Remember Ben Stiller’s spoof of “The Six Million Dollar Man” TV series starring Jack Black? Or how about that twisted adult version of the “Bozo the Clown” show that aired on Fox? Don’t remember? Well, that may be because both shows are TV pilots that were filmed but never saw the light of day — until now. “The Other Network,” a compilation of such failed television outings, is at Bijou Art Cinemas to shed light on these comedic oddities.
It says a great deal about the state of television that countless cringe-inducing reality shows can be green-lit to prime-time while creative and intelligent fare such as that offered in “The Other Network” is passed over. These are the shows we might see if TV executives actually had respect for the viewing public.
Instead of the truthful and hilarious “North Hollywood,” a semi-autobiographical look at young wannabes living on the fringe of Hollywood from the creator of “Freaks & Geeks” and “Undeclared,” we get “Good Morning Miami.” Does anyone actually watch this show? Why is this thing shoved down our throats every Thursday while “Heat-Vision & Jack” never even aired?
“Heat Vision” is perhaps the highlight of “The Other Network.” This pilot, directed by Stiller, stars Jack Black as a super-intelligent ex-astronaut and Owen Wilson as the voice of his sidekick, a talking motorcycle, who are on the run from the villainous NASA agent Ron Silver as … Ron Silver.
This exercise in tongue-in-cheekiness feels like a relic of the late 1970s rather than the mid-1990s, when it was produced, shot in a style reminiscent of shows like “The Incredible Hulk.” The script by Dan Harmon and Rob Schrab is hyper-aware of its own ridiculousness — it has the same absurd charm as “Zoolander.” One gets the sense that this series would have been a dream for star cameos. And the humor was tailor-made for Black’s tightly wound energy.
“Saturday TV Funhouse” — not to be confused with the similarly titled Comedy Central show — is probably best described as a children’s hour on acid. It features a slurring clown named Prozo who turns a mock Israeli-Palestinian peace conference into a pie fight and engages in a conversation with a talking outhouse, all in front of a live studio audience of children and their parents. Enough said.
The final entry in “The Other Network” is called “The Lewis Lectures,” a cartoon about a woman and her dogs. While this show is entertaining, it doesn’t stack up to the others for raw kicks. The first three feel like TV outlaws, while “Lewis” just feels neglected.
The four shows are just the first in an “Other Network” film series. This chapter, now playing, is part of the Bijou’s late night movie selections at 11:40 p.m. Performance will dictate if more lost shows are on the way. But what I really want to see is more Prozo.