April Fools 'Fess-Up 2013 Edition!

Yes the rumors are true!  They were absent for a few years but 2013 saw the return of the April Fools pranks to The Knight Shift.  The story about CBS producing a pilot for a modern-era reboot of The Andy Griffith Show was my own humble entry in this year's festivities.  It seems to have been moderately successful 'cuz a few friends were taken in by it (one of whom had some rather colorful remarks about it) and a few hours after I posted it some news site in France had picked it up!  It's in some weird font though: apparently something like Iranian or Pakistani, so I don't know if they thought it was real or they were saying "look at what this American idiot is doing!"

As always, I gotta note what the "clincher" was.  Every time I do a prank like this, I try to give some indication that it's just a gag.  Also as a way of putting my "signature" upon the work.  In this year's case there were two of them.  The first is the TMZ reporter: "Istvan Teleky" was the name of the eighteenth-century European count whose spirit supposedly haunted those tarot cards in the "Three Wishes for Opie" episode of The Andy Griffith Show (one of my favorites, incidentally).  The second was the child actor who would be playing Opie in the Mayberry reboot: "Ralf Paydosilo" is an anagram for "April Fools Day".  Right clever, aye?

The joke went through a few iterations before I posted it.  Originally it was going to be Charlie Sheen as Ernest T. Bass, but he's been doing too much other stuff lately, and he would have been way too obvious a choice to play Ernest T. anyway...

Special thanks to girlfriend Kristen who helped me brainstorm some ideas for this year's prank :-)

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CBS produces pilot for reboot of THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW! Modern MAYBERRY to star Kevin Sorbo as Sheriff Taylor, Aunt Bea as closet lesbian!

Keep in mind that what you're about to read is as of right now a pilot episode and maybe not even that much.  I thought it noteworthy that the CBS execs are describing this not as a pilot but as a "proof of concept".  Meaning the idea is being explored but it may not go any further and I doubt it will.  But hey, stranger things have happened in Hollyweird...

MAYBERRY pilot episode title card.  Copyright CBS Television

Entertainment and celebrity gossip website TMZ.com is reporting this morning that CBS Television head honchos have sanctioned and produced a pilot for Mayberry: a modern-age remake of the network's classic Sixties comedy The Andy Griffith Show.  Seems that when star Andy Griffith passed away last summer his last will and testament stipulated that CBS would enjoy uncontested rights to do with the show - along with spinoff Mayberry RFD - as it saw fit.  With CBS seeing success in its reboot of Hawaii Five-0, execs thought that the time was ripe for a return to Mayberry.  The pilot itself was shot in early January.

So what's Mayberry like? From the article by TMZ reporter Istvan Teleky...

The 22-minute "proof of concept" has Kevin Sorbo (Hercules: The Legendary Journeys) as Andy Taylor: Sheriff of a Mayberry for the new millennium. Sorbo's Taylor served two years in Iraq before PTSD sent him back home. No longer willing to carry a gun, Taylor returns to find his wife tragically killed and left to be a single father to son Opie (child actor newcomer Ralf Paydosilo). Barney Fife - voted by Entertainment Weekly as the greatest sitcom character of all time - now has borderline personality disorder and is played by Dominic Monaghan. The "pilot" also sees Steve Buscemi in a brief appearance as Ernest T. Bass and lovable town drunk Otis Campbell portrayed by Dennis Franz. Mayberry's most startling departure is The Carol Burnett Show sweetheart Vicki Lawrence as Aunt Bea: a closet lesbian whose feelings for Clara Edwards provide much of the pilot's laugh fodder. Some CBS officials expressed concern in one scene where Opie asks "Pa, what does 'masturbate' mean?"  However Sorbo is adamant about keeping Mayberry "clean and family friendly" and is demanding an executive producer role as well.

TMZ reports that several scripts are already prepared should the pilot go to series. One is a retelling of the legendary "The Loaded Goat" episode, which true to "modern sensibilities" finds the Town of Mayberry sued by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals after dynamite-gorged Jimmy the Goat explodes outside the town's only Planned Parenthood clinic. But despite such liberties, CBS execs are determined that the time is ripe for "a return to cornpone hayseed humor the likes of which hasn't been seen since Fred Silverman's 1970 'Rural Purge'."

Steve Buscemi as Ernest T. Bass.  Good Lord, I must see that someday!  But with that said: this thing sounds horrible.  It should be given a burial at sea courtesy of the bathroom toilet.  Putting jokes about masturbation into The Andy Griffith Show?  Whoever came up with that oughtta be burned at the stake for blasphemy...

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Mourning in Mayberry: Andy Griffith has passed away

The very sad news breaking everywhere right now is that Andy Griffith has passed away at the age of 86 at his home in Manteo, on North Carolina's Outer Banks.

Awright well, what can be said that hasn't already been during the course of his long life: Griffith was an incredible performer, whether he was acting or singing or doing comedy... like what started it all for him, his 1953 monologue "What It Was, Was Football":

A few years later Griffith was in No Time for Sergeants, considered by many to be his single funniest work...

And 'course it wasn't long afterward that Griffith was keeping the sleepy little town of Mayberry safe and sound as Sheriff Andy Taylor. Griffith first put on the badge in a "backdoor pilot" episode of Danny Thomas's Make Room for Daddy (an episode which also featured future co-stars Ronnie Howard and Frances Bavier). More than fifty years later, and The Andy Griffith Show is still playing, somewhere, throughout the world in syndication.

But if you seriously want to see Griffith shine, you have to step away from his comedic repertoire and look at what he was capable of doing as a serious dramatic actor. The first time I saw Andy Griffith as anything apart from Sheriff Taylor, it was his portrayal of real-life murderer John Wallace in the 1983 television movie Murder in Coweta County...

Griffith starred opposite Johnny Cash, who played the Georgia sheriff who brought Wallace down for murder. The final scene, showing a shaven-headed Griffith strapped down in the electric chair, would be a particularly unsettling image for anyone who grew up with The Andy Griffith Show.

But that's downright mild compared to what was Andy Griffith's very first movie: from 1957, it's A Face in the Crowd.

I've no idea how else to put it: if you've never seen it before, A Face in the Crowd will scare the hell out of you...

I first saw it about a year and a half ago when TCM ran it. Directed by Elia Kazan, A Face in the Crowd has Andy a long, long way from Mayberry as drunken drifter "Lonesome" Rhodes. It's a brutal morality tale about celebrityhood and its power to corrupt. A movie that in many ways was far ahead of its time and even prophetic. And Griffith as Lonesome Rhodes is positively the meanest son of a bitch you're likely to see in any movie. If you haven't seen it already, I have to recommend it as being perhaps the finest work that Andy Griffith ever pulled off.

But today, Griffith is mostly going to be remembered as "America's Sheriff": the chief constable of a town that never really was but we all wanted to visit.

Thoughts and prayers going out to his family.

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George Lindsey, AKA Goober Pyle, has passed away

I saw George Lindsey live onstage at the Grand Ole Opry when I was six years old. Even at that young age, it was something of a surprise to hear that the man I knew best as Goober Pyle from The Andy Griffith Show could also sing really well too. He was performing right alongside Roy Aycuff, Grandpa Jones, a few other country legends.

What a performer Lindsey was. I mean, to go from playing sinister "tough guy" types (including one appearance on The Twilight Zone) to being one of the most beloved comedy characters in television history. In the past few years it was also revealed that George Lindsey was at one point seriously considered to be the actor who would play Spock on the original Star Trek series.

But it will always be Goober - Mayberry's fun-loving, ever-grinning grease monkey - who we will most fondly remember Lindsey as being. Somewhere here in North Carolina and in a better time still, Goober can be found even now down at the fillin' station. I've no doubt he'll be there as long as good television like The Andy Griffith Show is still on the air.

George Lindsey passed away yesterday at the age of 83.

Thoughts and prayers going out to his family.

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