"Gong Show" host Chuck Barris - RIP

RIP Chuck. I always liked him, like the Gong Show, liked the Dating Game for awhile, but boy do I hate that Newlywed Game.

 

R.I.P.

The Gong Show was legendary TV that could only have happened when it did. Loved it.

 

I love how the audience used to clap along with Barris when he did his intros. This show was required viewing with me and my friends.

 

I met him for a few minutes at a book signing for his Confessions book, that must have been 1984. Only 5 people showed up including me. He was upset, he made a funny crack at his publicist, and a funny crack at that mall bookstore. But to the five of us, he was pleasant and friendly. He signed my book and each book, and he left.
RIP.

 

I watched my DVD of "Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind" last night. It is still entertaining upon repeated viewings.

 

Pretty much all the game shows today suck, in the 70s game shows were king.
Like them all, Gong Show, Match Game PM, Family Feud, Hollywood Squares, and many more.

Almost all the game shows have been replaced with talk shows now.

 

Rip Chuck. Gene Gene the dancing machine! And the large lady that dropped her snuff pen. Chuck would be smiling every show, and it was a riot! Rip, Chuck you will be missed!

 

The commentary is good, too!
Cloony had a couple of scenes where sets were moved, while the camera stayed on Rockwell, and tells a funny story about how he made Drew Barrymore laugh hard at the end of the movie!

 

I remember a Gong Show movie as well, mostly for Chuck telling one of those dirty jokes that actually has a clean punch line.
The movie didn't have much of a plot, IIRC

 

Didn't some famous musician (Tommy Tedesco?) appear on The Gong Show?

 

I liked that after the first season, The Gong Show was like a big crazy, anything goes party. I see comparisons made to America's Got Talent, or whatever it's called, and there's no comparison. Today's shows are tame. I miss the wild and crazy 70s.

 

Yes, the clip is in the Wrecking Crew documentary.

 

The head boy at my high school was a huge GS/Barris fan and he sent him a beanie in our school colours. A year later my jaw dropped when Chuck opened a show wearing the beanie from our little high school!

 

I will never forget Rogie Vachon Day!

 

Dunno who the large woman was, but a large gal would walk on stage, drop her snuff pen? and pick it up, I think is was a pause in between acts, but I laughed so hard when she came out and picked up her Pen, yeup everyone was out there in tv land, like Sigmond the sea monster and land of the lost, you are right about shows being tame, modern shows try to gross you out more than make you laugh, its a shame. I dig the 4 dudes in N.Y the Impractical Jokers. They crack me up.

 

That show would have been right at home in the 70s!

 

I watched six Gong Shows yesterday, loved the originality of some of the gongees! Corky Carrol was the winner on one, and I have one of his LPs. Of course Oingo Boingo was one of the best remembered groups. A little girl in a purple butterfly costume danced for a few seconds before a tall black character with a net came out and that ended that. I'd forgotten how they had some of these weird little bits which were neither explained, gonged or judged, but just ended! Gene Gene dancing up a storm as stuff was thrown at him by stagehands, a failed escape artist act who lay on the floor in a straitjacket for half the show (until they need that jacket for a singer act which was led away), the munchkin graduate with the basket of confetti at the end... it was a golden age!