Kid out of the hall

Bruce McCulloch on movies, moving and metropolises

by MATTHEW HAYS

Describing Bruce McCulloch's new one-man show isn't easy. In fact, it's even a bit difficult for the man who came up with it. Slightly Bigger Cities, currently on a tour of Canada, is "a theatre-rock-dance-poetry-comedy show about the weird and sad things in the world that obsess me," says McCulloch.

Kid in the Hall McCulloch has created a show--with musical accompaniment by Shadowy Men guitarist Brian Connelly--about generational anxiety, and one which will undoubtedly strike a chord with anglo Montrealers. The principle anxiety running throughout the show--and prompting the title--is that nagging sense that, in order to make it after all, you should be in a bigger metropolis.

"When I was growing up in Calgary, everyone thought they wanted to get out," recalls McCulloch. "The places to go were Vancouver or Toronto. In Toronto, people are all talking about moving to New York or L.A. Once in L.A., people then talk about moving to a cabin in Montana. It never seems to stop."

McCulloch acknowledges that the debate over staying or going will certainly touch anglo Montrealers, who constantly seem to have the question "When are you leaving for Toronto?" hanging over their collective head. And McCulloch also says the move-or-lose phenom is indeed pretty universal. "This is really a show about finding your place."

Canuck hyuck

Surprisingly, McCulloch doesn't bristle when I bring up his show's place in the considerable body of theoretical thought surrounding Canadian culture and, more specifically, Canadian comedy. "Slightly Bigger Cities is my world view. And I wanted it to be specific and universal at once. There's been talk of doing it off-Broadway. Do you think they'll catch the Red Deer references there?

"Certainly, all Canadians feel like outsiders. Our relationship to success, our relationship to the U.S., is very different. I know a lot of my comedy is about fitting in. Outsiders do tend to make good artists."

While McCulloch concedes the link with certain themes within Cancon, he has consistently stopped short of according Kids in the Hall--which put he and four other young comedians on the map during its five-year run in the early '90s--a link within some broader kind of evolution. "I was never into Saturday Night Live or SCTV," he says, when asked about their influence on him. "I was always into going out and getting drunk when I was younger, rather than sitting down to watch SNL. I've actually never really been a big comedy fan. I mean, it can be done well, but I don't go out of my way to see it generally. Really, the only thing I can honestly say had a major influence on me was Monty Python."

McCulloch recognizes the shadow Kids in the Hall casts; he also recognizes people will often gauge what he's doing on what he did during that show's run. Kids attained an immediate following, one which has endured (the show is heavily rerun on specialty comedy cable channels). In Mondo Canuck, the dictionary of Canadian pop culture, authors Geoff Pevere and Greig Dymond argue that the Kids were "loved, disdained and puzzled over with equal intensity." The troupe featured all sorts of bizarre, gonzo characters and sketches, usually without the political bent of the Royal Canadian Air Farce or the celebrity imitations of SCTV. In particular, Kids--especially Dave Foley, Scott Thompson and McCulloch--often exercised a unique brand of genderfuck, a drag which pushed the limits of comedy around sex and sexual orientation.

Critical legacy

The show ended in 1995 with a certain degree of controversy, as Thompson--the out gay kid--lashed out at the media for never giving Kids in the Hall the praise he felt it deserved.

"I totally disagree with Scott," McCulloch says now. "We totally got our due. Scott was always worried about the media, in particular the gay press. I think that was one of the most profound influences our show did have, was with gays. There we were, four hets and one gay guy, and we were all hugging Scott. It was very gay positive."

McCulloch does recall some of the Canadian we're-eating-our-own mentality, though. "I remember for one of our tours, the only negative review we ever got was in Toronto. I guess they thought our show had broken through to the U.S., so we must be rich. That Toronto attitude, especially towards L.A., is odd: it's like they want you to stay in Canada, but then if you do, they're like, why aren't you in L.A. if you're such a success?"

The good news for Kids-philes is that a reunion tour will be performed in the early new year (though the stopovers include Vancouver and several American cities, nothing has been worked out for Toronto and Montreal yet). For McCulloch, this adds to a juggling act which vacillates between a growing body of film work and live performances.

From Dick to Dog Park

Slightly Bigger Cities is one of many shows he's performed in the past 10 years, beyond Kids in the Hall's successful stage touring shows. It also caps off an extremely busy year for him. He wrote, directed and starred (with Janeane Garofalo) in Dog Park, released earlier this year. He also directed Superstar, based on the Molly Shannon SNL sketch, which has been weathering some rather brutal reviews since opening last month.

And he appeared in Dick, the underseen teen comedy set amid the Watergate scandal, in which McCulloch delivers an hilarious revisionist performance as the Washington Post's Carl Bernstein (played to the hilt as an egotistical, bumbling fool).

That's a lot of gruelling film work, and to some disappointing box office and critical responses. But despite the difficulty in building up a post-Kids reputation--Foley appears the closest of the five to achieving this--McCulloch doesn't appear fazed by the perceived flops.

"Only people in the media ever ask that question. No one who comes to my show ever stays after and asks that. Critical responses are always strange. When I did a show called Trapped in a Lawn Chair years ago, the reviews were diametrically opposed. I don't run from the press, but alternately I don't hang on their every word. Brain Candy got some harsh reviews. And it didn't do so well initially. But films get a second life on video. Now everyone in L.A. says, 'Oh, you did that Brain Candy movie. It was really brilliant.'

"Ultimately, I'm not in a numbers game," McCulloch intones, while noting that Superstar hasn't been doing bad box office, either. "I know that makes a huge difference to the money people. I don't put a lot of stock in my career. I mean, I do care, but it's not all about numbers."

And as for the prospect of always being held up to the Kids' legacy? "The shows are in reruns, but it's not like I'm a person on WKRP. I wrote for the show as well, it's an accurate reflection of where I was at the time. And I'm still silly. I'm just in my later 30s now."

Tom Green and the Cancon scene

As for new comedy programming, McCulloch professes to loving Canadian TV sensation Tom Green. "I did his show a couple of weeks ago, which was a blast. And I cast him as an asshole in Superstar. He's doing his own thing, which is great. But he does so many other things, other than the gross-out stuff. And I worry that he could get pigeon-holed now, because he's become so well known for the gross-out stuff."

As our conversation draws to a close, McCulloch talks about his primary goals with Slightly Bigger Cities. "What impresses me is when people actually come back to the show. It's not a political show. It's not like, STOP THE OPPRESSION! Blackout! It's about laughing at our lives. In a sense, we're all outsiders together, so we're no longer outsiders. It sounds corny, but sometimes the best messages are simple.

"It's like when you watch The Horse Whisperer, and you want the horse to get better and go free. Because it represents Robert Redford's spirit. And when you're watching it you have tears rolling down your cheek. It's just like that."

Bruce McCulloch will perform Slightly Bigger Cities one night only this Sunday, November 7 at 8pm at Le Spectrum, $19.50+tax; info: 790-1245