Jack Delroy

I think it's a great title.

I think the lead character, Jack Delroy, played by David Dismalchin, who's also a horror fan.

He's in all these horror documentaries.

He's great.

Of the ghost, yeah, whatever.

Yeah, the ghost.

All right, if you guys were alive in 1977, would you have watched Night Owls with Jack Delroy or The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson?

Night Owls.

It takes place in 1977.

You have a TV host named Jack Delroy, who is a part of a late night TV talk show.

It's kind of failing.

It really needs some help in the rating.

Set, it's a one location setting again, one of my faves, that type of aspect.

A '70s talk show host, Jack Delroy, I think was his name.

This is all going off memory.

Yeah.

What I like about this movie is Jack Delroy, played by David Dastmalchian, I can't ever pronounce his name, but a, he's a big horror fan.

You'll see him in, like, In Search of Darkness and all these, like, you know, horror, um, documentary stuff.

He really nailed the part as a talk show host.

And what I like about this movie is, like, they say, "Cut." They go to commercial break.

All right.

So David Dastmalchian plays, um, our lead, Jack Delroy.

Um, D minus Johnny Carson, A minus, uh, David Letterman.

Um, and he's trying to be Johnny Carson, basically.

"Johnny, he's dead."

...

Jack Delroy is trying a bunch of goofy antics to try to get, uh, people to watch.

Um, and then sadly one day out of nowhere, his wife, despite not being a smoker, dies of cancer, and he uses her for clout on the internet the way-

And the film really does capture the nostalgia and the kind of slightly greasy browns and oranges of 70s television aesthetic.

We are following a struggling talk show host called Jack Delroy, who was played by the brilliant David Desmalchen and his once popular program Night Owls.

It's losing its viewers and anyone knows when it comes to these shows, once your ratings start to drop, it's really hard for them to keep you on the air.

And he is slipping behind the competition, specifically, a word I struggle to say, the Johnny Carson show.

So let's get into it with some behind the scenes.

So the broadcast itself is obviously fictional, but the Cairns brothers built the movie out of this fascinating real life 1970s history and TV lore.

And the host, Jack Delroy, the real life inspiration for him came from TV host Don Lane.

And he was an American host who hosted a big talk show in Australia.