Keenen Ivory Wayans
Keenen Ivory Wayans is an actor, born 1958.
In Living Color is the achievement, and everything else on his record is either the road to it or the long detour after. Wayans created and hosted the Fox sketch series that ran from 1990 to 1994, built a cast that went on to take over American comedy, and holds a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Series. Nothing else on American network television at the time was that fast, that Black, or that willing to be rude about the industry paying for it.
He came to it as a writer. His first film credit is Hollywood Shuffle in 1987, which he co-wrote and appears in, a low-budget satire about the humiliations of auditioning while Black. A year later he made I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, his own blaxploitation parody, and the template for most of his career was set: take a genre, love it and mock it in the same shot, and cast his siblings in it.
After In Living Color the parody machine took over. A Low Down Dirty Shame gave him a straight action-comedy lead, The Glimmer Man put him opposite Steven Seagal, and then Scary Movie in 2000 turned the family's parody instinct into a franchise. He directed Scary Movie 2, White Chicks and Little Man. The films made money and thinned him out as an artist; the wit that made the sketch show dangerous is mostly absent from them. What survives is his eye for other people's talent, which was always the sharpest thing about him.
Movies (18)
- Scary Movie (2026)
- Scary Movie (2000)
- Scary Movie (2000)
- Scary Movie 2 (2001)
- White Chicks (2004)
- Little Man (2006)
- Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood (1996)
- Dance Flick (2009)
- The Glimmer Man (1996)
- I'm Gonna Git You Sucka (1988)
- I'm Gonna Git You Sucka (1988)
- Most Wanted (1997)
- Star 80 (1983)
- A Low Down Dirty Shame (1994)
- A Low Down Dirty Shame (1994)
- Why We Laugh: Black Comedians on Black Comedy (2009)
- Hollywood Shuffle (1987)
- This Is Stand-Up (2020)
TV (4)
Where to start with Keenen Ivory Wayans
Start with In Living Color and give it real time rather than a highlights reel. The show is where his instincts as writer, host and talent scout all operate at once, and thirty years on the sketch construction still holds up better than the fashion does.
For the film side, I'm Gonna Git You Sucka is the one to watch: an affectionate demolition of 1970s action cinema, and the funniest film he has made. Hollywood Shuffle shows him as a writer before the persona existed and remains sharp about the business.
A Low Down Dirty Shame is the interesting failure, a real attempt at being an action lead. Scary Movie is the commercial peak and worth seeing once for how completely it dominated the parody market. White Chicks and Little Man are the point where the formula collapses, and only Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood from that era still has jokes in it.