Paul Myers - The Kids in the Hall: One Dumb Guy

Also by Paul Myers

A Wizard a True Star: Todd Rundgren in the Studio

It Aint Easy: Long John Baldry and the Birth of the British Blues

Barenaked Ladies: Public Stunts, Private Stories

Copyright 2018 Paul Myers

Published in Canada in 2018 and the USA in 2018 by

House of Anansi Press Inc.

www.houseofanansi.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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The script excerpted from the Kids in the Hall sketch Reg
on pages 121122 is provided courtesy of The Broadway Video Group, Inc.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Myers, Paul, 1960, author

The Kids in the Hall : one dumb guy / Paul Myers.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-4870-0183-4 (softcover).ISBN 978-1-4870-0185-8 (Kindle).

ISBN 978-1-4870-0184-1 (EPUB)

1. Kids in the Hall (Comedy group)Biography. 2. Comedians

CanadaBiography. I. Title.

PN2307.M94 2017 791.45092'2 C2016-907270-3

C2016-907271-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017953508

Cover design: Alysia Shewchuk

Cover image: Reproduced by permission of The Broadway Video Group

We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the
Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government
of Canada.

For Liza Algar, who inspires me and coconspires with me every step of the way

Contents

Foreword

In 1995, the summer between my junior and senior years of college, I worked in New York City as an intern for Comedy Central. On the first day, my boss led me into a closet cluttered with VHS tapes and told me I had eight weeks to organize and catalogue it. For the first few weeks I was committed to the job and well on track to complete it as instructed, but then I stumbled upon the complete The Kids in the Hall and it all went to hell.

You see, I grew up in a household without cable. I loved Saturday Night Live and had heard tale of this other edgier Lorne Michaels show that aired on HBO, but had only caught glimpses of it at sleepovers or off bootleg tapes that fellow comedy nerds had brought to campus. And now, here I was with full access and I was resolved to take advantage of it. Each day, I would do the bare minimum of work to not draw attention to myself, and in the spaces in between I watched every episode of every season of this wonderful show.

I fell in love. If SNL was the Rolling Stones playing arenas, The Kids in the Hall was an indie band playing a low-ceilinged rock club full of adoring fans. The lo-fi opening credits alone let you know this was something grittier than you were used to. Sweeping shots of New York City were replaced with Canadian suburbia and parking lots. And while Lorne kept the device of actors finding the lens while their names bounced underneath them, there was no Don Pardo bellowing their identities. You had to read them, like liner notes on the back of an album.

And soon, you learned each of their styles. For precise character work, Mark McKinney was your guy. If you loved foreign films, Bruce McCulloch had the eye of an auteur. Scott Thompson was the open book, sharing himself via monologues unlike anything youd ever seen. And for sharply written premises, it was Kevin McDonald and Dave Foley. Their differing skill sets fit together perfectly. For years, Ive thought of the five of them like a perfectly constructed basketball team and just now Im realizing it should have been hockey. Its not like they never mentioned the Maple Leafs.

They were so funny, but beyond that they were so decent. When they played women, it was done with integrity and never for a cheap laugh. When they spoke of gay culture, it was as something to be proud of rather than a comic stereotype. In later years, when I found myself writing sketches for a living, I often turned to them as a standard for what I wanted to accomplish.

When my summer as a Comedy Central intern ended, I went to my boss for my employee evaluation. He told me that hed been impressed early on, but that he couldnt help but notice how my efforts flagged in the second half of my time there. While he had once considered offering me a job when I graduated, he couldnt in good conscience say that he would now. I admitted that Id allowed myself to become distracted. He asked me what by and when I told him The Kids in the Hall , he said, There are worse things to throw an opportunity away for.

I dont regret it.

Enjoy this book.

Seth Meyers

Introduction

Here Come the Brides

On a Sunday evening in May 2015, I entered San Franciscos prestigious Warfield Theatre to catch up with my old friends, the legendary comedy troupe the Kids in the Hall. As longtime stage director Jim Millan ushered me backstage, I found the Kids distractedly immersed in their various preshow rituals. As usual, it fell to Kevin McDonald to greet me, offering drinks and snacks before walking me over to a large round table where Mark McKinney nodded hello from behind a newspaper and Bruce McCulloch broke briefly from a conversation with his wife, Tracy, to raise an eyebrow in lieu of a verbal greeting. A jittery Scott Thompson darted in and out of the room, seeming to have misplaced something important, while Dave Foley offered me a warm handshake with one hand while nursing a soft drink in the other, having recently gone on the wagon. By this point, I had known the troupe for over thirty years, but while these five middle-aged men had long since outgrown their childlike name, very little else seemed to have changed about them since the day we met. While a sense of imminent fun hung over the backstage area, this was not a party; these men were about to go to work at the job they had created for themselves back on the streets of Toronto in the early 80s. As showtime approached, Millan politely asked all visitors to clear the room and take their seats, affording me my first glimpse of the 2,300+ fans in the sold-out house. Surprisingly, it wasnt all silver foxes like myself. It seemed to me that roughly half the house was comprised of millennials or younger; a large cross section of these people hadnt even been born when The Kids in the Hall TV series originally aired on network television in the late 80s. It was entirely possible that, for many, this was their first time at a Kids in the Hall live show. As the houselights dimmed, a recording of Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planets Having an Average Weekend the official theme for the Kids TV series echoed through the auditorium to cheers of instant recognition. The air was electric. As nostalgia washed over me, I realized that the Kids and I had come a long way some thirty years and 4,239 km (2,634 miles) to be precise. My mind raced back to Toronto in the winter of 1985, to the small club show where I had first realized that maybe, just maybe, these guys had something special.