So I happened to hear on All Things Considered an interview with Dick Cavett on the occasion of the release of a box of DVDs featuring performances and interviews with “rock icons” on his show in the late 60s and early 70s.

(So first let me observe that this is exciting; my friend Andrew had the Sly and the Family Stone on a beat up video tape when he lived upstairs from me and it was brilliant. Unsurprisingly, Sly was flying very high, and Dick Cavett had no idea what to make of the spectacle. It’s probably worth buying for that alone, but from what they played on the radio, there’s plenty more good in there.)

Anyway, so what should I find in the midst of the Amazon reviews but this:

Reviewer: David Barnhizer (San Sebastian, Terre del Fuego) – See all my reviews

Among the things that made this Cavett Show special was that the technical requirements of video-taping were unobtrusive; cameras were unseen by the participants, the required special lighting didn’t distract,and the audio was recorded informally, as part of the conversation. The result is a natural conversation, rather rare in commercial television then — or now.

As a television professional, I credit the director of the Dick Cavett Show with the skill, and the consumate good taste, to pull it off.

David Barnhizer
Director, The Dick Cavett Show, 1968-1972

Yes indeed. “I credit the director (who just happens to be me!)” Good ol’ Spy magazine used to have a brief front-of-the-book recurring feature they called “Logrolling in Our Times,” where they found cases of authors providing mutually fawning blurbs on each others books. But this trumps all of that. (pun intended, as Donald Trump was one of Spy’s favorite targets. I wonder what they’d make of his latest wave of celebredom?)