Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Dave Thomas: Toronto Mike'd #1040

Episode Date: April 26, 2022

In this 1040th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike is joined by SCTV's Dave Thomas as they talk about SCTV, working with comedy legends like John Candy, Eugene Levy, and Rick Moranis, Bob and Doug McKenzie, Strange Brew, Bob Hope, Grace Under Fire, Arrested Development, and so much more. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Canna Cabana, StickerYou, Ridley Funeral Home and Patrons like you.

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Learn more at cannacabana.com. Joining me this week, making his Toronto Mike debut, one of the stars of SCTV, Dave Thomas. Welcome to Toronto Mike, Dave Thomas. How you doing? Good, good. Nice to meet you. Thomas! Welcome to Toronto Mic'd, Dave Thomas.

How you doing? Good, good. Nice to meet you. That was my low-key intro. I was like, where's that energy we had before I pressed record? Oh, you'll get it back. Just depends what the questions are. All good, my friend. Lots of exciting questions from yours truly,

but also a bunch of fans of yours have chimed in with questions, and I think you're going to enjoy this, dare I say. But the first one is from me, and I've wondered this for as long as I can remember. So let me set it up this way. So you're the Dave Thomas, and soon we'll get to the origin of SCTV and everything, but you're, you're Dave Thomas. And then at some point in the nineties, the guy who founded Wendy's starts doing a bunch of like national ad spots. Like I was watching

them here in Toronto. Like, tell me honestly, what was it like when another Dave Thomas shows up and steals your name Thunder? I want to know how you felt. Well, actually it didn't quite work out that way because there was another Dave Thomas before that Dave Thomas from Channel 7 in Buffalo. Yes. And he had a show called Rocket Ship 7. And I used to watch that show when I was a kid. Right. And his son, weirdly enough, is David Boreanaz, the star of Bones.

And I, after all these years, I got a job as a writer-producer on Bones and I after all these years I got a job as a writer producer on Bones for three years and I became friendly with Borey Anderson I went over to his house and there was his dad Dave Thomas and so Dave Thomas and Dave Thomas got to meet up

now there was also a collision with the other Dave Thomas, the Wendy's Dave Thomas. Yes. And it happened after he passed away. And I, I have the website,

Dave Thomas.com. So I got a cease and desist letter from their legal people saying, you know, a cease and desist letter from their legal people saying, you know, you don't have the right to use this name because we own this name. It's trademarked. It's part of our brand, blah, blah, blah. And I just said to them, okay, here's the thing. Dave Thomas is my birth name. Right. I registered this company before you even tried. And I registered that web URL before you even tried. And your buddy, your guy's name is actually not Dave Thomas.

His first name is Richard. It's our Dave Thomas. Right. So that's not his real name. So bring it on. I want this legal proceedings to start immediately because I want to tell my lawyer to start countersuing right away. Did you win this lawsuit? Oh, they backed down immediately.

It was just like, oh, so sorry. We had no idea. Our apologies. So, Dave, okay. So I tweeted that my first question for you was about the other Dave Thomas, because you know how many jokes I got when I said Dave Thomas was coming on Toronto Mic'd?

So many jokes about Wendy's. I'm like, I don't want to hear it. So I tweeted my first question was going to be how you felt about the other Dave Thomas, and somebody by the handle XPman wrote me right away and says, this may predate you, and it does by a titch, uh,

before cable TV, many boomers in the sixties grew up most mornings before school with another Dave Thomas on Buffalo TV, channel seven rocket ship seven. And he actually advised me that, uh, and maybe I'll do this in post, but he said,

he said, promo the robot and Mr. Beeper. Yeah. Okay, so here's some other interesting stuff. That's not his real name. His real name is, I think it's Dave Boreanaz. That's his real name.

Okay. But he was trying to do local news and weather in the kind of Buffalo area. Right. Rochester area, things like that. And they wouldn't let him use the name Boreanaz back then. Back then they were like, hey, that's too weird and ethnic. We don't want any Boreanaz's on our network. You change your name to, and he goes, what? And they said to Dave Thomas. So he network. You change your name to, and he goes, what? And they said, to Dave Thomas.

So he was forced to change his name. When I joined the Screen Actors Guild of America back in 1978, they told me I had to change my name because there already was another Dave Thomas in Screen Actors Guild. So I just ignored it. I just pretended like I never got that message. They sent me one more message saying, you've got to change your name, and I didn't change it.

And I never heard from them again. So I kind of put my stake in the ground for Dave Thomas and just kept it there. Well, you deserve it, buddy. And that David Boreanaz fun fact about this Buffalo Dave Thomas and just kept it there. Well, you deserve it, buddy. And that David Boreanaz fun fact about this Buffalo Dave Thomas is a mind blow because of course, David Boreanaz, big deal. And who knew he was the son of another Dave Thomas in Buffalo? Yeah.

And that he would end up working with me and that there I would be at a Christmas party at his house, sitting down, having a drink with his dad. See, if I shut it down right now, this would be at a Christmas party at his house, sitting down having a drink with his dad. See, if I shut it down right now, this would be worthwhile. But now I get to ask the other question I've been asking aloud on this podcast for the last few years. Hopefully you have some insight into this. What happened to the Martin Scorsese documentary, The Reunion, An Afternoon with SCTV?

Where is that? Isn't that one of the great mysteries? Martin Scorsese documentary, The Reunion, An Afternoon with SCTV. Where is that? Isn't that one of the great mysteries? The short answer is I don't know. The conjecture is there's all kinds of possibilities. The most likely is that Scorsese is still, I was going to call him Scorianus. Scorsese, the son of David Boreanaz, Scorianus.

Scorsese is still editing it, and he takes his time. And that's the official version. And then I heard other versions that I couldn't really, I can't really relay because they're rumors and they don't have any evidence. There's no evidence for them, so I can't really back it up. So really it's from Ted Sarandos at Netflix. The official word is that Scorsese is still editing, and that

has to be my official comment. Okay, well, when I stop recording, I want the real deal from you, Dave. Okay. Gentlemen, so again, throughout this chat, I'll bring in the questions as they arrive, but somebody by the name of Retro Festive wanted to know what happened with that SCTV

reunion, as if I wouldn't ask that. It was top of mind, because we ask that question on the show every week. But then he puts in an interesting point. He goes, let's assume, and this is Retro Festive assuming, the SCTV project was scrapped. Maybe some weren't happy with the results, just a guess, or maybe Scorsese really hasn't gotten around to editing it yet. But my next question would be, can you try again? Get everybody back together in some way and try again without a bottleneck like that.

I don't know. That was pretty hard to do in the first place. I would think it's highly unlikely. You know, not everybody had the same idea of what the reunion

should be. You find this with every group, you know. I've watched the Monty Python live with python instead of life of brian live with brian life of python and you see them all talking and i i got i got to know a couple of them and they got the same problems that we do and that is that the sum total of the SCTV group was the sum total of the individual people that collectively made up that group. Individually, they're all as different as night and day, and you're never going to get

them to agree on anything. It was a miracle that we ever got the show made back when we did it. But the reason we did was because we were very young. We were starting out. It was all pretty much everyone's first gig. And it was the only game in town. So it was like, okay, yeah, I guess we'll do this. Well, let's go back then here.

So I was interested to learn that you're sort of like, you were like a Don Draper type guy. I feel like Don Draper would have been like the head writer for Coca-Cola, the Coca-Cola account in Canada anyways. You were an advertising guy. Yeah. Well, here's how that happened. I was in Godspell.

I was working on my master's degree in English Lit. Marty Short and Eugene Levy got in Godspell. And I had done plays with them at McMaster, and we were all buddies. And then there was a change in cast, and Eugene called me and he said, you've got to get in here right away in addition because you'll probably get in. And so I was in Hamilton and I drove to Toronto in this beat up Volkswagen that I had in winter. And there was no heater in the car. It was frozen to death by the time I got there.

And auditioned for Paul Schaefer, who was the piano, he was the music director, and he played a song. I don't even remember what I sang, but I had to sing a song. And I got in. So now I had to go back and try to finish my master's degree, but starting rehearsals. So I missed a lot of classes for I don't know the three weeks of rehearsal before we actually put the show up and because then I was gone all day for rehearsals and forget it there's no classes at night then when once the

show started I would do some of my daytime classes in Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Elton, and then drive to Toronto to do the show at night. And it became really a joke that I was trying to do a master's in English lit. I was a total fraud. to do a master's in English lit. I was a total fraud. And I remember I had to do an edition of Troilus and Cressida from the original quarto. That was my main thesis work for my master's in English lit.

And so I was making money at Godspell, and so I paid a typist $400 to type the whole thing out without punctuation, because that's part of what we had to do, put punctuation and then footnotes, explaining what everything was and what the meanings of different phrases were. different phrases were. And I got to the point, so I said, type the text only on half the page. Leave the bottom of the page blank for me to do the footnotes. So then it took me two nights to just scribble everything down, and I just basically handed it in, threw it on the prof's desk. And I remember getting a note from Hammond, Dr. Hammond, my professor, and he said, Mr. Thomas, please come and see me. He's an English guy. And so I went in to see him and he takes my paper and he tosses it across the desk at me and he says, what am I supposed to make of this?

And I said, I don't know. What do you want to make of it? And he said, this is supposed to be your year's work, and it looks like you might have spent at the absolute most maybe a month on this. This is ridiculous. And I said, well, if you really want to know the truth, I did it in two nights. And he looked at me and he said, you're kidding. And I said, no. He said, why are you even here?

And I said, well, I'll tell you why I'm here, and it's a bad reason, but it's all I got. My mother said, never be a quitter. I should have quit. But she said, don't be a quitter, so here I am, handing you in a pile of garbage because don't be a quitter, so here I am, handing you in a pile of garbage because I'm not a quitter. So if you want to fail me, then

I'm not a quitter, I'm a failure. But he said, he said to me, I told him I was in a play in Toronto and I was driving there every night, and he said, look, he said, if I give you a B minus on this

and you give me your solemn word that you'll never try to go to another university to do a PhD in English literature, do I have your word? And I said, absolutely. So I got a B minus. Wow. Do I have your word? And I said, absolutely. So I got a B minus. After Godspell, I know I was going to, I tell the longest answers in the world. I'm sorry. I love it.

No, it'd be as long as you like. After Godspell, I couldn't get a job as an actor. And it was like, oh, God, this sucks. And I'd been editor of the student paper when I was in my final fourth year of English at the undergrad level. And so I thought, well, I know how to write, I think, so I'll see if I can get a job in advertising. So I wrote up a bunch of fake ads, and I went back to the newspaper

at the McMaster and printed them up so that they looked like real ads. I got fake photos from magazines, made up my own ads. And then I did some scripts for radio and scripts for TV. And then I went through the yellow pages and started calling ad agencies. started calling ad agencies and by the time i got to m's mccann erickson this guy named harry yates who had been at doyle dame birnbach in new york very famous agency that did the volkswagen commercials in the 70s he gave me a job and so i got put on the coca--Cola account as a junior writer. And that's basically doing all the shit retail stuff. Right. Which is just horrible.

It's newspaper stuff. And it's basically a bottling war between Pepsi and Coke to change the molds of the glass to make the bottles bigger, taller, so that you look like you're getting more, but it's the same ounces. Right. And you have to make a fake copy of more for your money so that was the kind of writing i was doing then they gave me a commercial to do that was nobody else wanted to do it and it was like basically 28 and a half seconds of legal copy and i got this idea of making that the bit where a guy's got too much legal information for the contest to do so he's got these

charts that snap up and break away pointers and things like that and I wrote it and I handed it in to the creative director and he read it and he said he said

we can't send this to Coke. They're never going to get it. You have to go up there and perform that at the head offices in Toronto. And I said, okay. So I went up and performed it, and they laughed and thought it was great, and they said, who do you want to do this? And I just, I was reaching, I just grabbed a name out of it. I said, Tim Conway.

I'm not kidding you. Within two weeks, I was on a plane to LA to shoot this spot with Tim Conway. And then people loved it, and it became a hit. And then Coca-Cola said, we want that guy to be the head writer. So they fired the head writer and made me the head writer. I'd only been there for like two months and now I'm the head writer on their biggest account. That sounds

like it would be lucrative to be the head writer on their biggest account. How do you then end up at SCTV? What happens there? Well, it didn't end there. Okay, I'm ready. Because then I did a couple of spots for them as the head writer because Kanda was doing your own TV spots.

So I tried to copy the American spots. You get a book, by the way, for Coca-Cola. It's a blue book. And it basically admits all the stuff. This is basically a brown liquid, carbonated liquid, that oxidizes rust off bumpers and has no product benefit whatsoever, no consumer benefit. And so, but they tell you the secret, which is lifestyle advertising. You associate Coca-Cola with good times. You say associate Coca-Cola with Christmas,

with Thanksgiving. You put the bottles in the background, don't hard sell. And so I went, oh, okay, I get that. So I wrote a couple of spots in Canada. And then the guy who was the head, who was the creative director, McCann in New York, Bill Backer, who wrote the Teach the World to Sing spot on the mountaintop and came up with Things Go Better with Coke, and it's the real thing Coke.

He says, I want that kid from canada to come down here and do some spots with me so now i'm on a plane to new york i'm at i've been in the agency business for four months or something like that five months at this time and i walk into this office on leington Avenue, corner office. There's a grand piano, Persian rugs. It's like another world. And there's this little guy in a gray suit with kind of a string bow tie. He looks like a young Colonel Sanders with, like, balding, though. And this is Bill Backer. And I sit down, and he starts quoting shakespeare to me and i thought what the hell

is this so i had just finished an undergrad and graduate work in shakespeare's and i knew a lot of it and i could so i just started quoting it back to him well that was all i needed to do suddenly i became his boy wonder, just because of that. Not because I knew how to write any spots or knew anything about advertising. So he said to me, do you know how to write a jingle? Well, you never say no when somebody asks you questions like that. So I said, yeah, I'd never write a jingle. So he said, I want you to write a jingle.

And he said, we're going to do a spot that just features kids, young kids, about 15 years of age, drinking Coca-Cola in various fun situations. Think of some fun situations and think of a jingle that goes with that. So I did that. And think of a jingle that goes with that. So I did that. And next thing I know, I'm on a plane to England to shoot this spot with young kids. And guess what?

What? It could have been done in America quite easily. But because they were the richest account and because they had more money than they knew, I'm on a plane to England. Then this spot gets nominated for a Clio and wins. Wow. So that's like the Oscars of advertising. But of course, Bill Backer claimed that he wrote it. Oh. And I laughed.

What was the jingle? What was the jingle? Sure. It was something like this. I can't remember all the lyrics, but it is, if someone wrote a... Wait a minute. Sure.

If someone wrote a book that had half the look that you and the taste of coke do it ought to sell a million trillion zillion yeah it ought to sell a billion like they do with coke so they brought in billy davis from davison mccoo or whatever that these he's a famous musician, black guy. And I really respected him and I thought, now I'm working with Billy Davis. So I was adjusting the lyrics to work with him. then about another

six months of this and now I'm making like I mean, I started out at $8,500 a year. And now I'm making like $75 mean, I started out at $8,500 a year. And now I'm making like $75,000 a year or something like that. Which, back in 1973, that's a lot of money, you know? Absolutely. And I get a call from Eugene again.

Eugene's been my mentor all the way through this. He says, Dave, they're doing auditions at Second City. Because by this time, Second City had opened a stage company in Toronto. And the first one had closed and then the second one had opened. Eugene wasn't in the first one, but he was in the second one. And he said, they're doing a cast change. You've got to get down here and audition. So I flew into Toronto from New York, and I auditioned. It took a week. It was an audition took a week, a week of doing the sets with the cast

after they did the main show. And the cast was very intimidating. It was Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Eugene, Joe Flaherty, Andrea Martin, John Candy. I mean, God, these people would become giants, you know? And then

there's me in the set with the liar, the liar, Dave Thomas, who didn't know how to write a jingle, but said he did, and now this liar is pretending that he know how to write a jingle but said he did and now this liar is pretending that he knows how to improvise so anyway I got I got lucky and I got it and then the rest is history well the rest is history the rest is history but let's just you know linger for a moment uh are you like are you self-aware I'm always wondering are you

self-aware of what that show meant to so many of us? I mean, I know you look around and you say, oh, wow, look, John Candy was a big deal and Catherine O'Hara was a big deal and there's Rick Moranis. But are you aware that you're a key component, you're a key cog in this wheel of hilarity that still makes people laugh and smile?

Well, I'm aware of that yeah um i i've heard it a few times that's why i'm aware of it but but do does it go to my head or do i feel like that i'm this legend or anything like that no i mean i'm still trying to i'm now i to, now I'm writing books. I've been weaving my way through doing different things. I've always been able to make money doing whatever I want to do. to go on a little while longer. And I spend money like a lunatic. So I don't ever have this nest egg that I can fall back on. I've got to keep making money. But I never doubted my ability to make money. So I was like, okay, all right, that's not a worry.

But I probably should have doubted it. But these people that I do consider myself extremely lucky to have met these people who are all kind of gathered together at the same time with a common goal. Everybody wanted to do comedy. Everybody wanted to do a type of comedy that was new and that was different. And, you know, these people became my friends. And Marty and Eugene were my friends before this started.

But we all went to Toronto and Dan Aykroyd and Valerie Brownfield had come in from Ottawa. Gilda Radner had come in from Detroit. Andrea Martin had come in from Maine. You know, Joe Flaherty had come in from Ottawa. Gila Radner would come in from Detroit. Andrea Martin would come in from Maine. You know, Joe Flaherty come in from Pittsburgh, actually from Chicago, Pittsburgh to Chicago, Chicago to Pittsburgh. You know, there's these people that were all kind of gathered in Toronto socializing. And Marty Short says that in his fantasies, he likens it to Paris in the 20s, where all the artists were kind of collectively gathering,

bouncing off each other, and that's certainly what we were doing. And there was a real fertile playground for comedy at that time. Dave, would it be okay if I pepper you with some of the questions that came in about SCTV? Yeah, sure. Okay, so Canada Kev says, did you throw one of those TVs off of 100 Roehampton Boulevard? That pic, the pic, I guess you saw a pic

and it showed John Candy and Joe, well, yeah, John Candy and Joe Flaherty are showing kind of throwing it, but did you throw one of those TVs? I think so, but I'm not positive. I think everyone did. It was John's idea. That idea of throwing the TVs out the window was John's idea.

And it became an iconic image for SCTV in the early days. Because I remember they played that on the wide world of sports on ABC. And this is when we were just a cheesy little syndicated show that nobody was watching. And then all of a sudden we're on the wide world of sports because one of John's wacky ideas of throwing TVs out the window kind of made people laugh, you know? We lost John far too soon. But would you mind sharing just some memories of the late, great John Candy?

Well, there are so many of them. Hold on one sec. Sure. I got to get something. Do you use the video on this, or is it just the audio? Well, I was going to call an audible on the line of scrimmage. I'm capturing the video in case I one day want to use it. Why, are you thinking of taking off your pants or something?

There's a statue that John gave me, but it's really heavy. It's on the other side of the room. Hold on. Take your time. This is very exciting. While you're doing that, I'll think very briefly. I can't hear you. Oh, it's okay. I'm talking to the listenership about Great Lakes Brewery, Fresh Craft Beer, help sponsoring this show, and Palma Pasta,

delicious, authentic Italian food. Go to palmapasta.com and stickeru.com. Go to stickeru.com for your stickers and such. This is not small. Let's see this thing. Holy! Oh, it looks like it's got some heft to it. Okay.

It does. It's a soapstone carving that John gave me. John and I were good friends. And we used to clown around a lot together. And he was like a big kid and he was incredibly strong and I weighed about

30 pounds less back then but on stage I could run at John and jump up and tuck myself into a ball and he'd catch me like a football and barely rock on his heels. So we had a lot of fun physically on stage at Second City. And my brother, Ian, used to come down and watch the sets,

and he said he loved just watching John and I play because we liked to play. And we were both like little kids, you know. John had, he called it his room. And it was in the world of mime and improv, you know, this is a bookshelf up here. There's books on it. This is a filing cabinet here. Everything was always in the same place in John's room.

So if you've been in a few imprompts with John, you know where everything is and you can get there before he does. And that became part of the fun. And the audience who watched the improv sets, like sometimes a lot of the show audience would leave we would do what they call the book show which is improvs that we'd set into sketches and we they would be the same every night and then after we did 90 minutes of book show we'd do another hour or so of improv afterwards and that was always new but a lot of the audience that came to the imprompts were the same people

that would come back over and over. So they knew John's room too. And they knew where everything was. And John would do a thing that we at Second City called pimping all the time, where John would reach up. I got this book and he would open it up and he said I want you to read

the first paragraph because that tells you everything you need to know about the murder that happened here tonight and I took the book from him as a mind book and then John says by the way it's in Latin that's pimping you get you can't say no in improv.

Right. Do you know what I mean? You can't. That's the greatest transgression. But you can pimp people too, and then they got to roll with it. And the audience is there. They're enjoying every minute of that because they're part of the fun, you know? Absolutely. So that's the kind

of thing when i was full i was jumping on this i jumped on the deck of this boat from a dock and broke the fibula which is the small bone of my ankle that just cracked it couldn't put any weight on it and i went to mount sinai got a cast put on it and then i couldn't walk and so i called john and he said john i'm at the hospital oh god what did you do i said i broke my leg he said oh man i said, I need somebody to help me get into the house because I can't put any weight on this. In fact, at that time, it was so sore, I couldn't even let the cast hang down. I had to elevate it for a while.

Right. And John said, oh, I'll be right down. John drove down to Mount Sinai. It is in Toronto, in the university there, in his car. He picked me up and carried me like a toy into my apartment and sent me up in front of

the TV with the remote and everything. He said, you good? I said, yeah. He said, how are you going to get to your room? I said, I'll slide on my ass. He said, okay. And he left. He was a personal friend and he was a professional friend. And you just don't get that kind of relationship

with a guy like that every day. Here's another question from YYZ Gord. He says, cannot wait for this. I would be interested to know what his favorite sketch from SCTV is that he appeared in. That I appeared in? Right. Because my favorite sketch was one that I didn't appear in.

Okay, well, let's hear that first and then come back to the one that you were in that you liked the best. My favorite sketch was Yellow Belly, which was a Western parody where John played the biggest card in the West. And so there's a male chorus, which is typical of the Westerns. I was really into Westerns back in the

late 50s, early 60s. And they would have male choruses, you know, like Maverick, who is a tall, dark stranger there? Maverick is his name. So Rawhide, things like that. And so we had this theme for Yellowbell. Yellow, Yellowbelly, who you gonna run from now?

So John is the biggest coward in the west and he's dressed in a union officer's uniform he's got a gun in his hand and he's kind of creeping around the town hoping nobody can see him and a woman and her kid walk by and the kid as they pass john the kid says hey mom and he's like eight he goes hey mom it, mom, it's Yellowbelly. And John cringes, turns around and shoots the kid in the back. And the kid falls. And then the woman played by Catherine O'Hara comes running up screaming. And she goes, you shot my kid. And John's panicking and he just shoots her too.

And she goes down. And then the theme comes back up. Well, that's my favorite sketch that we did the whole time I was there. The favorite sketch that I was in, I mean, there were a lot of them. I liked the Bob Hope thing that I did of the Desert Classic. I liked, we got into dueling impersonations. Joe and I did for

the man who would be king of the popes. And Joe says Joe was doing his Peter O'Toole and I was doing my Richard Harris. We were trying to blow each other off the screen with English character impersonations you know impersonations

and um and john was um burton and john couldn't do the english accent at all and so joe was tutoring him and he just said just just do what Whoa, whoa, whoa. Huff and puff. And so John did that. John ended up blowing the two of us out the screen. So that was fun. Man who would be king of the popes. Probably from a writing perspective, the sketches, everyone was in this.

We took a turn at SCTV when Joe and I wrote this thing called Fantasy Island. And it was a parody of Fantasy Island the TV show, Casablanca the movie, Road to Morocco with me playing Bob Hope and Joe playing

Bing Crosby. And Wizard of Oz with Andrea Martin as the Wicked Witch and Catherine O'Hara as Glinda. So it had real turns and real twists that I had never seen in a sketch before, not on show of shows, not on Wayne and Schuster, not on any television show not on wayne and schuster not on any any television show we did this this the first time i ever saw a comedy sketch that took that many turns where it didn't just do a one-on-one parody of one thing it did a multi-layered parody of many

things and then we started doing that a lot and And so did other people. You mentioned Bob Hope, so I'm going to skip to a question from Gene Valaitis. Gene was on the radio here as Jesse and Gene, one of the 50% of Jesse and Gene, actually, to be specific. But Gene writes in, I saw a photo of Dave Thomas with Bob Hope. Did Bob Hope ever comment on Thomas' excellent portrayal of him? Yeah. A number of times because I

ended up working with him. I ended up doing three, four shows with him. And I was at his house. I got invited to his house a couple of times just to hang out. So the first time he ever

commented on it was backstage at O'Keefe Center in Toronto where he was playing. And one of his writers was writing on SCTV, Jeff Barron.

And Jeff said, I'll get you in backstage to meet Bob. And I said, I'll get you in backstage to meet Bob. And I said, oh, great. And I had done Play It Again Bob with Rick, the Desert Classic, and also Bob in China with his writers.

And so Jeff got us in backstage to meet Bob, and I had arranged for a video tape, a VCR, and a monitor in Bob's dressing room so I could show him the tapes. I was not going to let this opportunity pass up. And he watched it, and he didn't care for the conceptual stuff at all. Like, playing again, Bob, where Woody and Bob doing a...

He just kind of blew past that. But he liked the Bob Hope in China with his writers because that was actually based on a true story. He had been in China, and it was the stupidest thing I ever saw where Bob did

a monologue in China and had a Chinese interpreter interpreting his monologue for the Chinese audience. But Bob's monologue was all referenced with layered with American references that that audience never would get. Right. And so the sketch we wrote was me as Bob and Rick Moranis is milk. Joe Josephson, one of his head,

one of his head writers. He had a few backstage with a bunch of Chinese writers trying to come up with topical jokes for his Chinese monologue. He thought that was funny because he said, he said, yeah, you know, we're over there. And we did that, but we couldn't get anything going with the Chinese. So we weren't able to do the kind of jokes, you know.

And it was a comment on the fact that what he had done, like even doing a monologue for the Chinese audience with an interpreter, was an incredibly stupid idea. So it was kind of a shot at that. But it was also, you know,

a respectful comment on the fact that at least he was trying you know i mean no entertainer had ever been into china and entertained before so he was the first you know dave i was hoping you would do a little bob hope but i didn't think i could just ask you to do it like i didn't want you to feel like you're some trained seal like bark like a you know so it's like i'm glad i got some bob hope that's awesome well i only i got to the point where i'd only do bob old bob right and and and he got as he as he got older he got what my kids called the milk voice you know kind of a little bubble in his throat there right and um but i went to his house one time. I've told this story before, but

his publicist, Ward Grant, called me up and said, Bob wants you to come over to the house. And I was shooting Grace Under Fire at CBS Radford, which is just around the corner from his Toluca Lake house. So I drove over. And Bob was 90 now. And he was hard of hearing, but he was still with it, but forgetful. And I got to the house, and Ward met me, and he said, yeah, he's upstairs. He had a little makeup area outside his bedroom. He said, he's upstairs.

Go upstairs. He said to go upstairs. So all right. All right. So I walk upstairs, and Bob's sitting in this chair in front of the makeup mirror and he turns and sees me he says oh hi dave what are you doing here and i said well ward said you wanted me to come over and he goes? Well, what do you want? So you don't get into it with an old guy like that.

Just say, no, no, you said, he said you wanted me to come over, and now you're saying we. So instead I just said, I want to see that picture you have Patton pissing in the Rhine. Because he had a photo that I'd heard about of Patton pissing in the Rhine. And he got very excited when I said that. He said, you want to see it? It's right over here. He said, you know, Patton said he would cut a swath through Hitler's Europe,

and he would piss in his Rhine. He said, I got a picture of him doing it. And he walks me over and shows me this picture and sure enough and then there's all these other pictures of he said this is neil armstrong he did my special after he got back from the moon so who else could say that amazing so i thought i don't know it was pretty amazing i i have to say that you know i was a kid in Dundas watching these guys on TV. And I always wanted to do that. I thought, wouldn't it be great if I could do that?

And then there I am in Bob Hope's house talking to him and on The Tonight Show as a guest with Johnny Carson and then later having lunch with Johnny. Being on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson was like a childhood dream. And then it happened. I don't know. I think I'm the luckiest guy in showbiz. I really do.

I got more questions, of course. Jason wants to know, I'll just read it verbatim. Did he create the styrofoam replicas of the countries for the What Fits Into Mother Russia SCTV skit? His laugh and it still puts me in stitches. You say no.

No, that was a prop gun. The bit I wrote, and that was my idea, and it was based on the Cold War measure, countermeasure battle between the Americans and the Russians, where the Russians got into big as best. Americans would introduce a bomber with four engines,

and Russia immediately introduced their bomber with eight engines. They were always pointing that Americans would have a missile, Russians would have a bigger missile. So they were into this pissing contest with America. So what fits into Russia, I thought, ideologically nailed that, which is a bit. The character I play in that sketch is Felix Desvrinsky, who

was the head of the and founder of the KGB. And so, I researched all this when I wrote Spies Like Us with Dan Aykroyd. And we had to know before, Danny's a real bulldog for research. And when

I got to his office the first day, he showed me this steamer trunk full of books. He said, David, we've got to read every one of these books before we put pen to paper. And I was like, okay. I've just come from doing an MA and I was going to study two books.

So, but there were books on Soviet mobile missile launchers, Soviet ideology, pamphlets from the U.S. government about nuclear weapons and the damage that they could do, books on Central Asia and the tribal movements and Russia's annexation of much of Central Asia and Eastern Europe when it became the USSR. So I was a real student of that stuff. So the Biggins best concept to me ideologically broke down simply for what fits into Russia in a way that I think nailed them

on the ridiculousness of their making things bigger by having a bit that just mocked the size of other continents compared to the vastness of Mother Russia. That struck me as funny. I got to ask you about Bob and Doug McKenzie. But before I get this origin story and then I have other questions Malfurious has a great question

I'd like to know as well how's Rick Moranis doing? we heard about he got sucker punched, a disgraceful act in New York City but how is Rick doing? he's doing great I talk to him

once a week. And, you know, we stay in touch and we're still really good friends. And, I mean, he's got a life outside of showbiz that he embraced. And I don't think he has any real regrets. I mean, if something made sense to him creatively, he would do it. Or if something made sense to him financially, maybe he would do it. But he was at that reunion. Yeah.

So that was kind of the big get because he hadn't done much, and then he showed up for that. Yeah, he showed up for my brother's kid in an accident in a snowmobile and became a paraplegic. And I called Rick and said, I know you don't want to do the McKenzie's again, but we're doing a fundraiser. He said, I'm there.

I'll do it. No worries. So even though he didn't want to do it he came and did that so you know he has his boundaries and he he doesn't he doesn't want to put on funny hats and funny glasses and do what he did when he was in his 20s you know because he's in his 60s now and he doesn't, he doesn't, his mind doesn't work that way anymore, you know, but he's still sharp and he's still funny and I enjoy talking to him.

So would you mind telling me how Bob and Doug come to be? Because there's a, there's a duo that brings smiles to, uh, on the, to the faces of many a Canadian. Well, this is a well-told story. Right. a duo that brings smiles to the faces of many a Canadian? Well, this is a well-told story. Right. But I will tell you. So during the third season of SCTV, the half-hour show was run on CBC in Canada

and syndicated in the States. And the version in the States had two minutes more commercial content. So that meant we needed two minutes more programming time for the Canadian version. So the CBC said, can you make that two minutes distinctly Canadian? And we were like, what the hell? You know, this is a Canadian show. We're all Canadian.

What is your problem? And they're always kind of pushing that kind of stuff, which is not the way to build a cultural identity. But anyway, that story aside, we mockingly said, what do you want us to do, put up a map of Canada and wear toots and bargas and drink beer in front of the map? And they said, yeah, that'd be fine. And if you put a Mountie in the scene, that would be even better.

So in the very early Bob and Doug's, there's a big mounting mug, you know, a mug in the shape of a mountain. Right. But that was, and they were all improvised because Rick and I, we were really busy with the show and the volume of work that had to be done was oppressive and daunting. volume of work that had to be done was oppressive and daunting so um our usually end of the shoot week our producer pat whitley would come to us and say okay

you guys up for doing some bob and dugs and we were like all right all right so we would everyone else would go home and one cameraman and the floor director and the switcher up in the booth would stay and rick and i would get real beers we asked for coleman stowe so we could actually fry up real black bacon right and we had it treated as a happy hour and we because each piece had to be exactly two minutes we would get a count in from the floor director five four three two one and then the reason why i did that theme which i can't do anymore was a stall because we were improvising and we at the beginning of these things very often didn't have what the thing would be.

During the count sometimes Rick would turn to me and go, you got anything? And I'd go, nope. And then we would go anyway. And we would do about 10, maybe 15 and maybe 2 would be good. But still it would take about an hour to do them

to get four minutes of air time out of an hour and a half of shooting was production was very effective uh in terms of production costs and the producers fell in love with bob and doug because it was cheap and easy to do. Anyway, we were going to drop them after the third season. But then when NBC picked us up for the 90-minute show, they said, oh, yeah, and by the way, we want those two Canadian guys. Everybody seems to love those. So we're going, okay, here we go again.

But all those were improvised too. That answers my next question, which is actually from Sean, who said, we know Bob and Doug are Canadian icons, but do others around the world celebrate them as well? I don't know about around the world. But certainly in America they do. I gave two guys American writers that ended up becoming showrunners on The Simpsons.

Josh Weinstein and Bill Oakley. I gave them their first job. I thought they were good writers when I met them. We did a thing for ABC together. Anyway, in talking to Bob and Doug with them and their friends, they said

Americans love Bob and Doug because they thought they were charming. They thought they were innocent. They were like two Muppets. They were these very, very cagey and self-aware in their own little world, which was this little show that they were doing, how to put a baby mouse in a beer bottle and try to feed it until it grows up and get free beer. But they were fun, and Americans enjoyed them and kind of identified with them as a stereotypical portrait of Canada, you know? Right, right. portrait of Canada. Right.

Okay, now you mentioned the Simpsons connection there. So I take it that's how you got the Rex Banner role. Yeah. Go ahead. Josh and Bill were running the show when they asked me to do that episode. It's Homer versus the 18th Amendment and it's fantastic and you did a great job.

Just lifelong Simpsons fan here, letting you know, a thumbs up from me, but I want to ask you real quick about, uh, so much to cover here, but I want to talk about your brother. But first,

since we're talking about Rick Moranis, did you ever hear Rick Allen on the air at Chum FM and CFTR? No, no, I didn't. And I regret that. I would love to have heard Rick Allen. That's his middle name, you know.

It's Frederick Allen Moranis. That's his full name. So, he just went by as Rick Allen. I have lots of Toronto radio personalities on the program. So, every once in a while, I'll have somebody on who will let me know that they, you know,

I know Ingrid Schumacher, for example, was, was, was helping to train Rick Allen on overnights at Chum FM. So these, these connects. Hold on one sec. I'll be right back. Oh yeah, sure. Dave Thomas, we right back. But that gives me a chance to say thank you to ridley funeral home ridley funeral home of course have been pillars of this community since 1921 shout out to ridley funeral home and

of course uh we have brad jones there with his new podcast and i urge everybody to subscribe to life's undertaking and last but not, happy 420 last week. I want to give a big shout out to Canna Cabana. Basically, they won't be undersold on cannabis or cannabis accessories. Go to cannacabana.com and become a member of the Cabana Club. All right, do you know what this is of i got yes of course i do yes do you have some yeah i have a i have a gentleman there named doug thompson came over to give me the history of 10 50 chum and he left me a whole

bunch absolutely in fact real quick before we digress here, I'm doing a special episode 1050, so you're episode 1040, but my episode 1050, I'm going to have a whole bunch of people like Roger Ashby and a whole bunch of... Bob McAdory, Jungle Jane Ellison, any of those guys? Well, they're all late great, right? They all passed away. Oh, I didn't know that.

McAdory's long gone, unfortunately. Oh, really? Yeah, unfortunately. Who are you having on? Well, okay, so I Oh, really? Yeah, unfortunately. But, you know, I... Who are you having on? Well, okay, so I had Mike Cooper over here, and he told me he's done talking about the past, so he just dropped out. But I have...

Roger Ashby, for sure. Jim Van Horn? Oh, yeah. You got a Jim Van Horn there? The greaser? Scott Carpenter. Scott Carpenter's going to be on this show. Do you have any Scott Carpenter Scott Carpenter is going to be on this show I think most of mine Predate

These guys Gotcha But Chum 1050 Chum is a station I'm a bit young to appreciate it But I love the legacy of that top 40 station Love it Wolfman Jack was on the air there What?

Wolfman Jack would come up and do a show. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and this is like, this is all part of growing up in the Toronto area, you know? Because, you know, you had CKOC, right? In Hamilton, that's right. Right. And that's where Ashby got his start, Roger Ashby. Yes.

And I remember that. I remember him being on Bob McAdory. Is he still alive? No, no. He passed away quite a while ago, unfortunately. I know. I'm doing a Twitter thing almost every week about a friend of mine that dies. I mean, they're all dying now.

Latest was Gilbert Godfrey. Very sad. You were great on his show. I heard you on his program. Well, he was a lovely guy. And I'm so sad that he passed. But anyway, that's what happens when you get older, folks. Don't do it.

That's my advice to all your listeners. Don't get old. All right. So here is my segue over to the music of your brother. But maybe we talk about the music of Bob and Doug McKenzie. I got a bunch of questions. For example, where do I begin here? One is from me.

This is from yours truly here because I'm kind of like healthily obsessed with tears are not enough. Okay. We did a two and a half hour deep dive into it on this program. And I'm interested in who was not there almost as much as I'm interested in who was there. You know, so I would find out, for example,

that, you know, Buffy St. Marie wasn't there. She's not there. Where is she? And then I find out from Terry David Mulligan that Buffy bailed. And then you kind of start to, you know Buffy St. Marie wasn't there she's not there where is she and then I find out from Terry David Mulligan that Buffy bailed and then you kind of start to you know weave a the fabric is weaving together

to get a story but you why aren't you there your brother is there Ian Thomas and John Candy's there I'm not a singer you know I don't know why John went either Eugene Levy was there I know I know but Gene always either. Eugene Levy was there. I know, I know.

But Gene always wanted to sing. He was in a folk singing group. I never wanted to sing. I didn't want to be a singer. And it just seemed like stupid for me to go there. Were you invited? Yeah. Okay.

I just took a pass, like Buffy St. Marie. Me and Buffy went to Mr. Green Jeans. Got a burger. Buffy Bailed. Dave Bailed. Okay. Paul wants me to ask you about what's your favorite song by Ian Thomas? Probably Hold On,

which got covered by Santana. And a few places, have actually taken writing credits for it, which is insane, because they didn't write it. But, yeah, probably that one.

So Brad Fay, who can be seen here doing Raptors broadcasts and enjoys the show, but enjoys your work as well. He just wants you to know that his favorite top his three favorite Ian Thomas songs are Coming Home, Pilot,

and Painted Ladies so he likes the kids. Yeah Pilot's a really good song Painted Ladies was Ian's first so that was a good song too and you know Paul Schaefer at that benefit for my brother's son,

played the clavinet part of... Painted Ladies? Painted Ladies, yeah. Sorry, I'm just going to... So I just watched, speaking of the late, great Gilbert Gottfried, I just watched his funeral. And Paul's there. Yeah.

I know. They were good friends. So sad. It's so sad because I listened to the man's podcast and there was never any indication to us listeners and fans of Gilbert's

that he was sick at all. So, you know, and the same was true of Bob Saget. There's no, not Bob Saget, sorry, not Bob Saget, Norm MacDonald is who I meant to say.

Yeah. No indication. But Bob did die too. Yeah, but Bob died. Yes, but he wasn't sick. He just sort of... But yeah, we are losing a lot of funny people. So I hope you're exercising and eating well. I am exercising. I was in the pool before this.

I did my 40 laps. I didn't, I loved Norm MacDonald and I never, and the whole time I was at this business and we have so many mutual friends, I never met Norm. Wow.

That is so weird, you know. And fellow Canucks. Yeah. Wow. Another gentleman we lost very recently is, I think a couple of days ago, I believe, Guy Lafleur has passed away.

Yeah, I know. Rick and I did a commercial with him. Well, can I play it? It'll take 30 seconds. Let's hear this. I'm Bob McKenzie.

This is my brother, Doug. How's it going, eh? And we're having a motion with Hall of Famer Guy Lafleur, eh? Yeah, Lafleur,

that's like a real hockey name. What's that mean, eh? Like the wolf or Fleur, eh? Yeah, Le Fleur. That's like a real hockey name. What's that mean, eh? Like the wolf? Or the lion, eh? No, Le Fleur means the flower. Well, like a tough flower, eh? Like a dogwood or a snapdragon, eh? Roses have thorns, eh?

They're tough. You're tough. You're tough. So that's a visual. Right. You have to see the takes after he says it means flower. But, you know, yeah, he was a very, very sweet, gentle, nice man. I liked him. Gare Joyce, also a sweet man, by the way.

He wants me to ask you, can you ask him about the writing on SCTV? I took a class with a guy who won Emmys with SCTV and Larry Sanders. Dick Basucci. Basucci. Basucci. My apologies. UCCI. Yeah.

He says, I'm assuming Thomas and Moranis were writing partners, but what was the writer's room like? Well, it evolved. As the show got bigger, we added more writers. The core writers for the show in the first season was the cast. And in the second season, Hal Dramus left. Joe and I took over as head writers

and we added Brian Doyle Murray, Bill Murray's brother as a writer. Sure. Then in the third season, Brian couldn't do it. And so we brought in

Dick Blasucci and Paul Flaherty, Joe's brother. And they wrote primarily as a team during the whole run of the show. And they were there from the third season right through Network 90. Also, oh, when we started the Network 90. Also, when we started the Network 90 show,

things kind of stalled at first. Andrew asked me, Andrew Alexander asked me if I would take the job of head writer. With the blessing of the cast, of course, because it wasn't like the job

of the head writer of a normal show because you know i wasn't deciding what goes in the show right i was mostly like a traffic cop you know going okay we need a three minute piece here we need a five here we need this we need that hey did you finish that sketch you said you would come on like pestering people and things like that and so I hired some new people I brought Marty's brother

Mike Short on I brought in Doug Steckler John McAndrews Jeff Barron came in in the third season and then he came back for the fourth season oh there were a couple of other guys

oh and then we had done a show for CBS and two guys. Now I'm blanking on their names. God damn it. Anyway. It'll come to you. Yeah, there were about four other writers.

There was a guy that became one of Chuck Lorre's big writers. And I'm blanking on his name too. Jesus. So we had, there were about eight or ten writers when we were doing the 90-minute show. Because you need that many people. Sure. Because not every sketch is funny. And you end up, there's a certain amount of waste, waste you know in all the writing that's going on

and so you need that volume of stuff that keeps going you know and you David Flaherty you mentioned was part of the writer staff right he only did a couple things Dave was never really he went

he did later stuff I think like Maniac Mansion with Eugene. Okay. But I don't, he wasn't really writing on the show. It was mostly Paul and Joe. Okay, I only bring them up only because I recently had Jane Eastwood on the program. Oh, yeah. I wanted to shout out David here, but yes.

Well, Jane goes all the way back to Godspell. Right. She was in that first cast of godspell and then she was also in the first cast of second city stage and um yeah jane's an old comedy legend and she did some of the scpvs as a guest star well she did the going down the roads uh satire period which the Which, the only returning, the only person to be in both, I suppose. That's right.

Alright, we gotta talk Strange Brew here or people are gonna, you know, kill me. So, Kevin in Alberta wants me to ask, he basically says, Strange Brew is still a favorite of mine. Was there anything left on the cutting room floor that you wish wasn't left there?

left on the cutting room floor that you wish wasn't left there? Yeah, probably. It's a long time since I edited that, though. Rick was already gone during the editing process. He got a job as an actor in a film called Streets of Fire

that Joel Silver was producing. Right. I had introduced Rick and Joel. I had written a couple of Fire that Joel Silver was producing I had introduced Rick and Joel I had written a couple of scripts for Joel movie scripts and Pat McMahon and I

Pat was the editor and the two of us cut it yeah there was a bunch of stuff but not any full sequences that I had to cut they were usually just beats that were made it a beat too long that might have been funny but you know i can't really off the top of my head come up with any bit that we shot for Strange Brew that wasn't used in some way or other in the final film.

Well, here, this one's easier. Ted wants to know, was there real beer in those bottles on the set of Great White North? That was for, yeah. But then he also wants to know, did you get to keep your hockey outfit from Strange Brew? We got to, but

it became something that after a while we didn't want. Because it was just a storage nightmare. You know? Even the Bob and Doug costumes became storage nightmares. I still have my toque and my earmuffs, but that's it.

I don't have the park anymore. Because they're easy to get we can always go you know i need a blue parker rick needs a green one and um so yeah we didn't know we didn't keep the hockey outfits uh joe louis wants he says uh for dave thomas strange brew was a seminal movie of my childhood i watched it at yorkdale mall when i when it wasn't upscale and had a Dominion grocery store as an anchor tenant. And Max Von Cito scared the shit out of me. So that's a comment. But then I go, is this still Joe?

Okay, because there's so much stuff here on Strange Brew. But with a long list of celebrities that have done well in the alcohol business, A strange brew brew seems like a natural venture. Have you and Rick ever been approached? And if not, he's just suggesting that you make a beer with Great Lakes Brewery because they support this fine program you're on right now. Well, we would have been happy to back in the day, but the breweries in Canada didn't want anything to do with us because of the mouse in the bottle.

Oh, right. And I had worked at, as I told you earlier in this, as a writer for Coca-Cola Canada and then Coca-Cola U.S. And that's a legendary bottling nightmare is the rodent in the bottle. And they have a euphemism for it in the bottling trade. They call it a passenger instead of a rat or a mouse in a bottle. They call it a passenger. It's sort of like the airline industry calling a midair collusion a conflict.

Oh, yeah. Softens the blow. calling a midair collusion a conflict oh yeah that's that's something that they do which is like uh excuse me something where three to five hundred people are instantly vaporized and don't exist anymore might be a little more significant than a conflict you? So the passenger was a problem for the bottling people. And when we wanted to shoot in a beer store where there's a scene there, we couldn't get into the beer stores. Labatt's and Molson's shut us out. They said, no, no, no.

They got that mouse in the bottle thing. We knew what it was. So we had to build our own beer store. Interesting. Rock Golf wants to know, how the heck did you get Max Von Cito to appear in this movie? Because had he even heard of SCTV? No.

We were in Freddie Field's office at MGM. He was the president of the studio. And he said to me, who do you have in mind for the role of Brewmeister Smith? And I said, well, I always wanted Max Von Cito.

And he goes, Alice, get me Max on the phone. So Max is in Sweden and he calls him. And he says, I got these two guys. They're in this movie. It's like two beer-drinking brothers.

I can't explain it. Here, hold on. Dave. He hands me the phone. So I had to explain it to Max. And so I explained the whole thing to Max. And I tell him the truncated but probably too long version of the story and at the end of it Max says

so it's a comedy then and I went yeah it's a comedy so the story goes and he told us this on set that he called his son

who was living in America and he said so I on set, that he called his son who was living in America, and he said, I've been offered this role in a movie, Bob and Doc McKenzie. Is this something you think, have you heard of them? And his son said, oh, God, you've got to do that, Dad. He said, everyone's talking about that. That is just the best.

He said, I can't believe you got offered that. And so Max took it on the say-so of his son. Awesome. By the way, a lot of that Strange Brews filmed not too far from where I'm sitting right now here in southern Etobicoke because that

now is Humber College, but it was the old psychiatric hospital on the grounds, like bottom of Kipling by the lake. And that's where they filmed. Also, the great Police Academy was filmed there as well. So lots of good stuff. It was a big set and an inexpensive set, which is why we were there. I don't know why Police Academy was there.

Shout out to Steve Guttenberg. Okay. And shout out to Jill, who had a couple of questions that other people took, but he does want you to know that his favorite SCTV anything is you doing Richard Harris on Mel's Rock Pile with the disco dance interludes. It's his favorite bit of all time, and he'd be honored if I mentioned that to you,

which I just did for Jill. Well, tell them that I met Richard Harris at the Toronto Film Festival, and somebody introduced me to him and said, oh, Richard, this is Dave Thomas. He did an impersonation of you on SCTV singing

MacArthur's Park. And Harris looked at me and goes, I never saw that. But I heard about it. And then he starts pushing me with his hand, like, away from him. Right. And it was kind of awkward.

And he pushed me three or four times to a point where I backed up about three feet from where he was. And he was coming so it was like what am I going to get into a fist fight with Richard Harris for God's sakes so it fortunately stopped and it ended but he didn't like it he didn't like the impersonation and it wasn't

it wasn't real flattering if he was taking himself as seriously as I guess he was. You know, remember many hours ago when we started this conversation, when I mentioned Mad Men and you were like the Don Draper there of the Coke account. Of course, Lane on Mad Men. I don't know if you've ever seen Mad Men, but Lane was played by Richard Harris's son, Devin Harris. He's fantastic.

That's right. Yes. So it's another fun fact. And Rock Golf just wants to know, have you ever been to the Bob and Doug statues in Edmonton? No. We were supposed to go for the unveiling, but then COVID hit.

Right. And then, I don't know, a few months went by and they said, we got to do the unveiling without you. Well, COVID sucks, and that's another reason. Put it on the list. Yeah. And here's a fun fact. You can speak to it or not,

but you introduced John Travolta and Kelly Preston when you were directing The Experts. That's right. Which is just a fun little Hollywood fact, if you will, here. I had worked with Kelly on a movie in Toronto called something about the Salem Witch Trials. I can't remember the title. But she was just gorgeous.

And guys just melted around her. And you know who she was going out? He came to the set. She was going out. I was going to, who's the guy you can no, he can no longer speak, right? This is, I saw his documentary and why am I blanking on his name?

No. She was going out with George Clooney at the time. George Clooney, okay. That we did the movie and he came to the set to visit her. So anyway, when I was doing the experts, they said, we need a really stunning girl for John's girlfriend in this.

And I said, I know exactly who we should get. I said, I'll bring her in and she'll have the part right away. She did. By the way, the guy whose name I couldn't remember there was Val Kilmer. Only because I remember in the doc, but maybe they were just friends.

Who knows? Val! Sure, but I mean, she went out with a bunch of different handsome guys. Yeah, a bunch of handsome guys. And by the way, Diamond Dog had a request, and you don't have to honor this, Dave. You've already been amazing.

But he says, have him do a Bill Needle rant. So Bill Needle's another character that he fondly recalls. I'm sorry. They're too long. No pressure. No pressure. But I'll tell him something that maybe he doesn't know.

Here's where I got the name Bill Needle. I used to do that character on stage but his name was Bob Clark. And I thought, that's too flat. That's not a good enough name for TV. And I was flying somewhere and I thought, that's too flat. It's not a good enough name for TV. And I was flying somewhere, and I'm sitting in the airport,

and I hear, Bill Needle, will Bill Needle please report to the desk? It was like an announcement over the PA. And so I just said, that's it. That's a great name, Bill Needle. I love it. And Kevin,. That's a great name, Bill Needles. I love it. And Kevin, funny, your illustrious career, so many spots we could talk about,

but he remembers very fondly your Harvey's Angus Burger commercial. And I just thought for fun, if you have another 30 seconds, I would play it. You know what bugs me? Places that tell me they make the best tasting hamburger. Frankly, I'll make that choice myself. But since we're on the subject, I like Harvey's new special burger, this baby right here. Now, I got to jump on most of you because, well, I'm doing the commercial. So I know Harvey's gives you your choice of toppings, plus three new ones, lettuce, mayo, and hot peppers.

Okay, am I saying Harvey's special burger's the best tasting hamburger? Well, I can give you my opinion. After all, it's a free country. And in my opinion, Harvey's Special Burger is big on taste. And until you've tried it, you don't have an opinion. I'm Bill Needle. Good night. Well, there's a little Bill right there. That's right. There you go. That's right. Talking faster than normally he would,

but that's because they had a lot of copy to push in 30 seconds. Right. A regular on this program is a gentleman named Mark Weisblot. So hello, Mark. And Mark has, all his questions are about, and I'll just let you speak to this, but the new show, which was produced by Lorne Michaels,

Mark never missed it. It was only a brief run, I guess, back in 84, but he loves the intro. He just would love if you could just speak for a minute on what happened with the new show and why didn't that, you know, work?

Well, the main reason, excuse me, the main reason it didn't work was because NBC put it on Friday nights at 10 o'clock. Right. So for comedy, that's death. All the people who, the young people who might be watching a comedy show are out on friday nights at 10 o'clock so that's the worst time slot we could have got and then the other

part of it that was a sad thing was that lauren michaels was in transition between SNL SNL 1 and SNL 3 or whatever. And when he came back to SNL. He wasn't really invested that much in the new show. But it had a great writing cast. It had Buck Henry,

Jack Handy, Tom Gamble, Max Pross George Myers who was one of the brains behind The Simpsons Steve Martin did a lot of writing on that show Al Franken and Tom Davis it was an amazing

writing world great minds another funny guy we lost It was an amazing writing world. Great minds. Another funny guy we lost too soon is Bob Einstein. Yeah. I know you were on Bizarre with John Biner and Super Dave, Bob Einstein. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I knew Bob too, and I knew him socially.

And you know whose brother he is? course uh albert brooks who changed his name for obvious reasons right right right and speaking of the simpsons one of the great i mean your your role was great but man that is it uh hank scorpio when a lot of them actually so so many great voiceover appearances on the simpsons by albert brooks now that i think about it. Lots of great ones. All comes back to The Simpsons. Okay, so we're cooking with gas here. Dave, you've been incredible. Basement Dweller wants to know, and you

mentioned you were with Dan Aykroyd writing Spies Like Us. He wants to know why you didn't get a credit for writing the final script, Spies Like Us. Oh, I know exactly. Dan and I wrote three drafts of that script at Universal. And then it was originally for Dan and John Belushi. And then John died and ruined it for everyone.

So the project went into turnaround and a couple of years went by. And then Danny called me and he said, David, I think I can get this set up at Warner's. But Warner's wants these two gag writers to gag it up a bit. And they won't do it unless they get screen credits. These are Gans and Mandel, Lowell Gans and Babalu Mandel. And he said, so I know if you go to the Writers Guild and arbitrate that they won't get credit. So would you agree not to arbitrate? And I said, yeah, yeah, sure. I already got paid a lot of

money to write the first three drafts. I don't need to get paid again. So he said, well, you'll get story by credit for sure. But, you know, and I said, yeah, yeah, I don't care about that at all. So anyway, now I didn't hear any more about that for a while. And I saw Dan a couple of times socially. We didn't really talk about it. And then about two years later, or a year later after they finished the film, I got a letter from Dan's,

I got a letter on legal letterhead. And whenever you get one of those, it's like, oh, this is somebody named in a lawsuit? What now? But it's from Dan's lawyers. And they said, Dan Aykroyd has instructed us to tell you that you have been given

one gross point in the movie Spies Like Us from Dan's share of the proceeds. And I thought, oh, that's really nice. And then cut to a year later, I get this envelope from Warner Brothers and it's my first check from spies

like us. And it was a dandy. And it was like, well, thanks a lot. So that's what you get for being a nice guy. You know what I mean? Dan's the greatest guy in the world to work with.

And for somebody to do that, where they weren't asked is just typical of the kind of generosity and good guy that he is. I love that story. That's amazing. Yeah. Where was I? Avenue Road. I can't remember now.

I was at a restaurant. I couldn't afford to be there, but the boss was paying. Dan Aykroyd held the door open for me. That was my brush of greatness right there. No. That happened. He's a gentleman. I told you. I know.

And he's, of course, on Saturday Night Live when the Tragically Hip are playing. Dan Aykroyd introduces them. So that was pretty cool, too. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So speaking of Canadianity, Brian writes in, As a kid, I consumed a lot of Canadianity, and I missed a whole lot.

I was completely unaware of SCTV until 2000 or so. My first encounter with Dave Thomas was Grace Under Fire. Tell me a little bit about this. A lot of people who are younger than I am know you best from Grace Under Fire. This was a big role for you. Yeah. Who's the person that's new?

Brian. Really? Yeah, I think he's too young, I think, for SCTP. Normally, the fans of Grace Under Fire were women. And, you know, when I took the kids to Disneyland, I would see some people would come up to me. If they approached and they were like young kids, young men, like late teens or twenties, I would figure strange bro. And I was usually

right. If they were a mixed group of younger kids, I would figure rat race. And I was usually right. And if they were like middle-aged um slightly overweight women i would figure grace under fire and i was usually right so i'm surprised brian liked the show but thank you brian for being a fan and well he doesn't say he likes it he's if i read it it says my first encounter with dave thomas so i might have been assuming too much there and if he didn't like it then i respect him even more

okay let's can i pull in that thread just a bit because there's very public controversies about uh brett butler i know that like um some kid left the series because the mom said that Brett Butler flashed her breasts at him when he was 12 years old. And there's a very... It wasn't a flash, but she put the kid's hand inside her blouse. Yeah, so. Okay. I was there. I saw that.

So you saw that one. Okay. Yeah, yeah. It's sad. He's passed away. Oh, I didn't know that. John Paul. John Paul Stoyer. I'm sorry.

Yeah. I was surprised and sad to hear that. He was a friend of my son's when I was doing that show, who was about the same age. But Brett had an addiction to painkillers, if I remember correctly. Well, maybe she did. Maybe she drank. But she was also kind of nutty.

I mean, you don't get to where she was with just painkillers. Trust me, I've worked with a lot of people on painkillers and alcohol and other drugs. It wasn't just drinking. So overall, though, not a positive experience for you? Nah, not really. I mean, for a number of reasons. One is I never should have done a sitcom because I'm not a sitcom guy, you know? I did a lot of things because i was curious i started an animation company because i was curious and i shouldn't have done that because it was just a mistake but i stuck with it for like

you know because you're not a quitter yeah exactly biggest flaw, but I stuck with it for like 15 years until I finally pulled the plug. But you know, um, and I, I did while I was doing grace under fire, I thought I was bored and I was sitting in my dressing room and I was like, Oh God, I wish I'd never done this.

So I came up with an idea for a game show. Cause Merv Griffin had made a lot of money on Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. I said, I'll come up with a game show. Maybe I'll make some money. So I came up with an idea for a game show named Family Challenge, and I took it to ABC, and they bought it. They said, yeah, we'll do a pilot. So then we shot the pilot, and they liked it, but not enough to order it.

So then I had this finished pilot. So I walked it around to a few places, and I sold it to Family Channel. And we produced 144 episodes while I was doing Grace Underwater. So, you know, and it was kind of a prank game show, family reality type thing. You know, I was also, I took this job, which I never should have taken. I was co-exec producer and co-creator of America's Funniest People for ABC. Okay. Look at you.

Okay. And the reason I did that was because I had an overall deal with ABC. And I was friends with Ted Harbour, who was running it. And he said, I said, I want to do this sketch show. He said, yeah, but first, could you do this for us? We need somebody to go in there and help Vin DeBona with the comedy on this spinoff of America's Funniest Home Videos. And I said, I don't know.

That's not really my kind of show. And he said, well, we'll pay you this much per week to do it. And I said, well, maybe I could do a few of them. So I did that show. And that's the Dave Coulier one, right? Yeah. That was the only good thing that came out of that show was meeting Dave. Because Dave and I became

lasting friends. We're still close. Can you confirm or deny the rumor that he's the subject of Alanis Morissette's You Ought to Know. That's Dave Coulier. I always heard that rumor, but I didn't know if it was true or not. It's not a rumor. It's a fact.

Well, cut it out, Dave. Wow. that's all i got okay wow uh you mentioned rat race so i gotta ask matt choose question which is hey mike i would love to know from dave what it was like on the set of rat race it was one of my favorite ensemble cast movies growing up and i'm always curious what the dynamic of working with so many great names is like rowan Atkinson, John Cleese, Whoopi Goldberg, Seth Green, John Lovitz, and Wayne Knight. Well, it was pretty crazy because we shot in Alberta in Calgary. We shot in LA and we shot in a place called Ely, Nevada. Now Ely, Nevada is in the northeast corner of Nevada. And in order to get there

we had to take a private jet because there were no airports. There was a runway but there were no official airports there and a lot of the cast were the studio, this was Paramount, the studio likes to get you there in their transportation

rather than allowing actors to get there themselves. Because if they get there themselves, they might not show. And if they don't show, production stops. So in the end, it's cheaper for them to hire a gulfstream jet put everybody in it and fly them in so that's what they did now there's nowhere to stay there except like a motel six and a travel lodge so we were all in these cheesy hotels motels and um hotels, and I had lunch with Rowan Atkinson pretty much every day, and Cleese a lot. I became very friendly with Cleese and thought he was a hilarious prank. He played with people, you know.

Here's an example of the story. played with people, you know? Here's an example of the story. We were at the, John and I took a car to the airport when we finished in Calgary and we were then going to LA. I think to go to Ely, but yeah. Yeah, that was the plan.

So we arrived at the Calgary airport in a sedan, a town car, and they had one of those airport concierge people that helps incompetent actors find their airplanes to greet us. So she made the mistake of saying to John, can I do anything? Can I get you anything? And John looked at her and he said, yes.

I'd like to have a proper English breakfast before I fly. And she said, what do you mean by proper? He said, you don't know what a proper English breakfast is? I mean, eggs, bacon, toast, tea, marmalade, a proper English breakfast. And she said, well, I know. I think the only thing open at this kind of day is Jack in the Box. I don't even know if they have any square toast. It's probably just round buns, you know.

He says, do you mean to tell me in a city of this size, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, 865,000 people that you can't find me a proper English breakfast. That's just unacceptable. So she runs off to get a proper English breakfast. Right. And I said, John, what the fuck did you do that for? That's so mean.

And he said, I don't know. She looked like she wanted to have something to do. So that was John. So that was John. I was at, oh, I'm sorry. I was at the,

uh, I was at Massey hall, uh, to see Bruce Colburn two nights ago. So I'm going to line it up to get my overpriced beer. And there's John Cleese's face. So I can tell people he's coming to Massey hall, uh, at some point this summer there's,

but sorry for interrupting you. Your story is probably better than mine. No, he, you know, I've never seen his shows. Like, I wish I'd seen that Python live thing, you know. And I know Eric Geidel. I've never met Palin. know Eric Idle I've never met Palin and I never met Terry Jones or what's the other guy the guy who died I didn't meet him either um so Gilliam I knew quite well because we were on the same circuit when I first came to LA meeting the same people and became friendly we were at the same

restaurants we were at the same meetings we were the same doing and became friendly. We were at the same restaurants, we were at the same meetings, we were at the same, doing different, meeting different people. But it seemed you get on these circuits that your agents send you out on. Right. So I knew Gillian pretty well. I knew him the best. And then I met Idol a few times because he was friends with Dan Aykroyd. And then I worked with Cleese, but I never met the others. Graham Chapman, that's the one I never met that passed away.

So, Dave, you've been incredible with your time. But there's a woman, I would call her a Dave Thomas super fan. I think she runs the biggest Dave Thomas fan site on the internet. Yeah, I know who this is. Okay, Emily Elizabeth is her name. Yes. So ever since I announced you were coming on, I've been getting emails and tweets. So I just, at some point, I just said

just email me everything and I'll see how it goes. So my personal last question is about Arrested Development, which is a show I find to be, I find it's very funny. I thoroughly enjoy it and I enjoy your role on it. Maybe quickly, how you got the arrested development gig.

And then I'll cherry pick a few of these, Emily Elizabeth to make her, make her day, but probably make her, her year. Well, I was friends with Jimmy Valley who was co-running it with Mitch. And,

um, so they asked me to do a part. And they said, so we're going to run about five episodes, maybe six. And I didn't really know the show that well, which is a terrible thing to say because I was a fan later when I got into it. This happens a lot. When you're working all the time, you don't have a chance to see everything that's out there.

Anyway, my agent said, oh, by the way, you're going to be working with Charlize Theron in all the episodes that you do. And I thought, well, how bad could that be? So I went, all right, all right, I'll do it. And, but I needed a hard out, which is almost impossible to get from a studio like Fox. Right.

Because, you know, shows always go over. But it was like three days from when my scheduled last day was supposed to be. And I just said, I can't do it if I don't get this heart out and it was because my wife's brother was getting married in Hawaii and I had to be there for that right well Mitch and Jimmy just burned through the time like nobody's business then we come to the day before my heart out and I'm still shooting. And they said, Dave, Dave, what can we do? We need you to do this. And I said, I'm so sorry. I got to be in Hawaii and I got to be there. We're all leaving this weekend. And they said, well, would you come back to shoot this? And I said, that's insane. And they said, well, we'll figure it out, where you just come back on Monday.

You could fly on Sunday night and get in late and shoot Monday. And I said, well, I've got to be back Monday night because the wedding's Tuesday or Wednesday, something like that. And they said, well, all right, we'll figure that out. But I said, I need a hard out Monday at probably 3.30 so I can get to the airport for the last flight to Hawaii. So anyway, that's what I did. I ended up coming back and shooting that extra day.

And it was basically just one scene with Charlize. And I thought this was insane because normally, you know, on a show like that, if you don't have a scene, if you're a guest star and your scene isn't with one of the principal regulars, they're going to cut it. It's going to be in the editing room floor. Right. And so I, but I was in my trailer. I didn't get to it till almost the 11th hour.

And I was getting nervous. I'm going, these idiots are going to go over. So I knew my lines. Normally I don't know my lines that well because, you know, you go to block it and then you have enough time between the blocking and when they light it and they're ready to go, to go back to your trailer and learn your lines. But this time I knew them really well.

And I went to the rehearsal with Charlize and I just threw it away I just thought let's see if she knows her lines I threw it away and she threw it away so I thought okay so I guess she doesn't know her lines that well so when I come back I'm going to kick her ass

so anyway I went back to my trailer, and then they called me to set. And when we shot the scene, I came at her really hard with, like, everything I had, fast, lots of energy. And she matched me and topped me at every turn. And then I thought, well, okay okay let's try some improvising and i mind this bit about imagine putting imaginary locks on the door and she was watching what i was doing then she

went and unlocked all of them in sequence exactly the way i'd done it it was and then mitch and jimmy come down come running down they're watching it in the writer's room and they come running down to the set they go oh this is fantastic we love this this is in this is so in the show we just got a couple little notes could you do it again so i was really glad that i came back to do that you know she is an oscar winner so uh we have no kidding you know what i said to her when i first met her um what was that movie she did where she played the murderer? Oh, Monster. Monster.

When I was introduced to her, somebody said, Dave, this is Charlize. And I looked at her and I said, oh my God. And she said, what? And I said, I thought you were beautiful in Monster,

but this is ridiculous. And she laughed. I won her over. That's great. By the way, you know, you talked about like, you could size up where they know you from by their like demographic or whatever. My 17-year-old and my 20-year-old,

they know you from Arrested Development. This is their go-to Dave Thomas performance. Yeah, my kids are too old for Disneyland by then so I never picked that up. Now, Rock Golf, since you just mentioned that you don't see shows, you're busy working, you don't catch them until later, he wants to know if you did see Schitt's Creek.

Yeah. Okay. But I wasn't on it. No. I just saw it. Because Eugene did it, and Eugene's son, and Catherine. Right. And a lot of other people I know. But he was just curious if you had seen it since. Okay. Yeah. No, it's, well, it's won more

Emmys than any other show in the history of showbiz. So, I mean, come on. The show's a legend. And so are the, and it's made Dan, well, have you seen Eugene's Super Bowl commercial for Nissan or whatever it is?

The car thing? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Where he plays an action hero? He was super cool in that, and he looked great. And you're still tight with him, right? Does he get a weekly call like some of your other calls? For me, I'm not as tight with Gene because Gene is harder to get a hold of.

Gotcha. He just doesn't return calls ever. I got to get to Emily Elizabeth or I'm worried what might happen here. So I cherry picked because there were so many questions. Thank you, Emily. This is your moment.

I think we're making her year here. But what was your favorite sketch you did on the Dave Thomas comedy show? And then in parentheses, Emily writes, which, side note, should really have been given at least two seasons. I say aim higher, but go ahead. Yeah, I wish it had two. But here's the story why it didn't.

The pilot aired and we did these shows out of shot them out of order right but marty short and chevy chase were my guests on the pilot and there was a airplane sketch in that called the frightened brothers and these were wigs that i discovered when i was doing the new show that were originally created for Sweeney Todd. And they had like a little strings in them that raised the hair up so that you could look frightened. And originally Sweeney Todd came out and it was controlled by a monofil that ran down your sleeve to your thumb. So if you just straighten your arm, your hair went up. And so the sketch was just that we're the frightened brothers and we're flying on a plane and everything frightens us. And so

what the hell was the question again? I forget why I got onto this. Oh, anyway, that was the first sketch. And when the show premiered, Chevy and Marty came over to my house to watch it. And I was living in the Pacific Palisades at the time. And while the show aired, a plane crashed in Long Island. And underneath the Fright frightened brothers on the airplane sketch is a bar listing the casualties and it was just so horrible oh and so tasteless and made the comedy

that we were doing look like it was evil right and so and chevy was dying he was laughing so hard he was on the couch a good guy i've heard conflicting reports on that are you a decent guy it's good i always liked him but i've he's been an asshole to me he's been an asshole to everybody at some point and he can't help himself but you know what he's an asshole to everybody so if you take it personally that's your problem well those stories like the community stories like with dan harman are like like stuff of legends you hear about like i don't know i wasn't there but okay you know this is a business where okay here's my theory about this yeah being funny is not a talent it's a condition most of the people I know who are funny are crazy in some way. And when I would be interviewing writers for writing rooms that I set up, if somebody came in and they were like a

handsome looking jock, I thought, oh, profile, this guy's never going to be funny. I can tell already. And I was usually right. But if they were short or weird or dweebs or or nerds or fat or you know those people invariably would be funny and this is why it's so frustrating again our third mad men reference of the freaking day here but it's frustrating when john ham is actually very funny right that's frustrating like he shouldn't be funny and handsome pick one well he Well, he's funny, but he's not Norm Macdonald funny. No, no, he's not. You're right. You're right.

You know what I mean? You're right. So he's funny as a comedy actor. Right. You know, because I think Ryan Reynolds is funny too. That's true. That's true. But, you know, he's a comedy actor.

Right. He's not a sketch player or stand-up, you know. Okay. So back to Emily here because she brings up something that I'm dying to hear, but I'm so glad Emily asked this question. Boris and... Oh, my favorite sketch. I never answered your question.

Oh, yeah. Sorry. I'm moving on to Boris and Natasha. Yeah, what's the favorite sketch from the Dave Thomas? Probably Jack Palance. I did Jack Palance because I always thought he was like, so grotesque looking that it was funny to me, you know, and scary looking. And when you meet this big six foot guy that can do one handed pushups, come on, he's a scary looking guy. And he had this breathy way of talking. And for a while, he was host of this Believe It or Not.

I mean, can you imagine a worse choice for the host of a show like Believe It or Not? He would go, the tiny, deep, deep antelope of Kenya, so small, you can hold it in the palm of your hands believe it or not so this is a guy that I'd heard a story about and that's why I love doing this sketch because I did Jack

Pals as a star of a sitcom which I thought would be the worst miscasting you could do the guy who played the butler in Jekyll and Hyde played, which was a TV movie that Jack Plants was in.

He was in a show with me and he told me the story of the first read-through with Jack for that. He said that they did the read-through and then they were going to break for lunch and before they could see anything like, where do you want to go for lunch, Jack jumps up and runs out of the room.

And everybody goes, what the hell? Where did he go? Is he coming back? What happened? Did you say something to him? What happened? And at the end of lunch, he runs in, pouring sweat. This is a Toronto summer.

And I just wanted to get out and run around for a while. Well, I mean, if that happened to me, and I was doing a show with a guy like that, I would go, okay, we're going to wrap. We can't do a show with this guy like that, I would go, okay, we're going to wrap. We can't do a show with this guy. He's completely insane. We're going to go over. He's going to not show up

some days. It's going to be a nightmare. Doing Jack was my favorite part of the Dave Thomas show. Okay, now, Boris and Natasha, okay? The movie. So, Emily writes, it's one of my favorite lesser-known projects of yours. Was the film fun to work on,

and any idea why it didn't ultimately receive a theatrical release? Well, part of the reason was that it was produced by Sally's husband, Jonathan Crane. Oh, Sally Kellerman. Yeah, who was, Jonathan was produced by Sally's husband, Jonathan Crane. Oh, Sally Kellerman. Yeah, who was, Jonathan was insane. And he had, he told everybody he had Tourette's, but I think he just wanted to walk around going, oh, fuck shit, fuck shit, fuck shit.

I think he just wanted to cuss at everybody. And he made a flat deal with the crew and did everything he could during production to shut it down. And Charlie Martin Smith was the director. And so we ended up only shooting about three quarters of the movie. So there's big chunks of it that make absolutely no sense where it goes from this scene to that scene.

And there needs to be a connective scene so that that third scene makes sense. But of course, no. Jonathan Crane, we ran out of time because he did such a cheap deal on the financing. And then Sally was an insane diva as well. So she was difficult to work with. And wait a minute. One of the things I read is that there's no Rocky

and Bullwinkle in this movie. None. I mean, that troubled me too. But here's what happened with me. When I read the script, I was told by Charlie that it was going to be rewritten. And that if I wanted to, I could rewrite some of the stuff myself. I did end

up rewriting some of the scenes that I was in. But mostly, I didn't get a chance to rewrite. And it's like, if you don't, this is why actors get the reputation for being assholes. Because if you don't act like an asshole to protect yourself, you end up getting sucked into assholes. Because if you don't act like an asshole to protect yourself, you end up getting sucked into things.

And then if you bail, they sue you for bailing. So there was no way out for me. And I'm sorry, Emily, that you thought that this was an underappreciated film. But I think it was underappreciated for a reason because it just didn't work. I think Emily loves anything that you're in. So she's a big fan. She's very sweet. And unfortunately, maybe loves me too much. Well, you said something that she needs to see somebody because she needs a boyfriend. God bless her and i i think that

to answer your question though emily that this um this was a interesting experience but not uh one of my favorite shows i ended up becoming a mean prankster on this show. And here's an example. Yeah. I came to the set. Okay. I asked for favored nations. Cause if you do a show with a woman and you ask for favored nations,

they will ask for things, a female star that you would never even think of. So I asked for what favored nations. And so she gets this double banger, this trailer that's got two bedrooms, one at one end. Yeah,

I don't need two bedrooms, but I ended up getting this big double banger trailer, just like her. And so it was always a pain in the neck for the transpo guys to find a place to park these damn things. So I got to the set one day, and I usually just drive and park right in front of my trailer. And so I drive up and park in front of my trailer,

and the transportation guy comes up. He says, Dave, Dave, we got to move your trailer. And I said, okay. And they said, well, we want to move it at a time that's convenient for you. And I said, well, I just got here. I'm going to make up in here. This is probably the perfect time to move it. And I came to the keys of my car.

I said, you can move my car at the same time. And he said, no, no, we want to move it at a time that's convenient for you. If this doesn't work. So I can see now Sally's on the set in her chair getting made up and she's looking at me and she can see the transpo guy talking to me. And he said, the transportation guy said, Sally got her knickers in a knot because we put mistakenly put her trailer in the number two position and her trailer should be in the number one position and this is all paul the politics of the call sheet and the bullshit because of that so i said well i don't care when you move it just move it whenever you like because i'm going to make up and then then if I have to walk over there...

So anyway, I see her looking at me during all this, and I thought, she's really nervous about this now. She thinks I'm going to carve her a new one. So I walk up to her, and she was in character on and off camera, and that kind of bugged me too.

Oh, Boris, Boris, please. I'm not trying to be the big star and just feel that you know because i'm an older woman i want to have my trailer closer to makeup hair and i said no no i'm glad they're moving my trailer sally because when i came out of it there's this like shit smell on the ground that made me sick and so that and she looks at me she goes oh great now that shit smell will be in front of my trailer and i said well you're the idiot that wants to move your trailer so okay this is she didn't even connect that i'd pulled up and not even got into my trailer. You know what I mean? This is how out of it she was. So the next day I get to the set,

and the trailer's hosing down the ground in front of her trailer. And he says, thanks a lot, Dave. We've been hosing the shit smell out of the front of this trailer. I just made that up, you know. And I said, well, you're the idiots who put her trailer in the wrong space. Don't blame me, you know? I don't know how you top this one.

Sorry, was there more? I'm sorry. I thought the story was over there. But should I ask the very final Emily question? Sure, go ahead. You played Scott Aukerman's adoptive father on the Comedy Bang Bang TV series that every time I watch those episodes, I can't help but feel you were channeling your inner Archie Bunker as that character.

Was there any influence there? Well, it wasn't Archie. It was just me. Like, anytime you get to play an asshole, it's just like a gift because that's the easiest thing to play, you know? And so they said to me, we need you to play Scott Ackerman's father, and he's kind of an asshole. And I said, I'm in because I know that's fun to play because I'll be getting to, you know,

take this sweet guy and basically, you know, carve him a new one every time I come on camera. So it was really fun for that reason. And that reason alone. And, and Emily, thank you for your fan support and thank you for you know all

the kind things you've said about me maybe a little too kind you know if there are people that don't think i'm anywhere near as good looking as you seem to including myself but god bless you anyway thanks phil uh says i've gotten the sense from recent interviews that you, that's you Dave, consider yourself retired from working in front of the camera. Is there any dream offer that would cause you to reconsider? Somebody you've

always wanted to work with but never got the chance or someone you'd work with again anytime if they ever asked you. Some character or story you'd consider unfinished business it's a good way to wrap up here the short answer is

no the detailed answer and the true answer is if I was offered a good part as a judge or a guy in a wheelchair or a guy in a hospital bed I would take it. I just don't want to be standing around sets.

I'm 72, and it's just like, give me a break, you know? I've done this, been there, done that. I started becoming a jerk on the set years ago when I was running, when it started to become less interesting to me and less fun. And I remember I did a show that I got paid a ton of money for, Beethoven's Fifth. And I did it for money. And I knew the producer.

And I said, I'm doing this for money. And I said, but I read the script. And this guy does a lot of running around around and I don't want to do that. So I'm not going to do it if I can't get a runner, somebody who will double for me anytime the guy has to run. And Mike says, yeah, that's not a problem. We'll get a guy who looks exactly like you and do the running. So I was writing a script with a writer friend of mine in my trailer while I was doing that show that shows you how invested I was in it.

And I remember they called me to the set and every time they knock on the door, Mr. Thomas, we're ready for you. You don't need, you don't, this is when you should quit. It's when that knock on the door from the AD makes you want to quit. And I, anyway, I go out there and the director says to me, okay, Dave, we had you run around down the hill here, and now you just need to run into the shot and here's your mark. And I said, I'm not going to do that.

He said, what do you mean? I said, I'm in my contract. I said, I will step into the shot. I will lean into the shot. But I'm not running into the shot. And my friend who I was writing the script with was watching all this. And the director says, but Dave, it's only a few feet. I said, I have it in my contract.

I will lean in or I will walk in, but I will not run. And he says, okay. So he says, we need an hour here to relight. Okay, everybody. So I went back to my trailer. As I'm walking back to my trailer, my friend Tim Hedrick says, you know, you should quit and I said why he said because you're becoming a complete I said you know what you're right and that was right about the time that I started that I took the job on Bones as a producer writer and then went to the Blacklist because it was like doing the writing.

I still love that, you know what I mean? Right. But being on camera just doesn't excite me. There just really isn't a role that I would like to do. And as I said, if I get to do it like sitting in a chair, okay, maybe. Now, what if Rick has an epiphany and he calls you up and says hey let's do like let's do a bob and doug thing like a movie or something would that get you i can say yes to that because it's so unlikely that rick would ever have an epiphany and call me

for that that i can say sure because it it would never happen. Remember, I'm recording this, Dave. Okay, so I will be honest, Dave. Sometimes I have these conversations with people I admire and respect like yourself. And then at the 45 minute mark, I get the impression that they kind of want to move on with their day and can you wrap it up? I never got that impression today. So I want to say thank you so much

for being so decent with your time because I took a good two hours from you. And on that note, I got a very interesting specific question from someone named Phil. And I told Phil, I said, Phil, I'm calling an audible on the line of scrimmage. I don't know what mood Dave's gonna be in

or how it goes, I said. But now I've made the decision to ask it because it's so specific. I feel like we could make Phil's life here. So let me read it. And this might require me emailing you later images so you can look at them. But we'll see. This is Phil.

Entirely personal to me. See attached images. I won this in a Toronto Star contest at the height of Mackenzie Brothers Mania. 1981 question mark. height of McKenzie Brothers Mania? 1981? I had always thought that given the autographs were of the characters and not of you and Rick, that the Doug autograph looks so odd that you guys didn't sign this, but that it was done by some junior promo lackey at Anthem. But recently, Rob Salem has told me he thought they were legit. And I've seen the Tonight Show appearance with your right

fist, your right wrist in a cast at around the same time. So now I'm thinking you guys signed this for real. Did you? So my question is maybe, did you ever sign in the character of Doug McKenzie? All the time. So do you think this was

you? You probably signed this then yeah i like if i sent you can you can you hold it up or you can't do that no i gotta i gotta flip this email i will flip this email to you because i can't hold it up but um yeah flip it to me because um it's i will know instantly if it's the one i did when i busted my finger as walter cronkite and um had my hand in a cast well here uh riveting riveting live uh recording but i'm so you're not in front of a computer right now right so i'm gonna flip yeah i'm in front of a computer okay so check your email dave thomas let me i have a have these goggles delaying in case I want to call it back. Okay, so now you should be getting something in the inbox from Toronto Mike.

And you're going to... I hope I forwarded it correctly here. You never know what's going to happen on a Toronto Mike episode here. Oh, yeah, it came through through I'm looking at it now I don't have it yet I'm clicking well maybe I'll just say well got it got it got it got it

wow alright let me see this so I'm looking at it too you're looking at it nice thinking eh Doug McKenzie Looking at it. Nice thinking, eh? Doug McKenzie. He's been wondering for how many years? When was 1981?

That was 41 years ago. He's been wondering if you actually signed this or not. Yeah. Okay, so first of all, that's Rick's writing for sure. That's a good sign. And that's my bad writing with the busted finger. Wow. So that is definitely legit.

That's a real thing. And you can email me this, guys. Well, you have it there because I forwarded you his email. All right, well, I I forwarded you his email. So his email is... All right. Well, I'm going to send... I'm going to get his info. I'm going to send him a picture.

Wow. Without the busted finger signature that he can add to his collection or whatever. Dave, where's your... If he's been thinking about it all this time and thinking that he got ripped off, that troubles me. Yeah. And I would like to reward him for being such a fan

and I'll send him a photo with the proper signature on it. For 41 years, he was waiting for you to come on some local podcast. And you did it, Dave. Dave, where's your Order of Canada? Hold on. I don't have the... And congrats,

by the way. I know you can't hear me now because you took off the headset, but congratulations to you. Dave is now looking at it. He's got a great bookshelf. I see like a skull, and there's so much activity here. I'm going to get a screen cap so you can see. Is that an Emmy? I guess he's

won Emmys and Grammys. Oh my goodness. Let's look in here. What has he won? Here it is. I've got two because I thought I threw one out. Oh, no.

I threw it out. You can't throw that out. So this is the pen that you put on. I don't have the other part yet because of COVID. Okay. People are using that excuse for everything now. Do you know what I mean? Well, congratulations, man.

They don't just hand those out like candies. That's a big deal. No, they hand them out like order of candidates, but, you know. Good for you. Yeah. Congratulations. Congratulations.

So, Dave, what are you up to these days? This is a book I wrote with Max Allen Collins. It's available on Amazon for the shockingly low price of $8.99. And it is a quantum mystery thriller. Now isn't that a mouthful?

And here's the logline of the little book. It's like 350 pages. It's not that little. A small-time thief from South Boston named Jimmy Layton is on the run from a Vietnamese drug lord. He owes him 5,000 bucks. And the drug lord's going to kill him if he catches him. So he takes a trip across the river to Cambridge. And he gets a Harvard sweatshirt,

tries to blend in with the students. But he's a second-story man. That's his thing. He steals. So he breaks into a house to get some cash because he's got no cash. And he sees the basement is locked. He opens up the basement. He goes downstairs, and he sees all this scientific equipment. Well, what he doesn't know is that there's a quantum experiment going on down in the basement, and he connects this cable from this gizmo to this quantum battery, and the next thing he knows, it becomes a steering wheel in his hands in Chicago,

a thousand miles away in another version of his life. And we are playing here with what's called the many worlds theory that was proposed by Hugh Everett III in the 50s. And the concept of Hugh Everett's theory behind his theory, which is a little like the Big Bang Theory, which was just a theory until it was proved by the Hubble Telescope, or the Hubble Telescope, as I call it. Hubble telescope, or the Hubble telescope, as I call it. And anyway, the basis of his theory is for every binary choice in life, every A-B

choice, you can turn left at an intersection or turn right. The realized choice becomes your reality. The unrealized choice, or the road not taken, still exists, according to this guy, that all the choices that you made as a result of that right turn that you didn't make exist in

another reality and another universe. And as we move through life, making all these choices, our multiple universes are branching off into other universes. So this is a story about a guy who ends up hopping from one version of his life to another. In one version, he's the small-time thief. That's the baseline version. He then hops to one where he's a slightly richer version of himself in Chicago. In another one where he's a soldier in Afghanistan. In another one where he's a priest. In another one where he's a slightly richer version of himself in Chicago, in another one where he's a soldier in Afghanistan, in another one where he's a priest, in another one where he's a boxer. They're all choices that he could have made

from his baseline reality. In other words, he doesn't get to be the king or president of Argentina. They're all choices that a little orphan from South Boston might've made, but there were different versions of his life. And all the people that he knows are different versions of themselves, playing out different realities. And so there are two cops investigating. When he connects these two things together in the basement of this physics professor in Cambridge, he gets shot in the head simultaneously with that.

And he doesn't die. Hi, who's this? This is my boy Jervis. Jervis, say hi to Dave. Hi. And hold on, there's one more. I have four kids. Hi.

All right, hold on. Hi. Okay. Hi, you're the energetic one. That's little Morgan. Guys, two more minutes. I know, but I'm... Okay, what is it?

Quickly. Oh, let me just show my friend Dave here real quick. Jarvis just made that, and he's... That is fantastic. Dave said it's fantastic. Alligator in a tree or crocodile in a tree? Can I come up and see you in two minutes? I made a scene with a little bunny a tree? Can I come up and see you in two minutes? I made a scene with a little bunny.

I'm going to come up and see you in two minutes, okay? Love you. Give me two more minutes. Almost done. Night, Morgan. No, you can't stay. Honestly, we're literally two minutes. My mind's being blown here.

Two minutes. I love you very much. Oh, they love me too. Isn't that nice? Okay. Sorry, Dave. anyway yeah go on i think you should keep that i don't think that's oh i don't edit anything don't worry i these two cops at the same time that he connects these things he gets shot in the head by he broke into somebody's house somebody shot him these two cops find this guy

he's not dead, he's in a coma which is why he's hopping from one version of his life to another and not staying there and these two cops are trying to investigate who shot Jimmy Layton on a parallel story with Jimmy hopping from one version of his life

to another what's the name of this book again? I know you said it. It's called The Many Lives of Jimmy Layton. The Many Lives of Jimmy Layton. $8.99 on Amazon. Well, that's a deal at twice the price. I almost said a deal at half the price.

That's him getting loopy here. We're all playing checkers and you, Dave Thomas, are playing chess. Okay. Everyone buy Dave's book. It's mind-bendingly fascinating. Well done. And review it too because nobody counts a buy as a buy

unless you review it. And I'm ready for the truth. So if you give it a rotten review, I will accept that like a man. If you give it a good review, I'll accept that like a woman, like the lady that I am. I don't know.

Whatever. I just didn't plan that sentence out before I started. Probably should have. And again, I'm going to say thank you, and then I'm going to wrap up the recording, and then we're going to take a screen capture together. But seriously, from the bottom of my heart, and on behalf of this city of Toronto that misses you,

thank you for all this time and for answering all my annoying questions. Well, it was a pleasure to be on your show. Thank you for having me and God bless Toronto. I miss it. And that brings us to the end of our

1040th show you can follow me on twitter I'm at Toronto Mike Dave is at The Dave Thomas our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta

Sticker U is at Sticker U. Ridley Funeral Home are at Ridley FH. And Canna Cabana are at Canna Cabana underscore. See you all next week. Well, I want to take a streetcar downtown Read Andrew Miller and wander around Thank you. Ah, where you been? Because everything is kind of rosy and green Yeah, the wind is cold, but the snow won't speed the day And your smile is fine, and it's just like mine

And it won't go away Because everything is rosy and green Cause everything is rose and green Well you've been under my skin for more than eight years It's been eight years of laughter and eight years of tears And I don't know what the future can hold or do For me and you But I'm a much better man for having known you Oh, you know that's true because

Everything is coming up rosy and green Yeah, the wind is cold but the smell of snow Won't speed a day And your smile is fine And it's just like mine And it won't go away Cause everything is Rosy and great Well I've been told

That there's a sucker born Every day But I wonder who Yeah I wonder who Yeah, I wonder who Maybe the one who doesn't realize There's a thousand shades of grey Cause I know that's true Yes, I do

I know it's true, yeah I know it's true How about you? Are they picking up trash and they're putting down roads And they're brokering stocks, the class struggle explodes And I'll play this guitar just the best that I can Maybe I'm not and maybe I am But who gives a damn

Because everything is coming up Rosy and gray Yeah, the wind is cold But the smell of snow Warms me today And your smile is fine And it's just like mine And it won't go away

Because everything is rosy and gray And your smile is fine and it's just like mine and it won't go away. Cause everything is rosy and gray. Well, I've kissed you in France and I've kissed you in Spain. And I've kissed you in places I better not name. And I've seen the sun go down on Chaclacour. I don't know. and gray Yeah the wind is cold but the smell of snow warms us today And your smile is fine and it's just like mine and it won't go away

Cause everything is rosy now Everything is rosy Yeah everything is rosy and gray Yeah Everything is rosy and gray