Line #17 Creator/ChuckBarris


1	[[quoteright:320:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/chuck_barris_2_9212.jpg]]
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3	->''"One piece of pie is delicious. Fourteen pieces are obviously nauseating."''
4	-->--'''Chuck Barris''', in a ''Magazine/TVGuide'' article on the overloading of {{Game Show}}s.
5
6	Charles Hirsch "Chuck" Barris (June 3, 1929 – March 21, 2017) was a sometimes-controversial GameShow producer whose work was mostly pastiches of the genre. His library of shows is currently owned by Creator/SonyPicturesTelevision (via their acquisition of Guber/Peters in the early 1990s; they had bought Barris' company in 1989).
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8	----
9	!!Shows produced by Barris include:
10	* ''People Pickers'' (unsold 1965 pilot)
11	* ''Series/TheDatingGame'' (1965-74, 1978-80, 1986-89)
12	* ''Series/TheNewlywedGame'' (1966-74, 1977-80, 1984, 1985-89; actually created by [[Series/SuperPayCards Nicholson-Muir Productions]])
13	* ''Dream Girl of '67'' (1966-67)
14	* ''The Family Game'' (1967; also an unsold 1986 pilot hosted by Jeff [=MacGregor=]; later revived in a sense by Creator/JayWolpert as ''Series/WaitTilYouHaveKids'' for [[Creator/ABCFamily The Family Channel]])
15	* ''How's Your Mother-in-Law?'' (1967-68)
16	* ''National Celebrity Test'' (1968; unsold pilot hosted by Regis Philbin)
17	* ''The Game Game'' (1969-70)
18	* ''Cop Out!'' ([[http://www.usgameshows.net/x.php?show=CopOut September 1972]]; at least two pilots)
19	* ''The Parent Game'' (1972-73; began as a 1969 pilot hosted by Clark Race for NBC)
20	* ''[[Series/TreasureHuntUS (The New) Treasure Hunt]]'' (1973-77, 1981-82; revival of a 1956-59 game hosted and produced by Jan Murray, began as a 1972 pilot with a very different set and the Q&A of the 1950s version)
21	* ''Series/TheGongShow'' (1976-80, 1988-89; began as a 1975 pilot hosted by Gary Owens with a four-celebrity panel)
22	* ''The $1.98 Beauty Show'' (1978-80)
23	* ''3's a Crowd'' (1979-80; began as a 1969 pilot hosted by Wink Martindale, followed by two pilots in December 1978 and a third in 1979)
24	* ''Camouflage'' (1980; revival of a 1961-62 game by Jerry Hamer Productions)
25	* ''Dollar A Second'' ([[http://www.usgameshows.net/x.php?show=DollarASecond February 7, 1981]]; unsold revival of a 1950s game hosted by Jan Murray)
26	* ''Comedy Courtroom'' (1980s unsold pilot hosted by Barris)
27	* ''Bamboozle'' ([[http://www.usgameshows.net/x.php?show=Bamboozle early 1986]]; unsold Creator/{{ABC}} pilot hosted by Bob Hilton)
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29	Under the Guber/Peters name, they created the following shows and pilots:
30	* ''The Quiz Kids Challenge'' (1990-91; loose revival of the 1940s-50s ''Quiz Kids'' series)
31	* ''Series/{{Countdown}}'' ([[http://www.usgameshows.net/x.php?show=Countdown1990&sort=0 unsold 1990 pilot]], based off the British game show)
32	----
33	!!Also wrote the following books:
34	[[foldercontrol]]
35
36	[[folder:''Confessions of A Dangerous Mind'']]
37
38	->''"My name is Charles Hirsch Barris. I have written pop songs, I have been a television producer. I am responsible for polluting the airwaves with mind-numbing puerile entertainment. [[BreadEggsMilkSquick In addition, I have murdered thirty-three human beings]]."''
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40	An alleged autobiography in which Barris claimed he was using his work as a GameShow producer to hide his activities as an assassin for the U.S. [[UsefulNotes/{{CIA}} Central Intelligence Agency]]. This was a brilliant claim on Barris' part as, while the CIA requires all of its employees to sign an agreement never to publish anything without getting Agency approval, if they actually tried to enforce the agreement they'd be admitting that they engaged in assassinations (violating a presidential directive). So when the CIA reportedly said that Barris has never worked for the Agency, it probably wasn't believed.
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42	In 2002 it was the subject of the directorial debut from Creator/GeorgeClooney, which starred Creator/SamRockwell as Barris and was adapted by Creator/CharlieKaufman.
43	----
44	!!The film has the following tropes:
45	* AlternateCharacterInterpretation: InUniverse--is Chuck Barris LivingADoubleLife as a ruthless CIA assassin, or is this all just the PowerFantasy of a game show producer to cope with the contempt he gets (and feels) for being a purveyor of tasteless television?
46	* BasedOnAGreatBigLie: Barris had already admitted [[http://buzzerblog.com/2017/03/22/rip-chuck-barris/ he had made the story up]] in a 1984 interview promoting the book; he wrote the story in large part because he had been exiled from television over the controversy surrounding one of his shows, ''3's a Crowd''. In the same interview, Barris claimed he had applied for work with the CIA in the early 1960s but never actually entered the Agency; and ''Confessions of a Dangerous Mind'' was the product of Barris imagining how his life would have turned out had he entered the CIA, and how he could have balanced it with his game show career at the same time. (Even if he had got into the CIA, it's doubtful he would have been employed as a hitman.)
47	* BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy: GameShowHost Chuck Barry was a CIA hitman.
48	* CassandraTruth: At the end of the movie Chuck marries Penny and confesses to his double life, but she just thinks he's joking.
49	* DisastrousDemonstration: An instructor shows the CIA recruits how to kill a man by crushing his windpipe with the edge of the hand. He fails to pull the blow and the demonstration subject falls to the ground and starts audibly choking. Cue OhCrap from the instructor who then asks for another volunteer.
50	* {{Ephebophile}}: A girl who rejected Chuck's advances in school makes contact again once he becomes famous. Of course, now she's older and put on weight she looks nothing like the girl he was lusting after for years. We then cut to Chuck being invited into the bedroom of some girls who are implied to be underage.
51	* IndulgentFantasySegue: When Chuck gets cut loose by the networks for poor ratings, he imagines a montage where he proceeds to [[ShootTheMessenger kill]] the BearerOfBadNews in various ways.
52	* FreudianExcuse: CIA agent Jim Byrd recruits Chuck as an assassin because he "fits the profile". Chuck later scoffs at the idea that there's any such profile, whereupon Byrd reveals that [[CompensatingForSomething Chuck's mother used to dress him up as a girl]] and he's the [[BastardBastard illegitimate]] [[InTheBlood son of a convicted serial killer]].
53	* ObfuscatingStupidity: Chuck is stuck chaperoning an idiot contest winner around Helsinki as cover for a CIA assignment. Later he gets caught and spy-swapped...for the same man who turns out to be a KGB agent.
54	-->'''Chuck Barris:''' I don't know what was worse--that I was duped by that fat fucking bachelor, or that it took seven of us to replace him.
55	* PoisonedChaliceSwitcheroo: [[spoiler:Patricia (who is TheMole) brings Chuck a tray with two drinks; Chuck's is poisoned. She loses her attention for a moment, then comes back and notices the tray has been reversed. While Chuck isn't looking, she reverses it again. And she winds up choking to death on poison; Chuck hadn't reversed the tray, he just moved the objects on the tray around to make it look like he had.]]
56	* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Chuck meets a beautiful bather at a pool party who then proceeds to calmly get stuck into him for the way he sets up contestants in ''Series/TheGongShow'' for ritual humiliation. Chuck is so shaken he flees.
57	* SeriousBusiness: Peter Jenks of the Federal Communications Commission [[DrillSergeantNasty lines up the game show participants]] and threatens them with a $10,000 fine and/or a year's imprisonment plus [[NothingIsScarier unspoken other fates]] that will be inflicted by him during the long drive to prison should they use lascivious language on air.
58	* SexForServices: Chuck sleeps with FemmeFataleSpy Patricia Watson. When Chuck gives a DudeWheresMyRespect speech to his superior in the CIA, he reveals they sent Patricia to keep him happy.
59	* ThisIsReality: When Jim Byrd first recruits him, Chuck is overjoyed at joining a career where he gets to [[ConspicuousTrenchcoat wear a trenchcoat]] and [[WhenHarryMetSvetlana have sex with beautiful Eastern European women]]. Byrd abruptly brings him down to earth. Chuck does end up having sex with a beautiful spy, but that turns out to be a setup.
60	* YouAllLookFamiliar: Various characters are played by the same actor, or the same character appears in various roles. For instance Robert Burke plays two CIA instructors and a member of the FCC (and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHzf1T6dFfg they're all hilarious]]).
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62	->''"I came up with a new game-show idea recently. It's called The Old Game. You got three old guys with loaded guns onstage. They look back at their lives, see who they were, what they accomplished, how close they came to realizing their dreams. The winner is the one who doesn't blow his brains out. He gets a refrigerator.''
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64	[[/folder]]
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66	[[folder:''The Big Question'']]
67	A novel set in 2012 where Barris (now old, crippled, penniless, and long since forgotten) shares his last great idea with [[TheNameless a young producer]]: ''The Death Game'', a big-money quiz where contestants compete to determine a winner who is then asked a single (impossible) question for big money (if correct) or [[DeadlyGame death by poison]] (if incorrect). The young man likes the idea so much that, after Barris turns down a deal, he contacts his mob friends and has the cripple {{buried alive}}; the show is renamed ''The Big Question'', with its debut night contestants being the many characters the book has been following between the portions about the producer, Barris, and the show.
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69	Airing live on Creator/{{NBC}}, pretty much rigged to hell and back without the contestants' knowledge, and hosted by [[GameShowHost a stereotypical "all-smiles" emcee]], ''The Big Question'' is billed as the next big thing and most of America is glued to their screens. The "winner", a sweet old lady named Vera Bundle who was just beginning to experience life again, gets the final question wrong (as the producer had planned). Shortly afterward, Vera gives a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech to the doctor administering the poison - after which the doctor forces the poison down her throat; Vera dies soon afterward.
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71	A massive outcry begins against the show and NBC, presumably because almost nobody knew about the whole "death" element. While ''The Big Question'' manages to stay on the air despite this, it eventually gets canned after just three episodes,
72	[[/folder]]

Context Creator / ChuckBarris