Everybody Is A Raymond

Review by Mike Gange

You’re Lucky You’re Funny: How Life Becomes a Sitcom

By Phil Rosenthal

Viking Press, $ 29.95 (U.S.) $32.50 (Can), 243 pages

 

You’re Lucky You’re Funny is a fun look at the making of the Emmy Award winning television sitcom “Everybody Loves Raymond.”  And it is funny – sometimes sweetly sentimental, sometimes laugh-out-loud guffaw funny – but underneath the humour and wit, it is a seriously educational and revealing look at the making of a sitcom and some of the nasty business behind the term ‘show business.’  

As the creator and executive producer of the CBS sitcom, Phil Rosenthal was in the best seat in the house to watch “Raymond” develop from a minor, off-the-wall comedy routine by then-little known comic Ray Romano on “Late Night with David Letterman” to a blockbuster television hit that began in 1996 and lasted nine years. Rosenthal’s story is almost stereotypical: the skinny Jewish kid from New York who preferred to spend his childhood free time watching television; when forced outside by his mother, he had to use his wit to keep the neighbourhood bullies at bay; he studied at an acting school but ended up being a writer; when he moved to Hollywood on a whim, taking a chance he would find success in three months, good fortune and opportunities literally meet him on the sidewalk; by the time he is in his mid-thirties, he’d made such a name for himself that he is asked to write a pilot that will feature unknown comic Romano.   

Throughout the book, Rosenthal repeatedly stresses that it is not supposed to happen this way. There are, he says, way more starving actors working as waiters and bartenders than there are jobs in Hollywood. He points out the likelihood of a script being turned into a pilot show, then becoming a hit and lasting a long time is about the same as being struck by lightning – twice. But for Rosenthal it did happen. By mining the stand up comedy of Romano, which concentrated on typical domestic situations, and adding in the personal and family circumstances of his talented writers, Rosenthal managed to develop a show he modestly calls “a well made, traditional, classic type of sitcom.” “Everybody Loves Raymond” just happened to find such heartfelt fondness and familiarity among TV critics and millions of viewers alike that it received 70 Emmy Award nominations.

In a classy move, Rosenthal avoids turning the book into a “tell-all-tattletale” as he changes names to protect those guilty of devious Hollywood office politics – jealousy, backstabbing, double-speak and career climbing. Rosenthal also educates the reader about the steps involved in developing a television series, and he goes into specifics about the cast on “Raymond” to show how casting, table reads, run-throughs and character development all help to sell the premise and deliver the punch line. It’s in his telling of these humorous anecdotes, constantly showing the actors and writing team in a good light, that readers can gain an appreciation of Rosenthal as a wonderful writer and story teller.

Underlying all of this is why Phil Rosenthal is at the convergence of time and place, talented writer meeting up with a modest, slightly neurotic comedian, producing a sitcom that gained a stronger audience with each passing year as “Raymond” became a whole lot more than just “a well made, traditional, classic type of sitcom.” From time to time, Rosenthal had the chutzpah to say no, to the star, to his court jesters, even to head of the CBS network – when it meant to do otherwise would have resulted in a drastic change of direction for the characters or a loss of the most basic of family values. No matter how inept any of the characters might have been at expressing themselves, everything was done out of love.  “Everybody Loves Raymond” says Rosenthal, is a modern day “Honeymooners.”

You’re Lucky You’re Funny: How Life Becomes a Sitcom is worth reading and sharing. Like the television show “Everybody Loves Raymond,” the book will make you laugh and leave you with something to ponder.

 

Mike Gange is a journalist and media studies teacher in Fredericton, New Brunswick.