SCTV

I was in the Second City Stage show in Toronto when Bernie Sahlins and Andrew Alexander decided to do the sketch comedy show that would become known as SCTV. Bernie was pissed off at Lorne Michaels for pirating talent from his theaters for SNL (Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, and John Belushi) and decided the only way to stop that talent drain was to start his own show. So he and Andrew went to Canada’s Global television and made what they called a “facility deal” – Global would provide the studio (stages, cameras, lights, editing equipment, and crew) and Andrew and Bernie had to find the money for everything else (writers, actors, directors). Bernie had a lot of respect for a Chicago Second City alum, Harold Ramis, who was in Los Angeles doing TVTV when Bernie approached him to come to Canada and work with his old alumni Joe Flaherty to put this TV show together.

Meanwhile Andrew went looking for the money to pay everybody. He knew that a Canadian broadcast deal needed some sort of U.S. component and, since SNL already was on network television, it was unlikely that any network would touch another late night sketch comedy show. Television syndication seemed like the best way to augment the facility deal at Global TV. Enter Jack Rhodes, whose company Filmways was a name I recognized as an American distributor and sometime producer of television. For example, at the end of the TV show, “The Beverly Hillbillies” sexy Ellie Mae Clampet used to do the voiceover “This has been a Filmways Presentation”. So I knew the name because I loved Ellie Mae.

Rhodes thought he could sell the show to independent television stations across the U.S. in the same way he had sold reruns of former network shows like “The Beverly Hillbillies”. For the first season of SCTV, Rhodes put the show in 48 U.S. markets – which, luckily for us, included New York and Los Angeles.

Harold came to Toronto and, with Joe, made his first recruiting stop at the Second City Stage company. That is how Catherine O’Hara and I were included in the cast – we were in stage company at that time. So, by sheer chance, was John Candy who had just returned to Toronto from Pasedena where a stage company Bernie put together (also including Eugene Levy and Betty Thomas) failed and closed after a couple of months. Candy was a natural fit for a TV show – a man whose presence was admired but never captured by Lorne Michaels. And Levy was among the most experienced of the Second City Toronto players having done all of the shows there until Bernie had shipped him off to Pasedena. And then there was Andrea Martin, a bottle rocket of talent and energy who had charmed audiences with her talent from Toronto’s Godspell company through several Second City stage reviews.

So that was the cast – Harold Ramis and Joe Flaherty, John Candy, Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara and myself. Catherine was a much better actor than I was and this played a big part in her selection for the show. But I was a writer. I had demonstrated that in a couple of reviews and Flaherty has told me since that this played a big part in my selection for the show.

During the initial writing and concept stage of the show, Bernie was still very involved. Bernie wanted the TV show to be smart – to emulate the earlier Second City comedy of Elaine May and Mike Nichols – which was fine. We all wanted that. But Bernie was an academic and wanted the show to reflect the classics – which is why, in one of the early shows, we did a parody of Chekhov play. I had an academic background too, completing an honors BA in English Lit and then even drifting into graduate work in English. But I knew Chekhov was not right for TV comedy. So it was my idea to play Star Trek’s “Mr. Chekhov” and beam into the play. Harold loved that and championed it right away. And gradually, we all moved away from Bernie’s academic vision of SCTV to a more commercial one.

The origin of the concept is outlined in detail in my book, “SCTV: Behind the Scenes” which is currently out of print but still available on Amazon.

SCTV: Behind the Scenes

Profiles the cast members of the Canadian television comedy series, lists the sketches from every show, and presents anecdotes from actors, directors, and writers.

REVIEWS:

I originally bought the paperback version of this book in March of 1998, after stumbling upon it at a Barnes & Noble store in Augusta Georgia and it was like a dream come true for me. I have been a fan of SCTV since catching a few of their syndicated show (primarily seasons 2 & 3) on the St. Louis PBS affiliate KETC Channel 9 in 1980. When NBC picked up the show and expanded it to 90 minutes on Friday, May 15, 1981, there I was camped out in front of the TV, recording the audio track on cassette tape. I had never seen anything like that on television before and was definitely hooked on this show for life. I was never really a fan of "Saturday Night Live", although I later found out that Lorne Michaels poached quite a few Second City performers for the show. And don't get me started on "Fridays"! I taped almost every episode of SCTV on NBC until 1983, when NBC cancelled SCTV to free up the timeslot for "Friday Night Videos".

What you get in this extraordinary book is the definitive history of the cast, writers, producers, makeup-hair and wardrobe technicians & production team of SCTV, as well as the creative forces that took an idea from Del Close (the world's smallest and cheapest television station) and created one of THE best cast driven television shows to ever come out of Canada. Author Dave Thomas was there from the beginning and has given us this fantastic record of the show that launched the careers of John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Rick Moranis, Catherine O'Hara, Harold Ramis and Martin Short, as well as his own.

i just bought the Hardcover version of this book because, as you can imagine, my original paperback copy was seen a lot of wear and tear in 22 years.

If you're like me and share the opinion that SCTV is the greatest sketch comedy show of all time, then this book will not disappoint. Head Writer and longtime cast member Dave Thomas fires up the Way-Back Machine and takes the reader on a trip back to the pre-SCTV days when he first began to rub elbows with a bunch of talented nobodies in the Toronto comedy scene.

Dave was the "Forrest Gump" of SCTV, as he seemed to be present during all of the pivotal events which led to the birth of the TV show, and most all of its journey from that point forward. Dave pulls no punches, nor makes any attempt to paint a picture that everything was wine and roses, but neither does he denigrate a single cast or crew member even involved with the show. Nor does he gloss over any of his own mistakes or personality flaws, but remains a completely objective storyteller as is ideal for any behind the scenes journal of a popular media production. The reader is made to feel like a fully engrossed "fly on the wall," observing all of these amazingly talented people and who they really are behind all those zany characters, including a few very famous comedians who were never even on the show, but found fame elsewhere, such as Gilda Radner, Dan Ackroyd, and Bill Murray to name a few.

And what about Thomas himself? Near as I can tell, his actual personality is not all that far off from one of his most famous SCTV characters, "Bill Needle," the Melonville TV station's resident grouch. One wonders, after becoming enlightened by Thomas himself about his lack of patience and short temper, how he was ever able to both stay with the show as long as he did, and even sit down and write such a superior behind-the-scenes journal of its history, but after a little reflection, it becomes quite obvious this book is much more than a journal; it's a LOVE LETTER! Only Bill Needle could never admit that, and neither can Dave Thomas. Highly recommend!

How Toronto’s Second City became SCTV

The histories of The Second City’s Toronto theatre and SCTV are of course inextricably linked. In late 1973, Andrew Alexander and his partners Len Stuart and Scott Baker purchased the Toronto branch of the Second City from Bernie Sahlins and managed to get it back on its feet. In 1976 they would found their own production company to produce Second City Television. The original SCTV cast was taken straight from the theatre company, and in the early days some of the performers were doing both the TV and stage show simultaneously. Later in the run, bit players and replacement cast were also brought in from the theatre. The timeline highlights major events in the life of both the theatre and the SCTV television show.