A time of unity, and mockery (The Thanksgiving Ritual)

It’s a time of division in our country. The recent election illustrated quite clearly how this country is moving along on parallel tracks, some people steadfastly believing in one party’s divinity while others believe in the other party’s “correct” stance. The U.S. is a nation locked in conflict, with people looking for answers. They want them so much they follow terrible leaders down miserable paths (the only ones we’re allowed, Coke and Pepsi) and are either heartened or demolished when their chosen demi-deity is either triumphant or vanquished.

What can be done about this? Well, one can keep true to the one true faith: American mockery. 

Robert Vaughn is disgusted by what he sees.

The kind of mockery that could be found when people volunteered to hold balloons in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade dressed as clowns. The kind of mockery that ensnared one of the most dead-serious actors ever, Mr. Robert Vaughn. 

Skeptical but
undaunted.

I invite you to rewatch the moment when Mr. Vaughn, a Most Serious Thespian, read the preamble to the Constitution and was mocked by people dressed as clowns. 

Look seriously at the man from U.N.C.L.E. (stroking your chin), wiggle your nose at him, or just carry a balloon that says “Hi Mom!” But for the sake of sanity in the country, mock the serious man reading the Constitution. 

That way, things will all be all right. (And, to quote Tom Lehrer, we will all go together when we go.) 

An annual moment of reflection (or, Send in the Clowns)

Every year around the holiday season, we take stock of where we’re at. Currently the U.S. is in an absolute mess — the economy sucks, we are funding one side each in two foreign wars that were absolute disasters from the word go, the divide between fellow citizens only get deeper and deeper, and mainstream culture is pretty much lowest-common-denominator garbage.

But it is Thanksgiving, and one must count one’s blessings on this commercial holiday (with the biggest, most commercial holiday coming up fast — start that Xmas music in October, boys, we want those suckers to start buying!). I surely was blessed to capture the moment where Robert Vaughn was mocked by clowns as he tried to read the U.S. Constitution at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

In the past year, the only Robert Vaughn-related news happened when his one-time costar (and the guy whose fame and following of young women eclipsed that of Vaughn, whose show The Man From UNCLE originally was), David McCallum (aka “Illya Kuryakin”), died at age 90. (Vaughn only reached 83.) Perhaps Vaughn is being eclipsed in the afterlife as well — but one thing will always be certain: David McCallum was never mocked by a group of makeshift clowns (whom I believe were Macy’s employees; perhaps someday someone can confirm or deny that). And if he was, we have no video proof of it. 

I should also note that yesterday (Nov. 22) was not only the 60th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination but also the anniversary of Robert Vaughn's birthday. (If he had lived, he would've been 90.)

Enjoy Mr. Vaughn, soldering through a minor show-biz disaster.

The annual viewing of Robert Vaughn mocked by clowns (A Thanksgiving ritual)

I have introduced this clip for nearly 30 years now, on the Funhouse TV show (which celebrated its 29th anniversary back in September of this year) and also on this blog. This year, we have emerged from on-again, off-again lockdown status to be where most of us knew we’d be back in 2020 — just getting on with our lives, with COVID sticking around basically forever, as plagues brewed up by man are wont to do. 

America’s economy is in a mess, there are various forms of crime on the streets, and people are diverting themselves at this minute by discussing a social media platform as if it is the end-all, be-all of human communication. The proxy war (between light-skinned foreign people) isn’t as news-worthy as it was, so pundits are busy wondering if the 2024 presidential election will simply be a do-over of 2020, with two deranged, empty old white guys battling it out. Our Gerontocracy = No. 1! 

Surely, the only way to deal with the abovementioned problems is to simply bask in the holiday glow of the former “man from U.N.C.L.E.” being mocked by clowns as he reads the U.S. Constitution at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1986. By this time, I’ve seen it so many times I begin to simply look at the clowns rather than the rapidly-more-irritated Big Bob V. Watch as someone in the studio tries to “save” him by putting his head in the upper corner of the image and showing us a different image in the center of the screen. 

If anyone knows anyone who worked on the shoot for this parade, or who can tell us how angry Vaughn was when the segment was over, please get in touch. In the meantime — enjoy!

WWRVD? Thoughts on a second pandemic Thanksgiving

Every year without fail I present the clip at the bottom of this entry. It’s one of those seasonal displays of joy that only gets better with age — like receiving a fruitcake for Xmas and making endless jokes about it. 

As time moves on, though, I wonder: What Would Robert Vaughn Do? Where would he fall in the current culture war? Would he get the Pfizer or Moderna jab, or would he argue instead for natural immunity? Would he comment on the issues of the day, the murder trials and other controversies, or would he remain silent and simply watch them unfold, waiting to speak about them when they are fully resolved? 

It’s hard to say since, sadly Mr. Vaughn passed on. He is no more, has ceased to be, gone to meet his maker, is bereft of life, rests in peace and joined the choir invisible. He is, in short, now an ex-Robert Vaughn, and we can’t pretend to know what he would make of the complications of the 21st century. We can only marvel at his many performances, and even (dare I say it?) the times when he was doing material that was actually meant to be funny.

I’m prepping an interview to run on these pages, and in doing so I wound up rewatching parts of Harry Hurwitz’s That’s Adequate(1989), a piecemeal creation that is wonderfully funny for about 45 minutes and then slides into not-as-funny time-fillers for the remaining 30 minutes. Coincidentally one of the MANY guest stars featured in the film is our own Vaughn playing Hitler. 

Hurwitz was a very funny scripter, and so Vaughn’s dialogue as Der Fuhrer is predictably silly and amusing. (Hitler loves the Z-budget studio Adequate Pictures because he enjoyed their films “Slut of the South” and “Singin’ in the Synagogue.”) Vaughn of course had plenty of campy sequences in the “Man from U.N.C.L.E.” and he appeared in several big-screen comedies (from S.O.B. to C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud and from BASEketball to Pootie Tang). 

But seeing him as Hitler is oddly satisfying, as he enjoyed hamming it up – ’cause he often had no other level on which to deliver the material. Watch at 19:00: 

 

But you didn’t come here to see Vaughn as Hitler. You came here to see him mocked by clowns at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade in 1986.This year it was announced that children under 12 would not be allowed in the parade proper — I think this is a horrible stricture and would've certainly dulled this magic moment, had that rule been in place in '86. 

And please, before watching once, twice, or a dozen times, just ask yourself: What Would Robert Vaughn Do?

Now More Than Ever!

When discussing American politics over the last three years I’ve often simply framed things this way: “America is a fictional country.” But the U.S. of A. didn’t just turn into a big ol’ Grand Fenwick in 2016. I’d say we took a turn for the fictional when Ronald Reagan became Pres in 1980. The period before that had some resounding reality to it — after the star of Bedtime for Bonzo became president (hear him say it was a great comedy here), all bets on the country being a serious real-world, present-day entity were off.

The year he was elected was considered the last year of the “Me Decade” — but we all know that Tom Wolfe got it wrong, and that the Seventies were only the beginning of the self-involvement, which further made the country an even more bizarre place where basically anything could happen (but what always did happen made for scenarios that would’ve been thrown out in any good Creative Writing class as being “unrealistic”). Every decade since has been the “Me Decade,” and there is no prospect of the crazed introspection and leisure-time fascinations ever turning back now that the Internet and handheld devices rule us all.

So, why *isn’t* it more than likely that the encounter below will happen again, albeit this time at a political rally, a convention, or a debate? At some point, it should’ve become evident to those of us who watch this clip on an annual basis — nay, who LIVE this clip on an annual basis — that we are all of us Robert Vaughns, and the clowns are ruling the roost. It wasn’t for nothing that this particular event occurred during Reagan’s second term in the White House (the one where he more than likely had the beginnings of Alzheimer’s and the country was indeed run by the VP, a creepy former head of the CIA)?

Remember that the oft-quoted statement by George Carlin was not two lines long — it was three. The third line is often lost on the Internet (which is oddly, completely appropriate).

“When you’re born in this world, you’re given a ticket to the freak show.

When you’re born in America, you’re given a front-row seat.

And some of us get to sit there with notebooks….”

Cry U.N.C.L.E.: a Thanksgiving ritual

Live TV is a lost phenomenon. It still exists on local newscasts, but for the most part, even live awards shows and that most heinous of all walking-dead cadavers, the thing that used to be a comedy show (called, quaintly, Saturday Night Live), “package” their being live. The cast members or hosts crack up at what’s going on, thus letting us see “behind the mask.”  They let us laugh with them instead of at them. (At the fact that what they’re reciting is really bad comedy, or that they are reading it straight off cue cards or a prompter — who knows?)

The joy of seeing live TV is experiencing a true surprise, or of watching something go down in flames. The clip below is both, of course. It is a Funhouse perennial, the only way for me to celebrate the feast of food and pre-Yuletide despair, obligation, and depression. For a few seconds, let’s put all that to the side and watch Robert Vaughn being mocked by clowns (most likely Macy’s employees, or relatives of the parade’s organizers) at the Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Happy Turkey Day, all!

The clowns will save America

"Do you have the cards?"

It's that time, again, folks! Let us celebrate this grand country of ours with the one thing that can unite every faction -- young and old, male and female, white and black (and every other color in the spectrum), persons with "this" sexual preference (and/or gender identity) and people with "that" sexual preference (and/or gender identity).

The memory of Robert Vaughn can free us. Because it's always nice to see a man mocked by clowns as he reads this country's Constitution. Happy Turkey Day!

 

And if you want to "read more about it," check out my post from last Thanksgiving about Vaughn's many legal ads. It can be found here.

Breaking news: Deceased Artiste mocked by clowns

Sometimes two events collide in the Funhouse. This year the most interesting collision is the fact that Thanksgiving has arrived once more *and* the gent who represents that holiday for me (and, I believe, many Funhouse viewers) happened to die just two weeks ago at the age of 83.

Yes, Robert Vaughn has left the building. A man who was best known for The Man From U.N.C.L.E. but who did have much more serious roles in films, theater, and television. He took his work very seriously, even in the worst of times (which was pretty often, let's be honest).

He did a series of law-office commercials that were so vague and ambiguous that he did the same pitch for numerous firms around the country (one assumes he just went to a studio one day and shot a bunch of ads for law firms in different cities).

He also did ads for "The Helsinki Formula," a somewhat dubious (I'm being kind) form of hair restoration. The years after U.N.C.L.E. were indeed lean ones, so Vaughn could be seen all over the place.

I pitched a serious interview to him (I have never, and would never, make fun of my guests on the show) at the Chiller Theatre convention several years ago and got the strangest reaction — he said he wouldn't be interested and continued to read Scarlet Street magazine, putting it right up in front of his face so that he could completely ignore me and make me go away.

So, all right. He didn't want to do an interview (even though I brought out what I thought would be my ace in the hole, I had read his book about the theatrical blacklist, Only Victims). A friend of mine said he'd probably seen me showing the clip you see below — I knew he hadn't, he hadn't lived in NYC for years, and there was essentially no way to see the Funhouse back then (no online streaming or YouTube — or this blog!) if you lived outside of Manhattan.

In any case, when I posted about his death on Facebook, a friend noted that he too had gone over to Vaughn to talk at Chiller Theatre. He says it was clear he just wanted to ask Mr. Vaughn (who was incredibly not busy, both when I spoke to him and my friend attempted it) some innocuous questions. In this case, Vaughn put The Wall Street Journal up in front of his face, to ignore my friend.

Two other FB friends noted that Vaughn had been rude to them. This was countered by two people who said he had been a delight (in both cases those people had spent money to meet him — first, to get an autograph at Chiller Theatre, second, a ticket had been bought to a play he was doing, so he was magnanimous enough to talk to the audience afterward in a Q&A set-up).

So Vaughn was not someone who would be friendly to those in the public. He did have a very long career in show business (it was noted that, with his death, all of the original "Magnificent Seven" are now dead). I will single out one crime drama produced by Gerry Anderson, which wasn't very good -- The Protectors -- but had a killer theme song (a catchy song that became a big hit for Tony Christie in the U.K.).

In closing, I must of course once again fulfill a ritual I began years ago on the Funhouse TV show (first airing of this: 1994; I recorded it off the air in '86). In this moment when America is in transition, and we have a rabble-rousing, seat-of-the-pants president-elect that many people voted for and love, and other people loathe with a passion, I can only point you again to the clip that is America to me.

I will continue to feature Mr. Vaughn on this blog. At least once a year.

Happy Thanksgiving to all -- feast!

 

What time of year is it, kiddies?

America is at a crossroads. (Then again, America's been at the same crossroads since the Fifties.) Terrorist attacks are dreaded in every major city on the planet. The American political process is now the purview of people saying the craziest shit imaginable – and people cheer them for doing so. Black Americans are fatally shot by the cops for being “suspicious” (or whatever pretext is created). American culture is cookie-cutter to the max, with comic book movies being the biggest hits at the box office, and the only really quality TV series being made for pay channels. Pop music ate itself long ago, and literature of any kind is now subject in institutions of higher learning to “trigger warnings,” telling the young folk that they may encounter objectionable words or concept that might offend them.

So what can we do in this time of strife, discord, and general miserable-ness? (See below for the next holiday's blast of seasonal annoyance.) We can laugh at a former TV spy being needled by volunteer clowns as he reads the U.S. constitution (and misses a line in the process). I suspect there will be no sequel to the recent U.N.C.L.E. "reboot."

Repeated viewings make this clip even more patriotic. (For me, the clown wiggling his nose is only the surface level -- the guy stroking his chin is the real deal.)

 

On a more somber, mawkish note, I thank you folks for reading this blog, watching the Funhouse TV show, and for being so generous in your praise for this work.

The Funhouse TV show will be undergoing a MASSIVE change in the next month. Our access organization is converting from the tape format that has been working *splendidly* for the last few years to only accepting digital files that may or may not play properly on-air (the last formats that were used by the org both had several different Playback troubles, so I'm assuming the same will occur with this conversion to digital broadcasting). The recent for the conversion? Because, well... things have to move on, and things just have to get screwed up again (they're been working too well for years now!).

I am doing my best – and spending an *inordinate* sum of money I don't have – to learn the new specs and will be giving in the best possible files I can create with the best possible technology. If the Funhouse show starts getting wonky in its on-air, it isn't for lack of hard work from myself, my camera folk, and my tech-guru (the master cineaste Paul G.).

So I'll close out with another thank-you to youse and yours for checking this stuff out. I enjoy doing it, and your positive feedback when it arrives makes it all worthwhile.

Now more than ever!

In this time of unrest, indecision, civil rights violations, over-militarized police, governmental surveillance, and involvement in Middle Eastern quagmires, we look back to a simpler time. A time when a former TV star – not yet doing local legal TV ads around country – could try to read the constitution, and bored Macy's employees could gather around him, dressed as clowns, and wave to their relatives.

It wasn't so long ago, but America was a different place. No YouTube, no Internet at all. We had to turn to television for inspirational moments like this.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Red States + Blue States = this video clip

Each year at this time I discuss what America means to me and point to this clip as pretty much summing up the country in the shortest time imaginable. Our president came to great notice telling us that there are no “red states” and “blue states,” there is “only the United States” (that has never been true, as has been illustrated by a thousand different events, actions, behaviors, and policies).

I would like to posit that the spirit that makes a bored volunteer at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade begin to mock a man (a celebrity, whom everyone once knew) reading the country’s constitution IS the American spirit. Not all of us might do this, but we live in a country where it is possible, and really, really, probable.

Please join me in saluting the spirit of America once again:

The true essence of America: Robert Vaughn and his clown friends

Each year at this time I return to a piece of footage that really sums up America for me. Herewith, the annual presentation of Robert Vaughn being mocked by clowns (no doubt Macy's employees whose one goal was to be seen on TV) as he read the Constitution at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in the late Eighties. I used to show this clip at every "video night" I hosted and aired it annually on the Funhouse TV show — this week I'll be doing a tribute to the work of George Kuchar, so there wasn't time (although I'm sure George would've approved).

I share it again, in the hopes that all of the world will someday know that THIS is the very essence of our country:

It’s That Time of Year Again (turkey talk)

Each year since the early Nineties I have hauled out this clip on either the Funhouse TV show or the blog. I caught it on VHS back in the late Eighties, and never fail to be amazed as its time-capsule quality. Jean Shepherd used to muse at length on what future civilizations might find as remnants of America (he was fascinated by what he called our “slob art”). Well, the clip below is what I think should be found.



To answer Sinatra’s musical question, that is America to me….

What is America to Me? The annual viewing of Robert Vaughn and Macy's clowns

Every year around this time I start thinking about one clip that I caught by chance back in 1986 because I am an avid fan of star-filled pointlessness, like… the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade! The clip in question really does sum up the finer points of the U.S. in one neat little package. Formerly famous (you’ll never hear me saying “has-been”) TV actor gets the gig to read the U.S. Constitution to commemorate its 200th anniversary. Said actor doesn’t know the lines without cue cards — and then the clowns come over….




I have watched this clip countless times, and believe its effect intensifies the more you watch it in sequence. I can think of no better way to sum up what America means to me than to offer up Robert Vaughn being mocked by Macy’s employees dressed as clowns (watch them flock!) as he reads the Constitution to a befuddled and bored TV audience. The fact that host Pat Sajak tries to save his bacon by doing an impromptu intro to the segment (after Vaughn says on-mic, “you have the cards?"), and the fact that the director then tries to save Napoleon Solo once again by putting him in a little circle (in which you can still the bobbing clown heads) only makes this moment more of a patriotic godsend. I can offer no better treasure from my coffer of weird VHS moments to celebrate the “discovery” of this wonderful land.

What is America to Me? (One of my all-time favorite clips)

Every year around this time I start thinking about one clip that I caught by chance back in 1986 because I am an avid fan of star-filled pointlessness, like… the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade! The clip in question really does sum up the finer points of the U.S. in one neat little package. Formerly famous (you’ll never hear me saying “has-been”) TV actor gets the gig to read the U.S. Constitution to commemorate its 200th anniversary. Said actor doesn’t know the lines without cue cards — and then the clowns come over….



I have watched this clip countless times, and believe its effect intensifies the more you watch it in sequence. I can think of no better way to sum up what American means to me than to offer up Robert Vaughn being mocked by Macy’s employees dressed as clowns (watch them flock!) as he reads the Constitution to a befuddled and bored TV audience. The fact that host Pat Sajak tries to save his bacon by doing an impromptu intro to the segment (after Vaughn says on-mic, “you have the cards?"), and the fact that the director then tries to save Napoleon Solo once again by putting him in a little circle (in which you can still the bobbing clown heads) only makes this moment more of a patriotic godsend. I can offer no better treasure from my coffer of weird VHS moments to celebrate the “discovery” of this wonderful land (and yes, it’s available on YouTube, and that guy’s copy is far, far worse than this one).