Chilluminati Podcast - Episode 343: Chuck Barris: Unauthorized Autobiography

Episode Date: March 29, 2026

While Jesse’s away, Davis will play…and have Alex tell him and Mathas the story of an extremely groovy game show producer who claims to have secretly killed MANY people for the American government???CHILLUMINATI is a weekly comedy podcast hosted by Mike Martin, Jesse Cox and Alex Faciane. Hold on to your tin-foil hats and traverse the realms of the mysterious, supernatural, spooky and sometimes truly horrible - and your third eye will never be the same!Subscribe to our Patreon to support us and for extra content like full video episodes, weekly Minisodes, exclusive art, and more at http://patreon.com/CHILLUMINATIPODMERCH: https://theyetee.com/chilluminatiThank you to our sponsors:ZocDoc: Stop putting off those doctors appointments and go to http://www.zocdoc.com/CHILL to find and instantly book a doctor you love today. MintMobile: : If you like your money, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop plans at https://mintmobile.com/chill.Mike Martin - http://www.youtube.com/@themoleculemindset Jesse Cox - http://www.youtube.com/jessecox Alex Faciane - https://www.youtube.com/@StarWarsOldCanonBookClub/Editor: DeanCutty Producer: Hilde @ https://bsky.app/profile/heksen.bsky.social Show Art: Studio Melectro @ http://www.instagram.com/studio_melectro Logo Design: Shawn JPB @ https://twitter.com/JetpackBragginSOURCES:[BOOK] Confessions of a Dangerous Mind - Chuck Barris

Go ahead and do it on the iPad. Okay. Got this little pre-chatter, Dean. All right, here we go. It's going to be in the episode. I'll listen to do it. Dean doesn't do shit. Hello, right?

Now it won't be in the episode, for sure. You absolutely guaranteed it. If that's the way to get it to happen, you just got to say something mean to Dean. Why are you saying it like he's like a, like some sort of demon that we must please? He's a deanin. A demon.

Hello. Yeah, you can go to this. These are bad bits. Cut these. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Illuminati podcast, episode 343. As always, I'm one of your host, Mike Martin. joined by one of my typical co-host, Alex Fasiana.

The Leon S. Kennedy of L.A. The Leon S. Kennedy of L.A. And today, Jesse is gone. And we are joined by friend of the show, fan of the show, member of the Warb Zone, Internet famous young boy. God. Except for that last one, I think a lot of that applies. You kind of are like a young boy.

Like, you're like, sorry, ladies. He's made like you're like the like the cute one right like if I'm the if I'm the haggard one you're the cute one right I'll I'll take it I'm also the well I guess we're all anxious in our own ways. Oh yes. Oh yes. You guys should have seen. I know that you guys noticed that Davis has the exact same audio setup that he had in Christmas time of 2005. Yeah, 2005. However, I have backup audio maybe running on an iPad in the room with him. So hopefully it'll be a little better maybe we'll see. I don't know. But this is this. This is the real Davis. I want you to know that you're getting him unfiltered. This is how he approaches everything. He uses Firefox instead of Chrome.

It's just a little different. That's not true. I did have to switch from a sleeveless shirt to a sleeved shirt. That was your own. That was your own. You're like 95% getting the real. You deprived Patreon. And listen, I was willing to drive to, I was willing to drive.

I was willing to drive all the way to Davis's house to fix his audio for him and lend him an entire setup. But I was stymied because all over. old Steinberg audio interfaces, use the fucking old school house shaped USB, which is like from a million years ago. And no, I don't have like an extra one laying around. So it's fun to watch two old guys try to describe cables. Like, you have an XLR cable? Which shape is that? But it shouldn't be this way because you boys have been in the technology online business since like your teens. So you shouldn't sound like old men describing cables. You should know what you're doing. It's a miracle that we even remember anything that's

happened. Do you remember before this when we were the children and we knew everything till from the 40s to now? And now like everything is sped up by like 4,000 times so that it's impossible to even comprehend a single month of time as a thing anymore? It's crazy. The fact that

we even can say the little house USB cable, that's like amazing that we were around for that. That's like being like talking about meeting the Wright brothers in real life. Also also in my defense, For Warp Zone, I am both the writer and the talent. Both are the positions that don't have to, you don't know, need to know how to do anything.

Like everybody else does all the work. I just get the dream. Yeah. What a privileged life you lean. So welcome, so welcome back Davis to the show. Davis has now been on the show a fair amount of times. I don't know if he's a live show mainstaple. Yeah, I don't know if you've clicked Crendor.

I still feel like Crenor's got you. You might have taken out Michael Repairis now, though. I don't know if you got Michael Roparas. He was our Greenstone guy. So he got like shanghide into being like the original Steve Martin of the show. But then Crendor kind of like slow but surely like tortoise in the hair came up from behind. And he's like the main leader now. Right.

And so on next week. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the thing. Even if you do pass Crendor right now at the at the least he's back next week to body you. So it's like first of all as it should be like Crenor is just a much funny. person than me. I don't even, I'm like, I love to do things with him because I'm just in awe of him.

So it should be that way. But what people don't realize is there's a secret after show show that happens every episode where it's when I go do either Scary Game Squad or Star Wars and I have just listened to an episode and then I want to talk about whatever you guys talked about for like a fucking hour. So there's like, it is crazy like that you just get to go talk to us after. It's like you listen. It's like weird having like some people that I know and listen to their podcast that I don't get to talk to and like a kind of parissocial thing. But then because I get to talk to you guys days, if not even shorter after you did it, I feel like I have my own special

VIP show pass. Yeah. Yeah. And you can get your own VIP show pass at patreon.com slash Chaluminati pod, which does not include a post show brief by all of us. That's just a that's in the Davis tier only. But if you do go there, you get minisodes after every episode. That's pretty good. You get episodes of rotten popcorn, our show where last time we got so mad at Lou Elizondo. We got so disappointed in Lou Elizando last time. So if you want to go hear that and get ready for maybe the most on brand movie event ever for the Shlubinati, age of disclosure, whatever it's called. Or what's the movie movie called? Disclosure Day. Disclosure Day. That's the one. That's going be way more interesting. I think we're going to swap titles. I'm sorry. Age of Disclosure fits Spielberg's

movie so much more than Disclosure Day sounds like a bake sale. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. It really does. So Davis, usually I ask our guests like about themselves and like the crazy stories they've had in their lives. But last time you told us a story about I can't remember it was you directly or if it was Shro or who it was. But there was like some kind of trip. Yeah, there's some kind of like truck, some weird like Austin Powers government truck on the side of the road. You were driving out to Vegas for Evo and then on the side of the road was like an overturned big rig that just looked like the only thing that my brain could think it was like the Hulk or something burst out of it. We like looked.

We found nothing about it. It's just a thing where I have to keep going on with my life. And I like super eight. The other weird thing that I had that maybe I talked about with you, but I was like walking my dog. There was like a palm tree. And I caught something on the corner of my eye. I turned and I swear to God I thought it was like an old

like Baba Yaga like move behind the tree and I was like my body went all fight or flight and I was like I have to just I'm a man of science I'm a Jesse I have to just like You really rolled up your sleeves by the way I just want to point out you changed into a not Once you said it was for Patriot I'm like come on we got to give him something

Okay all right well yeah all right Check out these little squirt guns His little squirt guns I don't like that He's little super soakers. CPS 3,000. I wonder how they're still doing. Anywho, I like circle strafed using my counterstrike years of counterstrike training around the thing.

And then it ended up just being a squirrel that like was working its way around. But the tail and my ADHD mind created a like. You made the Baba Yaga. It's like a Baba Yaga and it was like, oops, you saw me. Like. The Baba Yaga. John Wig. That's kind of the most recent thing.

And that was like, okay. the brain will just fill in gaps. It'll madlibs and it's... Oh, yeah. I agree with that. It's crazy. I always tell that story about the thing I saw on the fence that one time for hours and it was literally nothing. But because you watch the show so much, I was also kind of wondering, since we're still in the like period of our show that is the sexy alien time right now, this is maybe, I think this might be the last episode in that in that cycle.

Yeah. What are your thoughts on like Bill Tompkins? Elizabeth Clare, Whitley Streber, all the stuff that we've talked about. I love aliens and I like the possibility of them, but I also in all things am about being like good faith in your discovery. And I feel like particularly with the UFO stuff and alien stuff, there's a lot of obviously not credible stuff that somehow is elevated to the level of like scripture or like that people just cite, even though it's like, like, to me, obviously bunk or so suspect that it should just be like stricken and it should be like known that you can't trust it. So when you were like, this is like a commonly sourced guy and then you're reading some of the quotes about the alien lady, the sexy like madmen people,

you're like, I don't know, when I'm on the team of something and somebody is like not bringing it, I don't like fight other teams. I like try to clean out house. It'd be like, we are adults. We don't talk about like sexy women alien that know everything and then we got to control our boy yeah like this is it looks just really bad and it doesn't make any sense like yeah and you know honestly that's what we got to talk about that stuff because you got to put it in context that's the whole point of everything is that nobody none of these alien people who who love to write like these long posts on reddit that like just grab from like the lore all around them that's constantly flying. They don't put it in context for you. They don't say, by the way, this guy

hallucinated that like a bunch of secretaries were like guiding him along towards building a moon base. But like, you know, like maybe that will change your opinion of him. But like, yeah, I don't know. That's that's a long and short of where we're at with this sort of thing. But, you know, to go along with that for one last hurrah, since Jesse isn't here to mess with. and because Davis might actually even be more like anti-wonder and joy in his skepticism than Jesse if you get to know him for a while. Let's go ahead and leave the aliens at the door today. I'm not going to subject to you.

I don't think Davis is anti-wonder. I think Davis challenge. He wants the wonder to be true. You didn't have him on during a cultism season. Dude, like the like fights. If we had. The post show was... If there's still recordings of pre- Scary Game Squad or other stuff,

where, like, Jesse and I are shitting all over chaos magic. And Alex is trying to, like, Neo- Alistair Crowley is the worst chaos magician. And I'm like, guys... Logic bouncing off him or he's dodd, it's like... They're literally like, don't listen to Alistair Crowley. He doesn't know shit about chaos magic. The whole thing is messed up.

I'm like, guys, we're like not even in the same computer program right now. Alastaircraft He argued Alastaira Crowley's chaos magic work because he influenced history whether you think he's a nutbag or not He's the exact opposite of chaos magic In every way

I have just Broadly say it I have a lot of wonder I'm deeply deeply scientific But that doesn't mean I don't like I'm not spiritual And for me

Sure spirituality is like acknowledging the fact that we are like Little dumb shits In a like infinitely unknowable galaxy and it's like Go ahead and do it on the iPad. Okay.

Got this little pre-chatter, Dean. All right, here we go. It's going to be in the episode. I'll listen to it. Dean doesn't do shit. Hello, right? Now it won't be in the episode, for sure. You absolutely guaranteed it.

If that's the way to get it to happen, you just got to say something mean to Dean. Why are you saying it like he's like a, like some sort of demon that we must please? He's a deanin. A demon. Hello. Yeah, you can go out this.

These are bad bits. Cut these. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Illuminati podcast, episode 343. As always, I'm one of your host, Mike Martin, joined by one of my typical co-hosts, Alex Fasciane, the Leon S. Kennedy of L.A. The Leon S. Kennedy of L.A. And today, Jesse is gone.

And we are joined by friend of the show, fan of the show, member of the Warp Zone, internet famous young boy. God. Except for that last one, I think a lot of that applies. You kind of are like a young boy. Like, you're like, sorry, ladies. He's made like you're like the like the cute one right like if I'm the if I'm the haggard one you're the cute one right I'll take it I'm also the well I guess we're all anxious in our own ways oh yes oh yes you guys should have seen I know that you guys noticed that Davis has the exact same audio setup that he had in Christmas time of 2005 yeah 2005 however I have backup audio maybe running on an iPad in the room with him so hopefully it'll be a little better maybe we'll see I don't know but this is this is this is this This is the real Davis.

I want you to know that you're getting him unfiltered. This is how he approaches everything. He uses Firefox instead of Chrome. It's just a little different. That's not true. I did have to switch from a sleeveless shirt to a sleeved shirt. That was your own. That was your own.

You're like 95% getting the real. You deprived Patreon. And listen, I was willing to drive to, I was willing to drive. I was willing to drive all the way to Davis's house to fix his audio for him and lend him an entire setup. But I was stymied because all old. old Steinberg audio interfaces, use the fucking old school house shaped USB, which is like from a million years ago. And no, I don't have like an extra one laying around. So it's fun to watch two old guys try to describe cables. Like, do you have an XLR cable? What shape is that?

But it shouldn't be this way because you boys have been in the technology online business since like your teens. So you shouldn't sound like old men describing cables. You should know what you're doing. It's a miracle that we even remember anything that's happened. Do you remember before this when we were the children and we knew everything till from the 40s to now? And now like everything is sped up like by like 4,000 times so that it's impossible to even comprehend a single month of time as a thing anymore. It's crazy. The fact that we even can say the little house USB cable, that's like amazing that we were around for that. That's like being like talking about meeting the Wright brothers in real life. Also, also, in my defense, for Warp Zone, I am both the writer and the talent.

Both are the positions that don't have to, you don't know, need to know how to do anything. Like, everybody else does all the work. I just get the dream. Yeah. What a privileged life you lead. So welcome, so welcome back Davis to the show. Davis has now been on the show a fair amount of times. I don't know if he's a live show mainstaple.

Thank you so much to Zok Doc for sponsoring today's episode. and do me a favor. Raise your hand if you've been putting off a doctor's appointment. Yeah, hands up over here too. Listen to something feels a little off instead of doing something about it. I do what most normal people do. I do them scroll my symptoms. Convince myself it's either nothing or something catastrophic and then just don't do anything about it. Maybe load up on some vitamins from feeling really, really spicy. Hope for the best, maybe. Tell myself I'll do it later. Does that sound familiar to you? While this year we're doing things differently, Doc Doc is a free app and website that helps you find and book high quality in network doctors.

so you can actually find someone you love, not just someone who has an opening six months from now. We're talking over 150,000 providers across all 50 states. Whether you need dermatology, dentistry, primary care, eye care, any of the other 200 plus specialties on Zoc Doc, you can search by specialty or symptom and build the care team that actually fits your life. You want to go in person? Great.

For a video visit, you can do that too. Before you book, you can browse thousands of verified patient reviews, real feedback that gives you a genuine sense of who this person is before you're sitting in their office. And when you're ready and you see their real time availability, you book instantly. No phone tag, no hold music, none of that stuff. Appointments typically happen within 24 to 72 hours of booking and you can even score same day appointments. If I needed a doctor, this is exactly how I find mine. It just makes too much

sense and makes my life way too easy. So stop putting off those doctor's appointments. Go to Zococ.com slash chill to find it instantly book a doctor you love today. That's ZOC. doc.com slash chill. Zocdoc.com slash chill. Thanks to Zoc doc for sponsoring today's video episode. Whatever it is. Yeah, I don't know if you've

Clendor. I still feel like Crenor's got you. You might have taken out Michael Reparres now, though. I don't know if you got Michael Roparas. He was our greenstone guy. So he got like Shanghaied into being like the original Steve Martin of the show. But then Crenor kind of like slow.

but surely like tortoise in the hair came up from behind and he's like the main leader now right? Is there on next week? Yeah. Yeah. And that's the thing. Even if you do pass Crendor right now,

at the least he's back next week to body you. So it's like first of all, as it should be like Crenor is just a much funnier person than me. I don't know. Like I'm not even, I don't even. I'm like, I love to do things with him because I'm just in awe of him.

So it should be that way. But what people don't realize is there's a secret. after show show that happens every episode where it's when I go do either scary game squad or Star Wars and I have just listened to an episode and then I want to talk about whatever you guys talked about for like a fucking hour. So there's like it is crazy like that you just get to go talk to us afterwards. Like you listen. It's like weird having like some people that I know and listen to their podcast that I don't get to talk to and like a kind of parisocial thing. But then because I get to talk to you guys days, if not even short.

after you did it. I feel like I have my own special VIP show pass. Yeah. Yeah. And you can get your own VIP show pass at patreon.com slash Chaluminati Pod, which does not include a post show brief by all of us. That's just a, that's in the Davis tier only. But if you do go there, you get minisodes after every episode. That's pretty good. You get episodes of rotten popcorn, our show where last time we got so mad at Lou Elizondo. We got so disappointed. it in Lou Elizondo last time. So if you want to go hear that and get ready for maybe the most on brand movie event

ever for the Chlubinati, Age of Disclosure, whatever it's called, or what's the movie movie called? Disclosure Day. Disclosure Day. That's the one. That's going to be way more interesting. I think the swap titles. I'm sorry.

Age of Disclosure fits Spielberg's movie so much more than Disclosure day. Sounds like a bake sale. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. It really does. So, Davis, usually I ask our guests like about themselves. and like the crazy stories they've had in their lives.

But last time you told us a story about, I can't remember it was you directly or if it was Shro or who it was. But there was like some kind of. Yeah, there's some kind of like truck, some weird like Austin Powers government truck on the side of the road. You were driving out to Vegas for Evo. And then on the side of the road was like an overturned big rig that just looked like. The only thing that my brain could think of was like the Hulk or something burst out of it.

We would like looked. we found nothing about it. It's just a thing where I have to keep going on with my life. You saw. I think about it. The other weird thing

that I had that maybe I talked about with you, but I was like walking my dog. There was like a palm tree and I caught something on the corner of my eye

and I turned and I swear to God. I thought it was like an old like Baba Yaga like move behind the tree. Oh, no. My body went all

fight or flight and I was like, I had, have to just, I'm a man of science. I'm a Jesse. You immediately rolled up your sleeves, by the way. I just want to point out, you changed into a... Well, once you said it was for Patriot.

I'm like, come on, we got to give them something. Okay, all right. Yeah, all right. Check out these little squirt guns. His little squirt guns. I don't like that. These little super soakers. CPS 3,000.

I wonder how they're still doing. Anywho, I like circle strafed using my counterstrike, use of counterstrike training around the thing. And they ended up just being a squirrel that, like it was working its way around, but the tail and my ADHD mind created a like... You made the Baba Yaga. It's like a Baba Yaga and it was like,

Oop, you saw me, like... The Baba Yaga. John Wig. That's kind of the most recent thing. And that was like, okay, the brain will just fill in gaps. It'll madlibs and it's... Oh, yeah.

I agree with that. It's crazy. I always tell that story about the thing I saw on the fence that one time for hours and it was literally nothing. But because you watch the show so much, I was also kind of wondering, since we're still in the, like, period of our show that is the sexy alien time right now, this is maybe, I think this might be the last episode in that, in that cycle. Yeah. What are your thoughts on like Bill Tompkins?

Elizabeth Clare, Whitley Streber, all the, all the stuff that we've talked about. I love aliens and I like the possibility of them, but I also in all things am about being like good faith in your discovery. and I feel like, particularly with the UFO stuff and alien stuff, there's a lot of obviously not credible stuff that somehow is elevated to the level of like scripture or like that people just cite, even though it's like, to me, obviously bunk or so suspect that it should just be like stricken and it should be like known that you can't trust it. So when you were like, this is like a commonly sourced guy, and then you're reading some of the quotes about the alien lady, the sexy, like madmen people, you're like, I don't know, when I'm on a team of something and somebody is like not bringing it, I don't like fight other teams. I like try to clean out house. It'd be like, we are adults. We don't talk about like sexy women alien that know everything and then we got to control our boy. Yeah. It looks just really bad and it doesn't make any sense.

Yeah. And honestly, that's what we got to talk about that stuff because you got to put it in context. That's the whole point of everything is that nobody, none of these alien people who love to write like these long posts on Reddit that like just grab from like the lore all around them that's constantly flying. They don't put it in context for you. They don't say, by the way, this guy hallucinated that like a bunch of secretaries were like guiding him a towards building a moon base. But like, you know, like, maybe that will change your opinion of him. But like, yeah, I don't know.

That's that's a long and short of where we're at with this sort of thing. But, you know, to go along with that for one last hurrah, since Jesse isn't here to mess with. And because Davis might actually even be more like anti-wonder and joy in his skepticism than Jesse, if you get to know him for a while. let's go ahead and leave the aliens at the door today. I'm not going to subject to you. I don't think Davis is anti-wonder. I think Davis, Davis challenge.

He wants the wonder to be true. You didn't have them on during occultism season. Dude, dude, like the, the like fights. If we had, the post show was. If there's still recordings of pre- Scary Game Squad or other stuff, where like Jesse and I are shitting all over chaos magic. And Alex is trying to like. they're like,

Alistair Crowley is the worst chaos magician. And I'm like, guys. Logic bouncing off him or he's died. It's like, they're literally like, don't listen to Alistair Crowley. He doesn't know shit about chaos magic. He's,

the whole thing is messed up. I'm like, guys, we're like not even in the same computer program right now. Alster Krau is Alistair because he influenced history whether you think he's a nutbag or not. He's the exact opposite of chaos magic in every way.

I have just, broadly say it. I have a lot of wonder. I'm deeply, deeply scientific, but that doesn't mean I don't, like, am not spiritual. And for me, spirituality is, like, acknowledging the fact that we are, like, little dumb shits in a, like, infinitely unknowable galaxy. And it's, like, more humble to, like, try and take what we know, use, like, science and always be looking for the truth. But, like, focusing it through lenses of spirituality, like treating others as sacred people and like trying to have as little negative impact on others in the environment, like that kind of stuff, more than being like, there's a dude and he's white and he's God and he's also his son.

And also, he's everything else. And that's the third thing. You're like, this is poor world building. So, you know, call it whatever you'd like. I'll call it what I call it. You call it whatever you'd like. We're going to leave the alien nonsense at the door today. Today we're going to focus instead on a mystery rooted in things that as a cart carrying member of the scary game squad, I know for sure that Davis likes.

And these things are television production, violent government intrigue, and a situation which, while unlikely, can neither be properly confirmed or denied because as crazy as it is, what happens in this story today remains entirely. plausible in some way. And at the end, let's just see how we feel about a wild out there story when it isn't also casually asking you to forget literally everything you know about our place in the universe. You know what I'm saying? Okay. Like, let's just know that by the end of the story, we're going to still know everything

about the world that we know now, but we're just going to learn some entry. This is the story of reality television pioneer game show host and writer Chuck Barron. and a series of contract killings that he may or may not have performed at the behest of the Central Intelligence Agency during several decades of the previous century. And rather than put any type of interesting spin on it or work too hard or do any pesky Alex creative writing today, in the name of Chuck Barris and pure lowbrow entertainment, right? today I'm going to just tell you this story based entirely on Chuck Barris's own book on the topic, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, which I was surprised to find is no longer in print, which I find sad because it's a pretty fun, good book to read for a lark. And I'm going to supplement it with a bunch of information from articles and pages

that you can easily find on Google without working too hard myself, either to put the facts together or even forcing you to learn any new words or concepts today that might distract you from whatever else you're doing while you're listening to your personal non-AI-generated content harvest of the week, right? That's nice, right? Listen, in all celebratory of less AI content with the downfall of SORA, we are grateful this day that SORA is gone. Even though I am not going to use AI, I still will not be that interesting, which actually, I find a little ironic today considering that for the majority of his life, Chuck Barris's main

source of self-loathing came from the fact that people were disappointed in him that he wasn't trying harder to make entertainment with higher complex concepts and lasting cultural value. People were actually pissed that he was not making it more intellectual and and hard to understand at a glance. This is my feeling toward James Cameron at the moment. Yes. Yes. Well, but with with Chuck Barris, it's close.

sort of like Jerry Springer, but we'll get to that in a minute. I digress. Got you. Today is all about getting right down to it. So first, here's what Wikipedia says about Chuck Barris's life, aka the official story, as it were, probably a good idea to lock this part down right out the gate. So first, so that we can just go back, slot in all the weird stuff from the book where it fits. Once you understand what kind of life Chuck Barrett's led, it will make the whole situation much more easy that I don't have to just stop and be like, by the way, Let's talk about this show. I'm just going to tell you the TV part, and then we're going to go through the other part.

Chuck Barris was born Charles Hirsch Barris. That's a hard one to say. On June 3rd, 1929 to Edith and Nathaniel Barris, who worked as a dentist in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And they lived specifically in the Lower Marion Township, which is in that area. His family was Jewish. He had a Jewish-American upbringing. And amazingly, his uncle, Harry Barris, was one of the earliest, Scat Singers.

He played in Paul Whiteman's Rhythm Boys, which had Bill, Bing Crosby, not Bill Cosby, Bing Crosby. Different. That's a different one. Totally different type of guy. Both of them, quite awful to women. Bing Crosby, Al Rinker, were the other two rhythm boys.

Harry Barris also appeared in 57 films, both as a musician and comedian. And Davis Callback was contracted to play at Coconut Grove in residence for several years in Los Angeles. Wait, you mean Bohemian Grove? The Coconut Grove, which we kept saying instead of Bohemian Grove, which was at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

There is a coconut grove. Yeah, there is a coconut grove. He did it in the early 30s before dying of alcoholism in Burbank in 1962 at age 57, which may or may not have been an early omen of what happens when a Barris collides with the culture of Hollywood. But we'll come back to that statement later in the episode. after Chuck graduated high school at Lower Marion High School, he went on to Drexel University,

which is also nearby in Philadelphia, where he worked at the triangle, which is the name of the student paper at that school. And he graduated from there in 1953, before immediately shooting up to New York City to join the page program, as in like Kenneth from 30 Rock vibes, with the little jacket and shit at NBC Studios.

Literally, he had the job that Kenneth had, has in the show. This was sort of his first foothold into television and the entertainment industry in general, though, like I said, his family was already in. He kind of knew how it works. They're pretty cosmopolitan. He also apparently worked briefly as a steel worker and a teleprompter salesman, weirdly, but very quickly in a relatively short amount of time compared to his like contemporaries at the NBC page program. He kind of shot up the ladder. He kind of spoke television pretty well. eventually he moved to ABC where he worked in standard

and practices at American bandstand which filmed in Philly he got married to his first wife Lynn in 1957 and famously around that time if you're a TV history nerd Barris found himself involved in investigating a huge payola scandal

you guys know what Paola is I'm familiar with the word It sounds like peyote but I assume it's not So everybody used to get their music from the radio right and somebody controlled what music was played on the radio. So if you pay that guy, that's a quick way to get somebody famous. That's Peola.

And so Dick Clark was like implicated or something, though according to Chuck Barris, he was pretty clean. But it ended up Chuck Barris basically had to like tail and track Dick Clark all the time at American bandstand in the studio and stuff just to make sure that he wasn't taking money for plays, which is crazy because it was Dick Clark, right? Like this is the New Year's Eve guy for many years. Surely you guys know who Dick Clark is. I don't even think Mathis missed Dick Clark.

No, I even know who he is. Isn't that crazy? The ball, the ball dropped. And at this point of culture in my life, I would be surprised if he wasn't taking money. Like, I don't know. The more popular the thing, I feel like the more compromised it is. But he wasn't.

But he wasn't. That's the whole point. He actually exculpated him and proved he wasn't involved, took the evidence. He'd like made reports. They took it all to Washington. And they've been close friends ever since. And in fact, obviously, they're both dead now, but they've remained close friends for many years. And in fact, here's a quote from Dick Clark about Barris for Davis to read for us. I'm going to drop that right here in the studio chant for you there. There you go. I wouldn't want to live his life because he hasn't been happy all his life.

All I think is if you can find work, stay healthy, find someone to share it with. You're the ultimate success. He's had some of the pieces of the puzzle, but not all of them. You know what the sad part about it is? Barris has a reputation of lowering the bar of television and the standards and all, but he had a great feel for what people wanted, and he couldn't take the criticism. Yeah, pretty, pretty crazy. Apply that criticism to so many people on YouTube.

It's, it's, it's, it's, did you see a clavicular? Oh my God, yes. He got, he got roasted so hard by, uh, what's her name? on Sarah Slyme or whatever her name is on S&L. And he was like, Who is clavicular? He's the looks maxing guy. Oh, okay.

I think you've mentioned this or just him. He like reacted to it and he was like, man, millennials have no culture, man. And it's like. Yeah. But I'm kind of on Chuck Barris's side. He seems like he got a good head on his shoulders. Like, I don't know.

He's a really good writer, so I like him. Anyway, after that, as you do in the entertainment industry, he wanted to try his hand at many different aspects of it. And that included pop music writing and production, of course, like you do in the 60s, when anybody could just do it. And in 1962, around the same time his daughter, Della, was born, rock and roll singer, Freddie Cannon, recorded one of Chuck Berris's songs, which is called Palisades Park. and he actually sent it up to number three on the Billboard 100 charts where it sat for two weeks became the single biggest hit of Freddie Cannon's career. It's pretty not been Chuck Barris wrote it. And we now know because of his investigation that it was legit.

Maybe I just like old rock singles. Maybe that's just cracked to me or maybe it's because I grew up listening to KRTH, K Earth 101, oldies. Maybe those things are related to each other as well. I don't know. But personally, I knew this. song way before I knew anything about Chuck Barris. I think this song totally whips ass. Here's a link to the song. You can check it out in the show notes. But you guys just give it a little

what do you guys think? And I want you to kind of keep it in your mind because it's going to come back later. Surely you've heard this song. You maybe have recognized the riff. Okay, this actually this does whip ass. Yeah. This is super familiar. You know the song. Eventually it's like the best way can describe it. It's like the best way can describe it. It sounds like it's from the 50s. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, yeah, it's literally from 1962. Yeah.

I feel like this song is like its own format of like how you do a, like you. There's probably like a bunch of songs that have this. It's like the beach boy. It's like the imagery of like a black and white movie with girls with really long skirts swing into the music as their skirts are twirling back. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

It's it's literally like when they'd like theme songs, they'd be like, what do teenagers like to do? Okay. Let's, they go to theme parks. So Palisades Park is. Alicades Amusement Park in New Jersey. Outer streets. It's like exactly like that. They're like, they love that.

They're like, I'm going on all the rides. You know, it's like, they're just like, yeah. They're right. I do like to go on the rides. It's basically surfing safari or surfing USA, but for like every, every like hobby. But yeah, eventually, but the song Wips. Still working in ABC, he was promoted eventually to the daytime programming division, which made him move to L.A.

because that's where all the, like, daytime programming was recorded, because it's bigger, you know, the lots were bigger. And specifically, he had the job of deciding whether or not game shows would be picked up or stay on the air and stuff like that. And he would, like, order shows to a series and stuff like that. But slowly, the sort of sad, like, cyclical rigmarole of it all started to get the best of him. And he started to think that maybe the reason all these game shows were getting canceled all the time was actually just because they were kind of shitty game shows and that there were better ideas

out there. And he complained about it. It worked so much. And he got so vocal about it that eventually his bosses were like, why don't you just like produce game shows, you fuck ass? Like, shut the fuck up. He's like, now I hate it. And they're like, no, go do it. You're going to be rich. And he was like, fucking fine. So in 1965 in June. Sorry, not to interrupt, but I forget where I heard this, but like, isn't it like, wasn't it back then TV was seen as just disposable entertainment? like low brow entertainment because it was free and you can do it, you get it at home rather than like,

well, in the same way that it's like radio. YouTube may have been seen as low brow or like cheap when, when you know, TV was hitting its golden age of like 2010, high end like Game of Thrones TV kind of storytelling. And YouTube was seen as that.

Yeah, just to give an idea, there was no way to watch something at all. Are you kidding? YouTube Red Brief series are just, well, unless I was in one of those. Unless, uh, I fought Matt Pat with a sword. The, or actually, I think I had an axe.

I can't remember. It was weird. I've led a weird life. The way that TV was back then is you couldn't rewatch anything. There was no on-demand anything, of course. I feel like I'm talking to people that definitely know this. But the whole point was, you know, it's like imagine that you would listen to like a specific morning drive time radio show again. It's like silly to imagine that you would do.

that. Why would you ever do that? But, uh, you know, famously, Dr. Who, which is like today, like as big as any like giant long running film movie TV franchise. Like famously, they're missing like tons and tons of their original episodes because at one point, they were running low on tape and to like save money. They just were like, all right. These things are old. Let's just, let's just ditch him. And they literally like just the other day, they found like another one recently. Like, It's, it's like already on. It's like going to be streaming next month. That's great.

I did not know that about the Doctor Who that they're just like episodes that are gone. Like some of the best episodes like from the era from like the classic era like the second doctor got fucked. Actually a lot of them got fucked. But dude, it's like tragic when you just hear about like a fire that happened and destroyed the thing. But then when you're like, oh no, yeah, we just like, we just wiped it. Yeah, you just taped it over. It's crazy because Britain. It's crazy because Britain is like, you know.

an empire. And so, like, they had all these affiliates in, like, far away countries that broadcast BBC. And so, like, a lot of the stuff that was saved

was just because, like, some place in Africa or some shit, like, kept the tapes more preciously because they didn't get as many tapes. And so they just had them. And so some stuff was just,

that's how it was saved. And that's, like, totally nuts. But so in June of 1965, thus began, Chuck Barris Productions, where almost immediately Barris found astronomical success with a show that he pitched himself. Originally, it was called People Poker,

and it had this whole complex situation where you were trying to read people and figure out what they were thinking and all this stuff, and he kind of boiled it down and boiled it down. The name alone is like People Poker. It's funny and it's also like, uh-uh. It's like a Tim Robinson, like, what's the idea? It's called People Poker. right away I have a note

but yeah he was gonna that was the idea but eventually whittled it down whittled it down and pitched a show called The Dating Game which I'm sure you've heard of Which at least you've heard the bachelor's walk on theme I'll toss it into the chat for you guys You guys can see the show in the dating game This is called Spanish Flea and it's by Herb Alpert

and the Tijuana Brass I'm sure you know the song Oh immediately Oh shit Oh, Yeah, I know that Yeah, I know that Yeah, I just learned about the oh no Knuckles thing

Like literally yesterday There's like things that I just have heard a bunch And I just didn't have the context for it I know that yeah, the song is like used a lot This is why it's amazing that we know about the house-shaped USB cable Anyway, just in case you're not a millennial, like, culture librarian and haven't heard of the dating game, Midwesterners and Patreon folk will probably remember that last time they heard from Davis, he was with us on stage at our most recent live show where he actually played the dating game for all of you as the bachelor slash contestant and had to choose between three cryptids that were played by Jesse Matheson Crendor. Isn't that weird? Isn't that crazy?

Chupacabra, by the way, does not eat babies. He thought the chupacabra ate human babies. He was like, all I know is you eat babies. I don't have self-confidence in anything. I'm not a betting person. But I thought one fact I knew. I was going in, waiting to hear about the eating babies. And it didn't get it.

Yeah. But basically the way the show works is the bachelor sits behind a screen and there's three bachelorette. So the bachelorette is behind the screen. There's three bachelors. And they like ask them questions blind. And based on only their responses, they pick which one they want to go on a date with

and then they don't see who it is to they come out from behind the wall. Is this show the one that originated that format? The dating game. Yeah. That's the game. Okay. I didn't realize that was like the er

text of like that kind of stuff. Okay. Yeah, they would send people out on a date at the end and that was the show and then maybe they'd follow up and be like, was that cool? It was weird. It was weird. Yeah.

It was a great. Yeah. This is the show. Rodney Alcala was on in the late 70s, a serial killer. The dating game? That's pretty scary. We'll talk about him one day. Without really knowing that much about serial killers except for like what you guys cover,

I feel like those things being connected are like a guy that's a serial killer being into that idea. Like something about it just works for me. Just makes sense to me, I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My point is Chuck Barris in his first project, he invented a game show. whose influence can still be felt over 60 years later, right out the gate, he did that. It kind of helped change the whole vibe of TV.

It loosened things up, got people acting normal and human on TV, made things groovy. I don't know if you've seen the set of the dating game, but it's like white with like big flowers, like big groovy flowers all over it. So that was kind of fresh too. And it was such a big hit that that like really went into the zeitguise.

And it ran for 50s, 15 straight years, eventually moving into prime time, which is crazy for a game show at that time, it's like maybe the first one. And it was revived three more times in the following decades, even as recently as five years ago. And brace yourself for this next insane thing I'm ready to say five years ago when Zoe Deschanel and Michael Bolton launched the celebrity dating game in 2021 featuring celebrities like Chris Catan, Tay Diggs, Iggy Azalea, and Gabriel Iglesias. And then we're just going to move on.

Even five years ago, I'm not sure those names were extraordinarily relevant. Chris Catan is the one that I'm just like. That's nuts. What? Like that's a wild poll. Yeah. All celebrities, like the bachelor and the bacheloretts? Or was it like one celebrity?

The celebrities, the celebrities are the question askers in this. Yeah. And then they find out that it's a celebrity and they find, you get it. But yeah, it's the same format exactly. Otherwise, it even looked like the dating game. but it was Zoe DeCinell and Michael Bolton don't get it. That was like I guess the like post

Lonely Island Michael Bolton. I don't know. But it's still 20, you said 19? 20, 21. This is post-colding. Yeah. When was that music video from a lonely island? The Jack Sparrow one?

Yeah. A long time. I'm pretty sure I was in college or high school at the time. That's what I'm saying. Like that doesn't carry any weight anymore. I know he made. He stayed making like weird stuff for a while. I don't know.

Michael Bolton is an interesting... 14 years ago, in the internet world, that thing is not relevant anymore. They're not the pairing that I would think of, but I'm like, there is a Zoe de Chanel character that's like the sarcastic, pithy one, and like him...

I can see it. I can see it. I can see it. I'm not going to. Yeah. That was the dating game. One year later after the dating game, he also produced the newlywed game,

which was hosted by Bob Eubanks, which is like another crazy-ass success game show where there's like a wisecracking host and he brings on a couple who just got married he asked them eight questions and they have to guess what each other are going to say it's such a very simple concept that like is it all it takes was the first person to do it for it to like explode because it's immediately relatable they have multiple couples on at once so like the one that gets the most right wins and that was like that had to be ugly oh man the fights that ensued afterwards then you lose and then you don't win like 20 grand or something it's like actually i read in the book this is like they

had to make the prizes worse because when the prizes were too good it was like breaking up the marriages you know what i'm saying you just are like poisoning the honeymoon phase you're like making them bitter against each other immediately thank you so much to mint mobile for sponsoring today's episode and quick quick quick question for you do you like your money because i do i mean i like my not my money I like your money too. Your money's great, but I like my money. I'm pretty attached to my money, actually. Which is why it always stings just a little

when I think about how much of it used to just disappear into a wireless bill every month. Big carriers are great at making you feel like that's just the cost of having a phone. Like it's some unavoidable tax on existing in the modern world. But spoilers, it's not. Trust me, I do a lot of research on the show. I checked.

Mint Mobile exists specifically to fix that problem. Premium wireless plan starting at just $15 a month. That's not a trial gimmick or a bait. in switch either. That's like the actual plan. High speed data, unlimited talk and text, all delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. Same coverage and speed just without the inflated price tag you've been quietly accepting. And switching couldn't be simpler. All you do is bring your own phone, bring your number, activate with an e-sim in minutes and you're already saving. No long-term contracts, no hassle, no surprise fees, just a wireless bill that doesn't make you wince or flinch when it hits. This is the exact service I would use when switching characters. The math just does. Why pay two or three times more for the same service? If you like your money, then MintMobile is for you. Shop plans at Mintmobile.com slash chill. That's mintmobile.com slash chill.

Up front payment of $45 for three months, five gigabyte plan required, equivalent to $15 per month. New customer offer for first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra, see mintmobile.com for details. But yeah, that was also a huge hit. Ran for almost 20 years was revived several times. Times. Here is Mathis with a quote from an interview with Barris that he did with the LA Times in

around 2002 about that. Those were the happiest days of my life, Barris says. It was Camelot. A 1969 Times article described his company as a swinging with it outfit staffed by super cool chicks and many skirts clacking away on typewriters. Oh, maybe one of them was an alien. The office walls were a... Imagine that's where this story went. Yeah, this is where it went. Well, it's true. Manani.

Yeah, true. The office walls were a freaky collage of pop hippie art, and bears sported a groovy mod haircut. Yeah. So that was the vibe. And after a few more... It's like working in Maker Studios of the 60s. Basically what it was like when...

It was like the Wolf of Wall Street over there. No, but after a few more crazy, less successful game shows like the family game and the game game and a game show that's literally called How's Your Mother-in-Law weren't that one had to have also ruined a number of marriages. There was an episode of How's Your Mother-in-Law? And I'm just, this is apocryphal. I'm so sorry if this is not exactly right.

I'm just talking out of pocket from my memory of the book. The show was like a jury was there. And it was like a fake trial. The jury was like comedians, right? And there was like maybe a lawyer. I can't remember. there was like the mother-in-law and you had to

the whole point was to ask the mother-in-law like why she did shit that was weird and then the jury decides who's right. Like it was like Judge Judy but it was like mother-in-law versus son-in-law.

Oh, man. And so this one mother-in-law every time her son-in-law came over she thought he didn't know how to take care of himself and smelled like shit. So first things first when he came in the house, he would have to take his shirt off

and present his open underarms to the mother-in-law to spray with, like, deodorant. I can't imagine why that show was unsuccessful. Yeah, weird. They also didn't like it when people were mean to the old ladies, I guess. Oh, strange. Sometimes an old lady needs to be mean that.

Yeah. So none of them were huge hits. Even a few non-game show things happened. You know what a USO show is? Where you go overseas to entertain the troops while they're stationed there. So he did a show that was called Captain America. Yes. like with Bob Hope.

But it was like he did a show called Operation Entertainment. That was for the troops at home. And it was like a weekly variety show. So, you know, at the time, that was kind of a cool idea. And then in Canada, he produced the very successful in syndication, Bobby Vinton show, which was like a Canadian variety show. But, you know, that's meager success compared to American, you know, United States success for ABC type station. and in 1976 he hasn't had a big win in a while he's reeling from a collapsing marriage that ends in divorce

Barris what did he go on the show he lost the washing machine no he was reeling from a collapsing marriage and he was going through the motions of his shows auditioning people and he had his most famous and notorious idea that he ever had, which was called The Gong Show. You guys can probably help me explain it better than this once you understand what it is. Basically, there's a gong on stage, and there's three celebrity judges, and it's a talent show. And these people come out on stage, they get 45 seconds where nothing can happen. And then after that, if they want you to stop, they can gong you and you got to go. America's got talent.

Sort of. According to game show expert Maxine Fabe's book TV game shows, it was like Barris was the quote, first man in America to realize how desperately ordinary people want to be on television. I think that's pretty much right on the nose with this. It was kind of like the people to- Look at modern day internet. Everything is content now. Everybody everywhere is like making content at everything they do every day. Yeah.

It's like the prequel to American Idol and X Factor and stuff like that. America's got talent. You already said. except there's no competition after the audition phase. You just get like a couple Hondo at the end of the episode if you win. And it was like a different amount all the time. It was really weird. And like fucking like Tom Green Showish in its in its looseness.

And unlike American Idol in which a large portion of the people actually do seem to have what it takes to be large international celebrities. The people on the Gong show were cast more like Tim and Eric. vibes like Tim and Eric. Great job factor. Like if you know what I mean, I guess it's kind of what Dick Clark was talking about when he said Barris lowered the bar, which is that like these people were extremely entertaining to watch. But it was usually because they were like weird or gross or dumb or like horny in some way. And I think the way that Chuck Barris saw it was that it was sort of like undeniable, unfony, pure entertainment for the people, you know, like the entertainment of the people kind of thing? I mean, there's a bunch of different ways to do entertainment,

but I feel like there's like elevated things or like documentaries or like things that are supposed to be like prestigious and like a little higher art form. And it feels like he had his like finger on the pulse of like how real people are, not like they're better angels, but like just what makes him tick? He like, the idea. of the newlyweds or even the step mother, like, or the mother-in-law, like, these are just incredible pressure, like social pressure points that are like, you're going to put these two people in and they will either come out or like destroy each other. And it's like, everybody else gets to watch and like, I don't know. I see it there and I've seen some,

I don't like, this is not the kind of like content that I like to watch, but I do acknowledge that it is like about human nature, like about how we are actually. Yes. And that it seems low bar because we are not these. We're not the best of us. We are every bit of us. We're the shit that we like don't like to. Not everyone is Susan Boyle, y'all.

You know what I'm saying? No, it pulls the same exact, uh, kind of like strings as reality TV does. It is literally the Genesis. Yeah. It's the genesis. He's like holding a mirror. to us. And I do think an important thing is like, reality TV is like an ironic name. It's like not real. But humans are like more about trying to be something or pretending to be something than any of us really is.

So in a certain way, it almost is reality that somebody is trying to be this thing, not that they are this thing. And that's what he like captures. That's exactly what I think it means to. in the larger sense, like these sort of shows, like where they film the guy putting the tears in his eyes and shit. That's fucking reality, bro. I don't even want to be around anymore. The point is, when NBC first chose John Barber as the host of this show, because of this reason that Chuck Bears could see and not many other people could see, it made him fucking nuts. Basically, Barbara didn't really get the show. He thought that it was wrong when the

celebrities would laugh at the people and kind of like step in and like try and calm it down and was being like a total joykill out out of nowhere Chuck just like freaked out fired him last minute basically fucking the show right before it came out before at the last second kind of just throwing a Hail Mary pass to save it by stepping up hosting the goddamn thing himself along with a killer versus entertainment yeah killer celebrity panel of judges including Jamie me far j p morgan art artie johnson uh rip taylor phyllis diller mitzie mccall tons of other people um and now i'm going to send you a clip of him as the host uh for you guys to watch uh and the act after which is a pretty funny famous one uh which will also be in the show notes but for the people

who can't watch it right now immediately just opens up with him looking at the camera and being i don't want to say these guys are unhygienic it's loose the vibe is loose immediately very loose like cuts in mid sentence almost like there's like his he's wearing a shirt that's unbuttoned like the first two or three buttons you can see his chest hair coming out but he's laughing while he's delivering his lines it's extremely just

like nonchalant then he introduces to a couple people curtains pull back and these guys are singing and dancing like I would yeah also I want you to notice what song they're dancing to because it probably saved them some money a little bit instrumental version of Palisades Park

oh yeah I was like this is Luke Skywalker hair. Okay, but you gotta find out what they're called the worms. American Idol's audition process when they host the people who can't sing as like to laugh at, like as a weird of pressure release. That's what these guys thing and dancing sound exactly like. But look at what the act really is.

And these guys are just wearing like boxers over like long white pants. Yeah, because then you start to see like what the deal is with the gong show and that the whole thing is not even real. What? Okay. Now everybody like dropped to the floor and it's like. Seizuring on the floor? They're doing their, saying they're the worm and they're doing the worms, but I think that everybody here knows these guys.

Everybody is just doing it because they saw these guys doing it. There's no line or reason to this show. Yeah, now the numbers are doing it. The number ends, and I don't want to spoil it, but it's getting a little long. So I'll just say it. He gets up with these guys and goes, all right, that was amazing, you guys. That's so good. One more time.

And they all go back down on the ground and do it all again. And then they're like, oh, man, that was so fucking amazing. Amazing. One more time. He does it like a couple times more. He like is playing it. This man would thrive on the internet. Yeah, dude, this show is from 1976 and it looks like it came out today.

And if you look at a show from before the gong show, it's like they didn't even think of this before that. It's so much more like what entertainment became. It's crazy. One episode, he had everyone sing the song feelings one after the other. Every single person on the show just sang feelings. Like, I don't even know. It's just pure trolling. Yeah. Anyway, but that's the gong show. Eventually, it spawned all these crazy recurring stuff, as Chucky Baby called it, that they would have on. They had the unknown comic on.

currently reeling. I think he's still watching it. He was like, he did it again. He was like, one more time. Unknown comic was one of the characters that came on a lot. He was a stand-up comedian where a paper bag on his head and told like the fucking worst jokes. There was Gene Gene the dancing machine who had a very like unique way of dancing. It was like an older black guy who actually worked on the crew of the show and had like diabetes and all this stuff. Was amazing. And then perhaps most notoriously was the act, the Popsicle twins, uh, who were just two. hot young teen girls who sat on the floor of the studio and just gave head to some popsicles. Oh, man.

He was just in every way that he could at every moment, pushing what it is to be a TV program, pushing what it is to be good, good entertainment, good content, just pushing, pushing, to sort of open TV to what it eventually became. Is that what started like the, it being, okay to like in commercials fetishized twins in like a very weird way that like Budweiser and a bunch of other I think it was that commercial that did it to be honest with you the and twins commercial I think that was where that started in the end I forgot about that commercial yeah um holy fucking shit so the gongshund just that like I feel like growing up that was like a common oh it's a thing

it's a thing it's a thing but I don't know about no commercials you know what I mean like it's way weird than it's just in pop culture I guess yeah it's just way weird if not it was selling beer Hey, you want to fuck twins, right? Have some beer. Yeah. Let's get, let's get wasted, motherfuggers. But yeah, it was only on TV for two years. It was in syndication for two more years.

But the way that it pushed boundaries and the acts that he picked and the way that he acted, it created a lot of noise in the culture for how short it was on TV on both sides, on the love it side, on the hate it side and the debate that it automatically caused because no one had ever seen anything like it before, to the point that there was no, there was a non-contest-based spinoff of the show that came out that was even crazier that had all the same people on it they just come out and do bullshit now, no competition

even. It was called the Chuck Berris Rara show. Why did they take out the competition part? Because it was like now there were so many people that were just like homies on the show that it was silly for them to compete. You know what I mean? And Barris even got to direct this sort of like weird, cool

like cool after the fact kind of like gritty movie version. It was called called The Gong Show movie in 1980. I forget who described it as like nine and a half with comedians or something like that, but I don't think that's what it was. It closed just after a couple days because of how badly it was bombing with critics and audiences. And in fact, Barris says that one of the worst moments of his life happened when he brought

his daughter, Della, who often came on and introduced him on the show. I'm my dad, Chuck Barris, right? She came out to see her part in the movie on a big screen. And when she showed up in the frame, the audience literally booed her. And she got up and ran out of the theater. So that's one of his worst memories of his entire life, was that movie not even staying in theaters for more than a couple of days. Then again, there's also the non-zero chance that the movie bombed because it opened when the other two options in theaters at the time were the slightly more anticipated films, the Empire Strikes Back and the Shining. So maybe that adds something to do with it.

But who knows? But that's pretty fucked up, right? Kind of feels like. The booing when his daughter came on, I feel like I'm lacking context there. That just seems like. It kind of feels like a primordial version of a comment section. You know what I mean?

It's like I would tell the joke. Is that a thing that people used to do in theaters, like be more vocal? People are vocal in theaters when you're watching like a, like I saw a speed racer the other day at the vista. I think it was. Was it the vista? man that ripped and right at the when he crossed the finish line at the end and it like goes to hyperspace or whatever

it was like silent in the theater and one dude was like like i don't know like that still feels great when that happens i guess for the like excitement of action and stuff but just like boo like oh boo to this like child that just came on like you don't even know what's happening or i don't know how old she was i say this i tell the story all the time i probably haven't told it in a while But on the decks back in the day, I don't know if you guys know this. I was on a show where me and my wife, my now wife, but at the time is my girlfriend, who at the time for the show was going back, Pokey Kels. I got this one comment, one time that is stuck in my mind forever, that said,

fat dude, get out of here. I want to fuck Pocatekels. And what I believe it is is just a complete engagement with your subconscious rather than your conscious mind. and those people that booed in that theater were booing in their house booing at her in that theater and it was a communal moment where they all realized

they kind of found that girl annoying and it was the heartless joy of the anonymous comment section in real life. Davis has something like bursting from his mouth. I'm just it's so fascinating. It is poetic justice. Like to me it seems like he made a

career off of like exposing the foibles of mankind and their personality and things like this, that's a very human reaction. Like the very reactions that he sort of milked or elevated to make a career. No, no, your audience. Like the audience you're like, I know, man.

Like, I guess, I guess it's just like, this is how it goes. I don't know. You wanted to like live in the shit. Sometimes you get some shit on you. I don't know. And that's what the commenters always say when I tell them that they shouldn't be mean to me online. Anyway, the gong show also has several revivals.

Once in the late 80s with Don Blue. Your content is not about, yours is like education. You're like, with, especially with that show, you're like, go crazy with us, call us educational. No, but like the Dex was a like, Oh, yes, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Educational thing.

Like, if you're like a shit talker and you're like, I don't know, a drama person, then it's sort of like you reap what you sew, but like, kill that one. I want to fuck that one. That show is like, that's not the, that would be like, I don't want it on like Sesame Street saying like some shit. Like, I don't know, it's just weird. They literally go anyone.

would kill to have your job. You got to put up with a little bit of abuse. It's been said to me many times. Or you could just be a not-shed. I mean, I don't agree. I don't agree with those people. I'm just, I'm just saying. So yeah, they tried to revive the gong show in the 80s one time with the true Don Blue. And then once in 2000 with David Tell, which I think is honestly like a great. That's a good mix. If you ever watched insomnia, I feel like gong show with David-Tel was good. and then I have literally zero memory of this. But apparently, Will Arnett also produced a version of the show. But he didn't host it.

Instead, he got Mike Myers to do it. Like Austin Powers standing next to Kanye that one time, S&L or Shrek Mike Myers. You know, except not Mike Myers. Mike Myers in makeup as a fake British host. character called Tommy Maitland, which happened in apparently 2017 when the Nintendo Switch was already out. Literally zero memory of that. I thought you were going to say like early 2000s or something when 2017, 20 years after Austin Powers. Dude, track down an episode. That sounds hilarious. I want to watch it. Of them doing the bit, I'm going to be honest. I am not feeling this bit.

I don't understand it. When you hear Austin Powers guy doing a British guy, you think, It's not going to be like a pretty realistic, creepy, older, British guy that doesn't really have that much energy. But that is exactly what he brings to the table with Tommy Maitland. And I just, I don't get it. I'm just trying to get it. And I don't get it. The clip is, uh, Will Arnett hosting. I'm assuming it's like the tonight show work.

And then pretend to talk about a friend that he's doing a show with. And he pans over to what is clearly Michael Myers in a lot of makeup. He looks like a prosthetic man. Uh, he looks like completely fake. And he's like, he also looks like, was he in Gloria's bastards where he was also like a fake British person?

Yeah. And that was like five and a half years before this at least. It's. Yeah, he's so clearly, oh, he looks uncomfortable. It's really weird.

I don't know. I don't understand the bit. I don't like know why we need. He looks like the villain in the mask when he gets the mask. Yes. Yes. He has like evil in his eyes. I don't get it.

I don't get it. It's in the show notes. You can subject yourself to Tommy Maitland. I don't understand it. I don't understand why that was the obvious successor to Chuck Barris on a version of the gong show that looks so good. It looks exactly like the gong show. It was amazing.

It was like all the bad acts in America's got talent with none of the good acts, except this guy's hosting it. I would have rather it just been Mike Myers. Oh, man, it's an uncanny valley about staring at him as Tommy. It's the only thing Mike Myers does is play other characters, which is like, I get, but man, it's been a while since we had to hit one, man. Like, I don't know. Maybe it's, I don't know.

Weird one. Weird one. Also, the love guru was not good. Okay. I like the little clips of him I see. Like, it's not immediate. He's doing like this, at least in that bit, the subtle, the British like destroying you while seeming.

Yes. Pleasant. Right. And he should host. Immediately like a slam dunk in the way that some of his other characters would. He should host a nationally broadcasted talent competition with bad acts. I don't, I just don't. I just don't see it.

I don't get it. The character is fine. Like, I could write a sketch for this guy to do myself. I get it. I get, like, what's going on? But I don't get why that's the host of the gong show. That's all I'm saying. It doesn't seem that complicated.

You get episode two somehow. You like go to bat for that crazy movie, but you don't get this guy doing this, like the British version of this, but it's like... You're making the gong show. You're bringing it back. You're like, I know who we should get. We should get Mike Myers,

who hasn't been in a film in 25 years. and we're going to put him in makeup and he's going to be quiet. Well, if he's quiet, that defeats the purpose. Because, like, I get the, I think I get the idea of being like, we need someone a little mean-spirited, but maybe pleasant about it. But, like, you can just, there's real people. The vibe of this character is- Real people you can just hire to do that.

If you can't, if you can't watch this clip, it's literally Mike Myers, like, sweating his ass off in something that's, like, as complex as the Grinch. He looks like, uh, like a British, father fusion danced with Donald Trump. And he's like, ah, you look like shit today. You're like, what? Anyway, I can't talk about Tommy Maitland anymore on the show. Shortly after the movie, kind of ate shit in 1980, back in 1980, 38, 48, 38 years

before what we were talking about before, a lot of his shows started getting canceled at once. And the perception was kind of that maybe audiences were moving on from the Chuck bear's flavor for the moment and major sponsors started pulling out of shows, uh, like on the grounds of good taste, but like in devastating ways, like in one famous story,

you guys know who Gene Autry is? No. Like classic cowboy television cowboy. He was so offended by the highly prurient content that he saw on the newlyweds game, that he almost had the entire production of newlywed game kicked off of the stage where it lived at, KTLA where it was being filmed. And here's a quote about that.

What a weird. Were they all just in the same studio? Yeah. And he was like involved. He like was, you know, high up at the studio and he was like, get him out of here. But here's a quote from Barris about that period for Davis to read. Oh, Chuck Barris himself. Yeah.

I figured I didn't have my finger on the pulse of what's going on anymore. So I took off. They say if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen. Well, I got out of the kitchen and went to France. But I should have stayed. It was a big, big mistake. Yep. And that is why, nevertheless,

starting September of 1980, only five months after the Gong Show movie, he had not, from that point, nothing was in production for an entire year. He got married to his like, three-year roommate, redhead,

long time sexual tension, best friend person, Robin Altman. Okay. What a phenomenal. explanation. Like who this person is. I don't believe it.

Yeah. Well, I did. And then he did a year. They were banging. I mean, sure, maybe they were. But the point is they got married. And then he did a year producing a hands-off revival of his show, the new treasure hunt, which was from the 70s, which itself was a revival of an earlier show called Treasure Hunt.

And then he kind of went on sabbatical. He didn't actually go in and work on that show. He just kind of like made it happen from afar. Then he was living in lots of hotels in New York. and like Davis mentioned, briefly moved to Paris before coming back to Hollywood in 1984

and forming another production company that revived a bunch of old IP. Newlywed game, a bunch of other stuff started coming out. But after three years of doing that, he was like, actually, fuck this. He sold off his shares

to some kind of like cement company or something, went back to France. And in the end, as far as all the shows and shit go, everything kind of ended up with Sony. in the end,

a.k. Columbia, I guess. Wait, he went to France, came back, then went back to France again. Yeah, he came back, like, tried again, went back to France, gave up. And then he kind of like chilled out a bit, spent a little time in an apartment, like in Manhattan, spent a little time in a Hudson River cottage, like in New York upstate, wrote a couple books,

like novels and stuff. And then quickly, one after another, he was diagnosed with lung cancer as a result of the absolutely wild amount of cigarettes he smoked. And his daughter, Della, who I mentioned earlier, regularly appeared as a teenager to introduce her dad in the gong show, kind of like lost her way in life, got lost in drugs and alcohol. If you're younger and haven't seen some of these older TV shows, they would just smoke on the TV, the show.

Yeah, yeah, 100%. Look at Dean Martin. It's crazy. But yeah, Delaware where, like, the doctors told them it was healthy. Right. Yeah, I mean. What doctors choose this brand? Berris kind of admitted to not being the most close parent. And he was already divorced from his wife.

And he had his daughter in this nice private school, but she wanted to go to Beverly Hills High. And he let her go. And he was like hands off and his daughter was in a public school. And over time, like around the time she was like 36, she passed away from an alcohol and cocaine overdose in like 1998. And he just never got. past that. He always blamed himself for it for his whole life and just felt like of all the things that he did that he fucked up, the one thing that he should have done was parented his daughter better, you know, which is, which is sad. But anyway, he kept on writing, put out a silly little spoken word jazz album or something here and there. Or he would come on a TV show as like a TV wizard expert type guy and talk. He served on the board of the New York Police Foundation for a while. He taped a few anti-smoking lung cancer PSAs that were like begging people to get cat scans.

And then he eventually passed away of natural causes in 2017 at the age of 87, which is probably a bit longer than he had. And now that I'm realizing it, it was probably because he fucking saw that goddamn remake of the gong show with Tommy Maitland that doesn't make any sense. And he probably just healed over and died. They get it. I don't need to be here anymore.

Yeah, it's in good. I release you. Finally, the natural successor has been shows. and I can rest easy. But yeah, or the average person who wants to know the kind of normal, consumable type of stuff that won't challenge you or blow your minds, that's the basic version of his life. The sort of funny, sort of amazing sort of sad story of Chuck Barris, who didn't do much besides make television shows.

And here is Mathis with another quote from that LA Times interview about him. And how would he like to be remembered when his time is up? not the way he knows he will be. I've always been second, he says. I've created hit TV shows, but nothing has been great. I've written rock songs, but I'm not a big music star. I've penned a best-selling book, but I'm not Hemingway or Fitzgerald. I've never saved any lives.

It's just middle of the road greatness, so I know what my legacy will be. It's the gong show, and that's a shame. It's not the legacy I want to have. It gave the impression of me being a clown, a court jester. none of that's true. His big fear he admits is that the headline on his obituary will say Barris gets gonged. And it didn't, which is lucky for him. But then again, at the same time, Barris, in the same interview, gets asked if he would pass on the gong show if he had a second chance to do so. And he said, quote, the gong show? No, I would do it all again. If you gave me

a choice to go back and erase all that, I'd hate to lose the good times. That's what he says. And that's Chuck Berris. The gong show is Chuck Barris. This quote is like post him trying to like make sense of or him finally gaining the wisdom to understand what it is. And I do think this is just how all humans are. Like there's a time where you're in it and you're not meta aware of what you're just like, this is what I believe and I'm living it.

And then it's like later where you get some perspective. And then you start to become self aware of your own life. that you lived and that you're actually, you're not like a, like, potential. You're like, you're like, you've like reached it already. Yeah. Yeah, like, he, he to me got on the, on a maybe subconscious level, people and how, and the things that are, like, entertaining to watch.

And it wasn't maybe until later that like, that all, he checked and he, like, the balance cleared and he was like, oh, wait, I, this was kind of like, I see that. is being low brown and maybe it could have been presented in something more or he just is the kind of person that like isn't it for fame and so that he didn't have more fame that's how it reads to me like just because the beginning where he's like i haven't created a hit tv show or i'm rock song musician or a best selling book like he goes over the reasons he's not as big as he wants to be and to me that statement reads more as evidence that success doesn't equal happiness like he was successful by all accounts, this man made impact on history he'll never understand. But it wasn't enough. Like,

there wasn't enough for him to feel satisfied. Look at Alyssa Liu. Like, nobody ever gets that type of success where you just go out, you get to be you, you are excellent, you don't, you're unapologetic about yourself. You bring your entire essence out there and the world is like, hell yes. Yes. Like, that never happens. And so, you know, as all of us can attest who have experienced the sort of unquantifiable success of popularity in some form or another in our lives. Like, you can't control what the people like that you make. You can't control why you're popular. You can't, you might not agree with your audience about what is good about what you do.

And that's just it. That's just showbiz. But that's just Chulaminaughty, dude. Chaluminaughty was a random side thing of being like, this could be fun. And like not even, not even in the realm of what all three of us were focused on. at the time, all in gaming creation for the most bar gaming video. Like you can't control it. So just ride it and enjoy it.

What comes goes. Like this, there's nothing you can do about it. If you get to do something that entertains people, you got to learn to be grateful in the moment for it, which as, as Davis said, it's like,

it's hard when you're in the middle of it and you're living it. And you're like not meta-aware of like the implications of actually what you're doing. Yeah. As long as you're getting to do what you love, you shouldn't worry too much about how much you're being liked for doing it. As long as you get to do it. And like legit artists or I don't know,

like there's many different kinds of artists, but like people that are like, people that do it, whether they make a bunch of money or they make no money, whether they're successful or no one knows about them. And it's like the love of the actual act. And maybe because he's like creating,

not necessarily like narratives. He's just creating like structures for people to interact. maybe that doesn't have that same effect. But yeah, I don't know. I don't know that he's like that he did it. I don't feel like this was like his great calling and he sees it as like an art form as much as trying to do something. And I think that he was sad about the way that it was seen by everybody as just like trash. I think there's something exquisite about the gong show at its heart.

And I think that what I do in my life resonates with what's happening on the gong show in way that makes me understand it a little bit more fondly than I think some people do. Honestly, it's kind of like George Lucas because we, you know, do a Star Wars podcast. And starting for the 10-year, like, anniversary of the films being released, his quotes about it took on a very different, like, defensive quality, like immediately, not even that early. He became aware of what people think of it and got too caught up. Like, he thought he was creating some higher level. thing.

And then from then on, it's like, well, it's a kid's thing. You know, I was always trying to do like a kid's thing. And, you know, you do what you got to do to make yourself sit right with what happens after you let your baby out into the world. That's the thing. Yeah, Tommy was only, you do what you got to do. Your brain does whatever it takes to do it. Like you're like a passenger for your own self hypnosis.

Yes. So this has so far been a great podcast about television history. But why am I? doing this on Chuluminati. Didn't I say that this guy was a government assassin earlier? Maybe he is. Yeah, well, yes, that's exactly what I said. And right now I'm going to tell you all about it,

thanks to a little book I mentioned way earlier called Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, which is not close enough for me to conveniently grab. But if you have a chance, you should rent the version that's on Archive.org or try and buy one second hand, because like I said, I don't think it's in print, which is

crazy to me. There's a major motion picture based on this, and it's not in print. It's not even an e-book, which is crazy. Like, I tried. And I had to, I had, I couldn't find my copy that I bought in like high school. What? Cover up. Cover up.

I just, I bought it in high school and I, I had a copy. And then right when I needed it to find it, I couldn't find it anymore. I had to buy an identical copy to the one that is also a tie in for the movie from 2002 to even get one because the original one was published in the 80s. It's crazy. But yeah. Anyway, he wrote the book. That's what we're basing this off of.

let's get into it. Do you remember that weird three-year period in the 80s where he didn't make any TV and he lived in hotels and went to France that I was talking about earlier? Apparently, that is when he was writing Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. And eventually, in 1984, it was published,

referred to on the cover as an unauthorized autobiography, hence the name of this episode, Chuck Beres, unauthorized autobiography. And with several key details added to his life, which even those closest to him couldn't claim he ever told them about, i.e., that for the entire span of his Hollywood career, and even beyond, while simultaneously making all these shows and headlines, he was also regularly going overseas on behalf of our government to eliminate sometimes 33, sometimes more, depending on where you hear it, of the most politically dangerous international spies

and terrorists in the Cold War world, and possibly even past the Cold War. all throughout Southeast Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East, with all names changed and identifying details obscured to protect the very real people that the story was about. I like, he and he's had no military, he's had no training, right, on the record. We'll get into it. Okay. Like, unless they were like fans of the Gong show and they used him as like a distraction in a cool like Mission Impossible type heist. murder. It's just bullshit.

Like, so look, look, of course, the CIA is obviously like, no, this did not occur. And there was even a spokesman for the CIA called Paul Noak, who said the whole notion is quite, quote, ridiculous and, quote, absolutely not true. And you can trust him because his last name is no whack, which means he does not put up. There's no whackness in him. Thank you to Hero Forge for sponsoring today's episode. I'm just going to say what I always say. I've been working with HeroForge now for over a year, almost two years at this point.

And HeroForge is just a service I used well before I was doing any of this stuff for a podcast. If you play TTRPs like I do and it's something you're interested in doing and you want minis, just go over to HeroForge.com and use code chill pod to get a nice little percentage off and get yourself some minis for your game. Even if you're running at home games as the DM and you want like an army of goblins or whatever, you can make them over at Hero Forge. Or if you're just curious, if HeroForge, if you're just curious, if Hero Forge has the tools that are as flexible as I seem to be making them out to be, you literally can go over to heroforge.com and create your mini with their tools for free just digitally right

there for you to see to see if you can even make the character you want to do. I urge you to go check it out before you do any spending at all. It's totally free tools. And then if you do like it, you can purchase the mini version, like the physical mini version and different plastics, metals, bronzes, you name it. Or if you have a 3D printer at home, you can just buy the digital file for way cheaper and just print it at home, which is what I do for most of my stuff here. But I love to buy like the finer stuff, like the bigger stuff, maybe like a premium plastic for like the big bosses I run for my campaign. So listen, I love Hero Forge. I'm just glad they want to work with us. It's a service and like a product I've used for years. And I urge anybody who's into the nerdy hobbies like I am to go over to Hero Forge and check it out. Whether you're doing fantasy, sci-fi, or everything in between. There's so many options you can make for your minis as well as so many different ways you can take that mini back home. with you. So check it out. ChillPod is the code. HeroForge.com is the website. Thank you so much

to HeroForge for sponsoring us. Go check them out. We'll see you next time. Uh, and though Beres once said he made the story up on the Today Show very shortly after the book was released in 1984, since then he has claimed that he did that for his own safety at the time because he was still hot and continued to maintain an air of mystery around the topic until his death, even between him and his wife, claiming to never have even told her the full truth. though if I am being real, I am not even sure which wife they are referring to because he has had three of them.

But yeah, by the late 80s, he already sold the rights to the movie version to Columbia Pictures and it was greenlit and it was offered to Richard Dreyfus who then did not read the script even because, and this just shows you how it was, he thought that Barris's humor was morbid and in poor taste.

So he didn't even read the script. And then Colombia... He said yes. No, he said, fuck you. And then Columbia changed presidents and it was ungreenlit and abandoned. And then in the late 90s, Andrew Lizarre options the rights to Warner Brothers eventually in 1997.

He gets Charlie Kaufman to write the screenplay of this movie, hot off of being John Malkovich, who was about to go on to write. What year is this? 97, 98, something like that. No, what year did Mr. Holland say no? Dreyfus. Richard Dreyfus.

He said no in the late 80s. Like was like Pop culture so puritanical back then like of the clips we watched there's nothing like nothing that crazy

Did you know missing? Well you didn't see the popsicle twins You didn't watch the popsicle twins Did you like that? I got you I didn't give you the popsicle twins I went and looked at it

I watched it for a 10 second I was like this is uncomfortable It's pretty crazy Like I get that When was Elvis the 50s or the 60 When was like Shaking your hip? Like, oh, like.

There you go. There's that. And just for the viewers, like Alex's description is just straight up dead on, correct? It is quite literally two girls sitting on the stage with popsicles giving them head. He got real quiet. He's just watching it. Oh, no. He's sweating.

His hands are. YouTube's asking for his actual government ID. Yeah. Oh, shit. He's scanning his face. This is not even, this is literally just them sucking them. Okay. Yeah, I told you.

I'm going to just back up. Whatever I was going with, I'm back out of it. Yeah. The point is, the point is, Richard Dreyfus did not even read the script. I was going to say, I was going to tell you the story that when I was a kid, my mom didn't let me watch,

the care bears and stuff like that because she thought it was like creepy, the kind of morals that they were instilling in the children that were like so, like, shielding them from like any sort of true challenge or... I watched the care bears and I turned out just fine, okay? Dude, based on, that story and then the space one, I think

your mother has a much higher percent chance of being a CIA secret killer than Chuck Barristers. She literally bought parts for the F-18 and the B-2 bomber. So like I, like she was pretty try, try, negotiating, brushing my teeth with that, she's new,

negotiates like $250 million government contracts. It's like impossible. It's like a highly controversial primetime television host. The one guy that's in every episode of all these shows could just sneak away to do some clandestine killing.

Hiding in plain sight, baby. Listen, listen. Charlie Kaufman wrote the screenplay. A bunch of directors got interested. Curtis Hansen, David Fincher, Sam Mendez, Brian Singer, Brian DePalma got all on the list. And actors got involved. Sean Penn

was involved. George Clooney was involved. Johnny Depp was involved at one point. Ben Stiller was involved at one point. Kevin Spacey was involved at one point. Russell Crow was involved at one point. Even fucking Mike Myers was involved at one point, who I guess finally got his wish.

He got the last laugh. Yeah, in 2017, as Tommy Maitland, the fucking weirdest thing I've ever seen. But eventually, the final movie ended up with George Clooney attached, not as an actor, but in his debut as a director, with Sam Rockwell cast

a relative unknown at the time, Chuck Berris. And Drew Barrymore, as a fictionalized, version of his red-headed, live-in, roommate, wife, lover, a person. Though, honestly, there was some weirdness with the production, and Barris wanted a totally fake cocaine subplot that was added about him getting addicted to cocaine.

He wanted that removed because he was pretty staunchly anti-drugs, like I said, despite his almost constant smoking, especially considering that just a few years before this, his daughter had overdosed and died on cocaine. And separately, Charlie Kaufman got mad at George Clooney because George Clooney just kind of like butchered a Charlie Kaufman screenplay, which is like crazy to me. I guess he didn't have the sort of weight that he does now, but his first movie was fucking being John Malkovich. And he didn't want it to be a collaborative process. He just kind of like didn't have Kaufman involved and changed it however he wanted. And so that's sad and kind of a bummer.

But personally, I think this movie whips. And if you hear this extra layer to the story I'm about to share with you now and you find it interesting. steal this movie or buy a physical copy of this movie because the only place to stream it is that shitty ass Paramount Plus, which besides like being the public face of a sort of fully mask off evil corporation at this time, even more so than most. I don't know about you guys, but Paramount Plus constantly crashes my brand new less than one year old TV almost every time I tried to use it. And I finally just canceled it. But again, the movie whips. So go watch the movie if you can. Just do it in a cool way instead of a lame way. Here's a quote about whether or not

George Clooney has any insight into Barris's claims from Wikipedia for Davis to read. So here's that. This is about George Clooney. When asked about Barris's claim of being a CIA assassin, Clooney commented, I don't know how much I believed it. I didn't want to officially ask him because I didn't want him to say, I made it up. I wanted to tell the story and I thought how interesting if it was all made up why someone as wealthy and successful as Chuck Barris would have to do that. I thought that was an interesting person to explore, and that's what we wanted to do with the film. I get that notion where you're like, if I know the truth, it will compromise my ability to do with this film what I want to do. We're not here to say that this film is the truth.

This is an adaptation of the book. Yes. That said, there is also sort of this, you know, George Clooney's been interviewed about this a few times. And he says that whenever he did ask Chuck Barris something, because Chuck Barris was on set quite a lot and was like involved, he would just get totally blank faced and like give him the fucking silent treatment. So it wasn't just like playful.

He literally wouldn't get into it with people. He would not address it. He would not comment. Like I think if you're going to tell I haven't seen this film, but if it's going to be as like weird as. it's been implied that this whole era of his life was. Like, I get that you need to like,

you have to like commit. You have to like believe it. Otherwise, you can't like half ass this kind of movie. Yeah. It's actually a beautiful movie. It has a lot of wonders in it. Like,

it's really a fantastic like filmmaking movie as well as just a good script and good acting. Sam Rockwell, amazing. You know, like George Clooney's in the movie also a little bit, but he plays another character that's only in a little bit. But yeah, because of the slightly fiction,

nature of the story as it is in the book. I'm going to skip most of his early life stuff. I'm going to go straight to the CIA business since now I can talk about it freely because you know his whole life story. But just for those few of you out there who know this book or this movie and we're wondering if I'd mention a few certain things. In honor of sexy alien month, there are two moments I want to include from the book here verbatim. And there, I have one for each of you to read. Okay. So first, we're going to start with Davis for a moment back in 19. 1953 when he was 24, and he went on a solo camping trip with his beloved grandmother. Okay.

What's wrong with that? No, it's like beautiful. I just was like, that's crazy. That's cool. We pitched a tent by Lake, oh my goodness. Wall and Paul Park. Okay. Well, Wall and Paul Pack, not far from the town of Blooming Grove.

We roasted weanies for lunch, and in the afternoon took a long walk by the lake. That evening, we had dinner in Blooming Grove and saw an early movie. Later, we sat in front of our tent by a crackling fire and chatted for hours. That night, my grandmother and I slept in goose down sleeping bags under a starry sky. And in the morning, when I awoke, she was dead. Whoa, what a turn. I sat for hours looking at her. Then, when the sun was full on the lake, I packed our belongings into my Volkswagen.

Our bags and camping equipment filled the entire backseat and most of the passenger seat. And I wondered how my grandfather had fit into the car in the first place. And mother. Sorry, grandmother in the first place. In any case, it was better this time if my grandmother lay horizontally.

Sitting upright, she tended to slide from one side to the other. Dude, what the hell? So I zipped her body into a sleeping bag, placed the bag on the roof

of the Volkswagen, covered the bag with a tarpaulin, and tied everything securely in place with length of heavy rope. I drove to... Jesus Christ. Deaths.

to Blooming Grove and parked down the street from the police station. I went inside to report the death and to ask if there was a mortuary nearby. While I was inside the police station, oh my God, there's one last one. Someone stole my car. Dude, this is the most incredible short story. Someone stole my mom, dude. No. The idea of like him just going camping, solo camping with his grandmother, like gave me pause at how beautiful it was.

I was like thinking about my grandmothers and how that cool that would have been. And then it quickly became like the RFK Jr. Story about the whale carcass so quickly. And then one last bit at the end with it like and the car was gone. So there's no way to ever prove that it happened or I had a grandmother or that anything. Imagine you stole that car and you're like, what do we get? Let's see. What, what, let's check the hall, the gear hall.

Dude, what was the, uh, what was the reality show about the storage? Storage Wars? It's like storage wars mobile. And then this next one is for Mathis. It's from when Barris was 16 and his sister was nine. And he was chilling in their shared bedroom while she was downstairs taking a music lesson. Anyway, my sister was downstairs taking a bass violin lesson. And I saw in our bedroom with her friend, Tuvia Freedman.

Tuvia was older than my sister. Tuvia was 13. I was sitting on the edge of the bed and Tuvia was lying on the floor playing with her dog. Albert I first. Albert the first was crouched down on his front paws, yapping his head off, his rear end hoisted in the air, his tail wagging furiously.

Tuva was teasing Albert with the pencil. I watched my sister's friend and the dog for a while, then I opened the fly of my trousers and pulled out my prick. I told, why did I have to read this one? I asked Tuva to give it a lick. Why should I? She asked,

tickling the dog's ear with the pencil. Because my wee-wee-wee-taste like a strawberry lollipop. My sister told me that strawberry was your favorite flavor. It is, but. And that's where we'll leave that one. But I will diffuse the uncomfortable tension by saying. Why did I? You used, you were, uh, I had a weird.

No, it's not gonna. Like, it's not, it's like. Why would, yeah, why would this be involved in this? I don't think that's where this is going to go. My mind, it's, it's too paranoid. Honestly, though, this is like, I, this is way more like, like in the. the realm of like in I have like a lot of

a lot of like nephews and nieces and like there's an age of body where they're just like showing you stuff where you're like I don't want to have any part of this I gotta get out of here. This is why I don't have children. The thing I will say that will make you feel a little better about this is that if you go back and watch the movie

where this scene is presented with no there's no like porn and it's the obstacle. Honestly if any age them down. Honestly, if anything, they age, I'm down. But in case you're wondering, Chuck Barris in the scene is played by Michael Sarah in one of his earliest on-screen roles as a young creepo Chuckie Baby Barris. Anyway, back to the spy stuff.

He was interviewed in, okay, actually, okay. In January of 1963, in between NBC and ABC, after being unemployed for about a year, at the urging of his sister from the Dick story, Chuck answered an ad in the New York University Washington Square News. You're right, Davis? I have questions about this, but I don't want to bog us down. But like, was there a point to this story? Like, this specific quote about the thing.

Like, when you write a book, you don't have to put everything that ever happened. Like, guess what? In the story. In my autobiography, I'm not going to mention it one time. In the story, in the book. Enforce to air this story. In the book, like, the reason. that he talks about his relationship with women so much is that over the course of the book,

he learns what being in love with the woman is about. And he starts by telling a girl that his dick tastes like strawberry lollipops to get her to suck his dick when he's kid to his grown end life where, which is a climax of the story in which he asks, hey, what do you want to do? No, the redheaded girl who's been. Oh, hey, you're another person. He didn't realize, he didn't realize that the friendship that he had made with this person was what love really is. and he decided, ah, this is love, I will be with her. That is the reason that it is in the story. But I included it here because I could tell you that Michael Sarah plays this character in the film

and that you should go watch the film because it's quite a good film. In January of 1963, in between his time at NBC and his time at ABC, after he was unemployed for almost a year, at the urging of his sister, Chuck answered an ad in New York University Washington Square News that was asking for a college graduate who's free to travel. And he was supposed to report to an address in Manhattan for the North American Center for the Arts. So he went there. It was not the North American Center for the Arts. It was a strange interview with somebody. He was interviewed rigorously about his life, his sexuality, his taste for communism. And he found out that it was the Central Intelligence Agency. And by April of that year,

had the job and was flown all expenses paid to Washington, D.C. and to Langley, Virginia, to train at the Advanced Training Center there, which he said everyone called the farm, where he was, quote, a straight-A student in operational methods and the execution of clandestine affairs, and where he eventually decided to major, which you kind of have to do when you're in the school, apparently, he majored in counterintelligence. So that was his specialty as an agent. By the middle of 1964, at first he was leaning towards defense against the dark general education spy efforts he decided no he had to get his he had to get his jeez in first and then he went to counterintelligence or something i don't know how it works by the middle of nineteen sixty four he was transferred

to the yeah it's cladescent they don't tell you how it works uh he was transferred to the international organizations division in los angeles uh which supervised like the surveillance of like american labor organizations student groups news organizations political activism groups that type of thing like how the cia was known to sort of surveil those things. And apparently during his time with that office, in the March of 1965, he was sent to Selma, Alabama, to March to Montgomery, using special CIA connections to work closely with the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who employed his sort of friendly, rich, white, Jewish TV producer look to rent in the South all of the flatbed trucks that they would need to take all the porta-potties with them along the 54-mile Selma March route.

So that was his job. He had to take this older black guy called Father Chester, who sort of pretended to be his valet attendant type person and helped him hustle all the various rental dealerships in Alabama all around the state, which were slowly being tipped off by the clan to refuse them service. and anyway, here is a quote for Davis about what it was like when the Klan eventually caught up with them in a dusty Pontiac just as they stole the very last truck they needed in Mobile Alabama and were gunning it back to Selma.

So he's saying that the CIA was on the like human right side. They sent him secretly pro the people. Not secretly pro the people, nothing like that. They just sent him to embed with these people. When was MK Ultra, by the way? Is it like a contemporaneous... Around the same time? Yeah.

Yeah. Here is a quote for Davis. Oh, God. They've got guns. I yelled. I was paralyzed with fear. Unable to do anything but look at the road ahead and the shotgun in the mirror. As I was watching a tennis match, as if I was watching a tennis match.

Don't just sit there, you stupid son of a bitch, hollered father, Chester. Ram him. I veered the big truck into the left lane. the Pontiac's driver drifted back behind our tailgate and stayed there. Both of us tarascing to Selma single file on the wrong side of the road. I held the Pontiac in my side mirror until I saw an automobile coming toward us in the distance. Its headlights growing bigger and bigger. I stayed in the wrong lane until I couldn't stay any longer.

And then I swerved the truck back to the right side of the highway. The Pontiac veered over to the right to avoiding ahead on collision. Our truck and the Pontiac remained in the proper lane until the automobile coming in the other direction, blaring its horn and anger and fear passed by. Suddenly, while we were both bent over, the man in the Pontiac aimed his rifle at the rear of the truck and fired a farewell blast that blew out most of the rear window. Neither of us was hurt, but I shit my pants when the windows went. Not a lot, but enough.

I was that scared. They should have thought of that sooner, the dumb fuck scrowled Father Chester. Yeah. So to answer your question more directly, apparently Chuck Baris said that He was a true believer in the movement and was actually kind of radicalized by watching Sheriff Jim Clark beating protesters on his horse on this bridge on television during these these protests. But officially, on a CIA capacity, without them knowing, he was there to collect intelligence about these people that could potentially be used against them in the future and to understand

how the organization worked and to collect intel. So yes, he was being friendly with them because he believed in their cause. but also because he was a CIA spook, he was collecting information that could be used against them. Okay. And eventually, the moral ambiguity of that type of thing caused him to request a more direct form of CIA work

where he could be more sure he was doing cool spy shit and getting the bad guys instead of like, I don't know, tricking Jesse Jackson. His handler, who in the book is called Jim Bird, says he'll do what he can. That week,

that's who George Clooney plays in the movie. by the way. That week when he got home from that mission was the same week that ABC ordered the dating game pilot and he used his salary from working at the CIA to set up the production office that he had to produce that pilot. During the early weeks of filming the now ordered 13 episode run that came from that pilot in January of 1966 while he was struggling with the contestants giving answers to the Bachelor and Bachelorette's questions that were way too dirty for TV and eventually having to hire an actor to pretend to be from the FCC to yell at people and say he would arrest them if they were dirty on the air. This was around the time that Jim Bird

returned and sent him to Mexico City for a three-day weekend to assassinate a friend of Che Guevara, who in the book is called Salvador Renda. With Jim babysitting him, they rented a shitty limousine in Mexico City, met their team at a place called the Restaurant Bellinghausen in Mexico City's Sonorosa, both real places, followed their sources to a specific bench, and the two other men, one called Brazioni and one called Soledad, executed the hit just as a group of schoolchildren entered the plaza. Here is Mathis with the quote. Where the fuck did they come from, groaned Brasioni? It's Monday, I said. Shouldn't they be in school? Maybe it's some sort of holiday, said Soledad nervously. Keep walking, Snap Bird. We kept walking.

As we approached the bench, Bird slowed down and so did I. Then we stopped. Brazioni and Soledad continued on. I looked around the square. Where were Renda's bodyguards? Did he actually come alone? By the time I looked back at the bench, Brazioni and Soledad had reached it.

They were standing in front of Renda facing him. Brasione's shoulders were hunched together. He was shooting from the hip. Soledadad's right arm was fully extended, uploading his gun at point-blank range. The end of the barrel inches away from Renda's face. All I heard were little pop-up. sounds. Rendah slump to the back of the bench, his head flopping to the side.

Someone screamed. Then people were running in several directions. Benitez was gone. So, so were Brazioni and Soledad. I watched Jim Bird walk to the bench lean over, look at Renda disappoint, dispassionately, then walk away. It was all over. Yeah. So that was his first hint that he was a part of. And a little over a year later in 1967 and early 1967, while he was trying to figure out a way

to make the dating game more special for its move to primetime programming, Jim Bird gives him the idea of sending couples around on dates across the

globe instead of to like local restaurants. So they used to send them somewhere near the studio, but this time for the primetime version of the show, they were going to send the winners to like

Paris, to London, to places in Europe. And that way, he could avoid suspicion while traveling overseas so much for scouting locations and acting as date chaperones. So it was like cover for him to get around Europe. Did he actually do date chaperoning? Is that like a thing?

I mean, it was the 60s. 100% it was. And you need somebody there. Did they film that part? No, no. It was like just literally ABC sending you to Germany. So they're going to send somebody with you to make sure that they don't get somebody kidnapped in Germany.

I'm sure. I get pictures or something while they're over there. Yeah. But him going there. Like maybe this all happened and he was the CIA or is it him as a smart producer being like, I want a free vacation for all these things. He didn't like go to every single one. You know what I'm saying? I'm just saying like it was covered.

Like sometimes you'd go over there to like and you'll see like it's like, oh, I went on a date with these guys and there was a hit. And so I did it. Or one time I went to a hotel in Germany and said, I'm scouting this for my show. Can I have a look around? You know, that kind of thing. I doubt you have the ability to do it. But was there any way to confirm? like was he traveling a lot when when it wasn't over like prime time was he actually doing overseas

travel a lot when it was this guy was a television executive in the jet setting age in los angeles in the 1960s for him to take a three day weekend to mexico city is not even crazy the you know like the this was a time when people were like smoking cigarettes and walking around on airplanes and having the like unlimited flight company expense account shit he was doing all of this shit for real and it was so much more like accessible for everyone at this time if you're rich in that way like you could just do whatever you wanted to do uh you know it wasn't like crowded it was just still happening um but yeah that's that's the idea that he got and in may of that year he followed a couple to london for his first solo assignment in which he was to pick up a

film delivery and then kill the delivery boy which he finally accomplished by tracking his target to a across from the Connott Hotel in London, while simultaneously avoiding both the couple, which he called the Lummix and the stick in the book. And what he was sure was somebody tailing him the whole time. But eventually, he found out that the tail that he had picked up was actually his own agents babysitting him on his first run. And it all happened in one crazy night in London. Then he stuck the film up his ass and flew it back to America to turn it in. And when he got to L.A., that was when he sold the newlywed game shortly thereafter. How's your mother-in-law, the family game, the game, and the weekly beauty contest, Dream Girl of 1968.

You're telling me that even in his own, if we believe that he did all of these things, to pitch all these shows, do them. He did all. He pitched the shows. And you're telling me he did not do cocaine? Bullshit. You cannot accomplish this many things not coked up. He didn't. It was just people weren't depressed. There was no computers. You just like did this. You could pitch four shows in 10 minutes. You know, like, also I guess his shows. His pitches are like two sentences. You go, hey, let's do a show where we get like these guys in a room and they can't see the guy and then they ask questions and then they guess who it is. And they're like, I love it. Here's a million bucks. Make it. How long the pitches take now? Like if you go to pitch a show today is like a 30 minute hour long. Forever. You can come. You could be on the hook for months. I mean, and it was. It was. It was. It was. It was. It was. still like that 30 minutes it was still like that here it was still like that here like a presentation the

point is just that there was none of this like rigum roll that there is today with everything where there's all these producers and all these like ways things are done it was very much the hollywood of like your you know what i mean it was not there's like it's like the charlie manson hollywood where everybody slept with their door open like and people could like go like do you realize how crazy it was when the camera phone hit hollywood how much it changed everything i bet like think about that. There's pictures from like 2007 of like Kirsten Dunst and like all these other like AAA people like post Spider-Man post-Spiderman 2 post-Spotterman 3 I think even like chilling in like birds which is like next to UCB like just you know hanging out in places because you couldn't

just take a picture of somebody like that. Yeah. Yeah. It's the D they created the D-Dification of celebrities. Yeah. It's crazy. But, you know, that's what it was like. And like I said, when he got back to L.A., he pitched all these games. But by 1970, dating game and newlywed game were canceled. And by 1973, we find Chuck Barris in West Berlin, pretending to scout a hotel for new dating game, for like the newer dating game primetime version prize he was considering. But really, he was there to meet his beautiful contact.

Patricia Watson, probably not a real name, who is apparently so beautiful that in the movie version, she's literally played by Julia Roberts. They have chemistry and fooled around a lot out on assignment, also a redhead, I believe, and become friends for years professionally and, you know, even though they don't see each other unless they're spying or whatever. But today's mission is just for Chuck to take out Hans Colbert, probably not his real name either, who's an anti-American, pro-communist trade unionist who wants to unionize steel mills and talk shit on the USA and

rich West Germans, just as Western German industry is starting to gain some good momentum again in the post, you know, main Cold War times. Not to mention, Hans funnels weapons to various other local terrorist orgs, so Uncle Sam says he's got to go. After a days long

stakeout, Barris is so miserable that he resolves to quit the CIA ASAP. But on the night of October 15th, 1973, he and his partner Keeler, pulled Colbert into a parked car, shot him to death, and burned him and the car with gasoline. Over the next two years, Barris produces four more shows, the hit parade. I thought the CIA was supposed to be clandestine. Shooting somebody up and lighting their car on fire, I will hear how that's an accident. It's 1973. If you found the car on fire, what would you even do

to find out who did it? How could you even find out who was dead right away? You wouldn't. What I feel like, and again, I'm not an expert on any of these things, but in most of my information comes from this podcast. But like the CIA was trying to find out super, like almost magical, but like ways of doing this where no, like there's no evidence. Just lighting them up like gangland style and then lighting them on fire just is not seen to mesh with like. That's no evidence. Oh, there's evidence of a murder. The car is going to blow up even. Like, there's no way.

Like, there's evidence that a murder occurred, but the fact is, it's not like they don't know the guy ever died. It's like the first time they shot him in a bench and brought daylight and aced and pieced out. Nobody knows who shot him. They just left. And then this one, they pulled him into the car first, killed him inside the car, and then waited a long time, got out of the car and burned it when no one was around. It's a, it's, it's the perfect crime.

It's the perfect crime. All of these. dude, all these dudes, I guess James Bond was a popular series. They all feel like James Bond, like American James Bond fan fiction. They all have like the femme fatale sidekicks that they definitely hooked up with. That Veronica Vaughn, they got along with her. The real CIA attached firebombs to bats and thought they were going to fly into the addicts of the Nazi buildings and killed them.

I thought you said they tested it. Like, they didn't make it to market. They didn't make it to market, but they did it. And they also dropped frozen cats with bombs attached to them because cats always land on their feet. Like, the fact that this is how they carried out an assassination to me, knowing what I know about how the government does things, especially today, is in no way surprising to me. I'm on, I'm with Alex on this one. After as much as I've read about what they've done, I'm like, no, this is, this is like, maybe more of the more. Like, I guess this makes sense.

How is this any different than status? something that the poem is believable. How I feel like these things go just from my own vibe is like, if you want, if someone's going to get murdered this openly, you get like a rebel faction that you support to be the trigger people.

But it seemed like the CIA was trying to like poison cigars. Like everything seemed so much more clandestine. Like actually like, we're going to kill them like through poison in a really innocuous. Like it's like a hitman mission. And this is just like, yeah, like six guys.

we just walked up and just shot him in the head and walked away. Yeah, there was... That's how every assassination in real life ever occurs is exactly like that. Think about it. It's certainly poisoning itself, but also like the fact that you believe that about them means the propaganda worked, Davis. That's what they want you to think.

When a normal crazy guy comes and kill somebody, like look at Shinzo Abe, right? He got killed by a dude who like made a gun and walked up and shot him. And the guy immediately got arrested because, of course, you can't just walk up and shoot somebody. But if you can and you can create a situation where you can just walk up and shoot somebody and be gone, that's almost as good as nobody knowing. Especially when there's no security cameras. There's no cameras everywhere.

There's no internet. There's no nothing. I don't think DNA testing was happening even at that point. Over the next two years, four more shows are produced. The hit parade, spoof, treasure hunt, the music game. Barris makes more money. He moves to Bel Air now, even nicer. Eventually, in 1975, Keeler, this is two years after he met Keeler in Germany and killed

that guy in the car. This guy calls him again and asks him to meet him at Lasgala and Beverly Hills to have dinner, except they ordered drinks and dinner and Keeler doesn't eat anything. And they just talk about like the old days and if any of it was worth it and if they ever think about getting out of the biz and he doesn't see Keeler again. And three weeks later, he gets word that Keeler killed himself or at least that's what he was told happened. And he never saw Keeler again. A few weeks later, in early April, 1975, he's contracted by Patricia Watson again and flown to London, where she tells him he's to meet his contact, who goes by the name Leonard Chumpchop. I know that sounds weird, but then again, Chuck says that when he's working.

It sounds like 30 Rocks Janice Joplin, like Janice Jormchomp for her documentary. They couldn't get to like. Chuck says that when he was working for the CIA, he goes by Sunny Six killer, so who knows what is real. Oh, yeah. None of them have cool code names. It's just like rusty shackleton in my mind. He and Chumpchop were going to follow a crooked CIA agent called Harry Kirby, which is also not his real name, to a meeting with a dickhead KGB colonel who's known in the book as

Yuri Slosky and he's meant to kill them both. However, this time, he does not realize it, but he has been under the surveillance by the KGB now for over a year. And he was being tailed the whole time that he was tailing Kirby. was every movement even before he left the country. However, once Kirby met Slosky, instead of tailing them anywhere, he kind of just decided to take the risk and ambush them both in the street right away, right when they met each other because he was tired of being there. And he wanted to just do it at the first possible time that he could. And he was successfully made it out of the country

thanks to the quick thinking of a French operative who had been assigned to protect him on his way out called Paul Picard, who when the Russians that had been tailing him closed in because he kind of caught them with their pants down, they took him through an alleyway. He was like, come in the car! And they like went down an alleyway.

And then the French guys like closed in the Russian guys and like moved in on them. And they were able to get out of the country. And he was able to get out without being properly identified by any official source, right? if he had tried to kill them in almost any other place besides where he tried to kill them out in the street, he probably would have been pinched and killed right away. And now that he killed Sloski and Kirby, he was sure that a kill order had been made against him by the KGB. And they were always watching him.

And when he got back to L.A. two days later, Jim Bird informed him that he was likely, there was likely a mole somewhere in the CIA that was giving them information about him. and that Paul Picard was already dead. The guy who helped him out of the other country was already dead. Jim said that he was planning on going sailing in Greece and that he was done with all this shit. And Chuck was kind of starting to feel the same way. He calls Patricia, talks to her about the mole,

says he's worried because Jim's run into Greece. She tells him the safest thing to do is probably to stay in L.A., make television in as high profile a manner as possible until he could properly retire from the CIA for good. That logic not makes sense to you, Davis? The math didn't math there. So like retire, fake retire, become, this is the stupidest simple plan, become massively like successful in a crapshoot industry.

No, just become high profile. And then he'll be like. No, high profile. Like go out on the town, be present, be visible, so that you can't just like be silently killed in your house. Okay. Bruce waning it up, I guess. Yeah, like just being memorable.

But isn't he already a successful producer at this point? He's a producer. Talent. No, he's not talent yet. He's just a producer. Oh, this happens before. Okay. Yeah.

But after this happens, he is three months later auditioning entertainers for a different variety show and he's having more fun watching the bad acts than the good acts. And that's when he invents the gong show. And the same night, he fired the original host and took on the role himself. Somebody was waiting for him in his office. and took a shot at him and then spooked and ran off when they missed. Damn. And it was close enough to him that it temporarily deafened his right ear for a couple days.

And right after that happened while he was standing there, just moments later, the phone rang and it was Patricia telling him that Jim Bird was now dead also and that the walls were kind of closing in. Surely a firearm discharged in his office. With the bullet. some form of physical evidence. It was the middle of the night and it went into a chair and he disposed of the evidence because he didn't want to be made.

Well, we all know bullets disappear after midnight. No, it went into a chair and he just, he got rid of it himself because he didn't want anybody to see it. You have to realize back then, the world's engine didn't have enough RAM to kind of like be a persistent universe. So it would clear all the damage. If you just take the bullet out and fuck the chair up or throw the chair away, nobody's ever going to know that a bullet shot the chair. You know what I mean? It doesn't like it doesn't matter.

Like I don't think that's like the smoking gun here. I was ironic smoking gun. That's ironically as ironic as it was. Specifically a smoking gun. Where was the chair? I'm now I'm thinking like the one he was like, was he sitting in it? He was in his office sitting on his desk and somebody took a shot at him and it went past him into his chair. And he was like, I know you asshole. And then that guy ran away. He was sitting in his chair and it went past him. No, he was sitting on his desk. Was he in a fucking gamer chair? He was sitting on his desk and it went past him and hit his chair.

Okay, okay. And they threw the chair out then and there. Yes, he was not sitting in the chair. And then he dealt with it. Yes. He's a fucking CIA operative. He knows how to deal with this type of stuff. In October of 1978, he got straight A's in spy school.

In October of 1978, he specialized, he had on television. In October of 1978, Chuck, Barris was called to DC to receive a medal for outstanding service from the CIA. And he thought it was ironic that while he was getting roasted by the critics for making the worst shows ever, that he was also getting medals for like saving the world, kind of. Towards the end of 1979,

a car with four heavily armed KGB agents was stopped by the CIA in Chuck Barris's driveway with orders to kill him, but they got him because they were watching him. And the heat kind of died down on him a little bit. And then the Gong show movie happened and it failed. And Chuck entered that dark period in 1980 where he didn't work for a year. And he apparently became some sort of recluse. And in June of 1980, he went to New York to throw a man called Mario Moretti, not his real name either, out of a window.

And he told his bosses at the CIA that after that he was done for good, but they said no one's ever done for good. And then he said, fuck you. And then he checked into a suite at the nearby Parker Hotel for over a year where he lived and got to know the staff quite well. and in August of 1981, you know, almost over a year later, he was visited in his room by a man called Puckston. Honestly, a hotel is like the, that's where all the murders happen in spy stuff. Like, that's not a safe place to hang out. I know, but he was also being dramatic and, you know, kind of a genius in a hotel. You know, you get how it is.

He's trying to be like Dracula. If I wanted to pick a place to be safe, I would not pick a place where there is huge turnover of the individuals that come there, as well as a massive number of staff that have access to multiple different ways to get to your room. It just seems like this is the stupidest place to hide. If I was depressed and I was rich, if I was depressed and I was rich, I would live somewhere where someone did my laundry. That's all I'm saying.

And God, he got you there, Davis. Sorry. It's a huge upside. Yeah. You got to pick. And everything. You get asleep in a clean room every day no matter what you do. Bagels from breakfast every Monday morning.

You know, breakfast, probably drinks at this time because everything was like affordable and sensible. Okay. In August of 1981, he's in this room. He's visited by a man called Puckston the 3rd who he came up with through the agency, who he fucking hated because he wore whoopee socks. Which if you don't know what whoopie socks are,

they're like the like socks that probably Davis is wearing right now that are like low cut athletic socks. that, you know, he doesn't have a problem with them. He broke TOS. Patreon video tier just got another treat. Wait, oh, is there like a thing you can't show body parts? No, no, no, I was just kidding. No, but for for free for freet?

For freet? No. At 38 and I'm diabetic and I still have him. Nice job. Gene Gene the dancing machine. I got to show them off while I still go. He, uh, he, uh, I can make that joke. You guys can't.

Anyway, Puckston, he wears whoopee socks. He doesn't trust this guy because he wears low-cut black socks with his suit. That's why he doesn't trust them. What if they were doing whoopee cushion socks instead? No, no. No. In fairness, though, those are the socks that I wear. Yeah, I know.

I know. I'm just out of him now. So Puckston's from the agency, told him he needed one last job from him, but that if he did it, he was out. He wasn't going to do the job, but then Puckston told him that the job was to kill the mole. Now that he knew about the mole, he assumed that the mole was responsible for Byrd's death and Picard's death and probably Keeler's death. And the double hit that he somehow succeeded at was probably a trap that was set up by the mole. And so he accepted and he wanted the revenge. That's a little plot, plot convenient for a final mission before you retire.

This is like the, how you get everybody to go, like everyone thinks they're killing the mole. then you have all the guys you need to clear out in one room. They're all dead. That's how you... Lucky number of Slevin. No, what's the one? Smokin Aces? That Friday...

Thunderbolts? I do not remember the plot of smoking Aces. That Friday, he met Patricia for dinner in Boston at the Union Oyster House, which we've been too many times. Yep. They talked about his mission. The food was probably better back then. They talked about his last mission.

Great place to order chicken. Yeah. They talked about his last mission and the good times. and they got a little frisky together before he did his last job. Then he went to the bathroom, hit a pistol on his ankle, went back with her to her apartment,

and shot her because she was the mole. Oh. Yeah. Just how it goes with these sides of doing. James has to... He shouldn't have told her that Jim Bird went on vacation, man. He shouldn't have told her.

Three hours later, he called his red-headed roommate Penny, not her real name. Her real name's Robin. We know that one. Who he was secretly, not so secretly in love with back in L.A. He asked her to marry him.