Strange Brew - Production

Production

In 1981, Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas recorded a Bob and Doug McKenzie comedy album, The Great White North, which sold a million copies. Based on this success, they thought about parlaying that into a feature film. After fellow SCTV cast member John Candy got an offer from Universal Pictures to do a film called Going Berserk, Moranis and Thomas started talking about writing a screenplay for a Bob and Doug film. Andrew Alexander, executive producer for SCTV reminded them that he had exclusive contracts with the two men and if they wrote a script he would sue them. Moranis and Thomas soon found themselves faced with the challenge of expanding their improvisations on SCTV from "two guys talking about how hard it was to get parking spaces in donut shops to a full-length story", Thomas said in an interview.

They hired Steve De Jarnatt to write the first draft. Initially, Thomas told De Jarnatt that he wanted to base the film's story around Hamlet but he ended up being too faithful to the play and was told be more creative with the parallels to it. Moranis and Thomas' agents sent the script to various Hollywood studios and a few days later they had a deal with MGM based not on the script but on record sales, "the breakout potential, and the fact that it was being advertised on a television show", Thomas remembers. They were unhappy with the script because Bob and Doug were improvised characters done in their "comic voices" and they felt that nobody but themselves could write for these characters. Thomas began rewriting the script without Moranis who was now uncertain about doing the film. After working on the first 50 pages, Moranis took a look at what Thomas had done and they worked together rewriting it. However, they were not sure just how much they could legally change and did most of the changes in the first third of the script, including the addition of Bob and Doug's science fiction film, Mutants of 2051 A.D., Bob and Doug watching it in a movie theater, and causing a riot. Thomas remembers that the script was "far more bizarre and conceptual in the beginning ... if we had been able to rewrite the whole thing, we would have made the whole thing like that".

Originally, Moranis and Thomas were not going to direct or write the film but ended up doing both with the guidance of executive producer Jack Grossberg, who had produced films by Mel Brooks and Woody Allen. They were subsequently given a budget of $5 million. Before filming, all of the major breweries wanted the McKenzie brothers to appear in beer advertisements. The filmmakers had the promise of Molson's Brewery, but once the brewery found out that there was a joke in the film about putting a mouse in a beer bottle so that a complaint can be made in order to get free beer, they distanced themselves from the film. The filmmakers were also banned from filming in a Brewers Retail store, and from using the name "Brewers Retail". The exterior shots of the store (now a Tim Hortons/Pizza Pizza) were shot in Scarborough, Ontario at the corner of Eglinton Ave and Midland Ave. The KFC and Petro-Canada gas station seen in the background still exist. They ended up building a replica of the store at a cost of more than $45,000, and calling it "The Beer Store". Ironically, Brewers Retail later changed the name of its stores to "The Beer Store", and they continue to operate under that name. Filming also took place at the Old Fort Brewing Co. in Prince George, British Columbia. The emergency vehicles used during filming were all real Metropolitan Toronto Police squad cars. The Ambulances used briefly were on loan from Metropolitan Toronto Ambulance.