Newsgroup: it.fan.tv.friends
Titolo: Il ritorno di Lisa (lungo)

da 
www.nytimes.com
Lisa Kudrow, This Time Without Any Friends
By ALEXANDRA JACOBS
Published: May 15, 2005
Santa Monica, Calif.
ON a recent afternoon along Montana Avenue, a street filled with the kind of 
rich suburban-mom boutiques that emit the gentlest of dings when you cross 
the threshold, about 50 cast and crew members gathered to tape a scene for 
the new HBO series "The Comeback." Directed by Michael Patrick King, late of 
HBO's "Sex and the City," it stars the former "Friends" star Lisa Kudrow as 
Valerie Cherish, a has-been actress who has consented to be trailed by video 
cameras 24 hours a day in the hope of reinvigorating her career - for, as 
she briskly declares, "Reality TV is the reality of TV - and I'm a 
survivor."
In the course of a few minutes, the terminally plucky Valerie fumbles with a 
dangling body microphone ("They can put a man on the moon, but they can't 
make a body mike that doesn't make you look like you're passing linguine?" 
she wisecracks) and strolls past a newsstand, where she glimpses an 
Entertainment Weekly cover that asks "Is Reality TV Over?" and visibly 
deflates. It took 12 takes to strike the right note of spontaneous 
awkwardness in this scene.
It's a lot of work to make a fake reality TV show - and fake, its 
co-creators Ms. Kudrow and Mr. King want to stress, is exactly what "The 
Comeback" is. Scheduled to follow "Entourage," another knowing examination 
of show business, it is not some derivation of "Lisa Kudrow," à la Larry 
David in "Curb Your Enthusiasm" or Kirstie Alley in "Fat Actress." It is "a 
black comedy about the reality of television," as Mr. King put it, entirely 
fictional and scripted (by a staff of six writers drawn from sitcom, dramedy 
and sketch comedy). For starters, Ms. Kudrow is not exactly in need of a 
comeback, having worked steadily for over a decade, most notably as the 
spacily sage bohemian Phoebe Buffay on the NBC hit "Friends." "I have 
nothing to complain about," she said during lunch with Mr. King at Michael's 
in Santa Monica a few days before the Montana Avenue scene was taped. Nor is 
she interested in playing a version of herself, a married woman with a child 
living quietly - "I am not in the tabloids," she pointed out - near Beverly 
Hills. Mr. King smiled indulgently. "I've been very blessed," he said, "to 
work with actresses who were not so self-involved in their image that they 
don't want to act."
The two collaborators first became friendly on an NBC lot in the early 
1990's, while Mr. King was struggling to make the leap from sitcom writer to 
executive producer and Ms. Kudrow was playing a supporting role on "Mad 
About You." She was also a member of the renowned comedy troupe the 
Groundlings. (Mr. King remembered being impressed by her improvisation of 
Audrey Hepburn visiting a hillbilly fishing program.) One of her monologue 
characters was called Your Favorite Actress on a Talk Show: "Just me 
laughing at this endlessly needy ego that's self-promoting," Ms. Kudrow 
said, "but in the name of talking about 'the work.' "
Then both of their fortunes turned. "Friends" and "Sex and the City" were 
lavished with critical and popular acclaim and dominated the Emmys and 
Golden Globes for years. "I would see Lisa at awards shows, in gowns - you 
know, regal - sitting at the next table," Mr. King said. "We'd analyze who 
was closer to the stage and therefore more likely to win." In 2004, both 
shows wrapped up long runs and went into lucrative syndication. After the 
artistic license he'd enjoyed on cable - the ability to use profanity, the 
freedom from a canned laugh track - Mr. King was wary of working on a 
network. Meanwhile, Ms. Kudrow, who will turn 42 in July, was being offered 
quirky roles in independent films, going from acting younger than her age on 
"Friends" to occasionally being asked to play "matronly" or "uptight." The 
Favorite Actress character wafted back into her consciousness, and she and 
Mr. King met at the Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills to discuss it.
They discovered a mutual interest in the sudden on-air dominance of reality 
TV, a concept that didn't even exist when their own mega-successful shows 
first went on the air. "When I would watch shows like 'The Amazing Race,' " 
Mr. King said, "I would always wonder stuff like, when they were on the 
plane, where are the cameras? How does this really happen? People are so 
familiar with reality shows, but maybe they might be interested in seeing 
one more step back, where the camera's included." Thus "The Comeback" is 
purposefully, artfully sloppy. In its dogged, unrelenting simulation of 
reality - including a scene in which Ms. Cherish's husband audibly 
defecates - it is somehow much more true than actual reality TV. "The camera 
lingers," Ms. Kudrow said. "Past the point of comfort," Mr. King added.
Part of the fun of the show is that it addresses the continuing ratings 
battle between traditional comedies and reality TV. As the story goes, 
"Valerie Cherish" rose to prominence on a sitcom called "I'm It!" that ran 
from 1989 to 1992. "A B-level sitcom," Mr. King said. "You know those shows 
that were on for years that you never saw? 'I'm It!' is one of those. This 
is of a different time, when women were on top in television, and it was 
like: 'She had it all! She was a lawyer! She was sexy!' " A former writer 
for "Murphy Brown" and "Cybill," Mr. King waxed nostalgic for an era of 
television history when "there was all this kind of 'Philadelphia Story' 
stuff that women were allowed to do." He continued: "They had long 
monologues, they talked and talked and talked, they all had business suits 
and their apartments had views of skylines. Where did they go? Where did 
they go? Where did they go?"
In one of the more hilarious and excruciating moments in the pilot episode 
of "The Comeback," Valerie Cherish learns that she has been downgraded from 
a leading role as an architect in a new sitcom called "Room and Bored" 
(about "four sexy singles in Manhattan Beach," a wink at "Friends" and "Sex 
and the City," Mr. King said), to the marginal and humiliating part of "Aunt 
Sassy," the landlady who lives upstairs like Mrs. Roper on "Three's 
Company." An overhead camera in Valerie Cherish's kitchen captures her 
practicing one line over and over as she works her way through a chocolate 
cake, pulled out of a refrigerator packed with Zone meals. "She reminds me 
of a salesman - like Willy Loman," Ms. Kudrow said. "Just give her a modicum 
of respect - just a little drop - and she'll be really cooperative."
Mr. King said: "No matter how much she achieves, there'll always be a 
22-year-old actress standing next to her, because Valerie Cherish isn't 
real, we didn't have to pay homage to anything except the story we wanted to 
tell, about how a woman can be ground up by her own need."
As lunch wound down, Michael McCarty, the restaurant's owner, came over to 
pay his own homage to the star. "Nice to see you," he said. "Thanks for 
coming in today. Hope you enjoyed yourself. Eat your greens. Keep doing it!"
"You too," Ms. Kudrow said politely. Mr. McCarty ambled off.
"You see?" Mr. King said in a stage whisper. "That's what Valerie Cherish 
hopes to get. That would make her day. But it's not going to happen. We want 
people to sit in the uncomfortable reality of what reality is, versus the 
slick, cleaned-up version of reality TV."
Cristina

ON a recent afternoon along Montana Avenue,
MEGA-CUT
Per la cronaca... inizia domenica 5 giugno e prosegue per 13 domeniche
(almeno questo è il numero di episodi che mi sembra di aver capito,
leggendo in giro)