Customer Reviews

Jack Paar: As I Was Saying & More [VHS]

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

First of all I want to say that I'm only 22 years old. I grew up - being born in 1982 - as a child of the Johnny Carson generation. So obviously I never had the opportunity to enjoy Jack Paar in his prime, so that makes me appreciate this DVD so much more that it is available for the younger generation like myself - who may not have otherwise had the opportunity to appreciate his genius. For years I've heard my father talk about how great Jack Paar was so my jaw dropped when I found another DVD set, "The Jack Paar Collection" at Best Buy a few weeks back. I purchased it and became a quick Paar fan. I then jumped on the internet and tried to find everything I could about Jack and that led me to Amazon and this DVD, "As I Was Saying...And More!" I'm very impressed with this DVD and it contains some very rare footage - including actual kinescope footage of Jack leaving the Tonight Show (Jack tearfully thanked the audience and said "There has to be a better way to make a living") after a joke had been wrongfully censored. A few weeks later, he returned to the show after practically being begged by NBC executives. Upon returning to the show, Jack slyly grinned and looked into the camera and said ever so calmly: "As I was saying before I was interrupted..." All of this footage is on this DVD! There is also a treasure chest of other footage contained in this 2-hour documentary. As for extras, there's a photo gallery and a documentary that Jack hosted about John F. Kennedy. But I think my favorite extra is the actual audio footage (the video is presumably lost forever) of the famous Water Closet joke that caused so much controversy. Hearing this hillarious story (about a misunderstanding between "WC" meaning "Water Closet" - which is a term the British use for a toilet facility, or meaning "Wayside Chapel". This leads to a hillarious story that is not offensive in any way, shape, or form but NBC felt they should censor it, which led to Paar walking off his show the next night. The audio of this water closet segment is on this DVD as an extra so you can judge for yourself how idiotic the NBC executives were for cutting the segment in the first place!

The only beef I have at all with this DVD is actually Amazon's manner of advertising it. They use the description for the VHS version to describe the DVD version. The VHS and the DVD versions are slightly different. The VHS version consists of 3 videos, with one video hosted by Jack talking about his Post-Tonight Show ventures. The DVD does not contain any of this footage (I didn't see any footage of Jack on "The Pat Sajak Show" and the Johnny Carson footage is very brief). So I think Amazon needs to write a better description for the DVD version as its NOT quite the same as the VHS version.

But for any of you out there who are like me and too young to remember anyone else hosting the Tonight Show other than Johnny Carson, you owe it to yourself to pick up this DVD as well as "The Jack Paar Collection". Jack is the real King of Late Night, but that's not to take away from Johnny Carson. If anything, I can see where Johnny has copied many of his mannerisms and his delivery style from Jack.

Jack Paar's five-year era as host of the Tonight Show was the definitive one, with an emphasis on intelligent conversation as opposed to the scripted celebrity huckstering of whatever happens to be for sale this week that, with the exceptions of Dick Cavett's various shows, became the post-Paar talk show norm. Paar was a kind of national obsession in his day, reaching a level of fascinated attention that was never matched by his successor, Johnny Carson, or anyone else in the talk show field, and deservedly so. For those unfamiliar with Paar and unable to get to the Museum of Television and Radio in either New York City or Los Angeles, this video is required viewing. Most of it is taken from an American Masters special, and people would be well advised to tape that show off the air rather than order this video if they get the chance, since the section of this one not aired on PBS amounts to little more than home movie filler. The problem there is that the show is so seldom broadcast that you might find yourself waiting for years for the opportunity to do that, and the chance to watch the flamboyantly charismatic Paar host the Tonight Show is a revelation that should be an American birthright. I would have edited this show differently, but the discerning viewer will practically be driven to weep that we were stuck with the comparatively pedestrian Carson during all those years when we might have had Paar.

Jack Paar's version of the TV talk show was a glittering carnival of raconteurs, much more anecdotal and compelling than the vapid and shallow excuse for "conversation" that we're currently suffering through in our television talkfests. The decline got under way when Paar's departure left us with Johnny Carson as his Tonight Show successor, a man interested in comedy but plainly not his guests' stories. Dick Cavett, a Paar writer, kept the torch delightfully alive for a while with the various permutations of his own talk show, but now only Charlie Rose's PBS series offers any real conversation and the rest only feature what amount to meaningless seated vaudeville turns aimed at advertising whatever happens to be for sale that week. Very corporate in philosophy. I wish that I'd been the editor of these tapes; I'd've done it differently, but they're quite worthwhile as a glimpse of what the definitively charismatic Paar did and why America obsessed over him like no television personality before or since

I agree with the other reviewers about the high quality of Jack Paar's shows. He was the best talk show host ever. He makes Jay Leno look like a real twit. I especially agree with reviewer John Ellis that snippets of the show are just not the same as whole programs. Fans of Jack Paar don't want CLIPS, which are someone's interpretation of what is worth watching. Put the whole series on DVD and let us see them uncut, as they were originally broadcast, commercials and all. Now that would be a worthwhile product!

Jack Paar initiated the late night talk show and hasn't been equaled. The interview clips are wonderful - Judy Garland being silly, Robert F. Kennedy in the first interview after his brother's death, Bill Cosby as the first black comedian on network television. All in all a superb video any television buff must have.

This collection is a wonderful portrait of Paar, who was an egotist but very charming. My only objection is - give us more of him with his great guests. Where is Dody Goodman, Beatrice Lillie, more Jonathan Winters, Judy Garland, Bette Davis? - neither this nor the other recent DVD issue of Paar really showcases him at his best, in the company of the great talents he drew to the Tonight Show and established the reputation that Johnny Carson and Leno today still feed off. Paar touring Africa is interesting. Paar with his guests was fascinating. Will someone finish mining his vaults?

Just a little background on this piece (I was involved in the production of the program as production manager, assistant editor and a half dozen other things).

What is on the DVD is what went into the 3 VHS set, and the transfer to DVD was done with then state-of-the-art multi-pass encoding equipment from the original master tapes, which came from the digital editing system, using the same files that created the original PBS broadcast program. We did go back and add a little material here and there to the first two parts of the show that we had been forced to cut fromt he broadcast version due to running time issues. The last portion was created especially for the video release version.

The comment that Kultur was responsible for a sub standard product is not true. We created the DVD and provided it to Kultur to distribute. The quality issues made mention of came into play LONG before the DVD encoding was ever done. You see, I know something that you don't: There are essentially NO original 'master tapes' of Paar's Tonight Show days. At the time video tape was brand new, and a daily show was not a place to waste that. NBC was required to keep 'air checks' for legal reasons. At the time, they made kinescopes of the shows (16mm film camera pointed at a TV monitor) for several years. Later in the run they did switch to video tape. Here comes the tragic part -- in the 70s, NBC got tired of paying for the climate controlled warehouse space in NJ where the tapes and much of the film records (of Paar and countless other programs) were stored, and had them disposed of. I suppose they are in a NJ landfill someplace at this point. Some of the Kiniscopes are apparently in the Library of Congress, but when we made "...As I Was Saying" we simply did not have the budget to get them out of storage and have them transferred.

What we DID have to work with was Jack's private collection of clips he had personally managed to get some engineers at NBC to lay off onto 3/4" U-Matic tape when we put together a program he did for several years in venues such as cruise ships and the like. I gotta tell you, U-Matic is NOT a pretty format, and it had not held up well over the years of Jack doing editing at home on his own equipment. Jack would come to our facility two or three times a week in his purple Rolls Royce convertible with a box of beat up 3/4" tapes and work with us to pull the most noteworthy pieces off of them and transfer them to more stable tape formats. If we could do so while we had them, we would just run the entire reel off, but often that was not possible.

Recall please that "...As I Was Saying" was NOT intended as a Tonight Show retrospective -- it was a Jack Paar profile. We had little budget to work with and a lot of politics to contend with (not going to get into that here). We did the best we could with what we had to work with. As long as Kultur is still using the DVD files we created (and I doubt they would have spent the money to do any different), then the quality is is good as it will ever be given the sources we had to work with.

KULTUR, the company responsible for tranferring this video to DVD, should consider refunding the buyer's money, removing it from the market, and do the transfer over again using state-of-the-art video equipment. It is bad...VERY bad. However, Paar himself is tremendous, as well as the overall program material.

Even though I'm a HUGE fan of the late and great Johnny Carson,
Jack Paar not only was the innovator of the talk show format, but also had the talent to back up those staunch critics who claim he remains #1. I'm among those many.

His classic exchanges with Judy Garland and Jonathan Winters have never been equaled. They're priceless.

Buy this DVD...terrible transfer and all.

"As I Was Saying & More" is a long-overdue appreciation of Jack Paar's influence on the television medium. As host of "The Tonight Show" from 1957 to 1962, he paved the talk-show road followed by Johnny Carson, David Letterman and numerous others. Paar was a brilliant monologist, cultural observer and undisputed master in the art of TV conversation. Happily, this VHS set includes a generous selection of rarely seen material, with a special video devoted to Paar's guest appearances and later work. The overall collection represents a landmark in television history that should be viewed by all generations.

I can honestly say I never saw a Jack Paar show but I knew who he was. In some ways I think he's better than Johnny Carson. He had a longer and more comprehensive monologue for instance. He quit too soon. Very good information on Jack and I loved the "W.C" joke (audio only) that led him to leave the show and then come back. I never knew the whole story behind that.