Outland: An Easy Stalking Guide

The earth cooled, we wrote the sitcom Outland, the dinosaurs died, we made Outland, Melissa Tkautz had a hit with “Read My Lips” and finally Outland is ready to premiere! It starts on Wednesday 8th of February at 9.30pm on ABC1 (you’ll come for the gay science fiction fans, you’ll stay for David and Margaret).

You may have seen there’s a lovely promo going around – it looks like this:

In preparation and promotion I’ve been shouting at anyone who’ll listen – here’s a list of places you can find me in the next few weeks:

LIVE!

Melbourne Science Fiction Club
Friday January 27th
St. David‘s Uniting Church Hall
74 Melville Road, West Brunswick
Hall opens at 8pm

I’ll be talking Outland, its development and probably showing a clip or two.

Queer Nerd
Thursday February 2nd
Bar Nancy
61 High St, Northcote
7.30pm

This is a spoken word event for the Midsumma Festival and I’ll be one of several people doing some speaking – sort of like stand-up comedy but not necessarily funny. But maybe it will! Find out!

NOT LIVE!

I talk forever on the Shooting The Poo podcast (terrible name, good podcast);

I’m a guest on TV Revolution;

I’m interviewed for Crikey by Matt Smith (no, not that one);

Back on Boxcutters – the tippest toppest Australian TV podcast – we talk to Toby Truslove about acting, Outland and AACTA Awards.

And I’ll be coming up on Guy-Fi, Sci-Fi & Squeam, Diffrent Strokes, The Age Green Guide, I’ll probably be going door-to-door at some point (“Hello. Have you considered letting a gay-and-lesbian-science-fiction-fan-club-comedy into your lives?”).

You can keep up with Outland news and events at the official facebook page, and check out the brilliant insanity of the Where’s Outland? tumblr (and why not join in? I know I have. But I’m not saying which one is mine).

And watch Outland on February 8th on ABC1, or else on iView. Or both. Whatever. I’m not your mother.

Bags Of Fun

Just like at the Oscars, guests attending the Seattle Gay & Lesbian Film Festival get a goodie bag. The Oscars bags are famously lavish, containing things like diamond jewellery, human growth serum or Justin Timberlake. But what’s in a queer film festival show-bag? Let’s take a look, shall we?

Let’s start with the bag itself – it’s a red plasticy shopping bag with “xfinity” written on it. They’re one of the major sponsors of the festival, I think. I have no idea what xfinity do but from their name I would guess they either sell multidimensional travel or they make CGI alien porn in the style of Avatar. I can think of no other options.

A copy of the latest issue of Seattle Met, which warns of “The Return Of Ryan Leaf”, presumably a variant of Dutch Elm Disease.

“W Hotels Present Global Glam Fall 2011 Collection”. It’s a fashion guide that’s actually intended to promote a hotel, which seems a little confusing (mind you, I just went to a pizza party to celebrate an HIV documentary held in a car showroom, so what do I know?). Mostly it appears to be a spotter’s guide to mad women:

Yep, she’s totally crazy.

One 23 gram bag of popchips – “popped chip snack”, barbeque flavour (yes, spelt with a “q” in place of the “c” for some reason). Already eaten (by me, I mean. It wasn’t already eaten when I got it. Quite tasty).

One can of Zevia “all natural soda”, grape flavoured. Quite vile. But I suspect that “grape flavour” is just a cultural difference between our nations. After all, you can’t buy roast-quokka flavoured milkshakes here either, and at home they’re ubiquitous. The drink is apparently “sweetened with Stevia” which is not a phrase you want your mind to rest on for too long. I don’t even know who Stevia is.

Starbucks-related product. In Seattle this is inevitable – the bag also contains a wing flap from a Boeing 747-8F and a vial of Bill Gates’ tears.

The Damron Women’s Traveller guide (2011 edition). Curiously,when it comes to Australia only Sydney gets listed. It appears there are no lesbians in Melbourne. Sorry, ladies.

Marriott-branded luggage tags. They’re done up like a bag of lollies, so this could be a choking hazard for very stupid children with extremely wide mouths. IT COULD HAPPEN.

30ml bottle of bliss lemon + sage supershine shampoo with wheat proteins and anti-static actives, the shampoo that doesn’t believe in capital letters. Or making any sense. Again courtesy of W Hotels. This is either the stuff all the crazy women in the brochure use, or THE THING THAT DROVE THEM MAD IN THE FIRST PLACE. You be the judge!

A genuine sex toy! Bet they don’t get that at the Oscars! Well, they probably do, and it’s diamond encrusted and designed by Philippe Starck, or something. Anyway, this is provided by Babeland (“sex toys for a passionate world”) and it’s one of those Japanese “egg” things that Brenda talked about in the second season of Six Feet Under. Batteries not included (but there is a 10% off voucher for future purchases).

And while we’re talking about sex:

It’s a piggy key-ring to promote the Steamworks gay sauna. I’m not sure what “transparent green” means in the hanky code, but I’m guessing it’s “enjoys independent cinema”.

Not one but TWO pens celebrating both literacy and King FM 98.1, the classical music station formerly known as KACL, home to grumpy radio psychiatrists. That could be a lie.

Incidentally, this photo genuinely shows you how they achieved the “floating pen” effect in 2001: A Space Odyssey, only they used double-sided tape and it probably wasn’t a coffee table.

There were also a stack of vouchers offering discounts on meals and drinks, a gymnasium offer which promised something called “toesox” (previously thought wiped out in the middle ages) and an Orbitz-branded box that looked like a pack of cards which – surprisingly – actually turned out to be a pack of cards. And not a guide to hidden bars, or the best countries starting with “e”, or Seattle’s best meat lockers, or anything. It says something that people from Melbourne now expect anything that looks like a pack of cards to actually be an artfully-designed guide to hidden secrets and not – you know – cards.

And finally my favourite. From the good people at Bob Byers Volvo it’s this:

It’s blue plastic, translucent, with a spiky bit with a razor blade on one side, and on the other there’s a white brush. The slogan “your travelling companion for life” is printed on it, but that might be referring to a Volvo and not to the device. Hell, it might be referring to Bob Byers. Turn it over…

…and there’s a black switch that makes a smaller, black brush poke out the end. What the hell is it? Feeling it might be something exclusively American (a sharpener for fourth-of-July flags, perhaps, or a pop-tarts utensil) I asked my fabulous hosts. They both immediately recognised the sharp bits as a letter opener (fancy!) but the brushes remain a mystery.

If my bag was a Swiss Army Knife, this would be that tool that gets stones out of horses feet. And I cherish it, even though it bewilders me.

So thank you for the gifts, Seattle Gay & Lesbian Film Festival! Now I’m off to drink Bill Gates’ tears. And to buy some batteries.

John Richards is the co-creator of Outland, the bestest-gay-science-fiction-fan-comedy in the southern hemisphere. It plays the Seattle Gay & Lesbian Film festival on October 18th & 19th at Central Cinema, 1411 21st Avenue, Seattle. More details here. Remember to look at the insanity of the Where’s Outland? tumblr here.

It’s Me – It’s Not You…

For those of you planning to stalk me in the next few weeks, here’s your handy cut-out-and-keep guide:

The best-gay-and-lesbian-science-fiction-fan-club-television-comedy-ever-probably Outland will be having its world premiere in Seattle on October 18th and 19th at Central Cinema as part of the 16th Seattle Gay & Lesbian Film Festival (you’ll find the cinema in the Central District, at 21st and Union. I have no idea what that means, but it sounds extremely glamorous). It starts at 6pm each night, with episodes 1 to 3 showing on the Tuesday and 4 to 6 on the Wednesday. I’ll be attending both screenings as a guest of the festival.

Incidentally, for our American readers, that’s the entire series. Just the six episodes. It’s going to be exactly like Abed and Cougarton Abbey on Community all over again, but without the Inspector Spacetime downloads afterwards. Central Cinema is fully licensed, so if you don’t find it funny you can always get drunk.

Tickets for the Outland screening are available here. Tickets for Seattle are available here (whatever you do, don’t book through Virgin Australia’s Groups And Entertainment section as IT WILL TAKE YOU FOREVER and they will send you emails stressing how unimportant you are. Honestly, it was threatening to go Gasp Jeans there for a bit. “The exclusive airline of Australians In Film”, my arse…).

Then, back in Melbourne, I will be giving a brief talk at ACMI about Star Trek: The Animated Series, because that’s the kind of thing I do, apparently. It’s part of Space: TV’s Final Frontier, this month’s Live In The Studio at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, and I’ll be part of a panel that includes RRR’s Robert Jan, Clementine Ford, Dr Djoymi Baker and my fellow Boxcutter Josh Kinal as referee. That’s what they call it, isn’t it? Tickets are available here.

A warning for those planning on attending events in both Seattle and Melbourne – I may wear the same suit. Adjust your expectations accordingly.

And speaking of Inspector Spacetime – and because the Internet is infinite – someone has created a brilliant tumblr called “Where’s Outland?” that features our two publicity images getting into all kinds of scrapes. Feel free to add to the fun.

Poetry and Pop

A couple of quick plugs for the weekend ahead for all you Melbourne-based arty-types – I’ll be hosting an event for Australian Poetry at The Wheeler Centre on Saturday the 14th May. It’s called one.seven.six and will feature readings from Terry Jaensch as well as Susan Hawthorne, Elizabeth Beaton, Trevor Ball and m d west. You can find out more by going clickety-click right here.

Then on Sunday night it’s the official Boxcutters Eurovision Party at Seraphim (formerly Vibe on Smith), 123 Smith Street, Fitzroy. Look at the classy poster!

So if you want to stalk me, you know where I’ll be…

Moving Pictures

I helped dismantle Channel 9 today. Not in a “death to the capitalist media overlords” way – sadly – but with a screwdriver.

Yes, the Bendigo Street studios of GTV9 are closing and everything must go! The building was originally a piano factory, then a cannery, but from 1957 it’s been Television City. The glamour of Graham Kennedy, Don Lane and Sale Of The Century clings to the walls like a poorly-cleaned toilet. Some say Bert Newton haunts these corridors and he’s not even dead.

But Channel 9 is moving to Docklands, so they’re having the world’s biggest car boot sale. They’ve auctioned their equipment online and when a friend went to pick up a Umatic tape machine I said I’d go along. In my head this would involve visiting Richmond, selecting a carefully-marked box, and going home for biscuits.  How wrong I was.

Something Funny Down Under

John Richards explores the very 1970s phenomenon of English sitcoms decamping to Australia. Contains double-entende and cat jokes.

As you’re probably aware, English comedian Ben Elton recently had a high-profile variety show crash and burn on Channel 9. While I do feel people may have taken a little too much glee in its downfall, it’s true Elton made it hard for people to sympathise with him. With his endless tirades about the young people – with their interwebs and the twitter and the hopping and the bopping – he mostly came across as a 24-hour audition for Grumpy Old Men.

And the show itself was fairly dire – horrendously unfunny pieces like Fat Chef competed with the seemingly endless Girl Flat sketches to see which could reach the antithesis of comedy first. It was almost like a mathematical exercise. But as a friend remarked, it would be awful if this show ended up clouding people’s appreciation of Elton‘s bona fide achievements, as a co-writer of The Young Ones and the notably better series of Blackadder.

Elton has always had a love of Australia (and Australians, or at least one of them) and word was that he had moved to Western Australia and was making this show as “a local”. But I’ll admit that when I first heard of Live From Planet Earth I wondered if this was a return to the days where we would seemingly let any famous person with an English accent have a TV show simply because they were from “over there”. I’m talking, of course, of the 1970s, when Australian television was awash with English shows in Antipodean clothing.

To be clear, I’m not talking about what we now know as “format rights”, in which a new show is based on the template for another (so The Kumars At Number 42 becomes Greeks On The Roof, for example). And I’m not talking a Very Special Episode in which the cast travel Down Under for a one-off adventure with as many koalas as the budget can manage (such as The Love Boat‘s 1981 feature-length special, “Julie’s Wedding”).

No, these are shows which directly continued the British original, in which the lead character has spontaneously moved to Sydney or Melbourne. It’s effectively the inverse of Neighbours characters moving to Queensland.

Let’s have a look at a few examples, shall we?

The Cauliflower Of Morbius

So, I was tidying around the website – polishing the fonts, putting doilies on the html code, that sort of thing – and I found this image in the comments that you may have missed the first time around. Either enjoy the sheer inconguity of it, or if you’d like to know why this exists read our review of The Doctor Who Cookbook and the follow-up article.

No, you’re welcome.

Thank you to David AA for his photshopping expertise, and why not buy a copy of The Brain Of Morbius from amazon.co.uk? Part proceeds go toward buying John coffee. Or buy the Doctor Who double pack of Kinda and Snakedance just because they’re both grouse and have giant snakes in them.

Want To Be In Outland?

Outland is a new comedy series for broadcast on the ABC in 2011 and already being called “the best gay and lesbian science fiction fan club themed comedy series ever.” By us. Just then. And you can be part of it!

Pop-Culture Melbourne

Yes, I’m aware that the updates here have been… um… sluggish. I’ve been writing a TV show! Leave me alone! Anyway, in September I gave a presentation about Melbourne and pop culture at Aussiecon 4, the 68th World Science Fiction Convention. Here is an edited transcript:

Melbourne is a city of culture. We have more cafes you can discuss arts funding in than any other Australian city, and many live music venues that are now pizzerias. We’re also home to Australia’s most exciting cultural institutions – ChamberMade Opera, Chunky Move, Circus Oz and Bert Newton.

But as well as all that “unpopular culture”, we also are a city that celebrates the popular stuff, being home to music, comedy, film, television and Bert Newton.

We’ll start with film, because Melbourne was home to potentially the world’s first feature film, The Story Of The Kelly Gang, which was filmed here in 1906. I say potentially because – like The Macra Terror – only about 10 minutes of it still exists and no one can agree on how long it was. It was filmed in bushland around the city, as well as in St Kilda, and it was made for 1 100 pounds, roughly double the average Australian film budget of today.

Top 10 Tips For 2010 (The Year, Not The Film) According To 2010 (The Film, Not The Year)

Happy 2010 everyone! And welcome back to the rarely-updated Outland Institute. Well, wasn’t 2009 a big one? What with the Outland Institute radio show, the world not being destroyed by the Large Hadron Collider, and Peter Andre’s new single Behind Closed Doors, it was hard just to keep up.

So I thought I’d cheat a little for 2010 by watching the film first. This way I’ll be ready for all the hot new trends! Peter Hyams’ 2010 (billed on the poster as 2010: The Year We Make Contact, although not – oddly enough – in the film itself) was released in 1984, as was 1984 (the film, not the year. And not the David Bowie song either, which came out in 1974, a year before Space: 1999).

We’ll talk about the film in a moment, but first here’s our Top 10 Tips For 2010 (The Year, Not The Film) According To 2010 (The Film, Not The Year)!

• The Soviet Union Is BACK, Baby!

With the 80s revival in full swing it’s a clever move for Russia to get the band back together and reform for the first time since 1991. And speaking of which…

• The Cold War – It’s On, People!

Yes, they’ll be accused of rehashing their old hits but the new Soviet Union and the old United States will be bringing us to brink of nuclear annihilation again this year with that old classic, the naval blockade. Think navy blues and piped matelot pants!

• Calculators Are So Hot Right Now!

Nervous that HAL may again go on a killing spree – possibly caused by Windows Vista – Roy Scheider sets up a kill switch cunningly hidden inside his pocket calculator. He’s done this so he can carry it around without raising suspicion, and since no-one says “bloody hell, Roy Scheider, I haven’t seen a pocket calculator in years” we can only assume they’re going to be back in a big way!

• Dame Helen Mirren To Become A Cosmonaut!

A surprise move for the acclaimed British actor, who must be finding it difficult to fit in training around the seven feature films she has due for release this year (including a new version of Brighton Rock). At least she’ll easily be able to get around the immigration paperwork due to her Russian father, Ilyena Vasilievna Mironov, although there’s no word on whether she’ll be reverting to the original family name.

• Wide-Screen Televisions Are SO 2009!

This year 4:3 cathode ray tubes are back in a big big way. Throw out those plasmas now!

• This Year’s Top Pet? The Dolphin!
  

It’s unclear if this is just because in 2010 (the film, not the year) Roy Scheider’s wife is a marine biologist, but it seems that in 2010 (the year, not the film) you’ll finally be able to keep dolphins in your lounge room!

• Roy Scheider Says Shorts Are IN!

Seriously, does that man bring his own shorts to each film? Does he refuse to go on unless he can get his legs out in at least one scene? Also, he’s going to need a bigger boat.

• Pan Am Is Back In Business!

Like The Soviet Union, the American airline Pan Am went out of business in 1991, but according to 2010 (the film, not the year) it’ll be back this year. It’s offering flights into space with the advertising slogan “Where The Sky Is No Longer The Limit”.

• Academic And Military Software To Embrace Retro 80s Stylings!

The rise of retro indie platform games like vvvvvv has even reached the military, with spacecraft and universities alike embracing faux Commodore 64 style graphics (incidentally, I believe the message after this one was “All your base are belong to us”). While we’re on computers…

• Laptop Screens Will Get Tiny!

This year’s laptops will have tiny screens, but you will be able to easily use them on beaches. Or possibly this year’s iPods will be enormous, I’m not sure.

So there you go, the top ten trends for 2010 (the year, not the film) as predicted by 2010 (the film, not the year).

As for the film itself – as I sat watching it for the second time (the first being in a cinema in 1984 – the year, not the film) I found myself wondering “Is this the most pointless film ever made?”. The world was hardly crying out for a sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and how could anyone follow up such a cinematic classic, a dreamlike meditation on man’s place in the universe? More to the point, why would they bother?

2010 (the film, not the year) is a straightforward cold war science fiction film with very little to offer. The characters are dull ciphers who spend most of their time doing little and the movie’s conclusion suggests events would have unfolded exactly the same way whether they were there or not. Without Stanley Kubrick’s bravura filmmaking we’re left with some nice modelwork but not much else.

So as I watched the film I pondered “is this film more pointless than Psycho 2?”. Yes. Psycho spawned the horror slasher film, a genre famous for its diminishing and endless sequels, so Psycho 2 simply completes the circle. It’s like break-up sex.

Then I thought “is 2010 – the film, not the year – more pointless than Gus Van Sant’s 1998 remake of Psycho?” Again, yes, as Gus Van Sant was at least conducting a cinematic experiment. That experiment was mostly “can I get Universal to give me 60 million dollars to do this?”, but at least it’s not dull.

Meanwhile, 2010 (the film, not the year) exists as a film so dependant on it’s predecessor that it makes no sense in isolation, yet so devoid of ideas or style that it removes itself from your memory even as you watch. Hopefully 2010 – the year – will be better than 2010 – the film.

I haven’t read the book.

John Richards is the co-creator of the upcoming ABC gay-science-fiction-fan-club-themed comedy Outland and a presenter on the Boxcutters podcast.

Want to buy your own copy of 2010 (the film, not the year)? Of course you do – amazon.co.uk has it on DVD and Blu-ray. Or pick up the superior 2001: A Space Odyssey on DVD, Blu-ray or as part of the impressive Stanley Kubrick : Special Edition 10 Disc Box Set.