Homey Don't Play That! Page 11

  Chris Rock, who was just getting to know Eddie and Keenen around this time, recalled watching Eddie prepare for the shows on his Raw tour, batting around material with friends. Occasionally, Rock and others might help “tag” a joke. “I might have got a line in,” Rock told Marc Maron during a 2011 interview, referring to Raw. “That’s what friends are for, for tags. It’s only when they’re not your friends when they go, ‘I should get a writing credit for that tag.’ ”

  Keenen has always maintained that his writing credit was for his work on the opening sketch. Beyond that, “I was sort of the objective eye. As he’d work out the material, it would be giving notes like, ‘Hey, try this.’ ‘Try that.’ ” There were rumors that Eddie and Keenen had a falling-out over all this, and one person close to the situation at the time says Arsenio called Keenen afterward and said something to the effect of “You’re out and I’m in.” For his part, though, Eddie never publicly complained about Keenen’s contributions—or lack thereof—to Raw.

  On the last day of 1987, Eddie threw a party at his mansion in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, known as Bubble Hill—“bubble” being a slang term for “party.” The New Year’s Eve party was lavish: Stoli, Chivas, champagne, a chef fixing made-to-order plates of pasta, shrimp, chicken, and the like, and a well-dressed crowd of the famous (Sugar Ray Leonard, Janet Jackson, Vanessa Williams) and the merely beautiful mixing with Eddie’s family and friends.

  There was a lot to celebrate. Hollywood Shuffle Raw Partners in Crime. The Beverly Hills Cop sequel had been one of the year’s biggest films. Arsenio was in the middle of shooting Coming to America with Eddie. Even Damon, after crashing out of SNL, had landed on his feet: He’d had a supporting role in Steve Martin’s hit comedy Roxanne, had just finished filming a meaty part in the gang drama Colors, and was a big draw as a standup. A few minutes into the new year, Townsend gave a toast: “Brothers, let the good times roll.”

  Keenen had had a busy 1987 too, but it was hard to escape the fact that everything he’d worked on in the past year came to be viewed, rightly or wrongly, as other people’s projects. He and Townsend were already working on another script, called The Five Heartbeats, about the coming-of-age of a fictional R&B group, but Keenen was jonesing to do something everyone would know was his. He had an idea what that something might be, but ironically enough, it was something that belonged to Eddie first.

  10

  “You Can’t Kill This Movie”

  Tamara Rawitt was running Paramount Pictures’ east coast Marketing Department in March of 1985, when Eddie Murphy walked into her office with an offer she couldn’t refuse.

  “He put first-class tickets on my desk and said, ‘Move to L.A. and open my production company,’ ” she says. Rawitt, a short, sandy brown–haired, no-nonsense New Yorker, had been Eddie’s point person in the Paramount Marketing Department during his early-eighties run, from 48 Hrs. through the first Beverly Hills Cop.

  “He was the biggest star in the world, on the cover of Time and Newsweek,” she says. “So I moved to L.A. and we started developing projects for him.” A few months into the job, she got a call from Eddie. “He said, ‘I want you to meet a friend of mine. He’s a comedian, he’s trying to break into the business, see if you can help him.’ ” This was her first introduction to Keenen. At the time, Keenen had made some television appearances and had the small part in Star 80 but was a couple years away from Hollywood Shuffle’s release. “When Eddie sent him in, Keenen was a good-looking guy who didn’t know he was good-looking,” says Rawitt. “He was young, gawky, and kind of insecure.”

  Rawitt worked with Keenen on a script he’d written for a film he called Groupie, but nothing ever happened with it. After two years at Eddie’s company Rawitt left to work at United Artists, but stayed in touch with Keenen.

  As Robert Townsend rode the post–Hollywood Shuffle wave and Eddie prepared Coming to America with Arsenio, Keenen was searching for a project he could stamp as his own. He recalled an idea of Eddie’s.

  “We were all hanging out and he [Eddie] said, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny to make a parody of black exploitation movies?’ ” Keenen said. “He actually said, ‘I’m Gonna Git You Sucka.’ We all started riffing and throwing out ideas. Then it sat.”

  Rawitt remembered the idea too and thought it was brilliant. “Coming from marketing, I knew I could sell the shit out of it.” She advised Keenen to ask Eddie if he could have the idea. Eddie gave up the rights and the title and asked for nothing in return. Once Keenen had written the first draft of the script, he brought it to Rawitt, because, as Keenen put it, “She was the only film executive I knew.”

  The script needed work. “I put Keenen through about twenty drafts,” Rawitt says. The film got set up at United Artists, and Rawitt was brought in as a co-producer. Keenen hoped to direct it himself. UA was resistant.

  “They said, ‘You haven’t directed a movie before—we gotta find somebody with experience but he has to be black,’ ” Keenen recalled. Within those parameters, however, options were limited. “They couldn’t come up with anybody other than Robert—who I’d just worked with on Hollywood Shuffle—and Spike Lee. Both of them had only done one movie. So by default, it was like, ‘Why not let the guy who wrote it do it?’ ” The budget was a relatively measly $2.7 million, so the risk for UA was limited.

  During the making of Hollywood Shuffle, Keenen had hired a manager named Eric Gold, an ambitious former standup comic from Pittsburgh who worked in the office of Hollywood veteran Ray Katz. According to Gold, getting I’m Gonna Git You Sucka greenlit by the studio had as much to do with fortuitous timing as anything else. UA and its parent company, MGM, had a unique deal with 20th Century Fox Video that stipulated Fox would have the home video rights to every other title that MGM released. One film went to MGM/UA, then the next one automatically went to Fox, and so on. At the time Gold and Keenen met with MGM/UA to discuss Sucka, the studio already had a film in the pipeline that they figured was a surefire hit, Rain Man—and they didn’t want to give it to Fox. Keenen and Gold met with UA president Tony Thomopoulos and his team on a Friday. As Gold recalls, they were asked, “ ‘When do you think you could start production?’ We said, ‘Immediately.’ He said, ‘Great. Can you start Monday?’ ” It was perfect. They’d rush it into production ahead of Rain Man, thereby keeping the hotly tipped Tom Cruise–Dustin Hoffman project for themselves.

  Keenen cast himself as the film’s lead, Jack Spade. Most of the other big parts went to actors who’d been blaxploitation stars, including Bernie Casey, Isaac Hayes, Jim Brown, and former Chelsea-Elliott Houses resident Antonio Fargas. Keenen’s family, friends, and fellow comics filled out most of the smaller roles. Damon, Kim, Marlon, Shawn, and Nadia Wayans all made appearances, as did David Alan Grier, Anne-Marie Johnson, Robin Harris, and John Witherspoon. Eddie Murphy came to an early screening and offered notes. One of the film’s more memorable moments comes courtesy of Chris Rock, who features as an extraordinarily frugal customer in a BBQ joint, bargaining with the proprietors for a single rib and a drink. In 2016, Rock said he gets more comments on his ninety-second part in Sucka than he does about almost anything else in his career. The part was based on something he did in his standup.

  “I don’t want to get punched in the face, but Keenen basically stole a joke of mine,” Rock said. “It was in the script. I think Eddie was like, ‘Hey, isn’t that Chris Rock’s thing?’ Next thing I know, I got flown from New York to L.A. for a movie that only had a two-million-dollar budget.”

  According to Gold, “Keenen always planned on using Chris, so that’s probably why his line was in the script.” That said, Keenen’s brother Marlon was under the impression he was in line to play that same role but didn’t make it out to California in time.

  In the end, the film is an extremely broad satire, at times more goofy than funny, yet also with a definite point of view. In an era when trust between the police and the black community was nearly nonexistent, the cops in
Sucka are all pretty crooked and incompetent. But the film playfully skewers the black community too. The plot centers around the death of Spade’s brother who O.G.-ed—that is, overdosed on gold chains. One scene depicts an inner-city youth gang competition with contestants stripping cars for their parts and racing down the street carrying stolen televisions. Sucka toys with blaxploitation’s clichés, but the satire feels like a product of affection. The film’s conclusion imagines a world where the blaxploitation era never ended, but just kept rolling with the times. As Keenen’s Jack Spade walks off into the proverbial sunset, he’s got his own updated theme music walking right behind him, performed by South Bronx rappers Boogie Down Productions.

  The film almost never got seen. As Gold explains, management at MGM/UA had changed twice since they’d made their deal with Thomopoulos, and the new regime planned to give Sucka only a perfunctory release then let Fox Video do with it what they pleased.

  “They decided to do the absolute minimum they needed to do to fulfill their commitment,” says Gold. “So everything was on the cheap.” When Keenen saw the initial marketing plans—or lack thereof—he was furious.

  “I felt like they were trying to sabotage the film,” he said. He told the head of distribution, “You can’t kill this movie. What you don’t understand is there hasn’t been a black movie like that in twenty years.” Hollywood Shuffle and Spike Lee’s films were great, but those were small, independent features, not studio films. “Imagine there were no white movies and somebody puts one out,” Keenen told the UA exec. “You’re going to go just because you haven’t seen yourself on-screen in twenty years.”

  Keenen’s protestations notwithstanding, the film was initially released in mid-December in only five markets, none of which were New York or Los Angeles. But when box office returns came in, it proved Keenen had been right: Sucka had the third-highest debut that week, behind only Rain Man and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, two films that had premiered on about ten times more screens. The following week, Sucka’s returns improved. Then they stayed steady into early January, despite the fact that UA added no more cities to the release calendar. As Gold, who got an executive producer credit on the film, puts it, “The movie refused to die.” Finally, in mid-January, UA doubled the number of theaters Sucka was in and the returns shot up more than 300 percent.

  Not everyone loved it. In his review for the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert, arguably the country’s most influential critic, wrote, “It is the sort of material that makes you wonder why blacks object to the resurrection of Amos and Andy, since ‘Sucka’ is incomparably more offensive than anything the Kingfish ever did.” The reaction of other critics was mixed, probably more positive than negative, but that particular criticism rankled Keenen.

  “Journalists asked me about negative stereotypes and do I think that I’m confirming for white people their ideas of black people,” he said. “I said, ‘This is a comedy! This is Airplane! I grew up watching the Three Stooges and never thought, Wow! White people are crazy!’ ”

  Of course, in show business, numbers matter more than words or feelings, and the numbers on Sucka didn’t lie: The film made about twenty million dollars for UA, a significant return on an investment of less than three million dollars. If Keenen’s goal had been to make his own name, to announce his own talent, as an entity distinct from Eddie or Robert Townsend or anyone else, there was no question that mission had been accomplished.

  11

  “The Bad Boys of Television”

  Keenen didn’t really want to make a television show. He was a filmmaker. He thought he’d just shown the world that. I’m Gonna Git You Sucka was the little engine that could, chugging uphill against an indifferent studio and the weight of history. It was in theaters right now making real money. He wanted to make more films. Yet here he was in this meeting talking to TV people. And not even real TV people—these guys were from Fox, which was then still a new network and felt distinctly minor-league. He knew enough to be polite and hear them out. And they did sound enthusiastic. “They told me I could do anything that I wanted to do,” he says. “That’s what set the wheels turning.”

  The “they” were Garth Ancier and Charles Hirschhorn. Ancier was Fox’s president of programming. He was considered something of a “boy wonder” in the television world. He’d been Brandon Tartikoff’s protégé at NBC when Fox plucked him, at the tender age of twenty-eight, to help launch what seemed like a fool’s gambit—a fourth television network. Hirschhorn was his lieutenant, as well as a friend of Tamara Rawitt’s. Rawitt had invited Hirschhorn to a screening of Sucka, and Hirschhorn in turn dragged Ancier to the screening room in the basement of 20th Century Fox’s old Executive Office Building to see what he’d seen: Keenen was a guy who could make a television show for them.

  That’s how all four of them ended up in Ancier’s third-floor office in early 1989. Joe Davola, Fox’s new VP of development, recalls being in that meeting too. Keenen also remembers him there, though Rawitt, Ancier, and Hirschhorn aren’t so sure. It’s one of many details surrounding the birth of In Living Color that few agree on.

  Keenen recalls getting a blank check from Fox, “total freedom” as he put it. They were a new network looking to shake things up. He was intrigued. He thought of the characters he and Damon had been making each other laugh with since they were kids. He thought back to those improvs they’d filmed with the Kitchen Table. He thought about Saturday Night Live—his brief audition and Damon’s disastrous stint as a featured player, as well as Eddie’s triumph there—and the way the show seemed to be made by, for, and about white people. He thought about all the black comics and actors he knew, people he’d met at the Comedy Act or on Hollywood Shuffle or Partners in Crime or Sucka. Hollywood had no idea what to do with any of them. But he did.

  In a second meeting with Fox, Keenen pitched them sketches and characters—two flamboyantly gay film critics, Louis Farrakhan on the Starship Enterprise, two “knucklehead thugs” selling stolen goods from the back of a truck. He pitched them the attitude, the style—the whole show, more or less. He wanted to bring a different voice to sketch comedy. There was an entire rising hip-hop generation that wasn’t being spoken for or to. Where were the sketches about Mike Tyson? Where were the Jesse Jackson impressions? Who out there could wring laughs from the way police treated black men? It wasn’t just that Saturday Night Live was too white. It also wasn’t very good. The sketches went on too long. Single-joke premises plodded along for five, six, seven minutes. His show wasn’t going to be like that. He knew how to get his laugh and get out. Ancier and Hirschhorn were impressed, and Keenen left the meeting with a greenlight to go make a one-hour pilot.

  At least that’s the way Keenen recalls it. Rawitt remembers it mostly the same except that she recalls that she was the one who gave Keenen the idea that it was time for them to challenge Saturday Night Live’s sketch comedy throne with an African-American sketch show. Ancier says he’d had the idea to do what he called a “black Laugh-In” on the bulletin board behind his desk for at least a year and had already reached out to Robert Townsend to do it, but Townsend wasn’t interested. Then he suggested the show to Keenen. Townsend confirms that Fox approached him about it, but Keenen is adamant that the show wasn’t Ancier’s idea.

  “Garth didn’t pitch to me,” he says. “It’s funny Garth said he had that idea because I used Laugh-In as the example of getting in, getting the joke, and getting out.”

  Jamie Kellner, Fox’s first president and Ancier’s boss, has a slightly different memory too. He says the concept of a “black Laugh-In” actually began as a “black Hee Haw.” “I said to Garth, ‘We should do a black Hee Haw,’ ” says Kellner. “He looked at me with this shocked look.” Kellner jokes that Ancier had gone to Princeton and may not have ever seen Hee Haw. “He says, ‘You mean Laugh-In?’ I said, ‘No, Garth. Think about it: Laugh-In was a broad comedy show with a bit of a news bent. Hee Haw was, I think, the third-highest-rated show on CBS when it was cance
led. It was giving a stage to country people to sing their songs, do their dances, and tell their jokes. We could do the same thing for African-Americans.’ ”

  Hirschhorn recalls pitching his own idea in that meeting with Keenen: a half-hour sitcom based on the guys who owned the rib joint in Sucka. “Keenen kind of looked at me and said, ‘No. We should do a sketch comedy show and have female dancers between sketches,’ ” Hirschhorn says. “He pitched me three or four sketches. Each one was funny.” The show, he continues, “was one hundred percent fully formed in [Keenen’s] head. I just said, ‘Yeah, forget everything I said. We’re going to do exactly what you say.’ ” (Interestingly, there actually was a Sucka spinoff pilot in the works, called Hammer, Slammer & Slade, which aired once on ABC but wasn’t ordered as a series.)

  It’s possible to read all sorts of nefarious things into this web of contradictory memories. It wouldn’t be the first time in Hollywood that multiple people tried to take credit for a good idea, and any self-serving anecdotes should always be viewed skeptically. That said, in a job where nearly every day is filled with meetings, most of which are completely unmemorable, misremembering the details of one or two meetings that took place more than twenty-five years ago seems a pardonable sin.

  There’s one more interesting tidbit about In Living Color’s conceptual origins: Ancier’s idea for a “black Laugh-In” had a history of its own. There had already been a black version of Laugh-In, created way back in 1968 by original Laugh-In producer George Schlatter. The show, titled Soul, was an hour-long pilot made for NBC and featured a who’s who of black comics at the time: Slappy White, Nipsey Russell, George Kirby, Gregory Hines, and—in his first television appearance ever—Redd Foxx. The pilot aired once but wasn’t picked up. To watch it now is revelatory.