Ringmaster (1998)

Think back to when you were younger. You were sick and from school. All the usual stuff that you would watch on TV was not on. The morning television geared towards children getting ready for school, that was over. But after school programming hadn’t started yet because school was still in. You flipped through the channels for anything to watch. You got The Price is Right. That was always on. Bob Barker told people to spay and neuter their pets, while the contestants spun a giant wheel, hoping to get 100. You flicked the channel again and got soap operas. All My Children, Days of Our Lives, General Hospital… all this boring drama that you didn’t really want to see. Flipped the channel again. News. Talking heads telling your parents what new thing was going to terrorize their children. One more flick. Now this was what you want to see.

One of three shows was now on your television. You got Maury Povich. He was telling people whether or not the child was, in fact, theirs. You got Montel basically doing the same thing. And what’s this? You had Jerry Springer standing in front of a line of chairs, while people sat in the chairs and yelled back-and-forth. One of them got up. They threw haymakers at the rest of them. Steve Wilkos came out wearing his security shirt. He pulled them off each other. He kind of tossed one away without actually letting go and tossing them. Chairs were flying. Profanities were being shouted and bleeped out. You were having a great time on your day off.

The Jerry Springer Show was a staple of daytime television for twenty-seven years. Every day there would be different people sharing their problems. They aired out their problems by fighting over their problems. Most of these people would be considered lower class. That was the perception that the show gave off. And, sometimes, that was a completely accurate perception. It was what most people would call tabloid entertainment, without the celebrities.

The popularity of the Jerry Springer show wasn’t just based on children home sick from school. Obviously, it was geared towards adults with the material that was featured. It wasn’t made for kids. But you can’t deny the attraction that kids would have to a show of this nature. They were probably not allowed to watch it, but when they were home sick from school, flipping through the channels, they could sneak a good two, three, five, maybe ten minutes before their parents from noticed what was on the TV. However, it was the adult audience that helped drive the show’s popularity. They drove it so much that Jerry Springer became a household name even to the people that didn’t watch The Jerry Springer Show. His popularity was undeniable.

Some of this popularity probably came from the political career Jerry Springer had before his show. He was a city council member and, at one time, mayor of Cincinnati. The time he spent with politics made him a known figure. He transitioned that into news. Eventually, he started The Jerry Springer Show, which began as a topical news interview and commentary show. The ratings were kind of low on that version and it wasn’t until he got into more tabloid-style topics that the ratings begin to skyrocket. Eventually the popularity of the show would lead to a spinoff, The Steve Wilkos Show, featuring the aforementioned security guard as the host.

I’m not here to talk about that. I’m here to talk about what happened during what may have been the height of Jerry Springer’s popularity. If something becomes popular, Hollywood studios will want to get their hands on it. They’ll want a piece of that pie. I bet you can see where this is going, not only from what I’m writing, but from the fact that this is a blog about movies. Movies that don’t have a great reputation. Movies that are kind of unknown because they don’t necessarily have all the good qualities that people associate with good movies. Hollywood decided to take Jerry Springer and his show and create a movie based on them, but not associated with them.

Ringmaster came out in 1998. Jerry Springer played a TV host named Jerry Farrelly. He wasn’t the main character of the movie, but his show, Jerry, was the story. Connie (Molly Hagan) and Angel (Jaime Pressly) were a mother and daughter living in a trailer park with Connie’s husband, Rusty (Michael Dudikoff). It didn’t take long for Connie to discover that Angel and Rusty were sleeping with each other. As revenge, Connie slept with the Angel’s fiancé, Willie (Ashley Holbrook), called the bookers for the show, and got a spot on an episode being shot in Los Angeles. Also appearing on that same episode was Starletta (Wendy Raquel Robinson), who caught her boyfriend, Demond (Michael Jai White), sleeping with her friends. All this would be jammed together in a weird family drama, comedy, sex romp sort of thing. And that’s the story.

It wasn’t necessarily the popularity of Jerry Springer, himself, that inspired this movie to be made. It was the popularity of The Jerry Springer Show, translated to Jerry in the movie. The movie was about the people on the show, and what their lives were like outside of the show. On The Jerry Springer Show, you only had a little snippet. You got one side versus the other and a fight. Probably. That was the stereotypical thing that happened. The audience didn’t really know what was happening in their lives beyond that. They only knew what the guests were saying. And they didn’t really care what the guests were saying because it was more about the action that was about to explode.

Ringmaster gave that background. It took what you knew was going to happen on the show and built it that way. It presented why the people were fighting. It showed everything that happened before the confrontation, during the conversation, and after the confrontation. I saw why Connie wanted to share her families, dirty laundry on national television. Why was she so angry with her daughter? You got to see the daughter interacting with the husband prior to their appearance on the show. I mean, the husband didn’t even show up on Jerry. He knew it would make him look bad and left before the taping. See, if you watched The Jerry Springer Show, you would only hear about him leaving. You wouldn’t see why, you wouldn’t see how, and you wouldn’t see what led to it. But in Ringmaster you got to see all of that.

Do you know why the movie was built like this? It was to tell the story of the people. Or that was what the movie wanted you to think. The Jerry Springer Show, or Jerry, only gave a glimpse into the lives of these people. As an audience, you probably looked down on them because you only got this tabloid story about one person cheating on another person and then punching said person, or other person, in front of a live audience. These people had more going on in their lives. The grievances they aired out on screen, as if they were in the midst of a Festivus celebration, were real issues. They were issues that people went through every day. As Jerry Fowler said, paraphrased from the climax of Ringmaster, audiences love when rich people talk about the issues portrayed on his show, but look down upon the poor people when they share the same exact problems. Why do people look down upon the poor but look up to the rich when they’re dealing with the same stuff? That seemed to be the message of the movie. The execution was just not that great.

I commend them for trying to show more of the lives of people that would appear on The Jerry Springer Show. The intention behind that was pretty good. They showed that the people on screen were more than what you might see in their segment. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Showing that people are people, just like you or me or anybody that might be watching them is an important thing to get across to audiences. Maybe next time they won’t make the people they highlighted into the type of tabloid character everyone assumed they were.

The Jerry Springer Show was an important part of television for twenty-seven years. It showed the problems that normal every day people went through, only to a sensational tabloid-exploitation degree. Everything had to be explosive. It had to be dramatic. That was what audiences wanted. Jerry Springer started with a calm discussion show about serious issues, but it wasn’t until the fights and the yelling started that people begin to pay attention. That was what made his show so big.

The most interesting thing was that he was always sympathetic towards those people. He would let things play out, but at the same time he wasn’t pushing their buttons. He was trying to get to the deeper meaning behind what they said. Even if what they said was pretty surface level. You might think that some of the stuff on The Jerry Springer Show was staged. It may well have been. But you can’t deny the importance that that had on shining the spotlight on part of America that most people would rather ignore. He was doing good through exploitation.

This idea continued beyond the popularity of his show. The Steve Wilkos Show came out of it, becoming its own thing while also being the same thing. If it weren’t for Jerry Springer, Maury probably wouldn’t be as popular. Montel definitely wouldn’t have been as popular, and we probably wouldn’t have had Dr. Phil. All this came back to Jerry Springer wanting to make a news talk show where he tackled real issues. If it wasn’t for that desire, the television landscape wouldn’t be what it is now. Particularly, the daytime television landscape.

Jerry Springer passed away earlier this year. I was supposed to write this post a couple months before that. Not that I planned to have it out before he died. I didn’t know he was going to die. Nobody really knew that. But this movie was originally scheduled for February. He was still alive when I first watched it for that initial post. And then I changed what I was doing. This post kept getting pushed back and back. I wrote about him when he passed in April. Perhaps that’s why I haven’t tackled this post until now. And some of the stuff in this post might be some of the same stuff I wrote way back in April on my other blog. There’s a reason for that though. I respected Jerry Springer, and what he was trying to do, even if I may not have respected the show he made.

His show started in 1991. I was born in 1990. As far as I can remember, his show was just kind of always there. It was always on. It was one of those shows where, if I was home sick, like I said at the beginning of the post, I would be flipping through the channels, and there it was. It was a slice of the world that I didn’t normally see. And that’s kind of important. Seeing stuff that isn’t necessarily in your immediate surroundings makes you a broader person. It makes you a better person. That’s what Jerry Springer did. Through his movie, Ringmaster, you understood what he was trying to do. You understood that his show was trying to do that same thing. Even if it was going about it in a cartoonish way. When you see that as a kid, you don’t know that. But you know what? It gets instilled in you. Bit by bit you learn from it. You might not learn the right things at first, but years later you really understand. Understanding… That’s what Jerry springer taught so many people.

As I do with every post, I’ve made a list of notes for y’all from this movie:

• Jaime Pressly was one of two actors who made their seventh Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance in Ringmaster. She was previously in The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure, Torque, Cruel World, DOA: Dead or Alive, A Haunted House 2, and The Karate Dog.
• The other seventh appearance came from Chris Coppola. He was in Far Cry, Russell Madness, Santa Buddies, The Search for Santa Paws, Santa Paws 2: The Santa Pups, Bloodrayne 2:Deliverance, and now Ringmaster.
• Stepping into his fifth Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance with Ringmaster was Robert Harvey. You may have seen him before in Jack and Jill, Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star, Sandy Wexler, and Amityville: A New Generation.
• Another new member of the Sunday “Bad” Movies five-timers’ club was Michael Jai White. He previously popped up in Exit Wounds, The Toxic Avenger Part II, The Toxic Avenger Part III: The Last Temptation of Toxie, and Skin Trade.
• M.C. Gainey has been in three Sunday “Bad” Movies. They were Soul Man, All About Steve, and Ringmaster.
• Dawn Maxey returned to Sunday “Bad” Movies in Ringmaster after first appearing way back in Baby’s Day Out.
• Paul Renaday was in Ringmaster and The Million Dollar Duck.
• Mickey Jones was a recognizable face in Ringmaster. He was also in Drop Zone.
• Ringmaster wasn’t Jerry Springer’s first Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance. He had already shown up in Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!
• Diane Michelle was in both Ringmaster and Roller Blade.
• Tangie Ambrose made her second Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance in Ringmaster, having first appeared in Surviving Christmas.
• Ringmaster and Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment each featured Paul McMichael.
• Finally, the great Retta was in Ringmaster, as well as Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip.
• Have you seen Ringmaster? What did you think of it? What are your thoughts on Jerry Springer? Let me know what you’re thinking in the comments. Or you can find me on Threads. I’m over there, doing stuff.
• If there are any movies you think I should check out for Sunday “Bad” Movies, you can also drop those in the comments or on Threads. I’ll take almost any movie suggestions into consideration.
• Okay, so the next post might not be until December. It’ll probably be something a little Christmas-ish. It’s getting to be that time of year. There’s also another anniversary coming up. That means I’ll have some sort of special post for you. I’m in the middle of planning it out before writing it. It should be a fun one. I’ll see you whenever I get the next post up, whatever movie it may be.