Andy Richter

SIDEKICK IS NO ONE'S FIRST CHOICE FOR A CAREER, ESPECIALLY

A COMIC GENIUS LIKE RICHTER. BUT AFTER NINE YEARS ON HIS OWN,

HE'S BACK BY CONANS SIDE...AND DAMN HAPPY TO BE THERE

ndy Richter is standing at the summit of Mount Hollywood, looking out at the vast Los Angeles basin. Despite his doughy exterior—or maybe because of it—Richter loves to hike the trails in the Hollywood Hills. And he knows the area well. The view is spectacular from up here, the city laid out before him in an amazing panorama. He takes a deep breath, admiring the view. Then he unzips his pants and starts to take a leak.

"From a distance this town can be quite beautiful," Richter says as he pisses over a nearby ledge. I can't tell if he's being ironic. His urine stream is aimed squarely at the Hollywood skyline, which may be symbolic of something—maybe his feelings about the industry and how it has treated him over the years. Or it could be just a coincidence. Probably the latter.

Richter is trying to explain his role on the new Tonight Show, which Conan O'Brien took over as host in June. Not surprisingly, he's having difficulty explaining exactly what he does. "I'm an announcer-y, sidekick-y cast-member kind of thing," he says. "I don't know how else to describe it. It's a rucking talk show, and he's the host, and he talks

to me, and I talk to him, and I do comedy bits. I'm kind of there to lighten the load. Otherwise it'd be all about Conan, and nobody wants to see that."

You can't blame Richter for being uncomfortable about the word sidekick; it has too many negative connotations. Everybody knows sidekick is just a polite way of saying "second banana." The sidekick isn't the star. The sidekick stands in the shadows, clapping like a monkey and laughing at the host's jokes. The sidekick is always Robin, never Batman; Tonto, never the Lone Ranger; Chewbacca, never the Leia-banging Han Solo. Sidekicks don't get the respect they deserve. Frodo got all the credit for saving Middle Earth in Lord of the Rings, but his hobbit sidekick Sam did all the heavy lifting.

Talk-show sidekicks have an especially difficult road, often stuck in that frustrating limbo between semicelebrity and wingman anonymity. Ed McMahon spent 30 years on The Tonight Show, and his sole claim to fame was being an appreciative audience for Johnny Carson. Does anybody really want his or her legacy to be a throaty chuckle? Before McMahon, Peggy Cass served as Jack Paar's frequent sidekick on the show, almost

eclipsing her career as an Oscar-nominated actress and game-show mainstay. Regis Philbin is one of the few who managed to cast off his sidekick shackles—in his case, a two-year run on The Joey Bishop Show in the late 1960s. But he had to storm off the set in a snit during a broadcast before anybody took him seriously.

Richter is anything but remorseful about his return to late-night TV, even if he won't use the S word. "I've been shitting solid turds of relief ever since getting this job," he says. "Especially now in this economy, I'm just so fucking happy to have a regular job." That means returning to a post he technically retired from nine years ago and maybe eating a little humble pie. When news broke that he would be reuniting with Conan on The Tonight Show, one celebrity website ran the snarky headline conan o'brikn rehires poor, failed andv richter. Richter doesn't have a problem with that.

The past decade has been hit-or-miss for Richter. Since leaving Late Night—the talk show that launched

him into stardom and on which he could still call himself a sidekick without wincing—in 2000, he hasn't had the best luck as a leading man. He starred in critically lauded but largely unwatched sitcoms such as Andy Richter Controls the Universe and Andy Barker, P.I., as well as what-the-hell-was-he-thinking fare such as Quintuplets. He was also in the Olsen twins flop New York Minute. His fans adore him, though—the blogosphere is rilled with frothing-at-the-mouth declarations of Richter's comedic brilliance—but apparently not enough to watch him on his own prime-time sitcom. "I don't have any regrets," he says. "I'm disappointed

some of the sitcoms weren't more successful, but I wouldn't have done anything differently. Well, just generally I wish I'd been more productive. I should've tried to write more of my own material. Most of the things I've done, usually somebody else built it and said, 'Hey, come in here and help us run this ship.' I didn't do enough of it myself. I didn't design any big ideas from scratch, which I think was because of garden-variety insecurity and fear.

"I had a lot of ambitions when I left the show," he continues." I wanted to do my own things and try something different. Now I feel, Okay, I gave all that a shot, and it was great, but I miss the smallness of doing a late-night show."

I point out that he's probably the first person ever to describe The Tonight Show as small.

"I don't mean small in terms of scope," he says. "I mean the immediacy of it. Anywhere else, if I have an idea, I have to go out into the world and try to sell it. But here, if I have an idea, I can put it on TV tonight."

When he finishes pissing we continue our hike until we come to another ledge. It's an unusually clear day for Los Angeles; the smog has been beaten down (at least temporarily) by rain, and we can see the entire city from the Valley to the coastline. Richter gives me a guided tour of his adopted hometown, pointing out various neighborhoods and providing bite-size factoids about them.

Silver Lake, he says, is filled with "fucking hipsters in their fucking fedoras, riding around on bikes without brakes." Hancock Park, where he lives with his wife and two kids, is "the second stop on the white-flight trail." He visits downtown L.A. frequently "because for some reason my children love all things Japanese." And don't forget Beverly Hills, which apparendy is populated by "strange lizard creatures and creepy old women with huge, ught tits."

Ed McMahon—who died in late June, only a few weeks after Richter made his Tonight Show premiere— will be a shadow looming large over Richter. McMahon was his only real predecessor on The Tonight Show and the man whom, for better or worse, he will be compared with and judged against.

Richter is humble and complimentary—and almost apologetic—when McMahon's name comes up. "I definitely admire him," he says. "He was the ultimate big affable lout, and I'm certainly of that school. At least I hope I am. I've got people working day and night on it. He sort of imprinted himself on this job. I could only hope to leave as much of a mark as he did." (concluded on page 111)

ANDY RICHTER

(continued from page 66)

He asks if I've read McMahon's 1998 autobiography, For Laughing Out Loud. "When I left Late Night, Sarah Vowell wrote an essay about me for an online magazine," he says. "She talks about McMahon's book and how the first line was something like 'I will never forget when I met a young man named Johnny Carson.' That was the very first line. Of his life story. That says so much. He was basically acknowledging that Johnny is the alpha male of his particular clan. It's just another way of saying 'co-dependence.'"

He doesn't mention Vowell's other observations, such as how McMahon's autobiography would have "scared me silly" if she was in Richter's shoes, or that Richter was smart to leave Late Night while he still had the chance. If Richter has any doubts about returning to sidekick territory, he doesn't share them. He believes he and McMahon are from two different worlds, with very different experiences. None of that sad co-dependence between McMahon and Carson is apparent when Richter talks about his relationship with O'Brien. But there are hints of protectiveness.

He describes their partnership this way: "When people transport a show horse, like the kind that's trained to perform in a circus or rodeo, they frequently put another animal in the horse trailer—like a dog or an old goat—something nobody cares about, to make the horse feel calm and secure. I kind of feel like that's my job. I'm the old goat that keeps the star horse company so he doesn't get agitated and kick the door off his stall."

It's a joke but a joke with a grain of truth. "He does tend to worry," Richter admits of his TV partner. "He gets so wound up sometimes he needs to be told to have a good time. There's something about Irish Catholic guilt, second only to Jewish guilt, that's pretty strong. It's so free-floating and doesn't even have a point. I used to have conversations with him where 1 was like, 'Please, enjoy this! My God, the fruits of your labor are bountiful!'"

O'Brien isn't the only one who finds Richter a calming presence. Although Richter is dressed like a prepubescent boy (wearing a baseball cap, shorts and a T-shirt with a cartoon character drawn across the chest), I feel safe letting him assume the role of hiking guide. He exudes an air of confidence even when he obviously has no idea what he's talking about. He explains the realities of L.A.'s wilderness: "It's all built on risers." he says. "If the bank crisis should deepen, all of this will be rolled up and taken away." And he points out the predominance of single male hikers: "Is this the place in the park where a fella goes if he wants a blow job from another fella?"

He's such a natural leader it's a wonder he never considered getting his own talk show. "I have no interest in that," he says without hesitation. "I've never had the talent for interviewing people like Conan does. He's just innately more curious about humanity than I am. I like people well enough but, well, not everybody.

Okay, hardly anybody. Conan really seems to enjoy asking questions and finding out things about people. He's very personable. I'm more of a recluse."

And pleasant conversations with strangers, Richter explains, are the best-case scenario. "I used to watch Conan sweat bullets over somebody who didn't know how to talk or wasjust a jackass," he says. "My most disliked guests are the stars of some new drama or sitcom that nobody's watching, and they walk out with this cocky confidence that's just like [he assumes the timbre of a smarms TV announcer] 'The love affair with America has begun! Hello, everybody. What's up? That's right, I'm Chase Danford, the chiseled hunk from Tucker Country, M.D.'"

Richter is unconcerned with the high expectations surrounding The Tonight Show. He seems to understand that, unlike his seven years with O'Brien on Late Night, this will be a very different type of show. With an earlier time slot comes a slightly older and more conservative audience that may not be as entertained by the masturbating bears and vomiting muppets of the Late Night era. Richter probably won't be as inclined to streak across the Today show set as he did so memorably on Late Night, or predict his eventual crossover into gay porn with a movie called 69 on the Richter Scale or cheat during a staring contest by convincing his

competitor's grandparents to strip.

"We'll still be relatively weird," he promises. "But at a certain point it's an issue of politeness. I can't go out there and say "Screw the establishment' or 'Suck on this, old man!' That's not The Tonight Show. It should be funny. I have no intention of working on something where 1 feel like we're not even trying. But you have to realize who you're talking to. You don't drop the F bomb when Grandma comes over."

I ask if he's planning any future surprises on The Tonight Show, something that will satisfy his longtime fans. "I can't make any promises," he says. "But there's a pretty good chance I'll have a belter parking space at the Universal Studios lot soon. That's gonna make a big difference to the quality of the show. Maybe not necessarily in visible ways, but it will matter. There will be a certain lightness and contentedness to me."

Richter says this with such deadpan sincerity that it almost seems as if he's being serious. Maybe a good parking spot and a dependable paycheck is all he really wants anymore. But look closer and you'll see a devilish glint in his eye, like a teenage kid who doesn't want his parents to know his backpack is filled with fireworks and porn.

"I DON'T HAVE ANY REGRETS," SAYS RICH TER."WELL, GENER­ALLY I WISH I'D BEEN MORE PRODUCTIVE."