Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV

by Emily Nussbaum

As Marshall McLuhan once put it, art is anything you can get away with.

In The Berkshire Evening Eagle, an unsigned editorial called Candid Microphone an “infant monster,” predicting that if the show was a hit, America would be “plagued with hidden microphones,” leaving everyone helplessly paranoid about the “gruesome gadget.”

He also applied to work for the Central Intelligence Agency, although, at least according to the CIA, they didn’t hire him. (Which, to be fair, is what they’d say if they did hire him.)

One woman, when asked to name something her husband had asked her to keep secret, explained, earnestly, that he planned to kill her uncle for the insurance money—and then won ten points when her husband gave the same answer.

Asked what time of day he preferred, Alcala murmured, “Nighttime, that’s the only time there is.”