About ten or so years ago, a girl that I was dating and I had a long coversation about film. In particular, she brought up the topic of which movie charcater each of us felt that we most identified with. Oddly enough, she chose Shrek as she- like many females- wasn’t happy with her weight. In truth, at 5′8 with 38DD breasts, she was a bit curvy, but also quite striking and hardly a Shrek-type. When she asked me the question, she fully expected me to say some sort of swaggering, machismo hero (like a James Bond), or Fight Club-era Brad Pitt. I came right out and said that, for me, the one and only character was Chuck Barris in the 2002 film, Confessions of a Dangeroud Mind (which, it should be said, was played perfectly by Sam Rockwell).
Now I’ve never created a game show or hosted one. Nor have I ever claimed to have murdered people on behalf of the CIA. I’ve never written hit songs for other artists or best-selling books (come to think of it, I’ve never written a song or a book), and I’m very much an ordinary and average guy. And yet, I identified with Chuck, or at least the way he was portrayed in the film. He was ambitious, if slightly unfocused. He was well-intetioned with the ladies in his life, but struggled to keep it in his pants. He wanted to fancy himself as being dashing and handsome, but he was a man of average at best looks. He tried to be swaggering, but could never entirely mask his vunerability. He did his best to be cold, calculated, and heartless when necessary, but couldn’t hide his guilty conscience. I remember being struck by his presence as I watched Gong Shot reruns as a kid. As the host, he strutted around stage not in a perfectly taiolred suit, but rather awkwardly, in a tuxedo with an open-collar shirt and his chest hair pouring out. He managed to be both endearing and slightly creepy at the same time. Forget James Bond. This was the guy I wanted to be like.
Chuck Barris, who passed away earlier today at the age of 87, was an unlikely star and pop icon; the perfect behind-the-scenes creative genius who found himself in front of the camera when he hosted the hugely succcesful game show, The Gong Show. But long before his on-screen success, he created some of the most popular and defining game shows of all time, like The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game. He wrote Palisades Park, which was a chart-topping hit in the early 1960s for Freddie ‘Boom Boom’ Cannon, and claimed to have written a variety of other songs. I was particularly fond of his two autobiographies. The first, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, caused a bit of a stir as this is where he first claimed to have been a hired gun for the CIA. This claim has been debunked by the CIA, but hey, you never know, right? The second autobiography, The Game Show King, was more of a straightforward (and highly entertaining!) look at Hollywood in the 1960s and 1970s. In addition, Barris penned a handful of other books.
But it was undoubtedly The Gong Show that made Barris a household name in the 1970s. And while critics slammed the show for being trash-television, it’s safe to say that without The Gong Show, there would be no Star Search, no American Idol, no America’s Got Talent, etc.
Barris had a sort of unrefined charm that was completely without pretense. He rose to fame in an industry which was all about glitz and glamour, during the tail-end of an glitzy era. But there was a certain element of Chuck not giving a shit about all of that. He was seemingly so uncool and out of place, that it made him incredibly cool. And let’s face it, if you’re going to be so insanely and outlandish that you claim to have murdered over thirty people for the CIA, then- true or not- you’ve got to have some balls.
More than decade or so after that conversation I had with that curvy brunette girlfriend, I can’t help but wonder if she ever outgrew that insecurity that often plagues early twentysomething females about their body and figure. Does she still identify with Shrek? Who the hell knows. Who cares, really? As for me, I can safely say that I still identify with the conflicted and often times square-peg in-a-round-hole Barris in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. And I probably will for quite some time.
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