Action Family (1987)
February 7, 1987Release Date

Plot.
Where to Watch.
Cast & Crew.

Chris Elliott
Chris / Writer

Chance Bassett
Cindy

Jimmy Butts
No Brain

Eyde Byrde
Peggy

George Ede
Blocker

Seth Green
Danny

Beth Holland
Shirley

Gary Klar
Zack

Lucy Landau
Aunt Lucy

Gina Martin
Melissa

Antonia Rey
Mrs. Diaz

Bob Elliott
The Vendor

David Letterman
Self

Sandy Frank
Writer

Joseph Amodei
Owen

Chuck Cooper
Cop

Drummond Erskine
Abe Lincoln

Jerome Grabarnick
Cop

Gary Weis
Director

Richard Zinn
Editor

Paula Niedert Elliott
Casting

Matt Wickline
Writer

Benjamin Davis
Director of Photography

Douglas Tishman
Editor

Karen Glass
Producer

Rick Newman
Executive Producer

Martin Thomas
Music

Sandy Frank
Writer

Daniel A. Bohr
Coordinating Producer

Ruth Ammon
Art Direction

Margarita Delgado
Costume Design
Media.

Details.
This Movie Is About.
Wiki.
Action Family is an episode of "The Cinemax Comedy Experiment" anthology series written by and starring Chris Elliott as a Private Investigator named Chris Elliot who is juggling work and home life. The show's overarching theme is that it is in fact two shows in one, and has sudden dramatic tonal shifts that affect everything from the way the characters act to the type of cameras used. His home and family life are a parody of a late 1970s/early 1980s saccharine multicamera sitcom shot on cheap 3 walled sets with an audience that often loudly comments on the action. When he goes to work as a hard boiled PI, the show switches tones entirely to dark, gritty, and violent, the camera switches to film stock, and the audience laughter vanishes. Regardless of which tone the show is taking at the moment, the action and dialogue is all completely absurd, and everything that happens is heightened for comedic effect or to service a joke or gag. Though there is a thin murder mystery plot, it takes a back seat to the comedy, and is eventually brought to a completely nonsensical conclusion. The show ends with the family dressed as the Partridge Family lip syncing to a Partridge Family song.
The show includes cameo appearances by David Letterman, whose show Elliott had been a writer and performer on for many years, and they engage in the exact same type of banter as on Late Night. Bob Elliott, Chris Elliott's father, also makes a cameo as a hot dog salesman.
Elliott followed up Action Family with another episode in 1987 of The Cinemax Comedy Experiment, called FDR: A One Man Show. This time Elliott played a fictional version of himself portraying Franklin Delano Roosevelt in a one-man stage show discussing mostly fictional events of his life before a mostly live audience of senior citizens and cardboard cut-outs. This concept had been discussed by Elliott on Late Night, when his "Guy Under the Seats" character emerged dressed in the FDR costume.
Action Family and FDR: A One Man Show were eventually both packaged together and sold on VHS on October 6, 1995, but have never seen a DVD release.
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