Australian Tumbleweeds
It Was Just Flat-Out The Worst Of Times
Ahh, Julia Morris – you might not crack a smile at anything she’s ever said or done, but you can’t deny that she keeps on saying and doing things. In fact, so good is she at saying and doing things – from purchasing a title so she can call herself “Lady Julia Morris” to pulling faces on any TV show that’ll have her on to trying to hijack our very own Tumbleweed Awards to promote her excretable book – that’d you’d be forgiven for thinking that that’s pretty much all she does. But you’d be wrong: she also does this:
COMEDIAN Julia Morris has joined the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Robert De Niro and Robert Redford in launching her own film festival.
But the Julia Morris Film Festival – or JMoFest for short – has a catch.
Every three-minute short film entered in the festival must feature a life size Julia Morris face mask.
So what, you might say: as far as entrants go, Australia isn’t exactly short of budding horror film makers. And we all know Morris has been the true face of Australian terror since her gurn-heavy days on the late 1990’s version of IMT. It’s the sheer pointlessness of this particular swipe at self-promotion that galls. This isn’t a publicity stunt to push a book, or a DVD, or a tour: the only thing being advertised here is Julia Morris’ face.
“I know it couldn’t be more bizarrely egocentric to ask people to make a film with my cut-out face in it but it’s not really about the mask it’s just about the laugh.
“There are so many insanely talented young people around, I thought this would be a wonderful way to showcase anyone who can be bothered to work,” she said.
Seriously? It’s a showcase? But does anyone think that when the “winner” of this exploitative nightmare is announced that it won’t be Morris’ name at the top of the article? Does anyone think it’s a big break for an actor to appear in a short film wearing a Julia Morris mask? Does anyone think that Morris is putting together a film festival based around her own face as a way to showcase anything else but her own face?
More importantly, can anyone else think of a way to show more contempt for your fans than by getting other people to make comedy films in which actors are forced to wear a mask of your face then show said films in a festival bearing your name while not actually having anything at all to do with the films yourself?
If, say, Tom Cruise said “I’m making a new Tom Cruise movie, only I won’t actually be in it, it’ll just be some guy wearing a mask of my face”, there’d be riots in the street: Morris is doing the same thing, only she’s expecting other people to spend their own time and money making “her” film. Based around, let’s not forget, her own face, so if the film – that she had nothing whatsoever to do with – turns out to be funny, she can soak up the laughs simply by association.
[And to take a leaf out of Morris’ book, any snide comments about how the results are bound to be funnier than anything the “real” Morris could come up with are entirely up to you.]
If you were an evil, soulless person concerned only with exploiting others, you couldn’t help but admire Morris’ latest scheme to get others to boost her career. Hell, you couldn’t stop yourself from admiring her entire career: while other, equally marginally talented people from the no-talent era of Full Frontal have no 21st century media careers to speak of, she’s still turning up all over the place, grabbing gossip column inches while rabbiting on about going to LA where she “has already captured the hearts and imaginations of many of LA’s top industry execs, appeared on NBC’s The Bonnie Hunt show and entered into discussions for television show development” (from her blog). Astute readers might spot that only the middle one of those “achievements” is a result that can be actually measured, but what the hey: it’s all part of the PR shitstorm.
The worst thing in this increasingly Human Centipede-esque long list of worst things is that it’s not even funny. Oh, the idea itself isn’t that bad; if we still had sketch comedy in this country it’d make a good four- or five- minute fake current affairs segment about some grotesquely self-obsessed monster. But to actually try to get wanna-be film-makers to make short films based around your face and then show them in self-financed film-festivals as a real-life celebration of yourself to the exclusion of all others because it can’t be said often enough that entry into this film festival involves obliterating your own identity by WEARING A JULIA MORRIS MASK – well, that stopped being funny right around the time everyone else realised you weren’t kidding and had actually made the masks available. Is it Halloween already?
Wherefore art thou, Full Frontal series 4?
It’s probably not the most anticipated comedy DVD of the year, but for those of us of a certain age – and a certain fondness for the work of Shaun Micallef – Shock’s announcement a few months back that they were finally going to be releasing series 4 of Full Frontal was very good news indeed.
Like all seasons of Full Frontal, “hit and miss” barely covers it, but series 4 was Micallef’s final one with the show before he went solo and became the comedy titan he is today when he’s not reading out questions on Talkin’ ’bout Your Generation. While much of his good work from that season is available on Shock’s earlier release The Incompleat Micallef, there’s still gold in them thar hills and a complete DVD collection would finally make it readily available.
So what happened? Well, the release of FF4 has been put back and put back throughout the announced release month of August until come September we’re in the odd situation where it’s supposedly been released but no-one’s actually seen it for sale anywhere. At least, no-one we know has.
So here’s the challenge: if you see a copy of Full Frontal series 4 for sale anywhere – as in, an actual physical copy in a bricks-and-mortar store – drop us a line. Conversely, if you know for sure that it’s not available, feel free to let us know that (and why it’s been given the run-around) too. At least with the recently delayed Kitty Flanagan DVD the distributor actually announced it was being delayed until 2011; the DVD of Full Frontal series 4 seems to have just fallen off the face of the earth.
Hangin’ Tough
So a hung parliament means there’s no clear nationwide winner, right? Usually yes, but in this case one group (no, not The Greens) is a clear winner: ABC comedy. Having a country where both major parties have an equal claim on the reigns of power is their dream situation, because for the last… oh, since at least whenever The Chaser became the only stand-alone political comedy on the ABC, the ABC’s approach to political comedy – it’s not even worth dignifying it with the term “satire” – has been dominated by one concept. Here’s a clue: it’s not “being funny”.
Balance is about as useless as cat-only monocles when it comes to comedy. For one thing, not everything is equally funny. More importantly, only one political party is in government: they’re the ones with the power, they’re ones actually doing things that affect our lives, and so they’re the ones that we should be making fun of. That’s not to say the opposition should be ignored, but they’re basically going to just be opposing a lot of stuff with the occasional inoffensive / stupid policy thrown in. They simply don’t have an equal impact on our daily lives.
And yet, for years now the ABC – across the board really, but let’s stick with comedy here – has been obsessed with one thing: balance. In all of The Chaser’s work there’s been a clear push to ensure that both sides of politics get a roughly equal serve. This idea is shithouse. Again, not everything is equally funny. Having a balanced comedy show means that hilarious topics either go begging or remain barely explored while dull or obvious jokes are shoe-horned in. You could possibly argue that all of Australian politics is equally hilarious and so a balanced view is both easy and natural. But the only way to sustain that view is to believe that every single policy expressed by every side of politics is equally good / bad / whatever. Perhaps if you’re independently wealthy and don’t think society exists or that you are in any way part of it this view is possible: out in the real world some ideas / policies / people are simply better than others.
Not to mention, who the hell wants to watch a comedy show where the makers don’t have – or aren’t allowed to express, as ‘balance’ seems to be an overall ABC policy – actual opinions? Without concrete views, good comedy is all but impossible; even slapstick says something about the human condition. For anyone committed solely to being funny and not pushing a party line, balance will come from the ebb and flow of politics anyway – just not in the course of one episode of one show on one night.
(Clarke & Dawe escape this trap by a): being filed away as part of “news”, and b): only doing one segment a week. If they had a whole show – or even a second segment in a week – it seems likely they’d feel the pressure for “balance” a lot more.)
But now, right now, right this second, the ABC’s policy has finally paid off. With both sides jockeying for power, “balanced” comedy has finally come into its own. So for one week only, Yes We Canberra! won’t feel like a wobbly grab-bang of decent jokes smooshed together with the results of a “Yeah, Gillard’s hilarious this week, but now we need 10 minutes on Abbott… fuck, we’ve got nothing” all-night writing session. Enjoy it while it lasts: once someone finally does get to sit in the big chair in Canberra, the ABC’ll be back to their balanced best. Even if that guarantees they’ll be giving equal time to unfunny comedy.
And The Winner Is…
At this stage of an election it’s traditional for someone to ask the question: which side’s victory would be better for comedy? With most comedians leaning left, it’s generally assumed that while having the Liberals in power might not be the best for the country, it’s usually good for getting comedians fired up. But these days, who are we kidding? There’s no political comedy on our televisions (apart from the ever-reliable Clarke & Dawe) – unless you think GNW‘s utterly generic gags are “political” in any real sense – and so questions about which political party will provide more fodder for satirists are more of a cruel joke than anything these imaginary “satirists” have to say about politics.
So consider this a reminder – like you needed one – that not only this is one of the most boring elections in living memory, but it’s also one of the most humourless. It literally makes no difference whatsoever who wins as far as comedy on our screens goes, because there’s currently no serious venue for bad impressions of either Julia Gillard or Tony Abbot on television. Who thought we’d ever pine for the heady days of 2009, when you could at least see firmly average Kevin Rudd parodies / send-ups on both Rove and Double Take? Not us, that’s for sure…
(by the way, remember Paul McCarthy, whose Rudd impression made Comedy Inc and Double Take so meh? According to Wikipedia, “Paul currently works as a ESL teacher at RMIT University, Melbourne”. Just another victim of the Labor coup…)
A rough morning
Melbourne’s Channel 31 has a well-deserved reputation for making the sort of comedy you just don’t see anywhere else. One such show is Morningshines, which started on Channel 31 on 6th August and airs every Friday at 10pm (it can also be downloaded from the show’s website).
Morningshines starts out looking like a send-up of shows like Sunrise, but swiftly moves beyond the world of experts, advertorials and forced banter between the hosts, to become twisted, surreal and experimental. Not surprisingly, creators and stars Michael and Stephen list Chris Morris and Armando Iannucci among their influences.
Having watched the first two episodes of this show, I’d say it was a noble attempt to do something different, that becomes self-indulgent, long-winded, amateurish and too weird to work far too often. Which is a massive shame because it’s clearly something Michael and Stephen put their heart, soul and a lot of effort into (advance publicity started in November – which must be some kind of record for a community television programme).
In other words, there’s promise there and I hope Michael and Stephen try again. They certainly made the Morningshines in the right spirit. Unlike almost all of it’s far more successful competitors, you really won’t have a clue what’s coming next when you’re watching this show – and that’s got to count for something.
Down Down, Deeper & Down (redux)
Considering the track record of the people behind them, it’s safe to say that both Yes We Canberra! and Gruen Nation have proven to be pleasant surprises to us here at Tumbleweed HQ. For the most part they’ve been smart, funny programs that have done almost everything right as far as getting laughs without selling their audience short. Unfortunately, that “almost” is nowhere near good enough, because while they may only have one real flaw, it’s a doozy: they let their targets in on the joke.
It seems a small thing, and at least in the case of Gruen Nation, it’s seemingly easy to justify. If you’re talking about political advertising, who better to discuss it than (ex) politicians and advertising executives? Well sure, that makes sense. Then again, does this mean that if you’re talking about racism you really should staff your show with supporters of the White Australia policy?
There are plenty of experts in both advertising and politics clogging up our universities who could point out the flaws in both: by instead bringing in the people responsible, Gruen might be educating us, but they’re also making sure that nothing they say against advertising has any real bite. I mean, unless you happen to think people who work in advertising are really going to have real, root-and-branch criticisms of the industry that pays their wages and shapes their thinking, or that ex-politicians can say anything bad about the system that never quite carried them to the top without having it dismissed as sour grapes.
Yes We Canberra! is less obvious about it, but that only makes it worse. If The Chaser were doing their jobs properly, no politician would want to go within a hundred miles of their studios – and they wouldn’t let them in even if they did. Because when they have politicians on the show, they’re showing them as being in on the joke. The politicians then are simply making fun of themselves, telling us that “hey, we’re just like you” – and then they go back to telling us how we should live our lives and we’re supposed to go back to letting them.
An oft-repeated story about the old Martin / Molloy radio show says that at one stage, when Tony Martin and Mick Molloy were riding the Liberal party hard over their attempts to de-unionise the docks, they were asked to have prime mover behind the anti-worker push Peter Reith on “for balance”. Supposedly, Mick said fine, but that he’d have only one question for Reith: “why are you such a cunt?”. And he was going to keep asking it until he got an answer.
That’s pretty funny: it’s also the level of respect our politicians all too often deserve. It’s worth noting that Martin / Molloy got a lot of mileage out of the politics of the time (as did Martin’s later radio show Get This) without ever having major politicians from either side on as guests. Why would you? Politicians aren’t exactly short of venues where they can speak to the public; worse, it would blunt the comedy and humanize the butt of the joke.
Make no mistake: no politician can seriously survive sustained ridicule. And sustained ridicule is what most of them deserve. But for every joke The Chaser makes about our crap politicians, there’s usually one about the crap attitudes of the general public not far behind. Yeah, we all know large sections of the Australia public are largely ignorant and openly racist. But when The Chaser are out there doing vox pops getting knee-jerk responses from a manipulated and lied-to general public, then getting Julie Bishop – one of the leaders of a party that’s repeatedly proven itself eager to whip up and manipulate racist feelings through blatant lies (two words: Children Overboard) for cheap political gain – on to outstare a garden gnome and look like a good sort simply for turning up… well, maybe they’ve forgotten who the real bad guys are.
So what, you might say. What’s wrong with giving ad men and politicians a chance to reply to the shows that mock them – it’s only fair? Fuck fair. Advertising has a billion dollar industry backing it up: politicians literally control our daily lives. Why should one of the few ways ordinary, average folks can take back a tiny amount of the control these massively powerful organisations have over our lives – by making fun of them – be handed over to them as well?
Good comedy should resist these forces. It should mock and humiliate them – not invite them in for a cuppa tea. Shit, it’s not like the ABC doesn’t know how it should be done. It’s not like Media Watch gives Andrew Bolt a quarter of every episode to playfully mess around with Jonathan Holmes and prove he’s human too, or has a panel of current newspaper editors on to chuckle and go “yes, under the pressures of deadline, sometimes you do have to steal entire articles from the internet and stick a staff reporters name on it.” It points out and makes fun of the media without giving the media a “fair go”, because the media (like advertising and politicians) is a massively powerful force in our society; Media Watch could run four hours a day every single day of the year and it still wouldn’t begin to balance out.
Whether the real blame lies with the ABC’s slavish devotion to an insane “equal time for every side” idea of balance, or in Gruen and The Chaser’s long-held traditions of allowing themselves to be captured by the people they’re supposed to be mocking, it doesn’t matter. Comedy should be the weapon of the weak against the strong. Without that, all we’re getting from the ABC’s “comedy” election coverage is one massive vote for the status quo.
The least worst we could expect
Week two of Yes We Canberra! was always going to be the real test. The Chaser had got rave reviews and high ratings in week one, so were bound to get a big audience for the second episode…but they’d had less time to write and film, and their stock of pre-written material was dwindling – and in some cases no longer relevant. Not that the latter has ever stopped them.
Their parody of Hawke – the much-hyped telemovie which aired more than two weeks ago – wasn’t exactly topical. Still, at least they told those boat shoe-wearers where to get off – the posh bastards!!!
There were some highlights. Chas Licciardello can always be relied upon to put together a well-researched and funny segment, and his segment with Andrew Hansen, “How To Turn This Boring Shit Into Great TV”, was an amusing and incisive look at how the commercial news media handles politics. But the much-trailed “Negotiate” song (written by Chris Taylor, sung by Hansen) felt like something we’ve seen several times before, even if it was totally new.
The other great problem with Yes We Canberra! is that it’s just a little too cosy, with politicians seemingly queuing up to play parlour games with the team. It’s all a bit of fun, of course – and yes, it can be funny – but is this actually what we want from a satire show? The Chaser should be ripping the hell out of these people, not giving them the chance to show us what jolly good sports they all are.
[Speaking of which, the real story with Chas’ doorstepping of Julia Gillard wasn’t about embarrassing her with his killer line about “cash for clunkers”, but how that young boy interrupted proceedings by asking Chas for his autograph. Remember how The Chaser couldn’t do pranks in this country anymore because too many people recognised them? That, times a million.]
So, any hopes we had that something related to this election would deservedly unite the nation have faded and The Chaser are once more delivering their usual lacklustre effort. It’s probably funnier and more entertaining than Gruen Nation, but it’s hardly what you’d chose if you had a real choice. As a metaphor for the current state of politics, where we’re all basically having to vote for the lesser of two evils, Yes We Canberra! is definitely on the money.
You Gotta Keep ’em Seperated
If you had any doubt at all about what market Ten is going for with their upcoming series Offspring, consider that doubt flushed after the first 90 seconds as our heroine Nina (Asher Keddie, last seen as a topless Blanche in Hawke) a): acts all clumsy in front of a buff and shirtless man, then b): delivers a baby. That’s right guys, out of the pool, tonight is ladies night. Specifically ladies of the “Ally McBeal” variety: ditzy, self-deprecating and yet somehow still lovable and adorable even though out in the real world these are the kind of self-obsessed pains in the arse you’d run a mile from.
Tempting as it might be to only review the first 90 seconds of the latest effort from the producers of The Secret Life of Us – or to instead review the 2009 movie of the same name, which sounds like exactly what Australian television needs going by its imdb synopsis – Offspring does deserve serious consideration by what is supposedly a comedy blog. The sitcom is basically dead and buried in this country, and for good or ill this kind of lightweight series – I’d call it a “dramedy”, but these days that pretty much means a sitcom that just doesn’t have any jokes – is what has taken its place.
That’s not to say this is a laugh-fest or anything. Let’s jump ahead another 90 seconds: There’s been one not-really-at-all-amusing squabble between the baby’s parents, at least two close-ups of the not-really newborn infant, Dr Nina leaning against a wall looking satisfied while a voice-over tells us that the magical power of a newborn can make the world seem new, and another hunky guy shows up – though to be fair, he is the show’s regular hunk (Don Havel). And that’s pretty much the balance for the series set: two or three parts soft focus drama to one part soft focus comedy.
Unfortunately, a lot of the “comedy” here seems to involve gimmicks like cutsey writing on the screen (scribbling mathematical diagrams over babies to show they have the right numbers of fingers), voice-overs like a list-making speech that ends with “make time for fantasy about sexy new doctor” and fantasy sequences where a group of families throw their babies to each other to illustrate the deep idea that perhaps some kids might be better off with different parents. It’s enough to make you long for the return of Scrubs. The crap final season.
Gradually the other pieces of the puzzle fall into place: Nina’s dad (John Walters) turns up outside a house sans pants; her older sister (Kat Stewart, whose work on Newstopia doesn’t even rate a mention in the promo material) is a snappy bitch, her younger brother (Richard Davies) is a liar and flirt, and her ex breaks into her house, steals her favourite chair, and blows it up. Hang on a second – he’s blowing up household furniture? Is this meant to be a quirky look at a single gals complicated life or an episode of The Three Stooges? Unfortunately, the rest of the episode rules out a Stooge-fest: even Dad eventually puts on a pair of pants.
Obviously there are no hard and fast rules about comedy. There is a kind of spectrum when it comes to jokes though, with totally generic gags that work no matter who says them (ie, knock-knock jokes) at one end and completely character-specific material that only gets laughs because of who’s saying it at the other. You can have both in a show, but the further you go towards either end the funnier things usually get: ideally you’d get to a stage where just having a character enter a situation is funny (because we know how they’ll react to what’s happening) while everyone’s random observations and smart-arse lines are hilarious no matter who says them.
Problem here is, this kind of show exists in the wishy-washy middle of things: when Nina makes an offhand comment about eating some kind of muesli bar that tastes like “Horse chaff” we’re expected to laugh (or at least smile) because it’s a funny observation and because she’s the kind of ditzy person that would eat something without knowing what it is. Out in the real world though, it’s barely an observation nor is it specific enough to make her character interesting in any way. She’s busy, you say? Gee, so was Stalin.
At least one way to make this moment funny isn’t exactly difficult to spot: have her eating something crazily inappropriate – maybe briefly followed by a spit-take, maybe for an extended period without noticing. Of course, this isn’t that kind of show. But if it’s not that kind of show, why have that kind of set-up and then wimp out? If you want to go for subtle observations and character-based laughs, why not take the time to think of ways to do that that aren’t simply neutering the kind of set-ups and straight lines you’d expect to find in a broad sitcom? And if you want to go down the surreal path – let’s repeat: Nina’s boyfriend steals her favourite chair and makes it explode in the street outside her house – why not go all-out with the strangeness and come up with some stuff that might actually make us laugh?
This kind of program is sold to audiences as classy viewing largely on the back of having a good-looking and well-dressed cast hanging around a string of attractive and carefully-filmed inner-city locations. The actual quality of the writing rarely gets a look-in. As for the idea that perhaps this kind of show should figure out what it’s trying to do and then do it – if it wants to be funny then work hard at being funny and if it wants to be a lightweight look at a single gals life then perhaps the exploding chairs and quirky screen-scribbles should hit the bricks – well, that’s clearly crazy talk because adding some watered down “comedy” to a family drama might pull in a few more viewers. Locally produced television shows these days have to be as many things to as many people as possible: unfortunately, “good” isn’t always one of them.