Everybody loves Raymond. Or do they? The hit comedic sitcom lasted from 1996 to 2005 and can still be seen regularly in syndicated reruns almost any day of the week. It was created around the universal themes of family and marriage. But just how universal are those experiences?
That was the question writer and director Phil Rosenthal faced when Sony Studios in Russia asked him to adapt the show for Russian audiences. In the documentary Exporting Raymond, a film crew captures the difficult and often funny experiences of West meets East.
Lisa Cole Smith |
Rewriting American television is the new frontier for Russian entertainment. Like language, however, things get lost in translation. Often the adaptation involves broadening the comedy and making the characters more colorful. This posed problems for Rosenthal and what was to become Everybody Loves Kostya because the show is based in a realism of sorts. What’s funny about the show is that the situations could and have actually occurred. Without a sense that this is a real life family the show doesn’t really work.
But try telling that to the Russian crew. The problems: First, the creative team didn’t trust Phil Rosenthal. How could he know what would be funny in Russia? He isn’t even Russian! Next, the writers were convinced that no married couple would behave this way. The character of Raymond was unbelievable. He was too soft. He would never let his wife talk to him that way. Of course, the writers were mainly unmarried men in their 20s, but they knew it wouldn’t work.
Then, the costume designer’s main experience was with soap operas. Never mind that the leading lady in Raymond does mainly housework and kid duty — what self-respecting TV star would be caught dead in anything less than designer evening wear? Finally, the head of the studio didn’t think the script was funny. He wanted something more like The Nanny.
They all knew better. They had lots of experience. They were experts and this vision of Rosenthal’s had never been tried before. Nothing short of a complete re-write of the script would make Everybody Loves Raymond possible in Russia.
But Phil Rosenthal knew his instincts and experience of family had translated to millions of viewers and he was willing to bet that Russian families have enough in common with American families to relate to what made the show work. Not slapstick or idealized characters but an honest look at the foibles, faults and loves of real people.
For Rosenthal, sticking with that vision was hard won and required a great deal of compromise and sacrificing preferences. But in the end, he was successful in convincing the Russian crew to just try the basic concept the way it was envisioned, the way it was written — and what do you know? It worked. In 2011, Everybody Loves Kostya was the most popular comedic television show in Russia. Apparently, the experts didn’t know everything.
At the end of the documentary Rosenthal shares with the camera that the result wasn’t exactly what he had hoped for, but he felt satisfied that his creative vision had, for the most part, made it to the screen. He says the experience reminded him of something someone once told to him about show business: “Make the show you want. In the end they are going to cancel you anyway.” That quote seems like the moral of a modern day fable about the value of vision. Chasing after what seems to work might be safer, but you can lose what is most valuable in the process.
We could rearrange it to say, “Do the ministry you were called to regardless of whether or not it has been done before. All ministries have a life cycle anyway.” Or, “Live the life you were called to despite what anyone says; eventually we all die anyway.”
In other words, whether or not it works for everyone or forever is not the point because nothing we do ever will. We can’t control whether or not a new initiative for children’s ministry or evangelism or youth outreach or worship will ultimately “succeed.” Sometimes we can do everything right and it still fails due to circumstances beyond our control. But what we can do is have integrity in our calling, in our mission. We can resist the voices of those like the Russian crew, so sure they know what will and won’t work. (How many great ideas are lost in committee meetings and conversations that predict that “so-and-so” won’t like it.)
We can bend and compromise, we can include other people’s ideas and suggestions, but we can also give ourselves permission to “make the shows we want” and have the humility to realize that in the end, everything gets cancelled anyway.
Lisa Cole Smith ([email protected]) is pastor of Convergence: A Creative Community of Faith, in Alexandria, Va.