(no subject)

[shadowkat]

While laughing at the Carol Burnette 50th Anniversary Special, I got curious about the Kevin Spacey allegations and fell down the proverbial rabbit hole. (ie. I found out more than I wanted to, and just enough to realize I'm not going to be able to watch this man in anything without it in the back of my head. He joins Mel Gibson, Bill Cosby and Woody Allen in that...arena.)



* Complete List of the 15 Accusers - many of which were students during his time running the theater program at the Old Vic

* Actor Harry Dreyfuss -- when he was 18, Spacey come on to him, groped him, while his father was working under Spacey and didn't know about it, yet was in the room.

Now having had nine years to process it, it finally is clear to me how wrong Kevin’s behavior was. Not because of how it made me feel. Again, I think being male, and roughly the same size as Kevin, meant that I never felt physically unsafe. My dad was in the room, and I could have alerted him at any time. It didn’t make me feel traumatized, and instead I spun it into a funny story. Kevin Spacey came on to me! He’s famous! Haha!

And that kind of thinking has to be addressed. I did a lot of mental gymnastics to normalize my experience. For the last nine years, whenever I would tell this story to people who refused to laugh — who insisted that I had gone through something profoundly wrong — I would always try to downplay it so they could just see the funny side. I especially wanted to discourage them from thinking that what happened to me was something I ever needed to speak publicly about. This is how I approached finally telling my father when I was in college, four or five years after the incident. He was furious, and I spent the rest of the evening ensuring him that it wasn’t a big deal, and that I would be mortified if he did anything about it.

As the allegations against Harvey Weinstein came rolling in, and so many women I know posted their stories of sexual abuse during the #MeToo campaign, I came to see how important it is to add my voice to the people who are demanding a better world. A world in which powerful men are no longer allowed to feel safe to do this, or far worse. In retrospect, what disgusts me about Kevin was how safe he did feel. He knew he could fondle me in a room with my father and that I wouldn’t say a word. He knew I wouldn’t have had the guts. And I didn’t.

So to all the people who have spoken up already, about Kevin, about Harvey Weinstein, and Bill Cosby, and Bill O’Reilly, and Roger Ailes, and all the women who have opened my eyes to how pervasive this problem is, I can’t thank you enough. You helped me see that what was once treated as normal never deserved to be, and that things we all could have condemned sooner were happening right under many of our noses. In minimizing my own experience all these years, I unwittingly played a role in minimizing it for everyone. That ends now. This was never a funny story. Rather than a punchline, I hope my story can serve as inspiration to others who may have felt that they couldn’t or shouldn’t speak up until now.

I'm sharing this because it reminded me a lot of my experience in Wales...which on the surface seems funny, but it's really not. Also to show that it's not just women who are experiencing this, but also men. This abuse of power is something that affects everyone.


2. The Carol Burnett show aired mainly in the 1970s. I remember watching it in reruns and on Saturday nights as a kid. Along with the Saturday Night Western. We didn't watch it all the time, since my family isn't really into sketch comedy, we preferred the more witty British series.

The Carol Burnett Show (also Carol Burnett and Friends in syndication) is an American variety/sketch comedy television show starring Carol Burnett, Harvey Korman, Vicki Lawrence, and Lyle Waggoner. In 1975, frequent guest star Tim Conway became a regular after Waggoner left the series. In 1977, Dick Van Dyke replaced Korman for much of its final season (but he left the show by Thanksgiving, on friendly terms). The show originally ran on CBS from September 11, 1967, to March 29, 1978, for 279 episodes, and again with nine episodes in the fall of 1991. The series originated in CBS Television City's Studio 33, and won 25 primetime Emmy Awards, was ranked number 16 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time in 2002, and in 2007 was listed as one of Time magazine's 100 Best TV Shows of All Time.

It was live and had a lot of improvisational comedians, specifically Tim Conway, who often did things that no one knew he was going to do ahead of time. One of the most famous is below:

Everyone loses it, including Dick Van Dyke who falls off the couch.

Watch on YouTube

3. Super's wife, Monica, stopped by, she speaks rapidly and in a thick Polish accent and is holding a clip board with a pen that barely works.


Monica: Is your apartment cold or hot?
ME: Well the air conditioning is currently on, so hot.
Monica: Are you sure?
Me: Yeah. It's too hot in the bedroom and sometimes cool in the living room, if windy.
Monica: Someone upstairs has contacted a lawyer and is complaining about it being too hot, but we spent up until 11PM fixing the boiler and if they turn down the heat everyone is cold, 50 some tenants complained last time, and and the management company would be fine about turning it down, saves money...
Me: I have the A/C on. Want to come in and see for yourself?
Monica: No, no. Tell the truth if you must, if you could write it here. People next to you are fine.
Me: Depends on where you are located. If you are facing the courtyard or backyards, too hot, if you are facing the street too cold.
Monica: if you could write here?
Me: Okay. (it's close to impossible the pen doesn't work. So find another one, it doesn't either...apparently it's the paper? Very weird.) Here it is.
Monica: Bad pen? Too many people using it?
Me: OR bad paper.
She looks confused and wanders off to the next door.

I put on the fan.

So now I have the fan and the a/c on, while the radiators are hissing to life. LOL!.

Sigh, what can I say, NYC apartments and radiators.

Comments

[cactuswatcher]

The Carol Burnett Show was not actually performed live on TV. It was done live before the studio audience, and the dress rehearsals were also recorded before an audience earlier in the day. Usually what went on TV was the final performance, but since things happen, sometimes pieces from the rehearsal were inserted, especially if the scene played out better or the timing in the final performance was too far off to fit the final product. It is said that Carol Burnett hated breaking character and the ad-libbing from a production stand point. But she was often the first to break out laughing in the moment, and the editors often managed to convince her to show those moments when they all broke out laughing, because the TV audience loved them.

I've heard varying stories about when the Tim Conway elephant story went out over the air and unfortunately the actors' memories on such things aren't perfect. (Frequently you'll hear actors say they never watch their own shows!) I think it was the same season and not years later when I saw it. It's possible it was cut for the first run and inserted for a reworked rerun that same year, because I remember being surprised seeing Conway ramble on and on with something that at the time was very different and much funnier from what I expected.

[shadowkat]

I think they had to edit out Vicki Lawrence's line. (Which is bleeped even in the special.) It's her line or response to Conway's ramble that causes all of them to lose it. Both Conway and Dick Van Dyke fall off the couch after that line. Apparently she used either the F word or something equivalent. (Sigh, television. It will show someone getting tortured, cut to pieces, raped, etc...but bleeps out foul language. People are dumb.)

[cactuswatcher]

Yes, I'm sure I first saw that clip of her on one of Dick Clark's shows a decade or more later. If I lip read and remember correctly she called Conway's character "the little asshole." That clip may not even exist anymore unbleeped. It is fun to see the guys fall off opposite ends of the couch when she said it.

[shadowkat]

I think it was "that little asshole Conway"...because I did hear it in one clip, can't find it. But it was posted on FB a while back. And in that one you can see Van Dyke tumble off the couch in a fit of laughter.