By BRUCE KIRKLAND --
The 1970s and '80s are now the proverbial "good old days" for Joe Flaherty, the comic conscience and guiding spirit of the SCTV comedy troupe, which revolutionized sketch comedy on TV.
"Oh yes, I've come to that conclusion," Flaherty tells The Sun in a Toronto interview, getting a bit misty-eyed and choked-up as he plumbs his memory banks.
"This is yesteryear, as old people used to say when I was young." But they were good years in comedy history, says the soon to be 63-year-old Flaherty (best known as Guy Caballero, the head of the Melonville TV station).
"I hope so, and I hope they remain in people's minds and hearts," Flaherty says. "Personally, I look upon that as the golden years. I'm so happy to be a part of that. I loved doing the show and it's a high point in my life. I'll be honest with you, it's probably THE high point. So I'm quite happy that this is happening."
Flaherty -- who says he stole his Caballero caricature from Lionel Barrymore's performance in Key Largo -- is referring to Tuesday's release of the impressive five-disc DVD box set, SCTV: Volume 1: Network 90.
None of SCTV has even been on VHS video before, thanks to complicated music rights issues, so the DVD debut is historic for fans of the Canadian troupe that included Flaherty, John Candy, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Catherine O'Hara, Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas, as well as significant others -- from Martin Short to Harold Ramis.
The music experts at Shout! Entertainment spent a year clearing the music.
The shows were digitally remastered and the decision was made to launch SCTV on DVD with the nine 90-minute episodes shot in Edmonton and aired on NBC in 1981, even though SCTV actually launched in 1976 with half-hour shows shot in Toronto for Global.
But the first NBC compilation shows included excerpts from earlier episodes, so you get flashbacks to the earlier material anyway.
The half-hour episodes are being collected for future DVD releases, once the NBC era is covered.
Eventually, says SCTV's co-founding producer Andrew Alexander, everything will be available, except skits edited out because the music rights were impossible to clear.
"I'm thrilled that the show has been around this long and that people still remember it," says Flaherty. "So, personally for me, it's a very big deal."
Like some of his co-stars, Flaherty participated in the new bonus materials on the DVDs and one of the extras highlights his hilarious bull session with Levy.
But there is sadness, too. Flaherty remembers Candy, who died a decade ago, as a genius co-star and as a dear friend.
"I'm starting to adjust to it now," Flaherty tells The Sun of Candy's death.
"It took me quite a while, though, because John was a good friend as well as being a fellow cast member. He was just fun to be around. He was fun to write for. John would come up sometimes with outrageous ideas for scenes. He would keep pushing it, we would shoot it, and it would end up being funny.
"Throwing the TVs out the window was John's idea. We just used to laugh a lot. That presence, all of a sudden to be gone, is just hard."
THOMAS: LEGACY LIVES ON
Dave Thomas has spent parts of the past 25 years getting feedback on SCTV, and specifically his Bob and Doug McKenzie collaboration with Rick Moranis.
"It is kind of cool," the 55-year-old Thomas says of the famed comics, from Ben Stiller to Fred Willard, who list SCTV as a major influence. "We were interviewed by Conan O'Brien at Aspen and he was falling all over himself," says Thomas, "and I've run into a lot of comedians over the years who told me it was really instrumental and important."
But, as much as he is flattered, Thomas says he wants to move on and live in the future, not in the past, despite the first release of SCTV on DVD.
"It doesn't have a reality for me. You can't weigh it like meat on a scale. It is gratifying that people think highly of it, but the show is not on anymore. I'm leading my life. They're leading their lives, you know what I mean. It doesn't have any measurable effect on my day-to-day life."
Except that the legacy of the Great White North lingers. Bob and Doug McKenzie have their photo in a sociology textbook. The characters inspired Thomas and Moranis' voice work in the Disney animated movie Brother Bear.
"With specific respect to the hosers," says Thomas, "it's their inability to die. Every time we think they're dead, they come back to life. Not just as moose, but we were the engines in promoting that movie.
"It was pretty sappy. They're doing another direct-to-video Brother Bear. But they're also talking to us about some moose thing. When you think of it, that was born out of SCTV, born out of a Canadian content regulation.
"If Rick and I sat down and said: 'Let's see if we can come up with a couple of characters and really have an impact on Canadian pop culture and will still be viable 25 years from now!' we couldn't have done that. That is totally a fluke."
