TelevisionAcademy.com 53Picasso, that was discarded. Edwards wrote a
sketch imagining the 1934 NAACP Image Awards.
Trophies would be awarded to the likes of Stepin
Fetchit and Hattie McDaniel, who played a series
of infamous “mammy” roles, most famously in
Gone with the Wind.
“The joke is the idiotically stereotypical
characters that were accepted as mainstream
entertainment back in the day,” says Edwards. “I
wrote it and everybody was high-fiving, but we
wound up not shooting it. That broke my heart.”
Some of the sketches that survived had a
history that dated back years or even decades.
Keenen and Damon had been playing some
version of Wiz and Ice since they were teenagers.
Kuperberg and Buddy Sheffield helped turn them
into the first “Homeboy Shopping Network”
sketch. “Men on Film” dated back to Damon and
Keenen’syouthfulmasqueradingasa gaycouplearound the West Village, and as movie-critic
siblings Dickie and Donald Davis. Sandy Frank
reimagined them as Blaine Edwards and Antoine
Merriweather.
Initially, Damon and Keenen were set to play
Blaine and Antoine. As Damon recalls it, Keenen
gave his part away to Grier simply because he had
too much other stuff to do, and Grier didn’t. Grier
says he was originally slated to play the father in
another sketch called “Hey Mon,” about a family
of Jamaican immigrants, but couldn’t muster a
passable Jamaican accent, so Damon — who had
a Jamaican character in his arsenal — took that
part, and Keenen gave Grier the part of Antoine.
Edwards recalls a related bit of horse-
trading between Damon and Keenen. Both
did pretty good Mike Tyson impressions, and
either could’ve played the boxer in a sketch that
imaginedTysonandthen-wifeRobinGivensonan episode of the dating show Love Connection.
Both were also capable of playing Blaine in “Men
on Film.”
“Whoever did the film critic was going to get
a lot of really creepy mail,” says Edwards, “but
whoever did Tyson was going to get punched in
the face at a party when they least expected it.
Tyson was notoriously thin-skinned and self-
conscious about his voice. They kind of went
rock-paper-scissors: Keenen got Tyson and
Damon wound up doing the film critic.”
Grier says the initial “Men on Film” script
had fictional movie titles in it, but after read-
throughs and rehearsals, he and Damon began
improvising. “We started using real movies
that had no gay connotation — like Top Gun, or
whatever — which really upped the ante. The
straighter the movie, the funnier it got that we
would put this gay inference in it.”
Blaine and Antoine were very much a product
of a pre-politically correct era. Even back then,
they raised the hackles of more than a few
people. Don Bay, a gentlemanly lawyer who had
been hired by Fox to run its Broadcast Standards
and Practices Department, recalls meeting
Keenen for the first time in the office of the VP
of programming. Keenen outlined the show and
mentioned “Men on Film.”
“I was concerned about how gays would be
treated since the subject was a sensitive one
at that time, and I’d met with reps of the gay
community before,” says Bay. Fox Chairman
Barry Diller was also uncomfortable with the
sketch.
Back in 1989, Diller was already a legendary
Hollywood executive, known as one of the
smartest, toughest, most ambitious guys in the
industry. He’d started in the mailroom at the
William Morris Agency (now known as William
Morris Endeavor), worked his way up to head of
prime-time programming at ABC and eventually
chairman of Paramount Pictures, where he
reigned for a decade before being lured to Fox.
He was short and stocky, with a clean, shiny, bald
head that only seemed to add to his intimidating
mien. Diller read the “Men on Film” script, and
according to Keenen, he raged to Fox president
Peter Chernin about it.
“He was like, ‘We can’t do this — this might
be going too far.’” Keenen recalls. “I said, ‘Come
to the rehearsal. Come see it, and if you have an
issue with it after that, let’s talk.’” Diller came to
the dress rehearsal in front of a live audience.
“It sounded like somebody put a bomb in the
building,” Keenen says. “That’s how big theDamon Wayans and David Alan Grier in “Men on Film,” a Siskel & Ebert parodyFOX/PHOTOFEST