Thursday, October 12, 2017

Postmodern philosophy shown in Hollywood deaths

There seems to be a postmodern philosophy seen with many in the current generation that history of the past (such as that before they were born, or even their parents in some cases) does not exist.  Such was the case of contrasting Twitter feeds following two recent Hollywood deaths of two television programmes when their developers died within the past two weeks.

When CBS was informed Monty Hall had died, the social media pages for Let's Make a Deal posted a tribute to the 96-year old who developed the show as a tribute to him on social media.  Since the show was taping its Halloween 2017 episode and had two more episodes to tape when word came of Mr. Hall's death, CBS turned the last taping of the day into a Monty Hall Tribute episode, complete with Wayne Brady in an empty set to remember Monty Hall, in a manner similar to that of the pitch film pilot that Mr. Hall used in introducing the show to NBC executives (and it was sold, leading to the legendary franchise).

When MTV learned of the death of Hip Hop Squares creator Merrill Heatter recently, their VH1 channel's Twitter page for the show made no reference to his death.  There was no note referencing the death of the show's 91-year old creator.  It was Wink Martindale, no less, on his Twitter, who referenced the death of Mr. Heatter on Sunday morning.

MTV won't even reference the passing of the show's creator when CBS did with their classic game show's own creator.

1 comment:

  1. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here.

    When I first saw this post, I immediately recognized Monty Hall.
    After an on-camera career of more than half a century, how could I not?
    Now, the other guy - who was that again?
    Merrill Heatter spent his whole career behind the scenes, as a creator-producer of many shows over the years - including a few that were emceed by Monty Hall.
    I can't recall ever seeing Mr. Heatter on-camera (at least not intentionally) on any show he produced; his was just a name spoken over the end credits - and that in conjunction with a long-time partner, one Bob Quigley (who predeceased him by a number of years).
    In other words, Monty Hall, as a performer, sought out the spotlight; whereas Merrill Heatter, by his own choice, shunned it.
    Nothing wrong with either of these choices; to each his own.
    Unless you're a credit-reading dweeb (like me), you most likely would never have heard of Merrill Heatter - and thereby not made the connection with his many other TV shows, most notably The Hollywood Squares.

    Another matter:
    As I said above, I had no idea who the guy in the right-hand picture was until I read your post.
    After reading, I checked some other sources - and learned that Merrill Heatter had only passed away a couple of days before, on October 8th.
    Not much of a window there, you'll have to admit.
    Given a few days for the word to spread, you just might find more than a few TV veterans who'd speak quite well of a Mr. Heatter.
    - And had he lived a few days more, Monty Hall would have been at the front of the line.

    If your real point was that younger people don't know or understand history -
    - well, I just turned 67 years old, so I already know that.

    ReplyDelete

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