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Conan O'Brien's TV Show That Became a Stage Show Becomes a Movie

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Been watching Conan O’Brien’s new TBS show but long for those early rebel days when he was unemployed? When the beard was new and we were young and his career became an act of improvisation? When he was an outsider and only you and the five jillion people who followed him on Twitter really “got” him?

Well, soon you can relive those heady bygone days of early to mid 2010! When Conan lost his job, sent out some tweets and began planning what would become the Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour, he had cameras following him. And the resulting behind-the-scenes documentary, Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop, directed by Rodman Flender, just picked up a distributor after debuting at the SXSW film festival in Austin.

Will you be there? Failing that, what are you thinking of TBS’s Conan lately?

Excerpts from the announcement after the jump:

RODMAN FLENDER’S CONAN O’BRIEN CAN’T STOP CLOSES UNIQUE MULTI-PLATFORM DISTRIBUTION DEAL

AT&T & ABRAMORAMA COME ON BOARD TO TAKE THE FILM TO THEATERS

Deal Happens On Heels of Film’s World Premiere at SXSW in Austin on Sunday

Austin, TEXAS (March 14, 2011) – Rodman Flender’s comic documentary CONAN O’BRIEN CAN’T STOP, which had its world premiere on Sunday afternoon at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival in Austin, will be released across the U.S. in the coming months in a unique mutli-platform acquisition and distribution deal. In the deal, AT&T will come onboard as a P&A and multi-platform distribution and marketing partner, and will sneak the film to their AT&T U-verse® TV subscribers on the eve of the film’s theatrical release. Abramorama has come onboard to handle theatrical distribution of the film. Magnolia Home Entertainment has acquired the remaining Video-on-Demand (VOD) and home entertainment rights.

In 2010, after a much–publicized departure from hosting NBC’s Tonight Show – and the severing of a 22-year relationship with the network – O’Brien hit the road with a 32-city music-and-comedy show to exercise his performing chops and exorcise a few demons. The “Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour” was O’Brien’s answer to a contractual stipulation that banned his appearance on television, radio and the Internet for six months following his last show. Flender’s resulting documentary, CONAN O’BRIEN CAN’T STOP, is an intimate portrait of an artist trained in improvisation, captured at the most improvisational time of his career. It offers a window into the private writers room and rehearsal halls as O’Brien’s “half-assed show” (his words) is almost instantly assembled and mounted to an adoring fan base. At times angry, mostly hilarious, O’Brien works out his feelings about the very-public separation with comedy and rockabilly music, engaging in bits with on-stage guests such as Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart and Jim Carrey, duetting with Jack White and sweating out manic Elvis Presley covers with his band and back-up singers. We see a comic who does not stop — performing, singing, pushing his staff and himself.

[Lengthy Conan-laudatory quote redacted]

Abramorama, headed by Richard Abramowitz (who steered theatrical campaigns for films that include ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL and the Oscar-nominated EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP), will shepherd the film theatrically nationwide with special theatrical “event” screenings. In a last minute piece of the deal, Magnolia Home Entertainment has come onboard and will begin to show the film on VOD following the exclusive window on U-verse TV, and then Magnolia will release the film onto DVD and other digital platforms.