FILM INTERVIEW: DAVE FOLEY

After Hanging With 'Kids in the Hall' The Comedian Loiters at 'The Strip'

By: Parimal M. Rohit

December 4, 2009

It seemed like a scary scene from a dramatic movie. David Foley was in a pool with his daughter and wanted to block some harmful sun-rays shining down upon her. So, being the good father that he is, Foley climbed out of the pool, grabbed a nearby umbrella shade, and attempted to position it in a place that would protect his daughter.

What Foley did not plan on was breaking his toe in the process, forcing him to be in a wheelchair after every take throughout filming of The Strip.

“I was in the swimming pool with my daughter. I got out to move the shade umbrella to shade my daughter, and the (40-pound) concrete base fell off on my foot,” Foley painfully described to Buzzine. “My foot, what my doctor called, exploded – the whole front part of it. Basically, every time you see me walking in the movie, I am re-breaking all the bones in my toe.”

Such was the handicap Foley faced heading into his role as Glenn in The Strip, playing a low-end electronics store manager obsessed with using team-building exercises to motivate his otherwise disinterested employees.

It was a role Pakistani-American filmmaker Jameel Khan was more than thrilled to fill with the television star whose resume includes Kids in the Hall and NewsRadio – and a role Foley was even happier to take on, mostly because he felt The Strip had a great story attached to it.

“There wasn’t really much need for Improv,” Foley candidly told Buzzine. “The script was pretty well-written and we stayed pretty close to it. We were on a really tight schedule, so there wasn’t any room to ‘play and find it.’”

For Foley, that worked out quite well, as the television actor likes to walk into roles he can predict.

“I am very television. I am all about every little detail of my character,” Foley said. “I spent about two to three months just working on my back-story.”

That attention to detail boded well for his character as well, since Glenn was very status quo and very enthused about an otherwise boring life.

“He believes he is secure, but he had all the security pulled up from underneath him,” Foley said about Glenn. “I never really had much security in my real life. As a kid, my dad was a construction worker and an alcoholic, so there really wasn’t much security there.

“Growing up, I pretty much had unpleasant jobs, and then there was acting. With Kids in the Hall, we were canceled almost every season. Same thing with NewsRadio — we were up for cancellation each season.”

Despite trying to be a secure man in an insecure profession, Foley believes taking both his roles and his fellow thespians as lightly as possible is what helped him survive all these years.

“We find each other funnier than we hate each other,” he candidly said. “We always find each other a little funnier than we find each other annoying. The only thing that matters on set is that people do their jobs.”

Of course, Foley has quite an interesting take on why he is still able to do is job, whether as Glenn in The Strip or as a vampire in many of the roles he has recently been cast for.

“I am getting very cool in my old age. I cannot believe I am not in the Twilight movies,” he jokingly told Buzzine. “I’m just on an onward slow decline – old age, loss of bone mass…”

All joking aside, Foley hopes everyone takes seriously the upcoming release of The Strip, which opens this Friday (December 4th). After all, if the film does well, the Canadian actor said he hopes the success will help translate into Kids in the Hall making its way back into cable television programming here in the U.S.

Also starring Cory Christmas, Rodney Scott, Jenny Wade and Noreen DeWulf, The Strip is a comedy poking fun at strip malls and suburban culture. The Bata Films release is rated PG-13 and runs 91 minutes.