TORONTO – Canadian TV writer Joseph Bodolai was an outstanding scribe who had a knack for comedy and discovering and mentoring young talent, one of his friends said Tuesday after news broke that he committed suicide in Los Angeles.
“In many ways Joe reminded me a little bit of Hunter (S. Thompson),” said producer John Brunton, president and CEO of Insight Production Company Ltd., in a telephone interview from Toronto.
“He was very, very well read, he had a broad scope of reference, he loved politics, he loved comedy, he was a terrific writer and one of the funniest guys I ever knew in my life.
“And more than anything, Joe made me laugh and laugh and laugh – made me laugh like hell – and he’s just terribly, sorrily missed.”
The Los Angeles coroner’s office said Tuesday that Bodolai, a former “Saturday Night Live” writer, committed suicide in a Hollywood hotel room.
Coroner’s office spokesman Craig Harvey said room service staff found the body of the 63-year-old Bodolai at 1:30 p.m. Monday in a room at Hollywood’s Re-Tan Hotel. He checked into the hotel on Dec. 19.
Harvey said Bodolai drank a mixture of Gatorade and antifreeze. The death has been ruled a suicide. Police Cmdr. Andrew Smith said there was no suicide note.
But the final entry on Bodolai’s personal blog is dire.
Dated Dec. 23 and titled “If This Were Your Last Day Alive What Would You Do?”, the blog entry includes mournful lists of Bodolai’s regrets and things he was proud of.
“We were very, very tight back in the day and I feel very, very sad that he slipped through our fingers,” said Brunton, who gave a speech at Bodolai’s wedding in Toronto and collaborated with him on several TV projects, including the 1987 CBC series “It’s Only Rock and Roll.”
“I wish that I’d known he was in such a terrible state because I definitely would have reached out. I had no idea. Once he left for Los Angeles we lost touch with each other and I just feel sick about it.”
Besides writing on 20 episodes of “Saturday Night Live” in 1981 and ’82, Bodolai was also the TV producer for 20 episodes of “The Kids in the Hall.”
Bodolai, who had two sons, also wrote for the Gemini Awards and was a writer and producer on the TV series “Comics!”
On his blog, he wrote that he also penned the first draft of the 1992 film “Wayne’s World” with Mike Myers.
“He was an incredible mentor of young comedians and young talent in this country and he got an enormous satisfaction out of giving people their first opportunities in the world of comedy,” said Brunton.
“He had a great eye for talent and had a great pedigree working for ‘Saturday Night Live.’ He had tremendous instincts when it came to comedy and was an outstanding writer of not just comedy but his views on many things in life.”
Born in the United States, Bodolai moved to Canada to avoid being drafted for the Vietnam War. Brunton said late senator Ted Kennedy helped Bodolai clean up his record in the U.S. so he could go back when he wished.
“(Bodolai was) very, very, very radical and political in the early days and that’s one of the reasons why he and I became such good friends,” said Brunton.
“We both shared some of the same ideas. We were both kind of radical hippies.”
Bodolai’s Facebook page states he’s from Toronto but Brunton said he moved back to the U.S. around the late ’90s.
– With files from The Associated Press
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