Dallas VideoFest (http://videofest.org), a film festival and a nonprofit, will honor both “Kids in the Hall” co-founders Dave Foley and Kevin McDonald with the Ernie Kovacs Award on the evening of Saturday, Oct. 14, at the Alamo Drafthouse (100 S. Central Expressway at Beltline – Richardson). Tickets can be purchased here: https://prekindle.com/event/59225-kovacs-award-richardson.
Both Foley and McDonald will be in attendance to receive the award and will be on hand for a panel discussion, a Q&A with fans and a rare screening of the iconic Kids in the Hall film BRAIN CANDY (1996). Foley and McDonald are being recognized for careers that span more than 30 years, including acting, producing and writing on television, film and stage and especially for their breakout roles playing a multitude of characters in “The Kids in the Hall” television series which ran from 1988-95.
“One of the things that impressed me deeply about Ernie Kovacs was that television was a brand new medium in the fifties and he was subverting its conventions even as those conventions were being formed,” Foley stated in a press release. “Ernie was way ahead of his time.”
”Ernie Kovacs has been one of my idols since I was a child so to receive an award in his name from the Dallas VideoFest is a true honor,” McDonald stated. “Kovacs was doing ’70s anti-comedy in the ’50s and his sense of absurdism would have been at home in a Monty Python’s Flying Circus episode. When Dave Foley and I are in Dallas on Oct. 14, I will pretend he is here with us – celebrating his career – because that’s what this is – a celebration of Ernie Kovacs. And he deserves a lot of them.”
“Dave Foley and Kevin McDonald of The Kids in the Hall are being recognized by the Dallas VideoFest for their efforts as comedy pioneers in the same vein as Ernie Kovacs,” stated Bart Weiss, director of Dallas VideoFest, in the press release. “Looking back at the comedy of The Kids and their other work afterward, you can see that, they, like Kovacs, saw what video and television could be and took us to that new place.”
The award recognizes the career and talents of some of television’s greatest visionaries. Kovacs’ work in the 1950s and early 1960s summed up the spirit of innovation and the development of the language of television as art. The Dallas Video Festival and the Video Association of Dallas announced the first Ernie Kovacs Award at the 1997 festival. Comedian Joel Hodgson of Mystery Science 3000 was the first recipient and subsequent honorees have included Terry Gilliam of Monty Python; Robert Smigel, writer/performer of Saturday Night Live and Late Night with Conan O’Brien; Paul “Pee-wee Herman” Reubens; Martin Mull; Mike Judge; George Schlatter, creator of Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In; Harry Shearer, Spinal Tap and The Simpsons; and Michael Nesmith. Actress Edie Adams (www.edieadams.com), Kovacs’ wife, came to Dallas to host the awards program annually until her death in 2008. Today, Edie’s son, Joshua Mills, runs Ediad Productions, the video and audio archive of both Ernie Kovacs and Edie Adams.
Event Information:
Dallas VideoFest presents the Ernie Kovacs Award to Kids in the Hall co-creators Dave Foley and Kevin McDonald on the evening of Saturday, Oct. 14, 7:30 p.m., at the Alamo Drafthouse (100 S. Central Expressway at Beltline – Richardson). Tickets:
https://prekindle.com/event/59225-kovacs-award-richardson
Admission to events:
$25 – Ernie Kovacs Awards presentation at 7:30 p.m.
$10 – BRAIN CANDY (1996) with intro by Dave Foley and Kevin McDonald at 10 p.m.
$30 – Kovacs Awards presentation and BRAIN CANDY at 7:30 p.m.
$50 – includes all events: Reception hosted by Canadian Consulate, Ernie Kovacs Awards presentation and BRAIN CANDY at 6:30 p.m.
