Monthly Archives: June 2004

Here's another piece by Terry Jones, who is so much more than another member of Monty Python who looks good in a dress.

When I was younger and I stayed up 'til 5 AM working on a script, everything was funny. It might not have been funny the next morning but at 5 AM, everything — including the punctuation marks — was hilarious. Now, it isn't. What's changed?

Ken Plume sends a slight correction to my earlier SCTV item. Tony Rosato and Robin Duke were not officially a part of the 90-minute SCTV done for NBC late night. They appear in some of those shows because a few sketches done for the earlier, 30-minute syndicated show were rerun in the 90-minute incarnation.

My friend who was involved with the DVD release also wrote me to mention that some of those sketches (i.e., the ones repeated from the earlier incarnation) are quite edited from their original versions…but that's the way they were presented on NBC so that's the way they are on the DVD set.

A topic we should discuss here when we have more time: As long as movies and old TV shows have been coming out on home video, the folks in the home video business have wrestled with the question of whether they should offer the most complete version or the way the product was originally released or just what they should do. It often happens that a show or film exists in several versions, or that with the home video release, it's possible to restore cut material or go back to a pre-release sequencing that some preferred. Occasionally, someone doing a home video release comes upon technical errors in the original which can now be easily fixed. Should they be? These questions usually come down to individual judgment calls but you have to ask what the over-all goal should be. If forced to choose, would we rather have a set of classic TV episodes presented the way the shows were originally aired or the way their makers would have preferred?

I just clicked over a news page and I saw this headline…

U.S.: Suspect sought to blow up buildings

…and my first thought, so help me, was: "Well, they ought to be able to find someone for that job."

I haven't posted an Amazon link in a while. This one will give you the chance to order the first of what we hope will be many DVD volumes of the SCTV TV series. This set contains the first nine of the 90-minute episodes done for NBC, which were very fine shows indeed. They featured John Candy, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Rick Moranis, Joe Flaherty, Catherine O'Hara, and Dave Thomas, along with Tony Rosato and Robin Duke. The latter two would leave soon after and Martin Short would arrive. The set is loaded with special features, including a commentary track by Flaherty and Levy, and I can't imagine why any of us wouldn't want this. Once again, click on this link and be whisked over to Amazon to order.

I am informed by a friend close to the project that the episodes are "almost" the way they originally aired. Apparently, there was some switching-around of segments when the shows were rerun back then on NBC so it was arguable as to what was the proper sequencing of some episodes. The DVD makers selected — almost "arbitrarily," my friend says — a running order, and just about everything that was ever in those nine shows has been included. One exception: The "Indira" sketch (Indira Gandhi's life staged like the musical, Evita) was repeated in a couple of shows and has been excised from all but one. Also, a couple of bumpers (the little announcements going in and out of commercials) have been changed.

Apart from those teensy matters, the only alterations have to do with music. Along with some battles over ownership of the shows themselves, one thing which has often kept SCTV unavailable has been the matter of music clearances. Rumor has it that in some cases, the show never had the right to use certain pieces of music in the first place and counted on the fact that they were produced in Canada and aired after 1 AM to keep certain proprietors from noticing. In any event, it has taken the lawyers many years to clear the usage of enough pieces to make these shows releasable for home video…and even then, a few cues had to be replaced, including some usage of Star Wars themes.

In any case, it oughta be a joy. The "Play It Again, Bob" sketch — with Moranis as Woody Allen and Thomas as Bob Hope — is by itself worth the price of the whole set. If anyone ever asks you what Bob Hope was really like, just show them that bit.

Alexandra Polier is the young woman whose name was briefly splashed across the press as an intern who had an affair with John Kerry. Some of us thought this rumor would never go away but this one proved so groundless that it did. (It turned out she wasn't even an intern.) Ms. Polier decided to do some investigatory journalism of her own to see how the story got started and her findings are well worth reading.