“I find emotions really get in the way a lot of the times in comedy. And with Buddy I can keep those emotions at bay. Because I really don't think emotions in comedy are great partners. Emotion tends to override the brain, and it overrides logic. And comedy is very much logic. It's almost mathematical. So you have to make sure your passions don't overwhelm your thinking, and that's always been my problem.”
– Scott Thompson
Scott Thompson: Hi, Guy. How are you doing?
Guy MacPherson: I'm good. We spoke in 2002. I'm sure you remember.
ST: Wow, that's a long time ago.
GM: You were the second Kid in the Hall I ever spoke to. And now I've gone through them all.
ST: Oh. And who did you like the best?
GM: You, of course.
ST: Well, you have to say that. Am I the first one you've talked to twice?
GM: No, I talked to Bruce twice.
ST: Oh. Really. Were they both professional? Were they both official or did he just call to chat one day?
GM: Clearly professional. I was reading over our talk from 2002 last night and I did tell you that you were one of my favourite talk show guests.
ST: Oh! Thank you.
GM: You're coming to Vancouver... Or Buddy Cole is, actually. Are you one of these performers who gets into a role and you'll talk about him in the third person?
ST: Will that make you uncomfortable if I do that?
GM: Not at all. I'm just wondering.
ST: I am one of those people. I guess, yeah. I mean, I'm not delusional. Like, I understand that he's me and all that. But when I do speak about Buddy, I do speak about him in the third person, yes. I do like to keep them separate from myself. Especially because I do standup as well. And Buddy, in some ways, is a kind of standup. Basically, I share Buddy with myself in terms of performing live. And there are a lot of things that Buddy says that I agree with, but there are also things where I go, 'Well, that's his opinion.' I also have to let the character have autonomy, if that makes sense. I can't police the character the way I would police myself. He has to be allowed to be himself.
GM: He's like your id.
ST: Yes. So that's right, yes. And I mean I don't have a lot of impulse control anyway, so my id is quite close to the surface. But Buddy I do absolutely no policing. I let his freak flag fly. And if it makes people uncomfortable, I really don't care. Because he doesn't care. I care more myself, but not Buddy. Buddy's impermeable. He's Teflon. You can't really hurt him. It's a nice thing on stage because a lot of standup is opening yourself. In comedy, you're trying to address the truth but it could be difficult on the soul. But with Buddy, who has no soul, it's a lot easier (laughs).
GM: Oh, come on now.
ST: I'm being facetious. He really is so much tougher than I am. I don't really take the reactions personally the way I might if it was myself. I mean, I'm much better than I used to be. I don't take things as personally as I used to, but with Buddy I literally don't feel anything (laughs). I just don't when I'm him. He's not a cold bastard, but he's very clinical. Like, if there's something that he thinks is true, he doesn't care who it hurts. Does that make sense? He doesn't spare you. He's very much about tough love.
GM: And in the process, he hurts no one, really.
ST: Well, exactly. Absolutely. Because tough love really just means that if you enable someone, you're going to hurt them. If you tell someone over and over that they're fabulous and that the world is their oyster and they can't do anything wrong, you're going to create a monster. Of course we need to be positive about ourselves, but we also need to have some self-knowledge. Buddy knows that the truth is the only way. It might hurt more, but it's worth it ultimately. So ultimately, he doesn't want to hurt anyone. He really doesn't. It's just there is always collateral damage on the road to truth.
GM: You say you don't hold him back, but he's a very written character. Does that mean that any crazy thought that comes into your mind in the writing process, you go, 'I'm going with it. I'm going to see where this goes'?
ST: Yeah, kind of. The Buddy show is very written. He's more written than I am. When I do standup, I'm not as adamant on every word being precise. But with Buddy, I'm very, very adamant that everything has to be exactly right... No, not everything. There are times when I do a show and I look back on it and I go, 'Oh, that was really good, and that part really soared but it wasn't him.' There are times when I look and I go, 'Hmm, yeah, that was really funny but that was me, that wasn't Buddy.' So I always have to be very cognizant of that and just go, 'Remember, that's Buddy, not you.' So there is some control. I definitely go off; I don't stick to the script completely. But I try very hard that when I do go off, I make sure that it's Buddy's beliefs, not mine, even though they cross over a lot. But not everything crosses over. The way I approach things and the way that he approaches things is very different. Like I'm very high energy and I have to remember that Buddy's not as high energy as I am. And sometimes I get so physical that I have to pull back and go, 'Remember, Buddy's not as physical as you are.'
GM: He's in control.
ST: Yes. But it's very difficult because the thing is, the moment I hit the stage I start sweating regardless of whether I'm doing well or bad. I wish I could stop that because ultimately I would love Buddy to be perfect, like every hair in place, no sweat. But I have to deal with this body that I'm in. The only way for me to do him perfectly would be to have someone on stage at all times blotting me. By the end of the show I'm a complete sopping mess.
GM: Andy Kaufman finally got somebody else to play Tony Clifton.
ST: That's really it right now. That's a really good idea. I would love to hire someone who doesn't sweat to play Buddy Cole. Like maybe someone ten years younger with a better hairline who has no sweat glands, who never loses their temper or their cool. That's who I'd really like to have play Buddy.
GM: Maybe you could get your sweat glands removed.
ST: Well, I've looked into it. It's too much money. The problem is my face. You can't take the sweat glands out of your face. I mean, I don't think so. You can Botox your armpits but that's not going to fix your face. If I Botoxed my face, my God, I wouldn't be able to show any expression. That's the thing: at the end of it, all of Buddy's clothes are starting to rot because of the sweat (laughs). By the end, I'm very much James Brown. I'm literally just towelling off.
GM: What about a fan going in your face the whole time?
ST: That would be nice, too, but then that would ruin the hair. The hair is more important.
GM: You get to say whatever you want as Buddy, but I'm thinking Scott Thompson says whatever he wants anyway.
ST: You're right. And you know what? You've completely called me on it and I appreciate that. You've exposed me as a fraud. And you're right in a way (laughs) because I don't hold back. But you may think that I don't, but I do have some delicacy... Maybe not. But I do have some.
GM: I can only imagine what's going through your head if you're holding back.
ST: I don't know. I mean, maybe it's the voice: the Buddy Cole voice just lulls people into thinking it's not important. The lack of emotion I think is very important for comedy. I find emotions really get in the way a lot of the times in comedy. And with Buddy I can keep those emotions at bay. Because I really don't think emotions in comedy are great partners. Emotion tends to override the brain, and it overrides logic. And comedy is very much logic. It's almost mathematical. So you have to make sure your passions don't overwhelm your thinking, and that's always been my problem. But not when I'm Buddy. It's not that he has no passion – he's very passionate about the truth – but he does not let it interfere with his thinking.
GM: The truth as he sees it, you mean, not the universal truth.
ST: There's no such thing as absolute truth. Everybody's truth is through their own filter. He would say, no, the Truth. See, I would give you that, but Buddy would not. Buddy would be like, 'No, this is the truth. It's not my interpretation; this is the truth.' He's much more sure of things than I am.
GM: You talk about emotion. These days especially, if you say things that really go against the grain or somebody's own personal grain, they can't see the humour in it. Whereas I've always loved a comedian who I can disagree with intensely but find them hilarious.
ST: Yes, I agree with you. Just because a comedian has a point of view that you don't like, who cares? Who gives a fuck? No one cares if you disagree. Just live on. They're not hurting you. I don't really understand why people get so up in arms over comedy today. I think it's stupid.
GM: I think they must be thinking that what you say will influence how others think.
ST: That's flabby thinking. And it doesn't give people much credit. I think it's actually quite insulting to human beings. You think a person's going to go to a comedy show, walk in a super-liberal and walk out a facsist? That's not going to happen. It's silly. So I don't believe in any of that kind of policing of language that's going on today in comedy. You're there for a show. If you don't like it, you can just leave.
GM: It's also wrong to assume the comedian believes what they're saying.
ST: Well, exactly. Obviously the comedian is just trying to be as funny as they can be, and if that means they have to bend the truth or embellish, that's all fine. That's all part of the comic's arsenal of tools. You're not supposed to take it literally. I think that's weird. I just think it's very dumb.
GM: I don't know if you've heard the latest controversy over Dave Chappelle's latest special.
ST: Oh, yes, I've watched the special.
GM: His bit about Michael Jackson, I could totally see Buddy saying that. And not getting in trouble.
ST: Yes! Absolutely. Here's the thing about the Dave Chappelle special. I watched it and I didn't think it was his best at all. To me it was quite lazy. I didn't really like it. I thought his Jussie Smollett stuff – Juicy Smolet – was hilarious. The thing about it was, I watched it and Buddy Cole takes on an awful lot of the same things that Dave Chappelle takes on in this special, but I'm here to tell you Buddy says it a lot funnier. That's what bugs me. I'm going, 'I am being scooped by Dave Chappelle?! And it's not even as funny?! This will not stand.' I watched it and went, 'Why is he talking about so many of the things that Buddy talks about and yet Buddy is doing it much funnier and he [Chappelle]'ll get all of the attention.'
GM: Yeah, but it'll be negative attention for the most part.
ST: You know what? I'd welcome some negative attention at this point (laughs).
GM: I would love to see your show on Netflix.
ST: Are you kidding, that's what I've been waiting for. That is what I'm going for. I've been trying for two years and I'm going, 'You've gotta get me on television now before I'm scooped by lesser comedians.' I'm not saying... Dave Chappelle is a genius but I did not think this was a genius special. I went, 'Jesus, I wish they were hearing Buddy Cole's take on Jussie Smollett.' Because mine's much more inside. I keep waiting for people to be outraged by Buddy and they're not, really. It's kind of exciting. I'm like, 'How am I doing this? How is Buddy not getting heat?'
GM: Is it because he's a character and people can go, 'He doesn't really think that.'
ST: It's because he's a character. Although the thing is, with my journey – and I apologize for using the word 'journey' – when I first started out, you could not be an openly gay standup comedian. That was just not a possibility. Believe me, I tried. And so I had to create Buddy Cole. I had to; there was no other way to do it. People just would not listen to this material until I found Buddy to do it... I've lost my point.
GM: We'll probably find it as we keep talking. Does Buddy pre-date Kids in the Hall?
ST: No. I mean, I started doing it with Paul Bellini back in the mid-eighties. It's when I met The Kids in the Hall. It's all the same time. Paul bought a camera, I started improvising, I met The Kids in the Hall, I wrote a monologue. But Buddy Cole was not the very first monologue I wrote for them; the first monologue was Fran. The Fran character was first; Buddy was second. But they all came about at the same time. I think Buddy is what kind of made The Kids accept me, which made them go, 'Well, this is going to screw people up.' I think they saw my homosexuality at the time as kind of a punk thing. Like, 'Wow, we can really weaponize this! This is going to fuck people up.' And it did. For them it was different; it was not as personal. For me it's personal. Like, well this is me. I'm not a weapon. I'm a human being. This is me. But Buddy Cole, at the time I was doing him, there were an awful lot of people that thought I was sticking it to the homos, as they would say.
GM: Because they didn't know you were gay?
ST: Oh, no, no. Because the idea of openly gay was beyond the pale. No one could even conceive of it. People say to me all the time, 'So, you're not really gay.' It just didn't seem possible that you could be openly gay. People assumed that I was pretending. And I think a lot of guys thought like, 'Wow, this guy's making fun of homos. We're behind this.' And then we would inform them: 'Oh no, this guy's a real homo and this character's a real homo. So no, we're not making fun of them; we're making fun of you.' And that was a big deal.
GM: Did the gay community immediately get it? Or was there any backlash?
ST: The gay community has never really, I'll be honest, has never really gotten me. I've never really gotten the love from the gay community. I mean, I get it individually. I get it from people who tell me how much I've changed their life, or that sort of thing. But in terms of an actual coordinated response to the character Buddy or me, no. The gay community has always seen me as problematic. Because I'm a comedian, I'm an artist, and I'm not just about an agenda. I'm not about being empowering and all that nonsense. I'm trying to be funny.
GM: But they go out in droves to comedians like Kathy Griffin, Lisa Lampanelli, Margaret Cho.
ST: That's different. They're women. Here's the thing about comedy and gay men: Gay men will not – I'm going to be very blunt here, and this is not everyone, but generally – gay men will not give it up for another gay man. Unless he's in drag. I do not have a huge gay male audience. Gay males generally only see women: Margaret, Kathy, Janeane, Sarah, Lisa, on and on and on and on. But there are no openly gay male comedians that are stars. There never has been and there still isn't. Not one.
GM: Hmm. There are some working comics but they're not stars.
ST: There's Guy Branum, and Andrew Johnson, and James Adomian, Joel Kim Booster... none of them are stars. And none of them are stars in the gay community. It's just true. It's an ugly truth of our community: gay men just will not give up their love for a gay man standing on stage as a gay man, not in drag. They just won't do it.
GM: Is it better for you as a gay character, Buddy Cole, to not just be performing to the gay community?
ST: Oh, of course. I never wanted to be that kind of an act anyway. I never wanted to be just a ghetto act. I always felt that my message and my work was for the whole world. Honestly, it did hurt me, and it has actually caused me a lot of grief that the gay community did not embrace me the way I thought they would, but I've made peace with it. Yes, in those early days it broke my heart.
GM: But as you get older, you just go, 'Ah, who cares?'
ST: Yes. As I get older I start to see the patterns in life, you start to see how, well, cowardly people are.
GM: Cowardly?
ST: Yeah. Most people are cowards. And most people go along with the mob until the mob says to change. And you have to accept that. And gay men, particularly, we went through a war so our behaviour towards each other... we were never given the tools to love ourselves so we could never love each other. And my generation of gay men had it terrible. So I think a lot of us don't have the skills to love each other because we don't love ourselves. And this new generation, they'll be a very different generation. But for my generation, it's rough. I don't know if I'll ever truly be able to enjoy the way the world is today. Does that make sense?
GM: Because of the baggage and the history you have?
ST: I'm too wounded. I'm too scarred. I'm too scarred in a weird way. I know it's holding, and I pray that it holds, but I'm not convinced that it will.
GM: What is 'it'?
ST: I watched the world turn on us in the eighties. Hard. So I'm very aware that it can happen.
GM: You're waiting for the other shoe to drop.
ST: Yes. And I'm trying very hard to let go to... to... to basically live in this world and to let go of all the, basically, the pain of what we went through. To let go of it. It's very, very difficult.
GM: Are you in Toronto?
ST: I thought you were going to say, 'Are you in therapy?' (laughs) No, I'm in Los Angeles right now.
GM: Is that where you live?
ST: I do, yes.
GM: Oh, I thought you moved back to Toronto.
ST: Oh, I did. I've gone back and forth over the years but I came back about three years ago. I thought I'm going to go back to L.A. and give it another shot. One last chance to see what happens. Now the world's changed; let's see what happens. Canada doesn't do a good job on building on people's careers. There's no star system. It's a very cruel industry in Canada, show business. It's much crueler than here. Here it's different. It's crueler, but it's more honest. Canadian show business is completely dishonest.
GM: Because no one will tell you anything to your face?
ST: It's a joke.
GM: But it's better health care!
ST: Yeah, but what's that got to do with comedy? Of course it does. Of course. Here's the thing about art and comedy and all that sort of thing: It's not really fair. That's the thing about Canada – it's socialism, etc: Well, talent's not fair. It's not all given out in equal amounts. Some people are given more. And this country's more of a meritocracy and that's why show business can thrive. But show business is a very unfair business. And I think that's partly why it doesn't thrive in Canada is because Canada is so fair. Almost too fair! It's like, 'Well, this person's had their chance; let them move on.' And the Americans go, 'Oh, well this person is gold; let's build on that.' And Canadians go, 'They've had enough! Time for someone else to have a chance.' So that's the reason I came back. You know I love Canada for many, many reasons but I certainly don't love it for show business.
GM: Unless you're performing here.
ST: Well, yeah (laughs). I love Canadian audiences. I love Canada. And I would come back in a second for something good.
GM: I know you've been touring this show for more than a year.
ST: Yes. It's been two years since I started writing it.
GM: And you use old monologues and new monologues?
ST: Basically the monologues are from 1995 until now. The monologues begin the year The Kids in the Hall ended. I would say that they are old and new but when you think about have people seen them before? Most likely not because none of them have been on television. Some of the monologues I've done in different Kids in the Hall tours, some of them I've done in my own shows, some I've never even really performed. The last five, six monologues nobody will know them because they're all new. There will be one in '95 then one in '97 so you have to take the monologue with a grain of salt. You've got to remember that this monologue was written in '97, this is about the politics of 2001. So basically it's a trip through time, through the last 25 years of history in the west. And actually not just the west – the world because Buddy's very international. Everything changes around him except him. The world is a river and Buddy's a rock in the middle of it so things have to go around him. So whenever the river hits him, it causes rapids. But he's the rock; he doesn't move. So in that way I think of Buddy in many ways as something you can hold on to as the world changes around you because this is a character that's so certain of everything. Most of us are not.
GM: His views don't change over time?
ST: No, he doesn't change. No. There are certain things I wouldn't do now but in terms of change, no. And also, this is something I learned years ago in a very good class I took at York about comedy, is that comic characters generally don't change. It's not that they don't grow, but what makes things funny is certainty in a character, especially in an uncertain world. You would really love to see a character do the same stupid thing over and over and over again because that will generate comedy. But when a character learns, then it's drama.
GM: That's right, yeah!\
ST: Yeah. It's almost mathematical. That's why Seinfeld is one of the greatest sitcoms of all time because those characters never learned anything. 'Comedy is much more loving and inclusive and warm and all that.' I'm like, 'Meh, is it? Really?' You know, comedy's comedy. Comedy is mathematical. And that is one of the rules. And with Buddy Cole, sometimes I say, 'I can't believe I said that twenty years ago.' I might say it differently now because things do change. But the essence of Buddy? No, it hasn't budged an inch.
GM: Are you constantly writing this? A new monologue pop up or not?
ST: Oh, absolutely. The last monologue is called "Woke Me When It's Over" so it's all about woke culture, pronouns and all that stuff. And I'm working on a new one, because I have to have a new one for every year so there has to be a new one for 2020. It takes a long time to write a Buddy Cole monologue. I have to try them out an awful lot. And I make a lot of mistakes and I go down in flames a lot. But that's part of the process to get there. And if I get an encore then I'll do a piece that I'm working on right now, which will be messy. It's eleven monologues that people have never seen or heard before.
GM: Have you ever not gotten an encore?
ST: Yes, I have (laughs).
GM: I thought it was just perfunctory. Everybody gets an encore.
ST: I don't do it just because it's part of the deal. They have to really want it. I mean, it's a long slog anyway. I'm going to New York with the show and I'll be doing two shows a night. That's hellish. The first show I might not do an encore no matter what they beg because to be on stage for 2.5 hours talking constantly is very tough. Especially when you're talking in character, too. That's a lot of control.
GM: It's been great talking to you again.
ST: You, too. I'll talk to you in 16 more years.