July 25

Matthew Steven LeBlanc's Birthday
 

These lyrics may have more accurately depicted Matt LeBlanc's portrayal of Joey Tribbiani on the TV series "Friends" which had a  highly successful ten year run  As loved as the five principal charters were, the Joey Tribbiani character of a  struggling actor serial womanizer was too one dimensional, a flaw that was demonstrated when his character was given his own TV spin-off series "Joey" in which he moves to Los Angeles to pursue his acting career. The series viewership declined to  7.10 million in the second season and was cancelled. "Friends" viewership in it's 10th season was 20.84  million.

A more interesting TV  project could have been Matt's own history of why he took up acting. According to Matt,  "One weekend I went down to New York City and I met this really cute girl and she said, 'I have an audition, want to go with me?' And I went with her, and her manager had me read some commercials and signed me. So I moved to New York and got a commercial right away. I thought, hey, this shit's easy, I'm gonna be huge! Of course, that didn't happen, and I lived in a transient hotel for a couple of years."

But within a few years, and after several relatively minor movie and TV roles, Matt became a successful commercial pitchman. His  1987 Heinz ketchup commercial won a top prize at Cannes, and he appeared in commercials for for Levi's jeans, Doritos, and Coca-Cola. Then in 1995 he was cast in "Friends" against the wishes of the producers David Crane and Marta Kauffman, but they were told by the network to cast him. That may be the reason that Crane and Kaufmann were not interested in producing the spin-off "Joey."

Matt has made a series of mostly forgettable films includes two remarkably bad films.  In All the Queen's Men  (2001, he appears in drag The budget for the film was $15,000,000, but  it only earned $22,723 worldwide. The other was Ed (1996) in he plays a  baseball pitcher. whose friend is a  mechanical ball-playing chimpanzee  Ed received three Razzie Awards nominations for Worst Picture, Worst Screenplay, and Worst Screen Couple (for Matt and Ed the mechanical chimp). After it was released Matt said, "I know, I know. Everyone told me, 'Don't do the monkey movie, don't do it.'

Matt successfully returned to TV in  2012  playing himself  in the Showtime series  Episodes .which scored him  the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's Golden Globes best actor award in a television comedy or musical.

So for Matt's birthday, we suggest watching Tequila Sunrise (1988) in which one of his commercials is featured although Matt is not in the film as an actor, and whip up a few Absent Friend cocktails.

2 shots gin
2/3 shot grenadine syrup
2/3 shot whipping cream