Bruce McCulloch on getting drunk: ‘The young, weird feelings we had in all of ourselves was that it wasn’t a party if you could remember it. So, what is the outlet for the anger and the sexual energy? In Calgary, I’d go out and get in fights in bars. That was before comedy.’Handout
He literally was the kid in the hall, the outsider.
Bruce McCulloch, comedian, writer, director and famously part of The Kids in the Hall troupe, breaks down the titular components of his one-man play Young Drunk Punk, presented Monday night as part of the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival.
Young
"When I was young I lived in a townhouse. My dad was a salesman.
"When you're young, the world is scary and stupid at the same time. I think this is what all of my comedy is about, trying to figure out the point of view of the world.
"But when you're young, you're hopeful, and you have a lot of energy. For me, before I turned to comedy, that energy went first into rock music."
Drunk
"Me and all the boys I knew in Alberta who didn't know what to do with themselves would get drunk on the weekend. We'd wake up in the morning and think, 'Did we get beat up?'
"The young, weird feelings we had in all of ourselves was that it wasn't a party if you could remember it. So, what is the outlet for the anger and the sexual energy? In Calgary, I'd go out and get in fights in bars. That was before comedy."
Punk
"I was into punk music. The Sex Pistols changed my life.
"But I think of it now as people who might work in comic book stores, who think that things don't have to be the way they thought they had to be.
"All of us counterculture people think the world doesn't have to be the way it is.
"There's a little bit of that in the show, about The Kids in the Hall. The idea is that we're outsiders.
"Not that we're on the outskirts of society, but that we're people trying to find our way in a different way."
Bruce McCulloch's Young Drunk Punk, March 11, 8 p.m., Randolph Theatre, 736 Bathurst St., torontosketchfest.com.
Brad Wheeler