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WORK TITLE: Homey Don’t Play That!
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://djpeisner.com/
CITY: Decatur
STATE: GA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Male.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Freelance culture and entertainment writer.
WRITINGS
Contributor to journals and periodicals, including Rolling Stone, the New York Times, Esquire, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, New York, Fast Company, Spin, Billboard, Playboy, Vibe, TV Guide, Atlanta, BuzzFeed, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
SIDELIGHTS
David Peisner is a freelance culture and entertainment writer. He publishes on a wide range of topics, such as music, books, film, television, politics, sports, technology, and world affairs. Peisner has contributed articles to a number of journals and periodicals, including Rolling Stone, the New York Times, Esquire, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, New York, Fast Company, Spin, Billboard, Playboy, Vibe, TV Guide, Atlanta, BuzzFeed, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Professional Idiot
Peisner coauthored Stephen “Steve-O” Glover’s memoir, Professional Idiot, in 2011. The personal account recalls many of Glover’s stunts from Jackass but centers largely on the impact of his drug addiction. The book chronicles Glover’s excessive drug use and how it led to his pushing away his family and friends. Peisner and Glover also discuss the drug use in Glover’s family and how his success on television made his addiction worse.
Writing in Xpress Reviews, Terry Bosky found that “despite his rampant drug use, Steve-O offers a lucid and candid account of his life.” Bosky suggested that the book would be “popular.” A Publishers Weekly contributor opined that Glover appears “as a sweet person and depicts his descent into the depths of drug abuse with candor.”
Homey Don't Play That!
Peisner published Homey Don’t Play That! The Story of In Living Color and the Black Comedy Revolution in 2018. The account posits that the comedy television program In Living Color served an important role in bringing African-American comedy to a mainstream American audience. Peisner chronicles many of the key actors, particularly the Wayans Brothers, and inserts several interviews with them. Peisner also highlights the show’s formation and its evolution over time.
A contributor to Kirkus Reviews called the book “a breezy, slightly overlong account that will interest fans of African-American culture and TV comedy due to its up-close detail and numerous sources.” In a review in Library Journal, Sally Bryant observed that “it’s a fascinating glimpse into the intense work needed to create and keep a show running.” Writing in Splitsider, Harry Waksberg remarked that the author “ably provides a detailed account of the series’ development with a particular focus on its creator and producer, Keenen Ivory Wayans. Through extensive research and interviews, Peisner provides vital context for everything that went into the production and distribution of In Living Color and what made it the cultural force that it was for the first half of the 1990s.” Waksberg mentioned that the author “does an excellent job detailing the Wayans’s background and their influences that went into making the series, but the book unfortunately ends roughly when the TV series does. In Living Color’s influence was undeniably huge, and its creative team was involved in various capacities with many of the Black series that made it to the air throughout the ‘90s and beyond. What the show’s ultimate impact was deserves further exploration, but for now, Homey Don’t Play That is a welcome addition to the excavation of Black television history.”
Writing on the PopMatters website, Christopher John Stephens noted that “In Living Color was a sketch show aimed at a black audience and one of the centerpieces of the Fox TV network in its early days. Peisner is probably generous to a fault in his conclusions about the legacy of the show.” Stephens remarked that “Peisner does admit that such skits as ‘Homey the Clown’, ‘Men on Film’, and ‘Fire Marshall Bill’ are probably anachronistic in 2018, and the end result is a book that relies too much on extensive author interviews with cast members, producers, and various scene makers at the time. Perhaps in that sense Peisner understands his material, but it can be frustrating for a reader who may not be as familiar with these landmark TV skits. Certainly they were audacious in their time, but sometimes what’s delightfully bitter in the early ’90s just becomes unsatisfying with age.” Stephens mentioned that “Homey Don’t Play That! wants to work on several levels, and the reader risks whiplash following the trains of thought.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 2018, review of Homey Don’t Play That! The Story of In Living Color and the Black Comedy Revolution.
Library Journal, January 1, 2018, review of Homey Don’t Play That!, p. 105.
Publishers Weekly, July 4, 2011, review of Professional Idiot.
Xpress Reviews, May 20, 2011, Terry Bosky, review of Professional Idiot.
ONLINE
David Peisner website, https://djpeisner.com (June 2, 2018).
PopMatters, https://www.popmatters.com/ (May 7, 2018), Christopher John Stephens, review of Homey Don’t Play That!.
Splitsider, http://splitsider.com/ (February 21, 2018), Harry Waksberg, review of Homey Don’t Play That!.
David Peisner is a writer based in Decatur, Georgia. He has been writing about music, film, television, books, politics, technology, sports and world affairs for more than twenty years. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Esquire, New York magazine, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Fast Company, Billboard, Spin, Playboy, TV Guide, Vibe, Atlanta magazine, BuzzFeed and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
David Peisner is a freelance writer based in Decatur, Georgia. He has been writing about music, film, television, books, politics, technology, sports, and world affairs for a wide array of publications for nearly twenty years. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone, The New York Times, TV Guide, Spin, Billboard, Vibe, Fast Company, New York, Esquire, Playboy, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and BuzzFeed. Peisner is the co-author of Steve-O's New York Times betselling memoir Professional Idiot.
David Peisner is a freelance writer based in Decatur, Georgia. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Esquire, BuzzFeed, Details, New York, Playboy, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and many other publications even less reputable than those.
Peisner, David: HOMEY DON'T PLAY THAT!
Kirkus Reviews. (Jan. 1, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Peisner, David HOMEY DON'T PLAY THAT! 37 Ink/Atria (Adult Nonfiction) $28.00 2, 6 ISBN: 978-1-5011-4332-8
A history of the development of the hit TV show In Living Color and the comedy dynasty of the Wayans family.
Freelance culture and entertainment writer Peisner (co-author, with Steven "Steve-O" Glover: Professional Idiot, 2011) argues convincingly for In Living Color's cultural importance at the dawn of the 1990s, as it brought an underground tradition of confrontational yet reflective African-American comedy into the mainstream. Although he quotes many of the show's principals, he focuses on Keenen Ivory Wayans (and his siblings), starting with their hardscrabble 1960s New York childhood. Following a youthful fascination with Richard Pryor, Keenen determined to pursue a comedy career. He found some early success, including a Tonight Show appearance, though, as the author notes, "it's almost impossible to overstate what a wasteland Hollywood was for African-Americans in the early eighties," with the exception of Eddie Murphy. Still, Wayans was part of a formative generation of comics and directors, including Robert Townsend, Spike Lee, Arsenio Hall, and Chris Rock, all of whom crossed paths with him or were involved with ILC (or skewered by its sketches). After years of such scuffling, Wayans found opportunity via the unlikely venue of Fox, "still a new network [that] felt distinctly minor-league." While Wayans recalls "getting a blank check from Fox, 'total freedom' as he put it," Peisner notes that stories regarding the show's origins are contradictory. Still, the show won an Emmy Awards in its first season and became a phenomenon. The author ably captures these glory days and later seasons, when a mixture of grueling production norms, competition and conflicts among cast and writers, and network difficulties caused a clear decline, culminating in Keenen's departure during the fourth season (and the show's cancellation following the fifth). Since then, "the Wayans brothers have become essentially a parody factory." Peisner's telling is casual and sometimes repetitive, but he effectively pulls together the recollections of many involved with this influential enterprise.
A breezy, slightly overlong account that will interest fans of African-American culture and TV comedy due to its up-close detail and numerous sources.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Peisner, David: HOMEY DON'T PLAY THAT!" Kirkus Reviews, 1 Jan. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A520735699/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c0183037. Accessed 17 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A520735699
Televised Revolutions
Library Journal. 143.1 (Jan. 1, 2018): p105.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
*Peisner, David. Homey Don't Play That! The Story of In Living Color and the Black Comedy Revolution. Atria. Feb. 2018. 400p. bibliog. index. ISBN 9781501143328. $28; ebk. ISBN 9781501143366. TV
American Idiot coauthor Peisner's new book is an in-depth, well-researched look into the success and aftermath of the 1990s TV show In Living Color. Created and produced by Keenen Ivory Wayans, it was a groundbreaking sketch comedy show with an African American perspective that launched many careers such as those of the Wayans family members, Jim Carrey, and Jennifer Lopez. At the time Fox was a struggling fourth-place television network and Color's success helped launch the new network. This book begins with an examination into Wayans's background and then delves into the show's various seasons in historical context. Most of the sketches, such as "Homey the Clown," "Fire Marshal Bill, "Ugly Wanda," and "Star Trek: The Wrath of Farrakhan" are discussed in depth. It's a fascinating glimpse into the intense work needed to create and keep a show running, and how the production's popularity impacted the culture at that time and still reverberates today. VERDICT Highly recommended for those who enjoy reading about the entertainment industry, how their favorite TV shows are created, In Living Color, the Wayans family, Jim Carrey, and African Americans in the entertainment industry.--Sally Bryant, Pepperdine Univ. Lib., Malibu, CA
*Press, Joy. Stealing the Show: How Women Are Revolutionizing Television. Atria. Mar. 2018. 272p. ISBN 9781501137716. $26; ebk. ISBN 9781501137730. TV
TV journalist and critic Press discusses the gradual emergence of the female showrunner on television series. The showrunner is the new name for the main decision maker, a position that used to be called executive producer. Press begins by discussing female-driven shows such as The Mary Tyler Moore Show and That Girl and how at the time, most of the writers and producers were men. Since then, more female-driven and female-focused TV shows have emerged, including Roseanne, Orange Is the New Black, 30 Rock, and The Mindy Project. The book is well-organized chronologically and is an absorbing read with some politics thrown in. There are fascinating interviews with female showrunners such as Roseanne Barr, Amy Sherman-Palladino (Gilmore Girls), Jenji Kohan (Weeds/Orange Is the New Black), and Shonda Rhimes (Scandal). This emergence of female showrunners is allowing stories about women on screen, and one hopes it will allow more diversity behind the camera as well. VERDICT Highly recommended for those who enjoy reading about the entertainment industry, how their favorite TV shows are created, and women. [See Pre-pub Alert, 10/4/17.]--Sally Bryant, Pepperdine Univ. Lib., Malibu, CA
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Televised Revolutions." Library Journal, 1 Jan. 2018, p. 105. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A521049449/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=b3c2b775. Accessed 17 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A521049449
Glover, Stephen "Steve-O" with David Peisner. Professional Idiot: A Memoir
Terry Bosky
Xpress Reviews. (May 20, 2011):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2011 Library Journals, LLC
http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/reviews/xpress/884170-289/xpress_reviews-first_look_at_new.html.csp
Full Text:
Glover, Stephen "Steve-O" with David Peisner. Professional Idiot: A Memoir. Hyperion. Jun. 2011. c.336p. ISBN 9781401324339. $25.99. TV
Jackass TV star Steve-O is embarrassed by his actions--not stapling his scrotum to his leg or his other notorious stunts but those resulting from his drug addiction, which pushed away friends and family. He opens his memoir with a 1996 prison stay (the first of many), then takes us through his globe-trotting childhood as he and his sister cover for an alcoholic mother while their CEO father is away on business. Eventually the class clown ends up in clown college, but Steve-O's true passion is concocting and filming elaborate stunts. Skateboard tricks give way to self-immolation and other life-threatening feats, and Steve-O's videos grab the attention of the creators of Jackass. Yet as he realizes his professional ambitions, he succumbs to a flood of narcotics.
Verdict Despite his rampant drug use, Steve-O offers a lucid and candid account of his life, concluding with a Dr. Drewnenabled institutionalization and his subsequent sobriety. With last year's successful Jackass 3D motion picture and a busy touring schedule, Steve-O is still in the spotlight, and this will be popular with his fans.--Terry Bosky, Palm Beach Cty. Lib. Syst., West Palm Beach, FL
Bosky, Terry
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Bosky, Terry. "Glover, Stephen 'Steve-O' with David Peisner. Professional Idiot: A Memoir." Xpress Reviews, 20 May 2011. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A258816011/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=5a53b279. Accessed 17 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A258816011
Professional Idiot
Stephen "Steve-O" Glover, with David Peisner. Hyperion, $25.99 (336p) ISBN 9781401324339
Raised by an alcoholic mother and a supportive but frequently absent father, Stephen "Steve-O" Glover was an imaginative boy with a serious need for attention. He fed this need by performing dangerous skateboarding stunts that he filmed and often showed to anyone willing to watch. In this honest and often graphic memoir, Glover details how this hobby turned into a career when he teamed up with the produc-ers of the dangerous stunt show Jackass. The successful show provided Glover with the fame he craved, but also allowed him to indulge in drugs and alcohol with wild abandon. Glover tells how he often stayed awake for days, hopped-up on an ever-changing cocktail of substances. While Glover comes across as a sweet person and depicts his descent into the depths of drug abuse with candor, he displays surprisingly little remorse about his drug use. Though there is a note of redemption at the end—he's been able to maintain sobriety and has even become a vegan—the focus here is more on the stunts, wild stories, and drug abuse that got him there and that Jackass fans are expecting. (June)
DETAILS
Reviewed on: 07/04/2011
Release date: 06/01/2011
Downloadable Audio - 336 pages - 978-1-4013-2610-4
Paperback - 322 pages - 978-1-4013-1079-0
‘In Living Color’ Gets Its Own History Book with ‘Homey Don’t Play That’
By Harry Waksberg February 21, 2018
When In Living Color premiered on Fox in 1990, the sketch series represented the beginning of a wave of Black network programming unlike any seen on television in decades (arguably ever). In 1994, In Living Color ended along with four other Black series on Fox alone (the syndicated talk show The Arsenio Hall Show ended the very same month). What brought Fox to that moment and what it took to make In Living Color last as long as it did are the focus of Homey Don’t Play That, a fascinating new book by David Peisner. Peisner ably provides a detailed account of the series’ development with a particular focus on its creator and producer, Keenen Ivory Wayans. Through extensive research and interviews, Peisner provides vital context for everything that went into the production and distribution of In Living Color and what made it the cultural force that it was for the first half of the 1990s. The story of In Living Color is, in these pages, the story of the Wayans family (especially Keenen Ivory Wayans) and the Fox corporation, and why they were briefly perfect for one another until they became incompatible.
Keenen Ivory Wayans started out as a standup comedian with Robert Townsend. Together, they moved out to Hollywood and formed “the Black Pack” with Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall, and Paul Mooney. Wayans found some success through co-writing Hollywood Shuffle and writing, directing, and starring in the blaxploitation parody I’m Gonna Git You Sucka. When Fox offered him a sketch show, he was already confident about what he wanted and didn’t want — and so were they. Wayans insisted the show would be “revolutionary,” then saw a room full of executive faces fall. He clarified, “No, not take-over-the-world revolutionary. Revolutionary in terms of funny.” That tension between producing radical material and just getting laughs lasted the rest of In Living Color’s run. Another recurring source of friction was Keenen Ivory Wayans’ insistence on working with his family. His younger siblings Damon and Kim were in the show’s original cast, and Shawn was a production assistant/DJ stand-in in the first season and a writer-performer starting in the second. Marlon Wayans joined the cast in the fourth season. Though Keenen Ivory Wayans took some flak for nepotism, it was undeniable that the Wayans family was tremendously talented. Peisner explores why all were so funny in early chapters devoted to the family’s early years. He also attempts to explicate why Keenen was such a difficult, demanding boss who frequently held up production with last-minute sketch changes. There, too, the result is easier to identify: for the four seasons he produced In Living Color, it was a clear expression of his comic voice that proved impossible to replicate.
Peisner describes the television landscape of the early 1980s as a “wasteland,” a “post-Good Times, pre-Cosby Show drought.” What this functionally meant was, when hiring writers for In Living Color, Wayans struggled to find experienced comedy writers who were Black. Over the course of its run, In Living Color provided early writing jobs for more than a few Black writers, but there was constant debate over what jokes were appropriate for the show and which were unpalatable when pitched by white writers. White writers often pitched hard-hitting sketches taking on racist institutions; Black writers and Wayans himself pushed back. “Keenen, Damon, and Kim, they lived the black experience. They didn’t need to spend one more day fighting that battle,” one white writer tells Peisner. Individual sketches appeared to reinforce racist stereotypes to some writers; to others, these sketches mined laughs from elements of Black life not previously explored on network television (the recurring sketch “Homeboy Shopping Network” comes up frequently throughout the book as hotly debated among writers, producers, and executives). Fox attempted early on to bring in consultants from organizations like the NAACP and the Urban League to sign off on its humor. When they brought in a man who’d marched with Dr. King (the book doesn’t name who), Keenen Wayans told them, “If he ain’t got no jokes, I don’t need him. He’s no blacker than me.” The original plan was to have an entirely Black cast, but the first season was determined to need two white cast members, one man and one woman. That white man, Jim Carrey, was one of the show’s breakout stars, and was from the start making more money than the Black cast members (and fellow white cast member Kelly Coffield). When Keenen Ivory Wayans left the show in its fourth season, he was replaced by three showrunners — two white and one Black. Sketches that previously felt right for the series started to feel uncomfortably wrong, and no longer like jokes being made by and for Black people.
These distinctions are a key component to unpacking In Living Color, and come up frequently in Peisner’s book. Chris Rock, who joined the cast in its final season after a few years on Saturday Night Live, compared being on SNL in the era of In Living Color to being Charley Pride. Peisner quotes him explaining that “I was the first black guy [on SNL] in, like, eight years. I wanted to be in an environment where I didn’t have to translate the comedy I wanted to do.” This was a huge part of what made In Living Color so notable. Producer Tamara Rawitt recalls Fox executives balking at a sketch mocking Louis Farrakhan because they believed that “nobody knows who Louis Farrakhan is.” To Rawitt, this issue was absurd: “Everyone in black culture knows who Farrakhan is.” Rock (and Damon Wayans, who was on SNL for one miserable season) had performed on an established network sketch series, but In Living Color provided an opportunity to appear in sketches written to appeal directly to a Black audience.
Fox’s foray into Black programming wasn’t the result of television executives suddenly deciding to broaden their audiences. In Living Color was a product of its moment even beyond its politics or aesthetics. Thanks to the gradual phasing out of fin-syn regulations, Fox was looking to produce its own original content that would syndicate well, and this sketch show was a good fit. Though its ratings weren’t enormous, they were huge for the fledgling network, and the show’s controversy (and Emmy win) helped bring viewers to Fox. In her landmark book Color by Fox (which complements Homey Don’t Play That perfectly), Kristal Brent Zook explains that “Fox aired the irreverent series when it did because it needed…to distinguish it from the more traditional networks.” 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. Throughout Homey Don’t Play That, Peisner clearly explains the ways that decisions made at the corporate level trickled down to the creative. In this case, 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.” As Fox lost so many of its Black shows, including In Living Color, the WB and UPN began to pick up the slack — until they began to shoot for higher ad buys, too.
In her essay “In The Time of Plastic Representation,” Dr. Kristen Warner expresses concern over the basic demand of more representation for Black people on television: “Black images as the marker of societal progress or regression makes any image acceptable on its face, obliterating context and sidelining any consideration of depth.” By detailing the changes occuring in Black entertainment in the 1980s, David Peisner draws a distinction between SNL hiring more Black cast members and Keenen Ivory Wayans producing a Black sketch show (and one can watch Chris Rock and Damon Wayans on both shows to see just how different their roles were on each). What helped In Living Color stand out was not just that it had a primarily Black cast: it’s that it was a Black show. Peisner does an excellent job detailing the Wayans’s background and their influences that went into making the series, but the book unfortunately ends roughly when the TV series does. In Living Color’s influence was undeniably huge, and its creative team was involved in various capacities with many of the Black series that made it to the air throughout the ‘90s and beyond. What the show’s ultimate impact was deserves further exploration, but for now, Homey Don’t Play That is a welcome addition to the excavation of Black television history.
Harry Waksberg is a writer and lazeabout based in Riverside, CA. He is the creator and writer of the web series Doing Good.
'Homey Don't Play That': A Tale of Emmy-winning Black Comedy Sitcom 'In Living Color'
Christopher John Stephens 07 May 2018
Comedy is a cruelly subjective art form, and not much of it survives outside of its time frame.
Homey Don't Play That! The Story of In Living Color and the Black Comedy Revolution
David Peisner
Simon & Schuster (37 Ink)
Feb 2018
Other
Most revolutions are difficult, messy, hard to easily summarize and perhaps impossible to clearly be reflected in a narrative. Add the complications and implications of race and a clearly subjective art form like comedy and the end result can sometimes be overwhelming. Compress the perspective from roughly the late '60s through the mid-'90s and the story will always seem unfinished. The alpha and omega of black comedy was definitively set in stone with Mel Watkins' 1994 On the Real Side: A History of African American Comedy from Slavery to Chris Rock (Chicago Review Press, 2nd ed. 1999); the book is clear, objective, and deeply profound about the ways a marginalized people rose up from within institutionalized racism to present themselves in the comic realm. It's a tome worth reading, a volume that earned its weight (literally and figuratively) and is a fitting document to the 20th century. Where would black comedy go in the 21st century? What patterns could we expect to re-occur, in different variations, to give voice to this particular experience?
David Peisner's Homey Don't Play That: The story of In Living Color and the Black Comedy Revolution has the distinct advantage of time over the Watkins book, but the approach is decidedly different. On The Real Side was published the year In Living Color went off the air. By 1994, as Peisner notes, the landscape for black comedy was decidedly different than the late '80s. Shows like Martin, arguably a child of In Living Color creator Keenan Ivory Wayan's sensibility, was still going strong, and the landmark apparent respectability of The Cosby Show and its lead character Dr. Cliff Huxtable (Bill Cosby) was gone. Will Smith's The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air would last until 1996, and other such shows lingered through the decade with various degrees of success.
What does this all mean to the premise that In Living Color revolutionized black comedy? Deeper than that, Peisner argues (with some success) that the initial success of the show meant something. He opens with a picture of Wayans, accepting an Emmy for the show in its freshman year:
There had been important breakthroughs… but the march of progress was… slow… [u]ntil suddenly it wasn't. Not only were there Eddie [Murphy] and Arsenio [Hall] and Robert [Townshend] and Keenan, but there were Spike Lee and Oprah Winfrey… In Living Color [was] a black show created by a black man that seemed to effortlessly cross over to a mainstream audience ready and waiting for it…
Peisner ends his Preface by noting that this was the first and only Emmy the show would win, in spite of 15 additional nominations over the next four seasons. This show that gave a nascent home to such talents as Jim Carrey, Jamie Foxx, David Alan Grier, Tommy Davidson, and all of the Wayans (Keenan, Kim, Damon, Marlon, Shawn) burst like a magnificent firecracker in the first four years of the '90s and, like that firecracker, quickly disappeared. In the shadow of such real-life events as the 1992 L.A. Riots following the acquittal of four white police officers in the beating of black motorist Rodney King, In Living Color was never overtly political, but it gave voice to those who had been marginalized. It was reviled by many in and outside of the community, but its shameless and unapologetic energy was part of its charm
The problem with charm and bravery within the context of a particular time is that it doesn't have a long shelf life. In Living Color was a sketch show aimed at a black audience and one of the centerpieces of the Fox TV network in its early days. Peisner is probably generous to a fault in his conclusions about the legacy of the show:
Those big, loud, hard laughs came not just from being smart or clever or witty or black but from being outrageous… This was a show willing to upset people in search of those big, loud, hard laughs. They said the un-sayable. That's a legacy that always needs periodic renewing…
The problem with such pronouncements (and Peisner circles around these themes more times than necessary) is that he can't seem to admit that the particular sketches of In Living Color really don't hold up. Granted, comedy is a cruelly subjective art form, and not much of it survives outside of its time frame, but the pieces are very thin. Peisner does admit that such skits as "Homey the Clown", "Men on Film", and "Fire Marshall Bill" are probably anachronistic in 2018, and the end result is a book that relies too much on extensive author interviews with cast members, producers, and various scene makers at the time. Perhaps in that sense Peisner understands his material, but it can be frustrating for a reader who may not be as familiar with these landmark TV skits. Certainly they were audacious in their time, but sometimes what's delightfully bitter in the early '90s just becomes unsatisfying with age.
Homey Don't Play That wants to work on several levels, and the reader risks whiplash following the trains of thought. An unexplored narrative strain Peisner develops early on is the Wayans family childhood, life in the Fulton Houses for the nine Wayans siblings in the mid-60s through the mid-'70s. The story of the matriarch, Elvira, is worth a separate volume. Peisner incorporates understood facts about the status of Flip Wilson at the time as a black comic on TV, the transformation of Richard Pryor from a man who wore a suit and tie to a man who challenged the establishment by speaking about truth and black power. Keenan leaves for a while to study at the prestigious Tuskegee Institute and he comes home to a New York City in the late '70s/early '80s brimming with comic possibilities.
Again, Homey Don't Play That benefits more from the power of its surrounding stories and subplots than the strength of benchmark In Living Color recurring characters like Jim Carrey's female weightlifter character Vera DeMilo and Jamie Foxx's Ugly Woman Wanda. The story of how NBC's The Richard Pryor Show seemed to simultaneously explode and implode is another element worth exploring, a shining supporting theme better than the primary narrative. It takes a while for Peisner to lay the foundation for the start of In Living Color, but when he does it's effective and clearly rendered:
Television was in its post-Good Times, pre-Cosby Show drought… The prospects for African-Americans in the film world were even drearier… This is the Hollywood Keenan, Arsenio, and Townshend were walking into.
There is some time given to Robert Townshend's film Hollywood Shuffle, but not enough. That was a remarkable statement for independent cinema at the time (1987) about the paucity of authentic and respectable roles for African-Americans then and now. Again, it's another example of supplementary characters and themes (Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Paul Mooney) that are really more substantial and interesting than this book's subject matter. It goes back to shelf life and relevance, and Homey Don't Play That stretches itself by probably 100 pages trying to justify a larger than necessary book about its subject.
The presence of such outlandishly gay characters as Blaine Edwards (Damon Wayans) and Antoine Meriwether (David Alan Grier) in the popular recurring sketch "Men on Film" definitely cannot be replicated in 2018. Whether or not it should be replicated is a different question. It was controversial at the time but it stayed, and perhaps that's reflective of an era not straightjacketed (as some may see it) by political correctness. Other sketches, like "The Wrath of Farakhan", starring Damon Wayans in a brilliant take on Nation of Islam leader Louis Farakhan on the set of a Star Trek film, are politically charged sketches that still resonate. Other shows at the time (namely Saturday Night Live) would not have touched this, or at least the end results would not have been as effective.
The cultural legacy of In Living Color was somewhat alien to white programmers at the time. Show writer Rob Edwards noted:
'Black audiences don't just laugh at stuff, we stomp our feet, we high-five… People were literally running up and down the aisles during the taping [of the show's pilot], high-fiving each other. One of the executives turned to me and said 'Did you pay these guys to do that?'
Homey Don't Play That is exhausting in its detail, and that's not always a good thing. Too much time is spent on recounting graphic details of what would now be clearly acts of sexual harassment posing as humor in the sketch comedy show office workplace. Not enough time is spent on how the show ended, how cast member Anne-Marie Johnson claimed "We were used as laborers to build up Fox, and once that was done, we were let go…" Later we read that "New York Congressman Ed Towns hammered Fox for what he perceived to be 'plantation mentality.' "
Peisner includes a quote from comic Marsha Warfield, who concludes that In Living Color "…anchored a whole new world not just for black entertainment but for entertainment period. It deserves its own place for being part of that revolution and evolution.'" That may very well be the case, but Homey Don't Play That would have been better served in a different format, perhaps a coffee table book with full color photos, perhaps a pure oral history solely from those directly involved in the show's production. As is, the book is a long read that takes up more room than it should and leaves too many narratives stranded by the side of the road. An author's unlimited access to high profile interviews does not matter if it's put to a narrative that's juggling more elements than it should. Something has to come crashing to the ground.