Thomas recalls ‘perfect storm’
SCTV vet in city for award
It was easy to feel like Edmonton was the centre of the world.
As shoppers in the early ’80s, we boasted the largest mall on the planet. As hockey fans, we not only made the playoffs, but repeatedly brought home the Cup. Then there was SCTV.
Filmed here for giant NBC at ITV’s south-side studio — stars like John Candy, Andrea Martin, Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas would show up with camera crews in our parks and cranes in our alleys, doing satire as good as classic Mad magazines that we’d later covet on TV. Ultimately, it wasn’t easy giving up that feeling that we mattered. Just take a spin down Gretzky Drive — it’s hard to let go.
“I can see that,” says Dave Thomas with a laugh — a.k.a. Doug McKenzie, Bill Needle and the man behind pretty much the best impersonations of Liberace, Bob Hope and Carl Sagan ever.
“But Edmonton did have a perfect storm there for a while. And the people around had an unreasonable affection for SCTV. They were fans in a way that almost made us uncomfortable.”
At the Winspear Saturday night capping this year’s Rosies, the Alberta Media Production Industries Association will hand Thomas a unique Special Achievement Award for their 40th anniversary. The only similar nod was given to Leslie Nielsen a few years back. Thomas, now 63, halfjokes over the phone from his home in Agoura Hills, Calif., “I suppose I’m going to ask them why they couldn’t come up with somebody better.”
But AMPIA’s executive director Bill Evans notes, “Because of his connection to Alberta and especially Edmonton it makes perfect sense to honour him.” Besides Thomas’s work here as head writer and actor on some of SCTV’s best episodes — Zontar, CCCP1 and Polynesiantown, for example, never mind the Bob and Doug skits, which started in town — Thomas brought actors like Dan Aykroyd and Dave Foley to Edmonton for his film Whitecoats in 2003. He also guested on Mentors and played a priest in Santa’s Slay, both filmed here.
“There are enough stories that I could talk for hours about Edmonton,” Thomas says in a long conversation containing several perfect Max Von Sydow impersonations. He recalls being picked up at the airport for the Whitecoats shoot, his driver noting it was 40 below. Thomas asked, “Oh yeah, Fahrenheit or Centigrade? And he got really excited and said, ‘It’s the same!’ And I said, ‘That should be the motto of the city. Edmonton: Where Fahrenheit and Centigrade meet!’ ”
Despite shooting only two seasons in Edmonton — SCTV was back in Toronto by early 1982 — the comedian/writer/ actor/director/producer simply percolates with legend, from being inspired by our industrial parks and Orthodox churches to making an episode where Russians hijacked the airwaves to being seriously injured here — twice. Thomas lost hearing in one ear — still damaged to this day — after Joe Flaherty shot a prop gun during the Godfather parody. “Right at the side of my head! Wadding went right in my ear, cut my temple and made the side of my face bleed. I could have been killed.”
The shot was used. Thomas also broke his finger in half, making a 180-degree turn driving a Corvette. “I had to go to the hospital in Edmonton dressed as Walter Cronkite to get my finger in a splint. Then I was back that afternoon, shooting! I had to keep the makeup on. I was splinted up and doped up … and working.”
Tales abound of the show’s merciless filming schedule, sometimes 18 hours a day, which only got worse after SCTV went to a late-night, 90-minute format. Carpenters worked around the clock, and when they burned out, sets had to be reused. “How did we stay sane? I think sometimes we went insane. One night Rick and I decided to race from ITV Studios back to the Four Seasons — Sutton Place now. We literally raced at 90, 100 miles an hour.
“We didn’t have time to drink a lot because of the schedule.” Mind you, there
“There are enough stories that I could talk for hours about Edmonton.”
DAVE THOMAS
was overindulgence during the filming of Vikings and Beekeepers. “We built a 40-foot Viking boat, and it became one of these production things that got out of control. The shooting went really, really long into the night. There was no air conditioning and it got really hot with the furs and helmets. John Candy got really, really cranky and pissed when one of the producers said, ‘We’re gonna go all night to get this and stay on schedule.’ ”
Candy called the Four Seasons and arranged a full bar on set after the producers were in bed, and the boat set became a whirlpool of booze. “When Ivan the hairdresser, who was also playing one of the Vikings, threw up in the Viking boat we called it a wrap,” the actor laughs.
Thomas brought Moranis onto the show after meeting him at a party; Bob and Doug’s first skits were filmed here. Thomas talks about playing the same hoser for decades, including in the feature film Strange Brew, a reunion show and a recent animated series.
“When we did that Two-Four Anniversary, shot in HD, it was pretty obvious that we couldn’t do it anymore because we’re just too old. It was kind of telling because the whole experience was kinda like, ‘OK, it’s over.’
“I always approached my character intuitively. But Del Close, who was this Second City director, actually put his finger on who Doug was in a better way than I had ever been able to. He said Doug is really an anarchist. Doug is antiestablishment. Doug wants to take the man down.
“There’s a big part of me that’s that way, so I was just leaning on it. Doug was the kind of character who would park the car then figure out some way to jam the meter so that he wouldn’t have to put a nickel in it.”
He brings up his rabid commentator: “Bill Needle was basically me with glasses. I just enjoyed that kind of ranting. A lot of the stuff I did as Bill Needle was very inside. I went after NBC and General Electric because I couldn’t stop myself from biting the hand that feeds me. We were on NBC and it was like, ‘Let’s go after those f---ers.’ ”
Laughing, he really digs into it Needle-style. “When I heard General Electric made $17 billion in profit and paid no taxes that made me really mad. And that’s typical of what’s happening in the country.
“I have a lot of residual frustration and anger by the degradation of our culture. It’s happening in the media, as the media has become these conglomerates. It’s changed immensely since when I first started. You’ve got Time Warner and Disney and they own everything, the networks, the magazines, the studios, and they’re controlling the information.
“Although we live in the information age, it’s not knowledge, it’s just a bunch of data! A Taliban bombing and a pope dying and Jessica Alba showing her tit all have equal value.
“That’s where Doug McKenzie’s anarchist tendencies and Bill Needle’s anger comes from, it comes from observing stuff like that and saying, somebody’s got to say something. Comedy is a great way to put on a persona and scream about stuff that’s really happening. And people tolerate it because it’s comedy, but maybe a little filters though.”
Fittingly, ever laughing, Thomas is in with the young punks making fun of the idea of an Edmonton monument to the cast of a TV show briefly filmed here 30 years ago. “At one point somebody asked me to come up and be part of it, support. I can’t do that! I want a monument for myself and I want to campaign for it? That’s stupid! I said, ‘I don’t know if you should do that.’
“Look, if they have a monument of Al Waxman in Kensington Square in Toronto, sure. But on the basis of historical significance of monuments from kings and queens to the Unknown Soldier, SCTV shouldn’t have a monument.”
But is the monument such a stretch in a city with a fresh mural of a eugenics proponent and an inability to ever, ever let go of a hockey player born in Ontario now living in America? Why not a shrine of a megalomaniac in a wheelchair, a woman in leopard print, a hapless giant and a pair of beer-swilling alcoholics? If Detroit can have its RoboCop statue …
“Look, I don’t want to crap on someone’s parade,” Thomas laughs, “go ahead. I just don’t want to campaign for it, because I think that’s idiotic.”