Thank you, Ed & Red’s Night Party

Ed & Red’s Night Party will go off the air in August. The new owners of CITY-TV here in Toronto are ridding the station of everything that made it unique in Toronto: Speaker’s Corner, Ed the Sock….

This is a shame—CITY was the fun station, sometimes annoyingly pretentious like Queen West can be, but never boring or entirely predictable like its buttoned-down, blandly corporate competitors.

Ed the Sock started out on the cable access channel with the nefarious Rogers Cable in 1992. Stars on press junkets through Toronto started to stop by a talk show hosted by a puppet who pulled no punches. I never saw the show on cable as I was still an over-the-airwaves viewer, but I knew about it by way of the media and friends who did have access to it.

A mere two years later, the Sock got called up to the big leagues at CITY. The show was a must-see on Friday nights. There were a few sidekicks along for the ride (Humble Howard of CFNY being the first one at CITY, and Craig Campbell in either the 3rd or 4th season). But as talented as they were, the Sock was still the main draw as he insulted guests, the show, the audience….

Ed’s Night Party was, for a long time, the only night time talk show in Toronto and Ontario (probably Canada, too).

The leading national networks, CBC and CTV, both launched high-profile, late night talk shows, the CBC doing a weekly show and CTV doing 5-nights a week. Both efforts were clones of the big US shows, down to the placement of the desk and the guest chairs (with the requisite funny musical director and the house band to one side, of course). Both were entertaining in their own way, but they broke no new ground and both efforts eventually left the air after ratings slipped away due to boredom.

But the Sock was refreshingly original. You never knew what was going to happen on the show next, something that even Letterman couldn’t claim. You couldn’t jump into the middle of the show and know exactly where the show was (opening monologue/comedy bit/first guest… they’re still following this calcified format).

After turning into a day-job wage slave, my nights began to end earlier and earlier, and I stopped watching Ed the Sock, Letterman and the rest at some point. Heck, I even stopped watching Saturday Night Live and missed that whole Tina Fey revival. I didn’t start watching Ed the Sock again until we met Ed and Red at a comic-con here in Toronto.

Ed & Red’s had evolved into a different show from the what I’d watched the first 3 years he was on CITY—the interviews were usually done in the field, and the bikini quota went way up. The comedy remained edgy, however, and Ed & Red are tremendous improvisers, ranging from groan-out-loud puns to edgy barbs aimed at society’s sacred cows. The show self-mockingly went for the young male demographic with spring break footage of wet t-shirt and bikini contests, topless hot tub girls, and some of the dirtiest jokes ever told on Canadian TV.

The show is less predictable in this late incarnation, breaking away from the monologue-sketch-guest-guest-guest format that has solidified the genre into an indistinguishable ritual—only the host, the set dressing, and onscreen graphics distinguish the big American shows (Jimmy Kimmel providing a breath of fresh air but not as popular as a result). Ed the Sock, meanwhile, marching to his own drummer , made his cast of dancers, tub girls, DJs, and his co-host Red into a complete repertory company capable of doing anything.

I hope we haven’t seen the last of Ed the Sock, but I do know that Ed and Red will do well in their next step, whatever form that takes.

CITY-TV, meanwhile, won’t be the same with all the fun tossed out like yesterday’s garbage. I fear the one station that embraced the great city of Toronto will become another bland corporate entity, indistinguishable from the safe, generic, predictable dullness of the other Toronto stations.

Maybe it’s better that the Sock is now free of the new CITY—it would be sad to see him sanitized into something he is not.

Dance of the Sugar Plum Scaries

Our 3rd appearance on Ed & Red’s Night Party aired on Friday (June 6), with the repeat running on Sunday, June 8. As I wrote back on April 24, this was an appearance in a sketch rather than being guests plugging something on the show.
Should Ed & Red post the clip, I’ll link to it here as I think we did some of our best work so far on that sketch.
That leaves one more appearance yet to air. Our fourth appearance is just a cameo, and it should last a few seconds rather than minutes.
You’ll get a chance to meet Ed & Red, as well as Miller & Mullet, at the Paradise Toronto Comicon, which runs July 12-13 at the Holiday Inn on King. This show is dedicated to comic books, so if you’re a fan of sequential art, drop by and say hello.

The Kings of Silent Comedy

My exposure to the silent-era comedians courtesy of Mother’s Pizza led me to research and seek out the great silent clowns, as Walter Kerr called them.

Charlie Chaplin: the superstar of the silent era. His movies seem dated now (theatre-style compositions, a wide maudlin streak), but he is still an important teacher. Chaplin used characters to create comedy rather than stringing together a series of gags (pay attention, Mike Myers), and he spent his career trying to find the perfect blend of comedy and tragedy.

Buster Keaton: a man before his time. Watch any of his shorts or features and you’ll see the roots of modern comedy filmmaking, with the naturalism and cinematography of our movies today. Watch his masterpiece, The General—there’s not a wasted frame in that tightly controlled, well-told story, and the film ranks as one of the best ever made. Where Chaplin’s tramp instantly mastered any task thrown his way, Buster’s poor sap would struggle before mastering anything.

Harry Langdon: the man-sized infant. His comic persona was that of a baby trapped in a grown man’s body, and he puts it to good use by putting that character into unsavory places as often as possible. He was the master of making the little things bigger than the big things. A glance, a stunned stare held for a beat—Harry was the master of understatement, but he made every gesture and beat stronger for it. Watch The Strongman if you can.

Harold Lloyd: the go-getter. It’s possible to watch the development of Harold Lloyd’s “glass character” through the surviving shorts. By the time he’d fully developed the character, he was creating great comedy that rivals that of Chaplin and Keaton. He was the king of the “thrill comedy,” with Safety Last being his finest effort.

Laurel & Hardy: two gods of comedy, no waiting. Most people have seen the duo’s sound-era shorts, but they did quite a few silents as well. I’ve seen parts of their silents in some of the Youngson re-releases. The characters are overgrown children, polite and well-meaning, but placed in their well-crafted stories they fail time and time again. The Music Box is one of the best comedy shorts ever made, but any of their shorts are gems. I love Towed in a Hole and Me and My Pal. Stan Laurel was a great craftsman, writing and editing their output. Their later features aren’t as good as those shorts are, but they are still a lot of fun. Laurel & Hardy took action and reaction and set them to a comfortably slow pace, allowing the gags to build on each other, with some of the finest physical comedy on film.

Interestingly, these great clowns, all long-gone, have official websites. There is hope that future generations will know their work.