HALIFAX -- Ricky, Bubbles and Julian had barely taken the stage when the perks of newfound celebrity came pelting from the crowd.
"People were throwing huge bags of weed at them," says Mike Clattenburg, writer and director of The Trailer Park Boys, the cult TV hit that begins its third season on Showcase on Sunday.
"People would give us a tape and you'd open it up and it would be full of weed. We had so much we had to throw it away."
The scene was Kelowna, B.C., in January and Ricky, Bubbles and Julian -- three dope-smokin' doofuses from fictional Sunnyvale Trailer Park -- were warming up the crowd for rockers Our Lady Peace.
A few hours before, the boys had been tipping a few in a Kelowna bar when they noticed people staring.
"There were probably 10 people there and within an hour, an hour-and-a-half, the place was full," marvels Robb Wells, who plays foul-mouthed Ricky on the popular show.
"People were calling their friends saying, 'The Trailer Park Boys are here. The Trailer Park Boys are here.' It was crazy."
The Kelowna trip gave the boys their first inkling of how popular the low-budget, Halifax-produced mockumentary has become since first airing two years ago.
In the ensuing months, they've hobnobbed with rock stars, put the finishing touches on a soon-to-be-released DVD of the show's first two seasons, begun writing a feature film based on the show and generally tried to adjust to the weirdness of sudden fame.
"I remember the first time Episode 1 played," says Mike Smith, whose myopic, kitty-loving Bubbles has become a particular fan favourite.
"I remember distinctly thinking, 'That was wicked. That'll probably never be on the air again because it's just too crazy.' Then it got played what? Seventeen times that season?"
The low-brow comedy follows the lives of Ricky, Bubbles and Julian and their hare-brained schemes to attain "Freedom 35," usually through dope-growing.
The third season opens with Ricky and Julian's release from jail following their latest drug bust. Flush with thousands they hid before their arrest, the two return to Sunnyvale with big plans that quickly go awry.
"It's nice to see that people have really latched onto it," says Clattenburg, who grew up in a Dartmouth, N.S., suburb with Wells and John Paul Tremblay, who plays rum-swilling Julian. "I think the characters really scream Canada, but it's not an accurate representation of trailer park life. It's a whacked-out comedy."
Because of a low-budget, documentary style that borrows as much from Cops as its does Spinal Tap, Trailer Park Boys blurs the line between fiction and reality for many fans who don't realize the show's not real.
Wells was drinking in a Prince Edward Island bar once when a guy tried to hire him to kill a neighbour's dog -- a key plotline from a short film that spawned the series.
Then there was the time he was waiting in hospital for an X-ray when he was approached by a patient who was convinced he had done jail time with both Ricky and Julian.
"With some of these people, you're afraid to tell them it's not real because it's so awkward and they're so sure it's real," Wells says.
The show is shot in several Halifax-area trailer parks. But Clattenburg is considering building a fake one because of the inconvenience it causes residents who've had to cope with trucks and crews at all hours of the day and night and fans who show up by the dozens for tapings.
"Maybe once or twice someone will accuse us of making them look like Yankee trailer trash," he says. "But in the midst of that we've seen all kinds of great, wonderful examples of people who really want to help us make the show."
Besides Canada, The Trailer Park Boys is shown in Australia and Clattenburg is confident of a deal soon in the United States, where the show already has an underground following built through tapes downloaded from the Internet.
MTV, the American music video giant, showed interest in The Trailer Park Boys early on and even talked of running it back-to-back with the hugely popular Jackass. But the network ultimately balked at the show's overt drug use and frequent gunplay.
Wells says they're not about to tone down the show's content, which includes some of the foulest language this side of The Osbournes, to appeal to a wider audience.
"If we got rid of the guns and the dope, I'm sure it would be much easier to sell," he admits. "But this is our show. This is what we wanted to make from the beginning."
IF YOU WATCH
What: Season debut of The Trailer Park Boys
When: 9 p.m. Sunday
Where: Showcase