The Kids in the Hall were brilliant partly because they
weren’t afraid to mine such sinister stuff as murder, alcoholic dads, cancer, empty
promises, taxpayer-screwing, head crushing, and half-chicken sexual predators
for laughs. Their personal stories weren’t particularly funny because many of
their most transgressive bits were rooted in the five guys’ personal stories
(well, maybe not the head crushing and chicken lady stuff). So make no mistake—The
Kids in the Hall were hilarious, but The
Kids in the Hall: One Dumb Guy (coming on October 23) is not. Tragedy and interpersonal clashes
are recurring elements of Paul Myers’s new book about the revered comedy troupe.
While John Semley’s 2016 book This Is a Book About The Kids in the Hall achieved a light tone
despite the often-heavy material (right down to that author’s generally
misguided attempts at cracking his own jokes), Myers takes the material much
more seriously. That seriousness also includes involving all five original Kids
in the storytelling, and Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, Mark
McKinney, and Scott Thompson are quoted extensively throughout, as are former
collaborators such as Diane Flacks, Lorne Michaels, and the perpetually toweled
Paul Bellini, and comedy peers such as Bob Odenkirk, Judd Apatow, Mike Myers, Andy Richter,
Fred Armisen, Paul Feig, Thomas Lennon, Dana Gould, and in one of the final
interview exchanges he’d give before his death in March 2016, Gary Shandling. Consequently,
One Dumb Guy is not as much fun to
read as Semley’s book, but it feels like a more fleshed out and official
version of the story.
