Page 7 - Pop History: In Living Color

Episode Date: June 23, 2020

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You walk on the moon float like a balloon. You see it's never too late and it's never too soon. Take it from me, it's a it to be. And how would you feel known prejudice was obsolete? And all mankind danced to the exact beat. And at night it was safe to walk down the street. El Lévi cala. You can do what you want to do.

Elibicala. Everybody there's, you click kind. All right, fine. Fine. It is, man, I have just, I know that I feel like I said this on page seven last week. I have been living in the early 90s and you know what? It's warm and it's nice here. That's the way you're living.

It's not. It's very upsetting. In fact, I would say the early 90s are just as upsetting as our current times, which I think is the same shit. The Jim Carrey cop sketch where he stops the little boy and takes his water gun from him. And it's like, I think you were like, I don't remember whether or not that was in Limit Color. That was in Living Color. That was in Living Color, yes. It is Jim Gary on Cops the Reality Show where they harass a child because he has a water gun and it's comedy. Well, dude. In Living Color is such a groundbreaking show of a show that

is written by Black people that is for everyone. It makes fun of everybody and it makes fun of a lot of things that at the time was deemed very inappropriate to make fun of. But this is real life. man, we have to make fun of what we experience because it's a part of therapy. It's a part of our lives. It's almost incredibly tragic that it's almost the exact same story being told now. Because this time period, I feel like there was a lot of peering into this issue. And then it brought upon the late 90s, which is perhaps the worst time for music in history and the whitest. So we kind of make sure that doesn't happen again after this period of time, please. No more limp biscuits.

Okay, that's what I'm saying. Whoa, all right. Well, let's not throw barbs here. Yeah, I said it. I'm starting a beef with Fred Durst on this show. Oh, you're going to start it with me. We're going to go head to head. Wow, ladies, please.

Ders to Dirst. Yeah, and for me, I, talking about the gush for this one, it's really easy because I loved this show. Me too. And it was such a fun, like, it was like a really, like, dirty secret. to go watch it in my room. You know, I remember, I actually remember the Super Bowl halftime special, like, running upstairs and watching it. And laughing my ass off, like, with my brother, while, like, my parents were downstairs with the adults, had doing, eating chilly and watching a marching band. And I just loved it.

And, I mean, obviously, it's the first exposure to Jim Carrey. It was the first exposure to gay black men. It was really just everything. No, but it was so. But honestly, looking back on it, too. There was so much genuinely funny stuff that totally definitely flew right over my head. The video parodies are the best.

Yes, but that's why I think it works so well that I still loved it because then you also watch like Fire Marshal Bill and stuff like, and Homey the Clown, and it's so like cartoonish. I watched ugly Wanda sketches this morning for at least an hour and a half. Jamie Fox's amazing on it. Well, when we were talking about In Living Color,

I was very young when this came out. And so I was like, oh, I don't think that I ever really watched it as much as you guys did. And then as I was looking through things like, oh, fuck. In my brain, I guess I just thought it was S&L or I thought it was mad TV. And no, I watched a lot of In Living Color growing up. Yeah. And it was something that was ingrained in all of us. And I think because it was that idea of since we were young and since it was controversial,

it was the kind of thing that we all watched in secret. it because our parents didn't want us to watch it. This is one of the first, it was like this and Renan Stimpy. I had a different experience because comedy was one of the few things I could bond with my father over. So I watched it with my parents a lot. That's fun. My brother and I were so manically excited when it came on.

We'd both start like doing the fly girl dances with them every time. And so my mom would call us the fly kids a lot in the house. That's a nice memory. It is. I have some. But yeah, no, I, and then, like, a couple years later, when I became obsessed with Jim Carrey, they would play the reruns on FX

and my little best friend and I would watch them over and over and over again. I love it. I also did, was in the camp that I watched it in secret, and I would hold my knees, and I'd sit on the floor, rocking back and forth going, I'm a little secret boy. Get me with my tiny little secrets. Oh my God, isn't that what you did when you consummated your marriage?

Yeah, absolutely. I don't think that has to do any. within living color. I know. With my little bonnet and everything, I loved wearing my bonnet. Honestly, you would look very cute in a little bonnet. You would look cute, no bonnet. A happy little secret boy.

I just want to put him in a little bassinet. I've got secrets on the screen and secrets in my pants. Secrets that make a moist romance. Ooh. Yeah. Oh man, you know what? I've had a couple of moist romances in secret as well. So I guess we all have something in common.

Guys, I've got hungover man. panic energy, so you get to put up with that today. Well, I have dental, I have dental work emergency energy, so we can make this. I have just general anxiety and depression. Is this? Oh, man, what a trio we are. What an interesting trio. We should have like a name or something.

We're like the soup women. It's just because I said my new, my new catchphrase is, you got to be soup and me? Yes. You got to be soup in me. All right. I am chugging. about anything. I am chugging a peptobismal right now.

So, and I have been thinking about mixing it with vodka, calling it the 2020. Oh, I kind of like that. I like that. All right, mix me up some. I like that. I also, I really wanted to be a fly girl. I still really want to be a fly girl.

I listen to it. Let's do this. I hit up Natalie yesterday and I was like, who can we find to teach a fat white woman how to dance to Motown Philly properly? I can. Please. I love this.

Man, and I get into it a little bit on here. The fashion inspires my every single day. So good. The fashion on the show and the fly girls, just in the people in the sketches as well, it was something that I had never seen before because it was so fun. And even though in the 80s it had fun, this was different altogether. This is just with the accessories and the tightness of everything. And in the fact that the fly girls could still dance in those outfits.

Lycra, man. Wow. Got to have some spandex in there. Get that stretch. Now, I really like this quote about the show as a way to kick this off. It was controversial due to the Wayne's decision to portray black humor from the ghetto in a time when mainstream American tastes regarding black comedy had been set by more upscale shows like the Cosby Show, causing an eventual feud for control between Fox executives

and the Wains, which of course now we know. Cosby show not as squeaky clean, or at least isn't at the same. Almost like appearances can be deceiving. Or that they can hide things sometimes. Not that the entire show was, but, you know, we all know about Bill Cosby. But Keenan, the Wayne's brothers, the Wayne's family came up in a very different time period than we grew up in. The same amount of angst, still the upset, but in a very different way. And they used it for their comedy.

And now people look back and they think that there's a lot of things that don't hit the same. way that are more offensive than they were back then. And of course, it's been 30 some odd years. Of course, there's going to be differences in the humor. But honestly, even they say with all of the men at sketches that they did, the people that were offended by it, for the most part, wasn't the gay community. Well, the men on things was, they were, they weren't the villains in the sketches. You were rooting for them a whole time and obviously it is a... It's silly! It's a portrayal. It's a caricature of gay men, but you loved those characters. I mean, I did. I thought they weren't awesome. Look, I love to speak for the gay community and I'm

going to say they are thrilled by it. They say it's fine. I think that it is fun though, the going back and forth and we'll get into this later, but at the 30th anniversary, that David Allen Greer was like, no way would I ever do that sketch again today. I've learned so much more from the LGGQ2Q Plus community. And Keene Ivory Wains was just like, hell no, I'd still do it. It's funny. Is it funny? You know, that kind of thing.

But there was, Keene and Ivory Wain seemed to be a little bit of a Mussolini on set. Yeah. And it is, it is something that, as someone that works with my family as well, how difficult that must be. Careful, Jackie.

Henry, you are perfect. Yeah, terrifying. I'm frightened of my friend, and I'm frightened of you all. I will say, but yeah, it does seem like he was deaf. I mean, but also what a crazy job he had to battle with the censors. To wrangle everybody. To create a show that was unlike really pretty much anything out there in terms of the content. Obviously, there were sketch comedy shows out there, but really was way over the top.

From a network that wanted a black laugh in, you know, whatever that is. You know what I mean? So it's just like. And Fox was a new network. I believe at that time. It wasn't even a network yet. It was just like the twinkle in the eye of a network. And so we will see how that changes.

They definitely wanted to be known as the revolution of black television, the beginning of Fox network, which it did help by giving, you know, the voice for in living color to be on there. But when they change their mind, they really changed their mind. They really shifted gears, huh? Because they can do that, unfortunately. So why don't we jump in with the man, the myth, the legend, Keenan Ivory Wayans, and the Wayans family. It is, I did not realize he was one of 10 children. Born to a supermarket manager named Howell Stoughton Wayans

and his wife, Elvira, Alethea, a homemaker and social worker. And they all lived in Chelsea in New York City. And also, also, the dad was a devout Jehovah's Witness. Ten kids! I think that, and so I watched this very in-depth interview with Keenan Ivory Wains. And not only 10 kids, but then, which you're about to say, they moved into the Fulton housing projects in Manhattan. I was not about to say that.

I was about to say, tiny little secret man loves to put his toy in his hand. His toy is his penis, you must understand. And then I was going to say that they later moved. Then I was going to say they later moved to the Fulton housing projects of Manhattan where he spent most of his childhood. Well, this is not a little secret that Keene and Ivory Wains worked with his entire family. And this was something that they learned from a very young age. He said, we were forced to bond more than most families. Beyond just being poor, we were part of an experiment.

The city of New York started public housing in the 1960s, and they were integrated. But the country was not integrated. at that time. So my projects were comprised of Puerto Ricans who were brought in from the east side, blacks who were brought in from Harlem, and the Irish from Hell's Kitchen. You had three of the toughest groups put into this housing development that couldn't relate to each other. Everybody came with their prejudices and their issues and their baggage. Every single day you fought. When we first got there, we didn't fight as one. We fought as ten. So together, they'd been working together. And also, he goes and talks about how creative they had to be

be as kids when people ask like, oh, were you guys all always funny? They had to be. They had to be creative and they used humor as a guard for them. This is something that we've talked about in other episodes before. And he even says, we weren't creative in the showbiz sense. We were creative in the survival sense. That's really what life made interesting for us. Every day was impossible by the world's standards. When you have 10 people in an apartment in the projects and a breadwinner who's not winning much bread, it's a constant creative way of survival. And so we took all those skills. Everything from my dad buying wholesale and selling surplus.

We all had jobs when we were very young, whether it was shining shoes or delivering groceries or collecting bottles. We were always trying to find ways to survive. Which a lot of times like this creates a way to have artistic outlet. And also a drive. And yeah, and producing content takes a lot of those skills, honestly. Oh, yeah, for sure. And that's really what the lesson is, is that.

but they're lucky that they lived in the projects. Because they learned that I'll work hard for it. And speaking of working hard as a teen, he went to Tuskegee University on an engineering scholarship, but ended up dropping out of school to pursue comedy. And he actually, yeah, when he was in Tuscalogee, he drops out because he was from New York and he said that he was one of the few kids from New York.

And at lunchtime, I was the entertainment. I would do my characters and jokes, and I'd have everybody laughing. He said one day an upperclassman from New York said, hey man, when you go home, you should check out the improv. It's a comedy club. Richard Pryor started there. So he was obsessed with Richard Pryor.

And that's all he had to say. He didn't even know. He didn't know about the improv. He's like, the irony was it took me going 2,000 miles away to find out about a club that was one mile from my house. I went to the improv and I auditioned. It was like I had stepped into my dream. And while there, he meets a man named Robert Townsend.

And that was when he went to perform his first set. at the improv and Townsend. Medium man! I really want to do Meteor Man at some point. Leisure Man. Townsend showed him the ropes when it comes to the comedy biz and

Townsend also already studied at Second City. He almost got cast on SNL, yada, yada, yada, yada. So he had a pretty good understanding what was going on. Together, they decided to drive across country to L.A. in 1980 and that is when Wayans actually pursued more so

acting. He gets some TV work and with Townson co-writes and co- stars in the film Hollywood Shuffle, which I've never seen. I want to go back and watch that. That's directed by Townsend, which was a semi-autobiographical piece about Townsend's experiences as a black actor when he was told he was not, quote, black enough for certain roles. So it's a very industry speculative piece. Also, and a lot of the people that are involved in living color, most of them auditioned for SNL and were told either that they were to blackboard or not black enough or that they just didn't fit in, that most of the people involved

in Living Color, it was almost as if they were the very talented people that didn't just quite fit in. This is, in Living Color is the island of the most talented misfit toys. But that is what, that is what like shifts the tide in culture is those people who are looked at as weirdos, all of a sudden they're all together and then it becomes a cultural shift. It's the power of the grouping of weirdos. And it felt good to see it on TV as a, person who felt much like a weirdo myself. Also, Natalie, you said you watched In Living Color with your father.

I used to watch, I'm going to get you Sucka with my dad all the time. We loved that movie. Yeah, I love that movie. And I definitely is a dad watch movie. This is the film that Keenan Ivory Wains makes after Hollywood Shuffle is successful enough for him to raise the money to make it. I'm going to get you Sucka, a parody of Black exploitation, which is literally said, I don't think I'd ever seen a Blueprint.

black exploitation film before this film. I still loved it anyways. I still remember. I was saying this to Holden. It was like my poody tang. Yeah. I'm going to get you sucker and then I had booty tang. You wouldn't have had any,

you wouldn't have had an understanding of that as a kid. It just would have been a funny movie. It's just a great movie. Chris Rock in there with the one wing. That was one of my favorite bits where he's like, or a rib. That's what it was. He was like, give me a rib.

He's like, can I have one? They were like, all right, one rack of ribs coming up. He's like, no, one rib. He's like, one rib. How much is one rib? He's like, it's a dollar. He's like, I'll have one rib. And then they serve it up to use your one rib.

He's like, he pulls out this fat stack of cash. He's like, you got changed for a hundred? So they're like, get out of here. They just yelled him to leave the pimp with the goldfish in his shoes that break. When he's walking down the street, there was just so many great. And then of course, when he's like acting all tough and stuff and then they're in the gunfight, he's like, they shoot it! They shoot it!

It's like all these people are just like, immediately a scaredy cat. And the thing, I don't know. I just really loved this as a kid. I thought it was so smart and well done. And it really does open up the door for Keenan Ivory Wains with Fox, which again is a brand new network at this point in time. So essentially Fox's network executives told Wains that I could do anything I wanted.

And that's what set the wheels turning. He said, I got a call for a meeting at Fox, not in the film department, but the TV department. They said, look, we've got this new network, and we really want to push the edge. We would love for you to create something for us. You can do whatever you want. You have total freedom, which can you imagine the excitement of a new network saying, do whatever you want, which of course we will find is a lie later on.

Censor, censor, censor, censor, because they're all liars. Keenan and everyone said at that time, Fox wasn't even a network. They were a startup, and I really didn't have interest in that. that because I wanted to pursue film. But they said to me, you know, if you come here, you can pretty much do anything you want to. And also, by the way, credit where credit is due. You can do what you want to do.

That's why the song is called that. It's because of what Fox said to them. Is that something you just made up? No, actually, it's not. I think it's a Tommy Davidson's book. Oh. But yeah, a lot of this was pulled from an oral history done by the Hollywood reporter. Shoutouts to them.

Thank you so much for that. it always makes my life easier when there's an oral history on the internet. And yeah, it's really, really fascinating. They get really open about stuff. And we're going to talk about it. The rise and fall. There's only a five-season long show, by the way. This whole thing was done pretty suddenly, and we'll get into why.

Well, and essentially, when asked what his inspiration was for a sketch comedy show in particular, Keenan Ivory Wayne said, I auditioned for Saturday Night Live and didn't get it. Damon was on Saturday Night Live and got fired. So I thought, create my own show. I knew all these incredibly funny people who hadn't been given a shot. So I went in and pitched in living color. I wanted to do my own version of Saturday Night Live. This is also a very interesting time for Saturday Night Live, which in my brain, I remember the beginning of Saturday Night Live, and I remember probably mid-90s Saturday Night Live. So at this point in, Saturday Night Live was not

at the top of its game and also especially lacked in, and still fucking does, lack in the diversity that it should have, especially for being one of the only sketch comedy games in town that has been running for so long. So they really wanted to come in and explore a whole side of comedy that wasn't able to be explored just yet. And of course, this would open up the door for the Dave Chappelle Show, this would open the door for Key and Peel. This opens the door for so many people that are able to, as black people, write their own humor for everyone. Yeah. Yeah, and yeah, so he makes the pitch and they take the pilot, they buy a pilot based on his pitch, and he goes off to get his cast together. Keenan said, I wanted to do a show that reflects different points of view.

We've added an Asian and a Hispanic minority to the show. We're trying in some way to represent all the voices. Minority talent is not in the system and you have to go outside. We found Crystal doing her act in the lobby of a theater in Chicago. We went beyond the comedy stores and improvs, which are not showcased places. for minorities. And this is what's fun too is that a lot of the people that they knew and that they brought in. Also, you have to remember standup and sketch

comedy are two very different things. And a lot of these people were stand-ups before. He says, stand-up was our background, so sketches were the first writing we ever did. Ivory Wayne said of his work prior to the series, which was a different kind of animal, and had more intent behind it,

was more in your face, and the energy of it was a little bit different. So the writing of stand-up and writing sketch comedy as someone that we've done this many times before. It's a very different idea to turn your idea into something that is fleshed out. But what I love about in Living Color is that that energy is brought through every sketch.

So it's not just a, and then this happens, and then this happens, and then then the end. Like how UCB teaches how you're supposed to do. The pace to. Establish the game, heighten, heighten, heighten. Yes, and then the end. No, it brings with it such a different energy. So please continue all of it.

I just mentioned Crystal a second ago, so we'll start with her. Tika Crystal Kama only had a few minor TV roles before getting in living color, but was interested in acting as a young child, having written her first play and song in elementary school, and went to Famu for college, Florida. It's the historical black university that is in Tallahassee, yes. Oh, it's in Tallahassee. Mm-hmm. Oh.

And so we were, yeah, we were definitely adjacent. Remember Famu Homecoming was always this, like, crazy event in town. time during time you hold on me. Oh, please. But anyway, you have a special secret. David Allen Greer. I have a special secret.

We're sharing some secrets today, you sloppy little kittens out there. Moist relationships. What did you say before? Moist. What was moist? Something is moist. I just want to sit in a big bowl of soup right now.

You gotta be soup in me. Thank you for that. David Allen Greer came out of Detroit and went to go get an MFA at the Yale School of Drama in 81, much more of a traditional theater background for David Allen Greer, before immediately getting cast as Jackie Robinson in the Broadway musical The First and made his film debut in streamers directed by Robert Altman in 1983, and his television debut in the Cosby Show, spin-off a different world as a geology professor.

And also, Wands' I'm Gonna Get You Succo, which of course led to, him getting cast in in living color. He improvised with Chris Rock, Martin Lawrence, and Susie Esmond in his audition to get the part. What I do love is that Keaton and Ivory Wayne still had all of his friends come in and audition. He said the casting was really fun. It involved a lot of the people I knew from doing stand-up in the clubs. I put them all through the process. They read the script and performed.

Then they did improvs. Then, if they made it to the finals, they had to do their act on stage. I needed people who could think on their feet, who would act and do it. do characters, not necessarily do impressions, but mimic. They were people who went on to become very famous who auditioned but didn't make it, like Chris Rock and Martin Lawrence, but the people I did find included Jim Carrey, Jamie Fox, Tommy Davidson, David Allen Greer, my brother, Damon. This has also another difference as someone that has unfortunately auditioned many times for Saturday Night Live. They want impressions. Even back then, this is when the tide of their

comedy started really changing where it wasn't as much, this is like the beginning of the end, I think. And now they're coming back around at least of original characters and having the freedom to have original characters on a sketch comedy show as opposed to doing just impressions of other people. And that that's what gets you the role. And if you can get on the show, then maybe you can try and do other characters. But for the most part, they want impressions.

because they think that it's scary to allow people to have the freedom to create their own character. So, yeah, Jim Carrey. What? You went in, you are only doing impersonations of Bob Dole. I mean, I love it.

It's like, remember the Viagra? It's in Jim's house. It's in Bill's house. And it's in Richards' house. Jim Carrey was credited as James Carey at first on in living color. He grew up very poor in Canada, and he and his brother would work eight-hour shifts after school as janitors and security guards at a tire factory as teenagers. It's almost

like someone wrote his background. It's ridiculously upsetting sounding. Carrie dropped out of school at 16 to perform comedy, and at one point during this time, he and his family are living in their van. They were so poor. He struggles to find his footing at first, but he manages to get his impression-based stand-up act over and on to regular paid gigs until he was noticed. by Rodney Dangerfield. I love it. Rodney Dangerfield, he pops into all these

comedians' early stories as the first person who discovered them, and it's so cool. He helped out a lot of young comedians. He was someone that was definitely out there trying to help the people underneath him

in the same way that he was helped as a young comedian. And, you know, love him or hate him. I obviously loved him growing up, but Jim Gary does transform his face. And if you watch a lot of those early videos,

even if you go back and watch his SNL audition, which he did in like 81, he didn't obviously make it on, he does fucking transform. It's crazy to watch. Well, even in reading Tommy Davidson talking about and Keenan and Iver Wayne's talking about it, that Jim Carrey was just supposed to be the white guy in the show.

And his physicality, not only with his face, but with his body, is what helped break the mold of them giving him, more because he earned it because he's like, okay, I'm going to be the white guy, I'm not going to be like, he did it in a way though that wasn't trying to take away from the other people he was on

stage with. It really just amplified everyone that he was in the sketch with. You just like, go do yourself a favor and watch the Vanilla Ice Barity that he does. White, baby. It is so funny still. I was cracking up when I was watching it this morning and his physicality in it is just

so funny. So good. So good. So he ends up opening for Rai This leads to him moving to Hollywood. He ends up getting a set on The Tonight Show and almost became a cast member on SNL. Wouldn't you know it? I feel like Kenan just looked at everybody who didn't get SNL was like, come over here.

Why he just at least audition for this? Yeah, sure. Damon Wayans approached him saying, this is Carrie saying this. He told me, hey, crazy man, what do you think about coming into audition for this thing? Come and meet my brother. So that's how he gets into the audition room.

Kelly Caulfield is an actress who started out in the movie. field of dreams, but that's about it before getting in Living Color. You're going to hear this for a few of these people. Very, very little credits leading up to this. Tommy Davidson. I was shocked to find out that he had been abandoned in the trash

at 18 months old and was actually rescued by the woman who would go on to be his adoptive mother. That story is crazy and you can see him talk a little bit about it. I think he didn't interview with on the own network. His mom literally put him in the garbage and like tried to kill him. And his adoptive mother, for some

reason had this instinct to go, she walked by a couple minutes later and this instinct to go look in the trash and she saw his little foot sticking up out of the garbage. And she rushed into the hospital. He almost died. But also read Living in Color What's Funny About Me. His book is amazing. It just opens up a lot of light of just like how he broke a lot of ground. And honestly, he's one of these characters actors that I've seen in lots of things, but I've never looked into his life before. And he's done a lot. Yeah. Just his struggle, he talks, he's very open about his struggle of being a black kid and a white family growing up in the 60s and how he felt like he was rejected by black and white people growing up because he didn't really, he didn't know how to connect to anybody.

Yeah. It's crazy. He starts doing stand-up in 1986 at a strip club in Washington, D.C. Then he goes on to win the amateur stand-up competition at the Apollo Theater, after which he moved to Hollywood. David Zinn said, when I landed in In Living Color, I was a hot comic. A week before getting the job, I had met with Lauren Michaels in his office in 1990 for a potential S&L spot. He lined it up for me and said... Another one, by the way.

Another character in this story we are telling. He lined it up for me and said, I don't want a black comedian. Eddie Murphy was a mistake. I don't want a person that stands out. I was confused. I was born black. There's not a zipper in the back of this thing. This, by the way, was refuted by S&L.

the Hollywood reporter made it a point to say because Chris Rock Meadows Tim Meadows and Ellen Clegghorn were all hired that season so I guess that is... But I love that Dobby Davidson said about Keenan Ivory Wains. He said he reminds me of Professor X from the X-Men.

He said he took all of us mutants together and told us use your powers. This naturally led to great things. And he talked about the environment before in Living Color. He said it was like a steam pot about to blow because it built up. Davidson recalled the wait

for the show to actually premiere. He said we knew what it was going to do. All the energy was anticipation because America needed something new and in living color was the thing. It really changed the shape of culture. Yes. And comedy. Do the rap again. Let's take

drip and zip. There's several different rap. Do what you want to do. Tiny little secret man, we'll not let her talk again. Tiny little secret boy loves his mysterious, fleshy toy. That was the season six promo

intro, but it got canceled. Yeah, it got cancer right before. Secret boy. Also, apparently, John Liguizamo turned the show down. John Ligizamo was another potential cast member. He said, I wanted to do it. They wanted me to do it, but I got talked out of doing it. You know, your representation talks in your ear and the whole thing gasses up in your head.

They're like, you're blowing up, John. You've got have your own show, John. You got to do Super Mario Brothers, John. I mean, this is the thing, and it's a representation. I'm talking about another evil whispers in your year. Is this later Fox offered me my version of, my own version of in living color, House of Buggin, which

also, do you know about House of Buggin? No. I didn't know about House of Buggin, which he claims eventually became Mad TV. This is another thing I want to look into, because I've never heard of it. No. But that's got to be very upsetting. That House of Buggin isn't in Living

color. You should have done in living college, John. Yeah, dude. But who did too? In living color was Kim Coles, born and raised in Brooklyn, and this was her first big TV gig, so not a huge bio to speak of before. Damon Wands started out doing stand-up and made it on SNL as a featured performer, but as we said, already in the episode got fired after just 11 episodes for improvising.

I love this story. So he does his men on film character, essentially, as this cop in a sketch. and and just super flamboyantly gay the way he plays it. He does it to the surprise of Lord Michaels, to the surprise of Cass. If you know anything about S&L, like you cannot just do something like that. You can't just make a crazy character choice,

especially when this is a character that was supposed to be like, probably had two lines. I think he had only have like a few lines. He was supposed to be a straight character completely and instead just did this crazy thing. So Lauren outright fires him. This is people get, blackballed for this kind of thing from the show.

It kind of feels like though he did it intentionally a little bit. Like I feel like he was sifled there. He's a fire star, yeah, and it's just like, oh, all right, you want to sifle me? Because in living color is not live. Or it wasn't live. They did sketches, but it wasn't live in the way the SNL was,

so they could go back and change things and do different improvvism. Which is also why the Fox sensors can go in and just take shit out. Yeah. Kim Wands appeared in I'm going to get you Sucka before in living color, but that was just about it. And Sean Wands was credited as a feature player,

but he started out as DJ SW1. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Also, Jamie Fox, so Jamie Fox does not end up joining until season three. Yeah, right. I will say he started doing stand-up in 1989 based off of a dare that his girlfriend at the time gave him. So he got up on stage, found that he liked it.

One of my favorite things about Jamie Fox, stand-up especially, is that he changed his name to Jamie because women were getting to, women seemed to be getting more stage time, like, especially early on, like early on, just to make the, make a lineup more diverse. So he changed his name to a girl's name. That is why his name is Jamie. That's such a weird juxtaposition of how things you usually go. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I guess it worked. Something worked. Or I guess he found that female comedians were often cold. the first to perform is the clarification. Oh, interesting. What was his real name? His real name was Eric Marlon Bishop.

Fox actually was a tribute to Red Fox, the famous comics. Oh, hell. Yeah. Jamie Fox is a great name. Yeah. It is a great name and it obviously served him quite well. Oh my God, ugly Wanda, really is like it is because it's so cartoonishly, every time somebody, she shows her face and the waiter just like,

oh. Yeah, they get like violent. They get like so upset they become violent and how ugly she is. It's so funny. It's so dumb. It's so over the top. But it's so, so fun.

But that's again why I think it worked for all ages, weirdly enough, even though it was this groundbreaking cultural thing. It really worked for people who understood half the jokes as well just because of how cartoonish the sketches could be. Let's talk about the Fly Girls, a group of dancers that would perform as a lead-in to commercial breaks as well as the closing credits.

that included Rosie Perez as the choreographer. I want to be a fly girl. I'm going to make you one. Please, I want to be a fly girl. And also, I didn't know that it was choreographed by Rosie Perez. Yeah. I had no idea that she was in charge of the fly girls. She was the fly mother.

The mother of the flies. Yeah, she did it for four seasons. Then Carrie Ann Anaba took over for the final one, as well as having dancers Carrie French, Dijer Lang, Lisa Marie Todd, Barbara Lumpkin, and Michelle Whitney Morrison with Jennifer Lopez joining in season three. I'm going to go ahead and say this. Everything I looked up about the Fly Girls. I'm going to talk about Rosie Perez who did it for seasons, who was the head of it.

I want to talk about Michelle Cole, who is the costume designer for them. And everyone's like, did you know Jennifer Lopez? She was a Fly Girl for one season. She's not the head of the Fly Girls. She's not responsible for all of what made the Fly Girls amazing. And even Rosie Perez. So Rosie Perez has initially, Keenan Ivory Wains had offered me the job, and I was very excited about it. And when I walked in, the prejudice kicked in right away. As soon as I opened the door, it's like, okay, she's New York, she's Puerto Rican. You know, the girls had all these preconceived notions of who I was and my abilities. And I had an assistant who had been working with me forever. His name is Arthur Raynor and he's black. He just looked at me and he said, forget these girls. Come on. Let's do our thing. And thank goodness, he said, that because he knew the real me. I was shaking inside and I said okay line up and you know that's how it went. I thought it's very interesting because even Jennifer Lopez apparently Jennifer Lopez and

Rosie Perez didn't get along then and do not get along now. A lot of times with the alphas they bought heads. That's exactly what's and Rosie Perez as a way to command her to command respect. Her fly children with her fly children was it seemed a bit of a hard ass. And even said that Rosie Perez says that Keenan Ivory Wains didn't want to pick Jennifer Lopez as a fly girl. He said that he called her chubby and corny. But in a 2010 VH1s behind the music episode about J-Lo, Wayne's claim to have known about Lopez's star potential from the start. I'd been there three hours and seen every dancer in New York.

And then this young girl steps up and a spotlight landed on her. And she captivated everyone in the room. And then Jennifer Lopez says, he just saw. something in me, he would always tell me, you're going to be a big star. Kidd Ivory Waynes is not pulling Jennifer Lopez. I, you know I love Jennifer Lopez, but it is just, there's a, like, a league of amazing dancers that you're working with. But that just shows the Keene and Ivory Wayans is a typical executive producer.

It's just like, I discovered all of this. I did it. It was perfect, and I knew which ones were the good. The League of Extraordinary Fly Girls. I do like Carrie Ann and Naba's story about how she got the part. I got a call for my agent. They were looking for hip-hop athletic dancers under 5'5 foot 7 of diverse cultural backgrounds. Wow.

Sizes. Right? Very specific. I went in wearing black. Yeah, so Natalie can't be a fly girl. Unfortunately. Story in my life. Yes, I can.

I went in wearing black leggings, motorcycle boots, and a white lacy bra with a black leather jacket. I tossed my jacket to the side and walked to the center of the room ready and eager. Keenan always said that I got the job the moment I walked in because my outfit was so bad and I had so much confidence. I want to wear that outfit right now. I love it. And I think that's how you should always audition for parts, by the way, ladies. Just every single time, no matter what part is. Just slam your jacket down on the ground.

It's me that you're looking for. It's like a British period piece. Yeah, it's like any piece. It's like Jane Austen's, you know, whatever. Just soap and a bra. I just love that dancing was something that needed to be included in this show because it's a part of their culture. It's such a big part of black culture and the way that they dance. And I love that they included it in between every sketches.

I love sometimes that the fly girls would become part of the sketches. I love that it wasn't also. I know in watching it again, I wanted to go back and see like, oh, is this just like, and now it's time for the sex. Put the sex on. It really isn't. No, no, no. It's such an integrated part of the show. show. It's not like the

it's not like the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders or something. Yeah, that's right. I said it. Oh my God. You want to fight me Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders. You mentioned a sport. I'm scared of it. John Madden football. Ouch. Oh, no. They were, they were they were essentially characters in the show. Oh, yeah. They were awesome. And they each had their own

personalities. They each had their own outfit. You know what I mean? Like they weren't just like these sort of vanilla ass like, yeah, you guys are good. We're getting a clip for you. Yeah, I'm fucking calling out cheerleaders right now. Yeah, but Rosie Perez was a cheerleader first. That's how she started learning out of choreograph things. I love this quote from Carrie Annabah about Rosie Perez.

Rosie Perez pushed us hard. She didn't know how to pronounce words like pirouette, but it didn't matter. She had a vision. Also, I do want to talk about Michelle Cole. Michelle Cole, who was the costume designer who won four Emmy nominations, four in Living Color for her costume design. She is currently, at the time of the interview that I read of her, she's the head costume designer for Black A.F, Blackish and Grownish,

all at the same time. Oh, cool. She credits her late father, Marcellus, for encouraging her ambitions to become a costume designer and work in an industry that decades later still has plenty of work to do in terms of diversity. She says, he would say, you're black and don't forget that. But you can do it.

And there are going to be forces that are going to try and stop you, but don't let them stop you. She even says, in living color established a bold color and print heavy aesthetic, thanks to Cole, who often comes up with ideas overnight. She says, I was doing musicals, my fair lady and music man. Everything about musicals is bright, bright, bright, bright, bright, bright, bright. Yeah.

And even to the point that the Fly Girls, in their sleek, spandex, day glow separates, a vibrant prints and chunky jewelry, began influencing international style. And maybe no coincidence that Carl Lagerfeld introduced his hip-hop collection for Chanel Fall 1991 on mostly white models, complete with bold primary color blocking, brashly layered necklaces,

and off-center diminutive headwear. And Michelle Cole says, people always ask me, did you know that we were going to be so iconic? I was like, no, never. And then she went on to earn four Emmy nods for her work on the show. Cole credits a relationship

she developed on the groundbreaking series for her prolific career sense. I always say, there's this tree. In Living Color is the trunk. And every single show that I've done goes back to a writer from there. All those writers took me with them. She says referring to popular series like Bernie Mac, South Central, Martin, and the Steve Harvey show. I'd never heard of Michelle Cole before. And look into her design work. She does amazing work. And also, now that it's all come back around, looking at it, it's like, look to it for inspiration too. Yeah. The pilot included Minot

men on films, the Homeboy Shopping Network, and the wrath of Farrakhan, all of which made Fox incredibly nervous. Tomorrow Rowett said Fox knew they had something special, but the execs were also concerned about potential pushback from the African American community. So the pilot sat in long-term parking for six months. But then it still didn't end up, it was still a year after it finished before they even put it on air. It's crazy. I discreetly passed along a copy to a journalist at details magazine. She loved it. Got her editors enthused about the pilot and asked in print why it

hadn't been picked up. I faxed the piece to the exec team at Fox and we got our pickup. So smart. They were sending copies of the pilot everywhere that could trying to get reviews. Detail magazine writes review. Even down to, because Fox Network kept wanting to bring in people

to get the okay. They even wanted to bring in the NAACP. They wanted to bring in the Urban League as consultants. And Keene and I have reween refused. He said, I don't want to do that. You can't do that with comedy, man. No, you can't. I want to kick the door in, guns blazing. If they like it, they like it. If they don't, I'm good with that. I don't want to trick the audience. I want them to know what they're doing. I want them to know what we're doing. Right. A quick aside about the name and the song. The name in Living Color was an homage to the NBC

peacock tagline from the 1960s. The following program is brought to you in Living Color, which of course is because they were transferring from black and white to full color for television networks. The song was done by Heavy D and the Boys that Natalie did her rapping for us earlier in the episode. We thank you again for that, Natalie. Maybe we'll close out with some more of the rapping and singing because I do love the song so much.

I will do some of the rapping and more of the singing. Oh, his trunk is filled with gunk. I got a little, I've got a tiny little organ over here and I'm not talking about my penis. that I'm going to play just to really make it as white as possible sounding there also was a lawsuit from the band Living Color

claiming the show stole its name and logo which did force them to change the logo because they did kind of rip that off so yeah the whole mission statement from Keenan to his crew to his staff was to take the comedy as far as one could as Jackie just said

Keenan said, Barry Diller called Peter Churnan and said, we couldn't do the Black Gay Parity Men on Films. He was worried it was going to be offensive, blah, blah, blah, and I called Barry and said, I understand your concern. But do me a favor. At least come to the rehearsal and see it on its feet. He said, okay. He came down. He watched the rehearsal, and it was like a bomb went off in the studio audience. People were stomping their feet and clapping and laughing.

Barry stood there watching. His face didn't move. But then he turned to me and said, okay and he left so we were able to do it and by the way even just as a person at home watching men on film on the TV the audience is in was always insane for the for those sketches to a point that I didn't quite understand because I didn't understand half the innuendos you know for sure as an adult though it's very it's because also it was a lot of movies I hadn't seen as well yeah I will say as a little

mostly straight white girl watching that. It didn't make me feel anything, but I liked those characters a lot. They didn't make me dislike gay people by any stretch. But I just thought it was funny. I honestly didn't look at it as a wave that they were making fun of gay people either. I loved their outfits. A little hats. Yeah.

It was great. Although I do think it is kind of funny that apparently, originally, Keenan Ivory Waynes was supposed to be in the sketch, and he eventually gave it to Damon and gave it to David his part to David Allen Greer and I think David Allen Greer always kind of wondered like why did he just give that

to me? I think that maybe I think he and Iver Wains knew that he wasn't the star actor right and it was the kind of thing that as much as he liked to have control over everything I think he was very aware that at the end of the day the best actor should do

the sketch whether whoever wrote it and David Alan Greer as Antoine Maryweather is so adorable. He really is. I'm actually kind of shocked that they even cared about being offensive to gay people in that kind of period because they seem to not care about them in any other way. I think it's in the same kind of vein is that they wanted to be open to make fun of everyone and anyone and that there wasn't that they were like specifically pulling out. It was the same, you know, with ugly Wanda where the joke of the sketch and the joke of men in isn't the fact that they are gay. I think that that's the difference.

Ugly Wanda isn't funny because she's a man dressed as a woman. It's funny because she's ugly. Right. And there is a difference of being mean with your humor and playing the joke. Right. Ugly people, the last bastion of folks that we're still allowed to make fun of

if you're ugly and go fuck y'all. You ugly? You ugly? That is how it goes. So yeah, it was kind of amazing how like the people they made Funn up sometimes got offended to David Alighrear said Spike Lee hated the show. Spike Lee hated the show. He got really mad at us because we thought we were over the top about do the right thing. He did not like us making fun of him. People would get angry when we poked fun at them. Arsenio Hall too. Anybody that we really poked fun at, which I love. The Arsenio Hall stuff is so hilarious. Even if you don't remember the show as well. Also, some of the reactions that you hear from the audience is like, who, who, who, who.

Like the whole thing that... Of course, yeah. Like his lead on on the Arsidio Hall show. The dog, dog pound... What were they called? They called the audience something like the dog kettle. I think so, yeah. The dog kettle.

But anyway, that was so bizarre. That was such a weird time period when, like, that was the way to clap and stuff. And now it snaps so that we're... Don't offend people who have issues with hearing. It's not snaps. Yeah, snap. So they snap at the colleges because they don't want to, they want to be sensitive to those that have sensitive hearing issues.

Ouch. Ouch. Ouch, the snapping hurts. Don't they not even do that? Don't they just wave their hands or something in college? Yeah, there's something. Yeah, there's something about hand waving that happens. So glad I'm not in college in 2020.

Well, I guess nobody is, aren't they? Anyways, when half of comedy is making fun of stereotypes. They only get critical when I do it. I enjoy this quote. Right? I like this quote. Woody Allen has been having fun with his culture for years and no one says anything about it. Who they also?

They did a Woody Allen. sketch on that show and nobody was talking about how he's a fucking weirdo creep except for living color. Martin Scorsese, his films basically deal with the Italian community and no one ever says anything to him. John Hughes, all of his films parody upscale white suburban life. Nobody says anything to him. When I do it, then all of a sudden it becomes a racial issue. You know what I mean? It's my, you know what I mean? It's my culture and I'm entitled to poke fun at the stereotypes that I didn't create in the first place. I don't even concern myself with that type of criticism because it's racist in itself.

So, yeah, I think that pretty much lays that down the gauntlet in terms of what they were doing. And honestly, I was slightly afraid to go back to In Living Color sketches, worried I would see that it super didn't hold up in all these ways. And I was pretty surprised at how it actually, for the most part, it's pretty okay. I'd say there's like one out of 15 or 20 that are just like, oh, no, no, sure. But most of them are really funny still. I was cracking up watching them. Yeah, I think it held up a lot better than I thought it would.

And that's saying something, especially just for comedy in general that's decades old. You know, like a lot of that stuff still hits. Let's talk about some of that stuff. Yes. Carrie's first big hit on the show was, of course, Fire Marshal Bill. And initially, let me die, I die, die, die. Initially came from a sketch idea that never made it to air that I think is amazing called Make a Death Wish Foundation, quote,

about a dead kid whose posthumous wish was to go to the amusement park and that was the phase he was going to do for the kid and in the same breath in talking about that sketch he also said there was another sketch that was too insane to do that was about an abortion rally

ventriloquist that also didn't make it unbelievable yeah ridiculous so yeah then you have men on films which you already talked about with Damon Wayans and David Allen Greer playing the effeminate

film critics in which they always interpret the films to have some kind of gay bent. Their catchphrases, hey, did it! And two snaps up were also a big hit. Of course, everyone was quoting that all the time. Greer said, I had already done Dreamgirls on Broadway, and being in a musical and working with other performers who were gay, I was privy to that vocabulary backstage. They were being themselves. So a lot of it was hijacked from what I heard in the theater and what was permeating around. Now, at that time, if a gay person was going to read you to tell you off, it was always accompanied by snaps.

Now, I don't know if it was a gay thing, but it was also a very black thing. And so that's when David Allen Greer said in the 30th anniversary interview, he said, I feel like that was 1990. My personal politics, my knowledge of LGBTQ plus has evolved since then. But I would say there was never any malice in the portrayal of these gay men, at least from my perspective at that time. but it was very much of its time. And then Keenan Ivory Wayne said, I think the sketch could be done today, but we have more information about gay culture

so we can make it even funnier. The intent of the show was to include everybody. Everybody's going to laugh. So we did handicapped characters. It was all inclusive, so we offended every aspect of black culture. You can only be as good as the time period that you live in with the information that you have.

So that's what we tried to do. We wanted everybody to say, that's messed up, but that's funny as hell though. I mean, he's not wrong. No, I understand. And that, I think it's such a good quote of like, it was different then, yes. And it wasn't intended in a malicious way,

understanding. And people definitely can go back, especially now knowing what we know and see it as such, but it wasn't intended in 1991 to do that. Right. And stuff that's being done now is not going to be intended to be something that's going to upset somebody in 20 years.

So you just got to do the best you can. Right. I feel like if you're not upsetting somebody with your sketch comedy show 10, 20 years in the future, then you're doing it wrong. You weren't really, edgy enough. You weren't pushing the boundary at all. Yeah, like whatsoever.

That really is what makes a lot of comedy exciting. I think bigger than all of those, at least back in the day, homie de clown guys. Oh, yeah. Hugely popular that was. So funny, and this makes so much sense. Homie de clown was based on Paul Mooney, who is the comic on the Dave Chabelle show,

in the sketches Ask a Black dude, and Negrodomis. He was a writer for Richard Pryor. And Damon Wayne said, Paul Mooney, he was the angriest black man in the world. He prided himself on that. Like, he wouldn't even pitch ideas for sketches in front of white people, because he wrote on the living color as well. He'd say, not in front of the white people, homie, one on one, me and you, Keenan, and I'll tell you everything. Not in front of the white people. And he would say, homie, you know, homie this, homie, oh, homie, homie, not in front of the white people, homie. So this guy, Sandy Frank, I'm talking about writers. And what Matt Wickline said,

you know, this is funny. The clown who won't perform. So they wrote Homey to Clown and I put the angry black man voice on Homie to Clown because I just thought it was appropriate and the rest is history. And so the angry black man voice is one of his stand-up bits

that he used to do that also is what partially got him S&L in the first place. I do love this to Larry Wilmore who now we know he had his own show and got to be central. He was a writer friend Living Color at the time. He said we had black characters doing things that were from our point of view,

not white writers having one black actor or character represent all black people. Homey to clown, at his heart, he's not only a black guy, which he might have been on another show. He's a guy that hates being a clown and will make kids pay for that. Again, it goes back to the idea

where in so many shows that they have a token black character be the black character. This isn't even about him necessarily being black. Right. It's a funny character. Homey don't play that. How me don't play that.

We don't play that. Benita Boutrell was Kim Wayans' neighborhood gossip character that made big waves. I love this character. I love her. And those are the sketches that I didn't think were funny back then, that now, in watching it,

so funny. It is just her monologuing out of a window. And you know this person. It's great. You a thousand, I know, like, especially in New York, you know this person. My favorite part is the part where she's just like, you know, just stay away from all those gossips and all the people in this neighborhood that are all gossipy all the time, you know, stick with me. And then like, I didn't tell you that, though.

You know, it's like everything. You didn't hear that for me. You didn't hear that for me. It's so funny. It's just the hypocrisy of gossips always. So great. And coming from a huge goss, I totally, totally know that. You also have my favorite character from In Living Color by far with a bullet.

But I don't know why I just thought he was so hysterical. Calhoun Tubbs, the David Allen Greer blues singer that he did, who would do 10-second song sporadically. And he'd always started with like to hear it, here it go. And there's something about the repetition and the song itself was like I probably, again, probably didn't get half of the jokes that were actually in the song. But just the sheer repetition and just bizarreness of that character was so funny to me. So funny.

It just didn't matter. I just was rolling on the floor laughing about that guy. Like, hey, here I go. So great. And rewatching that Calhoun Tubb stuff was so funny. There's so many other ones, for sure, that we could talk about to. It's hard to find full episodes. I watch a lot of compilations.

I don't know, maybe that they are going to be. I feel like this happens every time. It's like, oh, they're all going to be put on this streaming service. You can't find them somewhere. You can probably get the DVDs somewhere. Sure. But yeah, Jim Carrey's like crazy workout lady character that was like on steroids. Vera DiMilo.

You know, there's just so many different. I feel like Vera DiMilo might be an issue. Yeah, there's definitely some character. Yes, there are some characters. But a lot of two, again, going back to what you were talking about with Homey to Clown, like even that problematic character, a lot of it was about Jim Carrey just doing weird, like bizarre physicality comedy. Yeah.

Yeah, so definitely. It sort of had nothing to do with the thing that they were making fun of also the homeless man. I believe it was that Damon wins. The one where he eats the poop out of the jar. All that stuff. So yeah, just so many characters that were memorable from the show, but I think those are the biggest standouts.

So yeah, let's talk about it. The censors pushing back on the show, which would of course lead essentially to its demise and Fox taking advantage. of the show in general. Yeah, so there was this weird push and pull. They wanted to be this super edgy thing on TV, but they also didn't want to offend the advertisers and all this kind of stuff.

Fox President Peter Sherman. They knew how delicately they had to dance the dance to make sure that the show could stay on the air. And it's not a fun secret boy dance. This is a big, mean man dance. It's a mean man dance. It's a money bags dance. There's no mannays involved.

They shake the money. money. No. There's no mayonnaise involved. There's no tiny little sticks involved. No, and there's no comicum involved. Fox President Peter Turnin said the show, quote, pushed further than any other show ever had in the history of the network. And the writers had a tough time

at points getting stuff over with the censors, of course. They would even actually intentionally submit over the top offensive sketches they knew would get cut and would get this huge reaction from the sensors just to distract them from the other stuff that they were actually trying to get on. That's the move. You gotta do it that way.

It's so smart. Here's another trick they used, according to David Allen Greer. For the Headleys, the Jamaican characters they did, we put in all these profane Jamaican curse words. White people didn't know what we were saying. So, I love it. I love it. Wayne said, I didn't have, Ken and Ivory Wayne said, I didn't have an antagonistic relationships with the censors. I wasn't irrational.

I knew there were restrictions. It was more about how far. can I go? Like, just tell me where the line is. The frustration was that the line was moved week to week, so you could do something one week, but if they got mailed, you couldn't do it the next. We were constantly in that dance. Churn, as you called it a dance as well, not an again, a mean man dance. No, it's, yeah, no, it's money man. So the sensors would get nervous, and I think that they would create new phrases that they would all start laughing at, and the censors would assume that it was something that it was bad that they didn't know what it was.

And they'd say, you can't say something like Kayak City. Because he was saying Kayak City in a sketch. And they say, you can't say Kayak City because that's what we had and everybody was laughing. We say no. Well, can we say toss your salad? He goes, yeah, that's fine. The cast also remembers using Jamaican curse words and the Hay Mon sketches. By the time the Jamaican viewers wrote in, we'd already done three or four sketches.

David Allen Beer says, we had already. won by that point. No Google back then, censors. I will say, according to Urban Dictionary, Kayak City is the act of having sex in the pool during which one partner must be underwater at all times, though they may alternate. Oh.

I don't, I think that that is not true. I think it's just people making stuff up on there, but either way. So, yeah, Chernin also admits he, quote, wanted the show to be as outrageous as possible, and one instance was definitely the live episode they did during the Super Bowl halftime that was quite racing,

including a men on football sketch that was wall-to-wall sexual innuendoes. We have to talk about this Super Bowl halftime show. It's so good. And I do, again, I remember running upstairs to watch it in secret. But do you remember why they were able to do this? So the suit, we're talking about the 1992 Super Bowl. What they did, they knew going into it what they were going to do. There was a live episode of In Living Color at the same time that the beginning of the halftime show started.

But also this changed the game not only for in living color, but also the NFL as well. So you're watching, they knew that they were going to have, this is back in the day when there wasn't big stars on the halftime show. And they knew that everybody hated the halftime show. So imagine you're watching the Super Bowl, right? And the winter magic spectacular halftime show games, you're hammered, you're screaming. And then Olympic figure skaters, Dorothy Hamill and Brian Boitano, skate atop oversized plastic snowflakes in the middle of the field. Women costumed as snowflakes paraded beside them.

But they also couldn't bring in any ice. So they weren't even skating. Gloria Estefan comes on to perform a winterized rendition of Live for Loving You and get on your feet. And wouldn't you change the channel to almost anything else? Now, Keenan Ivory Wains knew this. He said there was an ad exec at Frito Lay. and he's the one who came up with the idea of counter programming against the Super Bowl. Because Frito Leigh sponsored the In Living Color halftime show.

We brainstormed and decided that we do it as a live version of the show. We wanted to put up a countdown clock on the screen so that people would know when to go back to the game. I was very confident that we would steal the show. It was such a perfect opportunity because halftime was when everybody went to pee. So Tommy David said, Keenan says, all right, Janie, you're doing this. Jim Carrey, I pick you to do this. David, I got you doing this. Then he said, Tommy, I got you hosting because you can handle live.

I was like, oh my God, I thought you ain't like me. And I'm like, Michael Jordan. All you got to do is give me the ball. Tequia Crystal Kima said, the creative chaos was normal at in living color. So going live, we just rolled with it. For most of us, it was our first series. It was my introduction to television. I thought everybody knew their censors by name.

So essentially, then Jamie Kellner, the president of Fox, said Keenan and his team wrote a very funny episode that pushed the edge about as far as it could go and not get us in trouble. I sat in the control room with the head of standards and practices for Fox to ride the edit button in case an ad lib cross the line. The plan was I would tap his shoulder if I wanted an edit. We both started laughing and missed two edits, but this is the reason why in 1993, the NFL got Michael Jackson to be the best type performer. Isn't that insane?

Even Keen and Ivory Wayne said, this little rag tag crew did something. that changed a huge event. We made history. That's hilarious. That's crazy. Isn't that insane? I don't remember a uneventful half-time special. You know what I mean?

Like, so crazy to think about that. They got 28.9 million live viewers. That's incredible. It is why, like, why would they not think to put something interesting in the middle of it? Because nobody ever cared. It's like what the women, quote, unquote, wanted to see. Like, even back in 1992. Yeah, totally.

Like, let the prancers prance for the lady. They weren't even skating. So, all good things must come to an end. Let's get into it. The departure started happening after season four. Tensions seemed to start between. Oh, I'm sorry. Actually, before we get into this, I just want to say real quick.

It's insane how much in Living Color helped bring hip hop into mainstream television. So we know that Heavy D and the boys did the theme song. We also had, you know, DJ. Jay Sean Wayans in there as well. And hip hop at this time was still a growing culture, far from being accepted by mainstream audiences. But in Living Color, helped to crystallize the music and aesthetic.

Nowhere else could you find Jim Carrey performing a knee-slapping remix of Vanilla Ice Ice Baby, Elsewhere, the funny man satirized white reggae artist Snow's number one record, In Former or Jamie Fox, poking fun at Sir Mixalots, classic song Baby Got Back. So in season two,

musical guests started becoming a regular thing, and it all started with Queen Latifah. If you were cool in hip-hop, you were on in living color. Public Enemy, naughty by nature, Red Man, MC Light, EZE, and too many others to mention, all made appearances. As with S&L, some artists, including Tupac and Vogue, were roped into doing sketches, but in Living Color's close relationship with music, meant their musical parodies were some of the shows by this film. Because music was such a big part of the show.

And for the first time, hip hop was on a mainstream television. When I was rewatching these, I remembered a lot of the lyrics as the songs were playing. I was able to sing along. And this is why I failed math every time I tried to do it. That's why you failed math. There was no room left in my brain because I put all these things in there. Yes, I understand. Worth it.

Yep. So all good things. must come to an end, including this podcast episode. But before we do that, we must talk about the end of In Living Color. The departure started happening after season four. Tensions seemed to start between Keenan and his family and the rest of the team was one of the issues. Writer Larry Wilmore used to call him Murphy Brown because he showed up with a new assistant

every week. It was a dated reference. Yeah, very dated reference. Very much puts you in the time and place of the show. writer and producer Les Firestein said it was a difficult it was a difficult workplace for a lot of people one of the reasons for that is that you had this very tight-knit family that was at the center of everything and the rest of us were not necessarily part of that if you weren't a wayans you definitely had dues to pay Keenan ends up making a surprise exit from the show in the middle of the season citing fox as the

reason for its devaluing of the show and we will get into why but also what sucks as as a showrunner Keenan Ivory Wayans leaves and he's replaced by three showrunners, two white and one black. Yeah. So already it is starting to, it's like that's not the voice that they want at the head of this. They bring on way more white characters in the last season. Yeah. Wands goes, Keen and Ivory Wands goes, I keep saying Wands, but there's 10 of them. So I'm trying.

I know. I was looking at Wayans so much this week. It started to become one of those words who didn't mean anything after a while. Right, right. Way. Way. Kenon said, this is a shell of a company making death. desperate moves. They're collapsing and they don't care who they offend or what shows they ruin. He goes ham on Fox around this time. He gets very mad at Fox. There seems to be two things happening here. Wands is struggling under Fox's wish to be both controversial but appeasing to the advertisers while others blame Kaine and Ivery Wands for being too difficult to work with. And the real nail in the coffin was Fox's wish to do reruns of in Living Color in place of a show that was dropped from the network before in Living Color was actually in syndication. Just one.

year shy, which was this massive financial disaster. Because, you know, television shows, incindication is when you make even more money because it'll just be on, and you're just making money for the work you've already done. So the way that they were editing it and the way that they were ripping it apart meant that that's just taking money

out of the Wains' pockets. Yeah. Kinnevery Wain said, I was so stunned. I kept saying, you're joking. You're joking. They were so sneaky about it. Then they said that they were only going to show reruns from the first season, but they're not even doing that. They're editing shows from all different seasons.

I was supposed to have that control, and even that was usurped. The years I put into the show were being robbed from me. The problems with the cast at that time were also growing as well, with Tommy Davidson being checked into rehab, which I do not blame him for because of his insanely difficult childhoods and everything. of course, that would be the sort of thing that might happen to a guy like that. And the rumors that David Allen Greer, Jim Carrey, and Kim Wants were threatening to walk

unless their pay increase. Well, and also, I don't, I mean, I wonder how much has to do with it that apparently Jim Carrey is cited as being the quote-unquote reason for the show's eventual cancellation because it was assumed he'd be too expensive to keep on, and he was essentially

the last superstar to stay with the show through the fifth season. Now, that is all conjecture. I mean, Jamie Fox was, still on it too. But at the time I think that Jim Carrey's like he was skyrocket. But you know what year season five came out? 94. That is the year

94 was when he had Ace Ventura the mask and dumb and dumber all come out. Oh in one year. Yeah, Carrie said I was contracted for five years. I could have weaseled out but I wanted to stick with it. Things were happening for me. I spent nights in my office with Steve OdeKirk writing the Ace Ventura Pet Detective strip script. We'd stay up until four in the morning and David Allen Greer used to rub it in during tapings. He'd go out to the audience and say,

I don't know if you people realize it, but Jim Carrey is about to jump off in a movie called Ace Ventura Pet Detective. He meant it facetiously. He was making fun of me for the silly name of my big hand of it. I was reading parts of this great book called Color by Fox, which is a book about the Fox Network and the Revolution of Black Television by Crystal Brent Zuck. And I think explains a lot of what is happening at this point in time that essentially Fox aired in Living Color when it did because it needed to. He wanted, it wanted to distinguish it from the more traditional networks. So by the time in Living Color was in its fifth season, things had changed dramatically at the network. The executives who'd ushered in in Living Color, the Simpsons and married

with children had mostly moved on to other networks. And Rupert Murdoch began taking a much more hands-on approach to his network. He wasn't satisfied with getting niche ratings and wanted to turn Fox into a juggernaut that could compete with CBS, NBC, and ABC. And she even says it's an identifiable pattern. A young network can make its name with black programming, but when it's ready to shoot for higher ad dollars, black shows are disappeared quickly. One executive is quoted saying there was no outward racism, but Rupert wanted to broaden the advertiser base. It's once again, ready. Which that is racism. Righting on the backs of talented black people. Yes, and

using them and not, and then also the fact that they don't make the money that they deserve after the show is canceled. Firestein said, I believe there was an ethnic cleansing at Fox. They were trying to become more mainstream. They started canceling African-American centric shows like South Central. And Rock, do you guys remember Rock?

I loved Rock. Yes. Rock's great. And going back to Keenehry-Wain's, I had one last quote from him about walking off of the show. Right before he walks off from the show. He literally holds a finished show tape hostage, hiding it in the ceiling panels above his office. A few

days later, he leaves for good. Like, he is just, it was like a real war going on. Damon and Marlin both left because they didn't have contractual obligations, but Sean and Kim, they had to work, they were trying to get out of theirs, but they had to stay on for the final season. Wayanset, it was absolutely,

Keen and Ivory, Wand said, it was absolutely the most difficult thing I've ever had to do, but I had to. I couldn't condone what they did and how they did it. No one wanted me to leave, but I couldn't continue in good conscience. I couldn't give them a show that was a certain quality and not have them return that quality. Also, speaking of that kind of way, so Sean and Kim Wains weren't allowed to leave when Keenan Ivory Wains left because they were under contract.

So they said, so they and other cast members express their displeasure with the situation by wearing black shades and not participating in Jamie Fox's Christmas number at the end of the first episode of the fifth season following Keenan's departure. I didn't even think, I don't remember them being in the opening credits. I think that I just, when I rewatch the fifth season's intro, there wasn't a single way-ins in the credit. They changed the whole beginning because they put in almost, not only, not entirely, but a good amount of a brand new cast. Yeah. And also I did love this line that Damon Wayne said when he was on David Letterman, in living color was like Kentucky fried chicken. They got rid of the colonel. He took the seven spices with them and now they're just

frying chicken about the last season, which a lot of people say is definitely nowhere near as good as the other seasons. Yeah, for sure. I'd forgotten about it. I'd forgotten about until I was watching the credits and I was like, oh, I remember that guy, kind of. And that lady. There was an attempt at a revival back in 2012. A pilot episodes were made produced by Keen and Ivory Wains. They brought in a new group of Flygirls and a new class, including our good friend Jermaine Fowler. You also have Jennifer Bartels, Lil Relrell, all from Kevin's sketch comedy show,

Friends of the People, among others. They would go on to do Kevin Barnett's Friends of the People sketch comedy show, Rip Bird Lugar. The show's cancellation was confirmed, however, in 2013, as Wayne's and Fox felt.

It wouldn't be sustainable. And they said, Keenan Ivory Wayne said that the reason for the cancellation was because he doesn't believe a full season's worth of quality, material was possible. However, a comedian who was set to become one of the new cast members said that Damon Waynes changed his mind and decided not to come back, which led to the shutdown of the reboot, which is also kind of fine because I think that a lot of the Wayne's siblings didn't want to do a reboot. They wanted it to be kept the way that it was. It was a moment in time. And I do enjoy this quote from Keenan Ivory Wains when asked, what is your legacy in the entertainment industry? He says, my legacy is my family. showing the world what one family can achieve together. We came from extremely humble beginnings,

from the projects of New York to Hollywood, together, still loving each other and still working together. I don't think I could achieve anything greater than that. I mean, it's astounding what the family has accomplished and continues to accomplish. And we will definitely go into further, because I want to get into the scary movies. I want to get it.

They're still making them. I just thought, there's one that came out last year on Netflix called Sex Tuplets, where I forget who, forget who. Sean Wayne's, one of them plays all six sex albums. But then, yeah, like a lot of their kids have now developed careers in Hollywood, too. Like, Damon Wayne's Jr. is in all kinds of shit. He was on New Girl, and he's adorable, and he looks exactly like his dad. And he's really funny. Yeah, it definitely makes my

secret pants dance a little bit moisture. Get your bonnet on. Hi, it's me, Mr. Friendly Secrets, boy, I cannot wait to trown you with my toys. Ooh. I can't believe season six didn't make it on with it. I know. Secret Boy would have been a huge hit. Unbelievable. Well, either way, thank you so much, everybody, for joining us for In Living Color,

the episode on Pop History. Check us out on Patreon. Patreon.com forward slash page seven podcast. Check me out. Twitch.tv. Forward slash Holdenators ho. Jackie and I, we get wacky, right? On Friday night.

We do every Friday night. If you guys could, 6pm ET, and if you guys could also make your plugs rhyme, I would really appreciate it. Go fuck yourself, Holden. My name is Caddwy. You can find me at the 90sene. That's an interesting rhyme.

And we're at page 7, LPN, and all the stuff. And go ahead, Jackie. My name is Jackie. I'm pretty wacky. and you can find me on Instagram I'm Jack That Worm If you're not you

This is right of Jack That Worm Thank you guys so much for joining us This week for Learning about in Living Color And we will be back next week We love you, we kiss you, we miss you Bye You can do what you want to do

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