Simon

SIMON-1980-Some brilliant but twisted geniuses (including Max Wright, William Finley and Wallace Shawn) manipulate the USA fixing TV ratings, creating diseases, doing bizarre research on cross breeding a man with a cockroach and talking about a Nixon substitute who came back from China. They get a lot of info from a computer named Doris (the voice of Louise Lasser) and are kind of like forerunners of modern day computer hackers. They decide to create “an alien” using eccentric college professor Simon Mendolssohn (Alan Arkin) as their guinea pig. Through drugs and a sensory deprivation tank and the help of a phony female doctor (Madeline Kahn) they manage to change him. After he becomes a media sensation with his ego driven demands for making a better world, the group try to destroy him but only wind up losing their intellect to a gas that makes them dumb, dispensed by an Army general (Fred Gwynne). Dr. Becker (Austin Pendleton) the head of the institute wants to kill Simon but he winds up trapped on a rocket-ship headed into space! Simon and his wife (Judy Graubart) run away and are taken in by a religious cult that worships TV. He starts his own pirate network and delivers a crazy philosophy (He's right about many things!). 

This is a great but overlooked black comedy criticizing TV and the obsession with junk culture co-written and directed by Marshall Brickman, a former head writer of THE TONIGHT SHOW who wrote several Woody Allen films (SLEEPER, ANNIE HALL, MANHATTAN) . Dick Cavett and David Susskind play themselves.

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