Joe Flaherty was one funny guy on that show who had a number of repeating characters.

Wasn't sure where to put this Citizen Rules quote. In the Joe Flaherty thread? The Hate thread? Or is the eloquence of this in such close competition to AI, should it be in the "Artificial Intelligence is going to take all our jobs" thread.

When the revolution comes, CR can maybe qualify as our robot overlords Supply  Boy.
 

It isn't Joe Flaherty's fault that he would be overshadowed by the enormous talent that SCTV provided, or that he was one of the few who never had much of a career outside of that show.  (Only Tony Rosato and Robin Duke are more obscure.)  And who happens to be Flaherty's most recognizable character?  Guy Caballero, the shady Lorne Michaels head of SCTV.  He is central to the show's flavor.

I do find the endless need to compare and compete SCTV with Saturday Night Live to be boring and dumb.  The shows were never in competition with each other, airing on different nights on the same (in America) network, and also the fact that so much of SNL's talent was sourced from the Chicago/Toronto Second City roots makes the need for one to "best" the other futile.  There's very clearly a sympathy between the two shows, however different their styles, and quite clearly among most of the respective casts there's a sense of shared fraternity.  I think the only real reason why such a cliche exists for one to be better than the other is because SCTV appeared on American TV just as SNL was disasterously attempting to rebuild.  Like, no one is even trying to talk about comparisons with Fridays, for example, and for good reason, even though, by airing directly against SCTV on Friday late nights, it was its real competition.
 

crumbsroom wrote:

And of course they are very different beasts, but that's what is interesting about contrasting their approaches. Both were early examples (maybe the two first?) of the improvisitory school of comedy figuring out how to make television. And in completely simplistic terms, SNL went with the edge, and SCTV went with the heart. Both are also full of successes and failures. Both are also completely valid as anyone's preference.

I think that Second City is at the heart of both of them.  Maybe SNL's edge came more from its National Lampoon side (although even the Lampoon would employ Second City talent - Murray, Radner, Belushi, Raimis, and even Flaherty - for their radio shows and records).  And, no, I don't really recognize much distinction between the Chicago and Toronto schools.

The crucial difference between SNL and SCTV is in the latter's choice not to use a live audience (and thankfully they dropped the canned laughs after the first couple of years).  This goes directly to how they translated their humor from the theatrical stage.  There's simply an energy in the performances that comes from a responsive audience, regardless of whether it's broadcast live or cut together later.  The argument can be made that the lack of an audience allowed SCTV to provide a more meta satire of television as a medium.  But combined with SCTV's more dry delivery, this was maybe the one element that I had to adapt to.  But even still, when I remember actually watching SCTV on network television, these were the years when the only big attraction to SNL was Eddie Murphy, and the original cast were better known from their films at that point.  And even there, there was a lot of overlap - Candy and Levy in Vacation, Flaherty in Stripes, Moranis in Ghostbusters. 

In addition to being more "theatrical", I would also give those first early years of SNL the edge of having a deeper variety of comedy styles, more political and taboo than SCTV, aided by guests like Andy Kaufman, Albert Brooks, Carlin and Pryor, Mr. Bill, Mr. Mike, the Muppets.  This preference only counts for these early seasons, because by the time the show found its footing in the mid-late 80s, it had a more established formula.  But those early years, there's still an anarchic sense of not really knowing what to expect that stands up after watching those shows dozens of times.  And I've also watched the SCTV shows dozens of times as well.

Mad Magazine's Al Jaffee only died a couple of months ago (he was 102). Seemed to slide right past my radar.

God, I loved that magazine when I was a kid. Spy v Spy for life.

Richard Tandy is a lesser known name, but as the multi-keyboardist of Electric Light Orchestra, he's one of the secret sounic masters of the most cinematic of '70s rock music.



 

https://pitchfork.com/news/steve-albini-storied-producer-and-icon-of-the-rock-underground-dies-at-61/

That one hurts.

I found out that Zack Norman passed away a couple of weeks back.  You might remember his face, best known for playing Danny Devito's brother in Romancing the Stone, which was a great comedic side role.  He appeared in a number of TV and film roles in similar character roles, usually comedically angry bald men.  Also a stand-up comedian, Norman (who also went by his birth name, Howard Zuker) was a constant fixture behind the scenes, as a fundraiser, producer, all around Zelig.  And probably most notably he was a longtime collaborator with independent filmmaker Henry Jaglom.  His one directing effort is a film I still haven't tracked down, Chief Zabu, filmrd in 1986 but unreleased until 2016, alongside another frequent underground perennial Allen Garfield and Allan Arbus.




 

98.

Too soon.
 

Dabney Coleman

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/dabney-coleman-dead-9-to-5-mary-hartman-tootsie-1235902521/amp/