Conan O'Brien: when he took over late night from David Letterman, everyone wondered who the gangly redhead was. Ten years later—after some hitches and stumbles—he is arguably the funniest man on television. Here, he switches chairs with fellow sidesplitter Jack Black

Interview, Sept, 2003 by Jack Black

JACK BLACK: Hello?

CONAN O'BRIEN: Two great comedy minds, finally together.

JB: Head to head. Clash of the titans, as it were.

CO: Superman and Aquaman.

JB: Who's Aquaman?

CO: I'm afraid you are.

JB: [laughs] Okay. Let me start off by apologizing. You've probably been waiting by the phone for me to call.

CO: I've been staring at my pink princess phone waiting for my nails to dry, wishing you would call. And I have a photograph of you, and it's in a heart-shaped frame by the side of my bed.

JB: [laughs] Well, let me explain. I got scared and did some last-minute cramming. I had to approach this like a hard journalist. Now. I want to ask you some things I've prepared. Awesome questions.

CO: Are these the kind like "if I lift a tree that's heavy, that means I made it?" Wait, that makes no sense. I fell apart for a second, but now I'm back.

JB: [laughs] Which brings me to my first hard-hitting question, actually. It seems to me that you are the master of self-effacement. You might even be the king. The undisputed king. But the truth is, you've got the funniest show on television [Late Night With Conan O'Brien], and I'm not just blowing smoke up your ass.

CO: Well, there is smoke up my ass, so did that come from you?

JB: Yeah, it was me. But there's also other stuff up there.

CO: There's a 1934 Lincoln penny, which is very rare.

JB: What's up with that? Why do you--

CO: --Make fun of myself? I have a theory, which is that your core sense of humor and what you think is funny is formed early on. And my sense of humor was formed when I was a mediocre athlete, not that popular with the girls, coming from a big family, just this guy who was funny with my friends. Self-effacement was actually a survival tool. So if people want me to start saying "Check this guy out!" or "Wanna see something funny? Just watch the old Cona-rama!" you'd need to get in a time machine and go back to 1978 and make me an amazing athlete and a hit with the ladies.

JB: You said you come from a big family. Do you have brothers and sisters?

CO: Yeah. Five.

JB: Were you competitive with each other?

CO: I think we were competitive about being funny. And about who could throw the spear the farthest. [Black laughs] That was something my father made us do. He was a tribal chief. I read something once that Bill Murray said, that so much of his comedy education happened at the dinner table with his brothers, and that certainly is the truth with me, too. We were sitting around and someone said something funny and it made our mother and father laugh, then someone else tried to say something funnier.

JB: I remember really wanting to be funny, and not being funny for most of my youth.

CO: Really? That's interesting because I don't think people would guess that [about you]. When did you feel like, Hey, okay, people think I'm funny now?

JB: [silence]

CO: Never did, huh? [both laugh]

JB: Still haven't. No, in high school sometime, when I started doing improvisational stuff.

CO: I was always drawn to improv because I like being funny with other people. That's just always appealed to me.

JB: You're a collaborator.

CO: That sounds dirty. "Conan O'Brien was arrested for collaborating, outside, in public." Yeah. That's kind of the spirit of what we try to do on the show. If you're on the show, either you be funny or I'll be funny with you.

JB: Yeah. I feel like I have to collaborate or else nothing's going to happen. I can't come up with anything until I hear someone else say something bad, and then I can fix it or tear it apart.

CO: You are very abusive when you collaborate, I've noticed.

JB: It's true. I have a weird temper. Do you have a fiery temper?

CO: When people think of me having a temper they laugh because it's sort of like a children's party clown having a temper. But I think the thing that would surprise people the most is that when it comes to doing comedy, I am very impatient and I have this kind of classically Irish temper.

JB: You get a glimpse of it when you're interviewing someone and you get mad. You can tell there's a nuclear reactor inside.

CO: [laughs] I try and sublimate it as best I can, but when I get mad, I feel like I could shoot a ray out of the pupil of my eye and melt concrete. Sadly, I think that's part of being funny.

JB: True. You need an edge and an anger. It's coming from a place of destruction.

CO: There's a choice all comics make at some age. We come to a fork in the road, and it's like, date rapist or comedian? Personally, I chose comedian, but other people go the other way.

JB: You try to think of the most harmless comedian you know, someone who is never really angry, like [Jerry] Seinfeld, but the truth is, when he makes his observations--[imitating Seinfeld] "What is it with this thing?"--there's a fury there. There's a rage inside that.

CO: Right. I think that being funny is like a consolation prize for being angry or upset about some stuff when you were a kid.

JB: Do you ever think about having kids yourself?

CO: I'm having a child. My wife, Liza, is due in October.