[it]Really Weird Tales[ro] is in post-production and features, of course, [it][sc]sctv[esc][ro] talents [bo]John Candy[ro], [bo]Martin Short[ro], [bo]Catherine O’Hara[ro] and [bo]Joe Flaherty[ro], who brought the concept to [bo]Atlantis Films[ro], now producing its three half-hours with [bo]Viacom[ro] and [bo][sc]hbo[esc] [ro] (first telecast Oct. 4).

Look up, look a little ways up, and you’ll see rustic. Coded type as it would have emerged, inch by painstaking column inch, from Playback copy chief Michelle Hille’s weak and teeny Macintosh computer, on Wed., Sept. 24 through the early morning of Sept. 25, 1986. This single sentence is an excerpt from Natalie Edwards’ It’s A Rap production column, from Playback Vol. 1, Issue 1, Sept. 29, 1986.

Hieroglyphics of this ilk stretched on and on through the early years of this paper’s production.

Michelle typed in virtually the entire text, coded it, edited it and, on press night, loaded it all onto a floppy disk. Then she’d run four blocks through the downtown eastside to the type processing shop, which would eventually deliver galleys back to the raccoon-eyed souls sipping leftover warm beer back at the office. But if even one of the [s or ]s was left out, whole long passages of text would come out bold, or italic, or both. Then Mme. Hille would have to fiddle with the codes, make the run to the copy shop, wait for more galleys.

As the war stories would have it, the copy layout on that original issue (and many subsequent) actually involved instances of pulling type out of the garbage, constructing new sentences and headers from the detritus of discarded ones.

That original issue of Playback advertised that shares worth a total of $1.6 million had just been sold in series iii of Sharon, Lois & Bram’s Elephant Show. It plugged jingle kings Greg Adams, David Beare, Syd Kessler and Rick Shurman from The Air Company in Toronto, and the ‘Music that makes your cash register’ from Cooney Tunes in Montreal. In Vancouver, ‘Steve Martin and company have moved from Nelson to Vancouver for exteriors and studio shooting on Roxanne,’ while There Ain’t No Candy Mountain was en route Cape Breton. Playback was running a controversial self-promotional ad campaign featuring busy bunnies, busy making more bunnies.

It’s comical to think back on how hard it was to, er, produce that launch issue. Alas, even though the type long since stopped coming out of the waste bin, the type[it]face has stayed mainly the same all this time.

‘High time for a change,’ we said. And said. And said.

‘High time for a change,’ the boss finally agreed. Finally, not only a new look for Papa Playback, but a new baby, too, a commercial section toddling off on its own every second issue. We call it On The Spot.

Meanwhile, our copy chief from that first issue is still on this spot, still painstakingly editing Playback.

Thinking back to those early days, Michelle drily advises she wants ‘a -30- on my tombstone, but I want it to read: ‘[bo][it][sc]-30-[esc][ro]’.