If there is a film out there whose title tells potential viewers what to expect better than this one, I havenât found it.
Chuck BARRIS, not Berris.
It is literally not possible to find it as a DVD, but it is on TPB ^^â âŚ
Ah. YouTube. At least you can find the traiiler:
there are copies available on the usenet
I have a DVD of it - donât ask why, I just manage to collect crap like that. I got it a few years back from the now defunct Revenge Is My Destiny web site that used to deal in a huge library of out-of-distribution Grindhouse, B-Movie, C-Movie and uber-obscure titles. Itâs not a bad film, per se, but it is (not unlike the show itself) a rather pointless exercise in displaying the cultural decline of its times - so, yeah, itâs crap. Makes a great companion piece though to Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind, the George Clooney film based on Chuck Barrisâ semi-fictional autobiography starring Sam Rockwell as Barris.
the theme music from the showâs closing credits is now in your head for the rest of the day.
BAAAAAAhhhh-dump
bomp
bomp
bomp
Crossing my fingers for a remake next summer! If Total Recall and The Wicker Man can make the cut, surely this has a chance.
I knew some guys who were on the Gong Show and they were invited to the premiere at the Chinese Theater. One of them couldnât make it so I got the ticket. Iâve actually seen the Gong Show Movie!
It was worse than you could possibly imagine. In addition to everything you would expect, it had long stretches of self indulgent inner dialogue by Chuck Barris, apparently thinking he was Woody Allen or something. Dreadful!
Are we sure the final product wasnât this?
They actually showed the Gong Show movie recently on either Cinemax, Starz or TMC, one of those channels.
I did catch a few minutes and it seemed like a cookie-cutter dramedy about the pressures of success and fame on Mr Barris, not awful but nothing to write home about, either.
I saw it many years ago on cable. I actually thought it was a great, great movie. I MAY have recorded it on VHS. Now Iâm pretty sure I did. That would be in storage right now.
This is the movie my grandmother died on. She had already been on the Gong Show once, and I guess they liked her so much that they had her in for some bit part in the movie (as a contestant). But she had a heart attack during the lunch break on set.
This was probably the way to go for her; she decided very late in life to get in show business and she was very happy doing even this. [I remember the songs she wrote and âperformedâ; this is what she had done on the Gong Show and hadnât gotten gonged only because she was so vivacious.] Even better, some NYT reporter was there writing about how the Gong Show exploited old people, which seems pretty quaint now given the depredations of reality shows.
If I recall the highlight (at least for an adolescent me) was Jaye P. Morgan flashing her chest. My apologies to Ms. Morgan should I be misremembering.
I remember that it was where I had seen David Letterman for the first time; he brilliantly said of one of the acts, âI could listen to that all day, and for a moment I thought I was going to have to.â
The longer The Gong Show ran, the weirder it got, the weirder Jaye P. Morgan got, and the less control Chuck Barris seemed to have of everything. I always wondered if Barris and Jaye P. were â yâknow â âEeent-err, Eeent-err, Eeent-errâŚâ
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
