Laurel and Hardy. Abbott and Costello. Martin and Lewis. Red Green and Harold?

Red Green's plaid-shirted, wide-eyed nephew is one half of a comedy whole on CBC's The Red Green Show. On Friday, they both step up to the big screen with the release of the long-awaited movie spinoff, Red Green's Duct Tape

Forever.

Patrick McKenna was in Toronto last week with Red Green's bearded boss and alter-ego Steve Smith. The two Hamiltonians were promoting their brand-spankin' new movie.

It finds Red and Harold and the other Possum Lodge pinheads dodging cops and bad guys on their way to a Minnesota duct tape sculpture contest and their very Canadian goal: A modest third-prize payday of $10,000.

"Pat's the real star of the movie," Smith says. "I knew he was going to steal it anyway, so I did the sensible thing and wrote him the biggest part."

Soft-spoken and far less frantic than Harold in person, McKenna also starred for several seasons as Marty Stephens on the TV drama Traders. He holds the distinction of being the only Canadian to win the best acting Gemini Award for both comedy and drama -- and he turned the trick in the same year.

"I took so much flak from other actors for that," he says, mocking himself. "Look at the range of that guy -- two characters!"

The 41-year-old says he took the dramatic Traders role to avoid being typecast as Harold. "Talent agencies started looking at me a little differently," he says. "Oh, look, he's not just Gilligan."

McKenna says Harold was born 14 years ago on the main stage at Toronto's Second City. That's where McKenna honed his comedy chops. "We needed a quintessential nerd to do a presentation in front of a class," he says.

McKenna insists he didn't steal from Mr. Bean or Pee-wee Herman or any other naive-and-nerdy character who might spring to mind for Harold. "It scares me, but it must be some internal scream that I have," he says.

He also says he's never so calm on stage as when he's that hyper character. "I think its because I'm letting my nerves hang right out instead of hiding or fighting them."

Smith caught McKenna's Harold act a dozen years ago when he was first putting together his Red Green cast and instantly knew he'd found the perfect comedy foil.

"He came to see the show and thought, 'Imagine that standing next to Red Green,' " McKenna says. "It was just a natural marriage."

As McKenna explains it, despite all of Harold's energy and enthusiasm, he's the straight man and Smith is the comic. "It looks the other way around because I'm so frenetic. But it's his point of view that's so twisted. Mine's the audience's point of view. I'm the voice of reason."

McKenna did find he had to tone down some of Harold's antics to match up with Red Green's more static presence. "It's difficult not to steal focus as that character," says McKenna, a huge Martin and Lewis fan who sees parallels with the post-war comedy team. "I'm Jerry and he's Dean," he says.

The comedy team connection was even endorsed several years ago by the Sons Of The Desert, the official Laurel and Hardy fan club. The Toronto Tit For Tat Tent invited Smith and McKenna to a screening of vintage L&H films, an honour McKenna describes as pretty cool. "Steve and I were the next comedy team inducted," he says. "There was only Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Martin and Lewis and then us."

The occasion prompted McKenna to start looking seriously at old Martin and Lewis films. "The problem I always thought with Jerry is that he didn't know when to stop," says McKenna, who toned down Harold as a result.

In fact, he toned him right out of the show. For the past two seasons, Nephew Harold has been AWOL on Red Green. McKenna wanted to explore other acting options, including his role as the fictional Ottawa insider Duncan in the recent CBC miniseries Trudeau.

That experience also allowed him to test himself opposite a crack Canadian acting ensemble, including Colm Feore, R.H. Thomson and John Neville. "He was scary good," McKenna says of Feore as Trudeau.

McKenna says the Stratford-trained actors on the Trudeau set teased him about being in "that show. You get a lot of that. It's a movie and theatre crowd and I'm a TV guy."

McKenna had the last laugh, however, when Red Green fans in Ottawa and Halifax would give their only shout out to McKenna. "People would be going nuts for me," he says. " 'It's Harold! It's Harold!' Don McKellar and I would be walking along and he'd go, 'Oh, you're pretty popular here ...' "

Despite the two-year layoff, picking up where he left off with Smith wasn't too tough. "I trust his comedy instincts completely," McKenna says, adding, "We never rehearse. It floored a lot of the crew."

The movie was shot in 28 days last spring on a $3.5-million budget, far less than most American studios spend on marketing. There were a lot of exteriors and Smith and the crew lucked out with the weather. "I don't know what kind of horseshoes Steve has up his butt," McKenna says.

Other dollars were saved when Red Green fans from all over Canada and the U.S. contributed their own duct tape creations as props. "They went nuts," McKenna says of the fans. Several were even drafted in to the final contest scenes as extras. "They were like an orchestra, clapping and cheering. They just wanted the party to go on and on."

Smith was so committed to the project that he put his own money on the line, deferring his salary as writer/star and cutting a cheque as the second-biggest investor. He'll need to see plenty of green to keep out of the red. "I'm very proud of the film," says Smith, who even got 3M, which makes duct tape, to contribute to the budget.

"Everybody agreed that the money goes on the screen," says McKenna, who, besides Smith, got to goof around with Bob Bainborough, Graham Greene, Wayne Robson, Peter Keleghan, Melissa DiMarco (as Harold's love interest, Deputy Dawn) and pseudo-Mountie Dave Broadfoot on the film.

"There was no fighting for huge wages or who got the bigger trailer. It was very functional, let's get it done the Red Green philosophy way. We didn't get into this for all the other stuff. We didn't even know we were getting into this!"

McKenna says coming from Hamilton rather than have-it-all Toronto probably helps him and Smith go where some Possums would fear to tread.

"Hamilton is one of those victim towns," he says. "It's like New Jersey or Pittsburgh. You gotta stand up and throw a punch back every now and then and I guess we do it through humour. Anyone who has ever had a Goliath to fight knows it's a good position to be in."