First Night with Jamie Kennedy
For me, the phrase ‘New Year’s Eve television’ sparks memories of Jools Holland, an enormous Sir Captain Tom looming out of the sky, and watching as Claudia Schiffer — introduced by Clive James as the World’s Most Beautiful Woman — is described by my gran as “an ugly old trout.” But amid all the year-end background noise, there’s one notable show, having earned a massively skewed ratio of infamy:viewers, thanks to a spectacular level of ineptitude, on both technical and creative levels.
Jamie Kennedy is best known as the guy from Scream who reels off all the slasher movie rules, but post-2000, his works can almost entirely be found in the sub-10% range on Rotten Tomatoes. Son of The Mask, white-rapper comedy Malibu’s Most Wanted, hidden camera prank show The Jamie Kennedy Experiment; Kennedy took such a battering, he even made a movie — 2007’s Heckler — devoted to confronting critics and asking why they were so mean. Had he decided to embrace the failure, First Night 2013 with Jamie Kennedy might’ve seemed like a subversive middle-finger to the haters, but instead, a man already struggling with bad reviews ended up fronting a show unanimously considered one of the worst of all time.
Aired on independent station KDOC-TV in Orange County, First Night kicked off at 11pm, New Year’s Eve, by which time the ball had already dropped on the traditional East Coast special, two hours earlier. Aiming for a block party feel, we’re on the street outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, having cleared away the Spider-Men and Buzz Lightyears charging tourists $10 for a selfie. Jamie Kennedy, done up all posh in a suit, opens with a monologue, on a small stage to an even smaller, disinterested crowd, idly chatting with each other while he shouts gags about Mark Zuckerberg, and Snooki giving birth to a bottle of tan. Musicians in hoodies mill about behind, plugging things in and setting up equipment like he’s not even there, giving Kennedy the vibe of a roadie warming up early arrivals before the proper show starts.
Topical material serves as damning indictment of an era which took its lead from Perez Hilton; relishing in the hounding of famous young women, and obsessively hate-watching tabloid reality television. “You guys like Honey Boo Boo?” and “You guys follow Lindsey Lohan?” reeling off the latter’s overly-documented calamitous year and telling us “honestly though, I’d still hit, (pointing at man in crowd) you know you’d hit too sir, you know you would hit!” He berates the audience for not laughing at a Kanye impression — “Beyoncé had one of the best hip hop pregnancies of the year!” — and fails to win them round with “rumour has it the baby’s first sex-tape is gonna hit any day now!”
In spite of Kennedy’s resume, this seems like a man trying stand-up for the very first time, and to flatly describe the act gives one the air of a policeman reading out a statement in court. ‘At three minutes, Kennedy mispronounced “Gangnam Style.” He then complimented a man in the front row with “you’ve got great hair, dawg.” At three minutes-forty seconds: “now when you hear the words ‘Asian rapper’ you won’t think of the little plastic bag that holds your fortune cookie. You get it?” Corroborating statements from witnesses confirm the defendant then began a joke with the line “percentages had a big year in 2012…”’
It’s a set even Adger Brown would shake his head at, deserving of a 10,000 word dissection all of its own, with set-ups like “how many of you guys like your new technology products?” and “boy bands are all the rage this year!” He’ll miss-speak the word “clear” as “queer” and have a laugh about it; he’ll get paid to say on television “Kirsten Stewart used Apple Maps to find Robert Pattinson’s hotel room and ended up in Rupert Sanders’ crotch!” Prince Harry’s family jewels, Fifty Shades of Grey, Lance Armstrong’s bollock, “hashtag too soon!” — Jamie Kennedy’s chosen path and identity as a comedian is equivalent to a blind man with dreams of being a bus driver, irregardless of consequences. But First Night is packed with celebrities too, told “Shannon Elizabeth’s breasts are here!” and watching New Year video shout-outs from Bob Saget, Tony Hawk, Soulja Boy, and Shaq, who makes truck horn noises with his mouth.
Shannon Elizabeth — all of her, not just the breasts — is interviewed by Stu Stone, a man whose big yellow-lensed sunglasses never come off, even though it’s outdoors and midnight in December. Stone, previously one of Donnie Darko’s classmates, was Kennedy’s sidekick in MTV reality series Blowing Up, which focussed on Kennedy’s attempt to become a rapper, with the pair releasing a tie-in album. He asks Elizabeth what 2013 will bring, as she excitedly promotes a jewellery line she’s starting with her cousin. But soon it’ll hit midnight, and wonders Stu, “is there a New Year’s kiss for Shannon Elizabeth?!” So too, MTV Live‘s Jessi Cruickshank queries Drake Bell on the important business of that first kiss. He won’t say who, only that there’ll be “plenty of tongue.” “Someone’s getting lucky with a nine-time Kid’s Choice Award winner,” squeals Jessi, “I hope you’re over 18!” Bell’s career ended in 2021, after an incident with a minor.
Stu’s in the ‘VIP section’ amid a blackjack game, breathlessly promoting Commerce Hotel and Casino, as Adam Pearce the wrestler (no relation to Billy), there for some reason, pounds his fists on the table. Commerce Casino are one of the night’s sponsors, their branding all over proceedings like a fading tribal tattoo. As part of the deal, Kennedy shot three sketches, one which resulted in First Night‘s worst critical backlash, as he and a bunch of white extras play ‘Mayans’ in classic Red Indian Halloween outfits, having bankrupted themselves before the coming 2012 apocalypse.
The promotional dialogue is perhaps at its most subtle here. “My chief, we can win our money back if we enter the Los Angeles classic poker tournament at the commerce hotel and casino!” “Why would we go to Vegas when we have the beautiful commerce hotel and casino, right off the five?” Why indeed? The final sketch sees a casino heist; the Commerce Casino, if you can believe it! But Jamie’s crew keep getting distracted because it’s so great. “Why are there so many entertainment options here at Commerce Casino? We should’ve robbed another casino!”
A pre-taped interview between Kennedy and Olympic athlete Alison Felix has him tripping over in the sandpit, asking if his nob looks big in tiny shorts, and putrid banter about the amount of condoms in the Olympic village. Then it’s over to Bridget Marquardt, one of Hef’s birds on Girls Next Door, at a nearby night club, shouting at the top of her lungs into another mic which doesn’t work. In the volume one would use when trying to alert passers-by you’re locked inside a portaloo, she screams “DON’T THINK THAT I’VE FORGOTTEN ABOUT THOSE CARLS JR TURKEY BURGERS!”
She’s not kidding, in a bit demonstrating again how beholden they are to sponsors, with Bridget and Jessi at a Carls Jr. food truck (when a producer can be heard shouting “NO NO NO!”), where Bridget will eat the turkey jalapeno burger we’ve seen over a dozen commercials for. Jessi tells her “you’re very sexy lady, that’s a very sexy burger,” and lays down the challenge — “let’s see how sexy Bridget can eat this burger.” It’s twenty-five to midnight, through your walls, the muffled sounds of neighbours’ parties, and in the dim corner of your living room, a woman in a sequinned dress shivering in front of a food truck makes seductive eyes at the camera while stuffing a huge, contractually obligated burger into her gob. “This is really impressive!” coos Jessi, “I’m a vegetarian and I’m aroused, so…”
In another skit, Jamie promotes “green stuff” by pointing down a woman’s cleavage — “I know you’re feeling the draft, know what I’m sayin’?” When we return to Stu (referring to himself as “Stu the Jew”), he’s in the shadow of a statuesque model-looking lady from a clean energy company — “I never knew green could be so sexy!” But how can we can improve the energy efficiency in our homes? “Hi Stu, it is a pleasure to meet you,” she replies, bumbling in a Bond villain accent through a lengthy speech about energy efficiency she clearly spent the Christmas period memorising. Waffle about double-paned windows and AC systems, “and many more” is wasted on the live crowd, as the mic’s doing a Norman Collier tribute act. Behind her, a man chuckles as he nibbles on a party blower.
Back from a break, we hand over to a swaying Macy Gray, trying to rouse the crowd into a “heyyy, hooo!” as someone films on their Blackberry. A very slurry performance, proper ‘auntie doing hen night karaoke’, there’d be speculation she’d had a few. Her mic too, dies mid-song, ambling through three numbers and making repeated references to the silence of the crowd, as a lone red balloon floats by, implying Pennywise is about to make a welcome appearance. She closes her set with an appropriate “bottoms up!” leaving just three minutes to midnight.
Jamie bellows Macy’s name into the mic over and over again, presumably just excited to find one that works, before speaking into his own and finding that it’s dead. With two minutes of the year remaining, everyone’s excited to do the money shot of all New Year’s Eve specials; the countdown. Then Jamie realises — on air — they don’t have a clock to show the audience, and are incapable of even projecting one on the big screen, shouting “Where’s our clock? Where’s our clock?” It’s left to Stu taking his phone out of his pocket to check, and with everyone lined up on stage, Stu starts a fifteen second countdown — at 11:59:55. While the rest of the West Coast lets off fireworks and party blowers, Jamie and co finally cheer in the New Year at ten seconds past midnight.
Cut to Bridget in the club, embracing a skeezy guy in a kiss, plastic beer glass gripped in his middle fingers as he throws a devil horn salute at the camera. Macy’s pianist plays Auld Lang Syne, but nobody joins in, everyone stood round not sure what to do, tech crew still pottering in the background. It feels like a chaotic ending, but we’re only halfway through the show. Stu chats with a drunk in the audience, Jerry from New Jersey whose resolution is “I want to be home.” Yeah, I bet. A frat bro drops an f-bomb and gets 7-second-delayed, Stu quickly moves onto a woman who turns out to be bro’s shocked mother. Her resolutions? “I don’t know what they are yet.”
A dreadful droning Bone Thugs-N-Harmony performance consists of saying “first of the month” over and over again for about eight minutes, before Stu asks one of them if he’s familiar with “Jamie Kennedy’s brand of comedy,” or “a fan of Malibu’s Most Wanted?” Back to Jessi, yammering into another mic which isn’t working, as Jamie’s off-camera voice berates the audio technician, “Shane, you gotta get the bottom button, dawg, bottom button!” At the club, Bridget’s “ready to get my drink on!” as the camera pans up to reveal a half-naked dancer dangling from the ceiling astride a giant bottle of champagne, dousing revellers with a piss-like arc. “HOLY COW!” cries Bridget “LOOK AT THAT CHAMPAGNE! I’M SO EXCITED!”
The endless promotional stuff is the closest real-life example yet of Alan’s Rover shilling in Knowing Me, Knowing Yule, its advertising relentless, and veering the tone back and forth between “yo, bro!” attempts to recapture boozy college days hedonism and earnest shills for sponsors’ wares, like being stopped mid-threesome by Parky knocking on the door to offer a free pen. Regard when Jamie abruptly announces he wants to be more healthy in 2013, while stood with another pair of glamorous women; women who happen to be representatives from the non-profit GuardHeart. He’s open-mouthed at the camera as another heavy accent — this time in a fur coat — tells us “Out of three people, one has been diagnosed with heart problem [sic], so we’re here to raise awareness.” Absolutely scintillating television at half past midnight on New Year.
At the end of her spiel, Kennedy tells her she looks good, and that “my heart needs a little guardin’.” His mic flitting between silent and deafening, he adds “I got pricked today,” pulling open his shirt. Given these representatives all have a certain ‘look’, it’s impossible not to assume the infomercials had the caveat of “fine, I’ll talk about it, but only with a hot chick!” In a final skit, Jamie’s surrounded by the cast of Brian Henson’s Stuffed and Unstrung — a kind of rude Muppet show — as a load of puppets make rape jokes and ask what Courtney Cox’s tits are like. Events come to a close with everyone crammed onstage, and when Jamie wishes us a Happy New Year, a fight breaks out behind him, as someone appears to shove Adam Pearce, who angrily wades in and starts swinging.
First Night is practically impossible to find in full now, and even my copy, snagged some years back, appears to be a slightly incomplete re-run, as it’s missing a few reported moments, including more of the end-credits brawl, plus Kennedy’s interview with a pair of black women, one whose New Year’s resolution was “to get rid of all my haters,” while the other’s “going white, to keep my vagina very tight.” After clips of its worst moments blew up on Twitter, Kennedy defended the show to the NYTimes, claiming he “wanted to make almost an anti-New Year’s Eve show,” and that “I didn’t stab nobody, I didn’t shoot nobody. I just made a New Year’s Eve special. Is that so bad?” I mean… yes. Having experienced it, I can confirm First Night totally lives up to its rep, dawg, as a show which made you wish the Mayans had been right.
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