GONG: The Chuck Barris Story

25:11He was beyond awkward. So when you put all this stuff together, like bad talent acts that aren't trying to be bad in some cases, a really weird, awkward host that's clearly uncomfortable hosting a game show, and then, you know, these, like you said, celebrity judges on the panel hamming it up. Like, you have a cult classic today, but at the time, there was nothing even remotely like this that anyone had ever done, ever. It was totally groundbreaking. I was two, but even I knew that at the time that that was a groundbreaking show. You said, Mama, groundbreaking? That's right. Yes, dear. That's exactly what she said, too.

25:54So I don't think we said that if you won, you get a little gong trophy and you get a check for$516.32, which was the SAG minimum daily rate at that time. And what the Gong Show, again, in retrospect, became known for in some ways was the fact that some real, you know, talented people sometimes got their break there, sometimes didn't necessarily get their break. But it was the first time they'd ever done anything, you know, on television before. Country singer-songwriter Boxcar Willie was on the band Oingo Boingo when they were the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo. Yeah, they would go on to, their biggest hit was Weird Science.

26:36Oh, and much other, I mean, Oigo Boynton goes great. Yeah, but I mean, their big hit was that, and then the other one was Dead Man's Party, which I think they played at a party and back to school. Probably, and they're probably best known now for the fact that their lead singer and songwriter was Danny Elfman. Yeah, so Danny Elfman, he was a huge composer, especially in the late 80s, early 90s. I mean, he did some really high profile stuff, one of which was the Simpsons theme. Oh, yeah. Batman. Yeah. He also a lot of Tim Burton stuff, too. He also did the theme. He composed the theme to Pee Wee Herman.

27:12Pee Wee Herman's I don't know if it was Pee Wee's Playhouse, but certainly Pee Wee's Big Adventure. He composed. And that's interesting because they actually could have potentially crossed paths on the gong show because Oingo Boingo wasn't the only one on there. Paul Rubens was as he was kind of trying to start to develop his Pee Wee Herman character. Yeah, he was on he was on the dating game a few times as sort of the proto Pee Wee Herman character. The Gong Show 14 times. And he he later in his career credited Chuck Barris. He was like, if it hadn't been for me getting just the SAG minimum payment to be on that show, that made me able to focus on my career and my work with the Groundlings improv group and not have to get another job.

27:58And the fact that, like, I got to workshop this character. It got me in the public eye. Like, he really kind of credited Chuck Barris with not only helping him, but all kinds of struggling artists. Besides Oingo Bongo and Boxcar Willie, Andrea McArdle was a 12-year-old who performed on The Gong Show, and she would get cast as the Broadway lead in Annie because she was discovered on that show. So, you know, things like that were happening. Another singer named, did you mention Cheryl Lynn? I didn't know. Yeah, she got a recording contract, another singer, because of her appearance on the gong show.

28:34She recorded that disco hit, Got to Be Real. I don't know that song. It's got to be real. Su-su, su-su, su-su. I gotta have it, baby. You know that song. I don't know. Please don't make me continue. No, it's okay. I'll look it up. So, yes, she released a disco hit, among other things from what I know. But there's one more thing I wanted to mention about Paul Rubens. He didn't always do Pee Wee. One of the things he did, and I could not find a video of it, but I saw it written of, he impersonated a dripping faucet as one of his acts. That's pretty good. Yeah, I thought that was very creative. It was.

29:16I mean, he was a groundling. He's a very funny guy. He was, I mean, he was known most for Pee Wee, obviously, and I think he at times felt like he was sort of stuck in that character. It became so big he couldn't do anything else. But he was also very in love and appreciative with that character, you know. Yeah, we saw his, Umi and I went to Los Angeles and saw his live Pee Wee's Playhouse show. But that was so great. It was really good. And, yes, he was trapped in Pee Wee Herman for the most part, but he did a great turn in Mystery Men as the spleen, remember? Yeah. Good God. He didn't get enough of those chances, unfortunately, but I think we should do a Pee Wee episode at some point.

29:57You bet. Let's do a Pee Wee three-parter. All right. So the end would come for Chuck Barris as far as his TV work goes. At his peak, this is staggering, and this is, mind you, a time when there were three main television networks. It was even pre-Fox as far as programming goes. He was supplying 27 hours a week of programming, of TV game shows, which is, I mean, I don't know what percentage of that overall, you know, of their overall programming that was, but 27 hours a week is your King Daddy TV if you're doing that. Yeah, you literally can fill more than a full day of programming every week of new stuff.

30:43That's crazy. Oh, totally. And in 1980, sort of at the peak, I guess it was starting to wane a little bit. He shut it down, sold his TV company for supposedly 100 million bucks, did a little TV here and there. But basically, that was it for him. And one of the reasons, and there are many, you know, taste change and people were sort of moving away from that kind of thing a little bit, I think. But the show called Three is a Crowd that he pitched in the 60s and then would later do a pilot for in the 70s had a lot to do with his downfall. My goodness. So the original version was one of the most abhorrent ideas anyone's ever come up with for a game show.

31:23It was you were going to have a man and his wife and then the man's mistress. and the mistress and the wife would compete answering questions like on the newlywed game to see who knew him better. Unbelievable. Can you imagine? And apparently they made a pilot. Oh, yeah. I can't, like, think about how ruined those people's lives were. Like, even if it sounded like a lark at the time, like, just to go through that in actuality had to be totally different from the idea of it. So he revamped it a little bit and then replaced the mistress with the secretary. And it was still the same format. And even that alone proved to be extremely awkward and uncomfortable to watch.

32:06Yeah. Thinly-veiled mistress is what they should have called it. Sure. Sure. So that didn't last very long. And that one seemed to really draw the most ire. He got the Grand Gobbler Award that year from the National Organization for Women. which dubbed him the year's largest living turkey and this he'd been doing this for decades already but that's how bad that show was that like they gave him that and they said that this was from his his lifetime body of work but that's how bad threes a crowd was received um and apparently the united auto workers also came out against it um because they represented a lot of women workers back then so the uaw and now came out against it really hard and he ended up just saying like you know what forget it i'm done not just am i gonna like fade into the background and keep producing shows he i think sold chuck bear's productions and just retreated yeah he retreated uh but not before he made one final mistake which was uh in 1980 the gong show movie um pretty much universally known as one of the worst movies ever made.

33:16It was Robert Downey Sr. was going to write and direct it as a slapstick comedy. Chuck Barris didn't like that direction. So he took over as director, turned it into a more serious thing about him and Chuck Barris' story and how difficult it was to be sort of known as the king of schlock. And it was just a mess. Yeah, I didn't see it, But I remember when it came out, and I even remember at the time it being a massive failure. Yeah, it was a flop right out of the gates, not just with critics, but with audiences, too. And I watched a couple trailers for it. And, I mean, he didn't seem to have really gotten rid of the slapstick element.

34:00So he tried to combine a serious, sympathetic look at his life with slapstick. And, yeah, it did not work at all. Have you ever seen Ringmaster, the Jerry Springer movie? Oh, no. Is it a documentary? No, it's a slightly fictionalized version where he plays himself, kind of like our TV show. But it is like there's no way Jerry Springer didn't watch the Gong Show movie and say, like, I want to remake that. It's basically what he did. You know, I think the lesson we can learn here from our TV show, from that one and from the Gong Show movie, is that slightly fictionalized versions of a real job don't go over too well.

34:37They don't work. Don't try. Don't even do it. You want to take a break and come back for the rest of this? Yeah, I mean, I think everyone knows what's hanging out there. Coming up in Act 3, did Chuck Beres assassinate people for a living while he was a TV producer? Right after this.

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35:47It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP. its crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a new age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi Kyle, could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan, just one page as a Google doc and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one page business plan for you.

36:24Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. It's not his fault. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. My name is Evan Ratliff. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co-founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman. There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one person billion dollar company, which would have been like unimaginable without AI and now will happen. I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for my award-winning podcast, Shell Game. This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people.

37:00Oh, hey, Evan. Good to have you join us. I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents and small to medium businesses. Listen to Shell Game on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

37:23okay chuck like you said in 1984 chuck barris released a um an autobiography called confessions of a dangerous mind the subtitle was an unauthorized autobiography which is pretty funny yeah and in it he recounts apparently as far as the critics concern were concerned like pretty masterfully. He recounts his life as a game show producer, as a hated destroyer of civility and taste, you know, across American culture and just how he dealt with that. But some of the other parts were also part of his life at the time mixed in where he was going abroad as a CIA hitman and carrying out contract killings for the CIA, 33 of them by his count.

38:11And he would describe these in graphic detail. Apparently, there was one where he writes about having broken some guy's front teeth because he jammed the gun with the silencer in there. And it's really graphic stuff. And he's writing about this totally matter-of-factly and seemingly totally unironic as if he's revealing to the world that he was both this producer, this legendary producer, and secretly at the same time a hitman. Yeah. And, you know, the idea was that he was, it was the perfect cover because nobody would suspect Chuck Barris, TV producer, King of Schlock of doing something like this.

38:48So the CIA just loved it. Did you see the movie? Yeah, I thought it was, if I remember correctly, I thought it was pretty good. Yeah, it was pretty good. It wasn't great, but it was pretty good. It was a weird movie and it was a weird book. when he, there were some critics, I believe Jeff Simon from Buffalo News said that Chuck Beres is alive and well and living in schizophrenia. Other reviewers tried to suggest that it was a metaphor and that it's really about a guy that's struggling so much with his life as an outsider that it was, you know, it was all just metaphor. Wait, wait, you got to finish the rest.

39:29Like this Ed Gorman guy I really missed the mark, if you ask me. All right. Suggesting with this conceit is that he spent his life as an outsider, an assassin of sorts, dealing with a species that frightens and baffles him. Yeah. That's like terribly, terribly, terrible. I think that was a lot of leeway there for what Barris was intending. And I don't know what he was intending. And no one really does. The only interview with any clear sort of indication that it was all a put on was when he gave to Regis and Cindy Garvey on The Morning Show. When the book was released, when he very, you know, in a very straightforward way said, I was not in CIA.

40:09I wanted to be. Got an FBI background check, but then got my job working in television, which is what I wanted to do. And that the version of me in this book is just a character. But he did say a character crucified by the critics for entertaining the public. So there, you know, there was maybe a little bit of metaphor to it after all. What's weird to me is it doesn't seem that anyone just took it as face value is not even a metaphor, just an interesting thing that he did in his autobiography. Right. Punch it up. Everybody seems to just be totally perplexed by it. The best explanation I saw, apparently he hinted in some interviews that he used it as a device to point out that all of those critics and people in like government who criticized him so openly and so meanly in a lot of cases, too, would also have totally praised him for killing on behalf of the American government.

41:05That seems like a stretch as well, but it's better than Ed Gorman's interpretation, I think. yeah I mean it's sort of that and you know I do agree with this the American way as far as entertainment goes which is boo sex and yay violence but you know there's a difference between you know he wasn't filming like tasteful love scenes it was some pretty blatant misogyny happening yeah I mean through and through over and over again even so like I was saying a couple of times at the time this is just how things were So it really goes to show just how much over the line he went that he was roundly criticized and made fun of and mocked by people for the level of misogyny his shows displayed.

41:50That's how misogynistic his shows were in a lot of cases. Yeah, for sure. The CIA for their as far as they go, they were like, of course, in 2002, a spokesman named Tom Crispell for the CIA said it's absurd. It sounds like he's been standing a little too close to the gong all those years, which, of course, Chuck Barris said, yeah, of course, that's what they're going to say. Have you ever heard the CIA acknowledge someone was an assassin? It's a good, good, good point. Yeah. And it's seemingly a good way to sell books, even though it didn't turn out that way. Right. No, it languished in obscurity for 20 years before his friend Andrew Lazar, a producer, picked it up.

42:29Apparently he sold less than a thousand copies, which was about 1 % of the run, the first run. They later re-released it when the movie came out. But yeah, one of his friends was like, you know, I've always thought this was a pretty cool book. Let's see what Charlie Kaufman can do to it. So they had Charlie Kaufman write a screenplay based on the book. and no one's ever seen that. As far as I know, well, I don't know that no one's ever seen it. There's a script out there that he wrote, but it never got made because George Clooney came along and, like I said, made the decision of, nope, we're going to present all this as face value.

43:07We're not going to do anything weird with it. We're just going to basically shoot the movie version of his book. Yeah. I mean, an interesting choice, and it was a pretty good movie. Like Sam Rockwell was great as Chuck Barris, like the perfect casting. But man, Charlie Kaufman is so unique in his take and spin on things. I would have really loved to seen what that movie would have been. Yeah, I wonder if the script is out there. Surely somebody had the wherewithal to be like, this needs to be out there in the world. Maybe we can get our hands on it. I remember years ago, my friend Stacy, who still works in the film business, would give me screenplays at the time when she would get them from her jobs.

43:52I was trying to learn how to write scripts, and so it's always good to read scripts. And she gave me one called The Orchid Thief by Charlie Kaufman. And I read it, and I read it in a night and called her the next day, and I was like, Stacy, I've never read anything like this before in my life. Like, this is the craziest movie and narrative I've ever heard of. And that would become Adaptation. Such a good movie. And that's the first time I had heard of Charlie Kaufman was reading that script, like, before they even made the movie. This is in pre-production. Yeah, and then he followed that up with Being John Malkovich or vice versa.

44:28I can't remember. No, no. He's so – No, that was first, I think. Yeah, because John Cusack plays a cameo in Adaptation. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I would like to read that script, too. The movie itself. Did you notice? I don't know if this is just my interpretation, but in the early 2000s, about the first decade, movies were like overly polished, overly tight. Yeah. The Bob Crane movie. What was that one? Oh, at one point, your favorite movie, Autofocus. Autofocus. Right. Yes. It was just everything is just too polished, too perfect. Yeah. And I think that was a good, um, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind was another good example.

45:11Uh, Catch Me If You Can, I think is the pinnacle example of this, where these movies are so refined and so polished and so clearly done by Hollywood people who've been doing it for so long that they've kind of lost the, not edge, but just the heart to what they're doing, that it's not actually particularly entertaining for me. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, with Catch Me If You Can, it makes sense because it's Spielberg. But Autofocus was Paul Schrader. So that, I mean, he's not known for being slick in Hollywood. So that is, I just remember early on when you and I were getting to be friends at work, you talked a lot about Autofocus.

45:47I loved that movie at first. Yeah, I did too. I haven't seen it for a while. Yeah, good movie. Yeah. Greg Neer, what kind of casting was that? I know. That's just nuts. Yeah, he was good though. So, spoiler alert, Chuck Beres died. He died in 2017 at the ripe old age of 87, although it's not entirely clear if he was 87, 88, 86. But that's what they put down in his obituary at 87. He also wrote some other books over the years. He did a follow-up to Confessions of a Dangerous Mind called, what was it called? Bad Grass Never Dies, I think, that he released in 2004. and he doesn't mention, he talks about a lot of the same scenes, does not mention any of the CIA stuff in that one.

46:32Yeah. Which is just, I think he was - Yeah, it was almost like a do-over. Yeah. And I think he was toying with people. I'm not sure, but that's my take. And he said that he wanted to be remembered, I think, as a novelist, I think you said, and that's just not how he's remembered. But apparently he was a good enough author that he's also remembered in part as a novelist. Yeah. Chuck Barris. There's one other thing. He invented syndication, Chuck. Oh, really? Yeah. He created a game called Parent Game. And in 1972, ABC was like, no, we don't actually want to do this. So he bought the rights to the game back from them and went directly to stations and sold it to stations, hence creating the entire concept of syndication.

47:16Oh, wow. Yeah. I mean, a real visionary in a lot of ways and just a kind of a kooky guy. Yeah. Well, Chuck said he was kind of a kooky guy. And as anyone who's ever listened to stuff you should know before knows that Chuck just unlocked listener mail. That's right. Quick correction on ADHD, guys. And we do want to read this one because it's kind of an important thing we got wrong. Oh, no. Want to point out a minor correction. Toward the end, it was mentioned a couple of brand name drugs that are amphetamine based stimulants, Adderall, Vivance, and Stratera. Stratera, though, guys, is one of the non-stimulant ADHD medications.

47:57It is a selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor and is not a controlled substance. I couldn't help point it out because I'm a pharmacist and miscategorizing a pharmaceutical. I could keep listeners from trying something that could help them if they're adverse to amphetamines. Great point. Regardless, I have to say, I've always been meaning to send in an email. Thanks for the work you've done. I've been listening for five years, and it's truly fascinating to learn about the variety of topics. And I really love the chemistry you guys have between each other. I get it. And that is from Michael Ahn.

48:29Thanks a lot, Michael. We really appreciate that. That was a huge miss. And thanks for following up and letting us tell everybody else that we got it wrong, because that is pretty important. and we got a lot of emails from a lot of people about the ADHD episode so thanks to everybody who wrote in about that. Big time. It seemed like a pretty important suite to a lot of folks and that means a lot to us. Yeah, for sure. We actually got people who were like, I had no idea that I had ADHD until I listened to this episode and realized you were talking about me beat for beat. Like, I can't. That's just nuts that we're running around diagnosing people with ADHD with the podcast.

49:08Yeah, and I had even several personal friends that knew they had ADHD that were like, I never knew this part of my life was due to that even. And, you know, that's great. It makes us feel good. Yeah, for sure. So if you want to make us feel good or you want to point out something we got wrong, doesn't matter. You can do it via email. Send it off to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

49:51What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, a.k.a. neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

50:54big people. Check out the second season of my podcast, Shell Game, on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.