An Old City studio has a documentary about comedian Bob Saget’s life in the works
The unnamed documentary takes a look at how the Mount Airy born funny man became so dark and raunchy.
Old City-based 9.14 Pictures is working on an untitled documentary about comedian Bob Saget, the Phily-bred funny man who rose to fame in the 1980s as the affable Danny Tanner on the ABC sitcom Full House.
The announcement comes on the heels of the studio’s successful projects centering celebrities with local ties including Disney+’s Taylor Swift: The End of an Era and Prime Video’s most watched documentary, Kelce. Both were directed by the studio’s owners Don Argott and Sheena M. Joyce.
According to Deadline, Argott and Joyce will direct this piece, too. The directors, Deadline reports, were given access to Saget’s rare home videos and to never-before-seen footage about the actor.
“The film will reveal the complex life, devastating losses and enduring kindness behind the laughter,” the article stated.
The documentary will ultimately help viewers understand how and why Saget’s comedy turned so dark and raunchy before his untimely death in 2022 at a Ritz-Carlton hotel in Orlando, Fla., from what medical examiners said was an accidental blow to the head. He was 65 years old.
Saget, who also hosted America’s Funniest Home Videos for eight seasons, was born in Mount Airy, moved to Virginia, and moved back to the area when he was a teenager. He graduated from Abington Senior High and went on to attend Temple University, where he studied film.
While at Temple University, he practiced his stand-up at then Philadelphia restaurateur Stephen Starr’s Queen Village Club. He also won a student Oscar in 1978 for his 11-minute documentary, Through Adam’s Eyes, the story of an 11-year-old boy who underwent a grueling facial surgery.
After Temple, he moved to the West Coast and attended the University of Southern California’s film school, but dropped out to do stand-up.
For the next seven years, he was the emcee at the Comedy Store, working among such comedians as David Letterman and Robin Williams, Michael Keaton, Billy Crystal, Jay Leno, Johnny Carson, and Richard Pryor.
He also warmed up the crowd before tapings of Bosom Buddies, the Tom Hanks-Peter Scolari sitcom. The producer later hired Saget to play Danny Tanner on Full House, on which he portrayed a morning TV host in San Francisco.
Before Saget 38, he’d lost one sister to a rare autoimmune disease and another to a brain aneurysm, he told the Philadelphia Inquirer in a 1994 article.
Those losses, he said, helped him prioritize his life and led to his maudlin sense of humor.
The Bob Saget documentary will be produced by Story Syndicate, Revue Studios, and 9.14 Pictures.