Non-MX Interviews: George Buza (7/07 Laffmasters)
Laffmasters 7/28/07: George Buza Interview Part 1 and Part 2
Maxcott & Co. with George Buza
Mark Scott: Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm Mark Scott with Mascott & Company, and I have some imperial company today. I have George Buza in the studio. Good morning, George.
George Buza: Good morning.
Mark: How are we doing?
George: Still alive.
Mark: You're very well known as Turner. Is it Turner?
George: Turner from Maniac Mansion.
Mark: From Maniac Mansion. And considering the size of you, to play a baby...
George: Well, he was a four year old.
Mark: That's...who inspired that?
George: It was cooked up by Eugene Levy and Joel Flaherty, John Hemple, the people from Second City. And then they based it loosely on a video game, it was from George Lucas, which was Maniac Mansion.
Mark: A video game? Oh,okay. So it was a video game before the show.
George: Yeah.
Mark: And these days, you would have come with a candy as well. [George laughs.] So the premise was that you are a four year old, and you are in a mansion with...
George: Well, Dad is a scientist, and he's got this nuclear chamber down in the basement in his laboratory. And Uncle Harry, who was John Hemple, was kind of like the, sort of loser of the family who had married into it. And he always had a couple of shady deals on the go, and he was in charge of looking after Turner one day, and he was too busy on the phone making bets with his bookie. Turner wandered into the nuclear chamber as a little boy, and then Uncle Harry went in there after him, and the thing turned on. There was a fly in the chamber as well, so Uncle Harry turned into a fly and Turner turned into this giant gargantua. And that was the basis of those characters.
Mark: And that sounds like a bit of a twist on The Fly.
George: Well, yeah, there were a lot of spoofs that went on, as is Second City's wont, to toss everything up that they can get their hands on. There was a lot of under-the-radar comedy that went on in that show. We spoofed basically everything in the course of the three seasons.
Mark: There were...
George: Well, under the radar. I mean, the producers of the show that carried the actual broadcast of Maniac Mansion was none other than Pat Robertson's family channel. So we had some fairly strict guidelines of what could be done and what couldn't be done. If we were having dinner, there was no wine on the table ever. So with a lot of these stringent rules to kind of please Pat Robertson and the gang--
Mark: It must have been a...
George: It became a challenge to fly off-color jokes under the radar.
Mark: Right. To stay--
George: To see how much we could get away with that was veiled, that some people would get and others would not.
Mark: So it had to be wholesome humor, family oriented.
George: Yeah.
Mark: And yet, you were in a setting that was totally absurd. So you start off, by the premise sort of expects that you're going to go off-color a lot.
George: Today, it would be seriously off-color. But then it had to be done really under the radar. I think we succeeded, because High Times Magazine voted us the number one show to watch stoned, so I guess we did a good job. But I've had a long career of playing bikers.
Mark: But that commercial, I think might have even played in one of those commercial awards shows.
George: I wouldn't be surprised. It was a very good commercial.
Mark: And you're a biker and there's a fellow who sort of, he doesn't actually touch the motorcycle.
George: He's a jogger. He's running around in circles and a little kid on a tricycle runs past, or drives past the motorcycle and knocks it over. And the biker appears and looks at the bike on the ground, and the jogger just happens to be stopped right in front of the bike as it falls. And he looks at the bike, he looks at the jogger, and then the announcer comes in and says, "There's pain and there's Motrin pain."
Mark (laughing): Yes.
George: It was a clever gag.
Mark: Yes, it is. And it's a memorable visual. And now I understand one of your favorite projects to work on was Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.
George: That it was. It was a wonderful set. Working with Peter Scolari was a joy, and everybody else that was in the cast was just so wonderful, and it was a happy experience. A really happy experience.
Mark: Is that a constant in what you do, you tend to pick projects that you're passionate about?
George: We're in Canada, here, Mark. We don't pick our projects; the projects pick us. [Mark laughs.] There's very few people in any kind of position where they can go, "Gee, do I want to do this job or not?" That's a luxury that's not in our domain.
Woman: Usually more of a Hollywood star thing. Yeah.
George: That's right. You've got a stack of scripts to look through and go, "Oh, that appeases me now." Well, that doesn't happen here.
Mark: I want to make sure the audience knows that Eden Fieldstone is also here. That wasn't my voice. [Eden laughs.]
George: I don't know, you're looking pretty good, Mark.
Mark: Yeah. [They all laugh.]
Eden: He's sick; I'm sick, so excuse the coughing.
Mark: Yeah, looking good, though. Eden, you know, do you want to ask?
Eden: Have you tried to go, like move to the States?
George: Well, that's where I came from.
Eden: Oh, you came from the States?
George: That's right. I came up here to be a Canadian. I actually, the only time I went to Los Angeles to work was on a Canadian movie that used it as a location.
Eden: That's interesting.
George: Oddly enough.
Eden: That's interesting, it's usually the other way around.
Mark: In Vancouver?
George: Well, it was High Point. It was back in the '70s, and there was that movie with Chris Plummer and Kate Reed. That's the one were Dara Robinson leapt off the CN tower. It was a 1970s film. Peter Carter directed it.
Mark: So they worked Los Angeles into the budget.
George: They did, yeah, I mean, it was a two week shoot in L.A. They put us up down in Malibu. But during the time I was there, I got together with some of the Canadian community were already down there living, and saw how they lived. It wasn't very inviting. They were in a dangerous neighborhoods.
Mark: Yes. And living in...
George: Because if you don't have any money to live in a safe place, today you'd be down in drive-by shooting heaven.
Mark: Mark Scott with George Buza and Eden Fieldstone. George, at the break, you has started to talk about it, and I wonder if you can tell us again how you got inspired to come to Canada. It wasn't actually film or television, it was--
George: Well, the inspiration to come to Canada was Richard Nixon.
Mark: Richard Nixon?
George: Yes, well, he had just resigned. I was doing a show on the stage, and actually missed my entrance because I was watching him resign on TV. [Eden laughs.]
Eden: That's a good reason to miss your entrance.
George: And I felt that was a couple of beats, it wasn't really late, but, you know, I couldn't rip myself away from the TV. "I am not a crook." [They laugh.] That was kind of the height of the Vietnam conflict and the draft was already over at the time, so I'm not a draft dodger. But the climate was so split, very much like it is now, between right wing and so-called left wing, that I found Canada to be a much more tolerant, open, friendly place than a lot of the places I'd been in the States. Especially south of the Mason-Dixon line.
Eden: So are you fond of Pierre Trudeau?
George: Oh, yeah. Pierre Trudeau was one of the driving forces that brought me to this country. I thought, here's a major player on the world stage. With a prime minister like that, it was very progressive.
Mark: We have actually accepted a lot of people that were draft dodgers.
George: Well, all you had to do, basically, at the border was say you were a draft dodger, sign your papers, and you were an instant land immigrant. By the time I came here, I had to go through the whole audition process of going to Detroit -- oh, my favorite place -- and having an interview with the Council General there, and meeting the criteria to immigrate to Canada, so it wasn't as easy as it was before.
Mark: I almost expect the sound effect of a snapping rubber glove there.
George: No, no, that was when you went back across the border into Detroit. They like the snapping rubber gloves there.
Mark: The draftwoods.
George: Yes.
Mark: So, you got here, and you had talked about how you got into theater.
George: Well, theater was what we all did back then, because there wasn't a lot of television to do, unless you were in Los Angeles or New York. So American actors made their living doing the regional theater circuit. Finding a playhouse to do a season in, I did Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival and some outdoor drama, and big huge epics that were written by Graham Greene. And that's how I got my equity card, was doing the appreticeship program. That is the way that you do actually get into the union, is becoming an apprentice and doing a couple of years of slave labor, where they've got you working construction and crew during the daytime, rehearsing your understudy roles and having some very, very minor walk-on parts with a line or two here or there.
Mark: That's how you become equity.
George: That's how you become equity. That's the long and involved process. Or someone offers you a leading role right off the bat, which is kind of like the "I've been discovered in a drugstore in LA" routine.
Mark: Which very rarely happens.
George: It rarely happens, but it does happen. You know, somebody sees you in an amateur production and says, "That's the person I want in my play." And they can offer him an out and out contract, and immediately you get your card. But if you're going through the ranks, then you've got to do a couple of years of apprenticeship, a lot of slave labor. I remember we barely slept, because an apprentice could brave, like Shakespere Festival. And Canadian actor Bruce Gray was one of the leads in the show there. That's the guy from Traders. And we worked from early in the morning, constructing the sets, and then we dragged off to rehearsal.
Eden: Wow.
George: Because we had understudy roles that we had to practice, and then we had our regular roles, which were walk-ons. And then at night we did the shows, so it was a very long day. And for that, we'd get paid 30 bucks a week.
Eden: How did you survive?
George: Well, life was a lot cheaper back then. Even an equity contract, when I came to Toronto, was 130 dollars a week, Young People's Theatre. Toronto Free Theatre, about 125 dollars a week. If you got 150 or 200 bucks a week, you were living like a king.
Mark: You were a professional.
George: You were a professional. If you ever did a St. Lawrence Theatre show, then that was an A house, so you could be making four or five hundred dollars a week.
Mark: An eight house?
George: A. They're graded according to the size of the audience. The larger the audience, the higher the pay scale.
Mark: You had related an situation when you had come to Canada and got invited into acting.
George: Well, I got invited to audition for a show. And being an adventurer, and whatever new opportunities opened, when I read for it, I got the part. It sounded like a better idea than other things that were waiting for me back home, so I got my permit to work here. And after doing that show and a couple others afterwards, I realized that Canada was a really great place to live.
Mark: And you had...
George: So I became a "Permanent Landed Ignorant," and eventually a citizen, and never looked back.
Mark: Though you have moved, do you still do theater?
George: No. I haven't done theater now in 22 years.
Eden: Ever thought of getting back into it?
George: No, and I have a baseball bat for that. Whenever the urge hits, you've got to hit yourself soundly about the head and ears.
Eden: Why is that?
George: Well, for one thing, it's daunting. After so many years of never having to memorize anything more than four or five pages at a time, to look at a two-three hour long script, and see all the stuff that you're still responsible for memorizing, it's a daunting thing. Even though you didn't have stage fright when you were doing the theater back in the old days, after being absent from it for so long, a guy my age could drop dead from fear. My friend Cedric Smith feels the same way. He says, "My God, that Bill Hutt. He's in his eighties and he's still doing Waiting for Godot." And hats off to him, because that's difficult dialogue to memorize at any time. I've done Godot, and it's theater of the absurd for one thing, and another, the dialogue is sequential, so you're not replying to somebody else's question or to somebody else's statement in the play. It's all self-generated dialogue.
Eden: So do a lot of people commit suicide after watching the play?
George: Only if you've done a good job. [They laugh.]
Eden: So if an audience member commits suicide, you've got a good actor? That defines a good actor!
George: This is what we're hoping for, you know. What's the count tonight? 25 bodies tonight in audience. All right, we did a good show! We depressed the hell out of them!