TO READ THE PIECE CLICK HERE:
The Office USA

“…The task of the novelist [is not] to fake a coherence that does not exist, but to capture the chaos that does. And in so doing, perhaps we shall discover that chaos and permanence are not, in fact, opposed…”

READ IT HERE:
DIVINE COMEDY Essay

Leaders of the major political parties are taking his Senate Campaign seriously.

Bill Shorten (Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, ALP), Julie Bishop (Deputy Opposition Leader, LNP) and representatives of the Greens Political Party have each discussed offering party pre-selections with Tim. Shorten made his offer publicly on the ABC’s political panel show Q&A (4/3/13).
Ferguson has refused all offers.

Speaking from New York, Ferguson declared, ‘You know things are bad when my campaign is being taken seriously. Smarten up, Canberra!’

Ferguson’s political platform is simple: ‘No promises. No policies. Just feelings.’

It might sound like he’s joking, but a Government Minister said, ‘In the current climate, it’s so crazy it just might work.’

Ferguson’s tilt at power may not be as silly as you think.
Popular comedian, Beppe Grillo, has recently been elected to the Italian Parliament. To be elected, Tim only needs 14.5% of the statewide vote. He ran for the seat of Kooyong in the 1990 Election, gaining 3.7% without setting foot in the electorate.

A political columnist and author of the bestselling political satire Left Right & Centre, Ferguson is ‘dismayed’ by the major parties’ offers.
Ferguson says he’s running ‘so I have someone to vote for‘.

Tim Ferguson will Launch his Campaign nightly at his show CARRY A BIG STICK as part of the Melbourne Comedy Festival.

More information: carryabigstick.com.au

To help The Parallax Podcast get to the bottom of what is going wrong and why, critics Luke Buckmaster and Rich Haridy are joined in a special guest episode by Australian comedy and pop culture stalwart Tim Ferguson.

Ferguson, famous for a long list of gigs and productions including The Doug Anthony All Stars, Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush, Unreal TV and the award-winning political talk show With Tim Ferguson, and who is running for a seat this year in the Australian Senate, believes a resistance to genre filmmaking lies at the core of the industry’s troubles.

“Genre is genus. It’s the beginning. It’s the seed of a story,” he says. “If you look at a lot of Australian films, what they do is disparage genre. They disparage even things like a three-act story.”

Click the link below to listen to the podcast, which includes discussion of features such as Gallipoli, Mad Max 2, Sunday Too Far Away, Life of Brian and many others.

Here is the Podcast

What should I do first?
Ignore your instincts. If they have driven you to audition for a reality show, they can’t be trusted.

What is wrong with me?
Good question. Producers won’t need to hear about your strong points. Your affability, likeability and bonkability will be apparent in the first 10 seconds.
The producers want to see your faults. Foibles and weaknesses are the qualities that make you interesting.
So tell the camera what is wrong with you. You should know your faults. If not, have someone you don’t like list them to you. Don’t invent or embellish. Give it straight.

Should I be myself?
The Dalai Lama freely admits he hasn’t the first idea who he is. The Pope doesn’t seem to know who anyone else is either. Learn from the masters.
(Or try being ‘yourself’ and see how little of ‘you’ is in your public ‘self’. Only raucous social bullies, with too many insecurities to count, regularly declare they are ‘themselves’. It’s the world’s handiest unprovable boast.)
So forget declaring your propensity to be “yourself”. Nobody can reliably distil their kaleidoscopic urges, fears and prejudices into faithfully representative action. Being “yourself” is like trying to sing 10 songs at once. The Dalai Lama will tell you – a year of Buddhist meditation might whittle the number of songs to nine.
The closest ‘yourself’ will come to consistent manifestation is through the repetition of habitual behaviour.

Shut up about being ‘you’, unless you are smart enough to regard this as one of your faults.

Is it OK to be nice?
Yes. Contrary to inner-city conspiracy theories, producers of reality shows do not seek annoying or abrasive characters. They’re too hard to work with, and don’t follow the show rules.
The primary qualities sought are the same for television personalities across the board – warmth and attractiveness. Neither can be faked.
Nobody can be nice all the time unless they are deranged, deluded or medicated – and the show’s host will have all these angles covered. Conflict is inevitable.
Watching normally even-tempered people fighting is more compelling than seeing a group of loudmouth grouches bickering. (If you don’t believe this, check the low ratings for live parliamentary broadcasts.)

How honest should I be?
Be honest about yourself but not others. Producers will not believe anyone who says they “tell it like it is”. Having worked in the television industry, they will know how limited this assertion is.
Too often, people who embrace the code of perpetual, unfiltered self-expression do not enjoy free and frank character appraisals from others. This is because another term for those who “tell it like it is” is “belligerent, unfeeling egotist”. Such trouble-makers are not cast as often as you might think.
If you believe you’re a person who “tells it like it is”, for God’s sake don’t tell anyone. Exposing the hypocrisy of the self-proclaimed truth-teller is a hobby of reality show producers.
Besides, those who claim to speak their minds at all times are not being entirely truthful. Stanford University psychologists found that the average adult (idly) contemplates murder at least three times a day. And yet the mind-speakers never mention it to their employers.

How should I describe myself on my audition DVD?
Do not describe yourself as a ‘people-person’. Non-people persons are, technically, not people. They are usually household cats elevated to human status by lonely owners. Cats don’t often star in reality shows.
Also, all the other auditioners will be describing themselves as people-people (one producer told me he can no longer hear the expression without wincing).
Don’t be part of the crowd. You are just a person-person and leave it at that.

Should I be wacky?
No. It is not instructive to dress in a tutu while performing an interpretive dance of The Hobbit movie. No one could last that long. Ironically, people who present extremist behaviour on audition tapes tend to freeze when confronted by 20 TV cameras.
You will get a lot further if you sit quietly with your camera and tell it straight. When the reality show producers want you to be wacky, a tutu will be provided.
Of course, if you are naturally nutty, feel free to put it on tape. But send the tape to your local circus – they are hiring dancing hobbits all the time.

What should I wear?
Don’t wear nothing.
The temptation to nude up for your audition dvd will be intense. Just as you’ve finished encapsulating your personality in a few chosen adjectives, you may run out of ideas. Do not succumb to the twitching desire to strip to bare essentials and play with a loofah. Nudity is not a prerequisite for prime-time television, for obvious reasons.
That said, the body is a beautiful thing. If yours looks good, wear clothes that advertise the fact. Many will scoff at the notion, but it remains a rule of thumb that a six pack or a big rack (or both) will attract the eyes of producers. They are, despite evidence to the contrary, human. Feel free to flaunt your rack/pack. Chances are you’ll have the words “charismatic” and “X-factor” written on your report card.

What are the risks of being in a Reality Show?
If your three-minute tape works, be very careful. To enter a reality show, you must sign away all rights to the footage of yourself. Just ask the innocent boys competing for the heart of a beautiful woman on There’s Something About Miriam Do they have any regrets that Miriam was actually Marvin? The lads may have tried to stop the show airing but their contracts were sealed tighter than a transvestite’s truss.
Don’t bother having a lawyer look at your contract before you sign it.
They’ll simply tell you that a sane person would never sign it;
that you will regret it;
that there is no ambiguity contained within the language that you could ever exploit to save your reputation;
that any pain and suffering experienced by airing of the program will only be increased by the costs of hiring barristers to fight an injunction battle you will never win.
(Which reminds me – the writer of the above advisory column accepts no responsibility for any person engaging in, acting upon or investing in any part of said document. You getting it now?)

If I succeed, how long will my fame last?
Ask Joanne, Nathan, Sahra, Aaron, Alex, Jessica, Jamie, Leah, Claire, Kim, Vincent, Katrina, Davy, Suzy, Dalia, Maha, Patrick and Ben.

Who are they, you ask?
Indeed.

TO PURCHASE ‘The Cheeky Monkey -Writing Narrative Comedy’
CLICK HERE

CLICK THIS

LINKS FOR COMEDY SCREENWRITING

Comedy Tips from the world’s funniest minds…

Wisdom from Australia’s Master Comedy Writer:
Vin Hedger

Fred Rubin, veteran writer/producer of such TV classics as “Different Strokes,” “Mama’s Family,” “Family Matters,” and “Night Court,” shares his side-splitting secrets:
Fred Rubin’s 5 Secrets For Improving Your Comedy Writing

If you’re planning to write a RomCom Blockbuster:
Romantic Comedy Writing Secrets

Some guidelines for HOW you write, not WHAT you write. Like, Seven Good Habits…
The Seven Laws of Comedy Writing

D.B. Gilles wrote the comedian’s bible “You’re Funny: Turn Your Sense of Humor Into a Lucrative New Career“. He teaches Screenwriting and Comedy Writing in the Undergraduate Film & Television Department at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts:
4 Rules of Comedy Writing For Screenwriters

I hope these links help you write great comedies for Film & TV!

Tim Ferguson has a liveliness and enthusiasm that is as infectious as it is energising, even over the phone. “I have nothing to do with Julian Assange, I did not set him up! And anyone who says so is only half-accurate!” It’s obvious even from the briefest of encounters that Ferguson is a born entertainer.

First rising to fame in the musical comedy group The Doug Anthony Allstars with Richard Fidler and Paul McDermott, Ferguson has gone on to become one of Australia’s top comedy writers and performers. Ferguson still performs to this day, most recently with his stand-up show, Carry A Big Stick at the 2012 Melbourne International Comedy Festival earlier this year, which explored the impact that Multiple Sclerosis has had on his life and career.

Ferguson and co-writer Edwina Exton are now focusing on getting their script Circle Work, into production. A romantic comedy, Circle Work is “a bachelor/spinster ball-and-ute muster story. So it’s about two people: a young man and a young woman who work in a circle-work team.”

The ‘circle work’ of the title refers to “the Australian sport of driving in circles very fast. You know, chuckin’ doughnuts, fishtails, figure eights – and the hero and heroine of the story do it tandem – and so we have two cars doing this act. When the girl says she’s leaving town, the boy has one night to tell her he loves her which of course, for an Australian male, that’s almost impossible.”

The script took around six years to develop.

“You’re much better working hard on the script for a long, long time than finding out that writing it quickly just doesn’t work. And luckily both Edwina and I have other things in our lives so we’ve been able to devote a lot of time to this project without starving to death.”

Ferguson looked to Notting Hill as inspiration. “I love Notting Hill. I know screenwriters reading this will roll their eyes and say ‘oh no, how could you enjoy such a film’ and all I can say is it’s one of the most successful romantic comedies in human history. And only an Australian screenwriter would diss it.”

Ferguson’s past in stand-up and live performance has informed his approach to writing.

“The principles of comedy are the same in any form really whether it’s stand up or whether you’re writing a sitcom or a funny film; they all tend to operate using the same principles. The heart of all humour is the muscle of truth, which in many ways overpowers the imperative for realism. Realism and comedy make uncomfortable bedfellows at the best of times, but it’s about making characters act believably whether you’re a stand-up with a silly hat on or whether you’re writing a character in a romantic comedy.”

This grounding in comedy has led Ferguson into the teaching field, earning him the RMIT Sessional Teacher of the Year Award in 2010.

“About five years ago I spoke to a bunch of Australian screenwriters and it struck me that they not only knew nothing about comedy but they actually underestimated the importance of comedy no matter how dark a drama that script might be. Their ignorance of the fact that there are two masks for drama: one cries and one laughs.”

Ferguson sought to inform writers, first with a book The Cheeky Monkey from Currency Press, which explains to screenwriters how to use comedy, and through education by teaching “a new generation of screenwriters exactly what that ‘laughing mask’ is made of; that there are principles in comedy.”

Ferguson took Circle Work for a reading at the PAC Script Lab at CinefestOZ in Western Australia with actors Emma Booth, Matilda Brown, Sean Keenan, Emma Griffin and Josh Brennan, among others. “When I saw the list I couldn’t believe it. I just thought we’d get a pack of nuffnuts like me. No, these are all high-profile professional actors, so someone must like it.”

Ever the entertainer, Ferguson was also the Master of Ceremonies for the event. “I’ll be wearing a Darth Vader helmet. That way people can say ‘he really does have the power.’”

CLICK HERE THE LINK TO ARTICLE IN IF MAGAZINE