The Melbourne International Film Festival’s Lounge has traditionally been a place where film buffs would retreat to between MIFF sessions. There they would socialise, whet their whistle and watch one of the many panel discussions featuring various film making folk. In an attempt to provide different entertainment for the punters, MIFF decided to expand the program to include live musical performances, DJs and Movieoke (where people provide the dialogue for silent scenes from a movie). One event that interested us at Squirrel Central was the inaugural MIFF Comedy Night.
Although it wasn’t a strict prerequisite, many of the performers chose to include film related material in their sets. Justin Hamilton treated the audience to his gear on Superheroes, “Deep Blue Sea” and even transplanted his routine of answering a phone in a theatre to a cinema. Josh Earl sang his classic song “Memento” and told some film related knock knock jokes. Lawrence Leung busted out the Powerpoint and presented his thesis “The myth of the appeal of Colin Firth”. However Dave Callan resisted the urge to make his numerous Star Wars references and instead worked with his observations of the architecture of the Forum Theatre. He provided humorous back stories for the various ancient Greek style statues, imagining that they were people turned to stone by Medusa and what their final action was before feeling her wrath.
Also performing but not really taking the filmic tact was Sammy J with a batch of rather lewd songs, Justin Heazelwood with his brand of musical anarchy (although he did mention his cameo in the film “Cats and Rats”) and Justin Kennedy.
In a personal highlight of the evening, Andrew McClelland did some brilliant character work in a spot written especially for this event. He was introduced as Harvey (who may have been a caricature of Harvey Weinstein) who was taking over the reigns of MIFF as Executive Director. Armed with some dubious credentials (he produced both “Species” 3 & 4) and a lack of tact, he proceeded to tell us how he would improve the festival and the local film industry. It had shades of a film version of Hank Ruby, but was played with Andrew’s trademark enthusiasm that it couldn’t have possibly been taken seriously by the uninitiated. Despite hovering on the edge of losing his American accent on more than one occasion, it was a brilliant piece.
With downstairs at the Forum being such a cavernous room, the performers had a difficult time holding the attention of the entire audience. A number of people at the rear of the venue were obviously only there to socialise and proceeded to talk amongst themselves at considerable volume. Perhaps it was being in someone else’s backyard that prevented the MCs from calling for quiet but the performers plowed on regardless for the attentive punters at the front. Overall it was a fun night that will be a welcome feature next year if the powers that be decide to include it again.