All of our work in the game show field came to a stunning pinnacle with our version of the Gong Show. 18 acts competed for a grand prize: Two Burning Man tickets and the BM Kit: a handful of drugs, sunblock, a pair of shitty bongos and two gallons of water.
The show had it all: Danger! Comedy! Abandon! And our very own Popsicle Twins, the act that got the Gong Show cancelled from NBC in 1978. Mark Pauline of Survival Research Laboratories built a giant pneumatic gong for the show, and acted as one of three judges, Lisa Leathertongue as the second judge, and Sebastian Melmouth as the third. 18 acts competed. Many were brutally gonged. The judges didn’t like David Jesse, the ukulele player, nor did they like Don Paul Swain, the knife thrower who put the love of his life against a wooden board and threw knives at her, hitting her in the chest three times. It was so sad to see all the air deflate from her chest, her mouth open in defiance, his love will need to be patched it seems. Those inflatable love dolls are expensive!
The judges didn’t like the BMX bike troupe, who accidently smacked an audience member. They didn’t like the Popsicle Twins, who were just two 12-year-old girls eating popsicles. Slowly. Licking. The. Popsicles. Ok, they weren’t really 12 years old but it was the act that the censors ended the real Gong Show over, so we had to do it. This is 25 years ago, we would never do that now. Or would we?
The judges did like Roller Rex, rollerskating over a ramp through an actual flaming hoop doing a flip into the crowd! They loved Mikl-Em and Seth trashing a hotel room. They adored the arial stylings of Sadie Masochista and the Harmon-arachies. It’s all in there!
Our Unknown Comic (Eric Solmanson) got drunk before the show so you can hardly understand his jokes. You’re not missing much. Our Gene Gene the Dancing Machine played by Godd Todd was a late edition to the show, the junk we throw at him from backstage is ACTUALLY just stuff that was around. ZERO preparation! Chaos Kitty sucking the mop has to be a historic moment in show business.
Here is a list of the acts:
David Jessie Ukulele
Capt. Catastrophe
Persephone
BMX bike troupe
Robert Burke the limbo king
Don Paul Swain knife thrower
Roller Rex
Popsicle Twins
Unknown Comic
Try This At Home
Unnamed Contortionist
Harmonarahies
Sadie Masocista
Gene Gene the Dancing Machine
Michael Pepe, monologist
David Jessie, ukulele
Chaos Kitties, Conjoined twin splodge act
You can watch the Gong Show video here:
30 minute edited version:
Here is the original 60 minute version, with the acts in their entirety:
Of course, this is just one of fifty game shows we did.
You can see some videos and photos here.
Some of the game shows were ones that you know, like Hollywood Squares:
Or Jeopardy:
But some of them were brand new ones that we wrote. Which isn’t easy!
Here is a photo from the show “Is It Art?”
Here Bill the friendly junkman gets a new look on “The Iron Barber”:
Here is one from my personal favorite: “What’s Up My Butt!”
I did game shows for like five years. Hal became the announcer, it was perfect. He is such a wealth of talent. Lera was the perfect scorekeeper, with her Stanford education, she was the most over-qualified person in any position for 500 miles in any direction. Here we are, ready to steward game shows and disperse valueless prizes:
We also simulcast the shows. In the photos and videos, you might see that the performance space is littered with TV’s. They all work. We would video the show as it was happening, and pump that signal (with no audio) to the TV’s. They were all set to black and white. It looked like this:
That’s why we wore all those tacky 70’s clothes. So when you looked at the TV, it looked like a re-run from a 70’s game show. It worked. The audience would watch the show either live, or on the TV’s. We would use a $25 broadcasting box we got at Radio Shack. It was only good for a couple hundred feet, and we would broadcast on UHF channel 13. This is how we did porneokie, but that my friend, is another story…
