Monday, May 30, 2011

Comedians Shouldn't Kiss!?!

Deb: I have been a comedic actor all of my adult life and I have performed a huge variety of styles within that gaffaw-ish genre. The one thing I did not sign up for was the bodily entanglement. I am never called upon to kiss or make out. And there’s a reason for that. I am a comedian. We. Don’t. Kiss.

I have done intimate scenes which are sweet and sexy, loving and real. But I have not done the kissing.

My character on Mosque is all about the sex and she talks a good game. So imagine my horror when after five seasons of Little Mosque on the Prairie, my character has been called upon to put her money where her racy mouth is.

She has been given a lover.

This lover comes in the form of one of Canada’s comedic treasures––Peter Keleghan.
I have been Peter’s huge fan and good friend for 25 years. Peter and I have performed together many times over the years playing a romantic couple, lounge singers, swingers and swindlers. But we are comedians. Comedians don’t kiss.

So what do you feel when you are faced with making out with an old friend with whom you have shared nothing but warm hugging and big mugging?

Abject fear.

I am NOT trained in this. I “make” with the faces, not with the “out”!

So there we were in the first passionate scene and we are required to kiss. Big kiss. Long kiss. Legs wrap kiss...ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

So we move in for the money shot and my lips close like a clam in a sand storm. You could not get an amoeba past these clenched lips of mine. And the funny thing about it is that his lips are the exact same. Clenched. Pinched. Pursed.

And I LOVED him for it.

I am not shy when it comes to communication, so why did I not lay it on the line with him and say I was feeling awkward? Maybe because I was afraid that he was all cool with it and that I would look like an idiot. OR, maybe I thought he was all cool with it and by speaking up I would make him feel awkward.

So we kissed, and I use the term loosely.  My lips were sucked up so far in my mouth they were making my tonsils gag. And I don’t even have tonsils.

After our crazy glue kiss, we laughed with relief. Phew. Glad that’s over.

But of course it is television so we had to do it again and again and again, both of us scrambling to put “shtick” in the kiss to divert from the fact that we were actually kissing.
When the scene was over, we hugged our friend hug and said (LYING), “That was fun.”

IT SO WASN’T!

It was fun playing off of each other and enjoying the chemistry and the timing we shared. But it was not fun when we had to make out. At least it wasn’t for me and I am pretty sure it wasn’t for him.

Then as I was heading home after work the unthinkable occurred to me. What if he thinks I really kiss that way? What if he thinks I am a lousy kisser? What if he thinks that my husband is daily subjected to the KLENCH KISS?

OHNO! I am a good kisser. You can ask my husband. He will tell you. I am a damn good kisser.

So I thought, “Well, suck it up, clenchy, and let it go. If he thinks you suck at kissing you are going to have to live with that.”

So I’ve made my peace with it, praying that Peter isn’t the type to clench and tell. And for the sake of my husband and Peter’s beautiful girlfriend, I am proud to say that we partook of the “lame smooch”.

My ego ... well, that’s another story.

Barbara: Oh god, Deb, so very funny. I haven’t had to kiss a lot of actors over my career, but since I’ve been with my husband through the whole of it, there’s always been the tug and pull of Do Your Job Well versus My Head Gets In The Way, Not To Mention My Husband’s. The three-headed monster. So not sexy.

But then, those kisses are only meant to be sexy for the audience. Or at least believable. The beauty is, you can always fake your way through it. And I’m gonna wager that a kiss in a comedy is allowed to be funny. So let’s pretend you were playing it for the laughs all along. Time to embrace (as it were) the on-screen Klench Kiss! It’s the new spit-take. (…ba-dah-bum…)

PS this video is a re-post, but since it features Deb with Peter K and some mad pseudo making out (but not the scene with aforementioned Klench Kiss), we thought it timely to post again. Enjoy!



PPS For anyone trying to post a comment to our static pages (ie About Us or Deco Tips, etc), the comments boxes on those pages have suddenly disappeared.... And we don't know why.... Have sent a message to Blogger, so hopefully that will be cleared up asap. Thanks!

15 comments:

  1. Sorry, guys, not an interesting comment, but Blogger is having issues with embedded comments this weekend -- and we're seeing them on our static pages. Just wanted to make sure all was still working on our post pages.

    Carry on. Tell us fun stuff about awkward kisses :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. wow. I love it ladies. I will have to say that I love,love watch Little Mosque On The Prairie. I watch it ALOT,ALOT and it a very funny show.I have seen some of the new ones of Youtube and it's amazing. They always make me smile when I watch them.

    Anyways,back to the orginal subject, I will have to admit that I have had a pretty awkward kiss before. My awkward kiss had to be when I first laid eyes on my boyfriend back in middle school. We were actually at a school dance and it was near the end when he reached over and tried to kiss me and frecked out because I had never been kissed before and moved out of the way. OH ladies it was so awkward. After all that I felt so bad and so awkward that I just sat there and stared at the ground. 'Finally after looking at the ground for like 5 min we decided to try it again and it finally worked,and every since them I have been hooked.
    I am sure he would have no complaints now.

    So maby the kiss for him was good but I remember it being just a little weird for me. OK ALOT weird for me. He still says it was good.

    Lyndsie

    ReplyDelete
  3. Aw, Lyndsie! such a sweet story. First kisses definitely have the potential to be awkward. Mine was awkward because I didn't so much like the boy (as in I didn't), but really wanted to get that first kiss notch on my belt! I love a good kiss :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Lyndsie I love that story. Funny, sweet and most of all happy ending.

    ReplyDelete
  5. This whole blog cracked me up. I, too wanted the first kiss to be over with and I remember it as sweet. Love the difference between actors and comedians. Thanks for the humor today. I am going to look up the show and she if I can watch it. I assume it is online.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks Madge. A tale I had to tell!

    ReplyDelete
  7. OMG- I am soooo sharing that video. You're hysterical Deb.

    ReplyDelete
  8. My first kiss-on-the-mouth doesn't even really count. It wasn't a "real" kiss with snogging intentions. It was during summer vacation after high school graduation but before I left for college. My high school friend Glen was over at the house along with some other folks just hanging out one afternoon. What you've gotta understand is Glen was very cute, very cool, and hilariously funny. And, he had, basically, a harem. He had a lot of friends-who-were-girls but weren't girlfriends, and we all adored him (and,not so secretly had crushes on him lol). He was adorable and sweet, and he was very protective of his girls. (Oh, and we also all not so secretly hated his ex-girlfriend who had broken his heart. We were very protective of him, too. lol) Anyway, when he was leaving and we (all girls) were gathered around to say goodbye, he just went down the row and gave us each a peck on the lips as a goodbye kiss. I was stunned to silence. He never knew that was my first lips kiss.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Now, for the awkward kiss story! Sometime during my 2nd year at Bama (so I was either 18 or 19), I was at the Chukker with a martial arts buddy of mine, C (he was a junior). (Yes, I was underage. No, the Chukker never carded. No, I wasn't there to drink. The Chukker just always got the best bands.) C was just a guy I hung around with a lot as a friend, and we clobbered each other on the mats quite often, exasperated our sensei on a regular basis, and had a lot of laughs at dojo BBQ get togethers and stuff. That night at the Chukker, in the back of the bar when we were walking toward the back courtyard to get some air, he stood me against the wall by the bathrooms and leaned in and kissed me. First of all, it was weird as all get out to realize I was being kissed by him. Second of all, it was the grossest kiss ever. It's the only kiss I've ever received where I honestly had the urge to puke. But, he was a dear friend and I didn't want to hurt his feelings so I didn't say ewwww or anything. I hid that his kiss triggered vomit. But, we did have the awkward "Um, no, we're not going there" talk in the courtyard a few minutes later. We stayed very good friends thereafter.

    Fast forward to about a year and a half after I've graduated from Bama. I had lived in Charlotte, NC, for a year and was moving to Charleston, SC. His folks and brother lived on a farm just outside Charleston. I'd known his family for years, and his mom pretty much adopted me once I became local. C was living about 1 1/2 hour away. He drove up to help me unload the U-Haul at my new apartment and get me situated. A couple of weeks later, he drove up again, and I took him out to dinner as a thank you for the moving help. (By this point, I was 22, and he was 25 or so.) After dinner, we went over the bridge out to Isle of Palms to hear a band at the Windjammer. Later, we were walking along the beach behind the bar. He was staying on the sand, but I was wading in the water. (Remember, I was born a beach rat. I love, love, love, love, LOVE the ocean. I am at my absolute and ultimate happiest when I'm in the ocean.) It was making him nervous that I was in the water so I came back to shore. Then he kissed me. And, it was nice! Surprise! So, I kissed him back. *blushes* But, being so surprised, I blurted happily like a dufus, "You learned how to kiss!" He kind of blushed and hemmed and hawed, and I said, "Sorry, but that was sooooo much better than the kiss at the Chukker!" He explained that one of his girlfriends after he graduated had been an older woman who "taught him things." I said, "Be sure to thank her! She taught you well!"

    Apparently, he did learn well, because he married a really cool woman and they have 2 adorable daughters who have him wrapped around their little fingers.

    And, for YEARS, he teased me about that night in our emails. lololol

    ReplyDelete
  10. Hollye thanks. I do my wacky best! Rigel what a sweet tale. I loved when you said, He didn't know it was my first lips kiss.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Rigel I love that story. God bless the older women!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Aww such sweet stories :)

    But wait a minute... who says comedians don't kiss? Here's a video that says otherwise :P http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq0zsT-nUAc

    ReplyDelete
  13. Ha, exactly what I was thinking, Elle! Very funny blog, Deb! :)

    ReplyDelete
  14. Haha, glad someone's on the same page ;P

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.