Damon Wayans, Las Vegas Sun, Sept. 1, 1998

Wayan the options Lisa Ferguson Tuesday, Sept. 1, 1998 | 9:39 a.m. Homey the Clown has made his last television appearance. So have Blaine Edwards, one half of the "Men on Film" ("Two snaps up!" "Hated it!") critics duo; Anton Jackson, an annoyingly disgusting homeless guy; and the body-less "Head Detective" -- except in reruns, that is. All of these characters (Homey was an oppressed, violent children's party clown) were brought to life earlier this decade by Damon Wayans during his Emmy-nominated stint on the now-defunct Fox sketch comedy series "In Living Color." For that matter, Wayans also has bid the boob tube adieu. "I'll never be on television again," he says. The standup comic-turned-actor is fed up with the medium -- and rightly so. He's had not one, but two of his shows on Fox -- the short-lived 1997 drama "413 Hope Street," which he created and executive-produced, and this year's half-hour comedy "Damon," in which he starred -- axed from the network's lineup. ("In Living Color" was the brainchild of his brother, Keenan Ivory Wayans, whose syndicated, self-titled, nightly talk show also met its demise last season.) So, aside from the occasional HBO comedy special ("Maybe," he says hesitantly), Wayans, who performs his comedy act at the Riviera hotel-casino Wednesday and Thursday, won't be coming to a TV near you soon. Needless to say, his impressions of the industry are less than favorable these days. Network executives, he contends, "say they want to push the envelope and they want to do something new, but the truth is, they just want the same old thing." Wayans says he began to realize this while working on "413 Hope Street," but that the cancellation of "Damon" confirmed it. "All networks are just so greedy right now," the 38-year-old says. "Everyone's trying to own whatever (shows) they put on their network, which means they don't have anybody to kind of check and balance" the creative aspect of shows. "It's just the same person who's signing the check, so there's no resistance." No one to fight for shows such as "413 Hope Street," which starred Richard Roundtree ("Shaft"), when it was given its death sentence, scheduled opposite "Seinfeld" on Thursday nights. While the cancellations of both shows bruised Wayans' spirit, "you move on," he says. "You realize that it's someone else making the decision, it has nothing to do with the creative brain, it's simply (ratings) numbers and sometimes it's political. Those things I don't have control over." "He is absolutely right in a big way," Rick Kushman, TV critic for the Sacramento Bee, says of Wayans' take on network politics. While networks would love to have high-rated, critically acclaimed shows, he says creativity often gets lost -- quite literally -- in the program shuffle. "The networks are run nowadays by the accountants, and whether that means moving shows around way too fast or canceling them too quickly, or, more importantly, just shoving things through," Kushman says, the results can be bad. Also, network presidents are feeling the pressure to produce more hit programs. "They also sort of force a formula on shows," he explains. Then there are orders from the top with which to comply. "The irony to all of that is the shows that work," he says, "the hits in the last four years" -- such as "Friends," "ER" and "South Park" -- "were very different, were things that people wouldn't have tried before ... and yet (network executives are) so afraid to take chances. "It's like any corporate takeover, in a way: (networks are) not doing well, so they end up tightening belts rather than being creative," Kushman says. "Damon Wayans is not the only guy to get caught in that." But don't count on Wayans to give up so easily. While you won't see him in front of the camera, he intends to work behind it, creating and producing television programs (he's currently entertaining an idea pitched to him by brother Keenan). "I'm like a roach; I'm gonna come back with 16 more (shows)," he says. Actually, he says he's glad that "Damon" was canceled because it freed him to pursue his movie career, which has so far included a dozen or so not-so-memorable flicks such as "Major Payne," "Blankman" and "The Last Boy Scout" with Bruce Willis. He was recently in New York working on "Harlem Aria," an independent film he is co-executive-producing. He also co-stars as a street hustler who takes advantage of a mentally disabled, musically gifted man. "It's really a movie with the tone of like 'Shine,' " Wayans explains. He also plans to film a movie of his stand-up act. "I love working with other writers and helping shape ideas and things like that, but when you bog down trying to do a television show and you're in there fighting" with network executives, he says, "you just get so consumed with ... them telling you about the numbers." On the set of "Harlem Aria," he and co-executive producer Deepak Nayar "sit around and we make the decisions. We go, 'Wow, that's pretty cool,' and we don't have to give the (script) pages to anybody to read when we rewrite it ... because you're left to censor yourself and I think artistically, everybody needs to be their own critic." Look for Wayans in bookstores this spring when his book "Relationsh--" -- the complete title can't be printed here -- is due to be published. "It's about relationships and what goes wrong and how people get comfortable," Wayans explains about the book, which was inspired by a rough patch he and his wife experienced recently. "I just had to step back and start seeing what's wrong, and after 17 years, why are we breaking down," he says. "I think with us, it's a little deeper because we have four kids and ... we never really had time for each other so, to keep the kids happy, we smiled a lot and didn't really say what we wanted to say. "I think that in relationships, everything needs to be negotiated because people walk in thinking they've made some great sacrifices and they really didn't; they do what they have to do to make things work," he says. "But if you talk about it ... then both people have an understanding of what they're doing." If only television executives were as rational. archive