Paul McDermott Articles/Reviews

[Dragonfly Lady]

[quote:post_uid0="Sam on Mar. 11 2002 at 15:03"]Like Stack's little icon/piccie thingy. *Thinks about how the Unicorn evolved and when someone just got so shitted off with a horse that they stabbed a huge spike through it's forehead - the red braiding sort of reminded me of blood. *[/quote:post_uid0]
i've never heard that unicorn theory, if that's how the unicorn happened, how did the alicorn(sp) happen?

[Ames]

Well i am going to get behind Paul on this one *hehe* because i think we should give him the benefit of the doubt, he hasnt really done *real* acting, he has just fucked around on camera. Maybe he will be good, we will just have to see now wont we *g*

[Prosehits]

*snort*

sorry...but some of you are questioning Pauls ability to act...not saying I disagree with you...but what made me laugh was that he has to follow some greats in this role...

now Im hoping he'll do well...but...he's following people in the likes of...

Ian McShane...and
one of the greats...

Jack Nicholson! I love Jack...

Hope he has his wits about him!!!

[pj]

either way i think it shall be very interesting. hurry up hurry up and tour.

[Bear]

i agree with you Ames

[DMG]

Fortunately for me there was a copy of MX laying on the seat when I jumped on a train this evening

[b:post_uid0]The Mad Minute with Paul McDermott[/b:post_uid0]
[i:post_uid0]Best known for this comedy and singing in the infamous anarchic Doug Anthony Allstars and Good News Week, comedian Paul McDermott is familar to most Melburnians. *He's back in town for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival[/i:post_uid0]

[b:post_uid0]Q. Where do you get your comedy from?[/b:post_uid0]
A. There is a guy that sells comedy across the road quite cheaply and I get all my stuff from him. *No, just kidding, I get my comedy from everyday things that happen - basically life.

[b:post_uid0]Q. You have a twin sister. *Do you believe in the whole psychic twin thing?[/b:post_uid0]
A. Yes, I am communicating with her now. *No, really, we did not come from the same egg so we are not that close, but we are still close.

[b:post_uid0]Q. According to a website on you, you knocked down George Michael in a British nightclub. *Is that true?[/b:post_uid0]

A. Yeah, I knocked him down - but it was an accident. *I was wearing heavy boots and I was dancing next to him with a friend and my boots kind of took off with their own momentum. *My boots ended up connecting with his kneecaps and he just went down like a tonne of bricks. *I went to help him, but his bouncers went for me. *Luckily George stopped them before they got into hitting me. *Then he was rushed off into the corner by his bouncers so I never had a chance to apologise.

[b:post_uid0]Q. What was the highlight of your eight years with the Doug Anthony Allstars?[/b:post_uid0]

A. There were so many highlights. *Our tour of Montreal was pretty good, while Tom Jones telling me I had an amazing voice was great, too. *But just being able to travel around the world was amazing itself.

[b:post_uid0]Q. You sing as well as being a host and a comedian. *How did that start?[/b:post_uid0]

A. I have always just had a nice voice. *The Allstars were street performers and buskers - we wrote and performed the songs - so singing is just something that I have always done.

[b:post_uid0]Q. You have two new shows at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Tell us about them?[/b:post_uid0]

A. One of the shows is a comedy called Comedyoscopy, which is a re-examination of comedy in the 21st century. *A lot of people come along to the comedy festival not knowing what to see and they don't really understand comedians and how they use comedy. *My show will provide an interpretation so people can enjoy the rest of the festival. *The other show is called GUD and it's a musical comedy. *It is a dance music spectacular to rival Moulin Rouge. *Except we don't have the budget for the talent, costumes or overseas names.

[b:post_uid0]Q. Have you ever been heckled during your comedy performances?[/b:post_uid0]

A. Only once or twice.

[i:post_uid0]GUD- Hard Core Cabaret and Comedyoscopy will be playing at the Melbourne Town Hall from tomorrow. *Tickets through Ticketmaster7.[/i:post_uid0]

There's a small picture of Paul standing in an alleyway, it's from the same shoot as the photo that appeared with the last article on him that was in MX. *I can scan it if anyone really desperately wants to see it.

[Ames]

Yes please, i dont think i have seen that one begs begs begs

[VAxwell]

Don't come from the same egg... pish pash!  Lol...
I'm looking forawrd to seeing him tonight... his, and my first show of the comedy festival.  We have something in common - ohh... does that make us close?  *stupid grin*

[VAxwell]

Personally I thought Jack was shit in the Witches.  I actually thought everyone was shit, and that it was a shit movie with very little shitty plotline, and not much shit happened.  Basically three stutty women (all single for various fucked up reasons) live in a shitty little town with a lot of shitty women gossiping (yep, that shits me), and they're on edge for a fuck.  They wish that some shitty little guy who's ugly as fuck comes and screws them all to buggery.  After what seems like a fucking eternity, they all get fucking sick of him (I did after the first fucking minute the shit was on screen) and decide to blow him up.  THE END...


*smirk* I'm very negative today aren't i?  

How much can you swear in 200 words or less?

[majordag]

I agree with Vaxwell........it was a shitty movie......

[shishi]

Two Paul articles:

1. Front page of "Culture" section of "The Age" 28/3 (today).

2. Front cover of Inpress independent street mag.

Decent NEW photos with both articles.  And pretty good articles/interviews.

Sorry no scanning capabilities

[Cherryish]

I don't suppose you could type them up?

Cherryish

[shishi]

For the Age article, check out this link

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/20...206126497.html

Paul is featured in thongs *g*

Back in your face
By Fiona Scott-Norman
March 28 2002



Paul McDermott: "I love live performance, it's not sanitised, cut back, trimmed, and genitally mutilated to go on television at 7.30pm."
Picture: Natalie Boog




How like Paul McDermott - that wild, omni-talented bundle of contradictions who disappeared with Good News Week 18 months ago - to spring back into public notice at the Comedy Festival with not one show but two. A festival season is gruelling - financially, emotionally, creatively - and most comics think carefully about committing to one show. To do two, Comedyoscopy and GUD Hard Core Cabaret, particularly when expectations are high because you're a television personality who's been off-air for a year, and your last live show (Mosh) was panned, is nothing short of true bravery. But then we are talking about Paul McDermott, who made his mark with The Doug Anthony Allstars (DAAS), the Mass Debates, and TV's Good News Week and to imagine Australia without him is to imagine a pot of shit that has never been stirred.

But where others see signs that read "Here Be Monsters" and "Turn Back", McDermott pulls up a banana lounge and daiquiri."

I suppose I wanted to pressurise myself into doing something. I mean, if you're not going to challenge yourself why do anything? I love live performance, it's not sanitised, cut back, trimmed, and genitally mutilated to go on television at 7.30pm. I'm not going to just sink back into the TV train.'' If McDermott, who moved from Canberra to Melbourne to London to Sydney, is a Gordian knot of paradoxes - a displaced artist, a retiring performance extremist, a fearless introvert, an aggressive Greta Garbo - it is this mess of impulses which makes the man so compelling.

It's been a year and a half since the satirical current affairs show hosted by the playfully acid McDermott, Good News Week, finished up on Ten after five very successful years. McDermott was exhausted and happy to let it go, and gladly dropped off the public radar until now, going to ground in his Bondi flat to protect and indulge his intensely private side.

"I went into my cave, which is what I tend to do when I finish something. I did it when the Allstars finished up. I like it in there. There's a nice big lock on the door, and mirrors all the way round that look out on to everyone else. I just watch them pass. Not a lot happens in the cave except, um, looking at the ocean.''



McDermott, a shy, intense, anti-social Canberra youth from a middle-class, Christian background, was going to be an artist. He attended the Canberra School of Art, letting the hours fall away into oblivion as he sat drawing, colouring in, and cross-hatching in meditative silence. But, in his last year at school and strapped for cash, he decided he didn't want to shoplift any more art supplies.

He started performing at Cafe Boom Boom with a group called Gigantic Flyer, after meeting then-buskers Richard Fidler and Tim Ferguson, and his life changed forever.

McDermott still spends his days scritching quietly with nib and ink, and The Girl Who Swallowed Bees, his second solo illustrated book (he put out a few collaborative graphic books with the Doug Anthony Allstars), will be released in April.

He spent months writing and drawing his books, marking his days by the passage of ocean liners across the horizon of the Pacific. ``If I saw a big ocean liner out of my window on the north side of the bay, and I didn't see it again until it reached the south side, I was having a good day. If it took an eternity to get across, I was getting distracted.''

The first of his planned series of seven books, The Scree, had a deliberately low-key release at the end of last year. The second, The Girl Who Swallowed Bees, is an adult children's tale about depression, but on another level it's about a jolly group of adventurers who go off to an island and get eaten by monsters.

Besides working up Comedyoscopy and GUD and trying them out in Katoomba and other regional centres in New South Wales, McDermott has also been doing a live music show with Mikey Robinson called Rat Pack. You can hear the joy in his voice as he describes it. ``It was a dream we had, to be a bit Sinatra. We wanted to dress up in tuxedos and sing songs from the 1950s and '60s, so we've been doing that with Will Anderson and Peter Berner up the Gold Coast and around Sydney. It's such fun . . .''

There'll be no smooth crooning and smart tuxedos for Melbourne though, just a rejuvenated, loud and passionate McDermott bringing his opinionated, feral alter-ego out for a long-awaited airing. That Paul (Stinky Paul, Cranky Paul, Kill The Hippies and F----The-Dogs Paul), will be familiar to those who followed the reactionary and non-bathing antics of the Allstars. For newer fans, used to the smart buttoned suit and smooth barbs of Television Paul, it could be a shock.

It's certainly a more extreme persona than the one people saw on Good News Week. ``In your face and unapologetic, grotesque, offensive, loud. But it's all essentially me with the amp turned up - I don't own that many great acting skills.''

He does own a tremendous and pure singing voice, however, and that will be getting an airing in GUD - Hard Core Cabaret. The cabaret consists of original songs written and performed by Paul, with Mick Moriarty from the Gadflys and Cameron Bruce from Club Luna Band. It's essentially about contemporary issues, the state of the country, ideas and beliefs.

``I called it GUD because that's who Americans thank at awards ceremonies, and I thought someone should be taking the credit. I've started calling the show Moral Decay Cabaret, or Urban Decay Cabaret; that's what it is. If anyone comes expecting a couple of tunes from My Fair Lady they're going to be disappointed.''

Although McDermott, who wrote most of the songs for DAAs, has planned GUD as musical social commentary, he insists the political content is implied and oblique rather than overt. He misses the opportunity Good News Week gave him to comment live about fresh issues, but isn't planning any material about the current political state of Australia.

``At the moment, I'd just get too bitter. When I was living in London (early '90s) I was so proud of this country, but now I'm just ashamed of it. I get up every morning and read the newspaper and I'm filled with an incredible sense of shame.''

Talking about the children-overboard issues, he asks: ``How do you deal with a government that has done this? That has an ongoing campaign of belligerence and deceipt? How can it be just a lack of communication, a boo-boo, on such an important issue, and how can it just play and play for the government weeks before the election? And how can the media be sidetracked . . .?

``The Governor-General, and now Justice Kirby . . . it's all colour and movement, look over there! Children overboard is page 14 on Sunday, and Russell Crowe and his new squeeze is on the f------ front cover. God, this f------ nation at the moment . . . Sorry, sorry. You see? There's no comedy there.''

Comedy will be provided by Comedyoscopy, essentially a deconstruction revealing how comedy works. McDermott has always been a dissector; he thought that examining comedy from the outside would be more interesting than simply material.

It's possible that McDermott might inspire hate this festival, but you'd expect nothing less from a performer who has also inspired fear, admiration, devotion, love, repulsion, anger, hysteria, confusion, loathing, lust and envy. Still, that's what happens when you base your comedy instincts on fanaticism, manipulation, and an early involvement with Christian youth groups.

There are no guarantees what emotions you'll experience but the chances are boredom won't be one of them.

Comedyoscopy: at the Powder Room, Melbourne Town Hall, until April 20. GUD - Hard Core Cabaret: is on at Victoria Hotel, Lt Collins St, same dates, at 9.45pm.

The Age is a festival sponsor.

[Ames]

the age is a melbourne paper hey??

[Ames]

Whats Inpress independent street mag?? is that avaliable in QLD or is it a 'another' Melbourne thing