Sandy, your information is very interesting. I would be interested in seeing the Dick Van Dyck episode where he scares Mary. I was a big fan of that and watched pretty regularly but don’t remember that one. I’m sure my friend would have watched it too and remember there just wasn’t all that much on back then so most people watched many of the same programs if they were tv viewers. I’d be curious as to the date that aired.

When I was younger, some people would say they thought I looked like MTM as well as a few others in the news and remember telling my friend one day during one of our many convos about tv, movies, school, work, etc. It could even have been after he’d told me about Zodiac and that he thought he looked like the poster I had not seen then. He did eventually get a poster a few weeks later and showed me and seemed very concerned so remember we got into a long conversation about look alikes . When he told me he saw the poster on a telephone pole and took it to show me to see what I thought, I kind of wondered about that….seemed pretty extreme to me and I remember telling him I thought it was against the law to remove something like that or maybe it was against the law to even post something like that and he was lucky he hadn’t gotten in trouble. He seemed absolutely shocked that I’d raise the question of anyone getting in trouble for removing a poster or putting one up and then he’d go into that being nothing compared to the stuff he’d done and kind of laugh as if to say "if only you knew." I remember telling him I thought I’d read something in the newspaper about someone doing that and it was considered defacing public property.

I didn’t think it looked like him at all and we talked about it a long time and remember he’d take his glasses off and put them on and have me look at the poster and then him and seemed convinced that sketch looked just like him. I don’t to this day but can see a slight resemblance and finally did way back then. Plus he fits the physical description. This was on the beach and he was looking carefully around to make sure nobody was watching before he pulled the sketch out of his pocket and unfolded it to show me. I think I asked him what he was so worried about and that’s when he said he looked so much like it that he was worried someone would report him or something along those lines.

I can certainly empathize with this now that I’m older. It would indeed be terrible for anyone who resembles any wanted poster if they were innocent and of course if they were guilty. Putting myself in their shoes, I can imagine how a person might feel very guilty or act rather suspiciously if they really were totally innocent and worried someone might point the finger at them as the wanted person in a crime. He said he felt much better after showing me the poster and convincing him I didn’t think he had a thing to worry about. Now this was before that costume I saw I am almost positive so he may have just followed the news carefully and came up with lots of copycat stuff that was totally innocent is what I think has to be the case.

So it may be that is what gave him his idea and he thought he’d just get a big reaction from me. I know I got upset years later when I was with him in his family home in the mid-west which was out in the country in a rather isolated wooded area. There were rather large insects around and I was afraid of bugs and couldn’t stand them or to kill them. I’d call for his help when I saw one and he was always very good about getting rid of them. He did love to tease me though and one day I was walking down the hallway when he jumped out from a doorway and yelled something. I was so mad and asked him why he did these things and then he laughed and said because he got such a reaction. He’d also say I took the things he said too literally but I was never quite sure just what things he was talking about. Then I would just think to myself he was acting like a twelve year old and be amazed at how juvenile this behavior seemed. He’d often say off and on that I was so naïve he could tell me anything and I’d believe it and then we’d get into a back and forth over that which was his way of sidestepping whatever we’d been talking about and he’d said before making that comment. Then I’d end by telling him that when he said stuff like that it made me wonder what he was talking about and what he was hiding and that I’d never known anyone to say things like that. He’d then laugh, telling me he wasn’t like anyone I’d ever met before and that I’d never ever meet anyone like him in my life and I must say I now have to agree!

Good find Stitch.

Chuck Barris does not seriously claim to have been a CIA hitman. It is s joke. IEither it is a play on his sometimes feeling responsible for assassinating good taste and lowering standards for television and/or just hype and humor. The movie was a comedy and pretty funny, written by Charlie Kaufman who wrote Being John Malkovich a similarly weird funny movie.

Popsicle girls was the only good thing ever on the show.

Thanks AK but Barris wrote the book back in the early 80’s and your right Charlie Kaufman later wrote the movie screenplay. Speaking of Kaufman I think Barris was pulling a Andy Kaufman lol.