Scott Thompson

Scott Thompson is an actor and comedian who is best known as one of the founding members of The Kids in the Hall where he played such characters as Buddy Cole, Francesca Fiore, Queen Elizabeth II, secretary Cathy, and many others. Their latest series, Death Comes to Town, is currently running on IFC. Now, he brings one of his other KITH characters, businessman Danny Husk, to comics in Danny Husk: The Hollow Planet with Frozen Beach Studio’s Stephan Nilson and artist Kyle Morton. Westfield’s Roger Ash recently spoke with Scott to learn more about the book.

To listen to an audio version of the interview, simply use the player here:

Westfield: For people who aren’t familiar with the character, who is Danny Husk?

Scott Thompson: Danny Husk is my businessman character from the Kids in the Hall. I did him many times. He’s a mustachioed, middle aged man; a straight white male conservative businessman from the corporate world who’s never managed managed to get above middle management. His number one trait is he’s dogged. He never gives up and does everything with a smile. He’s very earnest and very eager to please and get the job done. He’s a very deadpan kind of character. I chose him because he’s sort of an everyman because everybody can look at him and go, “Hey, I’m smarter than that guy.” [laughter] I thought if I did Buddy Cole or Francesca Fiore, people would go, “Oh no. I can’t compete with that.” But with Danny, you can definitely feel superior. He’s not the smartest man, but the most determined.

Westfield: How did you decide to bring Danny to comics?

Thompson: Well, I’ve been working on this story for ten years. I had this inspiration ten years ago when I found myself stereotyped in a way where I thought I’d never get out of this box where all I ever got work-wise were boring gay characters that made people feel good about themselves, but weren’t really characters. You know what I mean? Politically correct role models, which is even difficult to say without vomiting. [laughter] When I hear “positive role model” – ugh! Really? Why don’t we just do a character? So I thought to myself, “Who do I have in my stable that’s the straightest person?” And I went, “Oh, Danny Husk!” I thought, “Wow, he’s such a perfect guy because he’s deadpan and I love playing him.” Then I thought, “What genre do I love more than anything in the world other than comedy?” That was fantasy. Then I thought, “Hmmm. How do I reinvent fantasy?” And I thought, “Oh! Why don’t we add comedy and then stir it up with a little bit of sex and have Danny Husk be the hero?” I thought that’s the way to go, so I started writing what originally started out as a screenplay.

I wrote this very long, involved, hideously expensive screenplay. When I started to write the story, I went “I want to write it just for joy. I don’t want to think about money or whether any studio would let me play this character.” I just wanted to write something, in a way, for myself. This is something that I would have loved when I was younger. It’s like the kind of book that, if I found when I was 11 or 12 years old, I’d go, “Oh my God! I’m not supposed to be reading this!” [laughter] That was the inspiration and I just wrote it for years. I tried to have it made as a movie for a number of years. It went through many, many studios and everybody said to me, “Oh! This is amazing! It’s the most original thing we’ve ever read!” That translates as “We will never make your stupid movie. Who the hell do you think you are? Jeez! You’re not Will Ferrell.” [laughter] After a number of years of development heartbreak, I went “OK, I have to get this story out. What’s the way to do it?” First of all, I thought “I’m gonna make it a novel. I love novels. I love books and writing more than anything.” Then I thought, “Oh! That’s a lot of work! Why don’t I make it a graphic novel? Then a really great artist can draw it!” It’s a very, very visual story. It’s a big adventure at the center of the earth. So I started pitching it to graphic novel companies and a lot of them bit. I went with Frozen Beach because I really like Stephan and he took me to Comic-Con two years ago. I went, “Well, you dance with the one what brung ya.” So we started adapting it over the last year and a half. It was one of the most satisfying creative things I’ve ever done in my life. We found the right artist and the right colorist and all the right team. I’ve been working on this feverishly for the last year and a half and almost all of it done online, which has been quite an experience. That’s basically its history and now it’s coming out. I couldn’t be prouder of my little boy.

Westfield: Were you a fan of comics before you started working on this?

Thompson: Oh, yes. I was a huge fan. When I was a kid, I devoured comics. I’ve always been a reader, so I’ve always read comics and books. I was a huge science fiction and fantasy fan. This book is inspired by a number of different writers I read when I was young, like Jules Verne. it’s got that old fashioned feel to it. Journey to the Center of the Earth is definitely one of the models. Also, H .Rider Haggard who wrote She and King Solomon’s Mines and People of the Mist. That kind of classic Victorian fantasy. Edgar Rice Burroughs is another big inspiration; the Pellucidar series and John Carter of Mars. All of that stuff plus classic 50s, 60s science fiction/fantasy stories, but funny and character driven. He’s not a superhero. Danny couldn’t be more average. He’s like Frodo. You don’t expect him to be the hero. That’s what I find so satisfying about it.

Westfield: What can you say about your collaboration with Stephan on the book?

Danny Husk: The Hollow Planet

Thompson: It was great. His company, and Stephan, understand this world more than I do. The first thing we had to do was find the right artist and that was Kyle Morton, this young guy from Nebraska. That was difficult because we went through a lot of different artists. I didn’t want anything anime. I wanted it to look kinda retro, kind of old fashioned, almost like a Frank Frazetta cover but with less muscles. I didn’t want to spend a year in the gym if this ever becomes a movie. [laughter] We need muscles, but I can’t be Conan the Barbarian. Once we found Kyle, we started building the main characters and there’s possibly 14 main characters. That was all done by sending Kyle different pictures of people that I thought they looked like, or doodles of my own . He would give me drawings and we’d go back and forth on Skype and online. Once we settled on the drawings, then it was time to tell the story. Stephan took my screenplay and would adapt it into comic form, three or four pages at a time. It would come back to me and I’d give him notes on it and he’d give it back to me. It went back and forth this way. Once we decided on it, Kyle would start drawing it, then I’d give notes again on it. We worked on this for the last year and a half doing it this way. It was a really great education because originally I thought this would be like an extremely elaborate storyboard. But in many ways, it wasn’t that. It became its own thing. It became a comic book; a long graphic novel. The more it went along, I would look at these and go, “Oh my God. This drawing is so great it doesn’t need this line or it needs different lines.” It’s sort of like a script being directed. Once you bring in the director and the actors and the art director, it’s a completely different animal. Now I look at it and I can’t believe it’s here. I’ve wanted to do this for such a long time and to see it now is incredibly exciting for me.

Westfield: Is there anything you can reveal about the story?

Thompson: It’s about a man who loses everything. Then loses some more. When he thinks he has nothing left, he finds out that he has a lot left. It starts off in the real world and then it goes to this fantasy world. I don’t want to give too much of the story away but, another inspiration was John Norman. I don’t know if you remember him, this guy from the 70s.

Westfield: The name’s familiar.

Thompson: He wrote the Gor books; like the Tarnsman of Gor. They were these very adult books that were marketed to young people but really shouldn’t have been. It’s a planet of slaves where women are kidnapped from earth and they’re taken to this planet and they all eventually, at the end of every book, go “Boy! I love being a slave!” They were very subversive. Now, they’re considered very politically incorrect. But as a kid, I devoured them. Before I knew it, I’d been subverted and it was too late. [laughter] In that way, this is about slavery. Danny Husk becomes a slave, but it’s about the nature of slavery. He becomes a sex toy, a sex slave, and he kind of enjoys it. [laughter] Of course, he escapes and leads a rebellion, but it’s about what slavery is. On this world, Danny’s life is nothing. He’s never going to advance any further in his company, his wife’s having an affair, his daughter’s out of control, he’s lost his son. It’s very hard. Then, when Danny finds himself in this world that he’s swept up into, which is supposedly more barbaric than ours, he finds himself. But it’s funny. It’s comedy first. With everything that I do, number one, it’s comedy. I guess that doesn’t give too much of it away.

There’s also a 28-foot woman who wears very little clothes and a telepathic mammoth. The first thing when I started writing was to go, “I have no idea where this story’s going, but there must be a mammoth in it.” [laughter] I thought, “What would I like as a kid? Oh, God if there were a mammoth, I’d be out of my mind! And if he was telepathic, I’d buy every book.” [laughter] That was my thinking. Not very logical, but that’s my thinking. [laughter]

Westfield: If this does well, do you want to do more comics with Danny?

Thompson: Oh, absolutely. And this conceived as a trilogy. This is the first book and I’ve already started writing the second one. I definitely want to do more and there’s also plans to turn one of my other characters, Buddy Cole, into a comic book series as well.

Westfield: Very cool.

Thompson: I love the genre. I’m a storyteller at heart and I feel very blessed to have discovered this world.

Westfield: Any closing comments?

Thompson: Buy the book, obviously. You’ll love it. It’s very different.

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