Q 6

PLAYBOY: Why isn't there more sex on the show?

Joe Flaherty: Sex, like drugs, is a very easy laugh, so you tend not to use it. Catherine and Andrea won't dress up in panties and see-through bras just for a laugh. They're much better than that. I did do Dr. Tongue's 3-D House of Stewardesses, though. I thought it would be real risqué to have them strip to their bikinis. But it was silly, it wasn't sexual.

Catherine O'Hara: Also, we don't waste our time working on something that's going to get cut anyway. And everyone's married in the cast except Rick and me.

Dave Thomas: We have big-breasted girls who appear in the background of a lot of scenes, but basically, we don't think they're funny or, certainly, not funnier than we are. Andrea has a sketch about how to fake an orgasm and NBC at first bumped it from the show. The network relented because it felt that most of the people who are offended by sex go to bed early. That's good network thinking.

Rick Moranis: Also, we're Canadian and very provincial and we like to keep sex inside the bedroom.

Q 7

PLAYBOY: Is it because you're Canadian that there are no blacks or Third World members of the group? Don't you think they're funny?

Andrea Martin: I'm Armenian.

Rick Moranis: We have an Italian, two Jews, an Armenian, an Irish person, a Scot. What's John?

Catherine O'Hara: Irish.

Rick Moranis: When you come from the Great White North, there aren't a lot of black people.

Andrea Martin: I'm about as black as you get.

Dave Thomas: This show started from a stage cast that was in Toronto, and there were no black comedians in the show at that time. It would be difficult for me to accept NBC's saying to us, "We want you to put one black and one Mexican and one more woman on your show. We want you to appeal to our demographics." Why force us to change what we do? Nobody appreciates that. Mexicans and blacks don't. A lot of what Garrett Morris did on Saturday Night Live looked as if it were just pandering to the blacks. Really tokenism. I was insulted by that; I'm sure he was. Intelligent and thinking blacks would be insulted by that, too.

Q 8

PLAYBOY: Does it disgust you that unhygienic acts occur while your show is televised?

Rick Moranis: Well, it bothers me that herpes may be spreading during the show.

Andrea Martin: If I can help somebody's sexual act, I'm happy. I wish I could get aroused watching myself.

Q 9

PLAYBOY: Are there any secrets you'd care to reveal about yourself or the other group members?

John Candy: Well, I'd like to tell the government that I am paying taxes and would appreciate a green card. I spend a lot of money and I would help the economy.

My main secret is that I'm bald and really 100 pounds lighter than this. This is just a suit that I wear. I don't want that to get around, because it'll wreck my career. Another secret is that this show is being done out of South America with laundered Nazi money.

Joe Flaherty: The truth about Catherine is that she's like a lot of Irish-Catholic girls--a nonswinger. She lives a dissipated lifestyle without being dissipated. She keeps bad hours, she eats the wrong food, but her vices are so innocuous. If you can pick vices, you should really have vices like humping away all night. Not Catherine. Her vices include French fries and staying up all night by herself in her hotel room watching TV. Rick and Dave are pretty straight. Andrea used to be wild in the milder sense. John has the most vices: he's a big guy and a big guy needs big vices. He has funny vices, such as he spends too much money. The group isn't excessive except for John; he would have to be our Belushi. But I don't see any dark streaks anywhere in the group.

Rick Moranis: Wait a minute. A good, little-known fact is that Eugene sent back three bottles of Chateauneuf-du-Pape one night in a five-star restaurant. It was the highlight of my life.

Andrea Martin: The truth? Rick would like to sleep with every extra who comes onto this show.

Q 10

PLAYBOY: OK, then. Graphically describe some of the sexual relationships that are occurring within the group.

Andrea Martin: It's certainly not a big party group, with the exception of Catherine, who would kill to party every night. Eugene and I used to go out with each other. Every time I mention that, he gets upset.

Catherine O'Hara: Hey, I went out with him once, too.

Dave Thomas: It's all part of being a family. And there's a point with any brother and sister at which they say, "You show me yours and I'll show you mine." Andrea is really refreshing, because she has no inhibitions at all. Catherine has loads of inhibitions, so they're a nice contrast to each other. You can drop your pants in front of Andrea and Andrea will go, "Good, dear. So that's what it's like, huh?" Catherine will be down the hall and out the door, will have ordered a cab and got into it before the belt hits the ground.

Q 11

PLAYBOY: What are your feelings about censors--the standards-and-practices people?

Rick Moranis: They're just earning a living. The problem is, they're not reporting what is offending them so much as what they are told might be offending Middle America. They're bureaucrats and they should stay out of the creative process.

Andrea Martin: I'm a little bit more compassionate. Everybody tries to hold on to his job and he's scared. He doesn't really know what his job is.

Dave Thomas: Well, I know it's really hip to despise them. And there's no getting around the fact that you are, to some extent, what you do. Unfortunately, the real power always goes to the older guys. In entertainment, that's fucking deadly, because, ultimately, they will not have contact with their audience.

Q 12

PLAYBOY: What's the most distasteful sketch you've written that never got approved?

Dave Thomas: I wrote a piece called "Pocket Pal." It was about an electronic detector that would warn you 15 seconds in advance of mid-air collisions in aircraft. Bernie Sahlins, our executive producer at the time, was horrified. I was mad, because I thought it was funny: "Shocked by the recent negligence of air-traffic controllers and the number of errors committed by overworked pilots? Well, you don't have to worry about mid-air collisions anymore, thanks to an amazing piece of hardware developed by the Ronco corporation called the Pocket Pal, which can predict mid-air collisions, sometimes as much as 15 seconds before impact." Well, Danny Aykroyd eventually did the piece on Saturday Night Live. Matter of fact, Aykroyd told me I was the only outside writer who ever got a piece on that show. Our producers called me when they saw the bit and asked me what the hell was going on--was I writing for S.N.L. or what? They said, "Hey, you wrote that for our show." I said, "Yeah, and you rejected it. So piss up a rope. Jack." I didn't receive any money for it. I just wanted that idea to get on the air.