A creative genius that I greatly admire has died. Patrick McGoohan, the man behind the truly visionary British television program The Prisoner, and one of Columbo’s most cunning adversaries, has passed away at the age of 80.
If you’ve never seen The Prisoner, you’re in luck. For a short while, the AMC network has put every episode on-line, where you can watch them for free. If you already have other plans for the evening, I suggest you cancel them, stay home, pick an episode, and watch it… And, here, for those of you who won’t do that, is a quick clip:
[From this point forward, one of my biggest regrets in life will be that I didn’t pursue an interview with McGoohan hard enough.]
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This hit me like a ton of bricks today. I realize that Ricardo Montalban will get all the headlines but honestly? ¿Quien es mas macho? Senior McGoohan…that’s who!
Be seeing you.
Somewhere in this drafty old house, I have a tape with Peter Falk talking about McGoohan, who was a close friend of his. I remember him looking at me, holding up his fingers so that his thumb and pointer finger were just a few millimeters apart, and saying, “That man doesn’t have an OUNCE of BULLSHIT! NOT AN OUNCE!”
And I’ve got to change the title of this post to incorporate the “Be Seeing You.” Thanks for reminding me, Jack.
The three people I most regret not working harder to interview… Don Knotts, Patrick McGoohan, Joey Ramone.
I had leads on all of them, and I just didn’t work hard enough at it.
I hate myself more than usual tonight.
R.I.P to the true legend – Patrick McGoohan. The Prisoner was so ahead of its time, its ridiculous.
didn’t you also have regrets about not interviewing Shirley Hemphill (although I realize she wouldn’t have ranked in the top 3)?
I’ve never seen much of the Prisoner because I have a preference to watch serials in order. I think we watched one episode that you had on tape in 1990 which only made me want more to watch the whole series in order, so I never watched any other episodes you had on tape (which was obviously not a complete set). I might watch over the long weekend, even though I hate watching video on computers.
It’s weird that you should say that, Anonymatt. I was just thinking about Shirley Hemphill. She wouldn’t have made the top three, but I thought she was pretty damned funny. She was no Phil Silvers, though.