Movie Spotlight: Remembering The Tufts

At some point, comedy becomes a ghost. Remembering The Tufts starts after the death of one of the founding members of a Halifax sketch troupe, when the surviving members are gathered back together on camera to sort it all out. Thirty years of scattered lives, unfinished arguments, and whatever was left of the Tufts comes flooding back in.

Len MacKeigan wrote and produced the film, directed by Lara Cassidy. He was in an improv troupe himself in the ’80s, so the premise wasn’t abstract. “Always loved mockumentaries, especially Spinal Tap,” he says, “and thought I should do one. Also I was in an improv troupe in the ’80s so I knew the dynamics.”

Why death gets them back in the room

MacKeigan calls the death-as-reunion setup “a bit of a trope.” He used it anyway. It was a good way to mark the passage of time, he says, “how it seems suddenly we’re all old.” The loss isn’t the subject of the film so much as it’s the door. What comes through it is thirty years of people who haven’t figured out how to move past each other.

Funny on the outside

One of the film’s recurring tensions is the gap between what comedy people project and what they carry. “They’re fun on the outside,” MacKeigan says, “but sometimes darker than a lot of people on the inside.” Remembering The Tufts doesn’t play that for easy irony. It just stays with the people long enough for both things to be true at once.

Real people who happen to do improv

MacKeigan wanted the Tufts to feel like ordinary people first. “I wanted them to be real people, like a factory worker, postman, bank clerk, who deal with their jobs and co-workers in certain ways. It just so happens this group of people make up comedy on a stage.” That grounding keeps the satire from tipping into cruelty. When the characters feel human, the mockumentary format has something real to work against.

He was drawn to the dynamics of improv groups: “People who came together for the love of performance but from different worlds.” The comedy can be funny, painful, competitive, deeply personal. MacKeigan says it can be all of those things, and usually is.

What happens to fame when it ends

The Tufts had a moment. The film is interested in what that moment means decades later, and the different ways each person has made sense of it. “Fame affects different people in much different ways,” MacKeigan says. “Some are uncomfortable with it and shy away from it, others thrive on it.” The harder question is what comes after. Do you treat it as one chapter and move on, or spend years trying to reclaim it? “And at what point do they age out and decide that’s it.” The film doesn’t resolve that cleanly, which is probably the right call.

Halifax, briefly

MacKeigan is upfront that Halifax wasn’t a comedy capital. “There is/was nothing really special about Halifax as far as improv or other comedy goes.” What it had was a theatre community willing to embrace the form at a moment when improv was spreading across the country. He adds, without much ceremony, that the east coast of Canada is much funnier than the rest.

What to know before you press play

The hardest scene to get right was dealing with Evan’s remains. MacKeigan is still not entirely sure about it. “Still not sure if it was funny or just stupid. Either way works for me.” On what to expect going in, he kept it short: “It’s dumb.”

Comedy

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Streaming now on Relay.