Lets start a riot, p.1
Let's Start a Riot, page 1
Let’s Start a Riot
How a Young Drunk Punk Became a Hollywood Dad
Bruce McCulloch
Dedication
This book is dedicated to all the furniture at the side of the road.
And all the people who have left it there.
And the other people who pick it up and take it home.
Epigraph
Some of the names have been altered to protect the innocent.
For me, there is no hiding . . .
Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
Foreword: I Love Bruce
Let’s Start a Riot
Hollywood
Angie, the HIV Unicorn
The Mouse and I
Pyjama-Rama
False Teeth
Hello, Goodbye
Never Trust
The Beautiful Day You Beat Up Your Dad
Keep Yourself Alive
Punk History
Tequila-Fest
Under the Rug
Prison Break
The Last of One
Food Repairman
The Bible
Crazy Chick Circa ’86
One Dumb Guy
Vigil
Sharing Air
Good Investment
Nursey Says
Jean Jacket Love
Radiohead
One Good Cup
Sex Weekend
The Bottle Fairy
Liver
The “Brucie-Derata”
Forty-One Steps
Taco Bell
Dad as Dog
They Started the Riot without Me
Acknowledgments
Copyright
About the Publisher
I Love Bruce
Winter 1991. Toronto, Ontario. The streets of the Canadian megacity are covered with snow. My then-girlfriend/now-wife, Laurie, was the manager of Brian Hartt, one of the writers on The Kids in the Hall, and we are there to visit him. Earlier in the day, we’ve gone to the set and watched the Kids film part of a sketch. I’ve glimpsed Bruce from afar. I am an enormous Kids in the Hall fan and an especially rabid fan of Bruce’s, whose characters and performance style I have always marvelled at. He has a delivery unlike anyone I have ever seen in comedy before, and I am desperate to meet him.
That night, we meet up with the Kids at a bar and I am able to nervously have a conversation with Bruce for a good ten minutes. He is pleasant but aloof, distracted by both people he knows and by adoring fans. But we have a good talk, and even though its content is lost in the nervous haze I get into whenever I find myself face to face with one of my heroes, I leave the conversation feeling like Bruce and I have made a nice connection.
The next night, Brian tells us he’s meeting Bruce at a different bar and asks if we would like to come. This is my chance to cement my friendship with Bruce. We arrive at the bar, and I sit at a table where Bruce is holding court. He looks at me and I say with great familiarity, “Hey, Bruce, I’m Paul. We hung out last night.”
Upon which Bruce looks at me icily for several seconds and then says, “No, we didn’t hang out. We talked.”
And then he goes back to conversing with the other people at the table and never looks at me again.
And that was the beginning of my long and wonderful friendship with Bruce McCulloch.
I don’t remember when we actually became friends, or even why. Our paths crossed again because of Brian, and suddenly, we hit it off. It was like that moment when the big, scary dog in the neighbourhood that always chased you and wanted to kill you comes up tentatively and lets you pet him.
I haven’t technically petted Bruce, but I did marry him to his lovely wife. I’ve holed up with him in his former house in Toronto to write, and we both drank so much Jim Beam and Coke that after a week neither of us could fit into our pants. He got me into collecting Canadian art. He turned me on to some of my favourite alternative bands. He taught me the joys of peeing off the stoop in your backyard instead of using the indoor toilet.
We’ve been through several dogs together, supported each other through our various movie and TV projects, and had some of the greatest discussions about comedy, writing, directing and life in general that I’ve ever been involved in.
Simply put, I love Bruce.
As I alluded to earlier, Bruce is truly unique. When we say in comedy that somebody has “a voice,” Bruce is the very definition of what we’re talking about. His take on the world, his characters, his writing, his one-man shows, the actual voice that comes out of his mouth—they’re all unique.
When I sat in his Toronto kitchen in the mid-1990s and he informally read me his one-man show, Slightly Bigger Cities, I was blown away. He had me laughing, he choked me up, he made me think. I had done stand-up comedy for years but never could have conceived of communicating to an audience in that way. He’s both a reliable and unreliable narrator, a spinner of tales tall and real, a bobbing-and-weaving wordsmith who makes you burst out laughing a moment before he hits you with some truth that stops you in your tracks.
But most of all, he’s funny.
So sit back, lick your thumb to turn the pages (even if you’re using an e-reader) and enjoy the voice and world of my good friend—a man whom I don’t hang out with but simply talk to—the amazing Bruce McCulloch.
—Paul Feig
Let’s Start a Riot
I am a writer. A simple man pushing and pulling words around. My whole life, I have been asking myself, “What are you thinking? . . . Hey, do you have an idea?” Stopping conversations in the middle to write down a phrase. I have a series of tartan notebooks that I have been scrawling in since I was a teenager. Perhaps I carried these around to tell myself, and the world, that I was a writer. These books became coffee- and time-stained as I toted them from place to place. My own illegible library.
Inside of me, there has always been the arrogant dream of writing a book. One day. When I was old. Luckily, and unluckily, that day had come. I had just gotten off the phone with my Busy Agent. I was excited by the news that I was going to be writing a book. I wanted to tell someone. But who? No friends came to mind. I couldn’t really tell the gardeners, could I? I didn’t know the Spanish word for “book.” (I later looked it up. It’s el libro, in case you ever need to know it.) Also, the gardeners can be kind of cold, like they’re mad at me or something. Maybe I’m just being paranoid. Then it hit me: of course! If I have good news, I should tell my family. My Pretty Wife and two kids who allow me to live in their house. That I pay for. Somehow.
They burst through the door. Roscoe and Heidi. They’re five and seven, I think. I don’t remember and they won’t tell me. And it seems that as soon as I remember their ages, poof, one of them has a birthday.
Heidi is seven, and a big seven. She’s nine hands high. She can eat six oranges in one sitting. She can jump over a bouncy castle in a single leap. But while she’s big for her age, she is still a baby at heart.
Roscoe, on the other hand, is an ad for a boy. A dancing, gentle, happy but not stupid boy. A smallish five, but still he knows how to toddle over and refresh your wine glass. He knows which wine you were—or should be—drinking. In fact, his first word was “Malbec.” And he pours with compassion. He knows what you’ve been through. He knows what you’re going through. He’s on track to become a teenage sommelier. Yes, we recently enrolled him in a course they offer at school for kids with “gifted palates.” There was a waiting list, but I got him bumped up. That’s the extent of my power in Hollywood. That and the fact that I can leave a message for anyone in town.
Roscoe is crying. Already crying, or still crying, I wonder. He is hard to understand at the best of times, but when he’s blubbering, all bets are off. His older sister translates. Something to do with him getting a yellow belt in karate but not getting a yellow belt in karate?
“Well, Daddy’s got some interesting news too.”
Heidi responds, “Apple in a bowl.” Meaning, “Asshole, go get me my apple cut up in a bowl like you do every day at this time.” My daughter has blood-sugar issues. At least we hope that’s what it is. Got it. Apple cut up perfectly in the correctly coloured bowl, then my news.
“Roscoe, what do you want to eat?” He looks at me and cries a jazzy wallow.
“Butter sandwich with fish crackers inside,” says Heidi.
He cries another good blast. “With the crusts cut off. You can eat the crusts, Daddy.” In this house, Daddy gets the crusts. I am a crust eater. I am an apple butler. I am Daddy.
Heidi is old for her age, but I’m sure she wouldn’t think so. One day when she was five, I came home and she said, “Hey, where’s my sushi?”
“I didn’t know you liked sushi. How would I know you liked sushi?”
“Didn’t you get my text?”
“I didn’t know you knew how to text.”
Now she is going through a phase (at least we hope it’s a phase): she’s been wearing glasses that she doesn’t need. Prop glasses with lenses, but she is very serious about them. She is so cute in the morning when she wakes up, lurches out and fumbles for them as if she can’t possibly see without them. When she puts them on
Enter, my Pretty Wife, carrying an armful of catalogues from the mailbox that sits atop our driveway. They just keep inventing new things for her to need. The catalogue people have her in their sights. Consumerism disguised as creativity. She’s also carrying fresh locally sourced organic foods from the farmer’s market. Or “overpriced” as I often (always) refer to them. But more pressingly, she has two almost identical tile samples for the kitchen floor that I only realized needed replacing when I was told it needed replacing. She has to decide and call her Tile Guy right away. He is a very busy, in-demand Tile Guy. She has a Cheese Guy, a Fish Guy, a Condiments Man and, now, a Tile Guy. I get the quick image of some lunk with calloused hands, not computer-soft like mine, pulling down her Lululemon yoga pants to get at her MILFy goods. But I stop myself because I have good news to tell her.
I want to say, “Actually, I’m going to be working on a book that will pay for part of that floor.” But she’s engrossed in studying these samples in natural light. And by the way, isn’t all light natural? Roscoe has forgotten karate and is now dancing. Our little Lord of the Dance is suddenly quite happy. He’s dancing on each sample to see which is “faster.” My Pretty Wife calls her sister to get her opinion of the tiles over the phone. She describes them both, and refers to the one that she’s now leaning towards as “well worth the money.”
Heidi is not impressed. Which is common. She grabs the prop glasses that sit on a chain around her neck, puts them on and rolls her eyes. She goes back to her own project: picking out books from a catalogue she’s been given at school. Which five should she get? For sure for sure, she wants the one about a girl whose sister is a vampire. Or she’s a vampire, I wasn’t really listening. But I thought, “Duh, book? I’m going tell her I’m writing a book.” Life has given me a natural segue. That never happens! (Sorry about the exclamation mark. I’ll try not to do that again.)
Those of you blessed and/or cursed with a family know that a family is a big, lurching boat. You try to stay upright while doing your job. Only every so often do you lock eyes with one of the shipmates who make up your family. Mostly, you are busy. And alone. It’s loud but lonely. Sometimes beautiful things, or moments, fly by you and you miss them. Or you notice them and promise yourself to be touched by them later.
After a few minutes, I sit slumped by the fire. My Pretty Wife brings me the martini I ordered some time ago. But in all fairness, the kitchen has been backed up with kids’ complicated dinner orders. She joins me. Our first moment together all day. She smiles. So loving and calm for an instant. The girl I married. She asks me about my day. Did anything interesting happen? I look at her, but for some reason I . . . don’t want to tell her about the book. I am now like a baby-man in a snit of my own creation. I can’t get my good mood back, no matter how hard I try. Even though I’m not really trying. Finally, I make her pull it out of me. She is ecstatic.
I act distracted and even lob, “Let’s talk about the tile some more. Aren’t there other people you could phone to help you decide?” She doesn’t bite. She calls the kids in and tells them, “Daddy is going to write a book.” Roscoe is elated, but doesn’t seem to know what a book is. Though he immediately knows it should be called Let’s Start a Riot. As if to lobby for his idea, he starts to run around in riotous circles. It is very loud and annoying, but at least he’s getting exercise. Let’s Start a Riot ? Daddy’s the writer here; I think he can come up with a better title than that.
“Really? Like what?” asks my Pretty Wife, suddenly not so pretty.
“I’ve got a few I’m rolling around in my head. Nothing I’m quite ready to pitch.”
Heidi, as always, is worried.
She says, “A book will be a lot of work for you. Are you sure you can do it?”
“Of course I can do it,” I say.
“What will this book be about?” she asks.
Everything stops. All eyes on me. The house is quiet for the first time in weeks.
“Well,” I stammer, “it’ll be about how I was once a young, angry punk who crawled out of a crappy family, had this silly show on TV, then somehow became a happy man, with a pretty good family.” Crickets.
“Why would anyone want to read that?” Heidi asks.
“People like Daddy,” offers my wife. “Those who know him.”
Gee, thanks. I feel clammy. I try to remember what I had said in the meeting.
“People will enjoy my book because it will be funny and touching and sort of relatable.”
Heidi just glares. My wife freezes a smile on her face. Avoidingly, I grab my laptop to check to see if there were any emails since the last time I checked to see if there were any emails.
Heidi prods, “Are you writing the book now?”
“No.”
“You better start. I’m getting worried.”
“Get off my back. I’ll start first thing in the morning.”
“Don’t you usually watch TV first thing in the morning?”
“Heidi, sometimes Daddy catches up with what is going on in the world in the morning.”
“You do that by watching House Hunters International ?”
“What are you, a tiny cop?”
She moves towards the kitchen, then stops. She gets serious. “Dad, your book sounds sort of boring. I think you have to put a vampire in it.” I finish my martini and think to myself, “Oh, I will. You and Roscoe and Mom are all vampires.” There will be others, of course.
In the kitchen, my Pretty Wife knowingly begins to rattle the martini shaker. We both know I have some work to do . . .
Hollywood
I live in the Hollywood Hills with my two kids and my Pretty Wife. She’s a good Canadian girl. Wonderful lady. She answers every question before it’s even asked. Catches every tear, real or imagined, before it hits the carpet. She’s tough as nails, but whenever she finishes a book, she cries, knowing she’ll miss all her “friends” inside those pages. She can organize a Moms Club fundraiser in her sleep. She actually did just that. I heard her somnambulistically mumbling details.
And, most impressively, she played Nancy Drew in a short-lived series in the ’90s. I take great pleasure in that fact. So whenever she loses her car keys, I can say, “Why can’t you find them? Aren’t you Nancy Drew?!” I’ve even got the kids doing it: “Mom, why can’t you find my glow-in-the-dark shoes? I thought you were Nancy Drew!”
Also, as we were getting married, and she was coming up the aisle towards me, I could have sworn I heard her mutter under her breath, “I love it when a plan comes together.” Perhaps I’m being paranoid.
We are now an old couple. You know you are an old couple when you can share the same eyeglasses. We have been married a long time, but still every so often she gives me “the look.” The look I know so well. The look that says, “Let’s just stay in tonight and get wasted and watch Intervention.” We watch that show because it puts our drinking in perspective. Sure, we like a drink now and then, but we’re not like those people!
Sometimes, people compare marriage to a war. I don’t think that is fair at all. Because in a war, if you surrender, you get to stop.
I am a writer with a complicated career. Meaning sometimes I work, sometimes I don’t. It’s gloomy when I don’t work. It can be stormy when I do. Married to a writer, my wife must endure and hope. But I have to do the writing. So we both have our crosses to bear.
So here I sit in Hollywood, part success story, part cautionary tale. Successful because I tend to sell things—movie scripts, TV pilots, etc. But cautionary because they mostly don’t “go.” Meaning, get made. I have realized no one ever stops you on the street to quote from these scripts. Or reads them aloud at your funeral. Or perhaps even goes to your funeral.
I live in a bubble house. A starter mansion, as I quip. But honestly, I try not to quip. Perhaps I should quip and my scripts would get made more often. I can’t see the Hollywood sign from where I am, but they assure me it’s there. Lurking. Waiting to inspire or taunt. Some days, I ask my housekeeper, Nadia, if, on her way into work, she can check to see if it’s still standing. It’s one of the jokes that we enjoy. That she doesn’t understand.
