The Groove Tube
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| The Groove Tube | |
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| Directed by | Ken Shapiro |
| Produced by | Ken Shapiro |
| Written by | Ken Shapiro Lane Sarasohn Rich Allen |
| Starring | Ken Shapiro Richard Belzer Chevy Chase |
| Cinematography | Bob Bailin |
| Distributed by | Levitt-Pickman |
| Running time | 75 min. |
| Country | US |
| Language | English |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
The Groove Tube (1974), written and produced by Ken Shapiro was a low-budget comedy film. It satirized television and the counterculture of the early 1970s. The film was originally produced to be shown at the Channel One Theater on 62 East 4th Street in New York, a venue that featured R-rated video recordings shown on three television sets, which was a novelty to the audiences of the mid 1970's. The film starred Richard Belzer and Chevy Chase, and featured Move On Up by Curtis Mayfield in the film's opening scene. The news desk satire, including the signature line "Good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow" was later used by Chevy Chase for his signature piece on Saturday Night Live, although in the film he does not appear in this segment.
Among the skits were The Dealers, a feature about a pair of urban drug dealers introduced by a wildly overdone, hip title segment, Koko the Clown featuring a jaded clown reading erotica to the kids, a public service announcement for venereal disease that covertly used a real penis, and a television cooking show featuring incompetent recipes. It also features a skit involving crude bodily functions that are part of a commercial for a mythical corporation called "The Uranus Corporation" (with the name pronounced "ur-AY-nuss" in the film, which is part of the skit).
Buzzy Linhart appears in the film as an (eventually) naked hitchiker. He also supervised the film's soundtrack.
[edit] See also
[edit] Trivia
- The opening scene begins with an almost spot-on recreation of the "Dawn of Man" sequence from the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
