The Kids Are Alright
Courtesy of Head Crushers Ball
by Tim McCarney
"So we can count on your eight bucks?" asks Mark McKinney, one-fifth of the wacky Canadian comedy troupe The Kids in the Hall, upon hearing of my eager anticipation of Brain Candy, the Kids' first big-screen jaunt.
"Good," he says with a laugh. "We're keeping a tally."
On the phone from L.A. as he begins the arduous process of promoting what could be one of the year's toughest sells, McKinney is guardedly optimistic about the film's prospects. It's clear that he's thrilled with the final product, and equally apparent that he enjoyed working with his fellow Kids on their first project since the end of their celebrated sketch comedy TV show, The Kids in the Hall. But as the zero hour approaches--Brain Candy opens in most major cities, including Boston, on April 12--McKinney is realizing just how ominous the fear of bad reviews and tepid box office can be.
"In this last phase, it really gets daunting, especially as you hear about the other films that are coming out against yours," admits McKinney. "At this point, though, it's like a pregnancy, and I really just want to give birth."
Although the Kids--McKinney, Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Scott Thompson, and Kevin McDonald--have amassed a sizeable international following since their humble beginnings on stages across Canada, their American audience has always been measured in terms such as "cult," which, depending on whom you ask, can mean either "limited" or "fervent." McKinney and the rest of the Kids are banking on the latter, hoping that the same folks who religiously watch reruns of their show on Comedy Central and pack their live performances will feast on Brain Candy.
Breaking through to a wider audience may prove a tougher task, however. Subversive and outrageous, at times slapsticky silly and richly distasteful, the Kids' humor tackles subjects like death, religion and relationships (both straight and gay) with a rawness that some factions of mainstream America wouldn't touch with a six-foot pair of barbecue tongs. Take, for example, a wickedly funny sketch from their TV show which imagines the Bible as written by Dr. Seuss ("One day God said, `This is what I will do/I'll send down my son, I'll send him to you/His name will be Christ and he will not wear shoes/His pals will all call him the King of the Jews'"), or another which works over the old baseball-player-hits-home-run-for-dying-kid theme by having the player blame a lousy performance on the pressure the cancer-stricken kid put on him, then show up at the hospital to deliver, in lieu of the homer, "the next best thing -- a twenty dollar whore."
"We like to take the weirdest idea, the darkest notion, the strangest situation, and make it work for the audience," says McKinney. "There's really nothing that we consider to be taboo. We've never found something too outlandish or too risque."
But after rejuvenating the art of sketch comedy with the manic grace of their TV show, the Kids were anxious to move on.
"We had been doing sketch comedy for five years, and we were ready to sink our teeth into something new," says McKinney. "It could have been musical theater, it could have been haiku. Thankfully, it turned out to be a movie."
The concept of the first Kids feature-length film began to take shape during the last season of their TV show. After the now-classic final episode--which ended with the Kids being buried alive as the credits rolled--the Kids and head writer Norm Hiscock began to hash out ideas, settling on the tale of a Prozac-like happiness pill and the havoc it wreaks on a depression-addled world. Originally called "The Drug," the film underwent a quick title change when it was learned that several networks were wary of carrying advertisements for a motion picture of that moniker, which, coincidently, was likely more acceptable than some of the other suggestions bandied about.
"We originally wanted to call it 'Fuck You,'" laughs McKinney. "But Paramount wouldn't let us."
Paramount did, however, give the Kids ample room to flex the odd muscle of dark, almost surreal humor that has become their trademark. As was the case on their television show, the Kids perform several characters in drag, and a few key scenes, most notably a musical segment in which cast members cavort in a giant pie, are so strange as to defy description. All in all, McKinney feels, the Kids' transition to the big screen was, from a creative standpoint, rather seamless.
"Making the film felt oddly comfortable, because the director was Kelly Makin, who had directed a lot of the filmed bits on the TV show," says McKinney. "The only thing that was rough was the pace of it, which can get real boring. There are times when you'll be sitting in your trailer for five hours, and you get the feeling that you're wasting your life.
"Also, the gulf of time between when we wrote the material for the movie and when we performed it felt a bit weird. When we did the TV show, the time between when a piece was written and when it was performed was never more than a month or six weeks. But the film was like a bunch of jokes we had written an entire year before finally coming to fruition."
Several characters from the TV show appear in Brain Candy, including McKinney and McCulloch's wayward patrolmen, McKinney's bigoted cab driver (who gets one of the film's biggest laughs while expounding on a theory involving, er, monkey semen), and Thompson's uncanny Queen Elizabeth. Although favorites like the Chicken Lady, Cabbage Head, and the Headcrusher do not appear, the Kids dash off a series of zany new characters throughout the film, including the villain, pharmaceuticals czar Don Roritor, who bears more than a passing resemblance to the Kids' producer, Lorne Michaels.
"There's a hair of Lorne in the character of Don," says McKinney, who portrays the sly Roritor. "But he's really just a type; an executive with that 'I can handle it' attitude. Don was actually my favorite of the characters I play in the film. I'm very happy with how that performance turned out."
While fans will no doubt be equally impressed with McKinney's work, many will find the fact that the Kids are working together at all a cause for celebration. Long the subject of rumors involving infighting and bruised egos, the Kids went their separate ways after their TV show. McKinney joined the cast of Saturday Night Live, Foley became the star of the hit NBC sitcom NewsRadio, Thompson jumped aboard at HBO's Larry Sanders, McCulloch released an album, and McDonald appeared in the film National Lampoon's Senior Trip. Recently, Foley, whose profile has risen considerably since Newsradio, revealed to Rolling Stone that his work in Brain Candy was more contractual obligation than desire to work with his old chums again, sparking a fury of debate across the Kids-related areas of cyberspace. Despite these reports, McKinney maintains that the Kids are still a tight-knit group.
"There are always rumors that we hate each other or that we're breaking up," offers McKinney. "That's mostly because we met as eighteen, nineteen, and twenty-year-olds, a time of your life when you're just brutally fucking savage with each other about opinions on everything from music to clothes to girlfriends. That's still to a large degree the way we relate. When people see five guys sitting around a table yelling at each other, they think it's apocalyptic, but that's the way it's always been. Fighting has always been a part of our creative process.
"I watch [Foley's and Thompson's] shows avidly, and I'm really happy for all the guys. I wanted everyone to go out and do well after the show ended, and I'm thrilled that everyone has, because it proves to me that we had some weight, which we never got a sense of in Canada. We had no idea that anyone outside of our country was watching the show."
McKinney admits to also being impressed with the number of up-and-coming comic acts who cite the Kids as an influence, such as The State.
"It's weird how quickly you can become the old guy, but I now find a lot of young comedians and sketch troupes sending me tapes and looking to me for advice," says McKinney with a laugh. "It's a little intimidating, but it's also nice. It validates the work we've done."
In regards to his own influences, McKinney notes an affinity for comedians who were "out there."
"The thing about being a Canadian comic is that growing up you were exposed to a little more British comedy than you Americans are exposed to. I loved Monty Python, and I traced their influences back to The Goon Show [a British comedy series featuring a young Peter Sellers]. I also loved Jonathan Winters, Steve Martin and especially Andy Kaufman, who was brilliant. I've always gone for people who pushed the edge or were certifiably insane."
As for the future of the Kids in the Hall, though its members are currently involved with individual projects, McKinney sees no end to the troupe's adventures in sight.
"With the end of the TV show, which was sort of the glue that held us together all year long, and with each of us off doing different stuff, there's really not a lot of opportunity to do things like a tour, which is a bit more involved," says McKinney.
"But if the film does reasonably well, I think there will most certainly be a life beyond that."
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