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The search for a Canadian Legend…part two…

Back when I first arrived in Toronto over 14 years ago, I was employed at Magnetic North, a very successful post house, in the lowly position of data-input / courier. Had I known that when Riff Markowitz poked his head into my office, on one of his many inspections from Los Angeles, was one of the creators of “Hilarious House”, I would have hit him up with a resurgence for the cult show then… alas, it was not to be.

Flash forward years later while I sit, sipping a beer in the company of Billy Van, “The Count”, “Grizelda”, “The Wolfman” and many others, himself. I told him I once met Riff Markowitz and a slight scowl came over his face. When I told him my idea for a resurrection of sorts for “Hilarious House”, his reception of the idea was somewhat tainted by the fact that he could really do nothing to help me achieve my goal. He reiterated the story of how he felt slighted by his former business associate and that he had no access to the rights of a show that, in my opinion, could not have been, without his creative input.

He was still receptive to being involved in some way as he was very proud of his contribution to the show. Being relatively new to darkened business deals and poorly conceived contractual obligations, or lack thereof, I was somewhat, naively, disheartened by the news that these two could not have just mended fences for a reunion of sorts…

Regardless, it was good to talk with a man, who was one of the people that made a great contribution to the world of Canadian comedy in his endeavors. We made plans to talk again regarding the project and we did speak a couple of more times on the phone, but it really didn’t get very far. Billy Van passed away in 2003. There is a tribute to his work on the show here.

A year after Mr.Van passed on, I was at the bar with a friend of mine, who works at a local television station, and we got on the topic of “Hilarious House”… he casually mentioned that he had access to all 130 masters of the show! I grabbed him by the shirt collar and begged him to get me these elusive masters!

From this article link: “Frightenstein’s producer and creator, Rafael Markowitz, recently ordered the master tapes destroyed after its run on Showcase.”

He said he’d see what he could do, but it would be tricky. Now, the mystery at this point would be why on earth would one of the show’s creators want the masters of a great Canadian classic destroyed?? Are there any other copies? Does he have the only copies? Does he hate the show and in some Kafkaesque moment of self-loathing want his work obliterated? My friends and I have speculated on a less dramatic theory. When re-runs of a show are not airing, the master tapes are stored in a videotape warehouse somewhere. To house these tapes it costs money. (A monthly charge I imagine…) So, if no one is airing “Hilarious House of Frightenstein” at the moment, then why pay for the cost of housing the master tapes? Insane? Well, it depends I suppose. It’s like internet hosting in a way. People think that just because your site isn’t “live” that you shouldn’t have to pay for the space that “hosts” your site.

Yes folks, the erasure and subsequent eradication of this Canadian legend could quite possibly be simply because someone was too cheap to pay for storage.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 7th, 2004 at 12:43 pm and is filed under old blogger shit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.