Australian Tumbleweeds
Hamish Blake is Unpopular Fraud, Steals Gold Logie From Deserving Blandoids
Did Hamish Blake deserve to win his Gold Logie? Well, it depends: considering the Gold Logie usually signifies a career about to come to a screeching halt… again, it depends. But you’d expect that kind of snark from us; one place you probably wouldn’t expect it from is the celebrity-worshiping pages of yes, you guessed it, the Herald-Sun via the current grumpy sod in their TV writer’s chair, Colin Vickery:
Hamish Blake is hard to dislike. But it is hard to accept him as most popular personality on the basis of Hamish & Andy’s Gap Year, which even fans concede doesn’t match his talent.
…
The Logies gain huge exposure from the voting campaigns, but you can’t help but think the awards are becoming more about marketing and less about genuine popularity.
Event organisers must put a stop to the campaigns. The gloss comes off the gold if there’s suspicion it has gone not to the most popular personality, but the most cleverly promoted
Gee Colin, why don’t you tell us what you really think? “Genuine popularity”? “Most cleverly promoted”? What, wouldn’t the lawyers let you lead with STOP, THIEF?
This particular spray from Vickery – strangely unavailable online, though published in the April 16th edition – was bolstered after Blake gave Vickery an interview featuring the somewhat self-deprecating comment “I feel like… an imposter. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to seeing my name on that list of winners “. So of course April 17th’s Herald-Sun ran the headline “Hamish Ponders Cred Gap” while Vickery started his story with “GOLD Logie winner Hamish Blake reckons he is an imposter”. Sadly, the lawyers clearly cut out Vickery’s next line, which was presumably AS DO I AND ALL RIGHT-THINKING AUSTRALIANS.
(yes, we did notice the “…” in Blake’s quote, which usually indicates something was cut out. Wonder what it was? Especially as the actual tone of what Vickery did leave in seems to suggest Blake is merely surprised that he won, not feeling like a fraud because he won)
This vitriol is slightly puzzling. What, does Vickery really think that Carrie Bickmore, toiling away on a show that changed timeslot twice in the last year and is currently struggling in the ratings, was vastly more popular than a guy who, as Michael Bodey (writing for the Herald-Sun‘s sister paper The Australian) points out in a piece supportive of Blake, was hosting top-rating TV specials little more than a year ago?
Of course, it could just be that Blake is a comedian who makes jokes, seems likable and has fun in the spotlight, rather than the usual Logie-winning pointless actor or completely superfluous “host”. Lord knows the Herald-Sun couldn’t play favourites when reporting on a news story, even though Vickery made sure to stick the following in his Blake interview:
Blake’s win certainly surprised many observers who had picked Carrie Bickmore or Karl Stefanovic to take out the Gold Logie.
The Logie-winning Hamish and Andy’s Gap Year started strongly but faded in the ratings. Blake’s trump card was popularity on radio and across social media as well as TV
That’s right, he’s not a REAL television star, and don’t you forget it! Sure, Stefanovic hosts a breakfast show that rates even worse than Gap Year did, and Bickmore spent the last year doing nothing memorable on a struggling show, but, uh… HAMISH CHEATED! By being popular. With people who voted for him. For an award based on popularity.
Let’s not forget, this sustained attack on the credibility of the Logies comes in the wake of the award putting its’ voting process entirely online, thus enabling regular folk to vote at the same rate and volume as the awards traditional fans: network publicists. And everyone who counts knows the Logies aren’t about being popular with voters, they’re about being popular with the people who count.
Like Colin Vickery.
The inconsistent world of comedy and the Herald-Sun
Is it just us or have this year’s MICF reviews on the Herald-Sun website been really positive? A bit too positive? Check out their page’s Laugh-O-Meter, which shows that the average rating for shows is 4 stars. Seriously? Even assuming that different reviewers will rate shows on slightly different scales, and that all comedians performing will be doing their best material because MICF is an internationally-renowned showcase event, and that Australia being a relatively small place some reviewers will have industry connections or interests which may cause them to score the acts more highly than others, shouldn’t the average show rating still be more like 2½ or 3 stars? What could be going on here?
Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with last year’s Herald-Sun/MICF reviewing “fiasco” (if not, this blog post gives a good run down), for which the Herald-Sun received a lot of industry flack. Could this be our nation’s largest newspaper attempting to redress the balance, to protect their sponsorship investment in one Australia’s largest cultural events? A sponsorship which we’re guessing was intended to draw a slightly different audience to their core readership.
It could equally be the result of inexperienced reviewers. The Herald-Sun is not exactly noted for its arts coverage, nor is there any major publication in this country which has a dedicated live comedy reviewer. And indeed, if there was a dedicated live comedy reviewer what exactly would they review? Despite a number of people keeping the Melbourne live scene going, it can hardly be said to thrive at any other time of the year. So how can reviewers be expected to keep churning out fair and balanced reviews of a style of performance they rarely see? Better be nice and score them higher to be on the safe side.
(in case you were wondering, the Herald-Sun’s rival newspaper and former MICF media partner The Age has also been reviewing the fest in somewhat glowing terms. While a lot of shows are getting three stars from them, you have to be pretty bad to do worse and a lot of shows have done better. So while they’re not as bad as the Herald-Sun – their reviewers generally have more live reviewing experience as well – the general consensus again seems to be “better-than-average”.)
Not that any of the acts can be worrying too much about this. As a recent blog post demonstrates, there’s a great deal at stake for anyone putting on a MICF show…
They’ve got an average of $8,000 on the line.
…especially if you don’t have much of a profile. In this context word of mouth and good reviews are vital. As is profile-raising, which possibly explains why comedians – who by virtue of their profession should be above this sort of thing – are increasingly prepared to turn up on, for example, morning television, even when they’ve got nothing to plug.
And who can blame them for trying to get their faces out there? Much as everyone involved – apart from the audience – is a winner when comedy shows get glowing reviews (the sponsors – which includes the Herald-Sun – know good reviews help drag in punters who don’t know any better, the organisers can claim the festival was a success because everything was “well-reviewed”, and the performers can put the star ratings on their posters as promotional tools), this kind of constant praise ends up hurting comedians because it leads to disgruntled and distrusting audiences.
Take us for example, for we are the prime market for MICF: people who are interested in comedy. But because we don’t see a lot of live comedy – which makes us like everyone else, because outside of MICF there really isn’t much live comedy on offer in Melbourne (and what there is, is short sets, not 50 minute solo shows) – we have to rely on reviews. And because we can’t trust the reviewers – everything can’t possibly be three stars or better unless three stars doesn’t actually mean “three stars”* – we stay at home unless it’s someone we know about from outside sources. Like television appearances.
Which means comedians will do anything these days, they kind of have to. Over the past decade or so comedy has morphed from something which was almost pure and isolated from other artforms – like a loner standing in a corner at a party, cynically analysing what all the cool, popular people are doing – to a mere ingredient in any number of creative enterprises. Apparently, audiences don’t really want proper news any more, or indeed proper comedy, hence The Project. It’s a situation which frustrates a lot of comedians, who would quite rightly prefer to be off creating comedy than appear on, say, The Circle, for which they don’t make much money anyway.
So, it’s no wonder that comedians (and all the management companies and promoters who grew up around and professionalised the comedy industry in the 90s) get so stressed about people bagging them, or even re-telling their gags, online. Remember, there’s lots of money at stake, and reputations, and indeed an entire career path and industry. But as we’ve argued before, for a bunch of people who are professional funny buggers and want to spend their lives telling edgy gags – gags which out of context can sound like personal attacks and which are liable to be controversialised by newspapers like the Herald-Sun – comedians have a remarkably thin skin and a staggering lack of insight.
If they’re so worried about things like their “personal brand” what the hell are they doing taking-on members of the public who dislike their work? When the public takes to Twitter to express their dislike of a comedian, 99.9999999% of the time they’re objecting to that comedian’s work, not to them personally. Even if in isolation their comments seem like a personal attack (such as “I could just kill Dave Hughes for that”). As Graeme Garden once said “irony doesn’t work in print”, or it least it doesn’t always work in print, and we all – audience members, comedians, promoters, media – need to accept that in all circumstances.
Which brings us back (slightly clunkily) to our friends at the Herald-Sun, a newspaper with an ever-changing and often contradictory set of business strategies, all of which are ultimately intended to make Rupert more money. And if making Rupert money can be achieved by wilfully misinterpreting a joke on one day to boost readership, and handing out four- or five-star reviews to MICF shows on the next to boost takings at an event they’re sponsoring, then that’s what they’ll do. It’s what they’ve always done, and will do for ever more. And it seems the MICF is just fine with that.
*Other artforms – music, movies and television – are measured against a much wider range of examples. A newspaper can give every album they review 3 stars or better and when pressed about their soft reviews counter with “we don’t review anything that gets less than 3 stars” because there’s no way they can review everything that comes out. Movie reviewers can give most movies 3 stars or better because there will be a handful of really, really horrible films released each year that deserve 1 star. But with MICF everything on offer is being reviewed and because it’s the only real source of live comedy for the year the only valid comparison for a show is with other shows on around it – which means that, ideally, a reviewer would see everything first then hand out star ratings. As this isn’t possible, the star ratings are close to useless… but sadly, are the only things anyone pays attention to.
Vale Woodley
Last weekend Sunday Age TV critic Melinda Houston revealed exactly why Woodley has been a bit of a fizzle ratings-wise: “It’s complex and full of thoughtful detail while still able to be thoroughly enjoyed by a six-year old.” While this is true, the problem is that it’s true of the show as a whole, not of the comedy within the show. Put another way, across the eight episodes it rapidly became obvious that the “complex and thoughtful detail” stuff was for grown-ups; the funny man doing silly things was for kids. Grown-ups who want to laugh, enjoy the complex and thoughtful detail while you wait.
Frank Woodley’s not to blame for the way his show was reviewed, but this particular review does highlight the kind of highbrow condescension that this kind of “quality” comedy often attracts. When Houston feels the need to reveal to us that “every episode – and they’re only 30 minutes long” BECAUSE OBVIOUSLY AUSTRALIA HAS A LONG TRADITION OF HOUR-LONG SITCOMS AND TEN MINUTE SITCOMS AND SITCOMS RUNNING PRETTY MUCH HOWEVER THE FUCK LONG THEY FEEL LIKE IT SO SHE’D BETTER LET US KNOW RIGHT NOW THAT THIS PARTICULAR ABC SITCOM IS *ONLY* 30 MINUTES LONG PHEW THANK FUCK OUR LONG NATIONAL NIGHTMARE OF UNCERTAINTY IS OVER, she’s letting us know that she thinks her readers are complete fucking idiots.
No, wait, she’s letting us know that this is a show for people who don’t normally watch television, because people who normally watch television tend to know how long a sitcom runs for. This isn’t regular television, people: it’s a “quality” comedy, based on applause-gathering pratfalls and mime and clowning… you know, the kind of thing they have in those “quality” comedies that gather dust while everyone’s off watching a woman take a shit in a sink in Bridesmaids. One of us recently had a conversation with a friend who hailed Frank Woodley as “a genuine successor to Jacques Tati”, which is nice and maybe even true but probably not something you’d want to put on a DVD cover in Australia in 2012.
We could – and probably should – go on about the critical reception this show got, because most of the time the critics hailed it as an oasis in the wasteland. Which it wasn’t. It was just a little different from the prime-time norm. When you’re a general-purpose TV critic who’s expected to be up-to-date on the reality television and prime-time dramas that make up most of Australia’s television output, simply being different – and not in a car-crash WTF way – is probably enough to have you hailed as a genius. For everyone else who can pick and choose their viewing, Woodley was a little more problematic.
Let’s be clear here: Woodley was a good series – maybe even on its best days (the circus ep and the funeral ep come to mind) a great one – but it was never going to be a hit. Rather than just being flat-out unfunny, it failed in ways we’re more used to seeing a drama fail: it’s a show where all the elements are polished and every piece works as it should, but the project as a whole never quite manages to take off. It doesn’t do anything fatally wrong… it just doesn’t do enough right.
Frank Woodley is brilliant when it comes to mime and physical comedy but you can have too much of a good thing when that good thing often involves falling over, being hit in the head and pulling a sad face. It’s hard enough to get laughs on television when everything is fair game, and when you actively decide to limit your comedy palette – this was a show to avoid if you wanted snappy one-liners or wordplay – the bar is raised just that little bit higher. We’re not saying it needed gag writers and a laugh track: we are saying a little bit more variety in the comedy on offer would have been nice.
More importantly, the core of the show – Frank the sad man tries to win back justifiably disgruntled ex-wife – too often shaded into what in lesser hands we’d call “the tears of a clown”. Mostly Woodley used it to add depth to the pratfalls, but occasionally – a little too occasionally – it slid into mawkishness. And at the other end, sometimes it got a little creepy. Maybe eight episodes was four too many, as the show only found its sweet spot about 50% of the time.
There were plenty of other minor problems – the old-fashioned feel was half-charming, half silly-in-a-bad-way and the groan-worthy gags needed a few more really smart ones to balance them out – but most of them came from the central idea of making a 21st century comedy for grown-ups that was 80% mime and clowning. It’s simply not a field that’s developed much since… let’s say the 1960s… and four hours worth of it stretched over eight weeks with emotional arcs and realistic characterisation (neither of which Mr Bean particularly bothered with) was always going to be a massive stretch.
Even the great movie clowns tended to set up a basic problem then spin routines out of that, but the episodic structure here meant the story had to be reset each week while Frank’s specific nature didn’t allow him to break out into completely different situations. In contrast, by the limited (he wasn’t flying to the moon or anything) standards of Mr Bean, Bean could be anywhere and be doing anything in one episode then be elsewhere doing something else entirely in the next, while Tati would set up a situation for Monsieur Hulot and build riff after riff on that for an entire film.
Frank was trapped between the two approaches. He was too specific a character to provide the variety of a Mr Bean, and having to start again each week story-wise meant Woodley ended up covering the same ground (and often repeating gags) rather than building up to anything truly amazing. Clowning and mime is not an artform that lends itself to extensive character development, while Woodley refused to let its lead be just a… well, a clown.
Much as it breaks our hearts to say it, in Australia these days comedy is niche programming. Woodley was a niche within that niche. As part of a balanced comedy diet, or even with other stronger comedies around it, it might have been both vital and exciting; in today’s climate “sweet” and “often charming” just aren’t enough.
It’s Two-Edged Sword Time Again
While we’re working away on a post about the not-at-all-surprising soft ride reviewers have been giving acts at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival – and we’re also working on a Vale Woodley post that shouldn’t be far off either – it’d be remiss of us to ignore what is perhaps the funniest thing we’ve seen all year:
COMEDIANS have ventured into the last no-go zone of bad language, with many shows at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival featuring the C-word.
The liberal use of the offensive swear word has divided audiences and critics, prompting debate about its place in contemporary performance.
It is estimated up to a quarter of the 400 shows at this year’s festival use the C-word at least once, but there have been “very few complaints” to organisers.
Do we really have to tell you that this comes from The Herald-Sun? The media partner of this year’s MICF? The paper that ran “They Spat In The Face of Dying Children” on the front page while stoking the outrage about the Chaser’s “Make a Realistic Wish” sketch a few years ago (in case you were wondering: the Chaser did not literally spit in the face of dying children. The Herald-Sun ran a lie on their front page). Clearly their fear-mongering skills have dropped off a bit since then:
But parents have been caught off-guard by a potty-mouthed puppet who drops the C-bomb in the first 10 seconds of Sammy J and Randy’s performance.
Sammy J said the show had a recommended age of 15 and over at a venue where children needed adult supervision.
Geez Herald-Sun, everyone knows you get in at least one quote from an “appalled” or “disgusted” parent before you let the comedian mount a defense. More interestingly, there’s this:
Reviewers are divided over its relevance. Some said its use had been appropriate and a winner with audiences, while others said it was lazy, unnecessary and crude.
Aww, come on; name the reviewers who think using the C-word is “unnecessary”. Considering the C-word use has been going on on-stage – according to Justin Hamilton, and why wouldn’t he know – for “more than a decade”, we’d guess it’d be a reviewer new to the live comedy review gig, someone with a record of taking counter-intuitive views on review-related issues for the sake of gaining attention…
(okay, yes, we’re hinting that maybe it’s Jim Schembri. He didn’t quit covering film and television for The Age to be exposed to this filth!)
Seriously though, considering it seems to be the basis for the entire story, why not name these “reviewers” who are divided over a single word that’s been used in live comedy regularly for over a decade? Maybe because it would make them look out of touch and unqualified to be reviewing comedy in 2012? Though if some of the reviews that’ve seen print in the Melbourne papers are anything to go by, a reviewer’s qualifications are the least of anyone’s concerns…
Greeks bearing gifts
You may or may not recognise Tony Moclair. He’s one of those comedians who gets regular work, but hasn’t quite broken through to become either a beloved cult figure (Tony Martin) or a mainstream act with a big fanbase (Wil Anderson). If he does become either it will definitely be the former, because Moclair consistently does interesting, character-based work. Yes, he and comedy partner Jules Schiller made the mainstream panel show The White Room, but it wasn’t the natural fit for them that clever, scripted shows like Restoring the Balance were – and it’s no wonder it died on its arse.
More reflective of Moclair’s talents, and with much lower stakes, is the new podcast This Is Not The News, a parody of a BBC World Service-style international news round-up. Cecilia Ramsdale (who you may remember as one of several people who answered the phones during Get This) joins Moclair in the show, in which they play British journalists Tiffany Woodcock Jones and Martin Middlebrook. The result is a series of fake news reports and headline stories which cover a mix of topical and social issues from around the world. Unfortunately many of these are a bit student radio, over-written, not very funny and drawing on lazy stereotypes.
Ironically, the best sketches feature Guido Hatzis, Moclair’s well-established Greek Australian hoon character – hardly a subtle or un-stereotypical creation. In his new guise as Greek Finance Minister, Hatzis appears in several news reports speaking in the Greek parliament about his plans to solve his country’s economic crisis. Typically, Hatzis’ ideas of what is best for Greece are as self-serving and yobbish as a guy in a hotted-up Commodore doing burn-outs in a McDonalds car park. Hilarity ensues.
This Is Not The News has only been going for two episodes, so it’s probably a bit early to judge it properly and no doubt it will improve after Moclair and Ramsdale have made a few more episodes. Perhaps what is needed is more of Moclair’s well-established characters – young Liberal Stiring Addison, perhaps – or simply for the sketches to get a bit more spit and polish before they appear in the show. Oh, and if there was an RSS feed on the Podbean site so we could subscribe to the show that’d be great.
Vale Danger 5
Parody isn’t exactly the lowest form of comedy, but the law of diminishing returns kicks in pretty fast when your jokes are all about making fun of something else. And Danger 5 wasn’t even a parody of anything real; anyone trying to tell you otherwise wasn’t paying attention last time their local cinema put on a Matt Helm / Our Man Flint festival. Unlike Funky Squad, which was at least sending up something at least some of their audience knew first hand – 70s television in the 90s – Danger 5 was just riffing on a vague idea of 60s spy dramas and men’s adventure fiction with a whole bunch of extra stuff thrown in.
Other people have made the point that at its heart Danger 5 wasn’t really a comedy at all. Instead, it was basically a “straight” spy / action show, only for a value of “straight” that included a shitload of over-the-top elements. That’s probably why a show that really wasn’t all that funny has received a solid dose of praise: it’s easy to see what it’s trying to do, and what it’s trying to do is so out there it’s hard to tell if it’s failing. Nazis in shark costumes? Well, this show has them, so presumably that’s a tick in the Nazis in shark costumes column. Definitely more Nazis in shark costumes than Packed to the Rafters has presented us with to date.
Without some kind of grounding or point to the parody, non-stop wacky hijinks gets both boring and pointless pretty quickly. The original 60s spy spoofs – and there was a heck of a lot of them even before Bond himself turned into one – were playing around with something real (the success of the Bond films). Danger 5 doesn’t have that luxury; it’s riffing on something that’s fifty years old and a footnote in the history of pop culture. What it does have is a segment of the comedy audience willing to heap praise on what should be the backdrop to a successful comedy without noticing that the foreground isn’t there.
Danger 5 was made by talented people who did a solid job of realising their ambitions. It just would have been nice if their ambitions had stretched beyond making a wacky spy series and had touched on telling a few more decent jokes. There was enough decent material stretched across the series to make one really good episode, and that’s all this idea really deserved (especially as none of the running gags and repeated story elements actually built up to anything special).
So what have we learnt? Basically, Australia clearly needs some kind of regular comedy showcase – whether a series made up of one-offs or a weekly hour-long sketch show – where guys like the Danger 5 team can test out their ideas without having to go directly to series. As a regular five minute segment this would have survived being basically a one-joke idea: across six half hour episodes even Nazis can wear out their welcome.
Have we still got the Fever?
Santo, Sam and Ed’s Sports Fever finished up on Monday night after 10 weeks. Apparently it hasn’t been axed, it’s on a break, so the question is: when will it be back? The show’s producers, Working Dog, are famously tight-lipped about such matters – now that we think about it, they didn’t even say how long the series would be – so the only thing we can do is speculate on the show’s future. And our speculation is this: if the money and ratings were/are acceptable to Seven/7Mate, it’ll be back when the “proper” sport is over.
By proper sport we, of course, mean footy – either AFL or NRL – codes which risk drowning in a slurry of coverage on a daily basis, and games which are almost never discussed with any wit beyond hackneyed stereotypes and “jokey” abuse. In this climate Sports Fever and its predecessor Cup Fever have been radical departures, not just because they featured real comedians writing and performing sketches and doing cheesy prop gags (themselves almost radical departures for TV comedy these days), but because they dared to suggest that other sports existed and deserved a mention. Or were smart enough to realise that it’s possible to engage non sports fans by producing something which is entertaining in its own right.
TV shows about sport needn’t be po-faced and serious, or hosted by a group of ex-players trying to out bloke each other. This is a show which ended with its presenters gleefully reading out the worst gags they could think of and chucking them in a bin – oh for the day Eddie McGuire has the sense to throw out a proportion of his output!
Whether the show rated well enough to come back is probably going to be the sticking point. Being bumped from 10.45pm to 11.30pm on Seven was a sign that things weren’t going as well as hoped, but that the show stayed on air for 10 weeks does indicate a certain amount of network faith in it. Or perhaps no one, Seven or Working Dog, wants another of those high profile failures on their hands. If this show is over we won’t get confirmation of that for a very long time, and if it’s back, which we hope it will be, we’ll most likely hear about it when the footy ends.
Saving Schembri
Sometimes problems just solve themselves. Put another way, who knew that two of our recent posts – one on the demise of Jim Schembri, disliked film critic but avid comedy watcher, the other on the slightly surprising news that the Melbourne Herald-Sun would again be sponsoring the Melbourne International Comedy Festival despite the general disapproval of many of the comedians involved – would combine to cancel each other out? Or put a third, actually coherent way: It seems Jim Schembri, having left Fairfax media a few weeks ago, is now working away reviewing MICF shows for the Herald-Sun.
It’s hard to know at this early stage if Schembri will be unleashing his trademark vitriol, borderline sleaze, quasi-homophobia and general condescension in his comedy reviews. In fact, to date his reviews have largely been very positive. Which is a refreshing change both for Schembri and for the Herald-Sun‘s MICF reviews.
[Meanwhile, back at Schembri’s former home The Age, where of course they’d never have any sour grapes over losing the MICF sponsorship, it seems the very existence of the MICF – nay, laughter itself – is threatening the foundations of our society. Or at least, “the saturation of the comedy festival is working against Melbourne being a home of original ideas”:
When humour becomes the default field for social discussion, serious proponents of controversial material are less attractive in the media and less influential in the community itself… Comedians have begun to disproportionally inhabit the places where we meet to talk.
Considering that for this argument to make sense the author must be referring to people like Dave Hughes and Libby Gore, let’s just say his definition of “comedian” is disturbingly broad. And going by the number of times the headline IT’S NO LAUGHING MATTER pops up whenever a “comedian” cracks a joke about a topic the tabloids deem to be of import, it’s safe to say his concerns about laughs crippling serious discourse – at least on celebrity pregnancies, Logies outfits and Anzac Day – seem unfounded.]
While we’re on the subject of the media settling scores, far be it for us to point out the fairly typical way in which a much-derided foe – in this case, one Jim Schembri – becomes a font of wisdom simply by changing employers… ah, why not. From News Ltd’s Australian, less than a year ago:
Losing the plot
AGE movie critic Jim Schembri did the unthinkable last week — he posted an online review of Scream 4 that gave away the ending. The response on The Age’s website, and on Twitter, was immediate: “Why would you post that spoiler in your opening sentence?” said one reader. “You’re a real A-hole for ruining the film,” said another. In what looked like an effort to contain the damage, the online review was changed within hours, after which Schembri went on Twitter to say: “I didn’t give away the ending!” Nobody believed him, mainly because the Google cache version of his story was still available. Diary called Schembri, expecting to find him chastened, but mostly he sounded defensive. “I can’t talk to you,” he said. “I must direct all calls to the personal assistant of the editor-in-chief, Paul Ramadge. And I have a review of Thor that my editor is screaming for, so I’m hanging up.” If that weren’t strange enough — since when can’t reporters talk to the press? — Schembri has now posted a long piece saying he always intended to trick “the internet” into thinking he’d run a spoiler (which he had). “I decided to create an online event . . . I wanted to become the scourge of the Twitterverse . . . I ignited the firestorm by writing two Scream 4 reviews, one with a genuine spoiler, one without,” Schembri wrote. “The latter ran in print . . . the one containing the spoiler went online, but only for a limited time . . . once outrage had been stirred, the online version was altered.” And so on, and so forth. Now, this is merely Diary’s honestly held, personal opinion, but that sounds like utter bollocks.
From News Ltd’s Australian, less than a month ago:
AFTER a number of Twitter indiscretions, The Age’s long-serving entertainment writer Jim Schembri negotiates an exit.
In a memo sent to staff last night, editor-in-chief Paul Ramadge wrote: “After 28 years of dedicated service and hard work bringing a distinctive voice to The Age’s entertainment coverage as a film and TV critic and feature writer, Jim has decided to embrace other challenges.”
Last week, website Crikey erroneously reported Schembri had been “sacked from his position following revelations he had reportedly dobbed on the employers of his Twitter critics and hinted at taking legal action under the auspices of Fairfax Media”.
In fact, management only asked Schembri to take early leave after Crikey broke news of his Twitter transgressions. It is understood Schembri had a substantial amount of time owing and Fairfax Media did not comment on Schembri’s misdemeanours.
…
Schembri has since negotiated his departure. It is believed he will continue writing on pop cultural matters elsewhere.
From News Ltd’s Herald-Sun, less than 72 hours ago:
Review: Dom Romeo in Stand-Up Sit-Down: Comics in Conversation
Jim Schembri
From: Herald Sun
March 30, 2012 2:54PM
Guess the days of “utter bollocks” are far behind him. At least the Australian‘s hair-splitting defense of Schembri regarding his “negotiated” departure – what, does anyone think he would have left The Age if the Crikey story hadn’t blown up? – makes a little sense now. And if they have no problem with someone they recently claimed to be speaking “utter bollocks” now being the official voice of their best-selling Australian publication when it comes to comedy… well, considering the respect comedy usually gets from our major media outlets, is anyone really surprised?
Nattering on for the hell of it
With almost all Australian radio comedy consisting of two or three people having a natter, it’s perhaps not surprising that most Australian comedy podcasts follow a similar format. The (refreshing) point of difference with some of the better podcasts, however, is that the level of conversation often raises its sights above the odd-spot stories in that morning’s paper. Two podcasts which feature worthwhile comedic nattering – and an exploration of the craft of comedy – are The Little Dum Dum Club and Can You Take This Photo Please?, both of which have been going for around 18 months. If you don’t listen to them already we recommend you start.
The Little Dum Dumb Club is hosted by stand-ups Karl Chandler and Tommy Dassalo. Amongst the escalating in-jokes about Sunshine Johnson (a local character from Chandler’s hometown of Maryborough) and the fact that Dassalo’s real surname is not Dassalo, have been some good insights in to the Australian industry. Kate McLennan spilled all about Live From Planet Earth, Robyn Butler and Wayne Hope talked about their move into not-for-profit online video, and Weird Al Yankovic was interviewed for far too short a time. Other guests on the show have included Mick Molloy, Shaun Micallef, Charlie Pickering, and a number of prominent figures from the live scene.
Can You Take This Photo Please? with Justin Hamilton and Bron Robinson is similar to Dum Dum, but often gets more serious and in-depth. Comedians you may have dismissed as “that guy from that show” (i.e. Lehmo) turn out to have some interesting insights into their craft, while veterans of the industry like Tony Martin, Tim Ferguson and Greg Fleet require two podcasts each to go through their professional histories.
The latest episode of Can You Take This Photo Please?, in which Hamilton explains why his new Comedy Festival show The Goodbye Guy may be his last for a while, sees him get very reflective on his career and the local industry in general. If you’ve been listening to Can You Take This Photo Please? for a while, Hamilton’s decision to stop doing one hour shows for a bit doesn’t come as much of a surprise. Last year’s MICF reviewing fiasco, particularly as regards comments made about his show Circular, and a few other factors (which he outlines in the podcast), have prompted Hamilton to make the change. It’s a massive shame if you’re a fan of one of this country’s more experimental and interesting stand-ups, but at least the podcast will continue; a series of video podcasts filmed at MICF are apparently coming soon.
What is perhaps worth questioning about The Little Dum Dum Club and Can You Take This Photo Please? though, is that these podcasts are made by working comedians who can’t necessarily be relied upon to take a neutral or critical stance on the comedy industry. While you do get the sense in those shows that you’re eves-dropping on the sorts of conversations stand-ups have with each other after gigs, the reluctance of those involved to openly question bad work from their fellow comedians is problematic. If people aren’t willing to be honest and critical in one of the few regular outlets for serious discussion of comedy, then where will they? Sometimes you wait years for the likes of Jon Faine, who regularly has comedians on ABC Melbourne’s The Conversation Hour, to host a worthwhile discussion about comedy (more often you get this sort of thing), and we can’t think of another show apart from The Little Dum Dum Club and Can You Take This Photo Please? which does it better. [Okay, Tony Martin’s A Quiet Word With was pretty good too, but that didn’t feature many local comedians, and Tony Martin’s hardly a neutral party.]
But that aside, the long-form, often rambling, comedian-on-comedian chats you get in The Little Dum Dum Club and Can You Take This Photo Please? are still interesting. Very interesting. No one’s got anything to plug (mostly), they’re interesting conversations, and in the end, that’s perfectly fine.
Pictures of Matchstick Men
Working Dog has a new television show out? As Mick Molloy used to say, hurrah! These are the guys that gave us Frontline (excellent), The Panel (ground-breaking, if of variable quality), The Hollowmen (a steady improver), Thank God You’re Here (massive smash hit, occasionally hilarious), Cup / Sports Fever! (a sports comedy show sports haters can actually enjoy) not to mention roughly half of the various D-Gen television shows up to and including The Late Show. They know what they’re doing, and they do it well.
So it’s something of a disappointment to discover that Pictures of You is exactly what it looks like: host Brian Nankervis (who’s a steady pair of hands) holds up photos (brought in by his celebrity guests) and said celebrities talk about them. “I remember that,” they say, before launching into either a funny anecdote or moderately revealing tale of their past. And that’s it. It’s lightweight chat with a bit of a hook. That’s all.
We bring it up for two reasons. One, the show does seem to be focusing on comedians to some extent. The first episode featured Shane Jacobson and Anh Do, both of whom have been known to crack wise in the past (even if here the focus was also on their somewhat grim childhoods), while next week sees Julia Morris once again telling everyone she’s a comedian without actually providing any concrete evidence of it. The fact that, so far at least (and this does seem like the kind of show that would want to lead with its strongest guests first), none of the comedy guests are A-list comedy talent is just a sign of the times *cough Agony Uncles cough*. Australia currently likes its TV comedy talent to be “likable” rather than “funny”… which leads us to our second point.
TV Tonight described Pictures of You as “a Tonight show void of punchlines and performers”, and we’d go along with that. But where they meant it purely as a descriptive term – their overall review is generally positive – we’d say a talk show devoid of jokes and performances is a pretty shithouse talk show. And coming from people who used to pack every second of their shows with jokes? This frown on our faces didn’t get there by accident.
Yet this is merely an example of Working Dog knowing which way the wind is blowing in television. The days of comedy – pure, unadulterated, make-’em-laff comedy – seem to be rapidly fading. Today shows have to appeal to as wide a (dwindling) audience as possible, and that means comedy is just an ingredient (alongside family trauma, tales of struggle and everything else from the Enough Rope cookbook) instead of the main course.
So Pictures of You features comedians, and then gets them to talk about their childhood and their family in the hope that they’ll grab both the comedy and the personal insight / tearjerking crowd. Of course, comedy fans would like a lot more comedy in their viewing, but these days we’re told you have to take what you can get. And despite their comedy background, Working Dog aren’t afraid to dial down the laughs if they think the viewers want something a little blander. Sometimes they get it wrong – their recent feature film Any Questions For Ben? didn’t exactly set the box office on fire (it didn’t even set a soaked-in-lighter-fluid Polaroid picture of a box office on fire), but their logic remains sound.
With audiences having an increasing range of things to watch in their viewing time, it’s perfectly legitimate to assume that the blander and more wide-ranging you make your projects, the better the chance you’ll have of luring in as many viewers as possible. That said, it does also mean you have a pretty good chance of turning people off, what with “bland” not yet becoming high praise even in television reviewing circles.
And oddly enough, there’s a counter-example currently on-air that’s also out of the Working Dog warehouse: Sports Fever!. Resolutely specific – it’s not just about sport, it’s about sports like soccer that most Australians know root-all about, and THEN it’s about obscure figures in soccer – and with no real wide-ranging appeal, it works because it sticks to a handful of things and does them well. It’s made by people who know their subject (sport), and they use this sports knowledge to create comedy that even non-sports fans can find funny. Seems almost simple when you put it like that.