"Let's Get Busy!!"

By Richard Zoglin

Just a few minutes before the TV taping is to start on this sunny Tuesday afternoon, an earthquake strikes San Francisco. But the only tremor felt by ) the crowd filing into a Paramount sound stage 350 miles to the south is one of anticipation. Two women from New Orleans are congratulating themselves on getting into the show twice in three days (they stood in line for tickets at 7 a.m.). A couple of teenage guys from Orange County are making time with two girls they met in line. A twentyish blond from Los Angeles sings the praises of the young comic she is waiting to see: "He's young, he's hip, he's personable, he's humble. He's just himself -- that's the biggest compliment you can pay him."

Arsenio Hall, at the same moment, has no inkling of the earthquake either. (The news reaches him later, midway through the show, though he doesn't mention it on the air.) With minutes to go before his 5:15 deadline, he is in his dressing room, slipping into a stylish double-breasted jacket, glancing briefly at his cue cards and getting some final dabs of makeup. With only seconds to spare, he bops downstairs, wades through a phalanx of enthusiastic staffers, then darts behind a blue translucent curtain. The band blares, the announcer wails. Hall sinks to one knee for a few seconds of silent prayer. Then he slides over to his mark and assumes his opening pose: head bowed, legs apart, hands pressed together.

And suddenly the earth really rocks.

Hall raises a clenched fist and rotates it in a circle, inspiring the crowd to respond with its trademark barking chant: "Wooh! Wooh! Wooh!" He races over to bandleader Michael Wolff and greets him by touching index fingers. (No old-fashioned high-fives on The Arsenio Hall Show.) He bounds in and out of the audience, paying special attention to the folks in the bad seats behind the band. By the end of his opening monologue, the crowd is wired. Johnny Carson signals the start of his show with a decorous golf swing. Hall launches the proceedings with a cry of "Let's . . . get . . . BUSY!!"

We are seeing the future of the TV talk show, and it is, well, funky. The Arsenio Hall Show, a weeknightly joyride on 167 stations nationwide, is less a talk show than a televised party: hip, hyperkinetic and hot. The host can't sit still, and the crowd can't get enough of him. At any moment, Hall might race into the studio audience in response to a shouting fan, or sidle over to his five-piece house band ("my posse") for some impromptu jamming. Meanwhile, as late-night's first successful black talk host, he has turned his guest couch into TV's liveliest melting pot. Rap groups get as much attention as Hollywood legends; George Hamilton or Glenn Close might find themselves rubbing elbows with one of the Jacksons -- Jesse or Bo. And when things get slow, Eddie Murphy or Mike Tyson could drop in unannounced. Man, this show is loose!

Since its debut last January, The Arsenio Hall Show has passed both Pat Sajak and David Letterman in the ratings, to take the No. 2 slot behind Carson's venerable Tonight show. Hall's show ranks No. 1 among the important under-35 audience. "I take the view that the public has elected me as a new late-night talk-show host," he says enthusiastically. "I've worked all my life preparing for it, putting together a platform -- my kind of guests, my kind of music, what I think is funny. I've been warming up in the '80s, but I'm really for the '90s. I'm the talk-show host for the MTV generation."

The TV industry is getting the message. Rather than merely redistribute the existing late-night audience, Hall's show has attracted new viewers. Some urban contemporary radio stations have noticed a drop in their listenership when Hall is on the air. The inevitable TV imitators are starting to appear, notably The Byron Allen Show on CBS, a Saturday-night talk show with another black comic as host. Even fuddy-duddies like Carson and Sajak seem to be feeling the heat. Would rock acts like Simply Red and Stevie B. have been booked in the days before Hall?

Not that Carson is in imminent danger of losing his title as late-night king. After soaring during the summer, Hall's ratings have slacked off a bit this fall. (The kids who constitute his main audience, explain show executives, have gone back to school.) Through it all, Tonight's ratings have remained relatively stable. "This race is not a sprint, it's a marathon," notes Brandon Tartikoff, president of NBC Entertainment. "Whatever burns the brightest, fades the fastest."

Complacency would be a mistake, however: Hall's popularity may signal a geologic shift in late-night TV. The rise and fall of potential rivals to Carson -- from Alan Thicke to Joan Rivers -- has become an industry joke. But Hall is the first to catch on, and he has done it by reaching out to a new group of viewers. It is not Carson's audience, Hall likes to point out, but Carson's audience's children. "The Tonight show is an institution," says Steve Allen, who started it all back in 1954. "But with each tick of the clock, its advantage disappears. The Tonight show audience is dying every day." No need to convince Mel Harris, president of Paramount Television, the company that syndicates The Arsenio Hall Show. "In the 1960s, Johnny Carson started with a young audience that stuck with him for 20 years," he says. "Arsenio's is the new generation."

Hall has a new-generation approach to stardom as well: try to do it all. At 30, he is not only the headliner but also the executive producer of his show. He hires the staff, okays the guests and even wrote the theme music. (He has a substantial share of the show's profits.) He has recorded a comedy-music album, Large and In Charge, scheduled for release later this month. On it he performs in the persona of an alter ego, a fat rapper named Chunky A, whom Hall played as a "guest" on his show last May. He has made a video as Chunky A, now airing on MTV. A movie career, meanwhile, has sprouted almost effortlessly. Last year Hall co-starred with his best pal Eddie Murphy in Coming to America, the No. 2 box-office hit of 1988. Next week he will be back onscreen with Murphy in Harlem Nights.

With his all-gums smile, flattop hairdo and exuberant, affable manner, Hall seems like an overgrown kid surveying a roomful of candy. His conversation is frank, unaffected, headlong. "When I'm on the air, I'm happy," he says, relaxing in his mirrored office on the Paramount lot, a muted TV set overhead tuned in to MTV. He is dressed in his typical off-hours duds: baseball cap, Reebok T shirt and unlaced sneakers. "I was born to do this. When I'm in the spotlight, I'm gone. I love it more than anything in the world. When everyone is barking and screaming, it's the best feeling I've ever felt, like a three- point jumper with one second left in the championship game against Boston. Better than an orgasm."

The show, for both good and ill, reflects that boyish, MTV-inspired energy. To his credit, Hall has shaken some of the dust off the stodgy talk-show format. His set has no desk; instead, Hall interviews guests on a modish chair-and-sofa ensemble, leaning forward intently. There is no Ed McMahon- style sidekick; Hall prefers to trade quips with the crowd or play around with the band in recurring bits like the "poetry moments," featuring various sidemen reading silly verse. Musically, the show has brought on a host of rock performers -- Kool Moe Dee, Living Colour, Winger -- who rarely get exposure on mainstream TV. And in contrast to the carefully stage-managed routines on the Tonight show, Hall's manic energy sends a signal that just about anything can happen at his nightly party. "There used to be a feeling that late at night people wanted to be put to sleep by a talk show," says producer Marla Kell Brown, 28. "But I don't think that's true for our generation. We want high energy."

Hall's one concession to talk-show tradition is to perform an opening monologue. His topical jokes are lame compared with Carson's or Jay Leno's, but he exposes himself in a way those cool satirists never do. Talking about Ralph Abernathy's book, in which the former civil rights leader made allegations about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s sexual escapades, Hall barely disguised his anger. "He's just jealous," said Hall. "Probably hasn't been with three women in his life . . . Martin's still my hero. Right on!"

With guests, too, Hall often drops the reserve that talk hosts are supposed to maintain. Impulsive, sometimes off-color remarks frequently slip out. When actress Sally Kirkland told Hall she thought he was wonderful, he replied, "I can tell -- your nipples are hard." (Even Hall admits that one crossed the line.) An interview with filmmaker Spike Lee last June turned into a testy debate over remarks Lee had made criticizing Eddie Murphy for not helping blacks get more top jobs in Hollywood. "It takes time," said Hall, springing to his friend's defense. "And the change doesn't occur any quicker if you go to the Caucasian journalists looking to stir up conflict and tell them what you think about your black brother." (The dispute didn't end there. Lee later called Hall an Uncle Tom, and Hall canceled Lee's next appearance on the show. The two have since patched up their differences -- or at least agreed to keep them private.)

Most of the time, however, the conversation on The Arsenio Hall Show is just what you'd expect from a talk show that bills itself as a party: lots of small talk, much of it boring. Hall's show-biz gush rivals Merv Griffin's or Rivers' at their most unctuous. His treatment of guests is overly deferential, his questions stultifying softballs. ("Let's talk about pet peeves," ran a setup for Kirstie Alley.) The talk on Carson's Tonight show may be programmed and artificial, but at least it gives the illusion of a real conversation. Hall seems tied to preset questions and often appears disconnected and unresponsive. Too many comments elicit a blank "mmm-hmmm," followed by an awkward silence.

But, hey, do his fans care? At a time when most talk shows have moved into controversial issues (Phil, Oprah, even Rivers) or anti-talk-show parody (Letterman), Hall has returned the genre to its original raison d'etre: old-fashioned, unapologetic stargazing. His innovation has been to set the show-biz plugs to a bracing rock beat. And if you prefer a little more substance with your MTV flash, boy, are you stuck in the '80s.

Hall bridles at the criticisms his show has received. "One critic accused me of fawning over second-rate talent. How dare he! In the ghetto the game is respect. If I book you, I'm committed to you. I'm an entertainer, not a tough interviewer. My philosophy is to leave my ego at the door and get the best out of my guests." Yet Hall concedes that his interviewing skills need work. He is currently being coached by New York City-based media consultant Virginia Sherwood. Among her tips: ask more follow-up questions and avoid overusing words like interesting.

The press's fixation on race nettles Hall even more. Though he takes pride in giving exposure to many black performers ("I have a commitment to correcting the wrongs of TV history"), Hall insists he is doing a show for everybody, black and white. "I'm out to bring the ghetto to the suburbs and the suburbs to the ghetto. I want ((rapper)) Tone-Loc and Major Ferguson, Fergie's dad, on the same couch. Most white people have never been to a party at a black person's house. I hope they say, 'This one looks nice -- maybe I'll try it.' "

In addition to his tiff with Spike Lee, Hall has been embroiled in a feud with Willis Edwards, president of the Beverly Hills-Hollywood chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. When Hall's show began, Edwards complained publicly about the scarcity of blacks in key behind-the-scenes positions. (Hall's producer and director, as well as the vice president of his production company, are all white women.) According to Hall, after making the statements Edwards asked for a $40,000 contribution to his organization, a request that Hall told a reporter "sounds like extortion to me." Edwards denied asking for money and slapped Hall with a $10 million slander suit.

No wonder Hall sometimes feels besieged. "My manager told me not to be angry, but I am," he says. "I give 110%. I resent the fact that ((for some white critics)) I have to be whiter to be a star. And then there are the jabs from my own people, the implication that I have to be unfair to whites to make + blacks happy. I am angry. I'm on a tightrope, and people are punching me from every direction."

Hall has done some punching of his own, especially at his rival on CBS, Pat Sajak. Both Hall and Sajak launched new talk shows at the same time last winter, but it was the white-bread Sajak, host of the top-rated game show Wheel of Fortune, who got most of the attention. "Sajak was always the golden boy," gripes Hall, "though nothing on paper makes him more eligible for that title." Sajak's CBS show, after a strong start, has been sinking in the ratings. "As long as there's an alternative to Sajak," offers Hall, "the public will always take it."

He has kinder words for Leno, Carson's regular fill-in and current heir apparent: "He's a pure funny man, more exciting and interesting than Sajak." Hall also praises David Letterman for "forcing America to loosen its collar a bit and not take things too seriously." Hall's top praise, however, is reserved for Carson: "He has an incredible understanding of when he's needed and when he's not. He'll insert comedy when there's a bad guest and stay out of Robin Williams' way. Doing a talk show for him is like a snooze alarm on a clock: he can find it in the dark. He doesn't care about numbers or competitors. It's like Tyson: nobody can beat him but him."

Hall's admiration for Carson has a long history. Growing up in an inner-city neighborhood of Cleveland, Hall used to set up chairs in his basement and pretend he was Johnny. Years later, between appearances on Hollywood Squares and The Match Game, he sneaked into Carson's NBC studio, sat in his chair and practiced saying, "We'll be right back." Says Hall without a trace of irony: "Johnny is the architect of all my dreams."

Dreams like that were a way of escaping from a grim ghetto childhood. At four, Hall recalls sitting on the toilet and watching a rat run between his legs. His next-door neighbor was shot during a pickup football game. Hall recently returned home for a visit and reflected on the fates of his high- school classmates. "Von is dead, killed in a fight over a girl. Weathersby is dead, killed over an argument over 'last call' in a bar. Freddie's in jail. Jack was picked up for selling cocaine and hanged himself in the prison cell. Tyrone, the star basketball player, is in jail on two counts of murder. 'Yo, man,' I said to myself. 'Nobody got out but you.' "

Hall's father, a Baptist preacher, was an old-fashioned disciplinarian who forbade dancing in the house and made his son dress up for dinner. He had frequent fights with Hall's strong-willed mother Annie, many of them over which radio station to listen to. (Dad liked gospel and Harry Belafonte; Mom preferred the Top 40.) "It wasn't unusual for me to see my dad go for a gun during the arguments," he recalls. "It wasn't just screaming -- much deeper and more traumatic. I developed a rash and started sleepwalking. They'd find me in the garage in the morning, sleeping in the car."

When he was five, his mother walked out, taking Hall and moving in with his grandmother, who lived around the corner. Thereafter Hall's childhood was a disjointed and lonely one. "Teachers would write on my report card, 'Arsenio needs attention. Is there anything you can do about it?' " Yet his grades were good, and he avoided drugs in high school -- though he admits to a rebellious period as a senior. "You couldn't get close to him," remembers Marjorie Banks, his old Sunday school teacher and the wife of former Chicago Cubs star Ernie Banks. "When you talked to him, he'd see you and yet he didn't see you. His mind was always on something else."

Show-biz stirrings came early. As a teenager, Hall hired himself out as a magician at parties and played drums and bass guitar in a couple of groups. He started college at Ohio University and finished at Kent State, where he majored in speech communication and played the lead in the musical Purlie Victorious. After graduation, Hall went to work in Detroit for Noxell, the makers of Noxema skin cream. But one evening after tuning in to a Tonight show segment, he decided the moment had come "to do what I'd been dreaming about." He quit his job the next day.

His climb up the show-biz ladder had few missteps. He moved to Chicago and began honing a stand-up act in comedy clubs. "Even then he seemed to have something extra," says Art Gore, a friend from those days. "He had a rapport with the people; he could adjust his comedy to fit the audience in the club." In 1979 singer Nancy Wilson hired Hall to emcee her stage show in Chicago. When she arrived late, he had to improvise with the audience for 20 minutes. It went well, and Wilson hired him as her regular warm-up act. Hall soon moved to Los Angeles and started picking up work opening for other singers, from Robert Goulet to Tina Turner.

In 1984 Hall landed a job that provided a strange foretaste of his current success: as Alan Thicke's sidekick on the much ballyhooed, short-lived Carson challenger, Thicke of the Night. Thicke remembers the young comic fondly. "I think I recognized that if anyone was going to be the Jackie Robinson of late night, it was Arsenio," he says. After the show flopped, says Thicke, "I know writers who removed my name from their resumes. Arsenio remained a friend in failure, and you learn to appreciate those people in a year like that."

Hall did not stay out of the talk-show ring for long. In 1986 he joined Marilyn McCoo as co-host of Solid Gold, a syndicated music show. Then he got a call from the Fox Network, asking him to be a last-minute replacement for Frank Zappa as fill-in host of The Late Show, which had just dumped Rivers, its original star. Hall's stint went so well that he was asked back twice the following week. Soon he was doing the program full time.

Hall's hip, high-intensity style increased the ratings of the troubled show, but it was too late. Fox had already decided to scrap the program in favor of a new late-night entry, The Wilton North Report. "I was able to do a lot of stuff because the Fox executives weren't watching," says Hall. "No one cared." When Wilton North was a quick failure, Fox asked Hall to return. But by this time his attention was elsewhere, notably in movies: he had just shot Coming to America, the first of a three-picture deal with Paramount. Hall turned down the Fox offer.

But a better one was in the offing. Last year Paramount proposed another late-night talk show; Hall would be executive producer as well as star, and he would be guaranteed time off to make movies. He was still reluctant. But a guest appearance with Carson on Tonight got his talk-show juices flowing again, and he finally agreed.

"Arsenio eats, sleeps and breathes the show," says Cheryl Bonacci, vice president of Arsenio Hall Communications, which was formed last year to handle his TV and record affairs. "When he's not doing that, he's sitting in his house writing songs. Things like going out just aren't important to him right now." Hall usually arrives at the office around 11, conducts personal business and prepares for the late-afternoon taping. After the show, he reviews the tape with producer Brown, who worked with him on The Late Show. Most nights he watches the show again at home by himself, then takes a look at Carson, Sajak and Letterman before going to bed, usually around 2 a.m., with a talk-radio station droning in the background. Says he: "I can't go to sleep without it."

Brown and Bonacci are two of his relatively few close friends. Another is Murphy, whom he met at Los Angeles' Comedy Store in 1980. "Eddie's the brother I never had," says Hall. "We share intimate secrets. We cry together. There's no competitiveness between us. When I called and told him I had been signed by Paramount, he couldn't have been happier." Though Hall has been linked with Murphy's so-called black pack -- a group of young black performers and filmmakers, among them actor-directors Robert Townshend and Keenen Ivory Wayans -- Hall says the others are only casual friends.

Speculation about Hall's girlfriends has ranged from Dynasty's Emma Samms (they dated a few years ago, says Hall, but are no longer involved) and Newhart's Mary Frann (too old for him, he insists) to singer-choreographer Paula Abdul ("just very good friends"). Hall refuses to identify the current "special woman" in his life and claims to spend much of his time after hours by himself. "My life is in front of people," he says, "so when I go home, I don't want to hear voices."

Home is a relatively modest four-bedroom house in the San Fernando Valley, decorated in blue and filled with electronic gear. ("I'm very high-tech oriented. I wouldn't have a TV without doors that open electronically.") His garage houses two cars: a white 1986 Jaguar XJS and a Mustang convertible. He stays in close touch with his mother, who is a big fan ("No one barks louder at my show than my mom") and for whom he bought a condo in West Hollywood. For relaxation, Hall tried painting for a while but gave it up; took tennis lessons but "hated them." Says he: "I'm not an outdoor person at all."

Which pretty much leaves work. In addition to the five-day-a-week grind of his show, Hall has taped some antidrug commercials and is working with Reebok to promote a shoe that would "pay tribute to antiapartheid awareness." He co-wrote and co-produced his new Chunky A record album. Its cuts include a comic rap number, a satire of raunch rock ("Let me check your oil with my dipstick") and a straight-faced antidrug anthem titled Dope, the Big Lie.

After meshing amiably with Murphy in Coming to America (in which he played multiple roles, ranging from a grizzled barber-shop customer to a fiery evangelist), Hall seems poised for a movie breakthrough. In Harlem Nights, which Murphy wrote and directed, Hall is onscreen for only a few minutes, as a gangster who "hates Eddie's guts." He is currently talking with producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer (Beverly Hills Cop) about starring in an action-comedy, which would probably be shot next fall. "By then," Hall says, "either I'll have a grasp on what I'm doing or be sharing a condo with Dick Cavett somewhere."

No sweat; he already seems to have a pretty good grasp on the success that has engulfed him. Hall claims he would be happy doing his talk show forever, but he seems fully tuned in to the precariousness of fame in a medium that chews up stars like M & M's. "One bad show, and I'm mentally packing a U- Haul," he says. "But I don't want to start playing it safe. I accept the fact that I can't have it forever. Ali was the greatest, but someday someone beat him, and someone beat the guy who beat him. When I was in high school, J.J. Walker was the hottest. Recently I saw a ((cable)) special in which people walked by him and joked, 'That's Arsenio Hall.' Because I'm hot, and he's not.

"It's scary," he muses, glancing at the rock video playing silently on the TV screen overhead. "Someday I'll be the punch line."

With reporting by Dan Cray and Elaine Dutka/Los Angeles