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Paul Bellini | |
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| Born | September 12, 1959 |
| Occupation(s) | Comedy writer, television actor |
| Years active | 1990–present |
Paul Bellini (born September 12, 1959) is a Canadian comedy writer and television actor best known for his work on the comedy series The Kids in the Hall and This Hour Has 22 Minutes . He has worked on several projects with Josh Levy and Scott Thompson, and has appeared in small parts on television shows and films.
Paul Bellini attended York University in 1978, where he met Scott Thompson, later to become a member of The Kids in the Hall. For the troupe's eponymous TV series, which ran from 1988 to 1995, Bellini served as Thompson's writing partner. He received several Gemini Award, Emmy Award and CableACE Award nominations as part of the show's writing team. [1] During the same era, Bellini and Thompson also collaborated in a queercore band called Mouth Congress. [2]
Bellini's on-screen presence in The Kids in the Hall began when CBC Television suggested that the troupe conduct some form of sweepstakes in order to determine the makeup of the show's fanbase. Turning down such conventional ideas as a free show taping or a cash prize, the members of KITH decided that the "prize" would be Paul Bellini in a towel. Thus the "Touch Paul Bellini" contest was born, wherein the winner was granted the chance to gently poke the betoweled Bellini with a stick. This sweepstakes would be recreated by HBO, the show's American broadcaster, with winner Rebecca Klatka of St. Petersburg, Florida, poking Bellini with a kitchen utensil. [1] During the fourth season, Mike Szabo won a breakfast with him at the Ottawa airport after winning the "Spot Bellini" contest: to win, a viewer had to draw how Bellini appeared in a particular sketch (namely, emerging from a box of condoms). During these and other appearances on the show, Bellini would wander into a sketch wearing nothing but a towel and never speaking, thus himself becoming an absurd character in the show. [1] At the end of the final episode, however, after the cast is buried alive during the end credits, Bellini approaches their grave, turns to the camera, and intones, "Thank God that's finally over." He then picks up a flower and proceeds to dance on their grave. [1]
Founded in 1989, the Paul Bellini Fan Club quickly outgrew the Kids in the Hall fan club. The Paul Bellini Fan Club was based in Montreal, with smaller chapters in Winnipeg, Kitchener, Toronto, Abbotsford, Halifax, New York, Utah and parts of Europe. His fans travelled to Toronto to attend tapings of the Kids in the Hall with homemade "We Love Paul Bellini" signs. When the Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet (the band who recorded the show's theme song) came to play in cities where the Bellini fans lived, they brought gifts or home baking for the band members to deliver back to him in Toronto. The club also recorded more than 20 covers of popular songs with modified lyrics that were distributed among members and sung at the Paul Bellini music festival in 1993. The group hosted a Bellini Bratwurst Bar-be-que, produced regular newsletters, and a video depicting a fanciful re-enactment of Bellini's early life. At one event, Bellini brought a bag full of Timmins souvenirs as thank you gifts for his loyal fan club.
He was subsequently a writer for This Hour Has 22 Minutes , [3] winning two Gemini Awards and a Writers Guild of Canada award for his work with that show's writing team, and was one of the writers of the 1997 film Hayseed . [4]
In 1998, Bellini made an autobiographical documentary, Bellini's Drive, which among other things explained his thoughts on being the second-most famous person from Timmins—the first being Shania Twain. [5] In the same year, he and Thompson coauthored Buddy Babylon, the comedic autobiography of Thompson's Kids in the Hall character Buddy Cole. [6]
Bellini, who is gay, [7] was later a columnist for fab , a gay magazine in Toronto. [8] In 2012 he self-published The Fab Columns, a compilation of his writing for the magazine, [9] and performed at Awkward, a storytelling event about embarrassing experiences at Buddies in Bad Times which also featured Maggie Cassella, Marco Bernardi, Andrew Johnston, Rob Salerno, Dawn Whitwell, Shawn Hitchins and Gavin Crawford. [10]
In the same era, he was also a radio host on Toronto's CIRR-FM. [11]
In 2015, Bellini and Thompson uploaded all of their Mouth Congress recordings to Bandcamp, [2] and they reunited the following year for several live shows to promote the release. [12] They launched a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund a documentary film about the band; the film, Mouth Congress , premiered at the Kingston Canadian Film Festival in 2021. [13]
In October 2019, Bellini was admitted to intensive care after suffering complications from hernia surgery. [14] A crowdfunding campaign was launched to assist with his medical costs, which reached the $30,000 goal in just two days after it was promoted on Twitter by all of the Kids in the Hall. [14] He was in intensive care but did recover.
The Kids in the Hall is a Canadian sketch comedy troupe formed in 1984, consisting of comedians Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney, and Scott Thompson. Their eponymous television show ran from 1989 to 1995, on CBC, in Canada. It also appeared on CBS, HBO, and Comedy Central in the United States.
Charles Budderick "Buddy" Cole is a fictional character created and portrayed by Canadian actor-comedian Scott Thompson. He is an effeminate, gay socialite, made famous on The Kids in the Hall, a popular Canadian sketch comedy series starring the troupe of the same name. The character also had a recurring role on The Colbert Report. He was loosely based on one of Thompson's past partners.
John Scott Thompson, known professionally as Scott Thompson, is a Canadian actor and comedian, best known as member of the comedy troupe The Kids in the Hall and for playing Brian on The Larry Sanders Show.
Made in Canada is a Canadian television comedy which aired on CBC Television from 1998 to 2003. Rick Mercer starred as Richard Strong, an ambitious and amoral television producer working for a company which makes bad television shows. A dark satire about the Canadian television industry, the programme shifted into an episodic situation comedy format after its first season.
Gavin Crawford is a Canadian comedian and actor, best known for The Gavin Crawford Show and This Hour Has 22 Minutes. He currently hosts the panel show, Because News, on CBC Radio One.
Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy is a 1996 Canadian comedy film written by and starring the Canadian comedy troupe The Kids in the Hall. Directed by Kelly Makin and filmed in Toronto, it followed the five-season run of their television series The Kids in the Hall, which had been successful in both Canada and the United States.
Dave Foley is a Canadian-American actor, stand-up comedian, director, producer and writer. He is known as a co-founder of the comedy group The Kids in the Hall, who have appeared together in a number of television, stage and film productions, most notably the 1988–1995 TV sketch comedy show of the same name, as well as the 1996 film Brain Candy.
Kevin Hamilton McDonald is a Canadian actor and comedian. He is a member of the comedy troupe The Kids in the Hall, who have appeared together in a number of stage, television and film productions, most notably the 1988–1995 TV series The Kids in the Hall. He played Pastor Dave in That '70s Show, and starred as a co-pilot in the 2011 web comedy series Papillon. He also does voice work in animation, most notably as Agent Wendy Pleakley in the Lilo & Stitch franchise, Waffle in Catscratch, and the Almighty Tallest Purple in Invader Zim.
Paul Myers is a Canadian author, journalist, musician and songwriter. Until 2006, Myers worked as a musician and journalist in Toronto and Vancouver, where he became a television and radio personality. He is the older brother of actor and comedian Mike Myers.
Don Pyle is a Canadian record producer and musician, who has also been a member of multiple bands. Pyle is openly gay.
fab was a Canadian gay magazine that published biweekly issues in Toronto, Ontario from 1994 to 2013. It published alternate weeks to the city's other biweekly gay publication, Xtra! The publication's official spelling uses a lower-case F: fab.
Gary Pearson is a Canadian comedian, and television writer-producer. His writing credits include MAD TV, This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Corner Gas, and That's So Weird!. He is co-creator of the television series Sunnyside.
Billable Hours is a Canadian comedy series that was aired on Showcase from 2006 to 2008. Set in the fictional Toronto law firm of Fagen & Harrison, the series focuses on three young lawyers struggling to balance their expectations of life with the difficult realities of building a career in the driven Bay Street corporate environment, and engaging in immature and unprofessional behaviour to cope with the soul-crushing drudgery of working life.
Edward Kay is a Canadian showrunner, screenwriter, producer, novelist and journalist with a background in both live-action and animated television comedy, as well as print journalism.
The Kids in the Hall: Death Comes to Town is an eight-episode Canadian mini-series that aired on CBC Television on Tuesdays between January 12 and March 16, 2010. The show takes place in a fictional Ontario town called Shuckton whose mayor has been murdered. As the Shuckton residents cope with the loss, a new lawyer moves in to prosecute a suspect, though another resident, unsatisfied with the evidence, tries to find the real killer. At the same time, a character who is a personification of death waits at a motel room for the latest Shuckton residents to die.
Jamie Christopher Shannon is a Canadian actor, best known for his work in the Canadian television series Nanalan', as well as Ooh, Aah & You, and the Canadian-American television series Mr. Meaty.
The Kids in the Hall is a Canadian sketch comedy TV series that aired for five seasons from 1988 to 1995, and a sixth revival season in 2022, starring the comedy troupe The Kids in the Hall. The troupe, consisting of comedians Dave Foley, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney, Bruce McCulloch, and Scott Thompson, appeared as almost all the characters throughout the series, both male and female, and also wrote most of the sketches.
Hayseed is a Canadian comedy film, directed by Josh Levy and Andrew Hayes and released in 1997. The film stars Jamie Shannon as Gordon, a naive "hayseed" from a small town in Northern Ontario who travels to Toronto after receiving a tip from a psychic that his lost dog is in the city, and meets a bizarre cast of characters, from prostitutes to gay sex slave traders, during his trip.
Mouth Congress is a Canadian film, directed by Paul Bellini and Scott Thompson and released in 2021. Blending both documentary and fictional elements, the film is a portrait of Mouth Congress, the gay punk band Bellini and Thompson formed concurrently with their rise to fame as members of The Kids in the Hall, including historical footage of the band during their original period of activity, scenes from the leadup to a 2016 reunion performance at The Rivoli, and a fictional frame story in which their KITH colleague Kevin McDonald appears as the uncle of a young girl who dreams about the reunion show after he tells her the history of the band as a bedtime story.
The sixth season of Canadian sketch comedy series The Kids in the Hall aired in 2022; it was a revival, after 27 years, of the original series, which aired for five seasons from 1988 to 1995. Unlike the first five seasons, which aired on CBC in Canada and HBO, then CBS, in the United States, the sixth season aired on the Amazon Prime Video streaming service. It was greenlit and produced by Amazon Prime Video Canada, and was that subsidiary's first original series. The revival was announced in early 2020, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, filming did not commence until mid-2021.
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