And folks, we're back.
All right. Where were we?
Ah, yes, if I remember correctly.
After that first season, we'd all worked our asses off
...and now we're cancelled.
The bastards, man.
I can't believe they let you go.
We just heard.
I don't think it had hit me yet.
No, no. We have to do The Kids in the Hall.
I couldn't do anything else.
♪♪
Well, let's get started.
Shave your head, start again.
S’all going down, man.
[Kevin McDonald] After the first season, our show was canceled
and it was sort of shock.
There was a lot of like, thinking about what's next.
More worrying.
It was probably less organized, and more worrying.
We thought that for like a month or two, like a couple of months.
Thank you.
[Mark McKinney] There used to be these awards
called the Cable Ace Awards, which was kind of a big deal.
Cable was starting to have its own thing.
It was kind of the hip thing compared to the Emmys, right?
And we got nominated for a raft of awards
and I got nominated for Best Actor.
[Kevin McDonald] We got to go to Los Angeles.
One last weekend where we were like, in showbiz.
I remember going to the Aces,
and I thought this is all a fucking joke.
I thought we were just here to get drunk at some afterparty.
[applause]
And the winner is...
The winner.
[Kevin McDonald] Mark won and everybody was so happy.
Even like a "hip" comedy troupe, we're so happy.
[Mark McKinney] I did win Best Actor, beating out Garry Shandling.
I’m crushing your head, Garry Shandling.
May he rest in peace.
Show him the Ace Award, come on.
-Bam! -Two bourbons with ice.
Yes, please.
[Kevin McDonald] So I just thought
it was a normal part of showbiz.
People winning Emmys are going,
"Too bad we were canceled" and the audience laughing.
I think that was enough leverage for
Lorne to say, "Really? You want to cancel them?"
Of course, I forgot to thank him in my speech that night.
Of course, Lorne quickly figured out how to keep us going.
Thank you, Mr. Michaels.
You're welcome, Mr. McCullough.
The axiom in television is the longer
you're on, the longer you're on.
So if you get to season two, season three seems inevitable.
You don't know how it will grow,
but you know it has the potential to grow.
[Dave Foley] Lorne would go in and he'd meet with HBO.
Lorne just had that, that heft.
You know, he was able to convince people
that this was going to be something.
Season two, we decided to make the show better.
Season one had a problem,
in that it took thirteen months to make.
Which if you've ever owned a calendar, you'll be aware
is more months than are on a calendar.
So we realized, well, the show can't take this long.
[Bruce McCulloch] Bringing in writers is sort of a natural thing.
I mean, it took just a little pressure
of how much material we had to create.
[Dave Foley] Our egos were such that
even though we had these great writers working with us,
they could only get a piece into the show
if they wrote it with one of us.
[Paul Bellini] When you're writing comedy with other people,
it really is "who's got the biggest pecker?" type thing.
You are constantly trying to impose your vision.
Somebody would come in with the first draft
and then there'd be a million notes.
Then there'd be a rewrite, then there'd be a second rewrite.
Are you really such a talented
comedy writer that you deserve a raise?
I mean, you wrote this sketch, didn't you?
Yes.
It's got to be the oldest premise in the world.
A guy asking his boss for a raise.
This really proves your worth to us here at Comedy, Inc?
[Dave Foley] There's a tremendous competition
not just to get your stuff in the show,
it’s a tremendous competition for what
the philosophy of what the show is all about
because everyone had their own view of that.
What is it about the word faggot that makes people so frightened?
I wanted to affect culture.
You weren't allowed to talk about being homosexual,
and that was certainly not allowed in comedy.
Comedy was such a straight male world.
I guess I was like, "I'll be first."
Someone's got to do it.
First, you were gay, right?
Right, right.
[Bruce McCulloch] And then you were really gay.
Yeah.
Then he was irritatingly gay.
- [Bruce] Oh yeah. - [Kevin] You remember that?
I don't recall that one, Kevin. No.
And now you're ungay?
There were some at "Saturday Night Live," when I would say
The Kids in the Hall, go, "Oh, you mean that gay troupe?"
And I'd go, "Really? That's your takeaway?"
Like, I'm going to put that in the lazy file.
[Kevin McDonald] Scott helped us be important for sure.
Dave and I are on the other spectrum,
and we just want it to be the funniest.
If this says anything about the human condition, God bless me.
Evil! Evil!
Impolite and evil.
Comically, Dave’s sort of half of me.
We're the best pair in The Kids in the Hall.
Kevin and Dave are these modern day vaudevillians.
They're just... they have the greatest ideas
and timing in the world.
[Kevin McDonald] I came to the office one day...
...what are we going to write about today?
"I think we should write about that horrible thing
you do to people."
What horrible thing is that?
"You've always promised them you'll do something,
and then you never do it."
You were supposed to meet me at the restaurant at 8:00,
where were you?
Slipped my mind,
but I feel horrible about the whole thing.
No, I don't want to hear it.
You're the king of empty promises, you know that, man?
I think it's cause I'm a child of an alcoholic.
I always want to please people, and I mean it when I say it.
And then the feeling for that goes away
and well, I don't have to do it now.
I like a good premise, I've been very proud if
I write a real premise sketch, but I was a character guy.
I’ll crush your head!
[Bruce McCulloch] No one has better ideas than Mark
and no one is more frustrating,
waiting for him to come up with his brilliant idea, sometimes.
Cut to clip.
Wow, what a wonderful farm.
[Paul Bellini] I remember him watching footage of chickens moving
in order to create chicken lady.
I’m a chicken lady.
- A chicken lady. - Yeah.
And I love life!
Everybody seemed to know the head crusher
and everybody seemed to know the chicken lady.
It had just become a part of the zeitgeist.
I'm crushing your head.
Crush you.
Crush it, I crush. Crush, crush, crush.
Crush your head.
I sell shoes!
I generally don't come up with characters,
I usually come up with a weird idea.
Hey, everybody, look, it's the flying pig!
Hello, everybody.
Weeeee!
Outdoors.
All I did every day
was think about more ideas, think about more ideas.
How does it make it better?
How is it weirder? How is it cooler?
♪ These are the Daves I know, I know ♪
♪ These are the Daves I know ♪
♪ These are the Daves I know, I know ♪
♪ These are the Daves I know ♪
"The Daves I Know" should have stopped
in the chatting of it.
But no, he carries on and they do a whole bloody sketch of it.
♪ Dave Capisano I hardly know him ♪
♪ These are the Daves I know, I know ♪
♪ These are the Daves I know ♪
I love that, you've got to take an idea and just drag it out
so that people say you can't still be in on this idea.
♪ We are the Daves he knows, he knows ♪
♪ We are the Daves he knows ♪
♪ We are the Daves he knows, he knows ♪
♪ We are the Daves he knows ♪
[Dave Redican] Kids in the Hall were wildly different people,
but they had their artistic vision.
They were willing to die on any hill that came up.
Hey, any of you guys ever beat up your dad?
-What? -What?
What are you talking about?
Ever beat up your dad?
HBO said, "We feel your show's not really cohesive.
You need something that ties it together episode to episode."
They had a sketch where they sat around as a group
and they do a little scene.
And HBO said, "If you did something like that
every episode, it would tie the show together."
And The Kids in the Hall said, "Fuck you, fuck you.
You know what?
We won't do the show. Fuck it, we’ll walk away."
Kapow!
Stay down, please, sir.
We were always on the lookout for selling out
and not being ourselves and not being authentic.
[Dave Foley] We're constantly having to explain to outsiders.
- No, that's not how we do it. - Right!
[Dave Foley] And it's always that, that feeling of going,
No, no, that's how normal comedy works.
- Yeah, right? - That isn't what we do.
They have a "fuck it" attitude.
If I think it's funny, it's funny. Fuck you.
You never quite knew what they would do.
Which was part of the danger and the fun.
What's that bad man doing to my pet donkey?
Well that's not just a bad man, son.
That there's Hitler.
[Dave Foley] We went to the network.
Okay, here's the network note:
"Hitler can fuck the donkey,
but the donkey has to be alive."
Yeah, that's right.
- Yeah, yeah. - [laugher]
So it went from Hitler fucks a dead donkey
to Hitler fucks a pet donkey.
[Kevin] Which is worse, much worse.
- [laughter] - Way worse.
Coming right at you, East York!
- Etobicoke! - Scarborough!
Malton!
- Mississauga! - Brampton!
- Revelie! - Pickering!
Mississauga again!
[Mike Myers] They wanted street cred above all,
but I always thought that for their
alternative stance, I thought that they were
very, very good entertainers.
♪ I love the same girl that my friend does ♪
♪ But he doesn't love her half as well ♪
The laughs came at an unbelievable joke rate.
I saw a great movie last night. Yeah, it was,
it was on The Late Show.
It was um, a...
What was it called?
Some sketches, I think will go down as classics.
I think "Citizen Kane" is a classic.
- "Ci... Ci... Citizen Kane". - "Psycho."
Is this about a motel owner who was crazy
and kills a woman in the shower?
No, no. I just told you it's about this newspaper tycoon.
He had his sled named Rosebud.
Then I guess it wasn’t "Psycho," was it?
No, it wasn't "Psycho."
- It was "Citizen Kane." - No...
To me, it's the quintessential Kevin and Dave sketch,
where it's almost entirely about rhythms
and ebbing and flowing frustrations.
I want to get it myself, please.
Please, I want to remember this myself.
Just sit down.
[Bruce McCulloch] Kevin exploding with anger,
it's the funniest fucking thing I've ever seen. It’s like, oh my God.
You want a mortician, you want a mortician!
You want a mortician! You want a mortician!
[Mike Myers] There's satisfaction to it
that I think is better than "Who's on First."
But really, all of them have a precision
that I know that watching them keeps me honest.
I go, "Oh, Jeez, just when I thought
I was a precise performer. OK, that's great."
And they got better every year.
♪♪
Bryan?
What are you doing with your father's wallet, honey?
Oh, I was just looking for Aunt Barb's phone number.
I was just an angsty 20 something year old
and Kids in the Hall were kind of
the only comedy group that reflected Gen-X.
So I'm a fan.
You pig! You piece of pork!
[Fred Armisen] It wasn’t one sketch in particular that did it for me.
It was just like there was a mood to it.
[rock music plays]
[knocking]
That Gen-X thing, it's a sensibility.
The "outsider" status.
What are you guys, high? Smoking crack or something?
Are you on drugs? You sniff glue?
They have an alt rock music kind of vibe
with their interstitials and the black and white 8mm,
which I always thought was cool.
Can you sign my button so I'll have a full set
of signed buttons?
- Okay. - I love you so much.
[fan] You guys rule!
- Of course we rule. - Yeah, that's right.
I remember you - The Kids in the Hall, right?
[Scott Thompson] And I really identified with Gen X,
and that might have been from the music too,
the grunge movement.
I think that we were very much seen as
like, the comic arm of the grunge movement.
I moved to Seattle in 1990, so I was like, right there.
In the 90s, it was like, it kind of turned dark.
[Scott Thompson] You guys got any pot?
No, but try some junk.
I just want some pot, you know, like...
Get with the new world order, man!
And Kids in the Hall was just like, "This is who we are."
And I think that people resonate with that.
Great show.
- Hey, you liked it? Did ya? - Yeah, yeah.
Did it appeal to your youthful sensibilities?
- Oh yeah, yeah. - Yeah, it's funny.
Except for the fag parts.
[Reggie Watts] Kids in the Hall being there during that time,
they were part of the churning of it,
especially from the queer angle.
The idea of queerness was still abstract in many peoples' minds.
It's happy hour, time for a monologue.
Gather around, boys.
[Scott Thompson] Doing Buddy Cole was very important for me.
If anyone ever played an effeminate homosexual,
it was always a straight person
mocking the behaviour of gay men.
It was never a gay man
proudly owning his femininity.
[Paul Bellini] Buddy became a really powerful weapon.
You could let the character be and say things
that you, the actor or the writer, wouldn't dare say.
It's like being told Satan's a fag.
Maybe that's why God’s such a homophobe.
A lot of people were offended by Buddy Cole.
"Well you can't, that's wrong."
They couldn't conceive of the fact that a gay man
would play that character and not be ashamed.
AIDS was something that happened to other people.
But ever since Magic Johnson, I realized
it could even happen to me.
We were making fun of AIDS
because all I thought about was AIDS.
Do comedy, don't get AIDS, don't get AIDS, don't get AIDS.
That's that was my whole goal was to... don't get AIDS.
[Bruce McCulloch] And I remember feeling that it was so important for us.
It gave it more power that I was a heterosexual
kissing Scott Thompson on the lips, you know,
in the midst of the AIDS crisis.
AIDS was still a death sentence,
and it was an uncomfortable topic for many, many people,
which, of course, is exactly why the Kids gravitated towards
something like that.
[Michael Musto] I wasn't crazy about Buddy Cole at the time.
And now when I look at Buddy Cole, I'm like...
You know what?
First of all,
if he's a stereotype, well, he's not that far from me.
And also, the things he's saying are pretty spot on.
Give me that stick.
- But you're a man. - Labels.
If he had people running for the exit,
that's what comedy should do,
as long as the other half of the audience is there, laughing.
[Eddie Izzard] He’s even still powerful now watching it,
someone being openly gay and having an insane twist
and the surrealism that would come out of the things
that he would add into that, which was beautiful.
[Scott Thompson] And Buddy is an alpha queen.
He is never the butt of the joke.
He will always win.
[cheering]
Touchdown!
Hold this, I’ll be back.
[cheering]
Season four is our best season for our film sketches.
[Jim Biederman] The ambitions and the vision for each member
of the group grows exponentially.
With their natural growth of talent and their voice,
as their voice matured was, "I have a bigger vision."
♪♪
It was just stealing from what we were influenced by
as we were growing up.
60s Italian filmmaking.
Coen brothers, David Lynch.
Leaving so soon?
Why don’t you give me a reason to stay?
That’ll do.
[director] Cut and clear.
[spits]
It was fantastic, and we started playing with perspective
and style and tone and acting in comedy.
I remember there was a chicken lady sketch
where it was like, the chicken lady
was meeting her mom, I think,
and she had like, a real moment.
Are you all right, dear?
Yeah, I'm remembering.
[Lauren Ash] I didn't think about the fact that
a comedy character in a sketch show could have dimension.
What is it?
They were doing some like, bizarre, experimental,
cool things.
These like mini films, almost.
[clacking]
[Jim Biederman] The show started to become very expensive
when we tried to essentially execute
what was coming out of the writers' room.
The zenith of this was "Love and Sausages,"
which was a Bruce project.
I was sort of into weird Tarkovsky films and stuff then,
and that was just one that we, the style, we just wanted to go...
...to style, style, style.
[Kelly Makin] It's about an odd little character, you know,
who works at a sausage factory.
And I started pulling references.
There was, you know, a little "Delicatessen,"
a little David Lynch,
other Eastern European films that I had seen.
I mean, it's a very visual piece,
so there wasn't a lot of dialog.
[clacking]
I love that piece because there's not one joke in it.
There may be a laugh in it.
I know Scott screaming sausages is a laugh.
Sausages!
I don't know if the other guys even like that piece.
Oh, I thought it was awful.
I couldn't believe we were wasting
two days of production on it, because we never did that.
The art department was spending so much money,
and it was like all of these resources
were going into the sketch
that I couldn't see a single joke in, so I hated it.
[Jim Biederman] It's brilliant.
Beautifully shot.
I mean, the more jaded version of it was,
"Oh, it's for their director’s reel."
I thought I needed a fuckin’ job after this was over.
And I thought that looked like a fun job.
And I actually was kind of an asshole.
I said, "I'm not coming back
unless I get to direct films next year."
[Paul Bellini] There was a great deal of tension in the fifth season.
Bruce definitely wanted to direct.
Scott wanted his own show, his own half hour,
so that's what he negotiated.
Welcome to Chalet 2000.
My northern home away from home.
[Lorne Michaels] They by this point, all had different aspirations.
And so you started to see there wasn't the cohesion
that there had been, so it was harder to arrive at,
"What's the best strategy for all of us?"
You bastard! Get him! Get him!
[clamoring]
[Dave Foley] "I want to do this, so you have to cancel that sketch
so I can do the thing I want to do."
That sort of thing went on all the time.
Yelling at each other
and calling each other terrible names
and having tantrums and storming off.
Scott was pretty good at it
because he had a pretty raging temper.
Mark and Bruce were brilliant at it.
[Scott Thompson] Bruce was rough.
He was always trying to control things.
And I was just "My way, my way, my way, my way.
I'm better. I'm better. More scenes, more scenes."
[shouts]
[Mark McKinney] Bruce and I started spitting at each other.
We nearly came to blows because he's a pushy little fuck.
And so am I, in my own weaseley little way.
We had no healthy mechanism for making decisions,
so it was exhausting all the time.
There's nothing in show business
more exhausting than sketch comedy,
and there's really nothing more exhausting
than being the five guys who have to sign off on everything.
[Bruce McCulloch] I'd be just so stressed and fucked up.
Like, I would go to bed at night
and my ears would just be ringing.
[Scott Thompson] We’d do television, we’d do tours. We would write.
We would just never stop, never stop.
Emotionally, we just couldn't do it.
We just couldn't do it anymore.
[Dave Foley] We did have a meeting where we talked about
we should probably stop.
We didn't know how long we could keep it going.
[Mark McKinney] I was the only one at the meeting to go,
"Yeah, let’s do another season,"
because I was a character guy that was doing
weirder and weirder and more specific characters.
A lot of them on films that look gorgeous,
and I wasn't tired yet, and I have no ambition.
[Dave Foley] Mark wanted to keep going,
but the rest of us were just like, looking at him
like... we can't.
We just can't do this anymore.
- Excuse me... - Scott!
Woo!
I am going to miss this so much.
The fact that we weren't going to try and get another season
took a huge weight off us
and we actually were enjoying it again.
It felt like we could finally breathe.
Well, we knew a great chapter in our life was over
and we knew we'd done some kickass comedy.
Boom.
They couldn't shut me up.
[laughing] Woo!
Party people in the House say, yeah.
We take you to a television studio in Toronto.
The Kids in the Hall were working there,
taping their last show.
[chattering]
[director] Okay, five minutes to show, five minutes.
Come on!
Dave, get in here!
Have a good show, have a good show.
[Churchill] This is not the end.
This is not even the beginning of the end.
But it is perhaps the end of the beginning.
The finale was super poignant and it was very theatrical,
the way they did it.
We will be requiring that you all turn in
your security passes, your coffee mugs...
Oh, and your wigs.
[cast] What?
- [complaining] - Adios!
[cheering]
I forget whose idea that was, it wasn't mine,
but that... that was amazing, that sort of said a lot
...in one quick swift motion.
- Bye! - Bye!
[audience cheering]
It was incredibly touching.
It was upsetting.
You just watch it, you’re like,
"Oh, fuck, it's over. It’s done."
[audience cheering]
It was sad.
Yeah, I'm getting teary.
[Mark McKinney] Some people cried and some people hugged,
and I'm just kind of, I just go numb.
You know? That's what a WASP does.
[applause, cheering]
Thank God, that's finally over.
[applause]
We're building up to our post TV career.
We better strike now while the iron is hot.
We wanted to kind of follow the Python model.
As a sketch troupe, there was only one blueprint.
Monty Python.
Monty Python did a few seasons of a TV show,
then they did a movie every three or four years.
After the series was over, we all had a short vacation,
and then we all came back
and tried to come up with ideas for movies.
I think we were still too tired and also suddenly
for the first time, worried about,
you know, what was going to come next
and what were we going to do? What if this doesn't work?
I had a small child and a pregnant wife,
and I had fairly quickly dwindling savings.
I really luckily wound up
getting a chance to do the "NewsRadio" pilot.
We had a live tour booked
and in order for me to do the "NewsRadio" pilot,
we had to move one show in New York.
And I offered to pay for any return tickets.
We were less accommodative, like, what are the rules, then,
if you can just like, break out of the troupe.
We were young. Feisty.
[Kevin McDonald] It was weird because Dave and I are best friends.
We always thought that if the troupe split up,
it would be Dave and I.
[Dave Foley] Kevin was the worst.
He was the most adamant that I should turn down the pilot.
I just went, Well, that's insane.
I'm not going to do that.
[Kevin McDonald] I remember for the first time ever dreading
going to a writers room with The Kids in the Hall.
I mean, part of the problem was because it was a movie,
I was suddenly agreeing with Mark and Bruce.
So I'm the one that sort of changed the dynamic.
I was just sort of the problem.
[Kelly Makin] They had never written all together.
There's a lot of discussion about what should we do?
You know, how do we stand by what we believe in
but still do a Hollywood movie?
I loved the script.
It just didn't have the thing where a studio would go,
"We're so excited."
[Bruce McCulloch] We're fighting with the script with Paramount.
They kind of weren't letting us do what we wanted to do,
and we wrote so many drafts.
I didn't like that we were rushing to meet
a Paramount deadline, but nobody would listen to me
because they were all mad at me for doing "NewsRadio."
We couldn't agree on anything and any ideas I had,
I couldn't get into the script,
so I just said, "Well, I want to minimize what I'm doing on it
because I don't want to be around these guys."
Our manager called me up and said, "Don't worry,
they're not going to make this movie.
Paramount hates the script.
It's not going to get made,
but if you don't sign the contracts,
nobody's going to get paid for writing it."
And so I said all right, I'll sign the contract,
and then Lorne talked Paramount into making it.
I didn’t know Dave was that unhappy.
I just thought, a movie for Paramount?
Of course you're going to show up and do it.
And then at some point he refuses and there's lawyers.
So we had to sue him for him to come do the film.
[interviewer] Did that feel like a betrayal
or was that just more...
I don't think it so much felt like a betrayal
as, in fact, was one.
[director] And action! Action!
Well, you can say goodbye to this!
Yeah! Yeah.
Wave bye bye!
Wave bye bye, honey!
Wave bye bye!
[Dave Foley] Going into production was horrible.
None of us were talking as friends anymore.
[Jim Biederman] They would all hang out in each other's trailers and whatever.
And Dave was like, you know, his trailer was down
the block and like, nobody went there.
Bad side of town.
[Scott Thompson] The biggest rift was Kevin and Dave.
They really broke up.
They said terrible things to each other.
And I said some terrible things to Dave.
It was ugly.
Well, I would not want to say anything about
the Dave Foley situation, but it’s pretty serious.
Well, it's all completely untrue,
the rumours you've been hearing, but...
- Well, that's good. - [Kevin McDonald] No, that’s fine.
No, no one quit the troupe,
- that's ridiculous. - [Scott Thompson] That's ridiculous!
[Kevin McDonald] We’re five happy guys!
And they're in a gravy, right?
[Scott Thompson] I didn't speak to Dave all through
the making of "Brain Candy."
I only spoke to Dave when we were on camera.
It never interfered with our work.
Like, everything between action and cut was still flawless.
[Kevin McDonald] The biggest part of that troupe
relationship-wise with Dave was sort of me.
It was just like a horrible feeling while making a comedy.
I mean, we made a comedy about depression,
and I think those vibes caused depressing things to happen.
[Kelly Makin] There was a lot going on in everybody's personal life.
Which made it really grueling and difficult.
My wife left me a few months ago over the movie,
and I’ve been tossing and turning at night over that.
We were all depressed.
My brother died.
My brother committed suicide.
The movie helped because I had something to do,
but I was a broken man.
Get that away from me.
[cameraman] Why? I'm here for a job.
I’m gonna fucking kick it out of your fucking head
into the water.
There's too many fucking people.
Everything's been heaven so far.
This is the one bad day.
The joke being that they've all been bad days.
[Bruce McCulloch] We worked so hard on that film.
It was no fun.
And I remember saying to Kevin,
"Even if this makes $100 million,
it won't be worth it.
This was so hard."
It was a disaster financially.
Even critically, it was very few critics liked it.
The ones that did loved it, but the ones that hated it
hated it, like in a way that was personal.
[Roger Ebert] I thought this movie was awful, dreadful,
terrible, stupid, idiotic, unfunny, hateful.
The disaster of "Brain Candy" made us think, "Oh, we're done."
Failure is really hard to take, and once you've tasted it,
you really don't want to taste it again.
At that point, it was really hard
to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
Groups of men trying to figure it out is a very weird thing.
I mean, we all had, I think, problems understanding
that we were part of a group
that was bigger than, than we were.
[Mark McKinney] We'd been together like in each other's armpits
for a decade by this point.
It was natural that we’d want to wander away.
[Bruce McCulloch] I was sort of lost.
It was probably the hardest thing in my life.
[Dave Foley] Well, I was definitely out of the troupe.
I was out of the troupe before "Brain Candy."
And so I just said, "Well, it's been a nice ten years.
I'll see you guys."
[Kevin McDonald] Well, I guess it's the way it's going to be.
The Kids in the Hall are over now.
["Kids in the Hall" theme plays" ]
Everybody
Don’t panic.
I mean, I'm only crushing your head!
[announcer] This Father's Day, Comedy Central
spends twelve hours
with our favorite kids, The Kids in the Hall.
What Comedy Central would do, which was very, very helpful
for the show, was that they would just marathon it
and that really ignited the U.S. interest in the show.
[announcer] Well, we didn't give birth to them, but we...
We love them like our own.
Watch Father's Day with the Kids,
a twelve hour marathon June 21st,
beginning at noon.
The shows had real traction among kids in dorms,
and that demo.
Kids were smoking weed and watching the shows.
I’m holding it in.
All of a sudden Comedy Central did bring us
to a completely new audience.
[Eric McCormack] I discovered Comedy Central and The Kids in the Hall.
Mark was a vampire that had brought Scott home
and was apparently going to fuck him,
and Scott didn't understand what was going on.
And finally, when he realized that a vampire
was coming on to him, he said, "I gotta tell you..."
- I don't do nothing. - You cum, don't ya?
- Yeah. - Great.
And I remember thinking,
How the fuck did they say that?
Is anyone watching the same thing I'm watching?
[Jay Baruchel] In my bedroom, I'd flip on the TV and put on Kids in the Hall.
And I remember watching just like, mouth agape,
as like a sixteen year old, like...
I'm not going to spread for no roses.
Holy fuck! They went for it!
Look, there goes a leather dyke with their nipples pierced.
Oh wow, oh, hey!
Hey, there's a leather man with his ass hanging out.
Look, there goes a mistress with her slave.
I was a young queer kid watching the reruns all the time
and being like, "This is amazing."
But it just felt anarchic
and kind of rebellious and label defying.
Yeah, just blew my tiny mind.
[Tavie Phillips] It's one of the first things I did online
was look for Kids in the Hall.
And there was a newsgroup for The Kids in the Hall
called alt.tv.kids-in-hall
and we spoke the same language.
The quotes, the references.
We didn't ever want to see them as broken up,
we were still there for like the magic of the five of them,
and we talked about it constantly.
[director shouting]
[Scott Thompson] We'd all had success.
Dave had "NewsRadio," he was the star of it.
I’d done "Larry Sanders," which is an incredible show.
Bruce had directed movies.
Mark had been on "Saturday Night Live."
Kevin was this cartoon God.
Nothing was like Kids in the Hall.
[Kevin McDonald] The cult that we became,
that was a quiet train with a quiet engine.
Our lawyer said,
"You know that next to 'Saturday Night Live',
you're the second highest rated show on Comedy Central,"
and that threw me for a loop.
[Dave Foley] Kevin and Scott were both living in L.A. at the time.
So I started calling Kevin up,
gradually started sort of healing our friendship.
Then the two of us started hanging out with Scott.
Gentlemen.
[Dave Foley] My dad had just had a stroke and they asked,
"Is he still drinking?" I said, "Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
It's not his drinking hand that got paralyzed. He's fine."
[Kevin McDonald] We all laughed.
And I think we... I can't speak for them,
but I know I started thinking, "Oh, we can do this."
And that was the tip toeing back together.
[David Himelfarb] There's something special about The Kids in the Hall.
The chemistry between them, they can't get that anywhere else.
So I called the guys, "Give me the authority
to go out and solicit an offer for you guys."
We were going to do the first tour
and we did a conference call,
and I remember Scott, who's got the worst
fucking business sense in the world, and said,
"We're not going to try to make money on this, are we?"
And it's like, I kind of wouldn’t mind
making a little bit of money.
And then, of course, at the end,
he says, "I thought the money’d be better."
[photographer] That's the one. This is pretty good.
[David Himelfarb] It sold out in two seconds.
You bought tickets on Comedy Central.
Sold out like that.
[Mae Martin] And my mum announced that she had got tickets
to Massey Hall to see Kids in the Hall.
And then I got there,
the atmosphere was like, electric.
The audience was so diverse
and kind of queer and young and cool.
It just felt like the coolest thing in the world.
And I already knew I wanted to do comedy, but I was like...
Oh, if it's anything like this, then this is,
like, the life.
Have a good show.
- Yay! - Yay!
[Paul Bellini] The Kids in the Hall were always a great live act.
In fact, I'd say they're better on stage
than they ever were in any film medium.
So for them to regroup and to do the tour in 2000.
Of course, it's going to be exciting.
And I realized, "Oh my God," there's a groundswell
of fandom out there.
[cheering]
[Mark McKinney] It wasn't until the tour that we saw
what had been going on,
that we had become like the staple, you know.
You leave this nice homosexual alone.
Excuse me, sir, are you OK?
Get lost, killjoy.
[laughing]
It’s Kathy!
[screaming]
Easy to beat up. Hard to kill.
To Reg.
Well, the first tour was sort of amazing.
We realized that we had like, a big audience.
It was fun.
[Tavie Phillips] Definitely like a rock show, energy.
People would throw up, you know, hand signs and scream,
Hail Satan.
They're fucking Iron Maiden.
Like, they can still fucking shred no matter what.
Most comedians would rather have been in a rock band.
I think everybody.
Every rock band wants to be in a comedy troupe.
[Mark McKinney] It was nuts.
And we've been addicted to it ever since.
And my granddaughter Janie.
Oh, is Janie dead?
[reporter] What did you think of the show?
It was awesome.
[woman] All three of us came in 2002 when they were here last time.
[reporter] So how big of fans are you?
Well, we have all the DVDs that are out right now.
[Jim Biederman] It was the biggest collection of freaks and geeks
you've ever seen.
It was that thing going from town to town to town and always
seeing the same people from every community would come out.
[Bruce McCulloch] Goth girls with daddy issues.
- [Bruce McCulloch] Weirdos? - [Dave Foley] Yeah, yeah.
We brought some outsiders and there was a lot of us.
Sketch comedians, they’re dorks.
They’re losers.
They're a bunch of nerds.
But one of the biggest things
about The Kids in the Hall is they made sketch cool.
[cheering]
[Bruce McCulloch] I think us doing live tours, which we started in 2000,
and we did a few,
brought us together in a way that the show had never had.
[Scott Thompson] So we like each other more
than we've ever liked each other right now.
And I think we're actually in a great place.
[Kevin McDonald] By the third tour, not wanting to stagnate,
that was a tour of all new sketches,
and that was very exciting for us.
And the show went as well as our best-of show.
We kept thinking, well, those sketches were really good
that we wrote for those tours, I bet we could write other ones.
I mean, that's why we did "Death Comes to Town."
I guess hell froze over. They’re back.
[Mark McKinney] "Death Comes to Town."
How more dramatic can you get?
Well, I guess we're dark comics and what’s darker than death?
We're probably quietly obsessed with it.
I hope the last thing I say on this Earth
is, is not "I love you," but a joke.
Don't let the music die.
[Scott Thompson] We won't, we won't.
And don't replace me.
[Dave Foley] Death is just inherently funny
because it negates everything else.
Death is the one thing
that should remind you that absolutely everything else
about life is absurd and essentially meaningless.
So why get so wrapped up in it?
Oh, I'm sorry if my death and rebirth story bored you.
Perhaps if I had some tits in my story,
you would be more interested.
Death and tits, would that have done it?
Wait a minute.
I mean, the ultimate joke in life
is that you're going to die.
It's the punch line.
I've accepted since a very young age
that we just don't know what's around the corner.
A young gunman armed with two automatic rifles
wandered the halls of this school this morning,
shooting at anyone that moved.
I was in a shooting when I was a boy in a school.
[reporter] Within ten minutes, a teacher, a student
and the gunman were dead and fourteen students injured.
[Scott Thompson] Margaret Wright, I think it was
her first year of teaching and she got murdered
...by the boy behind me.
[Paul Bellini] The school shooting shaped his childhood.
I mean, you can imagine the level of trauma
with a school shooting.
They weren't very common back then
and it was the most shocking thing.
I don't think you ever really get over that trauma.
I really don't.
[Scott Thompson] When we were doing "Death Comes to Town,"
I had a pain in my gut.
I always think about the bullet from when I was a child
that missed me.
I always think of it following me my whole life,
just following me and following me,
then finally hitting.
I just knew it was something terrible.
The doctor told me, you have Non-Hodgkin's gastric lymphoma.
It's a very virulent cancer
that takes you down very quickly.
[nurse] Okay.
[Dave Foley] I remember going with Scott to his first chemo treatments.
It was, you know, a fairly high probability
that he was going to die.
The entire shoot of "Death Comes to Town"
was around my cancer treatment.
We probably could have gone to the CBC and said,
"Hey, can we wait six months?"
But it just felt like no,
like that would have been a tonic for him.
Scott's view and our view was a much better way
to spend that time was to be doing the thing
we love doing the most.
[Mark McKinney] Scott. - Yes?
Where are we?
We are standing here in North Bay, Ontario,
getting ready for day two of our shoot.
"Death Comes to Town."
Basically for me it was like, I need to do this.
This might be the last thing I ever do.
Can I start again?
We weren't sure how it would affect him physically,
if he could even do the performing.
[Kevin McDonald] It was odd at first.
It was hard to know how to help him
when he was having bad moments
because he would break down in tears a lot.
I'm not so good at comforting people,
so I would just sort of be silly.
And he would sort of cheer up for a bit.
Kevin and Scott and I were all staying
in the same group of cottages on Lake Nipissing,
so we'd all just sit out there on the beach
and drink and talk and build a fire.
And we had these great nights together out there.
[Scott Thompson] You know, everything went wrong, like my calf muscle blew up.
I can't even walk.
We're doing a show about death
and I'm being stalked by death.
I cried a lot.
I was very sad, I was scared, was terrified.
I remember what we were rehearsing and he came in
and he had a little hat on and he looked like,
fucking older than he does now.
I remember he went and lied on a futon
and he started to cry.
And I went over and...
Sorry.
I lay down with him and I kind of...
cuddled him, cradled him.
And I said, "You're not going to die.
Mark's going to die
...because he sends back so much fucking wine.
And you know who's going to die?
Dave's going to die because his ex-wife is going to kill him.
And you know, what's going to happen to Kevin?
He's going to blow out his heart doing an improv.
And you know how I'm going to die?
I'm going to die working to death.
You're going to die last."
[Scott Thompson] Here we go.
There is no greater high
than coming to the brink of death and winning.
We’ve got to ring the bell.
Here we go. Ready?
I broke it.
[laughing]
♪ We just don't know ♪
♪ I think I will explain the show ♪
♪ We’re The Kids in the Hall ♪
♪ You might be here just because of rain ♪
♪ So I think I will explain ♪
♪ The Kids in the Hall ♪
Their legacy is one of empowering misfits
and outsiders, of being anti-authority.
They make me feel very proud to be Canadian, to be honest.
A lot of their scenes are timeless
and I don't think anyone has pulled it off
quite like The Kids in the Hall have.
It's crazy to me that there's kids out there
who don't know Kids in the Hall.
I'd put their fucking intellects and their talents
up against anybody in the world.
[Kevin McDonald] ♪ We played at a club called the Rivoli ♪
♪ Lorne Michaels discovered us but didn’t like three ♪
♪ Of The Kids in the Hall ♪
The best of their work, I think is really
in the front rank of comedy, period.
I think The Kids in the Hall will be viewed
as one of the greatest sketch troupes of all time.
[Kevin McDonald] ♪ We're the show that your grandpas told you about ♪
♪ Aging Kids in the Hall ♪
- Can we get his reaction? - Take his reaction.
- Take the mask off?
- Okay, tell him. - Okay, ready.
[Kevin McDonald] ♪ We're not quitting ♪
♪ We're not quitting ♪
♪ ’Till one of us dies Probably Dave ♪♪
[applause]
[director] Okay. Stand by, please.
Camera move.
Framed.
[Dave Foley] What’s gonna play at your funeral, Mark?
[Mark McKinney] God, I don't know.
[director] Mark, you’re on, Ready dirt.
And... dirt.
Depends, will there be fog at my funeral?
- Yeah. Most likely. - Dry ice.
Fuck it, then just a single, you know...
- One note? - Lamentation violin.
- Oh. - Playing one note.
[Scott Thompson] This troupe, we love each other.
That's the key.
I couldn't have done any of it
if you guys hadn't written me those tiny,
perfect little roles.
And you're very lucky in your life
if you're going to find two or three people
that you hit it off with.
But to find four other people is a miracle.
The Kids in the Hall is a love story.
The four worst people you could ever be
forced to love for 40 years.
I am going to play T-Rex at Scott's funeral.
[Scott Thompson] T-Rex?
♪ Metal Guru is it true ♪
I guess that’s it.
I don't know the song, but I'm sure it means a lot to me.
[Dave Foley] I'm not even going to have a funeral.
Just arrange a screening of "Duck Soup."
- And that's it. - Yeah.
[director] Keep going.
In the beginning, it was all just about,
can I make these four people laugh?
Kids in the Hall are my audience for life.
And notice how I work the word "audience" in there.
Best name ever.
[Kevin McDonald] I guess mine would be...
"I'm sorry."
For dying or just your life?
Just for my life. Sorry.
They're many things, they’re family,
they’re salvation.
They're an end to loneliness and no one...
No one understands me as well as those four. No one.
I feel like there's such a compassion for each other now.
And yeah, no, we're going to keep doing it
until we can't do it.
[laughter]
[Churchill] This is not the end.
It is not even the beginning of the end.
[Kevin McDonald] You’re not a friend.
You're not a friend. You're jostlers!
I guess they call it a reboot,
but we're trying to think of it
as the sixth season of "The Kids in the Hall."
[Dave Foley] Making a TV show, I think is kind of a nice release for everybody.
We don't have this freedom anywhere else.
It's us against the world again.
What a thrill.
♪♪