JasonKoivu

A complete fraud! Or is it? Yes, it has to be! Doesn't it?

Who's to say if the super tall tales Barris lays down in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind are real? Like him or not, the man was a real entertainer. He knew what the people wanted and he gave it to them. But one wonders if while sitting around bored at his ABC Studios security guard gig cooking up ideas that would eventually turn into hit television shows like The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game and the Gong Show, perhaps Barris was also cooking up an alter ego, a James Bond daydream persona that could lift him out of his humdrum existence. When ambitious nobodies get a notion the wings of their imagination can fly it to incredible heights.

Real or not, Barris' spy stories, while made-for-the-big-screen in tone and content, are fun to read. And I will also say this for the book, it's a quick read! Not just page-wise brevity, but rather the pacing. Just like in his Gong Show days, ol' Chucky baby knows how to keep the show moving. Was it worth reading? Well, I don't know if I'd recommend it. Personally, I read it because I felt I owed him one. When I was a wee lad, Chuck Barris' tv shows entertained the heck out of me. Watching adults make fools out of themselves on the Gong Show cracked me up to no end! So even though I knew it wasn't going to be a great piece of literature, I had to read it...just to see what the old entertainer still had up his sleeves.