The Cart Boy
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The Cart Boy is a 9-minute long short film written and directed by Mike Clattenburg in 1995, which was one of the earliest incarnations of the later hit mockumentary series Trailer Park Boys. It was the debut of Mike Smith, who played a character that would later grow into the loveable Bubbles from the show. Although it features Smith, Robb Wells, and John Paul Tremblay, who are all regulars on the show, it has no continuity to the series itself.
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[edit] Plot Synopsis
The short opens with the titular character, whose name is Darren, collecting shopping carts from ditches and ponds, stating that this is his way of making a living. He reasons that nobody wants them when they are lying around, so he takes them home, fixes them up, and sells them back to a different mall for $12 a cart. We cut to Ricky (Wells), a low-level security guard whose job is to retrieve shopping carts around the mall parking lot. He has been working at the job for three months, and he is getting frustrated at the large amount of carts disappearing and re-appearing again. His boss is Jason Peterson (Tremblay), the chief security guard whom he considers "a dick." Both come into conflict with the Cartboy when they catch him taking a shopping cart from a ditch, and Jason tells him to get lost. Later, however, he returns again to collect more, and this time Ricky punches him in the stomach and scares him off. After he leaves, Jason finds that he dropped a picture of an orange cat with an address on the back of it. He tracks the location of the address, and, after their shift is finished, he and Ricky go down to learn more about the elusive "Cartboy."
They arrive at his apartment and try to remain polite with him once he lets them in, but he stays silent throughout their questioning. Suddenly, the orange cat is shown limping into the room. It is learned through Darren that the cat, named Bubbles, was the victim of a tragic accident a year earlier. Every year, the cat has kittens, and Darren takes them down to the orphanage to play with the orphans. Whilst driving back there to pick them up that particular year, a drunk driver ran Darren's car off the road, it flipped, and Bubbles was thrown out the window, unhurt. Knocked unconsious, Darren was revived after the cat crawled through the wreckage and batted his face until he woke up, but she got badly burned on the right paw. He explains that he only steals shopping carts to save enough money for a $2800 procedure that will give his cat a new paw. Ricky and Jason feel very sorry for him, especially after what they did to him earlier, and they offer their services to assist him. Later, Darren is cart-searching in the ditch again, and Ricky tosses him a few carts as a way of helping him out.
[edit] Cast
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Robb Wells | Ricky |
| John Paul Tremblay | Jason Peterson |
| Mike Smith | Darren the Cartboy |
| Bubbles the cat | Bubbles the cat |
[edit] Trivia
- Bubbles the cat is really Mike Smith's cat in real life. He also makes an appearance in the fourth season finale "Working Man" as "Vince the Pince," one of Bubbles' cats.
- According to Mike Smith, the coke-bottle glasses that have become his trademark were bought at a flea market for two dollars, especially for this short.
- The security uniforms that Wells and Tremblay wear are used in the episode Mr. Lahey's Got My Porno Tape!, where Ricky and Bubbles wear them in the amateur J-Roc pornographic film.
[edit] DVD Release
The Cartboy was included on the DVD release of Trailer Park Boys: The Complete First and Second Seasons.
