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There was simply no better place to spend a Saturday morning in the year 2000 than at AMC’s N.Y.U.K. I’ve brought up this show several times in the past, usually when discussing Leslie Nielsen or The Three Stooges, but I’d be willing to bet I’ve mentioned it totally randomly a few times as well. For years, I have wanted to profile this show more in-depth, but I wasn’t sure of the best way to approach it. I originally considered simply editing Leslie’s intros alongside the Stooges’ public domain shorts — releasing them on my channel as a fun walk down memory lane. I ultimately decided against that, though, as I felt this show was deserving of more.
A few months back, while digging around on YouTube for some old commercials to feature on our first Don’t Touch That Dial! podcast special, I stumbled upon a series of commercial breaks that someone had recorded off AMC in the early 2000s. When I discovered a promo for N.Y.U.K. among one of these recordings, I found myself transported back to a simpler time and place, watching the Stooges in my pajamas over some Pillsbury Waffle Sticks to kick off the weekend. (As much as I’d love to begin my days as an adult this way, Pillsbury Waffle Sticks have been discontinued for decades now.) I don't think I fully realized just how much this show had influenced my own work until I started revisiting full segments though. Looking back, I can clearly see how it inspired me to approach my work on Hats Off Entertainment, as this show was equal parts informative and entertaining.  I didn’t want to mention this in my video because I’ve come to respect him a great deal, but as a kid, I detested Leonard Maltin. It wasn’t anything personal, but rather due to the fact that he introduced every The Little Rascals VHS tape put out by Cabin Fever in the 90s. At a time when I didn’t really care about movie history, these intros just felt like a needless detour that kept me from enjoying the antics of Spanky and the gang — resulting in a prompt pressing of the fast-forward button. Of course, when I watch these intros today, I’m able to enjoy them with a newfound appreciation. But as a kid… they bored me to death. Sorry, Leonard. Quick aside: In 2014, I attended a screening of a few Laurel & Hardy shorts at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, and Leonard Maltin came out to introduce them! I couldn’t help but laugh as the man kept me from enjoying my beloved comedy shorts yet again — this time with no option to fast-forward. I don’t quite remember the first time I saw or was made aware of N.Y.U.K., but it must have been during its premiere marathon on April 1, 2000. My parents, who knew I loved the Stooges, usually alerted me whenever there was going to be a marathon. Even if we would be out that day, my mom would have made sure to set up the video recorder so I could watch later. I still have a few tapes we recorded off cable during a 1996 Stooges marathon on The Family Channel.  Like I said in the video, it was a fool’s errand to seek out every Stooges short back then, as even the official video releases by Columbia Pictures left out 90 of them. I can’t be too hard on Columbia for that, though, as this led to me discovering my three favorite Stooges shorts: Punch Drunks, Violent Is the Word for Curly, and A Plumbing We Will Go — as they were all grouped on the same tape. In any event, AMC quickly became the best way for me to watch the Stooges and discover more of their films. Though the network had first started airing the shorts in late December 1999, it wasn’t until they launched the N.Y.U.K. theming the following year that their Stooges block became appointment viewing for me. So what was it about N.Y.U.K. that appealed to me more? Well, for starters, I had always been a big Leslie Nielsen fan as a kid, so his involvement gave me something new to look forward to, especially in regard to the shorts I had already seen. Secondly, unlike Mr. Maltin’s work, these intros didn’t exist solely to provide historical context. Rather, they provided legitimate entertainment — showcasing these shorts using the same type of humor that the Stooges were masters of. The first challenge in making a video retrospective on this show was finding any information about its production. Fortunately, AMC had put out a press release to announce the series, which was picked up by most major news outlets. This release contained some great quotes from Leslie and then-AMC boss Marc Juris. Beyond that, however, I was unable to find any additional interviews, press, or even photos from the show.  It was then that I recalled seeing several adverts for something called AMC Magazine during those commercial break recordings I had seen on YouTube. Could there be some additional information available in one of those? Well, the only way to find out was by ordering some from eBay, as no digital archive exists for this publication. Fortunately, someone was selling copies of the March and April 2000 issues, which I figured would be the best ones to find potential information about N.Y.U.K. Unfortunately, though, only one of those issues referenced the show — in the form of a tiny blurb that offered no new information. These magazines were mostly brochures that listed the network’s schedule for the upcoming month, mixed with some short articles and ads.  Blurb found in the April 2000 edition of AMC Magazine At least now I knew that promo photos had been taken of Leslie on the N.Y.U.K. set, as I was hoping I could dig some up to use in my video thumbnail. But, in keeping with the precedent that had been set, I was unable to find any additional promo photos, excluding a tiny black-and-white one that appeared in a single newspaper. My quest for more information next took me to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, which lets you view snapshots taken from webpages that are no longer accessible. By searching specific keywords relating to the Stooges, I was able to locate the original webpage for this show on AMC’s early website. There I was able to find some additional graphics and logos (though they were all pretty low-res), as well as a few more blurbs about the show. I even located some small pics of the show’s three guest lecturers: Dan Lauria, Carrot Top, and Anna Nicole Smith.  A collage of pics I was able to find using Wayback Machine. This caused yet another disheartening realization, as I then discovered that there was no available footage of the Anna Nicole Smith intros to be found anywhere on the internet. According to the only known catalogue of the N.Y.U.K. segments — put together by a great Stooges fan site, Anna Nicole Smith's Dr. Anita Hugg was featured in only two intros, making them the rarest of the bunch. Days after I released my video, someone left a comment claiming to have seen one of these intros on YouTube just a few years ago, though it had since been removed. Being that I had mentioned N.Y.U.K. in past projects, I had amassed a small collection of clips from the show in my files. I decided to go back and look at the videos I had downloaded for my Leslie Nielsen mini-doc, one of the first pieces I did on Hats Off way back in 2020. Back then, I tended to gather more footage than was needed, though I never deleted the surplus files. I guess I should be thankful for my terrible organization early on, though, because sure enough, I found the exact video this commenter mentioned — downloaded in full in a file on my old hard drive marked “Leslie Nielsen.” Of course, I had to upload it and share it with the world: At the end of the day, all of my digging — the old magazines, archived web pages, blurry promo stills — was just background noise compared to the real reason N.Y.U.K. stuck with me. What made the show so special wasn’t the press releases or even the rarity of certain segments. It was Leslie himself. Watching him ham it up as “Professor of Stoogology” was enough to make those mornings unforgettable.
When I finally sat down to rewatch those Nielsen segments, everything clicked back into place. Suddenly, I was a kid again, sitting in front of the TV, laughing at the Stooges like it was 2000 all over. The research helped fill in the gaps, but the real story came from my own memory and personal experience — and of course, the warmth and silliness Leslie brought to it all. Maybe there’s still more out there. Lost footage of N.Y.U.K. could easily be sitting on a stack of unlabeled VHS tapes in someone’s attic, waiting to be rediscovered. If you grew up taping the Stooges off AMC, now might be the time to dust off that old box of recordings — you never know what gems could be hiding there.
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