Saturday Night at the Movies | |
---|---|
Genre | films |
Presented by | Elwy Yost (1974-1999) Shelagh Rogers (1999-2000) Johanna Schneller (2004-2006) Thom Ernst (2006-2013) |
Country of origin | Canada |
Original language | English |
No. of seasons | 39 |
Production | |
Producer | Risa Shuman (1974-2005) |
Production locations | Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
Release | |
Original network | TVOntario |
Original release | March 30, 1974 – August 31, 2013 |
Saturday Night at the Movies was a weekly television series on TVOntario, the public educational television network in Ontario, Canada. [1] The series presented classic movies, followed by interviews and feature segments with directors, actors and other people involved in making the films presented. [2]
The show was initially formatted in this way due to requirements that all programming shown on TVO (including dramatic programming) needed to contain educational elements, which was usually accomplished by including interviews and analysis of the programming. Nevertheless, even after these requirements were dropped, the format was maintained; all told, the series presented almost 1,500 films and over 1,000 interviews.
The show was produced for much of its run by Risa Shuman. [3]
First aired on March 30, 1974, the program was originally hosted by Elwy Yost. The first film shown was Ingmar Bergman's Through a Glass Darkly . [2] During Yost's 25-year tenure as host, he showed a variety of foreign films, but tended to concentrate on Hollywood-produced films from the 1930s through the 1950s, slowly expanding into also showing films from the 1960s and 1970s as the series progressed. Films shown spanned all genres; Yost famously said that of all the films he had ever seen in his life, he had disliked only two. [4] For a number of years, however, the show was unable to broadcast films from the Warner Bros. studio, as TVOntario's transmitter in Windsor created a programming rights conflict with stations in Detroit. [5]
Although the hosts did interview actors and film directors, they often interviewed film crew, such as cinematographers and film editors, who much more rarely receive widespread publicity. [6]
In his final decade hosting the show, Yost lived in Vancouver, British Columbia, and would travel to Toronto to prepare many episodes of the show at once. [3]
Yost retired as host of the series in 1999. [7] The last film he presented was, atypically, a then-recent Hollywood blockbuster: Yost chose Speed to conclude his run as host, as it was written by his son, screenwriter Graham Yost. [7] Around the same time as his retirement, he was inducted into the Order of Canada. [8]
Soon after Yost's retirement, the Progressive Conservative government of Mike Harris appointed Isabel Bassett as chair of TVOntario, with a mandate to refocus the network's broadcast schedule more clearly on education. [9] Although there was some concern that the network would lose Saturday Night at the Movies, its highest-rated program, [10] Bassett instead negotiated an agreement with York University to include the series in its film studies curriculum. [11]
Yost was replaced as host for one season by Shelagh Rogers, concurrently with her continuing role as host of CBC Stereo's classical music program Take Five. [7] When Rogers became the host of CBC Radio's morning news program This Morning in 2000, she left Saturday Night at the Movies, which briefly changed to a hostless format. [12] At this time, the series added a Sunday night companion series, Sunday Night at the Cinema, which focused more on international film. [5]
The program was then hosted by Johanna Schneller for two seasons beginning in 2004. [13] The show's final host, for the remainder of its run, was Thom Ernst. [14]
On November 13, 2012, it was announced that TVO would cancel Saturday Night at the Movies as of the end of the 2012-2013 season, amidst budget cuts incurred by the network. [15] The final edition of Saturday Night at the Movies was broadcast on August 31, 2013, featuring two foreign films as its last movies: The Lives of Others (at 8 P.M.), and Black Book (starting at 10:50 P.M.) [16]
Copies of many of the show's interviews have been donated to the archives of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. [6]
CBC Television has aired National Hockey League (NHL) broadcasts under the Hockey Night in Canada brand that is primarily associated with its Saturday night NHL broadcasts throughout its history in various platforms.
TVO, formerly known as TVOntario, is a publicly funded English-language educational television network and media organization serving the Canadian province of Ontario. It operates flagship station CICA-DT in Toronto, which also relays programming across portions of Ontario through eight rebroadcast stations. All pay television providers throughout Ontario are required to carry TVO on their basic tier, and programming can be streamed for free online within Canada.
Shelagh Rogers, OC, is a Canadian broadcast journalist based in British Columbia. She is the host and producer of CBC Radio One's The Next Chapter, and former chancellor of the University of Victoria.
Elwy McMurran Yost, was a Canadian television host, best known for hosting CBC Television's weekday Passport to Adventure series from 1965 to 1967, TVOntario's weekday Magic Shadows, from 1974 until the mid-1980s, and Saturday Night at the Movies from 1974 to 1999.
Graham John Yost is a Canadian film and television screenwriter. His best-known works are the films Speed, Broken Arrow, and Hard Rain and the TV series Justified.
Isabel Bassett is a Canadian broadcaster and former politician. From 1999 until 2005 she was the chair and CEO of TVOntario/TFO, Ontario's provincial public television network. She has been a controversial figure at times, but is also a highly regarded pioneer in Canadian broadcasting.
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Johanna Schneller is an American-born Canadian film journalist and television personality, currently the host of the film talk show The Filmmakers on CBC Television.
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The Agenda with Steve Paikin, or simply The Agenda, is the flagship current affairs television program of TVOntario (TVO), Ontario's public broadcaster. Anchor Steve Paikin states that the show practices long-form journalism. Each hour-long program covers no more than two topics.
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Magic Shadows was a 30-min Canadian television series produced by the TVOntario public television network hosted by Elwy Yost that ran on weekday evenings from 1974 to the mid 1980s.
Joseph Frederick Motiki is a Canadian television host, actor, and performer. He is best known for hosting the TVOntario children's block The TVOKids Crawlspace and the Food Network game show Ice Cold Cash.
Ronald Bruce Pittman is a Canadian television and film director best known for directing the 1987 slasher Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II. He also directed the 1989 film Where the Spirit Lives, which won the Gemini Award for Best TV movie and numerous international awards.
MovieTelevision is a Canadian entertainment news series, which aired on Citytv from 1988 to 2006. The series aired reports on film, including interviews with actors and filmmakers, preview clips of upcoming films and coverage of film-related events such as the Toronto International Film Festival.