Andres du Bouchet, a writer for Conan, went on a Twitter rant late Friday night, criticizing the current late night environment, which is dominated by Jimmy Fallon’s lip-sync battles and Jimmy Kimmel’s pranks. Rather than back him up though, Conan O’Brien put du Bouchet in his place.
Du Bouchet has deleted his rant, but Uproxx managed to keep the text. Many of the writer’s comments are filled with curses and offensive language.
“Comedy in 2015 needs a severe motherf***ing shakeup. No celebrities, no parodies, no pranks, no mash-ups or hashtag wars. I’m fat,” he began. “And shove your lip-synching up your ass.”
He continued, “Prom King Comedy. That’s what I call all this s**t. You’ve let the popular kids appropriate the very art form that helped you deal. F**k... None of the funniest stuff ever involved celebrity cameos.”
Du Bouchet tried to dial down his comments, even writing that “now comes the inevitable dressing down at work for criticizing other talk shows!” But he still hates the lip synching, karaoke and nostalgic reunions.
He ended the rant with an apology, writing, “Sorry for being a bloviating elitist windbag last night. I know tons of talented people are making the stuff I enjoy shitting all over.”
On Sunday, O’Brien took to Twitter to respond, but didn’t name du Bouchet directly. “I wish one of my writers would focus on making my show funnier instead of tweeting stupid things about the state of late night comedy,” the TBS host wrote.
Du Bouchet may have had a point that late night is now dominated by an obvious desire to create viral videos, but an expletive-laced tirade was the last way to make his comment, as he figured out. And even O’Brien creates Internet hits with his work with celebrities.
image courtesy of Jennifer Graylock/INFphoto.com