“When I read the script for Friends Like Us [título de trabalho da série], it was as if someone had followed me for a year, stealing my jokes, copying my mannerisms, photocopying my tired and witty outlook on life. One character in particular stood out to me: it wasn’t that I thought I could play ‘Chandler,’ I was Chandler.”
Taking on the profile that, for all intents and purposes, is his (“my style, my Chandler”) Perry takes us through the childhood, adolescence, adult life and middle age of someone who never really felt the warmth of his family. : from a very early age, he was given barbiturates to calm his crying, he became the “unaccompanied child” on flights between Canada and Los Angeles, due to his parents’ separation, he started drinking alcohol at the age of 14 and, before that, He learned to take refuge in methods to make people laugh, refining the recipe until he was able to go beyond the shadow of the attention-hungry kid.
It is a joining of points that give obvious consistency to the loneliness of the man who writes his memoirs at 52 years old, in a house overlooking the Pacific Ocean, because he needs to feel the security of “a place where there is love. Down there, somewhere in that valley, or in that vast ocean,” he clarifies, “that’s where fatherhood is. That’s where home is.”
Lame? Not exactly. As soon as the stories of his move to Los Angeles and his ill-fated quest for fame begin to weave together in the book, there is a light that shines through, and some Hollywood adventures that deserve to be read in his own words – like a meeting with M. Night Shyamalan in a bar or dating Julia Roberts – even when the combination of humor and some excess of frankness may not go down well in these times, due to multiple sensibilities. After all, he sees himself as the actor who slept with half the world (the “lovers” of the title) and ended (it really ended, little did he know…) without a single serious commitment, other than his work in Friends.
Furthermore, his secret monster was visible there, even though he never went to the studio under the influence of substances: “It is possible to follow the trajectory of my addiction if we measure my weight from season to season. When I have extra weight, it’s alcohol. When I’m thin, it’s pills. When I have a goatee, it’s a lot of pills.”
Throughout the chapters, with interludes, Matthew Perry is always returning to the “Terrible Thing” – especially because it was always present. Somewhere mixing with the millions, earned in episodes and spent on rehabilitation; or growing inside him, silently, even at the time of his favorite childhood memory (see Annie Hall with the mother); or to embrace the magic of having met and acted alongside River Phoenix (Jimmy Reardon’s Crazy Nights, 1988); or the good times spent with Bruce Willis (False Appearances, 2000 and 2004); or in the best project of his career, which won the Globe (this one, of course); and, first of all, in the view of fame as filling a void.
Being famous corresponded, in young Perry’s blind perspective, to the total absence of problems, to the magic that solves everything and makes existence a sweet eternity immune to the evils of life: “In 1986, I was sure that fame would change everything and longed for it more than anyone else on the face of the planet. I needed her. It was the only thing that would cure me. I was sure of that. Living in Los Angeles, every now and then we’d meet a celebrity or see Billy Crystal at the Improv, notice Nicolas Cage in the next booth and I knew they had no problems. In fact, all his problems had been eliminated. They were famous.”
It wasn’t like that, and it never was like that. Chandler/Matthew had everything that fame and money could give. But not even the affection of Friendsnot even the fact that he could buy houses with a view, at whatever pace he wanted, freed him from Terrible Thing. And he’s brutally honest about it. In literal terms: this is a confession that comes from the gut.
