I'm going to go to the next room.

I'm going to go to the next room.

I'm going to go to the next room.

I'm going to go to the next room.

I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. Would you be averse to me throwing out to you some Canadian trivia as we go along? I opened up a Canadian trivia quiz and I want to see how good you are. I haven't lived here for 20 years but we can talk about it. Your blood is Canadian, your heart is American. I'll allow it. But no, I also don't want to throw out questions and I don't want you to feel like, oh, now I look dumb because I didn't know these great answers. I'm talking to be a great great great

great

great

great

great

great

Hello, Dr.

Hi, how you doing, man?

How's life going with you in general?

Good.

I am excited about today.

Yesterday was Canada Day 2018, right?

And it just seemed to be for who it is timing, but this bonus episode is going to be a 90 minute conversation with somebody who is a a great friend of ours, be a former film critic of high skill and repute and see currently an educator in California. Let's welcome the wonderful Canadian born James Rocky. Hey Scott, Drew and of course Bobby in the booth. Very much a pleasure to be here the day after Canada the day. I'm just so hurry if this throws off your regular recording schedule. It is in full force. James, one of the things that we, one of the experiences that the three of us shared was the Toronto Film Festival several times. And I miss seeing you on the festival circuit, frankly, sir. You are always a great, great movie companion and knowledgeable and aridite. So it is good to have you here for maybe the silliest film we've done a commentary for so far. I have to say to you too, how much you three, how much I've been pleasure I've been getting from not merely the knowledge, but also the clear and cogent engineering of 80s all over. And I did a little bit of right to say so we could talk about some 80s all over deep cuts revolving specifically around the economy of Toronto and my home city of Hamilton as shooting locations for not just Strange Brew but a variety of other dentist money tax dodges that define Canadian cinema in the 80s. This is wonderful. This is going to be great. We got some notes here,balls. But before we begin, we want to do two different things. A, thank you if you're listening to this episode because that means you are a cat money supporter of our show and you have more than earned your biweekly bonus episode. So we hope you enjoy this one. Thank you very much. Drew, do you also like to thank them or not?

No, I have no thanks. No thanks at my heart. I am just angry all the time. Well, you cue everybody up, tell them how does it get rolling. All right, so we're gonna go ahead and we're gonna start the movie. And if you know the film, the first thing you're going to see is gonna be the MGM Lion. So I'm going to call 321. You should hit play and the MGM Lion should come up, drunken all his glory.

All right, three, two, one, play. All right. Now my experience with this film, let's run through ours real briefly. And then let's have James who was, is and was a Canadian citizen at the time. He's now he's now he's now he's in a dual citizenship. He is an briefly. And then let's have James who is and was a Canadian citizen at the time. He's now he's now a dual citizenship. He is an American. But I knew nothing of Bob and Doug McKenzie. I can't remember if take off, which was a novelty hit single. I honestly can't remember if that was big first or if the movie was big first. But I barely knew SETV at this stage in my life at 12 or 13, but I was in love with Strange Brew. And I think part of it is it was weird. I didn't get a third of the jokes. Like it's looked American. It's kind of sounded American, but a lot of the jokes just I was like, oh, that must be a Canadian superstar. That must be a Canadian restaurant. I just, and that alien aspect that I could still grasp was really fun for me. So I've grown up really enamored with this movie and I'm glad we're covering it through. You hate it, right? I was a big Bob and Doug fan already and a big SCTV fan and I would videotape every Saturday night, Saturday at live and SCTV back back and then get up and watch them. And I had one friend in my scout troop in particular who was also fanatical about Bob and Doug McKenzie. And we would drive everybody else in the Boy Scout troop crazy doing impressions of them well before the movie. So in the movie finally came out we felt vindicated and then then it tank. So clearly everybody else felt vindicated. But yeah, I was a massive fan of them. And just in general of these guys, like this school of comedy, it was an exciting moment. If I can give you guys a little bit of historical context, bear in mind that, and right now Bob and Doug Doug McKenzie are on their set in the film, and they're doing all of the great white North chatter. Great white North came out of possibly one of the most brilliant things ever, because SCDV started in 1976 as a sketch comedy show. And then eventually, it jumped to the CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation partially publicly funded. But the Canadian edition of a show was two minutes longer due to commercial lengths and syndication times, just as a British broadcast of the Muppet show were also two minutes longer. And what happened was a bureaucrat from the Canadian equivalent of the FCC, the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission, went to Second City and said, your program needs to be more explicitly Canadian. And Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis, being reasonable people working on a television show with an all Canadian staff and all Canadian stars and shot in Canada just basically said, oh you want Canadian. And through together some beer cases and a Coleman stove and a coffee table and would shoot the great white North bits unscripted unplanned just for the heck of it, and shove it into the Canadian broadcast as quote unquote, Canadian content. So good. It really is. What's delightful about that to me is not knowing Canadians at all. This was the era where I was living in Chattanooga. So I was in the deep south. I knew these guys. Like Bob and Doug still, even though yes, it is regional specific, Bob and Doug are so universal. And these lung kids who really have very, very, very low aspirations. And on the few occasions, they do have aspirations, really no ambition with which to achieve them. They are delightful. I love this movie that opens their movie within the movie that they made. I love that it looks like they shot it in about an hour and a half. And there was nothing that you could do that would be wrong for this sequence. It's terrific. And that's what I loved about SCTV was that sort of cable access aesthetic before I even knew cable access. I still got the joke that it was local and community and low rent and charming. Again, SCTV was involved or rather, SCTV was all set up as the only TV station in Melonville, a small Canadian town. And they would do and they would do big meta-shows like having a satellite feed get replaced by one from Russia, which is where you had John Candy talking to a tractor for a sitcom. But yeah, the whole, I mean, bear in mind, the thing about Canadian culture is that when you're watching it as a Canadian, nine times out of ten, what you're told about it is that's not yours. It's from America or it's from Britain. And the things that are yours are usually pretty cheap like the beach comers or the littlest hobo or space 1999. So the idea that... Was that Rogan? Well, you know, that's more advanced. Sorry, I'm just trying to get into the culture here. Sorry, sorry. I know, you know, but yeah, so you had this bunch of lunatics in the 1970s that included, of course, you know, you had Rick Moranis, you had Dave Thomas, you had Eugene Levy, Joe Flaherty, Catherine O'Hara, Martin Short, all these Tony Rosado, any women, any women at all James? Well, Catherine O'Hara, Andrea Martin, and also Robin Duke. Robin Duke. Yeah. And also roughly affiliated with the SCTV crowd, thanks to a legendary production of Godspell in Toronto, Gilda Radner and Bill Murray, as well as Dan Acroid. Yeah. Pretty much everyone who is in that 1972, I believe, try out production of Godspell, either wound up on Saturday Night Live or in SCTV. There's actually some footage of that Toronto in some misproduction of Godspell in the upcoming Magnolia doc, Love Gilder, because Gilder Radner was in that production as well. As well and gentlemen, you don't get this kind of hard info from our normal, I guess. This is what happens when you bring the air you died, the the learned. We can just yeah, we can just settle for abnormal. James, I have a question for you. I'm going to start you off with it. Canadianadian, share of your question. Real sip, real easy one. What Canadian city is known as Hollywood North? Well, technically Toronto. Oh, Vancouver or Toronto, depending on whether you're CW or feature film. I will accept that dual answer because I just knew I thought it was just Vancouver. Well, Vancouver is where they currently shoot almost all of the CWDC University stuff. It's also why they talk about maple syrup on Riverdale. But back in the day, strange brew is primarily shot around Toronto, of course, but also in Hamilton, Ontario. Now Hamilton was a town I grew up near. It was a 40 minute drive from the outskirts of nowhere to the middle of nowhere. But when you look at Strange Brew, for example, the brick red building of the Elson or Brewery, that's a matte painting over the offices of the Hamilton Spectator, Hamilton's Daily newspaper. And the Institute for Criminally Insane is actually a matte painting over Westdale High School, a well-known public high school from the 1800s, where they could literally paint over it, put them next to each other, and then have them be at the base of a hill for Bob and Doug to drive up. Another thing I need to talk about is, to get to Drew's point, it's easy to love Bob and Doug, and it's easy to see them as a comedic tradition of holy fools that goes from Abedin Castello through Bob and Doug up to Wayne and Garth. Even up to Cheach and Chong. The Friends on Letter Kenny, which is a more modern Canadian comedy thing that's coming to Hulu very soon. James, true or false, the trailer park boys, funny? The trailer park boys are funny if you didn't live it. Like, bubbles is funny if you've never talked to him about needing a toe on Highway 6, two in the morning. Trailer park boys are a little bit too close of a bone for anyone who actually lives

in rural Canada.

I've lived in rural Canada.

Only reason I'm asking is because I consider myself a big fan of most popular or well-known

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