TALK RADIO
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But Bogosian really wasn’t too avant-garde. Not by the time I saw him, anyway. For all the crazy energy and immanent violence he gave it, FunHouse was nothing more at heart than a series of character studies tending to suggest that it’s a jungle out there. Whoopi Goldberg and Lily Tomlin worked the same territory in a somewhat lighter vein. So did Red Skelton and Jackie Gleason, for that matter.
His more recent Talk Radio doesn’t even offer a pretense of being avant-garde. Written by Bogosian and originally performed with him in the central role, this script about a night in the life of a Morton Downeyoid radio-talk-show host looks an awful lot like his attempt to move more cleanly into the mainstream.
McDonough expresses none of the drive, none of the style, none of the anger, irony, egotism, cynicism, magnetism, slickness, bitterness, shallowness, weariness, loneliness, playfulness, guile, self-pity, self-hate, or humor–none of the horse’s ass/tragic complexity required to make Champlain just a little bit interesting. His performance is emphatic but centerless. All manner and no urge. Champlain is a guy with demons–or, at the very least, a certain devilishness: we’re told he’s supremely energetic; that he played “Let It Bleed” 25 times, consecutively, back in his underground radio days; that he clenches and unclenches his fists in his sleep, all night long. But as McDonough plays him, he’s simply a guy with a microphone–so inert, he seems to go blank between the lines. This Champlain abuses his callers, his coworkers, himself, and we have no idea why.
