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Conan O’Brien Decries ‘Bullies’ While Receiving Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize 

Comedian Conan O'Brien waves to the crowd at the start of the 25th Annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor Celebrating Conan O'Brien, Sunday, March 23, 2025, at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. (AP)
Comedian Conan O'Brien waves to the crowd at the start of the 25th Annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor Celebrating Conan O'Brien, Sunday, March 23, 2025, at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. (AP)
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Conan O’Brien Decries ‘Bullies’ While Receiving Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize 

Comedian Conan O'Brien waves to the crowd at the start of the 25th Annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor Celebrating Conan O'Brien, Sunday, March 23, 2025, at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. (AP)
Comedian Conan O'Brien waves to the crowd at the start of the 25th Annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor Celebrating Conan O'Brien, Sunday, March 23, 2025, at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. (AP)

Conan O'Brien accepted the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor on Sunday with a not-so-subtle broadside against President Donald Trump, whose takeover of the Kennedy Center, which awarded the prize, has shaken the arts world.

A host of comedians including David Letterman, Adam Sandler, Sarah Silverman and Stephen Colbert celebrated O'Brien for comic greatness while ribbing the Trump administration and putting a spotlight on the renowned arts facility that is now overseen by Trump allies.

But it was O'Brien, the longtime late-night television host and comedy writer, who aimed his comments most directly at the Republican president without using his name.

"Twain hated bullies," O'Brien said. "He punched up, not down. And he deeply, deeply empathized with the weak."

O'Brien described the award's namesake as "allergic to hypocrisy" and suspicious of populism and imperialism. "He loved America but knew it was deeply flawed," O'Brien said.

Trump, who came into office in January, has spent the last two months implementing much of the populist agenda that helped him get elected last year while advocating for US annexation of Canada and Greenland, firing federal workers, and deporting migrants who were in the United States illegally.

The show was the first signature event at the Kennedy Center since Trump announced he would become chairman of the institution, pushing out billionaire philanthropist David Rubenstein.

Trump dismissed board members appointed by former President Joe Biden and installed officials loyal to him. He handed leadership reins for the facility to Richard Grenell, a close ally and former ambassador to Germany who is serving as envoy for special missions in Trump's current administration.

The new board, which includes White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and Usha Vance, wife of Vice President JD Vance, fired its former president, Deborah Rutter.

Trump visited the center last week and declared it in "tremendous disrepair." O'Brien thanked Rubenstein and Rutter in his remarks, drawing loud applause from the audience.

"When he accepted the Mark Twain Prize, this was a very different place," Colbert said from the Kennedy Center stage. "Today they announced two board members: Bashar al-Assad and Skeletor," Colbert quipped, referring to the former president of Syria and a cartoon villain.

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Other comedians joked that this would be the last Mark Twain Prize awarded by the Center. John Mulaney cracked that the facility, which is seen as a memorial to slain former President John F. Kennedy, would be renamed after Roy Cohn, a political fixer known for his role in Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-communist scare campaigns of the 1950s, and a lawyer for Trump in his early years in business.

Along with the annual Kennedy Center Honors in December, the Mark Twain Prize is one of the premier events at the renowned arts institution.

Trump did not attend the event on Sunday and did not attend any of the Honors performances during his first term.

O'Brien hosted the Oscars earlier this month and is slated to come back in the emcee role next year.

He was the host of "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" and "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien" on NBC and "Conan" on TBS. He is a former writer for "Saturday Night Live."

"You are a genius, my friend," comedian and actor Will Ferrell said from the stage.

"You're an absolute giant in the world of comedy," said actor and comedian Tracy Morgan.

O'Brien told reporters before the show that he wanted to go through with the event to support Kennedy Center workers. "Our country has been through many different sea changes, and my thought is I will be here specifically to honor Mark Twain and the people that this award stands for," he said.

Previous winners of the Mark Twain Prize include Kevin Hart, Sandler, Jon Stewart, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Carol Burnett. Sunday's show will be available for viewing on Netflix on May 4.

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Studio Ghibli Marks 40 Years, but Future Looks Uncertain

This file photo taken on June 29, 2023 shows a man sitting next to the character No Face from the Studio Ghibli film "Spirited Away" during a media preview for "The World of Studio Ghibli's Animation Exhibition Bangkok" before the public opening on July 1, in Central World shopping mall in Bangkok.(AFP)
This file photo taken on June 29, 2023 shows a man sitting next to the character No Face from the Studio Ghibli film "Spirited Away" during a media preview for "The World of Studio Ghibli's Animation Exhibition Bangkok" before the public opening on July 1, in Central World shopping mall in Bangkok.(AFP)
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Studio Ghibli Marks 40 Years, but Future Looks Uncertain

This file photo taken on June 29, 2023 shows a man sitting next to the character No Face from the Studio Ghibli film "Spirited Away" during a media preview for "The World of Studio Ghibli's Animation Exhibition Bangkok" before the public opening on July 1, in Central World shopping mall in Bangkok.(AFP)
This file photo taken on June 29, 2023 shows a man sitting next to the character No Face from the Studio Ghibli film "Spirited Away" during a media preview for "The World of Studio Ghibli's Animation Exhibition Bangkok" before the public opening on July 1, in Central World shopping mall in Bangkok.(AFP)

Japan's Studio Ghibli turns 40 this month with two Oscars and legions of fans young and old won over by its complex plots and fantastical hand-drawn animation.

But the future is uncertain, with latest hit "The Boy and the Heron" likely -- but not certainly -- the final feature from celebrated co-founder Hayao Miyazaki, now 84.

The studio behind the Oscar-winning "Spirited Away" has become a cultural phenomenon since Miyazaki and the late Isao Takahata established it in 1985.

Its popularity has been fueled of late by a second Academy Award in 2024 for "The Boy and the Heron", starring Robert Pattinson, and by Netflix streaming Ghibli movies around the world.

In March, the internet was flooded with pictures in its distinctively nostalgic style after the release of OpenAI's newest image generator, raising questions over copyright.

The newly opened Ghibli Park has also become a major tourist draw for central Japan's Aichi region.

Julia Santilli, a 26-year-old from Britain living in northern Japan, "fell in love with Ghibli" after watching the 2001 classic "Spirited Away" as a child.

"I started collecting all the DVDs," she told AFP.

Ghibli stories are "very engaging and the artwork is stunning", said another fan, Margot Divall, 26.

"I probably watch 'Spirited Away' about 10 times a year still."

- 'Whiff of death' -

Before Ghibli, most cartoons in Japan, known as anime, were made for children.

But Miyazaki and Takahata, both from "the generation that knew war", included darker elements that appeal to adults, Miyazaki's son Goro told AFP.

"It's not all sweet -- there's also a bitterness and things like that which are beautifully intertwined in the work," he said, describing a "whiff of death" in the films.

For younger people who grew up in peacetime, "it is impossible to create something with the same sense, approach and attitude," Goro said.

Even "My Neighbor Totoro," with its cuddly forest creatures, is in some ways a "scary" movie that explores the fear of losing a sick mother, he explained.

Susan Napier, a professor at Tufts University in the United States and author of "Miyazakiworld: A Life in Art", agrees.

"In Ghibli, you have ambiguity, complexity and also a willingness to see that the darkness and light often go together" unlike good-versus-evil US cartoons, she said.

The post-apocalyptic "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind" -- considered the first Ghibli film despite its release in 1984 -- has no obvious villain, for example.

The movie featuring an independent princess curious about giant insects and a poisonous forest felt "so fresh" and a change from "a passive woman... having to be rescued," Napier said.

- Natural world -

Studio Ghibli films also depict a universe where humans connect deeply with nature and the spirit world.

A case in point was 1997's "Princess Mononoke", distributed internationally by Disney.

The tale of a girl raised by a wolf goddess in a forest threatened by humans is "a masterpiece -- but a hard movie," Napier said.

It's a "serious, dark and violent" film appreciated more by adults, which "was not what US audiences had anticipated with a movie about a princess."

Ghibli films "have an environmentalist and animistic side, which I think is very appropriate for the contemporary world with climate change," she added.

Miyuki Yonemura, a professor at Japan's Senshu University who studies cultural theories on animation, said watching Ghibli movies is like reading literature.

"That's why some children watch Totoro 40 times," she said, adding that audiences "discover something new every time."

- French connection -

Miyazaki and Takahata, who died in 2018, could create imaginative worlds because of their openness to other cultures, Yonemura said.

Foreign influences included writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery and animator Paul Grimault, both French, and Canadian artist Frederic Back, who won an Oscar for his animation "The Man Who Planted Trees".

Takahata studying French literature at university "was a big factor," Yonemura said.

"Both Miyazaki and Takahata read a lot," she said. "That's a big reason why they excel at writing scripts and creating stories."

Miyazaki has said he was inspired by several books for "Nausicaa", including the 12th-century Japanese tale "The Lady who Loved Insects", and Greek mythology.

Studio Ghibli will not be the same after Miyazaki stops creating animation, "unless similar talent emerges," Yonemura said.

Miyazaki is "a fantastic artist with such a visual imagination" while both he and Takahata were "politically progressive," Napier said.

"The more I study, the more I realize this was a unique cultural moment," she said.

"It's so widely loved that I think it will carry on," said Ghibli fan Divall.

"As long as it doesn't lose its beauty, as long as it carries on the amount of effort, care and love," she said.