I'm not knocked out by Don McKellar.
At least not literally.
That's despite the Mannix-esque move he's executing on my neck, demonstrating a small homage to his TV-fed formative years, which he's woven into his CBC comedy series Twitch City.
"(Mannix) used to knock people out with one karate chop. Just like that -- and they'd just drop, which we always thought was the coolest thing. 'Boink!' and people would just drop," McKellar explains during a break in production of seven new Twitch half-hours for fall.
The creator, writer and star is holed up in his east-end office with quotes from Socrates and Saturday Night Live on the walls.
That obscure Mannix tribute is typical of his series about twentysomethings living on the poverty line in Kensington Market. It doesn't matter whether you get the specific joke so long as you get the point -- of people being isolated from the world, but feeling completely in touch with it through massive TV consumption.
Twitch City's characters continue to struggle. Curtis (McKellar) and Hope (Molly Parker) are a couple, but she's still underemployed and he's no more eager to venture beyond their hovel of an apartment. A succession of strange, dangerous tenants inhabit their spare room. Former roommate Nathan (Daniel MacIvor) remains in jail for killing a homeless man (Al Waxman).
Twitch director and longtime McKellar collaborator Bruce McDonald likes to suggest that the show's apartment is a model of one his friend once lived in, something McKellar denies.
"There's autobiographical stuff, of course," he admits. "But I think it's sort of a horrible caricature of the way I was at one point, sort of a cruel self-parody of me at a point. The way people might have thought of me or I may have thought of myself at one point. But," he says, leaning heavily on the word, "it's fiction."
The fiction is getting even more surreal.
"It's hilarious doing this series because it just seems it's non-stop stuff. One day, it's neo-Nazis, the next the Meals on Wheels lady, then it's psychopaths, a hostage situation. It's quite busy."
One episode, Planet Of The Cats, imagines a feline-ruled world -- really, what cat owner hasn't? (There's an Androcles and the Lion story behind McKellar's acquisition of his own cat, Pinky, a stray that wandered Kensington with one paw stuck in its collar. McKellar was the only person it would let get near enough to rescue it.)
Professional cats -- 30 of them -- came too close for comfort to the allergic actress Parker, who had to dose herself with antihistamines before shooting the Planet episode.
Unlike his characters, McKellar continues to ride a career high. Twitch will air in Australia and, with more episodes in the package, other international sales are expected. His end-of-the-world feature Last Night, which won him first director honours here and in Cannes, debuts soon in Europe and Asia. The acclaimed The Red Violin, which he co-wrote and in which he appears, continues its long run. Just opened here is The Herd, in which he has a role.
Despite all of which, the slight 34-year-old remains as unassuming as ever. Perhaps that's due to the particularly passive-aggressive support he says he gets from his family.
"Any time anything happens, I'll say, 'I went on this amazing trip to some film festival,' and they'll say, 'Well, don't think you'll always be staying in four-star hotels.' I say to my parents, 'Can't you just say, "That's really good," one time, not "Well, it's not going to last, it's not going to last?" ' Every good review is, 'Well, there's going to be terrible ones soon.' Thanks, Mom. Thanks for reminding me."
Boink!
