Living in Color by Tommy Davidson

Author:Tommy Davidson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Books
Published: 2019-12-09T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

The Meanness

Keenen was not one to shout, scream, or lose his temper on set. He was tough—mentally and personally. He didn’t have a lot of time for other people’s problems, and he had a cold, mean side. Over time, he went from being collaborative to dictatorial, and, for his own reasons, Keenen liked to sow conflict. Just like the way he ran mean portrayals of his friends, he also liked to pit cast members against each other, and writers against each other. He believed that competition would yield better written and better acted sketches.

Perhaps that came from some Darwinian lesson he learned growing up in a large family. But sometimes, it just seemed as if Keenen wanted to blow it all up, to make everyone feel less secure. (In that way Keenen was Trumpesque, before Trump even was.)

Keenen wanted to stay on top, to keep control, and that was his way of making sure none of the cast members got too high on themselves.

Keenen wasn’t just distant; it was also that by the third season, Keenen was spending less time on In Living Color. The show was a huge success, a cultural phenomenon, and Keenen appeared to want to leverage that by creating more shows and returning to making films. The strange thing was, although he introduced every episode and occasionally appeared in sketches, he wasn’t getting the attention that other cast members, such as Jim, were getting. I believe this motivated Keenen even more to try to launch new projects.

Keenen was all business, and funny was his business. As a writer, you either delivered or you were out. For cast members, you either found a way to write funny sketches or you were relegated to minor parts. Keenen didn’t care how late you worked, how burned out you were. You either did the job or you were out.

That worked some of the time. However, it was difficult to maintain positive feelings about a show where you felt unappreciated, not on solid ground, or where the hours were impossible. It used to be that people didn’t want to leave the set or offices; they wanted to hang. Now they couldn’t leave.

The meanness spread throughout the show: The writers’ room had a wall where they put up bad sketches and made fun of them. Cast members who were not writers, or whose last name wasn’t Wayans, found it increasingly hard to get their own sketches on the air.

* * *

For all those reasons, by the third season, In Living Color was not the happy, creative place it had been that first season. Keenen and Tamara also announced several changes for the third season.

Our director Paul Miller left the show. Terri McCoy, who was very talented in her own right, would end up taking over for him. There was turnover among the writers again. Bowman left to create Martin. Fred Graver and Michael Anthony Snowden joined the staff. Firestein was now head writer, along with Pam Veasey.

There was a new dancer from New York, a Puerto Rican woman, named Jennifer Lopez.

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