The first thing I do when I get up in the morning is flip through the guide to see what the movie channels are running all day. Last week, I noticed that Cinemax was not only running The Gong Show Movie, it was also running it in HD. This boggled my mind for two reasons. First, I’d forgotten all about the film, which was a cable staple when I was a kid. Second, it has never been released on home video in any format, much less in anything resembling HD. Needless to say, I programmed my DVR faster than you could say “Jamie Farr.”
For those who don’t know or don’t remember, The Gong Show Movie was conceived to be a raunchier version of the TV show. It makes extensive use of uncensored footage from the program, as well as genuine contestant auditions. Interspersed around these moments are fictional scenes in which host/producer Chuck Barris (playing himself) laments the notoriety his creation has brought. The main joke in the picture is that wherever Barris goes, people want to audition for him: in a hospital, a coffee shop, even standing at the urinal in a men’s room. Barris ultimately grows tired of it all – and also tired of the badgering he gets from an uptight network executive - so he flees to the middle of the desert where no one will bother him. The grand finale finds all of the other characters in the movie tracking him down and singing a song designed to convince him to come back. It works.
The Gong Show Movie is about as sloppy a construction as you will find. Directed by Barris (and co-written with Robert Downey, Sr.), the film has a sloppy, thrown-together quality that undoubtedly accounts for the scathing critical notices it received. The primary goal seems to be showing all the stuff that censors wouldn’t allow on TV; it barely feels like a real movie. The rest of it has an odd sour grapes feel. For better or worse, “The Gong Show” made Chuck Barris a very rich man. Why he would choose to denigrate it – and himself – on the big screen remains unclear. What’s most striking is that he brings such authenticity to his self-loathing production, casting real-life wife Robin Altman as herself, and including lots of “Gong Show” regulars such as The Unknown Comic, Gene Gene the Dancing Machine, and Jaye P. Morgan. (An unedited version of Morgan baring her breasts on the show is one of the movie’s signature scenes.) The whole message seems to be, “I hate this thing that made me who I am, but I’m going to keep doing it anyway.”
While painful to watch, The Gong Show Movie also has a legitimate curiosity factor that is hard to ignore. It is neither a mea culpa nor a defiant “screw you” to those who proclaimed “The Gong Show” one of the signs of the decline of Western civilization. Why, then, was it made in the first place? Clearly, Barris wanted us to see all the dirtiest bits from the show in their full glory. But that could have been done documentary-style. The fictional scenes play like self-flaggelation, with Barris sharing his misery with the audience. They are as unnecessary as they are bizarre. The whole project has a confused aura around it, as though the film itself has no idea why it exists.
Seen today, a couple of things are notable. Even the most extreme acts shown in the film are tame by today’s standards; the majority of this stuff would fly on network television with nary a peep from the censors. There are cameos from second-rate celebrities (i.e. Pat McCormick) who exemplify an era of cheesy entertainment long gone by. There’s even a pre-fame performance from Phil Hartman, who disturbingly and ironically brandishes a gun. These individual elements do nothing to mitigate the fact that the film itself is a pointless, disjointed, unfunny mess.
The Gong Show Movie was rejected by audiences; it played on 775 screens but only earned $1.4 million. (Astoundingly, the budget was about $6 million. What that money went toward is a great mystery, because it sure isn’t on the screen.) A major bomb in its day, Universal promptly buried the movie. It played on cable in an era when not many films were made available for broadcast, and that was pretty much it. Barris, of course, went on to write a book called “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,” in which he claimed to have a secret life as a government assassin. That book, while doubtlessly an enormous crock, is far more entertaining than his lone big screen foray. Come to think of it, most of the inspid acts on “The Gong Show” are more entertaining than this film. If you like fascinatingly terrible movies, though, it’s something you need to see at least once.
To read about another piece of forgotten garbage – The Bee Gees and Peter Frampton in Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – pick up a copy of my book, “Straight-Up Blatant: Musings From The Aisle Seat.” To order or get more information, click here.
