Chapter Twelve - Kids In The Hall And A "Cult" Classic Performance

After a solid year of portraying detectives, police officers, commandos and special agents, I was sure ready to try something else. So it was with some excitement that I took a call from Anne Marie saying she had something really special for me. The Kids In The Hall’s first year, wrap party was going to be held at their home club, The Rivoli, on Queen Street West. They wanted a business-man go-go dancer to perform during the evening festivities and after questioning my fitness for the role, Anne Marie assured me that I was going to be perfect.
The money was going to be great because there was a fitting for a suit, (with the coat cut just below the mid chest and tassels sewed on), for which I got paid, and because it was a live performance my normal rate was doubled with a minimum six hour call. High heeled go-go boots and large wads of cotton sticking out of my ears completed the costume.
I entered the club and went to the tiny dressing room where I met my fellow dancer, an outrageous character named Lance Dick and I was warmly greeted by Scott, Mark, Bruce, Dave and Kevin. They were really enthusiastic about recreating the sketch that had appeared in their first year and they told us that we really just had to go into the elevated cages placed at each side of the room and have fun.
At the appointed time, we took our places and started to gyrate and replicate the go-go moves from the old shows like Shindig from the 1960s. Hate to tell you but neither of us were picked for our dancing skills and of course the absurdity of the costumes and lack of fluidity were exactly what the ‘Kids’ were looking for.
I knew I had to ratchet things up a bit when I saw various celebrities joining the party. But when I saw Lorne Michaels, the producer of Kids and of course Saturday Night Live walk in and take a spot near the front of the stage, I hatched a plan that people talked about for years.
When anyone walked by I would call out until I got their attention and I would call them over.
“Would you do me a huge favour?” I would ask. The guest would look really puzzled but I had their attention. Then I would say, “I am having a real problem with the noise level and it is affecting my ability to dance properly.” I sounded dead serious but they would usually crack a bit of a smile at this point. “Lorne Michaels is standing right over there. Would you ‘Pleeeease’ ask him to have the sound turned down?”
In most cases this would really get a big smile and they would walk on. As they walked away I could see that they suddenly got it and they would go over and actually speak to Lorne or one of the Kids or other guests and I could see them looking and laughing.
It was a wonderful and fulfilling evening for me and I felt like my first attempt at live adlibbed comedy had been a great success. And it paid off because in the following shooting season I was called to do three episodes of the show with one of the sketches becoming one of the Kid’s true classics, Girl Drink Drunk.
The sketch goes like this; a nondrinking business man gets asked out for a drink with his boss after work.
He is a non-drinker so his boss says, why not try one of those girl drinks and so he orders an exotic concoction with fruit and umbrellas in a fancy glass. One drink leads to another and the two go on a bar-hopping evening where he tries every variety of girl drinks.
I play two characters. One is the white shirted bartender busily working away in the background through the first half of the sketch. When the boys go on a ‘barhopping expedition’, the director shows this action by displaying the bar names and then showing close-ups of bartenders performing various duties. My second character has an outrageous floral shirt, a large blonde handlebar mustache and a blonde wig that made me think of Rip Taylor. The shot is a one-shot close-up of me with a bizarre smile as I shake the drink. It was so much fun and also so liberating to be performing in comedy. That over the top expression is illustrative of the sheer exhilaration I was feeling. Once again, I felt like I brought something a little bit special to a small assignment.
My other roles with the Kids that year were small background spots but I thoroughly enjoyed every minute on those hilarious and invigorating sets where comedic energy reigned and I could give the cop roles a rest.