A 25-year-old actor who dabbled in writing, Matthew Perry had a vision. With all the one-name television series revolving around standup comedians, why not write a script that revives the art of the ensemble comedy?
It would be about a group of young people, like him, who congregate in an old house just to talk. Taking a cue from Seinfeld, the series would be about “nothing,” yet because of the mutual dilemmas shared by the twentysomethings, the conversations would surely amount to something.
Last year, he sold the pilot, “Maxwell’s House,” to Universal Television. But when the time came to pitch it to NBC, the peacock declined.
“They said they already had something like it,” Perry the writer bemoaned, laughing at the irony.
The series in question-“Friends”-has become one of the hottest comedies around in its first season. And Perry the actor just happened to land one of the six starring roles.
The way things are going, Perry shouldn’t give up on his pilot. TV works in cloning cycles, where a hit can’t be a hit for more than 15 minutes before a rival network tries to copy it. Who knows? When the glut of new ensemble comedies pop up to challenge “Friends” next fall, “Maxwell’s House” could be among them.
It’s been a long time since television felt comfortable being funny in a group, if it ever did. TV writers have long crafted fine dramas with huge casts, but have struggled with dispersing comedic storylines equally among a handful of characters.
“Roseanne” wouldn’t be much of a show without Roseanne. Ditto for “Ellen,” “Cybill” and “Grace Under Fire,” whose star, Brett Butler, might as well change her name.
These days, only “Living Single,” “The Simpsons” and “Seinfeld” perform as true ensembles week after week. “Friends” drew its inspiration from three well-known ensembles-“The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Taxi” and “Cheers”-all of which featured the directing of James Burrows and his fondness for the art of conversation.
“I think what makes (“Friends”) interesting is that it’s a comedy based on dialogue, rather than situation,” Perry said. “If there’s nothing going on, and it’s just six people sitting in a room, the pilot established six interesting people that can talk about anything.”
Ross has a dilemma. After a painful and humiliating divorce, he’s finally found a new woman to date. Only she’s not quite the “good girl” he pegged her for. She wants him to talk dirty.
No problem, his confident buddy Joey says. Practice on me.
Ross, ever the gentleman, turns to stone.
“You like this girl, right?” Joey implores. Ross nods. “You want to see her again, right?” Another nod.
“Well, if you can’t talk dirty to me, how are you going to talk dirty to her? Now tell me you want to caress my butt!”
Such exchanges are the stuff that friends, and “Friends,” are made of, the show’s cast members said in a recent series of phone interviews.
“Our show’s about how an event that happens to one of the friends affects all of the friends,” said Matt LeBlanc, 27, who plays the struggling actor Joey. “That’s our strength-that we care for one another, help one another, feel for one another. If you cut one of us, we all bleed.”
As painful as it sounds, that’s just the intent executive producers Marta Kuffman, David Crane and Kevin Bright have had all along. They wanted to develop a series that would move fast-more like a movie than a stage play, as many sitcoms do, and they knew that multiple storylines involving a half-dozen characters would be needed to pull it off. “It’s really a show about a rite of passage that’s really universal,” Bright said. “What do you want to do for the rest of your life, and where are your romantic interests?
“For every one of the actors, it was made very clear how we envisioned the show. That it was an ensemble, that everybody would get their time. Everybody has a role.”
For Courteney Cox, clearly the most well-known cast member after “Family Ties” and “Ace Ventura, Pet Detective,” the role was mother hen. On another series, that may have meant more lines and more closeups for her character, Monica, an up-and-coming chef. Not on “Friends,” where egalitarianism rules to the point where the cast once refused to pose for a magazine cover because all six weren’t going to be featured.
If anything, it’s been Cox’s on-screen brother Ross (David Schwimmer), the show’s vulnerable puppy dog, who emerged as an early standout when his wife left him for another woman, then announced that she was pregnant with his child.
Just as quickly came storylines revolving around the pampered princess-turned-waitress Rachel (Jennifer Aniston), far-out Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow, who does double duty as the equally dense waitress Ursula on “Mad About You”) and sarcastic office worker Chandler (Perry).
“The idea of an ensemble show without a leader in it-I can’t even think of it,” said Perry, who plans to write an upcoming episode. “All the great ones, `Cheers’ and `Taxi,’ they all had their Judd Hirsches and Sam Malones.
“I don’t know if it can last. In a perfect world, it will.”
Cox, whose character battles perfectionism and a static love life week after week, is unabashedly optimistic:
“No matter how big a certain character gets, I think they will always, always keep us equal.” In the final Nielsen ratings for the 1994-95 television season, “Friends” ranked eighth of 115 prime-time series and was the highest-rated new comedy of the year. The series outperformed veteran comedies such as “Murphy Brown,” “Roseanne” and “Frasier.”
The Thursday timeslot-first before, now after NBC favorite “Seinfeld”-certainly hasn’t hurt “Friends.” Neither has the fact that in real life, members of the cast have become quick pals-a task first tackled out of necessity.
“When we showed up for the pilot, we were all of the same mind-set: We’ve got to appear to be very close friends, and we have a week,” said Kudrow, 31.
After lunches and gab sessions, the group of 25- to 31-year-olds found that they had more in common than their new job: “There are no egos here,” Kudrow boasts.
“I didn’t expect to like everybody as much as I do, to really want to hang out,” said Cox, 30. “I think we’ve developed true friendships. That’s really unusual” in show business.
Even with a breakneck schedule, the cast manages to go out together after Tuesday night tapings and often on weekends. Schwimmer threw Anniston a surprise birthday party a few weeks ago, and they all try to watch the show at someone’s house each Thursday in what LeBlanc describes as a comedy within a comedy:
“Actors, when they watch themselves, are a little insecure,” he said, noting that group members tend to complement each other ad nauseum: ” `You were great,’ … `No, that’s terrible, you were great,’ … `No, come on, you both were great…”‘
LeBlanc laughed at the image. “The banter is really funny.”
