SANTA BARBARA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2026 REVIEW! You Had to Be There is the short title of writer-director Nick Davis and writer Jane Mendelsohn’s documentary. The full title is a bit more revealing: 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). This is the largely unknown origin story of cast members who would go on to transform popular culture through shows like Saturday Night Live, SCTV, Schitt’s Creek, Late Night with David Letterman, and more.
Toronto in 1972 must have been a hell of a time and place, because that’s where relative unknowns like Martin Short, Gilda Radner, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, Victor Garber, Andrea Martin, Jayne Eastwood, and Paul Shaffer answered a casting call for the local production of a musical that had had runs in many cities around the world. You Had to Be There tells the story of each player’s nervousness at the open casting process and how they got the first opportunity that would eventually launch them to stardom. They would go on to become lifelong friends, and the surviving cast members come together here to both talk about their experiences individually and to gather together at a party, reminiscing and recreating some of the music that brought them together more than 50 years ago.
“…the largely unknown origin story of cast members who would go on to transform popular culture…”
It is difficult to create a documentary about a stage production from more than a half-century ago when there is no surviving film or video footage. Davis and Mendelsohn supplement interviews with the surviving cast with animation and a parade of stars commenting on the production’s legacy, including Lin-Manuel Miranda, Mike Myers, Dan Aykroyd, Janeane Garofalo, and archival footage of Gilda Radner, John Candy, and Catherine O’Hara. The main surviving artifact is an audio cassette recording of one of Martin Short’s shows. The quality isn’t great, but it serves to jog memories of the cast and prod them into endlessly entertaining stories.
This all works because the actual content of Godspell isn’t the point in You Had to Be There. There are too many productions of it to name, yet none captured lightning in a bottle like the Toronto one did. The real story is that this was a troupe of talented people who were young and hungry, who met, bonded, partied, trusted each other, and experimented with comedy. A few years later, Radner and Schaffer would be hired by a new experimental sketch comedy show in the US, Saturday Night Live. Levy, Martin, and Thomas would go on to the Canadian equivalent, Second City Television (SCTV). Both of these productions would transform comedy, lead to film projects, and many members of the rest of the Godspell cast would go on to film and TV roles in their own right.
There is something heartwarming and charming about seeing old friends tell stories about when they first met, decades ago, and all the insanity that happened in their formative years, when they were young, wild, and carefree. That is heightened when they later went on to become stars. But there is an extra dimension when they reflect on roads taken and not taken, and how their career choices either worked out or didn’t. Some members of the cast didn’t go on to fame and fortune. Yet all still seem to be unshakable friends to this day. –
That’s the magic You Had to Be There captures. We’ll all watch the film because some of the cast members are famous. But what sticks with us is the bonds they made when they weren’t. Sometimes the connections we make when we’re nobody are the ones that last a lifetime.
You Had to Be There premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. It is currently screening at the 2026 Santa Barbara International Film Festival.
"…heartwarming and charming..."
