Comedy; intentional and otherwise

This month is Melbourne's Comedy Festival. Every night of the month there are several kinds of stand-up shows or performances going on all over the city. On Sunday we went out to a bar in Brunswick with Ryan and Sara to see something called "Insert Name Here" which promised to be a screening of a bunch of comedy movie shorts all parodying mainstream movies. I'm a little vague on the content because reading the description on the web-site is as close as we got. When we got there, the inappropriately titled "Bar Open" was...closed. We hung around outside for about half an hour with the band who were supposed to be playing later that evening. Eventually someone arrived to open and explained that the guy who was supposed to open at 2pm that day had gotten drunk and forgot all about it. We may go back and try it again next week, phoning ahead this time.

Luckily we had plans for later so we went for dinner and a few drinks before heading back into the city. Every night of the festival there is what they call "The After Party" in the bar at the hotel Exeter. It's basically a two hour show where people who are performing elsewhere during the festival can come and do a 10-15 minute segment from their routine, presumably in the hopes of enticing spectators to come down and pay to see the rest of it at a later date. The show is free and the comics are basically given free drink and the opportunity to promote their show as an incentive. Since the more well established comics don't really need the additional advertisement, you're understandably left with a kind of bottom of the barrel set. It was a very much hit and miss mix, heavily weighted toward the miss. Several of the comics (term used loosely) died painfully, unable to coax more than sympathetic smiles from a cringing crowd. A couple looked on the verge of tears.

Still every now and then there was a decent act that provoked genuine laughter and we were able to get some free tickets for the full show of one of the best. We'll probably see him next week. Ardal O'Hanlon (forever Father Dougal Maguire) is also playing here for about a week. Since he's not really known here, tickets are a lot cheaper than in Ireland. We're going to go see him tomorrow.

In keeping with the comedy spirit of the month, we went to see a double feature of 50’s B movies at the Astor. One of them was Ed Wood Jr.’s Plan Nine from Outer Space and does indeed deserve its reputation as one of the worst films of all time. Apparently actor Bela Lugosi died before Wood had shot more than a handful of scenes with him, none with dialogue or any plot purpose. Undeterred, Wood went on to use the scenes and cast a replacement for the remainder. In a futile effort to conceal the fact that it’s not Bela Legosi, he had him hold his cloak over the lower half of his face for the duration of the movie.

It was a lot of fun though, with cheap sets that fell over when the cast brushed against them, horrendous acting and some unintentionally hilarious dialogue. Police Chief to Sergeant: “It’s murder alright (cue close-up) and SOMEBODY'S RESPONSIBLE!” Incidentally, whatever happened to the term “buster”? Back in the day that was a highly effective insult. Someone needs to bring it back.

Making Plan Nine look like Gone With The Wind, Robot Monster was the second movie in the double feature. Looking for all the world as though it had been shot on location in some one’s back garden it told the story of Ro-Man, (ostensibly a gorilla in a diving-helmet) who came from space to destroy the last 5 people on earth.

Made on a budget that can’t have been much more than $50 and a free gorilla suit, it had to resort to throwing in a lot of stock studio footage to up the excitement. Of course the problem with stock footage is that it may not be that relevant to your movie. But such practicalities obviously didn’t faze director Phil Tucker who clearly wasn’t one to pass up on some footage of rubber lizards wrestling and so, periodically we were treated to some truly bizarre scenes that appeared to have been stolen from the floor of the studio’s cutting room and inserted apropos nothing. In the end someone must have noticed that logic had exited a long time ago and a “Thank God it was all a dream”-ending was tacked on. To be fair it was the only way it would make any sense anymore.

Equally classic dialogue though. In an ill-judged attempt at Shakespearean pathos, Ro-Man, ordered to destroy the female earthling he loves, turns to the camera to exclaim, “I cannot, yet I must. How do you calculate that? At what point on the graph do must and cannot meet? Yet I must, but I cannot.” Beautiful.

Yesterday we went cycled the 30 miles out to Dandenong where Cassidy may be working if she gets the newspaper job that she's been after. The idea was to see how far the work-place is from the local train station (not too far, less than two miles). Today, however, the guy called and said that she'd be trying out in South Melbourne before they decide if they want to move her out there, so it may have been a little unnecessary, but he seemed impressed that she was showing such interest so it probably wasn't a complete waste. Anyway, it's good training for a cycle to Philip Island which we're planning for sometime next week.