Bruce McCulloch of the Kids in the Hall
The Kids in the Hall (Mark McKinney, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, Dave Foley, and Scott Thompson) have been entertaining audiences with their warped sense of humor for more than two decades. Their latest endeavor is an eight episode murder mystery miniseries titled "Death Comes to Town," which begins its run on IFC on August 20. TheCelebrityCafe’s Adam Bernard caught up with Kids in the Hall member Bruce McCulloch, who not only has multiple roles in the show, as do all the Kids, but also wrote it, to find out more about "Death Comes to Town," why Death is so grumpy, and what was, bar none, the worst job on the set. McCulloch also discussed why the troupe don’t play certain characters from their sketch comedy show anymore, and the endorsement deal they’d love to see happen.
TheCelebrityCafe: How are you today? I know you’re doing the circuit. How many people have you spoken to?
Bruce McCulloch: 4,000, but most of them are teenagers. Our plan this time is to do just high school press. You’re the only adult I’m gonna talk to.
TCC: In that case, let’s only talk about teenage things. Just kidding. What inspired you to want to get the Kids in the Hall back on TV and do so in miniseries format?
BM: I think it started on the 2008 tour. We had started writing new material and it was just a fun way to see if we had a juicy spark left, and we did, so we built it up and it became a tour that did all the major cities, including Madison, WI, and on that tour I had a genesis of an idea, an image, which is how I always start my writing, which is Death gets off a Greyhound bus in a small hickey little town and someone’s gonna die. That was it. I pitched that to the guys and they said yeah, that sounds great. We actually started talking about it as a movie and then as we got deeper into the conversations on tour a miniseries seemed like a better idea for us.
TCC: As a writer, obviously you can flesh out characters more with a mini-series, but what are some of the other differences when it comes to putting together something like Death Comes to Town versus what most people would view as a more traditional Kids in the Hall episode?
BM: It’s two things. Actually I’d written an outline at one point and gotten money to do a movie, but once we talked it was like no, I’m gonna have to say goodbye to that money and get other money to do it on TV. The eight part thing just gives us more space to develop (ideas). In movies you kind of gotta move along with the story. It becomes probably too much about the story for something like this. This way we’re allowed to be a little bit indulgent, and a little bit sketchy, and do things a little bit longer than you would in a classic murder mystery. The difference between this and sketch, I think with the sketch, or the short film, we would go as long as it felt right to go. It could be five minutes, two minutes, seven minutes, and I think there’s just a different kind of clock when you start putting things in a miniseries. You’re accountable to a different rhythm, and act enders, and things like that, so you can’t do everything you would do if it was a sketch. The mayor fighting with his wife, we would do that for seven minutes, not four.
TCC: And if Death Comes to Town had been a movie it sounds like there would have been some real time constraints.
BM: Yeah, and it was about giving the guys, all of us, more of what we wanted. There’s also all these natural comedy divisions in the troupe. Kev and Dave will go off and figure out a story. It gives you time to do your own thing a little bit and also to all do stuff together.
TCC: I’ve seen the first few episodes and one of the funniest aspects of Death is that he seems to hate his beat. How did you come up with such a grumpy Death?
BM: Well, I cast Mark. [laughs] Obviously Death has existed in culture for a long long time, and we’d actually done a sketch during the show, Death Visits a Farmhouse, and he’s really stupid. For this it felt, to me, funnier, or more interesting, if it’s sort of like a comedian thing. What does he do all day? Just sits around his room. He hates it until he goes on stage, and that’s a nice twenty minutes, and then he’s back in this hick town waiting to do a show. It will be revealed in later episodes he has a predilection for chubby redheads. There’s a whole story that comes with him and his root that will emerge.
TCC: I’m almost afraid to know who the chubby redhead is gonna be.
BM: It isn’t one of us.
TCC: Aside from Death’s grumpiness, what are some of your other favorite aspects of the characters you created for this?
BM: There’ll all essentially new, so that makes it fun, not that I would do Flying Pig, or... I don’t even remember my old characters. We each play about three major characters. I get to play the mayor, I get to play, later on, a big city lawyer who comes in who’s like a slick, weird, kind of James Brown lawyer type guy, and then I have the unfortunate job of playing the fat Ricky, the 600 pound, shamed, ex-hockey player. That was a unique challenge because I was in a fat suit and prosthetic face for 12 days of shooting.
TCC: You couldn’t have been very mobile during those days.
BM: I wasn’t mobile and, of course, the Kids in the Hall, we don’t have the Eddie Murphy fat suit people, we don’t have the ventilated trailer, we have the Kids in the Hall guys who have ropes [laughs], so it was pretty grim.
TCC: It sounds like you were basically in a huge mascot uniform.
BM: Yes. There was a guy who was hired just to take care of one of my wet arms.
TCC: I hope that wasn’t an internship.
BM: No, I think he got paid really well. I think that’s where the money went.
TCC: Was there a conscious decision to not include previous Kids in the Hall characters?
BM: I think it was more instinctive. We did this many years ago when we approached our film, Brain Candy. It’s a new thing so we’re gonna do a new thing. Of course, we’re older now, and I thought it was important to reflect that in the characters we chose. We play people in their 40’s, we don’t play people in their 20’s. I guess our other characters could age, but it just felt right to try to do a fresh thing.
TCC: Did that also help to create the backwoods town type of atmosphere?
BM: It’s an interesting writing question. What characters would be in this small town? That’s why for me the great part of doing a murder mystery is going oh, there’s going to be a lawyer, there’s going to be an accused, there’s going to be someone who thinks they know who really did it. All of those characters jump into your mind. It gives you juicy stuff to write, and by the nature of how you start it should probably be fresh.
TCC: You said you don’t remember all of your characters, but you did name drop Flying Pig. What have been some of your favorite characters to play over the years?
BM: I’ve always liked doing Cathy, which is the secretary, just because she’s a happy, sweet, girl, and she is someone who, as we’ve done tours over the years, she can kind of reflect our aging, because we have different writing concerns as we get older. She could be worried if she was ever going to have a baby, for example. I’ve always enjoyed playing her, and I don’t mind doing Gavin. He’s the little kid. It’s sort of easier, as you get older, to do a little kid than it is to do a teenager. For some reason he seems like an old man, so that seems perfect.
TCC: Since you are Canadian, and you mentioned teenagers earlier, I have to know, how often do you watch Degrassi?
BM: [laughs] Religiously.
TCC: Is the show really just propaganda to hook young American minds and eventually get them rebel against their country in some sort of Canadian revolution?
BM: [laughs] Well, I think you’ve got some shows in America that should make your own people rise up against the power elite, if Gossip Girl and all those other shows are true at all. I think Degrassi is a kind, sweet, palate cleanser to some of the other American teenage shows.
TCC: Are you implying Jersey Shore is not our best and brightest?
BM: It’s funny because Scott, when were doing some press last week, on TV, was like “oh my God, the Jersey Shore kids are here.” Both Dave and I had not seen Jersey Shore and we’re at that age now where we can not see Jersey Shore and it’s OK.
TCC: What shows do you enjoy watching?
BM: There’s a lot of good TV on right now. I watch Mad Men, and Breaking Bad, and all those other good shows that are on right now. I think it’s a really golden age of TV. Hopefully Death Comes to Town can be in that cannon, which are shows that are on cable which aren’t necessarily for everyone, but the people who like these weird things, as we realize over time, are more and more.
TCC: The incredible expansion of Cable TV has really helped out the quirky.
BM: For sure. I’ve worked in network TV and I’ve worked in Cable TV and (in Cable TV) you don't have to try to hit as big a target and therefore your aim can kind of be truer, I think.
TCC: You don’t have to smooth out any rough edges to please a much larger other group because the actual group you’re aiming for is just fine.
BM: Yes, exactly. It’s like a marketing thing. They always say in marketing, always know who your primary target is, and I think sometimes that TV people make shows that they don’t like but that they hope other people will like.
TCC: Finally, you guys crossdress a lot, and I’m guessing you can’t wear normal women’s sizes. Has a big lady dress company offered you a deal of some kind?
BM: [laughs] I think the ship sailed on that when we were in our 30’s. Maybe an older plus-plus sized model dress line. We’d be happy to do it. You get it together and we’ll give you a taste.
Visit the Kids in the Hall at IFC.com
Photo by Michael Gibson of IFC