It is well known in Hollywood that whenever a screenwriter wants to take a shortcut to quickly illustrate a character’s importance or how embarrassing a situation is, they simply insert a clip of a Jay Leno monologue in which the character or event is mentioned. This typically occurs right after another character tries to reassure the embarrassed person that everything is okay. For example:
TOM: Honey, nobody noticed that your top fell off, trust me. Now let’s watch TV.
(Tom flips to a news program.)
NEWS ANCHOR: On the lighter side of the news tonight, Lindsay Davenport, heiress to the Davenport Potash fortune exposed a little more than she bargained for when-
(Tom flips to another channel.)
JAY LENO: Did you hear about this? Apparently socialite Lindsay Davenport had her top fall off. It went down faster than Monica Lewinsky.
(Tom flips to a third channel.)
HISPANIC ANCHOR: Este es un clip de “Lindsay Davenport”-
(Tom quickly shuts off TV.)
Of course, the audience is meant to find this funny and accept it as proof that the character is a Very Important and Famous Person. A lazy shortcut, of course, that still crops up in American films.
Things have obviously changed, however. Now that Jay Leno has been exposed as a backstabbing douchebag whose credibility in Hollywood is at an all time low, will they still use him as the go-to guy for these type of scenes? I suppose only time will tell whether Jay retains these roles or they get passed on to someone else. Ideally, Hollywood should probably think about retiring this creaky cliche, just as Jay Leno should have retired his creaky act.
