Vanishing America

Rich Hall is one of the great unappreciated comedians of our time. His comedy is smart , never vulgar, always funny. In this episodic HBO special, Rich realizes that he never got the Wilt Chamberlain basketball and hoop that he earned as a seed salesman when he was a kid. He saw the ad in the comic books, sold the seeds, but never got the prize. So like a revenge movie, he is determined to get what is properly his. As he states in the film "its not the destination, its the journey" and Rich has some amusing adventures as he travels on a variety of transportation devices in search of his Wilt Chamberlain basketball and hoop. There is a very amusing sequence with Rich playing "Heart and Soul" on pieces of a gas station bell hose that predated the sequence in "Big" by at least a year. It's pretty much the same bit, down to using the same song. I wonder if they stole this bit from Rich or if he did some punch up work on the "Big" script. It's a shame Hall had to go to Britain where his comedy is more appreciated than it is in his own country.