During the pandemic, everyone was told to work from home; in show business, that usually just means youโre unemployed. I was lucky I had a job to do: writing, which I realized I liked a lot.ย Talking to Canadiansย opens with my childhood and ends just before we launched theย Reportโbasically when my editor said, โOkay, stop, you have a book now.โย The Road Yearsย isnโt so much a memoir as stories from travelling for 16 years. I couldโve written five books about that, but I wrote one. I didnโt go the Barbra route. Have sympathy for your reader! What if they want to bring your book in the tub?
At the end of his memoirย Talking to Canadians, Rick Mercer was poised to make the biggest leap yet in his extraordinary career. Having overcome a serious lack of promise as a schoolboy and risen through the showbiz ranksโas an aspiring actor, star of a surprisingly successful one-man show about the Meech Lake Accord, co-founder ofย This Hour Has 22 Minutes, creator and star of the dark-comedy sitcomย Made in Canadaโhe was about to tackle his biggest opportunity yet.
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The Road Yearsย picks up the story at that exciting point, with the greenlighting of what would becomeย Rick Mercer Report. Plans for the show, of course, included political satire and Rickโs patented rants. But Rick and his partner, Gerald Lunz, were also determined to do something that comedy tends to avoid as too challenging: they would emphasize the positive. Rick would travel from coast to coast to coast in search of everything thatโs best about Canada, especially its people. He found a lot to celebrate, naturally, and was rewarded with a huge audience and a run of 15 seasons.
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