Carol Burnett Password incident

[BrandonFG]

A commercial using actors but wants you to believe they're actual people. Novel concept.

[clemon79]

Which reminds me, I have this website for cheap designer sunglasses that I've been DYING to tell y'all about...

You mean Blue Blockers?

No.

[TLEberle]

You mean Blue Blockers? (Who remembers THOSE ads? They featured people that were supposedly not rehearsed... people off the street... especially the guy that did a RAP to Blue Blockers... couldn't have been prompted on how to respond... as Bill Cosby used to say, "Riiiight!"

This is one of those times when it was unnecessary to try to top the joke that was made, or indeed to try to riff on it.

[pacdude]

You mean Blue Blockers? (Who remembers THOSE ads? They featured people that were supposedly not rehearsed... people off the street... especially the guy that did a RAP to Blue Blockers... couldn't have been prompted on how to respond... as Bill Cosby used to say, "Riiiight!"

This is one of those times when it was unnecessary to try to top the joke that was made, or indeed to try to riff on it.

Generally known as third joke.

[Matt Ottinger]

Somewhat related to the original debate, there was a comic being interviewed for the SNL40 special Sunday who went on and on about Richard Pryor and what a big deal it was that Richard Pryor was the host of the very first episode of SNL, and what an influence it was to that comic's life to see Pryor on that debut episode.  And of course Pryor wasn't on the first episode, George Carlin was.

Celebrities are not historians, and amusing or interesting anecdotes aren't always fact-checked.

[PYLdude]

Somewhat related to the original debate, there was a comic being interviewed for the SNL40 special Sunday who went on and on about Richard Pryor and what a big deal it was that Richard Pryor was the host of the very first episode of SNL, and what an influence it was to that comic's life to see Pryor on that debut episode.  And of course Pryor wasn't on the first episode, George Carlin was.

Celebrities are not historians, and amusing or interesting anecdotes aren't always fact-checked.

Natural followup: should they be?

[TLEberle]

Natural followup: should they be?

By whom? Who is going to fact-check some off-the-cuff remark? Is that person above reproach? What happens if someone's anecdote is proved to be horseapples? Is it better or worse to forget, transpose or make things up? If Charlie Sheen says that he spent the night before in a marathon session of Twister Boggle, where do you go from that? Do you ask him for witnesses who will pledge to tell the truth under forfeiture of earnings?

[PYLdude]

Natural followup: should they be?

By whom? Who is going to fact-check some off-the-cuff remark? Is that person above reproach? What happens if someone's anecdote is proved to be horseapples? Is it better or worse to forget, transpose or make things up? If Charlie Sheen says that he spent the night before in a marathon session of Twister Boggle, where do you go from that? Do you ask him for witnesses who will pledge to tell the truth under forfeiture of earnings?

Brian Williams says "hi".

[TLEberle]

Brian Williams says "hi".

The difference is that Brian Williams was deceiving millions of viewers after being repeatedly told by higher-ups "don't do that!" and hurting the company he worked for. Some comic who says "I looked up to Richard Pryor," and gets the fluffy fact wrong isn't. He may have misremembered and that's the end of it.

One of those is a Whew! blooper. The other isn't. Everyone has their own boolsh filter. It is up to each of us to use it, to download and install regular updates for it and to know how it works and how to interpret the results. We don't need a Truthiness Czar.

(In "Quizmaster," Mark Maxwell-Smith tells a story about when Milton Berle was on Hot Potato, and how he's being a pain in the neck. The question of "Who has been on the cover of TV Guide most?" comes up, Uncle Miltie names himself and is told to Sit Down. On YT there was (it might still be there) that particular episode, and so I went looking. As it happens Tom Dreesen gives the answer in question, not Milton. I don't think Mark was lying or being deceitful at all, I think he forgot what happened because it was nearly thirty years ago when Adam did the interview. It's just an honest and easy-to-make mistake.)

[SRIV94]

Consider this--in Chuck Barris' The Game Show King, he recounts the taping where Jaye P. Morgan bares her full upper frontals.  And mentions the two other judges sitting in with Jaye that week as Charlie Brill and David Letterman.

Brill never did anything without his lovely wife Mitzi McCall, and Dave was not there--he only did GONG once and it was about 10 months prior to the incident.  (The actual celebs that week were Gary Muledeer and L.A. Dodgers peanut vendor Roger Owens.)

Now, is it a case of Chuckie misremembering, or a case of "If I mention who was really on the panel I'll get a collective 'Who?' from my audience"?  And the answer might be a little of both.

(To be fair, he mentions the incident in better detail in Confessions but without mentioning who the other celebs were, but also mentions another incident that supposedly happened [involving an act with a kid riding a unicycle] while at the taping of that week--which actually happened two years earlier.  That one I'm willing to chalk up to misremembering.)

[whewfan]

Another case of Barris misremembering, in a recent interview, he doesn't remember Gene Gene the Dancing Machine's last name, guessing it was Gene Reynolds, but of course his name was Gene Patton. I am guessing Chuck didn't sign Gene's paychecks.

[SRIV94]

I am guessing Chuck didn't sign Gene's paychecks.

That's true.  Patton (like "Father Ed" Holland and other stagehands Chuckie used) worked for NBC.

[PYLdude]

I am guessing Chuck didn't sign Gene's paychecks.

That's true.  Patton (like "Father Ed" Holland and other stagehands Chuckie used) worked for NBC.

I'm assuming at some point Chuck did actually sign Gene's checks, though...he stayed with Gong until the end of the syndie series, right? Unless KTLA paid him or he worked pro bono.

[Adam Nedeff]

I'm assuming at some point Chuck did actually sign Gene's checks, though...he stayed with Gong until the end of the syndie series, right?

Yes, but after the show left NBC and all they had left was the syndie run, he appeared FAR less often. Almost all of the recurring gags--Father Ed, the bug-eating guy, Scarlett & Rhett--disappeared completely. Only Gene-Gene and The Unknown Comic remained, with the Unknown Comic appearing at least twice per five-episode taping session, but Gene's appearances were scaled way back. He may have appeared as few as three times during the 1978-79 season, and only appeared ONCE in the 1979-80 season.

[Adam Nedeff]

(In "Quizmaster," Mark Maxwell-Smith tells a story about when Milton Berle was on Hot Potato, and how he's being a pain in the neck. The question of "Who has been on the cover of TV Guide most?" comes up, Uncle Miltie names himself and is told to Sit Down. On YT there was (it might still be there) that particular episode, and so I went looking. As it happens Tom Dreesen gives the answer in question, not Milton. I don't think Mark was lying or being deceitful at all, I think he forgot what happened because it was nearly thirty years ago when Adam did the interview. It's just an honest and easy-to-make mistake.)

In the same vein, I included a story from Mike Gargiulo about shooting promos for "The $25,000 Pyramid" that he can't possibly be remembering right, based on what's appeared on YouTube since that conversation. I was still in a position where I could have removed the story from the text before I sent it off to the editors, but I left it as is because #1, it was a funny story, and #2, the way Mike told it convinced me that, at least in SOME form, it happened. It didn't exactly happen the way he remembered it, but I totally believed that 75-90% of it happened.