 This is the SF Productions podcast network And that people used to tape shows. Let me see. There's a tape already in here. Let me hook this up here. Let me see what we got. Come back with us to the 60s and 70s dwelling place of the lost generation. An era whose heroes, role models, and very lives were molded and formed by weekly installments of favorite television programs. As your parents didn't understand. Welcome to the vast wasteland. Welcome home. I'm your host, Mark Schmibar, along with Wilbert Neal and Marty Wiley. We're here to talk about 60s and 70s television. Before we go into the big extravaganzo fund, I just want to tell you we're on Tuesdays at 6, Wednesdays at 10, and Thursdays at 3 p.m. here on A-S-E-T-V-E-K-E-B-L-S. Also, if you want to write into us, our address is box 151526, Columbus, Ohio, 43215. And it's also if you're interested in our big video exchange deal thing with no money included. That's right. If there's some show you're looking for and you can't seem to find it, this is your big opportunity. Write into us and we'll broadcast your message over the half or dozen of people who actually watch us. And maybe one of them actually have a tape of that show. But this is not for money. We want to emphasize this is not for money. This is a simple trade kind of deal. Some sort of barter deal. If you have a chicken or something, you can trade for it, I don't know. You'll know now chickens are considered to be currency in some parts of the world. Pigs. So we just want to see the letters rolling in for that. Fly again or fly again or however letters are delivered. Well, let's move into our big show tonight. This is part two of our big show on Maverick comedy shows. Comedy shows that really broke the rules. And we've already talked about laughing and we just started breaking the surface of money. So let's move more into money. Robert, what do we got here? Oh, I just missed my entry and no one could do anything about it. A little inside. But, well by golly, my name is Python. Did this really start in 68? Is that right? 69. 69. It's 69. We're still watching laughing. We're still watching laughing. And over across the pond there, they're doing this great, outrageous, humorous show with absolutely no scruples or anything. Coherency or anything. It was just downright silly. It was silly. It was so silly it was innovative. And it was great. And to prove how innovative it was, we didn't get it until, what, 75, 76? 75, 76, yeah. And they were done with four seasons of the thing already. They knew about it. That's right. And then we developed our own rip-off of it. Right. Yay! Several. But we get ahead of ourselves there. Right. So first, let's go through the... Yes. What? Start out with the short-lived or the long-lived? Well, let's see. First, we had the Python fruit. Cleese, Chapman, Idol, Palin, Jones, and Gilliam. That's Graham, Terry, Terry, Eric. There's a Michael in there. Michael and another Terry. No. A Bob. A Bob. No. No. No. Let me see. Let me see. Graham, Chapman, Eric, Idol, Terry, Jones, Terry, Gilliam. John. Graham, Graham, Cleese. John! John! Graham, Chapman. John, Cleese. John! Is that... Did I get them all? I think. You've got to go back to the remedial. That's it. Start the game. Well, anyway, there's six of them. But there's only... You usually only saw five of them because the sixth one usually just did the animation. That was Terry Gilliam. That was Terry Gilliam, the American who's from Canada. Yeah. The American who's Canada. Now gone into fame and fortune with Brazil and Baron Munchausen. And I don't know... Is he working on a project right now? Probably. They are working on something about superheroes. The last thing I heard, they were doing something about superheroes. They're supposed to be doing something about superheroes. Something about some aging superheroes. But hey, we don't know. We don't know what it is. So, let's see. We had a show that... Of course, a show with all men running the show. Men, if you had any women on the show. It was Carol Cleveland. Well, it was A. Carol Cleveland. Or one of the men. Men dressed up as women. And that, of course, was one of the major fixtures on the show. Were what were called the pepper pots. And these were the women who sat around. And Basin complained about everything. Good morning, Mrs. Lobster. Good morning, Mrs. Non-Lobster. What are you doing? Oh, I'm good shopping. Whatcha buy? A piston engine. Whatcha... Oh, I was a bargain. Yeah, I'll do that. See what happens. So, let's see. We had your pepper pots. Some of them... What's the favorite sketches I suppose? Favorite sketches, as well, by Golly. I think a favorite for anybody that watches to buy something. A favorite. That's a staple of any time they show the series. If they don't show this one, they've just wasted their money. Is the dead parrot. Yeah. The dead deceased parrot. No, he's only... He's pining for the fjords. Pining for the fjords? He's a Norwegian blue. He's just pining for the fjords. All the Norwegian blue enjoys kippin' on his back, Governor. Well, that was a good one. It's basically this thing. This parrot is dead. And the guy sold it to the man as a live parrot and claimed that it was sleeping. It was nailed to the parrot. So, it was butt out of the cage. He nailed it to that parrot. Muscled up to those bars. And went home with a beacon. This bud wouldn't boom if he put 5,000 volts through it. Anyway, so that's one. And also, I also enjoyed the gumbees. They were basically people that were like... They're brain damaged, aren't they? They got their heads wrapped up. Well, they put a high-cut chip on their heads and their pants were pulled up like Urkel. They got their pants rolled up. Their sleeves rolled up. And they took life fees. And they stand very rigidly. And how they live on? You see them walking the streets of Columbus. I know, they're nice. And let's see, there's a... Gosh, just stop. Hey, another favorite that you just don't see it. It's just not worth even turning it on. It's a lumberjack song. There's a song by Golly. We were talking about last time, the really great thing about the show was the fact that there was... How it broke the rules was that it... If they had a funny concept that didn't have a punchline on any other show until now, it would have been like, well, we can't use it because we don't have a punchline. Or if we got a great punchline, but we don't have a good lead into it, it'd be thrown away. But on this show, it was like, who needs this beginning, middle, and end stuff? We're just gonna go, bam, right into it. Wherever it happens, that's when it happens. And if you don't catch it, then you... Then you mess the rerun. Somewhere along the line, it'll finally hit. Oh, oh, honey, yeah. Whoa. Where have I been? You know, just think it's funny because you want to be so cool that you got it and nobody else did. Well, I think that a lot of people... I've heard a lot of people say, well, I can't watch the show because I can't understand what they're saying. They just couldn't get the British accent. Yeah, the British accent. Well, this is what PBS is for. You watch these shows and you pick up the British accent. It's not what PBS is for. You fight before you find yourself doing the British accent. Well, I mean, you get PBS so you can watch these BBC shows. Okay. Which was one of them. Well, one of my favorite tests has to be spam. I think which works better technically, I think on the album that it does on the show. Yeah, because in the album you get the... You can hear the Viking... You do the orchestral. Yeah. And I mean, the Vikings come in one speaker and the guy and his wife are the other speakers with the waiter. You get the... Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum. Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum. And if you've never seen this, well this is all just lost on you. Yeah, basically. We're not even going to try to explain these sketches, we're just going to zip right through them. You can turn down the sound for a while if you've never watched Bison. Well let's see, what's another, well one of the best written ones I think is Argument Clinic. Yes. It's just a very tight sketch. A man comes in, wants to have an argument, and he comes into several rooms. It's a very nice, it's a very cheap sketch really because he just keeps coming into the same room with clever camera shots that look like he's going into several rooms. And they always have a different person in there. Yeah. You get the guy in charge of contradiction. No. No, that's the human form argument. No, it's contradiction. No, it's not. Yes it is. No, it's not. That's the contradiction thing. No, it is. Insult. He gets insulted first, he gets totally insulted first, and then he goes in and gets contradicted. Right, and then he goes into the complaints department and the guy complains about him. Yeah. And then he finally goes in. And no one is hitting him in the head. Yeah, that's the being hit on the head lesson. Yes. What a stupid concept. It's just silly. Yes. I don't know. On to something else. LAPD, took that course. Ooh, social humor. Relevancy. Oh, I see an end. Yeah. Relevancy. There's relevant stuff here. Relativity. Well, let's see. They had just great fun with history. Since they've got so much history over there, they think it's incorporated as often as possible, which was just great. And they incorporated it not only on the show, but into their movies as well. So it says Monty Python and the Holy Grail. One of, truly, just a milestone of a movie. They just do so many things. And it was funny too. If you consider some of the reviews, Guy the Griller made me want to eat my own vomit. No. So, he got to love a movie like that. Well, Spanish Inquisition. Oh, boy, I wasn't especially a bloody Spanish Inquisition. Nobody's next to Spanish Inquisition. We're just enjoying the heck out of this one. If you've ever seen the show, it's just lost on you. Bye, Gally. That was great. If you did it on the way, you can see it now. I was watching it on that one comedy network. But who the heck knows what it's called now? Yeah. That comedy network was showing it. That comedy deal. What is it called now? Comedy DTV now. It's called. DTV. DTV. DTV. DTV. DTV. DTV. Turn it on. DTV. DTV. DTV. DTV. DTV. DTV. DTV. DTV. But I don't know where it's showing now. I suppose you can go to the library and get a tape or something. That's good. They are all on videotape now. They're all on videotape. You can get just about every one of those episodes on videotape. So, if you don't have a VCR, I guess you're screwed on that too. Oh, sorry. And the thing about the show, the style can alter so much during the show. Some of the early episodes, especially, are very video based, very quick bits, and then there's a later show, the bicycling tour, or the cycling tour, which is one sketch that goes the entire show about this loser guy who's going on the cycling tour and he meets up with this guy who's trying to make safer vegetables. Like the ultimate running gag kind of thing. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it goes on. And this guy gets hit on the head and he thinks he's Trotsky and they go to Russia. So deep. Yeah. Very strange. So we were to show off, basically. Well, several times. Right. But now it's available, like I said, we're available on videotape and available maybe on this new CTV. It was on the old comedy channel. But who knows? It should have happened anyway. So are you beating that to death or are we moving on? Yeah, we're moving on. Yeah, I think we've done enough of the pilot thing. Okay. And now there's something completely different. But not really. Yeah. Because it was based pretty much on this and Laughin and Ernie Kovacs. All that. We're talking, we're talking SNL. We're talking Saturday Night Live. Saturday Night Live from New York. And, okay. Saturday Night Live. And this was the... Which actually Eric Ida was on there. Oh, he was. Palin was on there. Yeah, he did that slobbering thing. It was so gross. Yeah. It was first there in October of 1975. First there was George Carlin. Yeah. George Carlin had the honor of opening each season there for a while. Almost. It seemed like it. Are you sure? I believe. Carlin? I don't think he ever reappeared. Yeah. Yeah, he did. Are you sure? Yeah. For Carlin, dude? Yeah. No, for a fact. Because he came on and talked about the fact that he was the first. He was the first. Wow. I missed that. Well... Gee, now like everybody that did... It's like the show isn't funny anymore, kid. Because it's like, when Saturday Night Live came on, it was a scream. And they did like drug humor and beer humor and gross humor. But yeah, that's what made it so funny. They knew whereup they spoke. Yes, they pretty much in the... And like now it's just like, not as fun. Like junior high school humor. Yeah, I suppose. Well, it's in high school when the show came on. Well, I mean, now it's... No, it's yeah. Now it's just like... It's like, I don't know, maybe they're aiming for... To be popular or something. Yeah, they're trying to create an audience. They used to be on three times. They weren't on the first Saturday. They had some news kind of shows. Weekend. Weekend. With Linda Ellaby and Lloyd Dobbins. Uh-huh. And then the last three Saturdays of the month, you got Saturday Night Live. Which was just a totally new concept. Having a late night show for one. But then having... A show in New York. A live show. A live show. Which at that point nobody was doing live shows. No, forget it. The news wasn't live. No, no, maybe the news was. But that was other than that. Part of the news were live. Part of the news were live. I mean, nothing was live. It was like, if it was on a videotape, we don't want to talk about it, you know. And they wanted everything to be safe. And this Lorne Michael guy came in and said, well, I want to do a show that's kind of a... Well, he basically lied to them. He said, oh, this is going to be kind of like a laughing kind of thing, you know. And he said, you know, if you read stuff about this, basically Lorne was like, I had no intention of doing this. When we first began, there was nothing like it on the air. And we had a kind of crusade feeling. It was a feeling of us against them, against the network, against the conventional wisdom of TV at the time. The intent was pure. We were incredibly naive. And now Lorne Michael is a power-mad producer or executive guy. He has given us the kids in the hall, which are fantastic out in Canada. But the show isn't funny anymore. We don't want to talk about the post-1980s show. Because it's not in our... But everyone from the original cast is either really, really famous now. Or they're dead. Except for Garrett Morris, who is terribly overlooked. And Lorne. Well, she changed her face. Yeah, Lorne did the nose job thing. She's only got enough money to do that. What do you mean? She did the whole face thing. And she just looks totally different. If you watch Saturday Night Live and you see Lorne Newman, and then you see her on something now, it's not the same person. Where do you see her on? I'll see her on something, but I can't remember what it was. Because when I see her, I don't recognize her. I haven't seen her in a long time. Well, she did that movie with Jamie Lee Curtis. Oh, yeah, that's right. And what was that? Perfect. Is that what it was called? Yeah. Okay. She was in that movie. When I see her with her new look, and it was like totally different. Doesn't even look like Lorne. And then we've got people that you always see now, Dan Aykroyd. My gosh. You're always seeing Dan either in a really good movie or in a really bad movie like that. Nothing's the trouble. I never did see that. I haven't seen it yet at least. I probably will see it. Well, I think you missed it. No, no, it's still around. It is still around. Well, see, you know a movie's bad when like two days before the movie opens, they change the name of it. Because this movie was called Vulcanvania. So like the week before, they went, nothing but trouble. Which I think was pretty much the producer said, there's always been nothing but trouble. Let's call it that. The cheese like made of kiln is the ghostbusters. Yeah. Of course, the Blues Brothers. Blues Brothers. Which started on Saturday Night Live. With Belushi doing the flips on stage and stuff. Of course, I guess you can do that when you're on cocaine, but I don't know. Right. And that started, of course, as a warm-up act for the show. They did it several times and they finally said, hey, let's put this on the show. And they did. And it became this enormous hit. And John went on to fame, fortune, cocaine, and death. You know what's really weird? There was a, they used to have the shorts on there, the Gary Weiss short film. And they did one that really, it's really scary to watch now because it's Belushi going through a graveyard talking about all the other cast members. And he's the last member that lives. And he's the last one alive because he was the first one to die. Right. But it was like right after he died, I saw it. And it's really creepy to watch that. And it's so scary to watch it now. It freaks me out, but I saw it like soon after he died and it just really bothered me. There's a really funny Gary Weiss. I don't think it's Gary Weiss. I think it was the, in the beginning of the show they were doing pretty much anybody could send in a home movie. Home videos, yeah. Home movie. And it turns out to America it's funny it's own videos, but they were a lot ruder. One of them was led to Mr. Bill. But this one, I've only seen it once, was called the hubcap thief. And this was hilarious. There was this guy ripping off hubcaps and he gets to one and he gets his hand stuck. And he gets his other hand and he gets his head stuck. And he's trying desperately to get out and he gets his feet stuck and a guy gets in the other, he's on the passenger side of the car. And so he can't see. The driver gets in the car not seeing the guy there and drives off and you see the guy kind of going uh-huh. I remember this a long time ago. They've never shown it since I don't think and it was hilarious. And they did the thing too. Like if they were in a sketch and it wasn't working. What is that? Or they dropped the cow. Yeah, they dropped the cow. Yeah, there was a lot of Python stuff to the show. In fact, Chevy Chase said they were always mad that they couldn't edit the show. I mean they would have done a lot of stuff more stuff like Python except it was live, you know, kind of hard to. But they did do some interesting things. I mean like the classic fall that Chevy always did at the beginning of the show. Oh man, Chevy put a lot into this show. It broke everything. And the Belushi in the news thing he's doing is talking to and it just falls down or whatever. And the butt, no. Excuse me. Well that's Steve Martin's buddy. He brought it on there and it kind of stayed on there because he was on it a few times too. And he's always bring up his friend Steve Wushankis. Or something like that. If there was a third person involved in the story it was always Steve Wushankis who is actually a real person as I understand it. Well as I understand it, that Richard Fader who was a real person. One of these great characters off here like well Emily Litchella was another great character. All these wonderful characters that if, well if you never saw the original one these are just kind of wild fun too. But there's lots of places to watch that. That's true. You can watch Nick at Night all the time you want classic SNL. You can water down on Nick at Night. Well it's a half hour one. They've cut out the really objectionable thing. You can tell it's like that may offend somebody. No more spuds commercials. That was the real beauty of the show that they tried to offend just about everybody. At one point or another. They kind of had the rip off of Saturday Night Live for a brief time which was a good show Friday. Friday's was a good show. It was good. I debate that. Yeah somebody carried a little Melanie Chardoff was. Yeah Melanie Chardoff. That geeky guy in the room. Richard, what is his name? Well Mark Blackfield. I would like the character of the little kid that had his G.I. Joe. That was the crazy, the tall guy. But it did all the funny stuff. And the pharmacist take up. That was a Mark Blackfield just great one. And Melanie Chardoff was always, she was just bitchy. She was just the date kind of on that show. But certainly a show that never particularly broke rules because all the rules were broken by Saturday Night Live and they just kind of walked in and said oh. Do you remember the other attempt? I think I always saw the show once. It was called Fun Zone or something. Dr. Demento was like a major host on the show. I swear I saw this show. They had Bud and Pam Militator commenting on the wind up toy races or something. And they were Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head. I know I saw this show. Okay. It was on late at night. I think it was a post Friday's. It may have, I don't remember if it was in the late 70s or when I saw this show but I know I saw this show. It was such a bit of a hot talk hat on. But it was kind of a spin off but I don't remember what it was called. It was on what too? I really hate to give this show a short shift because we only got like a couple minutes left. But another late night show of course was STTV. Which we've hardly even, A lot of Saturday Night Live people came off of that. It was like a war pretty much for a long time. People like John Candy there was like both shows were trying to get him to go on and finally he went to STTV. But weren't Belushi was originally a second city person? No, he was from, no, Accra was second, no, was Accra second city? I believe so, yeah. Radner was second city, Bill Murray was second city. And they did Lampoon too. That's where Lampoon Radio is. And stuff like that. There was a lot of cross pollination there. Well, because since then some of the STTVs have come over and done Saturday Night Live. Right. Martin Short? Yeah, Martin Short. That's such, but geez. Although my favorite character in STTV has to be Guy Caballero. So you don't like Count D. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm Guy Caballero, the president and owner of the STTV network. And isn't it scary? Like Ed Grimley is famous. Like, you know, people know who he is, but nobody knew who he was. Yeah. He was just a goofy character. And like, the day I saw him on Sesame Street, I left. Yeah, about Dr. Tun, the house of representatives. How about Ed? Ed is prickly. Don't let yourself get down unless you're going to do it. Ed is such a lady.