Thanks to the popularity of such shows as Saturday Night Live, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Mad TV and Chappelle's Show, it's easy to think sketch comedy has been a television staple forever. When you also consider the early contributions of Ernie Kovacs, Steve Allen and Sid Caesar, it's an even simpler assumption to make. What most people forget, however, is the slack period between the heyday of Caesar, Red Skelton, Jack Benny and Milton Berle in the '50s, and the arrival on these shores of Monty Python and ascendancy of SNL in the early '70s. It was during this span that the sitcom truly became the dominant form of comedy on television.
It also was during this period that improvisational comedy began to evolve. In the mid-50s, at the University of Chicago, the Compass Players began nurturing such comic talents as Mike Nichols, Alan Alda and Jane Alexander, among other future stars. That troupe would evolve into the Second City.
One of Second City's most fruitful offshoots was Toronto Second City, which in 1976, launched SCTV. The syndicated series satirized television as it was practiced at its most local and dysfunctional level, via a tiny independent operation based in fictional Melonville. SCTV's talented team of writers and actors during its seven-year run included John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Catherine O'Hara, Dave Thomas, Martin Short, Rick Moranis, Harold Ramis, Del Close and Sheldon Patinkin. Among the many delightful characters they created were the wheelchair-bound station executive, Guy Caballero (Flaherty); cackling station manager Edith Prickley (Martin); bubble-headed newsreader Earl Camembert (Levy); true-blue Canadian hosers, Bob and Doug MacKenzie (Thomas and Moranis); corrupt Mayor Tommy Shanks (John Candy); and uber-nerd Ed Grimley (Short).
After the graduation of the first class of SNL actors, and the dreadful performance of the second, NBC decided it needed some comic relief from the Great White North. Instead of trying to invent something new, it took the SCTV formula, added some rock music and the occasional guest star, and expanded the show to 90 minutes. It ran on Fridays, and typically was far funnier than SNL. The first nine of those shows have been collected in the five-disc SCTV Network/90: Vol. 1.
The 780-minute package also includes several documentaries on Second City comic technique, reunion specials, behind-the-scenes material, commentary by Flaherty and Levy, and a 24-page book of essays and tributes. Hard to imagine a better Father's Day gift for a boomer dad.
Among the other noteworthy TV-to-DVD titles debuting this week are the first season of Nip/Tuck; USA Network's Monk; Reno 911!; and Quantum Leap.
It wasn't precisely accurate to describe Winsor McCay as "the creator of animated cartoons"—as he often referred to himself—but, without him, it probably would have taken Walt Disney and Max Fleischer a bit longer to come up with Mickey Moose and Betty Boop. Image's splendid new DVD retrospective, Winsor McCay—The Master Edition, demonstrates how, in 1911, the cartoonist was inspired by rudimentary "flick books" to turn his popular newspaper strip, Little Nemo in Slumberland, into a still-wonderful cartoon. Two years later, McCay would make Gertie the Dinosaur the centerpiece of a vaudeville act, in which the artist pretended to interact with the cartoon beast. Also included in the package is The Sinking of the Lusitania, which, comprised of 25,000 drawings, represented the first feature-length American cartoon. The sad thing is knowing the vast majority of cartoons done in the subsequent 90 years of cinema history didn't come close to touching McCay's pioneering work, in vision, artistry and sheer entertainment value.
It's difficult to imagine any modern American movie that stars a dwarf actor—especially one about a somber railroad buff who inherits a ramshackle train depot in rural New Jersey—as being anything but exploitative. But at last year's Sundance festival, Tom McCarthy's The Station Agent stood those expectations on their head. Less a film about a small man trying to fit into mainstream society than a study of an unlikely group of friends trying to cope with everyday problems, The Station Agent offered surprises at every turn. Peter Dinklage plays a train enthusiast who reluctantly becomes involved in the affairs of several people far more worthy of sympathy than himself, and grows from the experience. The ensemble cast—Bobby Cannavale, Patricia Clarkson and Michelle Williams—couldn't be more impressive.