Predicting the New Friends and Other Mass Market Diversions
So Joey from Friends is the one who’s getting his own spinoff show. I like Friends and I like the Joey character, but Chandler is the heart of the show. His cadence and timing dominates.
Nevertheless, Cheers spinning off one of the lesser characters worked out ok for Frasier. So, let’s assume that this fall’s Joey! gives itself the same freedom to rework the character and setting.
So, what happens to Joey? He stays in New York because it’d be unpatriotic to move him, although re-setting the series in Hollywood would make thematic sense. Joey becomes not quite as dumb. He is either an actor in a minor, failing troupe that comes up with wacky ideas for shows (e.g., at Christmas they get hired to enact a punk Santa’s workshop in Macy’s store Window) or Joey’s a struggling actor who supports himself as an office boy in an uptight company from whom he has to hide that he is an actor. Either way we get a band of entertaining characters around him, including:
Oliver Permwell, the snooty thespian who lords it over Joey because he was once Ted Danson’s understudy in an Off Broadway performance of The Glass Menagerie: The Musical!
Tristi Jigli, the empty-headed (or so it seems!) blonde whom Joey secretly lusts after
Percy Gimlet, the black gay room-mate who not-so-secretly lusts after the oblivious Joey
Mr. Hawkins, the gruff-hearted father-figure (owns the theater or owns the business, depending) with a heart of gold who saves many a desperate situation
Pix, the wise-cracking pre-teen Joey is taking care of while his brother is “temporarily” on a trip. (Pix gets what would have been Chandler’s lines.)
Jimmy Lizard (“It’s pronounced LeeZahrd,” he humorously insists), the ambitious, scheming actor who’ll do anything to get the roles Joey wants
Much merriment ensues.
The review of the Pirates of the Carribean in The New Yorker made clear something about Johnny Depp’s performance that I’d missed. Maybe it was obvious to everyone else, but you know why Depp has such an odd rollling gait? When he’s not at sea, he can’t find his land legs.
Christopher Hitchens has written an article on a point I’ve been espousing, albeit not in my blog: Bob Hope was never funny. Was he funny? Not. (Wilifred Sheed has a counterpoint that defends Hope by saying he was funny in some of his movies.)
And, as if to hammer home the point, the NYT Week in Review runs Hope’s bestest quips. Not a funny one in the bunch.
A lot of Hope’s humor was topical. You had to be then…
Seriously, look at a Bill Maher (or even Will Durst or Jay Leno) routine from, say 5 years ago. It’s hard to make political humor hold up.
And remember, Hope was working with gags, not full-fledged jokes.
One other important point. So much of great comedy is in the delivery, and in the character you create around the delivery. Jack Benny’s most famous bit was on his radio show, a robber saying “your money or your life” and the audience laughter building for 45 seconds before Benny says “I’m thinking!” (which is what the audience is thinking).
Hope’s character was a lecherous, smart-alecky schlub who thought he was a ravishing, clever, even brilliant man. It was a great character.
Want to see the character born? Go out and get “Goldiggers of 1938,” where he first sang “Thanks for the Memories.” It was one of a succession of increasingly-forgettable “Goldigger” movies, and featured an elaborate set of bits by W.C. Fields. Hope’s character was all there — all of it. And the scene where he sang the song gave the whole thing poignancy.
The man made a living off that for 60 years. Neat trick.
Two more points about Hope.
First, his last joke. It was on his deathbed. His wife asked him where he wanted to be buried. “Surprise me,” he said.
Second, 40 years ago my father-in-law had the chance to build a new elementary school in his district. He asked the kids, mostly Mexican-American youngsters, what they wanted the school to be named. Hope, they said. So he got Bob Hope.
Of course, Hope was hopeless about making commitments when there wasn’t money involved. Finally, my father-in-law called Hope’s office and said, “You tell him that if he doesn’t commit by tomorrow we’re naming it after Crosby.” Five minutes later, “This is Bob Hope.”
30 years from now, very few of today’s comedians will seem funny either. Most mass-market comedy is ephemeral and contextual: it lives with the times. Only a handful of comedians in a millenium will qualify as “timeless.” Mark Twain comes to mind as one.
While thinking about these links, before clicking through to them, visions appear: a bunch of shriveled, old, dilbert-like-funny-looking cartoon characters sitting around a newspaper editor’s desk. One of the old geezers misunderstands a conversation because his hearing aid batteries are running low. He shakily raises his cane and indigently points to one of his 20-year-younger protégée (albeit also funnily drawn) newspaper editors and raptly murmurs, “Bob Hope’s head! Now, that’s not funny young feller…”
The “surprise me” line is the funniest Hope joke I’ve heard. Why do I think that therefore the story must be apocryphal?
FWIW, I was in the context. I watched his specials and sat through his endlessly unfunny jokes at the Academy Awards. They weren’t funny (to me, of course) then and they’re less funny now.
Sure, lots of comedy doesn’t hold up. But some does. Lenny Bruce is hopelessly out of date, but it’s still possible to see why he was funny and brilliant. Shelly Berman’s routines were all in their delivery, yet they can still rouse a smile. Richard Pryor’s stand-up from the 70s is dated (the difference between white guys and black guys has been overdone by those who followed him) but hilarious. I’m still telling Steve Martin jokes from the mid-70s. Will Rogers is remembered for some lines that are still trenchant. Buddy Hackett’s stories may have been hopelessly sexist and even cruel, but just as often were damn funny. Nichols and May transcend their time entirely and are still brilliant. Bob Hope has the distinction of not seeming funny in retrospect and having not even a single joke associated with his name that has survived. Nada.
Yes, his movies were funny at the time and one can still see in them the reason why … even as one sits there in stony silence.
(I think I’m done with kicking the memory of the dead. At least for now.)
FWIW, I was in the context. I watched his specials and sat through his endlessly unfunny jokes at the Academy Awards.
Naw, that’s not the context. I think you had to be someone who was an adult during the second World War to really be in tune with Hope’s humor. I don’t find him at all funny either, but I also never got many yuks out of Beavis and Butthead, Seinfeld (which admittedly I only watched once), or even Saturday Night live in its heyday. Maybe I’m just overly resistant to being manipulated, but I’ve always found the funniest people are the ones who aren’t necessarily trying to be funny, just like I’ve always found that the sexiest people are the ones who don’t flaunt their sexiness. For me, the best humor is when it’s unexpected and off-the-cuff. But I know I’m weird in that respect.
Gee, Dave, sounds like everyone’s saying you’re too young to have an opinion about this! Cherish the moment… :)
re Joey spin-off: what are the odds they had a reverse auction among the cast and he went for the low-ball salary?
ON Friends, these are great characters and ideas.
I spent a morning thinking about these things too. The problem is that Joey can’t stay in New York, or else, they would have to explain why his Friends are not always popping up.
I like the idea of the show being about his different gigs, which were hilarious on Friends. rj
David Weinberger is still a
David Weinberger is still a genius. Sorry I am just testing to see if my TrackBack macro is working for me, and it doesn’t appear to be. I will trace my debugging of it here: Initial attempt: added the macro per instructions to my template. It visually…