I'd say he's like a grumpy pop culture protege of James Burke

August 15, 2023 11:06 AM

I'd really only known Rich Hall [Wikipedia] from his appearances on BBC panel shows. It turns out, he has a whole career doing documentaries trying to explain the United States to a UK audience steeped in US mass media. Rich Hall's Red Menace [2019, 1h30m] begins with an atom bomb and follows the Cold War conflict between the US and the USSR as depicted in cinema and contrasting that with actual history. But he's done so many more!

Rich Hall's How The West Was Lost [2008, 1h30m] began Rich's documentary journey looking at the Western, the most American of movie genres. As he traces its development, he also tells the story of the real West, and how the mythology and the reality play into each other in modern America.

Rich Hall's The Dirty South [2010, 1h30m] works to detangle another mythical American movie genre as he looks at The South and its contradictions both on screen and in real life.

Rich Hall's Continental Drifters [2011, 1h30m] takes on the Road Movie, beginning with The Grapes Of Wrath [!], moving forward through history of American expansion as the decades go by.

Rich Hall's Inventing The Indian [2012, 1h30m] is the last of his strictly Hollywood focussed series, this time working with popular portrayals of Indigenous Americans and detangling them from the reality.

Rich Hall's You Can Go To Hell, I'm Going To Texas [2013, 1h30m] has Hall applying his acerbic eye to the most mythical of all US states, Texas.

Rich Hall's California Stars [2014, 1h30m] applies the same treatment to the Golden State that he applied to the Lone Star State.

Rich Hall's Presidential Grudge Match [2016, 1h30m] is Rich's contribution to the 2016 election cycle, tracing back all the really nasty Presidential campaigns of the past.

Rich Hall's Countrier Than You [2017, 1h30m] examines country music's development and its two poles of influence, Nashville and Austin.

Rich Hall's Working For The American Dream [2018, 1h30m] looks at the famous American work ethic, and how it developed and how much of it is fact and how much of it is just reputation and myth.

Previously, from 2014

posted by hippybear (31 comments total)

Thanks for this, hippybear! I remember Rich Hall from SNL and sniglets. It's nice to hear that someone on SNL from that era hasn't gone full MAGA like some others.
posted by queensissy at 11:27 AM on August 15, 2023 [10 favorites]

Wow I haven't thought about Rich Hall in forever. I loved Not Necessarily the News when I was a kid. I think I had the Sniglets for Kids book, too.
posted by HumanComplex at 11:29 AM on August 15, 2023 [7 favorites]

I've never watched his documentaries, I remember Rich from his really early work on Letterman's morning show. He was never really used well on SNL.

I also remember and owned some of the Sniglets line of books, taken from his routine on HBO's Not Necessarily the News.

I'm glad to see he's still going!
posted by JoeZydeco at 11:31 AM on August 15, 2023 [5 favorites]

I know Rich Hall from Sniglets:

A sniglet (/ˈsnɪɡlɪt/) is an often humorous word made up to describe something for which no dictionary word exists. Introduced in the 1980s TV comedy series Not Necessarily the News, sniglets were generated and published in significant numbers, along with submissions by fans, in several books by Rich Hall, beginning with his Sniglets, Sniglets for Kids, and More Sniglets in the mid-1980s.

I had several of these books as a child (purchased from the Scholastic Book Fair) but the only sniglet that I remember is this:
Eastro Turf—the fake plastic grass that you put at the bottom of a child's Easter basket
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:31 AM on August 15, 2023 [10 favorites]

I associate Rich Hall with David Letterman's morning show too. He was funny and interesting. I look forward to checking out all these links!
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 11:35 AM on August 15, 2023

Sniglets books were very common bathroom reading of the 80s.
posted by Kitteh at 11:36 AM on August 15, 2023 [3 favorites]

Even though I'm an American, I've enjoyed all of Rich Hall's documentaries. My favorite moment (should start at 23:28 but Metafilter sometimes screws up YouTube links to a specific moment in a video).
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:42 AM on August 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

I've loved his documentaries that I've seen (and I'm happy to say I've not seen all of them - happy because now I can).

Reginald D. Hunter's Songs of the South and Songs of the Border (can't find on YouTube) had a similar feel to them.
posted by Grangousier at 11:55 AM on August 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

Not Necessarily The News and Sniglets were a staple of my teenage years.

There was one short film he did on NNtN or SNL where he took those hoses at the gas station, the ones that ring the bell when you drive over them, and he cut them into different lengths and made a xylophone type thing out of them. It was bizarre and brilliant and I can't find it anywhere on line.
posted by bondcliff at 12:01 PM on August 15, 2023 [3 favorites]

Thanks for the excellent post. This is why I continue to read MeFi. Never heard of the guy, but I know exactly what I'll be binge-watching this weekend!

Especially the one on Texas, because..., well..., you know.
posted by smcdow at 12:32 PM on August 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

I first saw Rich Hall in an old BBC documentary about the life of stand-up comics. If I remember correctly he was presented as a mid-tier comic in that world, and the one joke I can remember him making is holding up a “fun-size” snickers bar and saying, “people, this is the size of fun”, which I thought about everytime I saw one of these fun-size candy bars. If anyone remembers what that documentary was called, I’ll be happy to know.
posted by Kattullus at 12:44 PM on August 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

Thanks for sharing these, I look forward to working through these.

In an odd coincidence, I bought a hat just like the one he's wearing in "The Red Menace" just before visiting the Manhattan project B-reactor this summer, and for continuity wore the same hat to the Oppenheimer premier in July. It's a nice hat.
posted by St. Oops at 12:53 PM on August 15, 2023 [3 favorites]

I'm very fond of Rich Hall. I read Self Help for the Bleak many times in my youth.
posted by Wink Ricketts at 1:03 PM on August 15, 2023 [3 favorites]

You had me at "grumpy pop culture protege of James Burke".
posted by Quasirandom at 1:49 PM on August 15, 2023 [6 favorites]

I was in school when NNtN debuted, so I remember "lactomangulation", or the act of failing to open a paper milk carton, because it was a useful term

Somewhat off-topic, but I could never get into the film Excalibur because King Arthur reminded me so strongly of Rich Hall.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 2:35 PM on August 15, 2023 [3 favorites]

From 1986 Rich Hall's Vanishing America has him tracking down a prize owed to him since childhood, from a comic book seed sales job.
posted by Sophont at 2:47 PM on August 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

ChurchHatesTucker, Nigel Terry was born to be greying and bearded.
posted by Iris Gambol at 3:00 PM on August 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

Rich Hall should give it a try.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 4:01 PM on August 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

I loved Rich Hall on NNtN as a teen. I'm looking forward to diving into this later this week. Thanks!
posted by mollweide at 4:11 PM on August 15, 2023

This is a goddamn treasure, thank you hippybear!
posted by capnsue at 5:10 PM on August 15, 2023

Oh awesome, I love Rich Hall and had only bumped into random quotes from these - had no idea there was a whole series.
posted by aspersioncast at 6:33 PM on August 15, 2023

I watch a lot of British panel shows and the like, and there is always a scattering of people who are from abroad but who are now living and working in the UK. Canada has produced two Taskmaster contestants, Katherine Ryan and Mae Martin, neither of whom has any significant recognition here, I’d say. Similarly, I can’t recall seeing Desiree Burch or Reginald D Hunter showing up in American TV shows, and when I have asked e.g. Germans about Henning Wehn, it seemed to ring no bells.

Rich Hall, though, I have known about and admired for forty years. I agree with JoeZydeco that SNL didn’t know what to do with him. Probably the best Weekend Update anchor we never had.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:47 PM on August 15, 2023 [7 favorites]

Aw, man. I’m so glad Rich Hall is still out there booking work. I last saw him at the Adelaide Fringe maybe 20 years ago, and his work as Otis Lee Crenshaw continues to live rent free in my head.
posted by MarchHare at 8:13 PM on August 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

I used a Sniglet as my senior quote in the yearbook (1988). LOL.
posted by tristeza at 8:53 PM on August 15, 2023

Longtime fan of Rich, and his docos.

Rich Hall's Inventing The Indian is probably my fave of the docos.
posted by Pouteria at 10:26 PM on August 15, 2023

Got to concur with the title. And I'm really glad to see someone out there continuing with James Burke's techniques.
posted by ocschwar at 5:34 AM on August 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

Rich Hall was the model for Moe from the Simpsons, I heard?
posted by lokta at 11:55 AM on August 16, 2023

Explains why he's an occasional panelist on the UK celeb quiz show QI, I guess. He never seems to be enjoying himself there, though.
posted by aught at 6:34 PM on August 16, 2023

Moon Echoes Over Norway! 😄
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:20 PM on August 16, 2023

Yeah this takes me back. I was a big Rich Hall fan back in the day (Fridays first, probably) and I was well chuffed when I went on a search several years ago, thinking "what happened to [stand up comic from my youth]?", and found him being a big ol' star back in Old Blighty! Really happy for him though, because after Sniglets, which were HUGE in their day, it didn't seem like he had much of a path forward and I lost track of him until the internet rose to the occasion.

He introduced me to Paul Harvey, which in true Baader-Meinhof fashion I started hearing often on the radio after seeing his imitation, which is quite good, and funny! I found a YouTube playlist with a bunch of his SNL work.

He never seems to be enjoying himself there, though.

That's just his face.
posted by rhizome at 12:55 AM on August 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

Explains why he's an occasional panelist on the UK celeb quiz show QI, I guess. He never seems to be enjoying himself there, though.

That’s just his unease and tension at finding out how many moons Earth has.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:34 AM on August 17, 2023 [2 favorites]