With ‘You Had To Be There,’ filmmaker Nick Davis takes audiences back to the legendary Toronto production of ‘Godspell’ that helped launch some of comedy’s most recognizable careers…in a Canadian kind of way.
“It’s a burst of genuine joy,” Davis says of the film. “It’s not hippie-dippy joy, fake joy. It’s deep, profound joy of living.”
Days after returning home from Toronto last year, filmmaker Nick Davis hopped on Zoom to discuss the inspiration behind ‘You Had To Be There,’ tracing the documentary’s origins to Martin Short’s memoir and his discovery of the remarkable creative chemistry among the 1972 Toronto ‘Godspell’ cast. Davis reflects on how the production’s comedic sensibility helped shape a generation of performers, the emotional experience of reuniting the cast onscreen, and the challenge of bringing the story to life through animation and archival recordings in the absence of performance footage. He also shares what surprised him most during production, including the cast’s enduring friendships and Avril’s deeply moving personal story, while explaining why he hopes audiences leave the film with a renewed appreciation for joy, love, friendship, and the role of luck in shaping a life and career.
‘You Had To Be There’ is a funny, moving documentary about the legendary 1972 Toronto production of ‘Godspell,’ which brought together future comedy icons Martin Short, Gilda Radner, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Dave Thomas, and Victor Garber, with Paul Shaffer as musical director. Featuring interviews with surviving cast members, entertainment luminaries, and never-before-seen archival footage and recordings, the film explores how this remarkable gathering of talent helped shape generations of comedy, from ‘Saturday Night Live’ and ‘SCTV’ to ‘Schitt’s Creek’ and beyond.
Directed by Nick Davis from a script written by Davis and Jane Mendelsohn, ‘You Had To Be There’ features Valda Aviks, Avril Chown, Jayne Eastwood, Victor Garber, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Don Scardino, Paul Shaffer, Martin Short, Stephen Schwartz, Dave Thomas, and Rudy Webb.
Acquired by Greenwich Entertainment in April, ‘You Had To Be There: How the Toronto Godspell Ignited the Comedy Revolution, Spread Love & Overalls, and Created a Community That Changed the World (In a Canadian Kind of Way)’ is now playing in theaters.
Awards Focus: It’s so nice to see you again. How are you doing?
Nick Davis: I’m doing good. It’s great to see you again, back in our own native lands.
AF: What was the genesis behind making a documentary about the Toronto production of ‘Godspell’?
Nick Davis: I am a huge comedy fan and I’d always known about this production. In 2017, I had a copy of Martin Short’s memoir and I was reading it next to my wife and often work partner, Jane Mendelsohn. I got to the part in Marty’s memoir where he described the ‘Godspell’ experience and I was really thought this was amazing. I mentioned to Jane, hey, do you even know about this? And did you know Martin Short went out with Gilda Radner? That really got us excited.
We started thinking about, well, what must that have been like for people to fall in love? And then they sort of all fell in love with each other. We decided then, okay, we have to tell this story. We weren’t really sure what form it would take. Jane is a novelist. I’m a documentary filmmaker. It took us a while before—she was writing a book and doing a musical and I was doing another film.
And then finally, in 2021, we said, all right, this is a documentary. Let’s go. That was the genesis. But to me, it never made any sense. I’m not a theater kid. My conception of ‘Godspell’ was as a goofy, hippy-dippy Kumbaya relic of the 60s, a musical about the life of Jesus where they were all just dancing around.
I didn’t really know what the musical was. I thought, well, this is the most mockable thing. How could all of these comedians—who could have done a brilliant parody of it on ‘Saturday Night Live’ or ‘SCTV’ where so many of them were—how could they have come from this hippy-dippy saccharin thing? This is the greatest coincidence of all time. That was what I went into this thinking.
Pretty quickly, as I talked to them and started to sort of investigate what ‘Godspell’ really was, I realized, oh no, this was no coincidence. The essence of ‘Godspell’ is that they were telling the Jesus story.
But John-Michael Tebelak, who wrote ‘Godspell,’ wrote the book and conceived of the whole thing before Stephen Schwartz got involved and wrote an incredible score, his genius insight was: Jesus must have been awfully entertaining and all of his disciples must have been awfully entertaining, so let’s do it as a clown show. That these gifted comedians came from ‘Godspell’ was no accident at all. They were encouraged to bring their brightest, most positive comic selves to the roles they were playing. That’s why lightning struck at the Royal Alex in 1972.
AF: How did you all decide on the film’s title and why is it so long?
Nick Davis: Well, that’s a great question, Danielle. One of the questions I asked everybody was, is this just a dumb idea? How can we do what we’re trying to do here in this film and create this magic moment and bring it back to life? There’s no footage and this makes no sense in a way. One of the interviewees, Dave Thomas, said, “Yeah, this is sort of the ultimate you had to be there.”
I didn’t think at the time that this was the title or anything. But one of the first things the brilliant editor of this documentary, Doug Abel, did was create a sequence that pretty much—I mean, we made a few changes to it, but pretty much stayed the same. It’s the third and final piece of our intro section where I asked them all that, and it lands on Dave Thomas saying, “You had to be there.”
Doug sent that to me, I think maybe even the first week he was cutting after we watched through all the interviews together. He said, “This could be a good title.” I thought, ooh, that’s really asking for it, isn’t it? But I also thought, it’s pretty good.
But I knew I wanted a subtitle that explained that it was from the Toronto ‘Godspell.’ I thought how about a comically long subtitle that tries to cram it all in? Not hilariously comic, just the spirit of the times, gently comic, long subtitle. So that’s what we did. We worked on that subtitle quite a lot over the next months. Only in the last few months did we come up with the final little ‘Spread Love and Overalls.’ It used to say something else in that little section since you asked. So thank you for asking.
AF: How honored were you to premiere the film at the very theater where ‘Godspell’ was staged?
Nick Davis: Well, it was crazy. It was absolutely insane to show the film in that theater 53 years and however many months and days later, and have so many of them in attendance and even people who came up to me afterwards and said, “I saw it at the Royal Alex.” It was a crazy confluence of events. I’m not going to call it a coincidence because we recognized it in early 2023.
I remember looking at the calendar and thinking, okay, if I get enough money to start shooting by here, we could be editing by here. And if we edit by here, we’ll have a rough cut that we can get to Toronto by here. The Royal Alex is affiliated with the film festival, so let that be the dream.
But I mean, we all have a lot of dreams that don’t come true. The fact that it came true was, it was just a life event that was just insane and wonderful.
AF: What went through you mind when Martin Short told you that he spoke to everybody and that they were in?
Nick Davis: It was like a roller coaster. I was so anxious going into this meeting. I mean, he’s one of my comic heroes and I was just nervous to meet him, period. Plus, we’d been thinking about this a long time and the whole thing could have blown up in my face.
But as you say, I had this lunch with him and within two minutes of meeting him—I prepared a whole pitch on why I think we should do it—he said, “I’ve talked to everybody. We all want to do it.”
He thinks this is a great idea. Let’s go. Let’s eat. I just felt instant zero to 60 and relaxation or zero to 60 to zero. It was just unbelievable what a wonderful gift that was without my even having to explain anything.
We just talked about the show and what the film would be. I asked him questions and found out a lot of wonderful things that informed the next however many years of work it was between now and then. Yeah, it was incredible.
AF: I love how the end credit specifically says bootleg.
Nick Davis: (Laughs) Yeah, well, yeah. I did ask the lawyers, “Can we say illegal?” Because Stephen Schwartz in his interview said Marty illegally recorded this. Marty said, “I illegally recorded it.” And the lawyers said, “Yeah, he illegally recorded it, so you can say illegally.” And then, yeah, we said bootleg recordings when we’re listing the song titles.
AF: What was the most surprising thing you learned during the making of the film?
Nick Davis: Well, there was a bunch of things. One of them was the depth of what ‘Godspell’ really is. I had seen the movie, too. No disrespect to the movie, but it’s very dated and it doesn’t capture the spirit of the show. Maybe a movie just couldn’t, but I feel like ‘Godspell’ has a really unfair reputation. As Don Scardino says in the film, it’s a radical show if you do it right and it’s hilarious if you do it right.
I would love to see a production of ‘Godspell’ that was done the way they did it in Toronto in 1972 using imitations of today, not Ed Sullivan and Richard Burton, but whoever we all might recognize. I think that was an eye-opener to me because I did think this could have come from ‘Sweet charity.’ I mean, they all could have been in whatever. That was one thing.
I think the other big thing I learned is this is a special group of people. I didn’t realize they were all still friends and they were all still so close. Marty could just email the chain or whatever, and just get an answer so quickly.
We did a Q& A after the opening session and Marty, Andrea, Jayne Eastwood, who was unfortunately sick, but joined, and Avril joined by Zoom. They just love each other and they just fall back into that wonderful, almost family-like relationship.
The third big surprise is Avril and what happened to her. Because, going into it, you just think, well, accidents and whatever happens, and who knows why these people didn’t become famous or whatever. Her story and her sharing her story with us was so incredible and moving. It was the furthest thing from my mind when I went into that interview is that she had a horrible tale of abuse that knocked the joy out of her and essentially knocked her out of the business.
AF: What was the most challenging aspect in making the film?
Nick Davis: That’s a great question. I suppose you could say that the most challenging was: okay, there’s no footage. What are you going to do? But I knew going in, there’s no footage, and I knew we’re going to do animation, and the animation is going to be great, and I know exactly what the style of the animation is going to be, and it’s going to be fine.
But actually, working with the animator, fantastic animation team, Ace & Son and Richard O’Connor, who runs the shop, brilliant guy, and his team is fantastic. But I hadn’t worked with animation before, and so you’re living with black and sketches for a long time. I think that was the biggest challenge.
AF: How long was the rough assembly cut?
Nick Davis: The rough assembly cut was a little over two hours. It was definitely too long. But the schedule, I mean, obviously, production is hard. There’s a lot of challenges. This was touched by the angels, this production. It was so wonderful. We had fantastic investors who bought into, yeah, this is a great story. We’ll tell this story.
I built a budget and a schedule that permitted me 24 weeks to a rough cut, which is pretty healthy. We had a pretty decent rough cut and it was too long. I think it was 2 hours and 5 minutes or something.
But then I had an additional 16 weeks to hone it and the rough cut was strong. It was too long and there’s plenty of stuff that we left on the cutting room floor. But it wasn’t misshapen or poorly structured. The structure was there. All of it was there because we had 24 weeks to sit with it. Lots of times, you don’t have that luxury. We built a schedule that permitted us that luxury and it was wonderful.
AF: Was there anything you wanted to keep in the film but couldn’t find the right place?
Nick Davis: Well, everything is always better shorter. So yes, there are things, there are great—Dave Thomas tells a hilarious story about once he was in and they have a cup of grape juice as they’re all passing the communion cup. He goes first and he drank the whole thing and then passed it to the next guy with a look like, where’s your Jesus now? He does an Edward G. Robinson imitation. It’s hilarious, but it takes about a minute and a half.
There are little things like that that we just didn’t get a chance to get in. There’s a little bit more I’d love to do on Jerry Salzberg. But watching it with an audience, I’m just reminded of, keep it moving. Keep it moving. I didn’t regret anything that we lost.
There was a wonderful, but very extra sad story about Gilda that we lost at the last minute. Again, I don’t regret it. It’s just a great story, but we didn’t have time for it.
AF: Do you recall when you first heard about the Toronto production and its cast?
Nick Davis: I don’t remember not knowing about it. I’m a significantly older gentleman than my interlocutor here. But I was seven in 72. I don’t think I heard about the Toronto thing then, but by the late 70s, when ‘SNL’ and ‘SCTV’ were on the air, I knew that all of them had been in it.
I did improv as a young man and in college earlier. I remember being with my groups in college and particularly in 1989 in New York and looking around at the group and thinking, okay, I wonder if we’re all like the ‘Godspell’ 72 group. And of course, we weren’t. None of us went on to be world famous comedians.
But it was definitely lodged in my brain as, okay, so that was a thing. But I remember thinking then, why ‘Godspell’? I really didn’t know what ‘Godspell’ was about.
AF: Having come up through improv, did you ever consider a career in front of the camera rather than behind?
Nick Davis: I did, but I really, two things. One, I loved improv itself. I didn’t really ever want to be an actor. I just loved the improvising. When I would try and do straight acting or even straight comic acting, I would be like, I can’t do this, the same every night. I just didn’t want to do it and I couldn’t handle the rejection and I wasn’t as good as I wanted to be.
One night, Mike Myers came and did improv with us. I did a scene with him, and it was like standing in against Sandy Koufax or something. I mean, I was okay, I can keep up barely, but this guy’s really got it and I clearly don’t.
It was fun. It was totally fun. But I did think, even if I could do improv for a living, I’m certainly not as good as this guy. So yeah, I didn’t.
There was nowhere to go with all my love for improv, other than what I thought, which was documentary films. That must be like improv. You just follow the story wherever it goes, not realizing how much preparation really goes into documentary films.
AF: When you started your career in filmmaking, did you feel that internal pressure to do well because of who your family is?
Nick Davis: I’m sure I did on some level, but not consciously. I think it was so buried that there was so much pressure that I didn’t even feel it. It was like I’m just walking around with pressure on my shoulders. I just thought that was what life was until I would say about ten years ago, when I realized the pressure all of a sudden went away.
I thought, oh, wow, I’m my own guy. I don’t need that. I’m just going to do what I like to do. Luckily, happily, I had fallen into this line of work and I really do love it. So, yeah, trying to live up to what they did. Yeah, come on.
I loved the John Candy clip in the film. Even though I had seen ‘John Candy: I Like Me’ days earlier, I must have been remembering and thought he was in ‘Godspell.’ I knew he was at Second City and ‘SCTV,’ but for some reason, I kept thinking he was in ‘Godspell.’
Nick Davis: Right, right. No, what’s great about that is you can tell—I mean, he’s so gentle. It’s such a great clip. He’s so funny, but you can tell he kind of thought of ‘Godspell’ the way I had thought of ‘Godspell.’ Like, okay, you’re all having such a good time. But he didn’t seem to love ‘Godspell’ the way they all did. But he was great.
I haven’t seen the John Candy documentary. I hear really good things about it. I would love to see it.
AF: Yeah. I imagine you were probably very busy on the ground in the brief time.
Nick Davis: Well, that’s the thing about film festivals is you get the program in advance and you think, wow, this is going to be great. I’m going to see all these films. And they’re like, you have no time. You’ve got your own films to premiere and promote and you’re being ushered from one place to the next.
I didn’t see anything else in the 48 hours I was in Toronto and I really was sorry about that.
AF: What do you hope people take away from watching the film?
Nick Davis: Joy. I mean, it’s a burst of genuine joy. It’s not hippie-dippy joy, fake joy. It’s deep, profound joy of living. I hope they take away something about friendship because it is about a group of friends who have stayed together, like genuine friends. As someone says in the film, these are not Hollywood friendships. These are real Hollywood friendships.
And also, I think there’s something in here about luck. There’s the thing where Dave Thomas says, “We understood the absurdity that would make one person successful and one person not.” It’s the luck of the draw that they were in ‘Godspell’ to begin with and that got them noticed, as Marty says, that got him noticed.
That’s why he followed the path eventually that he ended up following, realizing, yeah, comic acting, that’s what I’m really good at. Let me go do Second City. After years of sort of floundering around trying to do the prison play or Cole Porter or whatever.
I think luck has and self-worth, and joy and friendship and love. I mean, I think somewhere in there is the message of the movie. Thankfully, as a filmmaker, I just want people to see the movie and they’ll take from it whatever they want.