About

About The Film

After a much-publicized departure from hosting NBC's Tonight Show - and the severing of a 22-year relationship with the network - O'Brien hit the road with a 32-city music-and-comedy show to exercise his performing chops and exorcise a few demons. The "Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour" was O'Brien's answer to a contractual stipulation that banned his appearance on television, radio and the Internet for six months following his last show. Filmmaker Rodman Flender's resulting documentary, Conan O'Brien Can't Stop, is an intimate portrait of an artist trained in improvisation, captured at the most improvisational time of his career. It offers a window into the private writers room and rehearsal halls as O'Brien's "half-assed show" (his words) is almost instantly assembled and mounted to an adoring fan base.

At times angry, mostly hilarious, O'Brien works out his feelings about the very-public separation with comedy and rockabilly music, engaging in bits with on-stage guests such as Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart and Jim Carrey, duetting with Jack White and sweating out manic Elvis Presley covers with his band and back-up singers. We see a comic who does not stop -- performing, singing, pushing his staff and himself. Did Conan O'Brien hit the road to give something back to his loyal fans, or did he travel across the continent, stopping at cities large (New York, Las Vegas) and remote (Enoch, Alberta) to fill a void within himself?

About The Filmmaker

A native New Yorker, Rodman Flender graduated from the city's famed High School of Performing Arts and studied acting at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London. His acting career included appearances on Broadway and off, with stints at Playwright's Horizons and Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival. Acting took to a back seat to directing, however, when Flender studied documentary filmmaking at Harvard University with Ross McElwee. After graduating from Harvard, independent movie king Roger Corman made Flender an offer he couldn't refuse. He became Corman's Head of Production and produced 23 movies in two years, including such titles as Demon of Paradise and Stripped to Kill. Flender was also a short-order writer (Roger Corman's Dracula Rising), editor and trailer-director for the studio. His feature-directing career was launched with the Corman-produced thriller The Unborn.

Flender continued to write and direct horror, thriller, and comedy features. After helming the Columbia Pictures release Idle Hands, Flender moved back into cinema verite with the documentary Let Them Eat Rock. Between feature films, Flender had become a busy director of television. His TV pilots include the WB's My Guide to Becoming A Rock Star and his episodic credits include HBO's Tales From The Crypt, Ugly Betty, Party of Five, Chicago Hope, and The OC, among many others.

Credits

• Directed By

  • Rodman Flender

• Produced By

  • Gavin Polone
  • Rachel Griffin

• Executive Producer

  • Kat Landsberg

• Music Supervisor

  • Paul DiFranco

Full Credits on IMDb.com