TORONTO—In a frenzied search for laughs, North Americans have been tuning in to late, late Friday nights SCTV Network 90, an oasis of nutso humor in the vast, arid stretches of corporate network-land. In a frenzied search for a story, I found myself in my favorite N. American city, tracking my favorite TV show and having novelty drinks forced down me by Canadian friends in their swinging Canadian bars. Life is tough all over, and it could have been even tougher for me in Toronto, what with Colonel Khadafys hit squad supposedly crossing the Detroit/Windsor border just as I was. On past trips across the river, letting slip that I was a journalist usually let me in for the Toronto typewriter maneuver: Im asked if I harbor any recording devices or typewriters, then thefemale guard frisks me to make sure. (Damn—never thought of stuffing it under my sweater!) The ever-cheerful guard then asks me what story Im covering, makes an appropriate crack (i.e.,Well, that last Meat Loaf album stunk.") and sends me on my way. Ah, Canada. This time, though, there are no delays; I could be the needlework & crafts editor of Family Circle, or a vacationing PLO operative. I am, nonetheless, welcome to Canada (bienuenu a Canada).

And as for Canada, it isnt surprising that the best comedy on American network TV right now comes from our neighbor to the north, whats surprising is that its even on a major American network. SCTV has been available to North American viewers since 1976, depending on where you choose to live. Americans could see it in syndication (many stations) or on PBS (very few. But we had it—ha!)

So, SCTV fans have sprung up like dandelions all across the continent, hardy weed/fans who have survived long periods without Guy Caballero or Johnny LaRue only to have their high octane comedic sustenance returned to them abruptly, on a different station or network. This year NBC has turned out to be our benefactor—for now.

I cant stress enough the shock of coming home very late on a Friday night to flop in front of the TV for a mindless, cathode ray therapy session only to have Dr. Tongues 3-D House of Stewardesses unfold in front of my bleary eyes. On the triple-ply bland Detroit NBC affiliate, no less!

But, because of some fluke of good taste on somebodys part, it is there. So just what sets SCTV apart from their puerile competition; the late night sex n drugs n pseudo-social commentary Romper Room stuff? OK, heres what makes SCTV cool:

No playing down to the audience. In other words, no gratuitous drug references to snag the stoned-out teens who can barely manipulate the dial at that hour of the morning. As Andrea Martin put it during our interview:We write, I think, mostly for people our own age, which is in the 28-38 range. I mean, thats where our references are.

Eugene Levy added:A lot of writing is written not only for ourselves, but for references, and for people whove watched the show over a period of time. We dont write the show to bring in new viewers; we dont try to hook them with some device... We dont worry about ˜Will anybody get this? or ˜Will anybody know that this person is really so-and-so, who was in a scene three years ago? 

Ironically, I think this refusal to pander to the lowest common denominator has actually pulled in youthful viewers, who perhaps arent quite the yahoos theyre supposed to be. Witness this years CREEM Readers Poll victory for SCTV, despite the fact that theyre aired in 45 less markets than, say, Fridays.

The cast writes its own material. Dave Thomas:As long as we can control it, we prefer it that way. Its more fun to do your own stuff, because artistically you get to try things, and succeed sometimes, and fail sometimes... It has more reward longterm. Short-term its harder on you, because you have to do your own writing, and stay up later, and work harder...to fill the same number of minutes that someone else whos just an actor or actress reading lines, wouldnt have to.

SCTV likes you... It may be pop cultural heresy to suggest, but the shows humor doesnt have the bitchy, neurotic edge that seems to be such a vital part of that anamoly, thenew comedy. Even when winging off on a schizy urban archetype like Woody Allen, the performer (Rick Moranisjs affection is obvious. Theyre not above cheap shots, but somehow you dont sense the almost psychotic venom thats standard in a lot of new wave comedy. Dave Thomas partially agreed, but hastened to add,Were not afraid of shock comedy! Sometimes I think being vulgar is funny. But theres a real limit to how vulgar you can be on television before you really have to stop, and make compromises.. .and then youre dead.

Just about any hayseed can watch SCTV alongside nis hip urban pal and identify with something. My theory is that since the cast hail from a lot of standard issue Canadian and American towns—not really swinging places, but OK tobe from—thus, the wonderful Babbit-like everyman types they enact so well arent crudely drawn stereotypes, but in fact are likable and fully-developed for all their idiocy, because theyrereal to the performers.

Qn the other hand, during the height of the Saturday Night Live fever of 77-78, 1 can remember Linda Ronstadt proclaiming, after taking a Manhattan pied a terre, that SNL had created no less than a New York renaissance, what with Rolling Stone and half of L.A. moving there. These sort of semi-hysterical statements always amuse those of us from the hinterlands, but the patronizing tone is duly noted and filed away. As long as the cast of SNL could still be perceived as outsiders, like us, throwing rocks at the glass house where all the assholes were, whether it was Studio 54 or Pete n Lindas Hamptons love nest, then the humor was the best that we could hope for—they were the cutting edge, more than anybody in mass media/pop culture at the time. But when they started to become what they were supposed to be ridiculing, the Fall was imminent.

The Juul Havemayer dancers! Another excellent reason to watch SCTV. Besides his job as SCTVs talented costume designer—in which guise he whips out a seemingly endless array of double-knit polyester leisure suits in every never-seenin nature hue, white stacked-heel mensshoes, pink, purple & green tent dresses from the Junior Plenty shoppes, diamondpattered knit shirts of a kind not seen since 1962 when Marvin Gaye shopped at Kosins in Detroit, Lola Heathertons Garland-esque capris and smock tops (right from the wardrobe of Judys CBS series, it would seem)—all the garish stuff to make a trash culture junkie weep—besides all that, Juul leads the fabulous Juul Havemayer Dancers, backing up Lola Heatherton orPerry Como or whoever. SCTV has to be the only network show to allow its costume designer such a star turn, and its worth it! Usually at least one of the SCTV guys gets into the act; Eugene Levy, Joe Flaherty, Dave Thomas and/or Rick Moranis will doff a silly wig and prance like a chorus boy. And get paid for it!

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All in all, SCTV, like the first SNL, is a class act—the writing is obviously done by people who have more than stand-up comedy as their abiding life interests, and the acting transcends the stoned-out-jerkshaving-a-good-time ambience of other late night comedy shows. Why? Because of...

The repertory company. Perhaps more importantly, unlike the competition, the SCTV cast have been working together for years—all but Rick Moranis onstage at Second City in Toronto, and Moranis since 1980 with the TV show, where he leaped in as if to the Old Firehall born. All seven performers can mutate into hundreds of characters so seamlessly that a first or second-time viewer is hard-pressed to identify who did what. Heres a viewers guide...

Probably the best-known of the troupe to date is the brilliant John Candy (Johnny LaRuel), through his roles in the youthquake flicks Blues Brothers and Stripes. Candy first entered my consciousness when I was visiting my mother; she was watching one of the PBS shows and laughing across several generations at Candy, sprawled in a hippie pad and listening to Quicksilver Messenger Service with a bag over his head.Hey WOW maaan, he rapped, in a spot-on David Crosby stoned drawl.I can rilly hear the jams now! Candy is wonderful as any kind of innocent, whether its cultural icon Beaver Cleaver (especially rendering Beavs middle-Americanaw gee andcut it out, Wally banter well), or hillbilly rubes like Billy Sol Hurok, reviewing movies on the Farm Film Report (Billy Sol on the latest Godard film:Ole Jean-Lucs get a real obsession with that dialectic stuff. Drives me up a tree!) Candy has a vulnerable quality that could serve him well in dramatic roles, if he so chose. This irresistible gentleness comes through even in the lewd and lascivious Johnny LaRue, who, deep down, one knows, is the sensitive sort of guy who likes cute puppies and Keane paintings of little kids. Or Harry of Harrys Sex Shop—not such a bad guy, really...

Then theres Catherine OHara, whose praises have been so eloquently sung by the bard of SCTV, James Wolcott of the Village Voice (he beat me to all of this—in print). Nonetheless, Ill try: Catherine can deck herself out as a siren with the best of them, slinking around as Joan Crawford or singing Devo as bubbling BrookeDress Shields, but she really shines when she packs on the Pan-cake with a trowel and sinks her teeth into two-bit floozy roles like Lola Heatherton, or when she stuffs her longline bra and girdle and stomps around as a brassy old broad like Virginia Graham orDusty Town (a bawdy RustyKnockers Up Warren send-up, and sister-under-the-skin to V.G.). HerLola, although a composite of several aging starlet/dancers, was apparently created without ever having seen that other Heatherton, Joey, on TV or in the movies. Not so much as a peek at My Blood Runs Cold, and yet shes got Joeys confusedpizza-waitress acting style down pat. Catherine has the sort of mad elf Irish face which, scrubbed of makeup, looks quite inscrutable, as befits a changling (cf, Wolcott, Voice).

We're not afraid of shock comedy ...but there's a real limit to how vulgar you can be on television before you really have to stop. --Dave Thomas

Joe Flaherty is the consummate ensemble player; he plays straight man to each of his co-stars with the same graceful care (and great timing) that he brings to hisstarring roles. And hes from Squirrel Hill, Pennsylvania! Some of my favorite Flaherty moments are reactions; a TVwatching Guy Caballero leaping out of his wheelchair (a Barrymorian device used forrespect), onto his feet when a booze and pill-zonked Lola Heatherton starts blubbering about their affair in the middle of a song on her ill-fated SCTVspecial.Ive never had a fan letter to Caballero, Joe claimed during our interview.Never. Theyre intimidated by him. Hes not a likable character! Hes just sort of a...fixture! I was surprised, as Guy was my firstfavorite character; his proclamation:We here at SCTV will bow to the wishes of any pressure group, no matter how large or small, a classic line to warm the heart of sleazebucket bosses everywhere. His infectious, gut-rending laugh echoes all over the show, from Count Floyd on Monster Chiller Horror Theatre (Alice Coolers favorite—he sentCount Floyd an autographed album), to slow-talking all-American prairie types like Henry and Peter Fonda, to the average joes like the guy who, in the great Shock Theatre skit, tells a bedtime story to his son and scares the bratty whelp to death with a bloodcurdling rat story. But the best Flaherty character to date is his wonderfully smarmy Alan Alda: I look forward to seeing Joe/Alans weasel face in as many sketches as possible—the more bondage and humiliation foisted on that Ms. Magazine coverboy, the better. As Floyd Robertson, the (formerly) booze-sodden SCTV newscaster, he shares a desk with that boob Earl Camembert. Ah, Earl: Eugene Levy is another SCTV-er who seldom appears as he truly is: a downright normal-looking guy, tall, with an athletic build one rarely sees. Usually, Eugene is walking on his knees as Sid Dithers, peering through blindness-is-imminent eyeglasses and haranguing one and all in a thick Jewish accent. As Sid Dithers: Private Eye, he blasts Dave Thomas asBobby the pimp. :"Sch mart guy! When you get to prison it wouldnt hurt you should write a letter once a week; your mothers worried sick!

His best-known role is probably the justin-from-Vegas Bobby Bittman; comic, author of The Total Filmmaker and a wonderfully unreconstructed jerk. When the gold chain-laden Bittman plays Julius Caesar in a made-for-SCTV movie, his jokes are so rotten that the furious senators knife him to death. But my favorite Levy character has to be his loopy Floyd the barber, from the Andy Griffith Show. Besides appearing in the Merv Griffin In Mayberry skit, Floyd popped up in SCTVs Godfather spoof—somebody realized they were onto a good thing. When Floyd is sitting inDon Caballeros office, begging for a favor, you can almost hear the snap, crackle and pop of the synapses in his brain short-circuiting as he forms the words:Maybe you can just break Opies arms, the way he broke my barber pole...

Andrea Martin is another SCTV changeling; she has no qualms about disguising her feminine appeal with the Ellis Island get-up of Pirini Scleroso, SCTVs vice president of coordination/cleaning woman/bag lady. She drones on as Pirini in a wacked-out Esperanto, ever-cheerful and oblivious to reality, the English language, business etiquette and Guy Caballero. Then theres Edith Prickley, who has the same forthright manner as thereal Andrea, but who seems to have sprung full-formed from the head of Margaret Hamilton, fake leopardskin cloche and all. I like Andreas spaced-out modern gals the best, though; talk show hostess Libby Wolfson (You) tackles modern problems like bulimia, bad breath, and the hair in the chin depression of one of her guests. This season,Libby wrote a diabolical feminist play, Im Getting My Head Together, Screwing It On Right, And No Guys Gonna Tell Me It Aint, complete with malesymbol Seth Dick IV (Joe Flaherty in a great wig) being hanged at the end of the play. Worth it if only to give theatre critic Bill Needle an excuse for yet another cranial explosion.

Andrea is an accomplished stage actress, and Ive seen her whip off an admirable George Sand on a Canadian TV show, so I can vouch for herstraight acting ability. Now if only I had her Bounce commercial on tape...

Dave Thomas is always easy to spot, as he rarely manages to totally camouflage his twilight-of-the-Empire Anglo looks. Most of his characters seem to be in a constant state of hubris; exploding with staccato bursts of insane laughter (honed to perfection in his Richard Harris impression), shooting off at the mouth like that misanthropic nihilist Bill Needle, or just plain bellowing as some belligerent punk or another, always in imminent danger of imploding his flesh with wrath. Even his hair has the ability to look mad—as Bill Needle, furiously conducting the SCTV morning talk show, it bristles up from his head like the fur on a bull terrier. In the course of our interview, when I remarked on this talent, I started laughing so hard at the thought of Daves Osborpian punk in the British Film Festival skit that he and Rick Moranis had to play20 Questions to extract the name of what amused me. Dave revealed that years of duty visits to relatives in Great Britain had exposed him to Brit dialects of all kinds; thus we get the feisty Northern English bloke he played in Loneliness Of The Long-Distance Mum and Clockwork Leatherheads,movies that telescoped the early 60s angry young man films into three run-on epics, ending with a Clockwork Orange take-off.

"Were not facing the tremendous success Saturday Night Live faced ...we havent had that to deal with... -Joe Flaherty"

If Im allowed a favorite of the week, though, this weeks is Rick Moranis, SCTVsbaby-faced impressionist, as TV Guide would have it. Its probably the music biz connection; former DJ Rick (CHUM-FM and CFTR in Toronto) is often seen taking the stuffing out of various rock legends; Michael McDonald, Gordon Lightfoot, Elton John, Neil Young... (We Neil Young fans eagerly await Ricks version of Neils best song yet:Got mashed potatoes, aint got no t-bone...) Proof of the laughter-as-medicine theory; while recovering from a summer illness, I happened to be watching (for the first time) Ricks Doobie Brotherscarpet commercial, which caused me to laugh so hysterically and for so long that a miracle cure was effected. That unmistakable chugging organ, overlaid with the vanillapudding-tonedMcDonald tenor:Yeah, yeah, free installation, yeah... SCTV does more satire on the rock industry than even Saturday Night Live in its heyday. I asked Rick about it:

"They [SNL] always left the music to the legitimate bands, he said,and I dont know, I just always wanted to take shots at some of the cliches in the music business. I was so saturated with the Doobies and Mike McDonald that—I dont know if you saw it—I indicated that I had, between choking guffaws.All right, OK! A day in the life of Mike McDonald, OK? Sorry, I got another session...

"A Day In The Life... was on the same Gerry Todd Show (SCTVs video DJ and another Moranis character) that the carpet commercial was on. Rick/Michael is seen rushing to a Christopher Cross session in a vintage Chevy. After adding his patented vocal fillips toRide Like The Wind, he splits for the next session—but not before weve heard him speak, in the same mellow back-up voice we know and hate so well. And for the record,I LOVE the Doobie Brothers! said Rick, when I asked.When I was at CHUM-FM, I used to break format all the time, and play Doobies, Steely Dan...just what I wanted...But when the Doobies came out with the third and fourth album that sounded the same, and then Chris Cross, and I started to hear Labatts beer jingles with someone imitating McDonald, I figured—OK, thats it! Ive had itl

Then theres his Neil Young, first introduced in the Jackie Stewarts Wide World Of High Voices skit and brought back for Neil Jung, Psychiatrist, in which buckskin-clad, guitar-playing psychiatrist Neil/Rick sings a whiney Youngian rearrangement ofTie A Yellow Ribbon to disgustedpatient Tony Orlando (Tony Rosato, now with SNL), after plying him with medicinal Quaaludes. And slick MOR croonerTom Monroe, whos sung such boffo hits asDa Doo Doo Doo (as noted in our Records section few months back), andTurning Japanese, ("I want the doctor to take a picture...Tom sings happily while romping, leisure suit-clad, through a meadow with a couple of geisha girls) from his video disc, Tom Monroe On A New Wavelength.

Ricks Woody Allen has been justly praised elsewhere, but possibly from living too long in a City of donut and tool and die shops, I think Ricks at his best when he screws his face up and talks out of the side of his mouth as one of his blue collar yobbos. Or when he flattens his hair down for the acne-prone Cole Durning (whose hormone-blighted voice seems to turn up sometimes for commercial voice-overs). Like each of his stablemates, Rick can turn a supporting role (a pizza delivery boys, a janitor) into a minor gem of a characterization, and thanks to SCTVs excellent makeup/hairdressing staff, there are only fleeting glimpses of Rick as the affable sophisticate he really is.

The day after I talked toBob & Doug (cf. sidebar) I managed to ambush three other SCTV-ers; Joe Flaherty, Andrea Martin and Eugene Levy, at the SCTV writers office, in the midst of one of their marathon writing sessions. I started the questioning with the now-classic DiMartinorhetorical question1 gambit:

There are those who say the audience youre reaching are a bunch of stoned-out teenagers...

Joe Flaherty: Really? I dont think...I was never led to believe that it was teenagers— stoned out or otherwise. What I got was—NBC felt that young people didnt watch our show...I thought they did, but I have no idea what our audience is. We really dont think in those terms.

Theyve never done a demographic survey?

Joe: I guess they have...I tend to think they dont. I tend to think they dont really bother with our show very much (laughs)! Andrea Martin: I dont think they do, either, I think that if there is a survey it isnt very accurate on our show, because they dont have really great demographic surveys for 12:30 time slots. I think theyd have to have a whole new set of things to go by, and I dont think theyve done it yet for our show.

Well, youve been lumped with the other late nightyouth appeal comedy shows, which do pander to teens...

Joe: Yeah—they certainly do a lot more drug references and things like that. Andrea: I dont...think we do any!

Joe: Very few...

Andrea: If there are theyre not arbitrary, theyre within a character that would talk like that anyway, like Dennis Hopper or Peter Fonda. Its not arbitrarily there for a laugh.

I understand that Rick Moraniss David Brinkley-talking-about-hash skit was moved up to the beginning of the show... ? Joe (laughs): Yes! Remember that—shit! The week before that, Rolling Stone had come out with a review that said the one reason why they liked us was cause we didnt do that many drug references—and they specifically mentioned David Brinkley! They said:And Brinkley did a thing on his haircut, which was hilarious, because Fridays would do something about him on drugs! and then, the next week, we came out with one of the things he did on drugs! Do you think the fact that the show is produced out of Canada has anything to do with its sophistication?

Eugene Levy: I think the sophistication comes from the people in the show...

Joe: For the first three years, we just sort of...didnt acknowledge what country we came from. We were just sort of a group of people in television, and televisions a great leveler, you know...

Dont you think, though, that being away from the States gives you a different view of Americanculture—a way of laughing at it?

Eugene: Well, being away from it can give you a clear picture of what it is youre doing. I mean, you can do stuff about a New York subculture, as an example, when youre away from it. If we were living in Los Angeles right now, doing the show down there...I think you just kind of... settle in.

"A lot of writing is for...people whove watched the show over a period of time. We don't write the show to bring in new viewers; we don't try to hook them with some device. —Eugene Levy"

Andrea: I dont know if its that as much as just being here and not being distracted by anything. I dont think our humor vt/ould be any different there than here, but I think that there are so many distractions being in the States, the barrage of the media. Just because theres more to do in L.A. and New York than Toronto. This is pretty concentrated work up here because theres little else to do. So I dont know if the humor would change.

To put it another way...part of what happened with Saturday Night Live, I think, was that they became what they were supposedly satirizing, they were so enmeshed in being in New York and being media stars...

Joe: But that can happen in the States, too—I remember in Pittsburgh, feeling that same way. Oh, L.A.—Hollywood and New York were like these big...imaginary cities, and...you didnt satirize them from within, it was always from without...and thats basically what it is. Just draw a map of where everybodys from on this show, and its a radius of...Hamilton, you know, and Pittsburgh...not from the mainstream! Andrea: No! Were all from sort of provincial backgrounds, sort of small town! (laughs) Theres no hip element in this cast!

Joe: Yeah, theres a real danger, I think, of doing it out of New York or L.A. As much as'wed like to, dont get us wrong... I think we just realize, you can become what youre satirizing, very easily.

Eugene: I dont think it really matters. I think, if we did the show in New York or Los Angeles. The show would come out pretty much the same, its not gonna change that much. I think the show comes out of this group of people which has been together, off and on, for a long time. And I think that everybody was...really funny! And I think their sense of humor was nurtured by a strong discipline in the Second City Theatre, and the result is the television show, which started four years ago...and its grown, its expanded. With the 90-minute show were doing now, I think its a lot richer than the syndicated shows were. In terms of everybodys discipline, in terms of writing, and even performing has grown. Thats where the humor comes from. I just think.. .you could take seven people out of Second Cityanybody thats come out of Second City, and put them together, and it wont necessarily make for a good television show.

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Andrea: What they [SNL] didnt have going for them, although they had varied backgrounds, and didnt come from a big city—they did not have a nucleus of a family, or a repertory company, or somebody who worked together. So, when all the distractions came in, they didnt have a core to go back to. I have a fear, if we were to go to New York, not that our humor would change, but that...it would be very difficult to stay together; wed be pulled to different things, like films, other shows.

Joe: Remember, too, were not facing the tremendous success Saturday Night Live faced—I mean, they were doing things at the Inauguration, for the President. We havent had that to deal with; our show has been moderately successful, but it hasnt taken the country by storm. Its had a small group of loyal fans. So thats great, were able to deal with that, we havent been carried away with our own selfimportance.

Would you rather have an intelligent following than a not-so-discriminating mass audience?

Joe.Nah.

Andrea: Well, unfortunately, an intelligent cult following doesnt necessarily renew you, you know what I mean? Its nice to be able to sayYeah, its really great to have an intelligent following, then we would be off the air next year, and those intelligent people will be watching their tapes, and well be...doing theatre down on Yonqe Street.

You do seem . to have the videophile audience...people who watch the show over and over on tape to get all the layers of jokes...

Andrea: Thats what people say. Although I think, because were seven different people, that we do seven different types of humor...there are different things in the show that could appeal to the masses, you know? Like broader comedy, that can hook my parents. I think, what I would like from this show is that is would appeal to an intelligent kind of audience—some aspects of it—and there would be other aspects of it that my parents would like. I think its snobby to thinkI just want eight people in the underground to like it, and that would make me happy. Id like to reach the masses, sure! And other people. And some men, too!

More than anything, SCTV astonishes because its the product of a unique comic sensibility that hasnt been diluted by Rockefeller Center/Madison Avenue tampering. Like the best movies, it is determinedly idiosynchratic, lovable and perverse. Its also at somewhat of a crossroads; as this issue goes to press, NBC is to decide whether or not to sign SCTV to a five-year option, and if it should move it to a better (even prime time) time slot, out of the graveyard shift thats kept them relatively obscure. As executive producer Andrew Alexander told me in his Old Firehall office, looking forward to January with mock doom in his voice:Well either be in a better time slot, or well be out of jobs.

Im sure SCTV fans would cash in their empties in order to keep the SCTV hot dog grill/satellite up in space, but the great beaste NBC seems to sense that its got a winner in its massive paw that it can ill afford to lose. Now if the boys at 30 Rock only knew what to do with it...get it a hit theme, like Hill Street?

I think SCTV will be on the air in 82 to help sensitive escapists like me avoid reality, if only because of this omen: as I boarded the Detroit shuttle—back to donuts, Mojo and Death On Credit on Channel 62—1 was stunned to see row upon row of women wearing reindeer print scarves and old overcoats, chattering gaily in some foreign tongue and eating food from large paper bags. Undoubtedly a tour group, my brain screamed. Surely theyve flown in from Dubrovnik to tour the Strohs factory. Surely...