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You know Hal from somewhere
'Talk Soup,' 'Queer As Folk' alum fires up some laughter for his BCPA gig
By Dan Craft
dcraft@pantagraph
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Who woulda thought? "Queer As Folk's" cosmopolitan Michael Novotny began his life as a "smelly country kid" from a flyspeck town in the middle of Kentucky.

Pass the Tic-Tacs and Right Guard?

To be every bit as frank as "Queer As Folk": yes.

"I hadn't really learned to brush my teeth regularly," he confesses. "And I was going through puberty, so ..."

To be even more frank, he wasn't "queer as folk." And his name wasn't even Michael Novotny.

He was the distinctly hetero Harold "Harry" Magee Sparks III.

Yes, the III.

The entirely straight-shooting III, if you know what we mean.

Luckily for his future marquee billing, Harold and Harry were soon abridged to Hal, thus sparing him the fate of "Harold Sparks III starring in ..." (sounds like a severe night of theater), or "Featuring Harry Magee Sparks ..." (sounds like a bad night at the opry).

Hal No. 3 has gone on to prove the third time was definitely the charm, at least as far as the Sparks clan of Peaks Mill, Ky., pop. 3,330, is concerned.

Some three decades after his "smelly country kid" phase, the third-time charm has transformed him into a bit of a Renaissance man -- one who's mastered everything from kung-fu, to stand-up comedy, to rock guitar, to "Talk Soup," to playing a sexual preference outside his preference.

Above all: "Boy, do I make an effort to smell nice now!"

So anyone with tickets to his Feb. 21 show in the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts -- Sparks' first-ever pass through Central Illinois -- need not fear.

What he might need to be concerned about is that Renaissance man habit: It's likely he means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

Which might leave the audience resembling a human patchwork quilt: The "Queer As Folk" contingent here. The "Talk Soup" sector over there. And, two aisles to the left, the "VH1's I Love the '80s" fan club.

But he's not worried.

When he does stand-up, "there's a freedom that comes with it that I will never give up. I love it. I mean, what other job allows you to speak your mind and truly be yourself?"

Certainly not playing Michael Novotny on Showtime's boundary-stretching "Queer As Folk" for five years (2000-2005).

"As an actor, I loan out my body and hope they use it well," muses Sparks, 38. "As a musician (he has his own rock band, Zero 1), you're part of a team while still trying to express some genuine emotion."

But standing up on a stage, alone and figuratively naked, there are no bodily loan-outs or team-playing.

Interestingly, at the moment of this interview, Sparks has just finished retracing his career's trajectory back to its roots.

He is in Lexington, Ky., which isn't exactly Peaks Mill, but it's close enough. Fortunately, it's not the area of the state that was ravaged by the killer twisters that smacked the South the night before.

To get there, he passed through Chicago -- where he spent another key part of his upbringing -- and missed a blizzard that hit the city.

As a stand-up comic alone on the road back home, "I guess the best part about it is that allows me my own identity and my own life," he says. "When you're an actor, you're pretty much tethered to L.A. and New York -- it's like this umbilical cord to the mother of your career, and you can never sever it."

For Sparks, spending all his time tethered to those two show business poles would be a form of creative death.

"It's like being the clothing designer who spends too much time in sales and not enough time designing clothes. You're not growing. So I have to get out on the road and perform in front of actual human beings."

The spark for that need can be traced back to Peaks Mill, which Sparks calls "a town with one road and 46 people." (As earlier noted, current population estimates are slightly more generous.)

He passed the time playing class clown at school.

At the age of 14 he pulled a cultural about-face, moving from living with his mother in Peaks Mill to living with his father in the very upscale northern Chicago suburb of Winnetka.

He calls the impact of that reverse lifestyle maneuver "stunning."

Inspired to brush his teeth daily and spray on the Right Guard, young Hal leapfrogged from country hick to "Funniest Teenager in Chicago," courtesy a comedy competition he entered and won.

His victorious routine: "It was about the culture shock moving from Kentucky to Chicago. And, frankly, it was a culture shock I was hungry for."

Next up: Enrolling at Chicago's famed Second City in a program they offered class clowns ready to move to the next level.

Immediately after graduating from New Trier, the 18-year-old Sparks felt confident enough to pack up his car and drive himself straight to L.A.

Despite dire warnings to the contrary, he found the showbiz mecca was populated "with some pretty nice people. There were probably more fake people in my mom's church in Kentucky than I found in all of L.A."

Sparks bided his time for the next decade, honing his stand-up and landing occasional small acting gigs on TV and in movies (1989's "Chopper Chicks in Zombietown" was his first theatrical credit; enough said).

The turnabout occurred in 1999, when he was picked to take over hosting chores on cable channel E!'s popular "Talk Soup" daily show, where Greg Kinnear got his start.

Sparks lasted a season before becoming disenchanted.

"It was definitely skating uphill with the powers-that-be at E! all the time," he confesses. "Quite frankly, the ratings were going up all the time, but I wanted to have more of a hand in how the show went. I have certain joke subjects I won't touch, and one of them is that I don't make fun of someone's physicality in regard to anything they can't help or change. I have no reason to go there."

For example, he continues: "Look at (actress) Jennifer Grey, and how gorgeous and original and unique she was, and then she goes and has a nose job to please whom, I don't know."

Well, in fact, Sparks does know: "Talk Soup"-style writers who "make 13-year-old girls' noses the butt of their jokes."

(For the record, the famously catty show continues to this day, albeit on a weekly basis, as "The Soup," with host Joel McHale clearly having no qualms whatsoever about toeing the writers' line.)

Luckily, Sparks segued from that unhappy experience into the role of his lifetime thus far -- as one of the ensemble cast members of Showtime's "Queer As Folk."

The groundbreaking series required Sparks, who is not gay, to spend the next five years convincing the world otherwise through some notoriously frank encounters with his own sex.

"It was a tall order," he admits. "A fellow Chicagoan of mine, John Malkovich, turned it down. And a lot of other people were really afraid to do it, even though the script was really good."

Though the series has been off the air for two years, Sparks is planning new Renaissance ventures in between his stand-up touring and a new series gig providing the voice to the title character of Nickelodeon's animated series, "Tak and the Power of Juju."

One thing Sparks says he's proud of is the fact that his comedy shows draw a crowd "that's very smart and generous and gracious because of the type of stuff I do, which is about ignoring the social boundaries that keep us from having an honest conversation. I don't have an angry crowd."

The reason?

"I'm not angry."



A Hal of a guy



Actor/comedian/musician/talk show host/voiceover artist Hal Sparks is a man of many career moods and modes. Following is a guide to some of them:

Comedian

• Named the "Funniest Teenager in Chicago," 1987

• Trained at Second City in Chicago

• Still performs stand-up comedy about two weeks out of every month

TV actor

• Played Sharon Gless' gay son Michael Novotny for five years on Showtime's groundbreaking series, "Queer As Folk"

• Began his TV acting tenure as an Indian named Gentle Horse on "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman"

• Guested on "Las Vegas," "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," "Frasier," etc.

Movie actor

• Played the outer-space-obsessed Zoltan in the cult favorite, "Dude, Where's My Car?" (2000)

• Had cameos in "Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star" (2003) and "Spider-Man 2" (2004)

Talk show host

• Succeeded Greg Kinnear as host of E!'s "Talk Soup" (1999-2000)

• Regular on VH1's "I Love ..." series ("I Love the '70s," "I Love the '80s," etc.)

Game show host

• Allegedly "the youngest game show emcee in history," per the syndicated "Treasure Mall"

• Presided over "Video Game Vixens" (2005)

Voiceover artist

• Voices the lead character of Tak on Nickelodeon's computer-animated series, "Tak and the Power of Juju"

• Voiced "School Fish No. 1" in "Dr. Dolittle 2."

Reality show player

• Captain of the Chicago Hitmen team on the Game Show Network's "Extreme Dodgeball"

• Contestant on first season of "Celebrity Duets"

Musician

• Guitarist for Zero 1, an L.A.-based rock band

Martial artist

• A practitioner of martial arts for 30-odd years who speaks Mandarin Chinese

Take a look
Hal Sparks has followed his five-year run playing Michael Novotny on Showtime's "Queer As Folk" with a return to his stand-up comedy roots. That return will bring the former Chicagoan to the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts on Feb. 21 for his first-ever downstate Illinois appearance.
In addition to his stand-up comedy, Hal Sparks provides the voice for the title character on Nickelodeon's "Tak and the Power of Ju," upper left; plays guitar in his own rock band, upper right; and starred in Showtime's "Queer As Folk," lower photo.
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