Joe Keenan started off as a playwright and lyricist, and now writes for television. The wildly successful writer has eight seasons of the sophisticated sitcom Frasier behind him and a new show--Out of Practice (CBS Mondays at 9:30), starring Henry Winkler and Stockard Channing, about a family of medical professionals and their messy domestic life--currently on the airwaves. The story of how he got here from there involves a series of comic novels featuring two best friends, Gilbert and Philip.

Gilbert is the scamp of the duo--charming, handsome, reckless, and full of schemes for fame and fortune that inevitably, hilariously, go awry. Philip is the straight man, as deluded as his reckless pal, but not as full of vinegar. Philip narrates the books (with more than modicum of self-justification), and the general gist involves Gilbert dragging Philip into some hair-brained plot for material gain.

Their adventures range from a loveless wedding in 1988's Blue Heaven, to a foot jammed into the door to a Hollywood career thanks to an act of outrageous plagiarism in the third book, the recently published My Lucky Star. Joining them as the guys' best gal pal is Claire, who subsequently uses her considerable wit and maturity to dig the boys out of the heap 'o' trouble they've inevitably landed themselves into.

The demands of writing for TV have slowed Keenan's pace somewhat--My Lucky Star was in the works since the mid-1990s--but that's perhaps for the better, given the profusion of twists, reversals, and revelations that keep My Lucky Star effervescing away. Joe Keenan took a few minutes recently to chat with AfterElton about the parallels between the musical comic play and the TV sitcom, as well as tantalizing us with thoughts about Gilbert, Philip, and Claire's next possible adventure.

AfterElton: You started writing your novels before you wrote for Frasier.
Joe Keenan: Yes, I started the first one [Blue Heaven] in 1986, and I was between apartments in New York City. I had just met my lover Jerry the year before… actually, I think I started it earlier; I met Jerry in 1983… [Anyway,] I had been sort of kicked out of my apartment, and I was going to live with Jerry because he had his sister living with him, and she was leaving in September.

I was [without my own place] for three months, so I decided to go back and live with my parents and take a summer job. I was writing letters to him every single day, and the letters were extraordinarily boring, because there was nothing to tell about my life. I thought, "How can I fill six pages of prose on a daily basis? Maybe I should write a story instead."

I started what I thought was going to be a short story about a couple getting married for the wedding gifts, and I had gotten three chapters into it by the end of the summer and it still [was nowhere near finished], so I said, "I guess it's at least a novella." But I was getting my master's degree at NYU and the time, so I had to put it away after the summertime, and I just kept picking it up whenever I was free. That's the way it evolved into the novel Blue Heaven.

In some ways it was useful not being able to work on it all the time, because the plot kind of simmered and evolved in the back of my mind while I was busy thinking about other things.

AE: Who would have thought these sophisticated comic novels started off as love notes!
JK: [I told Jerry], "Honey, life is really very boring. I sit at a desk at Blue Cross/Blue Shield all day long and I go home and there's just nothing to report, so I'm going to try writing something, and at the end of the summer I'll give you a story." At the end of the summer, I said, "I have a story -- I have about 80 pages here." This was back before people were using computers--[only] people who made enough money were using computers.

It was all written longhand. I remember using the [promise of a] computer as the bait that Gilbert would dangle to get Philip to go along with [his scheme in the plot of Blue Heaven], because at that time it seemed like I would have done anything to get a computer. Being the best man at a sham wedding would have been a small price to pay for it!

Page 1 / 2 / 3 /4 / 5 - Next