The news came, surprisingly, one Sunday morning: Matthew Perry has died. Chandler has died. It’s not a bad joke. The actor returns from playing sports, gets into the jacuzzi, and suffers a heart attack. The second and last heart attack of his life. Global mourning for which he has been, probably, the most beloved actor in what is probably the most watched live-action series of all time (only surpassed by The Simpson), Friends.
In his memoirs—published just a year ago and published in Spain by Contraluz—he portrays himself as a born addict in perpetual escape from an emptiness that torments him. “I am able to stay sober as long as something doesn’t happen,” he writes. An eternal teenager who makes fame unhappy but who cannot stop looking for it, whether in others or in himself. And a man who has systematically escaped everything that could have filled the void in him. In short, a comedian. Aren’t they all like that? I don’t know if a happy comedian has ever been born.
There is an unfunny joke that changes the protagonist depending on the time and context of the person telling it. It’s about a man who goes to the doctor (now we would say bluntly that he goes to the psychiatrist) because he is sad. The doctor tells him that he has to do something that entertains him, and that just that night a well-known clown is performing in the city. Then the man looks at him sadly and says “I’m that clown.” The unfunny joke is that this man cannot make himself laugh. “Unfunny joke” could be the definition of irony. And in our context, the psychiatrist would tell him to see Friendsand the patient would respond: “I was Chandler Bing.”
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