Trailer Park Boys Disappointed by Fame

The Trailer Park Boys have become the most popular trio of petty thieves in Canadian history. Julian (John Paul Tremblay), Ricky (Rob Wells) and Bubbles (Mike Smith) spoke to Jay Stone about their latest adventure.

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Q So how does it feel to be movie stars?

BUBBLES We thought it would have been a little bit fancier, you know. Sending us around the city here with taxi chits and giving us old fuckin' croissants. I thought there'd be parties and ladies and liquor and dope and limousines.

Q What kind of role models do you feel you present to Canadian youth?

JULIAN We're hard-working guys, you know. We've got a great work ethic. Bubbles and I had parents who basically abandoned us. We've learned how to survive all these years on our own, and I think we've done a pretty goddamn good job.

RICKY Me especially. I've proven you don't have to have a high-school degree to do well in life. ... Kids can watch the show and realize this is the right way of doing things. Because we make mistakes all the time and learn from our mistakes. I mean, dope's not really that bad and people are probably told that it is. And kids swear. So I think kids should be watching this show.

Q Ricky, your ambition in the film is to begin growing dope. How do you feel this goal fits into the Canadian ethos?

RICKY Well, it's a good way of making a living without breaking the law.

Q I'm not sure why that's not breaking the law.

RICKY Breaking the law a little bit's not really breaking the law. It's when you break it big time that it is breaking the law.

Q What's the best part about living in Sunnyvale trailer park?

RICKY I think people can learn a lot from us because we'd do anything for anybody, especially each other, but even other people in the park. That's the way it should be everywhere in the world.

JULIAN Back when we were younger, around six or seven, we'd all sit around and have a few drinks and watch Little House on the Prairie. Our life isn't that much different than what those guys are going through at Sunnyvale. There's just more drugs and liquor involved, I guess.

Review: Trailer Park Boys

As you watch the 97-minute festival of small-time criminal activity and professional alcoholism that is Trailer Park Boys, you might wonder what our national cinema says to the rest of the world about Canadian culture.

It's a fair question, given that the producers hope to sell Trailer Park Boys in the U.S., where movie goers will not have the advantage of knowing about this cult TV comedy in which three petty thieves, named Julian, Ricky and Bubbles, scheme and fail in the warm and somehow innocent environs of chain-smoking and welfare, a place where one of our heroes can say, on his wedding day, "I'm gonna start growing dope again and get my life back on track." (The same character doesn't exactly live in a trailer, but has been banished to the car outside the trailer, which he refers to as "our family's cottage.")

Thus Trailer Park Boys follows other television spinoffs, such as the McKenzie Brothers (hosers love beer and hockey) and Red Green (fraternal brothers find many uses for duct tape), to create a unique picture of Canada as a land of amiable addictions and aggressive stupidity that is probably, if you have even the slightest knowledge about our history, government-funded.

The flip side of this picture, of course, is the Canada of our more elevated movies, a nation that is made up exclusively of dysfunctional families practising incest. Give me Julian, Ricky and Bubbles any time, even if they are tawdry spokesmen for the Great White North. At least they're dignified about it.

The dignity is the surprise in Trailer Park Boys, a show whose three main characters spend all day planning petty robberies, in this case, of parking meters and vending machines because change is untraceable.

Julian (John Paul Tremblay) is the large man who carries a constant glass of rum-and-Coke, even when he goes to the bar ("I brought this from home," he explains.)

Ricky (Rob Wells), is the aggressive, but loving Trailer Park Boy, whose voice we hear over the opening credits ("I need to get drunk as f--"), but who warm-heartedly apologizes for any offence he may have caused. At one point in Trailer Park Boys: The Movie, Ricky, who is on the ball hockey team in prison, fights to remain in jail so he can take part in the playoffs. Bubbles (Mike Smith), is the most confused of the boys, trapped behind bottle-bottom glasses and living in a shed with his cats. His aim in life is to cover the roof in plastic and have enough left cash over for cat food.

The Trailer Park Boys are best absorbed in half-hour doses, in which their idiotic criminal adventures represent a refreshing change from the usual TV families, if only for their creative (and constant) use of the f-word as every part of speech.

Their first movie is directed by Mike Clattenburg -- who created the series -- with the same downmarket look and drunkenly episodic style: Ricky wants to win back his girlfriend Lucy (Lucy DeCoutere), who has purchased new breasts while he was in jail and is now dancing down at the "gentleman's club;" Julian wants to steal change; Bubbles needs cat food. Their even-stupider proteges, Cory and Trevor (Cory Bowles and Michael Jackson) follow behind in a snowmobile modified with wheels. Mr. Lahey (John Dunsworth), the drunken supervisor of the trailer park, contributes to the general air of moral collapse by finding creative uses for the s-word.

There's only so much of this sordid brand of comedy you can take, and after awhile, Trailer Park Boys: The Movie feels like a marathon of coarseness. But it's salvaged by an aura of self-respect the boys are allowed, especially in the case of Ricky, whose warm apologies, faithfulness, and loyalty to his daughter Trinity, despite her habit of stealing barbecues and selling them at the flea market, make him into a full-fledged person, albeit one whose ideal evening involves marijuana, liquor, and April Wine on the stereo.

Such is the National Dream as filtered through our national sense of humour, and maybe that's what the Trailer Park Boys say about us.