Fenech: The posh wanker brigade has taken over Aussie TV
Fenech: Brain behind Housos
The Australian TV industry has been taken over by the “posh wanker brigade”, Housos creator Paul Fenech has complained.
His comments – in which he highlighted his “love-hate relationship” with SBS – came in a live video chat with Mumbrella readers on the weekend that the Housos fim opened in cinemas.
Fenech also spoke of his antipathy to working in the advertising industry again and said that the lengthy process involved in getting Screen Australia funding has made him go his own way in producing films such as Housos which he partly funded out of his own pocket.
Posh wanker brigade? That would be the people who make TV and Film that isn’t the same joke told three painfully, pathetically, unfunny ways.
SBS’ number 1 show? I don’t think your 200k viewers compare to Go Back, Once Upon a Time in fact most of SBS’s shows. What an arrogant kn*b. I’m sure he’s saying some of this to get a bit of publicity for his film. What a loser.
There’s a strong element of truth to what he’s saying ya stooges. A lot, not all, of TV production at the ABC and SBS are conceived by and created for the socially liberal Sydney and Melbourne educated middle class audiences who aren’t especially well connected to the realities of life outside of inner ring urban suburbs, or in a lot of cases hold them in contempt. Take for example Redfern Now, well produced and executed, but for folks who have any experience in front line services to the south sydney indigenous community so completely removed from the reality of the area. It’s like a liberal’s fantasia of what Redfern should be, not what it is.
Another example for me would be The Slap, I watched the first episode and I couldn’t fathom why any of these people were friends. It was like someone looked at a demography report and assembled a list of characters based on that, none of it felt genuine or real.
Hey, they’re both good shows, but they adopt the veneer of being “real dramas about real people” and they’re nothing of the sort. Still, better than most TV in Australia….like that’s saying anything….
errrrr…. anon_coward…. The Slap is a novel by Australian author Christos Tsiolkas … and a damn fine one at that. Having read the book, then watched the mini-series it was true to the original and well worth the watching of it. I think you’ll find if you read it/watch it, it’s a book about family, and their friends, and the impact of one of them slapping a child. And while a novel, it could so easily play out in any backyard here in Ozstraya!
Oh please! There’s no posh wankers on TV. Neighbours, Winners and Losers, Home and Away, Packed To The Rafters, House Husbands, Underbelly, The Shire, Being Lara Bingle, My Bedazzeled Life, Big Brother, Dave Hughes, Chrissie Swan, Michelle Laurie… They’re all bogan shows/people or appeal to that demographic.. Quite frankly Australian TV is overrun by bogans! I say more posh wankers!!!
Of course! Because what we need is more television that appeals to – and normalises – boorish behaviour…
Sure Fenech has an audience, but that doesn’t elevate his stuff above that of the “posh wankers”, as if his shows are somehow more “real”. It only shows that our culture (and education system) have a lot more work to do.
I know it’s a book buddy, I’m giving you my feedback on the story (irrespective of the medium). I really couldn’t find a logic that would lead to all these people from such diverse backgrounds to all be together in a backyard bbq. It was a pastiche of ethnic and soci economic diversity that made no sense. They added a gay man to boot – do people seriously think this is the make up of a suburban backyard bbq these days??? Don’t get me wrong, I’d like it to be, but it isn’t if we’re being honest.
Just my two cents on that aspect. I’m sure it was full of great characters and writing (in both mediums) but these characters never once felt real.
I think he’s absolutely spot on. He tells it like it is and I’m glad he’s still around to be the voice of a large number of people who are completely ignored by the middle class media. And his attitude to advertising is 100% right – just selling chickens!
anon_coward – love your work in calling out the Slap for being unrealistic. A great read but woefully non-reflective of australian life anywhere i’ve ever known
The Slap, the book, was highly over-rated – totally miserable characters, but they ticked all the enthic and sociological boxes thereby pulling the chains of the ABC’s lefty luvies when it turned up on TV. Sort of Home and Away for grown-ups – not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course, But please … it wasn’t The Wire, or even The Sopranos. And Fenech’s right – advertising’s about selling stuff to people who don’t know that they want it, be it chickens, alcohol, or any other over the counter drug – again, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but profound art it ain’t.
A movie full of swearing where every second word is F**K. Thats not comedy. Paul is not a genius nor a celebrity. Its all offensive low budget stuff. All you watch is his massive ego!!!!!
Draw a circle in the sand, stand in that circle and begin a work. Play an instrument, recite a poem, dance, sing or act. As soon as someone, any passer by, stops and begins to watch and listen, you have theatre.
The problem is in the perception; most producers fail to grasp the fact, that talent and theatre cannot be cold stored and cut off by the meter as required. Operas and musicals are something of an exception, where a bunch of sparkling tunes and a few good songs strung together by a compelling story line, will have something of a universal appeal. However, legitimate theatre, TV and film drama and comedy are very different animals, requiring careful treatment and a lot of hard work and background knowledge.
Actor managers of old knew, when wearing the manager hat, that a play that worked in one town would more than likely bomb in another, and when wearing the actor hat, they knew that a line that got a huge laugh on Wednesday night, would in all probability, die a death on Thursday night.
Mr Fenech has struck a chord, he knows his audience, and he writes and directs accordingly. He has had success where many have failed, this alone, is worthy of high praise. Australian producers should step down from their high platform above the clouds, and open the door to the outside world, to the ideas and to the theatre artists who have something worthwhile to share. Of course, it requires a shift in thinking, and maybe that is why people like Paul Fenech and his work seem so bizarre to them.
I do not know if he is a genius or not, but Paul Fenech is certainly a welcome breath of fresh air.
What I can’t understand is why inner city/north shore elites try to pretend to be average battlers, it just doesn’t work. For instance the drug dealer on underbelly speaking with a north shore accent. Or the bikies girlfriend – in an ad for margarine -who said to him “here eat this, it has plarnt sterols”. What a joke.