Bonny Lad from Scottland
Courtesy of the Edmonton Sun
By LOUIS B. HOBSON
April 12, 1996
Elvis has left the building and the Kids have left the hall.
From 1989 to 1994, The Kids In The Hall comedy troop was Canada's answer to Britain's Monty Python's Flying Circus.
The subversive humor of Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney and Scott Thompson turned their weekly 30-minute CBC series into a cult hit.
Like the comedy sketches of Saturday Night Live characters before them, the Kids make it to the big screen today in Brain Candy, a no-holds-barred farce from Paramount Pictures.
It was not an easy transition. The Kids are scattered across North America working on new projects from feature films and TV shows to record albums.
There were also the lingering personality conflicts of the five men who'd worked together on stage and then the TV series for almost a decade.
"We were like five brothers with strong personalities. We were always fighting but it never kept us from eventually producing the goods," explains Thompson who currently has a recurring role on comic Garry Shandling's popular series The Larry Sanders Show, which runs on CBC.
"We didn't leave the movie experience on the best of terms but I hope we'll be able to work all our differences out. If we can't it would be like spitting in the face of our legacy.
"We were like five fiercely independent people held hostage for 11 years. In the final analysis, though, we cannot ignore the fact The Kids In The Hall launched all our careers and gave each of us a very healthy and enthusiastic fan base."
Thompson has parlayed that enthusiasm into a web page (http://www.scottland.com)on the Internet called Scottland.
"It's a place where all my Kids characters can live and grow," explains Thompson. "There's a store on the site where people can buy things like bootleg videos and T-shirts. There's also a chat room called Bottoms Up."
Thompson says he hopes the material he is writing for Scottland will eventually translate into a one-man show.
"I'd like to take the show on the road first and work it out with a live audience and then turn it into a TV show."
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