Kevin Nealon Unearths More Conan Hiking Chaos — Sort Of
Today, Kevin Nealon went digging through the Hiking With Kevin vault and uploaded some new/old content to his official YouTube channel. Specifically entitled, “Kevin Nealon goes on a new hike with Conan! Well, kind of…”
The clip is built from previously unreleased footage featuring Conan O’Brien, revisiting one of the series’ most reliably chaotic pairings. Kevin and Conan together in any format — past, present or future — sounds like a ghastly time to us. Naturally, we mean that as the highest compliment.
It opens with Kevin asking whether Conan read the comments on their last episode. Conan says no. Kevin says he did — and jokes that they were rough enough that he “almost canceled the show.” Conan’s answer is basically: perfect. That tension, he argues, is exactly what drives more viewership.
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Hiking With Kevin: Conan Edition
Revisit Kevin Nealon’s wonderfully combative hiking chemistry with Conan O’Brien.
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From there, naturally, the conversation turns to death. Conan says he is “very nihilistic” about being remembered and offers the deeply reassuring thought that we all eventually get ground into the machinery of history. Kevin deadpans that his hikes are always so uplifting. Minutes later they are comparing cremation, burial, grave robbers and whether Conan plans to be buried wearing enough jewelry to look like a king.
That is basically the rhythm of the whole thing: Kevin attempts a question, Conan dismantles it, Kevin abandons it halfway through, and somehow another question appears. Conan eventually compares interviewing him to throwing a ping-pong ball into a room filled with mousetraps and watching everything start snapping.
Conan also clocks Kevin’s interviewing technique in real time — accusing him of simply grabbing the last word someone says and turning it into another question. Kevin admits one of his biggest influences was Howard Stern, particularly the rapid-fire questioning, which immediately explains quite a bit.
The hike gets even more wonderfully derailed when they stop for fans, Conan starts heckling Kevin’s celebrity status, and Kevin decides it is finally time to introduce a drone. Conan is horrified. Kevin insists it will let viewers see “all sides” of him. What follows is an absurd stretch of two veteran comedians wandering around while Kevin repeatedly tells Conan to “pretend to talk” for the drone shot.
Conan eventually points out the obvious: you cannot really have an interview show when your main direction to the guest is “pretend to talk.” Kevin’s comeback? Maybe when Conan learns how to talk, he won’t have to ask.
And then there is the strange little confession underneath all the nonsense. Conan says one of the things he dislikes about himself is that he lets friends take advantage of him. He has trouble saying no. If somebody asks, his motto is essentially: he’s there. Which, Kevin correctly notes, is exactly why Conan is wandering around on this hike in the first place.
By the end, Conan tells Kevin his questions are terrible — then immediately qualifies it by saying they are terrible in a way that is somehow captivating. He also predicts the drone footage will save everything despite spending most of the hike mocking Kevin for operating it like somebody’s dad fighting with a VCR.
Their original hike remains one of the series’ signature episodes, and this unreleased material makes it very clear that neither one is interested in allowing the other to behave normally. So yes, welcome back to Hiking With Kevin Nealon: the unreleased footage.
Images: Kevin Nealon / Hiking With Kevin YouTube video.
Kevin Nealon and Conan O’Brien — Unreleased Hiking With Kevin Footage
Kevin Nealon digs back into his Conan O’Brien hike for newly released footage from the Hiking With Kevin archive.
Source: Kevin Nealon / Hiking With Kevin.
