http://www.ottawasun.com/Showbiz/OtherShowbiz/2006/01/24/1408766-sun.htmlJust in case this link expires, I post the article itself...
Fishy
Tue, January 24, 2006
Busting a gut
Hapless and loveable Trailer Park pair take act on the road
By DENIS ARMSTRONG, OTTAWA SUN
AFTER 40 years as an actor, John Dunsworth loves playing Mr. Lahey on Trailer Park Boys so much he and Patrick Roach, who plays his crimefighting colleague Randy, are taking their show on the road.
"The difference between John Dunsworth and Jim Lahey is that I have a real thirst for new experiences, and he just has a thirst for alcohol," Dunsworth says over the phone from his studio in Halifax. "Lahey is an inebriate megalomaniac with homosexual proclivities, while I am a heterosexual epistemologist, a Renaissance guy who dabbles in everything including bridge and Scrabble and sailing, rock sculptures."
EXTREME CHARACTERS
No wonder he loves playing Lahey, and why fans have taken to the weirdest crimefighting duo on television. The pair is currently criss-crossing the country with the "Randy is Beautiful" tour, which rolls into Algonquin College on Monday night.
The show includes skits, a little song-and-dance and contests based on the hit series, a tour that will keep them busy until the summer when they begin shooting their seventh season.
You'd have to dig deep into Jerry Springer's guest list to find a pair as weird as Lahey and Randy. Even on Trailer Park Boys, a show known for extreme characters, it's hard to out bizarre the former alcoholic cop who's hooked up with a topless, beer-bellied male prostitute who lock horns every week with the park's three biggest hustlers -- the rum-and-coke sporting Julien (J.P. Tremblay), the dope-dealing Ricky (Rob Wells) and Coke-bottled glasses wearing Bubbles (Mike Smith).
"The live show is a cautionary tale," proclaims Dunsworth like an Evangelistic preacher. "Every single one of us are losers. What would you rather be, a winner that feels like a loser or a loser that feels like a winner? It doesn't matter. Trailer Park Boys is about being a loser but feeling like a winner."
And being a big loser, and not knowing it, is what the series, and first feature movie The Big Dirty which will be released this fall, is about.
"I couldn't function without Randy," Dunsworth admits. "He's the yin to my yang. He gets up in the morning positive and puts on the coffee, he keeps my spirits up because, as you know, alcoholism is pretty debilitating. He'll wash my underwear, he's a saint."
While Lahey is clearly the smarter of the two, it's the shiftless, shirtless Randy who's become a favourite with the fans since the college tour launched in October. Fans have been flocking to these gigs dressed, or undressed, like Randy. Not a pretty site.
PUSHES OUT BELLY
"It's become a part of the tour," Roach says a little taken back by the tour's success. "It's funny because in the first season in 1999, my belly wasn't that big, about 195 pounds, but now I'm about 215. They don't pay me by the pound."
Wait. He's strangely soft-spoken, even articulate. Is this really Randy?
"I have this ability to push my belly out quite far," Roach boasts. "Most guys walk around sucking their gut in. I'm the only one who's sticking his gut out."
The 36-year-old former bottled water salesman stumbled into the series when it premiered in 1999. He was childhood friends with the show's creator Mike Clattenburg and stars Tremblay and Wells. During the first few seasons he taped the series during his summer vacation and quit that job in 2004 to focus full time on playing the popular character.
"I was on the set on one of the first days they were shooting," he remembers. "It was so hot I took my shirt off. Then Mike and J.P. took theirs off too. That's when Mike came up with Randy. Every character on the show has their thing. Mine's my gut."
The reason why the show is so successful, Dunsworth theorizes, is because it breaks every rule for a successful television series.
"It's the antithesis of what you'd expect a successful Canadian story to be," he says. "It's a program that doesn't exist in America. It has fun with life.
"Look at an American sitcom, it's perfect but it's not true. Whether it's Three's Company or Leave It To Beaver, none of it is true. People believe it to the extent that they think that 95% of Americans drive a Mercedes and live a golden life. It's not true, but Trailer Park Boys comes very close to being the way it is."
Tickets for the Randy is Beautiful tour are $10 in advance or $15 at the SA Office C-151 and at the Observatory. Doors open at 8:30 p.m. with the show beginning at 9 p.m.
