October Rant part two:

Okay so October part two is crazy late. ShouldhavepostedNovemberbynow late. Sorry. My internet died. And I had to wash my hair. These are the other things that happened to me in October. Stand by for November Shortly…

Gig Rant: Again with the me-not-being-up-on-current-music-and-friends-dragging-me-to-things thing. This time I had a bit of warning and was able to do my homework. My friend got some work out of town and consequently couldn’t use her ticket to see the Jezabels and kindly offered it to me. Having some forewarning, but no cash or ability to download things, I did what any person in my situation would and listened to copious amounts of triple j in order to acquaint myself with this hip new band. Triple j, in October, were playing them about once an hour so I was able to quickly educate myself into fandom and completely enjoy the gyrating, sexy, awesomeness that is Hayley Mary. That’s all really. Hot. Good. Fun.

Art Rant: I don’t really have a rant. The new White Rabbit, exhibit, is, as usual, rad. Make sure you stand still in front of the rubble piece (god I should go with a pad and write down artists names, I’m such a shit blogger) you’ll know what I mean when you see it. Anyway if you walk around it you want notice that it is breathing. You have to stand still and watch closely. My favourite work is about plants talking to each other on the interwebs. Super awesome. I wandered a little around Art and About and was expectedly underwhelmed. I didn’t mind the lit up netting outside town hall though. Mad Square was neat. I loved the Metropolis prints. Crazy Yum. And I finally looked around the new Kaldor wing. Some of it is junk but most of it is FUCKING AMAZING, and such a great new space. super yum.

Eating Animals Rant: As part of the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, novelist and pseudo-philosopher, Jonathon Safran Foer came to Sydney to speak about not eating meat. I’m fond of the man as a writer. It took me a while, but I got there. I used to pick up Extremely loud and Incredibly Close in bookstores when I was at uni and flick through it and think to myself ‘how fucking pretentious does this shit look?’ then, a dear friend of mine bought it for me and I fell completely and totally in love with Oscar. He’s a magical, wonderful little kid character and the book is a really wonderful feat. It is heartbreaking and hilarious and magic. Everything is Illuminated, on the other hand, took me 4 years to read and I never really fell for it. I only just managed to finish it and return it to my poor friend that lent it too me all those years ago… I found it laboured and hard to read. But I know heaps of people who adore it so I’m prepared to accept maybe I’m wrong… However, needless to say, the boy can write. What he can’t do is open a festival of dangerous ideas. Or have any dangerous ideas for that matter. He reeked. His talk was stale. It was also really dumb. It felt like the sort of wank you’d spin if you were being interviewed by Opera not the sort of talk you’d give to a room full of thinkers who’s shelled out a hunk of cash to hear you speak. His main argument is that we need to take the dichotomy out of eating animals. He asserts that everyone is affected to some degree by cruelty to animals and that the meat eater/vegetarian (he never really used the word vegan, in his universe vegetarian is the strongest stance) split means that heaps of people, who care, but don’t care enough to give up eating meat are forced to shrug their shoulders at the problem and go, “that sucks but I like meat too much I can’t help” where, if there weren’t such an all or nothing dichotomy those that care could contribute to solving the problem by eating less meat. He told the room that very few of us would still be vegetarians in ten years time, but it’s highly possible all of us could be cutting down our meat intake in ten years time and that everyone eating, say, 5 less meat meals a week would greatly impact the planet and animal rights. I found the argument very definitely not new or dangerous. It’s fucking safe Idea if ever I’ve heard one. “Don’t be radical cos strong politics upset people and cause trouble in the long run cos people wont stick to it!” I found the argument condescending and stupid and I thought spinning it to a room full of thinkers (and most likely vegetarians or vegans) was just absurd. I’ve spun the same sort of crap, but only when I’m being bated by a cranky meat eater who takes it as a personal insult that I don’t eat meat. I get all zen and everyone-does-their-bit-in-ways-they-can about it… but I don’t then go sell out the opera house concert hall and expect people to clap and congratulate. Grow some balls wanker. And, if you’re touring to a country and charging large amounts to speak… re work your material a bit and maybe read up a bit on the country your talking to. I didn’t pay for your leftovers.

Flicks Rant: I finally saw Norweigan Wood. Rad. I found it a very dutiful telling. Sometimes this got to me but mostly I appreciated it. There isn’t actually enough time in a film to be entirely dutiful to a novel so I congratulate attempts to be so, but there are always going to be those absences and those bits where your memories of the text have to flesh things out and do some of the work. It made me realise how uncomfortable books becoming films really makes me. I mostly acts, like, say, chewing Nicorette when you really want a cigarette. Shithouse metaphor, I know, and I don’t even smoke so it’s a fraudulent one at that but… I dunno… You get transported back to this universe you’ve bonded with and a hit of something you once felt but it is a shadow. A ghost. You were never really taking in seriously to begin with. Don’t get me wrong, It’s a gorgeous film, and some of the photography is absolutely breathtaking. I was deeply moved and thoroughly enjoyed my overpriced Verona ticket (since when did it cost 20 bucks to see a fucking flick!!??? I swear just yesterday it was $4.50 with a shop-a-docket… grumble…) but, I dunno, I felt more complex things about Midori on the page and I understood more about Hatsumi. Anyway. It seems strange that I’m debating whether it should be filmified when I’ve always found Murakami’s writing so filmic… and he’s so drenched in pop culture of course we need films of his stories. Forget I started wanking. (but standby for more musings in my November rant) Meanwhile Norweigan wood is my least favourite of his stories in anycase. I prefer the more otherworldly stories and the dystopic nightmare ones. The man/boku losing woman trope (which runs through all of them even when shit gets trippier and more exciting) is my least favourite element and the entire focus of this one cos it was Murakami’s attempt at a mainstream love story so he deliberately toned down the surreal shit. I also might be growing out of Murakami… That’s not to say I’m not aching to be bought 1Q84 for Xmas… just… you know… maybe Murakami was an anxty early 20s thing for me… maybe… anyway I’ll stop inflicting this on you… I’m not ranting am I? I’m rambling indulgent crap. However… worth a look.  Filmy film.

October Rant part one

Rant Plug: Okay so I’ll get my shameless plugging out of the way first. Kelly and Bet’s PJ label is finaly available for purchase. If you’re into wearing Pjs I’d highly recommend these. Ethical. Organic. Yum. Go here: http://www.thegrandsocial.com.au/alas okay. That’ll do. Now for some ranting…

Theatre Rant: I saw a little collection of short plays called Money Shots, at STC. Now it’s not every day I agree with Kevin Jackson, but, on this occasion, he took the words right out of my mouth (thankfully not while kissing me) (very sorry, something compelled me to pun Meatloaf… I couldn’t control myself.)  His thoughts are here: http://kjtheatrereviews.blogspot.com/2011/10/money-shots.html It seems silly to rehash, hence why I thought I’d mostly just let him say it but, yeah. As he noted, Tahli Corin’s work (The Arcade) was hands down the best of the 5 and was performed well. I wouldn’t argue Corin is the first writer to tackle assault and abuse but she did so with great sensitivity, and, I thought, created really interesting characters in the situation. Her work made me really uncomfortable. I viscerally felt the awkwardness of being a courting teenager and thus the darkness of what was going on behind closed doors was extremely powerful and disturbing. Zindzi Okenyo and Tahki Saul’s work was awesome. They were spellbindingly kid like and brought the whole romance/fuckedupness at the arcade thing to life. I endured the rest of the stories, and really felt the sadness of this super underwhelming evening being the send off for The Residents kids. WTF? Mostly though, Tahli Corin is one to watch. Speaking of which, go see One For The Ugly Girls at 505. It’s super awesome. I saw it today, which is technically November so I’ll rant in my November rant, but, even sans rant, take my word for it, awesome. It is on till the 13^th of November, and tix and info are here: www.novemberism.com In other news, It’s been eons since I saw something at The Stables, a very neat little intimate stage that I’m fond of cos it’s drenched in Sydney theatre history and sports its fair share of charm and magic. Anyway, I’ve just not been drawn to see anything there in a while but I broke my drought with This Years Ashes, cos I wanted to see my friend, Tony Llewelyn Jones, perform. A play about cricket is prolly an unlikely pick for a girl like Ridiculous but I more than enjoyed it nonetheless. The second half especially. I wept like crazy. It is about grief and loss and trust and, well, summer and listening to the Ashes with your dad on the wireless. It, like most of the plays that Griffin mounts, is drenched in Sydney-ness so you get this really trippy feeling of location. You feel like you’re inside the theatre and outside the theatre at the same time. It’s hard to describe. Anyway, it’s moving. It ends up being about love and finding your feet, and trust, again… an ending you smell coming but which is executed so much more skilfully than you suspect it will be, neatly evading soapyness and cliché. It runs till November 19th. Check it out. A fucking lovely night at the theatre.

I'm ranting in 2 parts cos I'm going away tomorrow and I want to sleep, not finish writing my October thoughts, but, as I've begun them I thought I should at least post half... the rest will arrive mid November, late and out-of-date as per usual. Stay tuned for more morsels of my lazy thoughts on art and theatre and flicks and life... October style...

Much love,

Ridiculous. 

September Rant 2011

Sorry this month rant is so, so, fucking late. I’m all over the place, and, October is well and truly underway. Drinking red wine and trying to write was probably my downfall. Today I managed to finish my thoughts, with the much more writer friendly: coffee. Mmmm. Yum. Coffee… Anyway… Rants!

Ruby Rose is still a fucking moron rant:

A very quick rant to get things rolling. You might remember I discussed Ruby Rose’s, let’s go with: interesting, choice to pose naked for men in the charming publication named FHM, here: http://ridiculousrantsridiculous.blogspot.com/2011/01/hello-and-december-rant.html and here: http://ridiculousrantsridiculous.blogspot.com/2011/02/january-11-rant.html (and solemn apologies that I’m not a proper blogger who understands how to link things elegantly) Well, just as an update, she’s gracing the October issue of Maxim magazine. Another sleazy soft-porn mag that masquerades as a “men’s issues” mag. This time though, she doesn’t even look like a lesbian anymore. (NB. Please run with me on this one. I realise there isn’t one specific way a lesbian must look and there’s nothing wrong with passing/looking as straight, if that’s the way you like to dress/accessorise and you’re comfortable with possibly not being read as queer… It’s just the RR usually does look queer and on the cover of this mag you’d barely recognise it was her, let alone a dyke.) She’s sporting a Farrah-Fawcett-esque wig. Looking super straight and consumable by men. It’s pretty gross. And gone is any flimsy attempt at justifying why a lesbian is on the cover of a men’s rag. Just a really inane interview and some nonsense about the wigs and nudity having something to do with a statement about animal rights. It’s super odd. And super yuck. Ugh. There isn’t really much to say. Just that it’s lamentable, that, probably our most notable lesbian celebrity is such a fucking dag-head-moron. Ah well. You lose some you lose some.

Gig rant:

My friends invited me along to see Ernest Ellis & The Panamas at the Gaelic. I used to keep up with the music scene when I was younger and know what was cool and exciting but I really, really, don’t these days so I had no idea who these guys were or what they were like. They had me instantly. They opened their set with Angelo Badalamenti’s theme song from Twin Peaks and I couldn’t wipe the grin from my face. They could have played chopsticks for the rest of the gig and I wouldn’t have minded. As it turns out though, they played a great set and were super cute, generous, and most gorgeously: earnest, performers. Crazy fun.

Theatre rant:

This month, I saw The Threepenny Opera (Dir. Michael Kantor.) Blerg. Boring and irritatingly Aussie, and no one could sing except Polly (Lucy Maunder) who, despite having a tolerable voice, was annoying and boring. Paul Capsis and Eddie Perfect were okay but not as fun as I was expecting them to be. It was a night at the theatre I endured rather than enjoyed. I’m not sure why I persist with seeing STC shows. I also saw a Fringe show called Beast at the Greek Theatre, which I’d never been to before, nice space. It has a kind of spooky atmosphere. Beast was confronting. Absurd. Ridiculous. It was darkly funny and made me bellow with laughter. It also needs a bit more work. It examines the sordid side of the romance with performance and theatre magic, an interesting and clever take on the let’s-make-theatre-about-theatre trope. Zoe Houghton, as always, was focused and compelling and magical. She is an actor that is pure joy to watch. The rest of the ensemble did a good job but lacked the effortlessness of Houghton. The show has legs (both metaphorically and literally in that there’s some rad physical theatre components to the piece) but needs a bit more time and development and, if possible, money. It felt very fringe. Which it was. So the world makes sense. But it could definitely be developed into a more polished piece of theatre.

Alan Ball rant:

So, probably the most exciting event on my calendar in September, was Alan Ball’s talk at the Opera House: Vampires, Death and the Mundane. I almost didn’t go. (Cos I really, really, really, dislike jerk head Wil Anderson, with whom, Ball was in conversation with.) I saw that Ball was coming to Sydney, considered purchasing tickets, saw that Anderson was the interviewer, vomited in my mouth a little and thought better of going. Moments later though, I received an email from my mother who told me to mark it down in the diary. “No!” I replied. “I don’t think I can stomach Wil Anderson.” To which she informed me that it was too late, she’d already purchased us tickets. And so I had to suck it up and get excited about one of my favourite storytellers and temper my hatred for someone I consider to be a talent-less, unfunny, smug, jerk.  I decided he must be the ‘mundane’ component of the event and tried my best to not let him get to me. Of course I’d prepared myself so much for the worst, that aside from inspiring a few, very audible, eye rolls and loud groans, he wasn’t nearly as intolerable as I thought he’d be. And anyone who knows me knows that’s probably the nicest thing I’ve said about Wil Anderson in my entire life. So there. Despite him not being super painful though, I did wistfully imagine how fucking great an interview it could have been had a real interviewer been given the gig.  Ball spoke well and was (almost) every bit the amazing man his wondrous writing suggests he is. I considered giving him the first standing ovation of my entire life, except that, on a few counts, he disappointed me, and so I didn’t… however, mostly, he was amazing, and I’m very grateful that my mother saw to it that we attended. We were awkwardly early and had the foyer to ourselves. We eyed the ridiculously fun True Blood merchandise and drank red wine (they don’t have potato chips at the opera house wtf? So we couldn’t eat the traditional foyer dinner of redwineandchips, grump.  So mum ate a cheese plate and I picked at the fruit.) Mum wonders what sort of crowd will show. I inform her matter-of-factly: “queers and hipsters.” She changes the subject, but, later, she celebrates the dressed-down-ness of the crowd. “Well,” I think to myself… “What do you expect from queers and hipsters?” Being hot of the mark, mum scored us brilliant seats… We were say five or six rows back seated right behind Jane Campion. It was a good interview. He has a fun mind. He was funny and charming. I won’t post all my notes here but I’ll try to sketch a summary of the discussion before I launch into my disappointed/hurt bit of the rant… He spoke about American Beauty and Six Feet Under and Towel Head and True Blood.  He talked about his pilot script for Six Feet Under and how HBO’s response was: “We like it but the whole thing feels a little safe, could you make it a little more fucked up?” (Which, as we all know, he did, brilliantly…) He screened the final scene from Six Feet Under and I bawled. In the middle of the stalls, in the fucking Opera House. Electrifying television. Years since I’d watch the last episode, since I was in the rhythm of watching the show, since I was entangled with the characters, and the damn ending can make me cry in public. He said, when the writers room suggested the ending, he thought: “of course, how else could this show possibly end?” Indeed. It is probably the best ending to a TV show. Ever. He explained the effect of the death of his sister and how he “developed a sense of humour in unlikely places as a defence mechanism.” “How else do you confront mortality?” He asked, “You have to laugh.” His motives and narrative made me respect the show more. It became obvious what I’d always suspected: Six Feet Under came from a place of truth, which is why it was so successfully touching. He moved on to True Blood. He screened Sookie and Bill’s first meeting at Merlottes: I watched Campion, sitting in front of me, watching Anna Paquin, feeling and enjoying the time line of cinema, stretched out in the stalls before me. Sookie: “Can you believe it? I’ve been waiting for this to happen ever since they came out of the coffin two years ago!” – the queer portion of the audience laughed. I laughed. And then… he ripped my heart out in the Q&A section. A really cute earnest Malaysian gay boy got up, wore his heart on his sleeve, and (in that way people ramble before actually asking their question,) explained how DVD box sets of his works and images of Keith (Michael C Hall) and David (Matthew St. Patrick,) were useful in helping him find himself when he was growing up and didn’t have access to anything inside his culture that would explain his feelings to himslef. And, finally, the boy asked: “Is it queer? It is so sane and without any judgement, do you see yourself as an activist, do you think your work is going to change something?” (and then Alan Ball broke my heart a little (scratch that, a lot) and forwent his standing ovation from Ridiculous) His answer: “ NO. I’m gay myself so obviously so that’s obviously going to find its way into the work, is it a metaphor? No. If it were 50 years ago it would be about civil rights, if it were 100 years ago it would be about women…” There is so much wrong with this statement I don’t know where to start. At the same time, he says, It’s so not a metaphor, and it could be a metaphor for anything. That doesn’t quite work does it? It can’t be a metaphor for anything and definitively not a metaphor. Methinks he doth protest so much he sounds stupid. It can’t be ‘possibly about all these different plights’ (if it were a time-travelling text written in different parallel universes/times) and yet not a metaphor now, in our time. It doesn’t make any sense. It clearly is a metaphor. It examines prejudice generally, sure, but one of the key minorities it is written for and resonates with is the queer community. The queer community that paid to come see you talk and ask you heart-felt questions Mr. Fucking. Ball. Don’t disavow us. I honestly think Ball didn’t mean to be hurtful. I think he was playing it cool and playing it safe. I think he thinks activism is a dirty word. An uncomfortable position. Cos maybe he thinks that activism does a better job if no one knows it’s activism. Cos if he draws attention to the queer metaphor directly it might alienate straight audiences. I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt. Cos I love his writing far too much to turn my back on one of the few storytellers that is writing good queer characters in the mainstream. Seriously though, it is so fucking heavy handed, how can it not be activism? Stories teach us how to think and feel. We educate our children with fables and fairytales (and for the god-bother-ers, bible stories) Story telling cannot be unravelled from activism. It exists to educate inform and entertain. We watch and read stories that speak to us. And stories that have spoken to us shape us. Whether Ball likes it or not; he’s a big old queer activist. Just being able to see queers is an act of activism, because visibility does so much work in making life easier for gays… just as the guy who asked him the question had intimated. It broke my heart cos the guy (and me, and, I’d wager, most of the queers in the room) wanted to hear him say YES. We wanted a hero. We wanted to give him a standing ovation. We wanted to thank someone for Keith and David, and Clare’s (Lauren Ambrose) questioning of her sexuality that wasn’t gimmicky or stupid, and for kickass lesbian Edie (Mena Suvari,) who Clare questioned her sexuality for and who walked away from the situation before she got too hurt, for the examination of self loathing homophobia in American Beauty and for Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis,) and for Lafette and Jesus Velasquez (Kevin Alejandro,) and for Tara (Rutina Wesley) and Naomi (Vedette Lim,) and their super hot chemistry, for Sophie-Ann (Evan Rachael Wood,) and for Pam (Kristin Bauer,) and for Sam’s (Sam Trammel) dream sequence about him and Bill (Stephen Moyer). For allowing us to see ourselves and enjoy ourselves. We. Just. Wanted. A. hero. Anyway. He went on to be tongue in cheek and funny about his queer characters “Why don’t you thank me for our portrayal of gays and lesbians as drug dealers and prostitutes?” Then he got a bit more serious (with a dash of silly) which made his opening rant completely absurd “When we were kids we didn’t see gay characters and the gay character never took his shirt off… If I ever have a show, everyone’s going to take their shirt off… I see the importance of showing everyone, how everyone’s fucked up.” It made me so sad. Either Ball’s a jerk and not as brilliant as I give him credit for or he was too afraid to own up to the power of the stories he’s written. Either way it was fucking disappointing and fucking sad. But yes. It was an interesting talk and I’m very grateful I was able to attend.

And now, cos we are on topic, I want to talk about the complicated things I feel about True Blood: I got into True Blood, precisely because it was Ball’s work. Without having seen an episode, I shelled out 70 odd bucks for the DVD of season 1. It seemed like a no brainer. He’s brilliant. I adored Six Feet Under as I was growing up. I loved American Beauty. Vampires are fucking hot. It was bound to rock. However, I can’t say, when I watched the first few episodes, back in 2009, that I wasn’t a wee bit disappointed. It was watchable. And the title credits were fucking awesome. But it wasn’t as smart as Six Feet Under. The politics were good (and mine obviously) but I found it a bit heavy handed. All the jokes about the fucked-ness of prejudice seemed laboured to me… vampires coming out of the coffin… vampire rights movement… a newspaper sporting ‘Angelina adopts vampire baby’ draped across the table. The actors are great though, and there are lots of laughs, so I put my misgivings aside and went with it… and have been going with it ever since. It’s fun. It’s like a comic book. It is absurd and silly and it’s fucking hot. It has rad female characters and super rad queer characters. And the heavy handed politics are almost always great and it’s fun to have a TV show (in the way a TV show becomes your best friend) agree with everything you think. I sometimes waver on my feelings about the show and the big queer metaphor that it is. (And, to reiterate, it is. I’m not buying any of this rot that floats around that it’s not. Sure, in a sense it is anti prejudice generally, and is invested in the plight of all minorities everywhere, via vampires… but the language that is employed is directly borrowed from the queer experience. Coming out of the coffin in an attempt to be accepted by society is specifically queer. It’s never going to not be queer. That’s our closet metaphor that’s being played with. Don’t fucking disavow that this show, at the epicentre, is about us) Anyway, I want to discuss a couple of scenes with you. One makes me uncomfortable. One makes me cry. See what you think.

The first scene I want to discuss is from Season one, Episode 3, Mine, Written by Allan Ball, Directed by John Dahl.

Bill:

(to the scary crazy vampires)

You’re doing nothing to help our cause.

Diane: (Aun Janne Ellis)

Not everyone wants to dress up and play human Bill.

Liam: (Graham Shiels)

Yeah not everyone wants to live off that Japanese shit they call blood either. As If we could.

Bill:

We have to moderate our behaviour now that we are out in the open.

Malcom: (Andrew Rothenburg)

Not everybody thinks it was such a great idea and not everybody intends to toe the party line. Honey if we can’t kill people what’s the point of being a vampire?

…

Bill:

You all make me sick.

Diane:

You used to be fun. Is this all on account of that little blonde breather?

Bill:

If you insist on flaunting your ways in front of mortals there will be consequences.

Malcom:

Asshole.

Asshole indeed right? I hate this scene. You’d have to be a fucking numbskull to not read this as a queer metaphor, but, the tricky bit is, if you do, you get a bit stuck, don’t you? The scene says I should behave myself and act normal and I don’t like that. I very much struggle with that. I don’t mind the idea that some gays wish to pass as straight, but I do mind the idea that if I don’t want to I’m akin to the crazy mean killer vampires. The thesis of the scene seems to be we will gain more acceptance by blending in and not making anyone uncomfortable. That fucking reeks. We need room for diversity. We need room for all sorts of self expression. We don’t have to subscribe to normative rules. No-one does. Gay or straight. And we don’t have to act straight if we don’t fucking feel like it. Heterosexuality is not fucking compulsory (even though everyone insists it is, even usually awesome tv shows) Okay? But obviously we should all drink True Blood and not kill people. Killing people isn’t nice. Anyway. I could never quite shift that scene from my brain. It stayed in there annoying me, despite all the other cool queer friendly stuff that happens, and the generally cool stuff that happens. But when I watched the following scene, I forgave TB all its indiscretions, forever…

The second scene I want to discuss is from Season 2, Episode 3, Scratches, Written by Raelle Tucker, Directed by Scott Winant.

The scene is set in Merlottes, Sex and Candy by Macys Playground plays. Jess (Deborah Ann Woll) walks through the bar. Hoyt (Jim Parrack) and Jess meet eyes. Jess sits in the booth opposite him. Hoyt nervously gears himself up to talk to her, leaves his booth and sits in hers and begins to talk to her.

Hoyt;

Hi

Jess:

Hi

Hoyt:

Do you mind if I join you? I Mean, if you’re alone?

Jess:

I’m alone.

Hoyt:

I’m Hoyt.

Jess:

Jessica.

Hoyt:

So this might sound kind of funny but I was just sitting there thinking, How come you don’t ever meet a nice girl Hoyt? And then you just walked right in.

Jess:

How do you know I’m a nice girl?

Hoyt:

Cos of your smile. I guess you can tell a lot about someone by the way they smile, and you know I watch people all the time.

(Jess Smiles coyly to herself, Hoyt continues)

You see, oh, like that! That’s beautiful! I could stare at that all day long.

Jess:

Day? Yeah right.

(nervous, sad, lamenting, laughter.)

Hoyt:

Did I say something wrong?

Jess:

No. Of course not.

Hoyt:

Okay good cos I don’t wanna scare you away, would you like a drink or something, or food? Are you hungry? You should try the chicken fried steak. Cos it’s ah, like the chicken and the steak got together and made a baby, a delicious, crispy, baby, and ah,

(laughs, looks down nervously, embarrassedly)

Jess looks scared, takes a breath, musters courage and COMES OUT!

Jess:

I’ll just have a bottle of True Blood.

Hoyt looks up from the table and stares at her earnestly, openly and honestly. Jess shrugs and continues…

Jess:

B Positive.

Hoyt:

You’re a vampire?

Jess blinks. Does not smile.

Hoyt:

For real?

Jess raises her eyebrows in answer.

Hoyt;

Wow! That is awesome.

(Jess smiles)

A bottle of True Blood coming right up.

Hoyt leaves the table to order and jess beams.

Utterly gorgeous right? I can’t tell you how good this scene feels when I watch it. How joyfull I feel. How beautifully captured her decision to come out to him is. It’s prolly better on the screen. Deborah Ann Woll‘s performance is spellbinding. The moment where she weighs up whether or not she felt safe enough to come out choked me up. She nailed the fear and adrenalin and lust for acknowledgment and recognition…to be seen for who you are and loved either way/anyway. The split second decision to code yourself as queer/vampire that we often make when we meet people… at risk a terrible response. That sort of looking-over-the-cliff-of-coming-out feeling. And then the relief when the hearer acts like Hoyt and declares awesome. AWESOME.

So I got shitty about implied insistence on heteronormative shitty shit but when the show has moments like the Jess-Hoyt scene how can you not be fucking hooked? Mostly the show is “yeah! Yah queer!” and I can’t tell you how important and wonderful it is to have TV that says that to, and with you. And so what began as a show I found a bit silly and naff but watched anyway, quickly and quietly became one of my favourite TV shows of all time, and I’m completely lost and lonely now that I’ve finished season 4.

Meanwhile, back to the original point of this rant, Ball’s talk… While I love his work and will prolly do so forever, and while I am really glad I got to see him speak this September… I… well… I like my heroes a little braver…

That’ll do for now,

Love,

Ridiculous.

Retro rant: Interval...

I wrote this theatre-rant-ish-thing, in another place, on the 20th of March, 2008. I thought it was important to repost, cos, though written by a different, younger, Ridiculous, it captures a bit of me and what theatre means to me. It is called Interval. (btw, I'll post the September rant ASAP. I'm drinking red wine and writing it as we speak. In the sense that 'we' 'speak,' which, 'we,' of course, don't, nevermind, enjoy.)

Most of you know this story as I tend to go on about things and live in the past and in art and in my childhood… arg… When I was eight years old I fell in love with the theatre. The colour. the immediacy. the excitement. The magic. My parents took me to see an Indian production of "a midsummer nights dream" and I was completely hooked. It smelt good, it sang and danced and screamed through all my little kid senses, my heart, my eyes my ears, my nose, my throat, my silly, my imagination, my grin, my guts… a big huge explosion of bollywood/Shakespeare nonsense and wonderful. You could not tear me away from it. My parents of course could. And did. They were enjoying it too of course but living in the grown up world they were tired and interval let us out of the theatres jaws at midnight so the play would be set to keep us up into the morning (when the magic would be wiped from our eyes an order restored I guess)… anyway The parents decided to call it a night and take us all home to dream our own dreams. I was heart broken and begged to be allowed to stay and watch the second half. Begged and begged and eventually pulled a full blown little kid tantrum, which unfortunately only sealed my going home fate "you are tired, you’re exhausted, we are taking you home" only I wasn’t I was alive and awake and drunk on theatre, I was tantruming out of sheer love and desperation and frustration and I couldn’t communicate through my tears how terribly sincere I actually was. I think in the end though dad understood how much it meant to me as he has said to me that one of the few regrets he has in this world is not letting me see the second half of the dream… so last night he took me to see the Indian production playing at the Sydney Theatre, it was so so magic and wonderful, and we sat together in a little box perched above the stage and watch the colours and music and magic unfold, and dad leaned over and whispered in my ear "just think of it as a really long interval"…

August Rant

 Coffee/Gig rant: I forgot to say in July, so I’m saying it now, I saw Go with Colours at the Gaelic club and it was super rad. Go with Colours is my barista, Tom’s band, and I’d been promising (and then subsequently piking) to see him play for months. I immediately lamented my laziness. They’re super cute, and 90s and very, very, watchable and listenable… lots of fun. Recommend. Especially cos they play for free lots. They deserve to get paid gigs though, they’re good… but then most of creative Sydney deserves to be paid and the ones being paid don’t cos the world is arse up and we reward mediocrity… Anyway, Tom’s day job is making fucking excellent coffee at his little hole in the wall called Nookie. If you like good coffee, and company (cos he’ll tell you stories and make you laugh) and you live in Surry/Redfern/Chippendale, and you don’t already buy your coffee from Nookie, then you should. End plug.

Theatre Rant: Hands down, best night at the theatre I’ve had all year happened this month, in August, with Fefu and her Friends. A brand new theatre company Red Rabbit (launched by a couple of lovely NIDA grads, Sophia Roberts and Rebecca Johnston) delivered a gorgeous, Caroline Craig directed, version of Maria Irene Fornes’ deliciously feminist play. The really exciting element to the evening was watching a story about women, staged and performed and directed and executed almost entirely (the team was almost all women with the exception of Nate Edmonson who designed the brilliant sound) by women. Watching 8 women on stage is a profound experience and not one audiences are treated to very often. (the last all female cast I saw was Marion Potts’ The Taming of the Shrew in 2009 for Bell, It again, was completely rad to be treated to watching so many women perform, but, sadly, was gimmicky and ill-thought-through, and didn’t really work) There are way more roles for men written, and, most of the time the female supporting characters are bland or caricatured or stocky. So the play had me on side right away, just cos watching women do their thing, brilliantly, is awesome, and then just to make it more awesome the play was captivating and so were the performances and the choices and the set and everything was just yum. It’s a short play and more about atmosphere and relationships than actual plot. Not to say that stuff doesn’t happen. Stuff happens. And stuff has happened. The story, or stories, marinate through the actual weekend-on-Fefu’s-property over which the play is set. The play is about friendship, and love and the experience of being a woman. The play (and production) is laden with Sapphic undertones, and there’s also an explicit lesbian storyline between Celia (Harriet Dyer) and Paula (Sophia Roberts.) Their love is angsty and full of pain and hurt and repression. Dyer and Roberts depict their story beautifully and I was damn well about to choke I was so moved. They found the absolute truth in the little moments the lovers shared. Just stunning. The whole cast is gorgeous. Emma Palmer, as Julia, did the best work I’ve seen her do since she graduated. She was captivating and haunting and commanded the wisdom of a much, much, older actress. Megan O’Connell as Emma, (who I loved last year in Kate Revz production of Three Sisters for Cry Havoc) was incredibly magical and wonderful. Georgina Symes, as Christina, was a riot, utterly compelling and intoxicating performance. Suzannah McDonald, as Cindy was fucking hilarious, and it was great fun to see Julia Billington play a really dorky character role. She nailed all the comedy without losing truth from the role, however, I’d have dearly loved to have seen her in the title role of Fefu. Her or Symes would have been excellent choices for the role. Rebecca Johnston delivered and admirable performance, however, I feel she was ultimately miscast. I sound petty but her voice isn’t quite strong enough and I feel like had Symes or Billington played the role they’d have each brought a sort of prowess that each of those actors imbue (in different ways) in buckets. Fefu is a strong, autonomous, clever, magical, woman and I’d have liked to see someone who could have played with all the irony and nuances perform the role. That’s my only somewhat complaint though. The set was exquisite, the lights and sound perfect, and the performances, as I’ve said, fucking wonderful. The production is brilliant and it needs to get another run. We need it to get another run. The best show in Sydney this year only ran for a week! Criminal. I also went along to see a friend of mine, Nicholas Papademetriou, in a play called Drake the Amazing (Dir: John Kachoyan) at Darlo. Very watchable. And Nico did some great character work. It was Another ooo-look-at-the-magic-of-theatre text, which is a pretence/story that I do enjoy, but I found this play less imaginative and exciting that other texts. I didn’t find the actual work very magical so found it hard to sincerely ponder the magic of theatre that the play was exploring. The performers were rad though, and worked really hard, and, like I said at the outset, it was a very watchable show, I had a good giggle, I had fun. And I did tear up at one point, but I think I was pre-menstrual, so I’m not sure if it counts. I also checked out the new space ‘The Old 505 Theatre’ to see a one woman show called Shakespeare’s Will directed by Gareth Boylan. One man or woman shows usually annoy me a bit. I find it hard to focus on one actor for so long and end up daydreaming and writing shopping lists in my head, but I did manage to sit still and pay attention to Lucy Miller in this one. She did a great job and wove a complicated story, jumping across time, doing service to many different characters, she also sings a few numbers, and has a very lovely voice, which is nice. I think I’d rather if the story was told with a full cast, what can I say? I like watching actors interact… but this was rather good and I can see why it was written as a one woman show. You know, loneliness, isolation, abandonment, estrangement, those sorts of things… and I see the merit now of taking a really intimate journey with a character. The show is coming back to 505 for a Sydney Fringe Festival run, so go see it if you’re interested in a fairly good show about Shakespeare’s wife. I’m not a big history buff so I’ve now Idea if any of it is true, but it’s a very interesting tale, fact or fiction. And the space is really rad. I’d go just to check out 505. It feels very New York and spacious and full of creativity and excitement. It’s not the jazz place on Cleveland street. It’s where the jazz club used to be on Elizabeth St in that big warehousey artistic community apartment block that seems to go by a different name every time I go to it. They’ve given the 505 space a coat of paint and rigged up a really sweet little theatre and you wind your way up through corridors, and walkways, and bits of cityscape and the smell of fresh graffiti… If you want another excuse to check the space out, you must must must go see Tahli Corin’s new play there in November. It may or may not be called: The Memory Muse, or One For the Ugly Girls. I went and saw a reading of it at Darlo’s Parnassus' Den thing. It’s shaping up really awesome. It’s about art and beauty and love and grief and it’s really fucking funny. It’s going to be sensational, and (I suspect) might even vie for my favourite night at the theatre, when it happens. Mirrah Foulkes, Tony Llewelyn Jones, and Alice Ansara did great work at the reading. I’m unsure who is going to be in the cast when it’s mounted, but if we do get to see these three in the production, we’ll be very lucky punters. Really rad work. EEEEEP!

Flicks Rant: I saw a rad little Aussie film, that hasn’t been released yet, but I’m betting will be, called Wish You Were Here. I found it slightly xenophobic, but if you ignore the slightly racist premise of ooo-isn’t-Asia-dangerous-and-corrupting, there’s a good film in amongst the awkward. The performances are truly touching, and it definitely held me. I also saw Tree of Life. I realised I’ve got to stop going to films people invite me to. (I was also dragged to film-I’ll-never-mention) So fucking awful. Cinematic torture. Religious, indulgent, pretentious, wank. I’ve never been so bored shitless. And friend in question who suggested seeing it has stopped talking to me cos I didn’t like it. See? Seeing wanky cinema is dangerous, people get all invested in it and it wrecks friendships/homes/lives. Watch what you watch, okay?

Be Safe,

Ridiculous.

Australian TV Guides I hate you too rant:

Angry. Season 4 of delicious True Blood is being written up in guides. Should be a moment to enjoy pictures of the gorgeous cast and squeal with delight at a witty pithy write up that gets you all excited about tuning in and returning to Bon Temps. No. Instead, Angry. TV Week (page 10 August 8-20 issue) says: "After spending most of the past few seasons in relationships with unsuitable men, Tara (Rutina Wesley) finds herself mixed up in a witches coven, ..." and SMH  The Guide (August 14 -2) says: "Tara (Rutina Wesley) has run away to become a cage fighter ..." Neither publication thought it necessary to mention TARA HAS A GIRLFRIEND, and though (i'm only up to ep 4) she hasn't given herself a label IS PROBABLY A LESBIAN or BISEXUAL or QUEER or something. No, it's only a really queer show all about out-ness and examining prejudice... it would make far too much fucking sense to mention the developments in Tara's sexuality, wouldn't it? Fuck Australia. Fuck making lesbians invisible. Fuckety fuck fuck. Angry.

Love,

Ridiculous.

P.S. Lots more to say about True Blood. Interesting. Another day...

July 2011 rant:

 

Our daughter’s daughters wont adore this piece of shitty theatre rant, AKA the ways in which the current (fucky) Cameron Mackintosh infected version of Mary Poppins mangled my childhood and broke my heart rant:

(Warning spoiler alert for the crap-ness of the Mary Poppins stage show)

Where do I begin? Theatre means a lot to me. My childhood means a lot to me. My mother and my brother mean a lot to me. And Mary Poppins means a lot to me. So you can imagine the sort of nostalgic, bubbling, excited, mess I was as I stood in the foyer with my mother and my brother (my brother dressed as Bert in a beige striped suit, combed hair and red bow tie) waiting to see the much raved about production of Mary Poppins (which, god knows why, swept the Helpmann Awards on Tuesday night.) I was giddy. I was also a little bit theatre foyer tipsy. I paid for an overpriced alcoholic slurpee just because they’d named it Rum Punch, cos that’s the kind of nostalgic sucker I am. And can I point out, that the exact kind of nostalgic sucker I am is the exact kind of bums on seats that are shelling out 90+ bucks to have their dreams mangled and shoved back in their face. These fuckers are counting on people like me and our hearts full of memories, we’re the ones desperate to find something, re-live something… so I find it offensive and absurd that we get fucked with, that we get the short end of the stick. I need to start with the most offensive of the litany of changes that Mackintosh took it upon himself to make to perfectly wonderful, and loved, text. Consider this number for a moment:

We're clearly soldiers in petticoats

And dauntless crusaders for woman's votes

Though we adore men individually

We agree that as a group they're rather stupid!

Cast off the shackles of yesterday!

Shoulder to shoulder into the fray!

Our daughters' daughters will adore us

And they'll sign in grateful chorus

"Well done, Sister Suffragette!"

From Kensington to Billingsgate

One hears the restless cries!

From ev'ry corner of the land:

"Womankind, arise!"

Political equality and equal rights with men!

Take heart! For Missus Pankhurst has been clapped in irons again!

No more the meek and mild subservients we!

We're fighting for our rights, militantly!

Never you fear!

So, cast off the shackles of yesterday!

Shoulder to shoulder into the fray!

Our daughters' daughters will adore us

And they'll sign in grateful chorus

"Well done! Well done!

Well done Sister Suffragette!"

Who, in their right mind, thought it was a good idea to cut this song and re-write Mrs Banks as a subservient little wife-ey character? (and write her an atrocious, subservient little wife-ey character song?) On what planet is this an okay thing to do? The song is empowering. Important. Euphoric. It situates the story historically and centres the story. The story is about a strong woman. A strong woman who inspires and excites and reinvigorates a household. Mrs Banks, not as outwardly strong as our hero,  was closeted-ly fighting for womens right to vote and hiding her sashes when her husband got home. Her subservience to Mr Banks was ironic and comical and heartbreaking all at once. It was a really important dimension to the film. And at the very end of the film, you might remember, she does come out, she attaches her political sash to the end of Michael's kite “A proper kite needs a proper tail,” and they all go fly the kite, with ‘womens right to vote’ proudly flapping in the wind below the kite, with the family proudly flying it together. I can’t stomach the idea that this isn’t a relevant detail to leave in the story, seeing as it is a period piece… but even if you were to argue something ludicrous like, that considering women’s (debateable) relative equal-ness to male-folk nowadays, the song doesn’t fit, then there is no fucking excuse for turning Mrs Bank’s character into a subservient wifey character, who, when at the end of the show is offered the opportunity to chase her dreams (which are acting, not politics) she replies that she never really was a good actress and there is a role she’s much more interested in. BARF BARF BARF VOMIT VOMIT!!!! Fucked eh? How fucking dare they. So Ridiculous was a pretty cranky punter and that, sadly, wasn’t the only balls up. They screw around with all the songs. None of them really remain the way you remember them, which is okay, but kind of tiresome. We went there wanting something and weren’t given it and kind of made to feel rude for wanting it cos there’s this wank floating around that we shouldn’t expect it to be like the film… it’s something new… more based on the books… wank wank wank… Which is just rubbish. Like I said earlier, their banking on us with our film imbued childhoods wanting to come see it and give them all our cash. They’ve used the iconography from the film, they’ve got fucking 100 dollar umbrellas for sale in the foyer with a fucking parrot head handle exactly modeled on the one you see in the film. Don’t give me any rot about it being a separate piece of art from the film. (And don’t give me any shit about it being based on the books, if it’s based on the books, where the fuck are John and Barbara, the other two children? Huh?) It’s not. It’s based on the film all right, just that some megalomaniac got his hands on it and decided to fuck around and fix what’s not broken. Fucking fuck wit. (sorry I’m so mad I can’t stop swearing.) It’s kind of like when you go see an old band you used to love and they refuse to play all the songs you love and instead play you their new album, that no-ones heard, cover to cover, and it’s a gross noise experiment. It’s wanky and pretentious and you look ungrateful and not a true fan if you don’t take what you’ve been offered with a smile and shut up. It’s irritating, for no reason I can decipher, the readings on the measuring tape aren’t the ones we remember, the tunes are similar but they sing different words. There is a ghost in our hearts as we’re watching an instead of our little ghost being able to whisper the words, it gets trodden on. They don’t jump through chalk drawings, they don’t laugh and take tea on the ceiling… They do sing Let’s go Fly a Kite, thank heavens, but they sing it in the middle of the second act. You cry/bawl anyway. The song does all the things it always did to you. And if you’re sitting there with your brother-dressed-as-Bert and holding your weeping mother’s hand, and sipping another Rum Punch, it’s pretty damn emotional… but you assure and comfort yourself that they’ll sing it again, they’ll bring it back for the closing number, surely. It is the closing number. No such luck. Apparently, a new song needed to be written for the close, and apparently we don’t need to see the kids fly their kite with their daddy, cos that isn’t the whole damn point of the story or anything… don’t fucking worry about it… Ugh! And apparently dad buying Michael a new kite, not fixing it for him was the solution all along… fucking ugh! And apparently it is more interesting if Banks gets offered his job back cos he made a great investment and earned the bank heaps of money instead of cos he shedded his conservatism, found his sense of humour and joy in life and cracked a great joke that made the senior partner die of laughter… no that ending would be too damn well lovely wouldn’t it? We have to have a more plausible, greed-filled ending don’t we? Have I mentioned how fucking shit the show was? Despite everything though, the cast do do a great job and the sets are incredible. It really is a shame bout the writing. It really could have been quite a magical show, with a little bit of backbone, homage and imagination. I also, despite everything, had a theatre moment full of magic and electricity. Mary Poppins flies out over the audience and disappears. Seeing her, inches from my face, flying, the actress, in character, staring into my tear soaked eyes, seeing my dreams streaked across my face and knowing that her performance was moving people, moving me, was one of those delicious edge-of-artifice moments that I spend my life hunting for and I have to begrudgingly admit that I found it amidst a truly disgusting rendition of my favourite childhood musical. There you go.

Other bits of theatre rant:

I think the only other show I saw in July was Emily Eyefinger, the latest offering from gorgeous children’s theatre makers; Monkey Baa. Super cute. It’s fast and funny and bright and colourful and silly. Everything you’d want out of children’s theatre. Dannielle Jackson is a superb Emily, full of bravery, wit, charm, and generosity. Sandra Eldridge and Tim McGarry are also really great. Funny and pun-ny. If you have little ones and the tour is near you go see it. Get your kids hooked on theatre!

Art Rant:

So, my friends Kelly Elkin and Betony Dircks, (who just launched their PJ Label: www.alasthelabel.com ) had a show at Gaffa  for the Sydney design whatchacallit. I know so very little about fashion but I liked it. They upcycled (a verb I only just learned existed) a bunch of outfits and made a huge pyramid of clothes to highlight their distress about the amount of clothes that end up in landfill. Their designs were super trendy and rad, and if I bought clothes I’d definitely be up for shirts made out of pants and what not. I was impressed. Kelly has also been blogging about ethical fashion designers for a while now. Check out her blog if that sort of thing interests you. http://www.transparentseams.blogspot.com/ My friend Rob Yee also had a show in July. I didn’t make it to opening night cos I got hit down by a crazy flu that was going round but I did pop by and check it out. His work was good, as always, but I was largely unimpressed and frustrated. This man is super talented and has one of the most amazing imaginations of anyone I know but when he comes to pick works for his solo shows he always seems to pick the most bland examples of his work. I was disappointed. I can’t wait till he’s too famous to be curating his own shows and someone objective does it for him. He also has a blog. See what you think: http://theavocadomoshpit.blogspot.com/ I checked out the latest offering from White Rabbit Gallery, Year of the Rabbit I think it was called (they’ve just taken it down and are installing a new show. As always it was fucking amazing. Such a stupidly wonderful asset to the community that damn place is! So much exciting and sensational art. Well hung, well organised. For free. In a wonderful space. If you’ve not yet visited you must must must. I swung by and had a look at The Real Story of Superheroes at ACP, which was an exhibition of Photographs by Dulce Pinzon exploring the lives of hardworking Mexican immigrants in the US. Pinzon, wishing to pay homage to these everyday heroes who work incredible hours and send their savings home to their families, dressed his subjects in superhero costumes and filmed them in their workplace. I found the premise gorgeous but the actual photos a little repetitive. Interesting though. Lastly for my arting-outings was the Pre Raphaelite exhibition at AGNSW. Yum. If you like the PRB, or if you like drawing, or if you like art really it’s a must see. Really interesting collection of drawings I’d never seen before. Such a gorgeous exhibition. It’s still up for a bit, so go, now.

Ok, that’ll do for my July round up. Mary Poppins made me vomit and I inhaled a bit of art.

Love,

Ridiculous.

June Rant:

I thought, this month, I might give up with the rant categories and run all my thoughts together. Eeeeeeeeeeeep! So, June welcomed the magnificent Sydney Film Festival, and the lights-on-the-Opera-House, Vivid Festival. I never really do anything with Vivid but it does kind of buzz in the background and make buildings look pretty and make me go ‘dang, I wish I had tickets to The Cure’… I caught a glimpse at the pretty post theatre one evening, but it was raining and soggy and I didn’t stop to marvel, I jumped on a train and trudged home. But. Yes. Pretty. Funnily enough, considering I consider myself a film geek, I seldom celebrate SFF either… In fact, the only times I’ve ever gone to see something is when I’ve been taken/dragged. This year was no different. A lovely friend of mine had tickets to The Trip (Dir: Michael Winterbottom) and asked me to accompany her. Otherwise I would have just walked around all month going ‘dang, I wish I had tickets to Norwegian Wood’ (cos I’m super wetting my pants about seeing the first film rendering of Murakami, cos I’m a BIG Murakami junkie… Oh well… theatrical release is supposed to be in August, so I’ll just have to settle for soggy knickers till then) … Anyway, there was an odd short called Bunce (Dir: Peter Cattaneo) that screened before The Trip, written by Stephen Fry, who I’m super cranky at cos of when he said that women don’t enjoy sex and that sex is for men (read this and grumble: http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet/index.html?story=/mwt/broadsheet/2010/11/01/stephen_fry) and I tend to not be in the mood to like him/find him funny anymore. Meanwhile, Bunce was really weird. It was all about Fry’s obsession with lollies in boarding school, and included scenes of actual Fry (playing the role of principal) beating himself as a kid (played by Daniel Roche, that cute kid from Outnumbered, how funny is Outnumbered btw?) for sneaking to the store and buying lollies. It was odd. On the other hand, The Trip was heaps of fun. Food, friendship, English countryside, impersonations, actors being actor-ish dicks. I was having a most enjoyable giggle. Sadly though, as things tend to happen in Sydney… Everything happened on the one night. I suddenly found myself with tickets to the opening of The White Guard, (Dir: Andrew Upton) and it was going up at 8 at Sydney Theatre and The Trip started at 6.30 on George Street. I checked the running time, there was no way we’d be able to see the whole of The Trip and make it in time for The White Guard. So we did a runner in the middle of the 4^th Michael Caine impersonation and caught the bus down to Walsh Bay… So, I can only really say I’d begun to enjoy The Trip and was sad to leave and I fully intend to watch the rest at some point. Now, before I ramble about what I thought of The White Guard I want to rant about how much I love the Aussie flick, Dating The Enemy (Dir: Megan Simpson Huberman.) Odd segue I know, how the fuck is a 90’s rom-com related to a June-2011 rant? So, the thing is, I don’t usually get star-struck. Sydney is full of famous people. They’re annoying. Actually fame really gives me the shits. It’s a really freaky commodity/state. It artificalises places/experiences. It isn’t real. We don’t actually know these people… yet we’re filled with feelings for and about these people. They’ve captured our imaginations in some way. We have ideas and opinions about them. They are the characters they’ve portrayed or something (in the case of famous actors.) Or, there must be some bits of the characters we’ve invested in inside them cos they were them for a time. (I remember once, as a youngster, having to catch myself and swallow the urge to yell at Rachael Griffiths about what Brenda did on Six Feet Under that week when I was selling her movie tickets cos I knew it was absurd to conflate actress with her role, and you know, it was rude and embarrassing and I don’t know her…) I don’t know, but for whatever reason, when a famous person enters a room the feeling changes and I really, really hate that. It really struck me when I was about 16 having coffee with my mother and a friend and a famous person walked into the coffee shop. All of a sudden, we couldn’t just drink and talk as we had been. Everything now revolved around what the famous person was fucking doing… “ooh she’s ordering this, ooh she’s wearing that” Ugh. They suck. They turn settings banal and stupid. So I make a point of not finding them exciting or interesting. It mostly works too. Cept, at The White Guard opening no amount of don’t-let-fame-change-the-feeling-of-the-evening reasoning was going to stop my heart fluttering over Claudia Karvan being in the mix of famous-people-in-foyer-fodder and that’s because, Dating The Enemy is the Australian film that has meant the most to me in my life. I was there with my friend (who’d taken me to the beginning of The Trip) and she happened to also be a Karvan/Dating The Enemy nut, so the evening exploded in fan-girl giggling and perving and joking and general hysteria. There was no way to stop us. We were ridiculous. And I have to say it was pretty fun. And I think a coin or two dropped about what fandom is, how euphoric it can be. I’m still unsettled by the whole dynamic though. I think fame and fandom are fraught states and we need to be really careful… but a night of giggles at the theatre never really hurt anyone did it? Dating the Enemy was the film, throughout my teenage-hood, that I’d watch and re-wind and watch again. It was my Friday-night-learn-all-the-words-and-jokes-and-say-the-film-to-yourself-before-the-film-does film. I never really stopped to think about why I loved the film so much. I just loved it. Now I’m all nerdy and looking at the place films sit in peoples lives, specifically in lesbian spectators eyes, I realise that I was, without knowing it, watching the film queerly. I couldn’t get enough of Karvan acting like a man. The pretence, the masquerade, the woman acting butch, the edge of artifice and reality where I knew that Brett wasn’t really in Tash’s body, that it was actually a woman, Karvan, acting like a man, was so fucking exciting for little-kid-repressed-lesbian-me. I still watch the film really regularly. It’s silly and fun and dorky and 90s and I love all the shots of Sydney and I still find Karvan incredibly hot. I want to nerd it up properly and write a proper queer response to the film but I prolly wont do that here (in blog land) and I definitely wont do it now. I just thought I’d tell you the way in which my night devouring bits of Sydney culture felt, cos the experience of a theatre foyer is just as important as the actual theatre. Well, maybe not just, but it really is a big part of the evening. The red wine, and gossip over a bag of over-priced potato chips before the show goes up, the theatre skull, (cos there’s never enough time for a full glass of wine) and the slightly giddy feeling said theatre skull gives you as you stumble into the theatre and take your place, the pitch of the foyer chatter, the fashion, the type of crowd, all the little bits add to the feeling of the show, how the space feels, is it sterile? Is it a grimy underground venue? Is it pretentious? It all informs how we feel and theatre is all about how we feel. Anyway. What I thought of The White Guard… pretty dull. It runs till July 10 if you want to dash and see it but it’s not much to write home about. I really loved Dale March’s work. He’s charming and funny and keeps you giggling. He’s a really skilled and humble clown. A real joy to watch. One of the most interesting Sydney actors around at the moment. He’s the true comic genius of the show. Big wigs of the comic-actor scene such as same-every-time-Darren-Gilshenen are acted (and funnied) right off the stage by March. It might even be worth it just to see his work but, all in all, the production doesn’t really work. It’s supposed to be farcical, (I think) but it sits somewhere (uneasily) between farce and tragedy and doesn’t hit the right notes of either. Upton’s adaptation is as mediocre as his directing. Neither are inspired and some bits just didn’t work at all. Meanwhile, over at Wharf 1, Edward Gant’s Amazing Feats of Loneliness, (Dir: Sarah Goodes) is amazing and well worth a look. It runs till July 23^rd, if you want a good night at the theatre GO AND SEE IT! We all know I’m a big Lindsay Farris fan and he doesn’t disappoint here. Gorgeous, charming, hilarious, generous, magical, intelligent, performance. Paul Bishop, Bryan Probets and Emily Tomlins are great too. It’s a tight ensemble. The play, by Anthony Neilson, is wonderful, full of wit and charm and magic and imagination. I should quit with the listing of adjectives shouldn’t I? It’s about theatre and love and storytelling and the wonder of storytelling and it’s silly and absurd and loopy and gross and breathtaking. Whoops. Can’t seem to stop with the gushy listing. Sorry. It took me right in. It’s theatre that is theatre and is about theatre. It is imbued with all that is wonderful and exciting about performance and stories and storytelling. It’s circus-like and vaudeville and yum. My only complaint is I didn’t really feel like it suited STC. It felt too, well STC at STC… I wanted to see it in a tent or in a grimy warehouse in Marrickville, or even just Darlo (Speaking of Darlo it kept reminding me of a show I once saw there: The Illusion, (Dir. Damien Miller, 2006) one of my all time favourite theatre experiences ever!) would have done the trick. Seeing it in the charming but still very bloody proper and upper-middle-class-feeling Wharf 1 made me feel distanced form the piece a bit. I felt like I was at a zoo, or a museum, seeing what this rare specimen of “exciting theatre” was all about. The show transcends the space though. It’s completely rad. I should prolly mention Romance was Born did the costumes and they’re pretty good. The idea of them doing it made me a little uneasy. So fucking hipster, and, can’t we just have them be designers and give costume jobs to costume artists? (like say Gemma Lark… I’d have loved to have seen what her gorgeous imagination could have cooked up for this one.) But then, what can you expect when you’ve got and actor and an adaptor running a theatre company eh? What I mean is, I have to begrudgingly admit the costumes were really great. Full of, you know the drill… magic and wit and charm… I’d also like to mention that the sound design, by Steve Toulmin was really awesome. Super yum. Toulmin, as it turns out, is one incredibly talented individual. I also happened to be blown away by his acting chops this month round the corner (or right underneath) at the Studio 1 ATYP theatre, (seems I lurked at Walsh Bay for my theatre this month) in the Arts Radar/Under The Wharf production of Tooth of Crime, (Dir: David Harmon.) Toulmin, who plays Crow, was stunning, and sexy, and Bowie, and electrifying, and everything. He well and truly blew Hoss (Akos Armont) off the stage. I thought Armont was a tad weak, I’d have liked if I gave more of a shit about his demise but it was a solid (and sexy) performance too, I’m not going to complain too much. I also want to mention how much I dig Paige Gardiner. She was a little rusty at the start of the show I saw but she really warmed into her role and had heaps of really compelling vulnerable moments. Watch her. My bet is she goes places. I saw her in her final year of NIDA in a mish-mash-of-Moliére production and she really knocked my socks off. She really knew how to engage an audience and think on her feet and improvise and be funny and charming. I’m a fan. I also thought Dan O’Leary was great and had one of the most moving numbers in the show. I got all hairs-on-my-neck-standing-on-end (in a good way) about him. Anyway, they play was pretty good. It’s a Sam Shepard play and it’s dirty and Rock and Roll and exciting. It almost feels more like a gig than theatre. In a good way. Not much of a story and it kind of drones on a bit but it’s punctuated by fucking cool numbers. Fun. Enjoyed it much. That will do for this month. June equals: I’m a failed film geek who saw a bit of theatre. End rant.

Love,

Ridiculous.

May Rant!

I didn’t get out much in May. I stayed home lots and watched Buffy instead of seeing and doing things. (Which is a totally great way to spend the beginning of winter.) I blogged my flicks rant out of the month thing… I saw Snowtown… it reeked. So I’ve only got a one show and one gig to rant about.

Theatre Rant: The only theatre I got to in May was a production of I Only Came to Use the Phone at Darlinghurst Theatre.

As you know, I love Darlo. I think it might even be my favourite Sydney theatre. The staff are always super lovely. The vibe is lovely. It’s not super pretentious. It’s a nice intimate venue… and, often, the shows are great. I didn’t really enjoy this one though.

I found it really, really, uncomfortable, and I haven’t quite worked out if it was good-healthy-confronting-learning-from-the-discomfort discomfort. It was just so fucking depressing. And I’m not sure I learnt anything or gained anything from my heart being dragged through the gutter and kicked around. Do we have to gain something from depressing works? Am I being fuck-wit audience? Am I demanding theatre be disingenuous? Am I asking for ‘depressing’ with a take-home message and do I want to be let off the hook? I can’t tell whether I’m being unfair on this work but I really disliked the experience of it.  And theatre is about experience right? I don’t know. On some levels I want to like it. The production based on a short story by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (from Strange Pilgrims.) It explores the hideous experience of a woman in Franco-era Spain… which resonates with hideous experiences of women everywhere… in lots of different stories and landscapes, right? I wanted to feel the pain as a feminist and leave the theatre empowered and defiant, but instead I just felt kicked around. I just felt like shit.

Maybe if it were directed a bit differently, and, if Netta Yashchin, the director, didn’t keep getting up out of her seat in the audience and joining the ensemble. I’m not anti directors giving themselves a role, it happens. I am, however, against fucking with fourth walls for no good reason. Sometimes, (very rarely) fourth walls can be breached to great effect, otherwise, I LOVE FOURTH WALLS SO FUCKING MUCH IT HURTS. I want to suspend disbelief. I want to get lost in art. I don’t want to be constantly reminded it is art. Can directors please appreciate the magic of theatre, please? It was kind of a sloppy production. I didn’t care enough about the protagonist. I cared enough to be fucking depressed at watching her get kicked around but not in that complete, gut-wrenching way you’re supposed to follow a protagonist. The performers were all good, working really fucking hard, but nothing blew me away. It kind of felt like watching talented actors do drama exercises. Jullia Billington, in particular, got a real work out inhabiting tons of different characters with great skill and physicality.

There was also a really nasty lesbian predator rapist character (that the fourth-wall-breaking director played) and you can just imagine how excited I was to watch women raped by women on stage. I’m not disputing the fact it happens, (nor am I disputing the fact shitty things like abuse should be talked about/explored and assessed through art) I just couldn’t cope with that as an issue on top of all the other blows this play delivers. I never see lesbians on stage, and the first time I do it’s really fucked up. Grump.

I realise this rant has been a bit shit. I found it really hard to collect my thoughts on this one. Basically, I like fourth walls, and found this show uninterestingly depressing.

Gig Rant: I geared up for a night out with the rents and saw Mic Conway & The Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band at the Cell Block theatre (in the NAS campus.) They’re great. They’re a time capsule and a time machine. The crowd was full to the brim with people who were clearly groupies of the band 20, 30 years ago, and who clearly had been time travelling, with the music, (to an absurd version of) the 20s and 30s for 20 or 30 years. They’re funny, witty, silly, sincere, stand-up, cartoon, cabaret, circus, vaudeville, theatre, absurd, magic, magical, fun, fun, fun, fucking wonderful. It is a complete, generous, awesome performance, full of jokes and tricks and costumes and madness. The show is kind of a museum piece but I mean that in the best, best possible way… there really is nothing out there doing quite what Matchbox do. And Cell Block Theatre is really dramatic and spooky and sandstone-y yum gorgeous.  The spooky-ness of the venue amplified the time-machine/capsule effect of the band and the whole gig felt a bit haunted… It also possessed my rents and turned them into teenagers… and so, I might have forgone my Saturday night ‘stay home and watch Dr Who’ tradition but I was treated to wads of real life spook and time travel! Eeeep!

Snowtown rant

Snowtown is a really hard film to watch, and I don’t mean ‘hard to watch’ in a so-deeply-disturbing-and-harrowing-and-confronting-and-interesting way, (which it should be) I mean ‘hard to watch’ in a stupidly-pretentious-and-up-it’s-own-arse way, which is just so fucking disappointing isn’t it? Yet another missed opportunity to resurrect audience’s faith in Australian filmmaking. Sigh. True-crime-film is a delicate genre, and, unfortunately, Snowtown hasn’t pulled it off.

Let’s get one thing straight before I begin, Lucas Pittaway (who plays the lead Jamie Vlassakis) is nothing, whatsoever, like Heath Ledger. Sorry to start with such a snarky and seemingly inane point, but all the lead up hype to this film has been banging on about Pittaway being Heath Ledger and it’s been really irritating, it’s just such absurd, PR, rot. Ignoring the fact he’s not got even half the looks Ledger had, HEATH LEDGER WAS A FUCKING ACTOR. Pittaway, like most of Snowtown’s cast, is not, and it damn well shows in his far, far, less than mediocre performance. Justin Kurzel has attempted to tell a ‘humanised’ version of the story by centring the film around Pittaway’s character, Jamie, and show the seduced-and-corrupted-by-the-desperately-craved-father-figure angle on the tragedy. However, sadly, what with not actually being an actor, Pittaway doesn’t have the range required to pull off the angle…(Let’s not even get into whether this a tad sensationalised and irresponsible, insensitive, way to tell the story… Surely the kid had agency in the horror that shouldn’t be filmically excused with a but-he-was-corrupted-and-coerced telling of the story?) Snowtown is littered with stupid shots of Pittaway not doing much. Pittaway ‘acts’ by looking blanky at the camera in the hope the audiences will do the work and insert complicated emotions. It makes sense, he’s a non-actor so he’s been directed by Kurzel not to do much, because the camera is a sensitive eye and picks up everything, so the best thing to do with non-actors is to get them to stay still and then they won’t over act. In this way, Pittaway delivers an adequate(ish) performance, punctuated with moments when he gasps a bit and dribbles tears in a mildly moving manner. It is certainly not an embarrassing performance but it isn’t enough to make the boy the lynch-pin of the story. We’re supposed to see the story through his eyes and understand him to an extent, but as nothing much goes on in his eyes (apart from when he cries) we just don’t and the whole story merely lingers around him, weakly.  

Casting non-actors was one of Kurzel’s many pretentious choices that didn’t end up paying off in his artshit-house film. A choice that means Daniel Henshall, (who plays John Bunting,) being the only trained actor in the film, has to carry the entire film, and, while his performance is sound, it’s not good enough to carry or save the film. The performance Kurzel didn’t pay enough attention to, (but I’m betting audiences will) is that of Louise Harris, who plays Elizabeth Harvey, Jamie’s mother. It is Harris, not Pittaway that is the really exciting fluke of the non-actor casting. It is with Harris that Kurzel did find that gritty combination of performance and real. That terrifying, and heartbreaking, edge of artifice, that honesty and earnestness that can come from a truly gifted non-actor who is free from all the pretension/wank/ambition of having acting as their vocation. I feel, it would have been a truly fascinating film, if told through the eyes of Elizabeth rather than Jamie. Her journey is heart-wrenching and Harris goes well beyond doing justice to role. She embodies vulnerability and strength. She explores the (sickening and terrifying) love that Elizabeth felt for Bunting. Her performance is complicated and nuanced and heartbreaking and breathtaking. She is the little bit of human that makes this dreadful film watchable. Harris is sensational but at the end of the day, (and the way-too-fucking-long-film) I think the non-actor thing was a really silly call and didn’t do the powerful thing that Kurzel was banking on it doing… but then, the whole film didn’t do the powerful thing Kurzel was banking on. Kurzel has delivered a really adequate film. It’s not a masterpiece and it desperately wants to be, and pretends it is oh-so-profound, which is really awkward to watch. The aesthetic is cold and bleak. The film starts abruptly in a we’ve-been-whisked-away-into-this-frightening-world sort of way and begins with mood-setting voice-over and heart beat like score. The cinematography (by Adam Arkapaw) is really wanky. Heaps of self-consciously artful shots like shots through blinds or from between poker-machines behind ashtray, or reflections from arcade games. It’s very look-at-me-be-an-artist. Which is annoying. Kurzel needed to get on with telling the story and not spend so much time loudly proving how clever and interesting a film-maker he is. I really disliked the disorienting way the story was edited too. It is mostly chronological but you never really know where you are in the story and you don’t get enough of a sense of ending at the beginning. The story does come the full circle, but by the time we get there we’ve forgotten where we were because the beginning was kind of forgettable. Meh. I’m bored of writing. Save your time and money and give Snowtown a miss. Australian film will make its comeback one day. But not just yet… Sadly…