An Interview with Some Kid in the Hall
Courtesy of On Shore Magazine.
David Vicari
The popular sketch comedy troupe, the "Kids in the Hall" (David Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney, and Scott Thompson) star in the new motion picture, Brain Candy, which is being released April 12. Here is a phone interview I had with one of the "Kids," Kevin McDonald as we discussed the film.
DV: What made you guys decide you were ready for the big screen?
KM: Well, we were running out of ideas on the small screen, and it was a natural thing to do to try to like tell a story. Actually, in the old days when we were a stage troupe before the TV show, we had sketches in the first half and the second half we would experiment with longer stories, and sometimes they worked and sometimes they didn't. That's something we left behind. With the movie we wanted to explore that again.
DV: So what's it (Brain Candy) about?
KM: The movie, Brain Candy, is about a group of scientists who discover a cure for depression and it's meant to be a prescription drug, but the pharmaceutical company they work for are greedy and make it go over the counter to everyone, people who are just like normally depressed. There's side effects. People get so happy they go into glee-comas. They just become like happy zombies, and the scientists have to work against the Pharmaceutical company to get a cure for it.
DV: How many characters do you play in this one, or did you count?
KM: I play the least amount, because I sort of play the lead scientist. So I play him, he's like the lead character, and then I play two women. A party goer and another woman who's the wife of a man who denies to everyone and himself that he's gay. The other character I play is the father of the scientist who's a guy who suffers from depression and kills himself, only he's a bad shot, and it takes two hours before he hits a vital organ.
DV: What familiar things can fans of the show expect?
KM: They're all new characters, except for two or three smaller characters from the show, like the cops. But it's the same kind of humor. There's some sick things like what you would get from the TV show, and there's some gay oriented things. It's the same kind of comedy but with different characters.
DV: What new ground does this movie break for you guys?
KM: Just to tell a story was a big thing. In a way, we never really flirted with messages before, even though the basic message is to get as many laughs as possible, the whole thing about depression, that you need your dark side as well as your light side, and we think that mild depression is as valid as happiness. I think that was new ground for us to do that. You may not even know there's a message, but we did.
DV: Why did you guys start dressing like women? How did that start?
KM: We were a stage troop, and sometimes there were women in our group, but they got discovered before us. So we had no women in the troop. We had to do scenes about women because we were writing stuff about our mothers and girlfriends. Mark (McKinney) and Scott (Thompson) started playing women first. It was the days before we had a hair and make-up crew and it was a stage show. My girlfriend at the time had this big red sweater, and the audience, we had a pretty loyal audience, so they knew whoever was wearing the red sweater was playing the woman. We never went for cheap laughs. We never got funny wigs or balloons for breasts. From the beginning we tried to make it as least insulting as possible. Never get a laugh just because you're playing a woman.
DV: In your opinion, who's the cutest woman?
KM: Dave Foley
DV: Who's the ugliest?
KM: (laughs) In the wrong wig, we're all the ugliest. But definitely the prettiest is Dave.
DV: Dave could possibly fool somebody?
KM: Sometimes when we were working for 14 hours and he's dressed as a French prostitute, sometimes I forget that it's him I'm looking at and I find myself staring at him, then he turns to hit me and I stop.
DV: Why do you think people have taken to this dark, bizarre humor?
KM: I think its got something for everybody. If you like dark humor, there's that, and also if you like falling down humor, there's that. And the humor sort of says something about relationships. I think that's what people like the most about it. You see things about couples and go, "Oh, I know that. I'm having a similar problem with my husband." All the best comedy is like that. You can relate to it.
DV: How do you feel when you flip the channels and see your show on?
KM: When I see it there's some stuff I'm proud of, or sometimes it's hard for me to watch because I remember the problems or the fights we had to get that sketch in.
DV: Who is your favorite character that you've played?
KM: My favorite character is someone called - we only did two sketches of it, but it was my favorite - we called it Dean Deen. He was the king of empty promises. He was the guy that would always say, "Will do." The next day you'd say, "Did you bring me that videotape?" He'd say, "Slipped my mind." I wrote that with a writer on the show, Norm. That's how I was really like around the office. I'd always promise to bring people CD's or tapes and things for them and I'd always forget. We sort of exaggerated and made him more evil.
DV: What are the differences between shooting the movie and doing the sketch show? Was it better or worse, or a little bit of both?
KM: I think we do better comedy when we get to control it, which means doing as many takes as you can until you get it right. It was worse in terms of hard work. It was really tiring. We were doing 15, 16 hour days, which is probably normal, but since we're lazy Canadians it was pretty hard for us. I fainted at one point from exhaustion and dehydration, and the doctor had to give me a B-12 shot. I never fainted before. I don't think I fainted. I just think I fell asleep.
DV: Now that you are a big movie star, what are the chances that you might be the next Batman?
KM: Well, it's between me and George Clooney and he's the better Batguy. I think Clooney will be pretty good.
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