I thought this was a documentary about Conan O’Brien’s life story. How wrong I was.

David Dastmalachian is my favorite actor who is just barely memorable. I don’t mean that in a disparaging way. He’s really great, but there is something about him that is hard to remember. Maybe it is his hard-to-pronounce-and-or-spell last name. Maybe it is because he often plays smaller background characters that are important, but don’t get as much screen time.

Well, it’s impossible to forget him in this one, because he’s the central character. He plays Jack Delroy, a light night talk show host in the late 1970s. The film starts with a bit of background about the character in documentary fashion. Then it spends the bulk of the runtime showing his most famous live Halloween show where some shit went down. Intermixed are some behind the scenes bits that show what is going on during commercial breaks.

This was a well-crafted, yet simplistic story with exceptional filmmaking quality. The whole thing had a perfect 70s look and feel. The parts from the broadcast show were made to feel like a talk show of that era with gritty cinematography and a 4:3 aspect ratio. The behind the scenes parts were widescreen in black and white. I could be wrong, but it looked like the color started to slowly come back in the closer it was to the show starting back up after commercial breaks. There was almost a sepia tone for the few seconds before the show resumed. Or else my old eyes were playing tricks on me.

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