SCTV Thread

[minor muppetz]

I checked and didn't see any threads like this, so... Let's talk about that great variety show, SCTV!

I have the first three volumes that were released on DVD. I don't have volume 4 (it was very rare for me to even find copies in person) or The Best of the Early Years set. I also saw some of the half-hour reruns back when TV Land showed reruns for a brief time in 2005.

My favorite recurring sketches are The Great White North, Monster Chiller Horror Theater, Street Beef, and The Gerry Todd Show (I don't care much for Gerry Todd outside of his own show). It's hard to tell what was supposed to be funny and what wasn't in The Days of the Week (c'mon, did they have to have no laugh track in those sketches?).

Some of my other favorite moments:

Johnny LaRue's Pajama Party.... I like the criticism from the critics in that one, and enjoy watching the ladies in their pajamas... After the sketch they showed a group of women protesting, though the sketch seemed tame to me. I don't know if there really were any such protests after the broadcast, but would something like that cause such a fuss in this day and age?

The Leave It to Beaver 25th Anniversary Special was also great, but it seems like they should have called it a reunion as opposed to an anniversary special. I know that they probably couldn't get the rights to actual clips, but what kind of an anniversary special doesn't include past clips (besides Elmopalooza)? It played out more like an actual episode only with the cast being older.

I know that the show's producers didn't bother to get any legal clearances for music used on the show (did they make an exception for musical guests? It seems like the DVDs didn't edit anything with the guest stars), but there have been a few times when clips from other productions were shown (a few Gerry Todd commercials/public service announcements included footage from classic Warner Bros. cartoons). Does anybody know if the producers initially got the rights to use those clips? It is interestign how the DVDs include footage from the classic shorts but replaced the warner bros. ending music in one sketch.

It is a shame that there weren't more movies based on SCTV sketches, besides Strange Brew with Bob and Dough MacKenzie. Speaking of that, I read an interview with Dave Thomas long ago where he said that the show's producer threatened to sue him and Rick Moranis if they wrote a movie at the time, leading them to hire a writer, and then they rewrote the script. Considering they got writing credit, does anybody happen to know how they got around this? Rewriting is still writing, after all... Could Dave and Rick have just decided to write without worrying about a lawsuit?

Finally, I'd like to comment that it's a shame that msot of the cast seems to have become b-list actors (John Candy and Rick Moranis are the exceptions). It seems like Eugene Levy got to have significant roles in quite a few movies for awhile, but was never given top billing (I'd like to say that they were big movies, but I think the American Pie movies are the only really big ones he had big roles in).

 

[minor muppetz]

The other night I was watching the emmy-winning "Moral Majority" episode, and I realised that many of my favorite moments ar ein that episode. Including the plot, the second and final Gerry Todd Show (the best of the two), some funny Bill Needle scenes, and The Merv Griffith Show. And it is one of the few NBC episodes to not have a musical guest.

I read that it was hard to do a McKenzie brothers movie because on SCTV their sketches were always improvised... If that movie was made today I guess they could have maybe just written an outline and improvised all their lines. But I do wonder how much scripting was done with the two epsiodes focusing on the brothers. I have a feeling that the Great White North episode might have just had an outline and all improvised dialogue... There's something about their interractions with Johnny LaRue that doesn't seem right, but their interractiosn with all other characters (musical guest Ian Thomas, rarely-seen Brian Doug, and a few one-shots) look more natural. By comparison the interractiosn in Great White North Palace seem better done. of course I wouldn't be surprised if all of the non-McKenzie brothers scenes were scripted.

 

[GonzoLeaper]

It seems like Eugene Levy got to have significant roles in quite a few movies for awhile, but was never given top billing (I'd like to say that they were big movies, but I think the American Pie movies are the only really big ones he had big roles in).

What about Cheaper By the Dozen 2?
(lol- not really a big Eugene Levy fan so I haven't seen him in anything else- but I do love the Cheaper By the Dozen movies- Steve Martin is great in most any movie.)
And while I am somewhat familiar with Strange Brew- I mainly know of SCTV characters through their appearances on Sesame Street.

 

[minor muppetz]

I have seen interviews (and I think it was mentione din some of the DVD special features) where it was said that the writers wrote what they thought were funny, as opposed to what they thought the audience would think was funny. And I guess it does show at times... There are some moments where I can sort of udnerstand what they were trying to do, but don't think the humor turned out well.

One example was one sketch, I read an interview with Rick Moranis where he talked about it before I read the sketch (so I don't know if I would have gotten it without reading the interview... It may have required viewing a few times at least). The skethc was a PSA with Gerry Todd, in which he spoke of the importance of doing other stuff besides watching video, and went out of the house to do things. Everything he looked at was behind glass (well, except for the stars when he was up on the roof), and he compared his experiences with stuff on television.

And there are a few things about that sketch that I found wrong, and maybe it was because of the characters obsession with video. He said that the origin of the word "vision" is video... I would have thought it was the other way around. He also said you should do more than watch video all the time... He probably should have said you should do more than just watch TV all the time. I don't associate television as "video" (I associate that term with VHS, beta, and online video... I only refer to DVD as video on Muppet Wiki).

One thing that is amazing about the show is the fact that when I first saw the show, there were quite a few scenes that I had to watch before I could figure out who was playing certain roles. And for the most part I had seen many productions with most of the cast. The show may have been a bit low-budget, but the make-up people were good.