I haven’t seen Matthew Perry in anything in a long time, and, to be honest, his absence hasn’t really come to my notice at all.
But I just saw his interview on The Daily Show and his curmudgeonly shtik really cracked me up.
I especially liked his story about his best friend who is so happy that “It has started to affect our friendship.” He talked about how he stopped asking him “How are you?” because the answer would be unbearably upbeat. Then one day, he forgot and asked him how he was and he gave some answer about how he had just dropped of his kids and they were so great and blah, blah, blah.
Perry: So, then I said, “That’s great. I’m going to go masturbate into some money.”
Haven’t watched that episode of TDS yet, but I just watched him on Letterman. He kept going on and on and on with a pointless story about colonics. Dave kept trying to get him to move on but he wouldn’t. Since Perry was plugging his new TV show, I expected some discussion about it, maybe a clip. But Dave was so irked he just ended the interview and went to commercial.
Smart move Chandler.
(Usually it’s the other way around. Dave wants to keep going on and on about a topic and the guest tries to change the subject.)
Yes, as Jon Stewart said, “I did not see that last line coming.”
But the Daily Show guests rarely actually plug the project they’re there for; celebrity guests at least, it seems to me.
I also loved how Perry asked Stewart if he’d ask him to stay longer and “throw it up on the web”, and Stewart just deadpanned, “No, I think we’ve covered it all.”
I saw a blurb that said his new show on NBC is actually very funny. The co-star is Allison Janney, of West Wing fame. Pilot is next Wednesday at 9:30, if anybody wants to check it out.
I always hated Friends, and never thought much of any of the cast members, until I saw Perry’s guest role on the West Wing. I was blown away by how good he was. I am looking forward to this show, to see the pairing of Janney and Perry again. And I did enjoy him on the Daily Show, I like anyhow who brings up MTV’s The Jon Stewart Show. Ah, the glorious '90s (except for Friends).
Seeing as he gave a good interview on The Daily Show (despite its much tighter time restraints) and considering the topic he got stuck on, I’d tend to assume that Perry didn’t really want to be there and was only doing the show for contract reasons. It’s that close to literally talking about bovine defecation.
I don’t know if you’d be in the minority for liking Perry’s performance in and of itself. I think the cast did anywhere from a pretty good to an outstanding job on that show. It failed not because of the performances, but because Aaron Sorkin never could figure out what the show was about and wrote himself deeper and deeper into a hole he couldn’t get out of. A rare swing-and-a-miss for him. But I agree that Perry was terrific (as was Bradley Whitford).
I was kind of struck by how old he looked, at first - he’s in his early '40s, right? - but then I think it’s that he looked so young for so long. He looked really young, then post-rehab chubby but still young, then out of the public eye for awhile, and then all of a sudden wrinkles and such. I think he’s a regular smoker - the one time I met him, he was having a smoke alone outside a restaurant and lit my cigarette for me - and I think prescription drugs were quite a problem for him. And the spiky hair made him look old-trying-to-look-young.