{"id":689542,"date":"2025-09-11T21:05:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T18:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/paul-shaffer-to-get-feature-doc-treatment-exclusive\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T21:05:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T18:05:13","slug":"paul-shaffer-to-get-feature-doc-treatment-exclusive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/paul-shaffer-to-get-feature-doc-treatment-exclusive\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Shaffer to Get Feature Doc Treatment (Exclusive)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tA feature documentary about Paul Shaffer, best known David Letterman\u2019s longtime sidekick and Late Show <\/em>bandleader, is in the works.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe life rights to the story of the musician and TV personality from Thunder Bay, Ontario who got his start as the musical director of a 1972 Toronto stage production of Godspell <\/em>have been acquired for a film to be titled Say Hello to Our Good Friend Paul Shaffer.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n\tThe documentary will be produced by Ballinran Entertainment, Grace Street Media<\/a> and White Pine Pictures, with a director still to be attached to the project. UTA Independent Film Group came on board to handle world sales after discussions this week at the Toronto Film Festival.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlso at TIFF this week, Shaffer app<\/a>eared for the world premiere of the Nick Davis documentary, You Had to Be There: How the Toronto Godspell Ignited the Comedy Revolution\u2026<\/em> That film recounts Shaffer\u2019s first professional gig as part of the hippie musical Godspell <\/em>alongside fellow breakout talent like Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Gilda Radner, Victor Garber, Andrea Martin, Dave Thomas and Jayne Eastwood.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat stage production with its improvisational comedy opened the way to classic TV series<\/a> like SCTV <\/em>and\u00a0Saturday Night Live<\/em>. Schaffer was hired as the musical director for Godspell <\/em>after he made a positive impression on composer Stephen Schwartz when playing the piano for a girlfriend who was auditioning.<\/p>\n

\n\tShaffer joined up with Letterman in 1982 for the launch of\u00a0Late Night With David Letterman<\/em>\u00a0on NBC, leading the World\u2019s Most Dangerous Band. In 1993, he made the move with Letterman to CBS for\u00a0The<\/em> Late Show<\/em> to lead the CBS Orchestra after NBC passed Letterman over for the\u00a0Tonight Show<\/em>\u00a0hosting job in favor of\u00a0Jay Leno.<\/p>\n

\n\tSay Hello to Our Good Friend Paul Shaffer <\/em>will also recall the musician\u2019s rise with the original\u00a0Saturday Night Live<\/em>\u00a0band (he played the piano when Bill Murray famously sang the\u00a0Star Wars\u00a0<\/em>theme) and collaborations with musical icons like James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Sly Stone and Ray Charles.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve been the luckiest guy in showbiz. I\u2019ve had a front-row seat to music history. This film isn\u2019t just about me. It\u2019s about the soundtrack of our lives, and how music connects, inspires and remembers us,\u201d Shaffer said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe project will be executive produced by Vern Freedlander (Grace Street Media), Craig Thompson (Ballinran Entertainment) and Peter Raymont and Stephen Paniccia (White Pine Pictures). The same execs negotiated the life rights signing deal with Shaffer.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A feature documentary about Paul Shaffer, best known David Letterman\u2019s longtime sidekick and Late Show bandleader, is in the works. The life rights to the story of the musician and TV personality from Thunder Bay, Ontario who got his start as the musical director of a 1972 Toronto stage production of Godspell have been acquired…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":689543,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-2234030216.jpg?w=1440&h=810&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[44437,147290,39579,4122,27143,158266,38022,27144],"class_list":["post-689542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-david-letterman","tag-late-show","tag-music","tag-saturday-night-live","tag-tiff","tag-tiff-2025","tag-toronto-film-festival","tag-toronto-international-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=689542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/689543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}