Countdown to a Letdown

Election 2007

I wasn’t really intending to do this here, but it seems like the easiest place. We’ve finally begun putting clips from the community television iteration of The Bazura Project* back online after a temporary ABC-mandated removal, and have been linking directly to the YouTube clips on our Twitter and Facebook feeds.

With a federal election only 24 depressing hours away, this seemed like a good time to remind you that in 2007 we stepped away from movies** to make a one-hour election special that aired the night before the event. Shannon Marinko and I were joined by TV presenter Emma Race and comedian Adam Knox for what many critics described as “on television”.

The entire special is divided into many clips, and it seemed like the best thing to do would be to collate them in one easy-to-click-on place. Until we finally get around to rebuilding the Bazura website, this place here will have to do. So, cast your minds back to the time of an incumbent John Howard and a slightly-fresher-faced Kevin Rudd, and, with a clear understanding of the limitations of community TV budgets as well as 2007 era video formats, please enjoy Election 2007: Countdown to a Letdown.

How true that unavoidably prescient subtitle now seems.

The Bazura Project, n. a TV show about movies that ran for 36 episodes on Australian community television from 2006 to 2008, then for a season on ABC2 in 2011 as The Bazura Project’s Guide To Sinema. More information can be found here. Less information can be found here. Fewer information can be found here. Some information can be found here.

** Having said that, there are at least five movie references in this special. A leopard can’t change the fact that it was directed by Luchino Visconti in 1963.

A Ranting Pilot

About a year-and-a-half ago, my Bazura Project co-person Shannon Marinko made a pilot for Channel Ten. The show was called Rant, and it was basically Shannon yelling at the audience about things that annoyed him. Like Media Watch if it was shoutier.

Shannon invited me to come on board and do something for it, which I did. Comedian and filmmaker Dan Ilic directed, and he brought in Tegan Higginbotham for a segment. (Tegan impressed us so, we invited her back to appear in The Bazura Project’s ABC2 incarnation.)

Whilst I’m not especially happy with my own contribution (a couple of my line deliveries grate with me intensely), I do dig everyone else’s work a lot. And now it’s been put online, you can enjoy it in all its ranty glory.

ABC picking up The Bazura Project immediately after the pilot was shot meant Rant was put on ice, but my fingers are crossed that it get made at some point in the future. After all, there’s so much pop culture, and so few people yelling at it.