The director Jeff Kanew did a small Q&A session before the festivities began and gave us the real deal on how he came to direct the film (was fired from Dead Poets Society), how Shelley Long became Phyllis Nefler (Bette Midler pulled out), why Blossom was not a Wilderness Girl and why he thought NO ONE could get behind this anti-underdog story of rich girls winning in the end. He also gave little updates on the Wilderness Girls, like Jenny Lewis, Carla Gugino and Kellie Martin. When the movie began rollingk you could hear a pin drop, well that is over the quoting along or pointing out things not noticed before. We all got up to dance the Freddy, sang along and made sure Phyllis and Troop Beverly Hills beat the mean Velda and the dasterdly Red Feathers at the end. Overall, it was an amazing experience to realize you are not the only adult who is head over heels in love with Phyllis Nefler and nerdy enough to sing along to Cookie Time. So let your Wilderness Girl flag fly, get out of your chair and sing along!

Thanks to the folks over at the Village Voice for securing me tickets to this awesome event! And thanks to Erika for putting together a FABULOUS event!

Conan was feted by some of the biggest stars in the business, who came to support the man and say thanks to what he did. O’Brien in between big name guests like Tom Hanks, who created the Coco moniker, Steve Carrell and Neil Young, wanted to make sure that his fans, especially the youth who created this movement in support of him, knew that thinking big and being positive would not let you down in the end. O’Brien said, “To all the people watching, I can never thank you enough for your kindness to me and I’ll think about it for the rest of my life. All I ask of you is one thing: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism- it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere.”

He rounded out his last night as host with a rocking version of “Free Bird” performed by Will Ferrell, his wife Dawn, Beck, Billy Gibbons, Ben Harper and his band. O’Brien joined in on the fun, grabbed a guitar, which presumably was from his massive personal collection, and wailed away. Oddly enough, this song became one of my favorites courtesy of the soundtrack for a little movie Tom Hanks was in himself. You might have heard of it, Forrest Gump? Check out O’Brien and his band of merry rocker.

For me, the program was emotional on various levels. O’Brien was the first last night talk show host I grew up with. By the time I was old enough to get it, Leno had already taken the throne from Johnny Carson after his first vicious battle for the spot with Dave Letterman. And Letterman, while funny, was too old for me to get. O’Brien was quirky, awkward, smart and more than anything into “my” pop culture. He opened my eyes to a different level of humor, alongside “The State” and “Kids in the Hall”. He was the antithesis of standard late night programming. And something that has yet to be noted in the nearly thousand pieces that have pontificated over this late night debacle is the amount of exposure his program brought to not yet big names in music and comedy. When Neil Young ended his beautiful performance tonight, and we found out he was more of a Conan supporter than to be expected, he thanked O’Brien for what he has done for “new music”. And it’s true, what Johnny Carson was to comedians in the lates 70′s and 1980′s, Conan was to indie rock bands in the 90′s and early ’00s. He was the only place I would ever see some of my favorite bands get any coverage outside of MTV and knowing what occurred behind the scenes, he had his hand in picking out the majority of the musical quests. He got “us”. We weren’t just an audience to him, we were his people and he ours. Micheal Ian Black explained it best why this whole mess has seemed to really effect my generation. If someone like O’Brien can get screwed by a big corporation, what’s to keep us safe? It was almost a slap in the face to anyone who doesn’t like the average comedian, the anti-Dane Cook in us all. For all us kids, who grew up on bizarre tripped out cartoons, after school specials and found humor in Ween songs, its a real dose of reality that in fact we can not have it all. So from the bottom of my heart and from one pale, red-headed Irish kid to the next, I want to thank you Conan O’Brien. I want to thank you for entertaining us for years, opening my eyes to comedy and music I had no idea existed, backing your staff in your original move to LA and in your contract negotiations and for most importantly, keeping it classy. I know you are going to go on a much deserved and well, legally mandated vacation, but I want to let you know you have a supporter in me for life and I will be waiting with a cowbell for September 1st to come, if only for the better weather. You go Coco. You go.

Now, Letterman probably knows better than anyone else what Conan is going through and this nonsense almost writes his nightly monologue, so I love hearing his take on it. And see, even he feels bad for Carson Daly.

But Letterman isn’t the only one poking the bear. Jimmy Kimmel started off his program last night with a monologue as Jay Leno, even mimicking Leno’s voice and handshakes. Kimmel is another character who loves ripping on the peacock network and it can’t hurt that his competition is getting manhandled by their own network like this.

Kimmel interview Chevy Chase last night, who knows all about late night show debacles, and the comedian played right along with last night’s theme. Check out Chase dressed up as Conan and discussing the particulars that makes a successful late night bid with Kimmel. Now while everyone is out there lighting up their torches to storm Leno’s castle, we really have to look at the truly guilt parties here – the suits at the network. While Leno has not been the classiest in this mess, he isn’t the person making the ultimate decision. Jeff Gaspin, and technically Jeff Zucker, are the real villains here. First, they messed around with the late night schedules due to contractual liabilities and forced Leno out, even though he wasn’t ready to leave. They did this all in an attempt to not lose Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien and his hilariously talented staff, and yet, they find themselves with two very pissed off and very powerful comedians who just want a vehicle to make people laugh. Leno somehow is made out to be the bad guy in all of this, but ultimately the network should have made the decision to live by the contracts they signed and find a better fit for Leno, other than just a washed up version of “The Tonight Show”. They should have also done a better job at keeping any of the necessary updates they wanted to make to their primetime and late night lineups under wraps until everything was ironed out. For Leno, he will be remembered as the man who “made” NBC kick Letterman to the curb AND embarrass America’s favorite redhead Conan O’Brien. It will be difficult for him to pick up the pieces, but he still has loads of fans, so NBC will probably stick with him. MTV goes through a few of Leno’s options and it doesn’t seem that any of them have a bright and shining ending for the parties involved. What I would like to see from this though is that if Leno does get back his desk at “The Tonight Show” and O’Brien makes the move to Fox or another network, I would love to see a solidarity pact from comedians and supporters of O’Brien to essentially boycott Leno. While it might not be fair, until NBC understands that they are programming for US the viewers, they will continue to remove quality programming before it has a chance to blossom and bow down to corporate demands. I’m with Team Coco in this mess, but personally I think we need to get mad at the big business practices here and the suits at the network as opposed to Leno fighting to keep his job. What do you think?

Image via Newsday