by Bushman

The Trailer Park Boys is one of the most creative and original comedies on television today. If you live in Canada, you’ve known this for a long time. That’s where the series started and is now airing its fourth season. If you live in America, chances are you haven’t even heard of Trailer Park Boys. If you have, consider yourself one of the lucky informed few, exposed through some chance pairing of the show with BBC America. But that will all change soon enough. The show has a winning formula and cast. And more importantly, heart. Something that American television lost somewhere in the 60’s.

Filmed in a faux reality tv/Cops style, Trailer Park Boys takes the viewer into the lives of Ricky and Julian. Kings of their Trailer Park. They have a nemesis Mr. Lahey and his lackey, the ever-shirtless Randy. They have a sidekick, the coke bottle glasses wearing, cat loving and shed dwelling Bubbles. They have a posse, wigga J-Roc and his crew. They have an estranged family with Ricky’s daughter Trinity with on/off girlfriend Lucy. They even have the often-duped lackey’s Corey and Trevor to send on mindless missions and generally serve as magnets for abuse. And they have the perfect setting. The Trailer Park.

While not a ‘stoner’ show, there is liberal marijuana use and references (the one thing the employment challenged Ricky excels at is growing pot) and the main character Julian’s sole prop is an ever-present mixed drink (even when emerging from a rolled over car accident, his drink is intact). Most seasons start with someone getting out of jail and end with someone going back to jail.

But the writing is far above simple drug humor. There is chemistry between the actors and pacing to the show that allows for very spontaneous, unrehearsed yet sincerely funny execution. Meaning it feels more real than most reality shows while managing to stay true to its comedic intents.

Writer / director Mike Clattenburg was recently in Los Angeles pimping the feature film for The Trailer Park boys. Actor Rob Wells (Ricky) was in tow as well. Opportunities like this can’t be ignored, so we met up at the infamous Roxy on sunset strip for some food and conversation with the Canadians.

Why the motivation to capture that aspect of Canadian culture?
Mike Clattenburg: A lifetime exploration into the depths of foolishness. We all love to have fun. That’s where all our comedy comes from. Any group of friends all have their shorthand comedy. They crack each other up. We always did that. We probably did that a lot more than most normal people would. So we tried to refine it and think about it in terms of story. Necessity is the mother of invention. We had a handicam and we had some trailer parks. If you are going to write a story about the moonscape, you need a moonscape. If you are going to write a story about a trailer park, you get one. You write to your characters/actors strengths. You have the right actor to play the part. So we looked at what was around us and wrote to what we had.
Rob Wells: We wanted to do something very character driven. We sort of found these characters in “One Last Shot”. We didn’t have a trailer park in “One Last Shot” obviously. But we found we really liked these characters. We liked playing them. They are very unique. They are fucked in the head, but they have a lot of redeeming qualities where you end up loving them, even though they are fucked in the head. Mike Clattenburg’s vision was just brilliant. A trailer park. What better background can you have than that? It all just came together and works really well. Bubbles actually originally did sound on the pilot, and that’s how we came to know Bubbles. We had to do the short film “The Cartboy” to pitch to the network to ‘see it’ what Bubbles really was. It didn’t jump off the page.

It’s interesting you had to ‘push’ that character.
MC: A lot of time with the characters on our show, you need to see them to kind of get them. As we developed the Bubbles character, we wanted to make him lovable. So we added the cats and had him abandoned and living in a shed. And then filmed that and showed Showcase the nature of the character. A lot of times it doesn’t jump off the page until you know the world or the sense of humor among these friends. It’s like when you meet a new group of friends that have their own sense of humor. It takes awhile to get to know it. Once you get to know it, you find it funny.

Does Showcase in Canada fund all the episodes?
RW: It’s not just Showcase. It’s also Nova Scotia Film Development is one of the big funders. Showcase does put up some of the money. But there are a lot funds in these government-regulated agencies that have been very kind to us and helped us out along the way.

Is it true that the government in Canada is very supportive of the creative arts?
MC: A show like ours would not have been born in any other country I don’t think. The Canadian government and the funding agencies nurtured it and supported it and the network in particular, they renewed us before our first season went to air, which is kind of unheard of. They wanted to invest some time and money into it and give it a chance to grow and catch on. Showcase has been just wonderful to us. They’ve been so supportive and it’s been great to collaborate with them.

How did you pitch that?
RW: For us, we did sort of have a pilot. We made this movie, that although it’s quite different from the show. In the pilot, the two characters killed cats and dogs for a living. They’re ‘pet assassins’ I guess. There’s no Bubbles and a lot of the other characters are missing. But we had something to show them as far as character goes. Mike Clattenburg and Barrie Dunn went to meet with the Comedy Network in Canada. And they didn’t see what we were hoping they would see. So Mike and Barrie called Showcase on a whim. Showcase said ‘C’mon up’. They showed them the pilot and Showcase did see something there they thought they could develop. So it’s because Mike and Barrie going up there to actually pitch it in person. I don’t know what you’d do without the pilot. It would be hard for it to jump off the page. Visually, they saw the pilot and did see something there. So that definitely helped us a lot.
MC: That’s the thing, is the ability for anyone with a fun idea to get a video camera, tape it, edit it and present it. Then it jumps off the page. Then someone can sit and find it funny and laugh with it. So instead of trying to intellectualize this form of comedy, she could just sit down and watch it and see what it’s all about and sense that it was funny and that it was working. So what really worked for us was the availability of DV cameras. But we didn’t just fire it up and shoot something and get lucky. We worked a long time. We did a lot of short films before that and really worked on story structure. What made our characters tick? The characters were fully developed with a back-story and were original.

American audiences are just catching on, but it’s hard to find a Canadian who isn’t familiar with Trailer Park Boys. Does the show following differ throughout the provinces?
RW: I think originally we thought we’d hear a lot feedback when it first started out that it would be an East coast show or Newfoundland show. But as time went on, people didn’t even know where it was shot. They’re like, “Did you shoot that out west? Did you shoot that in Toronto? Did you shoot that in Vancouver? Did you shoot that in Halifax?” It’s scary. It’s universal throughout the country now. We went on tour across the country and the fan response is as good in the far West as it is in the far East. It’s just right across the country. It’s unbelievable.

Do Americans react differently to the show than Canadians?
MC: It’s totally different. Apples and Oranges. Because on BBC America, it’s expurgated. There are a lot of bleeps. A lot of the show is censored. But the groundswell reaction is very similar to what it was in Canada. We notice the same type of people seem to ‘get it’. It’s a slower burn here. We’ve had some great shout outs from some heavyweight American celebrities. Laura Dern likes the show. Lewis Black. They have been very encouraging to us, but any fan in the US is great. But it’s all icing for us because we’ve been making it in Canada and we’ve been actually able to employ ourselves with a job doing this. Our Canadian fans are the ones who brought us to the dance. Slowly but surely it’s increasing here in the US to.
RW: The ones that do recognize us still have the same comments as Canadians. “I know someone just like Ricky.” They can relate to the characters the same as Canadians. So the people that do see it, enjoy it the same as Canadians I think, as far as an audience goes.

What differences in general do you see between Canadian TV and American TV? (Aside from the government funding).
RW: America has bigger budgets for sure. America has more or less set the standard as far as comedies and sitcoms. They’ve developed a formula where we are used to seeing a comedy or a sitcom with a laugh track. Them almost telling us where we are supposed to laugh and what’s funny and not funny. So we just wanted to break away from that sort of thing altogether. But it’s apples and oranges as far as TV budgets go. Developments and programs... the resources in America are phenomenal compared to Canada. We just don’t have the resources.

Why does Julian always have a drink?
MC: Why does Randy never wear a shirt? It’s just the way it is.

Will Ricky ever get his grade 11?
RW: We don’t really know. He’s pretty happy getting past grade 10. He would like to further his education at some point. Maybe community college though. I don’t know if it’s going to be a grade 11 or not. Grade 11 is just too fucking hard. Too much work.

Who is Raveen? (In the show, Ricky is occasionally taunted and called “Raveen” due to his similar hair and beard stylings).
RW: That’s a great question.
MC: People in Vegas know.
RW: Even in Canada, not that many people know who Raveen is. He’s a mentalist.
MC: He can hypnotize people. He does shows. Performs incredible feats of memory. He’s an ‘impossibilist’. That’s what Raveen is. Raveen has been through the Maritime Provinces many time. Done a lot of shows in Las Vegas. He has the same side burns and same hair as Ricky. When we were shooting the pilot, he struck me that he really looked like Raveen. And it seemed like a really good taunt from a kid. “Hey, fucking Raveen! It’s Patrick Swayze and Raveen!” So you’ve been downloading shows, eh?

Yeah, a friend of friend found all four seasons online. Are you guys comfortable with that?
MC: We’ve got no problem with that. It gets the word out there. It’s great.
RW: That’s how our show has spread to the extent it is now. Just word of mouth and people doing that sort of stuff.
MC: It’s free on television. Anyone can tape it. In terms of music, it’s a little different. It’s kind of a drag that it’s distributed for free to a lot of people. I know when I really start to like a band, I want to go out and buy their music to kind of honor what they are doing.
RW: I think to some extent, we are like a band starting out. When a band starts out, they are giving away their music as much as they can and trying to get it to there to the public.

We gotta talk about Bubbles (Mike Smith). The pilot TPB was shot without him, but he did work as a sound mixer. It was then he pulled out the Bubbles character and impressed you enough to write him into the show.
MC: It wasn’t a ready-made character. It wasn’t as if, hey, this is Bubbles and he lives in shed with cats and has abandonment issues and he hangs out with Ricky and Julian. It was a voice and a pair of glasses that Mike had. It sounded like the Bubbles we know today. Mike was so interesting and so cool when I saw him do it. I was like, this is a great, original character. Mike performed him in such an interesting, gentle way. He’s such a talented actor and funny guy. He’s got a razor sense of humor. He’s really cool to work with. We had so much fun with him as a soundman. A kindred spirit. We knew he had our sense of humor. He just kind of showed it to us and we just wrote it into the series. It was a lot work actually. We had to work him into every story to make it work. And it did.
RW: Like I said, the pilot was quite different because we were pet assassins. So we had to really come up with some new stories and in the process we wove that character in. Then we brought Randy into the mix. Who played a different character in the pilot. He wore shirts in the pilot. He wasn’t the same guy at all.
MC: Mike brought so much to the character and how he interacted with the other actors. That Bubbles sensibility. With Mike, Jean Paul, Rob and I developed this guy. This buddy.
RW: He’s such a great contrast to Ricky and Julian who are these crazy, law-breaking guys. The all of a sudden you got this sweet, little... really, the smartest person in the trailer park in many aspects. They are almost like a family that keep each other in check.
MC: Mike brings a sense of sanity. He’s the first person in the park to really react to a lot of the shit Ricky and Julian are doing in a way that we can relate to. He’s brought a tremendous amount to the show.

Mike Smith used to be in Sandbox. Is he planning on doing music again?
MC: He’s been writing a lot of stuff. I wouldn’t be surprised if he comes out with some kind of record.
RW: He really enjoys music and being on stage and performing. He’s a fantastic musician. Very talented. He belongs on the stage.

Here in the US, the show is show on the BBC America channel, but it’s censored heavily. How does it air in Canada?
MC: Totally uncensored.
RW: In this day and age, it’s really frustrating. Disappointing I guess. You should be able to play this stuff on television. Have a warning. If you see the warning and don’t want to listen swearing or whatever it is, then don’t watch it. We should have that freedom to pick and choose what we want without having the government regulate it, censor and bleep it out. It’s crazy.

What are some ideas that you wanted to do, but budgets or censors prevented you?
MC: We’ve been pretty lucky. We wanted to do “Conky” a lot earlier. But that was just logistics. But I don’t think there has been any real episode where someone said, ‘You can’t do that.’
RW: At one point, we actually talked about having someone killed on the show. Which is a little hardcore. We weren’t sure if it worked or not. Between the network and us, we as a group decided that wasn’t the proper direction to head. But we’ve been very lucky. Showcase has basically let us do what we want and they’ve been behind us 100%. It’s very rare these days to have that happen with a network.

If you were to kill a character on the show... what character would you kill?
RW: Clearly it wouldn’t be a main character. We were thinking maybe one villains. I don’t want to mention Cyrus’s name... I mean, anyone’s name.

While not necessarily a ‘stoner’ show, TPB does deal with marijuana a lot. Especially the cultivation of pot. Is that a reflection of the general Canadian attitude?
RW: I don’t think we set out to say, ‘Hey, let’s make a show about dope for stoners.’ It’s more like, these guys live in a trailer park and that’s a means that some people use to make money. Cultivate marijuana. I think just as many people are growing in America. Maybe our laws are a little more lax, but people still get busted and go to jail in Canada. It was just something we decided that these grease ball characters, especially Ricky, he’s good at that. That’s one of his redeeming qualities. He loves to grow dope. He grows the best dope. We didn’t set out to make a show about dope, that’s just what this guy does for a living.
MC: What happens if you get caught growing say, 25 plants here (in America) in your basement?

Depends on your priors. First offense, probably a lot of money fine, probably won’t serve jail. Depends on the state though. California is a lot different than say, Iowa or Texas.
RW: I met a guy in Florida who did 7 years for getting caught with less than 30 grams of marijuana. We were shocked. I couldn’t believe it. This was his first offense. And with their drug laws, you serve every day of your sentence. So here was this young kid who was 19 in jail until he was 26. Ruined a good part of his life. God knows what he could have done with himself. I found that just so harsh and ridiculous for less than 30 grams of marijuana.

Season four is the currently airing season. How many have you shot? How many more are planned?
MC: We just finished shooting season five. We built our own trailer park this year, which was great. We shot an hour-long Christmas special. We are about to shoot season six, which will be 6 to 10 shows, depending on whether or not we do a feature film. Which is the reason we are in Los Angeles right now meeting with Ivan Reitman and Tom Pollack of Joe Medjuck of Montecito Pictures. They want to do a feature film. We want to do one with them. They’ve got an incredible track record. They want to collaborate with us on the script. And it was really inspiring to meet them and we are hoping to shoot next summer.
RW: Probably around 2006 by the time it’s all put together and ready for the public.

Seasons three and four seem to have had bigger budgets than seasons one and two. Being that part of the appeal to TPB is the ‘indie / low budget’ feel, what plan do you plan to make (if any) to future episodes that might have larger budgets.
RW: We started out being a little restricted because the network wasn’t sure what to think. We were new to this and they knew that, so they were a little concerned. But now, we pretty much have the freedom to do what we want within reason I guess. We’ve never really pushed the boundaries too much. They’ve realized we sort of have a knack for doing this. People are enjoying the shows so that’s pretty much given us free reigns.

Alex Lifeson, the guitarist of Rush did an episode. We learned Rush is Bubbles’ favorite band.
MC: Alex first contacted me through a mutual friend around our second season. He told us he liked the show. It was such a timely thing because we hadn’t had a lot of success with the show right away. A lot of people didn’t quite get it. He was the first artist that was hugely respected to give us some support. So I suggested that he be on the show and he said ‘Sure.’ So we wrote an episode about Rush being Bubbles’ favorite bands. Actually, Rush is one of Mike Smiths favorite bands growing up, and was all of ours. He came to town and he was so nice. I don’t know if knew what to think of us because we put on these ridiculous wigs. He hadn’t seen us or met us. We met him in the airport with these big fake mullets.
RW: Which was ironic because we later had the pleasure of going to his house and he had fake teeth and wigs and stuff. He has the same sense of humor as us. Just a great great guy. Totally down to earth. We didn’t want him to do a clichéd cameo. We wanted him to play himself and I think it turned out fantastic.
MC: One of the really touching moments was when we were going to get Alex to play “Closer to the Heart” on a 12-string. Now, this is another example of how the actors bring so much to the show, Mike Smith, who is a very accomplished guitar player, suggested, ‘Well, how about I play a six string, and he plays the other six string?’ And that’s what you see at the end of the show. It was so wonderful. Such a sweet, touching moment.

And to have Bubbles sing it was another great move.
MC: We didn’t really think about doing that, but it just kind of happened. Mike just said, ‘Alex, is it OK if I sing this?’ and Alex is like, ‘Yeah. Go ahead.’ And those are some of the moments that are born on set and that you could never write. The troupe of actors are so incredible talented.

If Rush is Bubble’s favorite band, what is Ricky’s favorite band?
RW: Probably Helix would be up there. April Wine. Rob Wells leans way more toward The Tragically Hip. I like a broad range of music. But they are definitely up there. I’ve really enjoyed their music over the years. One of the best live shows. When Gord is on, Gord is on. There is no better front man in the world. He is unbelievable. I love listening to music when I’m writing. It’s great. Actually the two of us used a few odd pieces while we were writing for the feature movie. It’s very inspiring. You write the scene to fit that piece of music sometimes. It’s amazing how well music and film can go together. Music can totally make a scene or ruin a scene if it’s not there. It can just make a scene so much better if it’s the right piece of music.
MC: NWA To Neil Young. It doesn’t matter. The Chieftains. I like a lot of classical music. I like a lot of indie. There is this record called ‘Tala Matrix’ which is all tabla players. An incredible record. It’s like electronica meets classical Indian tabla. A tabla is like a little hand drum. They look like bongos but are really dark, mysterious sounding drums. In particularly I really like Gordon Downie’s (singer of The Tragically Hip) solo projects. They are really cool. And I like The Hip. And I love Rush. I grew up on Alex and Geddy and Neil. They were so inspiring musicians.

The guys were on a tight schedule so we had to wrap up the interview even though I had many more questions to ask. If your cable provider doesn’t have BBC America, you can get a good dose of the Trailer Park Boys from their website. It’s honestly one of the best television shows ever made and it won’t take long for American television to catch on.
But for now...

www.trailerparkboys.com