michael jackson speaks
Like many people, I was sad to see Corey and Trevor missing from the seventh season of the Trailer Park Boys. They were my favorite characters on the show! Finally, thanks to Andrew for sending me the link, I have found out why they are missing and what caused them to leave! Trevor, played by Michael Jackson, has written to explain the changes to the show since the first season and what lead to their departure. See the original message here!
edit: it has been brought to my attention that some of what i originally wrote was insulting to my fellow cast mates and that was never my intention when i wrote this bog. i agree with this and i have decided to edit my blog and take out the offensive material. i’m sorry to those people that i offended. i love you guys. i’m leaving in the part about the sandwiches because i think it’s funny.
most people know that i don’t really like to talk about TPB and i really don’t. in my mind it’s in the past and it isn’t worth talking about. recently, i’ve had a lot of TPB fans message me and ask what happened and why i’m not on the show anymore and that it isn’t the same without cory and trevor. this is flattering but it wasn’t my intention when i decided to leave the show. i can’t answer all the questions that i get and TPB isn’t something i like to talk about but i will give a summary of what happened and why i left the show. this is going to be the truth and probably not what a lot of people want to hear and i don’t mean to sling **** at certain people but sometimes it has to be done. if you enjoy the show i hope you continue to enjoy it.
Season 1
the first season of TPB was really fun and i felt we were doing something really creative and it felt like a group effort. a lot of the scenes were improv’d and i don’t remember even seeing a script during the first season. during this time we were getting paid scale which is the lowest the producer’s were allowed to pay us and still have it be a union show (ACTRA). this was fair as we really didn’t have any acting experience and i don’t think anybody thought the show would be successful. season 1 bombed and the ratings were low and i don’t think anybody really understood what we were trying to do with the show. i remember a superfan from ottawa organized a party at a bar here in halifax and the only people that showed up to it was the entire cast of the show and this one superfan and his girlfriend. it was humiliating but really funny at the same time. luckily for us Showcase didn’t have a lot of shows and they played the episodes over and over and over. eventually people took notice and the fans spread the show by word of mouth. this didn’t have anything to do with marketing or business plans or focus groups. we all owe everything we have from this first group of TPB fans. i think we were all amazed when we were informed that we would be shooting a second season. it was weird because a lot of the production staff and an awesome lady named judy seemed to get let go before season 2. i’m not really sure why this happened but it seemed kind of ****ty. i bet mike volpe and barrie dunn would know something about this.
Season 2
clattenburg wanted me to have a mullet for season 2 and i’m not sure why i let him talk me into this but i did. i also somehow signed on to be a grip for this season. the show had a new woman named karen wentzell who might have worked with barrie dunn at CBC. i had to go in and meet her and do my deal memo for the grip gig and she made me an insanely low offer and pretended not to know what kit rental was. for those that don’t know kit rental is what you get paid to rent your own equipment to a production. normally a show would have a gaffer and a key grip and anywhere from 3 to 5 grips and 3 to 5 electricians. i understood that TPB was low budget and didn’t need a huge crew but they didn’t have any electrics and i was the only grip. i don’t know a lot about electricity and they had me running extension cords all over the trailer park and eventually the breaker would blow and it would somehow be my job to figure it out. the camera dept. had 1 guy who held the camera when it wasn’t being used, a guy who operated the camera and a guy who held the slate. the lighting department had me running around like a nut. eventually they let me bring in raddie dave to help me but this was no way to work. eventually i told barrie dunn that it isn’t my fault they don’t know the difference between a grip and an electric and that what they were doing was dangerous and i took my tools and went home. i had worked on a lot of movies and this thing was a ****ing joke. working as an actor on season 2 was ok and we were still getting paid scale and i think that is fair as the show still wasn’t very popular. bubbles played a much larger role in season 2 but he was still a great character. i’m so proud of the first 2 seasons of the show. i really think we were doing something special and for the most part it was a lot of fun. i wish the show would have ended here. what a legacy we would have had. oh well.
Season 3
i’ll be honest, i didn’t want to do season 3. the show had grown a lot in popularity from season 2 to season 3 and mike volpe and barrie dunn refused to pay more than scale. barrie dunn told me that i have to think long term and to think about when they sell the show to the US or make a movie. karen wentzell was back and she made a lot of really bad decisions. she had rev bob basically working 24 hours a day trying to dress/build the sets and refused to let him have enough people to help him do it properly. he worked his ass off and did an incredible job. he had to deal with a schedule that constantly changed and really bad communication. he didn’t come back for season 4 and in my mind the man should be sainted. season 3 was actually pretty fun to shoot.
Season 4
when i read the season 4 scripts i couldn’t even believe what had happened to the show…talking puppets, mountain lions and bubbles dressed as a wrestler. i was disappointed with this direction change as well as the fact that the show seemed to focus more on bubbles and less on julian or ricky/julian as it had in the past. i didn’t want to do season 4 and during negotiations this time around we got what i think was a 25% raise but we were still getting paid per day and not per episode. finally we were making a bit more than scale but this raise came with a price and that was a 3 year contract or what i think might be called an option in the entertainment industry. with this option the producers only had to pay 15% more each year. i tried to negotiate a better contract and barrie dunn told me that everyone was getting paid the same and if he paid me more he would have to pay everyone else more. for some reason i believed him and the idea of us all making the same somehow seemed fair. later on i found out that almost every actor on the show was making a different amount of money…some a lot more than me and some even less than me. andy miller came on as the art director and he did an amazing job but faced all the same problems that rev bob faced. i think at this time the show finally gave in and signed one page agreements with both the technical union IATSE and the DGC. this is important because with a union contract the producers contribute to the retirement and medical coverage for the crew. i could be wrong and maybe this happened later on. it’s funny because karen wentzell wasn’t in the DGC so her job of production manager was changed to production supervisor. it’s pretty sad when the person in charge of organizing the show isn’t actually in the union. shooting season 4 was painful.
Like many people, I was sad to see Corey and Trevor missing from the seventh season of the Trailer Park Boys. They were my favorite characters on the show! Finally, thanks to Andrew for sending me the link, I have found out why they are missing and what caused them to leave! Trevor, played by Michael Jackson, has written to explain the changes to the show since the first season and what lead to their departure. See the original message here!
edit: it has been brought to my attention that some of what i originally wrote was insulting to my fellow cast mates and that was never my intention when i wrote this bog. i agree with this and i have decided to edit my blog and take out the offensive material. i’m sorry to those people that i offended. i love you guys. i’m leaving in the part about the sandwiches because i think it’s funny.
most people know that i don’t really like to talk about TPB and i really don’t. in my mind it’s in the past and it isn’t worth talking about. recently, i’ve had a lot of TPB fans message me and ask what happened and why i’m not on the show anymore and that it isn’t the same without cory and trevor. this is flattering but it wasn’t my intention when i decided to leave the show. i can’t answer all the questions that i get and TPB isn’t something i like to talk about but i will give a summary of what happened and why i left the show. this is going to be the truth and probably not what a lot of people want to hear and i don’t mean to sling **** at certain people but sometimes it has to be done. if you enjoy the show i hope you continue to enjoy it.
Season 1
the first season of TPB was really fun and i felt we were doing something really creative and it felt like a group effort. a lot of the scenes were improv’d and i don’t remember even seeing a script during the first season. during this time we were getting paid scale which is the lowest the producer’s were allowed to pay us and still have it be a union show (ACTRA). this was fair as we really didn’t have any acting experience and i don’t think anybody thought the show would be successful. season 1 bombed and the ratings were low and i don’t think anybody really understood what we were trying to do with the show. i remember a superfan from ottawa organized a party at a bar here in halifax and the only people that showed up to it was the entire cast of the show and this one superfan and his girlfriend. it was humiliating but really funny at the same time. luckily for us Showcase didn’t have a lot of shows and they played the episodes over and over and over. eventually people took notice and the fans spread the show by word of mouth. this didn’t have anything to do with marketing or business plans or focus groups. we all owe everything we have from this first group of TPB fans. i think we were all amazed when we were informed that we would be shooting a second season. it was weird because a lot of the production staff and an awesome lady named judy seemed to get let go before season 2. i’m not really sure why this happened but it seemed kind of ****ty. i bet mike volpe and barrie dunn would know something about this.
Season 2
clattenburg wanted me to have a mullet for season 2 and i’m not sure why i let him talk me into this but i did. i also somehow signed on to be a grip for this season. the show had a new woman named karen wentzell who might have worked with barrie dunn at CBC. i had to go in and meet her and do my deal memo for the grip gig and she made me an insanely low offer and pretended not to know what kit rental was. for those that don’t know kit rental is what you get paid to rent your own equipment to a production. normally a show would have a gaffer and a key grip and anywhere from 3 to 5 grips and 3 to 5 electricians. i understood that TPB was low budget and didn’t need a huge crew but they didn’t have any electrics and i was the only grip. i don’t know a lot about electricity and they had me running extension cords all over the trailer park and eventually the breaker would blow and it would somehow be my job to figure it out. the camera dept. had 1 guy who held the camera when it wasn’t being used, a guy who operated the camera and a guy who held the slate. the lighting department had me running around like a nut. eventually they let me bring in raddie dave to help me but this was no way to work. eventually i told barrie dunn that it isn’t my fault they don’t know the difference between a grip and an electric and that what they were doing was dangerous and i took my tools and went home. i had worked on a lot of movies and this thing was a ****ing joke. working as an actor on season 2 was ok and we were still getting paid scale and i think that is fair as the show still wasn’t very popular. bubbles played a much larger role in season 2 but he was still a great character. i’m so proud of the first 2 seasons of the show. i really think we were doing something special and for the most part it was a lot of fun. i wish the show would have ended here. what a legacy we would have had. oh well.
Season 3
i’ll be honest, i didn’t want to do season 3. the show had grown a lot in popularity from season 2 to season 3 and mike volpe and barrie dunn refused to pay more than scale. barrie dunn told me that i have to think long term and to think about when they sell the show to the US or make a movie. karen wentzell was back and she made a lot of really bad decisions. she had rev bob basically working 24 hours a day trying to dress/build the sets and refused to let him have enough people to help him do it properly. he worked his ass off and did an incredible job. he had to deal with a schedule that constantly changed and really bad communication. he didn’t come back for season 4 and in my mind the man should be sainted. season 3 was actually pretty fun to shoot.
Season 4
when i read the season 4 scripts i couldn’t even believe what had happened to the show…talking puppets, mountain lions and bubbles dressed as a wrestler. i was disappointed with this direction change as well as the fact that the show seemed to focus more on bubbles and less on julian or ricky/julian as it had in the past. i didn’t want to do season 4 and during negotiations this time around we got what i think was a 25% raise but we were still getting paid per day and not per episode. finally we were making a bit more than scale but this raise came with a price and that was a 3 year contract or what i think might be called an option in the entertainment industry. with this option the producers only had to pay 15% more each year. i tried to negotiate a better contract and barrie dunn told me that everyone was getting paid the same and if he paid me more he would have to pay everyone else more. for some reason i believed him and the idea of us all making the same somehow seemed fair. later on i found out that almost every actor on the show was making a different amount of money…some a lot more than me and some even less than me. andy miller came on as the art director and he did an amazing job but faced all the same problems that rev bob faced. i think at this time the show finally gave in and signed one page agreements with both the technical union IATSE and the DGC. this is important because with a union contract the producers contribute to the retirement and medical coverage for the crew. i could be wrong and maybe this happened later on. it’s funny because karen wentzell wasn’t in the DGC so her job of production manager was changed to production supervisor. it’s pretty sad when the person in charge of organizing the show isn’t actually in the union. shooting season 4 was painful.
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