Australian Tumbleweeds
Rove (B)la(h)
Nice looking but dull, that’s how you might describe Rove McManus; it’s also not a bad description of his chat show Rove LA, which finished up the other night. Normally on this blog we wouldn’t bother with a chat show, but as this one had a fair bit of comic pretension and represents a very large percentage of Foxtel’s original comedy output for this year (the rest of it was local remakes of Balls of Steel and You Have Been Watching– way to go, Pay TV!) we felt it was worth noting.
Rove LA wasn’t a terrible chat show. It had decent guests, the host was pleasant to them, they participated in some segments and there were some laughs – look and learn, A Night With The Stars – it’s more that McManus failed to bring anything genuinely interesting out of any of the people on his sofa, or to get big laughs from any of his comedic schtick.
The wacky segments seemed influenced by British shows like The Graham Norton Show (and it’s possibly worth noting that Rove LA was produced by UK company Avalon Television), but the show didn’t seem to have any of the “out there” daring you get from the Poms. At least when Hamish and Andy’s Gap Year went to meet some crazy dog owners one of them pretended to be a dog, in Rove LA all Rove could manage was some mugging to camera as the obsessed owner showed him a wardrobe full of canine dress-up clothes.
Rove LA was slicker than Rove Live, but the same basic problem with Rove as a personality was still there: he’s just dull. And by transporting him to a town where it’s controversial to say anything that’s even slightly negative about another star, you basically compound the problem.
But what does it matter? Rove McManus’ ambitions lie in the US, and Rove LA is basically him killing time and fluffing up his showreel until Hollywood gives him a show. There will be another series next year, apparently.
Not Gruen out
The purpose of comedy, it is often said, is to speak truth to power. But comedy’s fatal flaw is that it needs to speak truths whilst also being funny, and once people are laughing they’re probably less inclined to overthrow the powerful. Those who argue that comedy is a conservative artform have a point – comedy may point out some truths about the powerful, but it also makes you feel a lot better about them existing (if only for a few minutes).
Comedy can still make the powerful quake in their boots, of course. Dictators aren’t big fans of dissident comedians and tend to imprison then for sedition, but censorship is a rather crude way of silencing comedy and one which will ultimately win you fewer friends. A much better tactic is to join in the fun – everyone will love you for having the gumption to take the piss out of yourself, and a surprising number of people won’t notice the difference between your officially-sanctioned comedy and a genuinely hard-hitting one by a satirist who hates your guts.
Which brings us to the various Gruen programs (no, really). Lots of people love them, yet ask those same people what they think of advertising executives and they’ll use phrases like “lying sleaze-bags” and “rip-off merchants”. Along with tabloid journalists, real estate agents, lawyers and anonymous bloggers, advertising executives are some of the most hated people out there. But present the public with a panel full of the cheery-faced fuckers, and make it look like they’re having a jolly wheeze of a time revealing a few trade secrets in between Wil Anderson’s gags, and it’s hello audience adoration, howdy-do ratings success!
The fact that large numbers of otherwise sane and rational people have come to love the advertising industry isn’t much of a surprise, perhaps – advertising executives don’t make it unless they know how to rebrand a turd – but the public’s four-year love affair with the show is quite something. Gruen may have undergone some format changes, but it’s still exactly the same show with the same host and the same panellists talking about the same sorts of subjects, often using the same observations and gags as part of some strikingly similar segments. Perhaps the show’s many fans have learnt nothing about the techniques of advertising – we refer you to our earlier point about how Gruen has merely made it look like it’s revealing trade secrets.
There was talk yesterday on a couple of websites, such as TV Tonight, that this evening’s episode of Gruen Planet could be the last Gruen ever. Don’t believe it – Gruen is not ending. It cannot be killed, and there’s no way in hell they’ve run out of slightly different versions of the original concept. Next year we’ll probably be invited to watch The Gruen Games live from London. Or there’ll be a Gruen look at reality TV, or gardening, or the rural economy. Too many people like it too much for this to be the end. This is merely adieu.
Numbers In Action
We’ve got nothing against The Chaser.
(and let’s just pause to reflect that, by saying we have nothing against them, we’ve made certain the rest of this post will prove the opposite)
In fact, while their current series The Hamster Wheel might be somewhat hit-and-miss, when it hits it’s probably the best thing they’ve done yet. But it’s worth nothing that this week (or maybe last week, our maths is a little shoddy) is the 10 year anniversary of The Chaser’s first appearance on the ABC.
Yep, (roughly) ten years ago, in October and November of 2001, The Election Chaser screened on the ABC, featuring a bunch of fresh-faced young comedians huddling under Andrew Denton’s wing as they took swings at both sides of politics in what would soon become their trademark style. And thus, with a few bumps along the way – reportedly they were pretty much sacked when the ABC didn’t renew CNNNN (hence Charles Firth heading off to the US), with The Chaser’s War On Everything basically being their comeback show – a legend was born.
Oddly, not much has been made of this anniversary by The Chaser themselves. Presumably it doesn’t mean much to them; they were doing their newspaper long before the TV show, and were working on the television show long before it aired. Still, The Hamster Wheel did start airing roughly on the tenth anniversary of their first appearance on the ABC: so where’s the party?
Perhaps pointing out that this is their tenth year on the ABC is something they’d rather avoid, considering they’re still occasionally described as “The Chaser Boys”. That’s not a cheap shot (okay, it’s not entirely a cheap shot): before The Chaser settled in for the long stretch, satirical comedy teams on the ABC had a life span of a few years at best. Australia You’re Standing In It had two series, in 1983 and 1984; BackBerner went four years, from 1999 to 2002. Perhaps the longest run prior to The Chaser’s was Max Gillies. The Gillies Report ran one series in 1984-85; follow-up The Gillies Republic had one series in 1986 and then nothing until Gillies and Company in 1992.
In contrast, The Chaser have made the following over the last decade : The Election Chaser (6 episodes, 2001), CNNNN (19 episodes, 2002-2003), The Chaser Decides Mk 1 (4 episodes, 2004), The Chaser’s War On Everything (60 episodes, 2006-2009), The Chaser Decides Mk 2 (2 episodes, 2007), Yes We Canberra (5 episodes, 2010), The Hamster Wheel (8 episodes, 2011). Pretty impressive stuff.
You can take this somewhat staggering amount of output two ways: either they’re impressive comedy technicians and the only people able to create material at the rapid and demanding rate required by the national broadcaster’s ceaseless desire for topical humour, or they’re hogging all the seats on the topical comedy bus and not giving anyone else a go.
Again, for a large part of their career we think they’ve done good work (and for the rest they were making The Chaser’s War on Everything under what seems to have been fairly stressful circumstances), but does anyone really think that for a full decade they’ve been the only comedians working in Australia who could make sketches about politics?
[we won’t mention The GlassHouse if you don’t. And anyway, that was a panel show]
It’s not like they’ve really changed up their material over the decade either. CNNNN cloaked their mix of topical references and media swipes in the guise of a fake news channel; after that it’s just been various members sitting at a desk talking about topical references and media swipes before throwing to segments about topical references and media swipes (and the occasional musical number). They used to do pranks; thankfully now, not so much. They used to do vox pops; again, thankfully not so much.
That said, good luck naming any comedian who radically changes their work over their career. Sure, there have been some, but not many, and not any in this country: Barry Humphries and Shaun Micallef, Max Gillies and Tony Martin are still basically making the same kinds of jokes they always have. Our problem – such as it is – isn’t with The Chaser making the same show over and over again…
[though actually, what happened to that sitcom they’d occasionally talk about? Why don’t they try something different, at least format wise? Having a giant hamster as a desk doesn’t count, and changing up the format might make the actual jokes seem fresh…ish]
… as it is with there being no other “satirical” comedy voices getting a go at the ABC for a full decade. What, The Chaser have set standards so high no-one else could possibly reach them so hey, don’t even bother? At this point we’d usually reel off a list of contenders for The Chaser’s job, but how can we? The whole point is that, by staying put for a full decade, no competing voices (and traditionally the ABC is the ground floor for TV satire, even if all the floors above have now been demolished) have been given a chance. Though the Restoring the Balance team on TripleJ have done a pretty decent job with political satire over the last few years – perhaps giving them a television special isn’t the worst idea ever?
Until The Chaser arrived a decade ago the satire slot on the ABC was relatively open with fresh faces cycling through on a semi-regular basis; now it’s a closed shop, no other applicants need apply. That’s not to say The Chaser isn’t worthy of the work, or that they haven’t been doing as good a job as any. But isn’t it time the ABC at least started to consider bringing some other voices on board before The Chaser Boys start getting around on walking frames?
It Hardy seems fair
When Marieke Hardy – writer / creator of ABC comedy series Laid and former breakfast presenter on ABC radio station TripleJ, amongst many other strings to her media bow – updated her blog on Tuesday, she promoted it via Twitter with these words…
I name and shame my ‘anonymous’ internet bully. Liberating business! Join me!
This tweet was then re-tweeted more than 100 times, which caused her blog site to be throttled to such an extent that anyone visiting on Wednesday night got only a “site quota exceeded” message. Then there was a new blog from Hardy Thursday entitled “Too much traffic equals blog meltdown equals…”. It’s contents were simply…
Enough oxygen. It’s a sign from the baby Jebus.
In Hardy’s site-crashingly-popular – and now pulled – blog she named and posted a photograph of a man she says has “had a bee in his bonnet about me for over five years”. She went on to describe how this man posted anonymous comments on her old blog, and then started up his own blog “seemingly with the singular purpose of letting people know what a tedious harpy I was”.
Upon reading the blog in question, we couldn’t help but agree with Hardy that the posts featured there are “rambling” and “poisonous”. They also seem to us to be written by someone with A LOT of problems, mainly about women expressing their sexuality. He may have some valid points in there somewhere about cronyism in the media, but it’s unlikely you’d want to wade through all the bile to find them.
Hardy says she was prompted to name and shame this man by the #mencallmethings campaign, which has been a much-discussed online in recent days and originated from two articles published in New Statesman and The Guardian last week. As these articles rightly point out, female writers, bloggers and opinion-givers receive an unjustifiable amount of personally abusive and sexually threatening comments from men online. A number of women writers have come out with shocking stories and spoken of how comments of this nature have made them want to give up writing. Clearly this is not a good situation, whatever you think of the work of the likes of Marieke Hardy.
What we question, though, is Hardy’s decision to name and shame this particular man. If she was at the point where she had evidence that it was him – and she says she’s known for months – could she not have gone to the police or lawyers? Did the #mencallmethings campaign just make her snap after years of anger, and then pull the piece when sense (or possibly wise counsel)* caught up with her? And what of this from her original blog:
Since discovering his identity I think any real potency behind [his] hate blogs has dissipated completely. He just seems like a fairly sad man who should probably find another hobby.
If that’s what she really thinks then why write the piece at all?
This is a difficult, complex topic. You have a well-connected but lacklustre writer who writes largely about herself and her sex life, whose work has attracted years of unjustifiable, sexist abuse from an anonymous man. The man in question has a couple of decent points to make, but seems only to be able to make them via the aforementioned unjustifiable, sexist abuse. And finally, there’s the legal system, which has proven time and time again to be incapable of dealing with sexual abuse of women without making those women victims suffer again and again for it. You can see why a victim might take the law into their own hands, but enlisting your online followers in this fight hardly seems fair.
As for why we in particular care… well, Hardy – in her guise as television writer – seems to have found a niche as a comedy writer with Laid. And as we’ve mentioned in the past, at the moment there’s a bit of a pushback from the comedy community against social media in general. This is an extreme and very personal example of it, but it’s an example nonetheless: someone’s gone online to rail against a comedian they don’t like, and the comedian’s swung back.
While we’d be the first to suggest Hardy’s writing isn’t all that funny – look up our posts on Laid and you’ll see we already have – in one way it’s easy to see why she’s been lumped in with actual comedians: like many of the best comedians, her work is intensely personal. For one, you can’t imagine anyone else writing much of her column work, though that’s mostly because pretty much all of it is about herself and her somewhat cultivated quirks (she loves Bob Ellis! she doesn’t mind getting her gear off!).
More than just about anyone working in Australian comedy at the moment, the focus of Marieke Hardy’s work is Marieke Hardy. She’s put a lot of time and effort into cultivating and promoting her “sexy / quirky / smart” image (there aren’t a lot of other comedians in this country putting out topless promotional photos of themselves), and we’re hardly the first or the only critics to suggest that lead character Roo in Laid was a very thinly disguised version of Hardy’s public persona. And as is often the case, when someone – in this case, someone who’s writing takes a deeply unpleasant tone – wants to take a swing at a comedian who talks about their personal life, their personal life is what they attack.
None of this in any way excuses anyone making a personal attack on her. We do think it’s worth pointing out that if someone’s entire act is based around “LOOK AT ME!!” right down to publishing a collection of stories about their relationships with a drawing of them on the cover (as shown here), then it’s even more important than usual to keep the focus on the work, not the person who created it. Those who dislike Hardy’s work should bear that in mind. She does have over 50,000 twitter followers she can sic on you, for one.
*Or perhaps the author of the Hardy-hating blog was telling the truth when he claimed (the day after Hardy’s post) that he in fact wasn’t the person Hardy named. Supposedly he’d used his top-level I.T. skills to shift blame / her attention onto an innocent third party, who he then suggested could cash in big by suing Hardy over her post.
Coda: It seems that Hardy’s brief attack worked: the blogger she targeted has announced he’ll be closing his blog down in a few weeks. He still claims to not be the person Hardy named & shamed though.
Vale: The Joy of Sets
Hard as it might be to believe after his twenty-odd years in the spotlight, The Joy of Sets was Tony Martin’s first lead role in a television show. In fact, every other cast member of The Late Show (where Martin first made a serious TV splash) has more up-front television experience than Tony Martin has. The Working Dog guys have made hundreds of hours of television by now; Jason Stephens is a high-level production executive with Freemantle media; Judith Lucy’s Spiritual Journey involved international travel, loads of interviews, sketches and so forth; Mick Molloy made eight episodes of The Mick Molloy Show and another thirteen of The Nation.
Before you start penning aggrieved letters to the editor, let’s also point out that Martin has written and directed a feature-length film, as well as directing a swathe of episodes of The Librarians and parts of Judith Lucy’s Spiritual Journey. We’re not saying he’s a newcomer to this television business by any means. We’re just pointing out that, even after twenty years of seeing him on other people’s shows and doing a ball-tearer of a job on radio not once but twice, it might have been wise to keep expectations somewhere around the middle of the range. Because that’s largely what The Joy of Sets delivered.
In the various interviews given pre-Joy of Sets Martin said once he was hired for the show (the format having been pre-sold to Nine before he came on board) he was left to his own devices as far as writing / choosing an on-air partner went. You could probably guess that Nine and / or production company Zapruder’s (makers of The Gruen Transfer) imposed the half-hour format instead of a two-hour one, but otherwise pretty much everything about the show past the basic “make fun of television” idea seems to be Tony’s work. Presumably the basic pitch to Nine would have been “an in-depth look at television… did we mention we already make a show that looks at advertising that does quite well?” and considering how far Joy of Sets is from any of the Gruen shows, it’s safe to say Martin was making his own show here, not an assembly-line Zapruder’s product. If there are problems with the end product, for once corporate’s off the hook.
One of the frustrating things about the early episodes of The Joy of Sets – it got better as it went along, about which more later – is that there was always glimpses to be had of the quality comedy Martin is known for delivering. While merely the sight of an oiled-up Warrick Capper didn’t exactly count as a laugh for us – and the law of diminishing returns kicked in hard with every subsequent appearance – My Monkey Baby more than made up for it. The jokes were often strong, the sketches even better (the send-up of The Block with Scott Cam was both hilarious and a reminder that almost every other sketch show on TV this year has been running on autopilot) while Martin and co-host Kavalee had decent chemistry out the gate despite the occasional clumsy moment.
And yet overall the early episodes felt stilted, as if a much funnier show had been edited down until all the oxygen was gone.
[numerous reports from tapings said the show was much, much funnier to watch in person. Great. Unfortunately, taping is merely part of the process to create a finished product, not an end in itself. While it’s nice that those who made it to the tapings had a fun time, for those watching at home hearing that all the good stuff was cut out was cold comfort]
Much as many Get This fans hoped and wished for “Get This TV” after that radio show was taken off the air, The Joy of Sets suggests they may have been lucky their wishes weren’t granted. The show’s two biggest weaknesses in the early weeks were the two most obvious hold-overs from Martin’s Get This days: co-host Ed Kavalee and the weekly guest.
Kavalee is a decent television host (see TV Burp) and he can be great radio talent, but for the first few episodes of The Joy of Sets he often came across as stiff and forced. We’re not blaming him, mind you. The format itself was basically “radio with pictures” – when Tony was talking there was nothing for him to do but look attentive. Tony, no doubt due to years of panel work on countless TV shows, came off a lot better when it was Ed’s turn to speak. Still, two guys sitting on brown chairs yammering away doesn’t make for thrilling entertainment visually no matter how attentive you look.
The guests, on the other hand, never really worked. Sure, some had funny stories, some had loads of energy, and Pete Smith as always had both. But on a 22 minute show giving over the final third to an in-studio guest drained all the energy out of the room. The first 13-odd minutes would fire through joke after joke and clip after clip at a rapid-fire pace… and then suddenly everything stopped while someone new sat down and told a story. It was often a good story; it just slowed the show right down, and with only 22 minutes in the first place that proved fatal.
So why’d the interviews work so well on Get This? Our best guess is that on radio a guest just means the same chat-based show continues, only with an extra person chatting away. On television a guest means the clips go out the window and the third person turns a clip show into a chat show. Interestingly, the longer Joy of Sets ran, the more they squeezed in clips during the interviews in an attempt to keep the pace up. Not to mention the generic TV star guests got the boot in favour of comedians better able to keep up with Martin and Kavalee.
As you might have guessed from all the “in the early weeks” references, we thought the show improved a lot as it went along. Martin and Kavalee’s banter seemed more natural, the pace picked up, the moments where the show broke out of the format were always good but they got a lot better – Martin’s out-of-nowhere plea to the jury and his line-up with Denton and the “For Dummies” guy during the police TV show, for example – and even the Capper moments tipped over the edge into outright absurdity.
Unfortunately, it was too late. Much as ratings are no guide whatsoever to the quality of a show – we have no idea what The Bazura Project rated on ABC2, but we’re guessing “bugger all” might be a good starting point – we’d be fools to ignore the fact that, unlike 90% of the comedy we talk about here, The Joy of Sets screened on a commercial network where commercial considerations apply. Fortunately Nine let it run out the clock in a later timeslot and all eight episodes aired, but it looked a little iffy there for a while.
On the one hand, airing at 9pm on a Tuesday (traditionally Nine’s worst night) after Two and a Half Men was never going to make things easy for The Joy of Sets; on the other, they had over a million people check out the first episode. To be fair, most likely many of those viewers just stuck around after seeing the first Sheen-free episode of Men and were never going to become regular viewers of The Joy of Sets. The fact remains: over a million people saw the first episode; less than half that number were watching when it was bumped back to 10.30pm.
[More ratings fun facts in the comments here]
Again, let us stress: we’re not saying ratings are in any way a guide to the quality of any program, let alone one as quirky as The Joy of Sets. What we are saying is that we thought the show got better as it went along and in its final weeks had moments as funny as anything that’s aired this year, only to have its potential – that is to say, a second series – snuffed out because of the bad ratings gathered in those first few weeks. We’re glass half empty people around here, in case you didn’t guess: rather than just being happy the show made it to the end of series one, we’re disappointed that a show with so much promise seems certain not to get a series two.
What we’re left with then is a bunch of what ifs. What if the show had screened on the ABC, where it could have stretched out in a full half-hour timeslot? What if the show had run for an hour on Nine (or more likely, Nine’s digital channel Go!)? What if they’d been given an initial order for thirteen episodes instead of eight and really had a chance to hit their stride? What if Australia as a whole had found Warrick Capper in gold jocks hilarious instead of pointless and mildly confusing?
Tony Martin’s style of comedy works amazingly well on radio. On television, given the freedom to stretch out and do what he likes over an extended period, there’s no reason to think he couldn’t do just as well. But while Get This thrived on minutes of improv and rambling away to stumble across classic running gags, on television these days there just isn’t the time for any of that. If Martin and Kavalee ever get to do another show – and no-one would’ve thought we’d see Kavalee back on TV after TV Burp fizzled so there’s always hope – maybe one day The Joy of Sets will be seen as the show where Martin learned how to adapt his style to television’s requirements; as that would require him to actually get another shot at putting together his own show, here’s hoping.
Vale: The Bazura Project
One of the biggest problems to stem from the collapse of sketch comedy in this country – and wow, how pretentious a sentence is this one shaping up to be – is the way that it’s downgraded the idea of actual jokes in comedy. With a thriving – or even just barely existing – sketch comedy field it’s impossible to ignore the fact that a lot of what makes people laugh is jokes. That’s because that’s pretty much all sketch comedy has to offer: jokes and plenty of them.
When “comedy” comes to mean “lightweight drama and panel chat”, as it currently does in Australia, then jokes take a backseat. Comedy becomes more about tone and attitude, and the methods of judging comedy drift close to those used to judge drama: that is to say, trying to make people laugh becomes less important than character arcs, quality camerawork, sassy back-and-forth chat, and so on. A “comedy” show becomes one where people merely say smart-arse things, not funny things. Trying to make people actually laugh gets dropped in the too-hard-basket.
All of which is why, for the moment at least, when you ask us what kind of comedy we have enjoyed in 2011 The Bazura Project is the show we’ll be pointing to. You can argue about whether you found it funny (we did), but what you can’t argue is that it was a show – a movie-themed sketch show even – that set out to actually be funny. There wasn’t just the occasional quip or wry one-liner: every scene contained joke after joke of every stripe, from broad face-pulling to obscure film references to wordplay to parody to character comedy to pretty much anything you care to name. Again, you can argue about whether the jokes worked (we thought they did), but you can’t argue that the jokes weren’t there.
What makes this even more impressive is that The Bazura Project is a show about film. If ever there was a subject ripe for the kind of “comedy” that was too cool and hip to bother trying to do something as obvious as work towards actual laughs, film would be second only to whatever the fuck Laid was supposed to be about. And yet stars / writers Shannon and Lee went out of their way time and time again to make a show that was accessible to pretty much everyone – yes, it’s time for that stat showing that more Australians go to the movies than watch sport, just in case anyone wants to pretend that movies are somehow more elitist than The Footy Show.
Bazura referenced obscure films, but they also straight-up introduced the viewer to obscure films, and then they made jokes about films everyone at least knows about, and then they made jokes that weren’t really about films at all (remember “staple gangster”? Still chuckling over that one). In contrast to a heck of a lot of ABC output, The Bazura Project was inclusive: rather than providing a pandering guidebook for clueless wannabe hipsters – something that pretty much sums up the Gruen approach to everything – Bazura‘s motto seemed to be “hey, come check out this cool stuff!”
(It didn’t hurt that there was a robot: we’d forgive pretty much everything we hate about Gruen if Wil Anderson was replaced by a robot. A killer robot swinging a chainsaw around wildly.)
We’ve heard more than a few arguments against The Bazura Project, and guess what? They’re all wrong. Being cheap and occasionally shoddy looking and having hosts who aren’t the most polished marbles in the sack are not drawbacks when it comes to comedy: they’re actually advantages. As stated in the opening, this trend of trying to judge comedy like it was a drama – that is, to judge it by polish and performance instead of by laughs – is rubbish. A crappy looking robot with a storage crate for a head is much, much funnier than a polished, art-designed, hundred-thousand dollar animatronic model: just go watch the movie of The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy if you don’t believe us.
Lee and Shannon and everyone involved with The Bazura Project set out to make a fun show, and to an extent largely unheard of on Australian television, they succeeded. In a sea of shows where comedians explored whatever subject wasn’t already taken, Lee and Shannon pulled off the rare trick of actually seeming to like the topic they were banging on about. Reportedly the numerous movie clips used means there’ll be no DVD release, which is a damn shame (though it will be repeated over summer, so set your VCRs). This is the kind of show that really does demand a permanent record: it’s definitely been one of the comedy highlights of this year.
3 Things
We were recently contacted by Joel Slack-Smith, who along with Heidi Regan, has written and produced a parody of inane tourist guide videos called London Wow. Joel and Heidi are Australians in London and their videos set in UK capital are well made and quite funny. Find them at www.youtube.com/londonwowtourism.
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Also available online is the new weekly podcast 5 Things with Nath Valvo, Stacey June and Sean Lynch (you may remember Nath and Sean from The Shambles). The episodes are short and pithy, and Nath and Sean are thick and fast with the cornball gags, but this is clearly an audition for a shift on Nova so if that sort of thing’s not your bag don’t bother.
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The Australian reported the other day that the remake rights to the 2001 Australian comedy film The Man Who Sued God (which starred Billy Connolly and Judy Davis) have been sold to a US company. The Man Who Sued God, as far as we can remember, wasn’t exactly a great piece of cinema. The idea of suing God sounds hilarious in theory but the script struggled to be both believable and funny, and the only decent lines seemed to have come from John Clarke, who wrote the original screenplay. We suspect the future for this project may be less Wilfred more Sit Down Shut Up.
Interview: The Bazura Project’s Lee Zachariah
You might have noticed that we don’t usually run interviews here, but when the chance to speak to The Bazura Project’s Lee Zachariah came along, how could we say no? Especially when by saying yes we could waffle on about all manner of obscure comedy topics and only occasionally remember to ask a proper question. Fortunately Lee was willing to put up with our crap – at least to our face – and so, after a lot of heavy editing to get rid of the many sections that were just conversational chit-chat, this is the result.
Being a critical website, we have to ask: how do you go about dealing with criticism? Seeing as we’re conducting this interview before the ABC version airs, it’d be criticism of the Channel 31 show…
“The only criticism we really got when was someone said how cheap it looked, and we already knew that. We knew that in our first season when we had blue curtains we couldn’t afford the colour red – people would say ‘that’s a crappy curtain’, and we’d say ‘well, we know’. We escaped most criticism back then because everyone loves an underdog, but that’ll change.”
Is it a concern that critics – people you’ve never met – now to some extent have your fate in their hands?
“Not really – I wrote for Ain’t It Cool News for eight and a half years, and I think that really thickened my skin. At first I was like ‘I can’t believe what these talkbackers are saying’, the really negative comments were getting me down, and then I just found it hilarious, and then I just stopped caring. I think if somebody has a legitimate criticism about the show I’d take that as constructive and try to work on that, whereas if they just want to throw personal insults at us I’m not going to care much about what they have to say anyway. So yeah, I’m pretty happy with what we’ve made, I’m very happy with what we’ve made, so I’m pretty confident about putting it out there.”
So how did Channel 31 help you develop?
“31 is a great starting point for people who are in no way ready – and I don’t mean that in a bad way. There is no better training ground that will teach you what you need to know than 31 does. And it helped doing a show week by week rather than filming them all in advance and asking ‘what worked and what didn’t?’, because we were able to improve week by week rather than season by season. We’d be trying to plan a long way in advance – certainly with the second season, where we figured out we wanted to do that Back to the Future ending, we had to film that over 13 weeks with us constantly changing into our BTTF costumes every time we did a different opening. For season three we shaved out heads for a Full Metal Jacket sketch, let our hair grow back, and then filmed season three. We put that opening, featuring our heads being shaved, way towards the end of the season after our hair had well and truly grown back – but by and large it was done week-to-week.”
What do you think about your timeslot? You’re up against some fairly big-deal shows…
“We’re very happy with the timeslot, I think it’s a great time to be on. We haven’t really looked at what else is on at the same time yet, we’ve had our heads down making the show for so long we haven’t really had time to check what we’re up against.”
It’s Hamish & Andy for the first week, The Slap is on the ABC…
“I don’t think we’ll really have the same audience as Hamish & Andy, Hamish & Andy have the audience that likes funny people who are good-looking and we have an audience that likes funny people with questionable appearances. We can be a little homely, we can be a little battle-scarred.”
Okay, so what are your comedy influences? Please don’t say “we just like to piss-fart about” like every other Australian comedian ever.
“I’ve never been asked my comedy influences before, it’s really weird – I didn’t come from stand-up comedy so I’ve never really thought of myself as a comedian. I think Shannon and I have always approached Bazura as an interesting film show first and foremost, but because we like telling jokes we made it funny. I guess my influences are The Marx Brothers, Looney Tunes. In Australia John Clarke and Shaun Micallef. Douglas Adams, a lot of British comedy, The Goon Show, Monty Python and all that.”
There’s a lot of big names and comedy professionals appearing in Bazura – Shaun Micallef, Tony Martin, Kat Stewart, Julia Zemiro – how’d you go about getting them all?
“The moment Micallef said yes it was like the heavens parting. It was pretty much a wish-list – once we realised we were in a position to get people we liked in our show, we got out our wish list and they all said yes, which is something we did not see coming. That was really insane, everyone was totally into it and we don’t know why, there was totally no reason for them to trust us, but then they did. With most of the larger cameos, the producer handles all that stuff, I think she takes the script and sends it over to their agent. We just handed our wish list over then she takes over. There was certainly a lot of improv – everyone stuck to the script, but there was some improv and a lot of ideas being thrown around.”
Enough serious questioning – that teen movie parody in episode two was hilarious! Just so you know.
“That was Shannon’s idea and I read it and said ‘that is really really funny – there is no way that’s making it into the final draft of the script’. Just from a production standpoint, but draft after draft it kept staying in the script and no-one said anything and I thought ‘are we actually doing to do this? Devote an entire day to this?’. And we actually got it done. That was one of the more fun days, too. And that’s me in the Bee costume, by the way. That was so much fun though, the kids were hilarious.”
So rumour has it that while you were waiting to hear back from the ABC about Bazura, you almost got a different show up on Ten? What happened there?
“We did a pilot for Ten, a completely different show, then we got the green light from the ABC for our show. It was definitely a case of it never rains but it pours after hearing nothing for two years. The pilot for Ten was more issues of the day than movies.”
The Channel 31 Bazura was big on reviews, but the ABC2 version is review-free. Why?
“Part of it was because the ABC already has a review show, and part of it was that they wanted a six-part themed show where we filmed everything beforehand, which was really useful in doing themed segments – if we wanted Shaun Micallef for six segments we’d only need him for a day. No reviews this time around, and I don’t know if there will be in the future.”
It’s a cliché to say that film reviewers are frustrated film-makers – the whole “those who can’t, teach” thing – but in your case… well, you are a film reviewer, and you’ve made television shows, so perhaps ‘frustrated’ isn’t the right word?
“There’s something quite unappealing when you hear about a film critic or someone making a show about film who says they’re a frustrated film maker. On the other hand, that’s my story, I can’t really run from that. Everyone assumes you’re doing that because you can don’t the real thing. But when I got into film criticism it actually had nothing to do with wanting to make films, they actually come from two very different sides – it’s like somebody who likes two completely different things, they just happened to be film criticism and making films. I’d consider it quite separate from my film-making ambitions. But yeah, Bazura, that certainly comes from the film criticism part than the film making part.”
The Bazura path to television success – actually going out and making the show rather than toiling away in writer’s rooms for years – seems to becoming more popular, what with you and Twentysomething being picked up from Channel 31. Did you ever think about going off to write for Neighbours?
“It’s weird that the path to get into television writing is through Home & Away and Neighbours, that’s the path you have to go on. I know one of the Neighbours writers quite well and I wouldn’t want to write for Neighbours not because I think it’s beneath me but it’s really structured and intense and I don’t think I have those particular skills. And also I would have to watch those shows and I’m not sure I could watch them and stay sane. And that sounds really snobby, I know, but I’m just not wired for soaps and reality TV. I know most people aren’t wired for the crap I watch. Or Bazura, for that matter.”
So what is the trademarked Bazura path to success?
“You make the show you want to make and say ‘that’s the show we want to make’. I always get concerned when I hear success stories when – there was a great one about ten years ago of Elijah Wood recording himself as Frodo on his home video and sending the tape to Peter Jackson and getting the part that way, through that method, and I can just imagine a generation of young actors filming themselves reading the parts and sending them to directors thinking ‘it worked for him, why can’t it work for me?’. So whenever you hear a success story you think that’s the way to go – Ridley Scott came from advertising and because I wanted to work in film I tried for advertising courses at Uni. Whenever you hear a success story you think you’ve got to model yourself on that, whereas everyone has come up a different path. ‘You should never ever make a film using credit cards – on the other hand, Kevin Smith did pretty well out of it’. There are ways to work your way up, you start off writing Neighbours and you end up writing Underbelly, whereas for us it was making the show we wanted and putting it on community TV, but there are probably fifteen other paths to getting to where we are now.”
The Bazura Project is on ABC Thursdays – this week’s the final ep in the current series – at 9pm
The Home of Variety
Channel 9’s push to become the “Home of Comedy” this year hasn’t really worked out for them; Live From Planet Earth, the bumping of The Joy of Sets…even Hamish & Andy’s Gap Year. Sure, Gap Year made it to the end and managed decent enough ratings, but it wasn’t the greatest piece of television ever. What Gap Year did do, perhaps, is remind us of what works on Channel 9: light-hearted, inoffensive, variety programs. And in Hamish & Andy Channel 9 even had presenters who could make this kind of show for the 21st Century.
Since the first demise of Hey Hey it’s Saturday in 1999, Channel 9 have struggled when its come to light entertainment. For a network which had a strong history of success in this genre, with shows like In Melbourne Tonight and The Don Lane Show, this struggle has been painful. They sort of noticed that the comedy culture had changed (thanks largely to the 1980s cabaret scene), but couldn’t manage to find a way to make use of that new culture’s stars.
Should you happen to pick up a copy of either The Best of the Don Lane Show or The Best of the Don Lane Show 2, both of which feature classic episodes from the early 1980s, you’ll be struck by how quickly this cultural change must have happened. The Don Lane Show with its club comics, international guests, middle-of-the-road musical numbers and endless promotions for household products, wouldn’t have been out of place on TV in the 50s, 60s or 70s. And yet, despite sounding like the daggiest show ever made, it’s charming, delightful and often very funny.
It was also a variety show in the truest sense of the word, because apart from the ads and the entertainment, there were serious discussions of current affairs (with members of the 60 Minutes team and counter-culture “hero” Richard Neville), science demonstrations from actual professors, a live cross to the National Museum of Victoria to look at old artefacts, an entire show with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, performances from ballet dancers and opera singers, and an interview with a heavily-bearded and rather strange public servant about cryogenics. This wasn’t so much middle of the road, as all over it!
The Don Lane Show was also a program that had serious money thrown at it, meaning they could – and often did – do anything. From motorcycle stunts in the GTV-9 car park, to a live cross to Dame Edna at Madame Tussauds in London, to an entire program from Elvis Presley’s old home Gracelands, in Memphis, The Don Lane Show pushed early-80s TV technology to the limit, and the results are still exciting today. No one would, or would be able to, make The Don Lane Show today, of course, and it’s unlikely that today’s audiences would watch a contemporary equivalent, but there are still some lessons to learned from it.
Amongst these are that good, experienced performers, when given decent material and a bit of time, can turn something as banal as a prize draw into comedy gold. Watch one of Don and Bert’s classic wheel segments and you’ll wonder how much funnier Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation would be if Shaun Micallef was really allowed to let loose. Also worth noting is that mainstream audiences will sit down to watch “intellectual” things like current affairs, science and orchestras if they’re presented entertainingly – all you need is Bert Newton taking the piss out of the conductor of the latter, and you’re away.
So, in the truest tradition of Channel 9 variety, here comes the plug: this weekend, why not treat yourself to a Don Lane Show boxset? It’s worth it for the wheel segment which follows the cryogenics interview alone.
Girl I’ll Houso You
Paul Fenech is, for whatever reason, SBS’s premiere contribution to Australian comedy. For over a decade now he’s made basically the same show for them under three different names: Pizza, Swift & Shift and now Housos. That show consists of extremely broad stereotypes played by non-professional actors shouting loudly while the camera tilts and swings around wildly. We’d call it “cartoony”, but we actually like cartoons.
So what’s the depth of comic invention on offer here? Let’s quote some sample dialogue from Shazza, Dazza, Franky and the rest.
“Just for a change he got to buy a car instead of stealing one”.
“What’re you grinning about, cockhead?”
“I think I pulled a muscle in my fucking arse!” “You’re fucking soft Shazza”
“I can see her fucking undies”
“Look, it’s penisaurus on his spastic scooter”
We could go on.
The real comedy here has come from the various serious media outlets wondering if the “politically incorrect” series will cause all manner of social upheaval.
“I get offended by people who get offended. I think there’s some sort of Nazi political correctness happening in Australia. The principals of political correctness are good but we have the top ten per cent of Australia wanting to nanny state everything we do. We’re not responsible for ourselves. We can’t decide what’s funny. What’s insulting is you can’t have a joke in Australia. Housos is the most ango-friendly show I’ve done. I’m copping it for having a go at bogans – are you serious?”
He has a point. Then again, he also wrote this:
“You’re fucked in the face Daz”
So, having watched the first episode of Housos free of the heavy hand of political correctness, let’s treat it with the respect it treats the home viewer: get fucked.
Fenech’s slapstick style is, well, energetic, and he’s not afraid to pile on the jokes. But the jokes are all the same joke: a dickhead swears a lot and does something stupid. Then another dickhead does something slightly different while swearing. Then someone swears. Then someone does something stupid. Then there’s a close up of some boobs. Then maybe there’s a midget.
The big difference with Housos is that some of the characters are bogans instead of wogs. Don’t worry tho, there’s still loads of racial stereotypes, and they all swear while doing stupid things.
“Some people don’t fucking deserve kids!”
“Bring it ya dumb fucking bitch”
“If you ever see Sunnyvale girls punching on, fuck off quick”
So who cares if the “plot” – the whole cast tries to figure out a way to qualify for the disabled pension so they can slack off (well, slack even more off) – might offend some easily offended tools. What’s offending us is that he’s been doing the same thing again and again and again in moderately different settings since 2000. Back then Pizza was a mildly amusing sitcom (and the Pizza movie was stupid but fun too); these days it’s just the same old shit reheated so many times even the stink doesn’t get a reaction any more.
“Fuck off Frankie, now ya cashed up ya can pay child support ya cockhead”
Not that the Australian media’s worked that out, even if Fenech is simply using the same method of stirring up attention as everyone else these days: get Australia’s increasingly rabid tabloid press to pay attention to you and free coverage is yours for the taking. As Fenech told marketing site Mumbrella,
“SBS only does a certain number of marketing recourses. So I have put my own money and heart into this.”
Here’s a tip: next time, put some of the money and heart into coming up with some new jokes. Having every single character be a shouting fuckhead kinda gets old after a while no matter how many burn outs and arse shots you throw in there. And by “kinda old”, we mean “fucking dull, ya cockhead”.