From The Comic's Comic

Episode #389

Bruce McCulloch is a Canadian actor, writer, and director best known as one of the five Kids in the Hall — who came back in a big way in 2022 — their sixth season of sketch comedy premiered May 13 on Amazon Prime Video, with a documentary about them, Kids in the Hall: Comedy Punks, out the following week. As a solo act, McCulloch has written a book (“Let’s Start A Riot”), released two albums, Shame-based Man and The Drunk Baby Project, and created the sitcom Carpoolers for ABC. He’s also directed movies such as Superstar and Stealing Harvard, as well as shows such as Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Schitt’s Creek, and Trailer Park Boys, and he has shepherded a new Canadian sketch comedy group, TallBoyz, to TV on CBC and Fuse. His latest one-man show, “Tales of Bravery and Stupidity,” will make its off-Broadway debut in June 2022 at SoHo Playhouse. McCulloch invited me to his hotel room to talk about the makings of The Kids In The Hall, and his perspective on it all. 

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So Bruce McCulloch, thank you so much for inviting me over to your hotel room, in your pajamas.

Yes, I’m in my pajamas, in the glamorous Essex house. I’m going to set the scene for the listeners — there’s only three of you. And I’m wearing white slippers, tartan pajamas, and I have a coffee in my hand. And then the first question I have for you is why are podcasts usually so long?

That’s a very good question.

I was on one yesterday that was 90 minutes, and it was like a stand-up going, ‘OK, what else? What else? What else? What else?’ But I know this is nice and concise. And it’s why I was rabid to do this.

So last things first, Bruce. I saw you and your fellow kids on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon last night. What didn’t you get to say on the show that you wish you could have since you had to share your screen time?

Yeah, I was sharing it with those four other effers.

You know, I think we said it. I mean, we’re very excited to be back. I mean, I don’t know if that was palpable watching us.

Yes

But there’s sort of a love flowing between us now, of — what the hell? — I’m falling in love with my wife again after 40 years?! So yeah, we have a love and kindness right now that overshadows our meanness and our anger.

Well, I suppose not only reuniting for season six, are we calling it season six?

Yes, we are.

Not only that, but also submitting yourself to a documentary allows you so much time to process — much more than this half-hour we’re spending here.

I mean, it’s interesting with the doc, because I just interviewed. The director sent us all a cut for notes, and I said, ‘Well, I have no notes.’ He said, ‘That’s amazing. You love it!’ I said, ‘Well, I didn’t watch it.’ But when I did finally watch it — because I didn’t want my hand prints on somebody else’s doc. That’s his story. That’s his art. And so when I finally saw it, in South by Southwest, with the premiere with the guys it was really sweet, and to watch footage I’ve never seen before of me in Calgary in 1983, and all kinds of stuff and Mark and it was very nice.

That was something that really fascinated and startled me, in fact, was seeing how much footage there was of you and Mark in Calgary. Of Dave and Kevin in Toronto from 1981-82. I mean, people now record everything on their phones, but the idea that you would have so much footage of yourselves in the early 80s…

I know it’s crazy. And Paul Bellini, who is the Man in Towel. We’re doing a Paint Bellini contest for our show.

And who’s one of our best friends and Scott’s best friend, is the secret weapon of The Kids in The Hall. I mean, he was a great writer for us. And he’s the Andy Warhol. He filmed all that stuff. He just always had his camera and they cut out the stuff where I said ‘Fuck off, Paul! Stop pointing that camera at me.’ But he had all that footage and he documented us, for whatever reason, and Scott for years and years. So they secured his footage for the doc.

What about the stuff from Calgary, though, because that predated you meeting Scott and Paul?

I don’t know. I guess Loose Moose, somebody probably had a camera. I mean, these are serious journalists who went — not like you, you didn’t even know my name before you knocked on the door. (laughs) They really researched, and somehow — they were at my house for like nine hours going, ‘Who is in this picture? I want to know everything about it.’ You wanted to go, ‘Just get out of here.’ But somehow they got it.

I started getting involved professionally with comedy in 1996. So I obviously have feelings about Brain Candy and about The Kids in The Hall. But even then in Seattle, there were maybe two or three stand-ups who would film their sets, but it was such a rarity at the time.

Certainly, because who wants to look at that?

Exactly.

When I started doing stand-up in 1984 or 5, I would record it sometimes. And listening back was really gruesome. And it was like, no, let’s not do that.

I could imagine bringing a cassette recorder and recording the audio but to set up a tripod?

You’re forgetting the detail, though, that Scott’s a narcissist, so the fact of watching himself. Tidbit! I remember when we had to tour, we had a great bus driver. A really cool guy. And he told us that Aerosmith would tape their concert every night. He drove Aerosmith. And they would sit there, stone-faced and watch the entire show on the bus every night after the show. And I thought, ‘That’s not the way to tour.’

They must have learned that from Lorne.

(laughs) Maybe. Maybe.

Another fascinating detail that comes out in the doc is that the four of you, and then the five of you, spent been a solid year and a half, maybe two years, at the Rivoli? A space that you eventually fit 400 people in — but you talked about performing for a handful of people for the first year and a half.

I mean the interesting part was, and a young man is so restless. Maybe an old man is restless, too, but when we were in Calgary, we got success really quickly. Mark and I, we started a thing called Late Night Comedy. We started writing sketches. I had The Dave’s I Know and stuff like that even.

And they were lined up around the block in Calgary right away. So when we came back to Toronto, we thought that would happen. And it didn’t. That was a good lesson. Because we had to keep going and going and going. And yeah, I don’t even know. We were like, people banging their instruments and there’s nobody there but we don’t care. Sort of.

How did you persevere through that period? Between starting to do shows at the Rivoli up until you get that phone call from Lorne’s assistant from Saturday Night Live?

I think we were too scared to say to each other, ‘Hey, this might not be working. This may not work.’ Every so often you get a good comic idea. And a good comic idea is like a warm egg in your brain. Or it’s like sex. It can keep you going for a long, long time. And I think we just didn’t know any better. I mean, I worked at Canada Dry in the warehouse for a couple of years. Do I want to go back to that warehouse? So we had, like all the people that I really love to read about, Patti Smith or whoever, they’ve just got no other choice.

But it’s got to be such a surreal moment for the people who break through where you have that job, whether it’s the Canada Dry warehouse or a mailroom, or wherever you’re working, and you know you’ve got something, but when you try to explain it to your co-workers, they’re like, I don’t see it.

No one wants to be the funniest guy in the warehouse, which I was, until I started comedy. A lot of us have something, and it never is gonna look like the path you think it is. Unless you want to be a doctor or something’s that’s a very logical path, or a YouTuber or whatever the fuck that is. But you just have to keep going and the world will figure it out for you. You don’t have to figure it out for yourself. All the things you’ve done will make sense at some point.

Did that hold true with directing for you?

Well, no. Directing was more cynical, because I watched the show and I thought there’s four really funny guys. And then there’s one little guy with a real wobbly head, won’t stop moving his hands. And he’s not so good.

But he’s wobbly!

Everybody loves a bobblehead Bruce. But I thought what am I going to do after this? And I’ve always been the obsessive one. It’s documented in the documentary. The details, it’s those extras don’t look right. Change her sweater. The music’s wrong. We’re on that close-up too short. So directing was a logical thing. So I picked a skill, as my drunk stepmom told me: ‘Be a welder.’ I picked a skill, which was directing, and I have a love-hate relationship with it. I had a couple of films — I did a film with Tom Green that was kind of tough because it didn’t perform.

Stealing Harvard.

Yeah, but it’s like now I love it. Now I’ve done it with TallBoyz. Schitt’s Creek, and things like that, and it’s like: Oh! I like directing.

Do you feel more comfortable behind the camera than in front of it?

Oh, without question. Without question, and it’s not even a function of my age. 61 years old! That was my Kevin (impersonation), and I did my finger, too. Yeah, no, I’ve been in the odd thing, and like, Scott said something now. He’s so happy doing a show with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Oh, he’s rabid to be on set. I don’t want to be in hair and makeup. I’d rather be going: ‘OK, one more. Quicker.’

Just for the listeners at home. There’s probably two of you now. He’s texting his mistress constantly. During this interview. Which seems — rather rude.

Well, I’m looking at my phone because I have lots of questions and little time, so I want to make sure I get everything in.

Of course!

So you know, I mentioned Brain Candy because I started getting involved in improv in ‘96. And I remember watching it in the movie theater in Seattle, near the University of Washington. And I was in love with it then and remain so, and I think it even holds up even better, since you did it before the opioid epidemic. ou guys talk a lot about it in the documentary and then you directly reference it in the new season. How has your opinion of it changed over the years?

Well, you know, I think Brain Candy is a pretty good weird — you know, my wife says everything we touch turns to cult. And it is the prime example of that. I think it is the product of a very dark time for us. The show was over. Scott’s brother had killed himself. Kevin’s marriage was breaking up. And and and. We were on the outs with Dave. So it just feels, the footage just feels, it just feels dark to me. Because there was not a lot of joy in the bellies of the boys performing. I think the fact that we could revisit it, because we’ve done a few staged readings of it that audiences really liked, and we do music and stuff. The fact that we could revisit it meant that we had healed our greatest failure. The documentary on us is excellent. The thing it didn’t seem to have time for was, part of that was because of Cancer Boy. Because I muscled Cancer Boy into that movie, against all odds. And they withdrew all their advertising revenue. I don’t know if it would have performed better, but that was us, as the doc’s called Comedy Punks. That is the example. And of course I famously said to the person I was talking to on the phone for two hours to keep Cancer Boy in the film. I said ‘It’s important because my mom died of cancer.’ And of course, my mom is still alive.

So death has not come to town.

No, death has not come to town. Well, it almost did, because Scott got cancer when doing that. My mom’s had seven heart attacks, but she just keeps going. I think she likes riding in the ambulance, is why she has those heart attacks.

Did any of you go back and watch Brain Candy as part of the documentary or as part of re-referencing it this season?

No. Maybe Scott? You know, I have teenage children. They’ve never watched it. I’ve only watched it. No, I haven’t watched it. I haven’t watched it in many many years. Maybe I will? But no. I don’t want to watch it.

You also have your own one-man show that you’re doing in June (June 1-12, 2022) here in New York at SoHo Playhouse.

Thank you.

No thank you. You’re the one doing the show. So thank you.

It’s called Tales of Bravery and Stupidity.

Kevin did his own show in 2019. And he did it across the street from the West Bank. I think for sentimental reasons…and Scott tried to do a show that Paul co-wrote with him in 2001 that was supposed to do off-Broadway here but it was September of 2001. So it got cancelled.

Yes, he put up his posters before Sept. 11. His show was supposed to open Sept. 12. And he had all these posters with, I think I can say, he had semen on his face. Was his thing. It was ‘The Lowest Show in The World.’ He thinks that was the tragedy. I mean, the Twin Towers was a tragedy. But he thinks, ‘My show didn’t get to open.’ But listen, I’ve come to do what those gentlemen could not do: come with dignity and respect. And lay it down for the good people of New York.

Well, I guess my question is: Did you learn anything from their shows that helped you decide, OK, this is the time. This is what I want to do, and this is how I want to tell my side of the stories?

Yes and no. One of the reasons I signed on to do the Kids In The Hall series. I had seen Scott’s show and I thought it was so effing brilliant, that that man needed to be back in culture in a different way again. But for me, I’ve always done one-person shows, sometimes with the guitarist from the Shadowy Men. This time, I’m just using his music. But no, it just worked out perfectly because of the time we’ve been through. Sort of the gurgling underbelly of my work has always been — which people don’t quite sometimes understand — has been a kind of a crazy humanity that I have for people. I think we’ve been through a time that has been, they say unprecedented. That’s a boring word now. But a horrific catastrophe for every person. And I think there’s something about that, that makes me want to reach out to people and be super funny and talk about dark humor and gallows humor, getting us through and stuff. But it just feels like a really good time in my life to just be able to commune with an audience.

How important is it that you’re doing it now, then?

I think it can only be now. I mean the show you can only do the day you’re doing it. You always change your material to reflect what you’re feeling, what you’re going through. I think now, with things shutting down and reopening. I did some shows in Western Canada in November, it was the first time that things had opened up, and people were crying. And not just crying because my show maybe has a couple of grace notes in it. But because they were just so happy to be out and be with each other, which is kind of the message of the show.

So do you still have close ties to Alberta?

Yeah, my sister’s there. My mom’s there, having heart attacks every fortnight, which as you know is every two weeks, and I have great friends. I was just back there to see some theater. I have great friends who run a theater there. But I don’t own raw land or anything.

Is the Loose Moose still there?

Yeah, still going.

TheatreSports, too?

Still at it.

I didn’t know that four out of the five of you started in TheaterSports.

Here’s the great thing that has not been told about TheatreSports. We had done a show there called Late Night Comedy, held after TheatreSports, and we’d done it for quite some time, and it was successful. I think they charged $4 or $5. And then when we left — and no one ever got paid to do TheatreSports — when we left, they gave us each $4,000. Because they had saved up the money that we had made during that entire run to give us, because they knew that we’d eventually be leaving. Isn’t that wonderful?

That’s amazing. That sounds very Canadian.

I know! And we surfed on that money, oh my God, that was so important, in our first shitty apartments.

How close were you to ever adding an official sixth member? I know you talked about like Paul being the Andy Warhol secret sauce, but then you know Mike Myers talks ad nauseam about

I love that you said ad nauseam.

And then his brother (Paul Myers) wrote the book about KITH.

There was only us for each other. I know a throuple is three. What’s a five way marriage?

Quint?

Yeah, we’re quint. We’re a five-person marriage. Only for each other. And also, again, one of the secrets of the truth is that Scott forced his way in, like a rabid animal. And completed us. We weren’t complete. We didn’t know we were complete until we got him. It’s weird, though, that you say that, because even yesterday, as we were leaving The Tonight Show, Mark said, ‘Oh, well, we’re still waiting for one.’ It’s like oh, no, it’s all of us. And we’re always sometimes thinking that there’s some other person we have to take with us in the car. But no, it was only us. Only we could stand each other. There were some really great kind souls, like Garry Campbell, who’s our head writer on this show. We’re just too much animals for him.

Yeah, that reminds me. I saw in the credits for season six that there’s some names that I recognize like Julie Klausner, Jen Kirkman.

Julie Klausner. I said her name wrong last night. I almost got slapped. I called her Clausner. She said, it’s Klausner. And Jen Goodhue, who’s my right-hand person and was my right-hand person on TallBoyz, and Baronness Von Sketch Show, was also there. And a couple other great writers, yeah.

What did they bring to the season?

It really seems like I’ve been giving talking points, but it is really great to have

Well, you have your own phone that you’re reading off of.

— to have other points of view. We had Laura Cilevitz, who’s my young favorite sketch comedian in Toronto. It’s great to just have other people’s ideas and voices, and sketch comedy is so hard. We need so much material. Like the piece that was on The Tonight Show last night — “60 & On The Pole,” that I wrote — it’s like, go write me 10 jokes about 60 and on the pole, and then it’s great to have helpers in a way. It’s fun to have other people to bounce things off. They take it away or you take it away.

Speaking of younger people. How did you decide to get involved in teaching comedy at Humber College?

Like all great things, it was just kind of by accident. They asked me, and I said OK. And then I went, and I enjoyed it. I didn’t know I would like talking to young minds so much. I was scared of the youth a little bit.

Don’t you think they were also scared of you? Being KITH started in Toronto?

Yeah I’m sure 1/3 of that class didn’t know who I was. As time has rolled on. But they’re all fighting their own wars. Every person. And so whether one of The Kids in The Hall or Bruce is here, I don’t think matters. I was trying to meet them where they were, give them stagecraft and figure out how to write scenes and have them not be scared. My God, it’s so hard for people to find their voice, I don’t know how they can. If I can help in any way, I find that wonderful.

I think the secret is they need a year and a half performing to 20 people at a bar.

I think so.

Where no one’s putting pressure on them or discovering them. So you can discover yourself.

Of course. It’s the 10,000 hours (theory). And then the show I did which is on Fuse, the TallBoyz, one of them was in one of the classes I taught. Vance Banzo. My great co-Albertan. I thought, oh my God, he’s so funny. So I brought him into my writer’s room, and somebody said, he’s got a troupe, you know. So I saw TallBoyz, and they blew me away. And I said, ‘We should do a sketch comedy show.’ And they said, we only have eight sketches. I said, oh, ou better write some more, then. And they said they write all their sketches through improv. I said well that takes too long. You’re going to have to write them. And I was worried. Oh my God, are they ready? Because I know we were. We had been at it, The Kids in The Hall, for maybe, I was at it, hard, for seven years before we were on TV. But they were naturals.

Because they were on TV within a year and a half.

Exactly. And stage and TV are so different. They are adjacent.

What do you think was the most important advice you had to give to them?

I think the thing I never knew, which a director once said to me, is: You’ve got to know your stuff. And I said to them, you’re like astronauts. We’re going to be in this rehearsal room. We rehearsed forever. I put down tape marks. Had cameras come in just so that they would think — there’s your eye line. You’re an astronaut. You’re preparing to go into space and when you get there, you’re not gonna go (panic). You know what you’re doing. And then it’s fun. And so they knew their stuff. And they’re kind kind men. But they knew their stuff. We could shoot fast. We could shoot out of order. And stuff came out, like, hey, we need an ending here? We knew our stuff, so we could go, OK, what’s the ending? And it’s something we never knew, or certainly I never knew, in The Kids in The Hall, is you’ve got to kind of know your work.

You can’t just wing it?

No, you can’t. Well, sometimes you can.

Chicken Lady can wing it.

Oh, you’re making a chicken joke.

Yeah, sorry. I’m such a fool for trying to make jokes.

That’s OK. You’re not a dad, but you’re making dad jokes. I love that.

I love that you could tell that I’m not a dad. I clearly carry myself as someone who has not tried to raise his own children.

Well, folks, he’s wearing a GWAR t-shirt. Clearly he’s not a father.

I love that you chose GWAR because you mentioned GWAR in the documentary also.

Well, it’s such a pleasing word on the mouth. GWAR. And it’s just such a great band.

Before I turned the microphones on, you asked me what’s my band? Was GWAR your band?

No. The Buzzcocks was my band. I think they’re from Jersey. The Feelies were my band. Oh, there’s so many. New York Dolls. Iggy Pop. Lou Reed. And of course as a young man, The Who. But that was important to launch me out of Calgary. And truthfully I moved to Toronto so I could see The Cramps. I didn’t care that The Kids in The Hall were going to make it in comedy. I just wanted to see The Viletones or whatever band I wanted to see.

And they weren’t coming to Calgary?

No, they weren’t coming to Calgary.

I’ve had the pleasure of seeing the five of you perform at a couple of different festivals over the years; 2008 at the Comedy Festival in Las Vegas; 2014 in Austin at Moontower. (Also 2007 at JFL Montreal, according to my video above!) Is it intentional that you try to get everybody together every four years or so, kind of like the Olympics maybe?

That’s a good way of looking at it. No, it’s weird. We gather like weather. I shouldn’t tell tales out of school, but we all want to tour. Mark is more reluctant sometimes, he has a more complicated relationship with moving around the world, being in hotels and meeting people.

Well, he is the son of a diplomat.

He’s a diplomat, and a weirdo. It’s the fun that we get to have. Filming is kind of fun, but it’s really the fun to go knock down Portland, then know you’re going to Seattle the next night. We didn’t know that the show had hit, really, until we started performing out of town. I remember. We went to Detroit, did seven nights in this 500-seat theater. Why are we doing seven nights? People rushed the stage the first show. OK. Now what do we do? So we get to realize we get to commune with the people that we never met, and that I was afraid of as a young man. That I now kind of love. So hopefully we’ll do it again, but we have no concrete plans.

As for you, you do have some concrete plans. We mentioned your one-man show.

Yes, I’m into performing, and the belly of my show centers on the death of a very good friend named Gord Downie, who was in a band called The Tragically Hip. Which Canadians know, Americans may not know. He died of brain cancer a few years back and part of my response to that was a) I wanted to be back in Canada, which I did move back to Canada. And b) I wanted to keep doing it. I’m a blues musician. When I saw Mavis Staples, she was 78 years old. She said there’s CDs for sale in the lobby!

Pushing merch!

And I want to do that. Like sometimes I play a big place. This (SoHo Playhouse) is a smaller place. I just want to do it ‘cause I can, still. And I’m still pretty good. I’m not coming out on a Rascal.

Even though I’m an American, so I’m not as hip to The Tragically Hip as much as Canadians are. I do remember that Justin Trudeau held a huge concert.

They had their last concert in Kingston, Ontario, which is where they’re from. And I think 8 million people watched it on TV. You don’t have to know Gord to know my show, but my centers on the emails we sent each other in the middle of the night, before his death. And just us talking to each other. It’s kind of nice. But yeah, Canada was in grief for a couple of years. And he wasn’t just a great guy. His First Nations causes were just so unbelievable. I still work with a charity he founded. He was one of the first woke White men to march through Canada.

Well, it’s pretty woke to do a podcast in your pajamas.

Yes, it’s pretty good. I will say, though, I did a costume change in the middle when he was fiddling with his phone, and I’m now wearing a seersucker suit.

The fact that you do that, for me, is tremendous. I feel like I don’t deserve it.

I think I did it for the one listener that’s left. You know who you are, Brad.

Well Brad, thank you so much for listening. And Bruce, thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you. I love you, Brad!