"You Had to Be There" review: Martin Short, Eugene Levy, and other comedy legends reveal their shared showbiz start

Even the most devoted comedy nerd may not realize how many truly iconic comedies of past and present might never have existed if it weren't for a single theatrical production.

Everything from Only Murders in the Building and Schitt's Creek to SCTV and Saturday Night Live can be linked back to a 1972 Toronto production of Godspell, which boasted such not-yet-famous performers as Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Gilda Radner, Victor Garber, Andrea Martin, Dave Thomas, Jayne Eastwood, and Paul Shaffer.

Incredibly, over its much raved about (and protested) 14-month run, not a soul thought to video record this production for posterity.

So, 53 years later, documentarian Nick Davis aims to bring us back to this pivotal time and place with the preposterously and perfectly titled 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).

For the sake of brevity (and sanity), we'll refer to the film simply as You Had to Be There going forward.

As in, You Had to Be There is so stuffed with interviews with comedy icons, remarkable anecdotes, and cheeky revelations that it's manna from heaven for comedy nerds.

You Had to Be There has an incredible obstacle and even more incredible interviews.

With a dismaying dearth of footage of the show itself, Davis instead relies on a two-pronged approach to usher audiences down memory lane for a bevy of comedy legends.

First off, he offers interviews with much of the cast from the show's run, including Short, Levy, Thomas, Garber, Martin, Eastwood, Shaffer, Avril Chown, Don Scardino, Valda Aviks, and Rudy Webb.

Many of them are now in their 70s, and they have the refreshing give-no-fucks air that is perfect for documentaries, looking back with fondness and candor to a time when everything felt possible — and vaguely terrifying because of that.

Davis' thoughtful collection of interviews takes us back to 1972 Toronto, where the stuffy culture of the Canadian city was set alight with the arguably sacrilegious clown show that was Stephen Schwartz and John-Michael Tebelak's Godspell, a musical that depicted the story of Jesus Christ through parables and willfully silly theatrics.

Short, who laid out a lot of this history in his addictive memoir, I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend, proves an especially great interview, in part because of his lifelong dedication to keeping records of his work.

However, You Had to Be There is most fun when the cut leaps from one individual interview to another, creating the sense that we're at a dinner party with some of the coolest people on the planet — recounting a party we weren't invited to.