Warts and all in close-up

Press, 10 February 1988, Page 19

Warts and all in close-up

In between dodging the sun-rays of my native Adelaide over the festive season I watched some interesting television on the diverse Australian channels. But none so interesting as the four-hour “Australia Live — a Celebration of a Nation,” which was broadcast here too on New Year’s Day. It was the clever achievement of producer Peter Faiman that it was both amazing and utterly unamazing at the same time. It all depends on how you view the viewing of what was clearly television history. Which is why Paul Hogan caused a lot of discussion when he told the world that his kids were bored and had turned on “Revenge of the Nerds” instead. Consider the plight of Mr Faiman. He was given state-of-the-art equipment — notably two satellite news-gathering machines, one from Britain and one from Channel Nine, which at 400 kg each did the same job as the 23-tonne truck-load of gear we saw bogged at Tibooburra — and was told to create the greatest TV show on earth ... about Australia. What a challenge to a nation of tall-poppy loppers. For those of us who stayed tuned Faiman created something unique.

He let the formal electronic precisions of satellites and space windows and international/transcontinental link-ups take our breath away and then dumped us into the unpredictability of the Aussie talent (or otherwise). No Korean massed gymnastics here. It was warts and all in close-up. The media build-up in Oz was intense. We knew that it was dangerous television and that John “Fast-on-his tonsils” Blackman had been paid heaps to chat laconically when the screen blacked out (he didn’t have to). We were told that there were dust storms in Alice, sleet in the Snowies, floods at Kakadu, and dusk rushing in from New Zealand. We had a sense of everyone flying by the seat of their pants. Antipodeans pride themselves on doing that very well. For my father, who remembers making crystal sets to catch the cricket, the great moment was the “space window” into the Russian cosmonaut’s cabin. That they used this precious time to discuss Russian T.V.P. menus did not matter an iota. And it was a bit like that all the way through. It had the “gee whizz” feel of first attempts on a video-camera. The journalists were thrilled simply to get the image

through. No wonder the blase fans of the Nerds, a generation used to the effects of movie space travel, switch off. The amazing was too matter of fact. Take the offering from Antarctica. The amateur technician got through with shots of boy-scout-camp hi-jinks — surfers and Father Christmas — until they shoved the shy scientist in front of camera to meet his newborn son in Melbourne. His squeals of embarrassment gained a context some days later when we learned that neighbours had dobbed his de facto partner into the Welfare Department. Mother expected some-

thing far higher-minded. Where was the Oz version of Richard Dimbleby whispering history into this event? Where was the equivalent national spirit of the archival footage we were shown during your ad-breaks? (A.B.C. had no ads.) New Zealand missed the lovely newsreel of Kingsford Smith in his plane and the fruityvoiced commentator exclaiming “We love you, Smithy.” And lots more. But it’s impossible to do a Dimbleby over anything less than epic. It won’t do over chats about fish freezers at Rosebud Camping Grounds or the stereophonic loos at Tibooburra, or the energetic dancing at the ItalianEthiopian wedding. Or the Aboriginal film-maker at Broome. And that, surely, was Faiman’s point. After all, who should be allowed to sum up the glorious muddle of contemporary Australia? And cronies who judge the whole two-hundredth birthday to be a farce confessed to being quite moved by the balancing act Faiman chose of the amazing technical juggernaut set against the com-mon-sense, yes, often prosaic, modesty of the Australians on screen. Ultimately, it just wasn’t on to compare them with the Nerds.