As degraded as film culture was when this SCTV bit was shot, it’s gotten much worse since. The idea behind this skit, remember, was not to appeal to film elites but to average Frito-eating, beer-drinking Joes, and yet SCTV producers decided that the name Michelangelo Antonioni as well as the films Zabriskie Point and Blow-Up would resonate with a fair-sized portion of the viewers. How likely is it that an SNL skit today would reference a director of arty-farty VOD films that only semi-serious, half-educated cinephiles have even heard of?

Glenn Kenny informs that “all the [SCTV] material was generated by the cast members with maybe one or two outside writers. The producer was a guy named Andrew Alexander whose mission was basically to keep other suits out of their hair. John Candy and Joe Flaherty developed ‘Farm Film Report’ PRECISELY because they were cinephiles themselves and thought it would be funny to have a couple of Hooterville hicks drop names like Fassbinder and Antonioni. It’s not in the clip you used but prior to Antonioni, Candy’s character goes on about Godard and his ‘obsession with the dialectic.'”