Big Talk From Sahl at Anaheim Taping

“It’s a weird show, isn’t it?”

Satirist Mort Sahl asked the question Wednesday night during a taping of his new cable television program, “Mort Sahl Live!” The question drew chuckles from his audience at the Celebrity Theatre, primarily busloads of conventioneers from the ongoing Western Cable Show nearby. But it is a weird show, if only in the sense that it’s unlike anything else now on TV.

Not quite a talk show, not just a comic revue, the monthly program on cable’s Monitor Channel (which is not available in Orange County) is a platform for Sahl’s concerns about U.S. culture and politics--and a call for action.

“What we want to do here is say, ‘Let me tell you about America,’ ” Sahl explained in an interview before the taping. “ ‘It’s the eleventh hour in America, and maybe you want to do something about it.’ ”

During the taping, he took his cracks at that day’s reprimand of U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston over his dealings with deposed Lincoln Savings & Loan boss Charles H. Keating Jr. (every member of the U.S. Senate, Sahl said, now will take an ethics exam--multiple choice, of course).

But he turned serious when he mentioned that Cranston had chosen to “blame the system” as a defense for his actions. “We have other solutions than blaming the system,” Sahl told the audience.

When he took on the Clarence Thomas hearings, he ended with an equally serious, spirited defense of beleaguered Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy--”the only one who stood up in the Senate and put in the Congressional Record a ringing defense of Anita Hill.”

Because Anaheim is in “Hollywood’s back yard,” the main theme for this installment was the movies. Far from celebrating the industry, Sahl wondered aloud why there aren’t any movies he wants to see.

The centerpiece of the show was a 15-minute discussion with screenwriter Robert Towne (“Chinatown”) about the evolution--and dehumanization--of the American movie hero, starting with Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life” and moving all the way through to Arnold Schwarzenegger in the “Terminator” movies.

Hardly standard TV talk show fare, even with the opening monologue and the live band, but that’s just as Sahl wants it.

“Is it a talk show? Not exactly,” Sahl said offstage. “You know, talk shows don’t talk anymore. I would say, since (Jack) Paar they don’t talk. It’s all plugs.” He launched into a parody of a typical talk show exchange:

Host: “Why did you do this movie?”

Star: “It’s a stretch.”

Host: “How did you like working with Al Pacino?”

Star: “He’s very giving and generous. I adore him.”

Host: “We’ll be right back.”

Often cited as a seminal influence on comedians ranging from Lenny Bruce to Mark Russell, Sahl pretty much single-handedly brought social satire into the mainstream in the early ‘50s. His popularity hit a lull in the ‘60s, after his attacks on the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating President Kennedy--a topic still close to his heart.

He rebounded in the Nixon years and has remained a steady fixture since. He even starred in a one-man Broadway show in 1987.

Sahl hooked up with the fledgling Monitor Channel about two years ago, before it was even on the air. The cable network was launched in April as the television arm of the Christian Science Monitor.

Sahl welcomed the chance to do a show that, he felt, wouldn’t be possible on network television.

Most TV executives, Sahl said, “would say they like it, ‘but the average man wouldn’t understand it.’ . . . Fortunately, I’m working for people who aren’t afraid of this.”

The first show was taped in Atlantic City, also in conjunction with a cable convention, and future installments will be taped in different cities, each month, at least for now. Sahl is contemplating several running segments, including one involving a discussion panel he would call the “truth squad.”

He also wants “to do a mock Issue of the Week, to show people that television deals with mock issues. They get a mock issue and they run with it, all the way from the ‘Today Show’ to ‘Nightline.’

“Mock issues, things that people feel they can deal with: They wouldn’t want to deal with the fact that everybody beat it in Iran-Contra with community service sentences, so instead of dealing with the CIA, they deal with how many women are anchor people, or do women get maternity leave.”

There will also be a real issue in each show, though (along with a monthly review of the news). “The big thing is to pose a question each month, like ‘What happened to romance?’ ” Sahl said. “There’s none in the movies. What happened to the movies? What happened to ethics? What happened, what happened? And then examine it.”

Sahl likes to paint himself as a voice in the wilderness, the last of a breed. But he does so with more concern than with pride. “Social satire? There isn’t any. I think it’s fair to say that. There should be 50 guys like me, of different political and social stripes. The dangerous part is there aren’t any . . . . There’s everybody saying, ‘Well, I do care about this, but I don’t think it’ll sell.’ ”

Will it sell? Will audiences respond? Sahl seems confident. “There’s something compelling about the truth,” he says. “They don’t hear it that often.”