I didn't really expect to appreciate the Snoop Dogg version of "Joker's Wild," and Snoop Dogg did not disappoint.
If you haven't seen the show, all you need to know is that it's the basic idea of "Joker's Wild," built around Dogg's persona. There are occasionally questions about general knowledge, although they're presented in reference to Snoop's life. Many questions are about pop culture topics, some of which nobody of reasonable intelligence could be expected to know. Category names, if not categories themselves, reference drugs. Talking about marijuana use makes the show appealing to today's modern game show viewer, evidently.
Plenty of questions use video segments featuring "celebrities," or other interactive elements. Some of these are just plain stupid.
The show is produced for TBS, so I didn't expect a traditional presentation of the classic game. Snoop is quite adept at hosting the game, and the set is well done. It is colorful and modern. It doesn't appear they went cheap on the set design. The audience is seated in a "lounge," which fits the vibe the show is trying to create with Snoop as the host.
I've come to accept that I'm in the minority. I enjoy a simple quiz show with an element of luck added to the game. The old "Joker's Wild" posed general knowledge and pop culture questions, but the pop culture questions weren't as ridiculous as Snoop trots out. "Sale of the Century" was not the most fascinating game, but it had a lot of elements throughout the game play. "High Rollers" was simple, but it was fun to watch each game unfold. "Joker's Wild" and "Tic Tac Dough" had interesting elements that made them enjoyable to watch, too. But I guess that's not enough for today's Twitter attention spans.
I guess if it's not "Jeopardy!" then we aren't interested.
Tuesday, November 21, 2017
Wednesday, May 17, 2017
Game shows will never be the same, fo shizzle.
The title of this is misleading. Wheel of Fortune evolves, and it has its flaws, but it's largely the same game I've known for 40 years. Yes, it has been around longer than Pat and Vanna want you to think.
Jeopardy! continues to be true to its format. Very little gimmickry finds its way into a broadcast.
And for all the changes and updates that have come along in the 10 years Drew Carey has hosted The Price is Right, it still feels like I'm watching the same game show from my youth.
But today's TV audience doesn't seem to be very impressed with the traditional game show.
It seems like any game show on TV, be it a 30-minute show plugged into an odd hour of a TV station's schedule or a 60-minute prime time affair, needs to have one of three things in order to capture an audience, if not all three.
Big money needs to be part of the equation in many instances. Watching people play Deal or No Deal for a $50,000 prize wasn't going to garner much attention. There had to be a huge prize out there. This all started with ABC's prime time showcase for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Suddenly every network wanted to draw huge ratings with a prime time game show. Fox rolled out Greed, and dangled a $2 million prize, for example.
The hosts of most shows of the past 17-plus years have not been your traditional emcees. That seems to be important, too. Deal or No Deal chose Howie Mandel, known to many either for his acting or for his comedy. He wasn't exactly a hot commodity at the time he was tapped to host the game. If anything, it resurrected his career.
Regardless, he represented a trend in emcees that emerged with the resurrection of the prime time game show. Your emcees of yesteryear typically brought a sense of humor to the proceedings, but they weren't there to interject it. More often than not these days, the emcee is chosen as much to be an entertainer as to be the host.
Bob Barker had great comedic timing as host of The Price is Right. But he didn't overuse it. He never made the show about him. I can't say the same for Steve Harvey and Family Feud.
And finally, many of the big money game shows need to interject human drama into the game. That must reel viewers in somehow. Plenty of Mandel's Deal or No Deal contestants had some sort of external situation that was played up and used to sell the game. "Marcia, you're a single mother, you have five kids, you work three full-time jobs and you're going to college to try to better you life. $85,000 would mean so much to your family....."
I happened to catch a few minutes of the latest NBC get-rich-quick affair, The Wall. I haven't seen enough of the show to have the slightest idea of how it works. But during those two or three minutes I watched, host Chris Hardwick built up the drama regarding the big cash prize while the husband-and-wife duo vying for it had an overly emotional exchange on stage. I needed a barf bag.
The old days of watching people play a competitive quiz game for nice prizes just doesn't seem to hold much interest to today's viewers. Simple games built around general knowledge, such as Sale of the Century, High Rollers and Tic Tac Dough, really don't stand a chance. Perhaps the closest we've come outside of Jeopardy! during the past 20 years is the six-year run of Hollywood Squares, and that ended more than a decade ago.
GSN, formerly known as Game Show Network, has had some success developing traditional games that lasted for more than a year, but nothing set the world on fire. And if it ain't Jeopardy!, it has to have one of today's criteria mentioned above, and usually more than one.
When I read today that there's going to be a new version of Joker's Wild, I quickly lost my enthusiasm.
Rap music's Snoop Dogg is going to host a new version on TBS, a cable channel with a poor track record of developing game shows. I'm not going to tell you I will hate it, because I might be surprised. But I'm not as excited as I should be.
Joker's Wild had a simple format, offering a game of "strategy, knowledge and fun." It was a quiz show with an element of luck. That's all I needed.
The new TBS version promises an update to the game. It will be more than the simple quiz show that went off the air more than 30 years ago. (I'm ignoring the short-lived, mostly unnoticed one-year revival from the early 1990s.)
But I have a hard time believing Snoop Dogg will play it straight. He might not be a comedian, but I suspect he'll interject his personality into the show more than I'll care for, and he'll probably take on the role of cheerleader during the show. That seems to be something hosts do today. I don't need to be prompted as to when I should be excited for a contestant, and I don't need to see my hosts celebrating with the contestants. But I suspect Snoop Dogg will work the audience and celebrate as if he's the winner when somebody walks away with a nice prize. I guess that's what people watching game shows want to see these days, but to me it takes away from the game.
Then again, the game doesn't seem to be as important to people watching a game show in 2017. At least not Family Feud. I'm sure plenty of people watching Family Feud today would never come back if Harvey were to be replaced by Todd Newton tomorrow. Todd Newton is younger than Harvey, but more traditional in his hosting style. I guarantee you the show would take a huge dip in the ratings were Newton to replace Harvey. That's the world I live in. (I watched plenty of Family Feud in my life. It has a play-along factor, but I've never loved it. I'm never going to watch it religiously, no matter who the host is.)
I'm guessing that since the new Joker's Wild is on TBS, it's not going to have a ridiculous prize budget. Given that, and the fact Snoop Dogg is the host, I'm not expecting the show to drip with personal drama as contestants compete for a bonus round prize of $10,000 or $20,000. So in order for the show to connect with todays' game show viewers, it's going to have to attract people who find Snoop Dogg to be entertaining enough to watch go through the motions of hosting a game show.
If it succeeds, odds are it won't be because of me. If it turns out that I think it's a good show, you can bet it will have a short lifespan. Fo shizzle my nizzle.
Jeopardy! continues to be true to its format. Very little gimmickry finds its way into a broadcast.
And for all the changes and updates that have come along in the 10 years Drew Carey has hosted The Price is Right, it still feels like I'm watching the same game show from my youth.
But today's TV audience doesn't seem to be very impressed with the traditional game show.
It seems like any game show on TV, be it a 30-minute show plugged into an odd hour of a TV station's schedule or a 60-minute prime time affair, needs to have one of three things in order to capture an audience, if not all three.
Big money needs to be part of the equation in many instances. Watching people play Deal or No Deal for a $50,000 prize wasn't going to garner much attention. There had to be a huge prize out there. This all started with ABC's prime time showcase for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Suddenly every network wanted to draw huge ratings with a prime time game show. Fox rolled out Greed, and dangled a $2 million prize, for example.
The hosts of most shows of the past 17-plus years have not been your traditional emcees. That seems to be important, too. Deal or No Deal chose Howie Mandel, known to many either for his acting or for his comedy. He wasn't exactly a hot commodity at the time he was tapped to host the game. If anything, it resurrected his career.
Regardless, he represented a trend in emcees that emerged with the resurrection of the prime time game show. Your emcees of yesteryear typically brought a sense of humor to the proceedings, but they weren't there to interject it. More often than not these days, the emcee is chosen as much to be an entertainer as to be the host.
Bob Barker had great comedic timing as host of The Price is Right. But he didn't overuse it. He never made the show about him. I can't say the same for Steve Harvey and Family Feud.
And finally, many of the big money game shows need to interject human drama into the game. That must reel viewers in somehow. Plenty of Mandel's Deal or No Deal contestants had some sort of external situation that was played up and used to sell the game. "Marcia, you're a single mother, you have five kids, you work three full-time jobs and you're going to college to try to better you life. $85,000 would mean so much to your family....."
I happened to catch a few minutes of the latest NBC get-rich-quick affair, The Wall. I haven't seen enough of the show to have the slightest idea of how it works. But during those two or three minutes I watched, host Chris Hardwick built up the drama regarding the big cash prize while the husband-and-wife duo vying for it had an overly emotional exchange on stage. I needed a barf bag.
The old days of watching people play a competitive quiz game for nice prizes just doesn't seem to hold much interest to today's viewers. Simple games built around general knowledge, such as Sale of the Century, High Rollers and Tic Tac Dough, really don't stand a chance. Perhaps the closest we've come outside of Jeopardy! during the past 20 years is the six-year run of Hollywood Squares, and that ended more than a decade ago.
GSN, formerly known as Game Show Network, has had some success developing traditional games that lasted for more than a year, but nothing set the world on fire. And if it ain't Jeopardy!, it has to have one of today's criteria mentioned above, and usually more than one.
When I read today that there's going to be a new version of Joker's Wild, I quickly lost my enthusiasm.
Rap music's Snoop Dogg is going to host a new version on TBS, a cable channel with a poor track record of developing game shows. I'm not going to tell you I will hate it, because I might be surprised. But I'm not as excited as I should be.
Joker's Wild had a simple format, offering a game of "strategy, knowledge and fun." It was a quiz show with an element of luck. That's all I needed.
The new TBS version promises an update to the game. It will be more than the simple quiz show that went off the air more than 30 years ago. (I'm ignoring the short-lived, mostly unnoticed one-year revival from the early 1990s.)
But I have a hard time believing Snoop Dogg will play it straight. He might not be a comedian, but I suspect he'll interject his personality into the show more than I'll care for, and he'll probably take on the role of cheerleader during the show. That seems to be something hosts do today. I don't need to be prompted as to when I should be excited for a contestant, and I don't need to see my hosts celebrating with the contestants. But I suspect Snoop Dogg will work the audience and celebrate as if he's the winner when somebody walks away with a nice prize. I guess that's what people watching game shows want to see these days, but to me it takes away from the game.
Then again, the game doesn't seem to be as important to people watching a game show in 2017. At least not Family Feud. I'm sure plenty of people watching Family Feud today would never come back if Harvey were to be replaced by Todd Newton tomorrow. Todd Newton is younger than Harvey, but more traditional in his hosting style. I guarantee you the show would take a huge dip in the ratings were Newton to replace Harvey. That's the world I live in. (I watched plenty of Family Feud in my life. It has a play-along factor, but I've never loved it. I'm never going to watch it religiously, no matter who the host is.)
I'm guessing that since the new Joker's Wild is on TBS, it's not going to have a ridiculous prize budget. Given that, and the fact Snoop Dogg is the host, I'm not expecting the show to drip with personal drama as contestants compete for a bonus round prize of $10,000 or $20,000. So in order for the show to connect with todays' game show viewers, it's going to have to attract people who find Snoop Dogg to be entertaining enough to watch go through the motions of hosting a game show.
If it succeeds, odds are it won't be because of me. If it turns out that I think it's a good show, you can bet it will have a short lifespan. Fo shizzle my nizzle.
Wednesday, January 25, 2017
'Big Money' brings Michael Larson and Press Your Luck back to life
Never in my wildest dreams did I consider that a game show episode I watched as a teenager would one day be recreated on a theatrical stage.
Been there, done that.
Note: I will rely upon my memory occasionally, and it's a bit cloudy more than 30 years later. And I assume you have basic familiarity with the show, given you're reading a game show blog.
In 1984 a simple, exciting CBS game show called Press Your Luck was competing for viewers in the crowded daytime schedules of the major networks. There was a time when all three networks were in the game show business, and it was glorious.
Press Your Luck was a great game. It wasn't intellectually stimulating, it didn't have much of a play along factor, and occasionally the games were less than spectacular. But the format provided some great competition and amazing outcomes in its final round.
Michael Larson did something incredible in May 1984. As a contestant on the show he won $110,000 in cash and prizes. Rarely would a contestant win $25,000 in a single show on Press Your Luck, but Larson shocked the game show world with his incredible win.
And I saw him do it during the summer of 1984. His game lasted so long that it didn't fit into the show's 30-minute format, which was unheard of. They had to split his game between two 30-minute episodes. I'm not sure if I saw both episodes that summer, but I definitely saw the second part.
How did he win so much more than anyone had ever considered trying to win? It was rather simple.
We didn't have fancy home computers in 1984, but personal computers were available. We had them in school and used them for a variety of simple applications by today's standards. You'd think a game show that relied upon 18 television monitors with alternating screens and a light indicator bouncing around those 18 monitors would have a basic computer providing complete randomization of the game play. But that wasn't the case.
Larson figured out, by watching videotapes of the game over and over, that the light indicator moved about the board in patterns. There was more than one pattern, and he memorized them all so that he'd know when the light indicator would stop on one of two monitors. There were three different screens in each monitor. The screens might contain a cash amount, a prize or a "whammy," which wiped out your bank account. The odds of hitting a whammy were 1-in-6, as I recall reading somewhere.
The two monitors Larson focused upon had six screens offering cash, plus an additional spin. Players earned a limited number of spins for each of two rounds by answering a few trivia questions. By hitting squares that always offered an additional spin, Larson could potentially play for hours, if he had the stamina and focus to continue following the pattern.
It took him a few spins to get his timing down, but by round two he was hitting his buzzer and stopping the board repeatedly with the light indicator on one of the two key squares, allowing him to run up a total of $102,000 before he decided he had better play it safe and pass his remaining spins to another player, which the game allowed him to do. He had a few spins passed back to him and added another $8,000 to his total. The game came to an end moments later, cementing his place in game show history.
I've seen the Larson episodes a few times over the years. His big win aired one time, and was all but forgotten by CBS and the show's producers. They were embarrassed. They aired the show, awarded him his cash and prizes and never acknowledged him again during the next two years of the show's run.
Even when reruns of the show were aired on cable TV in the 1990s, the Larson episodes were blacklisted.
It wasn't until GSN, the cable network formerly known as Game Show Network, aired a documentary in 2003 about Larson's improbable win that the average Joe had a chance to revisit Larson's incredible accomplishment. The documentary, as well as the original episodes, are readily available on Youtube.
A month or so ago my girlfriend told me about a play at a St. Paul theater that was coming in January. She hates the fact I'm a game show fanatic, but will take any avenue available to entice me to see live theater with her. She read the synopsis of "Big Money." It was they story of Larson's life.
The original production by Sandbox Theatre tells the life story of Larson. I wouldn't call it must-see theater, even for game show fanatics, but it was pretty amazing to see his life adapted to live theater.
The play opens with a recreation of Larson's game. From host Peter Tomarken's comments, to the interviews with the contestants, and the four trivia questions that begin round 1, it was very faithful to the original broadcast. The main deviation: Larson is introduced third. He was in the second seat, but given he's the focal point of the play, his introduction is third.
After the opening segment of the TV show, the play deviates from the broadcast. Larson steps out from behind his podium for a monologue about his life.
Most of the play features snippets of his life, before and after the show. We learn that he was always looking for a way to make an easy buck. We see him covertly selling candy bars at his grade school, we see him opening up bank accounts all over town -- sometimes under a fake name -- to receive a $500 bonus for opening a new account, we see him explaining to his brother how he created a dummy company in order to collect unemployment insurance and we see him studying his tapes of Press Your Luck, trying to crack the code, much to the disappointment of his on-again, off-again wife, who just wants him to get a job and earn a steady paycheck.
The play revisits the game two more times: When Larson was on his roll during round 2, racking up thousands of dollars, and at the end of the show, when Tomarken was interviewing Larson about his game play and his down-on-his-luck tale of being an unemployed ice cream truck driver.
The rest of the play shows scenes from the studio on the day he was chosen as a contestant, and after his big win. There's a scene recreating Larson's audition to be a contestant, and a scene showing the producers panicking about his win, and how the network would respond. Did Larson cheat somehow? Or did he simply make them look like fools by exposing a flaw in their game play?
Scenes from his life following his win include a scene showing him eagerly investing $35,000 in an effort to increase his windfall. It takes money to make money, after all. There's also a scene showing Larson, his wife and daughter searching through $1 bills Larson had withdrawn from the bank, trying to match a serial number announced on a radio station in order to win $30,000. According to the play, he had withdrawn $50,000 in $1 bills.
There are also scenes showing Larson working at Walmart within a year or two of his big winning. His money was gone. His investments fizzled and his bags of $1 bills were stolen while he was at a Christmas party. He suspected his wife had something to do with their disappearance.
The play also recreates his 1994 interview on ABC's Good Morning America. He was interviewed because of the popularity of the movie "Quiz Show," which was about game show scandals of the 1950s. I'm not sure if I saw the interview in 1994 or simply read a synopsis of it on TV Guide. (Does anyone know where to find Youtube video of his Good Morning America appearance?)
Sometime in the 1990s Larson wound up running some sort of lottery scam, which had him on the run from the FBI. He was estranged from his wife and daughter at that point, as well as his brother. We learn that he was diagnosed with throat cancer too late to adequately treat it.
The final scene of the play imagines Tomarken talking with Larson about the end of his life, on the set of a game show. Using dialogue mimicking the scenes we saw at the beginning of the play, we hear Larson reflect on his life.
I know the story of Larson better than most people, I'm sure, but I'm no expert. The GSN documentary did a good job of fleshing out details of his life. It explained how the producers disagreed upon whether or not they wanted to use Larson as a contestant when he showed up from Ohio to audition. They also talked about the concerns and embarrassment we see recreated in the play.
His tale of woe regarding the $1 bills and their burglary is well known by those who know the story of his life after the show. To the best of my knowledge the case was never solved.
But I didn't know about his life before Press Your Luck. I had never heard about the candy bars, the unemployment insurance scheme or the bank account fraud. I was left wondering what the source material was. I've never seen it.
I was familiar with most of the events from his life after the show, however.
So, did I like it?
I had mixed feelings.
On the whole, I liked it. It's a small theater, and it's a modest production. There are seven cast members, most of whom play multiple parts. Only the actor playing Larson is limited to a single role. But the cast does a nice job of morphing from one character to another.
The guy playing Larson was a bit exaggerated when recreating Larson's enthusiasm during the game play, but overall he seemed to embody the spirit of Larson. One of Larson's competitors on the show was a guy named Ed Long. The actor playing Long clearly studied him, as he did an outstanding job of replicating him. The actor playing Tomarken didn't remind me of the deceased emcee at all.
The props were limited, but the play did a nice job of using what little it had to work with. The creation of the game board was as simple as it could be, but one of prize squares depicted was a flokati rug. Diehard Press Your Luck fans will appreciate that.
I have to assume most people don't know the story of Larson. The play imagines the internal struggles Larson wrestled with in his lifelong quest to beat the system, and the price he paid. But it's not simply a cautionary tale. There's levity thrown in, and sometimes it didn't make sense.
My girlfriend characterized the play as eccentric, and theorized that they added the odd visuals and inexplicable moments to simply amuse audience members who aren't as hardcore about Larson's history. At one point there was nearly a song-and-dance routine, and plenty of times I found myself thinking, "That was wacky."
You won't find this play on Broadway any time soon. After this weekend it may never be seen again. The show was slated for a run barely more than two weeks, (13 total performances,) and it didn't get a lot of mainstream promotion locally, as far as I can tell, so I suspect other game show geeks in the Twin Cities don't even know they're missing it.
This wasn't community theater, but it certainly didn't have the sparkle and polish of a major theatrical production. Tickets are $40 to $60, evidently, but I attended on a discount night, so I have no complaint about the value of the production.
Bill Murray was allegedly going to play Larson in a biopic shortly after Larson's death, but that didn't happen. "Big Money" was a low-budget alternative to that unfulfilled promise, and I enjoyed it, despite its quirkiness.
I'm not sure why the folks at Sandbox Theatre dedicated their time and talent to the story of Larson, but I'm glad they did. I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who has been captivated by his story all these years.
Been there, done that.
Note: I will rely upon my memory occasionally, and it's a bit cloudy more than 30 years later. And I assume you have basic familiarity with the show, given you're reading a game show blog.
In 1984 a simple, exciting CBS game show called Press Your Luck was competing for viewers in the crowded daytime schedules of the major networks. There was a time when all three networks were in the game show business, and it was glorious.
Press Your Luck was a great game. It wasn't intellectually stimulating, it didn't have much of a play along factor, and occasionally the games were less than spectacular. But the format provided some great competition and amazing outcomes in its final round.
Michael Larson did something incredible in May 1984. As a contestant on the show he won $110,000 in cash and prizes. Rarely would a contestant win $25,000 in a single show on Press Your Luck, but Larson shocked the game show world with his incredible win.
And I saw him do it during the summer of 1984. His game lasted so long that it didn't fit into the show's 30-minute format, which was unheard of. They had to split his game between two 30-minute episodes. I'm not sure if I saw both episodes that summer, but I definitely saw the second part.
How did he win so much more than anyone had ever considered trying to win? It was rather simple.
We didn't have fancy home computers in 1984, but personal computers were available. We had them in school and used them for a variety of simple applications by today's standards. You'd think a game show that relied upon 18 television monitors with alternating screens and a light indicator bouncing around those 18 monitors would have a basic computer providing complete randomization of the game play. But that wasn't the case.
Larson figured out, by watching videotapes of the game over and over, that the light indicator moved about the board in patterns. There was more than one pattern, and he memorized them all so that he'd know when the light indicator would stop on one of two monitors. There were three different screens in each monitor. The screens might contain a cash amount, a prize or a "whammy," which wiped out your bank account. The odds of hitting a whammy were 1-in-6, as I recall reading somewhere.
The two monitors Larson focused upon had six screens offering cash, plus an additional spin. Players earned a limited number of spins for each of two rounds by answering a few trivia questions. By hitting squares that always offered an additional spin, Larson could potentially play for hours, if he had the stamina and focus to continue following the pattern.
It took him a few spins to get his timing down, but by round two he was hitting his buzzer and stopping the board repeatedly with the light indicator on one of the two key squares, allowing him to run up a total of $102,000 before he decided he had better play it safe and pass his remaining spins to another player, which the game allowed him to do. He had a few spins passed back to him and added another $8,000 to his total. The game came to an end moments later, cementing his place in game show history.
I've seen the Larson episodes a few times over the years. His big win aired one time, and was all but forgotten by CBS and the show's producers. They were embarrassed. They aired the show, awarded him his cash and prizes and never acknowledged him again during the next two years of the show's run.
Even when reruns of the show were aired on cable TV in the 1990s, the Larson episodes were blacklisted.
It wasn't until GSN, the cable network formerly known as Game Show Network, aired a documentary in 2003 about Larson's improbable win that the average Joe had a chance to revisit Larson's incredible accomplishment. The documentary, as well as the original episodes, are readily available on Youtube.
A month or so ago my girlfriend told me about a play at a St. Paul theater that was coming in January. She hates the fact I'm a game show fanatic, but will take any avenue available to entice me to see live theater with her. She read the synopsis of "Big Money." It was they story of Larson's life.
The original production by Sandbox Theatre tells the life story of Larson. I wouldn't call it must-see theater, even for game show fanatics, but it was pretty amazing to see his life adapted to live theater.
The play opens with a recreation of Larson's game. From host Peter Tomarken's comments, to the interviews with the contestants, and the four trivia questions that begin round 1, it was very faithful to the original broadcast. The main deviation: Larson is introduced third. He was in the second seat, but given he's the focal point of the play, his introduction is third.
After the opening segment of the TV show, the play deviates from the broadcast. Larson steps out from behind his podium for a monologue about his life.
Most of the play features snippets of his life, before and after the show. We learn that he was always looking for a way to make an easy buck. We see him covertly selling candy bars at his grade school, we see him opening up bank accounts all over town -- sometimes under a fake name -- to receive a $500 bonus for opening a new account, we see him explaining to his brother how he created a dummy company in order to collect unemployment insurance and we see him studying his tapes of Press Your Luck, trying to crack the code, much to the disappointment of his on-again, off-again wife, who just wants him to get a job and earn a steady paycheck.
The play revisits the game two more times: When Larson was on his roll during round 2, racking up thousands of dollars, and at the end of the show, when Tomarken was interviewing Larson about his game play and his down-on-his-luck tale of being an unemployed ice cream truck driver.
The rest of the play shows scenes from the studio on the day he was chosen as a contestant, and after his big win. There's a scene recreating Larson's audition to be a contestant, and a scene showing the producers panicking about his win, and how the network would respond. Did Larson cheat somehow? Or did he simply make them look like fools by exposing a flaw in their game play?
Scenes from his life following his win include a scene showing him eagerly investing $35,000 in an effort to increase his windfall. It takes money to make money, after all. There's also a scene showing Larson, his wife and daughter searching through $1 bills Larson had withdrawn from the bank, trying to match a serial number announced on a radio station in order to win $30,000. According to the play, he had withdrawn $50,000 in $1 bills.
There are also scenes showing Larson working at Walmart within a year or two of his big winning. His money was gone. His investments fizzled and his bags of $1 bills were stolen while he was at a Christmas party. He suspected his wife had something to do with their disappearance.
The play also recreates his 1994 interview on ABC's Good Morning America. He was interviewed because of the popularity of the movie "Quiz Show," which was about game show scandals of the 1950s. I'm not sure if I saw the interview in 1994 or simply read a synopsis of it on TV Guide. (Does anyone know where to find Youtube video of his Good Morning America appearance?)
Sometime in the 1990s Larson wound up running some sort of lottery scam, which had him on the run from the FBI. He was estranged from his wife and daughter at that point, as well as his brother. We learn that he was diagnosed with throat cancer too late to adequately treat it.
The final scene of the play imagines Tomarken talking with Larson about the end of his life, on the set of a game show. Using dialogue mimicking the scenes we saw at the beginning of the play, we hear Larson reflect on his life.
I know the story of Larson better than most people, I'm sure, but I'm no expert. The GSN documentary did a good job of fleshing out details of his life. It explained how the producers disagreed upon whether or not they wanted to use Larson as a contestant when he showed up from Ohio to audition. They also talked about the concerns and embarrassment we see recreated in the play.
His tale of woe regarding the $1 bills and their burglary is well known by those who know the story of his life after the show. To the best of my knowledge the case was never solved.
But I didn't know about his life before Press Your Luck. I had never heard about the candy bars, the unemployment insurance scheme or the bank account fraud. I was left wondering what the source material was. I've never seen it.
I was familiar with most of the events from his life after the show, however.
So, did I like it?
I had mixed feelings.
On the whole, I liked it. It's a small theater, and it's a modest production. There are seven cast members, most of whom play multiple parts. Only the actor playing Larson is limited to a single role. But the cast does a nice job of morphing from one character to another.
The guy playing Larson was a bit exaggerated when recreating Larson's enthusiasm during the game play, but overall he seemed to embody the spirit of Larson. One of Larson's competitors on the show was a guy named Ed Long. The actor playing Long clearly studied him, as he did an outstanding job of replicating him. The actor playing Tomarken didn't remind me of the deceased emcee at all.
The props were limited, but the play did a nice job of using what little it had to work with. The creation of the game board was as simple as it could be, but one of prize squares depicted was a flokati rug. Diehard Press Your Luck fans will appreciate that.
I have to assume most people don't know the story of Larson. The play imagines the internal struggles Larson wrestled with in his lifelong quest to beat the system, and the price he paid. But it's not simply a cautionary tale. There's levity thrown in, and sometimes it didn't make sense.
My girlfriend characterized the play as eccentric, and theorized that they added the odd visuals and inexplicable moments to simply amuse audience members who aren't as hardcore about Larson's history. At one point there was nearly a song-and-dance routine, and plenty of times I found myself thinking, "That was wacky."
You won't find this play on Broadway any time soon. After this weekend it may never be seen again. The show was slated for a run barely more than two weeks, (13 total performances,) and it didn't get a lot of mainstream promotion locally, as far as I can tell, so I suspect other game show geeks in the Twin Cities don't even know they're missing it.
This wasn't community theater, but it certainly didn't have the sparkle and polish of a major theatrical production. Tickets are $40 to $60, evidently, but I attended on a discount night, so I have no complaint about the value of the production.
Bill Murray was allegedly going to play Larson in a biopic shortly after Larson's death, but that didn't happen. "Big Money" was a low-budget alternative to that unfulfilled promise, and I enjoyed it, despite its quirkiness.
I'm not sure why the folks at Sandbox Theatre dedicated their time and talent to the story of Larson, but I'm glad they did. I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who has been captivated by his story all these years.
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