The Host, an interview with Mr Bong.

(unedited version, written for Sydney Morning Herald)

“A Hit From The Bong” by Benito Di Fonzo.

When some of us think of a monster we imagine an amalgam of HR Giger’s Aliens, Godzilla and Bronwyn Bishop on GBH. Bong Joon-Ho, or Mr Bong as his publicist calls him, decided on a clumsy four-legged mutant fish from Soul’s Han River about the size of a Kombi and with a face reminiscent of Steve Buscemi.

“I didn’t want to copy typical Hollywood monster where they are really scary and they’re perfect and they never make mistakes. I’d like to give you an analogy and I’ll use Hollywood actors. You know actors like Al Pacino, Gary Oldman they play real bad [guys], really through and through they’re baddies. I didn’t want to create a monster that way, I wanted it to be more like Jack Black or Steve Buscemi. [So] me and our creature designer (Hee-chul Jang) have a photo of Steve Buscemi when we are designing the creature [so] we always think about Steve Buscemi.”

The monster isn’t the only thing that separates The Host from the usual Hollywood fare. After his young daughter Hyun-seo (A-sung Ko) is kidnapped before his eyes by a monster created after US scientists pour formaldehyde into the Han River, squid-salesman Gang-du (Kang-ho Song) and his elderly father, former student-activist brother, and archery-champion sister form a dysfunctional posse to track down and destroy the killer fish.

“In Hollywood monster movies you will see army officers or scientists or biologists or police officers but I want to see ordinary people; powerless, weak, ordinary Korean people in my movie. I had to choose a weak, powerless family and make them fight against this monster without much support from the government or the society as a whole and that’s why it had to be somebody really powerless, for contrast.”

In fact Gang-du, with his bleached hair-do, comes across as the last of the 90s ‘slackers.’

“That’s to emphasis that he’s really like simpleton, a slightly retarded sort of loser, he doesn’t even know that [bleached hair] is not in fashion anymore.”

The monster was realised through a collaboration between John Cox’s Creature Workshop in Queensland (Babe), NZ’s Weta Workshop (Lord of the Rings, King Kong) and San Fransisco’s The Orphanage (Sin City, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.)

However, while the sight of a Buscemi-faced mutant fish swallowing and regurgitating the hapless Koreans who keep stumbling into it’s path provide much of the excitement and black humour, the real story is that of the family’s search for Hyun-seo through Seoul’s sewers while being pursued by the South Korean and US governments, desperate to rescue their kin before US scientists drop ‘Agent Yellow’ on the city to kill a non-existent virus.

Mr Bong, a member of the leftist Democratic Labour Party who confesses to having thrown the odd Molotov Cocktail in his student days, admits you may pick up a slight anti-American feel to the story.

“Of course this movie has many satire of the American, also many political comment, but I don’t like straight propaganda movies. The opening sequence, the formaldehyde sequence, it really happened six years ago in Korea. The Agent Yellow means the Agent Orange in Vietnam’s War, also the long misinformation about the virus is also the satire of [WMDs in] the Iraqi War.”

“When I was in Cannes Festival one journalist, from Al Jazeera, asked me again and again, ‘in your movie the monster is America?’ I don’t want to bring it down to very simple level of monster symbolises this, monster symbolises that. It’s rather what the family has to experience after the monster turns up and does all this damage. Nobody helps, not the government not the society. So that in itself, the situation they’re put in, it’s a monstrous situation.”

While Universal Studios purchased the remake and sequel rights the moment it broke Korean box-office records Mr Bong may not be involved.

“As a director I think the most important thing is to 100% control my movies, but in Hollywood it’s very hard because every right of final cutting, final editing and final script is by producers, so I hesitate to go there.”

So see it now before some Hollywood hack sucks it dry of it’s humour and originality.

“The Host”

Written and Directed by Bong Joon-ho. 

Starring Song Kang-ho, Park Hae-il, Bae Doo-na, Ko A-sung, Byeon Hie-bong.

Opens March 8^th.

x

article - Death of a President.

Bush whacked

Latest related coverage

• Trailer: Death of a President

Benito Di Fonzo
Sydney Morning Herald, March 1, 2007

"Fortunately when you apply for a White House press pass they don't ask you if you're making a film about killing President Bush," says English filmmaker Gabriel Range.

His new faux-documentary, Death of a President, has been called a "snuff movie" and "a new low in Bush hatred" by some critics. Others have chastised him for painting too nice a picture of George Dubya.

"I think it was very important that you got a sense of George Bush as a human being," Range says.

"It's a film that is absolutely critical of the Bush Administration's handling of the war on terror. It's critical of the very cynical way it sought to exploit the climate of fear following 9/11 and the very cynical way it sought to lead the country to war and connect Saddam Hussein to 9/11, but it is not a Bush-hating movie."

You could argue Death of a President is the best insurance policy Bush has had.

"I think if you ever needed a better deterrent than the prospect of President Cheney then I can't think what it might be," Range says.

The neo-con vice-president, who Range considers the driving force behind the invasion of Iraq, takes over the presidency after Bush is assassinated outside a Chicago hotel. Cheney immediately pushes Patriot Act III through Congress, further curtailing civil liberties.

Meanwhile, FBI agents go through names of employees in the building from which the bullets were fired. Focusing on people with Arab-sounding names, they find Zahra Abi Zikri (Hend Ayoub) unaccounted for. Within a year Zikri is convicted despite doubts from FBI forensic examiner James Pearn (James Urbaniak) and agent Robert Maguire (Michael Reilly Burke), both of whom resign in protest.

Much of the movie is made up of archival footage, including presidential appearances and anti-war protests, supplemented by footage Range's crew filmed in Chicago. Some of it is digitally manipulated, such as when Bush's face is pasted onto an actor's or when President Cheney's Reagan eulogy becomes one for Bush. As such, the film is as much a comment on media manipulation of images as it is on erosion of civil liberties.

"It is in some senses a very extreme version of the kind of media manipulation that happens on a daily basis," Range says. "A lot of it is simple editing and I think that you forget the power that has."

Zikri's trial also examines jurors' television-inspired faith in forensics.

"There's a sense among lawyers in the States of what they call the 'CSI Effect' in which juries expect forensic evidence to be incontrovertible," Range says.

Range and the director of the Toronto Film Festival were sent death threats before the film's launch. Cinema chains across the US have refused to screen it. The White House has wisely refused to comment, but presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has said that "anyone would even attempt to profit on such a horrible scenario makes me sick".

Range brushes off the death threats as "just a few poorly spelt emails from suspiciously Southern-looking addresses. [However] every time I go through US immigration I have this suspicion that I'm going to be detained for a few extra hours."

He is fascinated by political assassinations and their accompanying conspiracy theories. He saw his scenario as a chance to make an entertaining film that also commented on an administration "riding roughshod" over the constitution.

"Presidential assassinations are very much part of popular culture in the States. They're fascinating in the way they play out. The film plays with the hunger for conspiracy theories. I hope it makes us think about the way those conspiracy theories emerge out of any major event.

"It's a murder-mystery which I hope is intriguing. You don't have to be American to feel the effects of the war on terror or what the Bush administration is doing."

With luck, then, it will still be playing when Hicks gets home.

interview - Danny Bhoy

Danny Bhoy

Benito Di Fonzo

Sydney Morning Herald, March 1, 2007

The Scottish comedian riles everyone from christians to Eddie Mcguire.

Danny Bhoy invented a new swearword, just for Eddie McGuire.

"I called him a dick splash," says the dark, handsome young Scotsman.

Which means?

"I don't really know. It sounds quite offensive, probably doesn't mean anything. I've used it a few times since and people find that it's a good one."

Unfortunately for Bhoy's chances of a career at Channel Nine, he said it over the Collingwood AFL club's PA at its Hall of Fame event. Did Bhoy know what he was saying to the Collingwood president-cum-Channel Nine chief?

"I didn't know who he was, that's basically what the problem was. I was backstage and he came in and said, 'Hi, I'm Eddie McGuire, I'll be introducing you.' I just thought he was the MC.

I said, 'Great, whatever, keep it tight, don't f--- me up, just bring me on and enjoy the show.'

"I did a joke which involved the C-word. Nobody had told me not to swear. I didn't really know the importance of the evening. [McGuire] walks on after me and says, 'Well, my grandfather was Scottish and he didn't need to swear to be funny.'

"I thought, 'What's he saying that for? This guy's just the MC.' So I'm still mic'd up and I turned around and said, 'Yeah, f--- you, dick splash.'"

Has he heard from McGuire since?

"I've not had his heavies round but I'm sure he's planning a revenge. I've offered myself as a contestant for Who Wants to be a Millionaire."

So far, he says, there has been no response, but Bhoy's humour has a way of provoking people. Back in Britain after that run-in, he received a death threat in Bournemouth.

The threat came from balancing jokes about Muslim reaction to Danish cartoons with jokes on Christianity.

"I got not one complaint from the Muslim community and a huge amount of emails from Christians saying, 'It's disgusting what you said.' So I carried on doing it, as you do."

The would-be assassin got close to Danny by appealing to his vanity.

"He threw me a curveball by saying, 'Oh, great show, Danny, can I get an autograph?' I went towards him and he grabbed me and pushed me up against the wall and said, 'If you ever do jokes about Jesus again I'll stab you in the neck.'

"It was quite a weird threat because it was quite specific. It made me think that guy's obviously thought long and hard about how he would kill me."

Did Bhoy point out the Fifth Commandment?

"I'd already done that onstage. He clearly hadn't taken that as written."

Bhoy's mouth has gotten him into trouble since his childhood as the only Indian-Scot in small-town Moffat.

"When the teacher introduced me to the rest of the class she goes, 'This is Danny, he's all the way from India,' as if I was commuting every day. I got in a lot of trouble at school. Like the Christian thing, not everyone's going to find you funny. In school, that was the teachers. In later life, it's Eddie McGuire."

Or the Queen, who Bhoy first met as a Scottish Young Achiever.

"Most people there were teenagers that'd climbed Mount Everest with half a head or something genuinely amazing and I'd just won a comedy competition."

Perhaps she thought he'd been commuting from India?

"Prince Phillip did. [He later] said, 'I saw your act, you're very funny, but you're weird, though: you speak Scottish but you look like a bloody Indian.' And I went, 'You know what? You've not disappointed me. You're everything I thought you were going to be.'"

Bhoy's Sydney show will combine his recent Edinburgh festival act, which was a look at the inevitability of failure through history, with material he hopes to discover on his regional tour.

"I'm being more political this year than I've ever been. With the current predicament, it just feels like something you should be talking about if you can make it funny and interesting at the same time. Then again, I'll probably end up doing dick jokes like everyone else."

article - Cracker Comedy Festival young bloods.

Throwing jokes from the fringe

Sydney Morning Herald, February 15, 2007

Sydney is about to see new comedians at a new venue, writes Benito Di Fonzo.

WHILE big names such as Weird Al Yankovic, Danny Bhoy, Ross Noble and the show Puppetry of The Penis will be packing crowds in at the Enmore Theatre, the spiritual home of the Cracker Comedy Festival, there are hopes that the festival's new venue, the Factory Theatre, at the bottom of Enmore Road, will nurture the next generation of stand-up superstars.

Cracker hopes to give these fresh faces a crack through initiatives such as its MySpace site (www.myspace.com/crackercomedy) where wannabes can upload a set in the hope of being given a showcase on April Fool's Day. The festival is also offering a series of cheap ($17) one-hour shows by rising stars such as Sam Bowring, Dave Jory and Daniel Townes, similar to the Sydney Festival's successful About An Hour series.

“There's obviously fringe arts,” says Bowring, 27, “but in terms of comedy there hasn't been a festival to provide an umbrella for a lot of fringe acts.”

Bowring hopes the exposure of burgeoning talent during the festival will mean more Sydneysiders take a chance on the lesser-known names that grace regular open-mic sessions such as the one he and Kent Valentine, who is also appearing at the Factory, run at the Friend In Hand Hotel in Glebe.

"That's part of the festival experience, really: not to just go and see the same people you could see on TV," says Bowring, whose show Small Animals I Have Known examines the nature of mercy in terms of the swarms of small insects that seem attracted to him.

"I woke up and there were 50 live bees in my room that weren't there the night before, and another time baby huntsman spiders, then caterpillars, centipedes. I think God is sending his plagues against me."

Townes, who has just returned from a stint in Britain and is a winner of FHM magazine's "Search For Australia's Funniest Man", is tight-lipped about the show he will share with Raw Comedy-winner Nick Sun.

"You got to come and see the show. I went to see a counsellor about something, and she judged me, so it's something I've never talked to anyone about, and an audience is going to get it all," says Townes, 26.

Jory, the elder of the group at 33, is a Triple-J regular who came to stand-up after his book I Know Everything was favourably reviewed by Hustler magazine but otherwise unread.

"It was a precursor to doing stand-up because it came out and no one bought it so I needed a new outlet," says Jory.

For Cracker he will be focusing on that comic staple, the battle of the sexes. "I've decided that there is no battle of the sexes, that it was won long ago. Women won it and men are just hanging in there hoping it's still going," he says.

All three agree Sydney is a great training ground for comedians.

"In Sydney you've got to be really quick," says Townes.

Bowring says: "It's gladiator school. Melbourne audiences are quite forgiving, [but] the more forgiving an audience is, the less you learn."

Jory adds: "You see it when Melbourne comics come up here. They freak out because they see that the old tricks aren't going to work, they have to think on their feet a lot quicker."

The three believe Sydneysiders will take a punt on this fresh generation.

"All the acts that are playing at the Enmore, they all started where we did," says Bowring.

Townes adds: "The difference between them and us is 10 years."

Bowring says that if people take a chance, they will enjoy themselves. "Just because they don't know who we are it doesn't mean it's not a good show."

Jory adds: "Being the first one to find something is always more exciting than jumping on a boat that people already are on." And Townes reckons older acts will be taking note.

"Profile people take jokes all the time," Townes says. "They go shopping at open-mic nights. In the industry we call it 'side-writing'. People watch what works and then take that idea and run with it."

Jory says: "If you hear a pen scratching away you've got to home in on that."

"The trick is to get them in first," says Townes.

The Cracker Comedy Festival runs from March 7 to April 1. Details at www.crackercomedy.com.

Sam Bowring's Small Animals I Have Known is on March 30 and 31, Dave Jory Is Polished is on March 14-17 and Nick Sun and Daniel Townes are on March 28 and 29, at the Factory Theatre, Enmore.

article - Flyboys/ Martin Henderson interview

And they go down

• Trailer: Flyboys

Sydney Morning Herald. February 9, 2007

Benito di Fonzo shoots down some not-so-magnificent men and their flying machines.

Since such classics as Wings (1927), Hell's Angels (1930) and The Blue Max (1966), few films have attempted to put on screen the complex and dangerous manoeuvring of the flimsy World War I biplanes that battled above the trenches.

Producer Dean Devlin (Independence Day) attempts to remedy that with the epic Flyboys, much of which consists of close-up dogfights made possible by live footage and computer imagery.

Directed by pilot and war-plane enthusiast Tony Bill, the film stars New Zealand actor Martin Henderson, currently on screen in Smokin' Aces, as bitter flying ace Reed Cassidy. Along with Captain Thenault (Jean Reno), Cassidy preaches the realities of war to the adventure-seeking young American pilots led by Blaine Rawlings (Spider-Man's James Franco) that made up the Lafayette Escadrille in the years before the US officially entered the war.

The script has been criticised as an amalgam of war-movie cliches and stereotypes, but filming it was a dream come true for Henderson.

"My grandfather was in the [Royal Air Force] in World War II so I grew up listening to his stories of flying Lancaster bombers. He and I spent many an afternoon on the couch watching The Battle of Britain and The Dam Busters."

Henderson was perhaps a little overenthusiastic on set.

"Every time I went up [in a biplane] I loved it so much I kept smiling. My character's supposed to be this seasoned cynical veteran who's been in the war for years, so I had to go up and reshoot stuff because I was having too much fun."

Was Henderson concerned about romanticising war?

"That did cross my mind, given that America [is] at war. I don't know if it glorifies war. There's nothing attractive about burning to death in a little cockpit whilst plummeting towards the ground and being shot in the face by machine guns."

Flyboys
Director Tony Bills
Stars James Franco, Jean Reno, Martin Henderson
Rated M. Opens Thursday.

Click here for "I'm Frightened & I Want My Money" - Live at Short & Sweet 2005, Newtown Theatre.

You can now view my Short & Sweet 2005 play "I'm Frightened & I Want My Money" on Google Video.

Adapted from my performance poem, and starring me as myself, as well as the lovely Fiona Butler, and some other wacky talented cats, and directed by the sober eye of former S&S Artistic Director, and fine playwright on his own, the auspicious Alex Broun.

It was filmed by Tektonics Entertainment founder, the man we love to call Vlad The Pale: Tudor Bucea. Just click on the title of this blog entry.

Okay, the sounds a little dodgy, and it wasn't our best night, but such are the pitfalls of filming live theatre.

I hope very soon to have more of my short plays available for viewing thanks to Signor Bucea and the team at Tektonic, in particular 2004's "Naked, With A Blue Light," and my recent Peoples' Choice winner for it's week "9/11 Conspiracy: The Musical."

NB: I am presently writing a long version of "9/11 Conspiracy: The Musical" for a tour around Australia and the world. Could it be the next "Keating"? Let's hope so.

9/11 Conspiracy: The Musical

click on the above headline for a short film from the Short & Sweet site.

really, it's a very little film and, three (3) minutes in, it's all me talking about my new short play

"9/11 Conspiracy: The Musical"

dig?

c'mon man,

a durrie takes less time...

http://play.viostream.com/?play=02BB2192-AC27-43B6-837F-DE00EE94B92E&player=wm&speed=high&setplay=yes&video=1_4919_2700_wmhigh.wmv

article - White Cabin (Sydney Festival)

(This is an unedited version of an article that appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald on the 19/1/07. I must say, out of curiosity I saw the opening of this production and it was without doubt one of the most impressive nights of theatre I have ever seen: a bizarre and debauched blancmange of drunken dark clowning, or something like that. It's hard to explain, as you'll see.)

by Benito Di Fonzo

“What’s the angle?” I said to the editor. “One very big angle,” she said, “would be their ability to explain a very visual, very sensory and apparently very unnerving show in broken English to you on the telephone from Russia.” She was right.

Before ringing Maxim Isaev, Artistic Director of Akhe Russian Engineering Theatre, I watch a short clip on the Sydney Festival website. The extract shows an ominously silent black clown on stilts walking through what looks like a mental asylum full of catatonics, before coming to a door that opens on to a forest where, in slow motion, he hits a man with a bunch of red flowers. I am none the wiser.

It’s 10am in St. Petersburg and Maxim seems surprised: he wasn’t expecting our call and this is no doubt an early hour for a conceptual artist in a Russian winter. I decide to start simply, with the Company’s name: ‘Akhe’ (pronounced like ‘Ikea’ said very quickly.)

“It’s for no reason,” says Maxim in a thick Russian brogue. “In language no mean anything, but now it means our company.”

Okay. Maxim is one of the founders of the five member theatre group, which began by doing street performances during the cultural upheavals of Gorbachev’s Perestroika.

“It was real artistic performance: very long, very conceptual, probably very boring.”

Boring?

“If you watch from beginning to end, four or five hours, it was so boring.”

Quite the salesman our Maxim, but I guess this is why “White Cabin,” the show they are bringing to Sydney Festival, is only an hour long.

“Ya, now is only one hour is not boring at all.”

What actually happens?

“It’s difficult to explain in words because we are making an unusual piece. What we are doing [has] connected pictures, images, how one image transitions into another image and so on. Nevertheless it’s a production about how pictures are influenced by the person who’s watching, how the watcher transforms it. Yah, and also normal human relations, for example man fall in love with woman but woman does not love him.”

The Guardian’s review says “This is, I think, a show about death.” Is it?

“Yes, because the show has many images it is impossible to explain, one woman after show said for sure it was first part the soul preparing for death, second part is like soul just adventure after death.”

Despite this Maxim assures me “There is some funny moments.”

A kind of dark clowning?

“Journalists call it ‘intellectual clown.’”

Which means?

“I do not know I was just reading the newspaper. Just paradoxical situations, for me it’s more close to Dada.”

Akhe are known for their dislike of theatrical ‘tricks’ and use of real elements and stunts. Will “White Cabin” be dangerous?

“In this show no explosions, just open fire,” Maxim reassures me.

“Our conception is to give not character but just ourselves in special situations which are prepared by ourselves. We call ourselves not actors but creators, with real objects that are substantial, the emotions also real. We use real water, real whisky, real beer, real wine, because smell is also very important to us, for the audience smelling whisky or wine.”

The show’s pyrotechnics got Maxim in trouble in 2004 when Albuquerque Airport went into Orange Alarm after sniffer dogs smelt explosives on the four battered old suitcases Akhe carry their show around the world in.

“They thought we are transporting bomb,” says Maxim. “It was quite terrible, so serious. Agent from FBI and so on. We were in prison, but after one day they realise it was mistake. They took my prints, they think I Russian mafia.”

Assuming they make it through Mascot Maxim promises a bizarre and untraditional piece of avant-garde theatre.

“It’s another way of doing theatre, not like way of dramaturgy, it’s way of the imagination of the artist, the production looks like a live picture, also the audience is really very important to us to be a creative cooperative production, because we push audience to create [their] own show.”

It’s interactive then?

“Not really, but the audience have a little bit to work to understand it.”

They have to work?

“Definitely.”

Now I’m frightened.

#

(700 words)

Benito Di Fonzo

“White Cabin”

Akhe Russian Engineering Theatre.

Playhouse, Sydney Opera House.

January 22 – 26. $25.

Bookings 9250 7777

9/11 Conspiracy: The Musical

Learn how shape-shifting lizards, neo-cons and other religious nutters orchestrated 9/11 under the tutelage of Jesus H. Enron Mo-Hubbard. See the unknown knowns now!

that's right kids,

"9/11 Conspiracy: The Musical" is finally here

so any lovers of fine art, theatre, satire
should get down to The Seymour Centre
(cnr City Rd. & Cleveland Sts Sydney)
and catch my new short

"9/11 Conspiracy: The Musical."

It has it all;
shape-shifting lizards,
popes,
bushes,
Osamas,
sexually charged scenes at the United Nations featuring Johnny Howard, and of course

the great Phil Roberts pulling it all together on piano

plus at no extra charge

the deity to end all deities

Jesus H. Enron Mo-Hubbard

It's on as part of Short & Sweet 2007,
the world's biggest short play festival
(see http://www.shortandsweet.org/)

My god,
it's so good
I can't believe it's not Buddha!

it's on

downstairs at The Seymour Centre
Wed 24 - Sat 27 January
(excluding Australia Day for some reason,
obviously a conspiracy.)

Learn how shape-shifting lizards, neo-cons and other religious nutters orchestrated 9/11 under the tutelage of Jesus H. Enron Mo-Hubbard. See the unknown knowns now!

online bookings at http://www.mca-tix.com/festival.asp?fID=37
or call the Seymour Centre on 02 9351 7940

support your local drunken failed poet and conspiracy theorist today for not much more than a lobster (that's $20)

hope to see ya there,

Benito Di Fonzo.

(for more info on The Shape Shifting Lizards who apparently secretly rule the world see
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCvkz3LXwzY
http://www.subversiveelement.com/AliensReptoidsIckeShifters.html
and why not?)

article - Apocalypto (Dean Semler interview)

Dances with mad Mel

Latest related coverage

• Trailer: Apocalypto

By Benito Di Fonzo
January 5, 2007. Metro, Sydney Morning Herald,

"I think this is a combination of Dances With Wolves and Mad Max," says Oscar-winning cinematographer Dean Semler of Apocalypto, the film he shot for Mel Gibson in the rainforest of Mexico's La Jungla region.

Post-nuclear road movie meets Native American epic, then?

"It has the kinetic energy and the wild rawness of Mad Max yet some of the epic qualities of [Dances With Wolves]."

The South Australian-born Semler should know. Included on his CV of more than 50 films are Mad Max II, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome and Dances With Wolves, for which he won an Oscar.

Like The Passion of the Christ, Apocalypto, written by Gibson and Farhad Safinia, is told in the protagonist's native tongue: this time Yukatec Maya. It relies largely on Semler's visuals to carry the coming-of-age story of Jaguar Paw (singer-dancer Rudy Youngblood in his big-screen debut).

Following the enslavement and sacrificial murder of members of his tribe by populist Mayan priests, Youngblood escapes to save his wife (Dalia Hernandez), pursued through the jungle by hunters led by Raoul Trujillo (Black Robe).

"I was showing it to some people and they said, 'We don't need the subtitles we could follow the story pretty well,' " Semler says.

An allegory of the downward spiral of an American culture corrupted by consumerism, superstition and war, it first strikes as a fast-paced action adventure.

"We pulled out every trick in the book from all of Mel's experience," Semler says. "Mad Max [II] taught us both a hell of a lot, with George Miller out there doing it with bits of string. We didn't have any fancy equipment. Mel wanted to go down and dirty."

Fancy equipment is one thing they did have on Apocalypto, including new Genesis digital cameras, with Variety calling it "the best-looking big-budget film yet shot digitally".

"[The Genesis cameras] gave me the ability to shoot in the jungle where it was very dark," Semler says. "We got an extra two hours a day shooting. It's very light, the actors could run wherever they wanted to in the jungle, they had a hell of a good time with it."

For realism Gibson cast many Native American unknowns, including traditional Mayan storytellers, often acting out scenes for the crew.

"[Gibson] basically acted out the story for me on the front lawn of Panavision in 45 minutes or so and it was phenomenal," Semler says. "Right off I had to be part of it."

And did Semler and Mel hit the tequila down in Mexico? "Shit no!"

Apocalypto opens with a tapir being chased through the jungle, setting the pace for the next two hours and reminiscent of Semler's work on Razorback, which had a cult following among some bikers.

"They were Hell's Angels. They were first and second AD on Young Guns. They said, 'You shot Razorback, that's our favourite film! We're going to have a screening.' So we had a screening and lots of beer and then I went to my car and put my hand in my bag and there was something wet and fleshy in there: it was a pig's head. They said, 'We just wanted to show our appreciation, we would have put it in your bed but we thought your wife wouldn't like it.'"

Semler finds fans, and non-fans, in the strangest places.

"[This cop] was writing a ticket for me and he said, 'What other films did you do?' I said Dead Calm and Road Warrior [Mad Max II]. He said, 'You did Road Warrior?' I said yeah. He said, 'OK, just sign here,' and I said, 'No, you have to sign it.' He said, 'No, I want your autograph.' So he let me off.

"[However] I was picked up [speeding] when I was working with Mel on We Were Soldiers. It was north of LA and this guy was real mean. He didn't say shit.

"I said, 'I'm working on a movie down there, you know?' Nothing. 'You know, the one with Mel Gibson?' Nothing. I said, 'In fact, I've done several films with him right back to Road Warrior.'

"He said, 'Here's your ticket buddy.' "

Apocalypto
Director Mel Gibson Stars Rudy Youngblood, Raoul Trujillo
Rated R. Opens January 11.

article - Unsilent Night, Sydney

Metro, Sydney Morning Herald. December 15, 2006

Why sing carols when you can parade around playing Chrissie music on your boombox?

"It's a Christmas event that isn't corny or naff," says Daz Chandler, the organiser of Unsilent Night.

"This is for people who want to do something different around the silly season, who aren't into the whole Christian carolling side of things."

Unsilent Night is a composition by New York composer Phil Kline designed to be performed as a street parade by whoever turns up with a boombox.

It was first staged in 1992; last year's New York parade attracted 1500 participants. This Saturday night it will be performed in New York, San Diego and, thanks to Chandler, Sydney.

Chandler was given a recording of the New York parade for her 2SER-FM show last year and decided to organise the inaugural Australian parade in 2005.

"We asked Phil and he was stoked, so we bought a heap of cassette tapes - you can't do it on CDs because they skip - and stayed up all hours duplicating," she says. "It was great fun so we decided we'd definitely to do it again."

The symphony is arranged in four layers and distributed on cassettes to participants, along with a map of the route through the CBD, St James, Hyde Park and Oxford Street.

"It's timed so you get to Taylor Square and you're standing there [for] five minutes and it finishes and everyone goes, 'Wow, that was insane.' It attracts a lot of attention from normal people. They're having dinner and they look up and there's all these people carrying stereos on their heads."

It draws a wide range of participants.

"I was expecting the usual suspects: art students, people into weird stuff, musicians, but there were also families," Chandler says. "We had a women who was in her 80s.

"It feels magical, it also feels a trifle naughty. It's really great to do stuff with people you've never met before and feel like you're all united in something."

interview - Aunty Mavis

Stocking Stuffer, Turkey Plucker

Benito Di Fonzo
Sydney Morning Herald, December 8, 2006

Aunty Mavis isn't quite as she seems.

"I remember, as a girl, I had fantasies about Santa," says the unshaven 30-year-old man in the voice of an elderly woman, "I really did; that sort of older daddy figure, fuller figure, white beard, red suit. Santa comes only once a year, as did my husband."

Andrew Benson is getting a few odd looks as he channels Aunty Mavis for me in a pub near the performing arts school where he teaches. Mavis, a character Benson created under mentor Reg Livermore, is talking about her new show, Stocking Stuffer, Turkey Plucker.

"Try saying that fast with a few dry sherries under your belt," she says.

Aunty Mavis, Country Women's Association member and ex-president of the Lowlands Bowling Club, is a singer "somewhere between 60 and death" from his hometown of Newcastle. Since 1999, she has fronted shows such as Scones & Songs and The Silence of The Lamingtons.

"I've got a bit of a following in the gay and lesbian community," Mavis says. "A lot of lesbians like Mavis; I think it's the fuller figure myself."

Thought of turning? "No, closest I get to a lesbian is a lemon meringue pie."

As well as free Darrell Lea plum-nougat puddings - "they really put the dull back into delicious" - the show promises such carolling satires as Cross-Dressed Ye Merry Gentlemen, Away With a Stranger and Menopause is Getting her Down (to the tune of Santa Claus is Coming to Town), as well as a little Novocastrian culture.

"People in Sydney don't think there's life after Hornsby but there is, and it's Newcastle."

Mavis rounds off the show with a bit of tap-dancing, ably assisted by her elves. "You just say the magic word 'poof' and they appear."

Mavis, a staunch Country Party supporter, feels modern Australia may have lost its way.

"Oh look, there's a lot of foreigners here, isn't there? I mean they're nice, they've brought dim sims to the country and that's quite nice, but bring back the Australia of the '50s, I say."

Haven't we? "That's what I love about John [Howard]."

Mavis also will discuss the big questions of the day, such as AWB scandals. "They were just trying to help [Iraqis] out because they've got flatbread over there. I think they were trying to sell them yeast to give their bread a bit of a rise."

Could she send scones and lamingtons? "Wouldn't that be fun? I might have to speak to my local member and see if they'll send me over. You will have to try my rummy balls, I make a good rumball."

Rumballs in the jungle?

"Can I use that?"

Unfortunately, Santa won't make an appearance as, Mavis explains, he has been placed in detention on Christmas Island after Navy ships allegedly spotted him throwing presents overboard.

What does Mavis make of her nephew and creator, Andrew? "Oh, he's nice enough, isn't he? I just wish he could find a nice country girl and settle down."

What exactly does Mavis miss from the '50s? "Just politeness, manners [and] hot-water bottles - do you use a hot-water bottle? No. Well, that's what's missing in our culture and that's something I always relished as a girl: the smell of rubber close to the skin as you fell asleep. Do what I do, fill it with porridge; not only does it keep you warm, it's breakfast-in-bed in the morning. [The] taste's a bit rubbery but, in today's society, rubbery is quite safe, you know?"

Art Will Always Eat Itself

In an irrelevant aside:

One midday in the middle of summer in New York, 1972 John ‘Sonny’ Wojtowicz watched The Godfather. He wanted to become Michael Corleone. The part of Michael Corleone was played by Al Pacino. Wojtowicz robbed a bank later that day so his male lover Ernest Aaron could become a woman. The robbery failed. The botched robbery inspired a film script. The lead role was offered to a young stage actor who had recently made a name for himself in The Godfather. Ernest Aaron became Elizabeth Eden. In the Summer of 1975, filming began in New York of Dog Day Afternoon. Al Pacino became Sonny Wojtowicz.

Does this mean that if I watch The Sopranos this evening and decide I want to become Don Tony then in three years James Gandolfini will be a failed writer living in a small flat in Sydney?

No, it just means art will always eat itself.

article - Josh Lawson "Plays: By Himself"

by Benito Di Fonzo. (Metro, Sydney Morning Herald 24/11/06)

“I must sound like a crazy man,” says actor turned playwright Josh Lawson of his improv-inspired technique.

“I sit at home and improvise the characters aloud by myself. I’m speaking four or five different characters. It must sound like I’m having a dinner party but I’m not, I’m a lonely, lonely man.”

While the skills that earned Josh a NIDA Fellowship studying improv in Los Angeles have become his trademark through ‘Thank God You’re Here,’ he’s forged a parallel career as a playwright following the success ‘Shakespearealism,’ a winner of Naked Theatre Companies ‘Write Now’ competition staged earlier in this year.

“I was sitting in the audience opening night; nervous, scared, excited, looking at the audience react and seeing that they were liking it. That was absolutely one of the highlights of my career, so I continued writing hoping I would feel that again.”

He’ll get his chance at the opening of ‘Plays: By Himself.’ A double entendre I take it?

“What’s sad is that was my idea, the title. They wanted ‘A Night With Josh Lawson,’ that was just too arrogant.”

‘Plays: By Himself’ will include the aforementioned ‘Shakespearealism,’ which tells the story of Ralph Shakespeare, the failed realist playwright brother of William. The play is less a dig at the Bard than Josh’s contemporaries.

“It’s taking the piss out of realism more than it is Shakespeare. I just got sick and tired of reading new plays by writers who are desperate to recreate realism, and in doing so use this bastardised mannered syntax that doesn’t really make much sense, [as if] half finished sentences means it’s gritty realism, writing in ‘uhms’ and ‘ahs’ and leaving the actor no freedom to have any kind of original stimulus because you’ve written in coughs, sneezes and breaths.”

Another contemporary pet hate is swearing.

“Jesus, I swear in my life more than anyone really. I’m working with the navy at the moment and I match them, but I do think that new, particularly young male writers, swear too much for shock value and attempted grittiness, so in the night you’ll hear one ‘shit.’ I’ve [also] invented the word ‘fruck.’”

The show also includes his fast-paced comedy ‘The 11 O’Clock,’ in which a psychiatrist attempts to treat a patient that believes he is a psychiatrist treating a patient who believes he is a psychiatrist.

“It’s ten minutes long but if feel like two if it goes at speed. ‘The 11 O’Clock’ is a tribute to Vaudeville really, I’m a big fan of Abbot & Costello.”

Tony and Peter or Bud and Lou?

“Well, both are farcical really aren’t they? My dad was a fan of Buster Keaton, the Marx Brothers, it was an attempt to write a modern version . That’s were it came from, but you can read whatever you want into it; breakdown of communication, peoples’ fascination with therapy, self-help. At it’s heart it’s a blatant duel of words.”

Absurd word play is at the heart of Josh’s style.

“I’m a massive fan of word play, I think writers aren’t doing enough of it. I love watching clever wordy pieces and I hope I’m not the only one, but we’ll find out soon enough. I might be busking on Pitt St. Mall in six months.”

The third play ‘Work In Progress’ was still literally what its title implies at the time of talking to Josh. It’s a play within a play within a play, the protagonist realising he’s in a play written by someone else, who in turn is also. At it’s centre is a writer introducing his parents to his latest female character.

“It’s kind of Charlie Kaufman, in the play I refer to the Escher drawing of a hand drawing a hand. The original thing was because I didn’t write women very well. That’s where that idea came from: what if I was to write a women and then introduce her to my friends? What would they think of her? It’s going to be a real head-spin.”

Assuming its finished?

“It’s great isn’t it? I’ve already got an out-clause. If people go ‘Jesus the ending was a bit rubbish’ I can go ‘well it was a Work In Progress, I did warn you.’”

“Plays: By Himself – Three Short Plays by Josh Lawson.”

Directed by Tamara Cook and Toby Schmitz

Old Fitzroy, Woolloomooloo. November 29 – December 23

Jack Marx, Ian Thorpe & the proud donkeys of Italy

Yesterday in Jack Marx's SMH blog he said that Ian Thorpe should be stripped of his Australian citizenship for quitting swimming.

http://blogs.smh.com.au/thedailytruth/archives/2006/11/dirty_pool.html

While I had no problem with that, in fact any punishment on Australian sporting ‘heroes’ be more than overdue as far as I’m concerned, it was something later in the article which earned my ire, hence the response to Mr Marx below.

Dear Sir,
with reference to your comment that Thorpe is like –

“…a cowardly donkey… A Spanish or, perhaps, Italian donkey.”

While it is true that the donkeys of Madrid, Barcelona and other regions of Spain are spineless cowards who run at the first sign of a pub brawl (well, not exactly spineless, as they wouldn’t be able to carry anything on their back, or walk for that matter if they literally did not possess spines, but you get my drift) as an Irish/Italian/Australian journalist, playwright, poet and amateur historian I take great offence on the behalf of the donkeys, mules and jack-asses of Italy.

Your assertion, Sir, is an untruth. Surely you know of Garibaldi’s brave donkey “Spinicco,” who could defeat several men with one hoof tied behind his back and played a pivotal role in the unification of Italy. As for Mussolini’s bold (and bald) mule “Gucciano,” he was so loved amongst the people for his generosity, bravery and intelligence that when Il Duce and his mistress where hung like cheap salamis in the town square “Gucciano” was spared, and in fact offered a role in the post war government, alongside Lucky Luciano’s recently repatriated ass “Cunni” who had almost single-handedly chased the Germans from Sicily.

While it is an untruth that Julius Caesar appointed his horse a senator, it is true that he did appoint his donkey Praetor. Tiberius, likewise, rewarded “Assino,” a bold donkey that played a pivotal role in the defeat of the Gauls, several consulships. Gaius Caligula, likewise, was the proud owner of “Scatoulo,” the son of Mark Antony’s donkey and Cleopatra’s fine ass. This animals prowess and bravery in the battlefield and the bedroom were the envy of the Empire, and his debauched tales of bibulous bravery stunned even Caligula.

I will not even touch upon Sofia Loren’s “Stuccio,” Federico Fellini’s “Maestro” or Roberto Begnini’s “Ricco” as they are, I’m sure you’re aware, at present in the same court room in Florence awaiting trial. However, if I were even able to list the crimes these animals are accused of, most of which were committed undoubtedly in self defence, you would never dare call an Italian donkey cowardly.

Sir, on behalf of all right thinking people I assure you, therefore, you are incorrect, and will no doubt be penning your apology now.

Thank you.

Benito Di Fonzo

article - Sydney's Buskers.

Meet the buskers

Benito Di Fonzo, Sydney Morning Herald. November 17, 2006

Pterodactyl Man

"I'd like a dollar for every time I've heard some witless inebriate yell, 'Get a real job,' from a passing car," Pterodactyl Man says. "Then I'd have $8! A real job?

What are buskers: holograms?"

Ptery has spent a decade dressing as a haiku-sprouting pterodactyl superhero and accompanying himself on a stylophone, a small electronic keyboard. That's when he's not donning a white outfit and grabbing his charango, a South American lute, to become Bi-Polar Bear. "In hot weather you wear the heavy bear suit and in cold you wear the skimpy suit."

Ptery finds it safer to stick to Newtown. "[In Chinatown] I was told to move on because somebody was having spasms in a bar up the road. A man couldn't handle the high-pitched theremin noise I was making."

What is he seeking? "The ultimate approval and a few shiny gold coins to make up for my low wages. I have a real job but it doesn't make enough so I need an unreal job."

Rod Alexander

Sydney's draconian licensing laws have driven this harp guitarist to the streets. "Here's my problem with Sydney, OK? If a restaurant wants to put on a performance of me, they have to pay thousands of dollars for a licence. It's absolutely ridiculous. I go to restaurants and they go, 'No, we haven't got a performing licence. We'll get in trouble.' And they don't want to get one because it cost them all this money. It leaves me with not many options."

His mission is simple. "Just a way to live.

I've worked in lots of different jobs and done things I absolutely detest. Though I could make more money, you don't have the time, the freedom, to do what you want to do. If you give up some material things, you gain freedom.

You gain time to seek."

India Bharti

For Bharti, busking is part of a larger spiritual "seeking". "Look, mate, I lived in India for eight years. I'm a worshipper of Shiva. In India there's a long tradition of people called sadhus. They're usually wandering mendicants, completely outside of society, beggars. Buddha's last words were, 'Walk on.' I came back here and the only way to do it was to play music. It's a different culture here: if you just begged you'd starve."

Bharti accompanies himself on electric violin, harmonica and bhartiphone, an other-worldly instrument that looks and sounds like the bastard child of a mangrove tree and a cello.

"I started off with nothing and I've got nothing now," says Bharti, who has recorded several albums and has his own website, http://www.indiabharti.com. "I've kept myself independent and just above the poverty level but it's a fairly non-destructive occupation. What else can you do?"

Koomurri Troupe

A "Contiki" of tourists has gathered around Ben as he plays didgeridoo against a backing track. "There's about five didgeridoo players," Ben says, wearing Aboriginal dress. "We do two hours each."

Koomurri are by far the most professional outfit at Circular Quay this day. They include dancers and have just returned from South Korea where they defeated 71 other teams of indigenous performers. They even have their own roadie, Mitch, who explains their mission. "We do a whole show to educate people. There's not many places in Sydney where you can see a live Aboriginal cultural show. Here we're able to share Aboriginal culture with more people. We also give a spiel about what people are wearing, use Aboriginal language and explain what words mean."

They've found a way around the much-maligned council rule that buskers can't sell CDs. "Under international human rights law, indigenous people are allowed to promote their culture as they see fit and shouldn't be impeded."

Mitch is a volunteer but the performers share their tips evenly. "It's the way traditionally Aboriginal people look after each other in their families."

Ivan Medel

If you've seen electronic music outfit Endorphin then you've seen Medel - he's that wacky cat out front dancing in an outfit louder than the music. It's among the many suits he designs for Endorphin and his own human statue act. He has performed as a statue regularly at Circular Quay for the past eight years. His best busking experience was when Carlos Santana and entourage strolled by one day and were so captivated he flung him $100. They chatted afterwards in Spanish. Did he try to get Endorphin a support spot? "I was sort of too star-struck."

Sounds like he missed his big break. However, it's not all corn chips and salsa, as Medel found when "some idiot, a guy with a mullet" pushed him off his platform as a class of terrified primary school kids watched on. Lucky he didn't fall in the harbour. "Or squash one of the little ones. It was a bit scary."

Medel seeks to entertain a wide diversity of people. "I know how to lure them in, give them a little kick-start for about 10 seconds, mouth open, trying to figure out what I am. That's what I get off on."

J-P McKendry

"It's battle axes, medieval axes, whips and toy koalas." That's McKendry's description of his Darling Harbour act, which he has been perfecting since Brisbane's Expo 88 inspired the then 13-year-old to hit the streets.

What is he seeking? "I love making people laugh and breaking them out of TV. So many people are used to just absorbing entertainment, whereas a street show runs on the energy of the audience - if the audience doesn't clap and cheer, the show doesn't work."

Audience participation works both ways. "I had a gun pulled on me in Kings Cross. There was this stupid guy who didn't like what I was doing. He yelled at me for half an hour. I yelled back at him and then he pulled out a gun and said, 'You shouldn't hassle me because I've got this.' I just went, 'OK, I'll juggle now.'"

His show also saves lives. "I had a lady watch me for two-and-a-half years in the front row, always smiling, never clapping. At the end of that time she gave me a card that explained that she was feeling suicidal one day at Circular Quay and was thinking of throwing herself off the station and looked down and saw me doing the show and came down and watched it."

Did she tip? "Five dollars every show." It's in his interest not to lose her, then? "Oh, yeah ... [but] you give me $5 million and I'll still go out and do it. I'd do it for free."

Michael

It's six years since Michael swapped his job as an aged-care nurse for a milk crate, slide guitar and harmonica on Pitt Street mall, and he still gets off on it.

"I get a buzz from the gratification and if people want to throw in some coins, I'll buzz even more."

He takes his run-ins stoically.

"That mob over there," he says, pointing at a fashion store, "if they don't like me they'll turn their music up. I don't mind. I go with the beat and play with it. You get weirdos. I've had people come up and dance round to the music drunk and then they think the money's half theirs. Take a couple of dollars and off you go."

The tattooed guitarist loves his new life.

"I was sick and tired of the endless circle: get up, go to work, come home. I haven't got a boss on me back saying, 'Work faster, work harder, make me richer.' I can just do me own thing."

Sam Prest

"There's more to it than just the act," Prest says in a slightly Cockney accent. "There's a whole psychology behind it that is really the art of good street performing."

Prest's "circle act" combines dance, humour and magic.

"I started when I was about 12 years old until about 18. I did corporate work for 15 years and I decided I wanted to do more travel, meet new people, develop new material and there's no better place to do it than on the street."

Does he have run-ins?

"I've had guys go through my box while I'm performing. As we speak I've got a guy who's a bit of a psycho," he says, looking over my shoulder.

I shouldn't turn around?

"I think he's gone now."

Probably gone down to Michael the guitarist.

"Probably, yeah."

article - Busk Off 06.

Boom or busk

Benito Di Fonzo
Sydney Morning Herald. November 17, 2006

George Gill, busker and co-host of Bondi Junction's Busk-Off, says the best busking moments for him come "every time that you get a nice look from a nice young lady".

The 32-year-old singer-guitarist from Barbados, whose specialty is "reggae-tising" songs, hooked the co-hosting gig by turning up to the inaugural Busk-Off in 2004.

"I got into the final," Gill says. "I didn't have much to play at the time. They were having a massive jam session. I was at a loss, so I took up the mic and started making up a song as we went along and had a good old time, everybody dancing. Afterwards Debbie Dawson from [Waverley] Council and Cathy [Levins, organiser] said, 'That was fun. You'll have to come and co-host next year.'"

Waverley Council runs the event each year as a way of distributing free Oxford Street mall busking permits.

"Listening to great music as you come around the corner is just so fantastic," Levins says.

"It can absolutely change the colour of your day. Listening to something really bad as you come around the corner is not so good, so creating the competition allowed us to create a series of busking permits and we've left it in the hands of the judges."

Performers will have up to seven minutes each during today's and Saturday's two-hour sessions. The event ends with the aforementioned finalists' jam.

"That's the fun bit," Levins says. "It's literally a busk-off."

Meanwhile, in the city, you have to fork out $40 a year, or $10 for three months, to busk. That is, unless your act is considered potentially dangerous, in which case you'll find yourself performing an audition in the Bay Street truck depot in front of "peer judges" such as veteran busker J-P McKendry, a ruck of council workers (shovels optional) and Sydney City Council's Kiersten Fishburn.

"Ten dollars is pretty reasonable for three months," Fishburn says. "If you can't recoup that pretty quickly in the city then possibly you need to rethink your busking act.

"The ones we audition are the ones that could be construed as dangerous - that's fire, knife juggling, chainsaw juggling, axe juggling, anything that potentially holds a risk.

"We get a whole diversity like people on unicycles who are juggling knives and fire simultaneously.

"We get some pretty eccentric characters - they're buskers who have travelled the whole world. We also get people for whom busking is a total career change. We had someone who had been the spruiker at Kings Cross who has moved on to busking - he was very excited to get his licence."

Could busking be the new sea change?

"For some it is but what we tend to see is that there are a lot of people who have busking run in their family," Fishburn says.

Like carnies?

"I don't want to use the word 'carnies' - that has interesting connotations. They're a kind of contemporary circus on the city streets."

Fishburn does occasionally fail acts.

"People who have failed to undertake their act safely," she says.

"That can involve one of the busking auditioners walking behind them and they've got no awareness. When you translate that into a crowd scene you can imagine there are issues. One person was juggling fire and his firestick landed on his own head."

Michael Jackson jokes aside, Fishburn finds that those buskers who make it through can end up with a following.

"They have their own fan club so if they move from a particular site we get phone calls asking where they've gone."

The winners of last year's Busk-Off, Angus and Julia Stone, have gone on to snatch record deals as well as Triple J airplay.

Gill is happy with the simpler pleasures busking has given him, even if he's afraid to follow it up sometimes.

"I would assume that a percentage of all those girls who ask, and the guys who are you know 'I have a place' or 'I have a party'. Maybe one or two of those but I dare not go there."

Busk Off 06
Today and Saturday, noon-2pm, Oxford Street Mall, Bondi Junction, pre-registration at http://www.bondijunction.org.au/busk-off