In the last part of the program Conan O'Brien needs a friend Jon Stewart recalled on the podcast a sharp bit from the MTV show that “will never see the light of day.”
before his time Daily ShowHosted by Stewart The Jon Stewart Show on MTV from 1993 to 1995. “We're doing a little bit in two weeks,” Stewart explained. “I thought it would be funny if Dave Attell, one of our writers at the time, dressed up as Hitler and appeared on the show pretending to be a guest. 'Hey, everyone's wondering what happened to Hitler. I think you brought a clip!' and he is in Nuremberg.”
Stewart said he and Attell, who are both Jewish, “thought nothing of” the provocative sketch. “We laugh out loud at every idea you come up with… it's two in the morning and you think it's hilarious because you're sleep deprived,” Stewart explained.
When it came time to introduce the track, Stewart played it straight. “Our first guest is very surprising. “No one had heard from him for many years,” he told the audience. “We are so honored that he chose to do this show first. Ladies and gentlemen, Adolf Hitler!”
At this point, Attell entered in his traditional Nazi uniform and performed the Sieg Heil salute while eating a bagel with a thick layer of cream cheese on it. “I don't know why I'm so scared, these are delicious!” Attell, as Hitler told Stewart.
“I didn't realize the crowd would rightfully boo him,” Stewart told O'Brien more than 30 years later. This is Hitler!” “It all goes on from there,” Stewart said. “I see in the control room that there is an immediate outage. The stage manager comes out and says: 'Oh, they need to see you in the control room.'”
Unbeknownst to Stewart, executives at Paramount were watching the taping live. “The phone rings. There's just one guy and he says: 'This will never see the light of day. This will never be published. You'll never do this again,'” Stewart recalled.
Although the phone call managed to thwart the show's more outrageous concepts, Stewart regrets bowing to the pressure. He described the incident as “revealing” because it made him realize that he should “enjoy shit” rather than spend his career trying to please producers.
Stewart laughed at O'Brien: “The real blow of the story is that they canceled the show right after.”
You can listen to Stewart in full Conan O'Brien needs a friend Interview here.