On Sunday, I will “take off” for the SCTV reunion at the Elgin Theatre in Toronto. CHML’s Scott Thompson had plenty of questions about Martin Scorsese’s upcoming SCTV documentary, which has just been picked up in Canada by CTV. Smart move, Bell. Not a lot of details are known at this point about the project,
Very late in posting this but had a great time last Saturday moderating a panel at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival. A A 40-year-old CBC TV-movie was saluted: “The Making of the President 1944.” Among the distinguished guests on the panel was the author of the original short story upon which the movie was based,
On Saturday, May 5, it will be my privilege to help salute a rare, 40-year-old CBC teleplay: The Making of a President. The hour-long drama, which has nothing to do with the similarly-titled American election chronicles of Theodore H. White, has been kept in a deep corner of the CBC vaults since it aired in 1978.
Strange, with the success this spring of the re-boot of Roseanne, that headlines should turn toward news of the passing of Harry Anderson. Anderson’s breakout series Night Court ran from 1984 to 1992. That was back in the day when NBC was considered a “Must See” network. His series started a few years before Roseanne premiered on ABC in
On Tuesday, CHML’s AM900 morning host Bill Kelly suggested to me that Steven Bochco was to television what Steven Spielberg was to movies. Both moved their medium forward. Bochco certainly was an innovator as a writer and story editor, combining serial elements into police procedurals. Bochco also encouraged Hill Street Blues pilot director Robert Butler to literally
Way back when I was a young Turk at TV Guide Canada I was asked to get Steven Bochco on the phone. I thought the request was pure madness. At that time and for many years afterwards, Bochco was TV’s top showrunner, the much-admired writer/producer behind such groundbreaking hits as Hill Street Blues and L.A.
Back when I was a wee lad, Cleveland Amory would review shows for TV Guide magazine. He was on the back page, in a pencil sketch, wearing the typical white shirt and black tie reporter uniform of the ’60s. He was clutching a pipe, which is how you knew he was a critic. Reading his stuff
Famed during the Ed Sullivan Show years of the ’60s as one half of the comedy team of Allen & Rossi, Marty Allen died Monday in Las Vegas. He was 95. Allen & Rossi appeared 44 times on Sullivan, scoring their biggest audience on Sunday, Feb. 16, 1964 on a showcase that also featured The Beatles.