Cool for May, and a bit windy. Storms blew through yesterday, now "Blue skies, nothin' but blue skies ... ."
All plans to "turn my life around and get organized" lasted about a day and a half. What little I did looks nice though. New shower curtain has me sneezing less. Got me to thinking about the best organized life I've ever seen -- a little too well organized for its lead character, and me too. For most, this amazing one-time summer series on CBS was polite Brit allegory; for me (Mister Please-Disorganize-My-Procrastination himself) it was a portrait of cold horror.
(Read more ...)
Ah, the late sixties and early seventies. There were only three networks, and there wasn't anything else (we didn't get a PBS translator [a type of relay transmitter] in our area till, I think, '71. Snowy Julia Child and Joyce Chen -- foodies from early days. There was more, but that's another post.) What the bigs did (and they're getting back to it, but it ain't the same) was spend money to air something different for summertime audiences. CBS did the best job, in my opinion. It really was the Tiffany Network then. The first really nice summer series was an import from Britain -- "The Prisoner." It starred Scottish actor Patrick McGoohan in the title role. He'd gotten famous stateside two years or so before, playing in a weekly series called "Secret Agent." The show was way cool (for a ... hmm, 12-year-old, stretched out on the carpet in front of the screen), and it featured theme music from Mister American Bandstand Boy himself, Johnny Rivers. The song has a mad opener of a guitar riff straight from Major Twang. (Rivers recorded a longform live version of the song on his "Whiskey A-Go-Go" LP* {I think that's correct} that featured a wild guitar solo). Anyway, "Secret Agent" itself was pretty standard TV suspense fare, but it didn't really do a James Bond on the lead character quite the way McGoohan later claimed. His character did have a couple of hot girlfriends he had to betray, though. Maybe that was what McGoo didn't like. I dunno ... .
The Prisoner was McGoohan's take on what was wrong with his Secret Agent Man character, and the whole concept of spy shows. It turns out ol' Patrick was a dyed-in-the-Shetland old-style libertarian who thought the nanny state was taking over (and this was nearly forty years ago!). The show featured another red-hot rock track (an instrumental) for a theme, showing a no-audible-dialog sequence (mostly) that set up the show's premise. This Secret Agent Man zooms into work at his tree-lined High Street office in his Lotus (or was it a Vaux ... I forget. A true open-wheel two-seater with no roof at all) who screams at the boss and quits. He heads to his swanky apartment to think over his next step, pours himself a drink first to settle down, and things ... get ... foggy ... .
Ol' Pat wakes up in a squeaky clean and really small apartment in some place he finds out is called The Village. Everybody has a number they have to wear on big round badges that feature the same odd symbol -- a old-timey bicycle with a big front wheel (I forget what you call those things). I'm going purely from memory here, but Patrick Number Whatever (I think it was 69, no kidding! I'll have to check.) finally finds out who's in charge -- it's Number Two! "Who is Number One?" McGoohan intones gravely at the end of each following ep's intro. That's the big question. I'll let you get the DVD set (this is from the black-and-white days, guys) to find out who Number One is -- but a feature of the series is that each episode had a different Number Two. The final ep features Leo McKern reprising an earlier Number Two role, and this last ep will leave your head spinning! It did mine. I recall thinking about it for days, and I could come to no conclusions. It was the oddest series end I'd ever seen! (Actually, it's been copied mucho since -- I'll be expecting something similar from Lost someday. That series -- while it's got its original "Twists and Turns" angle, is not completely original. The Prisoner was there first.).
The really chilling thing about The Village was its utter sterility. And puerile falsity. And utter control of everything. Every step was controlled, every word recorded, every step watched -- and every so-called "right" that every "citizen" had was purely bogus. And if any "citizen" disobeyed, became "difficult," caused a ruckus, or tried to escape, he or she got swallowed by a giant white (I guess it was white) balloon. The show had some set creepy music that played while the camera with an "inside the bubble" POV showed each vic slowly being suffocated by the rubbery balloon. It would eventually swallow the unfortunate rebel.
One ep actually had ol' McGoo getting goo'ed by The Bubble, but he kind of held his breath and rolled out of it. Even at that, he woke in the hospital -- groggy, brainwashed and barely breathing. He eventually broke the hold of The Bubble by the ep's end, but not of The Village -- not then, anyway.
The series had a lot to say -- too much for most people, including me. This thing was way, way, way, way ahead of its day -- and I'm sure anyone watching the vids now may well be shocked at its prescience (did I spell that right? LJ has a spellchecker, but all I get is gobbledegook when I try it. Maybe the spellchecker is trying to tell me something. Maybe, it's The Village ... oh, no. Is that a big balloon? NO! Gurp...)
Summer specials were worth looking forward to back in the day. I remember genius mad comic David Steinberg had a great summer series, years before SNL or SCTV aired ("Boo-gah-bah-GAA!"). Another was a music-variety show actually by The Manhattan Transfer. No, they weren't the regular guests -- they ran the show! ("Tuxedo Junction ... U..S..A!") What we get now summers is UnReality TeeVee.
The Village had TV with nothing but bilge on it.
OK ... "Who is Number One?"
___
*I've since learned that the Johnny Rivers album containing the live version of "Secret Agent Man” is named “...and I know you wanna dance”. Some believe this album is better than Live at Whiskey A Go-Go -- two of four live LPs that Rivers recorded in his heyday. The LP "... and I know you wanna dance” was released two or three years after Whiskey A Go-Go was shipped to stores.
LJ orig.: 5/18/07
No comments:
Post a Comment