Name: Sona Thinks Conan Should Read "Fifty Shades Of Grey" (Ft. Ken Burns) | Conan O'Brien Needs A Friend
Uploaded: 2026-03-26T16:36:00.000Z
Duration: 5 min 12 s
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Gerund

One thing is that I have read hi I'm addicted to reading history, and

she's always trying to get me to read fiction as if eating my vegetables.

And, um, I just have this burning desire to know what happened.

And if she's reading this wonderful, powerful novel, I'm like, "Eva, what happened?

That's just made up!" And so she has wonderful photos of me when we've gone on vacations over our long marriage, on different beaches in different beautiful settings, reading the most turgid, dark, uh, books about, you know, uh, the Gulag.

And I'm sitting there with, like, a rum punch next to me.

But she could be reading, you know, Schultz and Nietzsche, or, you know.

she's always reading, um, you know, she's reading great stuff, and she has convinced me.

No, no, no, there is as much drama in what was and what is as anything the human imagination makes up.

But it's not a choice, because you're gonna lose Shakespeare if you're not gonna let people make stuff up, right?

You're gonna lose a lot of wonderful insight that comes from whatever the license is that people take to sort of focus on our interior lives and why we're here and what we're supposed to be doing and making of it.

I have to say, even one of my probably my favorite book is a historical novel, um, The Killer Angels, which is— That's what got me into the to do The Civil War.

I finished reading it on Christmas Day, 1984.

I was visiting my dad in Michigan, um, and

I said, "I know what I'm gonna do for my next film." And he said, "What's that, son?" And I said, "The Civil War." And he goes, "What part?" And I said, "All of it." And he just shook his head and walked out of the room.

And, um, it was it was because The Civil War had been looming over all the subjects of the film I'd made in really bizarre ways on the on the Brooklyn Bridge, on the Shakers, on the Statue of Liberty, on on the Congress, on Thomas Hart Benton, on on all the stu Huey Long, all of the stuff I had done, and

that I just couldn't figure out that this seemed to be as Shelby Foote once said, you know, "It's a American history is this clear river that flows into a bloody lake that flows out clear again." Not true.

But the idea that everything has to pass through The Civil War was important to it.

Very antiquated, uh, book, uh, um, 1920s.

He won the Pulitzer Prize, I think, for this or another one.

He did a biography first on Andrew Jackson, but

then he did one that The Raven is on Sam Houston.

And there is so much that happens to Sam Houston before he's even heard of the word Texas.

I mean, he is this close to the presidency.

He's sort of holding the governorship, uh, while Andrew Jackson is, is, uh, president.

He's gonna be the next president for sure.

He marries this young girl, his wife, and at some moment, she leaves him.

No, we do not know to this day why she did.

Something sexual, an old lover, whatever it was.

He went to what is now Memphis, swam across the Mississippi, and

became big drunk, a kind of dangerous, loose cannon Indian agent across the Mississippi.

I mean, it's just about if somebody gave me $180 million and said you had to do a feature film, I'd do The Life of of Sam Houston based on on this.

Well, you know, it's these there's so many things that really happened in our history and just in history in general that if you wrote it as a screenplay, someone would say, "Eh, this is too much." You know what I mean?

You know, Avatar is more believable than this.

This is you got a little crazy here when he swims across the river and you think, "No, no, this is all." All true.

And I think that's what's always attracted me so much to it.

I got into it and I realized, "Oh, it's just stories." And, you know, Sona's always giving me a hard time.

You always make fun of me for reading so much history.

Well, you read a lot of history, but, like, you don't read, like, Fifty Shades Of Grey, for instance.

I've recommended books to you and you completely ignore me.

Okay, this is your next your next this is your next documentary, Ken.

I did the blue and the grey, but I— No, no.

It's like the blue and the grey, but a little different.