Scott Thompson Will Never Let Amazon Tell Him What to Say Again

When Amazon revived The Kids in the Hall in 2022, it was largely met with positive reviews for recapturing the spirit of the original. However, a longtime staple of the comedy troupe was curiously absent. In all eight of the episodes, none of them featured a monologue by Scott Thompson’s gay nightclub owner, Buddy Cole (he was featured just once, in a sketch about the last glory hole, but that was it).

Perhaps the most memorable Kids in the Hall character, Buddy Cole was one of the boldest things on television in the early ‘90s. His monologues as a proud gay man touched on controversial topics such as closeted celebrities, promiscuous sex and AIDS, among many, many others. Even after The Kids in the Hall ended, Thompson continued to perform as Buddy in various stage shows — including his newest one, The Last Glory Hole, which will begin its run at The Lyric Hyperion in Los Angeles on January 22nd, 24th and 25th. 

The show is a direct result of his miserable experience of working with Amazon on the Kids in the Hall revival and feeling censored by the company. During our recent conversation via Zoom, he also got into the origins of Buddy Cole, how his relationship with the character has changed over the years and why he’s not going to hide behind Buddy anymore.

Let’s start at the very beginning: How did you come up with the Buddy Cole character?

That was a long time ago. (Writer) Paul Bellini got a video camera at the beginning of the video camera revolution, and he started shooting our whole group of friends. I was a natural clown, and one day he turned the camera on and asked me who I was. I just started talking like Buddy, going, “My name’s Buddy Cole. I’m a thousand years old,” and telling this story about being a vampire. It was ludacris. I was reading Interview with the Vampire at the time, and I had this concept of a gay vampire that had lived for thousands of years.

That, of course, changed, but there’s always been this immortal quality to Buddy. He’s larger than life, and he can do things that are a little miraculous, like talk to animals and things like that. 

All I was really doing was imitating this guy that I’d known that I’d had a fling with. He was a really effeminate guy, but his effeminacy was almost aggressive.

Instead of a character where things happen to them, Buddy Cole was very different. He’s the center. He’s the star of his life. He’s not a supporting character. He drives the action, and he’s the hero. That’s basically where he came from, and he became an alter ego for me. It allowed me to say things that might be more palatable coming from him than from me. It was a great way for me, in a weird way, to translate my own life. 

What was more palatable from him than from you?

Well, I think, partly, some of the things that I believe and some of the things I say can make people very uncomfortable. But when Buddy does it, they’re conditioned to think this character is toothless and not to be feared. They don’t understand that he’s a very dangerous animal. It’s because he’s beautiful — he has beautiful clothes and a beautiful voice and all the rest of it — he’s still deadly. Don’t turn your back.

How long before The Kids in the Hall did Buddy originate?

I started doing him the same time that I was meeting the Kids in the Hall. Paul Bellini and I had a band, Mouth Congress, and we had just put out a new album. It was all the same thing — music and comedy. I didn’t really know what I was going to do, but I wanted to perform and I wanted to write. I never really thought I would be a comedian until The Kids in the Hall.

I didn’t think there was a place for a person like me. I thought, “No one’s going to want to have a gay comedian.” So, Buddy came about and he became my stand-up voice. 

Did you face much backlash back then for Buddy?

Are you kidding me? There were tons of it from every corner, and it’s not what you’d expect. It’s not like the backlash came from straight people. It was overwhelmingly gay people who hated him. A lot of gay people don’t like Buddy because they think it reflects negatively. They’re probably in denial about the way they present. He also talks about a lot of things that people want to keep secret. Buddy Cole brings things out of the darkness into the light, and a lot of people are uncomfortable with that kind of comedy.

Homophobes didn’t like him. Actual gay people didn’t like him. A lot of people thought, “Why are you doing this? You shouldn’t be doing this.” It was almost like I shared too many secrets outside of school. 

Did you ever think about not continuing with the character?

I know what I’m doing and I know that what I do can make people uncomfortable, but I’m very comfortable with that. In the beginning, yes, there was a part of me that was disappointed. I thought that I’d be more celebrated in my own community. I didn’t realize that that wouldn’t happen, which took a long time to accept. 

People accept Buddy if they really like that kind of comedy, but in terms of “a gay icon,” the truth is, most gay men — and this has changed a lot lately — only really watch women. There’s no such thing, really, as an openly gay stand-up comedian who’s a star.

So, with Buddy, I’ve gotten a lot of flack for him, and I continue to get flack. And with this new show, hopefully, I will get a lot of flack. This is a big deal, this show.

Tell more about it.

The inspiration for this show came a couple of years ago with the other show, King. Plus, the experience with Amazon with the reboot was awful. The censorship was over-the-top and overwhelming. It was more than we’d ever dealt with. 

They didn’t allow any Buddy Cole monologues and that broke my heart. So, I just went, “This can’t be right.” 

This is very difficult to even talk about, but all The Kids in the Hall material had to be vetted by DEI and GLAAD. So, a lot of what I’d written wasn’t considered positive. They removed most of my material two weeks before shooting.

Think about how terrible that is. How did we get to that place — that people from ostensibly my community aren’t allowing me to be heard because it wasn’t reflecting positively? That cracked me open, and I changed. I went, “Okay, fuck you then. Maybe I’m not part of this community. Maybe what I’m really a part of is people that believe in free speech, number one, and everything else is secondary.”

And so, this new show came about because I was so angry. But I’m not angry anymore because I’ve gotten it out of my system. I’ve done it, and I just thought, “There’s no way on Earth that these monologues wouldn’t be acceptable. I know that they’re funny.” That was the inspiration, going, “You can’t tell me that I can’t do this, and you can’t stop me on stage.” You can stop me on television, but you cannot stop me live. That was the inspiration — to go, “I’ll show you what Amazon wouldn’t let be allowed,” and to get some revenge. In the first tour, I got a lot of it out of my system, but I kept writing and now the tide is turning so I feel like I’m going to be heard now.

In this new show, there’s a struggle between me and Buddy because I realize that I hide behind Buddy and I don’t want to hide anymore. Two-thirds of the way into the show, I abandon Buddy and basically become myself, which is very exciting.

Then, in the last part of the show, I talk about the history of the (gay rights) movement — where it started, where it went and where we’re going. The conclusion I come to is that it’s not for me and that I don’t belong and that I don’t want to be a part of this community. The whole thing is me getting off the rainbow bus, going, “I’m a gay man, I’m a homosexual, but I’m not a part of this.” That’s exciting. I’m not going to be owned by any movement, especially a movement that I think has gotten lost. 

The Mouth Congress album was a very similar experience. After the Amazon experience, I went, “Wow, I just need to make art, and I don’t want anyone saying ‘no’ to me.” And so, Paul and I decided to make a brand new album. We did a double album of 16 brand new songs.

Why do you think Amazon wanted to police you so much?

Amazon has to sell toasters and comedy. And also, I can’t even say “the gay and lesbian movement” because that doesn’t mean anything anymore. Now it’s the LGBTQI — whatever nonsense letters you want to use. It’s been completely corporatized. It’s owned, and the truth is, I’m an old gay man, it was built on our dead bodies. Are we not good enough anymore?

That’s what I thought: “The reason why you’re being an asshole to me is because of people like me.” I’m the one that made you an asshole. That’s what I thought with GLAAD: “You’re an asshole because of people like me. Now you’re trying to stop people like me.” I can’t live with that. I just won’t. I’m shocked that no one thinks that’s terrible. I’ve been talking about this for years, but no one thinks it’s a big deal. It is a big deal, though. It is a very big deal.

In his monologues on The Kids in the Hall, Buddy would target current events and people. In this new show, what’s he talking about now?

Circumcision, trans, race, gender, religion — all the good things. It’s mostly about where the West is right now. That’s what I do. Buddy’s a great cultural commentator. People look at him and think, “That’s probably a guy who didn’t have an easy ride.” And so, they’re willing to listen to him. They’re willing to go, “Okay, that might be a little hard to take, but he seems to have earned that opinion honestly.” And he’s so damn funny — not that I’m being funny in this interview — but Buddy can’t not be funny. 

That said, I also want to be more myself. I don’t want to hide behind him anymore because I don’t care if people think that’s me talking. That’s okay. I can take it.

When The Kids in the Hall ended, did you know that you’d continue with Buddy?

No. But it was very soon afterward that he came back. The first real show that I did was about four years after it ended, and that’s when I realized, “This guy’s with me for life.” Even now, I’ll give him a holiday, but I’ll never really abandon him. 

Basically, what happens in the show is that Buddy Cole realizes that he’s a character — he has an existential crisis — but it doesn’t bother him because he realizes that, because he’s a character, he’s not real, so he can never die. So, he doesn’t mind being put away for a while because he knows he will never die. I will die, but he won’t. 

Would any of that have been included in the Amazon revival?

No. There was an Amazon monologue about gay marriage. There was a monologue about trans. There was a monologue about circumcision. There was a monologue about religion. There was a monologue about Muslim men. These things just weren’t allowed to be talked about. It didn’t matter what my opinion was, it was just, “You can’t weigh in on these discussions at all.”

Is it safe to say that there won’t be any more Amazon revivals of The Kids in the Hall? 

They didn’t want it. They put it out like they were embarrassed, and it was a terrible relationship. I wouldn’t go back. I wouldn’t go through that again. The boot was so heavy, we just couldn’t believe it. We’d never seen anything like it in our life, ever. 

Were the other guys as bothered by it?

I can’t speak for them — they were — but no one was as bothered as much as me because I felt personally affronted. I also felt, “How can it be me? This is supposed to be my era. What’s going on?” But I’m not the right one. I’m not the right fag — and I wasn’t allowed to say “fag.” 

We’re old enough now that that censorship used to come from the right; now it comes from the left. That’s a gift, in a way — to realize that everybody will get it wrong and that there’s no such thing as right or left and that there’s one side that’s good and one side that’s evil. It’s power, and it will always corrupt. Women will get it wrong. People of color will get it wrong. Queer people will get it wrong. Everybody will be corrupted by power. 

Human beings are pretty awful across the board. But beautiful too. That’s what I take from it. The experience with Amazon was life-changing. I had to look at my own life and what I believe in and what I want to continue doing. What I want to continue doing is to make comedy without — I wouldn’t say without brakes, because there are always brakes in everything — but I thought it was more important for me to be heard than to make damaged goods for a dying media. 

I’ve had this incredible rebirth creatively because of it. I can look at it now and say, “Thank you, Amazon, because you allowed me to reboot. You gave me a chance to see what’s really important.”