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strong and abiding belief in the dark at the top of the stairs or lady
is the Night Gallery? All right, allur loves. Welcome back to Midnight
Viewing of the Night Gallery podcast, where we take a look at Rod Serling's
follow up to The Twilight Zone. We're talking about Night Gallery and joining me
here in the gallery as always are the projection boots, mister Mike White,
Hello, Hello, and of course scary stories we tells Chris Statue. Now
did you hear the one about the two Arabs? Hey lady, Hey lady,
make him laugh, make him cry? Oh yeah, Well, we'll
be getting into that in just a moment. We are Discussing Season one,
episode four, which ran on January sixth, nineteen seventy one, and was
comprised of two stories. They were called them Make Me Laugh and Clean Kills
and Other Trophies on display this evening a postiche of painting from oddball Land.
The poet Sir Max Beerbaum reflected that no one ever died of laughter. Object
of brush and palette rebuttaled. The clone is Jackie Slater, his occupation a
comedian, his aspirations to collect funny bones and hang them on the walls of
his life, to hide the cracked plaster and yellowed wallpaper that is part of
the interior decoration of failure. Poor Jackie Slater, a bad joke told in
a foreign language in an empty hall. The comic unable to coax laughter.
The painting is called make Me Laugh, and this lightless limbo is called the
Night Gallery. Now Make Me Laugh. Was written by Rod Serling, directed
by Steven Spielberg, and starred Godfrey Cambridge. That's right, Grave Digger Jones,
Tom Bosley, Jackie Vernon and Grandpa al Lewis very briefly and it is
the story of a failed stand up who sees the chance that start him when
he meets the Oh, I'll leave it to you guys to describe what he
meets in the bar. Chris, what'd you think of this story? You're
probably better off asking Mike first. I Mike, what do you think of
this story? Well, there's a reason why we talked about how Steven Spielberg
directed that one episode of Night Gallery, and we talked about that on the
first episode. We don't talk about make me laugh, and I think there's
a reason for that. Though. It was fun. I loved seeing Jackie
Vernon in here the voice of Frosty the Snowman, so that was kind of
nice. Always fun to see him with his body um. Also, what
the coach in Well, yeah, he was the coach in Cold Check.
I think he was. Also, picture isn't that his picture? It is
IMDb? Yeah, yeah, it should be this y just so we're all
clear. Not a term for real, right, It's a completely made up
term, is it? I don't know because I googled it and nothing came
up. Is it like saying chemo sabi? Like, isn't that the word
for friend? Hey? Chemo sabie? At least Tom Bosley is playing,
isn't playing a man who's slow. Yeah, what was it? Like,
Spielberg's like, get me Bosley not in this episode, but he wasn't That
first one was dummy, right like this it's a sad sack And now we've
gotten the other side of his sad sack coin here. Yeah itinerant gambler.
I'm going to probably kill myself because I lost my eyes. But at least
the loan sharks are happy. Yeah that's yes, exactly. So Spielberg was
like, you know, he was really pathetic. Now let's get him also
pathetic but doing better than the lead at least a little bit, but but
somehow more pathetic that he's hitched his start in this particular way. Oh,
I can go either way with Godfrey, Godfrey, Cambridge and um Man.
And this reminds me a lot, Chris of the episode we did on the
New Star Trek with what's the guy's name from like Book of Boba Fette or
yeah, no, it was from Obi Wan Kenobi, the guy who did
the X Files podcast. He starred as a comedian who yes, thank you,
And it kind of reminds me of that. I guess it's just the
setting at the oh, I see Okay, yeah, it kind of,
yeah, it kind of. Does I mean that that episode is about as
successful as this one? Yeah, Tim Thomerson one and Twilight, Yeah,
that one actually is the best of the three as far as I'm concerned,
I think you're right, you know, the other two, to their credit,
at least I know what they're trying to tell us, because here we've
got you know, first of all, once again, this is ron Soiling
operating and is sort of like nineteen thirties theater radio drama height and we've a
he's like he's supposed to be a failed comedian, but he's been at it
for sixteen years. He so I guess he's been making money for a while.
He's got an agent in everything, and this is like the end of
the run. But like I can't understand like what his purposes as far as
is this a guy who's like he never reached it or did he? Is
he a fail? Is he a failure or is he like a never was?
You know what I mean? And like so when he gets what he
wants, like that all needs to make sense, Like I need to know
is this a story about like like careful what you wish for or is it.
Like the character goes to pains to tell us that he got into comedy,
Like the path began when he was a young man and he was fat
and ugly and everyone made fun of him and they pushed him off the dock
at camp. But the laughter, like he even though they were laughing at
him, that was the drug, right, So that set him on this
path. So maybe that the story, like, don't start a job where
it's based on your own personal humiliation. I don't know. I'm honestly sitting
here just trying to think more than anything else. Because there's a line it's
more more more than likely a throwaway line. But his you know, he's
like Godfrey Cambridge says his manager. He's like, tell him, tell him,
you know, I was. I had this six week stint and you
know, wherever the fuck diddle dick nowhere, right, And it just like
it makes me wonder the same thing that you're wondering. Father Molanch's like,
who was this guy ever funny? Because the jokes that he's telling are infinite,
so bad there's not even a question as to whether or not they're funny.
They're not funny. Yeah, you would find this joke book in a
crackerjack box. Yeah, and this particular segment takes place in the present,
which then was nineteen seventy and Gonfrey Cambridge tells his manager, we've been at
this for sixteen years, right, so he started in nineteen fifty four.
Those jokes were bad and old in nineteen fifty four. What has he been
doing for sixteen years? He deserves to not have a career in comedy.
He doesn't know what he's doing, and he's terrible at it, and his
remotives in doing it are flawed. Well, and what it feels like the
episode should have been was just have him and another person, and that other
person is the up and comer and starts to overshadow him. And he does
all this because he is worried about not having a job anymore. That's what
this story should have been, because then you have the stakes as to why
he I mean, he doesn't have to be funny. Then it doesn't matter.
He's just losing his job to someone else as opposed to losing it to
no one, losing it of his own volition, I guess, is what
the story is telling us. But yeah, he's not funny, not even
remotely funny, like like he goes in and chides his manager for not coming
out like stacking the deck and like laughing at his material. It's like,
how could he? It's the worst ever, like like like the fact that
Tom Bosley is stuck by this guy, like what did he save his life?
Like in Vietnam? And that's the in Vietnam which hasn't happened yet,
right, well, it's happening currently. Maybe it happened a couple of years
ago. They were they were a team for a while and then they went
to Vietnam together. Yeah, I have no idea. It's somehow this is
worse than the Jordan Peel version, which is saying something because that episode is
twice as long as this one. It's also like only what like twenty two
minutes, but this felt longer than that one. Oh my god, so
many situations where we learned about people not laughing or laughing at him. I
mean, just think of the possibilities. And that's another thing, okay,
like putting a sign, the fact that Jackie Vernon is placing a man named
like Jay Chatterjee and he's wearing a turban and clearly in brown face. We're
gonna like put that aside first, right, just put that whole thing aside.
That's what Steven was saying. Now, Now, George, I want
to pitch you this idea. This Night Gallery episode that I'm on. Jackie
Vernon's casting makes literally no sense to me whatsoever, Like what was he a
draw at the time, like the like what we need to get Jackie Vernon
on here and then we can publicize it and then the ratings will skyrocket,
Like, No, that doesn't make sense anyway. I'm putting aside the Clayton
and inherent racism that goes on in the middle of the episode. Yeah,
okay. So he's making a deal with a genie that never goes well for
anyone ever in any of these anthology stories that pausit one of these, right,
and he wants him to make him funny. Basically it's the idea,
but he wants people to laugh at the things he says. And then he's
just saying random stupid bullshit in the bar and everyone's breaking up and laughing.
Right, So my initial thought is, Okay, so that's what this is.
Everything that comes out of his mouth, people are gonna laugh until it
drives him insane. But that's not the case because in the next scene he's
having a conversation with his manager, who this is like months later because he's
been on The Red Skelton Show and ship. Now he's headlining in Las Vegas.
By the way, the montage of all of the hotels in Las Vegas
all gone, yeah, right, isn't that fun? Only imagine if you
will, Las Vegas circa nineteen eighty five. It's a nightmare, a consumerist
wasteland. So then he has a conversation with Tom Moseley. Tom Bosley isn't
laughing at all and anything he says and then oh, okay, you say,
somebody take the ball. This movie, This episode is exhausting, This
episode is it's It's bad. Sterling always seems to me. I hate to
keep kicking him, but we're getting a lot of him in this in this
season because he wrote the lion share of the episode. So he's all really
good. Oh my god, well some of them are, but like you
know, anyway, I'll beat on him in the next segment as well,
and I will, but I feel like Sterling to me is was always sort
of chasing. The screenplay for On the Waterfront like it's the screenplay that he
was capable of writing and maybe should have written but didn't, And so like
this sort of like downtrodden man thing, the jones that he's got that he's
always working out, Like the difference in his characters and something like on the
Waterfront is like in that character, like some of the things have gone wrong
for him in his life. But Sterling's characters are always these losers who don't
deserve anything anyway, right, right, So like so it becomes this chore
where I can't enjoy anyone because everyone is miserable and terrible. And on top
of it, we have this supernatural huha that doesn't make any sense because there
are no rules for it, and it's like a twenty minute segment Like come
on, I mean, I see your point with all this stuff. Yeah,
the inconsistency is what really got me. I was just like, okay,
yeah, everything then that he should say from then on out gets a
complete belly laugh. People cannot stop laughing at anything. So even if he
goes out on the street and somebody gets hit by a car, he's just
like, hey, somebody get hit by a car, and everyone cracks up
laughing yeah, yeah, like my life is dying of cancer? Like,
right, can you imagine if in word play they just dropped it halfway through?
Oh yeah again, nobody cares anyways, right right. This is the
kind of lazy writing that I expected from the new show. This is the
kind of lazy writing that the new show has in abundance, and I didn't
expect it from Rod Serling. And you know what, guess what. You
could have told me that fucking Mickey Mouse directed this episode, and I would
have told you, yeah, Betty did, because Steven Spielberg brings absolutely nothing.
No, it could have been senior spielbergo for all I know. I
agree if it felt like an obligation at this point, But then again,
the script is really a radio play, Like can you imagine reading it and
going, what am I supposed to do with this? The whole thing is
three guys in a bar talking endlessly, followed by two guys talking in a
backstage of a nightclub, and it was just I don't know, that's right.
Defended to Spielberg's credit, it didn't look setbound. He made it look
good. Yeah, I guess like that's the only saving grace in this episode
for me because you know the thing about the inconsistency with the mythology quote unquote
going on like it's part and parcel with the rest, because it didn't decide,
it couldn't decide what kind of story it was telling, so it couldn't
decide what kind of punishment to meet out to our hero, who probably doesn't
deserve it anyway. I don't deserve getting hit by a car. Yeah,
probably not. Well, you know what he kind of does. Because if
you're gonna race across the street to tell someone an old, crusty joke and
not look about the two Arabs, I want to know what happened, Yeah,
right, and it is this like incredibly racist. He left me hanging.
He left me hanging with that one one. You wanted to know more?
Yeah, I just got to go grab my copy of Truly Tastes Just
Jokes from nineteen eighty three. Yeah. Yeah, those jokes were funnier than
every joke presented as a joke in this episode. I was like painting this
evening. He has to deal with the stalker and the victim, the hundred
and a hundred, that rare breed of Homo sapien whose love of butchery is
not a sport, but a consuming passion offered. You know, clean kills
and other trophies. All right, our next story is called clean Kills and
other Trophies. This one was written by guess who, guys Rod Serling whoa
Yeah, I know, making a rare appearance. I almost wanted to give
him a I almost wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. Yeah.
And this one was directed by Walter Don. This one starts Raymond Massey,
Tom Troupe, Herbert Jefferson Junior, and Barry Brown. This one concerns
an a bitter old game hunter who demands that his son make his first kill.
Chris, what do you think of this one? Oh? My god?
What is going on with this show? Already? We're four episodes in.
What is going on? I will say? I will say Season two
is on the way? Okay? What does that mean? That means that
when the series started, it was kind of this agreement that Serling was going
to do it all, he was gonna write it all, he was going
to okay, and that's the agreement that they all kind of kept too for
season one. So you're saying the whole like a little bit far too little
bread on far too much, certainly, but the reverse. But yeah,
but next season, that's what you're saying. Lantild sort of asserts himself,
so you're saying, take it with a grain of salt and a shot of
penicill and because Rod Serling's doing everything, Yeah, yeah, well it shows
there are other people in the mix and they're just waiting to to step forward,
and they will. That's that's what I'll say about Father Malone saying hashtag
it gets better. Yeah, yeah, and that, and you know,
then I don't feel that bad because, yeah, this is another segment that
just spins its wheels for twenty minutes. Nothing that happens in this segment is
remotely interesting. You can kind of guess where it's going once you realize what
the subject material is, once the conceit of the episode is there's only one
way that this ends with this guy's head up on the wall, like yeah,
duh no, like the Some of the best and worst things ever written
have their endings telegraphed. The things that have the endings telegraphed and still work
often feel like a miracle, because more often than not, it's this where
it's like, yeah, well, of course his head was going to be
up on the wall. It's the Twilights, I mean, Nike Gallery.
It's a Twilight Zone episode. These last two episodes would feel more at home
in nineteen eighty five than they would in the original run of the show,
which is me remembering the original run of the show a lot more rose tinted
glasses than even it probably deserves. Ah, Man, I mean, I
like Raymond Massey so much, you know, I just talked about him with
Arsenic and old Lace. You know, it was a great Abraham Lincoln.
It's funny, Chris, because I kept thinking of The Last Dinosaur while I
was watching this, and I'm just like, man, I kind of wish
that Richard Boone was in this role because there's just nothing. There's nothing for
these poor guys to do. Because yeah, to your point, Father Malone,
it's like, I know how this is gonna end when it begins,
and there's nothing really for me to like, kind of clomb onto. I
really wanted more of the Herbert Jefferson Junior characters, like, Okay, yeah,
that guy seems interesting. I want to know more about him, but
we didn't get him. Yeah, what a presence for him. Yeah,
Sterling going out on a limb here asserting the idea that old old money refinery
like his hiding bitter hatred, like oh thanks, rod, we did,
we didn't know, And of course it has to take place in an old
mansion and it's an old money white man. And yeah, I liked this
episode more when it was Ozzie Davis and Roddy McDowell. Yes, yeah,
it was, yeah, right, like fucking how lazy are we right now,
mister Sterling, because like that was two episodes ago or not my not
too but like the pilot of the goddamn show, like okay, why are
we doing another old white man African American? Butler helps him get his come
up ins like this is the same thing. It's the same thing. It's
just instead of a painting, it's trophy like trophy heads, you know.
And I think Sterling thinks he's being sort of like forward thinking and like yeah
out there you know what I mean. Yeah, this one in particular with
like you know they bake in at the start that Raymond Massey's character is completely
racist, Like he refers to his servant as like you so savage, you
realize you can't take them out of the jungle. Not really, Oh boy,
certain kind of Stuffles suffers from, like the noble savage kind of thing
too, and like and everything the guy says about his Washington's character like comes
true. Like the guy is a bucour or like a you know, a
shaman and he's has this spell on him and like, oh my god,
and the spell, by the way, produced a lovely frame that that part
of the voodoo magic is that part of the the African tribalism, Like oh
yeah, you didn't know that? It hangs it like perfectly level too,
like that do you think it said his name on the plaque. I've been
backing the wrong religion my whole life, because this religion seems to be on
the ball. Yeah. I mean, if they say something bad is going
to happen to you and you just end up as a head mounted on the
wall, can't say they didn't warn you. This ends up being basically Brewster's
millions with murder because he's like, you know, he's dangling money over his
son, like this one million dollar trust that he's already set up for him
that he won't give to him unless he murders or murder he kills a deer
the next day, right, the guy's lawyer is standing there. Who,
by the way, Tom Troop, I loved him, he was great like
that. I don't know that. I don't know what else i'd know him
from, but a lot of presents on him. His lawyer is saying,
like, you know, if you start proceedings tomorrow, that money will be
yours and there won't be anything he can do about that, even though he
even though the old man threatens to like spend it all, the lawyer counters
like Olivan injunction. By noon, he won't be able to do anything.
Still, this kid goes along with it. Why because it has to happen,
Because it's yet another debate in the form of a story. Quote unquote
from Ron Surlan. We saw Tom Trooper lawyer this year in my own private,
Idaho. He played Keanu Reeves, his dad, Oh, the mayor
of Seattle. Right? Is that Seattle Port? Yeah? Yeah, I
remember it as a judge from something I don't know anyway, Summer School.
It's probably what you remember. It is Mark Mark Harman film. That's that's
the joint. Cis his own Mark Harman is in Summer School. I love
that. I mean, you know what, you could do a whole podcast
on summer and school movies and never run out of things. That's back to
school, start with summer school and with summer school. Yeah, I do
it three times from three different perspectives. I you know, father Moan,
when you said the whole thing about this being a discussion about you know,
hunters and hunting and masculinity, like that is a good discussion to have,
absolutely, but not here. Yeah, no, and no matter what,
Actually, it could have worked here. It's a twilight Zone. I mean,
it's not gass. Yes, it could have worked here. I mean,
I'm not making that joke intentionally because like these episodes, these two in
particular, have felt like the twilight Zone. Sterling seemed to be bristling against
the sort of horror in supernatural elements of his Night Gallery television show like whit
What the fuck are you thinking? Dupe? Come on? He seemed to
want to make Alfred Hitchcock Presents and he would, you know, tolerate a
little bit of supernatural folder all on the side, you know what I mean,
Because that's what we're getting. It's more and more just like people murdering
each other, right, I know they we get the twist at the end,
but it's so irrelevant because really, like like I said, like you
said, Chris, like, it's just you know, it's a debate in
the form of a screenplay, and you're right, the Hunter debate is worth
having. And the sort of old morals versus young and black and white,
like all of them are are worthy of discussion, but not as a discussion
like dramatize them in a screenplay format and then film it and then present it
that way. Don't have fourcare after standing and remyambering at each other, then
you've got a Kevin Smith movie. Yeah, that's fair. It's it's oddly
And if you know, you said the first episode, the first segment of
the episode didn't feel set bound. This does until they go outside, it's
like, yeah, that's just a set somewhere, wildly set bound. The
final shot, in order to achieve the guy's head on the wall and the
guy on the floor, you can see it's a studio, like they haven't
even painted it, like there's a rug there, but really it's just the
studio floor, so like they didn't even didn't even give a shit. Sterling
Baby slipping, slipping, He's slipped, it's gone, it's done by now.
I will say this now, man, I will say this about it.
Though, And as sort of purple as his prose can be, you
can see a distinct difference between the last segment in this one, sterling like
he must have come from a deep well of rage, because every time a
character is being very mean on screen, no matter how radio drama it is,
no matter how set bound it is, that dialogue is killer, and
delivered by Raymond Massey. Here it's really really good, whereas when he writes
sad sack stuff, it just makes me hate that character. Like, so
you know that's sort of weird, right, It's coming from a very angry
place, clearly. Yeah. But like even in the even in the worst
of his writing, if it has that sort of angry tinge to it,
there's something to draw from it, Like, and I do think that we
get something of that here, even though the whole thing is kind of a
shambles. All the performances I thought were really good. But you know,
as a story, come on, it's not much. It's not much of
a story. Yeah, is there a story at all? It's leading us
by the nose to the one shot that it wants to get, which is
the shot of his head on the wall. I mean, that's what I'm
doing. Yeah, and here's the payoff. It should have been a three
minute interstitial like you know, like it totally could have for sure. Hey,
have you seen the with that great old hunter Go, he's right here,
that's it. Yeah, yeah, as the butler's smoking a big pipe
or something, right, and like an animal walks by in the background or
right on its hind legs and say hello there. Yeah, anyving us about
this episode, gentlemen, or a segment give me some more racism coming up.
I'm excited for that. Wo oh do you? I love all the
inherent racism we keep encountering, and next we get we get the chauvinism and
misogyny and everything. The sterling train is going to continue, I guess with
that. If you want to hold on, we're going to play a commercial
for our next episode. Welcome art lovers. We offer for your approval of
still Life if you will have noise, a soundless canvas suggestive of someone.
The mouth belongs to Pamela and life is shrieking battle acts made up of adnoids
tonsils and sound decipls in death, an unmuted practitioner of fishwifery, undeterred and
UnGagged by what one would assume to be the great silencer. Some ghosts come
back to hunt others, and back simply to pick up where they left off.
Our painting is called Pamela's Voice, and this is the night Gallery.
An unforgiving she usually buries its secrets beneath itself. Warships and ocean liners,
treasure guyons and submarines turn into rusting relics inside a watery lacquer loss of memory.
But occasionally there comes a floating, unbidden reminder of disaster, like this
lifeboat. The painting is called a loan. Survivor will put it in tow
and see where she came from and why, Moving off from ships like the
Titanic and the Andrea Doria to a small fragment of history, This little collector's
item here dates back a few hundred years to the British Indian colonial period,
proving only that sometimes the least likely objects can be filled with the most likely
horror. Our painting is called a doll, and this one you'd best not
play with. That is Episode five It is split into three segments, Pamela's
Voice, Jesus Christ, I Lost it again, Survivor and the doll Thank
you, Mike, I just gotta leave it at that, no problem until
then. Where can people find you? Mike? Oh? You can find
me over at Projection Booth podcast, where every week we're putting on a new
episode, much to my chagrin, and also over at the Life and Times
of Captain Barney Miller. Or even you can find me at The Shabby Detective,
which might be a bit available at Chabby Detective dot com, where me
and chucklehead Chris Stashue are talking about mister Colombo, mister Frank Colombo once a
month, having a good time doing that. Yeah. I mean, let's
be honest here, someone my age has their opinion on a show that old
doesn't matter. Why are you even listening to me? A bunch of woke
garbage? Yeah? Oh, and Chris, where can people find you?
Hih see Statue dot com is where you can go to find my rantings,
wavings and musings all those things. Cstasu dot com, cs t ac hiw
dot com. As for me, you can find me over at father Malone
dot com until next time, we'll see we are the Night Gallery or something.
Well, I'm convinced