Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
Speaker 2: should know. And if this were the Gong Show, we
Speaker 2: would have been gone a very long time ago, I believe.
Speaker 1: I think you mean Chucky Baby.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's right. Nice catch, because we're talking about Chucky Baby,
Speaker 2: the original one, not you, the Chucky baby.
Speaker 1: I got called that though back then because of this.
Speaker 1: Oh really, Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: Boy, you've been alive for a while.
Speaker 1: I get I was about the same man. This was
Speaker 1: right in my cultural wheelhouse from like seven to ten.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that makes it a little young for you
Speaker 1: or a little old for you, I guess.
Speaker 2: Uh. Yeah, it was a I was a baby when
Speaker 2: it started. I think I might have not been born
Speaker 2: quite yet when it started, but yeah it was. Did
Speaker 2: you watch as a.
Speaker 1: Todd Okay, did you watch any Gong Show ever? Like?
Speaker 1: Was it reruns or something?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I saw some reruns. I was never I mean,
Speaker 2: I can understand the Gong Show is a cult classic. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and I totally get why. It just never got me
Speaker 2: in that way, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Hey, when you're seven, it's pretty great.
Speaker 2: How bad you're like, come on, boobs.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So we're not talking specifically just about the Gong Show.
Speaker 2: We're talking about the guy who is routinely wrongly attributed
Speaker 2: for creating the Gong Show. And the reason why is
Speaker 2: because he was a legendary game show producer and he
Speaker 2: hosted The Gong Show and his name was Chuck Barris.
Speaker 2: But just to kind of clear the air right out
Speaker 2: of the gate, the Gong Show is actually created by
Speaker 2: Chris Beard, who would go on to become a legendary
Speaker 2: creator of another cult classic called Sherman Oaks in the nineties.
Speaker 2: I never watched that.
Speaker 1: I've never heard of that.
Speaker 2: I feel like I had heard of it, but I
Speaker 2: really don't think I ever saw it. There's a lot
Speaker 2: of the nineties I probably don't remember, but yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: I don't think I watched Sherman. Oh.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The nineties were our seventies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, kind of like our seventies and our sixties combined.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And the reason we're talking about Chuck Barriss is
Speaker 1: not just the fact that he was way ahead of
Speaker 1: his time in a lot of ways as far as
Speaker 1: what kind of content he was putting on television like
Speaker 1: a real visionary if you look back at what we're
Speaker 1: seeing today and what he was doing at the time.
Speaker 1: But the reason we're talking about Chuck Barris is because
Speaker 1: he did that. And also, as we will learn in
Speaker 1: Act three, well we'll learn it now, but we'll get
Speaker 1: into it in AC three. Chuck Barris also wrote a
Speaker 1: book in nineteen eighty four, after his TV career was
Speaker 1: pretty much over, wherein he said basically that while this
Speaker 1: was going on, he was a secret assassin for the
Speaker 1: CIA and carried out at least thirty three murders on
Speaker 1: behalf of the American government. And that was a book
Speaker 1: called Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, also made into a
Speaker 1: film of that same name, which makes this sort of
Speaker 1: an obvious pick for something for us to go over.
Speaker 2: I thought you're gonna say, like something new came up
Speaker 2: about him or something like that recently. So how did
Speaker 2: you think of Chuck Barris? Like, are you always just
Speaker 2: walking around with Chuck Barris in the back of your mind?
Speaker 1: I don't. It popped up somehow, and I was like,
Speaker 1: because I saw that movie and I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's so weird that Chuck Barris wrote a memoir in
Speaker 1: which he said that he was a CIA assassin. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like what was up? Like I never even like did
Speaker 1: any research to see how untrue that may or may
Speaker 1: not have been. So that was really kind of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. In the movie I think that was George Clooney's
Speaker 2: directorial debut, they treat it like, yeah, it's part of
Speaker 2: his life and ericave Yeah, which was an interesting choice,
Speaker 2: but also it kind of gets you out of like
Speaker 2: really getting caught in the weeds of trying to explore
Speaker 2: if it was true and if it's not, why he
Speaker 2: did that. Yeah, I think it was a good move. Actually.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so here we go on the Baron of bad taste,
Speaker 1: the King of dynamite television, I've got one, the King
Speaker 1: of schlock and drum.
Speaker 2: Roll, the Iatola of trash Ola.
Speaker 1: Is that great and very of the time. That fits?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Iatola was on people's minds in the mid
Speaker 2: to late seventies. Yeah, yeah, so yeah, this guy was
Speaker 2: born in nineteen twenty nine. Apparently when you read about
Speaker 2: interviews that he's given, like he was born in twenty nine,
Speaker 2: thirty thirty one, thirty two. Yeah, Like he is not
Speaker 2: huge on keeping up with consistent details. And I still
Speaker 2: don't know whether that was intentional, Like was he toying
Speaker 2: with people all this time or did he just not
Speaker 2: pay attention to that kind of thing because he had
Speaker 2: bigger stuff going.
Speaker 1: On, Yeah, like killing people. Who knows, but he is
Speaker 1: a guy from Philly, went to at the time Drexel
Speaker 1: Institute of Technology now Drexel University in the fifties, wanted
Speaker 1: to be a songwriter for Tin pan Alley for a
Speaker 1: little while. Ultimately would write a song which we'll get to,
Speaker 1: and then decided he wanted to get into tell and
Speaker 1: became a page at NBC in nineteen fifty five, which
Speaker 1: went nowhere because the daytime sales department he was a
Speaker 1: page for at the time was eliminated. But that gave
Speaker 1: him the TV bug.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was what he wanted to do, was crack
Speaker 2: into TV. He even went so far as to marry
Speaker 2: the niece of the founder of CBS not, a woman
Speaker 2: named Lynn Levy. Yeah. But yeah, in the context of
Speaker 2: his ambitions, you're like, like, what's that, like, you know,
Speaker 2: deliberate kind of thing. I guess it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 1: Although yeah, he was married to her for nineteen years.
Speaker 1: I will point that out, you know, so it seems
Speaker 1: like a real marriage.
Speaker 2: Talk about keeping up appearances.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, he started out like Kenneth from thirty Rock
Speaker 2: didn't last and then I don't know how it happened,
Speaker 2: but he ended up getting an assignment from ABC. So
Speaker 2: he started at NBC, moved to ABC, and his sole
Speaker 2: job was to go babysit Dick Clark to make sure
Speaker 2: that he wasn't accepting bribes or being a corrupt host
Speaker 2: of American Bandstand. That was his job in his twenties. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and it was supposed to last just a couple of weeks.
Speaker 2: It ended up lasting a year. And then very interestingly,
Speaker 2: he kept copious notes. Every day he would write up
Speaker 2: like a minute detailed account of everything that happened on
Speaker 2: set that day, and he would also include jokes and
Speaker 2: like parts of his philosophy and stuff like that, and
Speaker 2: it turned into like a seven hundred page document that
Speaker 2: ended up bailing Dick Clark out.
Speaker 1: Yeah. In the end, when Dick Clark testified in front
Speaker 1: of the US House sub committee, it was about you know,
Speaker 1: payella scandals of you know, pay for play basically for music,
Speaker 1: which was illegal. It actually got him out like you said,
Speaker 1: And Dick Clark was like, hey, buddy, I wonder what
Speaker 1: you were scribbling on all those that whole year, But
Speaker 1: you helped me out inadvertently, and now you got a
Speaker 1: full time job in our daytime TV department here at ABC.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He also said, hey, by the way, have you
Speaker 2: ever thought about getting into songwriting? And in fact, Dick
Speaker 2: Clark set him up with Freddie Boom Boom Cannon, a
Speaker 2: top recording artist at the time and a friend of
Speaker 2: Dick Clark's, and he recorded a song Palisades Park that
Speaker 2: Chuck Barris wrote, and it made it to like number
Speaker 2: three on the Billboard charts. Yeah, I know it's and
Speaker 2: I think in nineteen sixty two, I think it was. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and the Beach Boys ended up covering it. So that
Speaker 2: alone probably made him quite quite successful right off the bat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, even though his songwriting career, I mean
Speaker 1: that was kind of it for songwriting because his TV
Speaker 1: career was taking off. By all appearances, was a very
Speaker 1: hard worker and you know, I don't want to come
Speaker 1: across as we're just you know, singing Chuck Barris's praises
Speaker 1: constantly here. He changed the game in a lot of
Speaker 1: ways in TV. But as we'll see, because it was
Speaker 1: the seventies, that was a lot of misogyny tied into
Speaker 1: stuff he was doing on TV, which we'll get to.
Speaker 1: Just wanted to sort of level set on that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that was good.
Speaker 1: But when he was working for ABC, he became worked
Speaker 1: his way up to director of daytime Programs and initially
Speaker 1: got on the map with them by making a pilot
Speaker 1: about it was called People Poker, and it was sort
Speaker 1: of the first sign that he wanted to do a
Speaker 1: different kind of game show, like sort of a what
Speaker 1: would become like a Jerry Springer type thing with a
Speaker 1: game show component. With as far as People Poker goes
Speaker 1: was people were on the show to guess the professions
Speaker 1: of different other people in this pilot, which is I
Speaker 1: believe as far as it went, he had all women
Speaker 1: on the show. He had brain surgeons, police officers, and
Speaker 1: sex workers, and it ended up that the cops and
Speaker 1: the sex workers got into a literal fight and the
Speaker 1: show obviously didn't go anywhere, and he left ABC not
Speaker 1: too long after.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that was huge that out on his own,
Speaker 2: and in fact, shortly after that he founded Chuck Barris Productions.
Speaker 2: That was nineteen sixty five, so probably as the door
Speaker 2: was still swinging behind him at ABC, which, by the way,
Speaker 2: you said he was the director of daytime Programs. Apparently
Speaker 2: he didn't like that title, so he changed his official
Speaker 2: title to Duke of Daytime. That's the kind of guy
Speaker 2: he was. This guy's working his way up and that's
Speaker 2: one of the things he does, right, So it does
Speaker 2: make sense that he goes off and founds his own
Speaker 2: production company with a twenty thousand dollars loan from his stepdad,
Speaker 2: and that ended up paying off because in nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: five he developed the dating game, turned around and sold
Speaker 2: it to his former employer, ABC, and it was basically
Speaker 2: off the bat, a smash hit in that it was innovative.
Speaker 2: It was a pioneering game show. Up to this point,
Speaker 2: like you said, this was all new. People answered questions
Speaker 2: on quiz shows or there were puzzles or something like that.
Speaker 2: No one was doing this kind of thing, and Chuck
Speaker 2: Barris literally came up with it. He genuinely, sincerely came
Speaker 2: up with it, and it was it just it put
Speaker 2: him on the map and just kind of showed everybody
Speaker 2: what he could do for better or worse like you
Speaker 2: were saying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And the Dating Game was huge. I mean I
Speaker 1: watched a lot of Dating Game as a kid. Jim
Speaker 1: Lang was the original host back then. Eventually Chuck Woolery
Speaker 1: would take over. He'll be back in two and two
Speaker 1: as we all know. Yeah, and if you've never seen
Speaker 1: The Dating Game, the format was there are three potential
Speaker 1: dates hidden on the other side of a screen, and
Speaker 1: a woman interviews these three men and then supposedly goes
Speaker 1: on a date with one of them. But what it
Speaker 1: became known for eventually was was people coming on early
Speaker 1: in their career who were underemployed or unemployed. Actors, so
Speaker 1: Sally Field, Schwarzenegger, Tom Selleck, John hamm Andy Kaufman as
Speaker 1: Laka like workshopping a character as you know, as a
Speaker 1: contestant on the Dating Game.
Speaker 2: As an eligible bachelor on the Dating Game. Oh yeah, locka.
Speaker 1: It was a big deal. It was a huge show.
Speaker 1: And I want to quickly plug this new movie from
Speaker 1: Anna Kendrick, Woman of the Hour on Netflix.
Speaker 2: If you heard of it, yeah, I haven't seen it yet,
Speaker 2: though it's good.
Speaker 1: Man Anna Kendrick's directorial debut. She knocked it out of
Speaker 1: the Park. I think it's a really effective movie about
Speaker 1: the true story of a dating game bachelor Rodney Alcala,
Speaker 1: who was a serial killer and he was on the
Speaker 1: game after he had been a serial while he was
Speaker 1: a serial killer, won the dating game and the woman
Speaker 1: who was the bachelorette refused to go on the date
Speaker 1: with him because he was such a creepy weirdo. But
Speaker 1: it's a really effective movie, Like she nails the threat
Speaker 1: that a woman feels generally from men, like more effectively
Speaker 1: than maybe I've seen anyone ever do it, Like crawling
Speaker 1: out of your skin. Wow, just by this guy, like
Speaker 1: being in a parking lot with her at night, like
Speaker 1: that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And plus also at that time too, that was
Speaker 2: fully socially supported. Yeah, men could be total creeps and
Speaker 2: put their hands on women, and it was pretty much like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's just the way things are at the time too.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Good movie though.
Speaker 2: So he followed up the Dating game with the newlywoed
Speaker 2: game Huge very similar, except well not that similar. I
Speaker 2: mean the format was different enough that it's not the
Speaker 2: exact same game. But he took married couples. We've talked
Speaker 2: about this before, I think on our game shows episode,
Speaker 2: and he would separate the husbands and keep the wives
Speaker 2: back and ask them questions about what their husband would
Speaker 2: answer say to some question. Then he'd bring the husbands
Speaker 2: out and they'd go through and see if their answers matched,
Speaker 2: and then invariably, like they would get it wrong, and
Speaker 2: some wives would get mad if they got it right,
Speaker 2: some couples would kiss. It was like, very cute. They
Speaker 2: were newlyweds, right, But the content of both the dating
Speaker 2: Game and the Newlywed Game were so raunchy that in
Speaker 2: a lot of cases they were sayments of the dating
Speaker 2: Game that Chuck Barriss was like, well, can't use that
Speaker 2: because the guy mentioned as his junk in like a
Speaker 2: really vulgar term. Yeah, Like like he was, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: he said, uh, he said even he was surprised at first,
Speaker 2: that's not what he was going for. But when it
Speaker 2: started to when he could get enough of the innuendo
Speaker 2: and everything out as produced shows that were aired and
Speaker 2: the popularity that they were met with, He's like, well,
Speaker 2: I guess this is the direction I'm going.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Uh. And so for the first time on TV,
Speaker 1: you had people airing parts of their personal lives on television.
Speaker 1: And you had people that Chuck Barriss even acknowledged, like
Speaker 1: the prize money wasn't good on these shows, like they
Speaker 1: were doing these shows to be on TV.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was also partially deliberate on his his his part,
Speaker 2: because I read an interview with him and he said
Speaker 2: that like a wife bonk her husband over the head
Speaker 2: with like the card that she has the answer written
Speaker 2: on if he gets a question wrong when there's a
Speaker 2: toaster at steak, but if you have like a yacht
Speaker 2: at stake right, completely changes the dynamic of the game
Speaker 2: and takes away all the fun. Yeah, we could have
Speaker 2: won a yacht exactly. But at the same time, he
Speaker 2: also said that, like the Newlywed game was also famous
Speaker 2: for couples just going totally gaga over pretty mundane prizes. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and the other couples would be upset or they'd look
Speaker 2: kind of upset that they didn't win. And he said
Speaker 2: that he would do pre interviews with people and ask
Speaker 2: what their dream prize was, and then he would put
Speaker 2: together three couples that all had the same dream prize,
Speaker 2: so it would hurt that much more when they didn't
Speaker 2: get it. So I don't know which one's true. Or
Speaker 2: maybe both are true. But that's another example of him
Speaker 2: speaking out of both sides of his mouth, which he
Speaker 2: did a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the data shows that eighty percent of newlywed
Speaker 1: couples in the seventies their dream prize was and all
Speaker 1: spence paid trip to Acapulco.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's what they got, whether they liked it
Speaker 2: or not. The most exotic place in the world at
Speaker 2: the time.
Speaker 1: Man a Capolco was so big back then.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: I didn't even know anything about Acapolco. Is it still around.
Speaker 2: I believe it's still around. Don't think it's falling into
Speaker 2: the ocean yet.
Speaker 1: All right, So Barris is killing it with dating game
Speaker 1: and newlywed game. He started just producing show after show
Speaker 1: after show. The only one I will mention is the
Speaker 1: only one from this list that I really watched, which
Speaker 1: was the dollar ninety eight beauty show hosted by the
Speaker 1: late great Rip Taylor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm glad that was the one you chose. That
Speaker 2: was I was like, what is that? And I researched
Speaker 2: it and I was like, you have to be kidding me.
Speaker 1: It was so good. The prize was a dollar in
Speaker 1: ninety eight cents and Rip Taylor is just a legend
Speaker 1: and you know, sort of an American gay icon in
Speaker 1: the seventies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the guy who were a really bad to pay
Speaker 2: him with tow confetti all the time.
Speaker 1: He's great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was great. So yeah, that the show was
Speaker 2: one of the ones that Chuck Barriss really took a
Speaker 2: lot of heat for. It was described by him as
Speaker 2: a spoof of pageants, right, so they were making fun
Speaker 2: of actual pageants, but the way that they made fun
Speaker 2: of it was to humiliate and embarrass women who normally
Speaker 2: wouldn't have participated in a traditional beauty contest, that's right.
Speaker 2: Rather than celebrating them, they pointed out all the reasons
Speaker 2: why they couldn't have made it on a real beauty contest.
Speaker 2: It was just some of the quotes I read were
Speaker 2: really really mean. And yeah, it was a hit show
Speaker 2: at the time. I think it was just on for
Speaker 2: a couple of years, but that seems to be about
Speaker 2: how long his shows lasted. But they were like huge
Speaker 2: flashes in the pan. Sometimes not all the time. He
Speaker 2: had some flops, but he would you know, a show
Speaker 2: like that would be on for a few years and
Speaker 2: then it'd just be gone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and just to stick up for myself a little bit.
Speaker 1: The eight year old Chuck didn't realize he was being
Speaker 1: fed Oh yeah, blatant misogyny at the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah again, I mean that's how were It's really changed
Speaker 2: for the better in so many ways, because yeah, I'm like,
Speaker 2: I'm sure grown men were just laughing so hard at
Speaker 2: those insults. It's just crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was probably like, my dad's laughing, So let
Speaker 1: me bond with him exactly, or try to at least.
Speaker 1: So no, no, no, do your laugh from the that's
Speaker 1: not quite a laugh from the Halloween episode.
Speaker 2: I can't redo it. It'll just be a disappointment.
Speaker 1: Oh man, all right, before we break, we should mention
Speaker 1: that he got into book writing in nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 1: He would, like you said, going to write many books
Speaker 1: and believe, at the end of his life even kind
Speaker 1: of hoped you would be remembered for as an author
Speaker 1: rather than the King of Shlock. But in seventy four
Speaker 1: he published You and Me, Babe, You and Me Babe,
Speaker 1: a fictionalized account of his marriage, which ended a couple
Speaker 1: of years after the book came out. But he gained
Speaker 1: the system, Like we talked about gaming the system for
Speaker 1: the New York Times bestseller list. In that shorty episode
Speaker 1: landed on that New York Time bestseller list. But you know,
Speaker 1: that's how we started his book writing career. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And at the time, this is nineteen seventy four, this
Speaker 2: is like you pretty much were in the TV industry
Speaker 2: to know to have heard really of Chuck Barris and
Speaker 2: know what he was doing. He was not a cultural
Speaker 2: icon yet, so that was there was a chance at
Speaker 2: the time that he could have been remembered for an author.
Speaker 2: But he made a huge, fateful decision in nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 2: And we'll talk about that fateful decision right after this.
Speaker 3: It slick, all right, we're back.
Speaker 1: Josh left a quite a cliffhanger with the word that
Speaker 1: Chuck Barriss made a very faithful decision, and that faithful
Speaker 1: decision was to be the actual host of what would
Speaker 1: be the thing he was known for, The Gong Show,
Speaker 1: which ran for but two years in daytime, then a
Speaker 1: couple of more years in syndication until nineteen eighty and
Speaker 1: Bears said, initially, like I thought this would be basically
Speaker 1: what we see now with like America's Got Talent, like
Speaker 1: a real talent show with real amateur talent, but he
Speaker 1: got a lot of bad people in there and decided
Speaker 1: to go a different route and the show ended up
Speaker 1: being very bad talent. That was I mean, the premise
Speaker 1: of the show was they performed in front of celebrity,
Speaker 1: a celebrity panel, and if it was so bad the
Speaker 1: celebrity panel, one of them could or all of them
Speaker 1: sometimes could get up and hit the gong, which would
Speaker 1: end their performance. If they managed to make it through
Speaker 1: without the gong, they would rate them on a scale
Speaker 1: of zero to ten.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but the celebrity pan, and we're talking like celebrities
Speaker 2: of twenty years before panel, or if they were active
Speaker 2: celebrities like say Jamie Farr, they were like B list
Speaker 2: maybe yeah, they were at.
Speaker 1: The game show celebrities match game level stuff.
Speaker 2: You're right, yeah, right, But they the celebrity judges on
Speaker 2: the panel had to wait forty five seconds. He couldn't
Speaker 2: bang the gong forty five seconds. So you'll see some
Speaker 2: gong shows where Jamie Farr is just standing there at
Speaker 2: the gong for that forty six second so he can
Speaker 2: hit it. And then if they made it ninety seconds,
Speaker 2: that's when they would judge and potentially win. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: it was just so I found a description of it.
Speaker 2: This is Encyclopedia Britannica. It was quote part talent show parentheses,
Speaker 2: most contestants conspicuously lacked talent, part demented variety show. That's
Speaker 2: that's Encyclopedia Britannica describing this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it was really really funny because the
Speaker 1: talent was bad and you could laugh at that. The
Speaker 1: panelists really yucked it up, and sometimes one would have
Speaker 1: the gong hammer whatever you call the thing you hit
Speaker 1: the gong with is the mallet, I guess and other
Speaker 1: celebrity the panelists would be trying to rip it out
Speaker 1: of their hands and like no, no, no, let it go.
Speaker 1: They're all hamming it up. And Chuck Barris as host
Speaker 1: was he's probably the weirdest TV show host in TV
Speaker 1: show history, and just how he hosted a show and
Speaker 1: how he behaved that the weird things he did it
Speaker 1: was just very awkward and strange.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like he would hide his face by pulling hats
Speaker 2: like the gold hats that he would wear down over
Speaker 2: his eyes, and he'd be talking to the audience like
Speaker 2: like continuing on the show, but he clearly wanted to
Speaker 2: crawl into that hat and hide. He was beyond awkward.
Speaker 2: So when you put all this stuff together, like bad
Speaker 2: talent acts that aren't trying to be bad in some cases,
Speaker 2: a really weird, awkward host that's clearly uncomfortable hosting a
Speaker 2: game show, and then you know these these, like you said,
Speaker 2: celebrity judges on the panel, hamming it up like you
Speaker 2: have a cult classic today. But at the time, there
Speaker 2: was nothing even remotely like this that anyone had ever done. Ever.
Speaker 2: It was totally groundbreaking. I was two, but even I
Speaker 2: knew that at the time that that was a groundbreaking show.
Speaker 1: You said, Mama, ground baking. That's right, yes, dear.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly what she said too.
Speaker 1: So I don't think we said that if you won,
Speaker 1: you get a little Gong trophy and you get a
Speaker 1: check for five hundred and sixteen dollars and thirty two cents,
Speaker 1: which was the SAG minimum daily rate at that time.
Speaker 1: And what the Gong Show, again in retrospect, became known
Speaker 1: for in some ways was the fact that some real,
Speaker 1: you know, talented people sometimes got their break there, sometimes
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily get their break, but they were it was
Speaker 1: the first time they'd ever done anything you know on
Speaker 1: television before country singer songwriter box Car Willie was on
Speaker 1: the band Oingo Boingo when they were the Mystic Knights
Speaker 1: of the Oingo Boingo.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they would go on to Their biggest hit was
Speaker 2: Weird Science.
Speaker 1: Oh much other, I mean og Go boing Go was great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I mean their big hit was that, and
Speaker 2: then the other one was dead Man's Party, which I
Speaker 2: think they played tad a party and back to School.
Speaker 1: Probably, And they're probably best known now for the fact
Speaker 1: that their lead singer and songwriter was Danny Elfman.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Danny Elfman. He was a huge composer, especially
Speaker 2: in the late eighties early nineties. I mean he did
Speaker 2: some really high profile stuff, one of which was the
Speaker 2: Simpsons theme.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Batman.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He also a lot of Tim Burton stuff too.
Speaker 2: He also did the theme. He composed the theme to
Speaker 2: pee Wee Herman, pee Wee Herman's I don't know if
Speaker 2: it was pee Wee's Playhouse, but certainly pee Wee's Big
Speaker 2: Adventure he composed. And that's interesting because they actually could
Speaker 2: have potentially crossed paths on the Gong Show because Owingo
Speaker 2: Boingo wasn't the only one on there. Paul Rubins was
Speaker 2: as he was kind of trying to start to develop
Speaker 2: as Pee Wee Herman character.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was on He was on The Dating Game
Speaker 1: a few times as sort of the proto Pee Wee
Speaker 1: Herman character. The Gong Show fourteen times, and he later
Speaker 1: in his career credited Chuck Barris. He was like, if
Speaker 1: it hadn't been for me getting just the SAG minimum
Speaker 1: payment to be on that show, that made me able
Speaker 1: to focus on my career and then my work with
Speaker 1: the Groundlings improv group and not have to get another job.
Speaker 1: And the fact that like I got to workshop this character,
Speaker 1: it got me in the public eye. Like he really
Speaker 1: kind of credited Chuck Barris with not only helping him,
Speaker 1: but all kinds of struggling artists besides Oeo Bongo and Boxcar.
Speaker 1: Willie Andrey and mccartial was a twelve year old who
Speaker 1: performed on the Gong Show and she would get ca
Speaker 1: as the Broadway lead in Annie because she was discovered
Speaker 1: on that show. So you know, things like that were happening.
Speaker 1: Another singer name, did you mention Cheryl Lynn?
Speaker 2: I didn't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she got a recording contract. Another singer because of
Speaker 1: her appearance on The Gong Show.
Speaker 2: So she was when she recorded that disco hit, got
Speaker 2: to be real.
Speaker 1: I don't know that song.
Speaker 2: It's got to be real, Susu su su su sue.
Speaker 2: I gotta have it, baby, you know that song?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Please don't make me continue.
Speaker 1: That's okay, I'll look it up.
Speaker 2: So, yes, she really said disco hit, among other things
Speaker 2: from what I know. But there's one more thing I
Speaker 2: wanted to to mention about Paul Rubins. He didn't always
Speaker 2: do pee wee. One of the things he did, and
Speaker 2: I could not find a video of it, but I
Speaker 2: saw it written of He impersonated a dripping faucet as
Speaker 2: one of his acts.
Speaker 1: That's pretty good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought that was very creative.
Speaker 1: It was, I mean, he was a groundling. He's a
Speaker 1: very funny guy. He got he was. I mean, he
Speaker 1: was known most for pee wee, obviously, and I think
Speaker 1: he at times felt like he was sort of stuck
Speaker 1: in that character. It became so big he couldn't do
Speaker 1: anything else. But he was also very in love and
Speaker 1: appreciative with that character. You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we saw his you mean, I went to Los
Speaker 2: Angeles and saw his live pee Wee pee Wee's Playhouse.
Speaker 2: But that was so it was really good. And yes
Speaker 2: he was trapped in Pee Wee Herman for the most part.
Speaker 2: But he did a great turn in Mystery Men as
Speaker 2: the Spleen. Remember, Yeah, good guy.
Speaker 1: He didn't get enough of those chances, unfortunately. But I
Speaker 1: think we should do a Peewee episode at some point.
Speaker 2: You bet, Let's do it a Pee Wee three parter.
Speaker 1: All right, So the end would come for Chuck Barris
Speaker 1: as far as his TV work goes, at his peak,
Speaker 1: this is staggering. And this is you know, mind you
Speaker 1: a time when there were three main television networks, it
Speaker 1: was even pre Fox. As far as programming goes, he
Speaker 1: supplying twenty seven hours a week of programming of TV
Speaker 1: game shows, which is I mean, I don't know what
Speaker 1: percentage of that overall, you know, of their overall programming
Speaker 1: that was, but twenty seven hours a week is your
Speaker 1: your king Daddy TV. If you're doing that, Yeah, you.
Speaker 2: Literally can fill more than a full day of programming
Speaker 2: every week of new stuff.
Speaker 1: That's crazy, Oh, totally. And in nineteen eighty sort of
Speaker 1: at the peak, I guess it was starting to wane
Speaker 1: a little bit, he shut it down, sold his TV
Speaker 1: company for supposedly one hundred million bucks, did little TV
Speaker 1: here and there, But basically that was it for him.
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons, and there are many, you know,
Speaker 1: taste change and the people were sort of moving away
Speaker 1: from that kind of thing a little bit, I think.
Speaker 1: But the show called Three is a Crowd that he
Speaker 1: pitched in the sixties and then would later do a
Speaker 1: pilot for in the seventies had a lot to do
Speaker 1: with his downfall.
Speaker 2: My goodness. So the original version was one of the
Speaker 2: most abhorrent ideas anyone's ever come up with for a
Speaker 2: game show. It was you were going to have a
Speaker 2: man and his wife, and then the man's mistress, and
Speaker 2: the mistress and the wife would compete answering questions like
Speaker 2: on the Newlywed Game to see who knew him better,
Speaker 2: ivable imagine, And apparently they made a pilot. I can't
Speaker 2: think about how ruined those people's lives were like, even
Speaker 2: if it sounded like a lark at the time, like
Speaker 2: just to just to go through that in actuality had
Speaker 2: to be totally different from the idea of it. So
Speaker 2: he revamped it a little bit and then replaced the
Speaker 2: Mistress with the Secretary, and it was still the same format,
Speaker 2: and even that alone proved to be extremely awkward and
Speaker 2: uncomfortable to watch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thinly Veiled Mistress is what they should have called it.
Speaker 2: Sure, Sure, So that didn't last very long, and that
Speaker 2: one seemed to really draw the most ire. He got
Speaker 2: the goal of the Grand Goble Award that year from
Speaker 2: the National Organization for Women, which dubbed him the year's
Speaker 2: largest living Turkey. And this he'd been doing this for
Speaker 2: decades already. But that's how bad that show was. That Like,
Speaker 2: they gave him that, and they said that this was
Speaker 2: from his lifetime body of work. But that's how bad
Speaker 2: Three's a Crowd was received. And apparently the United Auto
Speaker 2: Workers also came out against it because they represented a
Speaker 2: lot of women workers back then, So the UAW and
Speaker 2: now came out against it really hard. And he ended
Speaker 2: up just saying, like, you know what, forget it. I'm done,
Speaker 2: not just I'm going to like fade in the background
Speaker 2: and keep producing shows. He I think sold Chuck Bearris
Speaker 2: productions and just retreated.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he retreated, but not before he made one final mistake,
Speaker 1: which was in nineteen eighty the Gong Show movie pretty
Speaker 1: much universally known as one of the worst movies ever made.
Speaker 1: It was Robert Downey Sor was gonna write and direct
Speaker 1: it as a slapstick comedy. Chuck Barris didn't like that direction,
Speaker 1: so he took over as director, turned it to a
Speaker 1: more serious thing about him. And you know Chuck Barris's
Speaker 1: story of and how difficult it was to be sort
Speaker 1: of known as the King of schlock, and it was
Speaker 1: just a mess. Yeah. I didn't see it, but I
Speaker 1: remember when it came out, and I even remember at
Speaker 1: the time it being a massive failure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a flop right out of the case,
Speaker 2: not just with critics but with audiences too. And I
Speaker 2: watched a couple of trailers for it, and I mean,
Speaker 2: he didn't seem to have really gotten rid of the
Speaker 2: slapstick element. So he tried to combine a serious, sympathetic
Speaker 2: look at his life right slapstick, and yeah, it did
Speaker 2: not work at all. If you've ever have you ever
Speaker 2: seen Ring Master the Jerry Springer.
Speaker 1: Movie, Oh no, is it a documentary or no?
Speaker 2: It's a slightly fictionalized version where he plays himself kind
Speaker 2: of like our TV show. But it is interesting, Like,
Speaker 2: there's no way Jerry Springer didn't watch the Gong Show
Speaker 2: movie and say, like, I want to remake that. It's
Speaker 2: basically what he did.
Speaker 1: You know. I think the lesson we can learn here
Speaker 1: from our TV show, from that one and from the
Speaker 1: Gong Show movie is it slightly fictionalized versions of a
Speaker 1: real job. Don't go over to it.
Speaker 2: They don't work, don't try, don't even do it. You
Speaker 2: want to take a break and come back for the
Speaker 2: rest of this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think everyone knows what's hanging out
Speaker 1: there coming up in act three? Did Chuck Barris assassinate
Speaker 1: people for a living while he was a TV producer?
Speaker 1: Right for this?
Speaker 2: Okay, Chuck, like you said. In nineteen eighty four, Chuck
Speaker 2: Barris released an autobiography called Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.
Speaker 2: The subtitle was an unauthorized autobiography which is pretty funny,
Speaker 2: and in it he recounts, apparently as far as the
Speaker 2: critics concern were concerned, like pretty masterfully. He recounts his
Speaker 2: life as a game show producer as a hated destroyer
Speaker 2: of civility and taste, you know, across American culture, and
Speaker 2: just how he dealt with that but some of the
Speaker 2: other parts were also part of his life at the time,
Speaker 2: mixed in where he was going abroad as a CIA
Speaker 2: hitman and carrying out contract killings for the CIA, thirty
Speaker 2: three of them by his count, and he would describe
Speaker 2: these in graphic detail. Apparently there was one where he
Speaker 2: writes about having broken some guy's front teeth because he
Speaker 2: jammed the gun with the silencer in there, and it's
Speaker 2: really graphic stuff, and he's writing about this totally matter
Speaker 2: of factly and seemingly totally un ironic, as if he's
Speaker 2: revealing to the world he was both this producer's legendary
Speaker 2: producer and secretly at the same time a hitman.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, the the idea was that he was.
Speaker 1: It was the perfect cover because nobody would suspect Chuck Barris,
Speaker 1: TV producer King of Schlock of doing something like this.
Speaker 1: So the CIA just loved it. Did you see the movie?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought it was if I remember correctly, I
Speaker 2: thought it was pretty good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was pretty good. It wasn't great, but it
Speaker 1: was pretty good. It was it was a weird movie
Speaker 1: and it was a weird book. When there were some critics,
Speaker 1: I believe Jeff Simon from Buffalo News said that Chuck
Speaker 1: Barris is alive and well and living in schizophrenia. Other
Speaker 1: reviewers tried to suggest that it was a metaphor and
Speaker 1: that it's really about a guy that's struggling so much
Speaker 1: with his life as an outsider that it was you know,
Speaker 1: it was all just metaphor.
Speaker 2: Wait wait, you got to finish the rest like this
Speaker 2: A Gorman guy really missed the mark if you ask me, all.
Speaker 1: Right, suggesting with this conceit is that he spent his
Speaker 1: life as an outsider, an assassin of sorts, dealing with
Speaker 1: a species that frightens and baffles him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's like terribly, terribly terrible.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of leeway there for what Barris
Speaker 1: was intending, and I don't know what he was intending,
Speaker 1: and no one really does. The only interview with any
Speaker 1: clear sort of indication that it was all a put
Speaker 1: on was when he gave to Regis and Cindy Garvey
Speaker 1: on the Morning Show when the book was released, when
Speaker 1: he very, uh, you know, in a very straightforward way,
Speaker 1: said I was not in CIA. I wanted to be
Speaker 1: got an FBI background check, but then got my job
Speaker 1: working in television, which is what I wanted to do,
Speaker 1: and that the version of me in this book is
Speaker 1: just a character. But he did say a character crucified
Speaker 1: by the critics for inner chain the public. So there,
Speaker 1: you know, there was maybe a little bit of metaphor
Speaker 1: to it. After all.
Speaker 2: What's weird to me is it doesn't seem that anyone
Speaker 2: just took it as face value. Is not even a
Speaker 2: metaphor just an interesting thing that he did in his
Speaker 2: autobiography right punch it up. Everybody seems to just be
Speaker 2: totally perplexed by it. The best explanation I saw apparently
Speaker 2: he hinted in some interviews that he used it as
Speaker 2: a device to point out that all of those critics
Speaker 2: and people in like government who criticized him so openly
Speaker 2: and so meanly in a lot of cases too, would
Speaker 2: also have totally praised him for killing on behalf of
Speaker 2: the American government. That seems like a stretch as well,
Speaker 2: But it's better than Ed Gorman's interpretation, I think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's sort of that. And you know,
Speaker 1: I do agree with this as the American way as
Speaker 1: far as entertainment goes, which is boo sex and yay violence.
Speaker 1: But you know, there's a difference between you know, he
Speaker 1: wasn't filming like tasteful love scenes. It was some pretty
Speaker 1: blatant misogyny happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean and through over and over again. Even so, like,
Speaker 2: like I was saying a couple of times at the time,
Speaker 2: this is just how things were. So it really goes
Speaker 2: to show just how much over the line he went
Speaker 2: that he was roundly criticized and made fun of him,
Speaker 2: mocked by people for the level of misogyny his shows displayed.
Speaker 2: That's how misogynistic his shows were in a lot of cases.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. The CIA, for their as far as
Speaker 1: they go, they were like, of course. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and two, a spokesman named Tom chris Bell for the
Speaker 1: CIA said, it's absurd. It sounds like he's been standing
Speaker 1: a little too close to the gong all those years, which,
Speaker 1: of course Chuck Barris said, yeah, of course, that's what
Speaker 1: they're going to say. Have you ever heard the CIA
Speaker 1: acknowledged someone was an assassin?
Speaker 2: Right, it's a good, good, good point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's seemingly a good way to sell books,
Speaker 1: even though it didn't turn out that way, right.
Speaker 2: No, it languished an obscurity for twenty years before his
Speaker 2: friend Andrew Lazar, producer picked Up. Apparently sold less than
Speaker 2: a thousand copies, which was about one percent of the
Speaker 2: run the first and I guess well the first run.
Speaker 2: They later re released it when the movie came out.
Speaker 2: But yeah, one of his friends was like, you know,
Speaker 2: I've always thought this was a pretty cool book. Let's
Speaker 2: see what Charlie Kaufman can do to it. So they
Speaker 2: had Charlie Kaufman write a screenplay based on the book.
Speaker 2: And no one's ever seen that, No one, as far
Speaker 2: as I know, well, I don't know that, no one's
Speaker 2: ever seen it. There's a script out there that he wrote,
Speaker 2: but it never got made because George Clooney came along and,
Speaker 2: like I said, made the decision of Nope, we're gonna
Speaker 2: present all this his face value. We're not gonna do
Speaker 2: anything weird with it. We're just gonna basically shoot the
Speaker 2: movie version of his book.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, an interesting choice, and it was a
Speaker 1: pretty good movie. Like Sam Rockwell was great as barrass
Speaker 1: like the perfect casting. But man, Charlie Kaufman is so
Speaker 1: unique in his take and spin on things. I would
Speaker 1: have really loved to see in what that movie would
Speaker 1: have been.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wonder if the script is out there, surely
Speaker 2: somebody had the wherewithal to be like, this needs to
Speaker 2: be out there in the world.
Speaker 1: Maybe we can get our hands on it. I remember
Speaker 1: years ago my friend Stacy, who works still works in
Speaker 1: the film business, would give me screenplays at the time
Speaker 1: when she would get them from her jobs, just to
Speaker 1: I was trying to learn how to write scripts, and
Speaker 1: so it's always good to read scripts. And she gave
Speaker 1: me one called The Orchid Thief like Charlie Kaufman, and
Speaker 1: I read it, and I read it in a night
Speaker 1: and called her the next day and I was like, Stacy,
Speaker 1: I've never read anything like this before in my life, Like,
Speaker 1: this is the craziest movie and narrative I've ever heard of.
Speaker 1: And that would become adaptations, and that's the first time
Speaker 1: I had heard of Charlie. Charliekaufman was reading that script
Speaker 1: like before they even made the movie. This is in
Speaker 1: pre production.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then you follow that up with being John
Speaker 2: Malkovich or vice versa. I can't remember. No, No, he's
Speaker 2: so yeah, because John Cusack plays a cameo in adaptation, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I would like to read that script too, the movie itself.
Speaker 2: Did you notice I don't know if this is just
Speaker 2: my interpretation, but in the early two thousands, about the
Speaker 2: first decade, movies were like overly polished, overly tight. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the Bob Crane movie, what was that one?
Speaker 1: Oh h At one point your favorite movie auto Focus?
Speaker 2: Auto Focus? Right, Yes, it was just everything is just
Speaker 2: too polish, too perfect, and I think that was the
Speaker 2: Confessions of a Dangerous Mind was another good example. Catch
Speaker 2: Me If you Can, I think, is the pinnacle example
Speaker 2: of this where these movies are so refined and so
Speaker 2: polished and so clearly done by Hollywood people who have
Speaker 2: been doing it for so long that they've kind of
Speaker 2: lost the not edge, but just the heart to what
Speaker 2: they're doing that it's not actually particularly entertaining for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean with Catch Me if you Can, it
Speaker 1: makes sense because it's Spielberg. But Auto Focus was Paul Schrader,
Speaker 1: so that's I mean, he's not known for being slick
Speaker 1: in Hollywood, so that is a I just remember early
Speaker 1: on when you and I were getting to be friends
Speaker 1: at work, he talked a lot about Auto Focus.
Speaker 2: I love that movie at first, Yeah, I do. I
Speaker 2: haven't seen it for a while. Yeah, good movie, Yeah,
Speaker 2: Greg Near what kind of casting was that?
Speaker 1: It's just nuts. Yeah, he was good though.
Speaker 2: So spoiler alert. Chuck Bears died. He died in twenty
Speaker 2: seventeen at aged the ripe old age of eighty seven,
Speaker 2: although it's not entirely clear he was eighty seven, eighty eight,
Speaker 2: eighty six, Yeah, but that's what they put down in
Speaker 2: his obituary at eighty seven. He also wrote some other
Speaker 2: books over the years. He did a follow up to
Speaker 2: Confessions of a Dangerous Mind called Oh what was it?
Speaker 2: Called Badgrass Never Died. I think that he released in
Speaker 2: two thousand and four, and he doesn't mention he talks
Speaker 2: about a lot of the same scenes, does not mention
Speaker 2: any of the CIA stuff in that one, which.
Speaker 1: Is just is almost like a two over.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think he was toying with people. I'm
Speaker 2: not sure, but that's my take. And he said that
Speaker 2: he wanted to be remembered I think as a novelist.
Speaker 2: I think you said, and that's just not how he
Speaker 2: was remembered. But apparently he was a good enough author
Speaker 2: that he's also remembered in part as a novelist.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Chuck Barris.
Speaker 2: There's one other thing he invented, syndication. Chuck, Oh really, yeah.
Speaker 2: He created a game called Parent Game, and in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy two, ABC was like, no, we don't actually want
Speaker 2: to do this, so he bought the rights to the
Speaker 2: game back from them and went directly to stations and
Speaker 2: sold at to stations, hence creating the entire concept of syndication.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, yeah, I mean a real visionary in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways, and just a kind of a kooky guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, Chuck said he was kind of a kooky guy,
Speaker 2: and as anyone who's ever listened to stuff you should
Speaker 2: know before knows that Chuck just unlocked listener mail.
Speaker 1: That's right. Quick correction on ADHD guys, And we do
Speaker 1: want to read this one because it's kind of an
Speaker 1: important thing we got wrong. Oh no, I want to
Speaker 1: point out a minor correction. Towards the end. It was
Speaker 1: mentioned a couple of brand named drugs that are amphetamine
Speaker 1: based stimulants, Adderall Vivens and Straterra. Straterra, though Guys, is
Speaker 1: one of the non stimulant ADHD medications. It is a
Speaker 1: selective nora epinephrine reuptake inhibitor and is not a controlled substance.
Speaker 1: I couldn't help point it out because I'm a pharmacist,
Speaker 1: and miscategorizing a pharmaceutical I could keep listeners from trying
Speaker 1: something that could help them if they're adverse to amphetamines.
Speaker 1: Point regardless, I have to say I've always been meaning
Speaker 1: to send in an email. Thanks for the work you've
Speaker 1: done Avid Listener for five years and it's truly fascinating
Speaker 1: to learn about the variety of topics. And I really
Speaker 1: love the chemistry you guys have between each other.
Speaker 2: They get it.
Speaker 1: And that is from Michael on.
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Michael, we really appreciate that that was
Speaker 2: a huge miss and thanks for following up and letting
Speaker 2: us tell everybody else that we got it wrong, because
Speaker 2: that is pretty important. And we got a lot of
Speaker 2: emails from a lot of people about the ADHD episode,
Speaker 2: So thanks to everybody who wrote.
Speaker 1: In big time. It would seemed like a pretty important
Speaker 1: suite to a lot of folks in that means a
Speaker 1: lot of time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, we actually got people who are like
Speaker 2: I had no idea that I had ADHD until I
Speaker 2: listened to this episode and realized you were talking about me.
Speaker 2: Beat for beat, like I can't. That's just nuts that
Speaker 2: were running around diagnosing people with ADHD with the podcast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I had even several personal friends that knew
Speaker 1: they had HD ADHD that were like, I never knew
Speaker 1: this part of my life was due to that even
Speaker 1: And you know that's great. It makes us feel good, Yeah.
Speaker 2: For sure. So if you want to make us feel good,
Speaker 2: or you want to point out something we got wrong,
Speaker 2: doesn't matter, you can do it via email. Send it
Speaker 2: off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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