The Barrises lived in Saint-Tropez for several years, with Chuck occasionally returning briefly and unsuccessfully to the game show wars. They split up in 1999. He published his second autobiography in 1993 and made a cameo appearance in Downey's oddball movie "Hugo Pool" in 1997. And while he was splashing around the Mediterranean in his boat and trying to become an ace at boule, a form of lawn bowling, American culture caught up with him.

A wave of real people had begun showing up on TV, most notably on the show "Real People" (host: "Gong Show" washout John Barbour) in 1979. The wave never let up: "The People's Court," which debuted in 1981, brought back the old '50s format of the real-life courtroom drama, but where shows such as "They Stand Accused" had used ad-libbing actors, "The People's Court" used actual folks, who agreed to have their actual small-claims court cases adjudicated on the show. People magazine called the show "the 'Gong Show' of U.S. jurisprudence" and its retired judge, Joe Wapner, a serious version of Barris. The American Bar Association Review made the same comparison. The real people in court format is still going strong, with Judge Jerry Sheindlin in Wapner's old chair, and competition from his wife, "Judge Judy," as well as "Judge Joe Brown," "Judge Mills Lane" -- and even "Judge Wapner's Animal Court."

The daytime talk show format, once the province of celebrity chat and caring, sharing Phil Donahue, turned itself into a voyeuristic festival of real people and their real problems in the '80s, with Sally and Geraldo and, to a lesser extent, Oprah, and a full-fledged freak show in the '90s, with Jerry and Jenny and Maury and Rolanda and Ricki and Montel and does anybody remember "The Tempestt Bledsoe Show"? The producers of these programs would sometimes admit they had no idea why people came on and made such fools of themselves. Chuck Barris knew. As an exasperated Warren Beatty said about Madonna in her narcissistic 1991 documentary, "Madonna: Truth or Dare": "Why do anything if it's not on camera?"

The '90s brought "America's Funniest Home Videos" and MTV's "The Real World," both of which spawned endless imitations, all of them proving over and over that people will do anything to get on TV, and people will watch them. And then came the Internet, with its voyeur cams and bedroom cams, and the current wave of reality game shows that leave audiences agog at the things people will do to get on TV -- audiences that keep tuning in.

It's not just Barris' ethic that survives. His methods are all over the airwaves as well. The chaos and noise of "The Gong Show" live on in almost all youth-oriented TV. The show's talentless performers became the "Stupid Human Tricks" contestants on David Letterman -- the same David Letterman who used to be a panelist on "The Gong Show," where he no doubt learned the trick of using stagehands as entertainers. Barris' addled master of ceremonies character can be seen in Conan O'Brien, Tom Green and squinty-eyed Adam Carolla of "The Man Show."

The time may be ripe for a Barris revival, or at least an image upgrade, but it's going to have to wait a little. Charlie Kaufman, the hottest screenwriter in Hollywood after "Being John Malkovich," has adapted "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," and Johnny Depp signed to play Barris early this year. George Clooney was reportedly on board to play Barris' CIA recruiter, but financing fell through in February because the deal couldn't get done in time to guarantee that filming would be completed before this summer's anticipated writers and directors strikes -- strikes that would mean even more reality shows flooding the TV schedule.

Where can reality TV go that it hasn't gone before? Barris has plenty of unused ideas. One that he used to talk about a lot was "How Low Will You Go?" or simply "Greed" (a title his pal Clark used for a "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" clone). Contestants would try to underbid each other for such jobs as kicking an old man's crutches out from under him or shooting a little boy's dog. Reality shows have barely scratched the surface of Barris' tongue-in-cheek vision. "The ultimate game show," he has said, "would be one where the losing contestant was killed."

Which almost happened on a Barris show. In "The Game Show King," Barris relates the story of Ivy Flotsam, a contestant on a Barris revival of the '50s game "Treasure Hunt." In the show, host Geoff Edwards gave contestants a choice between cash, which he'd count into their palm, or the prize hidden in one of 25 boxes onstage, which ranged from huge cash bundles to worthless crap. Edwards was a master at milking the suspense to the point of sadism.

Ivy Flotsam didn't appear to be in the best of health even before Edwards began torturing her. "You have just won ... twenty ... five ... thousand ... coffee beans!" he said, building her up and deflating her. But there was also something to put them in: "A brand new ... automatic ... coffee grinder!" Up she went, and back down. By the time he told her that she'd also won "your very own ... picnic basket!" Flotsam wasn't falling for it anymore. Dejected, she accepted the beans, grinder and basket from Edwards and began to walk back to her seat, but Edwards stopped her one more time, looked into the box and told the exasperated Flotsam to hang on, he had something for her to put her heavy bundle in. "Why don't you try putting it down ... in the back of your ... 1960 classic Rolls-Royce!" At which point Ivy Flotsam fainted dead away, one eye open, staring.

The crew was sure she'd died. The cameramen whirled their cameras around the studios, searching for something to focus on and settling on the audience's shoes.

"Me?" wrote Barris, "I had a million questions. Was a death on the show good for the ratings, or bad?"

He wouldn't get his answer. Ivy Flotsam survived to tell her tale on "60 Minutes," where Mike Wallace asked her if her experience on "Treasure Hunt" was a happy one.

"Are you kidding, Mike?" she said. "I had the time of my life that night."

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