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The Good Times Are Killing Me

TVTV

1975 00:58:00 United StatesEnglishMono4:3Video
Tags:
Documentary, Humor, Video History, Television

Description

Most of TVTV’s work takes place in the city, at the center of some pop culture event. “The Good Times Are Killing Me” takes place in the country – Southwest Louisiana, around the towns of Mamou and Eunice, the heart of Cajun country. This is an indigenous culture of food, music, language, and bawdy French-language jokes – something you don’t see much anymore in America. The event is rural Mardi Gras, where beer-drinking, boudin-eating men and boys on horseback capture and behead chickens for a big gumbo and town dance. In the center is Cajun musical icon, Nathan Abshire, showman by night, junk yard labor by day. Dancing, music, and an infectious love of life. As it says on the side of Nathan’s accordion, “The good times are killing me!”

TVTV (Top Value Television) was formed in 1972 by Michael Shamberg, Megan Williams, Tom Weinberg, and Allen Rucker, and enlisted the support of media collectives including Raindance, Ant Farm, and the Videofreex to provide alternative coverage of the 1972 Presidential nominating conventions. The Democratic tape, The World's Largest TV Studio (1972), and its Republican companion piece, Four More Years (1972) were among the first video documentaries to be broadcast. The convention tapes provided candid interviews with delegates and protestors alike, while exposing the foibles of the media, showing viewers "the underbelly of broadcast TV." 

Influenced by New Journalism and the versatility and novelty of portable video equipment, TVTV created a critically acclaimed, graphically inventive, intimate style of documentary satire. TVTV's success led to a contract with the TV Lab at WNET to produce documentaries on cult religion (The Lord of the Universe, 1974), commercials (Adland, 1974), Washington politics (a four-part series, Gerald Ford's America, 1975) and sports (Super Bowl, 1976), among other topics. Frustrated by public television's lack of commitment to independent documentary production, the group lost its shared purpose, moving from cable to public to network TV, finally producing an unsuccessful comedy pilot, The TVTV Show, for NBC in 1978. TVTV disbanded in 1979.