>>PREVIEW
YOUNG TRIFFIE
STARRING Mary Walsh and Fred Ewaniuck
DIRECTED BY Mary Walsh
Opens Friday, April 6
Check listings
Like the setup of a joke, like a half-finished ice breaker, like the scrawl on the teleprompter during the Gemini Awards–two generations of Canadian comedians sit on a couch. Mary Walsh and Fred Ewaniuck, though, seem oblivious to the generation gap as they lightly rib each other on a morning of slush and press for their new movie, Young Triffie.
Wearing his cap backwards befitting a youngster on the Canadian comedy scene, Ewaniuck seems only a shave away from the buffoon he plays on the Canadian television hit, Corner Gas. Dressed for business, it’s difficult to imagine Walsh chasing Ewaniuck off her lawn with a broom. She may not be that old, but she spent decades getting Canadians to laugh whether as part of CODCO, the award-winning comedy troupe she help start in the ’70s or as a long-time presence on This Hour Has 22 Minutes. Now, she steps behind the camera for the first time with Young Triffie, an uneven slapstick murder mystery. The movie stars Ewaniuck as a young ranger getting drawn into the grisly murder of a young girl named Triffie. Walsh’s dark sense of humour comes through as pratfalls and walking into walls follows partial crucifixion and incest for a strange experience. Walsh and Ewaniuck sit down with Fast Forward to discuss the new film, the state of Canadian cinema and what it takes to be a comedian in this country.
Fast Forward: The film is quite dark. Was this a chance to explore that side of you?
Mary: It’s always been major in my career. Death is the mother of comedy. If Buddy didn’t slip on a banana peel with the possibility of great harm, what would be funny about it?
Fred: There are dead boys and somebody getting nailed to a table, I’m like, ‘People are going to laugh at this?’ But the way Mary put it together, it’s fantastic. Usually Canadian comedies aren’t dark, Canadian dramas are. Mary takes both forms and smooshes them together.
With the Trailer Park Boys and Bon Cop, Bad Cop, Canadians seem to be embracing homegrown films. Why is this happening just now?
Mary: We’re a new country, culturally. We’re just growing up and accepting ourselves. When you’re 14, you hate your parents and where you’re from. It takes a while to come into yourself. In the 1970s, when I travelled across the country with COCOD, people always asked who Canadians were. Nobody asks that question anymore. The real problem now is that there are not enough of us and not enough money. It’s hard to get critical mass with so few of us spread out. In New York, you start something and it picks up speed. You start something in Regina, it’s a long way to get to the next place.
Did you guys learn from each other?
Fred: I tend to rely on underwear jokes, and I learned from Mary that there’s an intelligence to humour I’ve never been open to (laughs).
Mary: I’m a fairly dark person, but I get a sense from Fred that he’s truly happy. He’s the kind of comedian I like – an actor first. We also find the same things funny. I don’t feel like I’m a different generation, though he did say I reminded him of his mother.
Fred: We’re going to get coffee and there’s a bunch of girls working behind the counter. She pulls me up and goes, ‘Do you know who this is?’ The worst is when people haven’t seen Corner Gas.
Mary: We fear neither humiliation nor rejection, that’s why we’re comedians. |
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