From Flik to Dick
Courtesy of CANOE.com.
A Bug's Life's Dave Foley moves into a bugged office in new movie
By STEVE TILLEY -- Edmonton Sun
Foley, who cut his comic teeth on the ground-breaking, much-loved CBC sketch series Kids in the Hall, says a Kids reunion tour is in the planning stages, and could come to a city near you in a matter of months.
"We're talking about going on tour in January, doing a theatre tour," Foley said Saturday during an interview for his upcoming feature film Dick, a comedy starring Kirsten Dunst (Drop Dead Gorgeous) and Michelle Williams (TV's Dawson's Creek.)
"I actually had the whole group over to my house a couple of months ago, which was the first time we'd all been together in four years."
Which is not surprising, given that each member of the troupe - Foley, Scott Thompson, Bruce McCulloch, Mark McKinney and Kevin McDonald - has risen to some level of showbiz prominence since Kids in the Hall, which lives on in syndication on Canada's own Comedy Network.
"It'll be old sketches," Foley said of the pending Kids tour. "We're hoping we can clear some time to get together far enough in advance to maybe write some new stuff, to link stuff up together, try to change it around a little bit. Usually when we do the scenes live they get changed around a lot anyway."
CANCELLATION NO SURPRISE
Foley's own life has changed a lot from his Kids in the Hall days. He starred in the recently cancelled NBC sitcom NewsRadio (which also lives on in syndication), played opposite Brendan Fraser and Alicia Silverstone in Blast From the Past and provided the voice of Flik in last year's computer-animated Disney hit, A Bug's Life.
The cancellation of the critically acclaimed but increasingly low-rated NewsRadio after five seasons didn't come as a complete surprise to Foley and the rest of the cast.
"It wasn't a shock that they cancelled it, but it was disappointing," he said. "They (NBC executives) didn't like us.
"I never really cared whether the show was a big hit or not. I was happy that it was doing well enough that we kept doing it. It was a fun thing to do every day and I was proud of the work."
Dick, opening in theatres Aug. 4, sees Foley join Dan Hedaya (Cheers' Nick Tortelli), Will Ferrell (Saturday Night Live) and former Kids colleague McCulloch in a comic bit of revisionist history about the infamous Watergate scandal.
Two ditzy girls (Dunst and Williams) stumble upon the shady dealings of Nixon (Hedaya) and take their findings to Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (Ferrell and McCulloch), leading to the president's resignation and earning their place in history as the secret source known as Deep Throat.
Foley plays Nixon's beleaguered Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman, who he calls "such a cipher."
FOLLOWED SCANDAL
"He never revealed himself," said Foley. "If you read his diaries, he never mentions himself. There's absolutely no mention of Haldeman in the Haldeman diary."
Being nine years old - and Canadian - when the Watergate scandal broke in 1972, one would assume Foley knew very little about Nixon when growing up. But that isn't so.
"I was nine when the story started and 11 when Nixon resigned, but I was delighted by it," Foley said, adding he was something of a Watergate junkie.
"I had such a loathing of Nixon, and just from a very early age thought he was a corrupt and horrible man."
But he remembers being impressed by America's willingness to drag out its dirty laundry and examine itself during the scandal.
"Which was something, particularly at that time, that Canadians wouldn't do. It would seem bad form," Foley said.
Nowadays, Canada seems to be a little too zealous in its attempt to establish a cultural identity that separates our country from the U.S., Foley said.
"There was a period starting in '67, but it really didn't take off until the '70s - a conscious program started by (former prime minister Pierre) Trudeau to create a sense of pride in being Canadian," he said.
"In many ways, I think we've gone overboard in becoming Canadian. Definitely Canadians abroad are insufferable."
Like the ubiquitous Canadian flag on travellers' backpacks?
"That's just so we don't get shot as Americans. And you know what? A lot of American backpackers have Canadian flags. No one wants to be mistaken for being American."
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