I was busy with other matters when TV producer-host Chuck Barris passed away last March and I got a lot of messages asking me if I had anything interesting to say about him. You can be the judge of that.
Barris was at least an interesting guy. He started in television as a page, worked his way into programming and then quit and tried to sell shows to the folks who'd filled his old job. His first sale, The Dating Game, is said to have gotten on the air partly by accident. Some other new series that was supposed to go into ABC's daytime schedule was suddenly not and a replacement had to be found in a hurry. Barris had submitted his and while the programmers were semi-indifferent to it, it had two big things to recommend it: It was really cheap and it was so simple, they could throw it together and start taping almost immediately.
So it went on and I'm told most folks at the network thought of it kind of as a placeholder and immediately began discussing what would go into that slot for real…but it found an audience. Better still, it found an audience and it was still cheap. And before long, they were asking Chuck, "What else you got?" and a mini-empire was born.
Barris founded that mini-empire on a couple of principles, the main one being the one that started things off: Do it cheap. You get as much money as possible from the network or syndicator or whoever's paying for it…then you do the show for as little as possible. There was no such thing as a high-budget Chuck Barris Production. There were only higher-budget Chuck Barris Productions, which were the ones where he was a little less frugal.
Some of his shows were done for almost no money because that was the only way to sell them. There are producers who go for The Impossible Deal, meaning that some buyer wants a show but it's either going to be done on a rock-bottom budget or they ain't buying. Other producers might say, "I can't make anything doing a show for that" and pass. Impossible Deal producers figure out a way to pocket some bucks doing a show for that.
And some of his shows were done on the cheap deliberately to make up for the money he didn't make on the shows where there wasn't much. That's where Mr. Barris made his money. The network will pay X for a show. You produce it for Y. Subtract Y from X and what's left is your profit. Barris would get Y low…real, real low. Another producer might not get Y that low. He'd figure that it would be a good investment to not make shows for as little as possible. If you spend a little more money, those shows might have lives.
Not Barris. He did The Dating Game for his low, low version of Y. If he could persuade the network or syndicator to pay him 2X, he would still do it for the same Y and just bank the extra dough.
I knew a fellow who worked a long time for Barris and he told me dozens of stories like this…but he was still happy working there. The pay was low but it was constant. Barris always had a new series. Whenever one got canceled, another one would come along and as long as he wasn't missing a chance to get the show done even cheaper, Barris would hire the same people. He was loyal to those who did their jobs well and didn't demand more money.
That is a powerful thing for a TV producer…to always be in production on something. Most jobs in TV are very transient. You work 13 weeks here, then 26 weeks there. Then there's nothing for six months. Then you get four weeks on this show. Then nothing for a long time as you nervously watch your savings and your career dwindle. Then another short job. Along the way, there are a lot (a lot) of near misses. You're up for this job that you don't get, then you're up for that one that disappears on you. Then you're told "we'll definitely use you on our new show" but then that new show doesn't happen. Even when you're working on a series, you're well-aware that it could end unexpectedly and then what are you going to do?
This is not the greatest way to live, especially if you can't build up a little cushion in your checking account. You tend to be really appreciative of jobs that feel almost permanent, at least for a while. You think: So what if the money is low? At least it's pretty dependable. At least I'm not spending half my life worrying what I'm going to do next month.
I actually knew a number of folks who worked for Barris and thought that way. One or two resented the hell out him: He made four million dollars last year off the shows we sweat to make happen. The least he could do is pay us a few more dollars a week. Most though were very glad to be working there…and every once in a while, someone would prove to be so valuable that even the cheapest boss in the world would see the value of paying them a few more dollars a week.
Never having worked for Barris, I never really knew him. Still, I was around him on several occasions, including visits to the set of The Gong Show when my friends Charlie Brill and Mitzi McCall were panelists. Those tapings were enormous fun and I think one of the reasons that show was so successful was that a lot of that fun seeped out onto the screen.
ABC has just revived The Gong Show in an hour format with big celebrity judges and a host who is apparently Mike Myers doing his least-interesting character ever. I usually love Myers in his various guises but I don't yet get what he thought was fun about this guy. Then again, I only made it through about a third of the first episode. It struck me as having some amount of fun but not enough to last a whole hour.
This is not the first time the show has been revived. In 1988, there was a version hosted by San Francisco disc jockey Don Bleu. It only lasted one year.
Ten years later, there was a version called Extreme Gong done for Game Show Network. It was hosted by George Gray, who's now the announcer on The Price is Right and it was another one seasoner.
In 2008, Comedy Central gave us a Gong Show hosted by Dave Attell. That one got gonged after eight weeks.
I wonder how many of these failed revivals failed because their makers underestimated the importance of the camaraderie and chemistry of the host and panelists on the original. I wonder how many of the revivers thought it was just a matter of putting a fresh spin on a proven format. I don't think the format was ever what made the Gong Show work. I think that to the extent it worked, it worked because of the atmosphere…and that atmosphere was set by Chuck Barris. He was an unpolished, amateurish Master of Ceremonies but he ran a happy set and he had one thing going for him that others didn't: He was willing to look as stupid as they wanted everyone else on the show to look.
On the old Truth or Consequences, host Bob Barker loved it when the contestants got hit with pies…but nobody dared lob any meringue at ol' Bob or even muss his hair. Monty Hall on Let's Make a Deal never came out dressed as a large radish. Nobody on Candid Camera ever caught Allen Funt in the act of being himself.
I really don't like shows where the idea is to make people look ridiculous. Increasingly as I get older, I don't like pranks or most hidden camera stunts or anything where the whole point is to laugh at people making fools of themselves. The Gong Show as hosted by Chuck Barris at least had the sportsmanship to make its host and owner look as ridiculous as anyone on it…and it occasionally had moments of genuine entertainment.
Back in 2006 here, I wrote about visiting the set of the Gong Show and experiencing the sheer electricity when they brought on an NBC stagehand named Gene Patton and let him dance. When Barris died, an online columnist named Zachary Leeman wrote about that and said the following…
There may never be something that quite captures the mix of creative freedom and wacky randomness of the show as Gene, Gene, The Dancing Machine. Gene Patton, a stagehand, would get in front of the cameras and start boogying. He wasn't all that good — and audiences were known to throw junk at him. It was another odd segment that strangely clicked with viewers.
Blogger Mark Evanier once recalled on his since-discontinued site, News From Me, how weirdly exciting the segment was if you were in the live audience. "I've been on many TV stages in my life. I've seen big stars, huge stars — Johnny, Frank, Sammy, Dino, Bob, you name 'em. I've seen great acts and great joy, and if you asked me to name the most thrilling moment I've witnessed in person, I might just opt for 'The Gong Show' electrifying Stage 3 for all of 120 seconds."
I am amused that this seems to have caused Leeman to think this site was closed forever and he was also wrong that it was the audience that threw junk at Gene while he was dancing. It was the stagehands who were told to do that. But the article was right about creative freedom and wacky randomness. I suspect if the new Gong Show fails, it'll be because it's too polished and perfect, and also because its host does the exact opposite of what Barris did. He tries to lend dignity to the program instead of meeting it on its own level. Myers would have been better off as Wayne of Wayne's World, especially if they'd broadcast from his basement on a Public Access budget.
Anyway, one thing I liked about Chuck Barris was that he wasn't trying to be a polished, perfectly-coiffed host on a show that expected everyone else to wear chicken suits. One thing I didn't like about him, apart from the tales I'd heard of his niggardliness, was that every time I was around him, he was complaining about the same thing.
Barris built his fortune on shows like The Newlywed Game, which encouraged newly-married couples to embarrass themselves on network television in exchange for a new Maytag washer-dryer combo. People who applied as contestants for that and other Barris game shows learned that the way to get on was to make them think you might say something really mortifying on the air. That alone would have made me not like the guy but every time I was around Barris, he was complaining about people criticizing him or mocking him for putting stupid shows on television. Two of the four times I was in his presence, he was upset because Johnny Carson had done yet another joke about how Chuck Barris was a schlockmeister who put junk on television.
Once, he said to an imaginary Carson in the room, "Hey, Johnny! The same people who bought my show bought yours!" And clearly, he thought Johnny did some pretty undignified TV at times, booking airhead starlets and making jokes about their low I.Q.s and high breast measurements. He wasn't wrong that the line between The Gong Show and The Tonight Show wasn't always as bright and thick as Carson made it out to be but "Come on, Chuck," — you wanted to say to him — "Those jokes are the price you pay for cashing your profit checks from Treasure Hunt!"
He was a good sport on The Gong Show playing stooge to The Unknown Comic but he wasn't a good sport about that…and I'm afraid the shows Carson and others mocked are his legacy; that and being a good Job Creator for decades for an awful lot of people.
And I suppose I should add that every time they revive The Gong Show — and no matter how long this one lasts, there are more in our future — he looks better and better to me in that capacity. Maybe they should have seen if Mike Myers could just do a good Chuck Barris impression.