Quotes from Chuck Barris

There's tons of creative people in television that have one failure after another, and they just step up higher. I could never get over that. When I had a failure, there was no such thing as just getting over it.

I think if you're behind the times, you've failed. I think the only way to measure success is being right on time with what people want.

The Gong Show provided me with five years of the happiest times of my life, but that's that. And to be known as the guy who gave the world The Gong Show - listen, my Uncle George isn't known as anything. So I guess it isn't so bad in that context.

Spontaneity is such an entertaining facet of show business.

Helplessness is such a rotten feeling. There's nothing you can do about it. Being helpless is like being paralyzed. It's sickness. The cure calls for a monumental effort to stand up and start walking somewhere, anywhere. But that takes some doing.

Fifty percent of something is better than than one hundred percent of nothing.

I flopped back onto my pillows. I wanted to begin loathing the new day in comfort.

I came up with a new game-show idea recently. It's called The Old Game. You got three old guys with loaded guns onstage. They look back at their lives, see who they were, what they accomplished, how close they came to realizing their dreams. The winner is the one who doesn't blow his brains out. He gets a refrigerator.

I could never do a show, or be a personality like Howard Stern, where you take all that heat from critics. What he does, he does, but the critical heat would crucify me.

Tough love? That's bullshit. You love your kid and you keep on loving your kid. You take your kid back no matter what, and you keep on taking your kid back. Once, twice, a hundred times. The tough-love philosophy tells you to give your kid a million bucks and say, Don't come home until you're clean. Well, I did that. I gave my daughter a million bucks. She never got clean, and she never came home. She died.

I think if you're ahead of your time, you've failed. I think if you're behind the times, you've failed. I think the only way to measure success is being right on time with what people want.

God's camera takes snapshots that don't fall into your hand like Polaroids do. They pop right into your head and stay there forever.

If you stick in the business of being creative, you get hurt. And creative disappointment seems so much harder to take than any other kind. But if you're not prepared to get hurt like that, life can be pretty boring. I think I'm going to keep on going.

The Gong Show was the greatest scam of all time. It was simple: We wanted to do a talent show. There weren't any venues for acts back then. We were gonna have a show of new, fresh, good acts. But we couldn't find any; they were all lousy. So rather than throw away the idea, I said, "Let's reverse it. Let's do lousy acts." Now, is that a scam? I'm telling you.

Helplessness is such a rotten feeling. There's nothing you can do about it. Being helpless is like being paralyzed. It's sickness. The cure calls for a monumental effort to stand up and start walking somewhere, anywhere. But that takes some doing.

It was June 1980. I was standing in front of a full-length mirror studying my body. What I saw didn't please me. My face was full of deep wrinkles and lines, while the top of my forehead sported hairless patches of skin; vacant and deathly white chunks of scalp that, I realized with a certain amount of terror, could no longer be camouflaged by deft parting and combing. It was very depressing.

How can you not have any regrets? It's impossible. No regrets? Bullshit. I don't believe anybody who tells me that.

When you are young, your potential is infinite. You might do anything, really. You might be Einstein. You might be DiMaggio. Then you get to an age where what you might be gives way to what you have been. You weren't Einstein. You weren't anything. That's a bad moment.

I was always kind of a second-level jack-of-all-trades, and unfortunately not a master of any of them.

One day you wake up and you're old as shit.

I came up with a new game-show idea recently. It's called The Old Game. You got three old guys with loaded guns onstage. They look back at their lives, see who they were, what they accomplished, how close they came to realizing their dreams. The winner is the one who doesn't blow his brains out. He gets a refrigerator.

Well, I don't particularly like game shows. I mean, I think I did them well. I could do them, but it didn't mean I really liked them. I never watched any of the game shows that were on television at the time, like The Price Is Right, To Tell The Truth, all those shows. I think that also probably gave me an edge, because I never really copied much of what they did. I liked my shows--they made me laugh--but I didn't like anybody else's.

One piece of pie is delicious. Fourteen pieces are obviously nauseating.

The Gong Show provided me with five years of the happiest times of my life, but that's that. And to be known as the guy who gave the world The Gong Show -- listen, my Uncle George isn't known as anything. So I guess it isn't so bad in that context.