I've been thinking about The 1992 Incident, and I want to post this because it seems like it's becoming a talking point that people are just getting him to repeat the story because they're gay sadists. But, The 1992 Incident is really a great story, and I think there's a reason it kept getting brought up on the Big 3 Podcast and Simply Don The Podcast so regularly for so many years.
A person jump-starting their career with a blowjob is an overused premise, but that person being a greasy, hairy, Italian dude, and the fact that he gets the blowjob to get into Hollywood is a funny twist on the old casting-couch trope. Furthermore, the story starts with a sort of vague encounter with a female cast-mate he gives directions to and then flags down on the freeway to "see if she needed more directions" and "give a kiss goodbye" that always had sort of rapey undertones. The creepy stop added a karmic layer to the 1992 incident that, when added to the trope-reversing guy getting blown to get into Hollywood, really raises the quality and funniness of the story to a very high bar, while also lowering the level of sympathy the listener feels towards Perry.
The 1992 Incident is a really amazing story. It's funny and subtle, but to get the whole picture of it you have to hear Perry retell it in different states of mind. Sometimes he's more cautious about what he says about the stop on the freeway, sometimes he's in a meaner state of mind and the stop sounds rapier. Sometimes his description of the offer as purely a transaction he accepts due to greed for fame. Sometimes it's an attempt to avoid being blackballed due to Randy's industry connections. Sometimes it's fear of repercussions for what he did on the freeway/set. A couple times he's said it was all a setup and the Shannen Doherty lookalike was working with Randy to corner Perry into an offer he couldn't refuse.
The 1992 incident is, at it's core, a story about a guy getting taken advantage of on the casting couch. But, it's also a funny story about a fame-hungry guy doing a little light gay-prostitution by getting a gay blowjob and then jerking a dude off. And, possibly, it's an old-school medieval morality play about a guy trying to make a woman do something she doesn't want to do and then finding himself in her shoes the next day. It was interesting to see how Perry's mood would shift the message of the story from week to week. It was a story that got more interesting with each weekly retelling.
I know this post is autistic, but the weird and totally unique legacy of The Perry Project is getting tarnished by weens who have no fucking chill, and the magic of The Project already seems mostly buried by the madness that it has become. Perry is a bad guy, the old Perry Project was about peeling back the layers of how dumb, mean, and bad Perry is. The new streams seem like they're about making money and pumping out content while trying to keep Perry in the drivers seat of a one-man show that he just can't handle.
Thoughts?
