Sincerity in entertainment

I have another quote from the book Soupy Sez, the auto­bi­og­ra­phy of Soupy Sales.   The book includes quite a few tes­ti­mo­ni­als from friends and cowork­ers.  This one is from Crispin Cioe, a musi­cian with The Uptown Horns.

Soupy Sales made an indeli­ble impres­sion on me because he was the only TV per­son­al­ity I cared enough to believe in. Other boomer kid show icons — from Buf­falo Bob to regional stars like Detroit’s Johnny Gin­ger or the legions of fran­chised Bozo’s nation­wide — still seemed like grown-ups play­ing down to us in funny clothes.  Not so with Soupy.  This was a guy with real improv/standup/adlib chops, a guy who could actu­ally write com­edy — and chose to do so for kids.

And then he says

I recently acquired some of the Rhino tapes of Soupy’s old shows.  The funny thing is, with­out any prod­ding, by seven-year-old daugh­ter wants to watch them con­stantly.  She finds black­tooth mon­u­men­tally hilar­i­ous, and said to me the other day, “Dad, were all kids shows as funny as Soupy when you were a boy?”  And all I could say to her was, “No, not even close.”

My point in post­ing these quotes is to remind peo­ple that kids can tell the dif­fer­ence between enter­tain­ment that is cre­ated by skilled peo­ple who care about what they are doing, and that which is just prod­uct.  I see plenty of tele­vi­sion ani­ma­tion that feels mass pro­duced and is clearly just fill­ing time between com­mer­cials.  Some shows don’t feel that way.  Some seem to come from a cre­ator, while oth­ers from a com­mit­tee.   While some are truly clever and fun, oth­ers have forced “wack­i­ness” the feels trans­planted from some other show.