Like Mrs. Vilve Yachki’s coffee, this week’s new SCTV documentary on Netflix is nothing to sneeze at.
But an earlier incarnation of the project had something even more tantalizing in mind: brand-new SCTV sketches performed by the show’s surviving cast.
Before SCTV: The Greatest Show You’ve Never Heard Of became the Jimmy Kimmel-produced documentary premiering this week, Martin Scorsese was developing his own version of the project, one that would mix reminiscences with new original comedy from the show’s then-surviving members.
All of the actors were open to performing as a group again, Andrew Alexander, executive producer of SCTV throughout its 1976-84 run, told LateNighter.
The idea, Alexander said, was likely to involve “film parodies of some sort that would bring [Scorsese’s] skill set to the table.”
Imagine the possibilities. A Bob and Doug McKenzie version of The Departed? Edith Prickley running cons in The Wolf of Melonville? A mobbed-up Bobby Bittman demanding, “I’m funny how, like I’m a clown?”
It’s enough to make Ed Grimley go even more mental.
Scorsese’s involvement with the long-gestating SCTV documentary has been known for years. He even arranged and filmed a cast reunion on a Toronto stage in 2018, with Kimmel moderating a discussion between Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Dave Thomas, Joe Flaherty, Catherine O’Hara, and the relatively reclusive Rick Moranis.
What hasn’t been widely known is what the project was intended to become after that reunion.
Scorsese “was a huge fan of the show,” Alexander said, and began working with the cast on ways to supplement the reunion footage with additional interviews and new comedy.
It was an especially intriguing prospect given SCTV’s own history with Scorsese. The show famously parodied Taxi Driver and Raging Bull during its original run.
The problem was getting everyone in the same room long enough to figure out what the new material would actually be.
With Scorsese based on the East Coast and much of the cast out West, often busy with other projects, writing scenes—or even settling on what those scenes might be—proved difficult.
“You’ve got a lot of strong creative voices in the mix,” Alexander said. “It’s not just gonna get whacked out in a couple of weeks.”
As the delays mounted, other complications followed.
Scorsese was turning his attention to the monumental tasks of completing The Irishman and starting Killers of the Flower Moon.
“Joe [Flaherty] was starting to get ill,” Alexander said, “and we were into 2020 and Marty [Short] started getting busy with Only Murders in the Building.”
Eventually, the project “fell out of [Scorsese’s] field of vision,” Kimmel recently told the Toronto Star.
Years later, Kimmel—another longtime SCTV superfan—resurrected the dormant project.
He struck a deal with Netflix and brought in The Last Dance director Jason Hehir, starting fresh rather than attempting to finish the film Scorsese had begun years earlier.
The 2018 reunion footage was left behind—Kimmel told the Star it had become “too dated”—and the surviving cast reunited again last year for a new round of interviews, memories, and good-natured joshing.
The resulting 88-minute film chronicles the meeting of several future cast members in a Toronto production of Godspell, the creation of SCTV in part as a way to keep Second City performers from decamping for Saturday Night Live, its slow rise as a critical favorite airing in wee-hours U.S. syndication slots, and its eventual glory days as a late-night Friday fixture on NBC.
“I think the work we all did on SCTV is the best work we’ve ever done,” Levy says in the doc.
The finished film finally gets the SCTV story on screen after years of false starts. But Alexander’s account adds one irresistible footnote to its history: for a time, the reunion wasn’t only going to be about remembering the old sketches.
The cast was hoping to make some new ones.
And if Scorsese ever does find time for The Last Temptation of Schmenge, Netflix knows where to find him.
SCTV: The Greatest Show You’ve Never Heard Of premieres Oct. 30 on Netflix.
