Funny business going on at Wiener’s Home Hardware

Howard Pressburger, a familiar face at Wiener’s Home Hardware, on Bloor Street, dispenses daily doses of fix-it yourself advice and is all the while quietly contemplating a comedic plot. photo Brian Burchell, Gleaner News

By Nicola Kivell

Howard Pressburger, a longtime Annex local, actor, and employee at Wiener’s Home Hardware, gets it.

Especially when it comes to the imminent struggle and conflict between who we are and what we do.

He also understands how to put an absurd and comedic twist on a otherwise overwhelming theme and find the humour in our day-to-day struggles. Through his comedy project, Nuts and Bolts, he explores the looming reality that we all face when it comes to how and what we identify ourselves with and how we do so. There’s no question that a large majority of us identify specifically with what we do, how much money we make, and whom we associate ourselves with. So what happens if we lose all that?

Howard found the answer with Nuts and Bolts. After consistent requests from the community for him to create a television comedy revolving around the everyday absurdity and craziness of working in a hardware store, he was finally able to do it. The opportunity came to life with the CBC ComedyCoup Contest. ComedyCoup provides comedy creators from all over Canada the framework to create hilarious videos and pieces and put them together to develop their comedic projects. It is a contest left in the hands of the viewers. It’s up to you to vote and advance your favourite projects closer to the $500,000 production financing prize to create a half-hour-long comedy special for CBC prime time. With this fabric, Howard, along with his co-writer and girlfriend Shana Sandler, producer and co-writer Josh Tizel, and producer and director of photography Peter Ivaskiv, started to develop the comedy.

Nuts and Bolts is about a man named Howard who essentially loses everything, from his money, his job, and his wife to his identity itself. Howard ends up back in his hometown where he takes up a job at a local hardware store. It is here where Howard tries to put back together the pieces of his life and, in doing so, discovers a whole new outlook on what really holds us together as people and the fact that sometimes you have to go right down to the simple framework of it all to find yourself again. The comedy depicts real-life, hilarious anecdotes and stories from Howard’s years of experience working at the hardware store, dealing with the day-to-day, sometimes bizarre and comical struggles we all face.

Having never written or developed a TV show, ComedyCoup gave Howard the platform and tools to create something really special, but the inspiration for the idea truly came from the community itself. “This was really a project fuelled and generated from the community at large,” notes Howard. “ComedyCoup gave us the framework and the opportunity but we’re in this for the long run, we’re in it for the experience, and we’re in it to do something with our community.” Not only does Nuts and Bolts portray the hardware store community and the realism of everyday obstacles, it also finds the humour and absurdity in the ordinary and mundane. Because seriously what’s more funny than real life? Nuts and Bolts is a comedic gem because it’s relatable, it’s unique, and it’s absurdly hilarious in all the right ways. So make sure you check it out! You can go to comedycoup.cbc.ca/nutsandboltstv to see videos and cast your vote.