Cover Story: Live, Without a net
Mochrie flies by the seat of his pants — otherwise he’ll wet them
Uptown Magazine, March 25, 2004
Colin Mochrie is performing in the CBC Winnipeg Comedy Festival, and he’s afraid.
The thought of hosting the March 25 show at the Pantages Playhouse is getting to him. Two weeks prior, he was at home in Toronto, reliving the fateful moment when he agreed to host the event.
“It’s one of those things where I said ‘Oh, yeah, I’ll do it,’” he says. Then somebody mentioned the opening monologue. “‘What? Standup? Oh. Crap.’”
“I’ve never done standup, so this is something that induces fear in me. I mean, I love standups, I’ve always admired them. But I’ve admired them because I thought that’s something I’d never do. It’s just too scary,” he says.
An ironic statement coming from a man who made a name for himself by winging it in front of millions on the improv comedy show Whose Line Is It Anyway?
Whose Line... was a success in the U.K. for 10 seasons, and Mochrie was a regular cast member for eight of those. But the show met the fate of so many other successful British programs before and since: It was exported to Hollywood and failed to live up to the original. The U.S. version, hosted by Drew Carey, ceased production last year after five struggling seasons.
“I think it was sort of mishandled,” Mochrie says tentatively. “I don’t think ABC really knew what the show was. They never really knew how to package it.”
Mochrie says it was obvious from the start that the show’s concept was lost on the network powers that be. His wife, actress Deb McGrath, observed the scene in the show’s green room during the taping of 1998’s pilot episode.
“It was all filled with the network executives, and they were sitting watching going, ‘Yeah, you know what this show needs? Celebrities!’ So they started naming people like Julia Roberts, George Clooney,” he says. “Until one guy said, ‘You know, what they’re doing is really hard.’ And that kind of stopped them. For maybe that night.”
Whose Line... was promoted as a family show, which meant the cursing and sexual innuendo of the British version were out. With no script to pick apart before shooting, ABC’s standards and practices had to remove objectionable content after the fact — and the cuts could be severe. Once the word “hand” was bleeped in reference to masturbation; “Laid” was a casualty in another scene.
“I was shocked. Lord knows my son hears things in the playground that are a thousand times worse than anything we ever said on our worst day of Whose Line,” Mochrie says.
“Any kind of sexual thing they just freaked out about,” he says, small victories notwithstanding (“‘Two-hundred-pound snatch’ somehow we got away with”).
He gives the American viewing public a bit more credit than ABC. “They have a sense of what’s going on in the world. I don’t think censoring the word ‘laid’ is going to help their mental health in any way.”
Mochrie explains that while the show lost its edge, that wasn’t the only issue. Toiling in near-obscurity didn’t help.
“They put us on a different night, they put two shows back to back, they put us against the two biggest shows in the world, and then they never advertised us,” he says. “They’re pinheads. I’m trying not to be bitter,” he jokes.
Although it was a ratings failure, Whose Line... succeeded in bringing mainstream recognition to the genre of improv comedy. Mochrie says he hopes the show served as an introduction to improv, prompting viewers to go see it performed live.
“Although I think Whose Line came fairly close, there is no substitute for being in a theatre or a club and watching improv,” he says.
Live shows are exactly what Mochrie and his Whose Line... co-stars are focused on these days.
He and Brad Sherwood regularly play to college crowds throughout the U.S., and for the past few years Ryan Stiles has organized an “Improv All-Stars” tour. Stiles, Mochrie, Sherwood, Greg Proops, and Chip Esten will take the show across the Canadian Prairies for the first time, including a date at the Burton Cummings Theatre on June 8.
The live shows give the cast creative freedom over language, subject matter, and even who they choose to work with in a given scene. Stiles and Mochrie have worked together for over 20 years and prefer to mix it up as much as possible.
“It gives us a chance to work with the other guys, and it keeps it fresh for us because we don’t know them as well. We’re constantly surprised by what they do.”
Speaking of surprises, there is still that pesky problem of a hosting gig at the Winnipeg Comedy Festival.
Thursday’s show is entitled Myths, Lies, and Maple Leafs: Dispelling Canada’s Cultural Myths. However, the nervous Mochrie can’t help being overly modest, polite, and stereotypically Canadian about his role in the show.
“I think I’m the weak link."