Friends. The TV Show. (by Matthew de Kersaint Giraudeau)

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

So, Friends. The TV show. The one from the 1990s. With Joey, and Chandler, and Rachel and Monica, and Ross. And Phoebe. Phoebe was the kooky one. (Is it 'was' or is it 'is'? Do the characters from TV shows become past tense if they don't die? Especially when they are repeated on cable/satellite/freeview ad nauseum [till you are fucking sick, or possibly only watched when you feel sick, to make you feel more stable. Like the horizon.].) But now it won't be on any more, they say, though, I don't have a television, so I couldn't tell you, though I suppose I could Google it, but I won't, right now, anyway.

So I applied for some funding, from the Arts Council, and it has to be related to the Olympics (Cultural Olympiad: What does that even mean?), but I got this artist I assist, who always gets funding, and always applies, but always still manages to get it, to help me with the application, and even though I don't really have to show any evaluative proof of exactly what my project will do for the Olympiad, she sort of managed to imply that it is, somehow, related, to the Olympiad. Anyway, how she did it I don't know, but I had a lot of money to play with. Just about enough to actually pay the cast of Friends (excluding Jennifer Aniston, i.e. Rachel, and the one who plays Phoebe. We couldn't get them, I must say, for very different reasons. Rachel because I couldn't afford to pay her, and Phoebe because she had just undergone like $3 million worth of plastic surgery and was recovering at the home of a close friend [of course, no one told me about the plastic surgery, but the weird thing about L.A is that everyone implies everything, without you having to know what they are implying to work it out, simply through their weird way of denying things in an oblique, almost algorithmic way].) to get back together for a reunion episode.

The missing cast members were played by look-a-likes in rehearsal (who were almost certainly better actors than the people they looked like [which was, ironically, a bit of a problem for verisimilitude], and also really freaked out Matt Le Blanc, who played Joey, because he hasn't really had any contact with anyone and actually has frighteningly obvious symptoms of occasional paranoid psychosis, but everyone ignores it because he is technically still worth something, for like, DVD re-launches etc.) with the hope that eventually, we might be able to persuade Jennifer Aniston to get involved, but definitely not the one who played Phoebe because probably, what with all the surgery, she won't be acting, or having facial expressions, or even possibly eating solid food for some time.

The episode (which isn't going to be written by the original writers, because they are super, super rich and when I tried to phone them, even their assistant's, assistant's assistant wouldn't return my calls, so we have someone else in, who won't let me reveal their name because they will get strung up by their fucking bowels if the original writers find out they have anything to do with this.) is going to be like a meta-episode, if you know what I mean? Like it isn't going to be about anything apart from Friends. The whole episode is being filmed at a small studio in Bristol, and I have had the main apartment (Rachel and Monica's) reconstructed, and it is pretty good actually, even though I had to have certain pieces of zeitgeisty 90s furniture re-made by hand, by a pack of weirdly eager students from UWE art department, and it both cost a lot, but then, cost almost nothing compared to the fees I am paying the actors, and the security guards + super-injunction against names being released by the press for the writers.

And they all sit around in the apartment, actors & look-a-likes, reading this script which involves all of them, in character, dissecting the cultural and social and, possibly, political impact of Friends as a televisual phenomenon. And we film it and then we look at it, and then we insert, in to the script, classic Friends style jokes, like say, Monica, being really worried about cleanliness, or Joey saying something about sandwiches, but we keep the actual forward momentum of the whole episode geared towards this conversation about the gender power structures being displayed, or the city-based-friend/family dynamic being really cemented in the minds of the audience - first an audience of similar aged adults to those on screen, and then, increasingly, younger generations as the day-time repeats start and then the cast get older, and their characters and their careers start to atrophy. At one point, in one of the early rehearsals, Matthew Perry ad-libbed this incredible bit about his time spent working in the mainstream film industry, and how everyone was so cruel because none of the Friends stars, apart from the aforementioned Jennifer Aniston, ever really translated the success they had on the show, in to Hollywood success. At one point he is pointing at the look-a-like Rachel (Who are ten a penny, even now. Even after ten years, she says she gets regular work, like twice a week, to dress up as Rachel and go to some weird thing at a leisure centre in a small town in the south-west of England and just stand around not talking [which is probably because she can't even do a passable American accent, she kept making the rest of the cast laugh when she did it, so eventually, we just let her speak in her own dialect.]}, and screaming at her about how on The Whole Nine Yards with Bruce Willis, Bruce Willis, when he realised what a shit-hole of a film he was making, really turned on Matthew Perry, and kept called him a faget and a girly queer, and then, he just starts crying and saying about how she wouldn't understand and she could never know. So then that triggered the idea that we would write the look-a-likes into the script, as look-a-likes, and then we could just write Jennifer Aniston in later, if she ever got back to us. But then we realised that even then, we would have to keep the look-a-likes in, because they would be integral to the whole idea of the piece, now Matthew Perry had implicated them with his unprofessional, but breakthrough, bit of improv.

So it gets to the stage where we feel like the script is ready, a good mixture of classic Friends jokes and cultural critique, and we have given up on Aniston, and we are finally in the studio, with the cameras rolling for the final dress rehearsal, and the studio audience are sort of waiting outside, and we have someone who can do a good impression of the incredibly loud off camera laugh of what must have been one of the writers or producers of the original show, that happened every time there was a cleverish punchline, and everyone is feeling the lines and the cameras are swinging in the right direction. When suddenly, the real Phoebe (and don't ask me her real name, because when I phoned her P.A., the P.A. called her Phoebe when I used her real name, which I thought was just a slip, probably because I was talking about the project and how we would be using the original characters etc. and then she passed me on to her P.R woman, and the P.R woman called her Phoebe too, and then we were both just referring to her as Phoebe, and if I'm honest, I've forgotten the real name, because no one ever seemed to use it, and they were happy for me not to use it, so basically, I think we can assume that most other people just refer to her as Phoebe, maybe because her character is way more memorable than her actual personality? But maybe not.) just turns up unannounced on set, and just walks right in to the middle of the fake Monica apartment, where all the actors are sitting around, drinking decaf coffee and decaf green tea, waiting for the next scene with their minders and assistants on hand to take away said decaf coffee/decaf green tea when I shout ACTION. And she has serious bandages round her face like a fucking mummy and, massive sunglasses on over her (presumably, since we can't see them and the bandages definitely cover all exposed skin) vulnerable-to-sunlight eyes and eye-surrounding-skin. And she turns up and she is obviously on quite a large amount of prescription (but not necessarily prescribed) pain killers, and Matthew Perry notices straight away and starts chewing his mouth and making this moaning sound and his minders come up and shake their heads at me and take him to the side and give him a neck massage and whisper motivational N.A. derived statements in to his ear. The real Phoebe starts going on about how wonderful it is that all her friends are here and does anybody want to go down to Central Perk and see her play her new songs tonight? And everyone is smiling and nodding at her sloppy movements and obvious confusion over what is real and what is not real. Even Matt Le Blanc has this sudden clarity, while looking at her, like he is thinking 'wow, she is far gone' and for a second I think that maybe this moment might clear up his own particular issues with reality and such but then that moment is definitely gone and his minders also come over and move him away and talk to him and try and make him look in to their eyes and you can hear them telling him who he is, and what he is and how he is an actor, but not like Joey is an actor, but like Matt Le Blanc is an actor.

I ponder this for a second, and decide that Matt Le Blanc definitely has more rights to reality confusion than Phoebe, because Joey was meant to be an actor, and Matt Le Blanc was, technically, an actor. And being an actor playing an actor, must be confusing, especially when you are a bad actor, whose first major role is playing a bad actor. But I don't get long to consider this, because Phoebe has seen the girl who is playing her (who does a very good American accent, and, simply by nature of not being wrapped from the neck up in bandages, and also not being on loads of painkillers, which, give you that slow, hangy dog mouth thing [if we could see the real Phoebe's mouth, and they weren't covered in bandages], looks a lot more like Phoebe than the real Phoebe does, right now), and has started screaming so loud everyone is wincing and not nodding and smiling but looking around for their minders, and, in the case of the other people on set, just looking to me as though I'm going to magic the security out of the fucking air. But our security are outside, dealing with the carefully vetted, non-loony but just about obsessed enough to want to come to a reunion-that-will-make-no-sense-to-them-but-they'll-still-laugh-anyway, fans.

All the minders are definitely more concerned with the safety of their own charges and/or possible liability for having to tackle the real Phoebe to the ground so they are more like herding their own Friends away than dealing with the overall situation. The only people left on the set are the crew, (who now all just stand there looking at me like I'm supposed to fucking grab Phoebe and slap her and tell her to calm down) and then the look-a-likes. The Rachel look-a-like is backing away from the situation, towards where the audience would be sitting if they weren't (luckily) being held outside by our security. On the other hand, the Phoebe look-a-like is frozen to the spot with fear, and the real Phoebe is just fucking screaming at her, spewing garbled noises and spit and some of lyrics to Smelly Cat. She is moving towards her and holding her arms out and she looks like the fucking invisible woman with her bandages and her sunglasses. Her rage is palpable, I can literally taste it, because my mouth is open and my tongue can feel the hot studio lights amplifying the pheremonal situation to the point where it might be some weird feedback loop of rage/sweat/nasal-stimulus/rage for the real Phoebe. Everyone knows that when you see your doppelgänger you have to kill it otherwise there will be a time-space vortex of some sort, so in a way I'm sympathising, but then while I'm sympathising, the real Phoebe stands over look-a-like Phoebe and just fucking grabs her by the throat with two hands and picks her up off one of the special handmade 90s couches, and look-a-like Phoebe is being pulled off the ground by just her neck and I'm wondering why she doesn't grab the real Phoebe's arms to at least take some of the weight off her neck, but she doesn't, she just flails her arms around in the air, doesn't even try and hit the real Phoebe or anything.

And in my peripheral vision I see that the camera crew are still with the cameras, and technically, we are still rolling because of the previous dress rehearsal situation. So, slowly (in the context of what is happening, but quickly in a real world context, it is just that the situation means that everything is happening quite fast, so although comparative to what is happening, I'm moving quite slowly, I'm actually going quite fast), I sort of jog over to the camera guys and tell them to carry on filming and go over to the sound guys and make them point their mics at the real Phoebe's strangling of look-a-like Phoebe. By now the real Phoebe has look-a-like Phoebe on the floor, and is punching her in time to another song (that she is singing) that sounds a bit like Smelly Cat but has new words and a slightly different tune and sounds like maybe the real Phoebe has been writing new material since the end of the last series of Friends. So I figure that situation is fairly stable, as the real Phoebe looks like she might tire soon, and the look-a-like Phoebe definitely won't be knocked unconscious within the next say, two or three minutes, so I run back to the doors where the security are holding the audience, and I tell them to go and stop the fight, which has the dual benefit of making sure that no one dies, and also allows the audience to come in and get a chance to see the real Phoebe elbow dropping the look-a-like Phoebe. Instantly the audience are laughing and cheering at weirdly appropriate times, and then the guy who can do a good impression of the guy who does the big laugh starts getting in on it, and the security run up to the fight and start to break it up, and the timing is just perfect and I can see the camera operators are a bit freaked out, but on the whole they are doing their jobs and just getting on with it. And then the other cast members are back on stage with their minders, and Matt Le Blanc is just spouting Joey catchphrases and crying and Monica is trying to hug the real Phoebe (still swinging her arms and singing) and David Schwimmer is giving look-a-like Phoebe some somewhat unnecessary mouth-to-mouth and the audience give it a WOOOOHHH!! like it is a big romantic kiss.

Everything starts to settle down and the real Phoebe is herded in to a car and away from the building and the ambulance has come and look-a-like Phoebe is back on the sofa with one of those silver foil things around her (which I don't think is necessary, considering we have the hot studio lights on, but then she is still shivering and crying. It could be quite a psychological thing, the foil blanket.). And the other members of the cast are sort of chilling out a bit and meeting the audience (apart from Matthew Perry, who never came back on the stage and is in his dressing room with his minders in front of the door, talking to his psychoanalyst on the phone about possible moments of weakness re: prescription drugs and Matt Le Blanc is taking up quite a lot of the paramedics' time, but has been given a mild sedative and has somewhat calmed down and is now just mumbling about Janice and The Ducks and 'Fussball'.

I feel like maybe that might be the end of shooting for today, and maybe all days, but I have a lot of good footage and maybe I could present it as a split-screen installation, or something with a narration over the top by the Rachel look-a-like, who is looking really unnerved by what happened to the look-a-like Phoebe. I go over to her and I say something about how I am certain that, had Jennifer Aniston arrived unannounced on set, instead of the real Phoebe, the whole situation would have been totally different, way less violent. Perhaps rather less interesting, but definitely not involving any attempted strangulation. And she says she is thinking of turning down any future offers of Rachel look-a-like work. I don't say anything about the possible voice over/narration options of the finished art work, but I have her email and I can give her a few days to calm down. And, I suppose, she wouldn't have to dress up like Rachel. For the voice over work, I mean.