Local cafe gets mother of all promos

What a night Mike Riggs had. The Garnett, Kansas, restaurant owner and midlife graduate student had just walked out of a grueling evening class in research methodology, feeling great because his three-person team — which just happened to include Mrs. TV Barn, herself a midlife grad student — had given a boffo class presentation they'd spent all week toiling over.

But Mike's night was just getting started. On picking up his messages, he learned that Conan O'Brien was going to pimp his eatery on television that very night.

Would I make this up? See for yourself:

(There's a sharper version of the video at NBC.com.)

Now, you would think watching that clip that the proprietor of the Sherwood Inn lacked a certain, what do you say, sophistication? Well, now you're going to hear .... the RRRRREST of the STOR-y.

Here's how the amazing Conan spot went down, according to Mike:

"I didn't know the Sherwood Inn commercial was going to be used on the show until after I got out of class at UMKC the other night.  I had to go over to a son's house in K.C. to watch it because I couldn't get home in time!

"My daughter Deanna Riggs interned on the Conan Show last year and then stayed in N.Y.  She got to know Mark in the band because of the K.C. connection as well.  (Note: Mark ‘Love Man’ Pender, Conan's trumpeter, grew up in Grandview and is a friend of TV Barn.) She also befriended Pierre Bernard and stayed in touch with him after her internship concluded. 

"I had an idea for a commercial for our business in Garnett where she would go out to Times Square and film interesting people saying, ‘When I'm hungry, I go to the Sherwood Inn in Garnett, KS.’  I was going for the absurd angle.  I told her she should talk to Pierre about doing it and she said as a typical child of a strange parent, ‘Oh Dad, that is stupid, he won't do it.’ 

“Well, several weeks later she mentioned that she was going to be having lunch with Pierre the next day, so I suggested again that she run the idea by him.  When they had lunch she started to tell him about how her father wanted her to do a commercial for our restaurant in Garnett and to her utter surprise, Pierre leaped in with, "Sounds good. Let's go!” That is how it all came about.  Deanna, Pierre and Deanna's boyfriend (Jonathan Randell, a standup comic) came in the middle of August for a two day shoot. In addition to Deanna performing as the waitress, our older son Micah, a film student at K.U., loaned us his HD camera and did a lot of the filming, younger son Adam became the lighting person and eldest daughter April was an extra...it was a total family effort.  Deanna was an excellent producer on this project. 

“When she returned home to New York tape in hand, the editing still needed to be done.  She works part time for Jump, a large firm where all they do is edit T.V. commercials and they allowed an employee, Troy Mercury, to do this for free!  When it was finished late last week, Deanna took it over to NBC to give a copy to Pierre and they showed it to some of the staff who told them, “The writers have got to see this.” By Tuesday night, it had so mystified Conan it was used as a segment on the show.  An amazing saga that started with an ‘Oh Dad’ moment. 

“In the bit, Conan O'Brien asked Pierre who the man he pointed to was and he responded that he was Leroy Van Dyke, a well known local country singer.  Here is the rest of that story...Leroy Van Dyke is a big name in Classic Country Music.  His first hit came in 1956, a song titled ‘Auctioneer’ and has been re-recorded by many artists since it was released.  His record ‘Walk On By’ came out in 1961 and was designated in 1994 by Billboard Magazine ‘the biggest country single of all time, based on sales, plays and weeks in the charts.’  So Pierre and Conan did not realize he is much more than a ‘local singer.’ … I asked him if he would like to appear in a cameo role in our T.V. commercial and he said sure.  I used my hand held to film him and through the miracle of editing we worked him into the script.

“We are thrilled this all came together as it did and thank Conan for the national exposure this brings to Garnett and the Sherwood Inn.  As Pierre said, ‘The food really is great!’”

Comments

[matt stechel]

i watched that~~~i was completely and totally confused as to what the hell i was watching...just thought it was some random thing the wrtiers cooked up for pierre and a segment nice to know the backstory.

how was leroy van dyke there? did he just happen to be there at the time the girl was shooting the commercial?

I interviewed at Jump once...they seemed nice enough.