Remembering our Friend, Matthew Perry

Choosing memories as humans

By now most of you have learned of the passing of actor Matthew Perry on Saturday. Along with passing of the late, great historian Natalie Zemon Davis and the continuing crisis in the Middle East, Perry’s death marked a somber end to the week.

I hadn’t planned on writing about Perry tonight. Originally I’d intended to recap my visit to Utah and the Front Range Early American Consortium in my usual silly way. Plus I felt like there were so many other voices offering tribute that mine might wash along the shore like alongside a billion other grains of sand. But for some reason Perry got me thinking about my father and how I choose to remember him and the differences between historical and personal memory. Let me explain.

I wasn’t a huge fan of Friends despite being smack dab in its target demographic. In fact, I didn’t like it at all. Maybe it was that I was a kid in Kentucky who couldn’t relate to 20 somethings in New York. Maybe it was that I absolutely HATE shows with a laugh track.¹ Or maybe I just didn’t like coffee (since remedied). But I always liked Perry. When I did watch, it was his portrayal of Chandler Bing that I liked most. I remember thinking then that when the show ended, it would be Perry who might find the most success post-Friends.

To some degree, I was right. Perry was a talented performer. He delivered a nice romantic comedy with Fools Rush In and I liked his turn on The West Wing. What I liked most, however, was his performance on the ill-fated Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. On that show, he acted as a producer and writer of a fictional version of Saturday Night Live. Coupled with Bradley Whitford, Perry was brilliant. But the show never found its feet and was canceled after 22 episodes.

Perry also struggled to find his feet. As detailed in his late memoir, the man battled drug and alcohol addiction throughout his adult life, his troubles exacerbated by his fame and the expectations brought on by success. Like Perry, dad struggled with alcohol, though fame and fortune escaped him, perhaps mercifully so.

As a scholar, we are taught to look at the multiple dimensions of a person’s life, pour over their weaknesses and strengths, losses and triumphs. At times we render judgment over those lives. When I first learned of Perry’s death, I immediately questioned if his substance abuse played a role. And I almost as immediately felt guilty for it. I don’t want to choose to think of Perry in this way, much in how I choose not to think about how my dad drank himself to death. But Perry’s (and Herbert’s) faults and struggles were not the only paragraphs in the narratives of their lives.

I’m trying to think about why Perry’s loss—our loss of Perry—has bothered me so. I never met the man and only knew a smattering about him. But I think his openness to talk about his struggles made him somehow more real to many of us, and in a time where seemingly everything is processed by an algorithm to be exactly what we want, his story—a very real and human one —resonated with those of us who have had that in our own lives.

I hope his family and friends find comfort in this time.

1. One exception: Cheers. A perfect sitcom.