Generation Friends

by Saul Austerlitz

  Bright was intent on Six of One’s having a more cinematic feel than most television series. In the bittersweet moment when lovelorn Rachel was gazing out the window, Bright wanted a close-up of Aniston from outside the window—generally a sitcom no-no. He had prepared a temporary fourth wall, but Burrows bristled at the thought of such a composition.

  Bright wanted to see Rachel’s face in the window and was willing to put in the work to ensure that they could do it. “I need it,” he told Burrows. “I’ve got to have that shot.” Burrows reluctantly agreed, and set up and executed the shot so quickly that Bright almost missed it entirely. “All right!” bellowed Burrows. “That’s it. We’re moving on.” It was not really the shot Bright had asked for. He would have to blow it up to get the full close-up he was hoping for, but it was at least the right actor from the right angle. It would do.

  The pilot establishes another of the show’s abiding interests: mining the past for comic and interpersonal insight. For it turns out that Ross—Monica’s older brother—has also known Rachel for years. As Rachel pours her heart out at the coffee shop, Ross is silently pouring a packet of Sweet’N Low into her decaf coffee, attuned to Rachel’s needs only moments after re-encountering her.

  As they sit together in Monica’s apartment, splitting the last Oreo, Ross tells her, “Back in high school, I had a major crush on you.” (Schwimmer pauses meaningfully before major, sucking his tooth and extending his arm like a Supreme, or a running back barreling toward a first down.)

  Aniston’s response is beautifully understated. She meets Schwimmer’s gaze, a smile tickling the edges of her mouth, before replying gently: “I knew.”

  “I always figured you just thought I was Monica’s geeky older brother,” Ross responds, surprised.

  “I did,” says Rachel. (This scene had initially taken place at Ross’s apartment, as his friends helped him put together his new IKEA furniture. Rachel would tell him, “Thank you for a wonderful wedding night,” as they laughingly snapped the legs onto his new coffee table.)

  The scene is tender and awkward and funny, its emotional beats studded by a recurring desire to gently prick any lingering sentiment. “Listen,” Ross asks, demonstrating his soon-to-be-familiar circuitous method of speech, “do you think, and try not to let my intense vulnerability become any kind of a factor here, but do you think it would be OK if I asked you out sometime, maybe?” Rachel looks back at him soulfully, replying, “Yeah,” before softening into a smile and adding, “maybe.”

  Ross has been given a go-ahead of sorts but tellingly chooses to sit with it rather than pounce: “OK. OK, maybe I will.” Ross looks at his Oreo half rather than at Rachel as he ponders her ambiguous invitation, and after she heads off to bed, he lustily eats his cookie and struts around his sister’s apartment, headed toward the door. “Hey, what’s with you?” Monica asks. Ross replies, “I just grabbed a spoon.”

  With this closing flourish, Six of One demonstrated its abiding interest not only in the saga of Ross and Rachel, but in the perpetual flurry of transformation that would come to define the show. Its characters were motile, alert to quicksilver changes around them, and searching for self-definition. No sooner would one enormous wave wash over them—divorce, or fleeing marriage—than the next set of questions would emerge. (Originally, the pilot was to end with Ross finding out his ex-wife was pregnant with his baby, but this development wound up being postponed for the second episode.) The pilot craftily pulls both Ross and Rachel out of stultifying existences that we can only too readily imagine, placing them in each other’s orbit at precisely the moment they might be most receptive to the possibility of a new manner of existing in the world. The real world sucked, but we were going to love it.

  CHAPTER 4

  HOW YOU DOIN’?

  Preparing for the Premiere

  Testing, as Preston Beckman knew, was the crucible in which shows were formed. It was where new series made their way onto the fall schedule, and it was where they got pushed off. Beckman, possessed of a doctorate in sociology from NYU, had become head of scheduling for NBC in 1991, shortly after Littlefield had taken over from Brandon Tartikoff. Among Littlefield’s many strengths was an acute awareness of his weaknesses, and he knew scheduling was not his forte. Beckman, who had previously been in the audience research department, and whose skills in after-the-fact analysis as an academic were ideal for the work, was put in place to oversee both day-to-day scheduling and overall planning. Beckman had to make sure that new episodes were ready on time, and that both original episodes and repeats were scheduled effectively. He was also the executive who had to anticipate the needs of the schedule and steer the other departments to develop and support new shows that would match those needs.

  In early May, about one hundred people filed into a screening room on the NBC lot to take a first look at the Six of One pilot. The audience included representatives from every notable department at NBC, including programming, public relations, marketing, and scheduling, and the mission was a brutal if necessary one. Everyone was here to say precisely what was wrong with the show. Backslapping and plaudits were all well and good for another time, but for today, the mission was to poke holes in Six of One, to speak bluntly about what faults could be found with it. And the network’s assembled brain trust was not yet pleased with the show.

  The overall feeling was that the pilot was a touch too cute, its world too elfin to feel genuine. The characters, too, were overly processed, lacking enough detail to distinguish them, both from each other and from other, past sitcom characters. People were also deeply skeptical about the idea of the show’s characters’ spending so much time in a coffee shop. A coffee shop was too New York and too downtown for the audience to relate to, they feared. “Don’t worry,” Bright would later tell NBC. “Everybody will be going to the coffee shop after they see this show.” The coffee shop was an attempt to clearly delineate the Generation X trappings of this new show. This was a place where young people would be hanging out, all attempts at integrating Pat the Cop and others of his ilk to the contrary.

  An internal memo described the show as “not very entertaining, clever, or original,” with particular concerns about Ross, who “generated little sympathy.” Audience testing found that viewers over the age of thirty-five especially disliked the show, finding it hard to connect with the characters. And some prominent voices at the network, including Eric Cardinal, the head of program research, simply hated the show.

  The process was rough, but the overall message—that Six of One had not yet found its groove—was borne out by the later audience testing, which mostly agreed with NBC’s critique. It received a “high weak” grade, which neither demolished its chances nor notably increased them. NBC West Coast president Don Ohlmeyer worried that some of the lack of enthusiasm was due to the erotic pursuits of Monica, who was seen sleeping with a stranger on a first date. What would audiences think, Ohlmeyer wondered, about such a libertine young woman, and would they continue wanting to spend time with her after glimpsing her in so compromising a position?

  Ohlmeyer had audience members at the research screening fill out a questionnaire about extramarital sex, in an effort to gauge viewers’ comfort with such displays. Marta Kauffman was breathing fire out of her nose at Ohlmeyer’s presumption and at the obnoxiousness of his questionnaire, which basically asked, she believed, if Monica was A) a whore, B) a slut, or C) easy. Ohlmeyer’s sexist query was based on a mistaken assumption that the audience for the show was likely to judge Monica rather than identify with her.

  Nonetheless, NBC picked up the show for its fall season on May 13, one week after the pilot was filmed. During the call with the showrunners to let them know the good news, the network requested that the show acquire a new title. The series, they decided, should be called Friends. Kevin Bright was unruffled by the request, and said as much: “If you’re going to put it on Thursday night, you can call it Kevorkian, for all we car
e!”

  The network was confident that a show about six humorous, attractive twentysomethings would play well with youthful audiences, but it had no guarantees that that audience could expand beyond its core. The hope, in the mind of NBC public-relations head Flody Suarez and others, was that people would tune in and note in astonishment, “That’s who I was!” or “That’s who I am!” or “That’s who I will be!”

  There was also talk on the NBC lot of more substantive changes to the pilot. The testing suggested that the male characters were viewed as being too similar, which may have reflected the fact that the show featured three brown-haired men. Perhaps the solution, some thought, was to recast one of the starring roles, or to add supporting characters to liven it up.

  A concern elaborated by Littlefield and others suggested that there needed to be more of a professional life for the show’s characters, establishing existences for the six protagonists outside of their apartments and the coffee shop. But for all of his concerns, Littlefield was also intent on building a network at which passionate voices would be listened to. After strong pushback from NBC’s Jamie Tarses and Warner Bros.’ David Janollari, both intent on preserving Kauffman and Crane’s initial vision, NBC decided, tremulously, to avoid making any major changes to Friends—although we did briefly see each of the characters at work in forthcoming episodes.

  NBC already knew that it was retooling its Thursday-night lineup around Seinfeld and was shifting Mad About You over from Wednesdays to join it. The idea of adding a third sitcom about urbane New Yorkers was an appealing one, and Kauffman and Crane’s show was tentatively penciled in for the eight thirty slot, between Mad About You and Seinfeld. Meanwhile, NBC’s buzzy new hospital drama, ER, with a young, attractive cast of doctors and nurses (including George Clooney and Julianna Margulies) and a raw, handheld aesthetic, was slotted in at ten P.M.

  The show the network was most excited about, though, was Madman of the People, featuring returning star Dabney Coleman as a cantankerous newspaper columnist displeased to find himself working for his daughter. Madman of the People was scheduled for the nine thirty slot on Thursdays, there to coast in the wake of Seinfeld and grease the path to the new ER. Networks were entrusted with entertaining America, but their sense of what audiences wanted to see was often wildly off base.

  With Mad About You, on which she had an ongoing guest-starring role, and Friends scheduled for the same night, intrepid viewers could watch Lisa Kudrow going back-to-back on different New York–set sitcoms. Crane thought it was so strange that he decided to call Mad About You creator Danny Jacobson. What would he think about making Phoebe and Ursula twin sisters? Jacobson agreed, and a rope was extended to lash together one of NBC’s current hits with a show they hoped would be the next tent pole of Must-See TV. In retrospect, Crane was unsure whether he would have been so kind in offering a helping hand to a totally untested new show.

  Marta Kauffman passed along the pilot script to her husband, musician Michael Skloff, and tasked him with writing a theme for the show. Skloff got in the car to pick up their five-year-old daughter and turned on the car radio. The Beatles’ “Paperback Writer” came on the stereo, and John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s euphoria captured the precise feeling that Skloff had while reading the script.

  In writing the music, Skloff kept his ear trained on the exuberant sound of 1960s pop he had summoned on his FM dial: the Beatles, but also the Monkees and the sunny vocal tones of the early British Invasion. Skloff thought the song should sound like the feeling of waking up on a Saturday morning with a smile on your face.

  Skloff was no lyricist, but he decided to pen a rudimentary set of lyrics to accompany his music. The show was about friendship, and being a friend meant being there for other people. He came up with one line he thought was pretty good and could serve as the chorus for his ditty: “I’ll be there for you.”

  Skloff was put to work finding an artist to record the theme song. He was summoned to the producers’ office, where his attention was directed to a towering stack of Warner Bros. CDs sitting on a table. After being turned down by R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe and 10,000 Maniacs’ Natalie Merchant (who he suggested record as a duo) and They Might Be Giants, Skloff came on a duo that he thought might channel the Lennon/McCartney vibe. They might not have been the household names that Stipe and Merchant, or even They Might Be Giants, were, but what if the Rembrandts were to record the show’s theme song?

  In the demo, Skloff had used some processed drum sounds to provide a drum fill at one particular moment in the song. After recording with the Rembrandts, he sent the final version to Bright. Almost immediately, the phone rang. “Where’s that drum fill?” Bright asked. “Well,” responded Skloff, “we have real drums now, so the drummer just did what felt natural in that moment.”

  Unbeknownst to Skloff, Bright had gone ahead and begun editing together a credit sequence, and had used the four beats of the drum fill to make four fast visual cuts. Without that fill, Bright’s video didn’t quite work. Skloff was sent back to the studio to record some new drum hits. He was brainstorming with the engineer for the session, Kerry Butler, and someone suggested filling the musical space with a series of hand claps. There were no better ideas, so Skloff, along with two of the show’s assistants, got behind a microphone and clapped along with the song. The most memorable sequence of one of the most memorable television theme songs ever had just been recorded.

  * * *

  —

  With the show given the green light to air, Kauffman and Crane’s next task was to hire a writing staff. Kauffman and Crane wanted writers who were hungry, who had not yet been formed by their experience on other shows. The inspiration for Friends had come from Kauffman’s and Crane’s own time as struggling writers in their twenties living in Manhattan, but they were in their midthirties now. They were more than a decade older than their characters, and their twentysomething experiences, which were still so vibrant in their minds, were also a decade out of date.

  Kauffman’s and Crane’s desks were piled high with books and magazines and article clippings about the lives of Generation X. They wanted to understand all the nuances of youth culture, from the music to the clothing to the pop culture references to the preferred hangouts. The questions underlying their search were fairly simple: What was it like to be twenty-five years old in 1994? How did young college graduates speak, banter, and think right now?

  To help answer those questions, Kauffman and Crane decided that they needed a young writing staff. They wanted to be able to draw on the experiences of their writers to put the show together, both in mining their lives for story ideas and in serving as all-purpose bullshit detectors for its creators.

  * * *

  —

  Adam Chase had grown accustomed to the sound of a grown woman screaming at him by the time he was twenty-two. He and his Northwestern University classmate Ira Ungerleider had moved out to Los Angeles after graduation in the hopes of pursuing careers in television. Chase wound up with a job as an assistant to an agent who enjoyed shouting and throwing office equipment to express her frustration. This was just the nature of Hollywood, Chase thought, and he grimly stuck it out until he could find the next gig.

  Like practically every other sentient college graduate with dreams of writing comedy, Chase aspired to one day make the staff of The Simpsons. The goal, for now, was to get a production-assistant job at Gracie Films, which produced the show, and Chase peppered Gracie’s offices with letters and phone messages. One day, he called and happened to get a live person on the other end, who had thought Chase was a producer calling. Chase made them laugh, and they told him that they actually were looking for a PA and hired him.

  It was a dream job, made even better by the opportunity to work in close proximity to James L. Brooks. Brooks, who had been responsible for The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Taxi, among others, was generous in offering his time to aspiring writers. Chase and Ung
erleider sweated through writing a spec script (an unassigned script for an already-existing show, intended to serve as a calling card for an emerging writer) for Seinfeld that they planned to show Brooks. After tossing a first attempt, Chase and Ungerleider polished a second attempt a dozen times, and then when they had something they were pleased with, they brazenly stamped “first draft” on the cover and submitted it to Brooks’s colleague Richard Sakai. Sakai liked their script and passed it along to Brooks, who offered them an opportunity to write one script for a show called Phenom.

  Chase and Ungerleider eventually made the staff, and when the show was canceled at the end of the season, they were juggling offers from a number of shows. They had strong interest from the producers of the onetime ABC hit Grace Under Fire; they could sign on for the Dudley Moore–starring Daddy’s Girls, or they could write for the variety series The Martin Short Show. Both writers admired Short, a big star and a genuinely nice man who managed to remember the names of lowly writers like themselves when he stopped by the Phenom set. Chase and Ungerleider helped polish the Martin Short pilot and felt like their choice was made for them. The show would undoubtedly be a hit, and they would get to work with a comedic icon.

  Then they got called for an interview for a new show by David Crane and Marta Kauffman and had the chance to look at the show’s pilot. Chase and Ungerleider were thunderstruck by the echoes of their own lives. Here were characters who sounded just like them. Chase and Ungerleider had emerged from the same bookish East Coast Jewish milieu as Kauffman and Crane. Chase knew he could instantly summon that overly caffeinated, verbose, linguistically tricky voice.

  Moreover, the life the show was describing was one Chase and Ungerleider had lived. When they first moved to Los Angeles, they had lived in a cramped three-bedroom in West Hollywood with three other people, including Andrew Reich, who would be brought onto Friends’ writing staff for the fourth season. Chase felt like Kauffman and Crane’s pilot inadvertently channeled his own life, with friends in the bedroom next door and others down the hall. Chase and Ungerleider took the Friends job.