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Hollywood Spin
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Marvelous Merv
At the tender age of 78, Merv Griffin produces his first movie, jumps into the reality TV fray and finds time for a late night duet with singer Aimee Mann.
Wednesday, April 7, 2004
By Richard Horgan
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All of a sudden, Merv Griffin is back. And we don’t mean after the commer~cial break.
Although his company has optioned a number of properties throu~ghout the years, Tuesday night’s premiere at the ArcLight Cinemas of Shade, a high stakes poker game intrigue starring Sylvester Stallone, Melanie Griffith, Thandie Newton, Gabriel Byrne, Hal Holbrook, Jamie Foxx and Charlize Theron’s significant other, Stuart Townsend, marked the first time Griffin’s name was above the title as producer. Fittingly perhaps, Griffin made the film in partnership with RKO, the world’s oldest continuously operated entertainment company, which dates back to 1882. [Full Disclosure: I once worked closely with Thom Mount, now a production executive at RKO involved with this film].
But it’s Griffin’s announcement this week that his company is finally entering the sweepstakes of reality TV that really caught Hollywood Spin’s attention. After all, this is a man who has created Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, the two most successful entrants in the antecedent game show realm, so you can bet that he has been trying as of late to figure out how to get in on the action.
Add to that the fact that his old real estate nemesis Donald Trump has suddenly ascended to the top of the hill with NBC’s The Apprentice and you have the makings of a good old-fashioned grudge match. Although Griffin is at once too old, too rich and too easygoing to have to worry about what his East Coast doppelganger is doing, he certainly hasn’t lost his innate curiosity about what can be turned into entertainment for the masses (a revival of Dance Fever last year was, alas, not it).
Ironically, the idea for Griffin’s new reality show originated as an article in one of Trump’s hometown newspapers, The New York Times. In a December 11th, 2003 piece entitled “Toronto Journal; Comedians in the Rough: Canada's Very Special School,” reporter Clifford Krauss profiled the participants of a Humber College program near Toronto that he claimed were part of the only academic institution in the world to offer a diploma in the discipline of being funny. But as a correction run by the paper a week later made clear, there are in fact other schools with similar curriculums, including one as close as Montreal (L’Ecole National de l’Humour).
Although the article and its subsequent reprinting in the International Herald Tribune generated a flurry of interest from Hollywood and beyond, Griffin’s production arm, Merv Griffin Entertainment, were the first to make a serious offer for the right to base a reality show on next fall’s student body of Humber crack-ups. In the spirit of Lorne Michaels and SNL, Griffin also said he plans to concoct a feature film based on his dealings with the class of 2005.
While another 78-year-old bon vivant, Hugh Hefner, is getting the bulk of attention here in Hollywood for his weeklong birthday celebrations at the Mansion (he officially turns 78 this Friday), it may well be that we will look back in a year or two at Griffin’s entry into the world of reality TV as a yet another watershed moment in the now here-to-stay genre. When you consider that his variety talk show and game show producer backgrounds overlap beautifully with the worlds of American Idol and Survivor, it’s hard to believe Griffin won’t come up with something original here.
Too bad Trump wasn’t doing reality back in the late 1980s, because he and Griffin’s “War at the Shore” over some Atlantic City casino properties might well have bled into a couple of the episodes. In his typical bravado style, Trump’s first words when he heard that Griffin was competing with him for New Jersey real estate were, “You mean that band singer?” Even though it had been 36 years since Griffin had sung with Freddy Martin, Trump knew it still made for a good negotiating tactic label to hand feed the media.
For his part, Griffin was a little sneakier in his retort. Asked by the press to answer Trump’s showbiz dismissal, Griffin replied, “Just tell him to behave himself or I’ll go around Atlantic City and take the T off his name.” According to Griffin, this remark infuriated The Donald. Who knows, maybe Merv could even appear in his company’s Humber College reality skein towards the end of each show and, in mocking deference to Trump’s trademark edict, ‘You’re fired,’ tell a lucky comedian out of the bunch, ‘You’re hired.’”
No disrespect to Griffin, but you can tell his natural playing field is the small screen rather than the big one. How else to explain that his first movie, which is garnering good early reviews, has a solid cast, is set in the underground card clubs of Los Angeles and was written and directed by Damien Nieman, a former card mechanic and poker player at the famous Magic Castle in Los Angeles, is getting such short thrift at the PR turnstiles?
Well, for starters, there’s the title - Shade. Although the term is gambler’s slang for a cover used to hide a secret move or sleight, it is far too obscure a reference for the average moviegoer. What’s more, it’s somewhat of a neutral term when hung out there on the marquee alone. Is this bright summertime shade? Film noir-style light and shadow? A pigment variation of a particular color? Given how hot poker has become all over Griffin’s home field of TV in the past year or so, the word 'poker' or 'cards' or some such equivalent should have been in the title of this RKO film.
Although Stallone was on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno the other night plugging his small role in the film, it really should have been Merv Griffin making the rounds. To wit, people are still talking about his surprise appearance last week on The Late, Late Show with Craig Kilborn, when he sang a duet with Aimee Mann (Magnolia) to celebrate the former ESPN anchor’s fifth anniversary as a gabfest ringmaster.
If I were the PR person for Shade, I would have made sure Merv put himself out there as an edgy prognosticator for the first film in his illustrious, one-of-a-kind career. I mean this is a guy that could brand Shade with anecdotes about card games in the heyday of Hollywood, tales of Trump, and the remarkable fact that movies are about the only medium marvelous Merv has not yet conquered. Who knows, maybe Baker Wynokur Ryder, the PR agency handling publicity for the lower budgeted RKO production, tried to do just that and abutted itself against a 78-year-old’s busy schedule.
Still, the film is slated to open the Philadelphia Film Festival tomorrow, April 8th, in honor of the City of Brotherly Love origins of executive producer Joe Nicolo, co-producer Carl Mazzocone and Rocky Balboa, the fictional alter ego of Sylvester Stallone. A good start, but again, what the publicity people for Shade really needed to do was get Merv Griffin and fellow trailblazer and first time film producer Nicolo on the Charlie Rose circuit.
Consider Nicolo’s equally compelling back story: As the former president and owner of Philadelphia-based Ruffhouse /Columbia Records, he launched the careers of Lauryn Hill, The Fugees, Cypress Hill, Wyclef Jean, and Kris/Kross. Meanwhile, during his ten years at Columbia Records, Nicolo produced Billy Joel's album "River Of Dreams" and worked with others such as James Taylor, Bob Dylan, Aerosmith and The Rolling Stones. In today’s cutthroat world of movie promotion, Griffin and Nicolo are indeed Shade’s loveliest bunch of coconuts.
Ultimately, the idea here is to create the same kind of perfect PR storm that was started by that December NYT article on the Humber College program. Before Griffin presumably locked up the topic for the public airwaves, the BBC was talking about doing a documentary, 60 Minutes wanted to do a report on its show but could not fit into the waning spring semester schedule, and ditto for German broadcaster DZF.
But what really portends an exciting new twist in the reality vein is the personal passion for comedy exhibited by both Griffin and his vice president of develop~ment Ernie Chambers. On his talk show, Griffin nurtured the careers of everyone from Richard Pryor to Woody Allen, while Chambers has four decades worth of experience producing TV shows with the likes of Sid Caesar, the Smothers Brothers and Danny Kaye.
While Griffin’s appearance on Kilborn last Thursday, April 1st, may at first have seemed like some sort of demented April Fool’s joke, his seated rendition of “Tenderly” alongside the white-jacketed Mann was a vivid reminder that the king of talk variety, or variety talk – whichever you prefer – may be perfectly suited on paper for a swan song in this new world of post-sitcom TV.
| However, with his racehorses and ranches in La Quinta and Carmel, his far-reaching business enterprises and his tendency to be motivated by creativity rather than money, the reality of Merv Griffin is that his best potential for a final TV hit may lie in his own backyard rather than the distant climes of Toronto.
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Still, he better hurry. With The Donald on NBC, Virgin Group’s Richard Branson pacted with Rupert Murdoch at Fox and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban coming to ABC, the billionaire sub-genre may soon be last year’s reality TV trend.
[Every Wednesday, Hollywood Spin takes an opinionated look at Hollywood media, PR and marketing related matters. To reach the author, please email rhorgan@filmstew.com. To comment on this week’s topic, please go to our Hollywood Spin Discussion Board.]
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