>>PREVIEW
TRAILER PARK BOYS: THE BIG DIRTY
STARRING John Paul Tremblay, Rob Wells and Mike Smith
DIRECTED BY Mike Clattenburg
Opens Friday, October 6
Check listings
The cult hit Trailer Park Boys has defied the average life-span of a Canadian series. But with season seven in the works and the movie set to be released October 6, some long-time fans are wondering if the show has jumped the shark.
During season four, considered the peak among some of the hardcore fans, the character Bubbles became more prominent. Where once the show focused exclusively on the Ricky and Julian characters, it became a trio and some fans complained that Bubbles should be returned to supporting-character status.
Nevertheless, the show continues to hold onto its loyal audience, enough so to justify a seventh season, as well as the film. Rob Wells, who plays Ricky (the one with Elvis-esque hair who rarely appears without a cigarette), says he’d like to continue with the series.
"We’re still around and people are still laughing," says Wells who is not used to appearing out of character. "As long as they let us, we’ll keep doing more. If not then, we’ll maybe do something completely different feature-wise."
Wells also writes much of the dialogue and helped create the show with high school buddies Mike Clattenburg, the show’s director (also known for his documentary work and as a writer for This Hour Has 22 Minutes), and John Paul Tremblay, who plays Ricky’s counterpart Julian. The characters, he says, are combinations of people the three of them knew in high school.
Despite airing in the United Kingdom, Israel, Iceland, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark and Finland, Trailer Park Boys has not had a chance to gain a following in the U.S. BBC America attempted to carry the show for an American audience, but censorship issues prevented it from ever going ahead. BBC then offered a strange compromise where a censored episode would run at 9 p.m. and an uncensored one at midnight.
"Then the Janet Jackson fiasco happened, and everything got screwed up," says Wells. "They still wanted to run the show after that even, but we took it back. The show has to be uncensored, or it’ll never work."
Much of the F-bomb-ridden dialogue is improvised. This is meant to add realism to the characters, says Wells. The show’s concept originated in a low-budget feature film, One Last Shot, created by Wells, Tremblay and Clattenburg after they left high school.
"We never expected it to do this well. I think people take to the characters because they are diverse. People are looking for stuff that’s fresh," says Wells, adding that the low budget helps make Trailer Park Boys feasible in the small Canadian market.
But let us not forget Kids in the Hall’s big screen effort, Brain Candy, that bombed horribly despite the mighty cult following of the television series. Though it was generally well-received and became a cult favourite in and of itself after the fact, Brain Candy was a box office failure, possibly due to reluctant promotional efforts by the studio.
Trailer Park Boys, for its part, draws substantial ratings for a Canadian show running on a specialty channel like Showcase, and Alliance Atlantis seems determined to create a true Anglo-Canadian hit out of the movie, investing relatively heavily in a promotional push. |
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