Australian Tumbleweeds
Le Petite Mort à L’arrivée
So Australian comedy actor Josh Lawson has turned writer-director and made a film called The Little Death. But how to get your small quirky comedy noticed in a cinema marketplace where half a dozen films from overseas debut every week? Maybe like this:
Why is Josh Lawson bashing Australian cinema? You’d think that a guy who’s leveraged his success in local television and film into prominent roles in American films like Anchorman 2 and television series like House of Lies would have some loyalty to the industry, but apparently not. Promoting his directorial debut, sex comedy The Little Death, Lawson has seemingly stumbled on a convenient marketing catch phrase – “If you are an Australian who doesn’t like Australian films, this is the film you should watch, because neither do I” – that he’s been throwing around in his interviews.
Unfortunately, the reviews once people actually saw it were more like this:
But how does The Little Death — Lawson’s first feature as writer and director — fare when it comes to walking the walk?
Let’s just say it ain’t got the legs.
As Lawson has pointed out, it is clear there are millions of movie misanthropes in our midst who’d rather stay home and wash their hair than go out and watch an Australian production.
However, The Little Death isn’t going to be the one that stops many of them reaching for the nearest shampoo bottle.
Which led to a result like this:
Josh Lawson’s The Little Death generated a tonne of media coverage and mostly favourable reviews after selling to the US and multiple other territories- so why haven’t Australian audiences been more aroused by the sexy comedy?
That question is being debated after the saga of the secret sex lives of five Sydney couples rang up $77,700 at 34 screens last weekend and $83,500 with previews.
Having seen it on this very tight-arse Tuesday, here’s our answer: it’s just not very good.
It’s basically a collection of lame sketches that’re only slightly better than The Elegant Gentleman’s Guide to Knife Fighting, in that once they explain the basic set-up (they’re all based around couples with a specific fetish – one woman is turned on by her husband crying, another has a rape fantasy, a guy only gets turned on by his wife when she’s unconscious, etc) they just wander around for a while then fizzle out. Off the top of our heads, of the four main storylines two end in a pregnancy, one ends in marriage and one in divorce. They might be legitimate relationship milestones but they’re hardly surprising or funny.
The trouble with sketch comedy in this country for a long time now is that the old idea of “it’s too hard to come up with a punchline so getting out when you can is good enough” has mutated into “it’s too hard even developing an idea past the initial concept so… yeah”. A woman is turned on by her husband’s tears, so she comes up with ways to make him cry. That’s it. It just escalates until it ends. No twists, no surprises – and even worse, no insights: what would it actually be like to only feel sexually attracted to the person you love when they were in actual distress? Don’t expect answers here – all we get is someone playing tricks on her partner over and over so she can get her rocks off (as the kids say).
(there’s a minor subplot about an old guy who goes around door-to-door handing out baked Golliwogs, then when everyone is distracted by nostalgia he informs them he’s a sex offender. It’s the same joke three times, then on the fourth appearance he arrives during a fight and says “I’ll come back later”. This is the kind of throwaway running gag that could work in a movie packed with rapid-fire jokes and cut down to a minute tops: when it’s a slow burn spread out over what feels like minute upon minute of dead air, you’re just wasting everyone’s time)
There’s been a bit of flack sent Lawson’s way for the rape fantasy storyline, but for us that was actually one of the more sensitively handled plots: how do you go about fulfilling your partner’s sexual fantasy when it goes against everything you believe in? Of course, the storyline doesn’t actually answer any of those questions and the resolution is a massive cop-out – basically, so long as he thinks he’s done a good job it’s all good, while her unfulfilled fantasy is basically filed under “I’ll just pretend I got what I wanted so we can move on with our lives” – but in and of itself it’s not handled offensively.
Mind you, it’s not handled funnily either.
As for Lawson slagging off Australian film in general, who can blame him? For the audience this is aimed at he’s probably right. But that’s like complaining that Australian film isn’t making enough sketch comedy movies so no wonder people aren’t going to the cinema any more because clearly sketch comedy is what the mainstream wants. If people want this kind of thing they can get it elsewhere and better: Australian film is, on the whole about the kind of stories people can’t get anywhere else. Usually because all the stories with mainstream appeal have been grabbed by television or overseas film.
So this kind of stuff from the producers is a big load of crap:
“There is no doubt that we have a brand issue here, and what we’ve seen is a few key critics dig the boot in and causing a great deal of harm in an environment where our product needs nurturing,” Hilton said, “especially when we have a film that could break out and resonate with audiences. If we were reviewed 4 or 5 stars across the board and people still didn’t come, we could have pointed to a brand issue, unfortunately that’s not the case here.
“This film is for audiences, it’s not an ‘important’ story with serious message, it’s a comedy. And it’s the only thing a comedy needs to be, hilarious. What’s most disappointing about the soft opening is that the film works. We’ve seen it work for 90 minutes, every time we play to a full theatre.
Yeah, good luck getting those full theatres now. Because whatever this film is, unless you’re someone who giggles at the word “rape”, it sure as shit ain’t hilarious.
Still, we’re talking about a director who, when faced with criticism, responds with “how many films have you made, champ?” The real problem with film-making in this country is that we have a shitload of directors and producers who don’t seem to understand that perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to actually spend a few bucks on a script editor so they didn’t end up filming something that was arse.
Going by his first film, Lawson is a halfway decent director and the cast is pretty sharp across the board. But the script is an aimless mess, congratulating itself on its bravery for discussing sexual fetishes while having nothing of interest to say about them. Making a bland film aimed at an imagined white middle-class Australian mainstream isn’t breaking new ground, or giving the people what they want. If you want to do that and you’re making a comedy, maybe you might like to start with a couple of decent jokes.
Critical Failings (part 17 of a seemingly endless series)
It’s a sad indictment of the mental prowess of the people who run the Australian media that they seem to think hiring people who work in an industry to comment on that same industry is in any way useful to their readership. Oh sure, we can see how they’d come to that conclusion: who better to dissect the foibles of a specialist area than someone intimately involved in that area? It works for sports coverage after all, right?
Jesus fucking wept. Look, in sports coverage you’re hiring old farts who no longer play the game to cover a game they know well. When you hire Jazz Twemlow of ABC2’s The Roast to comment on television, you’re asking a guy who still plays… wait, “Jazz Twemlow”? Give us a minute here.
And we’re back. Anyway, thumbs down to The Guardian AU for hiring a working television performer – ok, yes, at least two of those three words are optional extras in this case, but you know what we mean – to write a hefty chunk of their television coverage. Did no-one think this would give off the appearance of someone favouring his mates and taking a swipe at his foes in the business of which he is a part? “Conflict of interest” is still a thing, right?
Sure, he’s focusing his ire on soft targets like reality television and overseas imports, possibly to avoid such a conflict. But what if the readers of The Guardian AU want to read about local comedy? Even if he could somehow guarantee that his coverage was 100% fair and balanced and not even slightly tainted by, say, the fact that if The Chaser and Mad as Hell were both to somehow get the chop The Roast would obviously yet pointlessly be promoted to the big time on ABC1, the people behind the other shows would be entitled to be somewhat pissed at having a rival pass judgement on them. Unless he only ever said nice things, and we’ve already got enough of those “critics”, thanks.
And yet this screwing over of readers and rival shows is a regular feature of the Australian television critical community, mostly because most of the members of the Australian television critical community are desperately working to remove the word “critical” from their CV. Is it general knowledge that Fairfax daily TV critic Ben Pobjie is a contributing writer for the ABC series Reality Check? You’d think it’d be the kind of conflict of interest they’d mention in every single one of his reviews, but it seems not.
Again, this is the kind of thing where people say “as long as he’s not reviewing his own show, where’s the harm?” Here’s a clue: it means that Fairfax’s TV critic isn’t reviewing a program being broadcast on the national broadcaster. Reviewing doesn’t run along a scale from “this thing is awesome” to “no comment”, despite what a shitload of people out there would like to have you think – including, it seems, the nations top movie critics. Sometimes a negative review is appropriate. And with Pobjie writing for Reality Check, it’s not going to get one from him.
“But what about you losers,” a fictional tough guys says, lurching out of the shadows and gesturing wildly at us, “we don’t even know who you really are – you could be Rove McManus for all we know!” Good point. Fuck, but The Project is shithouse, ey? Guess we’re not Rove then.
The big difference between us and these guys is that we run a blog about Australian television comedy and to the best of our ability we cover as much Australian television comedy as we can. You can read our opinions and decide if we’re right or wrong. These guys are professional television critics who seem to be deliberately ignoring at least some of Australian television comedy due to conflicts of interest.
Hey, here’s a crazy idea: maybe next time, hire television critics who can actually do their damn jobs.
We’ll Take It For As Long As It’s On Offer
Nice things: we just can’t say enough of them about Shaun Micallef. It’s not just that he (and his trusty regular cohorts, co-star Francis Greenslade and writers Gary McCaffrie and Michael Ward) are funny: he’s hard working too. Not for him vanishing for a few years in some behind-the-scenes gig or personal project no-one ever sees – he’s constantly churning out television shows (twenty episodes this year alone), with books and CDs and dozens of appearances everywhere else in between. Which is lucky, because at times it feels like he’s holding up the quality end of Australian comedy all on his lonesome.
There’s not a great deal new we can say at this stage about Mad as Hell, AKA the best comedy show on Australian television. Everything good we’ve said in the past seems to still apply – personally we’d probably prefer a few more sketches but with twenty episodes a year the interview format is clearly working just fine when it comes to giving the gags structure. And with a cast this strong just having them on-camera talking crap is good enough for us.
So for now, let’s just say we’re glad as Hell to have Mad as Hell back. If it feels just a little like Micallef’s skills would be better used elsewhere (news satire might be difficult to do, but it’s still entry level comedy and Micallef has proven multiple times that world-class sketch comedy and sitcoms are within his grasp), at least he’s doing us all a massive favour by keeping The Roast back on ABC2 where it can be safely ignored. Because all too soon Micallef will move on and the ABC, determined to have a regular news parody program no matter how low the level of quality, will bump The Roast up to prime time. And then where will we be?
It’s All Fun & Games Until Someone Gets Hurt
Press release time!
ABC APOLOGISES FOR THE CHASER’S MEDIA CIRCUS
ABC TV has today issued a pre-emptive apology for the whole series of the Chaser team’s new show, The Chaser’s Media Circus, which starts on ABC on Wednesday 15 October at 8.30pm and continues for 8 weeks.
“Looking forward a few weeks, we’ll definitely have to admit that in retrospect it could have been prevented,” said the ABC in a media release with an intentionally misleading headline.
“This is a group that not only does evil, it revels in evil,” said Prime Minister Tony Abbott in comments which appear to have been taken out of context.
The Chaser’s Media Circus is a new format by the team’s production company Giant Dwarf, makers of The Hamster Wheel, The Checkout, and election specials Yes We Canberra and The Hamster Decides.
“The Media Circus format is kind of like The Hamster Wheel… of Fortune,” said host Craig Reucassel. “It combines the Chaser team’s take on the week’s news and current affairs with the satirical comedy and media analysis of The Hamster Wheel and chucks it all together in the form of games. For the Chaser team, news really is a game now.”
“We’re hoping it will be a new low in the decline of news into entertainment,” said executive producer Julian Morrow. “We can’t destroy news, but degrading seems achievable.”
Filmed in front of a live studio audience each week shortly before broadcast, The Chaser’s Media Circus sees a mix of journalists, comedians and members of the program’s team (including writer/performers from The Checkout Ben Jenkins, Zoë Norton Lodge and Scott Abbot) dissect the week’s news and media through games like:
● Out of Order: Where teams have to organise news stories in the order they appeared in a TV news bulletin. Which is deemed most important – Syria’s civil war, the AFL results, or a neighbourly dispute over a garage roller door?
● Press Pack: Where a team member plays the part of a public figure at a press conference defending an embarrassing gaffe. Or whatever Jacqui Lambie said that particular week.
● Evil Mastermind: A fun game for the whole family where you have to decide whether a quote about “evil” is by Tony Abbott or a cartoon super-villain.
Each episode of Media Circus will also feature Chas Licciardello in the role of a one-man media brains trust, a sort of cross between Dickie Knee and Rain Man.
“It’s a shame that all the ABC’s good work for Mental Health Week (5-12 October) will be immediately cancelled out by the return of the Chaser team,” said ABC Director of Television Richard Finlayson.
The Chaser’s Media Circus is a Giant Dwarf production for ABC TV. The Executive Producers are Julian Morrow and Martin Robertson. ABC Executive Producer Sophia Zachariou.
Nice to see the ABC press department is still running with that whole “pre-emptive apology” gag when it comes to announcing The Chaser’s new projects. Also, it’s going to be more of a game show? Yeah, we’re not exactly loving that news, but we’ll hold fire there until we’ve actually seen how it turns out.
So what have we learnt from all this? Well, it seems like the long-held dream of The Chaser (core membership) to step into the background a little and pass on the performing duties to a new generation (AKA the guys from The Checkout) seems to be finally taking place. Making this series slightly more important than usual for The Chaser: if there’s any serious drop in ratings or interest, it could be taken as a sign that viewers only want “original brand” Chaser. What that would mean for the future of the team – would they break up, give up, or stick to doing their on-air work themselves – would remain to be seen.
Working Dog is usually the model for this kind of transition, but those guys hit the ground running with new cast members with Frontline (which was also a clear break from The Late Show) – this is more like the rumoured plans to keep The Late Show going with new cast members, only that never happened because most of the original cast bailed and wanted to let the format die. For a comparison with something that actually happened, this seems like the rolling casts that the various Fast Forward – Full Frontal series had throughout the 90s, and the quality there was a lot more variable – once the quality performers left, the audience fell off too.
The reason why Australian television comedy is all about the writer-performers is largely down to money. The whole Saturday Night Live model of a big team of writers plus a big team of performers has never really happened at the ABC (seriously, we’re struggling here – maybe stuff like The Sideshow?), so it’ll be interesting to see if The Chaser (which is a pretty big comedy team even with all but one member also appearing on-air) manage to pull back to behind-the-scenes stuff. Andrew Denton managed it for a while, but apart from him Australian comedy has largely been a performers’ game – if you’re not willing to stick it out in front of the camera, it’s time to find a new line of work.
Speaking personally, we’re not all that worried. The Hamster Wheel has been the most consistent (and impressive) work from The Chaser to date, so if the writing team remains the same (yes, we know that’s a biggish “if” based on that press release), we’re confident the on-air material will also remain decent. And it’s not like The Chaser have ever been universally strong on the performance side of things; it’ll be interesting to see if different performers put a different spin on their work.
As for that whole “it was going to be ten episodes but due to ‘scheduling’ it’s been cut back to eight” deal, let the rampant speculation begin…
Age Ain’t Nothing But A Number
How to explain this?
Currently halfway through its ten-episode second season, Please Like Me steadily gaining the attention of local audiences. Perhaps it was ‘Josh Thomas baggage’ – as cultural critic Dion Kagan dubs it in his wonderful Metro Magazine article – that kept local audiences away.
“Josh Thomas Baggage”. There’s the name of our new grindcore band right there.
That’s actually one of the better Please Like Me reviews we’ve read, in that it actually talks about things taking place in the show that the author likes, rather than just a bunch of vague hand-waving about how “adorable” and “quirky” and “heartfelt” the show is. If the relationship between Thomas and his on-screen mother is what you like about the show, we’re not going to argue with you: it might not be all that funny, but at least it’s an actual part of Please Like Me.
But then we get to this:
Thomas – equipped with skinny jeans, bow ties and an outspoken attitude – is a deliberately whimsical presence (think ‘adorkable’, then hate me for making you think of that word). These traits, when combined with youth, can ostracise audiences.
We won’t deny that “whimsical youth” is pretty much a synonym for “annoying”. But it’s also a little annoying when it’s assumed that the reason why audiences are being put off Please Like Me is his quirky youthfulness and not the way that large chunks of Please Like Me – while clearly well-meaning when it comes to mental illness – aren’t very funny.
We understand that it can seem a fine line between dismissing someone simply because of their youth and dismissing someone because they’re not very good – or at least, it is when you decide that saying someone isn’t very good is really just your way of saying you only like comedians that have spent years honing their craft. Wait, that is what we’re saying. Oh God, we’re prejudiced against the kids now.
Let’s put it this way: twenty-seven isn’t young enough to excuse a show this bad. Chris Lilley was barely 30 when he did We Can Be Heroes, and whatever that shows flaws it was a lot sharper than Please Like Me. But to be fair, Australian comedy has been aging a lot since the turn of the century – when The Chaser are still the up-and-comers of ABC comedy you know something’s not right – so it might seem legit to suggest that Thomas should be supported simply because he’s not pushing 40 like all the other comedy “young guns”.
But for those of us with long memories – or working DVD players – it’s fairly easy to compare the twenty-something Thomas with a whole lot of twenty-something comedians from Australia’s comedy past. And it doesn’t take all that long to realise that by twenty-seven you really don’t have many excuses left for not being really funny. How old were the Doug Anthony All-Stars in their prime? How old were Tony Martin and Mick Molloy on The Late Show? Hamish Blake is only 33: you didn’t hear anyone making age-related excuses for him when he and Andy Lee had the biggest radio show in the country back in 2009 – when they were both twenty-seven.
Come on, Josh Thomas might not be an old comedy pro but he’s certainly old enough for his work to be judged on its merits. The core of Working Dog were barely in their 30s when they made Frontline: there’s a shitload more than five years separating that and Please Like Me.
Heaven Is A Place On Earth
Has anyone put together a program to randomly generate Utopia episodes yet? It shouldn’t be all that hard, going by this list of discussion points we just whipped up:
*Malfunctioning office equipment / computer (VERY IMPORTANT)
*Interchangeable dialogue for the two ditzy office assistants (though their running jokes don’t overlap – if one is struggling with the faulty office equipment, the other is only dealing with confusing messages from elsewhere, and so on)
*Rob Sitch and Celia Pacquola having so few scenes together it’s like they had a brief affair off-camera and now hate each others’ guts.
*Did we mention the computer troubles?
*Lehmo being surprisingly convincing as a one-track mind dimwit who’s only joke is that the government wants the opposite of whatever the Nation Building Authority thinks is best. Why is there an NBA again?
*The rock solid comedy dynamic of “someone stupid / someone smart” playing out in every single scene, which is probably why Sitch and Pacquloa – as the only two smart characters in a sea of idiots – never seem to appear together.
*Vague decent political points about how developers get what they want and politicians only want projects that will make a splash / make them look good. Also vague less decent points about how art is pointless, the environment is an obstacle, consultation just sucks up time and effort for no good result and the public are nutters. Actually, that last point’s a good one too.
*The whole thing feeling like it’s lacking a certain something – Frontline worked even when it wasn’t hilariously funny because it was informative about the way tabloid television really worked, and it was scathing about it to boot. The Hollowmen, on the other hand, had (early on especially) a fairly feeble “all politicans are as bad as each other and politics is just aimless stuffing around” point-of-view, which meant that it felt both kind of gutless and oddly conservative. Utopia feels like it’s backed away from that a little – it’s only focusing on one small aspect of political life for one thing, and the desire to announce big projects really is bipartisan – but it still lacks the behind-the-scenes stuff that made Frontline really stand out. If you’re going to do lightweight, plot heavy comedy like this, you either need to be really really good at packing it with great gags, or you need to be actually informing your audience during the scenes where the jokes just aren’t there. It’s easy to forget that Yes, (Prime) Minister was actually lifting the lid on how the public service was really running the UK at the time – the occasional “gee, that explains a lot” moment was a big part of a): giving the viewers a break from all the wordplay and character hijinks, and b): providing a bit of weight to all the wordplay and character hijinks. You’ve got to get the audience to invest in a sitcom somehow, and if you can’t make them care about the characters it’s a huge help if you can tell them stuff that applies to someone they do care about – themselves.
*Something about how petty and silly office interactions are – signing cards for someone you’ve never met, having to do assessments of co-workers you’ve never met, forgetting the names of people you’ve never met. Anyone get the impression that the head honchos at Working Dog don’t really spend a lot of time interacting with the little people around their office?
*There’s probably some actual character differences between all the “dumb’ characters, but aside from Kitty Flanaghan’s PR flack / media advisor / person who reminds us that the the struggle in this show is between appearances and reality, they really do seem to be all the same person. Why do Working Dog write these big ensemble sitcoms? It worked in Frontline because the stupid characters were different – you had a burnout hack journo and a preening self-obsessed fashion plate as part of the on-air team, for starters – but they’re just not that different here. Yes (Prime) Minister only had three main characters, and so did The Games (ok, it crept up to four there): pretty much the entire regular cast here could be boiled down to Rob Sitch, a ditzy assistant, and a character combining Lehmo and Flanaghan’s roles. You’d have a much stronger dynamic between the three roles and you’d be able to tell pretty much all the same jokes. Plus it’d be cheaper! And also then Rob could play Rob, Santo could be the ditzy one and Tommy G could be the oily one. Which is probably how it breaks down in the writing, come to think of it.
* Some decent one-liners. Whatever their faults, Working Dog are still first-rate when it comes to firing off the gags.
*A refreshing focus on being funny rather than point-scoring. Unlike The Hollowmen, where it really did feel like Working Dog were trying to say something about our government, this is just them having a bit of fun with the stupid way political planning is currently playing out. Which is good. There’s probably a different sitcom somewhere to be made about the way that numerous competing interests actually like the way the system is currently broken as it serves them much more than it serves the general public, but whenever Utopia touches on those bigger themes getting a joke out of them is always the main goal. Whatever the shows other flaws, there at least they’ve got it 100% right.
It Seems You Can’t Spell Community Without Money
Press release time!
MEDIA RELEASE For immediate release
Community Television Press Release
In a statement on his website today Malcolm Turnbull justifies his recent shock decision to axe community television services by quoting some audience statistics that throws into question whether the sector deserves a place on the spectrum.As with all use of statistics, it is easy to cherry pick the numbers that best support the outcome you are looking to achieve.
No one should be surprised that a politician might use this approach in the face of what is proving to be a universally condemned decision.“Average Audience” describes exactly that – the average number of viewers that watched a particular station over a period of time as viewers tune in and out. “Average Audience” is the currency of television advertising trading. It is unsurprising that community television has a low “average audience” due to the niche and eclectic nature of the program and the fact that stations do not operate primarily to attract strong “average” audiences in the same way the massively resourced national broadcasters do. Community TV audiences watch the program that is of interest to them and then switch off.
A more appropriate measure of the scale of active interest in community television is “Reach”. Reach describes the total number of “unique” individuals who tune in and watch the station over the same period. Melbourne community television station C31 reaches 450,000 – 500,000 viewers every scheduled week – demonstrating the scale of interest and relevance of the programs we broadcast. Nationally community television is watched by over 3 million Australians every month.
By quoting community television audience as an “average” Turnbull seeks to diminish the quantum of interest in community television in the face of the overwhelming public backlash against his decision.As a comparison Community Television currently out-rates our equivalent specialinterest broadcaster NITV on both “average audience” and “reach”. We view NITV as an integral and important part of our media landscape and like Community TV should not be evaluated purely on a ratings analysis.
We also note that the Minister indicates he will be working with the sector to “consider the most appropriate transition strategy” for community television. We are yet to have any communication from the Minister or the department about this decision. The sector learned of this announcement via a transcript on his personal website on Wednesday.
And just in case you were wondering exactly what kind of sods we’re dealing with in the Federal Government, this is one of the questions posted as part of Malcolm Turnbull’s announcement on the “future of community television”:
How much have community television broadcasters been paying for access to the sixth channel spectrum?
Seriously? They’re trying to stir up outrage that a “community” organisation is getting free access to the broadcast spectrum? Guess we know what line they’ll be taking when it’s time to privatize the ABC then.
We sat on this for a few days because we weren’t really sure about what stance we wanted to take. Sure, Rove and Hamish & Andy (amongst others) got their starts on community television: do we really need to make the obvious jokes here?
But even we can tell a massively shitty decision (and a naked cash grab) when we spot one. Community television might not be the proving ground it once was – blah blah youtube clips blah blah bunch of obvious “observations” gone viral blah blah – but that doesn’t mean we should chuck it in the bin for the sake of yet another commercial shopping network we’ll program out of our televisions the first chance we get.
Moving into the future is supposed to mean we get more viewing options, not less: guess that upcoming Chaser show Media Circus is just going to be jokes about how the Abbott government won’t rest until the only media options available to Australians come from Rupert Murdoch.
Only they won’t really be jokes.
Taxicab Confessions III: Going Home In a Body Bag
Ok, now this is getting weird. Remember yesterday we posted about some alleged incident allegedly involving alleged comedy figure Paul Fenech?
THE ‘‘mishap’’ Fat Pizza actor Paul Fenech suffered two weeks ago, ending his stint on Dancing With The Stars before it even began, was allegedly the result of a violent altercation with a taxi driver.
Well, it seems this story is the gift that keeps on giving if you’re the people at the Daily Telegraph‘s “Sydney Confidential” page:
A WEEK after his house was torched in mysterious circumstances, Fat Pizza star Alex Haddad has spoken about the breakdown of his friendship with alleged cabbie basher Paul Fenech.
With Fenech due in court next month charged with assaulting a cab driver on August 22, Haddad has opened up for the first time about the souring of his relationship with his former mentor. There is no suggestion Fenech had anything to do with the house fire.
Haddad says he and his Fat Pizza producer and co-star fell out amid claims he was using his TV launch pad to “pick up chicks”.
Call us dim, but we’ve read and re-read this story a dozen times or more and we still can’t figure it out. It seems that Haddad and Fenech are no longer friends, and also Haddad’s house was torched. But that has nothing to do with them not being friends so please don’t draw that inference because that would be totally wrong and also inaccurate. Did we mention this:
It’s clear someone from the Pizza cast or crew has it in for Haddad.
Because:
The administrator of the show’s Facebook page taunted Haddad on the site after his house burnt down on September 2.
Case closed officer, throw away the key. But also:
There is no suggestion Fenech had anything to do with the house fire.
So which one is it? Arrgh, this is doing our head in. We need a good laugh to get over all this tension – but where to find one…
Haddad, who also featured in Underbelly and Packed To The Rafters, claims Fenech isn’t too dissimilar in some ways from the character he plays on the un-PC production.
“But, he is not a bad person. He does like to give to charity.”
Ok, that’s a start. But with a story like this, you really need a big laugh to bring it all home. Oh, wait:
Haddad however isn’t focusing on Fenech’s jealousy. Instead he has plans to crack the US, like former Pizza star Rebel Wilson.
“With my Armenian background and the industry in the US having a major Armenian contribution, I have an advantage over a lot of others,” he says.
Yep, that’ll do it.
Taxicab Confessions 2: Fists of Fury
As Jerry Seinfeld never said, “what is the deal with SBS comedians and allegations of violent assault?”:
THE ‘‘mishap’’ Fat Pizza actor Paul Fenech suffered two weeks ago, ending his stint on Dancing With The Stars before it even began, was allegedly the result of a violent altercation with a taxi driver.
Confidential can reveal police were called to Sydney’s CBD on August 22 following reports claiming a cab driver had been allegedly assaulted by the controversial comedian.
Fenech, 44, was arrested on the corner of York and Jamison streets following the altercation, taken to Day Street police station and later released.
A NSW police spokesman told Confidential the man was “issued with a future service court attendance notice for the offence of common assault. The man will appear at Downing Centre Local Court on 15 October 2014.”
The Housos creator took to social media last week to claim his abrupt departure from the dancing show was due to a dislocated knee.
First SBS’s Jason “Wilfred” Gann, now Paul Fenech; when will this nightmare spree of uncomic carnage end? Can’t the Herald-Sun/government step in and ban this government-funded filth? Or something? And what is it about appearing on SBS that drives these comedians to violence? Too many sexy European late night movies? Not enough sexy European late night movies?
Fingers’ crossed the alleged altercation wasn’t sparked by the taxi driver not finding Fenech funny – just by being the creator of Swift & Shift Couriers he’ll be punching people out for the rest of his life. Then again, there’s a good chance the taxi driver was really a comedian from ABC2’s Back Seat Drivers: if it turns out Fenech biffed Tumbleweeds fan fave Dan Ilic, good luck finding a jury that would convict.
Or it could just be that the show is shit
Submitted without comment from TVTonight:
It’s no laughing matter when a network picks the wrong timeslot for your show, and it’s a fate that appears to have befallen Please Like Me for Josh Thomas.
Last year it launched to 176,000 viewers on Thursday nights on ABC2 and was the channel’s highest-rating scripted show. This year on a Tuesday night it began with 103,000, but has now dropped to 57,000 in a timeslot not known for local comedy offerings. Despite positive reviews, viewers are either not warming to the material this season or are just forgetting it’s there.
Oh wait, we do have a comment: When a show loses 50% of its audience in a few weeks, there’s no “either” in front of “viewers are not warming to the material this season”. Clearly audiences found Please Like Me, then they lost interest in it: ABC2 is really going to struggle finding a timeslot when the already locked-in season three comes around.