[read 7/?/25]
for media researchChapter 1 - "The Reveal"
About Allen Funt, the creator of Candid Camera / Candid Microphone
OTHER NOTABLE MEDIA MENTIONED
- War of the Worlds radio program
so at this time, radio was the place for reality programming
> it has always been criticized. even at the time, newspaper writer John Crosby wrote "The Modern Thumb Screw" slamming the medium
> Jean Meegan for AP also wrote "Critics Scream, Actors Howl, but Audience Participation Shows Go On and On and On"
even at the time, Meegan noted that the boom of these shows was due to economics, not any sort of moral failing--these shows were cheap and easy to make
Queen for a Day early program that was a combo of the Bachelor crossed with GoFundMe where women gave their sad stories and whoever had the saddest life won the prize
> mention of Marsha F. Cassidy book What Women Watched
> 2003 essay "Would You Like to Be Queen for a Day" by Georganne Scheiner, who noted--despite the program's shortcomings--it acted as a place for women to "bond--and see patterns in--their shared troubles"
Allen Funt had a 1994 memoir Candidly, Allen Funt: A Million Smiles Later also 1952 memoir Eavesdropper at Large
> he started the show, plus a lot of early testing ideas, on base for soldiers (The Gripe Booth showed him that people were more open when they thought the microphone was done recording)
> people liked it, for sure, but also there was pushback
it also brought about this idea that with reality, to entertain people, you have to keep heightening the jokes and the surprises
"It all started, as I see it, when the first audience participant stepped to the microphone and announced belligerently that he was from Brooklyn. It got a laugh then, and at first, that was all that was needed. But Brooklyn palled eventually and it became necessary to pelt the Brooklyn man with eggs, to put him in his wife's housedress, to send him to Alaska to search for gold." - John Crosby
Funt's work drew interest from other pop psychologists
- sociologist David Riesman who wrote the 1950 book The Lonely Crowd
- Cornell professor James Maas who taught him in his Psychology 101 classes
- Stanley Milgram who did fake electric shocks experiment
- Philip Zimbardo who did the Stanford prison experiment
Joan Rivers briefly wrote for Candid Camera, then was a lifelong critic of it
it was really with Candid Camera and "the reveal" that brought people in on the joke that Funt was able to find some success to allow the audience to enjoy the show
> this is where "Smile, You're On Candid Camera" comes in -- it's like "you're in on the joke, right? you're not lame and gonna pout, are you? We're just having fun"
"He had invented the mechanism that made it okay to watch....Once the subject understood that they had been filmed, they took back a bit of agency, some dignity and control." [p.25]
Created a x-rated, movie version of the show What Do You Say to a Naked Lady (1970) and also Money Talks (1972) but not much success
"By then the Age of the Involuntary Amateur had dawned, just as Crosby had predicted. Cameras were everywhere. Political chaos spilled out on the TV news. Cracking a few eggs into a hat no longer felt especially transgressive--and Funt himself had evolved into something new, an avuncular and unthreatening figure...By the 1980s... Candid Camera was widely perceived as old-fashioned fun." [p.27]
The Flying Phone Booth: My 3 Years Behind the Candid Camera 2011 memoir by Lou Tyrell, Funt's showrunner for a period
> Funt definitely had some problems (accused of flashing staff and being bad on-set) but could a better man have made this inherently troll-y show? (the book asks)
"The truth is, even when it was broadcast on the radio, Funt's program had been a niche hit, the Nathan For You of its genre--mesmerizing, but a bit too dark for mass embrace." [p.20]
FURTHER RESEARCH
- S2 of the Rehearsal? (Nathan Fielder's comparison to all this is interesting)
- The Long Walk? (they quote candid camera, and it kind of adds a layered meaning)
- What Do You Say to a Naked Lady? (could be interesting to compare to Top Secret/Naked Gun types)
- War of the Worlds broadcast?
- The Flying Phone Booth: My 3 Years Behind the Candid Camera 2011 memoir by Lou Tyrell? (could be an interesting read)
- Golk book by Richard Stern, a satire of a cruel prank-show producer
