Failed Pilot

To mark the (almost) four-year anniversary of Just Farr A Laugh’s release, and to celebrate that the CD is practically out-of-print, the universe has decided that one of my NY associates needed to find a copy of JFAL in a Salvation Army.

Read some old.

Or read some really old (as it appeared in Chunklet Issue 16)

HOLLYWOOD CONFUSE-A-CON
by Andrew Earles
The Post Gong Show Life of Murray Langston

I’m writing this to make you aware of a particular career path that, while notably odd, also embodies the every essence powering a Neil Hamburger bit or the common “struggling actor” parody.

Murray Langston is better known if known at all, as The Unknown Comic - his one creative endeavor that might cause a resounding “Oh yeah” amongst the pop-culturally literate. Murray enjoyed both success (regular writer and performer on The Sonny and Cher Show) and failure (selling women’s shoes at JC Penney) throughout much of the 70’s before the bankruptcy of his nightclub, Showbiz, left him with, as rumor has it, no choice but to appear on The Gong Show out of financial desperation(1). Dreadfully ashamed of this, he armed himself with anonymity via a grocery sack with eyeholes, and some of the worst stand-up comedy this side of Bob Zany. As The Unknown Comic, he would prance about telling non-jokes and verbally insulting Chuck Barris, instantly winning approval from everyone including Barris, who subsequently made Langston a regular performer on both The Gong Show and The $1.98 Beauty Contest — the latter a peripheral example of Barris’ genius that aired in 1978. The bit enjoyed a fair amount of popularity, and The Unknown Comic began performing the Sahara Hotels Vegas/Reno/Lake Tahoe circuit as starring in the notorious and still heavily sought-after Gong Show Movie(2)(1980).

After running into the open arms of the detrimentally insular Playboy Channel, where he produced, wrote, and starred in a handful of comedy specials, Langston began working on the free-association malarkey-festival of elementary shit jokes and editor-had-the-day-off pratfalls that would eventually be Night Patrol (1984). Co-written by and starring Murray, Night Patrol, much like Wacko and Slapstick of Another Kind before it, tries and fails at emulating the Abrams/Zucker/Zucker (Airplane!, Police Squad) formula of filling every available second with a gag. Murray plays “Melvin” – a bumbling cop moonlighting as a popular comedian who…uh…yeah you guessed it. A shameless Police Academy rip-off that lowers the brow even further, some of Night Patrol’s comedic guns include a perpetually flatulent Billy Barty, a rape victim played by Pat Morita (shelved and released AFTER The Karate Kid!!!!!) with a poorly overdubbed child’s voice, and the enigmatic Pat Paulsen (Kent) as Melvin’s oversexed shift partner. Linda Blair (a Langston collaborator for years to come) and Jaye P. Morgan are thrown in as love interests, and there’s plenty of post-comedy when The Unknown Comic starts chewing up the scenery with his also horribly dubbed voice. Look for the Chuck Barris reference when a criminal runs up and asks Melvin if he can get him on The Dating Game. A man holding a bunch of mannequin parts is charged with “armed robbery” and a “cat burglar” walks by carrying…yep…okay, we’re on the same food-stained page here when it comes to the children’s humor. The adult humor consists of little more than characters saying “bitch,” “nice tits,” and “let’s fuck,” people touching and stepping in doo-doo, “straights” getting high for the first time, and a load of lesbian bashing/stereotypes. The approach is literally the most pedestrian that I have ever witnessed in an R-rated comedy made after 1980, and I will stand by that statement.

Night Patrol should have made a gaping void of the flimsy career Murray Langston had established prior to its release, but he miraculously continued to (and still does) get sparse work. He had a small part in the Alan Smithee helmed Stitches (1985)….you know, Stitches, with Eddie Albert and Parker Stevenson, come on…Stitches!!! Oh…I know you dug Lightning: The White Stallion (1986) starring a 438 year-old Mickey Rooney and a spent Susan George, well, Murray was in that, playing a blacksmith or something. Perhaps longing for the control and spotlight enjoyed with Night Patrol, Langston co-wrote and starred in Up Your Alley (1988) – a sensitive reporter (Linda Blair)-falls-for-street-transient (Langston) dramedy that swerved around the hearts of hundreds and went straight to video. Bob Logan, whom I’m sure you know as the man behind Meatballs IV, directed it. Wishful Thinking (1990) gets the same Langston treatment, as he co-wrote and starred as a guy who discovers a magic gnome (Billy Barty) and then has to deal with whatever character Ruth Buzzi plays in this pile of garbage.

A couple of bit parts later should put us up to date with the career of Murray Langston…but no! He still performs live as The Unknown Comic in the L.A. area, he wrote Night Patrol Too (unreleased, no really, it is), and wrote monologues for Dom Deluise to perform on The New Candid Camera. Not only that, he executed what could be the most credible move of his entire career by hosting The Gong Show 25th Anniversary Tribute and 24-Hour Marathon on the Game Show Network this past summer. If Murray Langston was the product of someone’s imagination, you know, had the man never existed outside of a Hollywood hack’s head, then The Murray Langston Story would be another screenplay blurring the line between brilliant and god awful.

1 It has been said many times that a Gong Show winner was paid considerably more than the infamous $516.23, and that all of the performers, gonged or not, were sent home with some money.

2 Shortly after this movie was released to an almost universal critical flogging, Chuck Barris pulled the plug on Chuck Barris’ Productions and moved to the south of France. The Gong Show Movie made it to videocassette in very limited quantities, and Barris’ is reportedly not in favor of the movie enjoying a re-release. Copies of the original cassette fetch close to $100 on eBay, but good dubs can be found on certain personal websites for as low as ten dollars.

editors note: In the ensuing job of finding images and information for this article, Mr. Langston’s website was discovered. It is, not surprisingly, theunknowncomic.com

It’s me amongst countless other bloggers!. Real time blogging? No. I said “sort of.” Remember? It’s since been decided that chronological coverage will better suit the evening. Thanks for reading. You make up a group that’s .01111298th the size of, say, Cintra Wilson’s readership for her annual slice-and-dice.

The TV wasn’t consistently on until one or two, and even then, I was a bit flighty with E!’s Countdown to the red Carpet. Clever programming (in regards to ME) on other channels, including Next of Kin (Turner South) and an episode of “Homicide: Life on the Streets” (Sleuth Channel), proved distracting. Reliably resembling a capital ‘B’, Bruce Vilanch gave explicitly unfunny answers to a straight man’s questions, thus we were spared the meltdown (in my apartment) that might have occurred at the hands of E!’s ELLIOT!!!!. According to this, Vilanch’s is experiencing year two of unwitting absence from the ceremony’s writing credits. At some point, the camera was trained on Gary Busey’s arrival…for what felt like a two full minutes. Gary Busey is no longer a punch line, not even for SLIGHTLY FUNNY people. Admittedly though, I want “Shasta McNasty” as an allowable punch line for me. And was that a fade-out of Helena Bonham Carter calling Tim Burton’s microphone-shover an “asshole?”

Oh but how they crept up! It was time! Mere minutes before the hour mark, I curiously conducted a little cable survey. Competing channels in my sufficient (but not huge) plan seemed to adopt a “fuck it” approach to tonight’s programming. Some even showed the same film back-to-back (AMC with M*A*S*H, TBS with Scary Movie 3, and Turner South with Snake Eyes). FX dolled out The Core, Sci-Fi aired a sequel-only Hellraiser marathon, and PAX donated an episode of “Early Edition.” We don’t have time to discuss that show. Later. Maybe. HBO phoned it in (“Deadwood”), and Showtime was Showtime (The Faculty).

I live in a Billy Crystal-free environment, so consider the intro sketch negated. Death to Smoochie joke? Not bad. I also laughed at the “period pieces” joke, or maybe it was the Jew joke, perhaps both, but Jon Stewart was holding up nicely, as he would throughout. Going on jotted notes here, people. Ok, I’m reading, “Charlize Theron has a red-tailed hawk perched on her shoulder” with no remembrance as to why that was noted. Enter the deluge of Crash nominations. I dearly despised this film. A preachy rotgut of poor-man’s (later) Altman and even poorer-man’s Paul Thomas Anderson, Crash is a suffocating, humorless, racial ambulance-chasing finger-pointer. It is the new Shamesploitation pile-topper. Beware of a film that makes me so hyphen-happy. A red flag, for sure. It was around this time in the evening that Syriana garnered one of its only mentions. A glorious thing.

Best Achievement In Costume Design? So, the costume designers for the nominated Walk the Line watched ANY 50’s/60’s PERIOD PIECE FROM THE LAST TWENTY YEARS??? Took a look at what hipsters were filching from thrift shops in 1994? Deep research!!

Then came Morgan Freeman, who was able to present an award by taking some time off of the case that brought him out of retirement. There went Good Night and Good Luck, along with Tab’s new energy drink. I guess that one must get all jacked up to keep a scrapbook, read Lewis Grizzard, or fuck a roofer.

The stuffed penguin fiasco caused hate towards a documentary that I previously enjoyed. Thanks. So as not to make lonely that cringe-inducing moment, the Crash theme was then belted out amidst a clusterfuck of burning automobiles and multi-culty interpretive walkers. FIRE!!! BEHIND YOU!!! FIRE!!! Truthfully, I’d watch this nonsense over the simultaneously aired Bad Religion concert on VH-1 Classic.

The “issues” montage was a mess. John Stewart’s taking the piss (“none of these issues were ever a problem again”) was funny, but not quite on the mark. Three Mile Island was, actually, never a problem again. See, that joke doesn’t even work. The China Syndrome was released a few weeks BEFORE the Three Mile Island incident. Better luck next time, Earles. Closing out this stretch was the evening’s token long-winded speech, given by Gustavo Santaolalla, the man responsible for the Brokeback Mountain score. You can’t really blame him; the speech is only four seconds long in Spanish. I did not steal that joke from Taylor Negron.

Jake bombed (the DVD player joke…wow) through the next intro, and I was soon tickled to find that someone else considers Smokey and the Bandit an “epic.” A montage backed with a montage! Altman’s tribute quizzically excluded Popeye, Pret-a-Porter, and Dr. T and the Women. A portion of Three Six Mafia behaved (I counted minimal profanity edits) and gave two full shout outs to Memphis, TN, the city in which I sit. This performance (and win) created a blank canvas for bad pimp jokes, which sadly continued for the remainder of the ceremony.

Hillary Swank and her Mary Tyler Mouth presented Best Actor, John Travolta mispronounced “Memoirs,” and Reese Witherspoon (probably the jibbering, paint-peeling nag that she always portrays) and Jack Nicholson shared the distinction of being openly laughed at during their respective speeches/intros. The last two laughs of the evening came courtesy of Ang Lee. First was the footage of him directing Brokeback Mountain in a cowboy hat, then the jokes! The jokes!

“Tee hee, I can’t quit you, tee hee.”

I have but one source of outrage concerning the tonigt. I could, by this point, care less that Crash won. Not a surprise. My beef ties in Dustin Hoffman’s Best Adapted Screenplay presentation with the In Memoriam montage.

Hoffman showed blatant frustration when describing the adaptation process. You could hear it in his delivery. He should know. Hoffman struggled for years to make his vision of Edward Bunker’s No Beast So Fierce. He gave up, and Ula Grosbard turned the book into the devastating Straight Time (starring Hoffman).

Edward Bunker, who passed last July, was excluded from the montage. Troubling.