Comics Unleashed: Hilarity by Laugh-Track

American man of letters Ben Hecht — sometimes called the Shakespeare of Hollywood for his talents as a screenwriter — was first summoned to Hollywood by his friend and fellow scribe, Herman Mankiewicz, who wrote to him in 1926 via telegram: "Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots. Don't let this get around." Unfortunately, it did.

One of the less than bright lights who turned up in Tinseltown some five decades later was an aspiring comic by the name of Byron Allen, who has failed stratospherically upward as a likable interviewer of celebrities, forging a one-man TV-production empire called Entertainment Studios. His flagship show, Entertainers, features Allen and whatever Hollywood actors have a film to flog that week. He pitches genial softballs and they give rote answers — it is one of the most un-dynamic, journalism-free approaches to publicity the major studios could ever dream of.

I have done a few of these puff-piece interviews in my day, in a suitably swank hotel room at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. The stars or director sit in front of a movie poster as fifty or more free-lunchers get five minutes to grab soundbites or quickie video interviews. The local film reviewer in Dubuque gets to look important for two minutes as he or she appears in a two-shot with Harrison Ford or Jim Carrey or Robert Zemeckis (whom I queried about Forrest Gump in 1994). The idea is not to be incisive or penetrating, it's to get your three quotes and begone with you!

Because Allen's company has been so successful syndicating and marketing such fluffery, he actually has a little heft in Hollywood, and even made news recently for selling a swank home in the hills for some six million dollars — and that's just a second little hut he bought for his mother. A brief gander at Allen's company website reveals a dozen or so equally generic programs, all described in the most over-cooked, poorly written prose — from travel shows to real estate to global business, Entertainment Studios can take any topic and package it into the most boring half-hour in television. And make piles of money doing it! Is this a great nation, or what?

Okay, so I have a confession to make that you can file under Dave's Guilty Pleasures: When I happen to be awake at 3 a.m. on a given night and trolling the putrid cable waters for something to put me to sleep, I am always excited to see Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen. Our ubiquitous host sits in the middle of four, generally B-list comedians, to whom Allen turns with pre-fab questions like: "So what's been going on with you, Tom?" — at which point the comic does four tepid jokes that the other three fake-laugh at while waiting for their turn to spiel.

But here's the beauteous part. Even though (according to the ES website) "the greatest comedians of our time take center stage in front of the largest live audience in Hollywood," a little post-production sweetening assures these 3^rd magnitude funny-people that the polite titters they elicit live will become outright riotous roars after a little laugh-track enhancement is applied. Did I say little? Whoever it is manning the mixing board (and I suspect it is Allen himself) jacks the hardy-hars up to ten no matter the quality of the witticism, and especially when Byron himself cracks wise!

That, my friends — in my admittedly warped view — is more than just passingly entertaining, to hear such naked fakery promulgated in such a clunky and obvious manner. We all grew up watching sitcoms with laugh-tracks, and have an inner monitor that tells us when the reaction is at odds with the quality of the gag. And I assure you, never in the fabled history of the boob tube has there been anything more unintentionally funny than Comics Unleashed and its pedal-to-the-metal, patently phony hilarity. To boot, it is better than Ambien for putting oneself back in the sack for some much-needed sleep. Thanks, Byron!