“Once upon a time aired a show featuring some of the greatest comedic minds of our time. What could go wrong? Everything.”
The collection of images you see above does indeed include some of the most popular comic minds of the past two decades…and yes, they came together to create one of TV’s biggest bombs of all time!
“Too Funny to Fail: The Life & Death of The Dana Carvey Show!”
This terrific new documentary airing on HULU tells the story of the creation of “The Dana Carvey Show” in 1996 for ABC, how its creative team was assembled, and how the show bombed spectacularly!
This was the Dana Carvey who exploded to success thanks to his “Church Lady” character on Saturday Night Live, and his co-starring role in the movie phenomenon “Wayne’s World.” ABC could only imagine what he would do on primetime television!
First, checkout the trailer:
The documentary features extremely candid and honest interviews with Carvey, along with his on-air talent and behind-the-scenes creative team including Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Robert Smigel, Heather Morgan, Bill Chott, Bill Hader, John Fortenberry, Robert Carlock, Jon Glaser, Spike Feresten, J.J. Sedelmaier, Chuck Dalaklis, Howard Rosenberg, and really candid and funny comments from then-ABC Entertainment Exec Ted Harbert.
Louis CK was also on the show, but doesn’t appear in the documentary, perhaps due to the issues he is currently embroiled in, but if you want to know how this show could have failed, perhaps it all began when the VERY FIRST SKETCH had Carvey portraying then President Clinton, suckling a puppy!
This is a great look at the creative process, how “sure things” can turn out exactly the opposite, and why making a hit TV show or movie is much more difficult than it looks! This is a great movie, and bravo to Carvey for being so candid about the experience.
Congrats to HULU for picking this documentary up – they’ve been on a creative tear lately, with “The Handmaid’s Tale”, and they also have another terrific documentary:
He was the “one and done” James Bond 007 – a single film as the Secret Agent – how could that happen?
This documentary tells the story with great commentary by George Lazenby himself – see the trailer here:
Let me know if you’ve watched “Too Funny To Fail!”