YCDTOTV.com
correspondent Zachary Houle interviewed the audio wizard of YCDTOTV,
Jim Clarke, in May 2003. Below is his transcript.
Zachary
Houle: What was your role with the series?
Jim Clarke:
I was the soundman.
ZH:
Throughout the entire run?
JC: Like
most of the shows then, we moved around a lot because we were
part of a pretty big production company (Carleton Productions)
in Ottawa at the time, so we had six or seven crews that were
mobile. You would work most of the shows as the main audio
person for a couple of years, and then move on to something
else because you would get kind of tired of it. So you would
work on other things and another guy would be brought in as
the main audio guy. But if you weren’t out on the mobile
or anything else, then you’d come in and maybe do boom
(microphone operation). There was a main mixer and the two
boom operators. |
Jim
Clarke at SlimeCon 2002 |
So from Whatever
Turns You On throughout the rest of the You Can’t series,
I was the main audio person. As we came up to the last year, 1989-90,
I might have done a little boom. Whenever I wasn’t one of
the main audio guys, I was one of the boom guys. It all depends
on what you were working on.
ZH:
What was working on the show like?
JC: Our initial
feeling when the show started was that we (the production crew)
were all pissed off because we would all work weekends.
ZH:
(laughs) Yeah, I’m under the impression after talking to another
production guy on the show that work on set dovetailed right into
the weekend. It seemed as though, from a production standpoint,
the show was quite labor intensive.
JC: Yeah, I
think you’d have a day or two off – the Monday or Tuesday.
Then, the kids would come in for their drama classes and their read-throughs
for the next couple days. The crew was booked into the studio possibly
on Friday nights, but mostly Saturdays and Sundays. So the kids
would be working and rehearsing all week for a couple of hours every
evening. And then the crew would take on stuff on the Saturdays
and Sundays.
It became quite
fun after that, though, because Les (Lye) was just fantastic. Some
kids were good, but some kids were a pain in the ass.
ZH:
I knew the show was pushing a lot of boundaries at the time, content-wise.
A lot of stuff got excised, and so you had a lot of external pressures
on set. I heard being on set was a matter of the best of times and
the worst of times. Is that a correct assessment?
JC: Well, you
know, it was mostly a fun time except if you were doing the same
scene over and over and over. The locker sketches were something
that was done start to finish, and there was no editing done on
that. So, quite a few times, getting the doors to open at the right
time and getting everybody to learn their lines … (was a problem).
I would say there was more fun than bad stuff.
There were
probably some behind-the-scenes pressure from the networks on the
edits and that, but I’m not even sure if that was bad. They’d
do an edit, send it down to Nickelodeon for approval, and make whatever
changes they requested. It was sort of the same with us for the
standards we had up here (in Canada to uphold).
There are different
versions of the show out there. There’s the CTV version, the
Nickelodeon version, and then they got edited after that because
Nickelodeon didn’t have any commercial breaks. So those (early)
episodes were actually longer and had fake commercials in them,
and those things are really collectable right now because after
(a certain time) Nickelodeon took out scenes and fake commercials
when they started putting in their own commercials. So, people that
have some of those early shows, with the fake commercials in them,
they’re quite collectable.
Like I said,
though, I don’t know if the editing was really bad. There
was a lot more to it than a regular show’s taping and editing,
however. I have one picture right now with cast member Ted Wilson,
who has all kinds of chocolate over his head, climbing out of a
toilet.
ZH:
And that’s the other thing, too: I guess the amount of gunk
and stuff that just got piled on you as a kid.
JC: Well, he
had toilet paper and all kinds of chocolate over his head, and I
remember that wasn’t allowed down in the States. They (Nickelodeon)
thought it was too gross.
ZH:
That must have caused some kind of tensions between the producers
and that network.
JC: I wasn’t
involved in that kind of thing. You gotta realize that I’d
come in Saturdays and we’d tape the show. We wouldn’t
hear much of that stuff or see much of it, because it was always,
“Hey, Roger, we need scripts at a certain time.” So
there were certain tensions that way in that we were such a busy
production house that we’d put blocks of time aside and that’s
when the show’s going to be done. I remember a few times where
we’d be running out of time, … and we’d only had
three scripts when we were supposed to have five.
Maybe other
stuff was going on – I’m not privy to it or can’t
recall any of that. But, like in any production, the only problems
I was aware of that you might not be ready with certain scripts
or things like that.
ZH:
How did You Can’t Do That on Television get its start?
JC: The show
sort of started in 1978 and ’79, when they (CJOH-TV) did Whatever
Turns You On. When it didn’t make it as a prime-time show
– the network (CTV) tried to put it on a 7 o’clock on
a Tuesday night and it didn’t work – they made it a
national CTV network show that the other stations (in the chain)
weren’t obligated to show. I know there were stations out
east (in Atlantic Canada) that refused to carry the show because
of the content.
ZH:
Really?
JC: It was
one of these optional things because, “Hey, we’ve already
ordered 12 shows and you (CTV affiliates) can show them if you want,
too.” I don’t know how long it lasted on the network,
but I mean they tried to do it primetime. They even brought (American
actress) Ruth Buzzi in.
ZH:
I have a question about the very early version of You Can’t,
back around ’79 or ’80. I’m seeing references
in the old episode guides that there were special guest stars: Donna
Summers and Eddie Money.
JC: Those were
strictly videos shown during the live show. You see, there was a
version of You Can’t that started out on Saturday mornings
in ‘79. We did studio stuff, but we had kids in as a studio
audience, and they would show videos and have a DJ. His name was
Jim. So they’d show videos during the live shows. Then, we
brought in Canadian artists that we shot ourselves, like Trooper
and a few others that escape me right now. But we pre-taped them
and played them back into the show too.
ZH:
I think I saw a few names like Kim Mitchell.
JC: Yeah, and
anyone who was around in Canada back then.
ZH:
Wow, so it was almost like you guys were sort of the first outlet
in Canada to show music videos.
JC: Oh yeah.
But that was a live (variety) show with content, a one-hour show.
So that’s when they showed the videos. Those names (like Eddie
Money) weren’t really guests.
ZH:
Speaking of guests, what about the Alanis Morissette connection?
She obviously went onto bigger things, and I know she worked on
a just few shows around 1986 or so.
JC: That’s
right.
ZH:
I hear she wasn’t an official member of the cast, per se.
She was only in three or four episodes.
JC: Well, she
was in five or six episodes. I think when you’re a cast member,
you’re a cast member. We had a lot of people who came on the
show. We have a lot of people who only came in for one show, but
they were still considered cast members.
The way the
whole thing was done was Roger (Price) and Geoff (Darby) set up
acting lessons, a school for teaching the kids. So they would come
in do read throughs, do their drama classes with two or three teachers
– that’s where Roger picked some people for the shows.
If he needed one kid, he’d only bring one kid in. The kid
might only be in one show because they needed that kind of kid or
personality, and if they realized that if he didn’t do great,
off he went.
In her (Alanis’s)
case, you were a cast member once you were on the show. So it wasn’t
a visiting thing. You see, we’d shoot all the living room
sets for four or five or six shows in one weekend. The next weekend
you’d come in and do the dungeon or library scenes. So over
the four or five weeks, you’d get the four or five shows.
They’d go in later and edit all that stuff together.
So she was
around for quite awhile. To tell you the truth – and this
is the way I see it – I thought she was being groomed to take
over from Moose. If you see Alanis on the show, she had a short
hair cut like Moose, she was cute, and she was bubbly. Even on the
show, they made her out to be the one all the guys are hot for,
and you will see that Adam Reid and the two brothers (Amyas and
Matthew Godfrey) are fighting over her for dates. On the opposite
sketches, they were all fighting over her so they wouldn’t
have to take her out on a date – things like that. So I think
they were grooming her for that.
ZH:
But the story usually is that Roger thought that she was getting
too old or too mature to be on the show: it was more that she was
a 35-year-old in a 12-year-old’s body.
JC: I don’t
know about that. To tell you the truth, I think it was more that
her mother was more of a stage mother, pissed Roger off, and (he)
kicked her (Alanis) off the show for a while. Then she moved onto
other things. That’s the way I see it. … But, if you
look at her, she was quite young looking. She had the hairstyle
that might have given her a little more of a mature look and that,
but she still looked like a little kid. If you see photos of her
on set, you’ll see the bobby sox and the Capri pants, and
she looks just as young as the other kids. She doesn’t look
any older to me. It was just the way that they were grooming her
to take over from Moose for the lead, because she had a certain
kind of brightness to her. You know, the bubbly-ness I guess.
She was good.
There was nothing wrong with her. She came in, could do her lines,
and was a regular person.
ZH:
I hear stories that she did some singing afterward at cast and wrap-up
parties. I guess she was hired back to do some more stuff, albeit
off screen?
JC: I don’t
know about that. … But one of the things Roger did want was
for the kids to have a life outside of the show. If they were all
together, they would all go out and have lunch together. When we
weren’t taping, he’d take them to go out and do, let
say bowling or something. So he was trying to do that with a group
of the core kids to make sure they had a little bit of a life, so
there were gatherings that the cast were involved with.
ZH:
Another thing: I hear you own the sets. Is that true?
JC: I own the
lockers myself, I own the firing squad post. The lockers actually
are set up right now in Studio D at CJOH, the same studio where
the show was done. It’s actually just a façade –
they were torn apart to be thrown out. I owned them and just couldn’t
move them, they were just too heavy, and the production company
said “We have to get rid of these,” and I said, “Ah,
go ahead.” But I came in the next night, and there they were,
all lying on the floor, taken apart with all the nuts and bolts
taken out. And I said, “Well, there they are: all of the front
doors and frames.” And I just couldn’t see them go:
these great big pieces of Andy Warhol-style art.
ZH:
Seems kind of like the relationship between the show and Nickelodeon
these days: almost forgotten.
JC: They don’t
acknowledge You Can’t Do That On Television any more, and
yet they use the green slime for everything. The Kids Choice Awards
last year had Tom Cruise and Rosie O’Donnell getting slimed.
And General Mills just came out with Green Slime Cereal.
ZH:
I know the show, when it initially ran, didn’t get proper
respect in Canada, either. I think it was only on CTV nationally
in 1982, aside from Whatever Turns You On.
JC: Okay, that’s
what you’ll hear the kids down in the States all say. They’ll
say that we never appreciated it here in Canada, and Nickelodeon
made it a big hit. What you have to realize is, back then, we didn’t
have a cablevision network like they had down there. We had local
cable, which brought in three American stations and your local TV
stations – that’s what cable was in Canada back at that
point in time. But, down there, when they started their cablevision
networks, they had a bigger distribution thing. So whenever anyone
bought cable, they got all of these other channels free. That’s
sort of what we have now, so let’s say they were years ahead
– say, five years – of us.
Up here, yes,
it was a local show. We tried to go nationally with it – we
tried to do it in primetime (in 1979) and it didn’t go over,
so it went back to a local show. But, later on, when we got some
cable channels like YTV, it became popular again in Canada. But
we didn’t have that when it first came out, so that’s
the difference.
They (the Americans)
had a national distribution network, where an audience could be
built up. Our show was shown twice a day in New York City and was,
I believe, the top rated show in New York City for a while.
ZH:
Well, I was even finding weird stats, like this article in USA Today
in 1986, where child psychologists were calling You Can’t
the best show for kids at the time.
JC: Yeah, I
remember that. That’s true. That’s exactly what they
voted the show.
Anyhow, it
wasn’t like Canadians didn’t like the show or that it
wasn’t popular up there. It was a different thing altogether,
because we didn’t have the distribution like the Americans.
And, don’t forget, it made Nickelodeon, which started out
as a little station up in Minnesota or somewhere under another name.
…
We made it
(Nickelodeon) what it was it. It was the popularity of You Can’t
Do That On Television that started to bring in all the viewers,
and kept their viewers for their other shows and made the network
what it is today. They still use the slime for their logo. Even
Ghostbusters came up with slime, but we’re the originators
of the slime.
ZH:
So who came up with the slime?
JC: I think
that was all Roger Price’s idea. It was brought in as part
of the show: the water and the slime.
ZH:
Do you feel from your perspective that You Can’t isn’t
remembered or has gotten the short shrift in bringing forth other
messy shows for kids, like Double Dare and Ren & Stimpy?
JC: Well, I
think that Nickelodeon obviously realized at a certain point they
could produce their own shows, all these other shows you’ve
mentioned, and own control over them, play them back as many times
as they wanted, and control the content, too. With You Can’t
Do That, they only had the rights to show the episodes in re-runs
for five years. The show was sold to Germany and Australia and England,
and once the five-year thing ran out in those different places,
the show stopped being shown there as well.
I think it’s
a thing where Nickelodeon doesn’t want to pay the money again,
all the residuals for the scriptwriting and the talent. So that’s
why they’ll never show them again, and that’s why they
think, “Well, why mention it (on air)?” It’s all
in the past, and we can’t do anything about it.
I mean, people
keep saying, “Well, why can’t you show this on one of
your other networks like Nick At Nite, or something like that?”
But I think because they have exclusive rights to show the show
in the States, and they’re never going to do anything with
it, we can’t sell it to somebody else to show. They still
retain those rights as far as we know.
So I think
they’re sticking with the slime as the logo for the network,
and they feel, “Why mention You Can’t Do That On Television?”
Nickelodeon and slime are synonymous, and there’s no reason
to mention the show anymore.
ZH:
So I’d imagine it’s not a matter of the show being past
its best before date?
JC: Well, you
know, you couldn’t get away with all that stuff now because
if you tried to show it again, it’d be so censored. You’re
shooting kids, you’re doing this and that to them. That wouldn’t
go over nowadays. People may think things are more acceptable on
TV, but I think they (the things on You Can’t) probably wouldn’t
go over.
ZH:
It’s weird too, because you have shows since then like South
Park that just upped the ante that you guys got away with and ran
with it into wild, new territory. And guess who’s watching
it? Kids.
JC: Well, I
could be wrong, but … I’ve been checking into what it
would cost to re-release the shows on DVD or VHS.
ZH:
So that’s a possibility?
JC: Well, it’s
the very early stages. It’s a little complicated because of
the different contracts that were signed over the years, so we don’t
know where to start. So we’re looking at that, but, to tell
you the truth, I don’t think it’ll ever happen.
© 2003
Zachary Houle
|
