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Megaphone Crooners (Monsters of Megaphone)
SKETCH-O-VISION
A VERY GOOD USE OF YOUR TIME.
The setup
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The premise
Here’s the bit.
Vaughn Pesler looks back on the career of megaphone crooner Dickie Crickets, whose songs celebrate new inventions. Dickie’s dominance is threatened by Kid Jersey, a rival whose winning manners are as memorable as his singing. Trying to regain the spotlight, Dickie gets ahead of the inventors and loses his audience.
The two singers join forces for the Monsters of Megaphone tour, building inventions onstage so they can immediately perform songs about them under a patent-office observer’s supervision. A counterfeiting invention brings federal intervention, and their popularity fades. In the present day, Pesler finds the elderly crooners working as theater ushers, still performing little routines together while he laments the entertainment that replaced them.
The funny people
Meet the cast. 6
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Highly quotable.
You still got it, Kid.
Those days are gone now.
Behind the scenes
The people who made it.
Bob Odenkirk
Other
Sketch concept inspired by an Al Jolson documentary, discussed by Odenkirk in the September10,2013 AMA.
Troy Miller
Director
Period filming discussed specifically by Odenkirk in Mr. Show: What Happened?!,p141; episode director corroborated by licensed listing.
A little extra
Notes from the archive.
In a 2013 AMA, Bob Odenkirk traced the premise to an Al Jolson documentary and credited Paul F. Tompkins with the original script. In Mr. Show: What Happened?!, Odenkirk recalled filming on Super 8 at a high-school theater, with the present-day scenes at the Vista in Hollywood/Silver Lake.
The rabbit hole continues
One more couldn’t hurt.
More from across the archive.
