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Thirty seconds before the cameras started rolling on “The Uncle Ducky Show,” I started to wonder what I’d gotten myself into this time.
Somehow, I’d ended up as a character on admittedly the worst (and most lovable) locally produced children’s show in the city.
I was dressed as a security guard, Elvis was standing next to me and, if I stood on my tip-toes and craned my neck, I could see a clown, a child ventriloquist, a depressed-looking sock puppet, a woman dressed like Scarlett O’Hara and a groundhog, all crammed backstage, ready to go on.
And then I heard a voice say, “Wait. I think I have last month’s script.”
This is going to be bad, I thought.
Action!
“The Uncle Ducky Show” is a calamity waiting to happen. In a good way, I mean. Taped live twice a month, there is never much of a script. It’s more of a three-page outline, really, with cryptic stage directions such as “Miss Manners sans marching troops sounds, etc.” typed on it.
Scanning the outline before filming began, I asked Uncle Ducky what I should do when I entered the set.
His answer: “We’ll just … make stuff up.”
The cameras roll for 30 minutes straight. No second takes, no cuts. And whenever something goes awry – and this happens a lot – the cast soldiers on. A tribute of sorts to the Golden Age of television.
“It’s one gigantic pratfall,” creator Doug Wylie – Uncle Ducky himself – says. “One gigantic disaster. We just go out there and fail miserably.”
While I was on the show, there were plenty of hiccups. For instance, Persy the Paranoid Sock Puppet was lowered from the ceiling in a basket, fell out and plopped lifelessly onto the floor. Twice.
Without a script, Wylie is able to throw curveballs at his fellow actors.
“It just makes us look more foolish, I think,” Wylie says.
For instance:
Uncle Ducky (on the phone to Elvis): “Elvis, how far are you from the farmhouse … in kilometers?”
Elvis: (long pause) “Couple.”
“It adds to the mayhem,” Wylie says. “We don’t want the audience to think we don’t know how bad we are. We know. We don’t have a lick of talent. It always falls apart and that’s what is charming about it.”
“The Uncle Ducky Show” began airing in 1984 and has aired, off and on, since. As a locomotive engineer with Norfolk Southern, Wylie sees the craziness of the show as the antithesis of what he does for a living.
“Everything on the railroad is done in a prescribed manner,” Wylie says. “There is no artistic license. It’s either black or white. The railroad is steel and tonnage, and bad things can happen very quickly. The show, however, is just a bunch of buffoons.”
Case in point: At the end of the episode I was on, the cast stood in front of the cameras, waving goodbye. After about a minute, we stopped.
And then we heard: “We still need about five minutes!”
“The show goes on,” Wylie says. “One way or another.”
