Kelsey Miller - I'll Be There For You

NBC bought it—not only a script, but a pilot, as well. At the very least, this would not be another idea sold, bought, and left unproduced. The show’s title was changed from Insomnia Café to Friends Like Us , 5and Kauffman and Crane sat down to write. In three days flat, the script was done. As with Couples , the writing came easily and it came out good. But Couples had also been a great pilot that went bust, so they wrote this first script with the understanding that it most likely would be the last. “At the point where you’re doing pilots,” said Crane, “you don’t think you’re going to spend the next ten years of your life doing this.” No one was all that worried about answering questions like: If Monica is a chef, then why is she home for dinner every night? Why doesn’t anyone lock their doors in this downtown Manhattan apartment building (except when someone is locked out for storyline purposes)? How the hell did a recently homeless, evolution denialist, aura-cleansing weirdo like Phoebe wind up hanging out with these bourgeois squares? As Crane pointed out, at this stage of the process, it just doesn’t matter much because, in all likelihood, your show won’t survive long enough to answer these questions. “We had absolutely no idea what this show was going to be. For us, it was just another pilot. We’d just had a series canceled. We were thinking we’d never work again, so we were scrambling… [It] was feeling good, but it was just another pilot. Or it was just another pilot until Jimmy Burrows wants to direct it. Excuse me, James Burrows.”

If you’ve watched any network television programming since 1975, then James Burrows is a name you’ve likely seen thousands of times, but never noticed. He is a director and producer, who has worked on shows including but not limited to: Taxi , Cheers , Wings , Will & Grace , Frasier , Dharma & Greg , 3rd Rock from the Sun , and NewsRadio . As Littlefield describes him in Top of the Rock , Burrows is “the most successful director in television comedy—ever.” After reading Kauffman and Crane’s pilot script, Littlefield called him up. “I literally had no time,” Burrows later told the New York Times . “But I read it, and I said, ‘I can’t let anyone else do this.’” He agreed to direct the pilot, but nothing more.

With Burrows signed on, things got more serious. He embraced the loose, low-concept structure of the show, and later, when directing the pilot, would offer several crucial tweaks that made the show stand out. But even with a knockout script and the best television comedy director on board, some NBC executives still had serious “concerns” about the show.

First of all, everyone was too young. What about adding an older character? Someone who could pop in every now and again to give some sage advice to these young folks. Maybe it could be the guy who owned the coffeehouse—or a cop! “You know the children’s book Pat the Bunny ? We had Pat the Cop,” said Kauffman. They would eventually write a script incorporating the character, and hated it so much that they called the network and begged them to can the idea, promising to incorporate the parents more or bump up older guest-star appearances. The network agreed. Then there was the issue of the coffeehouse. “You gotta remember what time it was,” said Kevin Bright. “Starbucks hadn’t really taken hold yet.” Neither had the mid-’90s trend of coffeehouse culture, complete with enormous mugs and acoustic guitar music, which Friends would soon launch into mainstream popularity (well, Friends and Jewel). 6The network suggested the coffee shop be swapped out for a diner—much like another NBC sitcom. “They came to us and said, ‘Why don’t you have a diner, like Seinfeld . Everyone knows what the diner is.’” It wouldn’t be the last time they’d have to fight against being pressed into Seinfeld ’s mold, but Kauffman, Bright, and Crane pushed back on this, too, believing that audiences would somehow figure out what a coffeehouse was. The network relented, with the caveat that they change the color of the couch. 7Sure.

One last adjustment was made, changing the title from Friends Like Us to Six of One , 8and finally, they were cleared to start shooting the pilot. And then came the infamous slut survey.

The pilot episode featured a storyline in which Monica goes on a date with Paul (Paul the Wine Guy, of course), a man she’s had a crush on for ages. During their dinner, he tells her he hasn’t been able to have sex with a woman ever since his wife left him. Monica winds up sleeping with him, and the next day finds out that the whole story was a lie he uses to try to get women into bed—leaving her crushed. After a run-through for network executives, West Coast President Don Ohlmeyer spoke up. “At first, he didn’t like the storyline, because one of our main characters is sleeping with a guy on the first date,” recalled Crane. “[He said,] ‘Well, what does that say about her? Doesn’t that say she’s a whore?’”

At which point, said Kauffman, “fire came out of my nose.” She immediately excused herself from the room, incensed, and left Crane to handle the situation. After talking through it, Ohlmeyer came around—but only because Monica winds up feeling hurt and humiliated after the encounter. Her so-called transgression was allowable, only because she was punished for it. As Ohlmeyer put it (according to Kauffman and Crane), “She got what she deserved.”

Nevertheless, at Ohlmeyer’s insistence, they handed out a survey to one of the test audiences, after another run-through. In the politest of terms the survey asked: What did they think of Monica having unmarried, filthy, and scandalous sex with a man on the first date?

I’m paraphrasing—but just barely, according to Kauffman. Presented as it was, she recalled, the survey might as well have said, “For sleeping with a guy on the first date, do you think Monica is a) a whore, b) a slut, c) too easy.” It was clear that Ohlmeyer wanted this storyline cut, and believed the audience would back him up (the other executives apparently didn’t agree, but neither did they get in his way). 9In the end, though, his survey backfired. The audience responded to the scandalous storyline with a resounding so what ? They didn’t care. Monica was a hit.

On May 4, 1994, “The One Where Monica Gets a Roommate” 10was shot on Stage 5 of Warner Bros. Studios. After wrapping with eight hours’ worth of material (two hours of footage from each of the four cameras), it was rushed to an editing studio, where Bright began cutting it into a twenty-two-minute episode. “Kevin worked with the editor, like, forty-eight hours straight,” said Crane. It was one of the very last episodes shot that pilot season, and there would be no time for additional notes. Bright sent off the finished pilot, got in his car, and started driving home to get some sleep. His car phone rang.

Don Ohlmeyer had one more note: “Pace it up.” The beginning was too slow. That opening sequence of conversation clips in Central Perk was plodding and not grabby enough. Ohlmeyer had called Kauffman and Crane, who desperately explained that the opening conversations were just that—just talking. It had always been written that way, and at this point it was already shot; there was no way to “pace up” plain-old back-and-forth talking without literally speeding up the soundtrack. Ohlmeyer replied with an ultimatum: “If you don’t somehow pace up the beginning, this show is not going on the air.” In a panic, they called Bright, who turned his car around and went back to the editing suite.

That’s how Friends got its first title sequence—not the one in the fountain with its famously catchy theme song. That came later. “The opening sequence was something that almost never was,” said Bright. Initially, it was set to air without one at all. Friends was on the air at the time, using only a brief, animated title card. Networks thought of long openings and theme songs as an opportunity for viewers to change the channel, thus Kauffman, Bright, and Crane had been told in no uncertain terms that their show couldn’t have one. But now it needed one.