I made a bad sci-fi film with Scott Thompson ‘a long time ago’

By Craig McKee

As a journalist, I’ve had my share of encounters with famous people. But much rarer have been encounters with people who only became famous after I met them.

When I was studying film at York University in Toronto, Canada, around 1980, I participated in a film that starred a young theater student named Scott Thompson. Years later, I would see Scott rise to stardom as a member of the Canadian sketch comedy troupe The Kids in the Hall. The group had its own show from 1989 to 1995. Later he joined the cast of one of my favorite TV shows of all time, The Larry Sanders Show.

Not only did I not know who Scott was in 1980, other than him being a theater student, I didn’t even know he was funny. Or had a sense of humor of any kind. In this student project, a science fiction “thriller” called Dreams, he was all business. I don’t even remember seeing him smile. The film certainly wasn’t funny, at least not intentionally…

What I remember most about Scott was how intense he was. Despite the quality of the material, he poured everything he had into the role in much the way I imagine Heath Ledger did with The Dark Knight.

The director, Jim MacDonald, came up with a premise that neatly anticipated The Matrix, which would come out nearly 20 years later. His director of photography (I think his name was Frank Lucchetti), explained at a pre-production meeting the technological sophistication that the movie’s special effects would have. He described how he would use fiber-optics to create the laser beam effects. Revolutionary for a student film!

I’m not sure what happened to that, but I do recall him scaling things down when the time came. Instead of fiber-optics, he resorted to using a red felt pen to draw the beam directly on to the 16-mm frames. I wonder if this ever happened to George Lucas…

Jim had some memorable moments in the director’s chair. Like when he told the cameraman to move to the right. “Not that right, the other right!” he bellowed. Another I recall was when he admonished me on set for something I had not done correctly. “How could this happen?!!” he loudly demanded to know. “Umm, human error?” I volunteered.

Now, to be clear about my own role in the film, I was the production manager. Not the most creative role to have. To borrow my favorite Jennifer Coolidge line from Christopher Guest’s movie For Your Consideration (she was asked what a producer does): “As my assistant, Lincoln, can tell you, there’s a lot of telephone calls and a lot of getting out the wallet and paying for sometimes ridiculous things… like snacks.”

That’s exactly the kind of things I did as the production manager. I had to “arrange” for everything so that the director could focus on the “art.” There’s no way he could be distracted by things like… snacks.

This was a role I grew into rather than being one I embraced from day one. Given my challenges with being organized, which persist to this day, one might wonder if Jim might have made a catastrophic error in choosing me among all the budding Scorceses and Coppolas in our class. And he might well have had that very thought on a Saturday morning when I realized I had forgotten to confirm all the cast members for that day’s shooting. It was to be an outdoor scene in the snow north of Toronto.

Once I realized my error, I scrambled madly to round everyone up, and I almost succeeded. But there was one actor I didn’t reach. There were supposed to be four characters trekking across the barren snowy landscape, but we only had three. So we filmed them and did the other person another day. I’m sure the audience didn’t even notice that the fourth character never seemed to appear in the same shot with the other three. Heh, heh…

Imagine if I’d been the production manager on Lord of the Rings…  (Oh my God, what do you mean you’re not available, Sir Ian? Please! Peter Jackson is going to kill me!)

When we looked at the rushes at the end of the day of shooting, I actually got the biggest laugh (actually, the only laugh). I was manning the clapboard for a scene taking place in a trench. There was no way for me to stand just out of frame, so I had to stand above the actors on a kind of small cliff. At the end of the scene, I jumped off the cliff and dropped into the frame like George Reeves flying in through a window in the old Superman TV show. Fortunately, I landed on my feet, clapboard ready to snap shut. Yessir, I stole that scene.

Many years later, I got the chance to meet the now famous Scott Thompson again. I was working at a weekly newspaper in Montreal called The Suburban, covering entertainment. He was attending a publicity event for a film (I’ve honestly forgotten what the event was…), and I took the opportunity to go over to him to say hello and remind him of our student experience together.

Scott looked at me with a half-smile (it might even have been a one-third smile) and said: “That was a long time ago.” The message was received. He was now a star and didn’t feel any inclination to reminisce with some faceless person he didn’t remember about a student film he probably doesn’t want anyone to know about. But I really wasn’t looking to expose his secret sci-fi past, I just wanted to say hi.

It wasn’t the first time, nor would it be the last, that I came away from a “brush with fame” with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. But I’ve also had a bunch of great experiences. And I’ll share those in future articles.

Despite feeling snubbed that day, I continue to enjoy Thompson’s comedy. Currently, he is touring as his most famous character, Buddy Cole, which was a favorite part of The Kids in the Hall during its original run. I also just started watching the new episodes of the Kids’ reunion, which can be streamed on Amazon Prime (in Canada, at least).

The “kids” are now anywhere from 59 (Dave Foley) to 64 (Thompson). The other members of this amazing Canadian troupe are Mark McKinney, Bruce McCulloch (who I interviewed and who was really nice), and Kevin McDonald. They don’t look like kids anymore, but that’s okay, neither do I.

It actually makes me happy to see them together again – and still funny. I may have gotten the brush-off from Scott, but that’s okay. I’m happy for all the success he has had.

And I got a good story out of it.