Tobey Maguire

interview |
Less than 30 seconds into the
interview, Steve Smith’s secret
was out. Surprising, nay, even
shocking, but true. The star of
CBC’s long-running The Red
Green Show — the flannel-clad outdoorsman
who personifies small-town, backwater life
in the Great White North for millions of
viewers worldwide — spends his winters in
Florida.
“I know. It’s so shameful,” says the 56year-old
comic, chuckling, on the phone
from his Gulf Coast home. “I’ve hated
Florida my whole adult life until five years
ago. And now I don’t know what the heck
I was upset about. It’s a great place to be
for winter.”
Oh, no doubt. All those birds and
famous 20 | april 2002
Steve Smith as Red Green
Red. Tape.
The union of the two — Steve Smith’s bumbling Red Green character
and his multipurpose duct tape — have been an archetype of Canadian comedy
for 11 years. But only now, after about a decade of filmmaking bureaucracy, are
the pair coming together on the big screen BY SEAN DAVIDSON
retirees can’t be wrong. But don’t people
give him a hard time about being a fairweather
Canuck?
“People aren’t actually aware of it,” he says.
“As soon as they are, they’ll be all over me.”
It was down in the land of orange
juice and electoral irregularities that
Smith — in between writing his books,
newspaper columns and TV scripts — ▼ ▼