The last thing I wanted to see was myself in nurse’s drag up on a 40- foot screen, but there I was at the Queensway Theatre, smiling and wincing at my performance in Mulroney: The Opera.
I also played a priest earlier in the scene, lip-synching my lines to a libretto written by ex-Frantic Dan Redican. The film is a satire on Brian Mulroney, recreating his career as a comic opera, and I was watching it for the first time.
I felt proud to be part of it. But I thought I’d be seeing myself on TV, not in the theatre. Originally, CBC had stepped up to partially finance the Mulroney satire, but withdrew their support. I couldn’t figure out why — the piece was sophisticated, politically astute and had the involvement of some heavy-hitting Canadian comedians such as Rick Miller as Mulroney, Seán Cullen as the disgraced Robert Coates and Colin Mochrie as Jean Chrétien
So why has the CBC been silent on the matter? As Martin Knelman wrote in the Toronto Star, “If the CBC were privately owned, it would be none of our business what happened behind the scenes. But given that this is our tax-supported public broadcaster, and that the main character is our former prime minister, are we not entitled to an explanation?”
I’m not pointing any fingers here, of course. But I had my own experience dealing with Mulroney’s long hand a few decades ago.
I was approached by a publishing company to write the “official Brian Mulroney jokebook.” Political humour is not my specialty, but the money was good, and it seemed like a relevant project at the time.
Trouble was, as I researched the idea with my co-writer, Martin Waxman, there really weren’t enough Mulroney jokes to fill a page, let alone an entire book. So we came up with an ingenious, if scurrilous, plan. We would take the world’s filthiest jokes and substitute the name “Mulroney” for whoever the character in the joke had been.
Voila! Instant political satire! Also admittedly mean-spirited, lowbrow, and borderline pornographic. We felt Mulroney deserved no less. We handed in our manuscript, dubbed, Son of a Meech and heard no complaint from our publisher.
The book came out, in paperback, and I embarked on a 12-city tour. It was going well; the books were selling briskly; and I found we had tapped into a huge well of revulsion toward the prime minister. Then, shockingly, I got a call from the publishing company informing me that the rest of the tour was cancelled. I got no explanation, but I figured it out. Instead, I continued the tour at my expense and made the cancellation part of my story.
My book was a foul-mouthed treatment of Mulroney, in the style of a Paul Krassner or Terry Southern, but I felt he deserved it.
But Mulroney: The Opera operates on a much lighter level. I could even take issue with the opera’s sugar-coating of some of Mulroney’s more egregious scandals. The Karlheinz Schreiber affair is only barely mentioned, for instance.
But to somebody in some shadowy office somewhere, a little bit of criticism at Mulroney’s expense is too much.
Luckily, you’ll be able to see this admirable and challenging piece of work. Thanks to DVDs, the Internet and cable, no one can block the expression of creative ideas. But when you get to my scene you might want to avert your gaze: it’s not a pretty sight. Mark Breslin in drag: now that’s something which should be censored.
Post City Magazines’ humour columnist, Mark Breslin, is the founder of Yuk Yuk’s comedy clubs and the author of several books, including Control Freaked.