Saturday, July 14, 2007

Today's Video Link

This is another long one...about seventeen minutes if you watch all three parts. Amazingly, it ran for that entire length (actually, a bit longer) without commercial interruption on NBC in 1967 on The Dean Martin Show. It's Don Rickles insulting a celebrity audience.

At the time, Rickles was well known in Hollywood society and in Las Vegas. He'd done guest shots on sitcoms and a few appearances with Mr. Carson but had yet to really break through on television. Dean's producer-director, Greg Garrison, decided this was because Don had not been seen in his natural surroundings — a night club — doing what he did best. So Garrison decided to give the insult comic a huge showcase on the show...and apparently he had the idea that it might lead to some sort of Don Rickles TV series that The Greg Garrison Company could produce. He arranged for an all-star audience to show up at NBC one evening and they had Rickles come out and do more than an hour in a club setting. Then they hacked it down to this.

There were probably very few ad-libs during that taping, at least in the edited segment that made it onto the air. Rickles knew in advance who'd be there and where they'd be sitting, and many of the lines he uttered were lines he'd used before on these very people. At the end, Bob Hope makes a "surprise" appearance just so Don can hit him with a great comment...and it's the same comment Rickles had made at a couple of earlier performances when he discovered Hope in the audience. You'll notice that throughout the piece, the camera is usually on a celeb just as Rickles starts talking about them...or even a few seconds before, meaning that Don was not up there being totally spontaneous. Someone was cueing him to begin addressing Dom DeLuise, to begin on MacDonald Carey, etc. I suspect they even did multiple takes of a fair amount of this. Like most of what Garrison did with Dean, it's allegedly spontaneous material that's been chopped up in the editing room and trimmed to the point of losing the sensation of spontaneity.

Still, the exposure did a lot for the career of Rickles. The following year, he had his own series on ABC — a rather embarrassing flop which did not involve Greg Garrison. The program was originally supposed to be a game show, with Don functioning a la Groucho in a game show format, belittling contestants and then giving them a chance to win a few bucks. Close to the last minute, the decision was made to abandon that idea and instead do a free-form half-hour variety show...but they still had the game show budget, much of the game show staff and no real concept for the new program. After its swift cancellation, and in later years as other shows starring Rickles came and went, Garrison told everyone that he alone had been able to make Rickles "work" on TV and pointed to the '67 appearance. I'm not sure there was ever a series in what Rickles did on The Dean Martin Show but it sure is nice to have that "record" of what he did when he was in his prime. Here it is...

• Posted at 2:13 PM · LINK

Today's Political Comment

I rarely agree with Conservative commentator Peggy Noonan and even though she's come around to the view that Bush ain't very good at what he does, I'm not about to start now. In this column, she theorizes that George W. makes some people uneasy because he's so upbeat and cheery. Here's an excerpt...

As I watched the news conference, it occurred to me that one of the things that might leave people feeling somewhat disoriented is the president's seemingly effortless high spirits. He's in a good mood. There was the usual teasing, the partly aggressive, partly joshing humor, the certitude. He doesn't seem to be suffering, which is jarring. Presidents in great enterprises that are going badly suffer: Lincoln, LBJ with his head in his hands. Why doesn't Mr. Bush? Every major domestic initiative of his second term has been ill thought through and ended in failure. His Iraq leadership has failed. His standing is lower than any previous president's since polling began. He's in a good mood. Discuss.

Okay, Peggy, I will. I think you've got it exactly backwards. I think Bush is making people uneasy because his "good mood" seems so forced and driven by panic, and because the guy is stammering and relying on hysterical premises that few now accept, like the idea that the people we're fighting in Iraq are the same people who attacked us on 9/11. I don't think Americans even know anymore who we're fighting in Iraq other than it's now "Al Qeada," an ill-defined group that depending on which report one believes this week, is either stronger than it was back then or weaker or growing or on the ropes. So we don't know who the hell we're fighting there and we're wondering if the current administration does.

The supporters Bush has lost needed to hear an articulate explanation of what precise objectives will constitute Victory and allow us to say we won and bring the troops home. Instead, they've been getting catch phrases about fighting "them" there so we don't have to fight "them" here, uttered by a guy doing at least a darn good impression of an alcoholic who's sneaking quick beers now and then.

Does anyone think what we're seeing lately from Bush is "effortless high spirits?" He looks more and more to me like a poker player who thought he had a royal flush, bet everything he had and then peeked again and saw that what he'd thought was the Ace of Spades is actually a Four of Clubs. It isn't Bush's good mood that unnerves people. It's all that flop sweat they're smelling.

• Posted at 2:10 PM · LINK