June 16-22, 2005

artpicks

The Truth Hurts

by A.D. Amorosi

Books

You know how you just sometimes never equate a person's deeds with who they are in your mind's eye? Take Greg Behrendt. I know this lumberingly tall, spiky-haired smart-snarker from his participation in Los Angeles' Un-Cabaret, his Mantastic showcase and his standup routines littered throughout Comedy Central. A solid Joe comic. Suddenly, his name creeps up as a consultant on HBO (Sex & the City) and NBC (Committed), the former being the place where he played literal straight man to a writing staff composed of women and gay males. This is where he met writer Liz Tuccillo, to whom he made an innocuous comment about a date gone confusing: "He's just not that into you." Apparently liberated by the honesty of someone not making a hundred excuses, the two spun the idea first into an episode of S&TC, then into a book that's filled with polls, glossaries, homework assignments and ridiculous but tenderly funny "Dear Greg" letters and answers. By book's end, you find not so much a soppy, selfish grrrl-essay stuffed into Manolo Blahniks but rather a sharply funny, self-powering book about deserving real love and recognizing when it simply ain't forthcoming. And these motherfuckers, Behrendt and Tuccillo, sold scads of books just by telling the truth, making monkeys of men who were forever lying and women who forever listened to them, and selling it all as a film screenplay and a two-person play (now that Electric Factory honcho Larry Magid won a Tony for producing Billy Crystal's 700 Sundays, he'll certainly eyeball anything for theatrical potential). Who knew?

Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo: He's Just Not That Into You … LIVE!, Mon., June 20, 8 p.m., $25, Theater of Living Arts, 334 South St., 215-336-2000.