Keeping the Kids Alright


Courtesy of Comedy Central
An Interview with Kids in the Hall Director Jim Millan
By Cris Sales
February 2000


"I had a choice between doing the tour and Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. It was one of those things where I thought, 'doing this would be different.'"

When the Kids in the Hall gathered at Dave Foley's house in Toronto last

September to finalize plans for what has since become their highly successful "Same Guys, New Dresses" tour, they faced a dilemma: How could they translate their now-classic sketches from a TV studio to the stage?

The process would take skill and care, even more so given that their collective schedules allowed no more than two weeks of pre-production and rehearsals here and there. They knew they needed someone to help, and only one person fit the bill -- Toronto-based stage director and old friend to the Kids, Jim Millan.

It's obvious why Millan was the only choice. The Kids' comic sensibility is smart, specific, and sometimes strange -- a sensibility that Millan shares. For him, there was the added advantage of a common history. "I knew the Kids before they had their TV show," he explains. "I've known Scott [Thompson] since he and I were at University -- he was in my very first play!"

Millan and Thompson fell out of touch after college, but reconnected through Bruce McCulloch and Mark McKinney, whom Millan met around ten years ago in Toronto. He was beginning a career as a stage director in the bustling Toronto theatre scene at the time, keeping up with his friends by "going to tapings and seeing their live show in the clubs, but mostly we just sort of hung out. McKinney and I used to watch a lot of Redskins football together. He still is a Redskins fan, I think."

In the years that followed, and as the Kids gained critical acclaim across North America for their groundbreaking sketch comedy, Millan's directing career took off as well. Although he describes the work on the tour as "completely different" from the kind of work he is used to doing, it's clear that the sensibilities match up rather well. "The theatre world I come from is a bit edgy, a bit funny and a bit strange. I do a lot of work with original plays by Canadian writers."

Familiarity brings its own rewards. When approached, Millan remembers that, "very quickly it became clear that a director was what they did want and that they valued my input. It was good for them to have an outside eye, someone they can turn to."

An outside eye was exactly what was needed to adapt "Comfortable," a popular sketch from the series in which Thompson, McKinney, Foley and Kevin McDonald play two couples having dinner, for the stage. Post-dinner conversation in the living room is interrupted by Thompson's sudden seduction of McDonald on the dining room table. Millan explains, "There would be a focus problem [if we did it the way it was done on the TV show] because the scene happened in two locations. All that could happen was that the guys downstage would be upstaged by Scott and Kevin behind them." His solution? Keep the action concentrated. In the staged version, four chairs and one table was all they would need. Thompson and McDonald carry out their lascivious action in full comic view on the table, as well as a conversation with McKinney and Foley.

Victories aside, Millan had no illusions about the challenge of directing the Kids. "It was really exciting and amazing how much liberty they gave me," he admits, "knowing of course that, like their own creative methods with each other, if things hadn't worked out, they'd be the first ones to cut me off at the knees." He adds, jokingly, "I knew I was accepted when they felt free to ridicule me as mercilessly as they do each other. It was like a hazing."

Did he find himself caught in the crossfire of the legendary rumored contentiousness? Hardly, he declares. "They go at it like brothers -- brothers say things to each other that you can't believe doesn't result in permanent scarring. The guys have known each other for fifteen years, and there's a shorthand. Part of the fun of being in the group is the willingness to push each other around." Exactly how do they push each other around? "They're intense workers, hard workers. They're uncompromising in terms of whether something is funny or not."

The range of the touring show runs the gamut -- from untouched classics like the murderous confessions of "To Reg," to new twists on old standbys like "Comfortable" and "Headcrusher vs. Facepincher." New sketches also appear, like "Jesus 2000" in which McKinney and McCulloch reprise their roles as infomercial-style motivational speakers, hawking a new, more user-friendly Jesus for the new millennium.

A significant portion of the show is made up of new material, written by the Kids for the tour, and Millan saw the process at work. Some pieces like McCulloch's monologue, "Sandwich People," lifted from his one-man show, "run quite clean, close to the original writing."

Most of the pieces, however, are group efforts: "Once the group gets together, it's like five mechanics working on a car-one thinks there should be bigger wheels, another thinks the interior need something." Remarking at the speed through which the Kids work through a piece, he adds, "When there's something problematic, they'll throw it to a specialist -- they'll throw it to Dave or Bruce, and say 'I need a line here, ' or 'What's the word I'm missing?' "

"You can more or less count on these guys having good taste, but not always... Lots of times some real clunkers come up, but whenever one does, a couple of really good ones come up too." What does happen when someone comes up with a clunker? Millan deadpans "Everyone ridicules the person who said it," and adds sheepishly, "and that could be me."

As for life after the final show in Detroit, Millan is hopeful. "Because everybody's got so many different things going on, it's amazing that they could devote a couple of months to going on tour. Hopefully that opportunity will come up again." In the meantime, Millan has his own theatre work to keep him very busy. He is currently preparing to direct a new play he has written based on the life of Salvador Dali, which will premiere in Toronto as part of the DuMaurier WorldStage Festival at the end of April.

"They are enjoying being back together -- no doubt about it," he offers.

"Kids in the Hall are more like a punk band than a sketch comedy group. At an after-show party, they don't really work the room in a show-biz sense. They have an astute awareness of the business side of things but they don't pander. They're the opposite of that -- they're kind of private, they like each other and there's a strong sense of themselves as a group, as a band of brothers."

"There is mutual respect, absolutely. There is a sense that the group is special. Mark said something in an interview once about how he's only met a few geniuses in his life. The third one he listed was the collective Kids in the Hall. The collective is genius, and I tend to agree with that."

Perhaps it takes one to know one.
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