... was lying about being a CIA agent, I feel deeply sorry for you. His stories are nothing but lying self-promotion, and should not be taken with anything but a Gibraltar-sized grain of salt.
"It ain't dying I'm talking about, it's living!!!"
Augustus McCrae
Do you have proof? No? That's what I thought.
shareBarris is the one making outrageous claims. The burden of proof is on him. Not one bit of evidence has been brought forward to in any way substantiate this satchel of pooh. It's all based on taking Barris' word for it. If you are credulous enough to accept a completely ridiculous, as well as unverified anecdote, I have some nice investment opportunities for you. Cash please. No checks, just small bills.
"It ain't dying I'm talking about, it's LIVING!"
Captain Augustus McCrae
The problem I have is that the CIA would deny Barris ever worked as an assassin for them even if he had. The CIA was (supposedly) forbidden from assassinations during the Cold War years. Therefore, they would deny it.
Also, the intense climate of paranoia and secrecy that existed during the height of the Cold War has been largely forgotten. In regards to those times, I would belive just about anything was possible.
So, I neither believe or disbelieve Barris. I don't have enough information. Even if everything he said was true, we would still be having the same arguement. That's the way Cold War espionage was, shrouded in ultra secrecy. So, if you disbelieve him because of his diminutive stature, or bad taste, then I might tend to agree with you. But, we will likely never know for sure.
But you can look at the unstable, erratic goofball that Barris has always been, and ask yourself, "Would the CIA really trust this nut with anything?" There is zero chance of that happening.
"It ain't dying I'm talking about, it's LIVING!"
Captain Augustus McCrae
Well if Barris were trying to develop a cover, then his persona in the 1970s would have been perfect.
shareYeah, that's it- it's all true!!! Nitwit.
"It ain't dying I'm talking about, it's LIVING!"
Captain Augustus McCrae
I never said I thought it was all true. I said we don't have the information to know either way. I think its plausible. The film lays out a scenario where its possible. Insulting people you disagree with doesn't help your arguement at all.
shareThe book was an "Unauthorized Autobiography". I find it extremely hard to believe the CIA angle. I think Barris threw the CIA stuff into his autobiography as just an odd, creative twist to spice up the story of his life. I don't think he expected some to truly believe that aspect. Putting that into the book was just another of his outrageous "show biz" things. Just the fact that people are talking about this 30 years after the book came out (with the help of the movie) kind of proves the mad genius of Barris to be thought out very carefully.
That aside...if you were a political target of assassination and Chuck Barris walked up to you somewhere, would you ever in a million years suspect him of being your assassin? Could've been a quite clever CIA choice.
I thought the movie made it obvious that it was his wild imagination and how from start of the movie he said he tends to stretch a truth a little.
I'm pretty surprised reading these boards and seeing that people think it was even a possibility.
I don't know how much, if any of it is true. But The Government did recruit celebrities for spying while over seas during the cold war.
I find it hard to believe that the best they could come up for an international assassin was a well known TV-Host
shareHe wasn't a famous TV personality until well after he started working for the CIA.
"You didn't come into this life just to sit around on a dugout bench, did ya?" - Morris Buttermaker
RP69 said:
But the government did recruit celebrities for spying while over seas during the Cold War.
I think that some of it could be checked out. For example, did the Dating Game really send the happy couples to West Berlin or Helsinki?
shareI thought the movie made it obvious that it was his wild imagination and how from start of the movie he said he tends to stretch a truth a little.
If the whole Chuck Barris being a CIA agent bit is true,I can't see why he would publicly admit that and,of course,the CIA will publicly deny it anyway.The movie at least conveyed the possibility well either way.
shareThe movie takes his claims at face value, but they do seem to be pretty absurd claims. But maybe Bob Barker was secret a Mob enforcer, who knows?
shareI like the fact that the viewer is left to decide what was true or not true. .. . a brilliant way of presenting a hypothesis. Frankly I don't care if it was true or not that Barris was a CIA operative, and yes, it could never be proven anyway. This was a fun movie with some of my favorite people camping it up. Please. . . . stop calling each other idiots unless you have proof that Barris was or wasn't who he said he was.
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This film is practically total fiction. It was fun to watch but it was confusing. I wasn't yet born when "The Gong Show" premiered but my mother used to watch it religiously [when it originally aired] and she remembered Barris' daughter appearing on the show. The girl was the product of Barris' marriage to Lyn Levy from 1957 to 1976 and there was no mention of that relationship whatsoever. I'm not even sure if George Clooney's character was real or the product of Barris' mental illness. But I'll bet it was the latter.
shareThe fact is that the Hitman persona is all a Barris illusion, drug induced or part of a mental defect, is very clearly shown in the end of the movie, when the locations of his purported CIA activity is rolled by...and it's nothing more than background scenery.
Another pivotal scene is at the Playboy grotto, when the Bunny tells Barris what she thinks of him, and the only thing that he can do is run away from having to confront his true reality. I took this scene to be another indication that the hitman illusion was an escape mechanism used to by Barris to retain what little sanity he had left. I think Barris actually started to believe his own created alter ego after a while. This too was addressed in the movie via the surreal, short clip filming technique. This was captured in the movie, without explaining it, you just have to pay attention to catch it.
Still a good movie, fun to watch.
I don't think it's fair to call Barris a liar, I think he basically puts forward what he perceived as the truth at the time, for whatever reason. You'll notice that he only shows up at the end of the movie, with a smirk that kinda says..."you figured it out yet?"
Happiness is a belt-fed weapon.
Fun movie but total fiction on the CIA stuff
shareI enjoyed the movie and was impressed with Clooney's foray into directing it, but I never took it seriously as all of the claims came directly from Chuck Berris. Had there been a slew of contemporaries, colleagues, and family members to corroborate just 25% of his claims I might have taken this seriously.
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