"Those Guys News" is a fast, fake and funny 'news' show in the style of Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update and This Hour Has 22 Minutes. It centers around the "Big Screen" that displays an ever-changing line-up of bizarre headlines, weird news stories and funny photographs, all presented by "news anchors" Doug Guy and Dingo Blitzer - 'Those Guys'.
Those Guys News covers it all - local and international politics, the entertainment world, advertising snafus, medical mishaps and police blunders - and presents it with no foul language and a non-offensive, tongue-in-cheek attitude.
Doug Guy and Dingo Blitzer have been friends for a lifetime.
"I first met Doug many moons ago at the Fredericton Playhouse," says Blitzer. "He was acting in a play and I was rooting through the garbage, trying to find a bit part. The director gave us a bottle of wine and while consuming it, we got to know each other and hit it off.
It would be 15 years before we would work together, but I knew right then and there that we had something special."
Doug Guy spent most of his life around the stage. Since most of his acting took place in feature films and specials, he never got to work on an actual stage, but he always liked the look of them. He once directed a feature film about the stage, but critics panned it, because it did not have any actors in it, just an hour and a half of floorboard footage. Guy claims that the experience of directing the feature was well worth it. "I can walk on any kind of wood surface now and feel good about it." Guy is a proud Maritimer and loves his mother country. "Where else could you get funding to produce a feature film about wood ?"
His next feature film project included bails of hay and what you could find in them. But the production was plagued by rainy days, which caused months of long delays and production overruns. "There was a lot of down time with absolutely nothing to do," says Guy. "It prepared me for life as a comic."
Dingo Blitzer was born in Austria and is the brother to CNN's Wolf Blitzer. The Blitzer household, which also included brothers Coyote and Raccoon, was a happy one until parents Tecumseh and Runabella split up, when Dingo was only 3. "We just had a sister, Poodle, but she was eaten at birth. I went with my mom, Wolf with my dad and my two other brothers stayed with my Grammy Dora," says Blitzer. "Wolf and dad emigrated to the States and my mom and I went to New Brunswick. She just didn't want to be anywhere near my dad, but wanted a new life as well."
Blitzer claims that he had a normal Maritime upbringing. "I have the missing brain cells to prove it, which makes me very creative." A class clown, who spent as much time in detention as he did in class, Blitzer went through the usual parade of meaningful jobs such as selling funeral plots and waiting on tables, before finding his true calling: the stage.
"I always wanted to be famous, but didn't have the stomach for all the booze and drugs, so I never hit the big time," says Blitzer. He even moved to the States for a short while, but found the roadblocks insurmountable. "Everywhere I went, everybody thought I was a mini-Wolf, like I was his puppy, it was just horrible," continues Blitzer. "Even Larry King crapped all over me. It was right then and there that I remembered the bottle of wine at the Playhouse and knew what I had to do."
Blitzer turned his back on the U.S. and Wolf and returned to his beloved Maritimes.
"Wolf has seen our show, but won't admit it. He is jealous, because he has no sense of humour and he would love to be able to say his favourite phrase 'weapons of mass destruction' in the same context that we do," insists Blitzer. "I might not be on CNN, but I am having the time of my life with my brother in comedy, Doug and I get to live and work in the best place in the world, the Maritimes."
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