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July 25, 2003
The Friend Who Stays in the Neighborhood
By Lisa de Moraes
The Washington Post
Friday, July 25, 2003; Page C07
HOLLYWOOD, July 24
NBC has promised the Thursday night "Friends" slot to a spinoff in which Matt LeBlanc reprises his role as intellectually challenged thespian Joey Tribbiani, network entertainment chief Jeff Zucker announced today.
Warner Bros., which produces "Friends," paid a high price to get LeBlanc back for the spinoff: The studio has agreed to star him in two feature films. None of the "Friends" cast has emerged as a film star, but LeBlanc's big-screen career since becoming a household name on "Friends" has been particularly unspectacular, including that monkey baseball thing and "Lost in Space" -- both box office bombs. LeBlanc also had a bit part playing Lucy Liu's dim boyfriend in the film "Charlie's Angels" and the sequel.
"I cannot think of a bigger announcement this summer," Zucker bragged at Summer TV Press Tour 2003, 48 hours after Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez announced that U.S. forces had killed the sons of Saddam Hussein. Which just goes to show you that even a former news exec like Zucker loses all perspective after drinking the Hollywood Kool-Aid.
Zucker insisted that LeBlanc was the only one of the six "Friends" stars whom NBC had approached about a sequel.
"You probably would never have predicted this when ['Friends'] began, but over the evolution of the show, Joey has emerged as the character that America roots for and loves . . . and I think people will want to see what happens to him as his life moves on," Zucker explained to critics.
He declined to confirm speculation in the media that soap actor Joey will move to Los Angeles, though Zucker did acknowledge that it would be the easiest way of explaining to viewers why Joey has no daily contact with bosom buddies Rachel, Ross, Chandler, Monica and Phoebe.
But he did sort of assure critics that the new show's cast might very well include an actual member of an ethnic minority, unlike the cast of "Friends."
Actually, what Zucker said in response to a direct question about minority casting was that, while they haven't yet thought about casting the spinoff, "that's clearly something that, in this day and age, would be important to any new show."
NBC has ordered 22 episodes of "Joey," which will be executive produced by Kevin Bright, who has been at "Friends" for its entire run, and Scott Silveri and Shana Goldberg-Meehan, who have been with the show for the past four years. Marta Kauffman and David Crane, who created "Friends," will not be involved with the spinoff.
And speaking of "Friends," NBC has removed the oral sex joke from the opening scene of "Coupling" -- NBC's remake of the British comedy that is the U.K. remake of "Friends" -- not because of advertiser skittishness and not because NBC's standards-and-practices division actually woke up and noticed the joke, but because NBC doesn't want viewers' first impression to be that the show's all about sex, Zucker said.
Because other scenes that include references to masturbation, having sex in a restaurant bathroom and the baring of a breast by a restaurant patron will definitely not leave viewers with that impression.
One critic, who has apparently not gotten word that reruns of "Seinfeld" -- which did an entire episode about masturbation, not that there's anything wrong with that -- and "Friends" air in the afternoon on broadcast TV stations in many markets, asked Zucker one of those "we already know the answer" questions as to whether a show that features masturbation, oral sex and sex in a public bathroom is appropriate television for America at 8:30 p.m. on a major network.
The critic was referring to the show's running time in some markets in Middle America, where prime time is 7 to 10 p.m. instead of 8 to 11 p.m. like God intended. The broadcast networks continue to run prime time an hour earlier in Middle America because people there have to get up earlier to milk their cows. In Washington, "Coupling" will air at 9:30 p.m. on Thursdays.
Zucker, who did get the memo about those "Seinfeld" and "Friends" reruns, responded, "We obviously feel that America is ready for this."
Another critic asked cynically whether Zucker was counting on critics' outrage over "Coupling" to help promote the show.
Yup.
"One of the things you have to do these days to cut through, for any new show, is you can't be bland and you can't just be another show," Zucker said. "If there's outrage over 'Coupling,' so be it. . . . That is good for us. It's not why we picked it up and decided to put it on -- because we thought there would be outrage over it -- but if that happens that's okay."
NBC's upcoming TV movie about Pfc. Jessica Lynch is actually NBC's upcoming TV movie about the Iraqi lawyer who told U.S. troops where to find her, Zucker said, when asked how the network could go ahead with the flick when the facts about Lynch's rescue kept changing.
NBC is proceeding without rights to Lynch's side of the story; it has, however, bought the rights to the story of Mohammed Odeh Rehaief, "the brave Iraqi lawyer who saved her life," Zucker said.
"It's really a story of mistakes that were made, and action and adventure. Quite frankly, Jessica's part of the story is probably the smallest part of the story."
Lynch has not talked publicly about her capture in southern Iraq in March or her return.
"Obviously, there's a lot of questions. That's what makes for a great story," Zucker said. "In most made-for-TV movies, they're based on some fact and often there's a little fiction because we will never know for sure what exactly happened."
Good news for "West Wing" fans: Zucker says you won't notice the difference now that Aaron Sorkin, who created the show and penned nearly every episode, is gone.
"Nobody was better at the small banter and the small talk than Aaron Sorkin," Zucker generously conceded, but John Wells, the executive producer of "ER" and "Third Watch" who has taken over "WW," has penned two episodes of the White House drama that are "gut-wrenching and emotional."
In other words, "WW" is now another "ER."
"Where you may miss a little of the small talk in the hallway, you're going to be quite taken with how gut-wrenching and emotional [the coming season] is," Zucker said, acknowledging that "gut-wrenching and emotional" "is the hallmark of a John Wells show and that's what you're going to get."
Goody.
Some critics were pretty steamed that NBC had not scheduled a "West Wing" Q&A session during the network's two days at the tour here so that Wells and the show's new writing staff could talk to them about all the gut- wrenching in person.
"Did you think we'd be bored, or are they just not ready to talk about what they're going to do?" asked one peckish critic.
Zucker explained that they've just gone back into production this week and "I think it's far more important to be in production and concentrating on that." You can just imagine how well that played with the crowd.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
Posted by Jo at July 25, 2003 05:29 PM