A lot can happen in 200 episodes. Check out the Top 25 things you probably never knew about Friends!
1. Stage 24 (home to Friends from season two until now) is said to be haunted. It is one of the oldest stages on the Warner Bros. lot and rumors of late night "occurrences" have been circulating for years!
2. Each episode enlists from 35 to 50 extras. James Michael Tyler (Gunther) was an extra in season one. He was the only extra who could work the cappuccino machine, which led to his recurring role. Not until his first spoken line ("Yes." in The One with Phoebe's Dad) did the writers give him a name.
3. The Wardrobe Department has an entire room just for handbags!
4. The artwork in Central Perk is changed every 3 episodes. The art department showcases local, national and international artists. Some artists create original pieces just for the show!
5. The shops across from Central Perk have meaning. Dottie & Herman's Deli is named after co-creator Marta Kauffman's relatives. Free Being Records is an homage to a Greenwich Village record store that executive producer Kevin Bright frequented as a kid.
6. Paul Swain, the Electrical Best Boy, draws the art on the Magna-Doodle board hanging on the back of Joey and Chandler's front door. Sometimes he does a drawing that the writers request or that relates to the storyline; otherwise, the doodle is usually an inside joke with the crew.
7. Monica and Joey's refrigerators actually work (a TV rarity). Monica's is filled with water and soda for the cast and crew. Joey's (pictured) is, um, pretty darn bachelor-like.
8. The sandwich board outside Central Perk references a crew member who went above and beyond the call of duty. "Neighbor Tim" has been appearing at Central Perk ever since his good deed on the set.
9. In the cold open of "The One with the Princess Leia Fantasy" (Season Premiere, 1996), the gang came in and found other people sitting in their Central Perk spots. Those were the show's writers for that season.
10. The show goes through 32 pots of regular coffee on show day and over 100 cases of water a week.
11. Phoebe has performed over 25 original songs on the show since the first season.
12. The Central Perk set is one of the few soundstage sets with a real asphalt "street." This allows for more realistic sound during exterior scenes, and allows for underground plumbing to pipe-in real steam from the manholes.
13. The newspapers near the pay phone in Central Perk are six months old.
14. 30,000 feet of film is used to tape one episode of Friends
15. The art department updates the food in Monica's kitchen cupboards weekly. But types of food (ie: pasta, canned goods) are always kept in the same areas, because Monica is so organized!
16. Monica and Chandler's kitchen has 7 spatulas in plain view.
17. The show orders pizza twice a night for the studio audience. That's a total of 85 pizzas to feed the 300 audience members. (The cast and crew sometimes get sushi too!)
18. When the original Magna-Doodle wore out, the prop department had to find one on eBay to match the original.
19. Robin Williams and Billy Crystal did four takes of their brief cameo in Central Perk.
20. Most of the copy on the Central Perk coffee board is the original copy from the show's first season (typos included!)
21. The show spends $1,700 a week on lightbulbs or "globes."
22. Executive producer/co-creator Kevin Bright often directs episodes. He also re-edits the opening title sequence twice each year with new footage. Once for the first 12 episodes, then again for the second 12.
23. Each script goes through three to five drafts - and often times jokes are rewritten during filming, based on audience response.
24. It takes 366,000 watts of electricity to light all the sets on Stage 24 for one Friends filming. That is the equivalent electrical power of 12 large homes.
25. Twenty five to thirty people attend the weekly table reads. This is when the cast reads the script for that week's episode aloud for the first time.
:::>^..^<::: ~*~The Journey is more important than the end or the start~*~ :::>^..^<:::
- Courteney Cox originally auditioned for the part of Rachel Green (played by Jennifer Aniston).
- Jennifer Aniston auditioned for the role of Monica.
- Jon Cryer was originally offered the role of Chandler Bing.
- Other titles considered for the show were "Friends Like Us," "Six of Us," and "Across the Hall."
- The golden frame around the peephole was originally a mirror which one of the crew accidentally smashed. But because it still looked good they decided to leave it there.
- In the episode "The One With the Girl Who Hits Joey" (ep. #5.15), Ross (David Schwimmer) is called "3B" by the other residents of his new building. Schwimmer played Josh '4B' Goldstein (nicknamed after his apartment) on "NYPD Blue" (1993).
- Ursula Buffay, Phoebes' twin sister, is a waitress in the TV show "Mad About You" (1992). Fran (Kenzel, Leila) and Jamie (Hunt, Helen) visit the coffee shop and mistake Phoebe for Ursula in one episode of Friends.
- After marrying David Arquette, Courtney Cox's name was hyphenated in the show as Courteney Cox-Arquette. As a joke in one episode, all of the cast's names were hyphenated with "-Arquette".
- In the first couple of episodes Chandler and Joey's apartment number was #4 and Monica and Rachel's apartment number was #5. However, in the later episodes, they are 19 and 20 respectively because the producers noted that 4 and 5 corresponded to apartments on lower floors and the Friends' apartments were higher up the building.
- In the episode "The One After the Superbowl" (episode # 2.12), the other production assistant that Julia Roberts is conversing with his her actual sister, Lisa Roberts
- Michael James Tyler was given the part of Gunther because he knew how to operate a cappucino machine.
- The dry cleaner from "The One Where Paul's the Man" (episode # 6.22) claims never to have seen the movie Air Force One (1997). The actor who played the dry cleaner, Volokh, Ilia, played the part of Vladimir Krasin, the first terrorist to die at the hands of the president, in Air Force One.
- Leah Remini auditioned for the role of Monica.
- Courtney Cox added Arquette to the end of her name after her marriage to David Arquette between seasons five and six. Her father, Richard L. Cox, died in 2001 and during the midst of the ninth season, she dropped the Arquette in her father's memory.
- Matt LeBlanc's character 'Joey Tribbiani' plays Dr. Drake Remoray in a fictional version of the NBC soap opera 'Days Of Our Lives'. In real life, Jennifer Aniston's father, John Aniston, plays 'Victor Kiriakis' on the real 'Days Of Our Lives'.
- In, "The One With Joey's Award," (episode # 7.18), Alison Sweeney guest stars as "Jessica Ashley", an actress on the fictional version of the NBC soap opera "Days Of Our Lives". In real life, Alison Sweeney plays "Sami Brady" on the real "Days of Our Lives" (1965).
- As with most sitcoms, episode titles are not shown. As a joking reference to this, the official names of Friends episodes take the form "The One where..." (or similar).
- In, "The One With The Proposal", Dr. Richard Burke (Tom Selleck), recites an excerpt from a poem at dinner: "In the sweetness of friendship, let there be laughter and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things, the heart finds its morning and is refreshed." It is the end of Kahlil Gibran's "On Friendship".
- In "The One With the Pediatrician" Ross and Monica's pediatrician's name is Dr. Gettleman. The is the also name of the pediatrician on "I Love Lucy" (1951)
- Is filmed on the same soundstage that was used for the filming of the sitcom "Full House" (1987) during its eight year run from 1987 - 1995.
- June Gable who plays Joey's agent, Estelle Leanard, also played a nurse who delivered a baby for Leah Remini (who originally auditioned for the role of Monica) in the episode where Ross and Carol have their own baby. Joey assisted his future agent by being the breathing coach during labor.
- In "The One With The Baby On The Bus" Phoebe is busking outside Central Perk. She tells Rachel that someone put a condom in her case. Later a kid comes and asks Phoebe if he dropped a condom. Later in the 2nd season this same actor (Giovanni Ribisi) shows up as Phoebe's brother.
- 30 second commercial spots to take place in the final ever episode are being sold in the UK for 2 million pounds (approx $1.8million), the most expensive commercial slots of any TV programme in England with the exception of sports.
- David Schwimmer was the first member of the group to be cast.
- Before the show was cast, the main love interest was intended to be Monica and Joey.
- "The One With The Flashback" was partly the idea of the cast to see how audience responded to certain couplings, the main one of these being Rachel and Chandler. The audience didn't like seeing these two together, so they never were.
- As of 2003, Courtney Cox is the only one of the six regular cast members to have never received an Emmy nomination for her work on the show.
- As of 2003, Matt LeBlanc is the only one of the six cast members to have never hosted "Saturday Night Live" (1975).
- Jennifer Aniston agreed to return for the series' 2003-04 season, which was the series' 10th and final season, only if production on the show would be finished by January, 2004, so she could focus on her film career.
- At least three performers, Bruce Willis, Christina Applegate and 'Paul Rudd' have guest starred on episodes of the show after doing a film with one of the regular cast members. Willis and Applegate won Emmys for their guest turns.
- The theme song performed by The Rembrandts became a #1 single on the American pop charts.
from amazon.com ... dunno where they got it from though
"I'm for it so we can put Nuclear power plants up there, and then beam the power back to earth on a laser beam." ~ Whidden
12-05-2003 07:38 AM
