| In Living Color | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Variety Sketch comedy |
| Created by | Keenen Ivory Wayans |
| Starring | see below |
| Theme music composer | Bosco Kante |
| Opening theme | "In Living Color" by Heavy D (seasons 1-2; season 5 (remix)) "Cause That's the Way You Livin' When You're in Living Color" by Heavy D and The Boyz (seasons 3-4) |
| Composer(s) | Tom Rizzo |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 6 (5 aired) |
| No. of episodes | 129 (127 aired) (List of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | Greg Fields Les Firestein Keenen Ivory Wayans Pam Veasey |
| Producer(s) | Kevin Berg Robert Jason |
| Running time | 22–24 min. |
| Production company(s) | 20th Century Fox Television (seasons 1-5) Fox 21 (season 6) Ivory Way Productions |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | Fox |
| Audio format | Stereo |
| Original run | April 15, 1990 – May 19, 1994 Revived series: 2012 (scheduled) |
In Living Color is an American sketch comedy television series, which originally ran on the Fox Network from April 15, 1990 to May 19, 1994. Brothers Keenen and Damon Wayans created, wrote, and starred in the program. The show was produced by Ivory Way Productions in association with 20th Century Fox Television. The show was taped before a live studio audience at stage 7 at the Fox Television Center on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California. The title of the series was inspired by the NBC announcement of broadcasts being presented "in living color" during the 1950s and 1960s, prior to mainstream color television. It also refers to the fact that most of the show's cast was African-American (in the past referred to as "colored people"), unlike other sketches comedy shows like Saturday Night Live whose casts are usually mostly white.
Other members of the Wayans family—Kim, Shawn and Marlon—had regular roles, while brother Dwayne frequently appeared as an extra. The show also starred the previously unknown comedians Jim Carrey and Jamie Foxx.
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The sketch comedy show helped launch the careers of male comedians/actors Jim Carrey (then credited as "James Carrey", a future Golden Globe winner and one of only two caucasian members of the original cast), Jamie Foxx (a future Academy Award winner, who joined the cast in the third season) and David Alan Grier (an established theatre actor, who had worked in Keenen Ivory Wayans' 1988 motion picture I'm Gonna Git You Sucka).
The series strove to produce comedy with a strong emphasis on modern black subject matter. For instance, Carrey was frequently used to ridicule white musicians such as Snow and Vanilla Ice who performed in genres more commonly associated with black people. A sketch parodying Soul Train mocked the show as Old Train, suggesting the show (along with its host, Don Cornelius) was out of touch and only appealed to the elderly and the dead.
For the first episode, an exotic-looking black-and-white logo was used for the opening credits. After the band Living Colour claimed in a lawsuit that the show stole the band's logo and name,[1] the logo was changed to one with rather plain-type letters of three colors.
In the first two seasons, the opening sequence was set in a room covered with painters' tarps, and each cast member played with paint in a different way (throwing globs of it at the camera by hand, using a roller to cover the lens, etc.). The sequence ended with a segue to a set built to resemble the rooftop of an apartment building, where the show's dancers perform a routine and open a door to let Keenen Ivory Wayans greet the audience.
For the third and fourth seasons, an animated sequence and different logo were used. Here, the real-life cast members were superimposed over pictures hanging in an art gallery and interacted with them in different ways (spinning the canvas to put it right-side up, swinging the frame out as if it were a door, etc.). The final image was of the logo on a black canvas, which shattered to begin the show. The fifth season retained the logo, but depicted the cast members on various signs and billboards around a city (either New York or Chicago), ending with the logo displayed on a theater marquee.
The hip-hop group Heavy D & the Boyz performed two different versions of the opening theme. One version was used for the first two seasons and remixed for the fifth, while the other was featured in the third and fourth seasons.
In Living Color was known for its live music performances, which started in Season 2 with Queen Latifah as their first performer (appearing again in the third season). Some of the other music acts who performed on the show were Heavy D, Public Enemy, Kris Kross, En Vogue, Eazy-E, Monie Love, Onyx, 3rd Bass, MC Lyte, Arrested Development, Jodeci, Mary J. Blige, Tupac Shakur, and Leaders of the New School.
The show employed an in-house dance troupe, known as the "Fly Girls". The original lineup consisted of Cari French, Carrie Ann Inaba, Deidre Lang, Lisa Marie Todd, and Michelle Whitney-Morrison. Rosie Perez was the choreographer for the first four seasons. Perhaps the most notable former Fly Girl was future actress/singer Jennifer Lopez, who joined the show in its third season.
The Fly Girls would sometimes be used as extras in sketches, or as part of an opening gag. In one sketch, they were shown performing open-heart surgery (in the sketch, the girls are dancing in order to pay their way through medical school).
Keenen Ivory Wayans left the show in 1992 after the end of the third season, over disputes with Fox about the network censoring the show's content and rerunning early episodes without his consultation. Wayans feared that Fox would ultimately decrease the syndication value of In Living Color.[2] During the fourth season in 1992, he appeared only in the (1992–1993) season opener, though he remained the executive producer and thus stayed in the opening credits until the thirteenth episode. Marlon Wayans left with Keenen. Shawn Wayans and Kim Wayans both left the show at the end of the fourth season. Damon Wayans left at the end of the third season to pursue a movie career, though he made a few "special guest appearances" in the fourth season.
Fox censorship of scripts increased after In Living Color produced a live Super Bowl halftime special (branded by the network as The Doritos Zaptime/'In Living Color' Super Halftime Party). During the "Men on Football" sketch, Damon Wayans and David Alan Grier ad libbed a suggestion that Richard Gere and track and field star Carl Lewis were homosexuals, much to Lewis' dismay. The programming stunt lured 20 million to 25 million viewers from CBS' telecast of the halftime festivities during Super Bowl XXVI on January 26, 1992. Also, in the originally aired version of another sketch unrelated to the Super Bowl special ("Men on Fitness" – February 7, 1993), there was a simulation of Damon Wayans' character Blaine enjoying receiving facial ejaculation while being sprayed with a water bottle. These two segments were initially cut from reruns, but have been recently airing on the Centric cable channel. The DVD releases has the Gere and Lewis references cut but retains the facial ejaculation simulation.
Reruns of the program on BET contain questionable words and phrases (such as "ho" and "bitch") muted. One line ("drop the soap") during the second "Men on Film" sketch was muted out by Fox censors before ever airing on TV for its implications of prison rape. The DVD releases have the language intact (except for the "drop the soap" line), but numerous sketches have been cut, particularly the music video parodies due to copyright reasons.
On the May 5, 1990, broadcast, Keenen Ivory Wayans did a take-off on a Colt 45 commercial featuring Billy Dee Williams (in which the purpose of the beverage is to get your lady friend wasted) that ended with a woman (played by Kim Coles) passed out on her back on a dining table, and "Billy Dee" moving in on her unconscious body to have sex with her. The "Colt 45" sketch was seen only once during the original broadcast. The sketch was omitted from repeats because some felt it was making light of date rape. The Season 1 DVD set of ILC did not include the "cut" sketch from the pilot. This skit was cut by Fox censors, and the necessary modifications were made to the master tape. But Keenen "accidentally" mixed up the masters, and the original master was broadcast. That segment has never been broadcast since, not even in syndication, on FX or BET. It has been replaced by "The Exxxon Family" (a fake promo for a sitcom about a clumsy Exxon boat captain) in syndication and DVD box sets.
By the fifth and final season, none of the Wayans family had any involvement with the show. The show's traditional reliance on the character-driven sketches featuring Damon and Keenen gave way to an increasing reliance upon walk-on cameos and guest appearances, including Nick Bakay, Barry Bonds, James Brown, Rodney Dangerfield, Sherman Hemsley, Biz Markie, Peter Marshall, Ed O'Neill, Chris Rock, Tupac Shakur and stars of the NBA. Kelly Coffield, who, prior to Alexandra Wentworth's arrival in the fourth season was the lone white female cast member, left at the end of the fourth season. Jim Carrey, David Alan Grier, Tommy Davidson, T'Keyah Crystal Keymáh, and "Fly Girl" Deidre Lang are the only cast members to remain on the show throughout all five seasons, although Carrey's presence during the fifth season was limited due to his rising movie career, while Davidson missed most of the fourth season for unknown reasons.
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Chris Rock appeared (as a "special guest star") in a number of skits in the fifth season, and reprised his "Cheap Pete" character from I'm Gonna Git You Sucka. In the early years of In Living Color, Rock was parodied as being the only African American cast member on Saturday Night Live (SNL also had Tim Meadows). In an SNL episode honoring Mother's Day, Rock's mother states that she is disappointed in him for not trying out for In Living Color, to which Rock states he is happy with his job on SNL.
Other recurring guest stars in the fifth season include Nick Bakay (for The Dirty Dozens sketches) and Peter Marshall (for several editions of East Hollywood Squares). Rapper Biz Markie also appeared in various roles as a guest star in the fifth season, such as being (not too much) in drag as Wanda the Ugly Woman's sister or as "Dirty Dozens" contestant Damian "Foosball" Franklin.
Where it was originally produced by 20th Century Fox Television on Fox, the series was in reruns on local affiliates and on the News Corporation-owned FX Network, where it was distributed by Twentieth Television.
Reruns of the show aired on BET from 2005–2008, and returned in 2010. Reruns have also aired on MTV2, VH1, Sí TV and on BET-owned Centric.
The Best of In Living Color aired on MyNetworkTV from April 16 to June 18, 2008. Hosted by David Alan Grier, it was a retrospective show featuring classic sketches, along with cast interviews and behind-the-scenes footage. The show aired on Wednesdays at 8:30 pm Eastern/7:30 pm Central, after MyNetworkTV's sitcom Under One Roof.
On October 28, 2011, The Hollywood Reporter reported that Fox has announced In Living Color is scheduled to return in 2012, airing two half-hour specials hosted and executive produced by co-creator Keenan Ivory Wayans, with the option of picking the series up for the following season.[4] The show is a "contemporary take" on the original premise, with new performers and musical performances.[5]
Note: Ratings data courtesy of TVTango.com
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment has released all five seasons of In Living Color on DVD in Region 1. Unfortunately the sets have been edited due to music licensing issues, resulting in some episodes having entire sketches removed.
| DVD Name | Ep # | Release Date |
|---|---|---|
| Season 1 | 13 | April 6, 2004 |
| Season 2 | 26 | September 28, 2004 |
| Season 3 | 30 | May 10, 2005 |
| Season 4 | 33 | October 25, 2005 |
| Season 5 | 26 | April 11, 2006 |
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