Futurama's Pilot Put Dick Clark In A Confusing Situation
The first episode of David X. Cohen's and Matt Groening's animated sci-fi sitcom "Futurama," called "Space Pilot 3000," saw the directionless twentysomething Fry (Billy West) wandering into a cryogenics lab, delivering a pizza just minutes before midnight. No one is there. He checks the order slip and sees that the pizza was ordered by "I.C. Wiener." He is despondent and annoyed. The year 2000 is about to begin, and he opens a beer, depressed to be ringing in the millennium alone and at a dead end in life. Then he trips. Fry lands in a cryogenic tube, and he is immediately flash-frozen. He will remain frozen for nearly 1000 years.
When he awakens, it is still New Year's Eve, only in 2999. The future is a strange and wondrous place. There are space aliens living on Earth, wandering through the streets of vast, towering metropoles. Sentient robots walk among us ... and are alcoholics.
Not everything has changed, though. On a nearby TV, there is a New Year's Eve celebration being broadcast. Just like a thousand years before, the NYE special is being hosted by the seemingly immortal Dick Clark, playing himself. Clark is his affable and capable self, having hosted "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve" from 1972 up until the present. The only twist: on "Futurama," Dick Clark is merely a severed head in a jar.
Clark's only line is, "Hello, I'm Dick Clark's head! Welcome to a special year 3000 edition of New Year's Rockin' Eve!"
Evidently, Clark — despite his descriptive dialogue — was a little unsure as to what "Futurama" was all about. "Futurama" co-executive producer Patric Verrone, speaking at Los Angeles Comic Con in 2022, recalled Clark's baffled reaction to the series at its 1999 premiere.
Dick Clark will never die
The premiere screening of "Space Pilot 3000" was, according to Verrone, held at Griffith Observatory, which sits on a high Hollywood cliff and overlooks Los Angeles. The pilot was projected onto the ceiling of the Observatory's planetarium, one of the more impressive planetaria out there. Evidently, Clark showed up for the gala ... even though he really didn't have to. Verrone remembered:
"It was a nice turnout. [...] [W]e actually screened the show on the planetarium itself. And I remember watching the show, you know, like this [leans back] and that's the way I'm used to watching it to ever since. But Dick Clark was there — if any of you remember that he was in the pilot — and I think he didn't realize that he didn't have to show up. And I remember him leaving kind of going, 'What was that?' He didn't really have a sense of what the show was."
Clark was a pop culture giant for several decades. He was a radio DJ, paid close attention to the evolution of mainstream pop music, and hosted "American Bandstand" from 1956 all the way until 1989. He also oversaw several iterations of the "Pyramid" game show, and, yes, hosted "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve" for over 30 years. Growing up in the 1980s, this author recalls many jokes at Clark's expense, although they were mostly to comment on how young he looked.
Clark, while serving as the face of the mainstream, would occasionally goof on his reputation. He had a cameo on an episode of "Police Squad!" playing himself, a cameo on a 1966 episode of "Batman," again playing himself, and played a mysterious financier in Robert Rodriguez's 2001 film "Spy Kids."
"Futurama" might have escaped him, but at least he was game enough to appear.