"The Gong Show" was a spoof of TV's old amateur talent shows. A panel of three B-list celebrities (Jaye P. Morgan, Jamie Farr, Arte Johnson, Rex Reed, Pat Harrington, Phyllis Diller, Scatman Crothers, etc.) judged the acts as they sang, or did the hula, or (in the case of a pre-Pee-wee Herman Paul Reubens) impersonated a dripping faucet, or whatever. Barris booked the occasional decent act to make the bad acts look worse. After 45 seconds, the panelists could ring a huge gong to make the act stop. Any act that survived the full 90 seconds would get a score of 1 to 10 from each of the three judges, with 30 being the top score. The winner on each show would receive a prize of $516.32 and a gong-shaped trophy.

In the '60s, Barris would explain to his staff that a lot of people eat while they watch TV. "If you can make something happen on the program that will stop their forks halfway between their plates and their mouths at least once each half-hour, you'll have a hit television show," he'd say.

Anyone brave enough to eat while watching "The Gong Show" likely had a fork permanently suspended in midair.

And at the center of the madness was Barris. He squinted at the camera, sometimes from under a hat that he pulled down over his eyes. He clapped incessantly, sometimes stopping just short to fool the audience, which clapped along with him. "Back with more stuff," he'd say, "right after these messages." He strummed an electric guitar (unmiked, because he was a lousy player), danced, made fun of the acts. Whenever there was a dog act, he'd smear Alpo on his crotch beforehand, the better to create onstage embarrassment. For 10 years he'd been telling his hosts to keep it low-key. The repetition of a daily show seems boring to the cast and crew, he'd tell them, but not to the audience. They like you the way you are, steady and calm. Resist the temptation to jazz it up. "Then I go ahead and perform about as low key as a whirling dervish, busting every one of my rules," he wrote. "I just got crazier and crazier," he said years later.

The show created stars: The Unknown Comic, a comedian so awful he wore a brown paper bag over his head ("Is my fly open?" he'd ask Barris, who'd say no. "Well it should be. I'm peein'!"); Gene Gene the Dancing Machine, a chunky stagehand who danced frenetically; Father Ed, another stagehand who dressed as a priest and spewed pseudo-biblical advice. ("When a man asketh you for $5,000, giveth him $500. He wilst not bother you anymore and you wilst be $4,500 ahead.") A prime-time version followed, with a more glamorous first prize: $712.05.

But the biggest star was Barris himself. He liked getting the good tables and parking spaces and never having to stand in line for anything, but for the most part he had a hard time with the loss of privacy that comes with fame, with the loss of that barrier between himself and strangers. "On an airplane, traveling from New York to Los Angeles," he wrote, "a dignified businessman knelt down by my aisle seat and did his lizard imitation, licking my cheek with his tongue." He recalls a woman yelling to her husband at a crowded bookstore, "Look, Morris, the moron can read!" And a woman waiting at a red light asked him to roll down his window and said, "My girlfriend and I just want you to know we can't stand you." Barris, noting the endless congeniality of his friend Dick Clark, wrote, "I behaved exactly the opposite. I never fully understood why I acted the way I did."

The critics were no kinder than the man and woman on the street. Oh, they hated it all again. Merciless! Humiliating! Stupid! Lowest common denominator! Mike Wallace grilled him on "60 Minutes" about demeaning people. "The contestants on our shows come because they have a good time," Barris protested. "These people don't take participating on a game show as seriously as you think they do, Mike. It's not a big sociological thing. They just want to have some fun."

Newsweek dispatched its entertainment editor, Maureen Orth, to report on "The Gong Show" in 1977. Barris disarmed her by asking what talent she had. She said she could do her old high school pompom routine and he booked her on the show. By the end of her report, she's dancing the Charleston with a midget as the closing credits roll, having scored a second-place 26 with her "Gimme a G! ... O! ... N! ... G!" routine to "On Wisconsin!"

In 1978 Barris produced and hosted "The Chuck Barris Rah Rah Show," a "Gong Show"-inspired variety hour that featured an odd mix of old-timers (like Cab Calloway), '50s rock stars (like Chuck Berry), then-current variety show staples (like Jose Feliciano) and amateur acts. It lasted six weeks. That fall, "The $1.98 Beauty Show" sicced the "Gong Show" ethic on beauty pageants. The winner, after enduring abuse by confetti-tossing host Rip Taylor, would be awarded the titular check and a bouquet of rotting carrots. The critics weren't crazy about that one either, but Barris called it one of his favorites.

Also in 1978, the Popsicle Twins appeared on "The Gong Show." Barris used to keep the NBC censors off the show's back by throwing sacrifices at them -- acts he knew the censors wouldn't approve, but that would distract them from the acts he wanted on the air. The Popsicle Twins were one of the stooges, but the censors didn't get the dirty joke, so the Twins made it onto the show.

The act was officially called "Have You Got a Nickel?" Two barefoot teenage girls (who weren't twins) walked onstage, giggling abashedly, wearing shorts and T-shirts. Each of them sat down cross-legged and, to the tune of "I'm in the Mood for Love," proceeded to fellate an orange popsicle. Phyllis Diller gave them a 0. Jamie Farr gave them a 2. Jaye P. Morgan (who would later be fired for flashing her breasts on camera) said, "That's how I got my start," and gave them a 10. She was rewarded with one of their popsicles.

"I'm fairly certain that's when I first thought of chucking it all and moving to the south of France," Barris would later write.

By 1980, "The Gong Show" was losing steam. Several times Barris has told the story of saying, "There must be more to life than game shows" to the makeup woman during a break in "Gong Show" taping, and the woman whispering back, "There is." He decided to make "The Gong Show Movie," with his friend Robert Downey Sr. writing and directing. Midway through the production, Barris decided he wanted to direct it himself, which he did with Downey's blessing. Barris turned Downey's slapstick comedy into an attempt at seriousness, with disastrous results. The picture bombed.

"Life is cruel enough without Chuck Barris around," read the Albuquerque Tribune's review, and soon, he wouldn't be. For the next half-decade, he scaled down Barris Industries, wrote his first autobiography and contemplated that move to France. In 1986, with his girlfriend and future wife, Robin "Red" Altman, he went.

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