HUGE BY BRENT BUTT

HUGE BY BRENT BUTT

Brent Butt was a stand-up comedian long before he created Corner Gas and I've always felt partially responsible for his TV success.

Back in the early '90's I worked on a CBC Friday night live variety show. Brent’s clip was built into the opening animation, and every time it rolled in the control room I’d turn to the suits and say 'this guy needs his own show!’ Every week. Eventually one of those suits was part of greenlighting Corner Gas. Just sayin'.

So when Brent posted a photo of a finished typewritten manuscript, I knew I'd be reading it.

This is the one where three very different comedians are thrown together for a string of small town gigs. And while the terrain between Winnipeg and Northern Ontario may be predictable, their roadtrip is anything but. Along the way there's an interesting deep dive into how barroom comedy works - from a room’s layout to managing its staff, working a crowd, and crafting a joke. How to entertain and diffuse tables of hockey players, farmers and everything in between. And then things turn dark. And not dark, like daylight-saving-time-is-over-and-the-sun's-going-down, dark. But dark, like one of these comedians is messed up, and maybe not the kind of guy you want to carpool with in the middle of nowhere.

It's tense but presented with the same relaxed tone that shot Brent into stardom and that keeps viewers watching him, and me, flipping his pages.