20 Questions: SCTV

video's wild bunch waxes witty about sex, satire, networks and the things they can't do on television

The seven people who make up the critically acclaimed "Second City TV" write, produce, direct, perform and edit their 90-minute show from an otherwise normal TV studio in Toronto. We sent Robert Crane into that center of creative chaos to talk with the talented group and to see if he could survive their pace for a week. He reports: "The energy from this cast could light up much of Canada. They tape here because they don't want to be part of the scene in New York or Los Angeles--the very places where the shows they satirize are made. Here are some brief impressions: John Candy is the lovable bear, a warm, funny man; Andrea Martin is the least inhibited and the most accommodating; Eugene Levy is careful and the most precise; Rick Moranis may be the best impressionist; Dave Thomas is the most opinionated and thought-provoking; Joe Flaherty is the most shy and introverted offcamera; Catherine O'Hara has the most changeable appearance and has the best bod in the group."

1.

[Q] Playboy: OK, who's the funniest performer in the group?

[A] Levy: I don't think there is one person who's the funniest.

[A] Martin: I do. I think there're some weak people. If you want to be honest, I don't like--

[A] Flaherty: Physically, John is the funniest. Rick is the quickest. Catherine makes me laugh. Gene makes me laugh, but he's not the funniest.

[A] Thomas: The way to find out would be to get all of us in front of 1000 people. I think I'm funnier than Rick.

2.

[Q] Playboy: Some people think your show is pretty outrageous. How do you think it stacks up against the rest of what's on the tube?

[A] Flaherty: I can't believe Three's Company is on television. But there are tons of bad shows. I find Norman Lear offensive under the guise of being a television messiah. Let's face it: A sitcom is a sitcom. He claims it's relevant or hard-hitting. He took himself so seriously. I remember that terrible thing he did, All That Glitters. It was like a real bad propaganda thing: "Look, I believe in the women's movement, I'm Norman Lear."

[A] Thomas: When I look at The Dukes of Hazzard and try to attack it from the standpoint of satire, I don't know what to do. What do we do, wreck cars? I don't understand the level at which it operates.

[A] Candy: I can't believe The Richard Simmons Show. And Richard Dawson--one of my all-time favorites. He's so obnoxious. He has everything going for him--the accent, the charm--and he blows it by being insulting. He isn't allowed in my house.

3.

[Q] Playboy: It's conceded that you folks are the best imitators on TV. But are there people or shows that are off-limits to satirization?

[A] Candy: It's hard to do close friends. You know, they're nice people. I'm very political that way. I kind of do them, but it won't be a full-out version.

[A] Martin: I was thinking that Sissy Spacek would be a great person to imitate, and then I thought, No, she's too good and I like her too much.

[A] O'Hara: I don't want to do some people, not because it would hurt them but because it would be too much of a compliment to them.

[A] Candy: On the other hand, we tried to do Laverne & Shirley one time. We shot a scene and it looked just like Laverne & Shirley. No matter how shticky we got with it, how bad we took it, it just looked like one of their regular shows. There are some shows you just can't do.

4.

[Q] Playboy: What's the best drug to take before watching your show?

[A] Martin: A nice glass of warm milk.

[A] Levy: Johnny Carson is the best drug to take before viewing our show. But some of the shows are unconsciously better appreciated if you've had a couple of tokes.

[A] O'Hara: All I can think of is my mom reading this.

[A] Levy: I think a lot of people interpret the show as stoned humor, but it's not. You won't find a straighter bunch of people than us doing a late-night show.

[A] Martin: I picture our audience drinking a cold glass of white wine.

[A] Moranis: With some spinach salad and nice Venetian blinds behind them.

[A] Levy: Egg-salad sandwiches and a milk shake.

[A] O'Hara: Rusty nails and cigarettes.

[A] Thomas: I think grass is the best, because it will keep you from being too fidgety. It will allow you to revel in the subtle nuances of what we do. I recommend sinsemilla above other types of grass, because that keeps you up a little longer.

5.

[Q] Playboy: What's the most fun you can have with your clothes on?

[A] Moranis: Eat at a five-star restaurant with Eugene.

[A] Levy: Yeah, having a lovely paillard of beef that is beautifully seasoned and a nice tall Coke.

[A] O'Hara: Come on, bar hopping and parties are better.

[A] Moranis: Wait a minute. I've changed my mind. I think the most fun you can have with your clothes on is a dry fuck.

[A] Candy: Yeah, I've got to go along with Rick on the dry fuck. Time is short and you're just in a hurry, like we are on this show a lot. A lot of that happens--the zipperless fuck.

[A] Thomas: Nah, the most fun to me is picking my nose. No question about it. It relaxes me in a way that Rick has to take his clothes off and do things with someone.

6.

[Q] Playboy: Why isn't there more sex on the show?

[A] Flaherty: Sex, like drugs, is a very easy laugh, so you tend not to use it. Catherine and Andrea won't dress up in panties and see-through bras just for a laugh. They're much better than that. I did do Dr. Tongue's 3-D House of Stewardesses, though. I thought it would be real risqué to have them strip to their bikinis. But it was silly, it wasn't sexual.

[A] O'Hara: Also, we don't waste our time working on (continued on page 238) Sctv (continued from page 145) something that's going to get cut anyway. And everyone's married in the cast except Rick and me.

"The network felt that most of the people who are offended by sex go to bed early."

[A] Thomas: We have big-breasted girls who appear in the background of a lot of scenes, but basically, we don't think they're funny or, certainly, not funnier than we are. Andrea has a sketch about how to fake an orgasm and NBC at first bumped it from the show. The network relented because it felt that most of the people who are offended by sex go to bed early. That's good network thinking.

[A] Moranis: Also, we're Canadian and very provincial and we like to keep sex inside the bedroom.

7.

[Q] Playboy: Is it because you're Canadian that there are no blacks or Third World members of the group? Don't you think they're funny?

[A] Martin: I'm Armenian.

[A] Moranis: We have an Italian, two Jews, an Armenian, an Irish person, a Scot. What's John?

[A] O'Hara: Irish.

[A] Moranis: When you come from the Great White North, there aren't a lot of black people.

[A] Martin: I'm about as black as you get.

[A] Thomas: This show started from a stage cast that was in Toronto, and there were no black comedians in the show at that time. It would be difficult for me to accept NBC's saying to us. "We want you to put one black and one Mexican and one more woman on your show. We want you to appeal to our demographics." Why force us to change what we do? Nobody appreciates that. Mexicans and blacks don't. A lot of what Garrett Morris did on Saturday Night Live looked as if it were just pandering to the blacks. Really tokenism. I was insulted by that; I'm sure he was. Intelligent and thinking blacks would be insulted by that, too.

8.

[Q] Playboy: Does it disgust you that unhygienic acts occur while your show is televised?

[A] Moranis: Well, it bothers me that herpes may be spreading during the show.

[A] Martin: If I can help somebody's sexual act, I'm happy. I wish I could get aroused watching myself.

9.

[Q] Playboy: Are there any secrets you'd care to reveal about yourself or the other group members?

[A] Candy: Well, I'd like to tell the government that I am paying taxes and would appreciate a green card. I spend a lot of money and I would help the economy.

My main secret is that I'm bald and really 100 pounds lighter than this. This is just a suit that I wear. I don't want that to get around, because it'll wreck my career. Another secret is that this show is being done out of South America with laundered Nazi money.

[A] Flaherty: The truth about Catherine is that she's like a lot of Irish-Catholic girls--a nonswinger. She lives a dissipated lifestyle without being dissipated. She keeps bad hours, she eats the wrong food, but her vices are so innocuous. If you can pick vices, you should really have vices like humping away all night. Not Catherine. Her vices include French fries and staying up all night by herself in her hotel room watching TV. Rick and Dave are pretty straight. Andrea used to be wild in the milder sense. John has the most vices; he's a big guy and a big guy needs big vices. He has funny vices, such as he spends too much money. The group isn't excessive except for John; he would have to be our Belushi. But I don't see any dark streaks anywhere in the group.

[A] Moranis: Wait a minute. A good, little-known fact is that Eugene sent back three bottles of Châteauneuf-du-Pape one night in a five-star restaurant. It was the highlight of my life.

[A] Martin: The truth? Rick would like to sleep with every extra who comes onto this show.

10.

[Q] Playboy: OK, then. Graphically describe some of the sexual relationships that are occurring within the group.

[A] Martin: It's certainly not a big party group, with the exception of Catherine, who would kill to party every night. Eugene and I used to go out with each other. Every time I mention that, he gets upset.

[A] O'Hara: Hey, I went out with him once, too.

[A] Thomas: It's all part of being a family. And there's a point with any brother and sister at which they say, "You show me yours and I'll show you mine." Andrea is really refreshing, because she has no inhibitions at all. Catherine has loads of inhibitions, so they're a nice contrast to each other. You can drop your pants in front of Andrea and Andrea will go, "Good, dear. So that's what it's like, huh?" Catherine will be down the hall and out the door, will have ordered a cab and got into it before the belt hits the ground.

11.

[Q] Playboy: What are your feelings about censors--the standards-and-practices people?

[A] Moranis: They're just earning a living. The problem is, they're not reporting what is offending them so much as what they are told might be offending Middle America. They're bureaucrats and they should stay out of the creative process.

[A] Martin: I'm a little bit more compassionate. Everybody tries to hold on to his job and he's scared. He doesn't really know what his job is.

[A] Thomas: Well, I know it's really hip to despise them. And there's no getting around the fact that you are, to some extent, what you do. Unfortunately, the real power always goes to the older guys. In entertainment, that's fucking deadly, because, ultimately, they will not have contact with their audience.

12.

[Q] Playboy: What's the most distasteful sketch you've written that never got approved?

[A] Thomas: I wrote a piece called "Pocket Pal." It was about an electronic detector that would warn you 15 seconds in advance of mid-air collisions in aircraft. Bernie Sahlins, our executive producer at the time, was horrified. I was mad, because I thought it was funny: "Shocked by the recent negligence of air-traffic controllers and the number of errors committed by overworked pilots? Well, you don't have to worry about mid-air collisions anymore, thanks to an amazing piece of hardware developed by the Ronco corporation called the Pocket Pal, which can predict mid-air collisions, sometimes as much as 15 seconds before impact." Well, Danny Aykroyd eventually did the piece on Saturday Night Live. Matter of fact, Aykroyd told me I was the only outside writer who ever got a piece on that show. Our producers called me when they saw the bit and asked me what the hell was going on--was I writing for S.N.L. or what? They said, "Hey, you wrote that for our show." I said, "Yeah, and you rejected it. So piss up a rope, Jack." I didn't receive any money for it. I just wanted that idea to get on the air.

13.

[Q] Playboy: What are some of the other censorship battles you've won and lost?

[A] Martin: Brenda Vaccaro for maxi pads. Giant pads, like diapers. "I'm Brenda Vaccaro and I like that." I walk off and I can't get through the door. They censored it.

[A] Levy: Rick's had a problem with a character, Guy Friday, a very funny gay character who was in the syndicated show, but we can't get him on network.

[A] Moranis: It's not a fight I'm interested in, because I know the gay groups I've talked to aren't offended by the character. It's the standards-and-practices people who are afraid, because they have had pressure from gay groups in the past and they think this will cause them problems. I don't want to lend credence to their position.

[A] Thomas: Sometimes, we'll take a shot at something to see if it can get through. We can say "The silly bastard" on TV, but we can't say "You ugly bitch"--which makes a lot of sense.

[A] Flaherty: We've had a few pieces dropped, but I feel that the pressure is more a liberal pressure than a Moral Majority pressure. I don't think the Moral Majority is up at that hour, to begin with. Besides, we're not into trying to get "Fuck you" on the air.

14.

[Q] Playboy: This is an opportunity to say all the things you can't say on TV.

[A] Candy: I was taught that fuck was a sacred word. If you use fuck properly, you'll always get a huge laugh. It's a good word that's wasted a lot.

[A] Thomas: What I think about the network is something I can't say on TV: It's a beast on its side heaving its last.

[A] Martin: I got scared that I couldn't say breast feeding.

[A] O'Hara: Turd. They won't let us say turd.

15.

[Q] Playboy: Which television shows did you watch while you were growing up and which ones do you watch now?

[A] O'Hara: I watched Combat, Captain Kangaroo and The Three Stooges as a kid. Now I like Lou Grant.

[A] Levy: I don't know whether it was part of Grant Tinker's deal at NBC, but I'm glad Hill Street Blues got renewed.

[A] Moranis: When people mention Ed Sullivan, I still get a pang in my stomach, because it reminds me that I have to go to school the next day. I used to watch I Love Lucy and Dick Van Dyke. Nowadays, I watch Nova and Jonathan Miller's Body in Question.

[A] Martin: I watched American Bandstand while I was growing up. Now I can't watch any television without thinking, Could I parody that?

[A] Thomas: I used to watch 50, 60 hours a week, easily. All the Westerns: Rawhide, Lawman, Cheyenne, Sugarfoot, The Rebel--I can still remember most of the theme songs.

[A] Candy: I loved watching Jack Benny, Jack Paar, The Honeymooners, Burns and Allen, George Gobel, The Munsters, Rocky and His Friends, Howdy Doody, Rin Tin Tin, Lassie. I wasn't influenced by any one show, I was influenced by the medium.

[A] Flaherty: I tend to watch sports, movies and PBS.

16.

[Q] Playboy: Saturday Night Live, Fridays and SCTV are inevitably compared with one another. How would you characterize each show?

[A] Levy: Saturday Night Live was innovative and contemporary with what was going down. Outside of a bad skit about Claudine Longet, you could put up with most of the stuff. It broke ground for our show's getting into syndication.

But I just have no respect for Fridays. It's a blatant rip-off of a successful show.

[A] Martin: I've seen Fridays only twice. But when I think L.A.--where the show is made--I don't think comedy, I just think hype.

[A] Levy: Saturday Night Live and Fridays were the brain child of one person. For example, Lorne Michaels [producer of Saturday Night Live] was very successful and deserves a lot of the credit for casting the people he did.

But we dictate what our show is. Nobody comes down and tells us what to do. We do it ourselves. I don't think we'll ever have this power again. You get an idea, you write it, you tape it, you edit it, you follow it through in post-production. This just won't happen again.

17.

[Q] Playboy: Who should immediately be put into the comedy retirement village?

[A] Flaherty: I don't find John Ritter funny. Nor George Carlin. Obviously, I'm not even gonna mention people like Jack Carter or any of those old-line comics. They're almost funny again because they're just so unfunny. A lot of people doing TV comedy have no right to be there. The people on Fridays, for example. But they're actors; they don't create the show themselves.

[A] Candy: Don Rickles should definitely go away. Alan King. Jerry Lewis. The Rat Pack in its entirety. Marty Allen should just be there for a long time. And Tony Randall has lost that magic for me. I hate the Mighty Carson Art Players. I think Carson will agree with me sometimes. It makes you laugh because it bombs. He just stands there with egg on his face.

18.

[Q] Playboy: One of your show's most popular features is the Great White North segment with Moranis and Thomas. Matter of fact, it has led to a hit album and there's talk about a movie. How did that skit start?

[A] Moranis: Doug and Bob McKenzie were conceived because of content regulations that the Canadian government imposes on media. Three out of ten records a radio station plays have to be Canadian. When our show was bought by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, we gained two additional minutes because of fewer commercials. The producer said, "OK, for those two minutes, we need Canadian content." And we said, "OK, we'll fry up back bacon and drink beer for two minutes."

[A] O'Hara: Americans love it because they think Canadians are just like that.

[A] Thomas: Entertainment is not an issue of nationalism. That's why I hate those Canadian-content regulations and why I reacted so hostilely in the creation of Bob and Doug McKenzie. But it's turned out to be a boon.

19.

[Q] Playboy: It's your business to pin down other people's personalities. Can you characterize yourselves in a sentence or a phrase?

[A] Thomas: I used to bill myself as "the Beaver" because I'm a workaholic. I can tell you what I think of the rest of them: John is the big, lovable lump. I've never met anybody who hated him. Rick is really an imp. Gene is one of the slowest people I've ever met in my life. Nobody moves slower or more methodically than Gene. Catherine has the nickname "the Cheezer" because of her throaty, gravelly voice and her long chin. I can't look at Andrea without thinking of her as an Armenian. Joe is one of the most complicated, richly textured individuals I've ever run across: an amazing blend of Irish and Italian. It's a pretty unusual group. Did I leave anybody out?

[A] Levy: There's a citizenship award in grade two that reads: To Eugene, for being polite, for being kind to others, for being the best boy in room 15.

[A] Moranis: I received an award in Hebrew school for being runner-up in a Hebrew spelling contest and they spelled my name wrong.

[A] Martin: Somebody described me as a hip Hobbit. I thought that wasn't funny, so please don't publish it. I think of myself as really being a conservative--

[A] Moranis: Whore.

[A] Martin: I think we're all middle-of-the-road people.

[A] O'Hara: I'm not middle-of-the-road. I'm just faking it because I'm with a bunch of older people.

20.

[Q] Playboy: Do you ever fake laughter just to be nice?

[A] Martin: Oh, that's disgusting. Are you kidding?

[A] O'Hara (as Lola Heatherton): Haaaa ha ha ha. Our laughter is our sexual release, so, no, we try to do it sincere as often as we can.

[A] Martin: I like a good cigarette after I laugh.

[A] O'Hara: Yeah, let's all get naked and laugh together.