Finishing a manuscript is a deeply emotional moment. Printing it out and sending it off into the world even more so. It's like sending a child off to school.

You weigh it in your hands.

You look at what was until now only pixels on a screen. A damn lot of pixels but pixels nonetheless. Now it's three hundred and eight pages of hard copy.

You flick through them.

You just know the judges of the competition you're sending it off to won't love it like you do, won't understand this strange little retarded infant you spawned, but you always will. Or will they? Who knows.

Here are some photos I took before I sent my child out into the big bad world. For three years I carried it in me in various forms, and I carried in that strange incubator known as my laptop. In fact it outlived two laptops, two Toshibas, and I carried it unharmed into a third, a Dell, only a month ago.

This morning it was spat out, all three hundred and seven pages of it.

I was unsure my printer would cope with it, whether the sides would split and it would bleed black blood, but it didn't. Sure it had a minor panic halfway through the labour but a restart soon fixed that.

When it was all out I dried it in a towel, looked over it to make sure it was all there, and naturally as one does with a newborn after a long labour, photographed it with my laptop camera.

Then I casually printed out the placenta-like Synopsis.

My hands were shaking as I filled out the entry form for the ABC Fiction Award 2008 and a stray tear of black blood left my laptop I'm sure.

Then it was off to the post office.

I felt like I was putting it out for adoption, betraying it almost, but no - I was sending it out into the world, hopefully to be judged less harshly than me, who knows.

So here it is, hopefully you'll hear more of it. Either way they say it's the journey that matters anyway. Not that a journey to a book deal isn't always better than a journey to the Dole office, but...

I call it Molochio Leather.

I Was Attacked By A Bush Poet!

Here's an old poem that I've just put this here for Wednesday Kennedy in response to an on her blog at http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=149802788&blogID=280206981&MyToken=5b9b6d02-01a8-4216-8dc2-71f48d589800

It's a true story incidentally.

I Was Attacked By A Bush Poet.

I was attacked by a Bush Poet it's true; he looked like a rabid Orson Welles

as his porky fist popped buttons off my collar & his face grew pink as a dingo’s bits on heat.

Yeah, I was attacked by a Bush Poet at the peak of a Spring Writer's Festival

after consuming the sponsor's fluids in the stale starchy air of the poetry marquee.

The gaggle of poets had gathered around to do what they did best; compete,

for a minuscule monetary prize,

and a rare shot in the bloated blue veins of their egos of the finest uncut kudos.

And then I was attacked by a Bush Poet,

sure, some would say I was asking for it

with my smart-ass dago mouth and threads and my 'Stop Jabiluka' badge.

I'd actually quite liked his verse;

a mild departure from the Lawson like rants about

horses and hills and sunburnt bullock trains,

and hard blokie homo-erotic fantasies about raping the land for a Queen -

all as alien to my existence as that sad Union Jack in our flag.

So I congratulated him, sincerely if not soberly,

as he pulled back his Akubra scalp

and continued to guzzle at the barrel of Guiness which explained his stout physique.

As his bloated face came down all that he seemed to notice

was the bold black and gold of that Jabiluka badge pinned to the rim of my ethnic leather

and so he began a tirade supporting uranium and sprouting mad Menzies wisdom.

Naturally, I didn't agree.

In fact, I'd just come from the ERA embassy,

and heard of the ferals risking their lives against the dumb ugly evil of Darwin police.

What I actually said to him is beyond me,

but I'm sure it was delivered with the silk like bite of a polite chardonnay

and an accenting flick of the wrist.

Then it happened; his porky fist flying towards my collar like a logger on acid,

then pulling it towards his plump matronly features as he began to bellow;

"You macchiato sipping inner city smart asses,

you dole bludging, drug addled, commie, hippie, poofter, scum.

Pauline’s right; you should all be gassed, you Greenie Wog Asian Jew Blacks."

All around me writers turned, poets even halted tugging dumbly at their drinks

and sat silently in the amphetamine air of violence awaiting my baited reaction.

Now, I'm a runner not a fighter

and while I'm not averse to thrusting the blade of a sarcastic word

into the Achilles heel of an enemy's sole,

I've never been in a fight in my life and I plan to keep it that way.

Like Ghandi said, You can't fight fire with fire, only water.

So responding in kind to his primate violence was never in the equation.

Besides, I'm a card carrying coward, and for all I knew, this yob wrestled crocs

and I couldn't fight my way out of a yeeros bag.

So in the end all I could to do was wave my hands in the air

and place my fingers in victory as I began to recite John Lennon's "Give Peace A Chance".

Before long the pacifistic logic of the lyrics

caused the old bush bard to have a cerebral haemorrhage

and begin to fall t'wards the floor like a hard wood

only to be caught by his ‘mates’ and dragged quivering to the tune of "God Save The Queen"

into the annals of history

(where, some would say, he belonged.)

©Benito Di Fonzo. Oct, 1998.

Beyond The Valley of The Summer of The 17th Doll

After the beautiful failure of my combining the literary styles of Raymond Chandler and Lewis Carroll (see www.jabbernoir.blogspot.com) my latest idea for a cultural mash is a blend of the cinematic style of Russ Meyer (Beyond The Valley of The Dolls, Vixen, Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill, Beneath The Valley of The Ultra Vixens) with the seminal Australian theatrical work Ray Lawler’s Summer Of The Seventeenth Doll. Just think of it – 60s psychedelic soft-core porn blended with the rough elegance of the Australian outback. I could bring out all the sexual undertones of the outback and blend Strine with 60s hipster speak. I’m going to call it Beyond The Valley of The Summer of The 17^th Doll. Discuss.

BDF

The Loneliest of Cities?

I just read a reviewer refer to London as “that loneliest of cities,” but I wonder, is it really? Surely the loneliest of cities would have to be an Australian town, even Sydney – those sparse, empty spaces, be it the landscape or the never-ending suburbia. Sydney does not even have that sense or artistic community of, say, Melbourne.

Sydney is an empty town where empty people leave their single flats to sit on vast, hot, salty beaches and not talk to one another, the loneliest of cities easily no? Discuss.

In conversation with Marton Csokas (Romulus, My Father)

Romanians of the day

Latest related coverage

• Director's video diary: Romulus, My Father
• Trailer: Romulus, My Father

Other related coverage

• Proud father

Benito Di Fonzo, Sydney Morning Herald.
May 25, 2007

In Romulus, My Father, Marton Csokas (Lord of the Rings, xXx) takes a break from playing elves and villains to assume a role closer to his heart. The son of a Hungarian immigrant plays Hora, the Hungarian voice of hope and sanity opposite Eric Bana's troubled Romanian in Richard Roxburgh's directorial debut.

It's based on philosopher Raimond Gaita's memoirs of the country Victorian shack where his father raised him with the help of Hora. Meanwhile, his German mother (Franka Potente, Run Lola Run) disappears to the city with her lover (Russell Dykstra), who is also Hora's brother. Romulus, My Father encapsulates the seldom-told struggle of the Eastern Europeans who came to Australia after suffering both Nazi and Soviet occupation.

"There are certainly similarities to the stories that my father and friends of the family told me," Csokas says.

"They shared the shock of the new, coming from an old established culture and what it was to arrive in a very foreign land. My father was the only person left in his family, and off he went from 12 years old. The story of Romulus is not dissimilar to that. The boy at the centre of the story, Raimond, has the wisdom of the old world in a burgeoning new land, and that's what struck me as the most wonderful thing about this story."

The film explores how young Gaita (Kodi Smit-McPhee) deals with the tragedy that unfolds in his life as his extended family try to survive and stay sane in rural post-war Australia. This bleakness is balanced by the optimistic Hora, who introduces the future philosopher to the works of Bertrand Russell as they watch the sun set.

"He's the light in the darkness, which is why I loved playing Hora," Csokas says. "He's full of sun and life. I could do with a lot more of Hora in my life."

Romulus, My Father
Directed by Richard Roxburgh
Stars Eric Bana, Marton Csokas, Franka Potente
Rated M. Opens Thursday.
There is a Q&A and screening of the fi lm with Bana at the Cremorne Opheum on Tuesday at 6.30pm.

In conversation with director Denis Dercourt (The Page Turner)

Reprise of revenge

• Trailer: The Page Turner

Benito Di Fonzo
May 18, 2007. Sydney Morning Herald.

Hell hath no fury like a child prodigy scorned, or so it would seem in writer and director Denis Dercourt's intelligent psycho-thriller The Page Turner.

Most of us struggle with one career, but 43-year-old Dercourt has excelled in two: writing and directing films while teaching and playing viola in the French Symphony Orchestra.

His latest film, The Page Turner, was selected for Cannes and was the most successful French film in 2006. It tells the story of Melanie, first seen as a talented, precocious child pianist attempting to enter the Conservatorium. When her ego is shattered by examiner and famed pianist Ariane (Catherine Frot) signing an autograph during her audition, she gives up music forever, carrying a chip on her shoulder the size of the Arc de Triomphe.

Fast forward 10 years and fate finds the adult Melanie, played by Deborah Francois and reminiscent of a young Catherine Deneuve, working as a nanny for Ariane, who now suffers performance anxiety due to a hit-and-run accident. Deciding revenge is a dish best served cold, Melanie endears herself to the ageing pianist and becomes her page turner, confidante and indispensable companion.

The subtle build-up to Melanie's revenge, foregoing the obvious avenues, marks The Page Turner as a tour de force in filmmaking, moving with a musical dynamism to its crescendo.

"The main mechanism in classical music is that of the cadenza," Dercourt says, "a tense chord resolving in another chord; tension, resolve, tension, resolve, and often the release of tension is [creating] another tension. It's the same in a film, especially genre film, and I liked writing this film because I hadn't done that before. That was a real discovery for me."

Dercourt's musical background gave him a unique insight into musicians' minds.

"It's a very tiny village, the world of musicians. We are very few, especially at a certain level. Playing music is really difficult, hard work."

Are musicians particularly prone to becoming psychopaths, then?

"Like actors, like painters, like all artists they are more aware of their feelings. Also they must be like sports people - they must be always perfect. You cannot fail when you have a concert, you must be aware of your state of mind."

Who is more dangerous, the child prodigy or the failed musician?

"That's a good question," Dercourt says. "When they both are one single person you have to be very afraid."

The Page Turner
Director Denis Dercourt
Stars Catherine Frot, Deborah Francois
Rated PG. Out now.

In conversation with Adam Hills

Adam Hills: Joymonger

Benito Di Fonzo
May 17, 2007. Sydney Morning Herald.

The Spicks and Specks host is having a car roof moment.

Adam Hill's deliriously positive dial has beamed at us from ABC's Spicks and Specks and stages from Enmore to Edinburgh. His new show, Joymonger, promises more uplifting humour. Someone once said "never trust a man that doesn't drink or is always smiling", so I decided to find Hills's dark side. What makes him angry?

"What makes me really angry is myself," says Hills, "my own shortcomings."

That's just too nice.

"No, I get really shitty at myself - if I forget somebody's birthday I really take it to heart."

Move over, Satan!

"All this 'nice guy of comedy' malarky is never really something I've cultivated," Hills says.

I remind him that his show is called Joymonger.

"Well, there's that," he says. "I was trying to think of something like 'militant joy' or 'joy warrior,' this idea of living in a cynical, jaded and very frustrating world and therefore trying to dance on the roof of my car."

The analogy, Hills says, comes from a friend in Egypt.

"He told me that whenever there was a traffic jam it was so frustrating - 45 degrees, no one could move - people would get out and dance on the roofs of their cars. I liked the fact that purely out of frustration people would dance on their cars, not because everything is great but because everything has turned so bad that the only way to deal with it is to dance on your car."

Is he sure they were dancing, not jumping? "Pretty sure. I believe in putting positive vibes out into the world and when you're frustrated and angry that's when you most need to put positive vibes out."

Joymonger is partly "improvised joy," such as in Edinburgh where Hills conducted a gay wedding, held an impromptu job interview and became godfather to a three-month-old in the front row.

"I like to create something special that audiences are going to remember," Hills says. "It's not about me showing off, it's about making sure they're enjoying themselves and often that entails 20 minutes of chatting with them because I want to get to know them."

Hills will be bringing his sign-language interpreter for Joymonger.

"I did a show in Adelaide a few years ago for a disability art conference and they provided a signer and two things happened. First, deaf people in the audience were connecting with my material, and second, I was getting laughs out of the sign-interpreter because the hearing people were fascinated. Now I have hearing people who will only book [for signer shows.]"

Hills was raised in Sydney's Sutherland Shire, where he had a "pretty happy suburban life, pool in the backyard, cricket on the road ... I was so happy when I was 10, 12 years old, and the rest of my life is trying to recapture that."

Happy despite the fact that he was born without a right foot, something that makes him feel almost lucky as it pushed him to achieve his goal. Hills has been determined to pursue a career as a stand-up comedian since he first heard Victor Borge on a plane at the ripe age of eight.

"That one person was making a room full of people laugh - I liked that idea. [Also] our family used to listen to comedy on holidays; Bill Cosby, Billy Connolly, Peter Sellers. Comedy was something that bonded our family. I like stand-up because it bonds people; again maybe it's me trying to recapture the happy days of being a 10-year-old."

Hills admits he has been driven to anger, such as when he abused a punter in an Adelaide beer garden who attempted to tell him a racist joke.

"I don't deal well with negative energy," he says, "If something bad is going on around me I wither and freeze up or yell at people inside my own head. One of the points of [ Joymonger] is to find a way of dealing with that."

Also, the man who wrote on disability website Ouch! that he feared becoming a "one-legged Anthony Robbins" does worry he takes life too seriously.

"I think a lot of stand-ups take life incredibly seriously; that's why they do stand-up. [So] I wouldn't say I have a dark side, but I certainly take life ridiculously seriously and I need to lighten up."

"The Italian" preview.

No place like home

Benito Di Fonzo, Sydney Morning Herald.
April 10, 2007

Inspired by the orphans that Russian director Andrei Kravchuk saw scamming on the local streets in the '90s, The Italian is a dark and moving journey about a heroic little boy.

Along a dirty and remote snow-ridden road, a childless Italian couple arrive at a rundown Russian orphanage to adopt Vanya (Kolya Spiridonov). Vanya's peers, envious of his escape from the rule of the orphanage's drunken, melancholic headmaster (Yuri Itskov) and their own harsh hierarchy, christen him the Italian.

"When I was a student I shot a little documentary about [a] children's house and I thought about this problem," says Kravchuk, whose film has won several international awards. "[When scriptwriter Andrei Romanov] told me about the little article in newspaper, about [a] six-year-old boy who decides to find his mother, I realise it is a very good story for [a] movie."

Many of the cast members are actual orphans, injecting the film with a level of realism that Kravchuk set out to achieve. "I want that the people see it like a real story," he says.

Learning of the suicide of another adopted child's mother, Vanya escapes his comfortable life in Italy to search for his own mother. The Italian then becomes a neo-realist chase film as Vanya is pursued by orphan traders (Mariya Kuznetsova and Rudolf Kuld).

Learning important life skills along the way, such as how to glass a man with a broken beer bottle in a street fight, Vanya is hindered by as many people as he is helped.

Kravchuk sees Vanya's struggle as a parable of hope for his homeland.

"We have [a] heroic little boy who lives like a real man, yes? He lives like he feels in his heart and I think that when you have that kind of hero in our time in Russia, yes, we have a future."

The Italian
Directed by Andrei Kravchuck.
Starring Kolya Spiridonov, Yuri Itskov, Mariya Kuznetsova.
Opens April 25.

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."