Joe Bodolai, who produced the hit CBC series The Kids in the Hall and wrote for Saturday Night Live, has died at the age of 63.

His body was discovered Monday at a Los Angeles hotel where he'd checked in on the 19th. A spokesman for the coroner's office says Bodolai drank a mixture of Gatorade and antifreeze. His death appears to be a suicide.

During a professional career that spanned more than three decades, Bodolai worked as a producer or writer on a variety of high-profile TV comedy shows that aired in Canada and the United States.

Bodolai came to Canada in the 1970s to avoid being drafted for the Vietnam war. One of his first jobs in Canada was as a writer for CBC Radio's Quirks & Quarks series.

In 1990, Lorne Michaels asked him to be the supervising producer at The Kids in the Hall — a job he held through the 1991 season.

He was executive producer of the series, Comics, which aired on CBC for eight seasons in the 1990s, working with such comedy stars as Brent Butt, Sean Cullen and Shaun Majumder .

Bodolai also helped to write two Gemini Awards night broadcasts and worked as a writer on three other TV series — It's Only Rock and Roll, Game On and After Hours. He was nominated four times for a Gemini Award.

The last entry on his personal blog — dated Dec. 23 — at times read like a suicide note. Titled "If This Was Your Last Day Alive, What Would You Do?" Bodolai wrote, among other things, that he was proud of writing the first draft of Wayne's World with Mike Myers, his two grown sons, and his writing for Saturday Night Live.

His regrets included "my inability to conquer my alcoholism" and "that I am no longer able to withstand any more of life's pain."

Comedian Dave Foley, who starred on The Kids in the Hall, tweeted a simple tribute: "He was a lovely man."