

10 Nov 2026 · 34m · 15 chapters

Jason Hare directs SCTV: The Greatest Show You’ve Never Heard Of, a Netflix documentary about the Canadian sketch comedy series Second City Television (SCTV). It covers the show’s origins in Toronto, its rise from a “secret inside joke” to broader cultural impact, and how the troupe’s careers evolved and eventually splintered.
One guest—Jason Hare, documentary director. He previously directed The Last Dance and has appeared on the Sports Media Podcast before (e.g., for Novak Djokovic-related coverage).
The doc argues SCTV’s creative freedom came from no “teacher in the classroom” (unlike SNL’s live-audience constraints). It also frames the cast as a long-lasting “group” whose friendship endured due to ownership, pride, and lack of executive interference.
Footage sources include Eugene Levy’s camcorder and Second City’s master tapes. The film highlights breakout “Mackenzie Brothers” characters (Rick Moranis, Dave Thomas) and contrasts them with later fame of Martin Short and Eugene Levy. It also discusses including John Candy posthumously and why the doc treats the ensemble as the main subject.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes.
Jason shares how he became the director of the SCTV documentary.
“So, you know, let's start with a couple of these questions that I'm sure you always get when you are interviewed.”
Discussion on the cult classic status and cultural significance of SCTV.
“We'll get into sort of how the doc works.”
A look at the iconic cast members of SCTV and their contributions.
“I want them to discover something new or to have joy in revisiting a story that they already knew.”
Jason discusses the challenges of finding archival footage for SCTV.
“When you were researching the doc and then ultimately talking to the principals, do you think this – could they have done the kind of comedy that they ended up doing if they were under some kind of U.S.”
Jason explains the process of gathering the SCTV cast for the film.
“It's Fantasy Football Happy Hour with Matthew Barry, wherever you get your podcasts.”
Learn about the process and challenges of reviving the SCTV documentary project.
“Can you take us through the process of just getting the group together and were they amicable to do this?”
Explore the close relationships among the SCTV cast members and their interactions.
“Well, Marty, Eugene, Catherine, and Andrea would see each other all the time at the lake.”
Understand the thought process behind selecting key figures for the documentary.
“Yeah, Marty's wife, Nancy, was the sister of the guy that Andrea married, who has since passed away as well.”
Discover how to effectively include John Candy's legacy without overshadowing the group.
“What was your thought process as the director?”
Learn about Katherine O'Hara's influence on the documentary and the missed opportunity to interview her.
“Did that change your documentary at all or just how you approached it?”
Learn how a director's background influences credibility in comedy documentaries.
“That's plaud.ai slash podcast with code podcast for 10 % off.”
Discover the dynamics of fame and success among SCTV's cast members.
“How did you want to sort of address that dichotomy?”
Examine the enduring friendships among SCTV cast members over decades.
“Canadian broadcasters, that there has to be two minutes of Canadian content, Right.”
Learn about the creative bonds that last through time in entertainment.
“I think it was that they came up together, even pre-SETV, they were, most of them, were trying out for Godspell together.”
Hear about new projects in development and insights into directing styles.
“And then four days later was my birthday.”

Get the gist, explore an idea or ask about something said.
On Sports Media with Richard Deitsch, what are the key points of this episode?
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.
0:00DraftKings, an official partner of the NBA, is now available in all 50 states. So wherever you live, follow your favorite NBA stars, get excited about the biggest matchups, and lock in on those buzzer-beating moments. And with DraftKings, it's all in one app. Download the DraftKings Sports app and use code 2400. New DraftKings customers can spend five and get 200 in total bonuses paid within 21 days. New DraftKings customers can spend five and get 200 in total bonuses paid within 21 days. Includes all markets. That's code 2400 in partnership with DraftKings. The crown is yours. Bet with DK Sportsbook.
0:41Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. 1-800-MY-RESET. Connecticut, call 888-789-7777. Or visit ccpg.org. On behalf of Boothill Casino in Kansas, BetTax Passed who may apply in Illinois, 21 and over. Void in Canada. Event contract trading with DraftKings predictions involves risk of loss. Availability varies. Predictions offer void in New York. Bet to get bonus bets that expire in seven days. Trade to get predictions dollars that expire in one year. $50 in rewards issued every seven days via click to claim for 21 days. One non-withdrawable reward redeemable. Terms at dkng.co slash offer. Limited time offer.
1:13Nationwide based on sportsbook predictions and free-to-play sports contest availability varies by state. If you're hurt at work, you need an attorney that understands Illinois work injury laws inside and out. I'm attorney Julio Costa from Costa Ivone Law. We don't outsource your case to an out-of-town attorney. We're local and we treat you like family. We're here to listen, guide, and fight for the results that you deserve. As a local law firm, we never take you for granted. You're not just a number, you're one of us. Call 708-400-0000 or visit CostaIvone.com for a free consultation. At Costa Ivone, we get you.
1:56Welcome to the Sports Media Podcast. I'm your host, Richard Dutch. My producer is James Jackson. One guest on this episode. This is a bit of a vanity episode for me because I absolutely love this documentary and wanted to get the director on. So it so happens the director has been on this podcast many times, so I'm lucky on that. Jason Hare is the director of SCTV, the greatest show you've never heard of. It is a documentary that explores the legacy and the history of the incredible Canadian sketch comedy series, Second City Television. It is currently streaming on Netflix. Jason, of course, directed The Last Dance, one of the great sports documentaries of all time.
2:38He was on this podcast in August to talk about Novak Djokovic, The Wolf in Winter, which was excellent as well. But it's very kind of him to come on to indulge my Canadian-American love of this show. Jason, welcome back to the Sports Media Podcast. Good to be here, man. Thanks for having me. All right. So, you know, let's start with a couple of these questions that I'm sure you always get when you are interviewed. But this particular project, I think, is like this will be an interesting answer for the audience. So how does this project come to you? How did you end up being the director who gets to do a documentary on a really beloved and cult classic comedy show from the 80s?
3:25I think I'm lucky enough that I share an agent with very funny people, among them Jimmy Kimmel. and um my former agent in a you know 15 years ago was a guy named scott lonker who now runs jimmy's company which is called kim a lot his production company so they reached out to me probably two summers ago and said um are you familiar with a show called sctv and are you interested in a do it directing a documentary about it and um i said yes of course to both I'm a little bit I'm 50 years old and even even I am a little bit young for it yes same but I knew it through reruns and through VHS tapes that we had in my house because my brothers used to tape it so I knew it really well I knew the characters you know that this was kind of like the prequel to some legendary careers and was just very interested in doing a comedy doc Scott Lanker and I from the time that I started working with him in 2008 had always said like maybe someday there'll be a good comedy project we can work on because he had represented people like Greg Giraldo and Bill Burr and I'm kind of a comedy nerd after being a sports nerd maybe equal so I had always been looking for like a cool comedy story to tell so when he came to me with this last year it was definitely something that I jumped at and the next day I knew I was on a zoom with Martin Short and and Kimmel to kind of express to them my understanding of the story and of the legacy of the show and to pitch myself as the right guy to tell that story.
5:13We'll get into sort of how the doc works. And one of the way Jason does this is not only does he take you through the history of SETV, but he has the principles where he filmed, it looks like it's somebody's house or at a hotel. And they're sort of watching these clips, Martin Short and Andrea Martin and Catherine nohara eugene levy it's like legends obviously um and they're sort of commenting on um watching their work from back in the day but before we get to that part one of the amazing things about sctv jason is that it was like one of those rare kind of cult cultish kind of things where if you and bill hater in your documentary really hits on this we're like if you loved it you were kind of in on this small kind of club or joke but in watching your documentary and now that i live in canada it turns out that it was much bigger than your average cult like in canada it was a massive at some point massive show so i wondered i wanted to just ask you about the fact that yeah it is a cult kind of classic but it's this odd cult classic that reached into popular culture do you know what i'm saying it didn't it didn't it didn't always stay in like a small box i do know what you're saying um and first of all at its inception it was so small it was only in toronto yeah so it was so small that if you if you watched it then it truly was this like secret inside joke that only a few people knew i mean i don't know if they had hundreds or thousands of viewers um dozens perhaps on some weekends but right um i think when you view it through an american lens and a canadian lens it's vastly different and i've seen the the the uh the blowback online of canadians who take offense not only to the title but also to the notion that this was kind of an underground hit when it was such a staple of canadian culture right um but that's where it's it's always you know i don't want to i don't want to start out by talking about criticism but anytime you do any doc or in my experience, it's the people who know the story the best who are the loudest critics.
7:19That's true. And really the audience for these docs for me is not the people who know the story the best. I want them to discover something new or to have joy in revisiting a story that they already knew. But I'm trying to also introduce this to a new audience and educate people who know nothing about it. So it's a tricky needle to thread. But, yeah, I think by the time it went off the air, you know, they were on Cinemax here in the States with some established superstars at that point. So it grew from like a secret club into something more culturally significant. I don't want to over overblow this parallel, but you did the the last dance.
8:00And so you, as part of the last dance, interviewed Michael Jordan, Scotty Pippen, Dennis Rodman, Steve Kerr, etc. So you dealt with people who are at the top of their profession, very, you know, iconic figures. When you talk about this SCTV cast, and I'll sort of read out the principles, John Candy, Eugene Levy, Joe Flaherty, Dave Thomas, Andrea Martin, Catherine O 'Hara, Martin Short, Rick Moranis, Harold Ramis, just to name a few. Eugene Levy. Eugene Levy, right. At the time, they were not sort of the stars that they've become today. but now in hindsight when you see that collection of talent you kind of can understand why the show was so great because it is like literally putting like kobe jordan chat right all together yeah yeah it was a it was a dream team that's that's murderers row i don't pick your sports analogy that you want um you know i i would be doing them a disservice if i compared them to an nba I was going to mention the OKC guys before they became super famous when you had Harden and Westbrook and Durant together.
9:07But even that fails in comparison to what these people became culturally. So, yeah, you're right. I mean, it's to get all of these people from the same in the same place at the same time. And basically suburban Toronto, with a couple of exceptions, was just extraordinary. When you were researching the doc and then ultimately talking to the principals, do you think this – could they have done the kind of comedy that they ended up doing if they were under some kind of U.S. or American production company? And I think you made the point great in the documentary. One of the geniuses of the show is that they tried stuff that they believed they would never get away with if they were under Lorne Michaels, let's say, at SNL.
9:50yeah i wouldn't say an american production company versus a canadian one it was just that they there was no teacher in the classroom they were just trying to make each other laugh it was almost like when your teacher has to run an errand and they say all right everyone behave then the funny stuff starts to happen all they were doing is making each other laugh and they had the the advantage of not having a live audience as conan says in the doc live audiences are tyrannical and they will tell you what's funny and you have to feed that beast. This was, they have all the time in the world to get as many angles as they wanted, as many takes of specific shots as they wanted in order to make what was funny in their head appear on the screen and go out to the masses.
10:32One of the coolest things, like I have seen obviously a lot of SCTV episodes and you can still get them here where I am. So like, like some of the skits were very familiar to me. What was so new and fresh to me is I had never seen behind the scenes stuff ever from that show. And there were some things that you procured of like some of these, um, some of these stars, like before they became stars, like auditions and stuff like that. So that, that strikes me that you really did your research in terms of trying to go back into the seventies to try to find some, some imagery of who these people were.
11:07Can you take my audience just through like that process and how challenging was that? Well, it comes from a few angles. First of all, you're mining the archives of the cast themselves. So that footage of the final day of the show, the taping of the show, Eugene brought his own camcorder to the set. Wow. And all of that footage was shot by him. You could see him. He's actually shooting himself in the mirror for some of it. Then we had, you know, local Canadian broadcasts were doing, as the years went by, like a behind the scenes long form piece about the making of this show. So we had that. So that's archival research.
11:46And we had a great team for that. And then we had a lot of cooperation from Second City itself. that's where we got the master versions of these shows because they didn't you can find them all on on youtube if you dig hard enough but all of these were really grainy when we were first um because it took them a while to find all the the best masters as well so the first cuts of this thing were really grainy and um it diminishes the comedy because the because the quality is so low of the video that you're watching it's really tough to get to to not have that distract you and try to appreciate the sketch itself.
12:20So we attacked it from a few angles, but I was pretty adamant that we didn't just want this to be sketch, talking head, sketch, talking head. The first freezing night is the worst time to find out something's wrong with your furnace. Get peace of mind with a Four Seasons 35-point safety inspection and tune-up for just$89.95. That's right,$89.95. Backed by a one-year, no-breakdown guarantee. from the team with over 35 ,000 five-star reviews. For all your heating, plumbing, and electrical needs, you know who to call. For all the right reasons, call 866-4-SEASONS. Drink up, baby. Fantasy Football Happy Hour is here to get you wins and have some laughs.
13:06Matthew Berry here, and my podcast, Fantasy Football Happy Hour, has the sleepers, busts, and start-sit advice you need to win your league. We're diving into the tape. We're crunching the numbers to bring you sleepers, bust weekly start-sit advice. Whether you're defending a title or desperately avoiding last place, I've got you covered every single weekday. The bar is open. It's Fantasy Football Happy Hour with Matthew Barry, wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so let's get into the doc. I thought what was so enjoyable and kind of the genius of this was twofold. One, we get to see all the old clips and to re-watch some of the great comic sketches that they did.
13:43and then you have the living cast together as much as you can sitting around and we hear their conversations as they're reacting to re-watching stuff that we have seen as well. So at some point, Jason, you obviously had to get the cast together. I'm going to guess you did it in Toronto, although you'll tell us. I really don't know the answer. Can you take us through the process of just getting the group together and were they amicable to do this? Did they want to do this? What was the process on that? Yeah, so here I can thank everybody who participated, but in special, I can thank Martin Short, who this really, the revival of this project was really his doing.
14:26He was sitting on his dock on the lake in one summer. I think it was the summer that they called me and wondered why this project that had begun in 2018, I believe it was 17 or 18 under the direction of Martin Scorsese had never been completed. And they started shooting in 18 and 19. And then when the pandemic hit, it just kind of died on the vine. And Scorsese is certainly a busy guy, went off to do a million other things, as is the rest of the cast. I mean, all of them are pushing 80 years old now, if not more, but they're thriving. You could argue that some of them are having, you know, the peak of their career is right now at this age.
15:08So it just kind of withered. And Martin said, you know, why didn't we do anything with this? I believe he called Ted Sarandos who runs Netflix. And then I believe Jimmy Kimmel was looped in to see if his production company could take it across the finish line. So when they called me, it was, can you take the footage that's already been shot and make a documentary out of this? Oh, wow. In other words, like the powers that be, the accountants at netflix said we don't want to spend any more money on this can you just compile everything that's been shot and the answer was not really there was there was um a panel that they shot at i believe the elgin theater uh in 2018 that jimmy moderated which was fantastic but that really doesn't that's not the spine of a documentary that was more like a live tv special and then they did some individual interviews none of which were that deep they were each like a half hour long it was really the basics and they kind of looked like a press junket you see Catherine's interview in this doc is from that batch of interviews and then they did a round table discussion with Martin Scorsese sitting in a hotel room with the surviving cast but it was so conspicuous that Martin Scorsese was there that we couldn't use that stuff because it was like wait a second why is the most recognizable filmmaker of our generation sitting in there nodding at these people so the answer unfortunately was unfortunately financially for them was i get to start from scratch but for me it was fantastic because i get to start from zero and actually like tell the story the way that i would love to tell it so um marty is the one who you know he said i don't want to be a producer i don't want um that onus on me but he really is the one who rallied everybody like very quickly after my call with him i was on a zoom with him and katherine o 'hara and andrea martin and that was surreal it was it was like memorial day weekend i think of 24 or labor day weekend of 24 because my my son had just been born so i was babysitting my infant son next to me and talking to these three legends on a on a zoom it was surreal so um that's how it evolved and then we were going to shoot that that group scene they said on that first call you know what's great is we have these, these dinners up at the lake in Canada that are so much fun.
17:30And if you could just get us in our element, you know, cooking and dancing, it's almost like the big chill. Like those, those kinds of scenes, if we could, if you could get us doing that and that's kind of, that was my creative that was kind of the touchstone for me was like, if we can get a big chill kind of like vibe to this, it would be really cool. And then right. We had scheduled it. Everyone was ready to go up. And then Marty called, Martin Short called and said I just realized that for my documentary we got all of our interviews up at the lake and they're going to look exactly the same if you do them for the SCTV doc so we had to pivot and rent a house in Toronto so we got the same people who were going to go up to the lake to go to Toronto instead and we shot it there in July of 25 that's very cool it seems to me at least based on what I watched the doc that much of the cast is still close with each other.
18:23They still maintain contact. I don't know. How often do they see each other? Well, Marty, Eugene, Catherine, and Andrea would see each other all the time at the lake. Either staying over each other's houses. I believe that Catherine and her husband Bo had a place up there. And obviously, Marty has a huge place that he welcomes people all summer to. And Eugene, I think, has a place up there. Rick and Dave, not as much because they're kind of far flung. Rick is in New York and kind of stays in New York. And Dave is over. He's like shooting a documentary in China right now. And he couldn't make the screening that we had at Netflix in LA last week.
19:06It's cordial. There's no acrimony with any of them. But some of them are closer than others. I mean, Marty and Andrea are literally related. They're brother and sister-in-law. Oh, wow. I didn't know that. That's pretty fascinating. Yeah. Yeah, Marty's wife, Nancy, was the sister of the guy that Andrea married, who has since passed away as well. Wow, I did not know that. I thought your decisions in terms of who you got to be, for lack of a better word, kind of talking heads or from the give us a 10 ,000 foot kind of perspective. Conan O 'Brien was one. Bill Hader basically couldn't stop laughing at every single memory.
19:46was like you could tell he was like a um a super fan of this um who else am i missing uh katherine fred armison katherine hahn katherine hahn fred arms right my guess is that within this comedy circle you could have chosen a thousand people because i'm sure they they they see sctv as like kind of uh the absolute kind of pinnacle of comic freedom so why the i thought your choices were great but you obviously made a decision that conan and bill hater and something fred armiston like what was the thinking behind i'm going to use these guys it kind of was like we had such an embarrassment of riches because anyone in that age range um in comedy especially who has done any work in sketch comedy is going to have revered sctv yeah conan made the most sense to me because I've heard him countless times on his own podcast reference SCTV as kind of the birth of his desire to be on, like the birth of his career really was that mind blowing moment where we saw SCTV for the first time.
20:51Jimmy Kimmel has a relationship. He's friends with everybody, it seems like, but he's close with Hayter and Armisen. um and those guys i have to say maybe i certainly top three but maybe the most enjoyable day of my entire career was interviewing armison hater and odenkirk back to back to oh yeah oh bob forgot about bob he was unbelievable and it was uh i mean for a comedy nerd like me who reveres these shows um you know bob odenkirk you could tell the entire history of sketch comedy on television through the lens of what he has done and continues to do yep um but just those three guys and their clear reverence and love for the show and what awesome guys they were we only found out much later on that it was bob odenkirk's birthday the day that he showed up to us and he didn't say a word about that i mean they took time out of their day we went and we shot it in jimmy's green room because they were dark that week so we're just hanging out in jimmy's green room with these current comic legends coming through to tell us their favorite sketches in this legendary show that they grew up watching so it was just like those are the kind of days that that you should be paying them to do the job i bet yeah i thought you i thought um you really handled um john candy's career well obviously he's not there he died in the 90s i believe um yeah 94 yeah terribly uh uh terribly early um but he's such an important figure in that show and obviously you know in terms of stardom uh when he was a star like as high a star as martin short or sort of anybody in that world um so he has to be part of it uh but at the same time like john candy has owned his has had his own documentary as well so um when you're thinking about how do you incorporate this guy who passed away, but is still a central figure for this group?
22:47What was your thought process as the director? Like, how am I going to get John Candy in here? But I have to make sure it's not a John Candy doc. Yeah, that was the most challenging part of the doc. Twofold. One, and these are great problems to have. But one was what sketches to include in a 90 minute doc. Something's going to be left out, definitely. And I can name you off the top of my head, eight sketches that are indelible to that show that never showed up in the doc. We didn't have the time. And second was each one of these people is worthy of their own doc. And some of them even have their own docs made about them already.
23:20So how do you engender any sort of emotion? How do you cultivate any sort of connection with the viewer to anyone there if you can't spend that much time on any one person? So I thought of this thing as the group is its own entity. The group, the tightness of the family of these people. I mean, these people have been very close friends for longer than I've been alive, and I just turned 50 years old. So that was, to me, this was a documentary about this group of friends who have been through the ups and downs of life for over 50 years, and secondary was the comedy to it. I wanted people to leave realizing how close these people were and how much they still cherished each other.
24:02So John was certainly a part of that, but we're also coming out at a time where like the venn diagram of documentaries now you have the godspell doc you had uh candy's doc you had martin short had a doc that came out about him and then ours like they're all really overlapping and a couple of years ago there was nothing out there and now it seems like okay we're done with the uh the sctv related documentaries so it was a challenge but it was really fun to navigate did um did katherine o 'hara's uh sad passing in January? Did that change your documentary at all or just how you approached it? It didn't change the narrative arc of it.
24:42I know she would have improved it immensely if she had been well enough to sit down for a one-on-one because she was the one who was the most vigilant about my involvement and making sure that I understood what this meant to the people who loved SCTV, what it meant to them, the family of SCTV cast members, and that I had a mastery of the subject. So she wasn't, she was always, she could not have been lovelier, but she had the most questions. And I loved answering those questions, but she was the one who had the most, like the night of the, when we did that reunion, the clips that I showed were not meant to be construed by them as the clips that were going to go into the final version.
25:25All I was trying to do was jog their memory because this was a very long time ago for them. And they have done each one of their IMDB pages is a mile long. So a lot of these sketches, I had to remind them what the sketches were. So I just wanted to get some stuff out there that jog their memory so that they could start trading anecdotes back and forth about the making of it and and so forth. So it wasn't meant to be the best of the best, the best examples of what they had done. And she pulled me aside in between setups at that house in Toronto that night. She said, now, are you going to be sure to include this?
26:01Because John's sketches in there, that's not his best Johnny Garou. And that's not she was very protective of everybody, but super respectful when she came to me to discuss it. But I really regret that I wasn't able to sit down and interview her. She just seemed so lovely. Look, you get to a certain age and you want to be a little more serious when it comes to your shirt. Anybody who's worn a dress shirt knows just how uncomfortable it can be and how annoying it is when they bunch up under a sweater. So you must check out Collars & Co., makers of the Dress Collar Polo. Their shirts are four-way stretch, buttery soft polos with firm dress collars on them.
26:38So they give you that dress shirt look, but it's an extremely comfortable polo feel. Now, these are shirts you can wear with anything. Wear them with a blazer, wear them under a sweater, wear them solo as an elevated polo. They work for any occasion. Got a date? Perfect. Heading out to golf? Again, perfect. What about going to the office? Same thing. Collars & Co. has exploded into the marketplace. I'm guessing you have seen them. They've gone viral many times on social media. Their collars don't flop down and spread out. They stay firm and sharp all day. They also have an amazing array of sweaters, quarter zips, pants, and outerwear.
27:16So if you're looking for a performance dress shirt or a polo that looks great all day, check out collarsandco.com. Use the promo code media for 15 % off any purchase of$100 or more. Again, promo code media for 15 % off any purchase of$100 or more. Collars and Co. We've all been there. You stop listening for a second to jot down a note and suddenly you've missed the most critical part of the conversation. That's where Plod comes in. Plod is an AI-powered note-taking device built for real-world conversations. With the hands-free NotePin S, one tap captures everything so you can stay fully present.
27:52Afterwards, Plod's AI automatically generates structured summaries, key insights, and action items. Don't let important details slip through the cracks. Get 10 % off at plod.ai slash podcast with code podcast. That's plaud.ai slash podcast with code podcast for 10 % off. I think in the sports world, if you tell somebody, you know or if somebody finds out that you directed the last dance andre the giant novak you're going to get some instant credibility just given those documentaries does that stay does that also work when you're doing a like a like a a documentary on a comedy troupe like sctv or like are they familiar or do like the i'm talking about like the martin shorts of the world the eugene levies like is that does that help you get in or does that not matter to them because they do not come from the sports world.
28:40I don't, I think it matters to them in terms of like, I know how to do this. I know how to put a story together. And I've done, I've done things that have been successful on large stages, but if anything, I think it could work against me that they see, you know, for lack of a better word, this jock coming in, right. Sports guy, a story that is like, you know, like we're comedy people, we're artists. You tell stories about athletes um so i think i had to kind of subtly demonstrate to them that that um i had a respect of a respect for what they have done and a mastery over over what they had done and how we were going to tell this story the last part of uh the doc i want to get into because this is kind of interesting to me is um during the when sctv was at its apex it was rick moranis and dave thomas who broke out as the the mackenzie brothers that they they did a movie um you show the footage of this like there were like essentially whenever they showed up somewhere in canada there was like parades essentially to greet them like they became like you know it's like if you think about south park today and like sort of like how people like uh uh no blame canada or cartman or something like that like these guys were like even more yeah they were massive um but interestingly enough today you might say Martin Short and Eugene Levy are the most famous people to come out of that group.
30:07How did you want to sort of address that dichotomy? Because they were really the first breakout stars, right? But in the end, the longevity of some of the other cast members, I mean, they're all stars. Everybody had a great career. But do you know what I'm saying? The initial people who really broke out were not the people who probably became the most famous celebrities of the group. Well, we had to tell the story of how the show broke up. You know, you don't want to do something as lazy as like The Rise and Fall and Legacy of, but it really kind of at its core was that. So how did the show start to kind of splinter?
30:44And the first steps in that were that the John Candys of the group started getting bigger roles. It was less and less necessary or less and less possible from a time management standpoint for them to keep on going back to Canada and spending enough time to do a season's worth of sketch comedy when they're doing Splash and Stripes and whatever else. I found it really interesting that that was a mistake, really, that that Bob and Doug thing was mandated by Canadian broadcasters, that there has to be two minutes of Canadian content, Right. And they were just ad-libbing. But it was really interesting to me that Rick and Dave were ambivalent about the success of those two characters because they knew better than anybody that those were the two dumbest characters on a very, very, very smart show.
31:37Exactly. So you have genius performers, the two of them included, who all recognize that they're doing stuff that is multi-layered and really, really groundbreaking comedy. And then they have these two guys just playing two Canadian knuckleheads, and that's what breaks out. You know, SETV's best joke, it said on the cover of Rolling Stone. So that was really interesting to me to explore everybody's feelings in retrospect about that era of how it went down. I think, and this is what we'll sort of end with, I think one of the great things about this documentary, and again, I cannot recommend it enough.
32:15It's the great, SCTV, the greatest show you've never heard of. It's playing currently on, streaming currently on Netflix now. You can't miss it. um i think we have seen um similar like comic troops like or like famous partnerships in in um in acting like people break up and never talk to each other again you know martin and lewis didn't talk to each other for like whatever 20 years until the end of their lives uh we've read you know about cast members like getting mad because one person got more money and they never ended up talking again in some ways it is like a miracle these guys are still friends most of them 50 years later.
32:54Do you have any, like, you know, I could be so flippant and say, well, a lot of them are Canadian and sort of kind of like the Canadian aesthetic, like it's, but there has to, were you able, as you investigated this and as you marinated in this, did you figure out like why it lasted? Because in, there are some SNL cast members who've never talked to each other, right? The famous Bill Murray and Chevy Chase, like that acrimony and stuff like that. But these guys really seem to still love each other 50 years, 40 years later. I think a lot of that goes back to the lack of corporate and executive oversight that they had, especially early on in the show, that this was a thing that they built together.
33:32And they all had tremendous pride in the show and they had ownership in the show, each of them. So they had such respect for each other as performers and reliance on each other. You know, Andrea is the one who says, we needed each other to get this thing on the air because they had nobody else guiding them. Andrew Alexander, who was kind of the unsung hero of this whole thing, the producer, who most of the time you see a producer like that, they have such aspirations to be the next Lorne Michaels or the next you name it, that their ambitions are going to supersede what's good for the group. And Andrew never did that to this day.
34:08He never did that. I saw him last week at the premiere. He's such a great guy. But I think it was that. I think it was that they came up together, even pre-SETV, they were, most of them, were trying out for Godspell together. you know in the wings when they're in their early 20s and they're having parties at at uh eugene and marty's apartment and you know just throwing on records and and and doing improv routines for each other and they've been making each other laugh in small rooms for over 50 years it is incredible you know an analogy i was trying to think of an analogy of a group of create a group like that and U2 comes to mind because they are they also have spanned over 50 years and they still remain very very close they all vacation together in the south of France every year and their families know each other it's so rare in rock and roll and rare in comedy like you said yeah so I did a little bit of research on this September 21st 1976 is the premiere episode of SCTV.
35:08First time it ever goes out over the airwaves in Toronto on Global. September 25th, 1976 is the first time that you two ever met each other in Larry Mullen's kitchen after he had hung a sign that week in school and said, anyone who wants to come try out for the band come to my kitchen. So that's the first time you two ever meets us four days after. Wow, I love that. And then four days later was my birthday. So I felt a kinship to all of these things not not not that my uh not that my oh there's there's some there's some funky astrology going on there's some weird cosmic synergy there that I am a huge YouTube fan obviously a huge fan of SCTV and and more more importantly just a fan of anyone who can keep it together and be and be tight with each other through thick and thin of five decades of of uh genius output I love that you got anything uh you're working on now that you want to promote i mean sometimes you can't really talk about what you're working on next right can't talk about much right now i think that you've probably seen um i have a couple of directorial things that are that are in the works that i can't announce yet as an ep i'm working on the um duke mike trushevsky eight-part series that's coming out on paramount that kristen lapis is directing it's going to be tremendous kristen has been on this podcast she's a great director she is crushing it with this one and i think that people are really going to enjoy that so that comes out next march and we're kind of locking final episodes here and um there's a lot of analogies to the workflow and the urgency of the workflow with the last dance and this duke doc so i'm trying to help her as much as i can and chip in there wherever i'm needed but um otherwise just looking for the next big one i love kristin but man it might be it's a big ass for me to watch a duke doc we'll see if i can we'll see if i can i felt the same way if i can overcome that hurdle the same way i mean you see the the poster behind me i'm not a duke guy it's a fab five poster just for the audience such great characters i i you know until you actually see the list of characters and oh it's unbelievable i mean yeah it's amazing it's a michael jordan doc in the way that the last dance was a michael jordan doc in that there's a lot of other characters there there's a there's a reddick episode there's a jason williams episode there's a you know uh hurley and leitner yes it's really really good yeah i i'm sure it'll be good all right jason harris the director of sctv the greatest show you've never heard of that is a documentary film on uh the amazing canadian sketch comedy series second city television which uh you know now goes next to saturday night live as one of the great comedy shows in the history of the genre.
37:48Check that out on Netflix. Jason, it's very good of you to come on. I only asked you this week, so thank you very much for doing that. It seems like the reviews of the doc have been great, and so continued success. I imagine I'll be talking to you soon, and thanks so much for joining me today on the Sports Media Podcast. All right, man. Thank you for having me. We'll talk soon. All right. Stay here, Jason, as I take us out. If you enjoy these conversations, just head to our archives. Most of the stuff obviously is related to sports media. We've done a ton of stuff on Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, obviously, and CBS locking up J.J.
38:21Watt, a lot of round tables. So check that out. But I did want to do a change up episode just because I thought that documentary was fantastic. I want to thank everybody to ask for their support. Thanks to James Jackson, of course, for producing this podcast. Most of all, thanks to you. We'll see you soon on the Sports Media Podcast.
39:11We'll see you next time. Possible. Print your possible with code NEW20 for 20 % off your first order at vistaprint.com. Industrial automation is complex, but navigating it doesn't have to be. Like a trusted trail guide, Graybar's automation specialists help organizations reduce uncertainty, mitigate risk, and plan their next steps. From evaluating existing systems to connecting you with trusted technologies and business partners, we help future-proof your automation so your team can operate with confidence today and tomorrow yep gray bar does that
Episode 673 of the Sports Media Podcast features Jason Hehir, the director of "SCTV: The Greatest Show You've Never Heard Of," a documentary film currently streaming on Netflix that explores the history and legacy status of the influential Canadian sketch comedy series Second City Television. The show included Martin Short, Eugene Levy, John Candy and Catherine O'Hara among other comedy giants. In this podcast, Hehir discusses how Jimmy Kimmel helped land him the documentary project; the enduring brilliance of SCTV; how Martin Short helped procure video footage for the doc; getting the living cast together in Toronto to talk about working on the show; the love Conan O'Brien, Bill Hader and Bob Odenkirk, among other comics, have for the show; how Hehir incorporated the late John Candy into the doc, and more. You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and more.



