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By PAUL BRENNER
During an interview session
between Joe Flaherty and Eugene Levy, two alumni
from SCTV, the great comedy show from the mid-70s
to the early-80s, Flaherty wistfully says, "Ah
yes. Those were good days." And those days were
good indeed. Very good and now, at last, those
good days are now available on a wonderful DVD
collection from The Shout! Factory.
SCTV, was a great concept show, and one of the few
concept comedy shows that actually worked. A
syndicated program filmed in a low-rent television
studio in the wilds of Edmonton, Canada, the
conceit of the program was to show a day in the
life of SCTV (i.e. The Second City Television
Network). Taking advantage of the paltry budget of
a syndicated show, SCTV made cheapness part of the
shtick, depicting the SCTV network as a scrappy
upstart fourth network, pretending to be a Tiffany
network but populated by two-bit celebrity
succubii like Catherine O'Hara's Lola Hetherton (a
crass Joey Hetherton debauch who calls out to her
adoring fans "I want to bear your children"),
Eugene Levy's Bobby Bittman (an obnoxious,
bejeweled Las Vegas comic who pontificates Jerry
Lewis style by intoning "As a comic, in all
seriousness . . ."), and Joe Flaherty's ever
obsequious and mawkish Sammy Davis Jr. talk show
host Sammy Maudlin, who wills himself into a
spastic frenzy every time one of his guests make a
corny joke. Presiding over it all is Flaherty's
venal, two-timing Guy Caballero, the network
president, a greedy, grasping leech in a white
suit and Panama hat, who is wheel-chaired bound,
not because he is handicapped, but to get respect.
With one of the greatest casts ever assembled for
a comedy show -- Flaherty, Levy, O'Hara, Rick
Moranis, Andrea Martin, John Candy, Harold Ramis,
Dave Thomas, and, later in the run, Martin Short
-- SCTV was a revelation.
But it was a revelation hard to see. Being
syndicated in the 1970s meant having airtime in
the late, late hours of the night, varying from
city to city. Lacking promotion, the show had to
be discovered like a pearl mixed in with dead
shellfish. As a result, this uber-"Saturday Night
Live" became a true cult phenomenon, with proud
SCTV viewers speaking together in dark rooms and
wearing their imaginary fan club cards proudly.
The original programs were 30 minutes but it all
changed in 1980. Global television had canceled
the show but one of the programs fans happened to
be Brandon Tartikoff, then president of NBC. At
that point in the history of "Saturday Night
Live," the show was in dire straits, the original
cast having left along with creator Lorne
Michaels, and SNL seemed to be in its death
throes. It was at that juncture that Tartikoff
proposed a ninety-nine SCTV show, to play at 1am
on Friday nights on NBC. Tartikoff hoped that the
SCTV cast could find a niche on NBC, in case
"Saturday Night Live" deep-sixed and he needed
programming to take over the Saturday nighttime
slot. The SCTV creators jumped at the chance. So
did the performers and writers from SCTV.
The new SCTV programs, "SCTV Network 90," were the
finest incarnations of SCTV. Nine episodes from
the first season are now available on the five-DVD
set from The Shout! Factory. Long unseen, except
for extremely pared down half-hour shows, the
90-minute programs are as fresh today as they were
in 1981. The expanded 90 minute time frame allowed
story arcs to develop per episode and throughout
the first season (like the overtly expensive crane
shot in hot-shot director Johnny LaRue's (John
Candy) "Chinatown" rip-off, "Polynesian Town." As
the first 90 minuteseason progressed, SCTV
programming parodies melded into one another as
the SCTV characters expanded from one-note gags to
rabid comedic fugues (the ultimate depiction of
this is Lola Hetherton Garland-esque on-screen
crack-up during her "Bouncin' Back To You"
special). By season's end, "SCTV Network 90" had
become an alternate universe of celebrity
narcissism, pride, and passion, populated by
totally incompetent and self-serving characters –
the American Culture of Fame pared down to its
essentials.
The highlights of the collection are too numerous
to mention, but personal favorites include the
Lola Hetherton musical special travesty; The Sammy
Maudlin Show (with the sanctimonious Bobby
Bittman, a brazen walk-on plug by Dave Thomas's
Bob Hope, and an over-the-top tribute to Maudlin's
substance abuse recovery by John Candy's unctuous
side kick William B); the afore-mentioned
Polynesian Town; the British acting triumvirate of
Richard Burton (John Candy), Peter O'Toole (Joe
Flaherty), and Richard Harris (Dave Thomas) in The
Man Who Would Be King of the Popes ("Good acting
at it's best"); a Gene Shalit variety show
featuring Shalit (Levy) singing "Sailin'" and
Siskel (Flaherty) and Ebert (Thomas) joining
Shalit in several song stylings; a meditation on
the comedy styles of Bob Hope (Flaherty) and Woody
Allen (Moranis) called "Play It Again, Bob"; and
the famed "Evita" commercial parody with Martin as
Indira Gandhi and Slim Whitman (Flaherty) as Che
Guevara. The list can go on and on.
The extras are also impressive. Included are "SCTV
Remembers" (reflections on the program by cast
members and creators); a tribute to John Candy;
"The Craft of SCTV" (the makeup artist, hair
designer, and costume designer speak of their
contributions to the show); a reunion of the SCTV
cast (minus Moranis) at the 1999 U.S. Comedy Arts
Festival; and audio commentary on two of the
episodes with Eugene Levy and Joe Flaherty (the
high point of which is Levy explained how he tried
to fit impressions of both pre- and post-stroke
Floyd the Barber into a Andy Griffith Show
parody).
For students and lovers of comedy, this is the
collection to have and to hold. To see the genesis
of the cult comedy shows like The Ben Stiller Show
and Mr. Show, here is the mother lode. Leave it to
Edmonton to outpace "Saturday Night Live" and The
City of New York. |
