CHAS’ WAR ON EVERYTHING

WORDS DONNA YAN & BONITA SILVA

Level four of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation may not look like much with its maze of cubicles and squashy couches but it is the central nervous system of the beast that is the Chaser. A mock school photo of the boys hangs on the wall behind us as we wait on the couches for Chas Licciardello. He is running slightly late for the interview courtesy of New South Wales’ public transport system. Despite the group’s success, they have not progressed to chauff eured limousines.

Andrew Hansen strolls past in military garb and powdered white hair, presumably done up for a shoot, and introduces himself as he spots us. Taken aback by his friendliness, all we could do was lavish compliments on his interesting attire to which he points out, doesn’t quite fi t. We immediately notice that his pants aren’t entirely fastened properly.

“I think there ’s all these people out there who think that we think we’re tough guys because we’re always in the news,” says Chas as he sits behind Julian Morrow’s desk. Morrow is the only one of the Chaser who has his own offi ce as he also doubles as executive producer.

“But we know that we’re geeks, we know that we’re nerds. We know that nothing we do is brave. And we don’t pretend otherwise.”

The Chaser Boys, as they have been aff ectionately dubbed by fans, comprises of Andrew Hansen, Chris Taylor, Julian Morrow, Craig Reucassel and Chas Licciardello. They all worked on satirical newspaper ‘The Chaser’ which infamously published ex-Prime Minister John Howard’s unlisted home phone number before Andrew Denton came knocking.

“Oh that’s legal,” Chas quickly points out when asked about the Howard incident. “Totally legal. If you have a phone number you can print it.

Just totally unethical that’s all,” he laughs in his distinctly coarse voice.

“Let’s distinguish between immoral and illegal. Immoral, we do plenty of. Illegal, we don’t do so much of.”

It’s an interesting revelation considering the number of times they have been arrested, most famously for Chas’ attempt to sell riot weapons outside a Bulldog’s football match and when their fake Canadian motorcade infi ltrated several rounds of security at the APEC summit to come within a block of George W Bush’s hotel.

However, despite what the public may think, being arrested is not something they enjoy. At least, not for most of them.

“I think one or two of the guys do get off a bit on the arrest,” he says. “I’m defi nitely not one of them. I hate being arrested, not because of the ‘threat’ or something, there is no threat. You’re never safer than when you’re in police custody.”

“The police are professionals, they know what they’re doing, they’re not going to beat you in jail,” he says, adding:

“unless you’re Aboriginal”. It’s almost as if he couldn’t help himself and we laugh partly in shock and partly at the political incorrectness.

“Truth be told, we do have debates over those kinds of issues and I won’t pretend that we have any kind of consistent line,” he says, referring to their boundaries on ethics and political correctness. “There are times when we think ‘aw, that’s too slack’.

There are times when we don’t. To be honest, more often we think it’s too slack than not, but enough ‘nots’ slip through,” he says and let’s out another laugh. “So we have a quite terrible reputation by now.”

This reputation also extends to other continents. Most recently, reports of the Chaser’s arrest in Italy surfaced after the group fl ew a blimp over the Vatican into what was apparently a no-fl y zone.

“Craig was fl ying the blimp. The rest of us were accessories to fl ying a blimp but having said that, I didn’t get arrested because I ran faster than the other guys.”

We’re incredulous of the claim, so he continues: “The Italian police are pretty ineffi cient, they do things old school so if you’re a little bit more evasive you can get away with a fair bit. And so far, I don’t even think they’ve gotten around to fi ling the paperwork, so fi ngers crossed.”

The blimp incident is only one of many brushes with the law the boys have had since shooting began for the new series. The fi rst episode airs on May 27 on ABC1. It has been a long eighteen months without the Chaser boys on screen, most of which they spent travelling the nation with the live show:

‘The Chaser’s Age of Terror Variety Hour’.

He concedes the live show is much easier than working on the show in the studio.

“Don’t let any comedians tell you that touring is a gruelling schedule, because it’s just a joke.”

“You just need to write a routine, get it right and then just do it over and over again,” he says. “You end up with people cheering even when you’re not particularly funny and it makes you feel really good. It makes you feel way more talented than you actually are. I recommend it to everyone.”

When asked whether anything unexpected happened in the live shows, he responds fi rst by asking us whether we publish online. He realises that we do from our momentarily evasive facial expressions.

“Let’s distinguish between immoral and illegal. Immoral, we do plenty of. Illegal, we don’t do so much of.”

“It’s okay… They’re not going to read it. You don’t have a big readership in North Queensland I’m assuming.”

He continues to recount the incident regarding an act where he is learning to do stand-up comedy from a GPS system: “It tells me to tell a joke and I try to tell a joke and I come up with the most off ensive joke imaginable and it starts going “wrong way, wrong direction, turn around” etcetera right? Now, the original joke I came up with started off with a lesbian, quadriplegic Aborigine etcetera right? It was that kind of thing and you never actually get to what the joke is because the GPS is telling me ‘wrong way, wrong way, wrong way’ and I stop.”

“Now, when we were in North Queensland, that got a huge laugh, and we thought, well, that went well. But then afterwards, when people come up to us after the show to get autographs, everyone was asking “What’s the joke? What’s the joke?! It sounds really good! What’s the joke?” And it gave me real insight into race relations in North Queensland. They all wanted to know what the joke was about the quadriplegic Aborigine. Very interesting.”

From then on, the team dropped the word Aborigine from the segment - “And it didn’t go down as well.”

However, it doesn’t seem like the boys are going to be holding anything back for their new, more compact season: “I can promise you that we will be smugger than ever before,” Chas says.

“It’s tough to give you details because we ourselves don’t know what we’re going to be doing. It’s kind of a week by week proposition. So at this stage I can tell you that there will be new segments. I hope there will be new segments because if there aren’t new segments it means that we’ve fi lmed a lot of stuff that hasn’t worked.”

One drastic change for the show is the decision to scrap the segment: ‘What We Learned From A Current Aff airs This Week’.

“We really covered every angle you could possibly cover. Because let’s be honest, the segment really had two or three episodes in it although we stretched it out over two years.

“Short of getting injected into one of their arteries, I don’t think we can get any closer to Today Tonight than we got at the end of 2007,” he says.

The end of 2007 was when the Chaser infi ltrated Today Tonight headquarters with a camera crew - “They locked the door and wouldn’t let us go for two hours.”

There are no hard feelings towards Anna Coren who has changed from being host of Today Tonight to working for CNN. She was frequently a target for mockery during the Chaser’s

‘A Current Aff airs’ segment.

“I’m delighted for her. She fi nally got out,” he says in amusement. “I didn’t think anyone could escape [Today Tonight]. I thought it was a black hole, that’s the end of your career right there but she somehow managed.”

Another prominent target on the Chaser hit-list was John Howard who was accessible through his daily walking regime around the outskirts of Sydney.

When asked whether Kevin Rudd’s lack of outdoor exercise makes it a hindrance to potential pranks, Chas responds:

“Yeah it does actually! When you think that you probably think, ‘Oh yeah that’s a funny thought’, but it’s actually true… Not only because he doesn’t walk, but also because he ’s a big hider.”

“He never walks in through the front door. You might think he ’s a media slut, but the truth is that he really likes control of what he ’s on and what he ’s not. And right now, he doesn’t want to be on our show,” he says.

It appears the Prime Minister may have sung a diff erent tune in the days before his new-found importance.

“He used to seek us out. Actually he used to be the worst off ender. When he saw one of us with the camera, he did this huge detour to walk past the camera in the hope that we’d approach him.”

Chas’ theory is that politicians feel compelled to be recognised by younger audiences and desperately want to impress their children, mentioning Alexander Downer as a prime example:

“Whenever we went near him, he was always wanting to know what day he ’d be on so he could tell his daughter.”

As one of the Chaser team’s most visible members, it seems Chas stops at nothing short of sending strippergrams to pashing Rove on national television (which he describes as “A little bit fi rm for my taste, I gotta say. Not very tender”). His comedic roots stem from his undergraduate days at the University of Sydney.

“I’m not kidding when I say without the Law Revue, I would not be on TV, and you just could get heaps of valuable experience performing at uni. As much funding as people can throw into university activity programs, I think it would help comedians a lot,” he says.

The Chaser team have a reputation for their intelligence, due in part to their fountain of law degrees. Although he found his other degree in science to be

“utterly useless”, Chas never wanted to be a lawyer either.

With this love for scriptwriting, Chas wanted to break into the radio industry, particularly to impress Ugly Phil of Hot 30 countdown fame, in the era before Kyle Sandilands.

“I sent a strippergram to Ugly Phil to read my scripts. I fi gured people send shit to him all the time, so that’ll get his attention, and I got no response. So I said okay fi ne. Then I sent him a male strippergram. ‘Sorry obviously I misjudged you, this might be more to your taste,’ and still got no response. So I sent a fatogram,” he says.

With the new series about to hit screens around the country, Chaser’s War On Everything is an obvious commercial dream. The team have resisted the urge to abandon the ABC despite receiving off ers from every channel, every year.

“To be frank, I think it’d be suicide if we did [leave the ABC],” he says.

He outlines why going commercial wouldn’t be so wise: “Every time we got arrested we’d probably get fi red. As opposed to the ABC where they pay for our legal bills - which is nice. And let’s face it, we culture a very cynical audience who would turn on us in a second if they thought we sold out.”

But at the end of the day, the concept behind the program will still be the same: “It’s just about taking the piss,” he says. “There are times when you think to yourself ‘oh we’re making a good satirical point’. But the truth is our fi rst job is to be funny, and if we ’re not funny, what the fuck are we doing on TV?”

“I can tell you that there will be new segments. I hope there will be new segments because if there aren’t new segments it means that we’ve fi lmed a lot of stuff that hasn’t worked.”

FEATUREVERTIGO . 7| 14

TOP 5Welcome to UTS new students! Here you’ll learn valuable new skills, grow intellectually, and bitterly duel each other for the prettiest friends. Its veterans off er fi ve handy tips.

Wear lots of braceletsLadies, we fi nd nothing sexier than a walking set of cymbals. A dozen chunky bracelets on each arm should have us begging for more. Ignore the fact that you set off metal detectors in other buildings.

IntimidationA friend, as the saying goes, is merely an enemy who hasn’t got the guts to kill you. Exploit this by engendering fear in the heart of everyone you meet. A halo of fear will illuminate what a warm, kind person you are.

Pretend to be foreignEverybody likes a tasty Danish, right? Aha! Aha! Hmmm.

‘Funny’ shirtsWhat better way to highlight your fi nely honed wit than a mass-produced joke shirt? Trust us. There ’s practically zero chance of an awkward encounter with others wearing the exact same shirt.

Substance abuseFeeling ignored? As usual, illicit substances are the answer. Soon, people will fl ock to you as word spreads of your party animal ways. Til then, suff er the restraining orders and knees to the groin with dignity.

We hope this UTS User’s manual wins you success, happiness and home-made apple pie. Happy studying!

WORDSJAMIE WYNEN

You might not know Yves Klein Blue but chances are you’ve heard their song Polka. Fresh off the Big O tour, Michael Tomlinson (vocals/guitar) chatted to Donna Yan about LA, drugs and the colour blue.

Yves Klein Blue is a specifi c type of blue invented by the artist Yves Klein. How did you come across your name?

Well, it was actually on a desk calendars - those fl ip ones. My girlfriend at the time had it and he was of those ‘great artists’, I forget what day it was actually, but it had the anthropometries of Yves Klein on the calendar and it struck me.

I read that you actually do draw sometimes to help you with a song. How does that work?

It’s more of a conceptual thing for me. Say I was writing a song and it had a verse and a chorus… it might go on to another verse or some sort of break down or something like that and I’m kind of a visual person so if you put it out on a page for me I can see how to plan the song a lot better… like one of those mind maps. It’s kind of like that… it’s not like synesthesia or anything.

Yeah, I was going to ask whether you saw music as colours or something.

[Laughs] No, I just see colours as colours.

You guys are from Brisbane, how’s the music scene diff erent there compared to other places like Sydney?

Well, there ’s a lot more people in Sydney and that’s the main thing ‘cause in Brisbane there ’s a much smaller population which means there ’s less of everything. There ’s a lot more of a

‘scene ’ and that was great coming from Brisbane because all the bands pretty much just play in the same four bars and all the bands go to the same bar. Bands can develop more in isolation up here, I think, which can be a positive and negative thing.

And you’ve just come back from LA where you’ve been recording your album. What was that like?

It was wonderful but LA is a strange,

strange place. It’s very alien especially coming from Brisbane but it’s also very familiar because of the whole American thing. America is intrinsically familiar like a mother’s voice or something because it’s always on television… But the guy over there was fantastic, and we stayed in this little two room [place] in North Hollywood. West Hollywood would be the more affl uent area and North Hollywood is like this industrial area. We were like a $40 cab between one and another and it was just between the studio and back every day. Except for Sundays where we’d sleep until 2pm because we were just so tired.

At the moment we’re hearing a lot of your song Polka because it’s on T.V. in that Mitsubishi Lancer ad. But what’s the song actually about?

I guess the point of Polka is to debunk the ‘glamour’ of drugs and amphetamine use. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has seen a group of their friends fall to pieces and getting lost in this kind of haze of… all-nighters and… I guess it’s meant to be fairly glamorous, pills and coke and all that kind of stuff but when you’re trying to wake your friend up in a park or something like that, it’s really not that glamorous and I think that was what I was trying to put across in that song but also not to really judge anyone.

So I have to ask, is blue your favourite colour?

[Laughs] It probably is actually.

Don’t feel obliged to say yes or anything.

Oh no, I’m not. I like blue…and green…for one period I liked aqua. But yeah, blue, defi nitely that region of the colour wheel.

YKB are heading over to LA and then Brighton for the Great Escape Festival before coming back to Australia later in the year to launch their fi rst record. Their EP ‘Yves Klein Blue Draw Attention to Themselves’ is out now. Go to Vertigo website for full interview.

CHAT WITH

TOMLINSONWORDS DONNA YAN

MICHAELOF YVES KLIEN BLUE

VERTIGO . 2| 6

WORDS DONNA YANLISA MITCHELLTHE INTERVIEW

From Australian Idol to Glastonbury Festival, from Albury to London, Lisa Mitchell has gained quite a following with her whimsical music. On the day of the Australian release of her debut album ‘Wonder’, Lisa chats to Donna Yan about song-writing, attic spaces and fashionistas.

It was only three years ago that Lisa Mitchell was on the small-screen as an Idol hopeful. The sixteen year old Albury local made it to the fi nal six thanks to her melodic voice and talent on the guitar. While there may be some prejudice against such beginnings in the music industry, Mitchell is thoughtful as she refl ects on that stage of her career.

“I found it an overwhelming experience at times but it was...,” she trails off . “It was just something that I did....as soon as you get on [the show] it’s great but it wasn’t really, musically it wasn’t really what I wanted to do at all.”

Mitchell is contemplative as she answers questions, back tracking at times and re-arranging thoughts as she speaks.

“My experience of the music industry has been really good,” she begins. “I just surround myself with really positive and encouraging people. So I fi nd that my experience - I guess it’s all purely based on who you work with.”

Those people include Dann Hume, youngest of the Hume brothers who make up the band Evermore. He worked with Mitchell on her two EPs ‘Said One to the Other’ (2007), ‘Welcome to the Afternoon’ (2008) and is also the Producer of her debut album

‘Wonder’. They are signed with the same management company who suggested a collaboration when Hume was looking to produce. It was a fi tting match which saw Mitchell living in, what she describes as a “tiny cupboard of a room,” at Hume’s house.

“We just get along really well and [we are] quite comfortable and I think when you’re recording it’s really important that your mind is really open and free-fl owing with ideas,” she explains.

“You’re in that comfortable state of consciousness.”

The album was initially going to be titled ‘The Attic Space ’ but was changed when Mitchell re-recorded a good portion of the songs in Australia. “I wasn’t staying in an attic any more,” she says, referring to the time she spent in London recording with Ant Whiting (Arctic Monkeys, Sia) when she literally lived in an attic.

Despite the less eerie album title, ‘Wonder’, Mitchell seems to harbour a deep-seated interest in the afterlife. “I’m quite morbid in my song writing,” she admits. This is evident in lyrics such as

“Once again I leave my grave/dirt and daisies hit the pave/...no sooner than I am dead I feel the ravens tugging at my hair” on tracks like ‘Oh! Hark!’.

“Not many people pick up on that, though it’s true. Not that I’m a morbid person,” she points out. “But I think the only certainty in life is death. I start thinking of the fact that you will die one day [so] every day is quite fun really,” she says with a certain lightness in her voice.

When asked about the painted ravens that appear in her video clip for the second single ‘Coin Laundry’, she laughs a little sheepishly. “Yeah, that was a little tie in...not like I’m a hippie freak who’s lost it. Ravens are kind of a good omen for me,” she says. “I’ll make a decision or I’ll hang up the phone and see if there ’s a raven fl ying overhead.”

Whether that means she ’s a superstitious person, Mitchell isn’t quite sure.

“Totally!’ she begins before changing her mind. “I am a bit...Not really. Not at all. I’m quite a realist. Like you know? Aw, I guess I’m...I guess I’m a bit of both,” she fi nishes.

At times Mitchell’s uncertainty is a reminder that she is still only 19 and fi nding her way in the world. But then she off ers an insight into her craft and age becomes irrelevant. Mitchell is up-front about the fact that she isn’t the most outgoing person which means “song writing, of course, is just ridiculous.” She ’s also very attached to the idea of making music that’s personal, so it’s quite contradictory that she co-wrote songs with Ed Harcourt considering her self-proclaimed shyness:

“Writing [together] is hard, because you have to be really open to the other person...but once you get to know them, you learn a lot.”

She allows others to listen to her innermost thoughts because she relates to the experience. “I think of the songs that I love that other people have written,” she says. “[They] are all really, really personal, I get so much out of them so I don’t mind giving that to people. I recognise it, so it kind of makes it okay.”

That’s not to say her songs are sombre and serious. In fact, she is a fan of the fantastical, citing a fondness for Tim Burton. “I love Tim Burton! [But] I haven’t watched Big Fish, I was going to watch it the other day, literally,” she tells me. “A song like Coin Laundry has a lot of fantasy elements to it and...I guess that kind of imagination is really important as a songwriter because you do start going a bit bonkers if you just start writing all these self analytical songs. It’s quite refreshing for your mind.”

To celebrate the release of her album, Mitchell reveals she is going to the Vogue 50th Anniversary Party. “I did a Vogue shoot the other day,” she explains.

“It was crazy. So they invited me to this thing tonight and I really want to go to that. So that’s kind of like sipping champagne at the Vogue party,” she says with a disbelieving giggle. “Live it up with the fashionistas.”

As her debut album hits shelves, she still seems a little in awe of her success, revealing that she ’s still wearing the wristband for Glastonbury Festival, where she played the previous month. “I don’t think I’ll ever take it off .”

If you thought Mitchell was ready to take a breather now that her album’s out, that’s not quite the case. She barely pauses when asked about her plans for the future, as she replies excitedly: “I can’t wait to make another one.”

‘Wonder’ is out now. Lisa Mitchell will be touring from August through to September. Catch her at the Metro (Sydney) on Friday 25th September.

VERTIGO . 9| 31

STUARTMACLEOD

THE INTERVIEW

OFESKIMO JOEWORDS DONNA YAN

After twelve years and three studio albums, you might think that Eskimo Joe would be comfortable with the ‘rock star’ image they’ve acquired along the way. Lead guitarist, Stuart MacLeod, reveals that’s not the case.

“I don’t know if we ’re keen to embrace the term ‘rock star’ anymore after the last record,” he says.

MacLeod is referring to the hugely successful ‘Black Fingernails, Red Wine ’ album which debuted at number one on the Aria Charts and sold four times platinum in Australia in 2006. The title track won the Aria for single of the year and the band played to sold out crowds on their ‘Beating Like a Drum’ tour.

It’s no surprise that Chris Martin is a fan of the Aussie trio, but MacLeod laughs as he recalls: “We met him for the Sound Relief Concert and I gave him our album.”

“I guess it’s always an honour to be respected by your peers and getting the respect of someone like that who plays to so many people on such a daily basis and has written music of such amazing quality. It does make you feel confi dent in your own abilities.”

Eskimo Joe ’s upcoming album ‘Inshalla’ carries an undertone of uncertainty: it is an Arabic word which translates to ‘God willing’.

“Kav [bass/ lead vocals] had a trip to Cairo and you really hear this word everywhere and it means ‘what will be will be ’,” he reveals. “For us it really sums up the album, we were really resigning a lot of things to fate and a whole new style of writing music and the way we created the album and it was very challenging and diff erent and we didn’t quite know if it’ll work and we sort of just let the chips fall where they lay.”

One of the challenges the band faced, was the decision to bring on a producer after the success of self-produced ‘Black Fingernails’. MacLeod reveals they were willing to relinquish some control for a chance to work with their dream producer, Gil Norton, of Foo Fighters and Pixies fame.

“That sort of outweighed the need to take control of this one again…We very much love being in the studio and having complete control over what we’re creating and that was diffi cult to relinquish when Gil entered the whole scheme of things but I guess over a couple of weeks we sort of learnt to let go a bit, which was hard.”

While MacLeod refers to Norton as a “whinging knob” at one point during the conversation, he does harbour some genuine aff ection for the Brit. “He’s great fun to have around and we sort of just gave him a lot of shit and he gave us a lot of shit and it was a foundation of humour that we built upon,” he says.

MacLeod admits that Norton taught the band some vital lessons in putting the record together: “It was good to analyse the drums and the bass and the rhythm section in general, and that work on the dynamics and building each section and building excitement, which was a really good lesson.”

Despite Norton’s presence being a signifi cant change for the band, the trio also faced some other milestones, namely fatherhood for both MacLeod and lead singer Kav Temperley.

“I don’t think it’s possible to have such a dramatic life change and for it to not infl uence your music. A lot of the songs on this album are quite obviously dominated by related themes. And I think it lightened up the mood in the jam room and allowed us to create a bit more positive music with a bit more of an uplifting tone. There is really a tone of joy and hope on this record.”

While songs such as ‘Sound of Your Heart’ and ‘Your Eyes’ are lighter and uplifting in tone, the album is not without its darker moments. First single off the record ‘Foreign Land’ was inspired by Heath Ledger’s death. Eskimo Joe were in New York during the incident, and the loneliness of someone from Perth passing in a foreign city resonated with Temperley because after all, the band are natives of Western Australia.

Although MacLeod identifi es with feeling homesick when touring, he is quick to point out that while it is diffi cult not to miss the comforts of home, “At the same time, it’s a pretty amazing job that lets you spend as much time at home in your off -season.”

Being together for twelve years has fostered a bond amongst the group and that helps personally and professionally.

“You get to form a deep sort of brotherhood and a deep understanding of how each other work so the song writing process becomes a lot more intuitive. Often times you surprise yourself with how in sync you are with each other and that’s always a bit of a positive,” he says. “Especially when in the past, you might’ve been thinking diff erent things and it was diffi cult to reconcile.”

MacLeod is comforted to know the band is still recording together after all this time: “We’re still, you know, good mates, we ’re still brothers so it’s very heartening to know that we can keep doing this for the rest of our lives really because the dynamic between us is so strong and intuitive and we’ve got a profound respect for each other’s abilities.”

The band also owes much of their success to their ability to continually change and grow musically over the years.

“I think if you haven’t grown musically and learnt a few diff erent things about yourself and making music with each new album…then the process would become quite stagnating and it wouldn’t be as enjoyable. I guess the day that stops happening is the day we decide to call it quits,” says MacLeod. “[But] I don’t see that happening for a long time.”

Inshalla is released on Friday, 29th May and you can catch Eskimo Joe at the Hordern Pavilion on Thursday 6th June. Tickets available at www.eskimojoe.net or through Ticketek.

VERTIGO . 7| 19

MELANIEMARY AND MAX AND

It was six years ago when writer and director, Adam Elliot, and Melbourne Producer, Melanie Coombs, teamed up together to give us the 23-minute short fi lm which told the tenderly tragic tale of Polish immigrant Harvie Krumpet.

Fast forward to 2009, and one Academy Award later, the director/producer team have created another stop motion triumph in the form of feature fi lm ‘Mary and Max’.

UTS graduate Coombs relates how she reacted when she fi rst received the news that their feature had been chosen to be open the Sundance Film Festival: “Adam actually rang me and I thought he was lying,” she says with a laugh.

“I was like, no way, you know? Then I actually read the email myself from Geoff rey Gilmore who was the director of the festival…I actually couldn’t stop shaking for an hour.”

After completing a Bachelor of Arts in Communication at UTS, Coombs applied to the Australian Film and Television School’s (AFTRS) three year production course. “When I was at UTS, I just wanted to be ‘a fi lmmaker’ before I really understood what fi lmmaking really was,” Coombs says.

It was only after her second rejection from AFTRS that she was fi nally accepted on her third attempt and entered the one year production course. By that time she had begun to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the role of a producer through her work at the Melbourne Film Offi ce: “I could see how producers were creative and they are the ultimate enablers of projects. Without a producer you know, a writer is just a wanker shopping in Newtown and a director is a crazy person with a vision in a café in Kings Cross.”

Coombs conveys a quiet confi dence in her words but is surprisingly realistic and practical in her views towards the Oscar win.

“We have a saying, ‘use the hype but don’t believe it’,” she says.

Coombs admits that while an Academy Award was a “wonderful recognition.”

“And it’s a lot of fun when you hold it. It’s kind of weighty and fabulously iconic…. It doesn’t really change anything that’s important.” Coombs reveals that her mother passed away shortly after she received the award and deadpans: “I can tell you which one was the more important event in my life.”

With that being said, an Academy Award does not come without a certain degree of infl uence. Coombs calls it the “golden crowbar” which did “wedge” doors open for them in terms of funding and also convincing the likes of Toni Collette, Barry Humphries and especially Philip Seymour Hoff man (Max) to become involved.

When approaching someone such as Hoff man, Coombs says with a laugh:

“you have to [fi rstly] think that you can [do it]; to give yourself permission to do so. I have always been pretty good at that because I’ve always been like ‘well, they can always say no’.”

But Coombs concedes that: “at the end of the day, it was the script,” that was the clincher.

Mary and Max, the story of two pen pals, based on a real life friendship of director Adam Eliot, is a story of people who struggle to make sense of the world that they live in.

“Mary and Max is sort of this story about two estranged outsiders who through their friendship kind of strengthen and enrich each other’s lives,” Coombs explains. “Adam’s core story telling philosophy, if you like, is that it doesn’t matter how diff erent we are, and we are all diff erent, we all deserve love and respect.”

WORDS DONNA YAN

VERTIGO . 6| 18

Coombs asserts the importance of sharing core values with the director you are working with: “It’s like dating in a funny kind of way. I know that sounds bizarre but you know almost immediately if it’s not going to work.”

Not only do Coombs and Eliot share similar values; they both had unusual but coincidentally parallel upbringings. Coombs’ mother whisked them off to live in a circus for two years when she was ten-years-old.

“Adam’s dad used to be an acrobatic clown in vaudeville in the ‘60s and my stepfather was a circus clown in England so when I was a kid, my whole family ran away to the circus,” Coombs reveals.

While she is not sure whether that infl uenced her penchant for slightly quirky characters, she does suspect that it played a part in her acceptance at UTS:

“I applied as a mature age student and I think all the leftie academics just adored the fact that I was a circus girl.”

Her also has some sage advice for fi lm students at UTS. “Listen to everybody, ask everyone for their advice but at the end of the day, trust yourself because you are the only person who cares about your project, really, really.”

Only the second stop motion feature fi lm to ever be made in Australia, Mary and Max took almost fi ve years to get from script to screen.

“I think we had a very kind of naive sense of what we were attempting when we started,” admits Coombs and adds with a laugh: “and there ’s the horrible truth unveiled.” With a staff of 123 people in total and a budget of $8 million - remarkably small when compared to Hollywood animations - the fi lm took a total of 57 weeks in production with an average of four seconds of painstaking footage shot every day.

Eliot described the process of making a stop animation fi lm in his opening speech at Sundance as: “making love and being stabbed to death at the same time.”

Apart from being Adam Eliot’s speciality, Coombs looks to the leading character, the overweight, socially awkward Max, as another reason for using stop motion, explaining: “If you did that in live action, people fi nd that kind of thing hard to watch and when it’s in plasticine it renders all of things that might be diffi cult…much more palatable, if you like.”

Despite its laborious nature, Coombs emphasises the devotion of all those who worked on the project, all in the “factory” where the fi lm was made: “Everyone was so passionate, people were so committed to their work, it really was a place where even though people were working incredibly long hours for not particularly fantastic pay, there was a real sense of joy and personal pride in the creation of every single one of those little things.”

By “little things”, Coombs means all the props which had to be made for the fi lm on a total of ten sound stages. At one point, everyone, including Coombs, was involved in hand crafting the 808 tiny Earl grey tea bag boxes that were required.

From everything that Coombs says, Mary and Max was evidently much more than just Play-doh, it was a labour of love.

Mary and Max is in cinemas now.

VERTIGO . 6| 19

THE INTERVIEW

JONHUME

WORDS DONNA YANPHOTOGRAPHY JARRAD SPRING

top right (opposite page)Dann Hume, Jon Hume & Peter Hume(courtesy of Warner Music)

VERTIGO . 3| 24

THE TRUTH OF EVERMORE:WELCOMETO THE SHOW

“I sort of like music that has the energy of [musicians] trying to get something across to you and reach out to you in some way. I guess that’s not very ‘in’ at the moment.”

‘Hi I’m Jon,’ he says, extending a hand. He’s tall, with bleached blonde hair. He wears a leather jacket, black skinny jeans and a Led Zeppelin shirt – fi tting, considering the origin of the name of the band comes from Led Zeppelin’s song

‘The Battle of Evermore ’. Jon Hume [vocals/guitar] is the oldest of the Hume brothers Jon, Peter and Dann that make up the trio better known as ‘Evermore ’. It’s only 11am and he has just done an interview on Triple M radio before coming to meet Vertigo at Warner Music. I don’t want to imagine how long he has already been awake.

The room is humid so he helps us to open a window before taking off his jacket. He cracks a joke about being ‘all professional’ in the offi ce setting with the lone telephone on the table before humming to himself and letting out a

“sweeet” as the interview starts.

I guess in the back of my mind I had expected some sort of fanfare or a fuss when he arrived but there was no grand entrance. It is uncanny how grounded he seems considering everything. Homeschooled brothers who won New Zealand band competition Rockquest when Jon was only 16, Evermore did the uni circuit in front of drunken crowds before they could legally drink, signed on with Scorpio/Warner Music and then released two albums. The band has since been nominated for six Aria Awards and their second album sold double platinum. Their third album ‘Truth of the World: Welcome to the Show’, produced by Jon, comes out on March 20.

The fi rst thing most people will notice about ‘Truth of the World’ is how diff erent it sounds compared to their previous two records.

“We were a little worn out I think,” Hume begins. He relates how he and his brothers were drifting apart musically after completing their fi rst two albums

‘Dreams’ (2004) and ‘Real Life ’ (2006) and subsequent touring. It took a long time before they knew how they were going to put together their third album.

“Dann [youngest brother, drums/vocals] was writing these Bob Dylan-esque folk songs that were really lyrically driven…and I was writing almost instrumental

music, sort of fully orchestrated, lots of strings parts in it and also kind of writing really synthetic, electronically infl uenced stuff , and then Pete [keyboardist/ bassist] was doing his own thing again and it was sort of like ‘it’s not an album here ’. These sounds are so diverse and there ’s no direction,” says Hume.

Growing up listening to their parents’ collection of classic rock bands like the Beatles, Pink Floyd and the Who, the brothers of Evermore had long had their hearts set on making a concept album. That was what they had originally intended for Dreams. “We’d written a rough plot to it all but…you know, it was our fi rst album and trying to make a concept album on your very fi rst record is just a bit hard”, Hume explains.

“It just ended up being a collection of songs that had a really subtle theme running through it that only we can actually notice…”

In a press release from Warner, he poses the question, “Politics, media, drugs, war…why can most albums only talk about love or loss?” It’s not a question many bands bother asking, let alone answering, which indicates perhaps that Evermore is not like most bands. “I sort of like music that has the energy of [musicians] trying to get something across to you and reach out to you in some way,” Hume says. “I guess that’s not very ‘in’ at the moment.”

“Then Dann came up with this idea that the media would be a really cool idea for an album ‘cause you can like have stuff like the news reports in the songs and you can have ad breaks, political ads…You can do a lot of stuff with it and you could make a comment about whatever you felt like.”

It also brought the brothers together again musically. “The news media, it’s so diverse…Once we discovered that idea, the whole thing started to work - all of Dann’s clever lyrical, dark humour, kind of lots of little layers in the lyrics that you can take literally or also in a sarcastic sort of way,” Hume says.

The new album subsequently became based around a “fi ctional news entertainment, political empire called

‘Truth of the World’,” Hume continues. “It’s got elements of Brave New World and 1984 kind of themes.” He laughs a little when he admits that it does have a slightly science fi ction feel to it. It’s almost as if he doesn’t quite believe that they’ve dared to venture beyond what people are familiar with, both with the band’s style and the general direction of mainstream music at present.

VERTIGO . 3| 25

‘Hi I’m Jon,’ he says, extending a hand. He’s tall, with bleached blonde hair. He wears a leather jacket, black skinny jeans and a Led Zeppelin shirt – fi tting, considering the origin of the name of the band comes from Led Zeppelin’s song ‘The Battle of Evermore ’. Jon Hume [vocals/guitar] is the oldest of the Hume brothers Jon, Peter and Dann that make up the trio better known as ‘Evermore ’. It’s only 11am and he has just done an interview on Triple M radio before coming to meet Vertigo at Warner Music. I don’t want to imagine how long he has already been awake.

The room is humid so he helps us to open a window before taking off his jacket. He cracks a joke about being ‘all professional’ in the offi ce setting with the lone telephone on the table before humming to himself and letting out a

“sweeet” as the interview starts.

I guess in the back of my mind I had expected some sort of fanfare or a fuss when he arrived but there was no grand entrance. It is uncanny how grounded he seems considering everything. Homeschooled brothers who won New Zealand band competition Rockquest when Jon was only 16, Evermore did the uni circuit in front of drunken crowds before they could legally drink, signed on with Warner and then released two albums. The band has since been nominated for six Aria Awards and their second album sold double platinum. Their third album ‘Truth of the World: Welcome to the Show’, produced by Jon, comes out on March 20.

The fi rst thing most people will notice

“We put a lot of lines in there to sort of prick people ’s ears so like ‘what did they just say?’ So hopefully once they hear that they’ll go ‘oh ok, I’ll pay more attention’.”

There is a touch of disillusionment as he discusses the media and entertainment industry. “Most people just want songs about…you know, ones that they don’t really have to think about; that doesn’t challenge them… but we did spend huge amounts of time on the lyrics to try and kind make them as interesting and entertaining and have layers to what’s in there so hopefully people will realise that.”

He agrees that the world they have created for this album is a dystopia.

“The fi rst track [Plugged In] on the album was actually a sample from a 1939 fi lm about how amazing the future was going to be,” Hume explains. “Of course that was right before getting into World War II,” he says as he lets out a laugh.

“They didn’t really know that that was right around the corner so that sort of idea of this incredibly optimistic view of the future where we were going to be you know like, fl ying around in cars. That was sort of the idea that interested us.”

Of course, their new album is not exactly optimistic, more the opposite. The darker themes, including references to anaesthetic drug ‘Truthogen’ which the brothers came up with for the album, hint at a more sinister family history. Hume revealed to Livenews.com recently that their father was “heavily into drugs as a teenager and was selling speed to his friends and doing heroine and stuff …I guess it’s part of who we are as a family and people. It somehow made its way into the record.”

However, while the album is darker in comparison to their previous albums, the cynicism has given way to much more tongue-in-cheek humour that the brothers haven’t had a chance to exhibit until now.

“We put a lot of lines in there to sort of prick people ’s ears so like ‘what did they just say?’. So hopefully once they hear that they’ll go ‘oh ok, I’ll pay more attention’,” says Jon.

It does seem at times that the mocking comes with a self-assuredness that could be off -putting but the brothers pull it off with skill and dexterity. They dare to delve into sensitive issues such as the war on terror (“a war of trial and error”) and issues such as global warming (“Who needs all the ice? The way I see it, the heat is quite nice”) with irony and dry wit that does not so much as comment on the actual events but the way in which these events are represented.

It is surprising how acutely aware Hume is of the way in which the media can operate. “It’s funny how everything gets fi ltered through diff erent view points,” he says. “[But] I guess when you have preconceptions about how about the world is you can make everything [to] kind of back it up.”

This insight has led to songs such as ‘Between the Lines’, which was released as a single, and ‘Infotainmentology’ which is “a mixture of information and entertainment and -ology is sort of like…a religious kind of thing, like Scientology or something”.

While there is a much larger synth element in this album than previous ones, he assures me that it was not an attempt to be more ‘in’, considering the recent direction of many bands. “It’s kind of funny because when we started on it 18 months ago I didn’t really notice any trends towards synthesisers at that time, but I don’t keep up very well with what’s going on to be honest…I started to notice sort of towards the end of it but we’d already gone [so far] down the path.”

It also helps that not many bands are attempting anything as grandiose as a concept album of late.

It is easy to come off as self-righteous when creating something with a social conscience, so the band’s humour is a survival mechanism as much as it is a lyrical tool. However, while the humour is present, they also seem to be searching for a raw element in the music making process; something that they are more willing to explore in this album than previous ones.

Consider for example the music video for ‘Between the Lines’, where the sound for the clip was recorded as it was fi lmed. Music videos are generally lip-synced to make the process easier but the brothers decided to try something diff erent. “We just wanted to capture the live energy of the band. There were no really gimmicks in it or anything. It was just us and what we were going to tour and take. We just wanted to represent that,” says Hume.

“It was a cool experience but I don’t know if we would ever be able to do it again, just because we had to do, like, 50 takes of it. And after 50 takes your voice is kind of shot and after [when] the guys were cutting together the video, sometimes they would get something from the wrong take and they wouldn’t notice but we’d be like, ‘hey, you know that’s not the right take ’ and aw [laughs].”

Hume does sound a little disappointed when he says “…and for a long time no-one noticed that it was live so we’re like awww…that was like weeks of work…[laughs].”

His dramatic change in hair colour from dark brown to bleached blonde was also a part of the concept behind the album, which has evolved to become one entire body of work. “We took on a lot of diff erent characters,” explains Hume. “I’ve sort of taken on this character of this entertainer, sort of ringleader, Dann’s sort of this reporter Donavan Earl who’s mentioned quite a lot, and Pete ’s a soldier. We wanted everything we do…the photo shoots and everything to kind of tie back into the album. So instead of just trying to look cool we kind of wanted how we dressed and how we looked to kind of add to the experience of the album, especially when it comes to the live show.”

The change in image has been gradual for the band but because they have been away from the spotlight for a relatively long period of time, it has come as a shock for many fans. “For us it’s like

‘What do you mean? It’s been like this for ages’,” Jon says with amusement.

Despite the relief of fi nally fi nishing the album - “fi nishing it was probably the best bit,” Jon admits - it’s hard not to see this as a milestone for Evermore. It takes a certain amount of daring and maturity to tackle not only a concept album but to base it on something as contentious and omnipresent as the global media force.

Jon admits that it might not suit everyone ’s tastes. “If you just want a chilled out background kind of, put it on and feel happy kind of thing, it’s not that. It’s like a real sit down and really listen to it, really absorb it kind of album,” says Jon. “We’ve got an hour and we want to…make it the most interesting record that we possibly can. I guess we just wanted to make an album that could take people on a journey. I’m interested to see what people [are going to] think of it.”

IMAGE DONNA YAN, & LINDA HOANG

A IS FOR ANARCHY

As 20 of the most powerful leaders of the industrial world converged in the white-topped ExCel

Conference Centre in London, thousands of people with banners in hand took to the streets of the capital in a two-day mass protest, driven by mounting discontent.

The friction between protesters and police reached its pinnacle when the Royal Bank of Scotland was reportedly stormed and the death of local London man, Ian Tomlinson, was revealed in the media. All the while, the shadow of the fi nancial crisis loomed overhead.

The cause of Tomlinson’s death was originally believed to be a heart attack. It was later revealed in a second coroner’s report that he had died of an abdominal haemorrhage. This news came as footage of Tomlinson being thrown to the ground by riot police emerged on the Internet.

Paola Totaro of the Sydney Morning Herald, wrote: “London’s fi nancial heart transformed into a massive, naughty teenager’s street part,” yet other reporters begged to diff er. The confl icting reports of what transpired at the G20 protests did very little to provide a clear picture of the events. In contrast to Totaro’s piece, Times Online journalist Tom Whipple, noted the extent of abuse protesters suff ered at the hands of London police.

WORDS DONNA YAN & BONITA SILVA

He argued that the police action (including detaining thousands without charge) was guaranteed to produce violence and rather than merely being prepared to ‘fi ght’, there was a sense of eagerness on their part.

Totaro’s claim that anarchy had returned to Britain and Europe cannot be merely considered a throw-away phrase, rather the inspiration for a myriad of questions regarding the eff ects of the GEC, and what it means for the anarchist movement.

Dr Stewart Davidson, Lecturer in Politics at the Glasgow Caledonian University says those present at G20 protests came from various positions on the ideological spectrum, and that it would be inaccurate to categorise them all as anarchists.

“The media attaches the term ‘anarchist’ to any social movement which challenges the status-quo, as a means of undermining its legitimacy,” says Davidson. “This works because, in the popular consciousness at least, the archetypal anarchist takes the form, not of a Tolstoy, a Thoreau or a Gandhi, but of a nihilistic, black-masked, bomb-wielding rebel-without-a-cause, hell-bent on bringing about lawlessness and disorder. The inaccuracy of this portrayal is beside the point from a propagandist’s point of view.”

Dr Benjamin Franks, Lecturer in Social and Political Philosophy at the University of Glasgow says protesters at the G20 were there for a myriad of reasons, such as highlighting human rights abuses, domestic concerns or global environmental issues.

Although economic discontent was the obvious concern for many of those present, he says: “I think it would be a mistake to see the G20 protesters having a single, shared reason for their protests and other actions…[they] most probably had no stable political identity.”

Anarchism is an umbrella term that branches out to sub categories such as anarcho-capitalists, anarcho-syndicalists, anarcho-communists, agorists and Christian anarchists, making it diffi cult to label the protests as a simple rise in anarchy when beliefs diff er extensively.

‘Anarchist Alex’ and writer behind “Anarchy Downunder” – a popular blog site detailing anarchist issues in Australia

- explains the only two available defi nitions of society for the public:

“civilisation, maintained by keeping the status quo, and chaos, which is incorrectly labelled anarchy, presumably to create in the readers mindset, an association between ‘anarchy’ and barbarism”.

“Saying that anarchists don’t provide an alternative system, is like saying that pacifi sts don’t provide an alternative to war,” he says.

Will the Global Economic Crisis (GEC) facilitate social change? And do the recent ‘Group of 20’ (G20) protests refl ect a rise in anarchism? Donna Yan and Bonita Silva investigate.

“The media attaches the term ‘anarchist’ to any social movement which challenges the status-quo, as a means of undermining its legitimacy.”

FEATURE VERTIGO . 6| 13

Some aspects of the protests were consistent with anarchism, says Dr Franks. These include attempts to contest hierarchical power, open, participatory planning, and fi nding co-operative links between diff erent political groups. However, Dr Franks is not convinced the economy determines social change.

He adds: “It should be remembered that many of those taking part in the protests, indeed those actors who provided the most memorable images of the protests, were not protestors but state offi cials

– mainly the police. And of course other important participants were the largely conservative/economic liberal journalists, columnists and broadcasters, who were pivotal in framing the events in particular ways.”

Some anarchists believe that although the turnout at the G20 protests was due to the economic instability, protests are not reason enough to prove a rise in anarchism has occurred.

Scott, a representative of the Victorian National-Anarchist network says: “A lot of those involved in the G20 protests around the world are more often than not interested more in expressing their anger toward an exploitative establishment than being involved in positive grassroots activism.

“What happens at a G20 protest may be an example of how angry people are with world leaders but it’s hardly an example of anarchism in action.”

Some disagree with the notion that the crisis will result in a resurgence of anarchist thought.

“The idea that the current crisis – or anything else – will lead to ‘a rise in anarchism’ strikes me as absurd,” says Dr George Crowder, Professor of Political Theory at Flinders University.

The confl icting views and diff ering subcategories of anarchism give rise to a misinterpretation by the public.

Non-violent anarchist activist, Karen Kennedy, says the majority of the public fails to understand anarchy, and it often receives negative media coverage due to the governments’ and the military’s fear of ‘anarchy’. Their existence is directly linked to the maintenance of peace and stability in society.

As Kennedy says; “Obviously the government want to paint all anarchists as violent rebels to be feared.”

The Jura Collective run the Jura bookshop and library in Petersham, where the public has access to materials that may not be as readily available elsewhere, such as anti-capitalist and radical political materials.

Katrina Byrne of the Jura Collective believe that the terms ‘anarchy’ and

‘anarchism’ are only associated with riots and disorder by those who misinterpret anarchy.

“Anarchism actually requires a high level of discipline and self-regulation because you actually have to put a lot of eff ort in yourself to regulate your own behaviour. It’s about giving autonomy but that autonomy comes with a responsibility. Instead of there being a government to tell you what to do, the community decides where it wants to go and uses a consensus based model,” she says.

Although the GEC is the outcome of the socio-political and economic systems that the state has in place, ‘Anarchist Alex’ believes that the crisis does present an opportunity for people to contemplate the deeper workings of the society in which we live.

The Jura Collective also notes increasing book sales as an indication that people are more interested in the materials and ideas.

Kennedy notes a similar openness towards anarchist discourse: “I have noticed it just as my own work as a tutor that there ’s a lot more interest, there ’s kind of a feeling of openness now for this kind of idea. It’s not seen so much as a utopian unrealistic suggestion.”

However, experts are doubtful the crisis will facilitate the social change that anarchists desire.

“Whether the disaff ection this generates is enough to stimulate wide-spread calls for radical social change will depend on the extent of the crisis itself. Things will have to get considerably worse before this happens,” Davidson says.

Dr Lawrence Davis, Lecturer in Politics at the National University of Ireland Maynooth, believes the opportunity for meaningful social change will depend on our future actions, or the opportunity will arise for global elites to convey the appearance of structural change.

He says: “If people the world over are content to give their power away to elites in exchange for promises of reform, if in other words they try to achieve democracy by waiting for it, then they will wait forever.”

“The idea that the current crisis – or anything else – will lead to ‘a rise in anarchism’ strikes me as absurd.”

FEATUREVERTIGO . 6| 14