Remembering John Dunsworth

Oh Canada. You may know me as Mr. Lahey. Mr. fucking Lahey! But I'm about to take on one of the toughest jobs of my career. This year, I'm competing at the Santa Winter Games in Sweden. And I'm bringing home the gold for Canada. F.J. Homo Canadiensis! Even if it kills me.

Hello?

Hi.

Yeah, who is this, is this Dan?

Whoa. Okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh that was that was that was a real treat.

Yeah, that's that's my name. Matchism.

Well, my first name's Matt and my last name's Chisholm.

Mm-hmm.

Oh jeez. I mean it was definitely Trailer Park Boys. I think growing up in Nova Scotia, everyone kind of knew at least somebody that was associated or affiliated with Trailer Park Boys.

Um, um, yeah. But uh yeah how do how do you know John? How how did you...

Yeah. Did you did you know him beforehand or was that like a...

Yeah, yeah, I took a class. Um...

I walked into this improv class, it was in the back of a grocery store, and um I I turned the corner and John was just there. You know, Mr. Lahey. He just showed up, so it was like sort of like Michael Jordan walking into a a pickup basketball game in a kindergarten. Yeah, basically, but he spent a lot of the time passing the ball. He was an excellent fellow improviser.

Um, he was a very physical actor.

No, he was he was very very like loving.

Uh, I mean, if you were playing uh a character with like a limp or a physical quirk. I know what I worked with him, one of the things that uh he said to me was uh "you watch, you watch a lot of bad actors, they they tend to throw away the last word in their sentences."

Yeah. I think that description fit John very well. You know, not wasting a word or a sentence.

Um... believe it or not in 1988, which was the year I was born, John ran in a provincial election in Nova Scotia.

Uh, for a member of the uh legislative assembly in Nova Scotia in Halifax. There's a documentary actually that's on the internet uh called The Candidate.

The Candidate.

Did you ever think of running in an election? Was it a serious consideration or a passing fantasy?

This is a portrait of John Dunsworth's campaign.

We've always been uh uh part of an authoritarian kind of society. And in a way it's true because people in this community they think um you know they think something that is has virtue because it is. I mean they will vote for someone because that someone has been the premier and he's important. They will uh they will subscribe to a set of rules because it has been the set of rules and so by virtue of its existence it must be good. And they're a little bit afraid of trying something new.

I didn't have either speech written tonight. The winning or the losing speech. I think the winning one would have come easier, so maybe I should make that one.

All right, I'll make the winning speech. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much. It's incredible. Five votes. A win by five is a win. We have a lot of work to do the next four years. I hope...

I mean it doesn't, you know, in the run of a day, it doesn't you know, he doesn't really pop into my mind. That that time that I met him that uh, I was one of the one of the best days, one of the best days I ever had. And uh he was incredibly kind. And uh you could just tell that there was that there was somebody present there the whole time. And uh that's... You know, you don't see that every day.

I mean, no nobody can make anybody a better person. That's not how that works.

But yeah, yeah I do think he made me a better person and I don't I don't know how he did it, but but I know I'm worse without him. What's what's fun about talking to John is uh he's so fast. He's so fast with everything and uh he he's if he starts going down one road he's not afraid to abandon it if he comes up with something funnier. And uh it's it's fun to just jump track to track with him. It's sort of like a, you know, an Indiana Jones style train fight where you're just jumping from car to car wrestling and tussling and and and having a blast. He showed up one time to our acting class uh with a a wine bottle and just started taking swigs from it. And he never really addressed it or anything like that. He just did it. And then uh I think somebody asked, and then it was like water. He just had a wine bottle filled with he was kind of like playing a game with everybody. It was pretty great.

I don't know, that that that doesn't seem too great. That sounds a little bit...

Yep. Yep.

No, I'm trying to do you, Dan.

Yeah. Well I'll do you.

You can do me, all right doing you. Let's take our clothes off.

Bless my soul, little Dan, and what would you like for Christmas?

You don't have nightmares.

Do you have a hot shower before you go to bed?

Did you tell Santa what do you think about before you fall off to sleep?

What what tell me one specifically one. Do you have a recurring nightmare?

So, so, do you think this might be analogous to your life, Dan? Do you feel at home in the world or do you feel...?

So this is your father on your eighth birthday took you for the colonic?

Do you know it's 11:11 right now on the clock?

Party for a minute! Party for a minute! You know, it's a magic number for me and I realize that when Flight 111 crashed outside my home.

And and that's magic. Uh, it it what it's a it's a moment, and it crashed in a spot where a friend of mine took a a picture years ago of a three-masted burning schooner, phoned the Coast Guard and they had no reports of any ships in the area. That but that's where the plane went down. And it started me thinking that maybe this mystical, you know, ghost-like apparitional things, maybe they're future, maybe maybe we pre-member instead of remember.

Yeah. Yeah. You sit there quietly and you think about an area and then you can see the future. I guess the CIA and the spies used it during the Cold War.

Well I I'm an observer of of natural phenomenon. And I'm always trying to make mathematical connections. And like for example I'm saying mathematical connection at the same time another guy might be adding two and two plus four.

Yeah. Unless you read 22, that'd be 26 I think. Dan you're you're just so far ahead of me intellectually that I I I'm finding it hard to keep up with you.

Yeah.

Oh.

Oh my goodness.

Please do.

Who's there?

Juno who?

Oh. This is very... Oh, it's a flask.

I have one identical. "I am the liquor."

Yes I am indeed. Randy said to me he said Mr. Lahey someone could get hurt. And I said wouldn't that be nice. And he says Mr. Lahey is that you talking or the liquor. Randy... I am the liquor.

Well, see for me I don't know the moment. It's all dramatic for me. My whole life is kind of an act. I never... listen to him purr.

I don't drink. I can't abide drunks unless they're intelligent drunks and they're on a real good one.

You're out there hanging out with uh Stephen Dawkins getting drunk talking about uh...

Sure. Yeah.

No I... listen you got the wrong impression. I don't believe in all this mystical shit. All I know is that there's connections in the universe. And if you want to be aware, then you're gonna have synchronistic moments. And all that it means is that you're aware. And all that it really means is, you're in the right place at the right time. That's it. And if you can have those... it's a beautiful way to look at it, being in the right place at the right time. Even if you're in a situation that's not uh uh good for you or something that that doesn't feel right, maybe it is setting you up for something. I I would love to believe that, hope to hope that that's the case. Well some people, it's a Zen kind of thing. Like like I've got a book here, it's a it's the Way of Zen. Well that's not the the book this is Alan Watts. Uh you want to read some real good philosophy, contemporary philosophy, he's he used to be a Jesuit, he's dead now.

In 1950s he was writing and everybody who's written since then has just repeated what he said. And uh...

Well it's simply he was a Buddhist as well and and uh um he just says that you have to relax in the in the moment and you have to not be an expert. An expert, Marshall McLuhan said an expert is a person who stays put. But he talked about the wisdom, I think it's called wisdom of doubt or the wisdom of... what's another word for doubt? Another word for doubt. We need another three second pause there so the audience could think.

Dan. No. Doubt is not fear. Like if the angels and God do not know God. Ecclesiasticus 247 1932, then how can we know God? And anyone who professes to know God is a goddamn hypocrite.

Cause the world is paradoxical. What did Socrates say? The only thing that I know is that I don't know.

I sure did. It's so it's a huge book I can't get through. Takes a long time. You can't I don't understand it.

Yeah. I don't whenever I think about that I just think bend over bend over let Lahey come over.

Okay okay for example uh this whole time I've been on tour uh we started off with a 46 page script.

Two years ago for the Santa Claus go fuck yourself tour. And starts off with me going out and the audience going crazy I have to say the a minute or two minutes of you know me waiting for them. Ladies and gentlemen can I have your attention please. My name is Officer Jim Lahey of the Sunnyvale Police Department and I am here for the warrant for the warrant for the arrest of Rick the Dick. Which sets up the whole premise. That's all it is. It's I'm the antagonist he's the protagonist. And that's the same thing over and over again. And all I have to do is it just play different gradations gradations of drunkenness. You know sad fucking drunk, you know, to the angry drunk, the guy's really going off... Randy what are you talking about! You're mine Randy! Right? And it's just and you can observe that or you can imagine it or you can make it up. But at the same time that I'm doing that uh I'm also uh involved in a documentary. We just came back from Vienna and Rome and Sweden, North of the Arctic Circle, Gallivare, Sweden, where I competed in the Santa Winter Games.

We went to Calgary, I went to Santa School.

I've had trainers and I got to witness uh the most wonderful little phenomenon where Santas from all over the world congregate and compete to be named the best Santa in the world. And what does it take to be the best Santa in the world? Well this year the winner was Santa Banana from Hong Kong.

He won what three years ago and he came back to... How the hell do you know that, Dan?

Oh you did ah. Wow well this is amazing because he he to win the porridge eating contest he did not have a mustache.

Yeah that's one of my nightmares in fact I had a dream that my mustache got so big that I choked to death on it in my sleep. That's look that is a definite possibility. That's why what are these Duck Boys on TV now, they're called Duck Boys?

Duck Dynasty. Duck Dynasty. You know what I'm talking about?

No no you know Honey Boo Boo's grandfather with the big beard.

What was that?

No we're talking about choking on your beard, it's better than you know choking on pubic hair, that's all I'm saying.

Well I'm trying to mix things up because you know radio needs variety. People are quick, people's brains are very quick. And you can take them from the fact that I I'm really sorry Randy. You fucking little, right? You can go through the whole panoply of emotions in a minute. And the audience will follow you the whole way if you just you know dial it in, give them context.

Oh.

You know what? One of the first characters I played was Oscar Wilde in university.

And I played him like a hero, 'cause to me he was. I mean he's the father of you know modern morality in a way.

You know he Marquess of Queensberry you know glove across the face and challenge to a duel and go to court and fight for the rights of homosexuality and land up in jail.

You know and that whole story was so interesting, it sort of awakened in me uh a knowledge of something outside of my own self which was pretty insulated, you know I was a Catholic boy in the south end rich part of Halifax and gives the opportunity to expand the mind being in another person's shoes.

And then the next semester I got to play Shylock in the Merchant of Venice.

Senior Antonio. Many a time and oft in the Rialto you have rated me for my moneys and my usances. Still have I borne it with a patient shrug, for sufferance is the badge of all my tribe. You called me misbeliever, cutthroat dog, and spit upon my Jewish gaberdine in all for the use of that which is mine own. Well what should I say to you? Should I not say, hath a dog money? Is it possible a cur can lend three thousand ducats? Or shall I bend low and in a bondsman's breath and whispering humbleness say this... Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last, you spurned me such a day, and for these courtesies I'll lend you thus much moneys? And I played him sympathetically.

Yeah. I played him sympathetically. But we're talking about characterization and and I was saying that at the same time that I'm playing Jim Lahey uh on stage and being a drunk Santa Claus and being, you know, a real jerk asshole and and the audience yelling fuck you Lahey at the end of the show and and post it every night by Mike Smith who plays Bubbles. At the same time I've been memorizing a script that I start on December 27th at the Neptune Theatre in Halifax.

And I play an old guy.

So my search right now is for the walk, which I think I know where to start. Bow-legged, stooped. Crumple your toes up, right? You know what crumple your toes up?

Yeah.

Yeah. Well I heard the crumpled toes in a different context.

Whenever you are feeling nervous before a performance

just go just say I'm gonna put all of my nerves in in my foot, I'm gonna crumple my toes up, and the other feeling that I have left in me is gonna be called excitement.

So the worry's in my foot, and the excitement's in my heart.

Dan, you know, one time in my life, as you speak I I find it very evocative and and uh and so many ideas go through my head as you're speaking that uh I want to interject and and then by the time you finished that long interlude that statement, uh they're all gone.

So now I'm stuck here with no idea in my head because I don't stimulate me at all.

Yeah. But I I what what you made me think about was uh uh it was uh Stanislavski and uh I was playing an old guy with one hand gone and I walked out on stage an opening night I think it was opening night, it was very close to opening night. And I had one of those moments where you see everything too clearly.

It's called something or other. All of you out there will have your own word for it, I'm sure.

When you realize everything.

When when the two characters that came out, Lenny and his brother whatever his name was, when they came out to talk to me when I'm sweeping the stage, um I saw them as the characters from Toronto, the two guys I had met a couple weeks earlier.

I saw them as the characters in the play, and I was aware of the pinging of the one little light off to the side, and on every breath of everybody in the audience.

And I and at that moment, even though my mouth was working and I was doing everything because it was, you know, sort of almost rote in a way, not really rote because I like to make things fresh. But I remember thinking, oh no, this is why people quit.

And it went away, and it hasn't come back. But it was it was a more it was a very lucid, lucid moment.

That outside yourself is a different kind of thing where you, you know, the body floats outside the hospital. Look, he saw that sneaker out there on the ledge. If he look, how could he astral project or whatever?

If his soul didn't leave his body, how did he know it was an Adidas size 9?

Something on the wing. So Having Hope at Home. That's the name of the play that I'm going to be doing. And I'm playing a guy maybe 80 years old. And I'm working for a voice right now. And the other day it occurred to me that way back, 40 years ago, I played a guy named John D. Rockefeller. And he was just like a Gabby Hayes kind of guy. And he was wiry and quick. And it seems to me that that would be perfect for this character, it's a comedy.

But would I be copying if I copied that?

Well in a way, but you don't want to repeat shit.

Yeah. There's no respect for the elderly. There's no no reverence for the wisdom of years.

But the thing is is that there's moments where you say, listen I wasn't doing anything, and then the next minute he says you stay away from me. You stay away from me old man. No. Stop touching me. Now I what I have to do is I have to make the voice so that it doesn't grate all the way around. It should have different variety in there, right? Up and down. But here's the thing. Like some of the rules that you learn along the way that you forget in the delivery of your, you know, of your dialogue, is that a lot of bad actors, they end on the downward note. They end on the downward note.

No, no, no, they end the statement with down. It's down.

Yeah, yeah, they do. You listen, you can hear a lot of bad actors that way.

Like they say I love you. Like it is. No no they do. I just heard that right there. Yeah but but it's I love you. Or I love you. You know what I'm saying? Yo yo. But I tell you one thing.

Yo I see. You know here's the thing. Uh you take Stephen Hawking for example.

Yeah but I'm going there. Okay. Okay. Give me a second here. But I'm just saying that a computer to indicate the end of a statement, will drop the last word. When you look at the universe, you will find that it is a most spectacular thing. And every time he finishes a statement, the statement drops.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I am a robot. I would like to pleasure you.

Yeah you listen, all you have to do is watch a movie.

Yeah well just now be cognizant of the fact that the bad actors are dropping the end of every line.

Now when I studied theatre, way back in Guelph in 1968.

I found out that well no it was Sir John Neville. Sir John Neville. Sir John Neville. Now you might not have heard of him but you might have. You heard of a guy, what's his name, that old, that movie, you know, what's his name?

No, it's a word like Busby Berkeley picture from the old days? It's a word like, you know, oh Christ, it'll come to me in a minute when you're gone.

Baron Munchausen.

Baron Munchausen.

John Neville was in in in the 22 Minutes thing, he was an old spy. He just died a couple years ago. He was a brilliant man.

Yeah. If he if it wasn't for him I probably would have left the theatre because I went and auditioned for him at Neptune in 19 whatever, 70 something, I had started my own theatre and got jaundiced and and I directed that, you know, Theatre Canada and directed and taught at Dalhousie University and and I was doing the thing and trying to make it, and I wasn't quite making it, even though I had vowed that I was always going to be an actor, I I'd I did anything. Voiceovers and everything. And I went and auditioned for him, and he was such a, um, sort of ramrod stiff very, very impressive personality, you know, and very British. And he should have played Alfie in Alfie but he lost out to Michael Caine.

Who's really incredible. They're both the same vintage. But I auditioned for him, and I left and I went, fuck. Because, uh, Neptune Theatre, which is my hometown theatre, which I had started in 1962.

And I saw the first plays there, and I never even dreamed of being an actor, ever ever ever ever ever ever. Uh actually Leon Major, who was the first director there, stayed at my family's home for the first season, and and I didn't even dream of it. And but when I went away to school and I took an elective course in drama, and I got sucked into the world of make-believe.

Uh that it was okay, that I was allowed to go there, 'cause I would have always been kind of, anyway, a little bit loose, you know, intellectually. Um so I went and auditioned for John Neville and cock suck.

No, and I never have. And I have never had that predilection. But I just tell you one thing. When I left there, I realized that life was a do-it-yourself job. And so I went out and I took a real estate course.

And I started a week late, I talked my way in, and I'd always been a terrible, terrible student all my life. Never able to study, never able to concentrate, stare at a page for an hour.

And I took the course, I finished tied for first in the course.

Thank you, Dan. And then I went out and I sold a house for $17,000, which was quite a lot of money.

But I only got like 3% of that or whatever. Uh what is 3% of 17,000?

I know, I'm telling you. Uh so then I sold a house for $92,000. But at the same time that the house was being sold, John Neville was calling me and asking me if I wanted to be in the play. About a month after my audition.

I walked into the real estate place and I took my little bag and I put it on the table and I said thank you very much.

And that's what, there's where the, there's, I have a lot to owe to him. And to my first professor at Guelph University, James Murphy, who, who uh without him I would not have been an actor because he uh encouraged me and said hey, you got talent. And that's all I needed to hear in my life, was that I could be appreciated for something. My dad was a psychiatrist.

He was very old school. He he he's he's still to the day he died uh believed the shock treatment was very valuable in some instances. Uh he was talk therapy.

Uh which has disappeared. And I didn't know very much about his practice 'cause he was very tight-lipped. I mean once he was very depressed for several months and we didn't know why, but we found out years and years and years later one of his patients had committed suicide and it really destroyed him.

We found out that he talked a woman off the bridge who was gonna kill herself. We found out years after because this girl named Lorraine came and lived at our house.

And we didn't know that the reason we had ten kids, but she had her own room and everything, we didn't know that she was the girl that was on the bridge that he said he was gonna get her a job and he couldn't get her a job so she moved into our house and the next year she went back and finished her high school.

She was part of the family, but that was the kind of family I was in. He took a gun, a German Luger from a guy who came into the hospital to kill doctors.

So he had a very, and he was so principled and so wonderful. I mean the conversations that we had uh were I always felt uh that I was a big disappointment to him.

Yeah. But, guess what?

I was so fortunate in my life because the last couple of years of his life we sailed a lot together on St. Margaret's Bay in the Atlantic Ocean. And one day I I used to start, I'd ask him questions, like Dad, did you ever cure anyone? Yeah. And he'd say, not my job. And then a couple minutes later he'd say, my job is to give as good a life as possible to people under the given circumstances. And I connected to that because the given circumstances are exactly what the actor looks for. And that's what if we are actors in real life and leave the stage aside, and we look at the world as possibilities, and what is the what are the given circumstances, and then we use our imagination, and if we can imagine for ourselves a better existence, like I don't need to right now, my life is so full, I have the best year of my life, but if I can use my imagination to say I can go to Oregon and I can chop down trees.

I mean on the way there, or when I arrive there, if I go searching, I'll find something. I might not get what I want, what I thought I was after, but I'm gonna get something.

What I want to do with that question is brag about how great my life is.

Well yeah, I mean I have such a wonderful family.

And I live in such a wonderful place in Canada and right beside the sea and I build my own house and uh this year I was in three separate series, one of them's been renewed for sure, and then I got to do Trailer Park Boys season 9 coming up, we just finished season 8, 10 of the best episodes ever. They're so rich, they move so... I got to direct one.

Yeah. And I did we did Trailer Park 3 the movie, Haven with Syfy network. We did uh season 4, hoping for season 5. I got to do stonework this year. I got to do sailing this year. I got to travel around Canada with Randy Bobandy on tour.

You know, I want to talk to you and give you a little bit of advice about your career.

Okay, well you you like do you imagine yourself as as a money-earning successful performer in the arts?

See here's the thing. When you imagine yourself, you can't imagine yourself with some another some other face. Like if I say, okay, if you can imagine it you can make it happen right. And imagine myself as Dan Rodandan.

Yeah, Dan Rodandan doing what?

You can't... See the thing is is that uh someone said hey you playing an old guy in that? Hey guess what, you should go to On Golden Pond and check out Henry Fonda. He did a great... he goes like this when he talks like that. Now that can get pretty boring after a while, but in movies you don't have that much dialogue so long lingering ponderous shots you know over the water when the sun is setting and you know.

Yeah. Yeah. That that's the one. But the thing is is if you have to do a 90 minute play and you gotta you gotta talk the whole time you don't want to have a voice that you want to have a considered voice but let's just you two old guys that are really communicating but only they know what they're saying okay?

(makes gibberish old-man noises) Yeah, that's right. (More gibberish) Okay, slow it down a bit, you're too animated, here we go, one more time, we're a hundred years old, okay. (Mumbling gibberish) Alice. Alice. Oh.

Okay, so moving right along... my advice to you.

Dan Rodandan.

Yes. I think that you should expand your horizon.

And I think you should go on the World Wide Web visually.

Yeah.

I noticed that when you speak.

You do not drop the end of your statements. They all have an electricity. And the thing is is that when you don't drop, but you sort of stop, so that the next statement is almost like conceived at that moment.

Right.

Yes. In my diary.

Yeah you do, you write a diary every night.

Well, you know, my advice to you, Dan, is to take a look at what the world really needs, and you know what it is? In a time of hypocrisy, like we are right now. Art flourishes. But for art to be substantially uh supported by an angel or by, you know, crowdsourcing.

One needs to actually be able to go and touch the clitoris of the of the of the... help me here. Uh of of the art itself, of the actual...

No, no, no, no, no. You you listen. Don't disparage this.

That there is an excitement factor in the world.

The world gets excited about stupid things too, like Miley Cyrus and all those guys.

Like, you hear those names, Paul Shen, and uh, you know, and the woman with the big lips, you know, that they have to light from the bottom. I mean, she's gorgeous and everything like that. But it's all held up.

By, by a kind of, um, like a prosthetic. You know, like, like, like a...

Exactly. I mean, I'd like to have a BMW. I'd like to have a BM without blood. The world needs comedy. At this time, and I was saying that it needs to be supported, it needs to find a way to find, you know, the acceptance, but it needs to be it needs to be supported by the people that it's entertaining.

And the skill to doing that, Dan, the skill to finding how you can be remunerated and how you can exist and be supported by the people that enjoy you, that is the challenge. Finding that niche.

Stanislavski, you mentioned him earlier?

Remember in the bed when... oh sorry. Um... pillow talk, Stanislavski, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the thing is, is people say the Method.

And what is the Method? What do... okay, first of all.

What do people usually attribute to the Method? What do they usually think?