Name: Conan Asks A Film Archivist To Doctor His Childhood Home Videos | Conan O'Brien Needs A Fan
Uploaded: 2026-02-19T17:10:29.000Z
Duration: 11 min 8 s
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Cause I was told just before I got on with you that I've met this gentleman before, this Joey guy.

And I thought, well, I won't remember that.

Cause I meet so many people all the time.

And then someone said, yeah, you were at a bookstore in Cambridge, Mass.

And I remembered it cause it was so unusual.

You were very nice and you said, hey, Conan, nice to meet you.

And you held up a very cool home movie camera.

Yeah, I remember you holding that up and taking a film of me.

I was really intrigued because, you know, I'm fine doing selfies and stuff like that.

But you held up this very cool home movie camera.

And I love that you walk the earth like Johnny Appleseed taking little clips of people.

I've been sued before, so I don't know how much you're going to get from me.

Well, I see some cool stuff behind you and I want it.

What did you end up doing with that clip?

Did you release it anywhere or is it just in your vault?

Okay, well, I'd like to see a piece of that when it comes out.

You know, you'll have to wait a few years.

It says here that you're a film preservationist.

There are obviously film preservationists that say, work on the director's cut of Lawrence of Arabia and try and restore it.

You've had some experience with that, but mostly you focus on people's home movies, is that correct?

I think that micro history is so much more telling and fascinating than macro history.

I mean, I know you studied history, so I think they're one of the coolest historical documents to ever exist.

There are so many universal themes in home movies, but

then there's so many, like, little individual things that you can tell just about a family or.

I love seeing you know, home movies from the 1930s, the 1940s, 50s, 60s.

when you see someone's grainy old footage of their Christmas and you really see what people are wearing, what the furniture looks like, how many, like, electrical cords are going into the wall in some unsafe way.

You just see these little things that don't exist now.

I think people have become very media savvy and camera savvy.

And, you know, everyone has a video device in their pocket right now, their phone, and

everybody's very aware and knows how to behave.

And there's a real innocence when you see that old footage.

People wave at the camera, they're excited.

I'm addicted to Instagram is always serving me up film that was taken in, like, 1903 in New York, because I just look at how people walk, how they dress, the kind of.

They're kind of shy, but sometimes they're very excited they're not knowing.

And ironic and cynical about the camera, the way people can be now.

I was watching the Mel Brooks documentary, which you did great interviews for, and

it's just so fascinating to see, like, mel Brooks shooting Super 8 footage on the beach.

And all the people behind him are so excited and they're waving and people are smiling.

And today, people get so annoyed, they don't know what you're going to do with the footage.

And it's just like people are oversaturated with video content, I guess it doesn't feel like it's not special anymore.

Whereas when you look at really old home movie footage, there's kind of a, oh, wow, they've got a moving camera.

Because the Kennedy family, it was a very wealthy family, and Joe Kennedy Sr.

Worked in Hollywood making motion pictures, he had access to really nice color film cameras.

And so there's all this really cool footage of, you know, John F.

Kennedy and his brothers and sisters goofing around in front of a really great color film camera in the late 30s and early 40s.

A lot of them are taken in Florida, and you're just like, oh, wow, I am there.

It feels like being in the present, even though you're transporting yourself to the past.

I rarely feel such a strong sense of presence when I'm watching home movies.

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Conan Asks A Film Archivist To Doctor His Childhood Home Videos | Conan O'Brien Needs A Fan

stuff

access

fascinating

adorable