At 11:35 pm, the red ‘on-air’ sign flickered on and LeBron James emerged onto the stage of studio 8H at Rockefeller Center in New York City.
It was September, 2007, and fresh off his first trip to the NBA Finals that spring, James had taken his talents to Saturday Night Live, the well-decorated comedy gauntlet factory, a tipping point for some of the funniest minds of the last half century, and broadcast legitimately live around the world.
SNL is a rite of passage in American pop culture, a validation of reaching a certain celebrity status. But that doesn’t guarantee laughs. James’ opening monologue fell flat, each joke punctuated by a nervous chuckle. Of course, it’s only natural for someone like James, who’s achieved his success through actions and not words, to be nervous putting his comic abilities on screen for the world to analyze. Comedy is wholly unforgiving. Either you’re funny or not. And the audience won’t be shy in handing down their verdict. At SNL they laughed politely at James, appreciative of the effort, if not the result.
Eight years later, James’ has sure come a long way. In his latest comedic turn co-starring alongside seasoned comic actors in the upcoming film Trainwreck, it was the NBA All-Star who stole some of the biggest laughs from the audience. At least that was the case at Wednesday’s screening of the film, the fifth picture directed by comedy heavyweight Judd Apatow (who, yes, I just realized, happened to have written the movie Heavyweights) and starring Amy Schumer, who also penned the script, in her first leading role.
To mark LeBron’s big role, we thought it’d be fun to create a rating system for NBA players on film, based on past performances of the pros from Shaq to M.J. and Ray Allen. Read it here.
Whether it was his soon-to-be-signature deadpan stare, pinpoint comedic timing and improvisation, or line readings as smooth as his jumper, James stole every scene he was in.
Though it earns its R-rating, Trainwreck follows a safe and familiar-enough story arch that sees monogamy-fearing magazine writer Amy Towsend fall for her latest interview subject Aaron Connors (Bill Hader), a sports doctor with an impressive client list, and a nice guy to boot.
In the film, James plays a fictionalized version of himself (think: Seth Rogen et al in This is the End, or, to keep it in the Apatow universe, the real-life comedians-turned-caricatures in 2009’s Funny People). In Schumer’s reality, James is still an NBA mega-star. But he’s also an over-the-top sensitive, supportive, and protective friend to Hader’s character. And a cheapskate. Oh, and he loooooooves Cleveland.
Those are the main jokes James’ character gets to work with. (“Do you know Cleveland’s great for the whole family?” James randomly asks while Hader is trying to seek relationship advice from him. “Yes, I do,” a frustrated Hader responds. “You text me that all the time.” “I get free texting,” says James.) In the wrong hands, like those of say, Amare Stoudemire, who makes a more traditional athlete cameo in the film, that material alone is hardly enough to guarantee laughs and could even be cringe-inducing. But James proves to be up to the task.
He’s not funny for an athlete (a bar set ridiculously low because athletes are some of the dullest and least humorous people on earth). He’s actually funny. In another scene, James tells Hader he’s going home to watch the latest episode of Downton Abbey because: “I’m not going to go to practice and all the guys are talking about it and I’m left out.” Whether he’s grilling Schumer to make sure she has the right intentions, or spouting endless, unsolicited, trivia about Cleveland, James’ performance doesn’t take you out of the film for a moment.
That James’ star comedic turn would come via a fairly meaty role in a megawatt blockbuster is, at first, part of the joke. Or at least it started that way. The notion that Hader’s archetypal best friend/wingman character would be LeBron James seems like a fully-baked idea surfacing out of a writers room and never meant to actually see the light of day. That Schumer and Apatow actually went through with it (“He’s the only basketball I’ve heard of,” Schumer has said. “It was him or Larry Bird”) is funny enough. That it actually worked is the funniest part of it all.
Either James has been secretly refining his comic chops over the years like it’s his jump shot, or he’s simply surrounded by the right group of people on set and feels more comfortable in his own skin. Apatow has said he didn’t know what to expect from James, and therefor didn’t expect much. Now he maintains James was the biggest surprise of the film. Here’s betting audiences this weekend will feel the same way as the director.
Throughout his SNL appearance eight years ago, James proved to be down for whatever, but it was only in the most over-the-top scenarios (and aided by ridiculous wigs) that he was able to garner real laughs. Dress a 6’8’’ behemoth in a leotard and make him dance- that was how you got comedy out of LeBron James. Then, when he shared screen time with the likes of Hader, as they did during one sketch, James, like practically all athletes in comedy, played the role of the straight man, reacting to those around him.
In Trainwreck that role is reversed. It’s Hader who plays the straight man to LeBron. And, surprisingly, it works. A part of you goes into the movie perhaps not wanting, but expecting, James to fail. After all, how can one person be that talented? How could a pro basketball player be as funny as the likes of Schumer, Hader, Dave Attell, Colin Quinn, Vanessa Bayer, Jim Florentine, and Jon Glaser?
Perhaps Apatow explained it best: “LeBron is good at everything. We can’t deny that; we have to accept it. He does what he does better than us. And he does what we do better than us. That’s just the way it’s always been. That’s just the way it’ll always be.”