<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"FacebookPinterest\n\nAt Frankies Spuntino restaurant in   Brooklyn, Jimmy Fallon orders the   peppers with anchovies to share.  \"So great. Phenomenal. You will not  believe.\" it's a homey place, tight and  worn, unmistakably Brooklyn cool, and not  far from the new Barclays Center arena,  where we're headed next to watch a Nets-Lakers game. \"You haven't been there yet?\"  Fallon says. \"No? No. It's so great!\" He claps.  Clap clap clap. \"I get to introduce you.\" He  looks back at the menu. \"So, some meatballs? Eggplant parm? We'll just do some  aps, get to the game by halftime? Whatever  you want. Easy. Easy-peasy.\" It is impossible  to disagree with him.\n\nFallon says he's kind of ADD: \"Not, like,  diagnosed. Just my personality. Like, I read  one chapter of a book and put it down.  Thank God for Kindle.\" At 38 he still has  a chiseled face, no bags, no fatigue, and  he holds his shoulders high, like he's in  a state of constant inhale, cocked and  loaded and ready to deliver you a gift. He is joyful, easy, breezy, and if there is a buzz about him now, it is in the context of the Leno-Letterman game of chicken\u2014both of their contracts are up in 2014. Anyone paying attention can see that the famously improbable Fallon is getting groomed for the Tonight Show throne. Even Late Night ecutive producer Lorne Michaels concedes as much: \"I'm not allowed to say it\u2014yet. But I think there's an inevitability to it. He's the closest to Carson that I've seen of this generation.\"\n\nFallon and I are just coming from a Late Night taping, where the audience was  small, maybe 200 people, and the feel was  intimate. \"The biggest star on the planet!\"  Fallon said, and the blue curtain parted  and out came Justin Bieber, doe-eyed,  with a pompadour, skeleton arms jangling  out of a camo jacket. \"I missed you, man,\"  Fallon said to him and told him how awesome he was, and then it was time to go  on over and shoot random items at a basketball hoop\u2014an iced cappuccino, a big  bowl of ramen noodles. Noodles? Bieber  missed every shot, but Fallon went girlie-underhand with his noodles, heaved, and the great blast of yellow flew through the air, free, gross, slimy\u2014the whole thing was  so stupid, so inane\u2014and yet the Fallon gospel was clear: It's okay, America. It's okay  to lie there in your bed hoping with all  your heart that some friggin' noodles plop  through a basketball hoop. The noodles  swished through the net, became entangled, a kind of satisfying vomit, and all the people cheered.\n\n\n\n \"I'm so happy right now. So happy,\" Fallon  says. The peppers have arrived. A plate of  four lying like limp soldiers in olive oil. \"It's good, right?\" Then the clap\u2014clap clap clap.\n\nMore Jimmy Fallon:\n\nFacebookPinterestundefined\n\nFacebookPinterestundefined\n\nFacebookPinterestundefined\n\n Fallon tells me about first starting Late Night, how he knew audiences were dubious. \"They were like, 'Jimmy Fallon?' \" He  had killed during his six-season run on  SNL, from 1998 to 2004, alongside Will  Ferrell, Tracy Morgan, Amy Poehler, and  \"Weekend Update\" co-anchor Tina Fey.  Then he left to go do movies (Fever Pitch,  Taxi) that tanked, and which made Lorne  Michaels's selecting him for Late Night all the weirder. NBC hated the idea at first, but  Michaels was bullheaded; he would only do the show with Fallon.\n\n \"NBC was like, 'This is going to flop,' \"  Fallon recalls. \" 'This is going to be like  Chevy Chase's show.' \" That legendary catastrophe was pulled from the air after just one month. \"They were comparing me to that.\"\n\n The point is, Fallon knew he was an  odd choice\u2014he got it. He had his writers  use it almost immediately. \"You loved him  on SNL!\" show announcer Steve Higgins  declared in an early skit. \"You hated him in the movies! Now you're ambivalent.\"\n\n Fallon wasn't edgy. Fallon wasn't dark or  complicated. Fallon was perhaps too cute  for late-night audiences used to hanging  out with the snarky, cool crowd. \"Yeah, the  cool crowd was always beyond my grasp,\"  he says. He means this literally. \"Like, my  parents had a fence, a chain-link fence, and my sister and I were not allowed outside it.\" This was in upstate New York\u2014Saugerties,  Irish Catholic, strict. \"I was only allowed to  ride my bike in my backyard,\" he says. He  rode in a circle, round and round, carving  a dirt track. \"Like Gus the polar bear at the  zoo? That was me. Kids would say, 'What  are you doing, man? Come out.' I was like,  'I can't.' We got a rope swing. On a tree. We  had to wear football helmets to ride the  swing. Kids could see us. They would pull up  on their bikes so they could watch the Fallon  kids, so weird. You know, 'Why are you wearing football helmets?' We're like, 'So we don't hit our heads!' \"\n\n His parents had parties; that was the  entertainment. \"Parties where everyone drinks and performs. I did a Rodney  Dangerfield act.\" He studied Dangerfield's  No Respect album\u2014minus the curse words.  His dad, as family lore goes, had located all  the bad words on the vinyl recording and  painstakingly scratched them out with a car  key. \"I would listen over and over. I didn't  know what the word was. I didn't care. I wanted the jokes.\"\n\n A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer  in your pants, said the quote under his high  school yearbook picture. He dropped out of  college his senior year to pursue comedy in L.A., where Michaels found him, laughed at his Adam Sandler impersonation, even  though Michaels famously never laughed  during auditions. Seeing Michaels bury  his face in his hands, crack up like that, it  answered everything. \"Every birthday cake  I cut,\" he says. \"Every shooting star, every coin in the fountain, I wished: SNL.\"\n\n On the show, he was the guy who  couldn't keep it together, who laughed during sketches. \"Definitely a comedy foul.  Lorne didn't like it. I didn't like it. But the  sketches I laughed in became popular.  At the end, it was like the audience was  waiting. The studio started to shake. Like  an earthquake. I couldn't hold it in anymore. Torture.\"\n\n People criticized him for it, but audiences didn't care. Fallon's brand of comedy  included the audience in the experience,  and that, it would turn out, was prescient.  \"On Late Night, it's like we're all in on the joke,\" he says \"That's what I wanted it to be. I'm not doing  something sneaky. Inside jokes, I don't like  those. We can all ride together, and everyone's on the same thing going, 'Aha, I know  where you're going here.' And if we get weird,  everyone knows, 'Okay, we'll go for that little  ride of being weird.' Or if I go, okay, I'm going  to try to be Neil Young and sing 'Pants on the  Ground.' We're all just going to ride it out,  laugh, and we're going to be like, 'This is so silly,' but it's happening.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n\"It's...a happening,\" he says. \"That's such a  '60s word. But that's what it is. It's intimate  and we're all having the same experience. A happening.\"\n\nMeatballs have arrived. He pops one in  his mouth, has to put his fork down it's so  amazing. \"I can't even tell you. Oh my goodness, phenomenal.\" Clap clap clap. \"I can't say enough. This is just off the charts.\"\n\nAlmost as soon as it aired, Late Night became one of the most buzzed-about  shows on television. \"Certainly greeted  more warmly than my choice of Conan  sixteen years earlier,\" Michaels says. The  show was loose, freewheeling, the first to  embrace social media as a key element,  and packaged lovingly with house band the  Roots. Fallon offered a new mood for the post-irony crowd\u2014a new generation with a taste for immediately streamable chunks  of unabashed pop-culture sugar that didn't  pretend to be nutritious, symbolic, relevant, or important.\n\n\"I just feel like people like a little break,\" he  says. \"Especially at 12:37 at night, you go like,  'I'm just tired of the snarky right now. I just  want to lie down and have somebody make  me laugh for an hour. Entertain me and then  I'm going to sleep with a smile on my face.' That's my job, that's what I do.\"\n\n\n\nThe Tonight Show with...Jimmy Fallon? That  may sound too odd for America to bother  even imagining yet. But Fallon clearly feels the wind of inevitability kicking up.\n\nHe's not obsessing over it, though. \"I mean,  in the nicest way, who really cares?\" he says.  \"In the nicest way.\" We're in the car, headed to  the game, and his producer Gavin Purcell is  texting, saying the Nets are down by nine, and he has beer waiting.\n\n\"It would be great, sure, I guess. I'd love it,  but it's not on my mind. I'm in no rush to do  anything. I'm kind of a boring character in  that book. I'm not in a fight with Jay or Conan, or any of them. I don't have that story.\"\n\n He brings up Kimmel. \"Love him! So fun to  play with. I'm so happy he's moved to eleven  thirty. It's a good move for him. Love him.\n\n \"And Colbert, by the way, is so underrated to me I don't even know. Can you even  understand he's doing a character for how  many years now? This is unheard of in comedy. He's doing something that people will  talk about forever. We did a whole bit where  we were BFFs, and we became enemies and  we hated each other. And then we sang  Fievel the mouse, 'Somewhere Out There.'  Looking out the window, remembering that  we were best friends. Such a smart guy. I love  him so much. He's one of my favorite guys to play with.\"\n\n It's funny to hear him talk about other  comedians as guys you \"play with.\" Like his  mom finally let some kids in the yard. Or, even  better, he got to go to a friend's house. Which  would have been unfathomable at the Fallon  home. That's the backdrop against which all  the rest stands in relief. The joy is genuine for  Fallon; everything about being a grown-up is  exciting, phenomenal, so fun. Clap clap clap. He has a wife, Nancy Juvonen-Fallon (Drew  Barrymore's production partner), he makes  millions and millions of dollars, he has a big  apartment in Manhattan, a big farmhouse in  the Hamptons. No kids. He wants kids. He has season tickets to the Nets.\n\n I ask if he has a favorite comedian to  play with. No. But he wants to tell me about  Cosby, who came through the curtain and set  in motion the kind of show Fallon holds as  sacred. \"He started, like, dancing. And then  I was dancing with him. And then just the  physicality of him walking to the chair. We  just riffed and riffed and riffed.\" The segment  went twenty-five minutes, and afterward  Fallon thought: I can't believe we put this out  in the world. \"Those moments, like, that's  what you want,\" he says. \"Not that I want to  be serious, but I guess I want to send a good message without being preachy.\"\n\nA message?\n\n \"Fun. 'Have fun' is my message. Be silly.  You're allowed to be silly. There's nothing wrong with it.\"\n\n And yet it's not random. Fallon's com-  edy isn't slacker, or stoner. It's orches-  trated\u2014the jokes are polished and the skits  elaborate, like a recent three-part Downton Abbey spoof filmed with costuming and  sets to rival the original. And Fallon's late-night persona is gracious. He wears a suit,  after all. \"People say to me, 'Yeah, dude, lose  the suit. It's so not you.' I'm like, 'I'm hosting a talk show.' You should show respect  for your guests and your audience. I always  wanted to wear the suit.\" But not the way,  say, Mitt Romney wears a suit. \"I did 'Mister  Romney's Neighborhood' last year. So fun.  Mitt Romney and it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. I take off the gray jacket, and in the closet there were all just more  gray suit jackets. So funny. My writers are  so funny.\" He says he got word from Rogers's  widow after that skit aired: \"She loved it. She  said that Fred would have loved it. I was so happy. Because we paid homage.\"\n\n He grew up on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. \"I loved him,\" Fallon says. \"Me and my  sister watched that every day, Mister Rogers. He was so friendly and he was so nice and so  interested in everything.\" The description, I  point out, sort of sounds like that of Jimmy  Fallon. He straightens his posture, shifts his  gaze out the window like an alarm just went  off. \"That's so interesting, I love that you  brought that up. And the message. Be yourself. And be happy with yourself. Be silly. No  matter how weird the neighbor kids think  you are. I never thought of that. Love Mr.  Rogers. Love him. I even watched him when I got too old.\"\n\n\n\n When people spot Fallon in public, they  do not shriek or drool or go wobbly in the  knees. It's a different look entirely. A tilt of the  head, mouth agape, eyebrows rolled like you  do when you see a puppy. Everyone does it,  and everyone wants to get closer, and everyone gets a picture. For the most part, that is  the end of it. But it happens constantly, and  it makes snaking through a halftime crowd to  get to your seats at a Nets game a very long, laborious process.\n\n We're seated nine rows back, smushed, taking in the crisp newness of the place, black  and white and shiny. \"This is so, so great,\" he  says. \"A little brew? A plastic cup? A holder  right here? Look at this, huh?\" He holds  his cup up to Gavin for a toast. \"De-fense!\" he yells. \"Isn't this great? You get to yell,  'De-fense!' \" It's a happening he doesn't have to host, can just sit back and enjoy.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n Cheerleaders come out. It seems like hundreds of them all over the court, all wearing hoods. Silver, shiny, scary hoods, like  they're headed to the gallows? \"Okay, this  is disturbing,\" Fallon says. \"People fighting,  flipping around in hoods. I don't feel safe  right now.\" A guy in silver comes running out  with a handheld cannon. Big, white, solid  bombs fly out. Pelleted T-shirts. \"I hate this,\"  Fallon says. \"This cannot be over fast enough  for me. No one wants a T-shirt. Back to the  game. Oh, God. Oh, my God. I don't feel  safe.\" He cringes, ducks his head. \"This will  not be here in a year,\" he says. \"They're good  dancers, but&amp;amp;\" The announcer screams,  tells everyone to stand up and cheer. \"No  one's standing up. See? They need to work  on this. This will not be here in a year. It's  a new team. They haven't figured out what  they want to be yet. That takes time....Wow, I hate this.\"\n\nA guy behind us taps him on the shoulder,  hands him something. A note. Yellow, folded.  Passed down from somebody else. He opens  the note. \"Thank you, Jimmy, for not being  a douche front-row celebrity at a Nets game. XOXO, Row 11, Seats 4 &amp;amp; 5.\"\n\n He turns to find them. Two women, heads  tilted, mouths agape. \"That just made me happy,\" he says. \"So happy. 'Not a douche.' \""^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/jimmy-fallon-interview-gq-april-2013?currentPage=1>