To answer your question: yes, Gene Gene the Dancing Machine is alive and, one hopes, as well as he can be after having both of his legs amputated in 2001 due to complications from diabetes. Alas, his shufflin’ at the woodside days are over.
But I’m sure Dave Attell will be able to round up his own colorful group of backstage eccentrics, celebrity judges and differently gifted talent for his 21st Century riff on The Gong Show, which will premiere this summer on Comedy Central (July 17th @ 10:30 PM). Recruiting performers should be phenomenally simple: just hit up YouTube’s garish gallery of attention starved weirdos and get ’em a cheap roundtrip fare to Los Angeles.
Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison Productions is responsible for this latest revival of Chuck Barris’s drunken talent show. Given Sandler’s and Attell’s many friendships, the rotating group of celebrity judges should be well-stocked with top flight comics like Patton Oswalt, Brian Posehn, Sarah Silverman (the new Jaye P. Morgan!), David Cross and Geechy Guy. As for the readily-gonged regulars… why not make Bubb Rubb the new Gene Gene the Dancing Machine (if he’s not dead or in prison)?
Ideally, this whole endeavor leads to The Second Gong Show Movie, and enormous, career-ending shame for all involved.