In 1983, a Canadian film Funny Farm was released to little fanfare and even less box office. The movie, written and directed by Ron Clark, is a comedy/drama about the then nascent comedy scene in Los Angeles, but cast entirely with standups from the Canadian comedy scene and shot in Montreal.

I had a decent part in the film as the slimy network executive who takes a chance on the young hopeful (played by unknown Miles Chapin, who stayed an unknown after the film) and then fires him the first chance he gets. I hated the film when it came out, bitter about its complete lack of “authenticity.”

But the movie, which has been all but buried the last 35 years, is being shown as part of the Toronto Jewish Film Festival’s (TJFF) comedy programming on May 6 at Innis Town Hall, followed by  a panel discussion that I’m involved in. So I screened the dreaded flick to refresh my memory in preparation for the event.

Well, maybe I’m just mellowing with age, but I found the film to be a lot better than I remembered. It’s no Citizen Kane– the story is weak and episodic, the lead is a wimp, and the comics have a general daffiness which has little to do with how comics actually behave-but the movie does have its retro charms.

First of all, it was the first movie to explore the comedy boom of the ‘70s – Hollywood would drag its heels until 1988 when Punchline with Tom Hanks and Sally Field was released, and you have to give the movie credit for being first.

The real reason to watch it, though, is to see the leading comedians of the day such as Howie Mandel, Mike MacDonald, Howard Busgang, Lou Dinos, Marjorie Gross and Maurice LaMarche strut their stuff with innocent abandon.

Mandel, the biggest star in the picture, is barely used, as if the director just didn’t know what to do with him. But the recently deceased MacDonald is a revelation. Playing an Andy Kaufman- type gonzo comic who takes his audience out into the street and later fakes his own death, it turned out to be one of MacDonald’s best roles.

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It’s a bittersweet experience to see Toronto’s Marjorie Gross in the picture, having died so young from cancer only a little more than a decade later. Gross, a pioneer in women’s standup, went on to write some of the funniest Seinfeld episodes ever. There’s very little surviving footage of her sophisticated comedy, but she has a sizable sampling in this movie.

Some things in the movie don’t work at all. There’s a casual racism to some of the routines that clashes with our modern enlightened sensitivities, and some of the casting just doesn’t work. It’s weird to see Peter Ackroyd basically imitating his more successful brother Dan Ackroyd, Tracey Bregman as the lead’s romantic interest seems leaden, and why is Dinos, the wonderful Greek comic, playing a  Hispanic comedian with a bad Mexican accent? And why is the whole movie shot to get a PG rating when the standup world is so clearly rated X?

The film will be followed by a panel discussion moderated by Andrew Clark from Humber College, and panellists will include Larry Horowitz, Marla Lukofsky, Briane Nasimok, Busgang (who now owns a great deli on Saltspring Island) and myself. We’ll talk about the old days at Yuk Yuks and anecdotes about the film.

Here’s one if you can’t make it. The lead character is named Mark Champlin. But if you listen closely to the scenes, you can tell that whenever his name is mentioned, the dialogue has been looped and slightly out of sync. That’s because, shortly after the film was shot, so was John Lennon, by an assassin named Mark Chapman, the original name of the lead character. So the filmmakers had to redo any scene with his name in it.

Also on the same bill that night is an episode of Take 30 from 1978 filmed entirely at Yuk Yuks only one month after it opened. You can see rare footage from the late Steve Shuster, as well as many of the hot new stars of the fledgling comedy scene. You can also feel the palpable condescension of the hosts, Hana Gartner and Paul Soles, who virtually sneers into the camera and laughs at the idea that there might be “Yuk Yuks all across the country someday. Ha!”

Nice sometimes to have the last laugh.