Posted on 02/14/2007 4:49:37 PM PST by PJ-Comix
You bet. BTW, I wrote comedy material for your namesake---Argus Hamilton. He was one of the few good guys but, well, I better not say it here. He's a good guy but he did have some problems. Roughed up his "girlfriend" a bit. Actually I don't blame him since it was Mitzi Shore (mother of Pauly). That sounds like a harsh comment on my part but you sort of have to meet Mitzi to understand.
I guess nobody remembers the early days of The Daily Show (back then it was Craig Kilborn as anchor). There was no live audience at first, at least for the first month. EVERYTHING klunked. It slowly built up steam. Now, of course, it's a cause celebre of liberal wussiness, but it was really a bomb out of the gate. I'd say it's quite likely that a show like this would have to find its legs, but I'm dubious that it will be given long enough to do so.
Why don't they come up with a comedy format OTHER than the Daily Show format? Somehow what FNC is doing sounds very unoriginal.
Oh come on. It's not like the Jr. High kids
hadn't already come up with the BO joke. It's
just not that important.
The concept of "dishing" is a great way to
turn the tables on liberals. The genre is
tried, tested and perfected. I can't wait.
Stupid. This show has all the subtlety of a buffalo fart.
DUmmie FUnnies 12-11-06 (Obama Orgasma), from post 31:
B.O. is their fantasy lover. "He's so dreamy!" they swoon to themselves. If they had Tiger Beat for female school teachers, B.O. Plenty would be the cover boy.
And I did a couple other B.O. references that thread. But I didn't do like a five-minute segment or whatever on just the B.O. joke. Also, the B.O. joke, once introduced, has a short shelf life.
Well, two reasons:
1) It's successful.
2) It's cheap. Standard set, small cast, mostly other people's video and a few studio guests. If you did staged comedy, you'd need sets, actors, props, etc. Talk shows, by comparison, are really cheap.
Successful and cheap is the Holy Grail of Television.
Frankly, I'd like to see them use a cast of impersonators for some of the name players, and do fake 'segments behind the news' kind of things (like Joe Biden trying to breathe life into his campaign by trying on blackface, stuff like that). I'd love to see them introduce a Barack Obama puppet, which is really nothing but an Armani suit on a wire armature that makes it look like it's empty, worked like a marionette from above during an in-studio interview (maybe cut back at the end of the interview to see who's pulling the puppet's strings...hehe...)
I hung out on the fringes of the Comedy Store back in the mid 70's and had slight acquaintance with some of the players before they were famous. Leno was okay but Letterman was a jerk. Freddie Prinze was a sad, lonely guy. Didn't know the Shores.
The Brits had a great show portraying poltical figures via puppetry. I remember a tremendous segment about Reagan called "Do Run Ron" or something like that using that tune.
I met Letterman too and agree with your assessment.
'Spitting Image.'
I think the (very brief) American version bombed, too.
I remember my Dad used to love the character of B.O. Plenty in the "Dick Tracy" comics. He used to love to say his name over and over again. I also got a kick from that character since he was always surrounded by flies.
To me the big mistakes at FNC are 1) having HQ in NYC; 2) hiring lawyers as info babes; 3) not giving a crap if it gets the stories having to do with science or geography close to right; 4) shep, bill-john-boy-walton-hemmer, harris-I-kant-read-faulkner-, colmes-the-clown, JuanWilliams, Olando-whats-his-name, the entire westcoastteam, etc,
Oh and Greta.
I remember it. Still trying to forget it. What happened is the the Americans didn't understand the subtlety of the original.
If I were Charles Henrickson, I'd be pissed off. . . .
If I were Charles Henrickson, I'd be uncertain whether they got the idea from me-which is very possible--or came up with it independently. That particular little idea is not as "fingerprintable" as something more developed would be.
UZBEKS!!!
True but at least you had the sense not to work it to death.
Drove me NUTS!!!
(video of Muslim terrorist)
'He blowed up good!'
'He blowed up REAL good!'
Okay, here is one idea I have for my proposed "Media Circus" comedy show. It would feature a "Ben and Jeffrey" ice cream commercial. The pitch would be that 10% of all the profits would go to saving endangered parking lots all over the world. Then they would show a time lapse video clip of a parking lot in the Amazon region slowly returning to the jungle with weeds and other plants sprouting up thru the cracks in the concrete. Part of the pitch would be the sale of "Endangered Parking Lots" calendars featuring beautiful color photos of parking lots in different locales.
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