by Jay Onrait
Dan bugged Rob as well as our bosses to allow us to do a weekly podcast in the wake of the success of shows like The B.S. Report with Bill Simmons and The Rich Eisen Podcast and Marek vs. Wyshynski.
We started the podcast in September of 2012 and it was an instant hit. We went to number one on iTunes right away. It was really gratifying to have instant success because the podcast is even more “out there” than the TV show is. Just an hour of unscripted talk about “butt chugging” (the art of ingesting alcohol into one’s anus); stories from Producer Tim, whose voice was modulated to sound like a guy from the witness protection program; and lots and lots of talk about poop. As in feces. It’s not as if we planned to become a podcast that was best known for discussions about excrement. It just sort of happened. We’re not even “potty humour” types. Our friend and Our Lady Peace drummer Jeremy Taggart became a well-loved regular on the show. I genuinely enjoy doing the podcast every single week with Dan. That chemistry that we had on the desk and just our general friendship translated into something totally unique and surprisingly listenable.
You know those times when you stop and examine your life situation and say, “I’m going to miss this someday”? That’s how I feel about working with Dan.
CHAPTER 21
The Blades of Glory Junket
THESE WERE THE BEST OF TIMES at SportsCentre. Our bosses were starting to become comfortable with the idea of Dan and me adding comic elements to what was supposed to be a straightforward sports news show. If we ever took things too far we’d be politely asked to “dial it back 10 percent.” Such a request would usually come after we hurled confetti in the air or had one of our writers appear with a chicken mask on his head. Overall, however, we were given amazing freedom to do what we wanted, and Producer Tim begrudgingly allowed himself to become a part of the show via nightly ridicule. Life was good.
Still, I wanted to get out in the field a bit and actually cover sports once in a while, so beginning in 2005 I asked and was granted the privilege of covering the NBA Finals for SportsCentre. I did it for the next three years, the most memorable moment coming when I suddenly found myself to be the first reporter in the Miami Heat dressing room immediately after they clinched their first NBA championship in 2006. Jason “White Chocolate” Williams soaked me with champagne as I made a futile attempt to ask him intelligent questions while taking elbows to the ribs from cranky print broadcasters. I was also sent on the road a few times to host Toronto Raptors broadcasts on TSN with Leo Rautins, back when the broadcasters covering the team actually travelled on the team plane. I was sitting happily enjoying my ice cream sundae on the way back to Toronto from Philadelphia in 2008 when suddenly I heard then Raptors head coach Sam Mitchell say loudly, “Who the hell is this peckerwood?” to everyone on the plane as he walked the aisle.
“Boy, I feel sorry for whomever he’s talking about,” I said to myself as I scooped up another bite of caramel. Leo was sitting behind me, and I turned around to ask him whom Mitchell was referring to. The look on his face said it all. He’s talking about you, idiot. Sam then went on a diatribe about this new “peckerwood” who had suddenly appeared on his plane out of nowhere to everyone who was interested in listening. No one was listening. They had all heard this song and dance before. Realizing his “bit” was played out, Sam offered a fist for me to bump, which I promptly did, and then returned to his coaching staff to probably discuss ways to keep Primož Brezec off the court as much as possible.
After that I mostly stayed behind the desk where I belonged. However, I did cover a press junket for the network once. I’ve been to only one junket, and that was enough for me.
For the uninformed (consider yourselves blissfully uninformed), a “junket” is when all the major movie stars of an upcoming motion picture are gathered into a suite, or several suites, at a beautiful hotel in New York or Los Angeles. This way, different entertainment reporters from across the country and around the world can travel to that location and interview each of the stars one or two at a time. It’s a subject that Billy Crystal tackled in his horrifically bad film America’s Sweethearts. Didn’t see it? Again, consider yourself blissfully lucky.
TSN had sent reporters to press junkets before, mostly for sports movies like Cinderella Man or Ali. This time they decided it might be a fun idea to send someone to the junket for a sports comedy like my favourite movie of all time: Caddyshack. Could you imagine working the Caddyshack junket? You would have had the chance to interview Michael O’Keefe, who played Danny Noonan, before he dropped off the face of the earth.
The movie in consideration for TSN coverage was Blades of Glory starring Will Ferrell, Jon Heder, Amy Poehler, and Will Arnett. Technically, it was a sports movie, though it was about as much a sports movie as D2: The Mighty Ducks. I loved Ferrell on Saturday Night Live as much as everyone else on the planet. In my mind, Ferrell’s cast, including Darrell Hammond and the criminally underrated Chris Parnell, had erased the memories of a few down seasons on the show (sadly those “down seasons” pretty much involved every season with former Kids in the Hall star and beloved Canadian Mark McKinney).
Ferrell was also coming off Old School and Anchorman and was pretty much the hottest comedy star on the planet at the time. My bosses asked if I was interested in travelling to L.A., interviewing the entire cast of the movie, staying overnight, and then flying back the next day. Yes, I was interested. But truthfully, I was kind of terrified. I didn’t really want to interview any of these people. I genuinely felt bad about their situation: Who the hell would want to sit there all day while reporters from places such as Toronto fed them dumb questions like “So how long have you been wanting to work with Jon?” The whole thing was just nauseating to me. I really had an uncomfortable feeling about it. But a trip to L.A. did sound pretty good.
I arrived in L.A. the day before the junket. All the entertainment reporters who had been invited to the junket were scheduled to get picked up at the hotel and taken to the Grove to see the film that evening. If you haven’t been to L.A., the Grove is a beautiful outdoor shopping mall and another reason to hate people who get to live in that city. We would see the film with our fellow reporters, thereby giving us all the material we would need to ask the actors highly provocative and fascinating questions the following day.
It didn’t take me long to realize I was the only person in the group of reporters attending the film who didn’t know anyone else. These people had probably worked alongside each other on a million of these junkets. Everybody was so chummy, talking about interviews they had just done or were about to do, trading stories about recent interviews that had gone horribly wrong, and sharing general entertainment-biz gossip. I immediately felt the same way I used to feel when my parents made me attend hockey school in the Okanagan during my summer vacation as a kid. I’d arrive knowing absolutely no one because I was from Alberta, and all the other local kids would be chatting and goofing around because they had known each other for years from playing minor hockey.
So as I sat amid those reporters like an outcast that day, I did what everyone does in that situation and pretended I was reading and typing very important things into my BlackBerry, all the while my fellow film attendees relaxed and chatted like it was some sort of entertainment reporter family reunion.
I wasn’t entirely concerned about looking like an outsider in this situation, however. I was already preoccupied with what I was going to ask Will Ferrell the next day. More specifically I was preoccupied with how I was going to come up with something “funny” for him to do that would justify TSN’s giving me the assignment in the first place.
The film itself was just okay. I remember thinking I probably laughed more than I would have had I seen it in a theatre in Toronto in another attempt to show what a great time I was having. The premise was sort of brilliant: Two male singles figure skaters are banned from competing individually, but a brilliant figure skating coach (played by “Coach” himself, Craig T. Nelson) figures out a loophole
that allows them to compete as a pair. Hilarity ensues. Probably the best gimmick was having then real-life husband and wife Will Arnett and Amy Poehler play a brother and sister figure skating duo with designs on bringing down our heroes, Ferrell and Heder. In the end I thought the film was missing a little something. Ferrell would tackle the world of ABA basketball (Semi-Pro) and NASCAR racing (Talladega Nights) to greater success in the future.
After the movie was over, I imagine the rest of the entertainment reporter mafia went to some sort of fashionable lounge in West Hollywood to swap stories about how difficult it was to interview Tommy Lee Jones or something. I quickly hopped in a cab and went straight back to the hotel to plan my interview strategy. I had one specific plan: I knew my interview time itself would be no longer than five minutes (as it turned out it was four minutes). Therefore, I needed to allot my time accordingly. My first idea was to have Ferrell himself participate in “Headlines,” which was the voiced-over montage that kicked off every edition of SportsCentre. Usually this involved Dan O’Toole or me reading a script that said something like this:
“Coming up on SportsCentre … The Leafs try to knock the crown off the Kings in Los Angeles … PLUS … The Oilers head to Minnesota to try to TAME the Wild! … AND … The RED HOT Flames travel to the music city … to TANGLE with the Predators!”
The script never really deviated much. The key was to tell the viewer what was coming up on the show using clever wordplay that related to the teams playing that night. Simple. So my thought was: What if I could get Ferrell to read the opening headlines to the show in which my story would appear? Surely that alone would justify my entire trip to Los Angeles! I could just imagine the reaction back in Toronto!
“Brilliant work, Onrait!” they’d say. “We’re doubling your salary immediately!”
The question was: Would Ferrell play along? Or would he actually be so tired of answering question after mundane question from a continuous series of entertainment talking heads that he would be cranky and shut down my idea on the spot? I decided I simply had to go for it and hope for the best. What I didn’t count on was the fact that I wouldn’t be interviewing him alone.
Often in the case of ensemble pictures with several so-called stars, they will pair a couple of stars together to save time. The idea is that you’re probably going to ask the same questions to Will Arnett that you’re going to ask Amy Poehler, so why not have them in the same room answering those questions together? I’m sure for people like Poehler and Arnett it’s also a welcome proposition since it means they won’t be completely bored the entire day since they’ll have someone to talk to. For the reporters asking the questions it’s also appreciated because perhaps the stars will loosen up and banter about the film and play off each other a bit. For me, it was a bit of a nightmare. I had envisioned being alone with Ferrell in a room, connecting with the guy over sports (he had said often in interviews that he was a huge sports fan and actually considered becoming a sportscaster while attending USC), having him laugh uproariously over my ideas, maybe even asking me to join him on the set of his next film. Oh, the fun we would have!
The next morning I woke early, ordered room service oatmeal (easy on my notoriously bad stomach), and went over my questions for all the actors I’d be interviewing. Most importantly, I had collected all the information I needed for Ferrell to participate in the headlines portion of the show. And by “information I collected” I mean I wrote his “script” on a Post-it-note-sized piece of hotel stationery. There were no lines in the script for Ferrell to read, all I had written down was this:
KINGS–LEAFS
OILERS–BLUE JACKETS
FLAMES–WILD
BLADES OF GLORY!
That’s it. That’s what I was going to present to this beloved, highly successful comedy actor: a piece of paper with ten words on it that really made no sense whatsoever.
Coincidentally, there happened to be another press junket going on in the hotel at the same time for a serious film called Reign Over Me, starring Adam Sandler, Don Cheadle, Liv Tyler, and Jada Pinkett Smith. The entire hotel was bursting at the seams with reporters, publicists, and hangers-on. It was exciting but at the same time it did little to calm my nerves. I threw on a suit and headed up to the Blades of Glory junket, only to find myself sharing an elevator with Tyler and Pinkett Smith, who were heading up to be interviewed in their own junket. Tyler looked tired, but Pinkett Smith was positively radiant, much more beautiful than I had ever seen her on the silver screen. Both ladies were surrounded by their teams of managers and handlers, and an awkward silence was thankfully broken when I jumped off on my floor to start my day. They were probably thinking this was going to be the worst day of their lives.
When I arrived on my floor for the Blades junket I was briefed on the situation: I would be interviewing Craig T. Nelson first, alone, followed by Arnett and Poehler together, and then Ferrell and Heder together.
My heart sank.
How would I explain to Heder that I needed him to sit and be quiet while Ferrell worked his comedy magic for me? I decided it was too late to change the plan. Just like everyone, I liked Heder in Napoleon Dynamite, but I knew that Ferrell alone would knock the opening headlines out of the park. Hopefully, Heder wouldn’t be too offended. Maybe he would appreciate the break after the assembly line of banal questions.
I waited my turn in one suite that had been designated the “wait-your-turn suite.” I sat silently and went over my questions for Coach. Anyone who glanced over at me would have seen I was noticeably terrified. I had never in my life seen a single episode of Coach. That’s right, not one single episode. As I panicked about my first interview of the day, I overhead two of the entertainment scribblers mention that Nelson was a “tough interview.” Great. Just the way I wanted to start my day. My name was called and I was led into another suite where Nelson sat, alone, chatting amiably with the camera operator and lighting guy.
As I mentioned previously, each interviewer was given an allotted time of four minutes. This may seem like a short amount of time, and if the interview is going well, that’s absolutely true. But if the interview is going poorly, it seems like an eternity. I was immediately transported back to my days on The Big Breakfast where every single segment on the show was four minutes without exception. Interview with an author? Four minutes. Cooking a crepe with a local chef? You’d better cook that crepe in four minutes. Band playing a song? That song needs to be around three minutes and thirty seconds if you want me to take thirty seconds to tell the viewing audience what bar you’ll be playing at that night.
Every time you walked into a suite to interview one of the actors, your name and affiliation were announced as if you were competing in a beauty pageant. “Jay On-RAYTE, TSN,” said the person in charge. Nelson took one look at me and said a dismissive “hello” and we were off. I thought that maybe I should start by asking him a somewhat serious question about the film even though it was a comedy, because I imagined that Nelson was the kind of actor who took his craft seriously no matter what the genre. So I started with “You’ve obviously done comedy before to great success, but this movie was kind of absurd, not exactly what we’re used to seeing from you. What made you decide to sign on for a Will Ferrell movie?” (BRILLIANT, ONRAIT.)
He stared straight at me and said nothing. After the most uncomfortable five-second pause in my life, he replied, “Well, why not?”
“Yeah, good question,” I said.
Silence.
“Uh,” I muttered. “So, you a big figure skating fan?”
He laughed. A genuine actual hearty laugh! My strategy had worked! Convince him that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing (no problem there) and hope he would take sympathy on me and see that I wasn’t another one of those fake-hair, fake-teeth entertainment cattle that he would be facing throughout the day.
The final two minutes of the interview were a bit of a blur. I believe I asked him about the plausibility of two male figure skaters form
ing an ice-dancing team and whether it’s something he would actually watch. I think he had already tuned me out at that point, but the truth is I had absolutely no intention of using any of this material for my finished story anyway. Unless he said something brilliantly profound, which he didn’t. I was just happy he didn’t reach over and punch me. I suppose if he had, that definitely would have made the story.
Next, I was instructed to head across the hall to another suite where Amy Poehler and Will Arnett sat waiting for my brilliant and poignant questions. Amy is well known as a former Saturday Night Live cast member and the star of the flat-out brilliant Parks and Recreation, a show that is very likely an unrealistic depiction of what it’s like to work in a parks and rec office in a small Midwestern city. However, since I’ve never worked in civic administration, I’m not bothered by it and can enjoy the show as the instant classic that it is. Also, the character of Ron Swanson (played by Nick Offerman) wears a moustache that is the inspiration for my duster every Movember.
Arnett was one of the stars of the equally brilliant Arrested Development. Not to mention the fact that he is a born-and-raised Torontonian and has stated often that he is a huge Maple Leafs fan and that Wendel Clark is his favourite player. I wasn’t really planning on working that angle in the interview, but then I entered the room and they announced my name and affiliation: “Jay On-RAT,
TSN.”
“TSN? I love TSN!” said Arnett.
“He loves hockey,” said Poehler.
Thank you, TSN!
What followed was practically a lovefest for all things hockey: “Every Saturday night he watches Don Cherry,” said Poehler.
“He’s on another network; we won’t be talking about him,” I replied, to uproarious laughter from my interviewees. Uproarious laughter! Maybe I should be doing the whole story about these two wonderful people, I thought to myself. We didn’t even talk about Blades of Glory and I didn’t care. The fact that Arnett was talking non-stop about the Leafs and Poehler was playing along was a perfect angle for a sports-network reporter to take on a story like this. They had already made the day a success.