GONG: The Chuck Barris Story

Chuck Barris was a TV visionary, developing shows in the 70s that were decades ahead of their time. But was he also a covert assassin for the CIA? See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Speaker 01

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• 1:10Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:19Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here, too. And this is Stuff You Should Know. And if this were the Gong Show, we would have been Gong a very long time ago, I believe.

• 1:32Speaker 01

  I think you mean Chucky Baby.

• 1:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's right. Nice catch, because we're talking about Chucky Baby, the original one, not you, the Chucky Baby.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  I got called that, though, back then because of this.

• 1:44Josh Clark?

  Oh, really?

• 1:45Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:46Josh Clark?

  Boy, you've been alive for a long time.

• 1:50Speaker 01

  I get, well, it's not the same, and this was right in my cultural wheelhouse from like seven to 10, but you, this, that makes it a little young for you, or a little old for you, I guess.

• 1:59Josh Clark?

  Uh, yeah, I was a... I was a baby when it started.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03Josh Clark?

  I think I might have not been born quite yet when it started, but yeah. It's not something I watched as a toddler.

• 2:08Speaker 01

  Okay, so did you, did you watch any Gong Show ever? Like, was it reruns or something?

• 2:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I saw some reruns. I was never, I mean, I can understand the Gong Show is a cult classic.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:19Josh Clark?

  And I totally get why. It just never got me in that way. You know what I mean?

• 2:24Speaker 01

  Hey, when you're seven, it's pretty great.

• 2:26Josh Clark?

  How bad? You're like, come on, boobs.

• 2:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:31Josh Clark?

  So we're not talking specifically just about the Gong Show. We're talking about the guy who is routinely wrongly attributed for creating the Gong Show. And the reason why is because he was a legendary game show producer and he hosted the Gong Show. And his name was Chuck Barris. But just to kind of clear the air right out of the gate, the Gong Show was actually created by Chris Beard, who would go on to become a legendary creator of another cult classic called Sherman Oaks in the 90s. I never watched that.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  Hmm, I've never heard of that.

• 3:01Josh Clark?

  I feel like I had heard of it, but I, I, I don't, I really don't think I ever saw it. There's a lot of the 90s I probably don't remember, but you know. I don't think I watched Sherman Oaks.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, the 90s were our 70s.

• 3:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah, yeah, kind of like our 70s and our 60s combined.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the reason we're talking about Chuck Barris is not just the fact that he was way ahead of his time in a lot of ways as far as what kind of content he was putting on television. Like, a real visionary, if you look back at what we're seeing today, you know, and what he was doing at the time. But the reason we're talking about Chuck Barris is because he did that. And also, as we will learn in Act Three, well, we'll learn it now, but we'll get into it in Act Three. Chuck Barris also wrote a book in 1984, after his TV career was pretty much over. Wherein he said, basically, that while this was going on, he was a secret assassin for the CIA

• 3:57Speaker 01

  and carried out at least 33 murders on behalf of the American government. And that was a book called Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, also made into a film of that same name, which makes this. Sort of an obvious pick for something for us to go over.

• 4:13Josh Clark?

  I thought you were gonna say like something new came up about him or something like that recently. So how did you think of Chuck Barris? Like, are you always just walking around with Chuck Barris in the back of your mind?

• 4:22Speaker 01

  I don't, it popped up somehow and I was like, because I saw that movie and I was like, oh yeah, that's so weird that Chuck Barris wrote a memoir in which he said that he was CIA assassin.

• 4:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  Like, what was up? Like, I never even like did any research to see how untrue that may or may not have been. So that was really kind of it.

• 4:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah, in the movie, I think that was George Clooney's directorial debut. They treat it like, yeah, it's, it's part of his life narrative.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:50Josh Clark?

  Which was an interesting choice, but also it kind of gets you out of like, really getting caught in the weeds of trying to explore if it was true and if it's not, why he did that.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:00Josh Clark?

  I think it was a good move, actually.

• 5:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh, so here we go on the Baron of Bad Taste, the King of Dynamite Television.

• 5:07Josh Clark?

  I've got one.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  The King of Schlock and drumroll?

• 5:10Josh Clark?

  The Ayatollah of Trashola.

• 5:16Josh Clark?

  Isn't that great?

• 5:17Speaker 01

  And very of the time that, that fits, yeah.

• 5:19Josh Clark?

  The Ayatollah was on people's minds in the mid to late seventies.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 5:25Josh Clark?

  So yeah, this guy was born in 1929. Um, apparently when you read about interviews that he's, he's given, like he was born in 29, 30, 31, 32. Like, he is not huge on keeping up with consistent details.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:39Josh Clark?

  And I'm, I still don't know whether that was intentional. Like, was he toying with people all this time? Or did he just not pay attention to that kind of thing? Cause he had bigger stuff going on.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, like killing people. Who knows? But he is a guy from Philly. Went to, at the time, Drexel Institute of Technology, now Drexel University in the 50s. Wanted to be a songwriter for Tin Pan Alley for a little while. Ultimately would write a song, which we'll get to. And then decided he wanted to get into television and became a page at NBC in 1955, which went nowhere because the daytime sales department he was a page for at the time, was eliminated. But that gave him the TV bug.

• 6:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that was what he wanted to do is crack into TV. He even went so far as to marry the niece of the founder of CBS.

• 6:31Speaker 01

  Not a bad move.

• 6:31Josh Clark?

  A woman named Lynn Levy.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:34Josh Clark?

  But yeah, in the context of his ambitions, you're like, hmm, like, what's that? Like, you know, deliberate kind of thing? Who knows? I guess it doesn't really matter.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  Although, he was married to her for 19 years. I will point that out, you know? So it seems like a real marriage.

• 6:48Josh Clark?

  Talk about keeping up appearances.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:52Josh Clark?

  So, yeah, he started out like Kenneth from 30 Rock, didn't last. And then I don't know how it happened, but he ended up getting an assignment from ABC. So he started at NBC, moved to ABC, and his sole job was to go babysit Dick Clark to make sure that he wasn't accepting bribes or being a corrupt host of American Bandstand. That was his job.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  In his twenties.

• 7:16Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and it was supposed to last just a couple of weeks. It ended up lasting a year. And then, very interestingly, he kept copious notes. Every day, he would write up like a minute, detailed account of everything that happened on set that day. And he would also include jokes and like parts of his philosophy and stuff like that. And it turned into like a 700-page document that ended up bailing Dick Clark out.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, in the end, when Dick Clark testified in front of the US House Subcommittee, it was about, you know, payola scandals of, you know, pay for play, basically, for music.

• 7:52Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  Which was illegal. It actually got him out, like you said, and Dick Clark was like, hey, buddy, I wonder what you were scribbling on all those that whole year? But you helped me out inadvertently, and now you got a full-time job in our daytime TV department here at ABC.

• 8:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah. He also said, hey, by the way, have you ever thought about getting into songwriting? And in fact, Dick Clark set him up with Freddie Boom Boom Cannon, a top recording artist at the time and a friend of Dick Clark's. And he recorded a song, Palisades Park, that Chuck Barris wrote, and it made it to like number three on the Billboard charts.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I know that song.

• 8:29Josh Clark?

  And I think in 1962, I think it was.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:33Josh Clark?

  And the Beach Boys ended up covering it. So that alone probably made him quite a, quite successful right out, right off the bat.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. Even though his songwriting career, I mean, that was kind of it for, for songwriting because his TV career was taking off. He, by all appearances, was a very hard worker. And, you know, I don't want to come across as we're just, you know, singing Chuck Barris' praises constantly here. He, he changed the game in a lot of ways in TV, but as we'll see, because it was the seventies, there was a lot of misogyny tied into stuff he was doing on TV, which we'll get to. Just wanted to sort of level set on that.

• 9:12Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I think that was good.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  But when he was working for ABC, he became, worked his way up to director of daytime programs and initially got on the map with them by making a pilot about, it was called People Poker. And it was, it was sort of the, the first sign that he wanted to do a different kind of game show. Like sort of a, what would become like a Jerry Springer type thing with a game show component with, as far as People Poker goes was people were on the show to guess the professions of different other people. In this pilot, which is, I believe as far as it went, he had all women on the show. He had brain surgeons, police officers and sex workers.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  And it ended up that the cops and the sex workers got into a literal fight and the show obviously didn't go anywhere and he left ABC not too long after.

• 10:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So that was huge that he struck out on his own. And in fact, shortly after that, he founded Chuck Barris Productions. That was 1965. So probably as the door was still swinging behind him at ABC.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:19Josh Clark?

  Which by the way, you said he was the director of daytime programs. Apparently he didn't like that title, so he changed his official title to Duke of Daytime. That's the kind of guy he was. This guy's working his way up and that's one of the things he does, right?

• 10:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:32Josh Clark?

  So it does make sense that he goes off and founds his own production company with a $20,000 loan from his stepdad. And that ended up paying off because in 1965, he developed the Dating Game, turned around and sold it to his former employer, ABC. And it was basically off the bat, a smash hit in that it was innovative. It was a pioneering game show. Up to this point, like you said, this was all new. People answered questions on quiz shows or there were puzzles or something like that. No one was doing this kind of thing. And Chuck Barris literally came up with it. No, sorry. He genuinely sincerely came up with it.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:12Josh Clark?

  And it was, it just, it put him on the map and just kind of showed everybody what he could do, for better or worse, like you were saying.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. And the Dating Game was huge. I mean, I watched a lot of Dating Game as a kid. Jim Lang was the original host back then. Eventually Chuck Woolery would take over. He'll be back in two and two, as we all know.

• 11:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  And if you've never seen the Dating Game, the format was there are three potential dates hidden on the other side of a screen. And a woman interviews these three men and then supposedly goes on a date with one of them. But what it became known for eventually was, was people coming on early in their career who were underemployed or unemployed actors. So Sally Field, Schwarzenegger, Tom Selleck, Jon Hamm, Andy Kaufman as Latka, like workshopping a character as, you know, as a contestant on the Dating Game.

• 12:07Josh Clark?

  As an eligible bachelor on the Dating Game.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Latka. It was a big deal. It was a huge show and I want to quickly plug this new movie from Anna Kendrick, Woman of the Hour on Netflix. Have you heard of it?

• 12:19Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I haven't seen it yet, though.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  It's good, man. Anna Kendrick's directorial debut. She knocked it out of the park, I think. It's a really effective movie about the true story of a Dating Game bachelor, Rodney Alcala, who was a serial killer. And he was on the game after he had been a serial, while he was a serial killer, won the Dating Game and the woman who was the bachelorette refused to go on the date with him because he was such a creepy weirdo. But it's, it's a really effective movie. Like she nails. The, the threat that a woman feels generally from men, like more effectively than maybe I've seen anyone ever do it, like crawling out of your skin.

• 13:02Josh Clark?

  Wow.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Just by this guy, like being in a parking lot with her at night, like that kind of thing.

• 13:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And plus also at that time too, that was fully socially supported.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:11Josh Clark?

  Men could be total creeps and put their hands on women. And it was pretty much like, yeah, that's just the way things are at the time too.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. Good movie though.

• 13:20Josh Clark?

  So he followed up the dating game with the newlywed game.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  Huge.

• 13:24Josh Clark?

  Very similar, except, um, well, not that similar. I mean, the format was different enough that, that it's not the exact same game, but he took, um, married couples. We've talked about this before, I think on our game shows episode, and he would separate the husbands and keep the wives back and ask them questions about what their husband would answer, say to some question. Then he'd, he'd bring the husbands out and they'd go through and see if their, their answers matched. And then invariably like, um, they would get it wrong and some wives would get mad if they got it right. Some couples would kiss. It was like very cute. They were newlyweds, right? But the, the content of both the dating game and the newlywed game were so raunchy

• 14:06Josh Clark?

  that in a lot of cases, there were segments of the dating game that Chuck Baer is like, well, can't use that.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:12Josh Clark?

  Because the guy mentioned his, um, his junk in like a really vulgar term.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:18Josh Clark?

  Um, like, like.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  Like junk?

• 14:20Josh Clark?

  Yeah, exactly. He said, uh, he said even he was surprised at first. That's not what he was going for. But when it, it started to, when he could get enough of the innuendo and everything out as produced shows that were aired and the popularity that they were met with, he's like, well, I guess this is the direction I'm going.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh, and so for the first time on TV, you had people, um, airing parts of their personal lives on television and you had people that Chuck Baer has even acknowledged, like the prize money wasn't good on these shows. Like they were doing these shows to be on TV.

• 14:59Josh Clark?

  Yeah. That was also partially deliberate on his, his, um, his part because I, I read an interview with him and he said that, um, Like a wife will bonk her husband over the head with like the, the card that she has the answer written on if he gets a question wrong when there's a toaster at stake. But if you have like a yacht at stake that completely changes the dynamic of the game and takes away all of the fun. Yeah.

• 15:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, we could have won a yacht.

• 15:24Josh Clark?

  Exactly. But at the same time, uh, he also said that, uh, like the newlywed game was also famous for couples just going totally gaga over pretty mundane prizes.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:36Josh Clark?

  Uh, and the other couples would be upset or they'd look kind of upset that they didn't win. And he said that he would do pre-interviews with people and ask what their dream prize was. And then he would put together three couples that all had the same dream prize. So it would hurt that much more when they didn't get it. So I don't know which one's true, or maybe both are true, but that's another, another example of him speaking out of both sides of his mouth, which he did a lot.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. And the data shows that 80% of newlywed couples in the seventies, their dream prize was an all expense paid trip to Acapulco.

• 16:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Well, that's what they got, whether they liked it or not. The most exotic place in the world at the time.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  Oh man, Acapulco was so big back then. I didn't even know anything about Acapulco. Is it still around?

• 16:22Josh Clark?

  Uh, I believe it's still around. I don't think it's fallen into the ocean yet.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  All right. So Barris is killing it, uh, with Dating Game and Newlywed Game. Uh, he started just producing show after show after show. Uh, the only one I will mention is the only one from this list that I really watched, which was the $1.98 beauty show hosted by the late, great Rip Taylor.

• 16:43Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I'm glad that was the one you chose. That was the, I was like, what is that? And I researched it and I was like, you have to be kidding me.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  It was so good. The prize was a dollar and 98 cents and, uh, Rip Taylor is just a, a legend and, uh, you know, sort of an American, uh, gay icon in the seventies.

• 17:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah. The guy who wore a really bad toupee and would throw confetti all the time.

• 17:05Speaker 01

  He's great.

• 17:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah, he was great. So yeah, that show was one of the ones that Chuck Barris really took a lot of heat for. It was described by him as a spoof of pageants, right? So they were making fun of actual pageants. But the way that they made fun of it was to humiliate and embarrass women who normally wouldn't have participated in a traditional beauty contest.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 17:29Josh Clark?

  Rather than celebrating them, they pointed out all the reasons why they couldn't have made it on a real beauty contest. It was just some of the quotes I read were really, really mean. And yeah, it was a hit show at the time. I think it was just on for a couple of years, but that was seems to be about how long his his shows lasted, but they were like huge flashes in the pan sometimes. Not all the time. He had some flops, but he would, you know, a show like that would be on for a few years and then it'd just be gone.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. And just to stick up for myself a little bit, the eight year old Chuck didn't realize he was being fed blatant misogyny at the time.

• 18:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Again, I mean, that's how things were. It's really like changed for the better in so many ways. Because, yeah, like, I'm like, I'm sure grown men were just laughing so hard at those insults. It's just crazy.

• 18:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was probably like, my dad's laughing, so let me bond with him.

• 18:22Josh Clark?

  Exactly.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  Or try to at least. So, no, no, no, do your laugh from the that's not quite a laugh from the Halloween.

• 18:30Josh Clark?

  I can't redo it. It'll just be a disappointment.

• 18:33Speaker 01

  Oh, man. All right. Before we break, we should mention that he got into book writing in 1974. He would, like you said, go on to write many books and I believe at the end of his life, even kind of hoped he would be remembered for as an author rather than the king of schlock. But in 74, he published You and Me Babe, You and Me Babe, a fictionalized account of his marriage, which ended a couple of years after the book came out. But he gamed the system, like we talked about gaming the system for the New York Times Bestseller List in that shorty episode, landed on that New York Times Bestseller List. But, you know, that's, that's how he started his book writing career.

• 19:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and at the time, this is 1974. This is like, you pretty much were in the TV industry to know, to have heard really of Chuck Barris and know what he was doing. He was not a cultural icon yet. So that was, there was a chance at the time that he could have been remembered for an author, but he made a huge fateful decision in 1976. And we'll talk about that fateful decision right after this. Slick.

• 19:55Speaker 01

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• 22:50Speaker 01

  All right, we're back. Josh left quite a cliffhanger with the word that Chuck Baer has made a very faithful decision. And that faithful decision was to be the actual host of what would be the thing he was most known for, The Gong Show, which ran for but two years in daytime, then a couple of more years in syndication until 1980. And, you know, Baer said initially, like, I thought this would be basically what we see now with, like, America's Got Talent, like, a real talent show with real amateur talent. But he got a lot of bad people in there and decided to go a different route. And the show ended up being

• 23:31Speaker 01

  Very bad talent that was, I mean, the premise of the show was they performed in front of celebrity, a celebrity panel. And if it was so bad, the celebrity panel, one of them could, or all of them sometimes, could get up and hit the gong, which would end their performance. If they managed to make it through without the gong, they would rate them on a scale of zero to 10.

• 23:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but the celebrity panel, and we're talking like celebrities of 20 years before panel.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:03Josh Clark?

  Or if they were active celebrities, like say Jamie Farr, they were like B-list, maybe.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were game show celebrities, kind of like match game level stuff.

• 24:12Josh Clark?

  Right, yeah, right. But the celebrity judges on the panel had to wait 45 seconds.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:19Josh Clark?

  You couldn't bang the gong 45 seconds. So you'll see some gong shows where Jamie Farr is just standing there at the gong waiting for that 46th second, so he can hit it. And then if they made it 90 seconds, that's when they would judge and potentially win.

• 24:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:33Josh Clark?

  And it was just, so I found a description of it. This is Encyclopedia Britannica. It was, quote, "Part talent show, parentheses, most contestants conspicuously lacked talent."

• 24:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:49Josh Clark?

  "Part demented variety show." That's Encyclopedia Britannica describing this.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it was, it was really, really funny because the talent was bad and you could laugh at that. The panelists really yucked it up and sometimes one would have the gong hammer, or the whatever you call the thing you hit the gong with is, the mallet, I guess. And other celebrities, the panelists would be trying to rip it out of their hands and like, no, no, no, let it go. They're all hamming it up. And Chuck Barris as host was, he was, he's probably the weirdest TV show host in TV show history. And, and just how he- Hosted a show and how he behaved, the weird things he did, it was just very awkward and strange.

• 25:32Josh Clark?

  Yeah, like he would hide his face by pulling hats, like big old hats that he would wear down over his eyes. And he'd be talking to the audience, like continuing on the show, but he clearly wanted to crawl into that hat and hide. He 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.

• 26:15Josh Clark?

  It was totally groundbreaking. I was two, but even I knew that at the time, that that was a groundbreaking show.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  You said, "Mama, groundbreaking?" Yes, dear.

• 26:27Josh Clark?

  That's exactly what she said, too.

• 26:29Speaker 01

  So 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, 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 they were, it was the first time they'd ever done anything, you know, on television before. Country singer songwriter Buck Carwilli was on, the band Oingo Boingo, when they were the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo.

• 27:08Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they would go on to, their biggest hit was Weird Science.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  Much other, I mean, Oingo Boingo's great.

• 27:15Josh Clark?

  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.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  Probably. And they're probably best known now for the fact that their lead singer and songwriter was Danny Elfman.

• 27:28Josh Clark?

  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.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Batman?

• 27:39Josh Clark?

  Yeah. He also, a lot of Tim Burton's stuff, too. He also did the theme, he composed the theme to Peewee Herman. Peewee Herman's, I don't know if it was Peewee's Playhouse, but certainly Peewee'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 Peewee Herman character.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was on, he was on The Dating Game a few times as sort of the proto Peewee Herman character. The Gong Show 14 times. And he, he later in his career credited Chuck Barris. He was like, if it hadn't have been for me getting just the SAG minimum payment to be on that show, that made me able to focus on my career and then my work with the Groundlings Improv Group and not have to get another job.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  And 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 Boingo and Boxcar Willie, Andrea McArdle was a, 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, were happening. Another singer named, did you mention Cheryl Lynn?

• 29:04Josh Clark?

  I didn't, no.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, she got a recording contract, another singer, because of her appearance on The Gong Show, so.

• 29:09Josh Clark?

  She was the one, she recorded that disco hit, Got to Be Real.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  I don't know that song.

• 29:15Josh Clark?

  It's got to be real. Su-su, su-su, su-su, I gotta have it, baby.

• 29:22Josh Clark?

  You know that song.

• 29:23Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't know.

• 29:24Josh Clark?

  Please don't make me continue.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  No, it's okay. I'll look it up.

• 29:28Josh Clark?

  So, yes, she, she released a disco hit, among other things, from what I know. But there's one more thing I wanted to, to mention about Paul Rubens. He didn't always do Peewee. 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.

• 29:48Speaker 01

  That's pretty good.

• 29:49Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I thought that was very creative.

• 29:51Speaker 01

  It was. I mean, he was a grounding. He's a very funny guy. He got, he was, I mean. He was known most for Peewee, 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.

• 30:05Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  Uh, but he was also very in love and appreciative with that character, you know?

• 30:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah, we saw his, um, you and I went to Los Angeles and saw his live Peewee, Peewee's Playhouse.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  But that was so great.

• 30:17Josh Clark?

  Show. It was really good. And yes, he was trapped in Peewee Herman for the most part, but he did a great turn in Mystery Men as the spleen, remember?

• 30:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:26Josh Clark?

  Good God.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  He didn't get enough of those chances, unfortunately, but, uh, but I think we should do a Peewee episode at some point.

• 30:32Josh Clark?

  You bet. Let's do a, a Peewee three-parter.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  All right. So, uh, the end would come for Chuck Barris as far as his TV work goes. Um, at his peak, this is staggering, uh, and this is, you know, mind you, a time when there were three main television networks. It was even pre-Fox as far as programming goes. Uh, he was supplying, um, 27 hours a week of, of programming, of, of TV game shows, which is, I mean, I don't know what percentage of that overall, you know, um, of their overall programming that was, but 27 hours a week is, you're, you're King Daddy TV if you're doing that.

• 31:12Josh Clark?

  Yeah, you, you literally can fill more than a, a full day of programming every week of new stuff. That's crazy.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  Oh, totally. Um, and in 1980, um, sort of at the peak, I guess it was starting to, to wane a little bit. He shut it down, uh, sold his TV company for supposedly a hundred 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, uh, you know, taste change and the people were sort of moving away from that kind of thing a little bit, I think. But the show called Three's a Crowd that he pitched, uh, in the sixties and then would later do a pilot for in the seventies had a lot to do with his downfall.

• 31:51Josh Clark?

  My goodness. So the original version was one of the most abhorrent ideas anyone's ever come up with for a game show. It was, you were gonna have a man and his wife and then the man's Mitch mistress. And the mistress and the wife would compete answering questions like on the newlywed game to see who knew him better.

• 32:10Speaker 01

  Unbelievable.

• 32:11Josh Clark?

  Imagine, and apparently they made a pilot.

• 32:15Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:15Josh Clark?

  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, 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.

• 32:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, thinly veiled mistress is what they should have called it.

• 32:43Josh Clark?

  Sure, sure. So that didn't last very long and that one seemed to really draw the most ire. He got the, uh, the goal, the grand gobbler award that year from the National Organization for Women, uh, 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 Three's a Crowd was received. And apparently the United Auto Workers also came out against it because they represented a lot of women workers back then. So the UAW and NOW came out against it really hard.

• 33:27Josh Clark?

  And he ended up just saying like, you know what? Forget it. I'm done. Not, not just am I going to like fade into the background and keep producing shows? He, I think sold Chuck Barris productions and just retreated.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, he retreated, uh, but not before. He made one final mistake, which was, uh, in 1980, the Gong Show movie. Pretty much universally known as one of the worst movies ever made. It was, uh, Robert Downey, uh, senior was gonna write and direct it, uh, as a slapstick comedy. Chuck Barris didn't like that direction. So he took over as director, uh, turned it to a more serious thing about him and, you know, Chuck Barris's story of, uh, and how difficult it was to be sort of known as the king of schlock. And it was just a, a mess.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  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.

• 34:23Josh Clark?

  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. So he tried to combine a serious sympathetic look at his life with slapstick. And yeah, it did not work at all. If you've ever, have you ever seen Ringmaster, the Jerry Springer movie?

• 34:48Speaker 01

  Oh, no. Is it a documentary?

• 34:50Josh Clark?

  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.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  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.

• 35:12Josh Clark?

  They don't work. Don't try.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  Don't even do it.

• 35:17Josh Clark?

  You want to take a break and come back for the rest of this?

• 35:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think everyone knows what's hanging out there. Coming up in Act Three, did Chuck Baer assassinate people for a living while he was a TV producer? Right after this.

• 35:46Speaker 01

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• 36:22Josh Clark?

  Buy smart, drive for less and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it all starts with a great deal on a truck from your local Toyota dealer.

• 36:31Speaker 01

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• 36:44Josh Clark?

  Or discover Toyota's off-road lineup, including the iconic 4Runner and Land Cruiser, designed to go beyond the everyday. And with Toyota's proven reputation for quality and reliability, plus hybrid power on many models, you can get more for every mile and drive for less along the way.

• 37:00Speaker 01

  That's right. And long after you leave the lot, your Toyota keeps delivering with great resale value. So you can trade in for more when you're ready for your next Toyota. From a great deal today to a great value tomorrow, a Toyota is right for you. Shop toyota.com for deals and details or stop by your local Toyota dealer today. Toyota, let's go places.

• 37:24Josh Clark?

  World Mental Health Day takes place in October, and it's really meant to be more than just awareness. It's about actually taking the next step and getting support if you need it.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  But a lot of people still talk themselves out of therapy. They think it's too expensive. They're not sure if it'll actually work. They don't know how to find the right therapist or they just get overwhelmed trying to navigate the whole system.

• 37:44Josh Clark?

  And that's exactly what Rula is built to fix. Rula makes therapy feel a lot more approachable, a lot more human. You can find a therapist who actually fits your needs, not just whoever's available. And with insurance, sessions average around $15 copay.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can sign up in just a few minutes. You can get matched with the right provider and even book something as soon as the next day.

• 38:03Josh Clark?

  And it's not just about starting. Rula helps you stay consistent and actually make progress because taking care of your mental health isn't a one-time thing. So if you've been thinking about therapy, don't talk yourself out of it. This is a really easy way to take that first step.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  So turn off the talk track that's keeping you from progress and head to rula.com, that is R-U-L-A dot com, to find a therapist the easy way.

• 38:37Josh Clark?

  Okay Chuck, like you said, in 1984 Chuck Barris released a, an autobiography called Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. The subtitle was an unauthorized autobiography, which is pretty funny.

• 38:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:50Josh Clark?

  And in it, he recounts, apparently as far as the critics 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. And 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

• 39:33Josh Clark?

  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.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you know, the, the idea was that he was, it was the perfect cover, because nobody would suspect Chuck Barris, TV producer, a king of schlock of doing something like this. So the CIA just loved it. Did you see the movie?

• 40:05Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I thought it was, if I remember correctly, I thought it was pretty good.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was pretty good. It wasn't great, but it was pretty good. It was, 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 Barris 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.

• 40:40Josh Clark?

  Wait, wait, you gotta finish the rest. Like, this Ed Gorman guy really missed the mark if you ask me.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  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.

• 40:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah. That's like terribly, terribly terrible.

• 40:59Speaker 01

  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, uh, the only interview with any clear sort of indication that it was all a put on was one he gave to Regis and Cindy Garvey on the morning show. When the book was released, when he very, uh, you know, in a very straightforward way said, "I was not in CIA, I wanted to be, uh, got an FBI background check, but then got my, uh, job working in television, which is what I wanted to do." And that the, the version of me in this book is just a character. Um, but he did say, "A character crucified by the critics for entertaining the public." Um, so there, you know, there was maybe a little bit of metaphor to it after all.

• 41:42Josh Clark?

  What's weird to me is it doesn't seem that anyone just took it as, uh, face value as not even a metaphor, just an interesting thing that he did in his autobiography.

• 41:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:52Josh Clark?

  To punch it up. Everybody seems to just be totally perplexed by it. The best explanation I saw, uh, apparently he hinted in some interviews that he used it as a device to point out that all of those critics and, and people in like government, um, who criticized him so openly and so meanly in a lot of cases too, um, would also have totally praised him for killing on behalf of the American government. Uh, that seems like a stretch as well, but it's better than Ed Gorman's interpretation, I think.

• 42:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's sort of that, and you know, I do agree with this is the American way as far as entertainment goes, which is, uh, boo sex and yay violence. Um, but you know, there's a difference between, you know, he wasn't filming like tasteful love scenes. It was, it was some pretty blatant misogyny happening.

• 42:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I mean, through and through, over and over again, even so, like, 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. That's how misogynistic his shows were in a lot of cases.

• 43:07Speaker 01

  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 gonna say. Have you ever heard the CIA acknowledged someone was an assassin?"

• 43:29Josh Clark?

  Right. It's a good, good, good point.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's seemingly a good way to sell books, even though it didn't turn out that way, right?

• 43:36Josh Clark?

  No, it languished in obscurity for 20 years before his friend Andrew Lazar, a producer, picked it up. Apparently, he sold less than 1,000 copies, which was about 1% of the run, the first, and I guess, well, 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. No one, as far as I, 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,

• 44:19Josh Clark?

  "Nope, we're gonna present all this as face value. We're not gonna do anything weird with it. We're just gonna basically shoot the movie version of his, his book."

• 44:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, an interesting choice.

• 44:32Speaker 01

  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.

• 44:48Josh Clark?

  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."

• 44:55Speaker 01

  Maybe we can get our hands on it. I remember years ago, my friend Stacy, who works, still works in the film business, would give me screenplays at the time when she would get them from her jobs, just to, I 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, 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.

• 45:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 45:24Speaker 01

  This is the craziest movie and narrative I've ever heard of, and that would become Adaptation.

• 45:30Josh Clark?

  Such a good movie.

• 45:31Speaker 01

  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.

• 45:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and then he followed that up with being John Malkovich or vice versa. I can't remember.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:43Josh Clark?

  No, no, he's so-

• 45:44Speaker 01

  No, that was first, I think.

• 45:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because John Cusack plays a cameo in Adaptation.

• 45:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 45:51Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 45:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:52Josh Clark?

  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.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:07Josh Clark?

  The Bob Crane movie, what was that one?

• 46:09Speaker 01

  Oh, at one point, your favorite movie, autofocus.

• 46:12Josh Clark?

  Autofocus, right, yes. It was just, everything is just too polished, too perfect.

• 46:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:19Josh Clark?

  And I think that was, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind was another good example. 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.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  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.

• 47:00Josh Clark?

  I loved that movie at first.

• 47:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did, too.

• 47:02Josh Clark?

  I haven't seen it for a while.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, good movie.

• 47:05Josh Clark?

  Yeah, Greg Kneer, what kind of casting was that?

• 47:08Speaker 01

  I know.

• 47:09Josh Clark?

  It's just nuts.

• 47:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was good, though.

• 47:11Josh Clark?

  So, spoiler alert, Chuck Barris died. He died in 2017 at age, the ripe old age of 87, although it's not entirely clear if he was 87, 88, 86.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:23Josh Clark?

  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- Oh, 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.

• 47:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:46Josh Clark?

  Which is just-

• 47:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was almost like a do-over.

• 47:48Josh Clark?

  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.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. Chuck Barris.

• 48:08Josh Clark?

  There's one other thing. He invented syndication, Chuck.

• 48:12Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 48:12Josh Clark?

  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.

• 48:29Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. Man. I mean, a real visionary in a lot of ways and just a kind of a kooky guy.

• 48:35Josh Clark?

  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.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  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.

• 48:53Josh Clark?

  Oh, no.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  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, Vyvanse, and Strattera. Strattera, though, guys, is one of the non-stimulant ADHD medications. It is a selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor, and it's not a controlled substance. I couldn't help pointing it out because I'm a pharmacist and miscategorizing a pharmaceutical. It could keep listeners from trying something that could help them if they're adverse to amphetamines.

• 49:26Josh Clark?

  Great point.

• 49:27Speaker 01

  Regardless, I have to say I've always been meaning to send in an email. Thanks for the work you've done. Avid listener 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.

• 49:39Josh Clark?

  To get it.

• 49:40Speaker 01

  And that is from Michael On.

• 49:43Josh Clark?

  Thanks 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.

• 49:59Speaker 01

  Big time. It would seem like a pretty important tweet to a lot of folks and that means a lot to us.

• 50:03Josh Clark?

  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.

• 50:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I had even several personal friends that that knew they had ADHD that were like, I never knew this part of my life was due to that even. And that, you know, that's great. It makes us feel good.

• 50:33Josh Clark?

  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 [email protected].

• 50:48Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 51:04Josh Clark?

  Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota Ford Ability. And it starts with a great deal on an off-road-ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest-lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places. Curious people ask great questions. And here's one. What's something you wish there was an app for? Well, with Base44, you can build it yourself. Maybe it's a tool to organize a project, or track a hobby, or share knowledge, or solve a problem that's always bugged you.

• 51:49Josh Clark?

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• 52:34Speaker 03

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.