Generation Friends

by Saul Austerlitz

  Mike Sikowitz had been working in advertising in New York, where one of his clients was ABC. The network regularly sent over advance copies of scripts for Sikowitz and his fellow entry-level writers of ad copy to look over. After reading the scripts, they were tasked with writing short blurbs about new episodes for the likes of TV Guide or People, or brief advertisements that might run on radio stations. Sikowitz had been plugging away at these for some time when he had a realization: The people writing these scripts were likely having a whole lot more fun than he was, and making more money to boot.

  He called his writing partner Jeff Astrof, then working in finance, and suggested they try their hand at some spec scripts. In the early 1990s, sitcoms were still booming, and the television industry had a seemingly endless need for young writers to staff the dozens of comedy series then on the air. “Let’s take a look at these,” Sikowitz told Astrof. “Maybe we could write one.”

  The two young writers set to work laying out a spec script of Seinfeld. In it, George went to get his pants tailored, while Jerry was embroiled in a cheating scandal in an adult-education class. On the basis of their spec, and a connection with an agent, Sikowitz and Astrof decided to move out to Los Angeles, where they found work writing for Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper and the animated series Duckman.

  They were used to the process of auditioning for new series, which Sikowitz called dog-and-pony shows. They would be summoned, trot out all their best tricks, and then go home to pant by the phone for a treat that might not ever come. So when a call came in for a new show by Marta Kauffman and David Crane, they were unruffled. After watching the pilot, they were impressed with what they had seen. The creators were clearly talented writers, and meeting them in person, they felt genuine and like just the kind of people they would want to work for.

  Alexa Junge had been so low on the writers’ totem pole that she was not allowed to go upstairs at William Morris to visit her agent. Her agent had taken on Junge as a client before joining the firm, and William Morris had told her in no uncertain terms to drop Junge. Instead, they would meet in the building’s lobby, where she would smuggle Junge a pile of photocopied pilot scripts to pore over.

  In the spring of 1994, Junge headed out to a shabby inn in Palm Springs to read this year’s haul, and stopped at the names of David Crane and Marta Kauffman. Junge had also been part of the New York theater scene and had seen their shows Personal and A . . . My Name Is Alice. Junge had been working for Nickelodeon and was struggling to connect with network series, but she had really enjoyed the script for Kauffman and Crane’s Family Album the year prior. In the margins of the script for Friends, Junge scribbled her calorie count for the day alongside copious notes.

  She asked her agent to submit a play she had written as her writing sample for the new show, and her agent refused. They had submitted the same material last year for Family Album, when she had not been hired. Junge pleaded, arguing that Kauffman and Crane likely had not even had a chance to read her play. She won her argument, with her agent offering to say it was her mistake if anyone noticed. Kauffman and Crane called days later, wanting to meet. Hers was a voice they were looking for, especially given the overwhelmingly male staff they had assembled. She brought her food-stained script into her meeting to show Kauffman and Crane one note she had jotted down right near the calorie count: “This is so special.”

  The new writing staff, which also included Jeff Greenstein and Jeff Strauss, who were content to take the downward step from showrunners to writers to move to network television and collaborate with Kauffman and Crane again, was tasked with the job of planning for the season to come. Kauffman and Crane had a rough sense of where the story should go, and a few plot ideas, but little more. They knew that Ross’s ex-wife, Carol, would be pregnant, and that the first season would track her pregnancy. Kauffman felt strongly that the season would culminate in Carol’s giving birth. They also knew that Ross and Rachel’s relationship would develop in some fashion, although precisely how far along they would get remained to be determined.

  Beyond that, there were a handful of semideveloped stories. They knew that one episode would revolve around a sonogram for Carol, who would be pregnant with Ross’s baby. There was the idea of having Joey serve as a butt double for Al Pacino. They even knew that Ross and Rachel would eventually have sex at his museum—a plot point that would not emerge until the second season. The rest was left to unfold in the writers’ room.

  Greenstein remembered that when he had worked on Dream On, he had devoted time—too much of it—to coming up with a pithy title for each episode. The title would appear on the screen at the beginning of an episode, and Greenstein, along with Kauffman and Crane, wanted the titles to properly set a mood before the episode started. In planning for Friends, it was understood that the episode titles were unlikely to ever appear onscreen, but Crane and Kauffman were cognizant that fans might come across them in TV Guide or the listings of their daily newspaper. They talked it over and realized that even die-hard fans were unlikely to remember the name of a given episode when talking it over in homeroom or a nearby cubicle the next day. Instead, it would be, “Hey, did you see the one with the . . . ?” Since fans were already going to refer to episodes that way, why not simply make that the formula for the actual titles as well? Friends’ episode titling was born, with nearly every episode’s name beginning “The One with” or “The One Where.” (Even the ones that diverged did so only partially, like “The One Hundredth.”)

  At Kauffman and Crane’s urging, much of what the writers brought was material from their own lives. Jeff Greenstein remembered working a temp job at a Japanese insurance company as a claims processor soon after moving to Los Angeles. Everyone was obsessing over the crunching of numbers whose purpose Greenstein only dimly understood. The mixture of intense seriousness and ludicrousness of purpose activated Greenstein’s comic taste buds; he recognized the Kafkaesque undertones of his workplace.

  After six months, Greenstein’s superiors wanted to give him a promotion to a full-time position. Instead of being pleased, Greenstein panicked. He was not a claims processor, nor did he ever want to be one, and the idea of progressing in a career that was anathema to his ambitions horrified him. Instead of accepting the promotion, he summarily quit. Greenstein’s risky career decision wound up becoming Chandler’s, who would also quit a mysterious data-processing job in search of more meaningful employment.

  Originally, the pilot had gone into more depth on Chandler’s professional life, with Rachel coming to his office to work on her résumé. Those scenes had been cut, but Friends retained an initial interest in Chandler’s professional dilemmas, having him take a professional-aptitude test that suggested he was best qualified to—of course—process numbers. It was like a fever dream of Greenstein’s transposed onto one of Friends’ characters, retaining that similar sensation of twentysomething aimlessness.

  Writers also drew on the experiences of their friends and colleagues for inspiration. During the first season, planning commenced on a Thanksgiving episode, soon to become a tradition on the show. Greenstein and Strauss suggested that one of the characters should be an outspoken Thanksgiving pessimist. The sardonic Chandler was the best fit for the role, but they lacked the backstory that would justify his grinchiness. Finally, Greenstein turned to Jeff Strauss and said, “Well, we could do your story.”

  Greenstein and Strauss had been classmates at Tufts, where they began their writing partnership, and Thanksgiving of sophomore year, Greenstein decided he did not feel up to going home for the holiday. His mother had died the previous summer, and home felt like an uncertain place. He asked Strauss if he could spend Thanksgiving with his family, which sounded like a respite from the crisis at home.

  That weekend, Strauss’s parents decided to announce that they were getting divorced. Greenstein was uncomfortably present as Strauss and his sister wrestled with the changes coming to their family. It was, of c
ourse, a perfect plotline for Chandler, and an explanation of sorts for his use of sarcasm as a shield deflecting the world’s arrows.

  * * *

  —

  The actors had varying amounts of sitcom experience, but it was James Burrows who understood the material, and the form, best and could offer necessary guidance. In an early run-through, Matthew Perry came up with a small bit of business that won a laugh, delivering a funny look after speaking his line. Perry returned to the gesture later on, garnering another laugh. Burrows interrupted the rehearsal and approached Perry. “I just want to tell you you shouldn’t do that after the line,” Burrows told him. “Because if this show is a success, which I think it will be, that will be all you’re known for.”

  Burrows knew how television could chew up gifted actors and turn them overnight into caricatures known for a single tic. The small gesture you created as a charming button to a scene could become, a few years down the road, the only thing anyone ever asked you to do. It was better not to take that laugh.

  Kauffman observed her actors and noticed that the show’s male actors were more willing to pitch ideas than the women. If they thought a particular joke wasn’t clicking, they would mess around and make each other laugh until they had something they preferred. Kauffman believed that the female performers were still fearful of embracing their inner comedians—something that would change as the series went on.

  Burrows’s presence encouraged the young actors to think of their costars as their colleagues, not their competitors. He was intent on Friends’ not becoming one of those shows where actors counted their lines and complained when they lagged behind. This was a show where an injury to one was an injury to all, and everyone’s success rode on collective achievement.

  The director offered the use of his lavish private dressing room for the cast to hang out in together between takes. They would gather in there and play poker, giving them a chance to banter and enjoy themselves away from the cameras.

  While filming the second episode, before the show’s premiere, Jane Sibbett, who had been cast as Carol after the original performer, Anita Barone, had demanded a larger role, walked around a corner and came on the three female stars of Friends. It was raining, and there they were, jumping in a puddle and splashing each other gleefully. Sibbett felt like she was privy to a privileged moment. If Aniston, Cox, and Kudrow could play like good friends when no one else was watching, it was just possible that they might be able to convey that sense of comradeship to the vast television audience.

  After the cast had filmed a handful of episodes, but before the show premiered, Burrows called Les Moonves to ask for a favor. Might he borrow the Warner Bros. jet to take the Friends cast to Las Vegas? Burrows wanted to give the cast a well-deserved break, but he also was looking out for the show. He believed that a crucial part of his work was to encourage the natural camaraderie that was blossoming between them. Burrows hoped that their respect for each other could turn into genuine love and affection, and that those feelings would be visible in their work together.

  Moonves agreed, and the seven of them flew to Nevada. Burrows took them out to dinner at Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant at Caesars Palace, and as they dug into their entrees, Burrows told them that this would be their last shot at anonymity. The actors looked at him, confused, and Burrows explained that after Friends premiered, they would not be able to enter a restaurant or casino without being mobbed. “You’re kidding me,” they told Burrows, not yet ready to accept what the future held in store for them.

  The actors were interested in gambling after dinner but didn’t have enough money to cut loose and enjoy themselves. Burrows took out his checkbook and wrote out a check to each of them. Burrows’s only regret, later on, was that he didn’t save the check stubs. What better memento could there have been of this pregnant moment in the history of American television?

  * * *

  —

  Littlefield’s intuition about an audience’s hungering to see themselves onscreen was borne out by the earliest responses to the show. After being hired, Jeff Strauss flew with his wife to Northern California to visit her sister. Friends had not even premiered yet, but promos for the show were starting to run on NBC. On the airplane, Strauss’s wife had begun chatting with her seatmate, and they exchanged notes about their professional lives. She mentioned her husband’s writing for Friends, and the woman on the airplane told her, “I think that’s going to be my new favorite show.” Strauss and his wife never saw the woman from the airplane again, but she was a reminder that there was a whole audience of young television viewers who thought Friends might be their favorite new show, before even seeing it.

  PART II

  • • •

  MUST-SEE TV

  (Seasons 1 through 3)

  CHAPTER 5

  GUM WOULD BE PERFECTION

  The First Season Debuts

  “Oh, no, you might well moan,” reviewer John J. O’Connor wrote in The New York Times on September 29, 1994, “not another group of pals sitting around whining and nursing their anxieties, getting up once in a while to test the passing Zeitgeist.” Entertainment Weekly’s Ken Tucker also began his review with a note of caution regarding Friends’ familiarity: “If I tell you that it’s a show about a bunch of attractive yuppies sitting around talking, what do you think of? thirtysomething, Seinfeld, Mad About You, yadda-yadda-yadda.” But the show surprised Tucker with its comic vigor: “At its best, Friends operates like a first-rate Broadway farce, complete with slamming doors, twisty plots, and intricately strung together jokes. And even when it’s not at its best, the crack acting and piquant punch lines give Friends a momentum and charm that win you over even if you’re not laughing.”

  Tucker offered effusive praise to both the writers and the cast. “Kauffman and Crane can take an utterly standard sitcom scene—a discussion among the chums about whether foreplay is more important to women than to men—and turn it into a tensely funny playlet with a beginning, middle, and end, all before the opening credits.” Tucker singled out each member of the cast for praise, calling Kudrow “a cross between Goldie Hawn and Teri Garr [who, unbeknownst to Tucker, would later play Phoebe’s mother on the show] with, I dunno, substance,” and referring to LeBlanc as “a rarity—a hunk with a gift for deadpan comedy.” Tucker went on to praise Cox for having “the most prominent, um, biceps—yeah, that’s the ticket, biceps—in prime time,” about which the less said, the better.

  After his initial burst of dyspepsia, O’Connor was also enthusiastic about the debut of Friends, comparing it to Dream On and saying that it “promises to be equally offbeat and seductive.” “The cast is appealing,” O’Connor concludes, “the dialogue is pitch-perfect 1994, the time-slot is between the solidly established Mad About You at 8 P.M. and Seinfeld at 9 P.M. Friends comes as close as a new series can get to having everything.”

  There was generalized agreement that Friends was privileged enough to have been born standing on third base. “Wedged happily between Mad About You and Seinfeld,” wrote the Chicago Tribune’s Ken Parish Perkins, “this comedy series from the producers of HBO’s Dream On would have to be an utter disaster—which it isn’t—not to finish as the season’s highest-rated new comedy.”

  Howard Rosenberg of the Los Angeles Times was the most enthusiastic of the early reviewers, calling Friends “flat-out the best comedy series of the new season.” After describing the premise, he noted, “It sounds vacuous, and it is, sort of, but wittily vacuous, with crisply written dialogue adroitly executed by the show’s strong ensemble cast.” “It’s all so light and frothy,” Rosenberg concludes, “that after each episode you may be hard-pressed to recall precisely what went on, except that you laughed a lot.”

  Other reviewers were turned off by what they saw as Friends’ childishness and lack of comic vigor. NBC’s other shows were being wielded as cudgels against Friends. “Where Seinfeld is smart and appealingly free-f
orm, Friends is inane and gimmicky,” observed Time magazine, who called the show “sophomoric.” “This half-hour is completely lacking in charm or intelligence,” groused the Hartford Courant’s James Endrst. He described it as “anemic and unworthy of its Thursday-night time slot.”

  Numerous critics agreed that Friends had a notable burden in introducing so many characters simultaneously. “Producers Marta Kauffman and David Crane are trying to give us enough information to make us care about all six people, in 22 minutes,” said The Baltimore Sun’s David Zurawik. “There’s something almost abstract about Friends,” noted Entertainment Weekly’s Tucker. “Even after a few weeks, I’m still not clear about where each of the characters lives and what relationships they have with one another.”

  Tucker was concerned about how long it had taken him to grasp that Ross was Monica’s brother and not her boyfriend, offering some advice to the actors to clear up any unwanted ambiguities: “I’d suggest to [David] Schwimmer that he resist the thoroughly understandable temptation to hug Cox in quite so passionate a manner.”

  Tom Shales of The Washington Post seemed to feel a particular revulsion toward the show, not only panning it as a “ghastly creation” but singling out Kauffman and Crane for abuse. They were “professional panderers” and “the witless duo who do Dream On for HBO.” The show “comes across like a 30-minute commercial for Dockers or Ikea or light beer, except it’s smuttier. . . . You keep waiting for Sally Jessy or some other cluck to interrupt the jabbering. The show is so bad that Sally Jessy would actually come as a relief.”