Sparked by a message from Steve in my Comments from the previous post, I thought it was time to relay the story of my world famous appearance in the Crash Test Dummies video for The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead, as noted in my Biography area. Turns out Steve was the Pumpkin Priest, which is a substantially larger role than I played.

As a bit of backstory, I was a huge CTD fan back in the day and had heard they’d be filming the video for this song at Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto. This was at a time I spent every weekend in Toronto anyways, so rather than head over to Yonge and Dundas to HMV, we hit the Square instead. By the time we got there the shoot was roped off and security guards were guarding the perimeter. I lead the charge through the ropes when security were on the opposite side and we dove into the crowd so they wouldn’t know who the scabs were that broke the line. Almost immediately they started handing out these glowing pumpkinheads on a stick and told us that our part would be to light them up, hold them high, and basically act like an angry mob. We did two scenes of this when they moved the cameras to the back of the crowd and announced we should all behave because Jeff Daniels would now film his “escape” scene through the crowd. The Director made his way through the crowd to stand between myself and a different Steve, parted us with his hands and announced “Mr. Daniels will start here.”

So I’m pretty excited now because not only was I so James Bond-ish in my breaking through the frontlines, but now I’m chillin’ (literally – it was snowing and January) with Jeff Daniels, and we were quick to exchange pleasantries. Noting that I had a huge crush on Sandra Bullock at the time, and remembering Jeff had been in Speed, I made the bright question “what was it like to work with Sandra Bullock?” with this dumb-a$$ grin on my face. Jeff looked down and said “you’re in love, aren’t you?” (shut up, Rob – post in comments if you must..) and I acknowledged I was. I asked why they were making him trance on his hands and knees through the snow without gloves and he had no answer. Our friend Steve kindly offered the hot packs he was holding to keep warm and they shot the scene. If you see the video, you’ll noticed Jeff crawls out between two people – one in blue jeans and a blue jacket, the other in a long Chicago Bulls jacket. That’s me in the jeans. :)

They announced they would now collect the Pumpkinheads (WHATEVER!) which encouraged us to once again break the line and make a brisk walk for it. Steve felt a tap on his shoulder and it was Jeff Daniels, offering back the hot packs and thanking him for lending them. So THAT was wicked cool.

I decided I wanted to go see Ellen Reid of CTD, and the guys agreed, but I didn’t have the guts to knock on her trailer door. Our friend Jon was gutsier and knocked, her security answered, and we asked if we could meet Ellen. They said no, but if we wanted autographs they’d bring something to her. This was cool except I didn’t have anything to autograph, so I handed over a $2 bill from my wallet. Wonder of wonders, Ellen herself came down (looking AWESOME) to return our signed gear and thank us for coming out. I now hold a glowing Pumpkinhead, a signed $2 bill with the Queen saying “Hi Rick!”, and some pretty cool memories. I never did get to meet Brad Roberts… :(

Incidentally, I managed to get Lisa Loeb to sign a $2 bill once too (she put cat ears on the Queen), but then they made the Toonie and my collection halted at two. Dang.

Cheers!