#200 SCTV, Strange Brew, and Jimmy Leighton: A Conversation with Comedy Icon Dave Thomas

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All right, Catherine, thank you so much for that amazing introduction. You get the show going each and every week and this week is super special. Welcome, everybody to Episode 200 of classic conversations. As always, I'm your host, Jeff Dwoskin, bringing you the classic guest of conversations and for episode 200. We have pulled out all the stops. We're going full comedic icon from SCTV strange brew.

That's right, Doug McKenzie himself. Dave Thomas is here to help us celebrate 200 Amazing episodes, and this episode is jam packed with so many stories. I'm so excited to share this interview with you Dave Thomas, and I dive deep into his career SCTV and so much more. You are gonna love this. I am going to get to it right now. Coming a you straight from the great white north. Dave Thomas. Enjoy. All right, my next guest, actor, comedian, Director, author, writer loved him on SCTV strange brew grace on their fire, the new show, author of the book, the many lies of Jimmy Layton, everybody welcome to the show the legend himself, Dave Thomas, welcome to the show. Thanks. Pleasure to be here. Dave. So excited to talk to you. It's, it's always a thrill to talk to someone who I've always kind of been there my whole life. And I've just I've always been a huge fan. So thank you for spending some time with me.

Dave Thomas 2:08

I'm like the queen, Great Britain who just died unfortunately at 96. I've been around a long time.

Jeff Dwoskin 2:14

You are royalty.

Dave Thomas 2:17

I don't know about royalty, but old for sure.

Jeff Dwoskin 2:20

Let's talk about your book real quick. The many lives of Jimmy Layton.

Dave Thomas 2:24

So available on Amazon, I wrote this. It's a quantum mystery. I wrote it with Max Allan Collins grow Road to Perdition. And he's a very famous novelist. It came about purely coincidental. It was an idea that I had, I had written three chapters, Max asked to read them. And when he read them, he said, I want I would like to work with you on this book. And that was a no brainer for me because he was an accomplished novelist. And I had never written a single novel. So it was win win for me. So we wrote it during COVID. On zoom, it came out. It's on Amazon, and I think it's a fun read. Hi, here's the walk the thumbnail of it. A petty thief from South Boston named Jimmy Layton is on the run from a Vietnamese drug lord, he owes 5000 bucks goes across the river to Harvard gets a Harvard sweatshirt tries to blend in with the student crowd. But he needs money by occupation. He's a second story, man. So he breaks into a house but he breaks into the wrong house. It's the house of a physics professor who's doing a quantum experiment in his basement. And Jimmy puts the two cables connecting quantum batteries together. And they become the steering wheel of a car in Chicago, 1000 miles away, and a different version of his life. And then Jimmy starts hopping around from one version of his life to another trying to get back. And simultaneously, the cops find his body while he's still alive, doing in a coma. But the cops find him in there. He's been shot in the head in the basement of this physicist and they are trying to trace it back through the world of sort of academic physics and why would somebody shoot this guy? And what's the deal? And so those two stories have to converge by the end of the book.

Jeff Dwoskin 4:13

That book sounds amazing.

Dave Thomas 4:15

It's different. That's for sure.

Jeff Dwoskin 4:16

It's funny. You mentioned this is your first novel right and it's easy to be king of doing things well right out of the gate like about what I know about you right? So you got to tell you got into advertising you wrote some ads you guys advertising strange brew, we need director directed all great outcomes, you know, everything you seem to touch turns to gold. I was

Dave Thomas 4:39

better at it when I was younger. But, you know, I still want to do it. I still want to work. I still have ideas rattling around in my brain that I have to put down on paper and hopefully sell get somebody to finance that's the hard part. Just getting somebody behind it. Oh god. Yeah, yeah, it's a different world. out there today very difficult.

Jeff Dwoskin 5:01

Let's talk about one of your other big ones, which are the mutants of 2051. Ad. Okay. So 10 years after World War four, this is not many lives is not your first first four, right?

Dave Thomas 5:13

Yeah, that was the beginning of this sort of the beginning of strange group. And what I personally loved about that little sci fi was that we were showing Bob and Doug, the characters were showing their movie in a theater, and then to disrupt their own movie. And originally it was BS, it became moths, but they release moths in the theater that freaks out the audience and causes the audience to stampede out. And they destroy the premiere of their own movie. I thought that was a good way to begin a film.

Jeff Dwoskin 5:48

I thought it was a great way to begin to film I rewatched it recently. I mean, I can't even remember the amount of times I've watched strange brew, which is one of those. I think growing up it was just it was always on also, it was just I mean, I can't the one thing that kind of always stuck in my head was Rick Bob, after drinking all the beer. putting out the fire. Yeah, that was too fun. My

Dave Thomas 6:11

favorite line in the movie is in the court room where Paul Dooley is being cross examined, and he refers to a videotape of Bob and Doug and it's actually maximum Encino and Paul Dooley, dressed up in the tubes and Parker's is Bob and Doug. And he says, you'll know on the video that clearly shows Bob and Doug as the as the shooters, that there's a timecode on there. And timecode is very hard to fake. And the judge says for the benefit of the court, will you please explain what timecode is. And Paul Dooley kind of leans back and glazes over and he says, Well, just because I don't know what it is doesn't mean on line. I love that line. It was so proud of that stupid, stupid line.

Jeff Dwoskin 6:59

That was hilarious. And then the cuts to the cuts to max Vaughn to reacting to that. I remember when I was just rewatching it one of the things, you get a nosebleed and you shove these things up your nose to stop it. And the reason I thought that was funny is because that's what I do. That's when I get nosebleeds. That's literally how I have to stop a nosebleed. I jam it up, I just have to walk around. It's like I get the worst nosebleeds. I'm sitting every watching and I'm like, oh my god,

Dave Thomas 7:28

well, I'll tell you that this is a behind the scenes story about that. The joke was that I sneeze and the bullet shoot out of my nose, and then ricochet around the corner. So that's the joke. And I say to the special effects that we had the worst special effects guy. And I sent this special fix guy this big. It was a big metal microphone in front of me one of the old RCA mics from the radio days. And I said, when I Spees where's that microphone gonna go? I noticed you were squinting various parts around the room, you put the squibs there. And he said, This is the stunt coordinator to special effects coordinator to the actor. And he says, well, that microphone is going to go down. I said, Well, it has to go down. Because when I steez I'm going to be doing what everyone does, when they cease, my head's going to go forward like that. So my head is going to be going down and he said, There is no way that microphone is coming up. It's set to go, it will go down and away from you. I said okay, so we do the tape, I blow the things out of my nose, the squibs go off, and the microphone comes right up, hits me in the forehead and knocks me out. That's the kind of stuff that happen on that set all the time. And that's why actors get hurt. You know, they get hurt doing shows, because, you know, the director will say, Oh, it's just, you're just gonna do the roll in after that stunt guy I'll do up and then you just do the roll in. And the reality of it is sometimes the roll ins can be really tough.

Jeff Dwoskin 9:01

You never know. You know, everything can be dangerous. So you wouldn't think about it. But yeah, you're right.

Dave Thomas 9:07

Here's another example that when I was doing boris and Natasha, there was a joke where Sally Keller and I went run up the stairs and there's a guy we're chasing guy, and then he dives he goes out the window and gives an affair on a on a fire escape and he's got a substantial lead on it. So she looks out the window. Natasha says we should open doors, you're never going to get him down. I said, I gotta cover and I just literally jump out the window and fall like eight storeys on the pavement, and then get up and go after the guy. Well, there was supposed to be a, like a fire escape facade of the building at ground level. So I would be jumping off the fire escape, basically about a foot below where I was. So when I get to the SAT that day, I'm looking at the SAT and ice See, there's a scissor lift, a big one goes up about six or eight storeys, and there's an airbag on the top of the platform on the top of the scissor lift. And I looked at that, and I said that the director, Charlie Martin Smith, I said, What the fuck is that for? Because I have no clue. He said, well, to think facade didn't arrive. So what we're hoping is that you'll just jump out the window of that building on to the scissor lift. And I said, I'm never going that into your mind. I said, What if I can't do a foot on the on the window and then just fall eight stories to my death? You know, he said, Well, we're gonna have guys there. And I said, yeah, anyway, after a lot of pressure and cajoling and everything, I felt like, Okay, I'll do it. So I jump out the window. And then it was an airbag, and I jumped out and then bounced back up into frame. So I go through frame and then come back up into frame. And Charlie said, we got the airbag too high. We need to do it again. I said, Forget it. I'm not doing it again. I said, you just got to cut out of there fast and cut out before I bounce back up into frame and go to your next shot. So it's

Jeff Dwoskin 11:15

a cartoon of a live action cartoon of course, you're supposed to bounce back into the frame. That's hilarious. So I was doing some research on strange brew was Yeah, was there an originally a sequel? Not I know, you did eventually the animated then off a sequel combo.

Dave Thomas 11:33

Yeah, yeah. And I got I lost a lot of money in that, because I finance pre production. And then this, our producing partners were supposed to get financing for the film, literally three days before principal photography, no, two days, the Friday before we're supposed to start shooting on the Monday, I get a call and the money's fallen through, they got no money. And I have to shut the whole thing down. And I've already paid like 750,000 close to a million bucks in pre production costs myself. And I say guys, come on, you got to come up with this book. And they two of them were lawyers, and I called my lawyer. And because we had all the paperwork and everything he said, Yeah, he said, This is as close to criminal as you can get. But we're never gonna make criminals think stick. So I just shut anything down. sets were built, cast was in rehearsed, all ready to go on Monday, I had to tell everybody to go home. That was pretty terrible. That was not a fun weekend for me. And I came home. I remember getting off the plane, just depressed as hell. And my wife beats me. And I said, we might have to sell the house. And she said, I don't care. She said, all the things we like to do. don't cost anything anyway. Don't worry about it. And she's let's just go grab somebody out of this guy luck out and find a woman like that. So bad luck. You know, in the showbiz portion of my life. Good luck in the personal portion.

Jeff Dwoskin 13:07

Yeah, wife sounds like an angel. Yeah, she is still sorry to bring that up.

Dave Thomas 13:12

No, that's fine. But I mean, it was, it was an interesting idea. Dan Ackroyd was in the cast. And we got a good cast of really good Canadian actors. And the characters that appeared in the animated show, were actually characters that were part of that script, we had to create a reality for Bob. And because Bob and Dave only appeared on their set, as two characters doing presentational stuff, directly camera, what goes on in the background we had, so we had to create a whole reality for them. Like, why did they live together? Are they gay? And are their parents still alive? Do they live in the family house? Do they have any brothers or sisters? Do they have any family members? So we had to create all that reality for the movie? And then that became the starting point of creating the reality for the animated show.

Jeff Dwoskin 14:03

Okay, so the plot of them becoming garbage man and stuff like that was meant originally meant for homebrew. And then that became Yeah,

Dave Thomas 14:09

that's right. I thought it was a good idea for them to have jobs where they would pick up trash and find things that they thought were valuable, and that their whole house was furnished with trash, you know, with stuff that they repaired or cobbled together or pulled out of the trash that other people didn't want.

Jeff Dwoskin 14:29

And Dave Coulier, a local guy for me,

Dave Thomas 14:32

he did the voice of Bob, because Rick didn't do it.

Jeff Dwoskin 14:36

Alright, well, at least at least you were able to use the Homebrew concept for that animated feature. So that's pretty cool. Yeah. Sorry to interrupt, but we have to take a quick break. I want to thank everyone for their support of the sponsors. When you support the sponsors. You're supporting us here at Classic conversations. And that's how we keep the lights on. And now we're back to my spectacular conversation with Dave Thomas. We're still Talk about strange brew and landing Mel Blanc as the voice of Bob and Doug McKenzie is father and we're back. Let's see. So Mel Blanc. He was your father.

Dave Thomas 15:10

Yeah, he was the voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, this amazing guy from the 40s. But we're American radio. And he was one of my, I idolize that guy. I thought his voice was just amazing. So when we created the character of our parents, I had this idea for a shot of him just watch a TV. And then I thought, Well, really, we're not gonna see lip flap. So it could be anyone's voice. Then it occurred to me that it be Mel Blanc. And then when we got him to do it, that was great. Except his rate back then, was pretty pricey. This is a 1981. Mel's rate was $10,000 an hour. Wow. So the producer, guy by the name of Jack Grossberg went to the president of MGM frating fields and said, Yeah, we got Mel Blanc for this. And and president of MGM said, he said 10,000 an hour. That's his rate. He said on paying 10,000 an hour to anybody, get somebody else to do the boys. And by now I was I had in my head that we had to have mill. So I said to Jack, we got to get Mel. Jack said don't worry. I'll take care of it. How are you going to take care of it? The head of the studio just said that he won't pay 10,000 an hour. So Jack says, I'm going to tell him that we need Mel for three hours. And I'm getting a deal. We're gonna get him for three hours for 10,000. Do you think you can get him in and out in an hour? I sit? Yeah. Yeah, he only has like four lines or something like that. So Jackson, right. So then we got Mel Blanc. And Jack went to the studio to president's studio and he said, I got a deal on Mel Blanc. He said, I told you an idea. And he said, Hey, I got him to cut his rate to 1/3. The President's genius at all? Okay, that's good. That's good. That's a deal. All right. Good work. Dave Thomas, deal maker. Well, it was actually the producer that made the deal. But but I got the value out of it.

Jeff Dwoskin 17:19

I read that all the major breweries wanted to sponsor you. But your the joke about the mouse in the bottle, ended up getting them to not want to be connected to the film that sound right.

Dave Thomas 17:32

Absolutely. Right. In the I should have known this too. Because I was a copywriter for Coca Cola and the brewing and the bottling business, they call a rodent in a bottle, a passenger that's one of those kind of trade euphemisms, like airlines calling a mid air collision, a conflict. You know, we're friendly fire. People are like literally vaporized out of existence. Like they were never here. That's a little more than a conflict. So they don't like passengers in the in the bottling in the brewing business. So there's you got to take that out. And I was like, No, that's a big joke. We're not taking that out. So in Canada, they controlled not just the breweries, but also the beer stores where you buy your beer and candy, you can at that time you couldn't buy your beer in the supermarket. You can now candy was still a Scottish Nazi Empire back then. And you had to buy your beer at a beer store. And the beer stores were all owned by the large breweries. So they shot us out of the beer store too. So we not only couldn't use a brewery, we couldn't use a beer store. And then ironically, it was like 10 years later. 15 years later, they hire Rick and me to launch Molson ins in the US. But it wasn't the the Canadian brewers. It was Miller. It was the president of Miller Brewing in the state, who had got the rights to bottle and release Molson in the US. He said, he wanted to use the Mackenzie brothers. That's how we got. So they was like, you know, shut out in 1982 brought back in in 1998.

Jeff Dwoskin 19:17

They gotta time heals all wounds. They I read that A is 174 times. And it's strange, bro. Question, though, is, is that how many times it appears in the script? Or was everyone just free to use it as well? Yeah, well,

Dave Thomas 19:32

oh, I don't know. I never counted that. I didn't hear that. It's 174. Is it?

Jeff Dwoskin 19:37

Yeah, it's what I read. And then but my question, my question is, is it in the script, or is that just a Canadian thing you add on you just Well, Dad.

Dave Thomas 19:46

Let me put it this way. Some of them would have been in the script, but not 174. That's for sure. Because there was some improv there to a so we would have done improv on herself.

Jeff Dwoskin 19:59

Never bad. Time for an A. Oh, so you mentioned you a Coca Cola writer for that was for McCann Erickson. Yeah. Interestingly, so you went, you went to college with Eugene Levy and Martin Short, right? And then they got you into Godspell or they convinced you to audition and become part of Godspell, which had a ridiculous ly talented cast. Eugene Levy, Martin Short, Gilda Radner. Andrea Martin Paul Shaffer, musical director,

Dave Thomas 20:25

Victor Garber,

Jeff Dwoskin 20:26

Volga Victor Barbara. Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah. So from there now, is this where you kind of got the bug where you wanted to kind of act? And

Dave Thomas 20:35

oh, yeah, well, after Godspell, I couldn't get another job as an actor. And I wasn't going to be a waiter that told everyone he's an actor. So I tried for a couple of months to get a gig. And I didn't. And then I thought, Well, screw this, I'd been handed her the student paper. And there was a little it had a little publishing setup. So I went back to the student paper, and I wrote up and printed up some fake ads, I just got pictures out of magazines, and then made up a product and copy for it. And then I did some fake TV scripts, and some fake radio scripts, but all packaged together. And then back then we had yellow pages, no internet, I just went through the Yellow Pages, calling every ad agency and setting up meetings with the creative directors got a lot of doors slammed in my face, because they went through everything until I got to the AMS at McCann, Erickson. And then I got hired. So at first, they put me on the Coca Cola account, which I thought was kind of cool until I found out what I was going to be doing, which is the retail print ads, which is probably one of the shittiest jobs in advertising, because it's all on sale this week, you know, two for one things like yeah, it's just terrible, terrible, and not good for writing at all. But one of the things I had to do in that retail writing job for Coca Cola was a contest called capital caps. And the premise of the contest was they had people would pop a bottle of pump the cap off a bottle of Coke, cool, peel it back, and then there'd be you won $10,000 Recently underneath the so it was a promotion. So I had to write a spot for it. And Coca Cola is a very litigious company, especially for off brand stuff like a contest, they gave me 20 and a half seconds of legal copy for a 32nd spot, which is just like, thanks a lot. So I remember this bit that Don Knotts used to do on The Tonight Show, a weatherman with a bunch of charts that he pulled down breakaway pointers and things like that. And the premise was that the sheer volume of what he had to tell was too complicated for him to be able to do it. And that was a similar problem that I had, where I had 28 and a half seconds of legal copy that somebody had to get through. So I made that the joke and I had charts and breakaway pointers and things like that. I pitched it to the creative director can you said, now, we can't send this script to Coco. They're not gonna know how to read it. They'll never do it. He's a you have to go out there and pitch it to them live. And if they see you pitching it, they'll think it's funny, then that's it. Okay. So I went up to Coke, and I pitched it. And then the president of Coca Cola Canada said, Who do you want to be in this? And I said, Tim Conway, just thinking, sure, like, as a dream, he would be a fabulous guy. Well, within two weeks, I was on a plane to LA to shoot this spot with Tim Conway. And Tim did such a funny job on it, that it won awards, and it was looking at the promotion was a huge success. Then Coke Cola said Tim McCann fire the head writer of coke all the candidate and make this guy, the head writer. So now, I'm only in advertising for three months. So I'm now the head writer of Coca Cola, Canada. And so they were doing their own lifestyle spots den, which is kind of advertising Coca Cola does the unobtrusive placement of the bottle in Thanksgiving dinner scenes and things like that. People will associate it with good times. Anyway, I did a couple of those bonds and the president of the can in New York. So one of my spots, and he said, like that's fun. Get that guy down here. I want to give them a couple things to do. So now I'm in New York, and their offices weren't on Madison Avenue. They were on Lexington. I remember this office. It was just palatial. It was these beautiful rugs at grand piano and everything. And there's this little guy in a gray suit with a string tie like, like a young Colonel Sanders. And this is Bill Bakker, the creative director of McCann Erickson worldwide, and he's the big guy for Coca Cola. He wrote, I want to teach the world to sing that mountain top commercial chair with the kids. And he came up with the slogans things go better with coke. It's the real thing coax, this guy is a legend, but I'm sitting in his office, and I don't know what to say he starts quoting Shakespeare. Why is only a year out of college? And I, I was Shakespeare was one of my majors when I did the master's degree. So I thought, okay, he's quoting Shakespeare, I can quote you. So I started quoting Shakespeare back to, well, he loved it. That was just, suddenly I was his golden boy, because I keep quoting Shakespeare. So he says to me, Do you know how to write a jingle? And have you ever written a jingle? So he said, in advertising, you don't say no. Because then you're out. So I see. Yeah, sure. I've seen a lot of genius. He's there. I rang me a jingle. Keep it light and fun and up, just kind of a bunch of kids drink Coke Cola to think of something fun for that. So I came up with a fun jingle. And he loved it. He got Billy Davis who was like a serious musician. He was part of Marilyn McCoo. And Billy Davis when I told Paul Shaffer that Billy Davis was right in the music from my McKenzie. Oh, Paul flipped out. He said, Holy shit. How did you get to work with Billy Davis. So then, the spot wins a Clio, which is the American the sort of Oscars of advertising, but Bill banker takes all the credit for just said he wrote it. My name never came up once. But you know, I was doing pretty good. And I kept asking for raises and getting them. So then I heard about tickets at I heard they were opening Second City in Toronto, and I went up to check it out. And it was great. It was like one I really wanted to do. But they already had a cast. So I missed the first shot at it. But then I saw him back in New York doing another spot for Bill backer, then I get a call from Eugene Levy. And he says they're changing the cast. Here's a couple openings. You gotta get up here. In addition right away Agena got me into Godspell to while Eugene and Marty but mostly Eugene, and now you James, get me into Second City. So I go down I edition and I got in. Now I'm in second city on the stage show with Dan Ackroyd. Gilda Radner and John Candy. Andrea Martin. It was just amazing. And then they left some of them left Gilda and Danny left for SNL. That was back in 75. Bernie songs, the guy who ran second city said, let's do our own show. And I remember saying, well, there already is a sketch comedy show in late night. It's a huge hit. What do you want to do, like, create a low budget failure of a show to supposedly compete go head to head with SNL and he goes, see when was and so they launched SCTV. And the early shows, I think the budget for the early shows was $7,000 a show? That's everything. That's all the accurate all the scripts, props, the sets the makeup, the hair 7000 I mean, that makes sort of internet indie stuff looks like high rollers, you know, so Oh, my

Jeff Dwoskin 28:03

God. Yeah. 7000 it's not I mean, it's it's apparently lunch.

Dave Thomas 28:09

And we had Harold Ramis for our head writer. And Harold said, no, no, we we can make this work for ourselves. We'll just make the sort of cheapness and low budget nature of this something is the charm of the show. So and he was right. That actually did work.

Jeff Dwoskin 28:25

That's what I remember. I lean into it and fictitious TV network, just yeah, just trying to make it work. So this original cat, the original cast of SCTV Well, first let me let me ask you when just doing Second City, Toronto, how long did you get to work with Ackroyd and Gilda before they went to SNL? Probably I

Dave Thomas 28:46

was on stage six nights a week, two shows Friday to show Saturday and improvising after all the shows about six months, maybe nine months with Dan, before we went to SNL. And then Dan was a real entrepreneur. And when he found out that I was from advertising, he said, David, can you write retail spots? Because, you know, I did a performance for one of them. And these guys, Edie stereos loved me him, you know? And I said, Yeah, I said, Sure. And he said, Oh, how much can we get for that? And I said, Well, there's a guy going around right now as a sort of a special comedy guy selling his stuff. And he doesn't have the credit that we have in comedy. And he gets 1000 bucks as fun dad said, all great, great, great. Let's do that. Let's so we're making 145 a week in the stage show, and 1000 bucks a spot for a radio spot plus the union stuff if we get to perform. That was really good. So Danny and I started writing spots for advertising and then we got to then we got hired to write for a kid show for CBC and a couple other writing gigs, but we started writing together. So we did Second City State show at night and then wrote during the day And then we wrote a sci fi story together that we started before he left for SNL. And then I remember when he was doing SNL, he said, I got a week off the shows down for a week. He said, Can you meet me in Dallas? And I said, Sure. And he said, because they this was a UFO movie that we were writing. And Dan said, the level and lights just north of Dallas, near Lubbock, Texas is there's a people up there that have seen UFOs we got to go there and talk to them. Alright, let's do it. So I met him in Dallas. We took a flight to Lubbock went into car then went over to level and we started writing this and he had to be in Houston by the end of the week to do a show for SNL, like a pre taped thing. And so we drove all the way through Texas talking to people who claimed that they'd seen UFOs. And we wrote a script that almost gotten made. We had a director, like a real direct Phil Alden Robinson attached as a director. And it almost got me in the studio found out Spielberg was doing close encounters. That was it, we were dead, killed it. But Danny and I developed this sort of writing chemistry together. And then a couple of years later, I was writing, I've written some movies, but this time, either a movie for universal, and I got a call from Dan. And he said, I want you to help me with this movie. I sold him this thing called Spies Like Us, and it's about spies. And he said, You're the perfect guy to write it with. I said, Well, I'm on a movie right now. And he said, What studio and I said University, he said, we can get you off that I bet. So I said, Okay, so I get a call from Sean Daniel, who's the Executive, VP and universal and he says, Dan wants you to work on this movie with him. And I'm work Meanwhile, I'm working on a script for Joel Silver, the famed Hollywood producer that did predator 14 hours, did a bunch of big movies. And Joe's pissed off that I'm going to be leaving his film now to work with down. And then this day, I got into an argument with the studio about money because I want a lot of money for that is like, if you're moving the off one picture to another picture, that's a big deal, I should be able to get paid a lot of money for then it just seemed like that was fair. Seems reasonable. And they didn't want to do that. And so I held them up. You know, I remember walking in the backlog on the western town with Sean Daniel arguing with him about money. I got it. And then when Dan and I started the script, Danny had a steamer trunk full of books, or books about Central Asia, US missile capability, Soviet missile capabilities, Soviet mobile launchers, satellite technology, things like that. They're all very technical, and but all sorts of Cold War books that were leading edge. A lot of them were sort of government publications, and Dan pointed this trumpet. He said, David, we got to read every one of these books before we put pen to paper. And I Alright, let's do it. So that was the job. I love Dan. And I've written with him periodically over the years and done stuff with him. He's got Dan's got contacts in the CIA. And I've done stuff with him and some of the CIA buddies. And he's always been an interesting guy to hang out with, because there's always something going on. You know, he seems

Jeff Dwoskin 33:23

like it'd be an interesting guy was it was it hard for him and Gilda to leave to go to SNL? I mean, now with hindsight, we know those five years or so classic.

Dave Thomas 33:32

Yeah. Danny was Danny was very ambivalent about it. He was very conflicted. And it was blue. She that talked him into it. I remember the phrase blue, she said to Dan, Dan, Dan, forget, forget the provinces. You're in Ontario in Toronto doing a little comedy show come to Rome, come to Rome come to town. He wanted Danny to come to the Coliseum, which was really, I thought a very fitting and appropriate metaphor for NBC at 30 Rock Center. And at that time, you know, so Dan finally went and Gilda went right away. But Danny, Danny was conflicted about

Jeff Dwoskin 34:09

when you started focusing on SCTV, who became your new riding partners now that Dan was gone.

Dave Thomas 34:16

Joe Flaherty and I worked a lot together for the first two seasons. And we wrote a couple of things that I thought were really groundbreaking, the new and different type of sketches. We did a fantasy island parody that had Fantasy Island, Casablanca road to Morocco, and the Wizard of Oz, all as sort of reference threads weaved throughout the sketch, and it moved from the landscape, one of those movies to the other. And that had never been done in Sketch before, not in show shows or laughing are any so I thought I thought that was really exciting and fun. Then in the third season of the show, Rick Moran has joined the show, and then he became my writing partner because we just were so prolific together, Rick came in with a million ideas. He was very fast, very smart and just wrote like a, like a robot. You know, he just got so much stuff out. We did this parody of Bob Hope and Woody Allen called Play it again. And we basically improvise that into a tape recorder and we transcribed it when secondaries tape it up. But we actually what was on TV was pretty close to what we originally improvised together. And we started doing Duo's like that, you know, hope and Woody Allen then we did Cronkite and Brinkley a bunch of times, then we did other care. We did some historical characters like Shakespeare and bacon shaken bake was our content. That is my concept of Shakespeare because I'd done major, you know, and I majored that for my masters and I an English Lit. And the Shakespeare was to me, he wrote for the people of his time, he worked for the Groundlings. And I always had this image that Shakespeare was this just a sweating weasel scribbling backstage and handing pages to actors just before they were about to go on that it was that fast, and not at all the sort of literary way that we study it and marvel at the images and things like that people talk like that. Back then. There was a different time very sort of floral language, very Elizabeth and people had classical educations and could speak. Many of them could speak Latin, new references, things like that. So things that we consider unimaginable as writers and we study the literature and revere it. It's like, what if he was just writing it fast for actors and throwing it and you know, Sir Francis, Sir Francis, bacon got a lot of scholars believe he might have actually written to Shakespeare plays. So the idea of him working with Francis Bacon, I thought was hilarious. So Rick was Francis Bacon, and I was Shakespeare, and I played Shakespeare as a weasel. Right and just stuck back. So we're doing Hamlet, and they're gone that the audience is booing and screaming. And that's it, get them to do the murder of Gonzaga. That's the play within the plane handling that will keep them busy for a while till I finished the scene. So it's just taking the sort of literary stuff and having fun with it. And we did the same thing. Rick and I did conflict and Brinkley we did a version of murder in the cathedral with the mercury three players and the mercury players were like a repertory company. But we thought it'd be funny if the mercury three players were astronauts in spacesuits and murder in the cathedral, this classic British play was being reenacted by a bunch of astronauts in zero gravity in spacesuits. And so I was guiding the audience through the play as Walter Cronkite. And Rick was out in the lobby as Brinkley interviewing. The people who got bored with the plane came out to get drunk, which included Joe is Tom Wolfe and Catherine is Katharine Hepburn. I forget who else but it was like really weird, fun stuff. And getting to write with people that were smart, wrote smart stuff. And just, it was so much fun.

Jeff Dwoskin 38:14

Sorry to interrupt, but we have to take a quick break. And we're back with Dave Thomas. It's incredible. When you look back when I was kind of researching SCTV. Again, growing up, I probably did not watch episodes in order. So it never occurred to me that you know, John Candy wasn't in the show in a season or something like that, like because they would just be out of order. So it was like maybe I just didn't notice one particular cast member wasn't in a particular show, but then they'd be in the next episode. I mean, so yeah, that first season with Harold Ramis is head writer, the cast John Candy Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Catherine O'Hara, Harold Ramis, and Dave Thomas you. I mean, that's an insane level of talent, that couple of them have passed away. But I mean, there have continued to be massive. I mean, to this day, right. I mean, it's just like, it's crazy. When you think about it. Yeah.

Dave Thomas 39:05

I knew these were smart, funny people. I mean, you know, and it's weird that they all sort of collected in Toronto, of all places in the mid 70s. Because I don't know. I mean, there was there was a real kind of a meaning of Second City National Lampoon. And Godspell, it was like those three shows kind of converged. And people that were in those shows had similar sensibilities. And, you know, I mean, when I was in Godspell, I met Paul Shaffer, Paul's incredibly funny and incredibly sharp. He's got a photographic memory and an unbelievable comedy reference, and he can pull up stuff like nobody's business and where music was a necessary ingredient. He could get on the piano, we improvised. It was just amazing. So he was the musical director of Godspell, but he became Aren't of this of the group of friends that all appreciated each other's comedy. Marty and Eugene and I used to have what Marty called Friday night services, which were like a bar. He was taking a shot at. Eugene being Jewish is like, so it's tomorrow is the Sabbath. We're gonna have Friday night services, but the premise of the Friday night services was just to make each other laugh. And why did you steal his tapes, like audio tapes from some of those Friday night services, and we just laughed our heads off. And you know, we would go and see a movie, like The Exorcist, come back and do stuff from it to the power of Christ. Rather, that's why I became obsessed with Max von Sydow power of Christ conversion, the power of Christ compiled you just this hideous, foul mouthed little girl that's just talking backwards and making pit noises and doing all kinds of seeing things that was so hideous that it was funny to me, at the time when it came out. I remember driving along Bloor Street, there's a theater on blur in Toronto, it was winter. And there was a line of people at the theater and I had heard any advance breaths or hype for the exorcist. I just saw a line of people there. And I said to the girl I was dating at the time, I said, We got to get in that line. So we get in the line for the actresses. And you're gonna remember people were different back then they hadn't you not. I mean, they hadn't seen all the horrible stuff that we've seen on the internet and things like that. And so I mean, the line and then the previous showing comes out, these people were ashen faced, and they were like, they were traumatized is like seeing people walking away from a plane crash. And I'm like, Holy shit, what is this, that people are saying, people are throwing up in there? They're throwing up. And I'm like, what? The lines moving forward, I'm going, Why am I getting into here. And when I get in there, there's this green chemical stuff called just being the janitors I used to put to cover up puke, they would just dump it on the puke and then shovel it out with a brush, you know, the whole theater smelled like Despain. And so I'm sitting there and there's the same thing I'll never forget Where's like, you hear that? Was the daughter in the demonic deep demonic voice of the bed going up and down. And the mother runs up the stairs and she goes to into the room. And Reagan is like, you know, putting a cross in her private parts and and does the head spin around and then, and then the door slams shut. The bureau goes in front of the door, the door falls down on top of the mother and the mother scrambles and then the daughter's head spins around again, and the daughter and Reagan in some demonic voices. How do you like your daughter now? And I was like, I'm sitting there and the girl that I was sitting beside said Dave, and I went what she said, There's goosebumps on your face. I was like, terrified. I was like the bumps on my face. And you know, people were in the break between horrible scenes. People were like lighting up because you could smoke in theaters back then they were lighting up in smoke. He's like the people that didn't smoke. We're gonna give me a smoke. It's like the

Jeff Dwoskin 43:25

trenches. You need to get there that movie, right?

Dave Thomas 43:29

So when I saw that first and then I told you, Jean Marie, they got to see it. Eugene came into that movie, absolutely mortified. And the first thing he said was that movie should never have been made. He was adamant, and just thought it was just an abomination. So we had to go home to back to Marty jeans place and process this and what better place than Friday night services where we could do impersonations and make fun. I could do backflips. No, I could do Reagan, I think that tape going backwards and things like that, that were an important part of the sort of terror but also something that you could parody. So even as early as that before we were in SCTV. Before, when I think Eugene might have been in Second City at that time, I'm not sure. But it was really early on. And we were already into parroting stuff for our own amusement. And then when we get a job where we get to do it for a living. How does it get better than that? That's fantastic.

Jeff Dwoskin 44:39

So when you refer SCTV for season three, when you became the head writer, how did you make it your own when Ramis left and you took over?

Dave Thomas 44:48

Well, I was Harold's unabashed protege. That's how he described me. And he came into the office he he was so smart, and I knew oh my god, this guy when somebody smarter venue, you know it, you know, in generally, when I walk into a room I look around, I think I'm smart people. I can room with ramus and it's just like, oh shit. Okay, I gotta bow my head reverentially here because this guy's a lot smarter than me. And so how laid down the gauntlet on the first day of writing, and he just said, Each of you should be able to write one sketch per day. All right here. That's it, hello. And it was just like, I love that. Okay, well, alright, too, as well. And I started watching him. And he had all the tools that he needed to be head writer of a comedy show, he had a been Playboy joke editor for like, three years. So in this catalog of jokes in his head, and he had an amazing memory. And he was a smart guy, and he read a lot. And he had a great reference level. So he was able to pull stuff up and do stuff really, really well, when he left him was only there one season. And when Harold left, he said, he wanted me and Joe to be ad writers after him. And he said to me, took me inside, he said, I want you to do this with Joe. He said, Joe's got the seniority, but Joe is gonna quit in about three months, he isn't, isn't gonna want to do that. He doesn't like the sort of administrative nature and bugging people to write scripts and things like that, you're gonna have to do that. And I said, Okay, he said, I want to give you one little bit of advice. He said, Your job as head writer, is not to try to make the show conform to your sense of humor, your job as head writer is to try to take a look at what anyone is working on, and trying to find a way to help them to make it better. And I thought, well, that's really smart. And that was my sort of modus operandi for handwriting, and it was like, trying to preserve the very diverse creative comics sensibilities that were part of that show. And, you know, there's no, there's no single voice in SCTV, there's a cacophony of voices of all the different people that are part of it, you know, and you want to, you want to water that, make it grow, you want to, you want to encourage that as much as possible. And the last thing you want to do is say, I don't think that's very good. Or I think you should do that like this, you know, you want to give them a joke in the vein of what they're doing that will make theirs better, and move on and let them do it. You know, so that was the job. And being the head writer for SCTV was more of a traffic cop than being a a sort of literary mentor, you know what I mean? Or a television major. It was a it was more of just trying to get the things flowing, trying to get trying to get the most out of everybody that we could like Harold used to make fun of John, John Candy, because Johnny like to read scripts, John was he was a fun guy. But you know, I mean, John came up with the idea. This is one of the seminal ideas that helped sell Second City, John came up with the idea of throwing the TVs out the window, because just like sick of television, the SCTV and John 10 was John's idea. And that's typical of the way his mind works. And Harold used to tease John said, you know, other people bring in scripts, and you bring in some notes that you jotted on a cocktail napkin. And that was true. But you know what, when I got the job of hearing this for the show, and I went to a couple of the writers, because when we went to the 90 Minute show, we couldn't do it ourselves anymore. And so we added other writers. There. A lot of them were second TT people that we knew, I said to two guys, two writers, John McAndrews, and Doug steckler, I said, John hates being in the office, John is gonna sit in his office and write scripts, he's gonna make up stuff. He's gonna say he's gonna go to the store to get his aunt a present, or he's gonna go out and do you gotta go out run errands. When he leaves, go with him. Take your legal pads with him, write down everything he says. Because your job is to go on a on a road trip with John every day when he leaves and come back with some stuff that you can write up the scripts, and you'll get it because he's funny enough that you'll get it just laughing everything he does, and get him encourage him to do more. And you'll come back with material. So you know, I mean, it was like that. It was like how do you get the most out of John, you don't force him to sit in an office and write scripts because he couldn't do that. And he would go nuts. So you find a way to allow him to do what he does. But send a couple of writers one of them was scribes just take down everything he said, You know,

Jeff Dwoskin 49:34

that's brilliant. Did the show change a lot? Did you guys like the vibe when you move to NBC for that 90 minute version? Because now you're on night you're right now you're late night in the US. That's because you've been mostly Canada syndicated us before that. But now you're still

Dave Thomas 49:48

late night it was always late night even when it was syndicated us but in the third season. It changed a little bit because Brandon Tartikoff was the president of NBC at that time. was watching the show when it was indicated. And he had plans for SCTV that we didn't know about at that time. So he put SCTV and all the Ono's the owned and operated affiliates of NBC in the 30s. And then all of a sudden, we went up from 48 markets to 350 US markets, that was a big deal for us. And it allowed us a little more money for budgets, we went up from 7000 to show and and so it started to get better then then the show went down for a year and they couldn't get a CBC design. They didn't want to do it anymore. And so we didn't know what to do. And I went to LA that was when I took the year to write Spies Like Us and another movie for Joel Silver. And then Rick Mirantis and I had connected really well in the third season, and I've done the show for CBS. And I knew the president of CBS and I thought I can't waste an opportunity like that is the president of CBS. We're going to sell them something. So So I said direct let's go in let's put a tape of our stuff of you and me As Cronkite and Brinkley and open and Woody Allen and and shakin bacon simply put it together and tried to sell him on a two hander the two of us because it didn't look like SCTV was coming back after the third season of the half hour show. So we went and we met with Harvey Shepard and we got a deal for a show a two hander meanwhile stuffs going on in Toronto that we know about. We're in LA and we get a call from John Gandy John's is brand jarred got was do SCTV late night, Friday nights, 90 minutes. It was like holy shit, 90 minutes. It's like SNL. That's a big deal. And John's it, you guys have got to come back and do it. I said, Well, we just sold this thing to CBS. He said you gotta get out of that. Come on, we got to do this. This is great. And John had some self interest in that, you know, because John was John was the face. John was the Baluchi of SCTV. John was the star. And everybody knew that. So John needed me and Rick to write for him and to get in to be support players. He had a vested interest in calling us back. And we knew that but it was also John. John was fun to work with. I worked with him on stage. So I knew him all the way back as far as there. And so we can I talk to you soon. All right. So we got out of our deal, CBS and we went to Toronto, now it's a 90 minute show. And that was a big change, because the network is going to our budget goes up. And the network has a vested interest in the show. And they say you got musical guests, you can't do 90 minutes of comedy without a musical guest. So then we had to figure out a way to incorporate musical guests in a way that was novel, not just drawing the way they do on SNL. Ladies, gentlemen, the police. You know, we couldn't, we couldn't do that we had to figure out a way of incorporating them in to our little fictitious network that was doing its programming deck. And for a 90 minute show, we needed a thread, we needed a story thread that held all the various sketches together. So there was a lot of stuff that had to be done to adapt the show from the half hour to the 90 minutes show.

Jeff Dwoskin 53:18

That's a big job. 30 Tonight, yeah, it

Dave Thomas 53:20

was a big job. And television is, especially television, that kind of television is all consuming. And it's funny, you know, you give it everything you got, and you write all the sketches you think you can write. And then guess what? It's Monday, you got to start all over. Hey, Ryan, if I isolate Oh, my God, it was going to end. So there is a built in burnout factor. And all of those shows, you know that you have a certain number of shows that you can do and then you're just repeating yourself or doing garbage

Jeff Dwoskin 53:55

you left at the end of this. Is that part of the burnout, you left at the end of season four?

Dave Thomas 54:00

Well, I was burned out. Yeah, as an writer and as, as the guy that sort of helped put the pieces of the 90 minute show together. And then we got John Kennedy and Joe Flaherty started writing a movie for universal go going berserk. And then a couple of producers that Rick and I knew in LA said you guys should do and Mackenzie Brothers movie, because that's a very popular franchise. And we're on the cover of Rolling Stone and Time Magazine. And we thought all right, well, we'll see about that. So recognize they're writing a script, and then their producer of Second City, Andrew Alexander and burning songs came to us and said, You guys can't do a movie. You're under exclusive contract us. So we've done an album, and our album went gold and it went platinum, double platinum roiling, holy shit. We made Rick and I made quite a bit of money off that album. And so we thought, Well, why are right we can't write it ourselves. We'll hire a writer with some of our record royalty money. So we did that. And then we got a script back that was just so wrong for the Mackenzie's and didn't capture the voice of the characters and didn't even do what would be a story that so are. We were both repped by Creative Artists Agency by CAA at that time. And we get the script and read it said Thursday or Friday or so. And the agent since the script all the studios to see if we can get a bidding war. And by Wednesday, we had a deal. So Friday, we just read the script for the first time and realize it's wrong. And we can't make this movie because it's not right. We're still on SCTV. And Wednesday comes around, we got a deal on offer from MGM. So now it's like, oh, now what are we going to do? So Rick said, we're not gonna we're not doing this. He's gonna do it. And I said, Well, how often do you get a chance to do a movie? You know, how often do you get a movie just handed to you? And we've already got characters that the audience knows. So we've done that awareness stuff that you got to do. That's part of the launch of anything I said. He said, But the script is all wrong. I said, Well, we rent this grip, he sympathic bought this grip is a bit opinionated. And he read it. And I was right. They didn't even read it. There was like they, you know what I mean? It's like a typical Hollywood thing. Going to shoot the deal. The deal was, here's a franchise with two guys that have got this Grammy nominated Gold, Platinum double platinum record there on a TV show on NBC that's on every week. That's our advertising. Right there. Right. So no brainer, we got a movie, we got a movie script, put some money in putting money down and give this a green light. And that's what happened. So we had to leave in SCTV to do it. And I have to hand it to Andrew Alexander, he let us leave. And I thank him for that. But it was like it was it was difficult.

Jeff Dwoskin 56:59

I can imagine because this is probably this comedy family that you have up until this point. And by

Dave Thomas 57:04

now Marty's in the show. And that was just fantastic. As far as I was concerned, because I'd been gone to college with Barney and we're such good friends. You know,

Jeff Dwoskin 57:13

he was only he was only in the end of season four. And then you left at this end of season four. Right? Yeah, there was a very small time that you actually were there with Marty.

Dave Thomas 57:21

Oh, yeah. No, we only overlapped for a few. Okay to two characters that Rick and I played on SCTV were pigs pig characters. We had pig noses rank had this concept called Carl's cuts. And the premise was that he was a pig nosed Butcher, who was also a film editor. So he caught me and he cut film. And hey, what's the difference? Right? He cut, cut some edges and cut some film. So he asked me if I would do a character with him. And I said, Yeah, but we can't just do it on the set. Let's do a piece. So we wrote this piece, a parody of deliverance. And it was my idea was this was that there was this horrific scene with Ned Beatty, where he gets raped by these two hillbillies. And they tell him to get down on all fours and squeal like a pig. I had always thought that was absolutely horrific. But funny, because it was so horrific for the same reason that the Exorcist was funny. And I said, What if we do these pig characters, and we get encountered by head hillbillies, but they tell me as the nambiti going to get down on all fours and squeal like a man. That, to me is the reason to do this. And Rick stern laughed and he said, Okay, let's do it. So one of the things that I was told Marty was that Marty short was that Marty's years kind of stuck out and he had this weird little Irish face. And he's if you pull your hair back, you look like that mountain boy, in deliverance. You look like that mountain. So Marty's I said in the morning, will you be the mountain boy in our deliverance, Barrett in learning was up for anything. And he was sure so he gets weighed up as the mount boy, he looked exactly like him when he got made up. So we do this parody of deliverance as the two pig characters. And he said, the two pages are just getting out. It's really funny, but sort of sad. And another week because it had a bad effect on the producers of Second City. We were going to do a parody of the two producers. Andrew and his partner, Lynn Stewart, and we got got made up as all kinds of different people I over the years as a utility player, I got made up as Steven Spielberg and people that didn't look anything alike. And, and so we went into makeup this day, and they had pictures of the two producers and the makeup, women were marked makeup and hair. People were marvelous, but they just looked at those two pictures and they looked and they said Pantone. Their faces are so radically different than yours that we can't, even if we do up All the prosthetics you need, your hands are going to be twice their size. It's going to be Gorgon. It's going to be awful. And Rick and I were were smart enough to take their advice, you know, he said, All right, then Rick said, well then just make up make us up as the two pigs. So what we didn't know was that the producers were coming in that day, because they had heard that we were going to be impersonating them. And they wanted to see our impersonation of them, they come to the set he working on made up his pigs, and then they that's our impersonation of them. And to this day, I have never been able to make Andrew believe that we weren't trying to make them look like pigs that we couldn't be made up to look like them. So we just set out to just make us just make us the pigs.

Jeff Dwoskin 1:00:47

So your album great wide north that you mentioned in passing which was huge. It was that both your albums and the strange route soundtrack Juno Award for comedy album of the year each one one that Great White North did not win the Grammy but it lost to Richard Pryor live on the Sunset Strip. So yeah,

Dave Thomas 1:01:06

if you're gonna lose Yeah, Fair's fair is fair, right? On KY north, you're hit single had the Geddy Lee Mr. Canada rush. Yeah. And Rick and him went to school together or something like that. Yeah, they were pals. And we're at Cannes getting we do it. And Rick said, all we can afford to pay you is a two for a beer, which is 24 beer and getting so now that's good enough for me. So that was part of the promo for the album was us paying getting his two four beer after he finished singing. And it's just a great guy. That band was just the nicest guys in the world. All of them loved

Jeff Dwoskin 1:01:43

seeing them. It's amazing. Yeah. And then your brother music. He did the main theme for the strange verse soundtrack. That's right. Yeah, he is done

Dave Thomas 1:01:51

20 albums. He's a well known Canadian musician. And he's done movie scores and stuff like that. Yeah. He said, he's a really solid musician, and can do all kinds of different things. And has he still work and do he? He's a part of a group now with Noreen McLaughlin, Mark Jordan and Cindy church. They call themselves lunch at Alan's. And they do live gigs all across the country. And it's

Jeff Dwoskin 1:02:15

pretty cool. He got an air for music. You got an air for voices and comedy. So it's just quite a talent pool that your parents produced.

Dave Thomas 1:02:24

My mom was my mother was very proud. Yeah. So it was my dad actually, he was a university professor. He taught at the college that Marty short, Eugene Levy and aisle attended. He was a chairman of the philosophy department. And so he, you know, when he when the McKenzie brothers became big in Canada, they became just ridiculously big. I mean, Rick, and I never expected that. But my dad would wear a takeoff hose or T shirt, to his classes, his philosophy classes, because everybody knew he was the father of Doug McKenzie, you know, and he'd get cheered coming in with that. So he was good natured about it, not embarrassed at all.

Jeff Dwoskin 1:03:05

He understood the importance of cred, and you gave him cred. Yeah, he could do anything at that point. I thought it was so interesting that the Bob and Doug McKenzie characters are just created out of necessity, because the CBC was like, you need to do two minutes a pure Canadian stuff, and go and then it was just you guys, you and Rick just kind of riff in it. And then it became kind of the most popular sketch. That was

Dave Thomas 1:03:31

really ironic. And it was ironic, because we didn't think it was important. And Rick, and I never wrote them. And we never wrote a single great white north sketch, they're all improvised, we would, most of the cast would go home, they shoot them on a Friday or something like that past, we go home crew would go home, they're just being the switcher upstairs in the control on the floor director and a camera. And me and Rick, so we had real beards, we went to happy hour, and we literally, really cook up back bacon on our little stove. And we get that call that Google Kokako we did, I can't even do it anymore. So but we get that call as kind of a stall to give us time to think of what we're going to do in that one. Because I remember on more than one occasion sitting with Rick on that set, and the floor director would count us and give us a five count to come in 54321 and then point and then we had to go. So I would start with that little loon call. And but I remember during the count on many occasions, returning to me and saying you got anything, and I would go now let's just go and one, go, go go go go go go and then we'd have to do it. And that's amazing. Now, some of them were good. And some of them was stuck. I mean, we threw out quite a few but I to this day, which We kept the ones that stuck, because I'll bet you they were funny in ways that we didn't think were funny back then.

Jeff Dwoskin 1:05:07

I bet they're all all amazing. And in hindsight, you're comparing yourself against yourself at the moment, but I bet looking back, they'd all be gold did the rest of the cast have any resentment that these characters are kind of just blowing up and taking spotlight and you got a movie? I'd love to do a movie. And you'd have

Dave Thomas 1:05:24

to talk to them about that. I mean, there was a little bit there was some stuff that that I think was genuine fodder for resentment. There was a headline on Rolling Stone on the cover and just SCTV is best joke. And it's like Bob and Doug McKenzie. Well, we weren't the best joke on SCTV we were a joke. We were a good joke, but we weren't the best joke. So it was when stuff like that would come up. That would be a little bit divisive, you know, and I think John Candy probably suffered more than anyone because as I said earlier, he was the face of SCTV he was the star. And then when these two characters kind of emerged and got a lot of attention and and media, I think that ruffled his feathers more than the others to be completely honest.

Jeff Dwoskin 1:06:12

Got it. Let's just hit a few lines real quick. So rocket boy, and it's important to know that no one knows that you're a rocket boy. So is anyone listening? Please just you're listening to this and confidence that Dave Thomas is rocket boy,

Dave Thomas 1:06:27

I worked with two guys on a show called the new show that Lorne Michaels did between his two stints on SNL, like Lauren left after paying on the third season or something like that for a season. And then he did the new show, which had a great writing room. It was Jack handy. George Meyers, Tom gamble, Max Pross McHenry. Al Franken Tom Davis, Jim Downey. It was such a good writing room. Steve Martin, John Candy, everybody contributing so these two guys Tom gamble Max price. were joking around one day and we came up with his idea of rocket boy together. And then after the new show, as it was even sell it. We sold it to a Ryan. It was a low budget. Of course, that's my lot on anything starting out. But it was fun to do. And these guys had a real sort of crazy style of writing and I thought, Wow, I've never done anything like this before. This would be fun. And so John Candy guested on it with brands gets it. And yeah, it was fun to do the new

Jeff Dwoskin 1:07:28

show. It's an interesting criss cross of events, right so Lorne Michaels leaves I live Dick Ebersol goes to fill in which then was the cancellation of the Midnight Special which is what SCTV filled in on when they move to NBC and then later as a Lauren's of not doing semi live yet. And then you guys do the new show, which was basically him making a new version of Saturday Night Live, basically which, which, when I was kind of looking at the show, I watched some clubs I was reading about it. It was like it reminded me of Dana Carvey is too funny to fail documentary. It's like how you had you mentioned a bunch of names but I mean, the musical guests pretenders Randy Newman, Cyndi Lauper every big name. I mean, your guests Candice Bergen buddy Marshall, Steve Martin, Kevin Kline, everyone, Carrie Fisher, John Candy Catherine O'Hara. It's like it was a who's who of who, and it just tanked in the ratings. Here's what

Dave Thomas 1:08:21

it helped it tank. It was on at 10 o'clock at night on a Friday when the young people were the target audience for a show like that we're out. So that's not a good time slot for a show like that. And then another reason it tanked was Lauren wasn't really committed to the show. Lauren was really trying to get back on Saturday Night Live. And I mean, we started shooting that show on West 57th Street in New York at the CBS Studios. And then Warren managed to talk NBC into letting him into eight H when Dick ever saw wasn't using that studio, which is where they shoot Saturday Night Live at Rockefeller Center in studio age. So he's crowning deck out of his own job as producer of SNL. And it's only a matter of time before Lauren comes back and we can see that so it was like Warren's real lack of commitment to that show. And and then the time slot. Yeah, it tanked. I remember going into Lauren's office one day really pissed off. I had the ratings and I just throw them on his desk and I said 66 out of 6969 shows rated that week were 66 in the ratings. I said not bad for the legendary producer of SNL. I said What in the fuck are you doing? I cannot believe that you are not concerned about this. And Lauren, one of Lauren's greatest skills is to deflect the anger and rage of his performers and writers. He's so good at that. And he looked at me and he smiled. He said, you know it's true. These days. Instead of thinking about one great comedy sketch, I'd like to Come up with I'm thinking about what I'd like to eat that day. Nice. I burst out laughing because he totally diffused me. And it was like I said, Come on, man. I said, What? What are you doing? And he said, it's all going to come out in the wash. He knew stuff that I didn't know. And as it turned out, like a year later, or something like that, I get a call from Warren. And he said, I'm going back to I'm going back to SNL, and I'd like you to produce and I said, I am on Selten. Right now do a show for CBS. And he said, Well, this is an offer day, this is an offer of a lifetime. And I said, Well, I said, you're really the producer of SNL. So are you just looking for like a fall guy in case this goes south? That you can blame? Well, it's not my fault. Dave Thomas. He's the he's the shithead. That wreck the show. I created a legendary show. Then I got a call from Bernie Brillstein, who was his manager at the time, you got to do as Dave, it's an amazing show. You got to do it. And then I get a call from Brandon Tartikoff, who's the president of NBC in saying, oh, man, but I honestly didn't want to do it. And I thought, that's warm show. I'm going to still keep doing my thing. Things that I liked and things that I want to do. They may not be the biggest, most successful things in the world, but they're mine. They're not Lawrence, they're mine. So I'm past when you said no error and told me I was crazy. My agent left me you're turning down SNL. I'm sorry, Dave, I don't think I can represent you anymore. Well, you never did anyway. So you know, some people say, you know, who's your agent? You know, this old joke, right? Who's your agent? I don't have an agent. I'm with William William Morris. Agents are in the business of doing things for themselves. They're not in the business of wrapping anybody during the business of taking care of themselves.

Jeff Dwoskin 1:11:56

Well, one final dave thomas comedy, my, like Dave Thomas comedy show, I remember watching this, you know, like, there's certain bits in your life that just kind of stick in your back of your head. They just kind of float there. And occasionally they pop into your your mind. The dad rap that you did that show is when I saw it, it just so funny, and it's always and so I was looking into that I rewatched, an episode of The Dave Thomas comedy show that you did with John Candy. John Candy was the guest, and that one particular skit was just so funny with John and Teresa Ganzel. Yeah, where you're he tells you you're dying. And then he says, You're kidding. And then you everyone's keeps faith that you all keep one upping each other and faking death. I mean, this is a funny show. Was it also just great to be with John Candy again? And oh,

Dave Thomas 1:12:45

yeah. I mean, that particular sketch played that was in the style of a lot of improv that John and I used to do together at Second City in the state show. So that was an easy thing for us to do, because we had real rhythms there, you know. And I mean, Jones, a guest on the new show tune I remember my brother even think it was great to see you playing with John again. Because John was like a big kid. He just liked to play comedy was playing to him. You know what I mean? It's like Robert Redford in the natural just wanting to play ball, none of the politics, none of the fame, just wanting to play ball, John just like to play on. He'd like to do comedy. He likes to make himself and other people laugh. And so we were playing Brezhnev and Gorbachev, I think, in the new show, and we went off book, and my brother Ian said, I remember seeing Bucky Henry's face just freeze, when he realized you guys aren't doing the script anymore. You're not reading off the cards. You're just flying by the seat of your pants, and he didn't know where you're going. And he had to wait for you to stop talking before he could say his line, you know, so that was fun with John. But you know, the Dave Thomas comedy show was you can see on my website, there's a there's a little version of the opening that I did originally, which is what I wanted to do. And CBS didn't want that I opened the show in a theater in Long Beach and I had an orchestra, I had an audience, and then the curtains open and I had an 800 Sorry, an 80 foot blue screen behind me onto which I projected a California road going off in infinity to the mountains beyond at a car and a Mustang actually on the stage. I said the audience some said how folks this isn't gonna be like, you know, Jerry and I live where you come to a living room set. You know, you're there till the commercial break. You know what's going to happen on this show? I say, Come on. Let's take a ride and take a look at our set. So I get in the car. I'm driving you minutes, intercut between me on a California highway driving and the audience. And what I did was I I'm driving along and then I stop and Fern armadillo. It's on the road and I pick it up and look at it, and then some Mexican Bandidos come up. And then The day we was on money, and I go, I don't have any money I go and they've gone got guns, you know, and they got the Bandoleros. And they're like, from The Magnificent Seven are the good, the bad, the ugly. And, and so I don't know, I got I got like, I think I got like six bugs, six locks six months. And they're all laughing, you know, and they're gonna kill me. And then I go, Oh, I know where you can get some money. And I point to the audience behind me. And I did a reverse angle and cut the audience the point of view, putting the camera in the theater looking out at the audience into that screen. So it looked like the audience. I said, there's a couple 100 people back there, they all got wallets, they all got money. And then the next thing I'm going to do is look at the neck, oh, I got a Domino's. And they ride off into the and I like, but I got out of that one. So they become characters in the show later in the show. They're sitting in the audience. And that's the kind of show I wanted to do. You know, I had all kinds of bits worked out with the the audience in the cast. And CBS saw this and they went away. We want Dave in studio, in his studio in Hollywood with a studio audience. And then we want to cut to the sketches. That's what we want the show to be. So that's what the Dave Thomas show ended up being. But it didn't start out that way. Sure it out is something much more experimental and fun, but I didn't have the clout to get them to do that. Well,

Jeff Dwoskin 1:16:33

I would have let you do it. I think it's there. I think it's You're welcome. You're welcome. Next time I'm running a studio first call I make Dave Thomas. Alright. Dave, thank you so much. All this time. It's man. It's an honor to spend time with you. And

Dave Thomas 1:16:46

it was a pleasure being on your show.

Jeff Dwoskin 1:16:47

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. How amazing is Dave Thomas so generous with his time and sharing all those amazing stories? Definitely check out Dave's new book. There's a link to it in the show notes. You can get it on Amazon, the many lives of Jimmy Layton. It's awesome. Also, now's not a bad time to rewatch strange. Bruce, if you haven't seen in a while dive into some SCTV. So much Dave Thomas, you can just bring it to your life. You deserve it. You deserve it. Well, I can't believe it with the interview over that means episode 200 is over. We've completed 200 episodes, everyone, quite the milestone. Thanks once again to my special guest, Dave Thomas. And of course, thanks to all of you for coming back week after week. It means the world to me, and I'll see you next time.

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