PERFECT BID: THE CONTESTANT WHO KNEW TOO MUCH

Featuring: Theodore Slauson, Bob Barker, Roger Dobkowitz, Drew Carey and Kevin Pollak.
Director: C.J. Wallis

Rating: 4/5

The curious case of Theodore Slauson and the role he played in one of the most remarkable moments of television history is examined with an acutely insightful eye and jaunty rhythm in director C.J. Wallis’ hugely enjoyable doc, Perfect Bid: The Contestant Who Knew Too Much. The 52 year-old survivor of game show infamy proves to be droll and delightful frontman for his own story, which Wallis recounts utilising first-person recollections, archive footage and some stylishly employed bridging animation.

A head for mathematical detail served Slauson well when his obsession with the iconic game show The Price is Right took full flight during his teenage years in the 1970s. The middle child of a middle class family raised in household where television was the centrifugal force, young Ted began to notice that the prizes on offer to contestants would often be repeated. Slauson took notes, first mentally and then electronically; by the mid 80s, with more than a decade of episodes logged, he knew the exact make, model and, most importantly, price of the entire prize catalogue.

The first half of Wallis’ charming, personality-driven profile affords insight into the rare depths that this brand of fandom occupies. There is not a judgemental frame of footage in Perfect Bid, which could have easily taken a mocking tone towards a man who spent the best part of four decades fixated on a daytime game show. In recounting his time spent lining up for a shot at player stardom and the special brand of ‘audience celebrity’ he became in his own right, Slauson’s ingratiating, self-effacing self-awareness proves entirely disarming.

Of course, most obsessions reveal a dark side. For Ted Slauson, it was in the form of Terry Kniess, whom Slauson befriended while waiting in line in September 2008. Kneiss would become the first contestant in the history of The Price is Right to place a perfect bid in the showcase round, with Slauson screaming numbers in support from the front row of the audience (participation encouraged as part of the show’s appeal).    

At the time, the ‘Perfect Showcase’ was deemed an impossible act; new host Drew Carey, in footage gleaned from his appearance on Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show podcast, recalls how production was halted when the numbers revealed the anomaly and the consequences of such an event were weighed.

Thematically, Wallis touches on the notion of ‘careful what you wish for’. The fan mantra “Loyal Friends and True” that was preached by the show’s producers was severely tested in the wake of the Kniess incident. For Slauson, any notion of aiding in a scam to cheat the show was mortifying, as was the preposterous notion of a vengeful conspiracy in the wake of the sacking of veteran showrunner Roger Dobkowitz and the departure of beloved host Bob Barker (both of whom lend their beaming personalities to the film; pictured, above, l-r Dobkowitz and Barker).

Wallis’ account of the super-fan’s journey guided, in part, by the power of television proves a joy. In relating an everyman’s life altered/enriched/elevated when it crosses paths with his obsession, Perfect Bid: The Contestant That Knew Too Much will speak with a very clear and relatable voice to those who seek it out. However unwittingly, Theodore Slauson dictated his own destiny through a lifetime of commitment and dedication, two of the key components of the great American dream. As is winning one’s fortune on a game show.

THE RED PILL

Featuring: Cassie Jaye, Paul Elam, Warren Farrell, Marc Angelucci, Harry Crouch and Dean Esmay.
Director: Cassie Jaye.

Rating: 1.5/5

The jagged histrionics of documentarian Cassie Jaye’s disjointed pro-Men’s Right advocacy film, The Red Pill, serves two masters well. Her softly-softly proselytizing and spurious arguments serve to sweeten the image of Men’s Rights mouthpieces and the ‘regressive progress’ platform they present. And speaking directly to her own camera as she journeys from feminist to ‘enlightened humanist’ serves Jaye as well, her frowns and tears recalling an acting class show reel.

As she painstakingly overstates, Jaye’s body of work outwardly presents an empathetic view of society – patriarchal rule within dogmatic Christian lives, with specific adherence to pre-marital abstinence (Daddy I Do, 2010); the impact of ‘food insecurity’ on the upper-middle class and those that serve them in Marin County (Faces Overlooked, 2010); and, the struggle of two gay white guys to raise a family as California’s Proposition 8 debate raged (The Right to Love: An American Family, 2008). But even if you include a couple of shorts about women’s issues (Blackeye, 2009; The Story of GoldieBlox, 2012), her oeuvre is one of narrow experience rife with hot button issues and moderate-right conservatism.

Jaye would have her audience believe that she stumbled upon the Men’s Right Movement with a wide-eyed innocence; we get to see her literally type ‘Men’s Rights’ into a search engine. She barely registers vile online misogyny (the kind that has seen MRA advocates labelled ‘rape apologists’) as if it was a dirty limerick. In no time at all, she is in warm conversation with the likes of Paul Elam, President of A Voice for Men, a voice that spoke the now infamous call-to-action quote, “I am proclaiming October to be Bash a Violent Bitch Month”; Dr. Warren Farrell (pictured, top; with Jaye), author of the MRA diatribe, The Myth of Male Power and spouter of wisdom pearls like, “Women are the only 'oppressed' group that is able to buy $10 billion worth of cosmetics each year,”; and, Harry Crouch and Marc Angelucci, executives from The National Council for Men, MRA heavy-hitters who once lobbied to defund domestic violence programs if men’s rights were not addressed.

So follows a whirlwind of male-perspective theories and twisty statistics eager to convince how work place deaths, suicide rates and financial hardship have impacted men since the Women’s Liberation uprising of the 1960’s (seen as a monochrome montage of screeching girl-power rallies with some laughable hippy-funk backing track). Elam and his brothers are presented as warm, composed, homely types; in one moment of un-ironic inspiration that could have come from a Christopher Guest-penned satire, Farrell (who greets his director with, “I thought you’d be a man! But I’m glad you’re a woman!”) all but serenades his director in his living room ‘man-cave’, striving to convey a portrait of perfect patriarchal stability yet coming off as desperate and smug.

Jaye will claim that non-MR dissenters are giving equal voice in her film. The likes of Feminist Majority Foundation executive director and MS. magazine editor Katherine Spillar and USC academic Dr Michael Messner get air time, but are portrayed as tsk-tsking, head-shaking elitists who simply perpetuate anti-MRA myths about it being a ‘man’s world’ and how the white male paradigm is more powerful than ever. More troubling is the footage chosen of anti-MR rallies, seemingly peopled solely by extremist gay and/or ‘feminazi’ activists bent on some form of pro-feminist anarchy. Or the extreme close-up afforded ‘male genital mutilation’, aka circumcision, used to convey how abhorrent MRA guys find it to have the fate of their body parts dictated by standards and traditions (a view probably shared by pro-choice supporters and those who have had their p***y grabbed by The President-Elect).

An extended mid-section about the lack of balance in the U.S. family court system seems to be from another documentary entirely, legitimately raising issues of gender inequality. But any insightful analysis is muted by the purely outrageous, none more so than the ‘Disposable Male’ theory. It posits that because only men traditionally take on roles such as soldier, fireman, oil rig worker, coal miner, etc., the male of the species is now perceived as disposable. A litany of statistics are presented, indicating the greater mortal sacrifice men have made in the last 100 years of societal formation (the disrespect afforded slain U.S. female soldiers, their deaths reduced to a percentage to drive home how many more men died, is breathtaking).

What Cassie Jaye and her all-white male chorus wilfully ignore is that the patriarchal stronghold on modern western life was not dictated by women or gays or lefty academics or any one else at whom Elam or Farrell or Cassie Jaye wag a disingenuous finger. It was determined by those in power i.e. the straight, white men of means who were the very forefathers of the MRA executives, who deemed that men of lesser standing be the ones who fought and died, worked and died. Once, men were viewed as warriors, not whiners, sent to die for the society, however flawed, that their leaders were forming. The best of these bygone men fought and died for the rights of every man and woman in a unified society. Cassie Jaye’s men, and by association the filmmaker herself, are not serving a greater good or inspiring discourse, but instead fuelling a social divide and dishonouring their respective genders.