Lisa McDonald sat down with writer, actor, producer and musician Rick Green recently to explore the inner workings of a man that has so many times caused us to smile, laugh and tap our feet. This is the first of a two-part interview, timed to coincide with the release of Frantic Noises, the new Frantics album that will be launched at The Royal in Toronto on December 7.
Rick Green is a Canadian comedian, actor, satirist, writer, and holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Waterloo. From 1975 until 1979, Mr Green worked as a presenter at the Ontario Science Centre where he developed numerous plays, programs and exhibits. Following the OSC, Green brought his gift for comedy and his love for performing to numerous Toronto stages by joining Paul Chato, Dan Redican and Peter Wildman in the enormously popular sketch comedy troupe, The Frantics. The antics of the troupe were displayed on the award-winning CBC Radio show Frantic Times and the television program, Four on the Floor. In 1987, Rick Green won two ACTRA awards for Best Performer and Best Writer of an Entertainment Feature for the 13-part CBC series, The Frantics Look at History.
From 1989 to 1994, Rick was writer and host (Commander Rick) of TVOntario’s Prisoners of Gravity, a show that explores literature, specifically science fiction, fantasy, horror, and comics. At the same time, Green joined creator Steve Smith to co-write eight seasons, direct four and perform in 173 episodes of The Red Green Show as the hapless klutz, Bill Smith. The Red Green Show is one of the longest running prime time series in North America. In addition to the television series, Rick co-wrote and illustrated several Red Green books. Rick then began developing a fast-paced comedy series called History Bites for the History Television channel. Each episode of History Bites focuses on a different historical event and imagines what it would be like if television were there to cover it. As creator, writer, director and performer, Rick Green brought History Bites to its 5th season. Over the years, Rick has written and directed corporate videos, television commercials and films, written for stand up comedians and dozens of magazines and newspapers, as well as taught classes in writing and physical comedy.
The multi-talented artist has been nominated for over a dozen Gemini Awards and is currently immersed in developing a website called Totally A.D.D., which not only stems from the award-winning documentary A.D.D. and Loving it?! for which Green wrote, produced and directed for Global TV along with actor, comedian and host Patrick McKenna. But this project specifically draws upon his own battle with A.D.D. and his passion for education and personal commitment to transforming our view of mental health. Unbelievably, Mr Green has found a moment in his busy schedule to chat with me extensively about Attention Deficit Disorder, his past achievements and current endeavours as well as the upcoming Frantics reunion show at the Royal on Dec 7, 2009.
Part One of 2 Parts
What led you from the Ontario Science Centre to performing absurdist comedy on stages with a sketch troupe?
I have a degree in physics and in some ways physics is a lot like comedy. It’s about exposing the truth underneath. It’s about expecting one thing and finding another. Physics fascinates me and I have a tremendous interest in it. But I knew I didn’t have the personality to be a physicist. All of my demonstrations at the OSC were full of humour. I found humour to be a powerful teaching tool. The OSC had a 40-foot long carbon dioxide laser; a million dollar machine used to burn holes through anything in six seconds flat, and its power was astounding. This was around the time of Star Wars and after I demonstrated the laser, there would be silence. Then I’d say to the class, “The only thing preventing this laser from becoming a weapon is not just its length, but the fact you’ll never find a holster big enough to hold it!” And this would be followed by laughter. I really found humour useful in clarifying, demystifying, and removing fear. I demonstrated for school groups and it was always the comedy that helped engage them. Some people were shocked that teachers of science could be funny, but I think comedy stimulates people to ask better questions. I’ve done a number of presentations over the years on how science and the arts differ but they’re also very similar in their search for truth. Before discovering humour as a teaching tool, it was like trying to sell cars by forcing people to listen about octane combined with oxygen to release….
Oh, you lost me already!
Exactly. That method won’t sell cars. But just like a scantily-clad super model draped across the hood brings attention to the car, humour can get people interested in science. The people doing scientific research are very passionate. It’s not magical, but there’s a sense of the mystical in what they’re doing. They’re looking for what really is, not just a simple explanation.
Were you always this interested in science?
Yes. I was always building stuff in the basement. But I prefer to work with groups of people. I’m not interested in working alone.
But what exactly led you from the Ontario Science Centre to stages for the performing arts?
I was always performing on stages, even at the Science Centre. And in the evenings I was doing comedy on Scarborough Cable and other shows. But after meeting Paul Chato at the Nervous Breakdown on Carleton, I got more involved in sketch comedy. It was great to get up in front of an audience and do strange stuff for thirty minutes straight. I’ve probably been in front of an audience close to 10,000 hours. I was up to 3,000 hours when I left the Science Centre.
Was your first performance as a kid in the family living room?
I used to do magic shows as a kid. And I killed ‘em with a couple of Ed Sullivan routines in high school. Girls came up to me afterward saying, “You were great!” And I thought, “Wow, a girl is talking to me. Okay, I’ve found it!” (Laughing)
Others would be wooing girls by picking up guitars and imitating rock stars, but you…
I was never great at playing an instrument but I could make them laugh. One seminal experience I had was just before my uncle, who was an architect, died. It was his last Christmas and he was not doing well, battling cancer. Everyone was being cheerful around him; he being the elephant in the room. I had made this kit with my younger brother; a do-it-yourself home 
architect kit; a little box with girders and pieces of Leggo in it, stapled up and sealed. It was cute and it was funny. People laughed over it and they were so relieved to laugh. It was healing. When my uncle passed away a couple of months later, the first thing out of my aunt’s mouth at the hospital was, “He just loved that kit. It meant so much to him.” Early on I realized that it’s possible to change the world. People were doing stuff that wasn’t just entertainment. Monty Python was breaking up how you viewed everything. George Carlin and Richard Pryor were also starting up.
You’re talking the heavyweights.
And shows like M*A*S*H and All in the Family came to television; comedy that could get nasty. Even Laugh-in was shocking, political and nasty. When the Frantics didn’t have nudity in their television show, the American broadcasters said, “It doesn’t matter; it’s your religious humour that’s dangerous.” I think all of this ties together. There’s always been an aspect of teaching in everything I’ve done. Even playing Bill on the Red Green show, there are physics lessons. There hasn’t been much incentive to write that kind of comedy, so writing it takes a unique skill. And when someone does it well, like Mr Bean, it becomes hugely popular all over the world. Did you know that Mr Bean is actually used as a therapeutic tool for Aspergers-afflicted kids in England?
No.
The kids indentify with Mr. Bean completely. When someone wants to know about Aspergers, you can begin by describing Mr Bean; grumpy, confused, very literal, intrusive, has a girlfriend but really only warms to his teddy bear.
When I think of stand-up comedians, I think of tragedy. Tragedy is comedy. Behind the curtain, aren’t all comedians living on the dark side?
We’re not a very happy bunch.
Can you tell me more about your character Bill Smith?
Bill was the character in the segment of the Red Green show called Adventures with Bill. Trying to do simple tasks, Bill would always find himself in clumsy situations. The segments were shot in a silent home-made movie format with a voice over by Red. Bill rarely spoke but carried out his tasks with slapstick comedy routines. On the first day of shooting, we discovered we brought the wrong film. There was a moment on the set where we said, “What do we do? Do we break for twenty minutes while someone goes back to get the right film?” We instantly made the creative decision to shoot in black & white instead. And just like my character, it was during the Red Green show that I discovered I too had A.D.D. (Attention Deficit Disorder).
Looking back at the history of the Frantics, with performances on stage, radio, and television, the troupe’s popularity and success grew rapidly in a short period of time. Was there a particular moment when you just knew you were on to something?
We were on the stage for three years before we went to radio. At that point, we really started to find our voice and we just kept developing it. It was an incredibly creative collective and a real democracy. I got to re-write anything I wanted and anyone could change it back again but, I got input on everything. Having the discipline to deliver a CBC radio script every two weeks was unbelievable. I learned I could always find a better verb; always write a better draft, and always find a little extra to give my character. But in radio, it gets taken away so you can move forward to write the next one. It was almost like that great saying, “creative works are never finished but abandoned”. There was a lot of material to be written and endless delivery dates. The Frantics rose to the occasion but when you don’t know you’re at the mercy of A.D.D. like me, it was easy to assume weakness. I would be lazy, give in too easily, and be stupid in some areas. When I later learned what some of my A.D.D. symptoms were, I got the chance to deal with them. Like when I thought I had trouble focusing when it was really just that I was hyper-focused on the wrong thing. I could be writing and look up four hours later to realize I had to pee the entire time and that I was starving. To switch from one thing to another was brutal and I never understood why. It was only five or six years ago when I became aware of my condition. The more I read about A.D.D., the more I say to myself, “Jesus, no wonder.” A.D.D. people love to work under pressure. The adrenaline wakes up the mind, but can be exhausting on the body. I found strategies that compensated, and made them work for me.
So you’re saying you’ve had A.D.D. all your life, but only discovered it five or six years ago? Yet, you’ve achieved so much!
I’m what you call high functioning; that’s the A.D.D. term. Unlike some with A.D.D., I went to university. I grew up in Don Mills with a supportive family. I have gifts that I benefit by, and a lot of things fell my way. But some people with A.D.D. can’t 
hold down a job. A.D.D. can be so severe that you can’t even finish a sentence. You get impatient. You lash out. I use to get nuts in traffic but now that I know the reason, I can calm myself and let it go. In the documentary I did with Patrick McKenna called A.D.D and Loving It?!, we address the impulsivity and the impatience. How some of us would rather get off at the next exit and go a hundred miles out of our way, rather than be stuck in traffic. And some people with A.D.D. who, having drove a hundred miles out of their way, will then pull up at the nearest car dealership and impulsively buy a car. They arrive home to announce, “I bought a car!” And the wife says, “what the…?”
That sounds extreme but, I would think some A.D.D. actions would appear to others as anxiety or reactions to stress.
A.D.D. afflicted people are stressed out but, the flip side is you can look A.D.D., when you’re not. How often do you lose your keys? Having learned to put small structures in my life to prevent it, I still lost my wallet on the way over here. It’s the first time it’s happened to me in years. But finding out you have A.D.D. in adulthood is like finding out in adulthood that your left leg is three inches shorter than your right. It’s been that way since birth and without knowing it, you develop all sorts of strategies to compensate. But then there are times when you think back to the high school dance; and the girl you knocked over into the punch bowl. She went off with someone else, got married and lived happily ever after. I spent 15 years in therapy trying to figure out my anger toward women.
How do you feel about that now, knowing it was the A.D.D.?
Relief. Okay, so my left leg is shorter, but why didn’t somebody tell me?
After discovering you had A.D.D., did you go around apologizing to people for the past?
I went around explaining it to people. And it was like, “But you’re successful, so isn’t that interesting.” And this response made me angry. I know I don’t look different. But I’ve taken the medication and the difference is astounding. I’m completely different on the inside. For example, I had a year and a quarter’s worth of GST that I couldn’t even look at. But when I went on medication, it all got done in a day.
But there’s no denying the success. So it must be like, “wow, if I can do all that without medication, look out now!”
The challenge is not having regret. I don’t get those years back. Now I want people to know sooner. What shocks me is the amount of terror people have over the diagnosis. Out of all the different types of diagnosis you could ever get, A.D.D. comes with good news and it’s why I have a website in development; to help people understand the condition.
Can you tell me more about the website as well as the documentary?
A.D.D. and Loving It?! aired on Global TV last September. It’s an entertaining and hilarious documentary because it’s made by a comedian, written by a comedian, directed by a comedian, and stars a comedian. Global TV will air it again in the New Year, 2010. It was astounding for me to read viewer mail that said, “my son is now beginning to see the life he can have.” The response was fantastic.
It must’ve been so rewarding to read that!
Oh, it certainly was! It’s fun to make people laugh but even greater fun to make people laugh with tears of relief. I did a one-day workshop last June for CAMH (Centre for Addiction and Mental Health) where people came in, sat down with arms 
crossed and eyes shifting side to side with a look that said, “I hope no one sees me here”. They had the look of someone who walked into a dog fight and were ashamed of being there or something. But within fifteen minutes, most of them were laughing. There was laughter, there were tears, and there were thank yous! The workshop was life-altering for some people.
Did the documentary turn out the way you expected it to? Are you happy with it?
A.D.D. and Loving It?! turned out exactly the way I had hoped. The question I got from so many people in television was, “but how did you get that made? They don’t make documentaries like that anymore. It’s not exploitive, it’s not confrontational, it’s not fake drama, it’s not reality tv, and it’s not intervention.” It’s a documentary that’s funny but, it’s even less than a documentary and more an educational film. We originally titled it A.D.D. and Loving it, and then my wife suggested adding the question mark at the end after we learned about people with A.D.D. who weren’t functioning as well as others; like A.D.D. people who have five hundred television shows under their belt, you know? And it was my wife who said, “I think the message should be: you can’t love A.D.D. but, you can have A.D.D. and love life.” And that’s exactly it. My wife is an editor and quite gifted at teasing out the truth that underlies something.
The documentary aired already, right? But was it a full length doc or a special that ran in many parts?
We shot 26 hours of amazing material that was cut down to 42 minutes for the documentary. But at the end of the documentary there’s a wall covered with a ton of post-it notes with questions written on them. This made us realize we could use the rest of the footage on the website to help address those questions further; questions about medications for example. It’s shocking how many people fear medications due to failure in education. There are many safe medications for A.D.D. which have been used for over seventy years. And they work with minimal side effects. We’ve done the studies. But there are groups out there who demonize. Nobody wants to go on medication but they’re all on caffeine. These medications are safer than caffeine.
Isn’t a large percentage of society on anti-depressants?
Yes. I know so many people who by the time they reach adulthood, are going through some level of depression.
I went through a bout of depression, as did Patrick.
I believe most of society is depressed at some level. I know I am. I’m not taking anything, but…
I couldn’t figure out why I was incapable of certain things and really capable in other areas. Depression really undercuts your ability to take stuff on because you think, “well, I could write or direct a movie, but Jesus, I can’t even do my GST!” There’s a great phrase in the documentary when a doctor says, “The number one reason adults come to see me is: unexplained failures. They have huge successes and then periods of completely blowing it. And they can’t for the life of them figure out why.”
I really want to see this documentary.
We got great numbers. We did almost double than anything else that ran in the same time slot for Global TV that year. We struck a nerve and I know from the response of the doc and the people registering at the website, there’s a hunger for this information.
We sort of got off track but, back to the Frantics. Was there a point where you just knew you were on to something?
I think it was when we were in California doing the Dr. Demento show. Dr. Demento hung out with Weird Al (Yankovic) and both of them knew everything. They knew everything when it came to recorded comedy. Having said that, Dr. Demento introduced the Frantics over the air as, “the greatest comedy troupe in the world who doesn’t have a snake in their name.”
Snake in their name?
Python.
Ah, of course!
And at that moment I realized, this is what I hoped for! The Frantics were compared to Monty Python many times and I knew we could never replace them. But now we were second, and that was cool. It took a moment, and then it was like, “thank you!” The Frantics had a bunch of skits running on Dr. Demento’s program, but we were down there at the time to promote our second album. It was like being voted for by your peers at the Academy Awards. It was reassuring.
In 1989, the Frantics went out with a bang. I heard the show Frantics Walk Upright – a Journey through History was not only your last big hurrah, but your most profitable show ever. Broadway was calling! How did you feel at the time the Frantics came to an end?
The Frantics were together for the same length of time as the Beatles. But two of the guys wanted out and I got tired of convincing them to stay. I’d hear, “oh, we’ll never be on Letterman or Carson.” This is all hindsight so who knows for sure but, had we had a really strong leader, or someone to say, “this is where you’ve got to take it…” I don’t know whether we’d have listened, but…”
You did go out with a bang.
It was like, “we got this show coming up so we’ll do it. But then, that will be it”. But of course what happened was, the show was a huge hit. It was held over and reviewers were saying “this is good enough for Broadway!” We could easily have gone but, some of us wanted out, so…
You went on to other projects.
I did tons of stuff. I wrote for Smith and Smith, a show for Steve Smith and his wife. But I wrote under the name Enrico Gruen because they couldn’t afford to pay me the actor’s rate.
And you also co-wrote, directed and performed with Steve Smith for the Red Green Show. Is it challenging to wear so many hats on a project?
Steve had said let’s do something else because my wife needs a break. And the Red Green show took off. We got more email in the first three months of that show than most shows get in their entire run.
So you went from not being paid under your own name, to a show as successful as this?
What we were doing was partly solo budget that nobody was committed to for a lot of money. We were allowed to play and Steve jokes about this, but there’s a huge amount of truth when he says, “They only gave us enough money to deliver something, but not enough money to ask us to deliver anything specific. “If you can deliver something to fill this time slot, we’re happy.” We not only filled the time slot, but we got to develop our own voice and garnered all these fans to become the number one show, without anyone’s advice. And then later, an executive came along and gave us all these things he wanted us to do. We tried all the things the executive wanted but, because it was someone else’s vision, it almost killed the show. When a great show comes along it’s because the creative team has been given free reign to come up with their own ideas.
With the types of programs aired on HBO and Showcase over the last several years, I believe that.
People working in television are definitely getting more freedom. The Red Green Show got it by default because the show wasn’t very expensive. And History Bites was done for a fraction of what anything else would have been done for as well. 
Prisoners of Gravity also cost a fraction of what TVO’s other show Imprint, cost. And yet we beat them all in the ratings. What I learned along the way was that when you go after something particular, it may alienate people at first… “oh no, we’re not interested in science fiction.” But those who are interested in science fiction, are now rabid and the rest follow. Why? People knew what they were getting with Prisoners of Gravity I guess; they knew what to expect. It had a voice just like the Frantics had a voice and Red Green had a voice; very different voices but ultimately a voice with a joyful self-deprecating sense of humour. A woman wrote to the Red Green show once and said, “Never have women on the show because we know how you act. We know how you act when we’re not around.” The show is about guys who are left alone to behave badly. But I was really proud of Steve for covering subjects like homophobia on Red Green. You may think the audience isn’t liberal minded enough but, we got it in there. When you have a lodge member on the Red Green show that’s gay and Red is cool with it, it’s a neat little message to send out. And with that in mind, families came out for Red Green and families came out to see the Frantics. There was a gleeful childishness to it all that I just loved. And as for wearing all the hats, you kind of have to in order to make a decent living. I’ve learned that producing and directing is just a step beyond the writing anyway; it’s really the next level. It’s a collaborative process that I find fun. Unlike Steve, who has no interest in directing, I like it because I can work with actors and clarify the jokes that I wrote.
Which roles do you prefer?
I’m probably the most comfortable with writing. But the most fun would be in directing! After it’s written, I can watch comedians bring my stuff to life. And watch them add stuff to it. To go up to an actor you admire and say, “what if when he says that, you turn your head and do this, and stare for a fraction of a second…” And the actor will nod his head and say, “oh, that’s good, that’s good, okay.” The cameras roll again, and when I call cut, we’re all laughing. I just love that.
Concludes next Tuesday…
Tickets for the Frantics at the Royal on Dec 7th are $10 in advance, $15 at the door. Doors open at 7:00 pm. Advance tickets can be purchased through the Frantics website…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Green
http://news.globaltv.com/Loving/2009300/story.html
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=25814835749
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.”
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Come for the Frantics, stay for the bars
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/734661–come-for-the-frantics-stay-for-the-bars