John Safran Article

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From the Big Issue



GLOBE-TROTTING JOHN SAFRAN HAS FOUND RELIGION AND, OP COURSE, CONTROVERSY OF BIBLICAL PROPORTIONS.


Small-screen renegade, shit-stirrer supreme, John Safran is the funniest man on television right now. Throughout his squally career he's scuffled with the sacred, but now he's taking the beast by the proverbial pointy bits - at great risk of getting snagged.


In his current series John Safran versus God, the prince of pranks rattles the cage of every God-fearing citizen on the planet, lampooning our religious foibles, getting fatwa’s put on the heads of our most popular celebrities and telling his viewers they can all go to hell. I expect the devil incarnate. But sitting opposite me just before the series goes to air, John Safran is polite and almost bashful. In his striped jumper he looks more bumblebee than Beelzebub.


"I've never really thought about religion that much," he says, with a comic-strip tee-hee that colours our interview. "But I always think there's some kind of presence there, and that the bad things I've done are going to come back and kick me in the teeth."


If karma is a balance sheet, he's definitely in the red but he says it's the quality of wrongness rather than quantity.


After mucking up in Year 7, Safran's parents sent their young buck to the strict, orthodox Jewish Yeshiva College in Melbourne where, steeped in Judaism, he seems to have sharpened his inquisitive edge. "When you see these guys [Hasidic Jews] walking down the street in long black coats and furry hats, even if you're Jewish you kind of think 'What freaks!' But, because I was on the inside, I knew they all had senses of humour and all that kind of stuff. I've had enough experiences where my hypothesis has been vindicated, where I'm somewhere totally different, just being myself, and am able to connect."


While the series has drawn fire from the fervently faithful, it’s an intensely querying mind that has propelled this religious quest. In fact, if Safran is having a go at anyone, it's his own audience, and he takes mischievous delight in putting a blowtorch to the politically correct.


"People have already said things like, 'How come you don’t, make fun of gays and lesbians the way you make fun of the church?' I wish they'd told me about this oversight earlier," he says in his 1 characteristic high pitches.
"I'm overgeneralising about my audience and going, 'Well if they're all smug, secular left-wing pinkos, and I'm going to show them that the world's more complicated than they think. That when George Bush mentions God and you chuckle and think 'How stupid is he for believing in God?' you have to acknowledge that for everyone in Latin America - whose political views you support - Catholicism is so important. And that religion is a very big thing for everyone else in the world.



"On a personal level, religion helps people get through the day. Where it goes wrong is when governments start invoking it in their decision-making. I guess it's easy for me to talk up religion whereas we've probably got the system a bit right here, being a secular country where anybody can practise whatever faith they like. Especially being Jewish in Australia, where people are just decent."


But, as he's discovering, feelings do still run high here. I share our experience at The Big Issue, where our content occasionally gets heat from Catholics and Jews. As Safran points out, their sensitivities are very different; Catholics can be thin-skinned about their religion while Jews get pent up about political opinions.


"I don't think you'd get complaints from Jews if you were frivolous about the religion, if you made pork or rabbi jokes. On the religious side, it is very generous and open but when it comes to Middle Eastern politics, it just goes haywire. I haven't personally felt it but I've spoken to journalists who tell me that's how it is and I trust their judgement," he says, referring to the so-called 'Jewish lobby', which is hypercritical of perceived anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian bias in the media.


But the series shouldn't be taken too seriously. It bubbles with champagne comedy moments that are memorable even when the ideas work better than the execution. On his pilgrimage, Safran doorknocks in the Mormon capital of Salt Lake City trying to convert people to atheism; gets to the bottom of Mormon sacred underpants; researches voodoo rituals in Haiti; washes in chicken blood in Mozambique to try and reverse a curse on the Socceroos; and gets a fatwa put on Rove in the opening episode (of which we only saw the 'lite' version apparently).


After traipsing the globe in search of enlightenment, it was just around the comer from the production company in South Melbourne that Safran reckons he came closest, serving as altar boy for the charismatic Father Bob.


But what's left the most lasting impression is an exorcism that makes up the final episode of the series. After allowing his soul to become "a breeding ground for the devil", Safran gets a few thwacks of the bible from the exorcist, takes on a demonic snarl and starts flailing about like a man, well, possessed. It's a little unsettling, disturbing and, I put to him, a crock of shit.


"He's a bit of hypnotist or something," Safran says of the exorcist in question. "Like in everything else I did, I just let myself go and waited for something to happen. And then I kind of got out of control. I didn't know what was real and what wasn't. Whether he's a shyster or he's genuine, at least something happened."



Something always seems to happen when this media bovver boy's on screen - like when he fronts up to a grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan and asks if he can join, even though he is Jewish. This is one of the quintessential Safran TV moments, when he's free falling without a parachute, when panic flashes across his face and his eyes scream "heeeeeeeeeeeeelp!"



"I'm a non-confrontational person. Sure I'm a smart-arse and muck around but I wouldn't have any of these confrontations if it wasn't for arrrrrrt," he says, raising his arms in a self-deprecating double quote. "So in those situations I'm actually just anxious and thinking, "Why do I have to do this, why did I ever write this story?”



But I was more nervous with the Catholic priest in Sardinia then I was with the Klan guy,” he says, referring to his hilarious brush with Catholic guilt, when he felt compelled to fess up to an Italian priest that he’d masturbated in his bed while filming Race Around the World in 1997. However, this is nothing compared to Safran’s fears about wasting other people’s money chasing a story that doesn’t work.



Versus God will no doubt repay SBS’s investment and see Safran build on the 300,000 viewers that tuned in to the more-hits-than-misses Music Jamboree. It will be a huge achievement after his ‘failures’ at the ABC and Channel 7, which left him scratching for work and contemplating a return to advertising. He pilots he made for the ABC – which famously featured his collar and Ray Martin’s fist – became and underground success after the national broadcaster refused to air them.

But still, some fear that it’s only a matter of time before our rogue punter cashes in the chips on his shoulder for commercial lucre. Safran’s not so sure



“I don’t think it’s my style. I tried to do something on Channel 7 but it just didn’t work. I just wasn’t funny as soon as I was talking to mainstream Australia. I’d be happy to have a bigger audience but I wouldn’t know what to do. The only thing that could change is if I had a family or something... when you’re alone and living in Melbourne, you can live modestly, but that mightchange if I had a family.”



And?



“I’m single so I’m definitely not on track at the moment,” he says, swerving to avoid the subject. “I love SBS. They let me do what I want, provide good direction and are happy to criticise my stuff. You can be a bit cheekier here, politically incorrect in a good way.”



Seeing a tabloid career roll out before my eyes, I ask, “So you’re single again? Are you having trouble holding down a relationship or what?”



“Aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrgh,” he moans, bursting with endearing awkwardness. “I’ve been doing the show for a while so I’ve been self-absorbed and preoccupied. I feel like I’m 32 now so I have to start thinking about having kids and shit. I’m definitely thinking I can’t get into that trap of living a child life in the entertainment industry too long and leaving it too late.”



The spirit slayer is contending with some demons of his own it sees, as he squirms and wriggles in his chair, avoiding my gaze like a vampire faced with a crucifix.

“It just seems to be such a raw emotional area of m life that’s not there in any other aspect,” he say’s picking imaginary crumbs from the table. “I’m generally very calm and, you know happy. But there’s just this one area of my life which goes a bit Betty Blue, where someone’s always smashing a glass and sticking it in my face and sticking it in someone else’s face,” he laughs, before trailing off.



“I hope I haven’t left I too late, I don’t think I’ve left it too late. Nah, I have left it too late, yeah, yeah. A friend said he saw a poster (for the show) outside a train station so I could just get some chick on the way to a date with me to walk past that train station I might look even mo kind of . . . um . . . scary.”



So ladies, take note: this cheeky little devil is on the market. But on behalf of all those who like their television funny, challenging and unpredictable, don’t you try and change him.



By Martin Hughes, photographs by David Marks





SAFRAN’S STUNTS



1997 Streaks through Jerusalem wearing only zinc cream and a football beanie, to the tune of Aussie rules anthem “Up There, Cazaly” (Race Around the World)

1997 Has a voodoo priest place a curse on his ex-girlfriend in West Africa (Race Around the World)

1998 Sends a remote-control seagull out to reformed smoker Shane Warne to tempt him with a cigarette during a Test match at the MCG (The Late Report)

1999 Ambushes Ray Martin waring a giant Mike Munro mask to ask Ray why he’s not at work when all other Aussie battlers are (ABC pilot, footage aired on Media Watch)

2002 Dances up a storm, Kevin Bacon-style, in the grounds of his old school, which had banned mixed dancing a la the movie Footloose (John Safran’s Music Jamboree)