The SCTV Guide to Showbiz (Documentary 2021)

tuesday janet jack and chrissy spend a crazy christmas with the ropers everybody dance what cindy williams exclusive story laverne and shirley star reveals how she was dumped by studio bosses inquiring minds one at all i want to know take a look at a movie version of a book that was a bestseller for a long time all things bright and beautiful and eric burns says that the frat man is back and big on campus we'll get that story the fat man fraternity fraternity fellows brad albert i remember him at first there were six people who loved to watch television but they didn't like what they saw so they decided to do something about it armed with determination and a strong will to change the course of television they wrote their own shows classy shows but they knew that wasn't enough they had to sell them letting nothing stand in their way they went straight to the networks but the networks just weren't ready for them not nbc [Music] not cbs not even abc but did that stop them no they built their own network sctv and they liked what they saw but they weren't the only people watching yes sc tv was on the air coming to you by satellite this is fctv uh second city started in chicago in 1959 it was originally came out of the university of chicago when it was the west compass players it was uh the university of chicago didn't have a theater department and they created their own they being uh elaine may mike nichols severan darden del close bernie sollins uh sheldon potenkin there was a lot of people who uh i think ed asner was was part of that shelly berman harry truman harry truman was part of that he had great stuff he was funny the blackouts he came up with i grew up in chicago and i'd grown i'd grown up in the kind of beatnik folk music coffeehouse atmosphere of the earlier 60s and in fact was a guitar playing beatnik singer and then the 60s as the as the whole um country started to wake up from the post you know from the eisenhower slumber after the second world war uh people like lenny bruce started finding their voice and mort saul and uh comedy turned uh edgier and more political well there were there was a floor of uh beyond which you did not go you did not tell jokes for their own sake you did not use obscenities for their own sake you did not use effects for their own sake you always served the scene you acted to the at the top of your intelligence at the top of your ability uh but after college i moved back to chicago this is the late 60s and i saw david steinberg on stage in second city with a very good cast and i thought very funny and really smart and i uh but i had the the reaction that a lot of people have had who've come through second city i looked at i looked at them and thought gee i could do that and because it seems so accessible that the stage at second city is you know the audience is two feet away sometimes they literally put their feet on the stage i was going to the college there point park university and they had a program with the pittsburgh playoffs and it's a good drama group there and they did a whole season good the goodman theater from chicago came in and did a whole season in repertory i would appear in little bit parts in the uh productions the season ended uh um they left everybody left for back to chicago and i uh i didn't know what to do because nothing was going and i remember mike um miller michael miller miller he had worked at the playhouse he had seen me act do little things and so you know and i said uh please do you need any actors and he wrote a letter back saying no i don't need any actors i do need a stage manager and uh do you know anything about lights i found myself in chicago at second city and i loved it there's these little sketches funny bits satiric bits and then afterwards they would improvise and i thought wow this is great i just love this you know i got to be a part of this i just have to where do these performers come from producer bernard sollins explains well we're at chicago theater we look to chicago we uh we look at other theaters we have their own workshops whenever we have an opening in the our touring companies which are run by joyce sloan and then then if they're lucky and we need them off they go into the regular company and then the the touring company i would run lights for them and help them out and they would let me improvise with them and the touring company at the time was jim fisher harold ramos uh who else was in it brian brian murray brian doyle yeah yeah and judy morgan bernie didn't like the the company was there they they were they're too long they were grouchy and mean and so he shipped them all out to new york he said uh how does everybody like to open up a theater in new york so he opened actually opened up ernie could never fire anybody he would just uh set them up in a theater somewhere in new york or something we had a big meeting there we were sitting around and i'm was stage manager and then and the touring company was there and uh and and bernie said to the cast okay you guys are in um you know you have any requests they said uh yeah uh we'd like we're happy to be in but we don't want to be in with uh garrett craig they didn't want him in they said we know uh he said well then who were gonna put in and they they said how about joe and bernie said joe he's the estate the stage manager what are you talking about and uh and they said no no he's worked with us in the set he worked with us and uh bernie said okay you can be in again [Music] oh that was a fine example of the blissful friends now let's even throw that film [Music] back [Applause] camera [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] we were together for four years our cast i love that cast you know with harold and brian and uh belushi came in john belushi and uh i just loved that cast it was uh so much fun this show was so much fun but one day bernie said look um obviously he was getting tired of us as a cast he said i'm opening up i want to open a theater up in toronto we were invited to play at the royal alex which was i think you know we had done a legitimate venue before but there was a large venue and uh we were embraced by toronto did a good show well received uh young lady was in the audience and saw us really like this her name was gilda ratner how did you get involved with the canadians from pittsburgh well i went uh up to canada to work with the theater company the satv no it was a second city second city cabaret and we wanted to open a theater up there so we went up and uh cast some people very good people up there and i was surprised to see the talent uh just sort of floating around in toronto and so we went back and he said oh who wants to open up the theater brian murray and i said okay we'll do it but uh before we open a theater we we were told that we had to you know use canadian actors in fact we got up there and newspaper wrote some articles uh they're gonna open a second city here and uh they'd only they have two americans but bernie summons the sures will still be out in a few months what the [ __ ] and uh we cast uh john and eugene levy and uh um let's see who else was up there it's time gilda radner and danny aykroyd that was they were in the original stage show yes i just come from uh ottawa with valerie bromfield my my old partner there in comedy she had done uh a children's theater uh play i think with with ypt or one of these groups and where they'd you know go up to bala bay and uh you know tour around and you know dresses squirrels and stuff and she said she'd met a guy there who was he said he's just like you she said you know you're the same you guys you know and uh one day i was uh walking by uh her uh apartment on yonge street and uh you know she leaned out the window and said hey come on up you know this guy's here candy's here and i walked up and there was john he was uh in a brown suit and he had his brown pontiac parked outside and he was selling kleenex he had a job with perkins paper so when you talk about candles i don't i don't forget that summer when you were out selling christmas table napkins and candles a traveling film christmas table napkins in his bag yep uh the trunk was filled with halloween uh valentine's day easter happy birthday greetings from the disney characters oh yes oh that was fun and then i ended up in a rehearsing for a show with and we toured uh the parks in this town and worked at the poor alec and while i was rehearsing for that i was supposed to be on the road and they finally caught up to me and fired me and i vowed i'd never work in that business again and you and paul of course have worked together you started out together didn't you absolutely and god spell we were uh that was the first job first professional job i'd ever had i don't i can't speak for paul is that the first same for me yeah okay our first time and that company of people actually there were some really amazing people in there yeah um marty short andrea martin eugene levy nancy dolman uh we all we all started out together didn't know what would happen we just spent a year jumping up and down now how long was the production in toronto it was uh a year it went on a little longer than a year and what kind of a play was it because i never saw it it was a very hot musical yeah based on the gospel according to saint matthew i was at mcmaster university and had decided i would take a year off inspired by eugene levy who said you i think you really show it to yourself too you love doing plays you love doing theater at mcmaster the godspell auditions was the march so i made that decision but now i was still at mac finishing my fourth year and this show godswell which was the hippest thing imaginable had just opened in new york and this is the first time they were doing a new company steven that day hated the rehearsal pianist playing for people didn't think he knew rock and roll fired him said to paul i will make your musical director if you will take over from this hike so i can fire him so that was kind of the level and so he whittled it down to 10 people it was surreal and i remember it was down between me and another guy and stephen shorts said i think we'll go with martin what they were looking for what stephen shorts was looking for is talented people with no real polish if you were too slick you weren't getting it so he wanted more raw talent that was a huge successful show ran for a year sold royal alex and moved to the playhouse theater we would be written about and the toronto's son george anthony we were the hip it was like being part of the cast of snl the first couple of years but be pre-snl you did a song though i did a song yeah dare you to do it right now the whole song yeah what was that no just after the first two lines couple of lines from what's the name of the song i can see a swath of sinners can see a swath of center setting yonder and they're acting like a pack of food gazing into space and let their minds wander instead of studying the good lord's rules you better pay attention to your comprehension there's gonna be a quiz at your ascension not to mention any better you better start to learn your lessons well yeah [Applause] so it really was a strict biblical adaptation you know after a year of doing that i was now second city came to town and everyone assumed that that's that i would want to join that but i didn't i didn't want to do it i wanted to do plays and as a canadian actor in the 70s i mean i was that era was there was no star system but you did everything you didn't say oh i'm a stage actor oh i'm a comedian i'm this you'd say do i bring a suit or not so it was like being in the most sophisticated university of show business imaginable i was invited by dan aykroyd and valerie bromfield to join them for lunch and they had put my name down on the list to audition unbeknownst to me and while i was standing around uh waiting for dan and val to finish their work there my name was called i was they pushed me into a room but he got to lose i you know and and he went up i went down there i was waiting around i was looking at everybody kind of in awe you see everybody from god spell and i hear john candy being paged and valerie says come on come on come on you're going come on we put your name down i was like i'll kill you i'll kill you for doing this to me and they said going up on stage del close uh going up on stage there uh this is a department store exercise uh the object of the game is give and take uh you you sit over here you're the information clerk at an imaginary department store in which anything the store has anything so uh your objective is to give this man any information he needs that's all we want from you and you you come through a revolving door five times as fast as you can five completely different characters all right begin the sweat was all over me it's hard enough to do an improv as an improv but when you're auditioning for with an improv it's yeah it's like 10 times harder because you know somebody's judging you sitting there judging you and this is going to be whether you get a job or not and uh um everything was on at stake there you know and one of the characters he played in this little exercise we call five through the door like a bunch of characters coming in and show us a bunch of characters fast it was a gay boxer as a feminine guy who as a profession would beat people's heads in and i was just so taken with him he was 19 at the time and i basically insisted on hiring him and we had no room for him in the toronto company and bernie said well if you like this kid enough you have to take him to chicago i said all right you're on i said what about the theater up here well we want you to go down to chicago for a couple weeks just to get to know the stage there and work with that group there well okay so i packed for two weeks uh not knowing you had to go across the border with a visa and it was at a time when they were checking for draft dodgers coming across so i was you know never really left toronto got into the airport and the customs pulled me aside and they thought i was a draft dodger so they brought up the big book and they started going through the pages and now i'm frightened because these people are supposed to meet me joyce sloane and eventually the three supervisors came over and looking at me eyeballing and one said uh it was just during the time of the hockey playoffs i said uh who do you like the blackhawks or the canadians i s blackhawks i just gone through stamped something and i was gone i got in the country and uh started out with him and i was there for a year and change really canada a country whose border is very close to our own yet a country we americans know very little about [Music] who are these people we call canadians i fell in love with toronto i thought wow this is a great city you know it was much better than chicago at the time chicago was pretty crappy nobody came to see the show it was almost empty for this show regular show then improv would come on and uh fill up the house with the smart set only hit people and that was the place to go because it's free one day uh they you know they said well we've got to bring some people in joe you've got to go you're an american yeah brian and i had to leave and eugene by that point came in and took over my part but they only did one show oh in a theater one day killed us and they showed up you know to do the show and there was a notice from the sheriff on their computer i had met bernie and joyce in toronto because they were looking for a theater at that time during that process they actually opened i moved down here was working for a theater called the ivanhoe and one day at the bar here bernie had indicated it looks like they were going to close the place so we were able to do a very quick transaction i moved back to toronto found the fire hall and sort of went on a quest to reunite the cast or most of the cats that had started on the other theater which was dan aykroyd gilda radner joe flaherty john candy eugene levy so we piled all of andrew's stuff and john had you know stuff too so he threw his stuff in there and uh we were off you know up to the unknown adventures of a new second city that you know who knows and we were just talking about what's going to happen you know this theater is it going to work and i said you're you know you're the young rookie ball player that wants to really get a chance to you know show them your stuff and i'm like the old grizzled vet that's hanging on for one more year it's hard for winners to do comedy uh comedy is inherently subversive it's uh uh we we represent the underdog as the comedy usually speaks for uh for the lower classes it's you know we we attack the winners so uh second city second nation works was a fine fit we didn't even have a stage yet we would go perform the bands would play there that was a big thing in toronto back then you know it was bands playing and all these places these bands and this a lot of drinking and you know whatever so we we would pull out this little stage and gilda was really like our press agent she'd say she'd pull people in off the street there was a pub called the jarvis house uh she'd come and pull me we're doing a show you want to come here to see i should pull them in what i wanted to do was make the audience laugh you know i wasn't as interested in making a point you know ooh isn't that clever you know especially with those crowds we had you know they how do you guys deal with uh bombing these days what is what has changed out there first of all does the audience really get ever belligerent one woman yelled uh yelled out at one point you're not funny during the monologue and then later yelled get off the stage and then tried to get up and get her coat on and leave but there were too many chairs she couldn't get out this performer i think the second city stage was the best for me to work with those those many people with those creative minds and uh and the freedoms that we had and it was the time in our age and you know we were working for nothing we'd work a lot of hours and uh didn't mind it we had the best time i had i really did my finest memories there one day uh bernie came up he said we're opening a theater in pasadena any volunteers i think he didn't say pasadena that's right he said los angeles we're opening a theater in los angeles you want to go well yes bernie set us up at this motel to live in i remember john said he was scared because those palm trees he thought dinosaurs were hiding guys before we opened it up we were in rehearsals and maybe maybe we were even doing the show danny came down because we needed another member and so dan aykroyd came he drove down with john i guess john what was john doing i vividly remember the 43 hours we took to drive from toronto to los angeles and it was like the beginning of our dreams you know and and that was a journey that i'll never never forget you know we played old music we sang and and talked and and wrote routines and and you know focused in on what we were going to do when we when we got older and where we wanted to go and looking back on that it was it was one of those uh kind of great uh you know drives of of of origination where we we we uh really focused in positively on the vision we wanted for our careers and went for it and so while we're there we're going to rehearsal danny was going to be in the show and um uh phone call bringing you a phone call in the lobby danny falco he goes on lobby comes back yeah lauren michaels you know this guy lauren michaels called me up he wants me to do this show saturday night live uh well what do you think guys well we said well you know it's network tv it's nbc yeah do it do it danny so that was it danny left we didn't he was gone that was it he never got a chance the joy of working in pasadena with us bernie had been asking me since from the moment we opened the theater up in 70 march of 74 i think it was bernie had been saying you know we should do tv we should do tv and then saturday night live emerged and i that then i immediately said oh good i'm going to have to do something about this so in 75 it went on the air and we were we had just opened so very you know very quickly we started losing those cast members if you love to do it do whatever you can to be around or near what you love take whatever job don't just take pictures of yourself and go to new york or los angeles and and hope you know you'll get a job the most important thing is to work even after you have fame even after you have success still the most important thing is to work the process and let people find you and i always feel like i was found more than i went out and sought my career have you ever sat down with lauren michaels and discussed saturday night live never do you want to do that show did you ever want to do it um well the only time i knew about it was after it was cast and then i thought i didn't want to do it because i didn't want to have to go in and um be the second cast and have to always be in somebody's shadow bernie said well lauren's stealing all my cast we're going to have our own show so he goes to canada and he puts together a very low funded i think it was like 3 000 an episode for the first shows and they can actually do shows in canada for 3 000 episode but you don't have sets you don't have makeup and you don't have anything really you just go out there looking like an idiot uh bernie called and asked if i'd be interested in doing a one show in in toronto and they said who'd be involved sounded great i went up to toronto and um sheldon patent had been directing second city on the stage in the in the mid 60s and del close had kind of taken over and was the comedy mentor of the of the later years of second city and um and dell was a renowned kind of comedy genius and we sat around kind of conceptualizing what a second city television show might look like we were looking for a format and there wasn't one available yet and i suggested that maybe we should try being the world's smallest television broadcasting company that did their entire broadcast day in 23 minutes starting with the sunrise semester and ending with the national anthem we used to talk about we in back in chicago we'd say you know geez these you know whenever we do tv uh parodies you know they go over gangbusters they're fun to do and movies too movie parodies that's what evolved and uh people have been variously given credit for saying that the format would be like a programming day what's a writing uh session for the second city people like i mean is it wild and wooly or is it really serious i don't know you go in to little rooms and you write your little scenes and then you sit around a big table and everybody it's like a read-through and you read through the scripts and then everybody says well i don't like my part in this and this grip stinks and this is bad this is terrible then you go back and rework it you know it's not that bad now it's not it was for a while it was for a while we had come right out of the theater and we start we would write the show by kind of improvising uh scenes in a in a group the way we did in theater except that you know after like a week and a half we would maybe have a scene and a half and we realized it's not the most efficient way to write a television show there was quite a range of experience and and age dave was one of the dave thomas is one of the younger members catherine was pretty young and i felt i'd been around you know i had worked in new york had worked in la i hadn't done a lot of tv but i worked on public television and uh so and i've been at the lampoon which was very edge it's kind of cynical working environment i'm stuck here in prison farm doing 99 years no hours i obstructed some justice you know i'm allowed to save my ass i'm stuck here on prison farm playing polo on the grass you know we got to eat caviar yeah lord we got a chauffeur in a car oh lord we got a church and a school we got a [Music] thought [Music] [Applause] [Music] my headband my wristband my alligator shirt my white shorts new tennis balls my tennis my dennis my tennis [Music] after i've done the national radio show for a while i was you know put into the national lampoon show which was an off-broadway comedy review not unlike it's the sort of show that we did at second city but a little bit wilder a little bit crazier uh a little bit more quite a bit more aggressive and uh and you know what people would say edgy you know it was much more bold i got to know everyone through their writing at the beginning and everyone had kind of a different style and different ways of producing material you know some some were real writers others were great conceptualizers but could not sit down and actually write a piece so we helped each other you know it's like helping each other with our homework we learned a great process at second city which was never to say no if someone has an idea you force yourself to say yes and and then add something or put a spin on their idea that makes it better what i said was hard about the television show ready for television shows that you sit down in a group and there's no audience and you have to trust in yourself what you really think is funny you know so you have to write material that'll last more than anything this was the best group of people i'd ever worked with and the nicest group of people and it we just had so much fun creating this stuff sitting around the table there was a lot of group writing and it was not competitive it was always cooperative hi i'm bert conby and i want you to join me each weekday morning here on sctv for celebrity tattletails if you haven't seen our show already you don't know what you're missing watch for 250 and the game what is the one thing you do that really bugs your husband i pick my nose in bed queen elizabeth ii has just won 250 [Applause] dollars johnny have you uh have you seen the nelsons lately i saw ozzy at a party a couple weeks ago he didn't look too good haunted nelson's the nielsen's the ratings hey you know i never look at ratings well maybe you should start looking at him take a look at these whoa what a turkey who's got this show you do johnny that is the johnny larue show i don't worry about that i can pull those ratings up you think so yeah well i don't i got my problems i tell you i got to get my ratings up that's not all you got to get out promise me you won't tell anybody all right promise get out of here get out of here yes we're talking about uh debits and when you finish the debits you can subtract them from credits and the remainder will represent profit that's right profit gained by stealing the labor of working people then gouging them at the other end in a known conspiracy with the running dog the essentials of bookkeeping will not be seen tomorrow due to a change in programming policies the rockefellers are behind it that's what it is they can't stand bookkeeping and they don't like me well right now thousands of beautiful women like me are discovering that you don't have to be a sex object with a fabulous new treatment called homely are you yes for just five minutes a day in the privacy of your own bedroom you can change from this to this hey tony how about that drink yeah now you're talking forget it let's let's keep working huh only are you you'll look like a dog but you'll feel like a person it has always been kind of a case of numbers he has two girls and five guys or whatever at certain points and and then any extra writers they would bring in were always guys it's just natural you know if it was 15 women they'd be going on about some subject that would exclude the guys it just would happen so it that happened a lot where you know they get into this guy's thing and andrea and i'd be like and then a woman could walk in and then the mother could walk in then the girlfriend could walk in you know so in brainstorming it was just to get overpowered that way um and the very simple good old-fashioned male chauvinism that dictated that we would not be paid as writers when the show started and the guys were and yet we all came from second city where we all wrote all our material that was that's just pure old-fashioned male chauvinism my commentary today is about women specifically women newscasters we've been getting some mail here at sc tv asking why we don't have a woman on our news team well the answer is quite simple i don't want one i mean we have funny little news items on our newscast our audiences love them and with a woman on our news team she wouldn't be able to tell the serious items from the funny ones and uh i've never even taken out a girl who could break me up in any way shape or form oh i know there are women newscasters or anchor persons uh on other television stations but uh who listens to them i certainly don't i'm too busy looking at their chests to be able to hear what they're saying but the news piece was a great television uh adaptation because uh it was it was tv that we were doing on stage and when we just put it in the show it worked pretty well i mean we started in show one and went right through the uh eight years of the show we'll be looking at some of the stills from that book described by sensors as revoltingly obscene earl and what are you doing and a special film report with the victims of the midnight rapist who will describe these horrendous crimes in very graphic detail girl oh none of that stuff is on the news tonight you're just making that up that's cheap sensationalizing just to drum up an audience what's the matter with you because the crew on this show has made another mistake they forgot my marking pencil [Music] ladies and gentlemen i apologize for what some might consider to be an unprofessional outburst but when someone as proficient in their job as i am finds himself working with a crew that is for lack of a better word unproficient it really ticks me off what the hell is going on here i had nothing whatsoever to do with this guys really believe me you're doing a super job all of you go joe i'm telling you everybody had their foot out the door one time or the other look at it they were all taken off the first season we were trying come on let's do the show let's do this we got this show you jesus no i'm doing this show stay tuned comes on after the hockey games at night and the beauty of it is it could either be an hour or a half an hour or three minutes depending on how many penalties are in the game because it was after the hockey games and of course you know that 10 30 to 11 slot you get a fight breaking out with two minutes left in the game and it eats up uh 10 11 minutes of your show and it was eddie chose that over over sctv he said the first six shows remember you said what we finished well there was no sc tv at the time basically what you remember from the stage your [ __ ] was out the door i'm telling you and it's so convenient needs no refrigeration and no cooking and it comes to you in easy to open single serving reclosable disposable polyethylene zip top bags hey kids you want more yeah we're starving they really are because there's not a speck of nutrition in it try chickadee chicken chicken style loaf we can't call it chicken but we can come awful close hi and welcome to the wacky world of poverty hey who's poor who wants to win some big cash prizes how do you feel okay then we're ready to play here would you stand up please how do you feel wacky i tell you what i'm gonna do man i'm going to give you one dollar for every hole you have in your sweater here's one [Applause] you know as a businessman i spend about 1500 hours a year in the air that's why i'm pretty particular about the airline i fly i want an airline that gives me more than just good food a free drink and a g-rated movie i want an airline that caters to my very special recreational tastes here's the drink you ordered you sniveling worm thank you that's why i fly s m airlines because on s m i'm more than just another passenger m we really whip your tails for you yeah okay i'll be appearing at the mocha room up in lanca anchorage alaska oh yeah yeah yeah yeah on the 25th of august i like to call uh the moca colombo rooms that's right [Applause] called the breakfast sketch i did this with chi-chi who is absolutely marvelous she's just marvelous and while this thing explains itself i don't have to set it up just watch it on the monitor here kitchen scene oh my gosh [Laughter] [Applause] bobby bittman is a compilation of a lot of old comics when i was growing up and watching tv in the early 60s there's a lot of jerry lewis in bittman too in fact i follow lewis really carefully because he's really interesting the whole critical structure there is a couple of dozen people that are very human and that are just gifted enough to be literally critics people who examine your work and then formulate an opinion and print the opinion but because i am jew or because i am loud or because i am tall or because i have a rash this shouldn't in any way have an effect on their writing the public library association asked me to write this spot because i've made no bones about the fact that as a kid i was pretty ignorant fortunately for me i ended up in show business i thought he was great as a kid and round about 64 he started this serious side to lewis came up you know where he'd get into his causes and uh and everything else and i picked that up as bittman you know where where you know he just cut in after a huge [Laughter] but china was a comic in all seriousness i'm a star i'm important now but orson i'll tell you this as a comic in all seriousness i would gladly give all this up tomorrow for the life of one happy poor person and that is the truth we are governed by the united states of america and if you look into the books you will find out why i will probably have problems paying my taxes this year that's how much money i make this is howard this year's solid gold poster child howard the how are you look at the man he's talking to you come on as a comic in all seriousness uh i don't get emotional that often but this this kid [Music] [Music] 13 years ago took me through a day without pain by the time i went into the hospital on the 29th of september i was up to nine and ten percent a day now that includes this last telethon we saw you that's correct all of which i cannot remember there's not very much i can remember [Music] what i'm trying to say is i come from a great big wonderful town and i just love it it's called new york city yeah your basement's flooded now what i wanted to tell you in new york let's send in the money and do it now and how about long island i come from long island i grew up there there's boulder in freeport mariguanto seaford massachusetts massacre park evangel tower lindenhurst and babylon and how about rockwell center let's do it now and speaking of celebrities we have one right here he's got a lot of specials right here on sctv i'm talking about lola hello well lola tell me what are you doing here in mellonville right now oh something new for me sammy theater in the round i'll be starting in three wonderful place st joan elektra and minnie's boys right here at the state fair october 15th 16th and 17th and we'll be in duxbury the 22nd through the 29th so come out real star act everybody wait sam let's i'll tell you sam it's going to be a fantastic special you know you but speaking of fantastic shows i think this show right here is a fantastic show well i'll tell you to be quite honest now to be honest it's only great it's only fantastic because i have fantastic guests on the show [Applause] and that whole fanfare on the modeling show uh was based on the sammy davis show where people would come out and say sammy you're just this man is really terrific you as i said the fidella you did not come here to play you came here to do your thing serious serious very serious that's right [Laughter] pardon me that's the funniest thing i've ever heard cheetah being cheated is that's like like a a renoir it is really like a gogan it's one of a kind thank you because you are one-of-a-kind for a long time now and uh i would like to say since i would like to go on record and i'm sure the audience will back me up on this i would like to say that you people are the biggest bunch of plastic vinyl phonies i've ever come across take a good look at yourselves come on what are you doing sitting out here nothing but compliments you don't mean a word of it all you care about is yourselves i know that for a fact and the longer i stood out there i wondered why the hell did i ever want to be on such a stupid sleazy show oh you're a bunch of phony mannequins just phonies everyone it makes me sick sammy can i say something right now and this as a comic in all seriousness i it's not often you see young performers come on a show like this and and forget the business and so forth and so on and just come out and speak their minds i think it's a fantastic quality you know i love doing crazy hairdos and sometimes that'll make me feel a certain way or make me move a certain way or if i feel the age of the person you know or like chad kathy's loud i just move very fast and sort of big you know and clumsy i'm a favorite with my trudeau sort of a high so very loose that's not fair to what i do why do you say it's not fair why do you do it because they're on the side of me and it feels like i hurt people but at the same time i'll do anything for a laugh new this season on sctv barbie summers is on her own in the big city [Music] and the laughs just keep on coming i used to think you had to cook a tv dinner in the tv set come and get it okay here i am [Music] so stay tuned for the sexiest laughs when barbie summers proves that tranquilizers and a selection of hard liquor well martha it's our turn shall i tell them about our son no george you promised promise martha shall i tell them about the little bugger martha oh alright josh this this is it total war total war martha all right martha our son is dead our son died we never had a son [ __ ] [Laughter] [Music] the game that keeps people awake all night but andrew alexander when you were at the fire hall working with second city said at one point that andrea martin's problem was her insecurity and then one wonders if that isn't something you can say about every single performer in the world the best actors are people that can control their insecurity so they might not be insecure you know during eight days of i mean eight hours of filming or three hours at night when they're working and they're very self-contained and controlled and doesn't interfere with their work but when they go home to their mate i wasn't good they don't like you know that i think there's always an element of that with people with actors but um the best people really have it under control i for instance don't have it under control am i doing well all right say what's his job pay anyway well tom i can start here at a penny a day but tomorrow it goes down to a half penny day after that you have to pay me and that don't seem hardly fair man can't support a family on that that socialist talk tom boy you really burn my britches you think this land is urine by letting your own in it renting it out subdividing it that this piece of paper that's what makes it yawn that makes me mad muley that makes me mean mad that makes me mean mad nasty fighting bad mad bad i still don't make it urine not only is the second city show in syndication in the u.s and being seen in some 42 cities but now australia and england yes and i wonder has it made you rich does something like that make the performer rich they say it will sort of insurance that's like an investment i guess because it happens later it's supposed to happen later but we haven't seen the money the producers say they haven't seen the money so we're not going to for a while we would tape and then we didn't know if we were going to get we were going to get to do any more we'd do seven and then they go well what's what what happens after that they're talking and then we hear three more and then finally we got 26 and we got we got a whole season under our belt now what they're talking and it just went like that so in that talking time we did the rim shots remember it started as a half hour local show here in toronto and after seven shows we got uh picked up for syndication got no promotion no publicity it was just word of mouth that kept the show going and all these cities you know they kept the numbers up they had little pocket followings of uh people in different cities that were fanatic fans of the show i'd like to introduce our new station manager mrs edith brickley thanks for the intro guys hello everybody well he told me to get things rolling around here actually i'm just tickled to death to get this job it was two years pre roughly 76 77 we we wrote and shot 26 shows i know what you want to see and i'm here to give it to you come here i'm talking boobs i'm talking bombs i'm talking good looking hunky guys i'm talking neil sadaka i'm talking old steve cochran movies i'm talking something for everyone i came back i didn't come back the next year i brought them all to la the next year where and i kind of ran the table again and we we wrote 16 shows in seven weeks i think in l.a we had a big party at our house we're finishing off running a season of sctv and this party grew from 100 people to about a thousand people the house was just wall-to-wall people outside inside steven spielberg was there and i had had a couple drinks and um you thinking it was a joke i went over there he was uh he was just surrounded by a lot of people and he said john jones i really like your work thanks very much and i had a lot more confidence because i was uh under the influence of a couple rum and cokes at the time but he uh said i'd like you to do this picture in 1941 i have a role in it for you and that you'd be perfect yeah okay thanks i think i said a few other things too it was all a blur after that our second year we went to fewer stations then time for the third season that was it there was no not enough couldn't sell it enough to make it profitable so uh no more syndication that's what happened you remember so then the show went down your foot was out the door anyway no it wasn't out the door what are you it was an apple you had a series you got a pilot or something no no did you remember that that pilot you got well that was it the show the show was finished give us jobs jobs i'm sorry the studio will never hire weasels as gophers come on give us a chance we'll do anything we have no pride no pride huh hey how are you boys at fawnings oh we're the best no you're the best oh i like you see that guest star over there we'll make him feel important weasels so the young weasels did as they ordered from out of the woods into the big time they became the backbone of the television industry it's a young weasel there's second season and third season no one wanted the show which makes you feel good but this thing that i love this thing that i think is so good no one likes it we i thought we were always the uh the poor cousin this saturday night when we when i was doing the show we had no sm no known sponsors we had no network i mean we should have been on the uh the educational channel pbs we should have been on that but we've been closer to getting to our audience i think than we were syndicated in 50 markets we're proud to bring you innovative and unique programming in every way now i want to tell you about something special that we had uh put in just recently and coincidentally i've been getting some mail saying uh guy why do you uh use that wheelchair we we see you walk around well i'll tell you why it's for respect i get respect when i'm in that thing and i expect it and i think that led us to um a kind of comedy that was later acknowledged even by people who sat on that as being slightly more inspired or freer or smarter or something you know uh being the comedian's comedians or or playing to the band in a certain way the audience might not have gotten what we were doing but other comedy people seem to really appreciate it well i don't think he can be too confident in that area you know you make the wrong choice and then you got to live with it for the rest of your life i've seen this happen to young guys like yourself a million times where i don't you're you're on the top you're right in the crest of a wave you've got offers flooding in you make the wrong choice and you let the big one go and you take that little sucker it dies out fizzles right up and the next thing you're left with nothing high and dry with no career no job no nothing you want to be able to get a job knocking on the door as an extra yes it's phil needle with his years of show business expertise letting young people have the benefit of his experience i'll tell you the thing about relying on your looks is that you're gonna have a short career and my prediction for you is maybe six months maybe a year tops after that cosmetic surgery and then you're running the risk of having a face like a congo drum pull that skin back so tight boy you can see your face in your own skin me being on this show is has come at a time when i'm really confused about what i want in my career and it's time it's come at a time when i really have got to make decisions right now i'm negotiating in my head and with abc about signing a a contract with them a holding contract which is that i can't work for any other network in the united states so are you planning to uh to move on to a wider audience well i was thinking that who just finished the last the third season of the television show i was thinking of going to new york and looking for work door knocking i haven't done that for a while and uh but i just got a part in a film or at least for a month or so i think after that i might go to new york just to look i've got anything waiting for me but you're leaving going to new york or los angeles you know they sometimes say that you know you're giving up the ship and uh but it's not true it's just uh you're you know the bigger and better projects and so forth and you know your work is your work and uh you go where the uh where the work is you know i don't you know i mean i really don't feel that you know your work should be tied to any one particular country i mean you should be able to work anywhere you want anywhere you know especially you know in this in this business of ours this crazy kooky business during the brief summer fall we ventured outdoors to ask the people of canada point blank why so many of their entertainers are working in america no but no no no no no don't to vote it's funny well one thing is for money because of uh money you get bigger money more what do you call them the big bucks you know well i would say certainly in hollywood boy you get to think you're real important then you go to new york and you see these plays and you know how little you are compared to it all you know how much there is to learn um it's pretty easy to be big here to be a big fish in a little pond you know that whole thing but it is true as a matter of fact you left the show for a while to do a show called big city yeah tv and i was a co-host one week how many did you do 13 and 11 shows and i was his co-host for one of the shows did you get a lot of response from the show i was on not a lot no they canceled it right after that really that was the 13th show i don't blame you no no you are um anyway it was a lot of people like to blame but i wouldn't blame you for it no i wouldn't no neither a good show it was but it just went down into that i'm pretty quick i didn't think yeah it hit like a like a nose i would have thought 13 more for sure you know to give it give it a chance when we started season three john candy was doing big city comedy for ctv in canada catherine was taking a year off andrea and eugene were in la trying to get the sitcoms so we didn't have enough cast and so andrew said his find some people so joe brought tony rosado and robin in and i met rick at some party and thought he was really funny and so i brought moranis in there in 10 ruby shoes locations including fairview mall toronto dominion center and 95 bluer street west thank you fellas the kinsman club of alliston takes you back to the 50s with their alliston graffiti dance it happens saturday september the 9th from 9 p.m to 1 a.m at the alliston memorial arena tickets are 12 a couple third season rick came in for the first before we started shooting and he just was doing these characters just off the top of his head when we were writing the shows and that's how we got merv griffin and you know woody allen and animal expert joan embry the next merv griffin show that is the biggest chicken i ever saw palestinian autonomy must be realized and the refugees indeed have a right to their own homeland or the struggle will continue that's a marvelous marvelous hacking photo is that nice [Applause] when i arrived at the show we were shipped out to edmonton which was very far away and nobody nobody from the network or um or from anywhere wanted to visit us and they didn't really they didn't really care what we were doing because we were on at 12 30 at night and so um you wrote and then you took it to the table where these people were and if you made them laugh then it must have been funny because they were funny so you shot it as a hollywood star one of the most eventful things would be to go to work early in the morning look out the tinted glass of my chauffeured limousine at the hundreds of extras being herded around like cattle and play a little game let's see how close i could get to them without acknowledging their presence one of the greatest experiences i've had as a hollywood extra was working with elizabeth taylor and richard burton on the set of cleopatra it was particularly challenging to me as an actor because i got to play about 10 different parts i was an egyptian foot soldier a roman sailor a poor person in one of the many street scenes but aside from that it was an exciting flick to work on what the hell i almost called them [Music] for total control geez i'm sorry everybody look why don't we just make some popcorn and order a pizza and just sit around the fireplace we have a new channel that you can watch from sctv it's called alpha channel this not only gives you first run movies this gives you movies before their first run it gives you movies before they're released we can give you movies while they're being made hang on don't miss the exciting allen alda in his third meeting this week already with his agents all fine all right a quarter to seven okay okay surely look i mean let me call you back i'm in the middle of something with ellen alder here shirley says hello i said load he's okay goodbye all right alan what's the problem yeah well i don't want to work with that guy in the film that's all there is to it what are you talking about he's got fourth billing he's making a fraction of the money you're making i don't care he's a punk he's trying to upstage me and i don't like that what do you what i don't know what the hell you want you're writing you're performing you're producing you're starring in the thing you're directing the thing that's right i want to be the star and i'm going to crush him if he tries to pull anything like that i can't believe this i can't believe it can i be blunt groucho once said any club that would have me as a member is not worth joining um what are you doing on television what a wonderful question thank you am i blushing i'm i'm actually feeling an awkward kind of embarrassment and the truth is that i had stolen it from uh from eric idle i had seen eric idle do uh david frost interviewing david frost on python and i thought it was a great way to avoid working with any other other cat remember all those lies we kept saying yeah that's a good cabin we were throwing these real nasty lines in and you say gee i don't know if i want to oh come on do it seriously you're a very funny man i saw that routine you did on sullivan years ago darwin and the monkeys that routine very funny funny connie funny actually um that darwin piece outraged bishop sheen who was in the audience and sullivan was torn as to whether to introduce him or not that night fearing that his show had suddenly turned into battle of the network theologians whatever but i did go up and guest for a couple of weeks and i when i got up there i i saw how the production had been had just uh it was amazing we'd never had production like this in toronto it was you know great direction great lighting great sets i mean it really looked dazzling and once i got up there i said whoa this is good how do i stay on yeah you hit the you hit the ground running you just picked right up where you left off you were bossing people around yeah that's it well you know he did and i gotta say you remember what i really realized was we never had to hold for laughs or we never thought about laughs or never thought about the punchline or the joke um because there was a crew that had to be silent because we were taping it i think that really influences the tone of the piece a lot and a guy named harvey popovich who was a chicken farmer by day and was trying to make a little extra money because the the chicken business wasn't that great he was he was a technician at this itv station and he was charged with laughing this network show and he didn't know any of the references he didn't know any of the jokes he just was looking for holes to yeah you don't play for the laughs right you hope you get one eventually but you have no sense of it because the show was on so much later than you know you'd do a piece and then it would get into a show somewhere and you might catch it on tv or you might not and then somebody will talk to you about it months later you go oh you like that great right you know i was like oh yeah we're doing yeah this show's actually going out to people okay at three in the morning if you can't stay up for sc tv wake up for fctv [Applause] [Music] did you see that did you see all those cats just leaping right at you from the screen right at you i don't know how they do that how they train those cats to attack like that but look if you're going to watch the movie in 3d next saturday night you gotta send away for your glasses so be sure you send 27 bucks 27 to me count floyd care of sc tv and then you can watch dr tong's house of cats is saturday night on monster chiller horror theater [Music] this was quite common back back the time they booked in these movies that weren't that good they were these bad sci-fi movies but a host would come out sometimes dressed as frankenstein or something or the mummy and uh and you know and pitch you know the movie and say and interrupt it to sell you know commercial time and so i just basically picked a program from pittsburgh called chiller theater my experiment is almost complete all i need now is a human body for my operation and then my name or alongside some of the greatest scientists in history [Applause] bruno go out and find me a human body yeah to think they laughed at me oh yes they all laughed at me they laughed at me in budapest they looked at me in prague usually the characters we always play are kind of vulnerable characters uh the schmingies or dr tung and woody tomius jr on the 3d horror films with count floyd and there's always a there's always a little sensitivity in the character it's always fun it's very easy to work with eugene i see what's bothering you you're still upset because francis yelled at you i told you don't worry about it i'm not i'm not you are friends i am not i'm not you're upstairs you are too you're not you are a kid you're not you are i'm not you don't be a baby you are you're a liar you're a baby grow up baby boo francis putting all his eggs in one basket with steak from the hut why don't you go hang around with your new friend francis cognac going at the camera yeah that was going past the camera that was when john just came back to do the show and he was he'd just done something uh down in la and they were screwing up in the studio and they were giving john a hard time and he kept talking about spielberg wouldn't do this gilbert wouldn't do that he would never treat me this way that was a if you watch that stewardesses thing all the way through that was one of our better more interesting shoots i'm here with francis ford coppola perhaps the greatest director in the world and francis i want to thank you for allowing me to interview you because as we all know you don't give out uh interviews well cal floyd as you know i'm a big fan i've come to realize that selling a picture means selling myself for example if the children watching monticello or theaters cal floyd like me then they may want to invest in the picture so i now will talk to virtually anyone and that includes yourself right thank you have you ever considered investing in a picture uh our show's like the movie the producers uh kind of a tax deal a number of numbers all right i'm being bitter you didn't come through with that per diem [Music] i can say that now my lawyers talk to me i'm clear um you were in stripes uh the movie with uh bill murray and it what it barely broke made it look like 80 million or so i mean you know uh but you're back again you got up off the canvas and you're back again and you're doing another film and i thank bill for that and ivan reitman and harold i asked bill about that he didn't remember you being in the film but you uh again what are you doing now what's the film so success hasn't hasn't changed you it's a corny question but uh do you feel it has i guess in a way maybe it has a little bit sure you know my attitudes are i'm a little more cynical i think now than i was before and that's bad i'm trying to change that what's it like to go out to try to be funny when you're just when you feel terrible when you feel cynical when working with this group it's really easy it's very easy if you're down somebody pick you up and if they're down you try to pick them up it's really good as i was saying ladies and gentlemen uh we here at sctv are proud of the fine programming and the entertainment we've been bringing to you that's right and we're particularly proud of the comedy we've been bringing to you because we feel it's well highly unique innovative and zany however that uh highly unique innovative zany comedy has been keeping us out of the big bucks for some time now that's right we've been losing sponsors by the bus load they don't seem to feel our comedies hip enough we're not reaching those pimply-faced kids zonked out on quaaludes well in uh in order to accommodate these kids uh we we've decided to go hip here at sctv that's right if you want hip you're gonna get hip ladies and gentlemen live from edmonton it's thursday night hello everybody i'm earl cannonbear and uh this is the first time i've hosted thursday night live who's been eating this nixon do anybody want a drink good i have some great [Music] [Applause] hair ladies and gentlemen i'm sorry we're running out of time kids it's the end of the show we didn't get time for the pig sketch good night everybody brandon essentially loved liked our cast he liked the talent in our cast he liked all of us he wanted to put us in saturday night live he wanted to do saturday night live with us yes so i heard that at one point yes there's everything john belushi said uh when he he was trying to convince me to do saturday night live and he said and he played frank sinatra's new york new york and he said look this is new york is rome this is rome everything is everything is in new york and he's right i guess in a way i just like the suburbs of rome i guess well that was 1981 during the kind of gene domain era of the just when the original cast had left right 1979 or something like that and the new cast came in new producer yeah i did hear that that they wanted to put us in the saturday night 11 30 time slot oh not not to take over the show well i heard it was to actually do it take or do the show in many parts of the world people are not allowed to laugh without a government permit exercise your right as an american watch saturday night live this saturday with rod's story to film by yoko ono and surprises i said i'm going to call bran antarcticoff and uh we called his office and we actually got through remember that they said i said joe flaherty wants to talk to britt and and he got on the phone and i was thrown because i didn't think he'd answer and uh i just said hi hi brad did uh it's joe flaherty uh we sure would like to be on nbc you just out of the blue decided to call brandon tarlikov yes because andrew never told us they were in discussions with nbc so anyway i called him and uh and he said yes we're interested uh i know he didn't say that he says we're discussing it then i found out afterwards that uh you know that phone call is that weekly phone call got us the job on nbc that's it now look here's ontario why would you want to take over a television station it's really quite simple i love television and there's a desperate need for television entertainment on the planet zhantar you see after the great entertainment wars of 25 37az santa was left with virtually no television personalities whatsoever therefore it is imperative to send your cast up to zantar to do one nine show cycle three best loves don't be ridiculous you will never get actors to go all the way to the planet satire now either you go along with my plan or i shall destroy you immediately you have one minute sun car has spoken what are we gonna do friday the original castaways are back in an all-new adventure the harlem globetrotters on gilligan's island then it's an all-star special on tv censored bloopers and after the tonight show it's the premiere of the sctv network 90 comedy show all friday on nbc next up uh three very talented people from sc tv and you see them on nbc on friday nights on a show called sctv network 90. is it a little tougher to get to slip things past the sensors for the network than it was say for the uh independent producers well we're sensitive right at the beginning now they read through our scripts and sensors where we used to just find out what was censored after i mean later on they just wouldn't show the show or they'd cut the piece out of the show and we'd find out why we have a standards and uh practices guy right there where we do the show now and uh we did a lot of piece which is anointment do you know what no i don't what is great how do you clean them there are qualities i don't even use for uh scabies and lice and crabs no i don't use that he usually finds out if somebody knows what it is [Music] your license scapies and crabs are dead with just a few downs of creamy cool ladder if you get caught in a funky situation clean up your act with quick killing colada contain seven natural pesticides and 10 fruit juice to get bugs out of your skin and keep on living [Music] uh licensed babies and crabs and they cut crabs on the script right from the beginning they said we wouldn't get away with it and supposedly they had a two-hour argument on the phone and finally got it back in that's the amazing thing to do they get on the phone and say well now listen jim what about crabs yes don't forget to watch gene shalom with rona barrett roger ebert and gene cisco it's america's best love critics after a serbic bench it's a great hour of prime access television show it shines at the mainsail of joe but looks like all i get valtteri support from a mediocre backup team of second-rate on-chair acrylics whose musical and comedic talents run with gambit from a to sweet flower don't break [Music] don't miss the gene shallot critic special tonight's a hot night guest host shelley winters plus the plasmatics want you to join in the late night five and to explore that stupid shrimp on your right next on friday i know that when sdtv was first announced by nbc there were the inevitable and and off quoted comparisons to fridays over on abc and saturday night live snl here how fair are those comparisons because you really aren't doing those shows you're doing your own program yet invariably when somebody's satirical or very very funny or bright or new as you all are come on they say well this is like saturday night live and this way and maybe it's like fridays and they draw these comparisons what does that do i think the fact that we're on late night on the weekends and we're 90 minutes it's inevitable you know so uh we just hope we're going to drive him down the toilet [Laughter] we're a pretty competitive bunch we're not bitter about it i was looking to you because i have a very distinct memory of us in edmonton together watching um the first network 90 show that we've put together we realized for the first time that that it was good and we were really proud of it and by then we started to get we had started to get some feedback and i think after that night we started to believe that there might be somebody out there watching it because we we really had no connection to the audience at all hello i'm dr raul withers chairman of the board of the national midnight star maybe you've seen our show last week it was a pretty good show but we we got slapped with over 5 million bucks in lawsuits now what i want to know is this how come when stars tell lies about themselves it's called publicity but when we do it it's called slander that's a pretty nasty word slender hey people come on this is the 20th century we're all in this for a buck well i'd be a liar if i says that i like doing this job just because i like sitting behind a big desk i'm in it for the money just like all them celebrities is uh is in it for we're all in it for money oh and look at this ever seen one of these in a publication before ooh too vulgar even for me look what you'll find on page four a ballot form to the american people's global golden choice awards that's right sweetheart that's where you people at home get to pick your favorite stars tv shows and movies simply by marking an x right there on the ballot forum and mailing the damn thing in and you get to see all the winners and losers next week when the american people's global golden choice awards are televised live on sctv sponsored of course by the national midnight star look who's up for best newcomer of the year skip bitman and p is the door fighting it out i wonder who's going to win i don't know it's not fixed what a night bill well i'm sure you were you just been finishing a show you're probably having one of those all-night wrap parties that entertainers oh what do you hear about those the lies they write about me in the national midnight star i'd like to see it okay lola uh you're doing a special uh i believe uh it's it's on tonight at nine o'clock it's it's my first live special and it's going to be so alive it's scary and the name of the show i i i think is lola bouncing back to you now uh where have you been what does that mean nothing it's just a name don't make a big thing of it well okay obviously somebody else got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning and why not i mean this is an honest show we we we just do it and tell it like it is here in the morning what are you doing there what what are those just a little bit of love me's the hell is wrong with you trying to sell yourself with drugs this is a family show where we kids watch this show i don't want them to see that entertainers fake their way through performances with drug induced euphorias that doesn't hang on this show that may swing in your dressing room and at your wild wacky parties but not here not with bill needle now lola i want to ask you a question if you can just lola where the hell are you going i want to bear your children look lola i hate to do this but considering the condition you're in uh i'm canceling your special tonight all right guy you're kidding god listen oh it's a big deal i was a little off today i'm rested now i'm ready for tonight you're high i'm not high guy please oh look uh someday you'll thank me for this lola but all right when limbo freezes over guy i can't believe you do this to me you know how hard i've worked for this guy listen let me do that special i'll break my legs tomorrow you know they're insured in your name no no show thanks guy you're canceling my special just like you canceled our love well i don't want to live anymore mr larue i'll owe you for these okay hey do you think that mrs lola's okay i knocked down her dressing room door and she didn't answer me yeah she probably jumped off a roof by now so many lives mr earl mr earl not now well i just want to show you my last chocolate bar for the staff association what a goof you too bad about mrs lola yeah she was so young too yeah oh boy she had to kill herself what she jumped off the roof and killed herself oh it's so sad why did she do it what are you saying lola killed herself who told you this oh mr larue did you talk to anybody else about this what did anybody corroborate 15 seconds earl oh never mind hold me lola heather thanks obit get it yourself what are you gonna do we've got a story to write lola heatherton top grossing nightclub performer and frequent guest here at sctv died today after she took her own life when she jumped from the roof of the sctv studios the tormented star was apparently upset over a decision to cancel a television special that was to air tonight on sc tv thank you yes brandon it is going on tonight a regular time i don't know how these rumors get started bye-bye all right surely tell mrs quickly there's been a change of plans the lola special is going on tonight have her put those promos on the air immediately yes life's so lonely at the top [Music] you buy and sell my autograph but in your eyes i hear a laugh it's just as if you've slapped me with a kid glove [Music] no one cares [Music] you know what i'm talking about mr guy cavanero get her off put me on the back until we hit the sack wait for the good name names mr bobby who was i bittman mr johnny why don't you suffocate me larue your account like you're so bad it's scary how are you bittman is back on the sammy maudlin show [Music] libby wolfson you did a play yes i'm taking my own head screwing it on right and no guy is going to tell me anything right yes it was and i i have seen shows worse than that i mean really shows worse than that in the state a feminist point of view women taking themselves very seriously john you know loves this topic don't you it's fine today yeah yeah you know what it's like working with five men on the show well you wouldn't know that no no kind of like snow white and five dwarfs my doctor says i'm working too hard but i love all the pressure i'm only truly fulfilled when i work 21 hours a day except when i have cramps of course if men only knew benny doesn't understand me always telling me what to do no he sounds just like my father jack treats me as if i was a child but you never were you've always been so wise and you're the most brilliant woman alive if men only knew woman you're such a mystery to me i'm too obsessed with my masculinity i wind up there with the tv what do you want me to say it was cute i don't know what these brides are yelling you know i'll tell you why i'll tell you why i think that they uh they come here is uh is for a bite to eat and to have something to look at max how much was it 18. it was eighty was nine nine dollar each so it was a good piece of meat that's a deal so she goes up on stage she tells her whole life story so she embarrasses the hell out of her whole family so what am i supposed to take from that am i supposed to go up on stage am i supposed to tell my whole life story no no one's supposed to do that especially with this kind of play there's a bad play relax the costumes were perfect precautions big deal the costumes and catherine o'hara plays a character that i i just can't believe woody sue bopper wilson sue barker simpson sue bopper simpson why is she called stupid about this character we've done libby wolfson three times and katherine plays my friend each time we do it as a different person you probably have only seen that one and um this is really interesting i'll kill you i'm finding what's fascinating i've never heard before but sue buffer simpson who is the daughter of the late big bopper yes that's right yes yes johnny how's it looking today looks very good we got a good club we fielded a very good club this year and uh looks like we're gonna walk away with a trophy we're right in the middle of the chant here for the itv wolverines and here comes dave thomas who is gonna first base up i'll be backing up uh my uh good friend john candy here on first and uh anybody tries to get in there and it's not good i'm gonna call it i wanna welcome you to the first uh melonville playoff we're here this is for wonderful nbc network here i got the owner of the wolverine team right here with me i want to ask you just a few questions i know you're tough i know you're tough i can tell that just from the way the team looks here it's not a really bright sunny day it's a little bit of a muddy field you think you guys are going to get off the rack are you kidding we got this whole game sewed up yeah joseph o'flaherty taking a heavy spill there as the wolverines get a base hit joey that was kind of a heavy spill you took there trying to get that ball earlier on what happened there well i knew i didn't have a shot for it a few years back maybe but uh i just didn't have a shot but um i i got in front of it and then i knew john had the ball so i had to get out of the way you know so i hit the dirt real fast well the arm's okay yeah the arm's okay and uh i don't know how it looked but um did it look bad did i look bad out there okay let's move on try earlier on with catherine o'hara with us what happened there dear well i don't know nervous it's a little too exciting for me this game and i'm very female and it's hard to surpass that you watch our team play baseball those guys are bombs out there next time on you watching the game it will be playing we can play baseball they don't know how to play the bums that we play thank you well in edmonton as i said uh we had no other life there was the show and it was seven days a week except sunday afternoons if pittsburgh was playing in a football game then we had to shut down but once we got back to toronto i ran into you at a voiceover one morning and pick up a little extra scratch and uh somebody had a brunch on saturday and there was just always something else to do for the first time and um and we were starting to you know look at other possibilities so touring with bob and doug perhaps yeah by then the mckenzie brothers had sort of happened and sort of happened the incredibly popular great white north sketches are improvised several at a time and on camera maybe if you have a show it's a good idea to have a topic coming in good luck guys take off good luck we don't know what we're going to talk about again for the canadian shows we needed canadian content so they said give us two minutes of canadian content so you know dave and rick said well you know what do you want us to do just sit and fry back bacon and drink beer if that's what they want that's what we'll give them so they started doing that the nbc was were they they weren't crazy about bob and doug until after uh until they started hearing about the mail then then they loved it what you mean people from the states write in about this oh we love those two characters they're great love them back i said too much about nbc as it is you know ultimately i'm gonna have to suck up to them and uh and be real nice and fun over them and tell them that i didn't mean anything that i said that was nasty okay good day i'm bob mckenzie this is my brother doug this is our album and welcome to it the great white north album getty lee is here from rush uh thanks for coming down to do our hit [Music] here the international hoser day parade honors bob and doug's discovery of the elusive canadian identity this is a cause for celebration because the true nature of the canadian psyche is almost never revealed a lot of the personal appearances that we've made at bob and doug have as bob and dick have been touch and go we've come very close to going down and at the last minute come up with something our album and oh my brother's finger what happened whoa he broke his finger eh yeah hey doc tell him hey i was picking my nose and we hit a car yeah when you pull up to a record store like a as you see five six seven thousand kids out in the street our my first assumption was not look at all the kids that came out for us i thought there was an accident a fire there was some sort of it was a dangerous situation we should move on okay nominees for most promising group are number one godot how many people vote for god yeah no wait go raise your hand yeah raise your hands don't clap dave if you voted for god raise your hands one five through thirty two okay come on do it right muffins martha and the muslim okay and it became very popular here in canada and when they released the record uh the record so i think it went triple platinum here in canada and it's also doing very well down in the states and they went on and just came back from a promotional tour of the record and they said that uh the not only are the mckenzie brothers gaining popularity but you know the show itself is now see there's a business run for you give them free beer you tell the hostess come out there all the free beers they want their in the back bacon it won't cost you 10. and the thing is is it that 2.5 million 100 000 people 25 to get in that's only the gate there's other ways to make money gentlemen he knows all the different ways you can make money as well as just the gate tell them well he's talking about merchandising that george lucas is a genius and i've admired and similarly we would uh have uh our posters t-shirts our buttons our our toques or our parkas everything everything to do with bob and doc we're talking every conceivable way of merchandising the name and likeness of the bob and doug mckenzie mckenzie need to do we need these two hosers that's all we need we can hook thing around these two holes and all we got to do is get them out to that weekend got your two hoses no doubt about them all right sit down yeah beauty two-toned cue cards uh the black is yours bob and doug you're red red he's as white as a tuna take off eh he's white cause he's from the great white north jewel can i uh see you for a moment please thanks for sticking up for me that's what brothers is for eh what is your problem nothing except i'd like to know why the jewel hallmark dancers are good enough for every show except this one well let me tell you something mr caballero one of those union dancers they had nothing to do with it now jewel this is a big budget show and those two morons are the stars i expect you to treat them like stars all right now you'll make my job a lot easier if you just keep your personal problems to yourself you understand fine another minority heard from morgan fairchild joyce de wind tony bennett and all union dancers on bob and doug mckenzie's great white north palace coming up on the next sctv we're wild and crazy guys yeah we're we're looking for uh swinging american foxes are you guys wait wait wait he's steve martin i'm conehead hey do it well excuse me eh okay give me a six pack and i'll consume it okay go now go are you guys sure you have the right to dress cool that's you what red oh bob that's it cut it get it off the air thanks get it up pull the plug get it off right away put anything on run anything morgan's blue oh here's a here's a typo or a mistake on the car see period please do not adjust yourself it's the difference between tv and movies hey okay go back to movies geez now that hoser's growling take off lee we're doing our movie don't wreck our show you hoser okay uh another topic zoom out eh let's show how big the screen is see what happened film bro you cut off our movie it's only a preview hey i didn't want to show you dancing we're leaving you all you got a man that came to see strange proof take off this is just a preview our movie's not coming out till the summer you not been saving their allowance for weeks to see this movie you lied to them you better you better you better come don't you tell them we'll get that guy with a big voice to tell direct from sc tv it's bob and doug mckenzie spilling across the screen this summer in strange brew nice voice hoser thank you beauty now tell us about the movie because it seems to me that you were very effective on sctv on a three or four minute spot but i managed to know how you parlayed a three and four minute idea really into a what a 90 minute movie yeah i don't know the jury's going to be out on that for a while until the audience takes a look at it uh we thank you there's there's someone that's made the judgment now we launched him we did we lost rick and dave oh gee i didn't know that no i mean they're all oh boy you've kind of left us behind well that's funny because we've talked here the rest of you would do well don't worry about it there's no i thought we'd get a movie what i thought we'd get a movie no they they wanted to go and i i think that's okay you know i think that everybody probably will at one time yeah well eventually not now no you're sticking with it i've left the show you're ready i've oh have you i've learned what it's like on my own oh i'm staying in the security of second city i like the woman i understand you're renewed at the end of every day yes uh-huh i'm a daily player there uh yeah in the card i'm there early fred yeah i'm gonna go to my favorite theater right now and just see a whole bunch of movies good movies bad movies all kinds of movies i don't even know the difference anymore so sometimes i think that i'm in the movies myself today i'm woody woodpecker well there you have it there there's a fine case of a cinematic schizophrenia right there she's seen too many films oh is this film a hit or a bomb or what i have a career to think about industry people read pauline kale and pauline kill can have a profound effect on what producers as opposed to directors yes indeed think about you did that rave she gave you really affect your career did you get a feedback from producers saying i read pauline kale yes i did actually yes i think it was very influential for me i received a lot of phone calls that week that that that came out and as people started taking me a little more seriously i started uh people were actually offering me work i'm just trying to think how do you keep a family together when you're doing crazy things and it's brilliant i'm a great fan of yours is it difficult keeping people together and that's that's sort of high pressure i think so i think so but uh that cast always up until you know last year really kept itself together and uh it's ironic that you know we were together and and and tight during the lean years and then when things started to go well for us people kind of drifted off you know i did second city for two years the stage and then i left second sunday i went down to los angeles i did a tv series that james brooks wrote called the associates it's called short order they go on for three shows they check out to see how it is if it's not good it's off and a show like the associates uh where it is not blatantly there is not a girl in the in a very small towel looking for a dog bending uh it's not there's nothing immediate that attracts you to it other than kind of an attempt at kind of a cerebral kind of writing that grows and it it's a it's a type of show that grows on you as did mary tell her more its second year its ratings improved and by the end of the second year was a big hit it was a classic but uh networks don't are very hesitant to put that kind of blanket faith into shows anymore well i'm a but i'm a big girl now could be often two shows and that was on and off and then i did next year i did a tv series for abc called i'm a big girl now where i played neil striker the office boy with thomas harris it was danny thomas diana konova and sherry north i was sheri's assistant this was a show that we did 19 episodes uh and it wasn't you know killing in the ratings and and that was canceled and now we're into 1982 and you know now i'm kind of looking around what figure next and and and these peoples you know dave rick and catherine were going to leave the show so that gave me this great opportunity kind of you know rescued i did three 90-minute shows with the original cast with dave and rick and catherine all involved and this is the first read-through for a while and i had written uh a piece with my brother michael called jerry lewis live at the champs-elysees louie that's a queue [Music] [Applause] look when i do the cry you do the cue cry cue you like your job do it he's a genius genius remember she said how could you have gotten two pieces into your first read-through you know because i you know i was green green and excited to be in this brian show uh and then i remember after the read-through mike short kept a bottle of whiskey in the bottom he had two bottom drawers and uh so first mike and i went and took a swig of whiskey and then there was a knock in the door and there was joe flaherty mike can i have a little shot of that mosquito i i did for about a year on stage and then i didn't uh and i left stage in 79 or something and then when i joined sctv i i had hadn't done eggmanly on television i thought it was too bizarre uh i don't know why but i thought it was too bizarre for for television or just for anything and uh i remember the first eggnog piece i did uh ed was uh attacked by a snake he was doing a seminar teaching or something and i dave thomas walked through the uh oh david st come here help me with this watch it and tell me what you think he just looked at me and said what did you say i looked at this thing this snake coming out of a wicker basket and ed with the hair up and all the moves and i jesus christ marniak i don't tonight it's sweet week right here on sctv join host johnny larue for half an hour of fun and jiggle on jumping for dollars then immediately following a special tribute to the music of aaron copeland starring the dallas cowgirls then live tonight jamie farr lorne green linda lavin merlin olsen and gavin mcleod star in one great super special night of the primetime stars well what's bugging me is the nielsen rating system was also begun for television anyway was begun in the 50s and it was designed to monitor the popularity of the old three networks and that's it well ratings have never worked and now there are so many options open to the viewing public but nielsen can't keep up with them all furthermore with the advent of video tape recorders there's no longer any such thing as prime time people can watch their favorite shows whenever they feel like it they tape it they watch what they want when they want so as far as i'm concerned the ac nielsen company can go take a flying yeah yeah a needle here what well what are they one time i think we were getting a little bit too cheeky or mouthy with him or we just kicked out one too many producers and he sent up the ratings you remember just to humiliate us and letters and remember that it was a pile of letters people wrote in 10 bc what is that crap you got on friday nights boy that's that short yeah that was that was scary well i'm glad he was on our side yes i am take a read from this paper thank you don ganuchi i as a television broadcaster do solemnly agree that it is in the interest of television as a vital medium to encourage programs that are innovative reflect a high degree of creative skill deal with significant moral and social issues and present challenging concepts and other subject matter that relate to the world in which the viewer lives good morning and welcome to today i'm jane pauley in our top story things seem to be calming down at the networks with the remarkable recovery of guy caballero we'll have more on that later and jane later on in the show i'll have a candid conversation with ed azner about his better defeat to junior samples for the california state tennessee i also do solemnly agree that in selecting program subjects and themes great care must be exercised to be sure that the treatment and presentation are made in good faith janet yes jack have you seen my underwear why do i look like a lawyer a lawyer i don't have your briefs and not for the purpose of sensationalism or to shock or exploit the audience or appeal to prurient interests or morbid curiosity all right jimmy the greek new orleans baltimore who do you pick well i don't like either one of those two teams brent so i didn't bother picking anybody well i understand that phyllis is giving the edge to new orleans phyllis phyllis why don't you just shut up about that dame must burger i'm gonna plant you right in the kisser okay what about atlanta green bay i also agree that television is seen and heard in nearly every home these homes include children and adults of all ages embrace all races and all varieties of philosophic and religious conviction and reach those of every educational background television broadcasters must take this pluralistic audience into account in programming their stations all this and a lot more as the today show continues right after this what the hell is wrong with you you've been dipping into the uzo again well i've been dipping a bit but not as much what businesses are yours muskrat come on you want to fight let's go yeah okay great come on [Music] it's they're obligated to bring their positive responsibility for professionalism and reason judgment to bear upon all those involved in the development production and selection of programs uh tell me about the now what is the status of the program now uh sct well i guess sctv is uh canceled it's it's it's not going to be on at 12 30 to 2 on nbc that we know we'll probably be moved to 4 30 to 6 on sunday opposite catholic mass that seems to be how about this but it was brandon tartikoff too it was we were in his office and we were he we were informed that the show was not going to be shown in its time slot he was offering us a new one to go up against um cbs 6 60 minutes which was a powerful sunday night that's monday night and it was kind of like the family hour so he wanted to make sctv into a family kind of show and uh and gene said well what do you mean by that and he says well you know like she said yeah could i um i'd still be able to do bittman and uh and brandon said no but maybe you could do uh bittman's uh nephew that'd be good and then gene said yeah that'd be good but uh maybe i won't do batman's w maybe i'll two bitmap and that was about it okay over uh before we go on john tell us about fctv it's now going to be on as we mentioned a kind of a cable on a table yeah yeah they were um excommunicated from nbc [Music] so to speak are you going to be part of the new no i left the show oh that's [Laughter] you know what's sad was i wanted to go after i was i wanted to keep sc tv on the air so much yes i was willing to consider it i was willing to consider it i just uh i just thought well maybe we could make it work as a as a as a sort of a childish uh wildlifer you make a crazy christmas movie you get frank bailey's name above the title it's a million dollar idea well the studios aren't buying it now they're getting cold feet and quite frankly i don't blame them one bit i mean who the hell knows who frank bailey is today you do i do that's right and now my ass is on the line well sorry i got to do something about it i got to think fast right toby right on marty you better believe it i'm 100 behind you in that frank you know what the greatest irony of this whole mess is i was a big fan of yours i grew up watching frank bailey films no one ever did anything without good reason in your films did they just good people making the best of a bad situation the way life should be instead of instead of uh the way it really is that is exactly the kind of film i want to make for you mr simmons simmons yeah that's not mercy oh no way marty simmons would never fire an idol did you know you frank i know this business and the kinds of films that you and i want to make just don't sell today the kids don't want them but how do the poor user today know what they want when all you have them is they don't have to know it's my job to tell them now look i'll be honest with you i've got a three-picture deal and you're not helping this christmas movie has to make money that's the bottom line sorry but i'm gonna have to let you go listen i'm heading back to the coast now you know how treacherous these roads get after dark up here in the sticks i want you to wrap things up in a week on schedule and don't go over budget what's the key word demographics good boy all right go do babe okay let's roll one rowling marker miracle at holiday new title all girls private school christmas break 31 take one action hey grandma why don't you go in the kitchen and try some hash brownies okay but it better be good dope you know how granny likes to fry your brain at christmas you know i kind of feel sorry for those kids why is that well they needed that land for an orphanage but mr cribbs doesn't think it's good business but i remember there was a great looseness that that last year and a lot of uh great pieces got written there was an ease to it i don't think um uh i think we actually did better than we thought we're gonna do so ladies and gentlemen barney roll the music would you dear help mom out the final curtain has fallen the death now has been sounded for without you we were nothing but believe me you haven't seen the end of sc tv forever there are people who cry out for superior television there will be an sctv wherever mediocrity wears its ugly head there will be an sctv whether it's from a tiny station in a little town like mellonville or a satellite somewhere in space there will always be an sctv good night and good luck geez i think that message really worked let's start calling the bread [Music] we had a significant impact in america you know i felt this is the group you guys liked us in america all of you here but you know i wouldn't say a significant impact this is a small group of really devoted fans and thank you for that i think well maybe it's a maybe it's a vocal minority but um i i keep running into people that talk about sctv all the time no you know i mean i can i can say it as more objectively because i was owning the show for two years but they're i mean in two years in a row sctv was nominated for the first year three and then five nominated for best writing five of the nominations they received all five so obviously it was more than just to handle i think certainly within the community there was a respect for the show and the characters i created [Applause] the the majority moral majority show of sctv network [Music] [Applause] is not long i got to be on the set in september of december oh you yes i'm kidding oh [Laughter] uh i i can't believe that we got something up here bigger than the cast of the hill street blues which i've done on our show all right i'd like to thank you sorry uncle milty go sleep okay [Music] you

Channel: Goose OD

Views: 4,471

Rating: 4.9705882 out of 5

Keywords: SCTV, SNL, Toronto, Comedy, JohnCandy, MartinShort, SchittsCreek, Late Night, TV History, Documentary

Id: iGPCHzH1TGA

Length: 118min 15sec (7095 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 03 2021