Homey Don't Play That!

by David Peisner

  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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