On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 11:13 AM, PGage <[email protected]> wrote: > Part of my misguided youth was spent hanging around various Burbank > productions, where my aunt was a studio teacher (her most famous pupil > being Ricky Schroder). We (my sister and I and friends) wound up spending a > lot of time in the audience at the Gong Show - enough that we got to know > some of the stagehands and production assistants a little. I was in high > school I think, and not the most reliable judge at the time - my memory is > that for all of the insane stuff I later read was going on, they were not a > very happy group (at least compared to some of the other shows we hung > around, mostly low-prestige sitcoms, and the Tonight Show). It may have > been part of the schtick to goose the studio audience, but our impression > was always that most of the crew really did not like Barry, and were mildly > embarrassed to be working on the show. > > NBC's Burbank studios were a tight-knit bunch, one of few TV production facilities capable of doing everything in-house, and proudly so. As a result their turn-over rate was low and most of the behind the scenes crew remained at that studio for decades, working on whatever shows happened to be produced there at the time. I worked on almost every lot in town and nowhere else had that sense of familiarity/family. That said, I've no doubt there was friction on the set of the Gong Show. I know at some point in the show's run they were shooting six or seven episodes a day; churning out that much content that rapidly affects everyone involved.
During the second season of "Your Big Break" (I still cannot believe we got two seasons of that show), the production schedule was cut short by two weeks and we went from doing one show every three days to four shows on one Saturday. Were it not for the fact I converted one of the dressing rooms into an open bar, there would have been dead bodies. Many of the stagehands worked on both shows and said they got a sense of deja-vu. A couple years later I worked on the hip-hop dance show "Source Sound Lab" and we had to do 13 episodes in two days... things got so tense that quite literally guns were drawn. One of the crazy things about the business is that while it is the "talent" that is revered, they are perhaps the most transitory part of the industry. The famous faces came and went but the crew who made them famous continued on. I suppose there is always a bit of resentment when a host like Chuck Barris gets the curtain calls for work done by an ensemble, but the rest in the ensemble knows that Barris would one day be a memory... that and the steady paycheck helps nullify any tension. -- Kevin M. (RPCV) -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
