July 5, 2010 Issue

Tad Friend already has two pieces in my own personal anthology of great New Yorker articles: “Secret Agent Man” (March 21, 2005) and “Blue-Collar Gold” (July 10 & 17, 2006). And now his wonderful “First Banana,” published in this week’s issue, is going straight into it, too. Like “Blue-Collar Gold,” “First Banana” is about the rise of a particular kind of comedy. In “Blue-Collar Gold” the subject is, well, blue collar comedy. And in “First Banana,” it’s improv comedy. Both pieces fit into a larger theme – unorthodox ways of succeeding in Hollywood – that seems to fascinate Friend and helps him generate some of his best writing. For example, in “Secret Agent Man,” he writes about a Hollywood agent, Dave Wirtschafter, who “hates going out, hates being called bro or dude or buddy or baby, hates ‘Santa Clausing’ clients with gifts, hates schmoozing and toadying – hates all the aspects of being an agent that have traditionally defined the profession.” Yet, he is the president of a talent agency, William Morris Agency, that makes “some two hundred and twenty million dollars a year in commissions.” How Wirtshafter does business is Friend’s story, and it’s a dandy. Similarly, in “Blue-Collar Gold,” the impresario, J. P. Williams, “doesn’t believe much in other people’s rules.” He’s a risk-taker. The story is about how he pushes every button he can think of to get a Larry the Cable Guy movie, in which he has invested all his money, released. And in “First Banana,” the comedian Steve Carrell is portrayed as a second banana who is so good at improvising reactions to other actor’s lines, at a time in Hollywood when improv’d comedy is in the ascendancy, that he’s become a star. Friend doesn’t just say that Wirtshafter, Williams, and Carrell are different. He shows the difference. One of the main ways he does this is through dialogue. Friend has one of the best ears for dialogue in journalism today. For example, here’s Williams on the phone trying to get a loan approved: “Every day this drags on fucks me – someone needs to take a pen and sign their name. Hildi, you bring me to my knees, which I wouldn’t mind if it was in a different context, but in business it scares me! So treat me like the wedding china – I’m fragile and I need you to hold me tight.” And here’s Wirtshafter on working at night: “There’s no fear, because I’m alone, and the only anxiety I have is when I can’t figure out a problem, or if I come up with an idea and can’t communicate it – Blackberrying someone at 2 A.M. is unlikely to get a response. Those seven hours to 9 A.M. are a long time.” And here’s Carrell on improv comedy: “I look at improvising as a prolonged game of chess. There’s an opening gambit with your pawn in a complex game I have with one character, and lots of side games with other characters, and another game with myself – and in each game you make all these tiny, tiny moves that get you to the endgame. Not that your character would remember them all – who keeps track of everything he’s said to everyone? – but you as an actor have to remember everything.” I like the way Friend ends his pieces by giving the subject of his portrait the last word. “Secret Agent Man” ends memorably with Wirtshafter talking about the impossibility of winning everything and the impossibility of being perfect, and then saying, “Still, my inclination is to try.” “Blue-Collar Gold” has a great ending - Williams’s email to a potential buyer: “Pay me or leave me fuck you.” And “First Banana” concludes with Carrell one-upping Mark Rudd with the line, “Knute Rockne used to say that before the big game: ‘Let’s go lay eggs in his brain.’” I know that writing doesn’t come easy for Friend. In the Introduction to his collection Lost In Mongolia (2001), he says, “I resist writing. I resist it for the very good reason that it makes me pace and sigh and gaze despairingly at myself in the mirror. I find writing so painful that my girlfriend is amazed that I am a writer at all.” Nevertheless, notwithstanding his resistance, on the evidence of these three extraordinary pieces – “Secret Agent Man,” “Blue-Collar Gold,” and “First Banana” - he appears to be on quite a roll.