Tag Archives: Friends

10.20.24
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Boomers, Batman, and Beetlejuice

Michael Keaton hosted Saturday Night Live this week and in his monologue he mentions that his new film, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, is out in theatres.

The theatrical film business being what it is – you might not know this.  But suffice it to say it is the sequel to what else – the 1980s megahit where he reprises his ghostly title role because, well, why not?  For once it makes sense and shouldn’t at all be seen like a cash grab.  If only because ghosts in heavy white makeup can believably go 35 years without showing their age. 

Works for me!

Especially if they remain as funny, trim and committed to playing a character and, thus, earning a laugh, as he is.

Keaton’s always been a really great actor – equally outstanding and believable in the broadest comedy and darkest drama (Note: On the latter score, rent the film he just directed and stars in, Knox Goes Away, on Amazon and you’ll see just how talented he really is.  Or watch his recent Emmy-winning turn in the terrific Hulu miniseries, Dopesick (2021) ).

Remember when Birdman won Best Picture?

It’s worth noting we’re sort of running out of these type of movie star/actors. 

The kind that maintain a career over forty years and whose work in iconic roles span multiple generations.  The self-deprecating stay-at-home dad from Mr. Mom,  the first and second modern-day, darkly tortured Batman, the crazed or not-crazed, depending on your POV, actor/bird in Birdman, even the straight down the middle newspaper editor in his other Best Picture Oscar-winning, Spotlight.

classically trained

Still, there’s something about Beetlejuice that was evident on Saturday night.  Keaton’s opening wasn’t merely a cheap promo for his new movie, but rather a moment that gave an opportunity for 2024 SNL cast member Mikey Day and former SNL cast member Andy Samberg (2005-2012) to both come out in the heavy white makeup, dressed in the bold white and black striped suit and wearing the crazy green wig, doing their best Beetlejuice doppelgangers. 

For the comics, who were aged 10 and 12, respectively, when the film came out, it looked like a fantasy come to life, and they couldn’t curtail their enthusiasm for getting to dress up as one of their childhood touchstones next to the guy who created/IS him. 

It’s a whole look

To that end, they confessed the tribute was really designed to goad him into once again at least doing the Beetlejuice voice, which the slightly embarrassed Keaton finally does, sort of, by the end of the bit.

The same way Jennifer Anniston did when former SNL cast member Vanessa Bayer did her Rachel from Friends bit in 2016.

The Rachel haircut is the cherry on top

The same way Nicholas Cage appeared to be when Samberg did his overwrought Cage persona on SNL in 2012.

The same way Jerry Seinfeld couldn’t help doing when then SNL’s Jimmy Fallon did his sing-song Seinfeld star/character in 1999 and…

The same way Joe Coker performed alongside one of SNL’s original Not Ready For Prime Time Players, John Belushi, when the latter sang as an impeccable, soundalike/lookalike Joe Cocker in 1976.

Which is to say nothing of all the real-life politico drop-ins.

There is a new four-part MSNBC documentary entitled My Generation running on consecutive Saturday nights covering the baby boomers (born 1946-64), Generation X (born 1965-1981), millennials (born 1981-1996), and Gen Z (born after 1997). The promo material states the eight-hour series “will document the iconic events, people, and media that shaped each generation” and describes it as “a dose of nostalgia for those who lived through these times and a primer for those who did not.”

I guess.

But I watched some of them and couldn’t help wondering — who makes up these categories anyway? 

Wait… right?

I can tell you as a baby boomer that there is a huge generational difference between those born in 1946, 1955 and 1963.  For instance, in 1948, only 1% of U.S. households owned a….TELEVISION.

It wasn’t until 1957 that the first passenger jets were in use.  And in 1964, The Beatles made their first stateside appearance on television, mere months after Pres. John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

I’m old enough to vaguely remember the debut of The Beatles but a world where almost no one had a TV or flew on a big airplane, well, that’s a product of someone else’s generation.

Embracing my inner Waldorf and Statler

Still, I do get I’m kind of old.   Which, if you get to be the age of any baby boomer, you will realize is really a privilege.

At least that’s what one old person told me some years ago.

This is all to say that if you really want to reflect on generational differences, just go to nbc.com or YouTube and watch a bunch of SNL clips through the years.  That will take you to what once was and you will also appreciate the passage of time AND get a few chuckles, or at least a couple of nostalgic, Oh my Gods, in the process.

And if you need a reference….

To that end –-  shameless self-promotion – VERY shameless – you can get a copy of: The SNL Companion: An Unofficial Guide to the Seasons, Sketches, and Stars of Saturday Night Live on Amazon.  Here’s the link: https://a.co/d/888Dhde

I wrote it, along with my better half, Stephen Tropiano, and, along with a bunch of fun history, quips and pithy historical observations, it has an episode guide where you can pick and choose your pleasure or…poison. 

Sure does!

What you will fondly relive and remember or what you will skip over, ignore or forever choose to deny.

Mere documentaries do not allow you to make that choice.

SNL Michael Keaton Monologue (10/19/24)

04.17.22
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That Person

Not gonna lie, this was not a great few weeks. 

A weekly blog that covers the intersection of pop culture and social issues is probably not the best place to tell you my dear friend of 50 plus years died quite unexpectedly two weeks ago.

But what the hell, she did and I’m devastated, angry, sad and grateful to have had her in my life at all.

And yes, to you lay therapists out there, I am feeling all of those feelings – at the same time.

Of course, those feelings won’t come as much of a surprise to anyone who has ever experienced the death of a loved one – be it friend, family or a little bit of both.

And my dear Deb was A LOT of both, and then some. 

Actually, she was much more than that. 

She was fun and bold and brave and saved teenage me from a life of denial, depression and, well, utter dullness.

As teenagers who would both grow up to be gay, we became best friends way back when and then, some years later, eventually… dated???

Well, sort of.

That was a teeny segment of our relationship, but one that many gay men and lesbians of a certain age will identify with.  The best friend who somehow was thought of as, or became, your “girlfriend” or “boyfriend” when you were a teenager or even in your very early twenties. 

Except that, well, a relationship that works perfectly on every level except the sexual one pretty much ensures they’re not your girlfriend, and definitely not your boyfriend. 

What they become, after some growing pains and years of therapy and a lot of luck, is that person.  Your touchstone.  The one.  That enduring extended family member who knew you then, chose to grow with you, change with you, endure you and love you in a way no one else really could (or can) because they’d never have the history and, certainly, not the context.

There’s a shorthand when you know someone this long.  Memories that ebb and flow, some really good or even great but none of them, even the most mundane or unsavory ones, ever truly bad because by this point you’ve weathered the storm and gotten through all the shit that comes at a person in more than five decades.

If you’re fortunate enough to still have that person in your life you get to laugh at the ridiculousness of what you thought so many times was the end of the world while remaining bonded in the reality of having both survived, this long, together, with any shred of sanity and humor left.

As it turns out, you realize together, you were nowhere near as insane as you both knew you were back then (and even sometimes now).  As for humor, being funny is what got you through and allowed you to survive.  What a gift it is to still be able to make each other laugh by saying so little.   The appropriate eyebrow raise or mind read at an oddly opportune moment will more than do. 

But only with them. 

The one who saw you for who you really were, long before you chose to, and decided to stay and find how it would all turn out.

Loving you for who YOU were every step of the way.

Of course, this is a two-way street.  You don’t get to have a person like that for so long unless you are willing to love them and see them for who they really were.

But that’s the easy part.

The hard part is when one day they’re not around for you to do it anymore.

Yeah, they’ll always be with you, all those memories make you one of the fortunate ones and blah, blah, blah, life goes on.

But not in the way you knew it. 

Deb and I both loved theatre and among our favorite plays was Our Town.  Yeah, we both particularly loved Albee and Tennessee Williams but there was something about that much-maligned Thornton Wilder classic that truly spoke to us and, in some hipster crowds, we took a lot of crap for it.

So it is not lost on me right now that all I can think about is the ghost of Emily, the young (Note: Spoiler Alert) dead girl in her grave at the cemetery at the end of the play, looking and marveling at her simple family and town going about their mundane tasks on a typical day in their mundane lives.

And her disembodied voice, as she asks that iconic question —

Does anyone ever realize life while they live it… every, every minute?

Followed by the Stage Manager answering —

No. Saints and poets maybe…they do some.

And Deb taking it in, nodding along, and helping me, as usual, to make sense of it.

See, that’s the thing. At the moment, none of that makes a whole lot of sense.  Even though we talked about it a million times.

Bette Midler – “Friends”