Late Night With Just About Everybody

By RICHARD CORLISS

On a huge billboard, Jay Leno's battering-ram jaw juts out over Broadway. AMERICA IS STANDING UP FOR JAY, the sign says. Maybe NBC hopes the nation's insomniacs will take a loyalty oath to keep watching the Tonight Show, and repel alien threats from David Letterman on CBS and Chevy Chase on Fox. So who's standing up for these guys? Bosnia?

The late-night drawling room has never been so crowded: Jay, Dave and Chevy competing for viewers with Arsenio Hall and Conan O'Brien, Dave's NBC replacement in the late-late slot. The new guys are joining a high-stakes poker game where Rick Dees, Joan Rivers, Pat Sajak, Dennis Miller, Ron Reagan and Whoopi Goldberg have played and, expensively, folded. Arsenio's audience -- his rainbow coalition of young viewers, a high proportion of them women -- has ebbed recently, and will slip further when his syndicated show is bumped toward dawn on many CBS and Fox affiliates.

So lots is at stake around midnight: the usual nine digits of ad-revenue dollars and the hosts' fertile, fretful egos. But, as Leno acknowledges, the free world will survive. "Does anyone really lose?" he asks. "It's not like people go home broke and beaten. Everybody comes out of this a millionaire."

The latest plutocrat is O'Brien, 30, whose new show -- he calls it Late Night with Question Mark -- is racing against the clock to invent itself. All right, sauntering against the clock. In Rockefeller Center, young creative types lounge about in pullovers and shorts. It might be downtime at the frat house; no one displays the panic expected of kids who must start, on Sept. 13, manufacturing five fresh hours of TV each week.

This esprit de cool comes from the host: Harvard Lampoon ex-president, writer-producer for television's best show (The Simpsons), scion of a tony Boston family (he could do my-father-the-doctor, my-mother-the-lawyer jokes, but won't). And, now, the star of Late Night after David Letterman. "I'd be an arrogant fool if I didn't get nervous," O'Brien says. "What calms me, I guess, is that there are a million things I can't do but I have a core belief in myself that this is something I can do."

Can do? Just ask his friends and colleagues. Mike Reiss, an executive producer of The Simpsons, recalls that "we'd be working on rewrites, 16-hour days, with sweaty men glowering at each other. And Conan would always entertain us; he was the comedy writers' comedian. I'd call him the '90s Steve Allen: smart, funny and very likable, with a more modern sensibility." The key is likability -- that elusive, soft-core charisma. Has Conan got it? "He doesn't have the sardonic glibness of Letterman," says Betsy Frank, a senior vice president at advertising giant Saatchi & Saatchi, "which a lot of people like but probably a lot more people find a bit tiring. Conan has a purer kind of humor, and that's being perceived positively."

For now, Conan & Co. are preparing comedy bits with names like "Raw Liver," "The Hunt" and "Tweeter." Max Weinberg, drummer for Bruce Springsteen's old E-Street Band, is expected to lead the show's resident combo. O'Brien's wish list of guests includes Larry Bird, New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Get Smart's Don Adams and biographer Robert Caro. But the star will be Conan, and the sizable shadow will be Dave's. "He did ; something innovative in the 12:30 time slot," O'Brien says. "And I'm inheriting this legacy. So I feel a responsibility both to do a good show and to try some different things. I'd like to be proud of this."

Chevy Chase's sights are less celestial. "There are these gaps of seven minutes I have to fill between commercials," he allows. "And we'll have some guests on. Ultimately, you have to understand that this is only TV. Silliness. Chewing gum." And what is the show for Fox boss Rupert Murdoch, who is banking big on the show, and to whom Chase jovially offered the job of bandleader? "For Rupert, it's just a breath mint."

Look, what's the worst Chevy can do -- fall on his face? That's how he became famous on Saturday Night Live, which he left in 1976 after its first season. Now, 49 and a movie star at liberty, he's back. "I went into Saturday Night Live feeling that we were in the top of the minors of late night. We didn't expect much from that, so I don't expect much from this."

What can viewers expect starting Sept. 7? First, an early start: the Chevy Chase Show will have a half-hour jump on Jay and Dave. He will do a nightly version of his SNL Weekend Update routine. He will play sketch characters: a Monsieur Faux Pas, perhaps the old SNL "land shark" metamorphosed into a dinosaur. Big-name guests? No problem: "I know every celebrity there is, practically, and they're all friends."

If Conan is charm, Chevy is smarm. At least that is his TV and film persona: the preening, been-there, done-that blase buffoon. But Chase insists he won't mock his guests: "The point is to help them relax, don't bully them. I want to have normal people too. One of the ugliest sides of TV is its continual daytime flushing of the underbellies of society in the guise of exposing the real America. Well, I think there are plenty of Americans who are very interesting and aren't screwed up. I don't know who they are yet . . . but we'll find them."

As for Leno, he hopes just to keep sailing along. "With the Tonight Show," he says, "you don't make sharp turns. It's like trying to turn the Titanic around." The Titanic, Jay? Are you just a tad apprehensive about an iceberg named Dave? Next week, to counter Letterman, Tonight is running a spiffy lifeboat drill: guests include Bill Cosby, Luke Perry and Garth Brooks. But Leno is in the game for keeps. "With all these shows," Leno says, "it's not how good the show is, it's how long you can continue to make it good, every night." It means long hours and renouncing the good life, but, hey, says Jay, "anybody can have a life; careers are real hard to come by."

Leno tells his viewers: "People! Go off, take a look around. I'll meet you back here in October or November." So don't feel guilty, America. Your standup guy is standing by.

With reporting by Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles and William Tynan/New York