Bathroom Reads #14: GENERATION FRIENDS by Saul Austerlitz

Seeing as how earlier entries in this series covered books dealing with SEINFELD and FRASIER, it seems only natural to now turn to FRIENDS, which (along with the two previously mentioned TV shows) I place in the Holy Trinity of the great 90s sitcoms, that glorious decade and lost golden era where the sitcom reached its apotheosis and cultural zenith (though there are a few post-FRIENDS sitcoms that I also rank highly, mainly THE OFFICE [American version] and HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER). My fandom of this show is a running joke amongst some of my friends, but I do not exaggerate when I tie FRIENDS with GAME OF THRONES as my favorite TV show of all-time. My brothers and I began watching it in 1998, about halfway through season 4, and because by that point in time the show was syndicated we quickly caught up with what was going on via reruns. Actually, the first episode that my brothers and I ever saw was a rerun, 1995's "The One With Two Parts," which was aired as a repeat on February 19, 1998: the night we started watching FRIENDS. As to just why I like the show so much? That's a complicated question. Partly it's because, like the film REALITY BITES, the show serves as a time capsule for a decade I'm still somewhat nostalgic towards (having grown up as a teenager during that time period, I obviously view those as my formative years). Also, and simply put, it's just one of those sitcoms where the acting, the writing, the set design, and other factors too numerous to name seemed to magically fit together into a harmonic whole. Many shows strive to achieve that kind of perfect alchemy, but few succeed. FRIENDS was one of those success stories, obviously. In fact, unlike SEINFELD (which was almost the definition of a sleeper hit), FRIENDS was almost precision-designed to be a hit from Day One, and how that came to be is itself a very interesting story, which leads me to the book under discussion today. 

Although a fair number of books on FRIENDS have come out over the last couple of years, Saul Austerlitz's GENERATION FRIENDS, published in 2019, is one of the better ones. Although he did not interview any of the six core cast members, he did interview the showrunners/creators David Crane and Marta Kauffman, executive producer Kevin Bright, and many of the various writers/directors/crew members/guest actors of the show, including director James Burrows, prop master Marjorie Coster-Praytor, Tate Donovan, Jessica Hecht, costume designer Debra McGuire, and many more (the writers in particular contribute a lot). At over 300 pages, it's fairly comprehensive, and is divided into four parts. Part One is 4 chapters long and covers how the show originated, the casting process (one of the most interesting chapters: Courtney Cox was of course the perfect Monica, but it's interesting to imagine an alternate universe where Janeane Garofalo, the showrunners' original choice for Monica, actually joined the show rather than turning them down, to focus instead on what by all accounts was a disastrous experience on SNL), the filming of the pilot episode, and so on. Part Two is 7 chapters long and covers seasons 1 through 3: some interesting chapters in this section include chapter 8 (which deals with how Monica's apartment and the Central Perk coffee house were designed, Rachel's iconic haircut in the early seasons, and how the characters' outfits/costumes were created), chapter 10 (which focuses on the initial contract negotiations), and chapter 11 (which captures some of what went on in the writers' room, and how certain episodes and jokes came about). Part Three is 6 chapters long and covers seasons 4 through 7, and some of its chapters focus on specific things like how the show was produced, an analysis of "The One With The Embryos" episode,  an entire chapter on the Monica/Chandler relationship (while on the subject, there are no less than 6 chapters devoted to the Ross and Rachel relationship, scattered throughout the book at various points), and the "Lyle vs. Friends" lawsuit. Part Four is 8 chapters long and covers the final three seasons. Here there are chapters dealing with the controversial Joey + Rachel pairing, another chapter on the show's complex contract negotiations (which makes for very intriguing reading), a chapter on the final episode . . . meanwhile the penultimate chapter covers what the show's creators and stars got up to in the years following FRIENDS, while the last chapter explores how the show attracted a new generation of Millennial fans long after it ended (and some of whom weren't even born when it first aired), and also analyzes the show's cultural impact on pop culture (both in America and abroad). 

Unlike some books in recent years that have come out on the TV show (such as Kelsey Miller's lightweight I'LL BE THERE FOR YOU), Austerlitz's book is less concerned about scoring points with the social justice crowd by griping about the show's "...deviations from contemporary liberal orthodoxy" (to quote Austerlitz's text) and more about just giving the reader a lot of behind-the-scenes information on how the show was made, so for that reason I would highly recommend this book, and it even taught me, a FRIENDS obsessive, some things about the show that I had not previously known (for example, in season 5 the writers wanted to introduce a big twist in which the whole gang would temporarily uproot and move to Minnesota). I also agree with the author's notion that, though in some ways predated by SEINFELD, FRIENDS was one of the first major sitcoms that realized that audiences had evolved and were capable of watching shows with story arcs that extended for entire seasons (a concept that some TV critics at the time seemed resistant to), and that the days of sitcoms being stand-alone shows where people tuned in for 30 minutes and quickly forgot about afterwards was in decline. 

Bathroom Reads #13: Misc. Band Books (Siouxsie & The Banshees, Bauhaus, Wire)

 

Siouxsie & The Banshees: The Authorised Biography (Mark Paytress, 2003) 

My Top Ten Favorite Bands/Musical Acts of All-Time list actually has 11 bands on it, because I tie Siouxsie & The Banshees and Nine Inch Nails as #1. I became a fan of the Banshees sometime in the spring of 1999, around the time of the start of my Goth period, when I purchased their second collection of singles Twice Upon A Time (which I would say is also one of the ten best singles collections of all-time). I quickly fell in love with their music and began collecting any albums from them that I could get my hands on. Around the same time I was getting into the Banshees I was also discovering the films of Alfred Hitchcock (mainly through film courses at college), and the two definitely seemed to go hand-in-hand: as I noted in my entry on Hitchcock earlier this year, the Banshees were very much inspired by his psychological thrillers, from naming the song "Spellbound" after one of his films to the way that the guitars of "Suburban Relapse" mimic the shrieking strings of the shower sequence in Psycho. Oddly enough, for a band as visually striking and photogenic as the Banshees were, there have been very little books about the band (one wishes for a lavish coffee table-sized book filled with photos). However, in the year 2003 a biography for the band was released, written by Mark Paytress (who also did the liner notes for the band's albums when Polydor reissued them from 2005-2014). 

In truth this book (which, like some of the other books I've covered in this series, I finally, "officially" read "for real" this year), is more like an oral history, in which long interviews with various people are cut-up and re-arranged to tell a chronological story, from the band's origins to their break-up in 1995 to their brief and final reunion tour in 2002. It also has a rudimentary discography, a list of all the gigs played by the Banshees (and Siouxsie's side project The Creatures), a foreword by Garbage's Shirley Manson, and an all-too-brief black-and-white photograph section. As one might expect, the majority of the quotes come from the core trio of Siouxsie Sioux, Budgie, and Steven Severin, but many of the former band members have their say as well, like Kenny Morris (the original drummer), Martin McCarrick (strings/keyboards), and of course, their many, many guitarists: John McGeoch, Robert Smith, Jon Klein, and John Knox (only original guitarist John McKay and John Carruthers aren't involved: and yes, the band had a lot of guitarists named John/Jon). Other people involved with the Banshees or who were part of that whole scene/their peers get some words in as well: super-fan Billy Chainsaw, tour manager (and later band manager) Tim Collins, Glen Matlock (The Sex Pistols), Marc Almond (Soft Cell), Phil Oakey (The Human League), Patricia Morrison (The Gun Club), Marco Pirroni, John Cale, and more (oddly enough, none of the band's producers outside of Cale are interviewed, not even Mike Hedges). It's a really entertaining and at times very funny book (Severin's quips especially tend to be amusing), and it really covers the entire spectrum of the band's career, focusing on the creation of all of the albums, memorable live shows, and so on. For fans of the band, I highly recommend it. 

Dark Entries: Bauhaus and Beyond (Ian Shirley, 1994) 

This book was published by SAF Publishing, who have done some very good music books over the years (see also Tape Delay: Confessions from the Eighties Underground by Charles Neal). I got into Bauhaus in the spring of 1999, around the same time (though slightly before) I got into Siouxsie & the Banshees. That was towards the end of my freshman year at Rhode Island College, and my interest in the band began when I saw a cute Goth girl wearing a Bauhaus T-shirt around campus, the image on the front being the iconic art for the band's "Bela Lugosi's Dead" single (historical note: this same girl did a weekly radio show on the campus' radio station called something like "Mistress Mayhem's S&M Hour," and which played a lot of Goth/Industrial/Darkwave music... I was a big fan of the program, and through that show discovered bands like Ministry and Die Form. Also of note was that the girl's first name was Karen, which inspired me to name the main female character in my Trinity fantasy series after her). The very first Bauhaus CD I got was the "greatest hits" one (Crackle), and like with the Banshees I quickly fell in love with them, though in truth, aside from their singles and their underrated final album Go Away White, it's only their debut album, In The Flat Field, that I listen to with any regularity... but what a debut album it is! As for Shirley's book, at under 200 pages it's a brisk but still informative read, and written in collaboration with all four of the band members. The first half of the book deals with Bauhaus, while the second half deals with Love & Rockets plus Peter Murphy's solo career. Like the Siouxsie & the Banshees book, I finally and formally "officially" read this one complete this year. 

Wire: Everybody Loves a History (Kevin S. Eden, 1991)

I am at best a casual Wire fan, mainly only familiar with their groundbreaking first three albums and also the albums of their second phase like The Ideal Copy and A Bell is a Cup... (the latter of which I rank in my Top Ten favorite albums of all-time). This is another oral history-type book (again from SAF Publishing) made in collaboration with the band's four members, and it also boasts a full discography (well, up to the start of the band's Wir era), gigography, and over 70 photographs spanning their collective history. It's a pretty entertaining book, and learning what some of their at times cryptic songs were actually about was really interesting.