Kids in the Hall Movie a Comedy About Depression
Courtesy of the Canadian Press
By JOHN McKAY
Wednesday, April 3, 1996
TORONTO -- Scott Thompson is out of the closet, down the hall, and now up on the big screen.
Brain Candy is the title of the first feature film by Thompson and the other Kids in the Hall, the Canadian comedy troupe that's trying to take its gender-bender humor mainstream.
"I'd like to see how perverted the world has become," says Thompson, one of the quintet who hopes the film, which opens in limited release this weekend, will make new converts to the cross-dressing zaniness that saw the Kids' former TV show become a cult hit in the U.S.
Like the other cast members, Thompson has moved on to other TV projects.
He now has a role on the The Larry Sanders Show, comic Gary Shandling's popular U.S. cable series (aired in Canada by CBC) that spoofs late-night talk shows.
Despite documented feuds among the Kids, they reassembled last year to film Brain Candy in Toronto.
The film is a broad satire that tells of the impact on society when a greedy pharmaceutical company unleashes a new but untested anti-depression drug.
Not surprisingly, one of the side effects is that gay people living in denial leap happily from their closets once they take the drug.
"I feel like God is tickling my tummy!" gushes a prissy but brain-candied grandmother, one of a half-dozen characters Thompson created for the movie.
Thompson says the strategy of Paramount distributors is to go after youth and gay culture and those looking for "alternative" entertainment. But he says he's optimistic the movie will win a wider audience.
"I personally think that the mainstream has moved enough in our direction that we will make new converts," he says.
Thompson points to a new Nova Scotia-based comedy troupe called Jest in which three women dominate sketches dressed as men.
"Canadians, who would have thought we'd be such gender benders? It's very weird. It's like suddenly discovering your Great Aunt Alice, who was so straightlaced, is a crack dealer."
It hasn't been that way for very long, Thompson says.
The Kids in the Hall series ran from 1989 to 1994 on CBC, CBS and American cable and can still be seen in syndication.
But Thompson laments how even the gay media ignored the show's revolutionary comedy. Presumably it was felt there was no place for frivolous homosexual humor when the community was coping with serious issues like AIDS.
"I would rather that they had attacked us, do you know what I mean? I found that more offensive -- that nothing."
But he says the Kids can't be ignored now.
"Now I've been talking to the gay press like tons and tons and tons."
Thompson was born in the Toronto-area community of Brampton and got into local sketch comedy at Toronto's York University.
He's been a member of Kids in the Hall since the mid-'80s when he and the rest of the cast were discovered by Lorne Michaels, the creator and executive producer of NBC-TV's perennial Saturday Night Live and Brain Candy's producer.
In addition to his various Brain Candy personalities (including the Queen, someone he frequently portrayed on the TV show), Thompson co-wrote the screenplay.
Asked about conflict among the Kids, Thompson concedes there's been a rift. But he dismisses it by comparing it to the natural scrapping of siblings who really love one another.
"There have been many times over the years when I thought we would never be able to go on," he admits.
"But you should think about it as brothers. When you think of it that way, you can understand the fights."
And yes, Thompson foresees more Kids films, but not in the same vein as Brain Candy.
"I'd love to do a real sex farce, a really sexy movie, a down-and-dirty gritty kind of film. I wish our film had a little more raunch."
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