Episode 1031 - Brent Butt
Marc:Lock the gates!
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck, buddies?
Marc:What the fuck, Nicks?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:It's Marc Maron.
Marc:I'm here.
Marc:I'm here in Canada still.
Marc:This is my podcast, WTF.
Marc:How's it going?
Marc:Are you all right?
Marc:Today, I guess in honor of me being in Canada, I'm having a Canadian comedian on, though we recorded in LA.
Marc:Brent Butt is on the show today, and that was fun.
Marc:I like him.
Marc:He's always been a nice guy, and I'm glad we got to talk.
Marc:And he's sort of a big celebrity up here in a way.
Marc:Well, I don't think he would admit that, but that's coming up.
Marc:So I have been having, again, a nice time up here just on a spiritual level, if I can say that.
Marc:I don't know if it's spiritual, just a part of me is relaxed up here because I'm in Canada and the air is not infused with the panic and aggression that
Marc:That seems to be the electrical current kind of like hovering over the United States of America right now.
Marc:It kind of dissipates at the border and you just kind of deal with life up here.
Marc:There's just life happening in Canada.
Marc:Now, I am in Hamilton, Ontario, which...
Marc:Look, I don't want to be condescending because I'm not I'm not from here and I don't want to be the rude foreigner.
Marc:But I think I am supported by many people I've spoken to from Toronto and other parts of of Canada that Hamilton is not.
Marc:it's not it's not a high watermark for Canada it's uh it's it's a little beat up here and it's it's kind of interesting but there's definitely a it's got its own frequency I don't know if it's the neighborhoods that I'm staying in or where we're shooting but there just seems to be a sort of ongoing ragtag parade of frenetic sadness in many manifestations just uh
Marc:It's weird when your focus is not consumed by what's going on culturally.
Marc:You can really kind of zero in on people.
Marc:And there's definitely a bit of a lot of humans twisted by soul sickness of one kind or another wandering the streets here.
Marc:And it's been kind of interesting and sad, but also funny and nice.
Marc:How's that diplomatic?
Marc:Anyways, that's my take on Hamilton.
Marc:But I did have a tremendous experience at a supermarket.
Marc:Now, before I get to that, I do want to do some business because there's a lot going on for me and maybe for for you as well, if you'd like.
Marc:There's something happening this weekend.
Marc:Now, I've told you about the movie I made with Lynn Shelton called Sword of Trust, which comes out on July 12th.
Marc:You can go to sort of trust dot com to see if it's playing near you.
Marc:But if you're in L.A., there's going to be an advanced screening this weekend as part of a retrospective of Lynn's work.
Marc:This Saturday, June 29th, you can see Sword of Trust at 5 p.m.
Marc:at the Arrow Theater in Santa Monica, followed by...
Marc:a triple feature of Lynn's films, Your Sister's Sister, Touchy Feely, and We Go Way Back.
Marc:Then on Sunday, June 30th, there's a double feature starting at 7.30 of Hump Day and Outside In.
Marc:So you can go to that and enjoy.
Marc:And from what I understand...
Marc:Lynn is going to be doing a Q&A at the end of every one of her movies there with people from the movie, hopefully.
Marc:I am going to try to make the Q&A at the end of the sort of trust screening if I can get out of Canada and back to Los Angeles in time.
Marc:If the shoot doesn't, I don't know what's going to happen.
Marc:It's going to be...
Marc:It's going to be a pretty hairy night for me coming up on Friday.
Marc:We're probably going to be shooting until three or four in the morning.
Marc:And then I've got to try to get a morning flight out of Toronto.
Marc:So I'll be in that haze that like there's no point in sleeping haze.
Marc:And then you're like, I'll just go right to the airport.
Marc:And then you're there like four hours early.
Marc:You haven't slept and you realize I've made a terrible mistake.
Marc:I should have slept for two hours somewhere else.
Marc:And then you sleep uncomfortably on the floor with the floor sleepers.
Marc:There's always plenty of floor sleepers at airports, and you wonder how long have they been here really?
Marc:Are they in between flights?
Marc:Did they get here just really early for another flight?
Marc:Do they live here?
Marc:I don't know, but I might be among those people.
Marc:We'll see.
Marc:I don't know how that's going to pan out.
Marc:The other thing I wanted to tell you is I mentioned a couple weeks ago that there's a new documentary called Blue Note Records Beyond the Notes, and it's opening in Los Angeles this weekend.
Marc:at the Lamley Santa Monica.
Marc:The filmmakers are distributing this movie themselves, and it's really worth checking out.
Marc:And these are not paid plugs, my friends.
Marc:I think that everyone should educate themselves about the beautiful history of jazz and how it's influenced culture and where it comes from.
Marc:So I think, because I'm just learning it.
Marc:I'm not even being some sort of jazz guy.
Marc:I'm just learning it, right?
Marc:And I want a cookie.
I don't know.
Marc:Come on, man.
Marc:Seriously, what's happening?
Marc:I'm punchy, you guys.
Marc:I'm tired.
Marc:That's what's going on.
Marc:I'm all right.
Marc:I hope you're all right.
Marc:It's been kind of a mind-blowing week and a half doing this movie.
Marc:I'm realizing that independent filmmaking has its own...
Marc:sort of compulsion, like the challenge on everybody's part to sort of make the day, economize, make kind of compromises, but figuring out how to get what you need, that there's something intrinsically exciting about that.
Marc:Because you hear about these movies that have hundreds of millions of dollars, and those sound like a disaster.
Marc:Here, you're kind of working...
Marc:you know, kind of, you know, very economically and very precisely and you're moving quick that it's got its own charm.
Marc:You know, I'm sure I'm not, you know, saying not surprising anybody involved in the pursuit of making independent film, but it's been sort of exciting to be part of the process of sort of like, we got to do it.
Marc:We got to get it.
Marc:And, you know, one or two takes, man.
Marc:But everything's OK.
Marc:There's been a weird swirl of events going on around me in terms of sobriety, in terms of, you know, people reaching out and my own reactions to those people.
Marc:And then I guess I could be more specific.
Marc:I get a lot of emails from people and I got a disturbing email from someone who, like, as you know, that I generally try to get back to people if they are struggling with, you know, addiction or alcoholism and share my experience a little bit or give some sort of, you know, kind of support.
Marc:And I got a disturbing email from somebody who I don't really know that was suicidal and in the sort of throes of alcoholic kind of self-pity and pain.
Marc:And I had a reaction to that where I'm like, oh, come on, man.
Marc:And then I checked back.
Marc:Apparently, he's okay.
Marc:You know, he made it through, but I hope he gets it.
Marc:And then like some other people in my life are struggling with, you know, codependency.
Marc:And like it just kind of swirls around all at once to make me realize, hey, man, I guess not that I'm a spiritual guy or a God person.
Marc:But, you know, sometimes, you know, I go mystical occasionally.
Marc:Maybe it's time to sort of recommit.
Marc:Read a little literature because I'm trying to help somebody else.
Marc:So I'm reading my literature and I'm like, wow, I did a lot of underlining over 20 years of having this book in my bag.
Marc:And I was like, wow, this stuff is pretty relative.
Marc:Like this part, like might help me.
Marc:Why am I not doing this?
Marc:It's right here and I've done it before and it says to do it and I'll feel better.
Marc:Why am I not doing that?
Marc:I don't know because it's too much effort.
Marc:Is it 10 minutes at the end of a day?
Marc:It's weird how stubborn we are in our own patterns.
Marc:This is not a self-help podcast, but man, like I am so ready to get out of some of them.
Marc:I am so ready and thank God I've got the equipment and the tools and the clarity of mind to do it.
Marc:That's all.
Marc:Some sort of weird collective, you know, the serendipity kind of surrounded me.
Marc:Coincidences transcended coincidence to congeal into some meaning for me around like, hey, time to sort of do some work, pal.
Marc:You want to break through to the next thing so you can settle into your body a little more?
Marc:Well, get the book out, stupid.
Marc:Yeah, that's how I read it.
Marc:But I hope you're all okay out there.
Marc:I hopefully will be back in LA for next week's shows if everything works out right.
Marc:We got two days of shooting.
Marc:I got to get ready to go do that.
Marc:And right now, I want to share with you this interview that I did with Brent Butt.
Marc:You can subscribe to his YouTube channel, The Butt Pod.
Marc:Also find him on Twitter, Instagram, and at brentbutt.com.
Marc:Had a show up here for years that is now in animated form called Corner Gas.
Marc:He's sort of, like I said before, kind of a Canadian comedy star and a good guy, and I've run into him over the years at different festivals, and I was happy to chat with him.
Marc:So this is me talking to Brent Butt.
Marc:It's weird because I had a friend in high school named Alan Butt, and I keep wanting to say Alan because it's memorable when someone's last name is Butt.
Marc:Anyways, Brent Butt.
Thank you.
Guest:I don't think you could lump us all together in one kind of... I mean, I know there are only like 50 of us in the second biggest country in the world.
Guest:There's about 102 Canadians.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You and Australia, you got lucky with the territory.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Plenty of room to do whatever the fuck you want.
Guest:I don't know what the hell... You know, you think, geez, we got the second biggest country.
Guest:Right.
Guest:How?
Guest:And then come February, you realize why everybody wasn't lined up for it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Do you know why I don't want to lump Canadians together and I don't because I know there's a tremendous diversity of people up there.
Marc:You know, a lot of Asians, a lot of indigenous people, French Canadians, you know, who, you know, come from sort of pirate stock.
Marc:Do they?
Guest:I'm learning about Canada here.
Marc:Trappers.
Marc:Pirate stuff.
Marc:No, trappers.
Marc:Yeah, the voyageurs.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Aren't they?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So I wasn't off.
Marc:I don't know if pirates and trappers are similar.
Marc:Well, no, but the personality just figured they're like, hey, let's go kill something.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, I don't.
Guest:I have friends who have a trap.
Guest:I shouldn't say friends, but guys that I knew growing up in my hometown.
Guest:I grew up in this little town in northern Saskatchewan.
Guest:I was back there and I ran into one of the guys and I was like, hey, what's going on?
Guest:What are you up to?
Guest:And he goes, oh, I was just with my buddy and we got a trap line.
Guest:What are they trapping?
Guest:Well, I guess we're done talking.
Guest:I don't know what else to say.
Guest:Guy's got a 21st century.
Guest:He's out trapping animals.
Marc:Well, I mean, it's a tradition.
Marc:I mean, sometimes the untraditions die hard, right?
Marc:Maybe he comes from trappers.
Marc:He does not.
Guest:I think he wants to torture and kill animals.
Guest:That's what I think it is.
Marc:It's not for their pelts or for their meat.
Marc:Is he trapping rabbits?
Marc:What are we talking?
Marc:I don't know.
Guest:I literally walked away.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:I literally was like, hey, cool to see you.
Guest:We're done talking.
Guest:I strolled away.
Guest:But there are hunters up there.
Guest:Do you judge hunters with the same?
Guest:No, I just did not expect to hear.
Guest:Trappers.
Guest:I think there's a different level of cruelty to trapping.
Marc:No doubt.
Marc:I mean, anything that the animal has to chew its limb off to escape is cruelty.
Marc:It shouldn't be alive to do that.
Guest:Like somebody who shoots another person, like an execution-style killer.
Marc:That's bad, right?
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:But somebody who keeps you around and gives you acid baths or whatever.
Guest:It takes your fingers one at a time.
Guest:That's horrible.
Guest:That's a different level.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Give me the execution.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Or at least let me run and you hunt me down.
Guest:That's a sportsman way to do it.
Guest:That's a sportsman's way to do it.
Guest:If you gave me the option of, listen, you can run.
Guest:I'll stop you right there.
Guest:No, I'm not going to run.
Guest:Just kill me now.
Guest:Why am I going to die winded?
Guest:Winded and I have no survival skills.
Guest:I'll be out there.
Guest:I'm quick to quit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's what I've learned.
Guest:Like anytime, you know that never, failure is not an option.
Guest:I always think it's like, yeah, it's really plan.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Plan B. Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No, no, failure, it's always what I assume is going to happen.
Marc:Yeah, it's a high probability.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:So when it doesn't happen, it's like, wow, I got away with it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's kind of how I feel about my whole life.
Marc:Yeah, me too, dude.
Marc:I'm like, holy hell, how did this happen?
Marc:You're telling me, man.
Marc:You're telling me.
Marc:So wait, okay, now let's go back to this generalizing Canadian.
Marc:Let's go back to the voyageurs.
Yeah.
Marc:Well, see, I don't know.
Marc:Like, you know, I get people who are like a lot of people don't think necessarily the Canadians are that different or it's another country, but it's a whole other country, a whole other history.
Marc:And I don't fucking know it.
Marc:I had Charlie Demers in here and I'm learning about a lot of things.
Guest:Well, he's going to teach you a lot more about stuff than I will.
Guest:I'm glad you learned stuff from him.
Guest:I'm not asking you about socialism and the future of the planet.
Guest:I have one Canadian joke.
Guest:You know how there's jokes of different cultures and stuff?
Guest:I've only ever heard one Canadian joke, but I love it.
Guest:What?
Guest:Have you ever heard a Canadian joke?
Guest:Let's hear it.
Guest:Other than Mike Wilmot?
Guest:That guy's the best.
Guest:He is.
Guest:I love that guy.
Guest:He is.
Guest:I had him on my show playing Cousin Carl.
Guest:I'll tell you that story.
Guest:We're going to work up to that.
Marc:Here's the Canadian joke.
Marc:We're going to work up to that.
Guest:The only Canadian joke I've heard.
Guest:How do you get 110 Canadians out of a swimming pool?
Marc:How?
Guest:You say, okay, everybody, time to get out of the pool.
Marc:No crying kids.
Marc:No one waiting back.
Marc:No, just, all right.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:It's time, I guess.
Guest:The fellow wants us out of the pool.
Marc:Well, that's all right.
Marc:But you are, there is a general politeness, if not mondanity.
Yeah.
Guest:Jesus, I never even heard that word.
Guest:Is that actually a word?
Guest:Because you can make words up, but I won't catch you.
Marc:I think it is.
Marc:Let's see if it fits.
Guest:Mundanity?
Marc:Yeah, I think so.
Marc:I'm not great with them.
Marc:I throw them around sometimes.
Guest:That sounds more like an insult, like kind of, you come in here with, do you have the mundanity to declare?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:It's the conditioner quality of being mundane.
Guest:I think there is a general notion, and probably not inaccurate, that we're a little boring.
Guest:In terms of...
Guest:You know, people on the globe, Canadians are pretty, we're pretty boring.
Marc:Yeah, but there's a lot of funny people up there, and I found the, like, but it's relative to the culture, right?
Marc:I used to think it was boring, and the reason is you don't have people shooting everybody everywhere.
Marc:There's not, you know, insane sort of, I think, what is socialized up there is sort of tempered the competitive nature of the capitalism up there, so people aren't fucking, you know.
Guest:It's not unregulated capitalism.
Marc:Right.
Guest:I figure I'm a capitalist.
Guest:I love to make a buck.
Guest:I loved it.
Guest:Ever since I was a little kid, I would try and sell stuff and I would draw cartoons and try and sell them to my siblings.
Guest:And they're like, why the hell want to buy your goddamn cartoons?
Guest:But I was always into trying to make a buck.
Guest:You could just take it from your room.
Guest:I don't need that.
Guest:But the notion of unregulated capitalism seems weird to me.
Marc:I'm for regulation.
Marc:Weird?
Marc:Here's what it looks like.
Marc:It looks like America right now.
Marc:This is the end game of unregulated capitalism.
Guest:But here's the thing about when you wander around America.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Maybe I just, you know, I don't wander around a lot of America.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Maybe I have a privileged view.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:But, you know, things are going about.
Guest:It's not dystopian.
Guest:There's not, you know, roving bands of marauders.
Guest:You're not going to the right areas.
Guest:Yeah, that's true.
Guest:You got to go to the dystopian areas.
Guest:It's my mundanity that keeps me from seeking the adventure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But is there a way to, okay, so we've kind of generalized Canadians, but all the Canadians I've met are different.
Marc:And there's a lot of funny people that come out of there.
Marc:Who did I just interview?
Marc:Oh, I interviewed, I've only got one more kid in the hall to interview.
Marc:I just interviewed Bruce.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Not to a couple weeks ago.
Guest:He's a funny dude.
Marc:He is.
Guest:And a different way of funny.
Guest:He's got a very original brain.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Original brain, sort of his own time zone, that guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You're operating, you know, Mike McDonald, before he passed, I had him.
Marc:At that point, he was a little slower because he was sick.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But, you know, funny.
Marc:Howie, I did.
Marc:Mike Myers, he's an animated guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't know why I'm just naming Canadians.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It's like when you have a black friend and you start saying, you know, all the black people you've met before.
Guest:It's like that with Canadians.
Guest:Listen, some of my friends are Canadian.
Guest:A few of them, yeah.
Guest:But where did you grow up in this rural... I grew up in the... It's called northern Saskatchewan, but it's really... If you look at Saskatchewan... I have no idea.
Guest:Is that west, east, middle?
Guest:Right in the middle.
Guest:It's above North Dakota and Montana.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Straight up.
Guest:Straight up.
Guest:And it's just, it's boring in terms of geography.
Guest:There's nothing there.
Guest:In fact, the borders, there's, you know, generally borders between states or provinces or whatever are defined by some river or a mountain.
Guest:These are just two straight lines.
Marc:Is there a sign?
Marc:Is there a sign?
Marc:Well, here, I guess.
Marc:We'll draw the lines here.
Marc:Is there a sign?
Guest:For Saskatchewan?
Marc:Yeah, you crossed it.
Marc:You crossed over.
Guest:Congratulations, you're in Saskatchewan.
Guest:So it's like there's, you know, it's bigger than Texas, but it has less than a million people there.
Marc:It's huge.
Guest:Or right around a million people.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Marc:And what kind of, what do you say, there's nothing out there?
Marc:Farmland.
Marc:Oh, it's farmland?
Marc:It's not tundra?
Marc:It's workable land?
Guest:Well, this is why... So it's like a big rectangle.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The northern half is just bush, and there's like 15 people living in the northern half of Saskatchewan.
Guest:And then the bottom half is just flat farmland.
Guest:And so all the... You know, 98% of the population of Saskatchewan is... Kevin Rooney one time said... Have you talked to him lately?
Guest:He said... Not in a long time, I know.
Guest:But he always busted me up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But he said there was all these people.
Guest:It's a pie crust of Canadians huddled along the warmth of the American border.
Guest:And that's kind of what it is.
Guest:So I lived in what they call northern Saskatchewan.
Marc:That's where I grew up.
Guest:But it was the northern half of the southern populated.
Marc:OK, so you're just at the edge of it.
Marc:You could look out and see like there's nothing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that was another thing he was talking about.
Guest:He was like, where you grew up, he said to me, as a kid, when you go to bed at night, are you just staring out the window wondering what kind of frost monster is going to crawl down from the top of the world and eat you in your sleep?
Guest:And I was like, that's such a great Rooney sentence.
Guest:But it's also, were you?
Guest:Not at all.
Guest:You don't know anything...
Guest:But I mean, it's very, you know, there's like one person for every five square miles.
Marc:Well, what are we talking?
Marc:Let's generalize some more.
Marc:Are these hill people?
Marc:Are they decent people?
Marc:Are they scary people?
Marc:Are they people that you see and you wave from a distance and go, what the fuck's that guy up to?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, you know, you don't run into a lot of people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So there's a wariness.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But it's not dangerous.
Marc:You're like, holy God, there's another person.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Do you come from farmers?
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I was a townie.
Guest:My parents were both farm people, and for the first three kids, I'm the seventh kid.
Marc:Holy shit, how Catholic are you?
Guest:We weren't at all.
Guest:It was just cold and nothing to do, I guess.
Guest:Let's have another one.
Marc:Yeah, and no birth control up north.
Guest:No, I'm sure that, in fact, my mother, I remember once,
Guest:I'm sure the last five of us were accidents, right?
Guest:Five.
Guest:They had no money.
Guest:Why do you want more kids?
Guest:I remember saying to my mom, or she's saying to me, we were watching some made-for-TV movie.
Guest:I was home visiting her one time when I was, I think I was maybe 40 at this time.
Guest:It's good you weren't living with her.
Guest:No, I was back home visiting her, and she was watching some cheesy, like, made-for-TV movie.
Guest:And at the act break, before we go to commercial, the woman finds out, the star of the movie finds out she's pregnant.
Guest:She doesn't want to be.
Guest:Oh, no, that's the go to commercial.
Guest:And so my mother says, she says, yeah, I remember, you know, when I found out I was pregnant with you, I looked up to God, and I said, why, why, why?
Why?
Guest:Can you imagine?
Guest:I said, Mom, you're not supposed to tell the kid that.
Guest:And she goes, what are you, 40?
Guest:Did you not feel loved?
Guest:She was like a real hard-ass, hard farm woman, had no time for it.
Guest:She goes, oh, did you not feel loved?
Marc:How old was she at the time?
Guest:76.
Guest:She was 36 when I was born.
Marc:You made me do math.
Marc:I'm sorry.
Marc:But it's weird, though, because there is it doesn't seem to be the statute of limitations on what you can tell your children about things they shouldn't know about runs out somewhere in the 70s.
Marc:It starts coming out in the 70s.
Marc:Like, I didn't know how to love you when you were a child.
Marc:Wait, what?
Marc:What?
Marc:Wait a minute.
Marc:I didn't even know if I was going to or if I'd be able to.
Marc:It's like, well, that answers a lot of questions for me.
Marc:So you were the last one.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Guest:Seven of seven.
Marc:Do you know all the other ones?
Guest:Yeah, I can rattle off their names.
Guest:Elna, Elmer, Velma, John, Della, Lloyd, and Brent.
Guest:It's this weird hodgepodge of names, like a lot of unusual names.
Guest:Elna, Elmer, Velma.
Guest:That's the first three.
Guest:Elna.
Guest:I know one other Elna.
Guest:Elna, Elmer, Velma, then John.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Shift in gears.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And then back to Della after that, and then Lloyd and Brent.
Guest:Are these family names?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Velma?
Guest:I know Elmer.
Guest:I believe.
Marc:Your brother.
Guest:The oldest boy in the family, Elmer, was named after my dad fought in World War II, and he had a buddy there, and his name was Elmer or something.
Guest:That's a pretty good name.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, it's like a classic.
Guest:Especially if your last name is Butt, then it's very Elmer Fudd close.
Guest:Elmer Butt.
Guest:Elmer Butt.
Marc:But it's like one of those names where it was kind of like a working class name.
Marc:I don't know when, but you don't hear it anymore at all.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Elmer.
Marc:Is he still around?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Everyone's still with us?
Marc:Yeah, all my siblings are still with us.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:There was an eighth who died in infancy somewhere in the middle there between us.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Wayne.
Marc:Oh, Wayne.
Guest:So there would have been eight, but he was a matter of, I think...
Guest:a month old so your mom was tough was she like where did she come from depression era hard farm but all really but all from canada for generations yeah although her she was born in canada but her family came from nebraska scandinavians i always said they moved from nebraska to saskatchewan because they wanted to gear down they wanted they couldn't handle the hurly burly pace of punk in nebraska so they came to saskatchewan it's probably for more land
Guest:Well, it was.
Guest:Saskatchewan, they were trying to populate.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so they were giving away very inexpensive land.
Guest:Were they Scandinavian?
Guest:No.
Guest:Irish were their heritage.
Guest:And my father's heritage was English.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:How'd they get to Canada?
Marc:Why Canada?
Guest:Well, with my mother's parents, like it was the land giveaway, they could literally get three.
Guest:They sold their farm in Nebraska and got like three times as much land or something.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:That's how they did it here, too.
Marc:They had all these...
Marc:I think they were like Siberian or Scandinavian.
Marc:Like no one knew how to farm that land up there.
Marc:So they gave away the land to people from countries that had the type of weather.
Guest:And, you know, that's why you get a lot of Ukrainians came to Saskatchewan.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:Because they it was very similar on the same winter parallel or whatever.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So a lot, I was the only, my buddies growing up, they were almost all Ukrainian stock.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:I was the, we said I was the visible minority because my shirt wasn't button crooked.
Guest:That was my anti-Ukrainian joke to my friends growing up.
Marc:Yeah, knocking that community, the Ukrainians.
Marc:They don't get that shit.
Marc:I was the minority.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You got to understand.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was free to lash out.
Guest:Did you get to eat at their house a lot?
Guest:Like pierogies?
Guest:Unbelievable food.
Guest:Good food, right?
Guest:And then they were, I was always like a little fat kid and their parents would always say I was too skinny.
Guest:I loved that.
Guest:Eat some more, have some more sausage, you're too skinny.
Guest:Well, what were they farming, man?
Guest:What do you know?
Guest:Changes by the market or whatever, but there was a ton of wheat, a ton of canola or rapeseed.
Guest:My hometown, Tisdale, Saskatchewan, had this, they just changed it as of a couple years ago.
Guest:For 50 years or something, they had this town motto was the land of rape and honey.
Guest:And so it was kind of this controversial thing and got them a lot of attention because they grew rapeseed and there were a lot of apiaries there.
Guest:So it was The Land of Rape and Honey.
Guest:And there was some heavy metal band that called their album The Land of Rape and Honey after seeing that on like a coffee mug.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Why wouldn't you?
Marc:I'd like one of those mugs.
Marc:So they changed it, I guess?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm assuming?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:To something very mundanity.
Marc:Mundane?
Guest:It's like where opportunity grows or something like that.
Marc:Something very...
Guest:Still a lot of bees up there?
Guest:I offered up, my suggestion was, welcome to Tisdale, Saskatchewan, home of the pointless fist fight.
Guest:That was my, yeah.
Guest:They didn't think it would be good.
Guest:Still a lot of bees up there?
Guest:Yeah, still a lot of bees.
Guest:That was like all my life.
Guest:I think actually the year that I was born, my father took a job at the honey plant where they processed honey and he ran the boiler rooms and stuff there.
Marc:Yeah, so you had plenty of honey growing up.
Guest:Yeah, loads of honey.
Marc:Like the raw stuff in the cone?
Marc:I know.
Guest:Still, when I smell honey, like if you're in a store and there's a beeswax candle, it smells like my dad.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:I launch back.
Guest:It reminds me of my dad.
Guest:That's crazy.
Marc:That's a unique and singular sense memory.
Guest:Yeah, it is.
Guest:And it's so locked in.
Guest:It's so tied to your olfactory senses and your memories.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that smell.
Guest:Beeswax.
Guest:Beeswax.
Guest:Smells like my dad.
Guest:And he was just, you know, he just was a scrappy.
Marc:Didn't have anything invested in honey necessarily.
Marc:It's just a job.
Guest:Went to work.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But he.
Marc:Ran the boiler room.
Marc:I don't know what the hell they needed boilers for.
Marc:To get the wax.
Marc:They probably, that's how they separated shit, right?
Marc:They had to separate the wax from the honey.
Guest:And there was just bees like just all around the factory.
Guest:I remember, I have this very clear memory one time because I used to go with them sometime to work.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and hang out in the summer, you know, summer holidays home from school.
Guest:Because the boiler room was very, it seemed like the Batcave to me, you know?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:One wall of it was just like dirt.
Guest:It was like carved out of dirt.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And then there was like, you know, pipes and everything.
Guest:Like a mad scientist kind of.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:It was like a Batcave.
Guest:And so I used to like to go hang out there and I have this clear memory of one time he was, he was telling me something.
Guest:And as he was talking, he was going to put on, you know, he's putting on these big rubber gloves that he used to handle these hot barrels or whatever.
Guest:So he's talking to me, puts on these gloves and then he takes the glove off.
Guest:He doesn't even lose a sentence like, and about nine bees fly out of this glove.
Guest:And he never even stopped talking.
Guest:And I said to him, didn't you get stung there?
Guest:He said, oh yeah, I got stung a lot then.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it was just like part of the day.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I get stung 50 times a day.
Marc:A work hazard.
Marc:So the bees are just there because it smells so good.
Marc:Yeah, because they love the way my dad smelled.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And to this day, many bees, when they smell that, they think of your father.
Guest:They think of my father.
Guest:remember that dude but yeah there was no room for so you know depression era you know my dad fought nazis and the whole thing yeah he was fought in world war ii and and my mom was depression era farm woman so there was no room for complaining growing up right that's probably good you know you could grouse a little get your point across but don't i don't want to hear you complaining about a bunch so you went ahead and made a career out of it
Guest:You found your voice.
Guest:I don't even like my comedy is very, it doesn't even come from a place of complaining.
Marc:Like most comedy does.
Marc:It's observational.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's really kind of, it comes from a place of here's what I don't get.
Marc:Right.
Guest:It's legitimately, I'm puzzled by things.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So how does that, so you're, you're the runt of this litter.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And did you learn a lot from your brothers?
Marc:Were you wearing everyone else's clothes?
Marc:How did that work?
Marc:Yeah, all that stuff.
Guest:Because we didn't have any money growing up.
Guest:I don't know how much my dad was making.
Guest:He was hauling down net for running the boiler rooms.
Guest:But you had health care.
Guest:Right?
Guest:Everybody got taken care of.
Guest:That's a lot of kids.
Guest:You don't have seven kids without health care.
Guest:So there was a lot of hand-me-downs.
Guest:And then my mother worked at the local thrift store, right?
Guest:So people would donate their clothes and then sometimes she would bring clothes.
Guest:So they'd be like, this would fit you.
Guest:And I'd be like, I'm gonna go to school.
Guest:That was all my fear was like, I was gonna go to school.
Guest:And some kid would be like, God damn, that's my shirt, man.
Guest:That's the one we threw away.
Guest:I got a new one.
Guest:Now you're wearing it.
Guest:So, yeah, that puts you in the state of like, you know, where you're verbally, you got to verbally be able to lash back at anybody who's going to make fun of you.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I think that's a good background for developing comedy.
Guest:Oh, absolutely.
Guest:Guarded, defensiveness, preemptive strike.
Guest:We were all trying to make each other laugh growing up.
Guest:That was their thing.
Marc:What'd your siblings end up doing?
Marc:Are they teachers?
Marc:Very different things.
Marc:Elmer.
Guest:Elmer with a good name.
Guest:Elmer with a good name.
Guest:Yeah, that's the Jay-Z song.
Guest:Isn't that Beyonce song?
Guest:Um, he, he fixes and, um, like watches and clocks and he's, he's one of the few people that knows how to, cause he's kind of self taught and he's done this his whole adult life.
Guest:He, people send him antique clocks from all over the place because he's the only dude who knows how to take apart a clock figure.
Guest:It doesn't matter what the mechanism is.
Guest:He takes it apart, figures out how it's supposed to work, what's wrong.
Marc:So he's like a very specialized person.
Marc:Like does he do museum pieces and stuff?
Marc:Is he world-renowned?
Guest:The premier of the province of Saskatchewan called him to come fix the clock that the province of Quebec had given to Saskatchewan as a gift in 1906 or something.
Marc:And was this something like you see him around when you were a kid?
Marc:Did you see him taking things apart?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, that was his... And apparently my parents always said with him... Yeah.
Guest:From the time he was a kid, if he gave him a little toy, he'd just take it apart.
Guest:That was his first thing he'd do.
Guest:He didn't want to play with it.
Guest:Take it apart, see how the hell it worked.
Guest:I have none of that.
Guest:We're all very different, I think, my siblings.
Guest:I have no curiosity or understanding of how anything works.
Guest:I don't want to know.
Guest:How's he with cars?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's awesome with cars.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Two of my brothers are great with cars.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Um, and all that kind of stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then me and another one of my brothers were like into writing and language and I play music and we got, but we're all kind of an offspring of, you know, my father was like that.
Guest:He was like the toughest dude you ever met.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But he also wrote poetry and played music.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he was this really diverse.
Marc:Eclectic cat.
Guest:Eclectic dude, yeah.
Guest:Renaissance man.
Guest:Yeah, he really was.
Guest:And your mom just.
Guest:So he like built our house with his bare hands.
Guest:Oh, he did?
Guest:You know, I don't know how.
Guest:The only thing he wouldn't do is to build electrical.
Guest:Because he said, that shit would kill you.
Guest:There's no wiggle room there with that.
Guest:Plumbing, things get wet if you mess up.
Guest:But, you know, like electricity, you're done.
Guest:Hire a pro for that.
Marc:He's right.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:He was a wise man.
Marc:And your mom just, what, she'd do?
Marc:She raised the kids.
Marc:That's a lot.
Marc:You know, that's full-time kids.
Marc:Was it like one every year?
Marc:What are the...
Guest:Like every two or three years.
Guest:There's seven of us spread out over 16 years.
Guest:Between the oldest and myself, there's 16 years.
Marc:So how do you, like from that world, how do you, like because the comedy world in Canada, I know a lot of the guys and I know how it's kind of set up.
Marc:But how do you start doing that?
Marc:I mean, were you doing another job first?
Yeah.
Guest:My only real path in life was to do stand-up.
Guest:It was the only thing that I was interested in doing.
Guest:It's the only thing that made sense to me.
Guest:Outside of, you know, I had a dream of playing in the NHL, being a goalie in the NHL, but that was kind of a pipe dream.
Marc:The hockey dream.
Marc:That's every Canadian kid's dream.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right?
Guest:And I knew, I was wise enough to know early on, this is not going to, I don't have the skill set.
Guest:Right.
Right.
Guest:But the only other thing, when I was 12, there used to be this talk show, afternoon talk show that was videotaped live in Vancouver five days a week.
Guest:This guy Alan Hamill was the host of the show.
Guest:He ended up marrying Suzanne Somers and he left the show to go be her manager.
Guest:And it was taken over by Alan Thicke, became the host of this afternoon talk show.
Marc:He became sort of big here.
Marc:And they had, yeah, yeah.
Marc:The thick of the night.
Marc:Remember he had a nighttime talk show?
Marc:I don't think it lasted that long.
Marc:No.
Marc:And I think his son just had to pay the estate of Marvin Gaye a lot.
Marc:Yeah, we were just, Nancy and I were just talking about that last night.
Guest:But anyway, this afternoon talk show had maybe two or three days out of the week they would have a stand-up comedian on there.
Guest:And that was the first time, and I remember the first time I ever saw a stand-up comedian.
Marc:We're like the same age.
Marc:So you're talking, how old were you?
Marc:I was 12.
Marc:So it was like 1978, something like that?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And Kelly Monteith was the guy.
Marc:Kelly Monteith.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Monteith?
Marc:Monteith.
Guest:Monteith, yeah.
Guest:And I'd never seen, like I'd seen, you know, sketch comedy and sitcoms and guys being funny.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But just somebody walking out and standing there and talking and not really doing, he wasn't like doing knock-knock jokes or something.
Guest:He was just a guy talking about stuff and being hilarious.
Guest:I know, it's a great moment, isn't it?
Guest:And it just changed my world.
Guest:I was like, oh, that's an option?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Because that's what I do with my buddies now while we're waiting to get into the school.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:I'm trying to remember what he looks like.
Marc:He was like, he's an American guy, isn't he?
Guest:Yeah, an American guy.
Guest:And then he had big success over in Britain for a while.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was the first dude that I saw and I became obsessed.
Guest:So every afternoon when I was home from school in the summer, um, yeah, the first thing I would always make sure I was home at one o'clock in the afternoon.
Guest:Cause they would say at the start of the show, they have a comedian on it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:If they didn't, I'd bug her off and go play with my buddies.
Guest:If they did, I'd be like, I'll be out in an hour.
Guest:That became my path.
Marc:Who else did you see?
Marc:Who else did you think was great?
Marc:Because were there Canadian comics at that time?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So a lot of the guys were Toronto Yuck Yucks.
Guest:I mean, it's like Mike McDonald.
Guest:That's where I first saw Mike McDonald.
Marc:Right, so this is the late 70s.
Marc:Larry Horowitz.
Marc:Late 70s?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, so all those guys, Lawrence Morgenstern.
Guest:Oh, it's also the first place I saw Richard Lewis.
Guest:I remember...
Guest:Because he was like nobody else I'd ever seen.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was just all over the map and Alan Thicke didn't know what to make of him.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But he was cracking everybody up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was so enamored by this.
Guest:Nothing seemed scripted with him.
Guest:He was just like pulling ideas out of the air.
Guest:He was so manic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:After the show was over, going out to meet my buddies to play baseball or whatever the hell we were doing.
Guest:I was trying to do his stuff to them, and none of it made sense.
Marc:Holding your head, wandering pacing around.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:He still works that way.
Marc:He definitely is out there on the wire.
Guest:That was my window to stand-up.
Guest:I did it for the first time in high school, like at a variety night, drama night.
Guest:I offered up doing stand-up, and that was weird to them.
Guest:They were like, what do you mean?
Guest:Did you do it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it went well.
Guest:Encouraged me.
Guest:I did it the next year.
Guest:And that kind of gave me the notion that, oh, well, maybe I can do this.
Guest:So that was your only job?
Marc:You never tried anything else?
Guest:No, because I was like 17 then.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And there weren't, when I was 21, there was a club that opened up in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Which is two hours away.
Guest:And I moved there to start it.
Guest:But yeah, between seven, between leaving high school, like I knew I wasn't going to go to college or anything.
Guest:So I worked as a drywaller.
Guest:I worked as an illustrator and cartoonist for the local newspaper and another newspaper nearby.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You still draw?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:You still do cartoons?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Really?
Guest:You sell them?
Guest:We're doing, you know, no, I, well, in a weird way, I guess, because Corner Gas, the TV show that I did, we're now doing the animated version of that.
Guest:We're in season two of the animated version.
Guest:So we're like, actually when I left high school.
Guest:Getting a lot of mileage out of Corner Gas.
Guest:Holy man.
Guest:It's the, I'm like, I'm the new Gilligan.
Guest:I'm like the Canadian Gilligan.
Marc:i'm gonna be opening boat shows and stuff but yeah we're doing the animated version now listen when somebody comes to you and says hey do you want some money you want to continue making a living well i mean okay so you start out and you're at that club in saskatoon yeah that's where i first so like you got a local crew there and then you got the canadian dudes that come through but it's not a breslin club right
Guest:Yeah, it was.
Marc:Oh, was it Yuck Yucks?
Guest:Yeah, it was one of the, yeah.
Marc:Because, like, no one works without his, you've got to be knighted by Mark Breslin.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:At the time, that's how it was.
Marc:I feel like he emailed me.
Marc:Somebody did.
Marc:But whatever, I know he runs Canada.
Marc:Like, he's the guy that runs comedy in the entire country, basically.
Marc:Ran.
Marc:Ran.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:No more.
Guest:It's not that way anymore, no.
Guest:But it was that way for sure.
Guest:For years, right?
Guest:The notion that you could, you know, and it was very propagandized to the comedians too.
Guest:It was like, you can't make a living outside of, you know, you have to do whatever we say because you can't possibly make a living outside of.
Guest:Yeah, and so, and after about four, four and a half years of me working with Yaks, I'd kind of had enough.
Guest:There was me and a group of another, like 12 comedians.
Guest:We all left at once, basically.
Guest:And so you have that fear of like, oh my God, am I ever going to be able to make a buck?
Guest:And within a week, this is God's honest truth, within a week,
Guest:of, uh, me leaving yaks.
Guest:I was booked on Annie's comedy on the road and I had HBO phone me at home to come do their, um, young comedians audition for the young comedians.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And both conversations started with, is it true that you have nothing to do with yuck yucks anymore?
Guest:Why, because they... So it was like, I was on their radar, but if it's going to be, if I've got to deal with it, yeah, because I'm not going to buy it.
Marc:Okay, so tell me about that, because that's not really something that ever really happened here.
Marc:There was, like, here it was more of a tradition.
Marc:I mean, the improvs became a chain, but from my recollection and not necessarily from my experience, outside of Catch a Rising Star and the improvs, which came later, you know, the club owner was a very specific type.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you had to deal with each one independently.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, some you had to party with, some you had to be nice to, some you had to listen to.
Guest:Those were the ones I could never get on.
Guest:The ones that wanted to pay you in Coke.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was like, yeah, I don't.
Guest:I'm really into paying my rent.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, yeah, they got a few guys.
Marc:You know who the guys are, you know, who got paid in Coke.
Marc:But so you're starting in Saskatoon.
Marc:You're doing, what, they have an open mic?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Thursday night.
Guest:It was the first night in February 1988.
Guest:I remember the...
Marc:Yeah, and then you stay in that area and you're kind of building your act.
Guest:For a matter of months.
Guest:Building the act.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I was going down an amateur night and it was going well.
Guest:So I got offered a couple weekend spots, paid spots.
Guest:And then they were like, hey, there's this guy coming through, John Wing Jr., who I'd seen on TV.
Guest:I know Wing.
Marc:Yeah, he's a great guy.
Guest:I saw him do a Canadian night at the comedy store.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Was it like Canada Day, July 1st?
Marc:I think it might have been.
Marc:I think it might have been.
Guest:So anyway, they said this guy's coming through and we need an opening act for him.
Guest:He's going to go do a show at Diggers in Prince Albert.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was like, yeah, I'll do it.
Marc:So there were independent clubs at that time.
Marc:There were independent clubs at that time outside of the Yucks.
Guest:It was like a one, but it was a one-nighter that was booked through Yucks, right?
Guest:So if you were the headliner that was coming in to play that club.
Marc:He really had it under wraps.
Marc:So he had the clubs and he had the fucking one-nighters out in the boonies, right?
Marc:So he'd book a night at a bar or a hall and it would be a weekly gig.
Marc:It was a one-nighter, but it was still Breslin.
Guest:Yeah, so you would, you know, you're booked to play the club Thursday, Friday, Saturday, let's say, and then maybe, you know, the Tuesday, Wednesday before that, you'd come into town, you'd do North Battleford and Prince Albert, you'd do these little towns.
Guest:All Breslin gigs.
Marc:So the payoff was you could do the club.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, if you do this, you can open at the club too.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But so there were just no other options.
Marc:And no one would try to start clubs outside of Breslin?
Guest:Yeah, people would try to start clubs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then he'd forbid you from working.
Guest:Let's put it this way.
Guest:This is all, for legal reasons, this is my recollection of how it went down.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right?
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Does that cover me legally?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:This is also the no one gives a shit anymore clause.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:But as I recall, you were basically told that you can't work for anybody that
Guest:you know, that was the one place that would book you.
Guest:So other places would, other people would try to start comedy clubs, but they had no, they had very limited access to talent.
Guest:To Canadian talent.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Because like, right.
Guest:So because you're- And then even out of towners, like if somebody like yourself wanted to come through and play that club, you would, the notion was, as I recall, you would be forbidden from playing Yucks.
Guest:And that was the big chain.
Guest:So you don't want to, you don't want to piss off the big chain so you could play one-
Marc:Right.
Marc:But I but I think as a testament to the good thing that Breslin did was he was pretty loyal to Canadian comics.
Marc:I mean, it wasn't easy for American acts to do yucks, you know, for a while.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I mean, it was mostly Canadian acts.
Marc:No.
Guest:Yeah, but I don't know how much loyalty plays into that as opposed to just grabbing, oh, here's some schnooks off the street who will work for a soda.
Marc:Well, I guess so, but he did give you the stages.
Guest:Yeah, so it's one of those things.
Guest:It's like, yeah.
Guest:How long did the Iron Fist of Breslin...
Guest:Well, if Yuck started in the 70s, and then so early 90s, I was living in Toronto by this time, Toronto comic, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I started in Saskatoon, but within months I'd moved to Calgary, which was the kind of booking center for Western Canada, and then I was there for months, and then another comedian by the name of Jamie Davis just called me up out of the blue.
Guest:I barely knew him.
Guest:I had met him once at a comedy competition.
Guest:He said, listen, I'm going to Toronto, and...
Guest:You should hop in my car and come with me because you should be seen by the people who booked the clubs out there.
Guest:Laugh Resort?
Guest:No, this was pre-Laugh Resort.
Guest:So I went out to Toronto.
Guest:So I was living in Toronto.
Guest:Long story short, I worked in the Yucks organization for about four years and then kind of had it.
Marc:But there were other clubs in Toronto.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, so there was, at the time, myself and 12 other comedians basically said, we're leaving all at once.
Guest:And there was another club that had started up a little before that called the Laugh Resort.
Guest:And now suddenly they had the talent pool that they had previously, as well as this new talent pool of 12 other comics that they didn't have access to before.
Guest:And it gave them enough...
Guest:uh, of a talent pool to maintain an existence.
Guest:And that was the beginning of the loosening of the iron glove of the iron, the fist of Breslin, the Breslin iron fist of funny.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I didn't work yucks forever.
Marc:I mean, I'd go up and do Montreal and, you know, do the jimmies and go to these festivals.
Marc:And I did the laugh resort, but I, I,
Marc:I didn't work a Yuck Yucks forever until not too long ago.
Marc:I did that downtown one.
Marc:I don't even remember what town.
Marc:Was it Toronto?
Marc:Toronto, yeah.
Guest:Like I said, I haven't played.
Guest:I haven't been within that organization since the early 90s, so I don't even really know how it works anymore.
Marc:Oh, so you're out-out.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, from the time I left.
Marc:He wouldn't put you back, not even now, as big an actor as you are?
Guest:Oh, no, for sure.
Guest:I would always get, you know, like other headline comics that played his club would all just come at me and go, listen, I think I could get you back into the room.
Guest:I'd be like, why the hell am I want to?
Guest:I'm playing theaters.
Marc:Why the hell?
Marc:Why would I go back there?
Marc:But the theater shift came after the show, I meant.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So there was other independent clubs, Rumors in Winnipeg and Laugh Resort, and there were clubs you could go around and make a look.
Guest:Rumors is still around, right?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:It's a good club.
Marc:Is it?
Marc:I've done the Winnipeg Comedy Festival.
Yeah.
Guest:And that was the only time I was.
Guest:Rumors is a great club.
Guest:It's kind of everything you want in a comedy club.
Guest:It's that basement, low ceiling.
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:Fantastic sight lines, no pillars.
Guest:It's like kind of an ideal.
Guest:Really?
Guest:With this, the back of the room is teared up, you know, on that second level.
Guest:And it seats like whatever to 75 or 300 people or something.
Marc:So it's really fantastic setup.
Marc:I think the last time I saw you actually, maybe not, we played a curling rink.
Guest:That's exactly right.
Marc:And that was the gala.
Guest:Yeah, in Victoria.
Guest:The Blue Bridge Comedy Festival.
Guest:Yeah, that was the big show because you could pack a lot of people in the curling rink.
Guest:That festival, yeah, that still goes on.
Marc:I think that was like, didn't we do like the first one?
Marc:I think it might have been.
Marc:But the curling week was terrible.
Marc:I was watching.
Guest:Well, it was very echoey, right?
Marc:Yeah, you couldn't hear.
Marc:You couldn't time yourself.
Marc:I was watching other people, and they'd say something on the stage.
Marc:Like three seconds later, you'd hear it in the back, and then it would bounce off the fucking concrete.
Guest:It's just not a good setup.
Marc:Are they still playing?
Guest:If there's any comedy bookers out there, curling arenas.
Guest:Not great.
Guest:Not great.
Marc:Are they still using that for the gala?
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:I would hope not.
Guest:I couldn't say.
Marc:It was like, it was one of the worst memories of my life.
Marc:But you did well.
Marc:You did well.
Marc:I do not remember doing well.
Marc:Yeah, because you couldn't hear their laughter the same way you can't hear your own voice.
Marc:Couldn't hear anything.
Marc:Everything was happening a second or two after it happened.
Guest:Yeah, it is very kind of surreal.
Guest:So you got to disjoint yourself from what you're saying and what you're hearing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You've got to be two different things.
Marc:Great.
Marc:That's a whole other skill I need to, yeah, that's what I got to, if you're playing a career.
Marc:If you want to work, Victoria, my friend.
Marc:I just remember seeing you and we had a long conversation about the Cheetos type of snack.
Guest:Oh, yeah, Cheesies.
Guest:Hawkins Cheesies.
Guest:Hawkins Cheesies.
Guest:They're in my rider when I travel.
Guest:Hawkins Cheesies.
Marc:Yeah, you schooled me on Hawkins Cheesies.
Marc:Because they're a hard, crunchy, cornmeal-based.
Marc:Yeah, they're very good.
Marc:This is exactly the pitch you gave me.
Marc:Go on.
Marc:They're made with real Canadian cheddar.
Guest:Not like some kind of weird chemical cheese.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Very high level of sodium.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:But I think it's the crunchy thing.
Marc:They're like more satisfying Cheetos because you can taste it, they're real cheese, and it's real, the cornmeal.
Marc:Yeah, it's real cornmeal.
Marc:It's very crunchy.
Marc:Yeah, you had me going on them.
Guest:I'm not even that kind of... I should have, as a good guest, I should have thought to bring some down for you.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, I'm not even a bag snack kind of guy.
Marc:I'm not a chipser.
Guest:What I recall of that situation was you were very begrudgingly
Guest:You didn't want to like the cheesies.
Guest:You didn't want to like the Canadian snack.
Guest:No.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then you could see the resolve in your face dwindling with each morsel.
Guest:You were like finally like, God damn, these are pretty good.
Guest:I got to say.
Guest:Yeah, man.
Guest:You didn't want to like the Canadian snack.
Marc:So, okay, so you leave Breslin, then you come down here, and you didn't get the HBO Young Comedians, but you did do comedy on the road with who?
Marc:Biner?
Marc:Who was hosting?
Guest:Yeah, John Biner.
Guest:And I ended up later touring with John Biner.
Guest:In Canada?
Guest:Yeah, he came through.
Guest:Actually, the guy who owned Rumors Comedy Club, he since passed away now.
Guest:But he put together this show that was three Canadian comedians opening for John Biner.
Guest:Well, John Biner worked as the host, really, what it was.
Marc:That's probably the best.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and he just took a bath on the tour.
Guest:I remember like, cause there was no one cared about John Biner.
Guest:Well, it was like, it wasn't that I said to him on the tour, I said, I don't know who the hell you kind of think we are here.
Guest:Who was like, it was me and John Rogers and, and me and John Rogers.
Guest:And I don't remember anything other than like, why is this Derek Edwards was the other guy on the tour.
Guest:Do you ever see him?
Guest:He's a Canadian dude who never ventured down here.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I don't know if I've seen him.
Guest:But he's maybe the funniest dude walking the planet.
Marc:No shit.
Guest:Derek Edwards.
Guest:He's one of those guys.
Guest:I remember when I did A&E's Comedy on the Road that same year, he was on another, you know, they would take multiple nights.
Guest:And so he was on it.
Guest:And you could see all the U.S.
Guest:managers snap to attention when Derek started talking.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And they were like, ooh, who the hell is this guy?
Guest:Yeah, how's he doing?
Guest:But I don't think he's very ambitious.
Guest:He's like this slow-talking Northern Ontario dude who just wants to be out at the cabin, really.
Guest:That's all he wants in life.
Guest:So I don't think- Well, some dudes, if you get too comfortable, you stay there.
Marc:What do you got to make your life miserable?
Marc:Well, you get popular there, you want to come here and be nobody?
Guest:Yeah, I think his notion was just, I want to make enough money doing stand-up that I can go out to the cabin every year.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, it's a nice one.
Guest:And so he tours and plays theaters in Canada.
Guest:And then he takes some time off?
Guest:So funny.
Guest:And he's one of those guys that, you know, I always said there's people who can be amazingly successful and not work that hard just because of their talent.
Guest:And then there are other people that maybe aren't that talented, but they can be successful because they just work harder than everybody.
Guest:And then you get some people that are crazy talented who work really hard.
Guest:And that's what he was like.
Guest:He worked, he wasn't, I don't think he had great ambitions.
Guest:I'm talking like he's dead.
Guest:He doesn't have great ambitions, I don't think.
Guest:Other than he wants his act to be really good.
Guest:So that dude, he had so much natural ability to be funny, and then you'd see him at middle of the afternoon at a coffee shop with his notebook just hammering away at jokes, and you're like, God damn.
Guest:You've got to work that hard and be that funny?
Marc:And he made a good life for himself without having to be the biggest star in the world.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Look him up sometime, Derek Edwards.
Marc:I'd like to.
Marc:I'm surprised I haven't seen him.
Guest:He's good buddies with Wilmot.
Guest:Him and Wilmot were like,
Guest:Are there cabins near each other?
Guest:They would leave their wives behind, go up into the bush and do God knows what.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And just come back haggard.
Marc:What do you mean God knows what?
Marc:I know Wilmot.
Marc:I've seen him at festivals.
Marc:I know exactly what he's doing.
Marc:He's like a health nut now.
Marc:Is he?
Marc:Good.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Probably had to be.
Marc:Yeah, I think he had a bit of a health scare.
Guest:Probably got scared, yeah.
Guest:He runs.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:He doesn't smoke.
Guest:I don't think he drinks.
Guest:He quit smoking and drinking?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Mike?
Guest:And he's like, he probably weighs the same as you.
Marc:Well, he's like about my age, our age.
Marc:I'm a little older than you, right?
Guest:But he looked like he was- No, he was younger than me.
Marc:But he just- He's younger than me.
Marc:Right.
Guest:He looked like- He looked hardcore.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Just talk like that all the time.
Guest:He was like that great kind of fun, drunk uncle.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Hey, you guys there.
Guest:So funny.
Guest:Yeah, so funny.
Guest:Still funny?
Marc:Healthy?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:He kills, and he's so funny.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, that's great that he turned around.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I don't know the details.
Guest:I think I get the vibe he had a health scare and said, I got to turn this train around.
Marc:Good for him.
Guest:And then he's got that intestinal fortitude to do it.
Guest:Yeah, that's great.
Guest:I don't know if I would.
Guest:I think I'd be like, ah, you know, I should just lay down and die then.
Marc:No, you wouldn't.
Marc:I'm not going to go running.
Marc:I know you assume that, but when the blood tests come back and it's sort of like you've got about one working heart valve, you're going to be like, all right.
Guest:That's in my family too, the heart thing.
Guest:That's what I got to look out for.
Marc:Are you getting checked up?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I started seeing a cardiologist preemptively to stay on top because that's my...
Guest:family's thing.
Marc:How's your, why is it cholesterol or just, uh, I don't know what it is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know what it is.
Guest:My dad died at 68.
Guest:All his brothers all died, you know, quite young, except for one of them.
Guest:So you're on the statins?
Guest:No, I'm not on any, everything's working fine.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:That's good.
Guest:I'm just, uh, you know, and I quit smoking years ago.
Guest:I smoked for up until I smoked for 20 years.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I started when I was 17 when I was 27, I realized I've been smoking for 10 years and I've promised myself I won't smoke more than 20.
Guest:And so I took it right to the 20 years, 37, I wrapped it up.
Marc:So you do comedy on the road and then you come back.
Marc:It's always been my assumption, probably wrongfully, that if you're talented and you work hard in Canada, eventually they'll give you a show.
Guest:Um, at least for a season.
Guest:Socialized entertainment.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Um, you know, there's, I know you're being kind of facetious, but there is a, there's not, it's not that cut and dry.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But the notion is there, you know, it's a small pool of talent.
Guest:And if you, if you, you know, are able to attain some level of success, they'll try you out sometimes on things.
Guest:But yeah.
Guest:That's not, there's certainly not a blanket statement because there are a million really funny Canadian guys who headline clubs and do great.
Guest:And, you know, there was a time when, you know, the big knock against Canadian broadcasters was you couldn't get them to come out to the, I know like for me, the big difference between American and Canadian networks as a young comedian, when I was starting out, like when I was like 25, I had a lot of heat.
Guest:People were like, oh, this kid's a funny young kid from Canada.
Guest:And so the difference between American and Canadian executives is,
Guest:I couldn't get a meeting with Canadian television executives, and they knew who I was.
Guest:I was supposed to be the hot guy, and I couldn't get a meeting.
Guest:Come down to LA, I had meetings with NBC, CBS, and ABC.
Guest:Yeah, because they want the new guy.
Guest:And they were all like, okay, who the hell are you?
Guest:What do you do?
Guest:We don't know anything about you.
Guest:What's your deal?
Guest:They don't want to miss out on- Right, exactly.
Guest:We hear you're hot.
Guest:There's some rumor you can do something.
Guest:What is it?
Guest:Can I make a buck off of it?
Guest:I had meetings at these big networks.
Guest:And what happened?
Guest:I mean, nothing came of it, but they took me and they had me read for stuff and all that kind of, and I was like, why the hell?
Guest:And even a year, it took years and years later before I finally pitched a show that got sold in Canada.
Guest:But what's the answer to that?
Guest:Why the hell was it like that?
Guest:I think it came down to individuals.
Guest:I think during that time, there was a lot of complacent executives.
Marc:What was on TV at that time?
Marc:What were you guys watching?
Marc:What were you guys jealous of?
Guest:We were watching American television.
Marc:Mostly.
Marc:No great Canadian comedies?
Guest:Kids in the Hall was the big thing, but that was, you know, Lauren Michaels produced that.
Marc:So that was... But that was a big thing when we were grown-ups already.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Right?
Guest:Yeah, in our 20s, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So how did it pan out?
Marc:So you come down here, you didn't get any traction, and you're still doing clubs.
Guest:Well, I never really came... I mean, I came down here for a matter of a few months.
Guest:Right, to meet and shit.
Guest:But I came back to Canada.
Guest:I was busy.
Guest:The thing was, I just had a good... I was making a living.
Guest:Playing clubs.
Marc:I was booked every week.
Marc:How did it run?
Marc:So you go back to places three times a year?
Marc:Yeah, that kind of thing.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And there was about 20 places and that was your year?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And a lot of one-nighters.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:It was a good number of one-nighters.
Guest:And I started doing a lot of corporate shows.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:So I was just busy and, you know.
Guest:Cause I can work very clean for, I mostly work clean.
Guest:I don't have a, it was never a conscious decision to, but, and then the weird thing now is because I've worked clean for so long, mainly people assume I'm a clean.
Guest:So now I'll go.
Guest:And then I had this success on TV with the show that the whole family could enjoy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It was a prime time sitcom, but you know,
Guest:So now I will go do a show and I look down and somebody's got their eight-year-old kid in the front row and it's like, it's a stand-up show.
Guest:It's the worst.
Guest:It's the worst.
Guest:And yeah, I'm not filthy, but I might be talking about my taxes.
Marc:I was in Vancouver and some woman brought a baby and that turned into a very weird story.
Marc:So how do you...
Marc:How do you develop a show?
Marc:So you come up with Corner Gas.
Guest:The way that worked for me was I was just going about my business, doing stand-up, and this director I know, David Story, who had directed a one-off comedy thing that I had done, he came to me.
Guest:He called me up.
Guest:He said, look, I'm in Vancouver.
Guest:Let's go for coffee.
Guest:I want to talk to you about something.
Guest:You were living in Vancouver?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I've lived in Vancouver for about 26 years or something.
Marc:You live in Vancouver now?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The last 26 years or so?
Marc:I didn't realize that.
Marc:I love Vancouver.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Why didn't I realize that?
Guest:Did I see you in Vancouver?
Guest:You're a busy guy.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I saw you once in Vancouver.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I was coming back from lunch with Kindler during the festival there.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And we bumped into each other.
Guest:But anyway, uh, so this director says, let's go for coffee.
Guest:I want to talk to you about something.
Guest:He says, I've been talking to the network and there, they want to know if you have any show ideas because I had just done, I'd been nominated for best comedy performance for the standup show I'd done on the CTV network.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so they were kind of, Oh, this, you know, he's a funny guy.
Guest:He just got some heat with the special nominated for an award.
Yeah.
Guest:So this director had been talking to the network about some of his show ideas.
Guest:They weren't keen on his show ideas, but they said, you know, you know, Brent Bott.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Does he have any show ideas?
Guest:So he came to me and said, do you have any show ideas?
Guest:I said, well, the only thing that I wrote this treatment for a show about a gas station in the middle of Saskatchewan, but I can't imagine they'd be interested in that.
Guest:He said, well, I'll talk to them about it.
Guest:He came back and said, yeah, they're interested.
Guest:So flush it out a bit.
Guest:So I flushed it out some more.
Guest:I had this four-page treatment.
Guest:I hammered it out more, made it more detailed.
Guest:I kept thinking they were going to not be interested.
Marc:And then they kept being interested.
Marc:In an isolated gas station?
Guest:Yeah, the notion was it was just, it's kind of like, for me, the notion, well, what would my life be like if I hadn't pursued show business?
Guest:I don't really have any marketable skills.
Guest:I used to hang out at the gas station a lot.
Guest:And I thought that's probably what I'd be doing.
Guest:So it's kind of premised on the life of if I hadn't pursued comedy, I would be running the gas station in a small rural Saskatchewan town.
Marc:And that gas station has a little grocery and stuff?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And then there's a coffee shop attached.
Guest:Okay, there you go.
Guest:And so the coffee shop had always been run by this woman named Ruby.
Guest:She passed away and she willed it to her niece who is from Toronto and she comes out to this small rural town.
Guest:So it's kind of a fish out of water.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:But you're a local.
Guest:Yeah, I'm a local.
Guest:She's the only official.
Marc:And it's like, is there a romance or is it like the Ted Danson thing where there's a romantic tension between you two?
Guest:Yeah, romantic tension between the two.
Guest:And then we did six years of that, and then we did a movie.
Guest:And at the end of the movie, you find out that my character and her have been dating for two years and nobody in town knows it.
Guest:It kind of goes against the trope of everybody knows everybody's business in a small town.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Everybody's like...
Marc:What the hell are you guys doing?
Marc:So the entire country was invested in this.
Marc:Yeah, it wouldn't have the crazy- Well, this is a unique thing because- It is.
Guest:This is a huge show.
Guest:There are no Canadian hit shows.
Marc:That's always been the rule, right?
Marc:No, but I don't know the show.
Marc:No, I do.
Marc:But in the sense that it was a huge success in Canada.
Guest:You were on the series for six years.
Guest:It's the only time in history that the number one comedy in Canada wasn't from America.
Guest:For me, I'm very proud of that.
Guest:We were actually the number one.
Guest:We weren't the number one Canadian comedy.
Guest:We were the number one comedy at the time.
Guest:We were ahead of all the big US network shows.
Marc:People were probably proud almost.
Marc:There was probably a national sense of pride.
Marc:It seems to be.
Marc:Like when people talk about it.
Marc:Because these were Canadian people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I think one of the reasons it had success or connected with people is that...
Guest:We weren't hiding the fact that we were Canadian, which some shows would do.
Guest:They would be nebulous as to where they were to try and appeal to a US market.
Guest:We weren't that.
Guest:We said we were Saskatchewan.
Guest:But that's all.
Guest:It was never about being there, really.
Guest:It was never about Saskatchewan.
Guest:People would say, it's a show about Saskatchewan.
Guest:You go, no, it's not.
Guest:It's a show about... And that's why it had this appeal.
Guest:It played in 26 countries.
Guest:It did.
Guest:We had guys...
Guest:Yeah, I would have guys from Sweden say, it's just like the village I grew up in Sweden.
Guest:I would have guys from Manhattan say, this is just like my neighborhood.
Guest:Because it had a real universality.
Guest:It had a run here?
Guest:Yeah, it came on WGN Superstation.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:For a couple years or something.
Guest:And now it's on, as of, so now it's in 60 countries, the original series, not the animated one, although we're hoping that that'll launch in the US soon.
Guest:The original 107 episodes plays on Amazon Prime.
Guest:And it's taken off there.
Guest:No shit.
Guest:The numbers are, you know, you have experts going into it who are saying like,
Guest:You could expect X amount, X amount.
Guest:It's blowing all those experts out of the water.
Guest:So do you still get the residuals?
Guest:No, we don't really do a residual system in Canada, which in 99% of the time, that's a good system.
Guest:They do a buyout system.
Guest:The only time it's not a real good system is when you have a hit.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So now you just sit there and watch it have this life.
Guest:But, you know, you just kind of I've done well by the show.
Guest:You know, once it's a hit show, you know, you know, you negotiate your fees forward instead of backward as well.
Marc:No, I get it.
Marc:But like, you know, here, I guess.
Marc:Yeah, I'll never be Jennifer Aniston is one of the appeals of coming to the States is that, you know, Jerry Seinfeld's a billionaire.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And I have no problem paying my hydro bill.
Guest:That's the difference between, that's Canadian success.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So, okay.
Marc:So this ran for five or six years and it did a hundred and how many?
Guest:Six seasons, 107 episodes.
Guest:And then I wrapped it up.
Guest:The network wanted more shows, but I was like, we've got to do something else.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We're all getting older.
Guest:So five years later, the idea was let's come back a few years later and do a movie and that'll be the cherry on top.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we did that.
Guest:We did the movie.
Guest:Was it successful?
Guest:Theatrical release and everything.
Guest:And then it was like the most watched.
Guest:It got the award that year for most eyeballs or whatever, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so the movie did great.
Guest:See, that's where here we call those ratings.
Guest:Yeah, but we don't know the technical term of it.
Guest:We just call it.
Guest:But it sold out theaters, like my brother called me up and said, I can't get into your goddamn movie.
Guest:And I was all mad.
Guest:Elmer?
Guest:Lloyd.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:And so anyway, and the theaters, it was supposed to have a limited run.
Guest:The success was, it was drawing enough numbers of theaters negotiated with the network to have a longer window so we could keep it in theaters longer.
Guest:It did great business.
Guest:And so then the network started.
Guest:You know, called me up again and said, listen, there's clearly still an appetite.
Guest:Do you want to do something?
Guest:You want to do more episodes.
Guest:And I just didn't think it was the right thing.
Guest:Me and my partners, we didn't think it was right to just go back and do more episodes.
Guest:But you like the idea of having a gig.
Guest:So what could we do differently?
Guest:And I have this history of illustrating and cartooning.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we had talked about, we had kicked around the notion of doing an animated scene in one of the episodes.
Guest:So, you know, we said, well, what if we did an animated version of the show?
Guest:Let's, let's kick that idea around.
Guest:And so I was in the fortunate position to know a guy named Norm Hiscock.
Guest:Do you know Norm Hiscock?
Guest:He's a comedy writer.
Guest:I feel like I've heard his name.
Marc:He wrote The Kids in the Hall Saturday Night Live and everything.
Guest:He was one of the writers on Corner Gas, and he was a writer on King of the Hill.
Guest:So here's a guy who knows our show and knows primetime animation.
Guest:So I went to him right away and I said, listen.
Guest:Is he Canadian?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I said, we're thinking about doing an animated version of Corner Gas, primetime animated.
Guest:What would we change?
Guest:What would we do different?
Guest:And he just emphatically said, don't do anything different.
Guest:This is the perfect show to animate.
Guest:So we brought him on to help develop the show to make an animated show.
Guest:And where's that at now?
Guest:So season one was big hit.
Guest:Broke the record for, what did you say?
Guest:Ratings?
Guest:Eyeballs.
Guest:Eyeballing?
Guest:Yeah, eyeballs.
Guest:Most eyeballs?
Guest:We broke Charlie Sheen's record on the Comedy Network.
Guest:The biggest debut of a show was Anger Management.
Guest:And so we got that.
Guest:Now it's Corner Gas Animated.
Guest:That was built to syndicate globally, and no one watches it here.
Guest:So we, anyway, it's a big hit.
Guest:And so we got the second season.
Guest:We're in the works of that now.
Marc:So that's, that's amazing.
Marc:Like it's like, uh, and in Canada, I guess, well, you have all the stuff you have streaming and everything else, but there's still a pretty, uh, lively, uh, just basic TV audience like for CBC stuff or is it,
Guest:Yeah, I think so.
Guest:It's across the board.
Guest:It's declining like everywhere else.
Marc:Yeah, it's a network show.
Guest:I mean, the animated version airs on cable first on the Comedy Network, which is like the Canadian version of Comedy Central.
Guest:Comedy Network, it airs there first and then airs in the summer on the main network, CTV.
Guest:And then it streams in Canada on Crave, which is a Canadian streaming service.
Guest:But outside of Canada, it's on Amazon Prime.
Guest:I got to watch, now I know where to watch it.
Guest:But not the, the animated isn't streaming outside Canada yet.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Only the original.
Marc:The original's on Amazon Prime.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The original Corner Gas.
Marc:Now, what was Hiccups?
Guest:Hiccups was the follow-up.
Guest:After I kind of said that we don't want to do any more Corner Gas, they said, well, would you like to do another show?
Guest:You're a bonafide comedy star.
Guest:Yeah, let's see if you can do it again.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, yeah, so we did, I came up with this other idea for a show called Hiccups.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which is about a child, a very popular children's book author who has emotional issues.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:She has anger management issues and other emotional hiccups.
Yeah.
Guest:And so that's what we did next.
Guest:We did the series with that.
Guest:That's with your wife?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So Nancy Robertson, who was an actor that we hired to come on Corner Gas and play the retail assistant Wanda on Corner Gas, she and I headed off during the filming of Corner Gas.
Marc:That's nice.
Guest:And we ended up getting married.
Guest:Show business couple.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Canadian power show business couple.
Marc:Power couple.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Damn straight.
Marc:Show business power couple.
Marc:Now tell me about the Peter Ustinov Award.
Guest:The Peter Ustinoff Award is an award that the Comedy Network gives out at the Banff Television Award, I guess.
Guest:And it signifies a significant body of comedic work.
Guest:Like a lifetime achievement type of deal.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you got one of those.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Was Peter Ustinoff Canadian?
Guest:No, but he spent a lot of time in Canada.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:He loved Canada.
Guest:He always said Toronto is like if New York was run by the Swiss.
Guest:That was his famous line.
Marc:So like all said, you know, you've got a great life and a great career.
Marc:But here in the States, you know, you're fairly obscure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, I know you from working in Canada, but is that ever something that that haunts you in any way?
Marc:Do you wish that?
Marc:Because I know there are cats that come down and for even from England or forever, and they try to get some traction here and they just they really want it and it doesn't necessarily happen.
Marc:Do you have that experience?
Guest:No, not really.
Guest:I mean, I would, I would love to be a huge, it's a big market.
Guest:It'd be big money if I was a big star here.
Guest:But I, when I came down to LA, I kind of did that chase the showbiz thing for about six months down here.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there was real palpable opportunity.
Guest:You could see it.
Guest:And I had some, I had interest from managers.
Guest:Jimmy Miller was like a big champion.
Guest:Me for a long time really helped me out.
Guest:And Mike McDonald, God bless him, he introduced me to club owners and stuff, and he was a big supporter.
Guest:But what I found was when I was down here, it's hard to put my finger on it.
Guest:If I was myself on stage,
Guest:It would go okay, but I think I have a strange Canadian accent where it's not like real strong East Coast Canadian accent or something.
Guest:It's not that real kind of tight Ontario accent.
Guest:It's not real Fargo-esque.
Guest:It's the closest thing.
Marc:Midwestern.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like when I watched Fargo, I couldn't stop laughing because everybody just sounded like my dad.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My dad would like, especially on the phone when the, uh, the William H. Macy character would be on the phone.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I just, my father on the phone, this was him all the time.
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Real good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Real good then.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Then real good.
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:Real good.
Guest:Right then.
Guest:So I was just cracking up there in Fargo.
Guest:But I think my, my accent.
Guest:Was it obstacle?
Guest:was just different enough that people... They were spending the whole time in my act going, where the fuck is this guy from?
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:It was not American.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But they couldn't figure out where.
Guest:But it wasn't like a thick Irish brogue or... It wasn't a caricature.
Guest:It wasn't Yakov Smirnoff.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So it was...
Guest:And if I would dial it back and talk more American, I would do much better.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I didn't enjoy it so much.
Guest:I felt I wasn't being myself.
Guest:I felt I wasn't being, the whole time I was on stage, I was just consciously, it was like you playing the Victoria curling rink.
Guest:You're like, you're ahead of, it's not natural.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so I – and then eventually I didn't have the paperwork to stay here and work.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I kind of had to make the decision, what am I going to do?
Guest:Am I going to pursue this?
Guest:And it kind of coincided with me getting a lot of traction in Canada and being busy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I kind of feel like the decision was made for me a bit.
Guest:And I just think internally there's part of me that –
Guest:As a little kid, because there wasn't a lot of Canadian TV, and I only grew up with two channels, I'd get CBC and CTV, and it was mostly American shows.
Guest:And if I ever saw anything Canadian, especially Canadian comedic, I was raptured by it, and I wanted more of it.
Guest:And so I grew up kind of wanting to make Canadian comedy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:as like a patriotic thing, something I didn't have much of growing up.
Guest:And then people always said, well, we don't do sitcoms in Canada.
Guest:I always said, well, there's no reason we couldn't.
Guest:I mean, I get the economics of it.
Guest:A hit show in the States will pay for 50 failures.
Guest:We don't have that economic in Canada.
Guest:You get one shot every five years at a sitcom.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, you know, you got to bat 1,000, and who bats 1,000?
Guest:So we just happened to come up with a show that worked, that people really liked.
Marc:Well, yeah, congratulations.
Marc:So now you're doing the animated thing, and you're on the road a lot still?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You do theaters.
Marc:You're a star in Canada.
Marc:How often do you got to turn over your hour?
Marc:What are you generating?
Guest:How often should I turn it over, or do I turn it over?
Guest:I mean, I have to assume.
Guest:I don't.
Guest:I have spent so much time on production and writing scripts for the animated show now that I can't turn my act over as much as I would like.
Marc:But does that eat at you?
Marc:I can't deal with it.
Marc:Or you go out, you were just there like six months ago and you go out with the same act?
Guest:It, it bothers me until you go out and it's working.
Guest:If it gets big laughs and then you forget all about it.
Guest:And so far it keeps working.
Guest:I mean, I changed, I have a, you know, I've been doing standup for 30 some years.
Guest:I got a, I got a big.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Tickle trunk as we would say in Canada of material.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We used to have a show in Canada called Mr. Dress Up.
Guest:It was like Mr. Rogers.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And he had a tickle trunk.
Marc:A tickle trunk.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Where he'd pull costumes out.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Let's see what's in the tickle trap.
Marc:Well, it's funny, though, when you're sort of like, you know, when I did that bit, people didn't really know me.
Marc:So there's a lot of people that have never heard that bit.
Marc:Yeah, well, there is some of that.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, you're like, that was a great bit.
Marc:I spent six months making that bit work, and then I put it on TV, and I fucking buried it.
Guest:I'm pulling that out.
Guest:You can retool some stuff.
Guest:Like, I just started redoing.
Guest:I was going through an old notebook of mine because I had this concern.
Guest:I was like, God damn, I got to start pulling some different stuff out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I was playing a show at this casino where I kind of come back every year.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was like, ah, I think they're going to start hating me if I don't come up with something new.
Guest:So I was going through a notebook.
Guest:And this is when it kind of hit me.
Guest:Sometimes you see a reference and you realize how long you've been doing it.
Guest:I had a bit in my act about push button phone.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And I was like, holy Jesus.
Guest:How long have I been doing this?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Anyway, I ended up kind of retooling that into being a bit about how long I've been doing stand-up.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Oh, great.
Guest:And I kind of told that story about I had a bit in my act.
Guest:And you could do the bit.
Guest:So it's a bit of a cheat kind of.
Guest:But it works.
Guest:People like the story of it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:As long as there's some kind of authentic grain to it.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And as you get older, you get more grounded in yourself and you can talk a little freer about yourself.
Guest:Yeah, and I think you have, for good or bad, I think you start to,
Guest:get less hung up on all those little kind of anxieties.
Marc:Yeah, certainly I have found that I don't have the same fears, but that one fear of repeating myself is a real one.
Marc:And then you start to realize like,
Marc:Well, even five years ago, I wasn't selling the amount of tickets I've been selling now.
Marc:You think all these people have listened to every one of my records or seen any of my specials?
Marc:No, you're crazy.
Marc:There's one special that you can't even find the fucking thing.
Marc:Yeah, let's all fold that in, man.
Marc:Don't let that go.
Marc:No, I know it's like it is kind of crazy, but then like because of that pressure I put on myself, myself, that thick Irish bro that Marc Maron is known for, you know, I eventually somehow churn out, you know, a good new hour every year and a half or two years just out of compulsion.
Guest:But is it really good though, Mark?
Marc:It gets there.
Marc:It gets there.
Guest:It gets there.
Guest:But that's the thing too.
Guest:One of the insecurities that I think all stand-ups have, especially if you, you know, once you've had some success and you're a guy who can go out and get big laughs.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You're that guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And you're used to it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you're hooked on that.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Now you go out and you got a bunch of new stuff and it's maybe not as honed.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It doesn't have 10 years in the clubs behind it.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And it's not getting the laughs you're used to and you just bail on it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:a smoke pallet and haul out the old bits yeah i don't i don't do that as much because what i'll do is i'll do like uh i'll get a small space and do like a workshop like uh instead of doing it on the road i'll do it at a like a residency at a theater once a week you know for a month or two where i'll just like you know have make sure it's my fans low expectations i'll ramble through an hour and a half and try to keep breaking it down because you try to kind of you know
Marc:Yeah, once you start sandwiching those half-baked bits into the well-worn ones, you know, you can always come back.
Marc:It's another great Canadian snack, the half-baked bits, if you ever get a chance to.
Marc:Made with real Canadian bits.
Marc:Yeah, you know, that's just the job.
Marc:But no matter what I'm doing...
Guest:that too like i've you know vancouver's got a great club called the comedy mix and yeah you know it's not a big club it's all that little place that's great yeah so i'll go down there and work on new bits that's the way to do it right fuck it and then like no expectations no one's paying the big bread and i i pop up unannounced so nobody has like paid a ticket to see me i just come up and do 10 or 15 minutes of is that rewarding though even if it doesn't work as good yeah you know like the because i miss playing the clubs
Marc:Well, and the other thing about that is that, like, you know, there is that thing where you have bits that, you know, work, but then you're doing the new bits and they're not quite there yet.
Marc:But that first time that, you know, you're in a low pressure situation and it hits, that's the real fucking laugh.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That, you know, it's not just doing the job.
Marc:That's the, I'm still funny.
Marc:Yeah, I still got it.
Marc:Yeah, it's like, whew.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:Because I think there is that fear.
Guest:That's one of the insecurities, insecurities.
Guest:Can I still do it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know.
Guest:I put out a tweet a little while ago where I said, you know, I was just up early in the morning, I'm having a coffee and I tweeted that nothing says I'm a vibrant contemporary part of the comedy scene, like being up at 7am on a Sunday morning for no reason.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The notion of that when I was 30, of being up at 7 a.m.
Guest:on Sunday for no reason, because I would have gone to bed at 4 or 5.
Guest:Well, now you're just an old guy.
Marc:I'm just an old dude.
Guest:You get up.
Guest:My wife and I, we hit the sack about 10.
Guest:We watch a Miss Marple, and then I'm up at 7.
Marc:Yeah, I get that thing where it's just sort of like,
Marc:You know, when I've got to start from scratch, you know what I mean?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Like that moment where you're like, where does it come from?
Marc:How do I do this?
Guest:Well, I think part of the thing is when we were, you know, just in the clubs every night doing it every night.
Marc:Yeah, just making it, scribbling all the time.
Guest:You're never really, maybe I'm just speaking for myself, but it never felt to me like I was, you didn't have that workload of like sitting down and just put three hours today and hammer some stuff together because you're doing a show every night.
Guest:So you're just kind of, you're going and doing the show, having a couple of drinks, hanging with your buddies.
Guest:And then wandering around.
Guest:Yeah, then wandering around all day, thinking.
Guest:But the work, that's not the work anymore.
Guest:No, exactly.
Guest:Because we're not in the clubs every night.
Guest:That's true.
Guest:So now the work is, oh, I got to sit down at the kitchen table.
Marc:and really do some actual writing.
Marc:Yeah, I can't stand it.
Marc:Like when I have a day off from shooting and I don't have any interviews or whatever where I don't have anything to do, I'm like, this is what I was working for.
Marc:This is how I spent most of my life.
Marc:Because yeah, you're in the clubs, you're doing shows every night, but you're also doing nothing.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You just wandering around where your notebook and then you'll have coffee and then you walk a few blocks and be like, oh shit, I'm going to write that down.
Guest:And that's that.
Guest:But you're also driven by the fact that you, you know, they're about to cut your phone off because you haven't paid the bill in two months and now your bills are paid.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:You've put in these years of battling.
Guest:You become into the old polar bear.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You can put the battle armor down.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, I have, and I do, but thank God my brain's still a fucking mess.
Guest:Yeah, that's your bread and butter.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Don't ever lose that.
Guest:Well, that's one of my things is like, and I don't know if I'm... It makes me question whether my whole life isn't just a load of bullshit because you always hear about, oh, the best comedy comes from angst, and I just never had any of that.
Guest:I grew up very...
Guest:You know, my parents were pretty cool.
Guest:My siblings and I got along.
Marc:But you do have the, yeah, failure's okay.
Marc:So that's just as good as angst.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Like the sort of defeatism.
Marc:I've pre-defeated myself.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That's the other way.
Marc:You're going to- You're going to be on to something.
Guest:This could be a whole revolutionary angle of psychotherapy where you just say to people, listen, just pre-defeat yourself and you'll get rid of the anxiety.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:you're already a failure sure sure dread i you know i'm a big dread fan like i'm not gonna go to like that's gonna be terrible what do you i don't even what is it about see i don't but i just don't i don't have that i'm i don't want to bomb but i'm fine with bombing at the end of the day it's like it's not i don't have somebody's child's life in my hands you know sure sure
Guest:I remember I dated this girl years ago, and I went on a double date with her friend and her boyfriend.
Guest:Her boyfriend was this vice cop in Toronto.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I remember him saying to me, well, I would never have the nerve to do what you do.
Guest:And I was like, didn't you kick in the door to a crack house today?
Guest:Like, how do you?
Guest:Where does that...
Guest:Like I never take a shotgun blast to the chest.
Guest:Like if I'm having a bad day, if I make the wrong decision, you know, I get up tomorrow, try it again.
Guest:You'll beat the shit out of yourself a little, but you're not going to take a shotgun blast.
Guest:But I don't know.
Guest:There's something about, I've never, I've always wanted to do well, but I've never put too much gravity on it or something.
Guest:Oh, that's good.
Guest:That's a good way to go about it.
Guest:But I wonder if it isn't like some sort of bullshit mask.
Guest:Because I hear that from people.
Guest:People say to me, oh, you're very grounded and you're very calm.
Guest:And I feel like that's the case.
Guest:But then sometimes I think, well, is that just... That's my anxiety.
Guest:My anxiety is, am I really this calm?
Marc:Is this all bullshit?
Marc:They don't have therapy in Canada?
Guest:Yeah, but it's socialized and it's not.
Guest:Everybody's got to work as a therapist for two weeks, so they're not good at it.
Guest:Some guy was a milkman the week before.
Marc:Well, you do discover things about yourself.
Marc:I mean, it's a matter of wanting to.
Marc:Maybe you shouldn't question it too much.
Marc:It needs to be working for you.
Guest:For me, I just like the laugh.
Guest:I don't think there's more to it than that.
Marc:But also you were the last kid.
Guest:Was there a struggle for attention?
Guest:I think so.
Guest:I think there's that.
Guest:And if I could make my older brothers or sisters laugh, that was a great, because it didn't come easy.
Guest:They wouldn't give it up easy to the kid.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So if you made them laugh, you knew it was legit, and that was a high.
Marc:See that?
Marc:You learned your craft by wanting to be liked by your siblings.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There you go.
Guest:Let the beatings stop for two minutes.
Marc:That's the next special title.
Guest:I'm planning on doing a special this year because I've never done one.
Guest:And I almost for posterity sake, I want to get it out to say I was here, you know, that's what I did.
Guest:And corner gas is partly that, um, bit of posterity, part of my stamp.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I was also, you know, I'm a standup.
Guest:So I want some of my standup out there more.
Guest:So I'm going to do a special this year.
Guest:So I'm kicking around titles.
Marc:Well, good, man.
Marc:Well, I'm glad that this corner gas is something you can do for the rest of your life.
Marc:It's great.
Marc:Here's hoping.
Guest:And that's one of the things about doing it animated now, right?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It doesn't matter how old or bald or fat, as long as I kind of sound the same.
Marc:That's why I love doing this, and I can do it in my house.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I'm glad we got it done.
Marc:What are you doing down here?
Guest:I had a couple of meetings.
Guest:I have an agency down here.
Guest:We're talking about some stuff.
Guest:Corner Gas American style?
Guest:Well, you know, the notion is to get Corner Gas down streaming in the state.
Guest:The animated version is streaming the way.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:So there's, you know, there's interest in that.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Just talking about stuff.
Marc:Keeping the machine going, you know.
Marc:All right, man.
Marc:Well, I'm glad we made time for this, Brent.
Marc:Me too.
Marc:Thanks for having me.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:I'll see you up in Canada.
Marc:There you go, Canada.
Marc:Me and Brent Butt.
Marc:And I'm talking to you right now from Hamilton, Ontario.
Marc:It's all coming together.
Marc:The forces.
Marc:It's Canada Day here a few days early.
Marc:You can subscribe to Brent's YouTube channel, The Butt Pod.
Marc:You can also find him on Twitter, Instagram, and at brentbutt.com.
Marc:His show, Corner Gas, I believe is animated now.
Marc:And you can go watch that somewhere.
Marc:Oh, my God, you guys.
Marc:Shooting is tiring.
Marc:I know, again, these are what they call luxury problems in the recovery racket, but I'm going to go out.
Marc:It looks like I have a little time, so I'm going to go enjoy Hamilton.
Marc:The Hammer.
Marc:Boomer lives!
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