And we're taking the US with us.
For anyone familiar with this fucking hilarious show, here's
fucking hilarious news: The Trailer Park Boys are heading to
US TV. I've only seen the first season, but this is classic
comedy and done on a shoestring budget.
http://epguides.com/TrailerParkBoys/
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040410/TRAILER10/TPEntertainment/TopStories
The first time I saw it, I thought "Man, Showcase is so low
budget they're buying cheap TV shows made on video." Then I
watched them in repeats and realized how funny they are. I
love the episodes where one character, Ricky, starts thinking
he's gay, and another where Ricky starts shooting his car.
They used real bullets.
From the episode, "The Bible Pimp":
Bible Person: Do you know how to read a bible?
Bubbles: That all depends. Do you know how to go ***** yourself?
And that is typical dialogue for the whole series.
Bob Dog
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Oh */+&!%*. The Boys are back
The air may be thick with obscenities, but that hasn't stopped
fans of TV's Trailer Park Boys, on both sides of the border,
from making it a cult hit, SHAWNA RICHER writes
By SHAWNA RICHER
Saturday, April 10, 2004
HALIFAX -- Every move up the ladder of celebrity is marked by a
moment when the stars-in-the-making realize how far they have
come from their humble beginnings.
For the actors who play Julian, Ricky and Bubbles on the wildly
successful television series Trailer Park Boys, several moments
marked the occasion.
The first occurred at 4:30 one morning when they barged into the
Chateau Marmont Hotel, parched for drinks and arguing with
security to open the bar. John Paul Tremblay, Robb Wells and Mike
Smith were in Los Angeles for discussions on what will likely be
a Trailer Park Boys movie. They were bunked in at the famous
Sunset Boulevard digs where John Belushi died of a drug overdose
many moons ago.
"So we're standing there and suddenly we realize that the
security guard at the hotel is actually a guy who had a role on
Degrassi Junior High," Smith said of the popular teen show that
aired on CBC-TV through the eighties.
On the same trip, one of the trio's comedic heroes, actress
Catherine O'Hara (Mighty Wind), spied the Boys eating in a
steakhouse and began, in their words, freaking out.
"That was pretty amazing," Wells said. "It was one of the best
compliments ever. We were freaking out meeting her and she was
freaking out meeting us. Who knew?"
In their hometown of Halifax, where the show is written and
filmed, things are much the same. The Boys are mobbed everywhere
they go and fans stop by their homes. Recently Smith was having
blood taken in a clinic and the nurses gathered around him
giddily.
"Then this 70-year-old doctor came in wondering what was going
on," Smith said. "I thought he was going to break it up, but when
he found out who I was, he said, 'No way.' Then he asked me if I
would tell him to go ***** himself."
With their popularity soaring, the Trailer Park Boys' fourth
season begins tomorrow, at 9 p.m. ET on Showcase. A few days
later, it premieres in the United States, where fans have been
dying to watch the quirky Canadian series. Debuting in 2001,
Trailer Park Boys follows the lives of Julian, Ricky and Bubbles,
who make their home in the Sunnyvale Trailer Park. The show does
not mock the trailer park, but embraces it lovingly.
When the show concluded at the end of last season, Julian, Mr.
Lahey and Randy had landed in jail after botching the heist of an
ATM. Left behind at the trailer park, Ricky took over as
supervisor, and along with Bubbles, his assistant, blocked off
part of the park to run various illegal activities, including
planting and maintaining several massive fields of marijuana.
In the coming season, the boys will have to deal with Mr. Lahey's
descent into madness, an evil ventriloquist doll from Bubbles's
past and a mountain lion with addiction problems. Special guest,
Cape Breton singer RitaMacNeil, has a run-in with the Boys after
Ricky hijacks her tour bus.
"There's definitely going to be more dope than anyone has ever
seen on television," Wells said. "And Rita MacNeil is forced at
gunpoint to do things she wouldn't normally do. It's a pretty
crazy season."
Trailer Park Boys is the answer to contrived sitcoms and what has
become insultingly predictable reality television. There is no
laugh track, the jokes are not obvious and the actors play
everything straight. Eventually, the cumulative absurdity dawns
on the viewer.
At its core, the show is about love, friends and family. The
characters are flawed, but they love and forgive each other, no
matter what kind of trouble they are in.
"If you strip all the dope and the guns and the swearing and the
drinking and driving away, it comes down to love," Wells said.
"Ultimately you love the guys even though they are breaking the
law."
Series creator Mike Clattenburg, also a born-and-raised Bluenoser,
said the show has a universal appeal. He and the actors have
milked their Maritime roots and the colourful characters they
knew growing up for inspiration.
"I'm more surprised by how diverse our fans are," he said. "We
have people you'd expect, the guys in their mid 20s, but are
finding we have more and more female fans of all ages and even
elderly people. Once they get past the swearing, they follow the
characters and get caught up in their lives. The show is a sheep
in wolf's clothing."
Sometimes the boys say the f-word upwards of 100 times an episode.
But it's so ubiquitous and rolls off their tongues so naturally
that it becomes part of the wallpaper rather than being offensive.
"It's not the swear words themselves that are funny, it is the
way they are said," Clattenburg said. " I like the absurdity of
swearing. I don't like mean-spirited swearing. But swearing is a
part of life.
"Some people are offended by it. Our show is not for everybody.
We understand that."
But Trailer Park Boys has become so popular it seems there is no
one who is not watching. The show has found celebrity fans of the
highest order. Actors Harrison Ford, Alec Baldwin and Eddie
Murphy, musicians Kid Rock and Alex Lifeson.
"People tell us all the time they know people like the characters
on the show," Smith said.
Trailer Park Boys has not been available in the U.S., but
Americans have been buying the show on DVD through the Canadian
site of the on-line retailer Amazon, to the tune of more than
50,000 copies. The first and second seasons start in the U.S.
April 15, where it will follow the cult hit, The Office.
Because the U.S. Federal Communications Commission has issued a
list of swear words no longer permitted on radio and television
south of the border, and because most of those words, and worse,
are staples of Trailer Park Boys, the swearing will be bleeped
out during the U.S. broadcasts. Clattenburg and the actors are
trying not to let it bother them and would rather concentrate on
the fact that they have penetrated the U.S. market.
"It will be interesting to see how it goes over," Clattenburg
said. "We know we have tons of U.S. fans because we hear from
them frequently. They are downloading it off the Internet and
circulating the DVDs. They haven't seen anything like it. They
can relate to it. They know someone like Ricky or Bubbles or
Julian."
The Trailer Park gang hopes their American fans and fans-to-be
cherish the Canadiana and believe it will cross cultures nicely,
even if some viewers don't quite get it, in the way that Mike
Myers's Wayne's World featured a bit about former Chicago
Blackhawks star Stan Mikita's Coffee Shop.
"When I hear about the FCC, it doesn't affect me creatively,"
Clattenburg said. "I tend not to think about censorship when I'm
shooting. I do what I think is funny. Showcase has given me the
freedom to create the show the way I want to. We've been allowed
to go with the flow."
The Trailer Park Boys was born out of Clattenburg's realization
that trailer parks are freestanding film sets. He began working
with Tremblay and Wells, and was delighted with their knack for
engaging each other in ad-libbed dialogue. They shot a low-fi
short film that played at the Atlantic Film Festival, and
followed that the next year with a film about two guys living in
a trailer park. Clattenburg loves the idea of working with an
outline as opposed to a full script.
While the trio was toiling on the first film, they discovered
that Smith, a former musician who was working as a sound mixer,
performed a funny little character named Bubbles, with a big chin,
who wore pink Coke-bottle glasses. The director was so taken with
Bubbles that he wrote him into the show.
"What I like about them is that they are co-dependent,"
Clattenburg said. "Bubbles is so loveable. Mike is a genius in
how he performs him. He makes up the sense of reason on the show.
He is always conflicted. Julian is the guy with the plan. Ricky
screws it up. And Bubbles gets caught in the middle."
One of the most frightening things about the show is that there
is only one true pair of Bubbles glasses in existence. Smith's
ex-girlfriend found them years ago at a flea market outside
Dallas.
A second pair was copied, but at certain angles, they are not a
perfect match. The original pair has been glued and taped so many
times they are barely holding together. Alex Lifeson, the Rush
guitarist, actually broke them when he tried them on once. Smith
carries them everywhere he goes for safekeeping.
"There are gobs of glue all over them," Clattenburg said. "They
better last. They're pretty important to the show."
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