As a child, my family typically went to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. Most of my family, that is. My father would often attend another mass, typically. And one year, it just so happened that Frank Capra’s 1946 film, It’s A Wonderful Life, was being shown on television. My father offered that I could skip midnight mass if I wanted to watch this film with him, and my father rarely made such offers like this, so I took it. And because my father so clearly loved this film, I grew to love it as well.

I was just reading Roger Ebert’s 1999 essay on the film–and something that Ebert wrote really struck a nerve with me:

“This was the first movie he (Capra) made after returning from service in World War II, and he wanted it to be special–a celebration of the lives and dreams of America’s ordinary citizens, who tried the best they could to do the right thing by themselves and their neighbors.”

There were no shades of gray in my late father’s view of the world. He saw the world in terms of the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do. For my father, anything other than the right thing was never an option. Hearing Ebert’s take on Capra’s intent with the film allows a glimpse past the heart-warming surface of the tale. It also allows me to see a little bit more of my father’s thinking, years after his death, through his appreciation of a film.

I keep the memory of my father alive in odd ways, but they are ways that work for me. And hearing George Bailey exclaim “Zusu’s petals” always takes me back to my childhood and my first viewing of the film.

But as much as I enjoy Holman’s writing (along with the criticism of Roger Ebert and Mick LaSalle), I often think that I could learn more about film (and thereby get more satisfaction from films) by reading a greater variety of critical analysis. In my quest to broaden my film knowledge, I recently added former veteran Chicago Reader film critic, Jonathan Rosenbaum, to my RSS reader. Rosenbaum, a critic since the late 1960s, has filled his website with a staggering amount of his writings from over the years. How staggering? According to him:

I’ve published over 8,000 items since the late 60s. And according to my former technical adviser and helper Benjamin Coy, over 5,500 of these appeared in the Chicago Reader. Thanks in part to Ben’s diligent work, there are now (as of November 25, 2009) 7,722 separate items or “posts” on this web site (not counting items which have been prepared but not yet published) , which most likely include virtually all of my articles and capsule reviews from the Reader, approximately 160 Notes (some of which are republished texts), 49 other “featured texts” that haven’t appeared in the Reader, and, I would guess, many other posts that are either unwitting duplications or else mystery texts that haven’t yet been identified (unless that estimate of  “over 5,500”  was unduly conservative).

On a regular basis, Rosenbaum pulls from his archive of writing to revisit a review–maybe from the 1980s, maybe from the 1990s or more recently. A recent post revisited his 2001 review of Citizen Sarris, American Film Critic: Essays in Honor of Andrew Sarris, which ended with this broad perspective on cinema and the general study of it:

I don’t doubt that things are still growing and still possible for various crazed cinephiles today, so I’m not trying to pull any rank here. The point is that, cinema-is-dead theorists to the contrary, film history never even comes close to repeating itself, for better and for worse. And the prime lesson to be learned from Citizen Sarris, American Film Critic isn’t how much things were changed forever by one book called The American Cinema, because ultimately there is no forever in film criticism. The point is how much they’re still changing because of it, because with or without forever, ripples can last for centuries.

Rosenbaum has a wealth of experience that thanks to the Internet, is free to read, at his website. If you want to broaden your scope of film knowledge, you’d do well to visit the site. You won’t agree with everything, of course, but either way you’ll learn something.

Tim O’Shea: How did Canadian Content originally form?

Ian Boothby: Canadian Content is a spin off from Urban Improv which has been doing weekly sketch style improv for 13 years in Vancouver. We still perform every Monday at Chivana. There was a Vancouver Sketchfest show happening and we wanted Urban Improv to attend but the other groups were adamant that the material had to be scripted. So we wrote some sketches based mostly on characters we’d done on our Monday shows and called ourselves Canadian Content.

Most of the performers in the group have actually had sketch television series in Canada but we never really thought about doing sketch regularly live before this. Since then we’ve got on to do the Chicago and San Fran Sketchfests and the Vancouver ComedyFest. We’ve gotten to work with most of our sketch comedy heroes from Kids in the Hall and Mr. Show. If it all ends now we couldn’t complain. Okay, we clearly would complain but…

O’Shea: Do all the performers also write sketches for the show? Are there any comedy writing teams in the group?

Boothby: Everyone brings ideas to the group and we’re very open about fleshing out a concept and seeing where it goes. Everyone has a strong sense of what’s funny and we try to trust that. Some sketches are direct lifts of improv scenes we’ve done on Mondays, some are built up from a loose idea and others are fully scripted and brought to the group. There’s really no set way a sketch gets done. What I’m saying is we’re unprofessional.

O’Shea: You all have already recorded a pilot for CBC radio, any idea when that will air?

Boothby: That’s up to the CBC. This is one of the nice things about doing our CDs, we have no waiting time before we can get those out there. The CBC show is more structured than the albums but we’re happy with both. Don’t make us do a Sophie’s Choice of which we love more.

O’Shea: While the name of the group is Canadian Content, you definitely do not target a Canadian audience only–in fact you’ll be doing a run of shows in London for the month of August. Will the group try to write sketches and material to capitalize upon current events in London.

Boothby: We’ll have to see if anything hits us. The name Canadian Content is of course based on requirements to broadcasters to play a certain percentage of Canadian material. It was entertainment that was forced upon us and while some good has come from it, it still leaves a bad taste in the mouth. We’re trying to take the name back!

I’m sure we’ll have some references to London, both England and Ontario.

O’Shea: What kind of material is included on the new CD, Canuxsploitation, which is being released this month?

Boothby: Sketches about magicians who don’t understand how their tricks work, sex offenders, a broke Batman, a fight at a party between Dracula and the Wolfman, how to deal with a beached whale, a radio talk show that has 300% too much talk and why you should never order crazy bread at a pizza place.

O’Shea: According to the group’s website, the group is the “bastard step-child of Urban Improv and much of the sketch material comes from Urban Improv shows”. Why form Canadian Content, in addition to Urban Improv?

Boothby: It’s like our improv show but in concentrated form. Like taking frozen Minute Maid orange juice and not adding the three cans of water. Which frankly sounds terrible and has turned me off of seeing our show.

O’Shea: How is it different to write a sketch for a visual medium (video/youtube) versus writing for CD or radio?

Boothby: You have to dress better and I feel worse about my weight when it’s on video. Also it’s more work for Drew McCreadie who directs all of our videos.

O’Shea: Ian, at Facebook you recently linked to a Roger Ebert essay on comedy. It in he includes the anecdote (from the Aristocrats documentary) about Gilbert Gottfried telling a 9/11 joke too soon (for some) after the tragedy. Are there taboo subjects that you try to avoid for fear of crossing a line?

Boothby: No, we try not to do material just for shock value but also if usually have a couple of things per show that scare us a bit. I am always surprised what the audience is game to laugh about. If you don’t try new things and push it a bit then people might as well be watching TV. Not that I don’t enjoy TV. It’s swell, but live theatre especially should take you some new places.

What I don’t like as an audience member is when you see a sketch and once you get the hook to it you know pretty much how your next 3-4 minutes are going to go. My hope is that with our sketches you don’t skip ahead mentally and if you do we’ll be taking you someplace different. That might come from the improv background where we never know where a scene is going to end up and we’ve tried to bring that sensibility to sketch. Or maybe we just don’t know how to end scenes. Once again we’ve pretty much all had sketch series on television, notice we don’t still have them.