Lisa McDonald’s Frantic Interview With Dan Redican

LISA McDONALD is back again, this time with an in-depth interview with a member of one of Canada’s premier Comedy troupes, writer, actor, director, producer, Dan Redican. His illustrious and ongoing career has enabled him to be part of the award winning Frantics, the Kids in the Hall, a wrangler of puppets, a purveryor of Muppets, and part of the hit CBC series, Little Mosque On the Prarie.  Lisa knows what questions to ask, and brokers a lively interview with whoever she has in her sights. Please feel free to add your comments after you read this interview, Lisa will appreciate the feedback. Her next Interview, with the Frantic Rick Green, runs in 2 parts starting this coming Thursday…

An interview with Dan Redican

The Frantics at The Royal

Frantic Noises CD release, Dec 7, 2009

Dan Redican grew up in Etobicoke, Ontario. But outside of a 5-year stint living in Beverly Hills working for MTV, Mr. Redican has been a Toronto resident for almost 20 years.  Starting out in the 70s, Redican worked as a comedic puppeteer at everything from birthday parties and church functions to family shows at The Toronto Centre for the Arts and Smale’s Pace in London. In addition to his television puppetry on CHCH’s Adventures of Snelgrove Snail and NBC’s The Jim Henson Hour, Redican also toured as a folk singer with his band, Poopy Dan. By the end of the seventies, Dan Redican found himself alongside funny men duo, Rick Green and Paul Chato entertaining audiences with their own brand of wacky comedy in a small club on Toronto’s east side.  With the addition of musician Peter Wildman, the sketch comedy and musical troupe of Wildman, Green, Chato and Redican went from tearing up stages as the Skits-o-Frantics to being billed quite simply as, The Frantics.

Enormously popular and highly entertaining, the comedy team are probably best-known for their CBC radio program Frantic Times and their television show Four on the Floor. But they also had great success with their album Boot to the Head and the comedy sketch Tai Kwan Leap, one of the most requested sketches on the Dr. Demento Show in Los Angeles.

By the late 80s, the Frantics decided to go their separate ways and Redican went on as Supervising Producer for The Kids in The Hall, Executive Producer of MTV’s Lyricist Lounge and as the Producer of the Jenny McCarthy Show. Some of us also remember this talented fella as the star of the Comedy Network’s hilarious hit show, Puppets Who Kill, for which he also served as story editor.  Currently, Mr Redican is Co-executive Producer of Little Mosque on the Prairie but has taken time out today to talk with me about his early days as well as the Frantics upcoming 30^th anniversary celebration at The Royal on Dec 7, 2009.

Starting out in 1979, The Frantics worked as the house troupe at a place called the Flamingo Cabaret.  Tell me about those days and where in Toronto this took place?

The Flamingo Cabaret was right across from the Art Gallery at McCaul and Dundas.  The comedy acts you’d see at the Cabaret were modeled after Second City.  But they were modeled poorly at first because of the three-hour marathon shows the performers would do to work up their material.  It was tough on the audience.  I wasn’t officially part of the troupe at that time.  I was doing puppet shows. I had an old British-type puppet stage that I wore on a frame and walked around in.  That was my shtick. When I first met the guys, it was at a place called The Nervous Breakdown at Parliament & Carlton.  Two of the Frantics, Paul Chato and Rick Green were doing throwback comedy as a duo.  But as corny as it was, anything comedic was considered super cool, and Chato and Green’s nerdy material really appealed to me.  When I returned from doing puppet work in London, Chato and Green were at the Flamingo Cabaret. I went there and performed a few times, but it was after the Flamingo ended that the Frantics really began.

Puppets are cool.

Yea, I know.  They’re fun to do, and I’d like to get back to puppetry again when the time is right.

Do you make them yourself?

Yes.  I try to do something every few years to keep my hand in it.  But right now Little Mosque on the Prairie is taking most of my time.  In recent years, I’ve been working a lot in television, writing as well as performing.

But back to the Frantics, the comedy troupe was originally called the Skits-o-Frantics.  That is, until one night at the El Mocambo opening up for a heavy metal band, the announcer introduced you simply as, the Frantics.

I really hated the name Skits-o-Frantics.  Watertight Torpedo Gang was thrown around, but when I went away to the Hamilton Folk Festival to do a little singing, I came back to the Skits-o-Frantics!  I thought it was so cheesy.  When we were announced on stage as The Frantics, I was happy to hear it!

Who was the heavy metal band?

I know we opened for Rory Gallagher at the El Mocambo but, he wasn’t really heavy metal was he?  I’m not sure if it was him or not, but I do remember the audience not wanting to see us.  They were not in the mood for us at all.

Did they throw stuff at you?

Yes!  At one point during a sketch, I looked out and saw some guy standing there (gets up to imitate a guy about to throw a beer bottle) and just before he let it rip, the waiter grabbed his arm from behind.

Thank god for the waiter!  Audiences can be so brutal.

It was trial by fire.  We played the Holiday Inn circuit too.  We played the Holiday Inn in all the O’s; Oshawa, Owen Sound and Orillia.  People who went to the Holiday Inn wanted to hear music, music they knew.  They wanted cover bands and they wanted to drink heavily. The Holiday Inn crowds were locals looking for a raucous party!  So we developed this opening.  We would run out on stage, each of us to our four mics that we had lined up in a row, and we`d do sketches one to two minutes long.  Sometimes we’d re-work old jokes, some of them dirty, but we kept it fast. We had to make the locals like us before they knew what was going on! (laughs)  If we had stopped to say, “sketch?”  They would’ve said, “Noooo, fuck you!” (laughs).  So we didn’t give them a chance to do that.  We’d come out for a fast five minutes and leave them cheering for more.  From there it got weirder, and more surreal.   And people started asking for us back!

I heard you were asked back because you sold the most beer.

That’s right.  We sold the booze and that’s the bottom line!

But the question really is… what kind of beer?

Well in 1979, it was either Ex or 50. (laughs) It was definitely a Labatt’s or Molson product.  The wild one would be… Labatt’s Diamond!

No Pabst Blue Ribbon? (laughs)

Having a hostile audience is really an important step that I don’t think anybody’s getting out there right now.  When the Kids in the Hall started out, they were the hip group from Calgary and when they came to town they did pretty well.  But Lorne Michaels took them to New York and put them with audiences that were expecting stand-up.  So in order to survive, the Kids had to find a way to change their act and win the audience over.  The Kids in the Hall had a year of trial by fire, and it’s how they got good.  It was the same for us at the Holiday Inn.

So you don’t think acts today are getting the same experience?

I’m not really up on every troupe out there but, I saw a bunch recently at the Comedy Awards when I hosted a night of sketch.  A troupe has to have a face.  You got to be able to look at it and say, “I recognize that face!” And it’s got to have a voice.  If you’re a troupe with twenty members who all look the same, doing material similar to other troupes, well, at the end of the night, people go home not knowing who they’ve seen.  The only troupe out there right now with any visible persona, I think, is the Imponderables.  You know who they are when you see them.

And where does one see them?

The Imponderables get a fair number of gigs.  They play down at the Comedy Bar, which is a good spot these days, or the Bad Dog.

I remember the Laugh Resort, but I think it moved from Lombard St.

The Laugh Resort moved over to King Street for a while, but I think it’s gone now. I like the idea of just going out and creating your own territory.  Just go into a bar with a stage and start something.  The thing about live comedy is when it’s good, it’s the best thing you`ve seen. But when it’s bad, its way worse than watching it on tv.  It’s a personal affront.  I mean, audiences get mad and it can be dangerous performing on stage.  People will get physically upset with you.  Live comedy is different than seeing a live band or drama.  After a live band or drama, people can say, “ya know, it was pretty good”.  With live comedy, a comment like that would be horrible.  You can`t be “pretty good” as a comedian because then you know you’ve failed to make them laugh.  The drama doesn’t have to be emotionally engaging, so it can be “pretty good”. Comedians have to emotionally engage you.  You have to be laughing, which is an involuntary emotional response.

In 1981, The Frantics recorded a radio pilot at Yuk Yuk’s comedy club.  The pilot was so successful, Frantic Times aired on CBC radio as a half hour program for the next six years, attracting a half-million listeners per week.

We were hugely popular, and it was a great kind of stardom to have because you could be anonymous.  You could go places and be anonymous. But if someone asked your name, you could choose to tell them and bask in the “aaahhh” for a while (laughs), and then go back to being anonymous.  Unlike Mike Meyers, who can’t be anonymous ever, and that wouldn’t be what I would want.

Remember the days when you never knew what radio personalities looked like?  And then suddenly you saw commercials on television advertising Roger, Rick and Marilyn.

People always sound better than they look, don’t they?  It doesn’t even matter if they’re good looking.  “That’s them? Oh!” (a look of disappointment).

(laughing) What was the transition like going from stage to radio?

When we first started out we didn’t know what we were doing.  I mean, it would be written down but, we didn’t really know what a script was or how to perform it really.  Sometimes Chato would make faces so there’d be all these laughs but the listeners wouldn’t be able to figure it out.  We read up on radio personality Ed Wing who used to go out riding a tricycle and honking a horn and listeners at home would laugh but, they wouldn’t have any idea why!  Our first episode was like that.  We recorded two hours worth of material and aired only 15 minutes.  The show went short. (laughs)  None of us were radio fanatics.  Radio comedy as far as we were concerned, was dead.  It took us the first year to learn what radio was.  The transition was a steep learning curve.  I was always impressed with (The Royal Canadian) Air Farce.  They were great in their ability to work microphones and play to the radio audience.

Was it radio that approached you or did the Frantics make a pitch to the radio?

The Frantics were always looking for the next opportunity.  We wanted to do television but there wasn’t any interest, so we went to radio.  We were a very hard working ambitious troupe and we thought radio would be a stepping stone to tv.  The transition from stage to radio was challenging but when we eventually became successful, tv people thought it was strange to hear us with the visual.  It turned out radio was not such a good stepping stone to television at all.  The Air Farce had a little show in the 70s, but it wasn’t until the 90s that they really got on television.  They were held back for years.  And when we started on radio, we thought the Air Farce would be retiring.  That was 1980, and the Air Farce just retired last year! (laughs)  Not only did they not retire, they outlasted the Frantics!

How did you guys get it together to write for a weekly show?

The amount of work we had to do was insane.  Every two weeks we would record two shows, take a day off, and then get back together and start writing and forming the next show, which we’d have in shape by the following weekend.  And then we’d re-write, fix and hone down to have a script ready to record the week after that.  There was a time in 52 weeks, we did 50 shows!  I remember someone coming up to me and saying, “you don’t seem well”. (laughs)  “No, no, I’m fine… I’m really good!  I can do another one right now, let’s go!” (laughs)  I had no idea.  And then I took sick and had to lie down. (laughs)  But it was an incredibly good experience.  We learned so much.  We learned not to be so egotistically attached to material.

Was it a live situation? Live to air?

No.  We performed in front of a live audience and then it was edited.  Live to air never made any sense to me.  I guess it gives people immediacy in performing but, editing will only get you a better show.

In the early days of radio it was always live, wasn’t it?  At least I always assumed so.  Now, it’s the opposite.  I assume all radio is pre-recorded.  And if I’m not mistaken, Saturday Night Live isn’t even live anymore.  Do you know if SNL is recorded in the middle of the day now, and aired on television later?

I think SNL is keeping the same method as it always has.  It’s still live with only a second’s delay.  Early in the day is the dress rehearsal which they record in case anything screws up in the evening.  I have friends on the show and I never heard anything about it not being live anymore.

Have you ever worked on SNL?

I haven’t worked on the show, no.  I was a young snotty bastard when Lorne Michaels asked me to write for it.

Oh!  And you turned it down?

(Head hanging low) “I don’t know if I want to be a writer….” I said to Lorne. (Laughs) I played hard to get, and didn’t get. Years later, I said to him, “uh Lorne, I’d like to try that writer thing now” And Lorne said, (in a Lorne Michaels voice) “well, uh, talk to Jim and see if he has a spot for you”.  I didn’t get on (laughs), but that’s okay.

Did you grow up listening to radio shows?

No. I was born in `56 so television was pretty established by the time I was conscious of anything.  And then I watched Bewitched, the Beverley Hillbillies and Green Acres. But you know, one of the best radio shows ever was Vic and Sade.  An American show that was done in the 30s; Paul Reimer wrote it before the real heyday of radio.  It’s a show about a husband, his wife and son; the original show about nothing.  It’s all but forgotten now but it was brilliant.  It broke all the rules and truly inspired me.

Where are you most comfortable working; stage, radio or television?

I have a real fondness for sketch and performing on the stage.  But performing sketch on television is a lot of fun too.  If I got the chance to do more of that, I would be happier.

So why is it more fun doing sketch for television as opposed to the stage? I would think it would get boring repeating stuff over and over again.

Well I guess the fun is:  the bigness of it all.  It’s the excitement of doing something large.  The last time we did the Bad Dog, we did all new shows for a week and it was a lot of fun but, there’s something obviously ephemeral about that.  You don’t get any residual cheques. (laughs)  You have to start your next job immediately.  I wouldn’t say the stage is less fun than doing television, but at the end of the thing, you have something to show for it.  TV lives a little longer.

I heard Eddie Murphy say he’d like to return to stand-up.  But after further thought, he said, “Na!  It’s too gruelling.  It’s so much harder doing stand-up than movies!”

Yes.  I have a craving to do puppetry again.  I haven’t talked to anyone about it, but it would be fun to take a puppet show on the road.  I’d have to start preparing now to have something ready by next summer.  And there would be a lot of building, creating, and conceiving.  But I’d like to do something for kids.  My kids are grown now, but I use to work as a daycare teacher and kids have always meant a lot to me.

Frantic Times garnered the outfit numerous ACTRA award nominations, along with a few wins.  What was it like winning an award for your radio work?

The ACTRA awards were the predecessor to the Gemini Awards.  We won for writing and performing and tied with the Air Farce on one. We were always up against the Air Farce.  The Air Farce were the darlings of radio.  Having been nominated so many times and always losing to them, it was exciting to finally hear our name called.  My acceptance speech was, “I’d like to thank Hell for freezing over!”

(Laughing)  After stage and radio, television finally followed with your own show called Four on the Floor.  The show was a hit for the CBC, Showtime Network in the US and for the BBC.   The talents of the Frantics seemed to cross over everywhere, huh?

We had a great response from Four on the Floor for years.  After it ended, I went on to be supervising producer for Kids in the Hall, which was a direct result of Four on the Floor.  I also got to work with the Muppets after Jim Henson saw me on Four on the Floor.

Doors were flying open!  Did you wonder which one to go through, keeping Lorne Michaels in mind?

Yup! (Laughter)  I’ve known troupes who’ve been around for 7 years without much movement, but we did an awful lot.  Four on the Floor was 1986, 23 years ago!  We zipped through!  Along with stage, radio and television, we also released records.

Yes, tell me more about your records.

Our first album was a compilation of sketches and songs from our radio show and the one after that was recorded at the Toronto Free Theatre (now a Canadian Stage space on Berkeley St).  We did an official Frantics bootleg album as well as recorded radio-style material in front of an audience at Yuk Yuk’s.  With scripts in hand and sound effects, people just ate that one up; it was a great live experience. We called it Enemies of Reason. Although I use to play and sing in a little folk act of my own, Peter Wildman is our resident musician.

And what about tv and radio now?  What do you think of them today?

The delivery system has changed and exactly how it will work down the road, I`m uncertain.  Television has to find a way to reach audiences who are now watching shows on computers.  They’ll probably have to do that by abandoning television altogether and going online. I’m anticipating a conservative majority in Canada next time around and they don`t really want to see a government-subsidized entertainment industry.  I gave up television for a long time but my wife can`t live without.  I find I’m watching tv all the time again.  (Laughs) But if I were alone, I think I’d get rid of it.  It`s not good for me.  I`d also be tempted to get rid of my internet, so my only options would be to read or write.  I use to read four or five books a week.  Now it`s a book every few weeks.  It’s sad.  But you know, I have a big writing project right now and to get it done, I hop on my bicycle and ride to the library.  I write a bit there and when I hit a block or need a change of scene, I ride to another library.  I`ve been going to libraries all over Toronto and they`re fascinating places.  It’s far better than working at home where I end up playing a computer game when I can’t get started.  This way, I get out every day, which I love.  And the work gets done.

The cycling and changing libraries obviously stimulates your creativity.

It works out well.  I really like the Oakwood library.  It`s an ordinary library but, on the second floor there’s a fireplace with comfy chairs around it.  Typically, nobody is too near which gives me the space to write.  And it`s not like the old days, libraries let you bring in a coffee.  It`s civilized.  And occasionally I pick up some books.  It’s far better than working in a coffee shop like Starbucks.  I mean, I get why people do it, but there`s not enough personal space for me and it`s too noisy.  I`ll get a coffee at Starbucks, and then go to the library.

By 1989, The Frantics finally ran out of steam but before parting ways, a production called The Frantics Walk Upright – a Journey through History was staged as your final act together.   At this point were you happy to spilt and work on other projects?

The Frantics Walk Upright was a huge success. It sold out night after night and went into an extended run at the Toronto Free Theatre before moving to the Young People`s Theatre.  The production showed no sign of waning and people came to us saying, “we gotta get this on Broadway!”  It looked like we could have gone to New York at that point but, Paul Chato lined up a job as an executive at the CBC and the Frantics came to a halt.  It was weird because Broadway would’ve been a big step.

Was this another Lorne Michaels?

(Laughs)  Something about New York, I dunno.

Did it take time to move on with other projects?

I was the first who said, “I`ve had enough of the Frantics.  We`ve been doing this for ten years and I`d like it to end”, but with the success of The Frantics Walk Upright, I was like, “or maybe not!  Maybe we should keep going!”  After the Frantics, I worked with the Kids in the Hall, but I also co-starred in a CBC comedy called Mosquito Lake.  It was a big flop and the press were horrible to us.  Even the CBC themselves told us, “get ready, the press will be horrible to you”.

And why would the CBC say that?

The reality was, if you put a mediocre show on CTV, people would say, “I don`t like it”.  When you put a mediocre show on the CBC, people would say, “oh, it’s horrible!” Look what the CBC is doing with tax payer’s money!” And the following week critics would write, “Oh that horrible show was on again.” They wouldn’t shut up about it.  In fact, after Mosquito Lake was off the air for three years, I looked at the end-of-year wrap up of Canadian television and sure enough it said, ”There have been some bad shows but nothing as bad as Mosquito Lake”. (Laughing)

What`s the difference between CTV and CBC?

The CBC is a government television station run under a different standard.  But now that I think about it, I don`t see much of that criticism any more.  With Mosque, people may like it or hate it, but they don`t go on and on about hating it.

Tell me about Puppets Who Kill.

That was John Pattison`s brain child.  John Pattison did a stage show called Puppets Who Kill but it was nothing at all like the tv show.  The stage show was about a ventriloquist whose dummy is trying to kill him.  But everything the dummy tries to do to kill him back fires, and ends up hurting the dummy instead.

(Laughter!) Why is that so f***ing hilarious?!

It was hilarious!  And then John Pattison worked with Steve Western to turn the play into a tv pilot.  I was hired as a story editor.  I gave them some ideas and then they went off to sell it to Jason Alexander (Seinfeld).  But Alexander`s vision of the show didn`t quite work with Pattison and so it fell through.  Pattison went off to Banff and sold it to the Comedy Network.  After all that, I was asked to star in it.  I went from working on the script to the starring role of the human social worker.   I had a lot of fun doing it.  It was a great treat and I was really sorry to see it end.  (Puppets Who Kill is a half-hour comedy show about a half way house for very bad puppets.  Set in the real world, these puppets are treated as if they’re alive and everyone accepts them as reality.  The puppets are conniving, dangerous, self-centered and bitter. Four felonious puppets having committed crimes against society, now doing time with their hapless human social worker)

Why did it end?

Pattison wanted to end it.  He thought at first he’d keep it going with a bigger budget (which the Comedy Network didn`t approve) but, I think he got pretty tired by the 4^th season.  John really lives and breathes a project when he does it.  He put so much effort into every episode that it just drained him.  He was the entire creative team, really.

I remember seeing the show once, maybe twice. And I thought it was absolutely brilliant.

The Comedy Network has the rights to carry it again and they probably will at some point.  But Puppets Who Kill can be found on DVD too.  And you know, when the Comedy Network started up in 1997, they also aired Four on the Floor.

Who is Mr Canoe Head?

Mr Canoe Head is a superhero who, while portaging in an aluminum canoe through Algonquin Park was struck by a bolt of lightning and the canoe welded to his head.  Mr Canoe Head uses his powers to fight evil.

Ha! And did you come up with this character for the Frantics, or was it a group effort?

The original idea came from me but, it was nothing like the way it ended up.  There`s a group effort to everything.

In 1994, The Frantics reunited for a sold out show at Just for Laughs.  The Frantics also did a reunion special on the Comedy Network in 2003.  And now in 2009, Frantic Noises will be released (a CD of old and new songs) to coincide with your thirtieth anniversary.   What can the audience expect when the lights go down in the Royal on Dec 7^th?

I’m not sure what kind of show we`ll be doing exactly. Nobody’s told me! (Laughs) But I think the audience can expect a fair bit of singing and they can expect something brilliant!  We may have reunited sooner but the trick is getting Rick Green.  Green`s always got a million projects on the go.  This time around Peter Wildman is the driving force.

Many artists continue to release CDs and some artists even release stuff on vinyl, which is cool.  But with the decline in CD sales, I wonder how much longer we’ll hear the term “CD release party”?

I hate vinyl.

Why would you say that? Vinyl has the best sound!

I would always scratch the record.  Always! I`d be told, “Get a new needle”. So I`d go get a new needle, but Jesus Christ, I would just scratch the hell out of all my vinyl.  I hated it.  When CDs came along I thought, thank god!  People would say, “They don`t sound as good as vinyl” And I`d say, “Well they sound better than MY vinyl!”

(Much laughter) So I guess you’re one of those guys who got rid of all your vinyl?

Oh yea!

Why didn`t you tape from vinyl to cassette and preserve your vinyl?

Cassettes!  Cassettes!  This would happen every time (imitates the tape being eaten by the machine)!

(Laughter) Sound like you didn`t have good chemistry with cassettes either.

I love CDs.

(This man is very funny!)

Who are some of your influences, favourite comedians or entertainers?

Monty Python had a strong influence on the Frantics and comparisons between the two would come up occasionally in the press.  Unlike Second City who were doing cultural satire, we were doing absurdist comedy and that puts us more in the realm of Monty Python.  We would do sketches sometimes and say, “Wow, this is too Pythonish!”  And when the producer of our tv show added little animated sequences between pieces, it only supported the comparisons.  When the show went to England, the response was, “oh these Canadians are trying to be Python”.  Nobody really mentioned it here but, I think we would’ve been spared the British criticism had we not went for the animated sequences.

Any Canadian influences?

Well, we grew up with Wayne and Shuster; and Second City.

Growing up, were you one of those kids who would inflict your act on your family?

Yes!  I come from a family of eight and my mother would always say, “Don`t laugh or you`ll encourage him!”

(Laughing!)

Tickets for the Frantics at the Royal on Dec 7^th are $10 in advance, $15 at the door. Doors open at 7:00 pm. Advance tickets can be purchased through the Frantics website…

Dan and Lisa

http://www.thefrantics.com/

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Frantics/10865361933

http://www.cbc.ca/littlemosque/

http://www.puppetswhokill.com/

http://www.kidsinthehall.com/

About Lisa McDonald: “I’m a city girl. A vegetarian who enjoys yoga, pilates, and cycles to keep active but live music is my real passion. All things music really, and I’ve been known to write about it.. I value a strong work ethic and good manners, but what really turns me on is confidence and experience.”