Paul McDermott Articles/Reviews

[Beckslee]

well there are no reports of screaming in the background, so we can only assume that he's not driving yey I got an excuse to use that emoticon

[pixieDAAS]

i found this interview Paul did in New Woman (Jan 02), to promote The Scree

Anyone want it typed up?

This interview is as personal as it can get

BIG MAC

There's something very attractive about comedian Paul McDermott. Maybe it's the "angry bloke" thing he's got going on or maybe it's his cheekiness. Maybe it's the singing, the quick wit or just because he's actually quite cute. Whatever it is, there's more reason thane ver to find him attractiveright now. After spending his time as one-third of the Doug Anthony Allstars, then moving on to Good News Week and Triple J, these days he's tackling writing and illustrating with new book The Scree and touring with Mikey, Sandman and a host of friends in a music and comedy extravagranza called The Rat Pack. Then there's the short film, the movie and TV shows he can't tell su about yet. This boy must be one hellva workaholic! So we decided to test him out - is he a new man or a old showbiz ham? only our intense, ahem, probing will find out.

You keep your private life a bit under wraps, Do you do that deliberately?

Yes, I don't think it's all for public consumption. I suppose i'm a fairly private person - i don't think i could be one of those people who could get $10,000 for putting their baby on the cover of a magazine, or selling their story. Though that being said, if there was an opportunity...

Please Call?

Yeah, please! No, I hate reading about myself and i feel it would be wrong, it's hard enough as an individual, but then you have family, friends, partners and it's a lot of pressure on them, too. I've always made a conscious decision not to talk about my family or whatever.

So you're not the kind of celeb whoe goes to the opening of an envelope, then? Don't you like sashaying up the red carpet?

I avoid the red carpet. I used to take the back enterence a lot! i can't do the pose, you see, it's three-quarters profile that i can't do at all. I look shambolic and dumb, stare at my feet and look stupid. I haven't had to do enough really, so i find it strange. The photgraphers are shouting my name and all i think is: "Oh my god, they've noticed i'm wearing different - coloured socks"

You have a reputation for always being angry

I don't think i'm always angry

How do you feel today then, Paul?

I've been moderately depressed and a bit moody. Yesterday i was angry when i locked myself out of the house in my skimpy bathers - in my lollybags! - on the back porch

Ok, what makes you happy

Well, apart from the obvious, it's when i'm painting. I don't get enough time to do it, and i regret that. I love feeling of getting lost in something for a few hours, and then three or four hours later not noticing time has passed - not noticing you haven't eaten or had anything to drink, just a total loss of physical dimension while you're into it. I'm obsessive about it. Actually i'm just making that up 'cause it sounds good...the ladies love it

You seem to be doing a lot of writing, too - TV, movies, a book. Are you chained to your PC?

No, not really, I would actually like to not work again! So if anyone out there wants to give me some money just for being me, that's what i really like. A benefactor to shine thier light on me. So i plead with New Women everywhere:Look after me and give me money! But in the meantime, it has been and odd year. I've had a lot of time off and i've enjoyed that, but i've got to start working again. I was enhausted at the end of Good News Week and i had to do something different, so thats why I started doing the book, i'd always wanted to do that

The Scree is a weird book. It's like a dark fairytale for grown-ups. Is it for kids or adults?

I was writing for me, essentially. When i was a kid, the books i used to love were Grimms fairytales, Roald Dahl and stuff like that - nonsense poems, bizarre stories. I think so many fairytales have been saintised these days so there's no horror in them anymore, and that was the fun part of growing up - it gave me an imagination, i think there's a place for darker or mencing stories. I didn't have an age in mind when i was doing it, i just wanted to emulate that style of imagery and word play

What actually is The Scree?

I like the idea of mythical monsters and the thing with The Scree is that you never see it - Oh my god, I just gave away the ending!, it's more to do with fear, i suppose. That idea of the unseen or just fear itself
[/b]

So, Paul, are you a New Man?

Oh, i don't know, i think the whole SNAG thing is a bit old hat. If you follow astrology, we're in the new age of aquarius, and it's time of woman. Women are doing some great shit at the moment because they're finally out from under the patriarchal thumb - i suppose thanks to all those great crusading women from the 70's and earlier, the suffragettes. You're smarter than us, you've better at learning....and you have a higher pain threshold [evil laugh]

I you were on Survivor, what would be your luxury item?

Oh, come on, ask a good question

That's a good question

Oh, Ok, um, i'd take a gun, it would be a short series: "You ate the beans", bang! i suppose given that i've just done a book, i should say my mapping pen and a bottle of ink. But i've got a love/hate relationship with my pen and ink

If you had a choice of being Bert Newton, Kerri-Anne Kennerley, or Ray Martin, who would you be?

I'd be Bert, Anyone who had any soul would be Bert. I mean, I love Kerri and I love Ray but Bert Rocks. He's so funny. Have you ever interviewed Bert? No? You've got to do Bert!

Hmmm, maybe later.

[Melicious]

I wouldnt mind - if you feel so inclined!

[Rock Angel]

*Nods enthusiastically*

[Abundance]

*looks up at title and smirks* I suppose he is feeling like a new man now.

[Abundance]

I am sure I've seen this interview before??????

[Spawn of Satan]

Originally Posted by Abundance

I am sure I've seen this interview before??????

I think it was posted on mosh when it first came out, you probably already have a copy.

SoS

Originally Posted by Spawn of Satan

I think it was posted on mosh when it first came out, you probably already have a copy.

SoS

Ooh, looks up and sees the January date woops.

[Mac]

GUD
P A U L M C D E R M O T T I N T E R V I E W
Interviewed by Nick Bishop and David Quinn

Paul McDermott or "the angry one" formerly associated with Australia's legendary comedic trio, The Doug Anthony All-Stars, toured his solo performance, GUD, in Launceston recently.

DQ: Paul, what do you think is the secret of really good comedy?

PM: Ahh... I don't think there is a secret to it. It's just what you do. It's very individualistic, like anything really.You set your mind to it and try and achieve the goals that you set yourself.

DQ: Okay.

PM: Oh, I don't know! I haven't looked into it that deeply! (laughter) Don't have any other skills!

DQ: (laughter) Right!

PM: I didn't even wanna do this type of thing! You know, you look back on your life and you think what on earth did you do? You got up there and you sang songs, you made jokes, made people happy. But were you
ever happy? You know? You sometimes start thinking about yourself.

DQ: Well, that's a good question, Paul: are you happy?

PM: Yes!

DQ: You are? That's okay then!

PM: (laugher) Ecstatic! Tomorrow could be another one of those hellish wells of depression that I fall into.

DQ: They happen regularly?

PM: Yeah!

DQ: Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.

PM: No, it's fine, don't worry about it. (laughter)

DQ: Okay, we won't.

PM: (laughter) I'm self-administering, sort of… chemical substances to try and equalise.

DQ: Right… okay.

NB: So, do you hang out much with Greg Fleet? (note: Greg Fleet is another of Australia's foremost comedic talents - Ed.)

PM: (laughter) I have! In the past… in our trainspotting days.
(laughter)

NB: Ah, he's a good guy, Greg.

PM: He's a great guy, and he's doing wonderful things on Sydney Radio at the moment.

NB: You do stand-up comedy. You sing songs…

PM: Yeah…

NB: Have you ever thought of doing the musical comedy, the Kevin "Bloody" Wilson type of stuff?

PM: Well, I suppose I do in a number of ways. Not that I've got anything against Kevin's fine body of work
(laughter) it's just a slightly different sort of material. Certainly I write comical songs and have done so for a
long time, like from the All-Stars.

NB: What was the reason for The Doug Anthony All-Stars breakup?

PM: Oh.. it was a mad sexual thing. There was tension in the group about someone's partner and what had been happening… things like that. We don't like to talk about it. If you can't hold your woman…! (laughter)
They're not down there are they?

DQ: Yes, we've got Tim sitting next to me, and Richard's in the other studio.

PM: They might have a different story, I'm not quite sure.

DQ: Well, I've heard stories.

PM: What have you heard?

DQ: I've heard that somebody came up to you after a gig on your final farewell tour and said to you, "Look, are you guys breaking up?" I think he was a reporter who originally started by asking Richard about his guitar…

PM: About his poor playing?

DQ: (laughter)…about how good he was, so therefore…

PM: Oh, right!

DQ: …so, therefore he was right in with Richard. So he said, off the record, "Why are you guys breaking up?" and he said, "well, basically, we hate Tim."

PM: Who said that?

DQ: This is the story that I've heard…

NB: The story goes, as both you and Richard were asked, "Why is it breaking up?" and the response was, to sum it up: "Tim's a c*nt."

PM: Oh really!

DQ: And then upon asking Tim the exact same question, he said, "I've got no fuckin' idea."

PM: Oh right, I see. There could've been a little bit of tension at the time (laughter).

DQ: Can you debunk this story for us…?

Sorry guys can't be fucked typing the rest up. If ya want to listen to it go to http://www.elaunceston.com/citypark

[Nick]

Originally Posted by Mac

GUD


toured his solo performance, GUD, in Launceston recently.

SOLO?!!!?!!! First he gets the damn Barry for "Paul Mcdermott FOR Gud" not "with Gud" and now Gud is solo!

Yeah, ok, even if he did Gud as a solo show, people would flock intil they found out he needs people to bounce off with!!!!

*twitchs*

[lily]

that's a pretty old interview though... GUD toured Tasmania in early April last year.

[Beckslee]

Originally Posted by lily

that's a pretty old interview though... GUD toured Tasmania in early April last year.

actually it was the end of february and the beginning of march

[unfrufru]

i just want to know who the fuckwit was that asked mcdermott if he'd ever consider doing musical comedy songs


HELLO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

captain obvious here!!!!!!!!!!

[majordag]

I was bored at work so I did it



If Magazine – April 2004

Paul McDermott
Where the wild things are

Funny Man Paul McDermott turns filmmaker with his 15-minute short, The Scree. A product of the FTO’s Young Filmakers Fund. The Scree takes us into the darkest crevices of his imagination. Rachel Turk ventures after the man in the white bear suit.

In its combination of pantomine flats, live action and modern compositing techniques, The Scree is a unique rendering of old and new. Add to this the quiet strength of Ruth Cracknell’s narration and an eclectic score, and you have a beast as intriguing as its title.

If The world is full of all kinds of terrors at the moment – imaginable and unimaginable. We’ve got Osama Bin Laden, we’ve got Bush, we’ve got capitalism. Even in a film like Lord of the Rings there’s this king of ‘monstrous force within’….

That’s a lovely interpretation. Can I use that in my little talks? Really this film was just a response to a friend’s deep depression, my way of making it make sense to me and using myth as a psychological base, like a farytale. Fairytales are often designed to enable people to order the universe.

Or a method of control, the morality tale.

It’s an examination, in this film, of the inescapability of the self. People who are depressives can’t get out of that cycle and that’s what I saw happening over and over again, it’s very self-destructive. The storm in this film is not just, you know, a storm, it’s just all the experiences that go with that. I like storms. Storms are hell.

It’s a very dramatic film, in the fullest meaning of the word.

It’s just a classic form, Ulysses gets stuck in a storm. It’s The Odyssey in a bear suit.

It’s very – weird – isn’t it?

Is it?

I like it though.

I don’t find it weird at all. Inside my head, that’s going on the whole time!

There are obvious references: Maurice Sendak, Dr Seuss maybe.

Certainly Sendak, and there’s Edward Gorey, and Georges Melles in there. When I was in high school I used to make books, hand made objects. When I started performing I managed to carry a lot of the visual aspect of what I wanted to do into the groups I was involved in. But I wanted to go back to what I do because I haven’t done it for a long time. And I thought that when I got to 40 I’d make a film – you can’t print that, my age, by the way – I’d dye my hair and so on…. I think there’s a few years in the old goat yet.

You’re still a ‘young filmaker’ (refering to funding from the NSWFTO’s Young Filmmaker Fund).

No I’m not, Justine is. [Justine Kerrigan is the film’s producer and DOP]. Actually some people were very upset at the time I received the grant because they looked at me and thought ‘he’s quite old’ but it was wonderful that she got it because she’d never produced before.

Right. But she’s photographed another YFF short – the one with the woman drowning [Laquiem]. Amazing.

She is I think one our finest cinematographers. She just has a beautiful eye. And when I showed her my little handmade book she was the one that said we should make a film out of it.

So when you give your ‘little talks’ do you make some sort of comment about mixing old techniques with new technology?

Well with digital we had this vast improvement in technology and most people use that to try and replicate life but you could use it just as well to make things more bizarre and artificial. You can make people frightened by bits of cardboard. People genuinely worried that the characters in this film and yet it’s a couple of weirdos about the characters in this film and yet it’s a couple of weirdos and a bear suit in a boat.

Totally. And the suspense is especially impressive considering you’re given the ending right at the beginning: you know it’s all downhill from there.

A bit like the Bible isn’t it?

I must admit though I was also laughing. When the guy’s head was spinning round…

It’s very black. I actually thought they’d laugh a bit more, the Germans [at the Berlin Film Festival]. When I [the bear] get killed. And when I get attacked by the first monster, I always find that funny; it’s a bit red tail, blump, how it pokes out and hits me in the head. I think kids would live it, you know because it’s silly and it’s violent. And there’s a little bit of sex in the end. The other one I like is the ‘hell horse’ with its enormous cock. How it wanders over the landscape, with its heavy lazy cock banging around.

I was very afraid at that point! So is this the first festival where you’ve seen it?

This is the first festival anyone’s seen it. We only got the print four days before we came over. We shot on HD and had a lot of problems. We discovered that no-one we knew had the facilities to cope with even some of the simple things like speeding up or slowing down. We got to use Channel 10, who were very helpful. They gave us the camera to shoot it on and it looked beautiful when we first saw the shots, really deep textures and all the materials like the bear hair. When we were editing, there were a number of technical problems. We had to dump it down to DigiBeta, which was okay because we were going to fuck it up anyway with the film scratches and so on.

How did you get Ruth Cracknell involved as narrator?

That was really important to me. Ruth was the only voice I wanted and I spoke to some people about it and they said ‘you won’t get her, she’s too busy, blah blah blah, but here are some other people you might be interested in’. I said, ‘I’m not interested in any of those people because I know the voice I want to hear its that one’. The power it has and the seniority and the assuredness and just the classic skills that she has from her theatre training.

And the beautiful thing was when I contacted her agent and sent one of the books over to her, I got a call like the next day saying ‘Ruth wants to meet you’. So Justine and I went over to Ruth’s house and she was just so ecstatic. I’d worked with her once before on Good News Week at the Opera House or somewhere so we sort of knew each other. When we were at the door she was pulling us in and she kept saying the book was so evocative, that it reminded her of the poems she read as a child and had touched her heart. On her bookshelf she had these classic fairytales: Hans Christian Anderson, The Brothers Grimm, and they were beautiful volumes too, with illustrations and so on just as these books are meant to. Anyway she said she’d love to do it.

Before we sat down to do the recording she said ‘what do you want me to do?’ I said ‘you know exactly what to do’. We did two takes and we didn’t really even have to look at the second one, she got it in one. Also I knew that the rhythm she adopted would dictate the film. There’s only one part in the film where we let it breathe a bit and that’s when we first get to the island and run around. If she’d read quickly and come in at 12, the film would have been 12 minutes! I’m sure if you were in a darkened cinema without any visuals that voice would still transport you, it’s so rich in texture.

The Scree also relied a lot on music. It goes through an amazing range, from orchestral to ambient to techno.

It does becomes techno-y. the whole thing is visually and orally a marrying of old and new so that’s why it’s loosely visually based on Voyage to the Moon and early theatrical films. In the music I wanted to reflect this period as well but have an awareness of the history. So you start with the stings and then move into French pastiche – Adrian (Van de Velde, who did the music and sound design) has done some beautiful simple piano passages as they’re approaching the island – and then the techno climax. It’s an extraordinary score. And it was important to have all those worlds in it.

It’s an amazing journey.
It’s fun. And I’ve got hundreds of poems, hundred of them.

Be very afraid…Well Adam Elliott has an ongoing series so there’s no reason why there couldn’t be more. How long have you been animating?

I just had the idea. I worked with a great fellow called Tony Melov who was the man pushing the buttons. We just kept building up the layers. It’s like flat puppetry or something, like classic proscenium arch theatre where you whip scenes in and out. That’s where the idea came from. But with the computer you have not just the vertical but the horizontal and a kind of diagonal as well so there’s a lot to play with there. I always thought it could be done quite easily, to reproduce that script, and it could, though we worked on it for two years and a bit all up. The only thing that stopped us was that we all had other jobs – I was in Melbourne for nine months at one point. And in the time it took to make this think Justine’s had a baby. And so has Adrian.

Well as long as they don’t have fluffy white ears we don’t have to worry.


there is a picture which I can scan when I get home

[majordag]

Pictures? who wants em??