Jay talking: An interview with Leno

A funny thing happened to Jay Leno when he was flying to Spokane on Jan. 26. A blizzard blew him back to Burbank.

That show was canceled and rescheduled for today. We’ll let Leno explain the circumstances later, but right now, all we can say is: It’s a miracle the guy didn’t strap on his snowshoes and trudge his way to the Northern Quest Casino.

This is a guy who loves standup the way Homer Simpson loves doughnuts.

“There’s nothing more fun than standing up in front of a room full of people, telling ‘em a joke and having them laugh,” said Leno, by phone from his “Tonight Show” office in Burbank. “You spend the first half of your career just trying to get on stage, where you get booed and hit with bottles and rocks. And now you reach the point where people will actually come to see you? It’s great fun.”

That’s why he still does 160 standup dates a year, in between hosting the top-rated late night talk show in America. He even has time to talk about standup with a Spokane newspaper reporter.

“That’s OK,” he said. “I’m just sitting here writing McCain jokes.”

His standup compulsion is in direct proportion to his aversion to being seen as a TV star.

“The worst thing you can be is a TV personality – ugghhhh!” said Leno. “Have a skill! Get a job.”

He sees himself strictly “as a comedian who was lucky enough to get a talk show.”

“I’m not particularly young, or handsome, or any of those other attributes,” he said. “All I’ve got going is the jokes.”

He mastered the skills of standup long before he became the “Tonight Show” host in 1992 and he will retain those skills long after he relinquishes the host chair to Conan O’Brien in late 2009. He compares it to being a carpenter or mechanic – a craftsman who will always be able to make a living.

But he wants to keep those skills honed.

“If you’re going to be a comedian and carry two hours worth of jokes in your head all the time, you need to go out and do it,” said Leno. “You can’t be a comedian once a month. To me, it’s like going to the gym. I can go someplace and do a hour-and-a-half, just to keep yourself sharp.”

Still, isn’t doing a TV monologue every night of the week plenty?

“It’s really different what people will watch for free and what people will pay for,” said Leno. “Jokes that you do on the ‘Tonight Show,’ which are really throwaway jokes – in a club, forget about it. It wouldn’t work.”

The TV monologue does have the advantage of immediacy – “if you think of a joke that’s topical, you can do it that day.”

“You do a funny version of the newspaper,” said Leno. “You open with jokes about the big story of the day. Then you work your way through entertainment, sports, medical news, the environment. And then you end with a silly sex joke or Britney Spears.

“But the bad thing about the monologue is that sometimes you finish a joke and that night, you go, ‘I had a better punch line. I should have used it. I should have expanded it.’ So (in the standup act) you can stretch it out and make it a longer story. When you’re on stage for 90 minutes, you can tell longer stories with more content and you get to polish them on a nightly basis.”

And there’s one more reason Leno loves standup: his New England work ethic.

“I don’t like unearned income,” said Leno. “I don’t like to sit at home and make money on records or tapes or videos. I prefer to go out and make eye contact. I come from New England, and once a month they had a town meeting where the whole town would show up at the Grange Hall. Nothing ever got done, but they got a chance to interact and communicate. And it was fun.”

All of which helps explain why Leno was as disappointed as anyone when he learned that a blizzard was disrupting traffic at Spokane’s airport on Jan. 26.

“They said, ‘We can’t land,’ ” said Leno. “And I said, ‘Well, where else can we go?’ ”

The pilot mentioned an airfield in Idaho, but that didn’t sound like a particularly cheerful option. He and his crew would still have to drive two-and-a-half hours back to Spokane – through the same blizzard that was playing havoc with air traffic.

Everybody finally agreed that the best thing to do was reschedule the show. The question was not just about whether Leno could make it. It was about whether the audience could make it.

“Luckily,” said Leno, “it sold out again.”

He said he loves working tribal casinos, like the Northern Quest.

“You’re reaching people who don’t have the interest or the time to go to Las Vegas or Atlantic City, so you go to them,” he said. “You know, this is what show business was like 50 or 60 years ago. You got on a train, in the 1920s or ‘30s, and went to theaters in Kokomo, Indiana, and did a theater in every town.”

So he has plenty of options the day after he turns over the “Tonight Show” to O’Brien. In fact, recent news stories suggest he is being courted by other networks and syndicates to continue a late night TV show. He was cagey with us about his future, but he did want to reassure us that he’ll keep busy one way or another.

“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I’ll be fine. I’ll find a job somewhere.”