Celebrating the Living
A deeply funny man with a decades-long career who's finally allowed back into Canada.
Don’t get me wrong; I am fully aware that women, by and large, see their standards of living go dramatically down in case of divorce, and children often do as well. “The style to which you are accustomed” is a lot. How accustomed to it was Tabatha Southey after two seasons of NewsRadio? But the $10,700 of their 2001 settlement was based on his salary from that show, and in 2011 he said it represented literally 400% of his earnings. It was generally accepted that, should he return to Canada, he would be arrested for nonpayment of child support. Two years later, they reached a settlement, and he is now able to return to his home and native land. And good on him.
David Scott Foley of Etobicoke, Ontario, really lucked out. He dropped out of high school to pursue a career in stand-up comedy, and you figure that doesn’t work out well for a lot of people. He met Kevin McDonald, who gave him a job as an usher at a movie theatre. In 1984, the pair, plus Bruce McCullough, Mark McKinney, and Scott Thompson, formed the Kids in the Hall. They did other acting—both Dave and Bruce were in Anne of Avonlea, in fact—and then in 1988, they got their own TV show courtesy of Lorne Michaels.
How to pick a favourite sketch? “Three for the Moon” is probably the most obscure of my favourites, and it captures one of the things Dave did particularly well—be the normal one. Not the straight man, necessarily, but the most normal. This is what made him perfect to be the axe murderer or the incompetent surgeon. He was the boss of Cathy and Kathie. Manservant Hecubus, of course. Bruno Puntz Jones. Brian, son of Gordon and Fran. Jocelyn, the Quebecois sex worker. Jerry Sizzler, not to be confused with Jerry Sizzler. And the recurring characters are so fantastic it’s hard to even start with the one-offs, even “Girl Drink Drunk.”
He made the move to NewsRadio during the writing of Brain Candy because he was tired of the bickering behind the scenes, apparently. And he was a lot of fun at that. It seldom referenced Kids in the Hall in any substantive way, though there is the episode where he wears one of Lisa’s dresses and she is angry that he looks better in it than she does. Well, he always was the prettiest of the five. He’d likely be the first to tell you that this was the peak of his fame; he made both From the Earth to the Moon and A Bug’s Life while it was on the air.
His career since then has been . . . uneven. Well, I’ve long figured he was doing pretty much anything for the money; how else to explain Postal? He did get to be on the KitH reunion episode of Lilo & Stitch: The Series, though I assume the KitH reunion episode of Odd Squad filmed in Canada and he couldn’t be there for it. Still, while I haven’t seen everything he’s done or even close, it seems unlikely to me that any acting he’s ever done has been better than on the KitH revival season. I’m sure you even know the sketch I’m thinking of. If you need a hint, I’ve got a brand new key for you.
About the writer
Gillian Nelson
Gillian Nelson is a forty-something bipolar woman living in the Pacific Northwest after growing up in Los Angeles County. She and her boyfriend have one son and one daughter, and she gave a child up for adoption. She fills her days by chasing around her kids, watching a lot of movies, and reading. She particularly enjoys pre-Code films, blaxploitation, and live-action Disney movies of the '60s and '70s. She has a Patreon account.
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Love Dave Foley. The Kids in the Hall and NewsRadio are two of my five favorite shows ever, and he’s integral to both.
The Kids formed in interesting fashion; Foley and McDonald were a duo, as were McCulloch and McKinney, and they united and brought on Thompson. It ended up being kind of a perfect alchemy, and it’s a pretty timeless show because they avoid topicality and really focus on character-based work. (I think Buddy Cole might be the greatest sketch comedy character ever created.)
That “Halloween” episode of NewsRadio— “Well, how do you think it makes me feel to realize at thirty I’m much better-looking as a girl?”– is probably the closest the show got to a Kids reference, although… I’ve heard that “Chock,” where Dave’s old college a cappella group returns, was supposed to be a Kids reunion, but the scheduling didn’t work out. (Instead, they got David Cross, Bob Odenkirk, and Brian Posehn from Mr. Show.) Kevin McDonald does appear in “Stupid Holiday Charity Talent Show.”
I’d also heard that Foley’s child support problem was in part because the payments were based on his starring in A Bug’s Life, not just NewsRadio. So the decision was made as though he was a sitcom star and leading man in movies and making commensurate money, when by 2001 he was neither anymore and would not be either again.
I’m going to be honest–this is one of the ones where I didn’t do a ton of research because I could probably write pages with just what I already knew. For one, I didn’t even mention my beloved Celebrity Poker Showdown!