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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Reinventing the wheel


Reed McColm is head writer for

Reed McColm is an accomplished actor and even more accomplished writer – yet you probably know him as the Sterling Savings Hamster Boy.

“People are always recognizing me from that,” McColm observes dryly. “I’m sure that’ll be in my obituary: ‘The guy in the Manster ads.’ ”

Yes, he’s the man who huffs and puffs in the Manster Wheel (a giant hamster wheel) in the Sterling Savings TV commercials, which have aired for the past two years all over the Northwest.

Fortunately, Spokane theater audiences have seen ample evidence of his broader acting range in brilliant performances in “The Drawer Boy” at the Actor’s Repertory Theatre and “The Laramie Project” and “Gypsy” at the Spokane Civic Theatre.

“The first time I saw him (in ‘The Laramie Project’), I thought he was astounding,” said Michael Weaver, ARt’s artistic director. “I went up to the director afterward and said, ‘Who the hell is that guy?’ “

For the past month, McColm has been demonstrating his writing talent as well. He is the head writer (as well as a performer) in “CenterStage Live,” the sketch comedy-variety show at the CenterStage dinner theater.

McColm is the man responsible for many of the show’s topical sketches, including the Spokane Report, a fake local newscast in which he plays the airheaded anchor.

Typical line: “It’s 11 o’clock in New York, 5 o’clock in Honolulu and here in Spokane, Washington, it’s 8:37.”

He’s had plenty of professional experience in writing comedy. McColm was a screenwriter for 15 years in Los Angeles and has what he calls “a long list of failed TV series, pilots and TV movies.”

He also has had his share of successes. He worked on “Growing Pains,” “Dear John” and “Wings,” and owns a piece of a daytime Emmy for a 1988 “ABC After-School Special” called “Set Straight on Bullies.”

McColm’s stage drama about the events of Sept. 11, 2001, “Hole in the Sky,” has been produced at several universities.

He was brought up in Edmonton, Alberta. When he set off for college at Ricks College in Rexburg, Idaho, he considered himself a writer, not an actor. The traumatic circumstances of his arrival at college changed all of that.

“On my way to Ricks, I was driving with a friend, and she was in all of the performing groups at Ricks and she wanted me to audition with her,” says McColm. “And I was driving the car and I flipped the car on a road in Montana and she died.”

When he finally arrived at Ricks, he felt alone and bereft.

Yet McColm went to all of those auditions, partly because he felt he owed it to her. To his own surprise, he was cast in “Oliver!”

“Let me tell you, theater saved me,” he says. “I just enjoyed it right off the bat.”

He later transferred to Brigham Young University with a double major in theater arts and English. He wanted to be a playwright.

“I told my parents, ‘I’m becoming a playwright, but don’t worry. I have a backup in acting,’ ” McColm says with a laugh.

His first play, “Together Again for the First Time,” was produced at BYU. Then he landed a Hollywood internship with the writing team of TV’s “St. Elsewhere.”

He was only a “go-fer,” as he calls it, but he did manage to name one of the show’s characters after his sister Roxanne.

McColm excitedly called his sister and mother and told them to watch the episode.

“After it aired, I called my sister and said, ‘Did you see it?” and she said, ‘No, it was on too late,’ ” he says. “Then I called my mother in Saskatoon, and she said, ‘Oh, was that on last night?’

“The moral I took from this was that I could write anything about my family as long as it was on after 9 at night.”

He landed at graduate school at the University of Southern California, where he earned a master’s degree in professional writing. Soon he was working on a string of TV sitcoms and dramas.

McColm was “in the thick of it” in L.A. for 15 years, yet he became increasingly unhappy.

“Writing for Hollywood was like being nibbled to death by ducks,” he says. “You were always trying to please somebody else’s vision, usually the producers. They don’t know what they want, but they know what they don’t want, which is whatever draft you just handed in.”

One day, a producer told McColm and his writing partner, “This is the best draft I’ve ever read! I know exactly who I want to rewrite it!”

“And he was dead serious, with no sense of irony,” says McColm. “It told us two things. One, we were fired. Two, it doesn’t matter how good you are.”

In the late ‘90s, following a health crisis, he was depressed about his L.A. career. He started thinking about what made him happy. His thoughts returned to a small summer-stock theater in West Yellowstone, Mont., where he had worked as a college student.

He packed up in 2002 and went back to the West Yellowstone Playmill, working as an actor and director.

“I really loved it and it felt safe,” says McColm. “I just felt liberated.”

Then, in late 2002, he came to visit his sister and her family in Post Falls. He wanted to check out the local theater scene, so he and his sister drove to Spokane to see an Interplayers play.

They ended up mistakenly at the Spokane Civic Theatre, where he saw that auditions for “The Laramie Project” were the next day.

McColm auditioned and was impressed with director Marilyn Langbehn. She read off a list of names at the end and told everyone else they could leave. He didn’t hear his name.

“I drove all the way back to Post Falls, thinking, ‘Well, that’s all right,’ ” he says. Actually, he was a bit miffed.

When he arrived at his sister’s house, his niece said: “Uncle Reed, the theater called and wanted to know why you didn’t stay.”

“I have a hearing loss in one ear, and I didn’t hear my name called,” says McColm. “And there was nobody I could ask. I couldn’t just go up and say, ‘I didn’t hear my name called. Are you sure you didn’t mean to call my name?’ “

He drove back to Spokane, got the role and won a local critics’ best actor award.

“Every day, rehearsal was a joy,” McColm says. “It was exactly what I needed for my health, not only my artistic health but my physical health.”

He said he was “welcomed with open arms” in the theater community and decided to move from West Yellowstone to an apartment in Post Falls, where he can be near his sister and her family. He has been working steadily ever since.

His work with Weaver in “Drawer Boy” at ARt was especially rewarding.

“We laughed every day,” says McColm. “I would go to rehearsal and would hate for it to end. I didn’t want to be away from these people or this script.”

He became involved with “CenterStage Live” because it’s the kind of show that isn’t being done anywhere else in Spokane. McColm loves writing local, topical humor, even though he admits that, as a relative newcomer, he had to go through a learning curve.

“The Gypsy curse – I’d never heard of it,” he says.

He’s especially excited about an upcoming project – the professional premiere in November of his play “Together Again for the First Time” at ARt, starring Patty Duke in the lead role.

“We met during ‘Gypsy’ (in which Duke played Mama Rose) and become very close,” says McColm. “I’m delighted that she loves this play.”

In fact, she and McColm are making a low-budget independent film version of “Together Again for the First Time” in Los Angeles this summer. If things work out well, audiences might be able to see it on the big screen (or on TV) around the same time they can see it live in Spokane.

Yet he has no intentions of returning to L.A. full time.

Says McColm: “When I’m asked, ‘Why did you move to Spokane and Post Falls?,’ the only thing I can come up with is this: Theater has been my mistress all of my life. I have been far more faithful to her than she has been to me. I just wanted to go someplace where we could be alone.”