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Melissa Harris-Perry: You're listening to The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris Perry. 27 years may seem a long time between seasons of a television show but for The Kids in the Hall, it's like the five members of the legendary Canadian sketch comedy troupe never split up.

Speaker 1: We get to write the very last facts. Write this down.

Speaker 2: Oh, cursive.

Speaker 1: To whom it may concern.

Speaker 2: Great start.

Melissa Harris-Perry: This month they're back with the series after nearly three decades off the air and no surprise here, they're still pretty weird.

Speaker 3: This was no accident.

Speaker 4: Yes, detective. I believe my two cats killed this man.

Speaker 3: Why didn't you come to us earlier? A man's dead because you didn't come to us first. They pounce like cats and kill him.

Speaker 4: Oh my god.

Melissa Harris-Perry: That's from the new season on Amazon Prime. When their show premiered in 1988, The Kids in the Hall were delivering something very different from the Saturday Night Live and other sketch shows of the era. There was in many ways a blueprint for the next era of comedy.

Bruce McCulloch: Listen, I'm no role model, I don't give advice but over the last couple of years, I've received a lot of letters all with the same questions. Bruce, how did you get started in comedy, acting and writing and what advice do you have for someone trying to break in? Okay, here it goes. First of all, I guess if you're in school, make jokes. Don't worry about if your teachers like it or not. The only teacher you should listen to anyway is your English teacher but not too much because remember, no one understands you.

Education is not your friend, neither is sleep. You won't need it where you're going. Instead of studying, try listening to tragically loud music daily and be strict with yourself. You’ve got to do it every day. Now get a lot of experience coming home drunk. Stand up to your dad. He may tower over you now but as he begins to shrink, you pick your day.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Doling out that advice to living a life of comedy more than 20 years ago is a young Bruce McCulloch.

Bruce McCulloch: I'm a member of Kids in the Hall but I'm also my own person.

Melissa Harris-Perry: And he joined me to talk about what's new with the Kids.

Bruce McCulloch: I love being on The Takeaway. Thank you for having me.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Absolutely. All right. 27 years seems a long time between seasons. [laughs] I mean, time is weird these days but that does seem long.

Bruce McCulloch: Yes, let's just say it's more than three bottles of gin in 27 years. Maybe it's more like 2,700. Yes, no, it's odd how a long life works. You just keep doing your things and you keep these people in your lives. You're sort of the same because your brain is the same, but your face has changed. Then you just pick up your guitar, which is a guitar and you do it again.

Melissa Harris-Perry: All right, so I want to know who is going to be doing it again in this iteration. Are we're going to have Gavin, Cathy, Chicken Lady? What's happening?

Bruce McCulloch: We don't have Chicken Lady but we have Gavin because he comes to play and we have Cathy. We have some of our old characters that we felt really we want to write for. The two Cathy's, which is the secretary of characters that I do for people who don't know the show, they're still working at A.T. & Love and they’re exploring what happens when the fax machine goes obsolete. It's able to speak about the changing times or not changing in the case of the Cathys.

Melissa Harris-Perry: All right, that point exactly, right. I mean, as soon as you said, fax machine, I'm like, “Oh, yes, right, that existed.” I'm wondering, we're living in times that can in fact, be described as absurd and you are masters of absurdist humor. I'm wondering, does it feel to you harder or easier to do this kind of humor in this moment?

Bruce McCulloch: Well, at first, it felt harder, because we know that there's been a change, a sea change in the world where kindness is demanded, which I love, certainly in the workplace. There's certain words we may not be using but also, the show has launched and the feeling I've gotten is people-- the best thing was people said, “I didn't know how much I missed you until you came back.”

I do feel it's not hard because we've been grandfathered into some of these complicated conversations. I think we know, to quote Elvis Costello, my aim is true when you see the show.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, you talked about you just keep living your long life. You have your people, you keep them in your life, and you all have done a few shows since the original series. Why come back to the original?

Bruce McCulloch: Well, it's kind of a realization for all of us that in a way we're most ourselves within the group, which would seem the opposite. It would seem like when I get to go and do my own show that I've done a few of that I get to do whatever I want because I'm the boss or whatever. But no, there's something about this family that allows you to be your best and worst selves and button more of yourself for some reason. I think we've all realized that, and like you say, we're getting on, we've lost people. I've lost friends who are in the arts and for me, I just want to keep going.

Melissa Harris-Perry: All right, so when the show was first on, y'all were definitely really pushing the boundaries around gender and sexuality. Oftentimes, those of us who think that we're out there, or actually are out there on the cutting edge, you take even a few years off, and you're, “Oh, wait, whoa. I cut that edge and some folks moved right on past me.” We've come a long way on these questions of gender, of sexuality of, how we represent and push. How do you see the show and the evolution of comedy around that and doing it now in a very different space that you helped to create?

Bruce McCulloch: Thank you for that. I think the thing is at the time, we were just doing the show and certainly in terms of queer politics, which is one of the things we're most proud of. I'm a heterosexual from Calgary who got chased down the street for wearing a pink t-shirt. For me, it was if I could kiss Scott Thompson on the lips in the height of the AIDS, then that was showing the people who chased me in the trucks that it was okay.

I do think that time has come on and as we look back at the show or what we did, we didn't cross dress to cross dress, those were characters but we weren't afraid of that. We weren't afraid of the sexuality of that. I think we're looking back on the show and going, “Yes that is pretty good.” Scott did stick his face in the fan, the worrying fan of culture over and over. I think especially if you watch the documentary on Amazon about us, you realize the importance of our place, or Scott's place in the queer conversation.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I've been talking with you a little bit in a way that I recognized is a little insidery and that’s because I enjoy being of a particular generation and just having conversations about things the way that those young people do about the things that they talk about. Help me to understand, is this for us or is this for my stinking kids who didn't even know it existed 27 years ago?

Bruce McCulloch: Well, I have a 17-year-old daughter and a 15-year-old son. I showed them a scene where I drive down the street in an easy chair at 30 miles an hour for some reason. They laughed their heads off and I think Kids in the Hall fans laughed their heads off. I think maybe some of the nuances and they don't know the characters, but I actually do think that comedy and laughs are evergreen. Not everything's for everybody but I think 14-year-olds can-- whether they'll find this or not, they will find it funny and I know that from being around so many young people.

It's certainly not just for the fans, but we don't care. [laughs] We just make it, right, we just make it and good luck, good luck, kid. Go down the river. Good luck. So we don't think about who it's for.

Melissa Harris-Perry: That's fascinating to me. When you're making it, are you making it in whole or in part? I ask this in part because, I know, we're constantly overthinking, thinking about the whole show and the arc of the show. I'm like, “Yes, you know people don't listen to the radio that way. They get in their car, then they get out of it, they just hear the part they hear.” In the world of the Internet, people might just see one sketch or one part of a sketch, one moment. Does that change how you do it or are you just still making it the way you make it?

Bruce McCulloch: We make it, we're obsessed of craftsmen. I go, “Oh, my God, that [unintelligible 00:08:54] was too long. We need three images not two.” We all have our own obsessions. Even in your show, you go, “Oh my God, he should have picked it up a bit earlier.” Of course, we all have different lenses in which we do that. Sometimes I think it's too fast, or sorry, too slow and sometimes people think I'm too fast, but no. One of the greatest things I heard about the show was people-- there's eight episodes, people said, “Well, I watched two and I was going to save two for the next night but I had to keep watching them.” I do feel you can watch just four seconds, but it's sweet to watch a whole episode or a couple.

Melissa Harris-Perry: What have you been watching while Kids in the Hall was off the air? Are you A Black Lady Sketch Show fan? Are you a I Think You Should Leave fan? What do you watch?

Bruce McCulloch: No, I can't plug my own show. I have a show called Tallboyz. It's now been released in America, which is a BIPOC sketch show, which is really funny, but I don't watch that. I made that. What do I watch? I liked Flight Attendant. I don't watch much comedy. Actually we were with Lorne Michaels this week and--

Melissa Harris-Perry: Drop that name, drop it. [laughs]

Bruce McCulloch: Because we did The Tonight Show and he dropped by. I love SNL. I love that fierce cast. Each person that comes on, I go, “No, that's my favorite. That’s my favorite.” It's probably different than slightly than the stuff we do, but no, I don't take to dark TV that much. If anything, it's like House Hunters International would soothe me.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Oh, it’s so good.

Bruce McCulloch: Right and I say to my wife, “Let’s watch four more of these.”

Melissa Harris-Perry: [laughs] Because every single time they're going to look at three houses and pick one. Oh, it really is helpful in a time when the rest of the world, you can't be sure what's going to happen.

Bruce McCulloch: No and this means I'm going to live one more day.

Melissa Harris-Perry: All right. You said you can't plug your own work, but go ahead and plug it. I want to hear about the work that you're doing supporting young comedians, like the Top boys.

Bruce McCulloch: Well, it's one of the things I've started doing, which is-- I hadn't been a fan of comedy. Then I started doing some stuff with a sketch organization here in Toronto and it's like, “Oh my God, there are thousands of you young souls.” There's not many places for them. Yes, that's why I had encouraged and sold this show with these amazing people to CBC and I keep doing it. I keep trying to develop things with these different things. I shouldn't say things I'm developing unless they happen, but it's a commitment.

It's fun with The Tallboyz, which is the show on views, is like to give them their own show the way I was given my own show, and to teach them what it is to make a show, and make decisions, and be good, and know when to hold ‘em and know when to fold ‘em as Kenny Rogers says. That was giving back and also energizing to me. Also in doing that, it was like, “Oh, I want to do The Kids in the Hall again. I got sketch comedy back in my blood.”

Melissa Harris-Perry: Well, we will have to either walk away or run very soon but I have one last question for you. You, the whole crew seems pretty happy about how this is coming out, this new season so I got a last question. Do you think 30 Helens agree?

Bruce McCulloch: Well, 13 now, because of course time is cruel, agree that we did a pretty good job, but don't gloat. That's what they would say.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Bruce, thank you for being Canadian and for bringing back to us The Kids in the Hall, Bruce McCulloch.

Bruce McCulloch: Well, thank you for your time. I appreciate it.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: Bruce McCulloch from The Kids in the Hall, which has a new season out now on Amazon Prime. For folks around the New York City area, Bruce is also performing a one-man show Tales of Bravery and Stupidity at the SoHo Playhouse this month.

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