John Safran on Race Relations
Comedian John Safran’s new series, Race Relations, screens on the ABC-TV on Wednesday, October 21 at 9.30pm. What do you think of the show? Send us your comments.
INTERVIEW BY ADAM KAMIEN
The Australian Family Association has described your new show John Safran’s Race Relations as the lowest point in the history of Australian television. Do you court controversy?
The thing that’s funny to me about the Family Association and the Herald Sun getting angry is that with my work — not just this series — I’m not even talking to them. My style is I’ve got this audience and I try to wind that audience up. It’s not like Michael Moore who has his audience and then tries to rile up the enemies of his audience. I just want to say to the Herald Sun and the Family Association “seriously, I’m so not trying to annoy you”, but it’s like I’ve inadvertently annoyed them or something.
You’re no stranger to controversy and there’s been plenty for your new show and it’s still two weeks away from airing. How do you react to controversy?
It’s not ideal if the controversy becomes irrelevant to the point of the show. If it’s controversial because you’re bringing up an issue and someone has a differing opinion, that’s kind of fun, but if it suddenly becomes about what you can or can’t put on television then that’s like … It is what it is. You throw something into the universe and see what happens. Maybe I’ll learn something.
You must have had an inkling that it would generate controversy though?
Yeah, but you’d be surprised how often it’s just not what you expect. It’s not like the issue of cross-cultural love even registers with WASPs [white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants] and people that watch the ABC as much as it would with Jews or Muslims, so for the first episode I was trying to do stuff that was kind of fun, that everyone can get their heads around.
I remember talking to my co-writer about this episode because it was slightly out of my comfort zone. If you go back through my opus, I think I’ve made like one blue joke in my entire career up until this series, in which there’s suddenly 800. I think I should just stick to doing esoteric Jewish shtick.
Do you really have a comfort zone?
I guess that’s part of why people maybe find my stuff a bit different to the way other people in my genre do it, because often I look nervous -— like I don’t want to do it but am doing in anyway.
I remember on Music Jamboree, I went and spoke to my old school rabbi, Rabbi Yitzchok Dovid Groner, and I remember when I wrote it, thinking “I’m going to go there and I’m going to say all this sarcastic stuff and zing — I’m going to zing him.” But it ended up the humour came from me looking so scared.
I developed that in John Safran versus God and then definitely in this show. It’s apparent that’s what people like … watching me get thrown in at the deep end and being genuinely scared. The problem with that though is you can’t contrive it, you sort of have to throw yourself in there and be a bit confused and not know what’s going on. It’s hard to contrive.
You literally got crucified in this series. What was that like?
It was definitely an “11” on the pain factor, but once the nails come out, it doesn’t hurt that much afterwards. You see all those crazy circuses, where those guys hang hooks from their cheeks and stuff, so I asked a few guys and they were like “if you got the right spot you’d be ok”.
Then I went to a hand surgeon to ask him to write a report -— I didn’t really care but the network demanded it. I asked a few Jewish doctors around the place and they all conceded that if you got the right place it could be okay.
Then these guys in the Philippines claimed they’d been doing it for over a decade, and they just knew how to do it so then it was just a bit of trust. I’m a humanities student so I’m an idiot, and I was just like “it’ll be all right on the night”.
What’s next?
I always want to do a film, but it’s a bad motivation. My motivation for doing a film is that it’s only going to be one-and-a-half hours, and not four hours; like eight episodes at half-an-hour each. But so much of the good stuff comes when you’re really forced to fill time.
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