Jimmy Fallon and His Upbeat Form of Comedy Grace New York’s Cover This Week

It took a while for the show to hit this tone. Shoemaker remembers an early struggle, in the first months, to figure out exactly how to joke about the then-ubiquitous Susan Boyle. “Everyone else was talking about how she looked or her fifteen minutes of fame,” he says. Letterman, for example, did a top-ten list of “Worst Summer Jobs,” which included “Susan Boyle’s groomer.” Jon Stewart joked that Boyle looked like Labour’s Gordon Brown in drag. “But I really liked her video,” says Fallon, and Shoemaker points out, “People were watching it in our office with tears in their eyes.” So instead, they wrote a sketch in which watching Boyle’s video could salve any affliction, including Fallon’s grumpy mood, a cancellation by Brangelina, news of an unwanted pregnancy, a zombie attack, roaches, snakes, and a bloody arm amputated by a broken copy machine. It was funny, inventive, and left Boyle unscathed. “We watched it and said, That’s it,” Shoemaker says. “That’s what our show is about.”

This week’s issue of New York is all about optimism. So a natural choice for a cover boy was Jimmy Fallon, who’s provided a nice alternative to the jaded, negative comedy that can sometimes feel like it’s taken over TV. Here’s a bit from the profile inside:

Jimmy Fallon and His Upbeat Form of Comedy Grace New […]