GUD Articles/Reviews

[unfrufru]

i know!

instead of The Goodies they can be the guddies and will do anyone anytime!


*amuses self*

[Munchkin]

Surely it's not that funny but I've completely lost it.

[Mythor]

Originally Posted by Munchkin

Surely it's not that funny but I've completely lost it.

And you think I'm mental? Pah!

[unfrufru]

i can't believe no one has posted this yet.

proof that the boys can be photogenic (apart from Paul's shirt, where's queer eye when u need them!)

http://www.photobat.net/portrait_cha...04/040416.html

[sooty]

Wow! Great photo, the person (people?) are really great, check out some of the others, specially Gorman! Are they professional's do you know, or just for fun? or did you fall on it through Google?

[unfrufru]

nah we've known about Photobat for years, just haven't checked it for a while

[Munchkin]

Who is that man and what have they done with the real Mick?

[Alisso]

Originally Posted by unfrufru

proof that the boys can be photogenic

Yeah, but that's Photobat, and he's like teh king of comedy portraiture...he could make anyone look good *G*

[Spoofy]

Originally Posted by unfrufru

i can't believe no one has posted this yet.

proof that the boys can be photogenic (apart from Paul's shirt, where's queer eye when u need them!)

http://www.photobat.net/portrait_cha...04/040416.html

It was on my website days ago :p

Blondieo sent it to me

[Spoofy]

SCOD!!!!!

ROSS!!!

[lily]

Originally Posted by Munchkin

The West Online 20/07/2004



RON BANKS

...the high profile of McDermott and the talents of guitarist Mick Moriarty and keyboard player Cameron Bruce.

Anyone else find this distiction funny, that Paul's got the history but the boys've got the skills?

Just me, then?

[Munchkin]

Strictly confidential
21/08/2004
SMH

Behind the acerbic showman who enlivens our TV screens lurks a quiet, almost private, artist, writes Catherine Keenan.

Paul McDermott is feeling weird, and so am I. My problem is that I can't reconcile the spiky, anarchic TV personality we all know with the gentle man showing me his delicate, beautiful hand-made books. He does the drawings, sometimes adds poems, even makes the paper. It's a bit like finding out the Hulk knits.

His problem is that he hasn't shown the books publicly before, and it's making him sweat. He keeps jumping up to make tea, go to the bathroom, or pace.

Anything, really, to get away from the fact that the books lay bare part of himself, albeit in heavily coded form. McDermott has played many public roles - Doug Anthony All Star, frontman for Good News Week and, now, the ABC's Strictly Dancing show, writer, lately film director, too - but he's always kept his art hidden away. "Because it means something to me."

But today he's taken a deep breath and let me into his home. It's a light, lazy sort of place, with wooden floorboards and distinctive touches, such as a pickled marine worm on top of a kitchen cupboard, and, for painting in, an Indian chair upholstered in red velvet, like a Bollywood throne. There's a comfortably messy array of easels and paints and plenty of unfinished artworks leaning against the walls.

McDermott himself is thoughtful, polite, and quietly charming - a million miles from his hard-edged alter-ego. He even seems physically slighter somehow. Everyone comments on this chasm between his on- and off-stage selves, though he finds it unremarkable. As he said, when I raised it during our first interview at the ABC, just down from the sequins and feather boas of the Strictly Dancing wardrobe room: "It's an act."

Maybe, but one can't help wondering where it comes from. He started our first interview hunched in a chair, in his dressing room, almost mumbling. By the end, he was striding about, imitating Germans, and re-enacting the time he could barely walk because of a boil on his inner thigh from wearing leather pants.

The shy introvert and the funny extrovert seem to be the Janus faces of his personality, brought together neatly when he describes his high school-self in the flashing language of the seasoned performer.

"I was so naive and stupid and backward and introverted and such an arsehole, I couldn't even talk to people. I had no social skills at all. I had my big pebble-lens glasses. I don't think I ever looked at anything above ground level. Oh man, I was a mucked-up kid."

He says he got into performing because it was easier than interacting with people individually, and still is. "If I didn't know you and was just sitting here, trying to talk, I'd quite frankly be f---ed. We'd both be looking at that door thinking: 'Got to get out of this room as quickly as possible'."

It's nonsense, of course. When I meet him for the second time, at his home, he's excellent, if subdued, company. Ask him about his private life, however, and he retracts into his shell like a snail that's been poked. For someone who's been in the public eye for almost two decades - he looks younger than his 42 years - remarkably little is known about McDermott.

The bare facts are there: born in Adelaide; a twin sister and four other siblings; grew up in Canberra; father was assistant tax commissioner; went to the Canberra School of Art. But there is no sense of what any of this was like, and absolutely no mention of any of his girlfriends. "Yeah, it's good, isn't it?" Then he shuts up for a bit. "Honestly, I've never felt like dragging the people I care about into the papers. I'd hate to get a ball rolling that I couldn't stop. Because that's the problem, you mention one thing and suddenly you find it splattered everywhere, and next thing you know people are up on charges." That's a joke.

Fortunately, there is much else to talk about. There's the TV, the singing, stints on radio, and the comedy - he is currently in musical comedy group Gud, with Cameron Bruce, one of David McCormack's Polaroids, and sometime-Gadfly Mick Moriarty. There's Rat Pack, a more ad-hoc affair, which he describes as an excuse to wear a tuxedo and get together with friends including Stephen Abbott, aka the Sandman, and Mikey Robins ("mock-Vegas, but vulgar" is how he describes the show).

There's the writing: to date, the All Stars TV shows, a couple of comics, a book, poetry and his weekly column for The Age in Melbourne. Now there's a 15-minute film, too, an adaptation of a book he wrote and illustrated called The Scree, which has been nominated for an AFI Award for best short fiction film.

It's quite a catalogue, and most people would be justifiably proud. But for McDermott, it's his art, the stuff he doesn't show around, that he regards as his greatest achievement.

"I've not said this before in interviews. The thing I am most proud of ..." He pauses, as if steeling himself. "My final year piece at the arts school in Canberra was the best thing I've done in my life. Nothing else has touched it. And once it was finished, I didn't even care if anyone saw it."

That's pretty much been his policy ever since: art for his private world, everything else for the public. There are threads linking his disparate activities, most obviously a distinctly off-beat, slightly surreal sensibility that runs through the poetry as much as Strictly Dancing.

He liked being an All Star because it brought aspects of himself together: he performed, wrote, sang, created the costumes and backdrops. Now everything is compartmentalised, and it's a bit schizophrenic.

He says he can feel the gears grinding as he switches from one mode to another. Which is why he enjoyed making his film so much. He wrote it, directed it, appeared in it, and painted every single animation: rocks, waves, islands and monsters. "It took two and a half years, which I think makes it one of the longest short films ever."

He's keen to make more films based on other books he's done, though he's reluctant to admit it ("I want to be a filmmaker" sounds too pretentious).

If he does it, however, it will mean pushing his art further into the public realm and I wonder if that's why he's invited me around.

Strangely, for someone with such a big persona, much of his work is miniature and intricate. He has always been drawn to the small scale, and jokes that when he saw his first nude woman in a life drawing class, he was so stunned by her abundant flesh and pubic hair, he drew her in 12 tiny boxes neatly lined up across the top of his paper.

There are recurring subjects: botanical specimens, tulips, jellyfish, lungs and hearts - especially hearts. His paintings swing between fantastical realism and the cartoonish; his books from scratchy visual diaries to a finished piece, "iconographic maps of the human condition," with hand-made pages and beautiful drawings of plants that don't exist.

It's a fragile, affecting thing. I tell him so, but nothing stops his nervous pacing. Appearing without his comic armour is new for McDermott. It might take a while to get used to.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/...972724901.html

[Alisso]

There's also a second, different photo from the same shoot in the paper.

Scanned and uploaded for you all *G*

[Laurenandë]

Originally Posted by spoofy

*grumbles about SMH not being available until Monday here*

Well that's odd, considering we get the SMH with our first (News Ltd delivery) papers of the day, and Brisbane is supposed to be more backward than you lot. :p

Nice article. Could've double-checked about the Gadflys. Picture looks like something Rove would do, except with less class.

[stevie]

Originally Posted by Munchkin

There's a comfortably messy array of easels and paints and plenty of unfinished artworks leaning against the walls.

Ha, sounds like my place! Although if you ask my mother no mess is comfortable, artistic or otherwise!

Not a big fan of the pic but good article.

I always find it interesting when people say things I would probably say about something. I understand the personal nature of art. I hate when people say, oh you should see this or that of Stevie's, and when they're in your house you can't really say no. It's a strange feeling, when you show someone something really personal like your own creation. You don't want them to say it sux but you're not looking for compliments either. You don't need their approval but at the same time you're sheepish while it's all being observed. Of course, then there's the crap I let people see, or the stuff I do for show, but that's different.