A few years after In Living Color ended, Buddy Sheffield was working on a pilot and was in the postproduction suite, when in walked an engineer who was in charge of juicing up the laughs. This is standard industry practice that goes back decades, substituting a pre-recorded laugh track for a subpar studio audience reaction. The engineer pulled out a cassette labeled, “This Ol’ Box.”
“Excuse me,” Sheffield asked him. “What is that?”
“Oh, this is the audience’s reaction I recorded a few years ago at In Living Color,” the engineer said. It was from an Anton Jackson sketch in the show’s first season.
“I wrote that sketch,” Sheffield told him proudly.
“These are some of the greatest laughs I’ve ever been able to record,” the engineer responded. “I use this all the time.”
Sheffield paused, then smiled. “So you’re basically taking our laughs from In Living Color and using them to sweeten unfunny shit all over Hollywood?”
If you want a demonstrable legacy, there you have it. Everything else is ephemeral. In Living Color was funny, and at its best so funny that it set a bar not often reached again in the years to follow. To see that only in terms of race may be reductive. Those big, loud, hard laughs came not just from being smart or clever or witty or black but from being outrageous, from putting things on television that viewers hadn’t seen before. Not all of it has aged well, but when you watched the show back then, and saw Homey the Clown, Timbuk, “Men on Film,” “Jews on First,” and Fire Marshal Bill in real time, the audaciousness was real. This was a show willing to upset people in search of those big, loud, hard laughs. They said the un-sayable. That’s a legacy that always needs periodic renewing, whether by In Living Color, Saturday Night Live, The Simpsons, Chappelle’s Show, South Park, Key and Peele, or whomever.
It’s a legacy Keenen himself can get behind.
“We were just young, dumb, and having fun,” he said, reflecting on the show’s legacy. “The agenda was just to be the funniest show on TV.” At the time he said it, it sounded like a cop-out, a way not to have to consider the bigger questions about In Living Color and how it has reverberated down the ages. And maybe it was. But there was some truth in there too. Keenen understood history but was never trying to make it. He was a guy who consistently resisted the poignant in favor of the funny—which is a big part of how In Living Color ended up being both.
Acknowledgments
This book would not have been possible without the efforts and support of many people whose names don’t grace the cover of it. First off, I am indebted to everyone I interviewed over the course of several years of research, many of whom submitted to multiple, sometimes quite lengthy interrogations and seemingly endless follow-up questions. It is their recollections and perspectives that shaped the narrative, and their generous spirits are hopefully reflected in it. In particular, I would like to thank Tamara Rawitt and Les Firestein, who both enthusiastically made themselves available for my constant queries and sent me original materials that I otherwise would never have been able to procure. This book is undoubtedly better for their involvement.
I’d also like to thank my publisher, Dawn Davis, whose belief in this idea made this book a reality and whose thoughtful insights improved it immeasurably along the way. Lindsay Newton offered notes and edits on early drafts that were both incisive and encouraging, and Albert Tang did wonders to turn my jumbled ideas about the book’s design into something coherent and creative. My agent, Laura Nolan, has always been a great sounding board and provided invaluable guidance throughout the process. Thank you to Cynthia Colonna for her dutiful transcribing work, and to David Walters for unwittingly helping to birth this entire project by greenlighting a magazine story back in 2015. And, of course, thanks to all the family and friends who have been supportive—with your feedback, with your ideas, with your patience with my bellyaching—during the past couple years as I’ve worked on this book, a list that includes but is not limited to: Mark Yarm; Tom Siebert; Samira Jafari; Brad Feldman; Tracey Noelle Luz; Lynn Peisner; my parents, Arthur and Susan Peisner; and my kids, Graham and Molly Peisner.
Author Interviews
Miguel Acevedo
Franklyn Ajaye
Garth Ancier
Jeff Ayeroff
Fax Bahr
Nick Bakay
Jennifer Bartels
Kim Bass
Don Bay
Kevin Berg
Sandra Bernhard
John Bowman
Neal Brennan
Kevin Bright
Ishmael Butler
Nancy Neufeld Callaway
Jim Carrey
Leroy “Twist” Casey
Sydney Castillo
Aleta Chappelle
Kim Coles
Jeanette Collins
Eve Szurley Coquillard
Gemma Corfield
Rusty Cundieff
Tommy Davidson
Joe Davola
John DeBellis
Harry Dunn
Josh Duvendeck
Carla Earle
Becky Hartman Edwards
David Edwards
Rob Edwards
Les Firestein
Martha Frankel
Mimi Friedman
Shauna Garr
Melvin George
Eric Gold
Maurice Goodman
Fred Graver
Dick Gregory
David Alan Grier
T. Faye Griffin
Madonna Grimes
Sandy Grushow
Argus Hamilton
Tre Hardson
Antonio “Big Daddy Kane” Hardy
Kali Hawk
Charles Hirschhorn
Joel Hornstock
Milton “Lil Rel” Howery
Carrie Ann Inaba
Ray James
A.J. Johnson
Anne-Marie Johnson
Michelle Jones
Todd R. Jones
Tim Kelleher
Jamie Kellner
Howard Kuperberg
Deidre Lang
Cari French Lather
John Leguizamo
Neil Levy
Bill Martin
Tajai Massey
Dan McDermott
T.J. McGee
Paul Miller
Michelle Whitney Morrison
Michael Moye
Charlie Murphy
Rick Najera
Steve Oedekerk
Judy Orbach
Kelly Coffield Park
Steve Park
Rosie Perez
Michael Petok
Rose Catherine Pinkney
Shari Poindexter
Alvin Poussaint
Colin Quinn
Tamara Rawitt
Carlton “Chuck D” Ridenhour
Toney Riley
Tom Rizzo
Carol Rosenthal
Lucie Salhany
Susan Sandberg
Mike Schiff
Jeff Schimmel
George Schlatter
Al Sonja Schmidt
Angela Scott
B. Mark Seabrooks
T. Sean Shannon
Buddy Sheffield
G. John Slagle
Adam Small
Dennis Snee
Michael Anthony Snowden
Aries Spears
Penelope Spheeris
Todd “Speech” Thomas
Lisa Joann Thompson
Richie Tienken
Liz Welch Tirrell
Andre “Dres” Titus
Lisa Marie Todd
Steve Tompkins
Robert Townsend
Kris Trexler
Rocco Urbisci
Maronzio Vance
Pam Veasey
Reginald VelJohnson
Mary Williams Villano
Marsha Warfield
Damon Wayans
Keenen Ivory Wayans
Kim Wayans
Marlon Wayans
Shawn Wayans
Alexandra Wentworth
Ken Wilcox
Michael Williams
Larry Wilmore
Marc Wilmore
Carmi Zlotnik
About the Author
DAVID PEISNER is a freelance writer based in Decatur, Georgia. He has been writing about music, film, television, books, politics, technology, sports, and world affairs for a wide array of publications for more than twenty years. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone, The New York Times, TV Guide, New York, Spin, Billboard, Vibe, Fast Company, Esquire, Playboy, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and BuzzFeed. Peisner is the coauthor of Steve-O’s New York Times bestselling memoir, Professional Idiot.
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