Celebrities sometimes drink and are difficult, according to shocking new Jay Leno book
As with most Jay Leno headlines, it’s neither news nor especially entertaining that late-night talk shows often ply their guests with alcohol, the better to get otherwise-introverted actors in the mood to really loosen up and fulfill their promotional obligations. Stories of Jay Leno’s backstage bar cart at The Tonight Show have been around since at least 2001—and Tom Green pounding Jagermeister aside, they hardly match those wild Johnny Carson years when he, Dean Martin, Burt Reynolds, and Ed McMahon would take turns holding each other’s hair while they puked for 40 minutes straight.
Still, even though you’ve seen this and you’ve heard about this for decades now, there’s a new book from longtime producer Dave Berg that looks at The Lighter Side of drunk Leno guests. For example, calling out people like Quentin Tarantino for the time that he “hit The Jay Bar so hard that he was slurring and ‘occasionally incoherent’ on air”—a marked difference from Tarantino’s usually manic, more articulated form of incoherence.