Can the Big Fat Fairy Tale Last?

By Joel Stein

By the end of the year, you will drown in big fat Greekness. There will undoubtedly be a Big Fat Greek video game, a Big Fat Greek Vegas revue, a Big Fat Greek chain of diners, Big Fat Greek Underoos. The Greeks haven't had this much influence over the culture since the Greeks.

That Big Fat Greek Wedding movie is still in almost 400 first-run theaters, having pulled in more than $240 million (on a $5 million budget), and is about to pass Raiders of the Lost Ark as the 26th biggest-grossing movie of all time. The DVD just came out. And on Monday at 9:30 p.m. E.T., My Big Fat Greek Life debuts as a CBS sitcom (which will thereafter run on Sundays at 8 p.m. E.T.). With the entire cast reunited except for John Corbett, who had already signed up to star in his own upcoming show on FX, this is the highest-recognition sitcom since Bette Midler's last attempt. But how long can the Greek streak last?

Unlike Bette, Greek has a good starting point. The movie was, after all, just a long sitcom episode. It was built from a 1996 routine that Nia Vardalos, a graduate of the comedy troupe Second City, did about her Old World family meeting her Hispanic husband. It then evolved into a one-woman play that Rita Wilson, Tom Hanks' wife, saw in 1997. Wilson approached Vardalos and suggested turning the play into a movie. Vardalos was one step head, having already written a screenplay. It took more than four years to get a studio to make and distribute the film, in part because Wilson refused to give the Vardalos role to another actress. Meanwhile, the day before 9/11, Vardalos, Wilson and executive producer Marsh McCall (Just Shoot Me and a head writer for Conan O'Brien) pitched the idea to CBS, which made a pilot and then shelved it. Wilson says she faxed CBS chief Les Moonves the film's box-office figures every week. Seeing those numbers go through the roof, Moonves proposed reshooting the pilot, this time with the film's cast. He ordered seven episodes.

In Vardalos, Moonves got a Hollywood player with a lot more control than she would have had if CBS had picked up the show before the movie came out. Vardalos, 40, after telling the immigrants-shocked-by-America joke for seven years, wants to do a smaller, more character-driven family show that picks up after the couple return from their honeymoon. The family will be a little less cartoonish, not as weapons-grade Greek as it was in the film. "They will be a little hipper, a little less Old World. The risk is, we won't capture the feeling the movie had," says a hyped-up, makeup-free Vardalos, sitting in her dressing room in jeans, a blue button-down shirt and thin, black rectangular glasses. "It's a big risk. I definitely feel everybody will be staring at the pilot and making the decision whether it's like the movie or not. I feel like a fearless idiot, but I think if I write from my heart and what I think is funny--even if the audience doesn't respond to it--I haven't failed."

The Corbett replacement for the husband, Steven Eckholdt (who played the part in the original pilot), even has a new name, Thomas instead of Ian. Vardalos has also changed her character's name from Toula to Nia, partly to help brand herself but also to update the character to the calmer, more mature person she has become. "Toula was a little more repressed," she says. "Toula worked in my shier stage of life. But Nia is who I am. Toula was sweet and wry. Nia is wry, sweet and smart-alecky." (After you pass $200 million, no one stops you from talking about yourself in the third person.)

Vardalos, who is used to creating all her own material, is going over every detail, from giving editing notes to the writing staff to approving opening titles. She is also promoting the film's DVD release and is scheduled to go into production on the second film she has written, Connie and Carla Do L.A., a buddy film with Toni Collette about two friends who witness a mob crime.

So Vardalos has been frantic, on set until 11 every night, she says, trying to make the scripts less sitcomish. "Our mandate in the writers' room is small stories," she says, forcing the writers to avoid the conflicts that organically come from the cultural dissonance she wrote into the film. "What I want is no jokes. I don't want lines like 'Good morning, honey.' 'Not in that shirt it's not!'" The show, however, is still very much a sitcom, with a lot of jokes. At a rehearsal for an upcoming episode, Andrea Martin as Aunt Voula walks in on Nia and her husband kissing in the kitchen and says, "Oh, I'm sorry. You're having sex. I'll come back in four minutes." Another scene, which disses Voula's baklava, has Nia calling it "mocklava." Solid jokes, but jokes nonetheless.

What Vardalos probably means by "no jokes" is none of the insult comedy that sitcoms often fall back on. Making fun of someone's baklava may be cruel inside the Greek community, but it's not one of the cutting, hate-tinged riffs so many sitcom characters display. "The challenge is being funny without being cheap," she says. "We all genuinely like each other and don't want to be funny at each other's expense." It's difficult not to rely on sitcom conventions when CBS pushed the premiere date forward a few weeks to get the show out in time for sweeps. As of Friday, Monday's episode still wasn't finished. But the scenes we saw were those of a show that had set its goal of one day becoming Everybody Loves Raymond. And Vardalos' plan to make the family less Greek seemed to fall away once she realized that thick Greek accents are funny.

The show does have the luxury of being able to take more of the chances Vardalos wants, not only because of her pull but also because it doesn't have to do a lot of first-season character establishment. "You have the goodwill of the audience, knowing they are familiar with this family," says Wilson, who's executive producer. And the cast chemistry is in place from the film, with Lainie Kazan (the mom), Martin and Vardalos visiting one another's homes and going out to dinner regularly when they're not working. Even Corbett stops by the set to check up on the show. "Last week I was doing a kissing scene on the couch with Steven, and I opened my eyes, and John Corbett is standing there going 'What are you doing?'" laughs Vardalos. Hard as putting out a sitcom is, having three husbands has got to be much worse.

All this could add up to a successful show, although the odds for sitcoms--including those with a built-in audience interest--are never good, even for shows that come from movies. Often those that do hit big--such as M*A*S*H and The Odd Couple--have little to do with the film and have almost no input from the movie's creator. Neil Simon, who didn't even own The Odd Couple's TV rights, had no creative or monetary interest in the series after writing the play and the movie. "After a while it wasn't my work anymore," Simon says. "The writers had to go off in so many different directions that it wasn't always The Odd Couple." His only advice for My Big Fat Greek Life is to "get a lot of Greeks." Larry Gelbart, who ran the TV show M*A*S*H while the movie was still in the theaters, struggled with ratings his first year o* Af the show. "The audience is theirs to lose," Gelbart says. "Fans of the film like being able to see the next chapter. Nia is the heart and soul of it, the pitchfork, touchstone. Now she's just got to artfully dodge all the network people who will tell her why this movie worked."

Even if the show doesn't work, Vardalos will know it was her vision completely. And despite the level of control she has taken, her staff has warmed to her. "I'm living an actor's dream," she says, smiling. "My mom says, 'You're working too hard.' I say, 'Coal mining is hard.' I'm a geek with a cool job."

By revamping her formula, Vardalos is betting it's the "geek" that people will want to see more than the Greek. --Reported by Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles and Amy Lennard Goehner/New York

With reporting by Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles and Amy Lennard Goehner/New York