The death on Boxing Day of Canadian TV producer Joe Bodolai in a Los Angeles hotel room illustrates how everything isn’t all ha-ha in Canadian comedy. The Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office is treating Bodolai’s death as an apparent suicide before a final investigation is concluded. But in a departing blog, the former Saturday Night Live writer listed among his many regrets leaving Canada for Hollywood after being passed over in 1996 by then CTV topper Ivan Fecan to run the broadcaster’s Comedy Network, a cable channel he helped launch.
“My handshake disappeared. I got offered a deal my lawyer described as 'they want you to walk away. This is an insult.' I objected. The next day they hired Ed Robinson. I like Ed, but…,” Bodolai wrote in the final blog post entitled “If this were your last day alive, what would you do?”
The veteran writer, who died at 63 years of age after apparently drinking a concoction of Gatorade and antifreeze, came up against the harsh reality of Canadian comedy: you get to be creative north of the border, but you need to go to Los Angeles to get down to real business.
Read the whole article in the Hollywood Reporter:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/what-snl-writer-joe-bodolais-276477
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