In case you’ve been spending most of your time listening to WHIT Radio, it’s possible you missed last week’s announcement that Tyler Perry’s TBS sitcom “House of Payne” became the highest rated sitcom in the history of basic cable, eclipsing unforgettable cable sitcoms like TNT’s “Washed Up Actress & Palz” and Lifetime’s “On Billboards But Doesn’t Actually Exist.”
On one hand, “Tyler Perry’s Diary of a Mad Black Woman” only cost $5 million to make and earned $50.4 million, “Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Family Reunion” was an even bigger success at $63.3 million, and “Tyler Perry’s Meet The Browns,” is already in the works. On the other hand, “Tyler Perry’s Daddy’s Little Girls” was a commercial and critical flop, plus critics appear personally insulted by the success of “Tyler Perry’s House of Payne,” despite its surprising viewership.
This leads me to my question: Is there any other person in Hollywood who slathers their name on every one of their projects as egregiously as Tyler Perry while having accomplished less?
The man’s like Wes Craven minus twenty-five years of career. M. Night Shyamalan has been on a suck streak lately, but “Sixth Sense” is the #24 grossing film of ALL TIME, which understandably has earned Shyamalan free reign to tack his name onto whatever twenty page flipbook he chooses to turn into a motion picture. Stephen King has his name on about 500 movies, but he’s also been involved in seven trillion movies, so mathematically, he’s pretty modest. Quentin Tarentino’s name is all over the place too, but who cares, he’s earned it, plus people tell me I look like him and that can only be interpreted as a compliment (no one tell me otherwise).
Bottom line, as much as I’d like to complain about Perry’s unashamed own-name-dropping, it almost seems like he’s starting to retrospectively justify it. That being said, as long as I don’t see any posters that say “Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up” or “Martin Scorcese’s The Departed,” I’m always going to feel the need to call a liiiiiittle BS on Mr. Perry, even if it makes him put on a fat suit and hit me with a rolling pin, or whatever actually happens in those movies.
Sorry for the lack of sports and music in the post. I guess I should mention that Tyler Perry’s name dropping is a lot like the Flaming Lips playing basketball with Tim Duncan. Or something.
