The Ben E. Kill Show
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday April 30, 1999
Ben Elton's Popcorn explores the line between screen violence and real violence. JUDY ADAMSON witnesses the birth of a natural-born thriller.
The hall has vast leadlight windows and a sandstone facade - far too tasteful a place, surely, to rehearse a play by England's steam-driven gob, Ben Elton.
I get out of my taxi in the leafy Melbourne suburb of Prahran and look up at the grand old building in some doubt. Then a man inside yells, "You f---ing bitch" at the top of his lungs. This must be the right place. It's the end of he first week of rehearsals for Elton's third play, Popcorn, which will premiere in Sydney on May 8. Cast members are sitting solo or in huddles working on their lines, chatting with director Kaarin Fairfax, or making a quick
cuppa. There are a huge box of fruit, exercise mats and an ab-cruncher. Everyone even has their own plastic cup with their name on it for the sake of environmental friendliness.
Fairfax sees me and her brow furrows for a moment. "Who are you?" she asks. "Oh, is it Friday?"
Over in the corner is the man responsible for the "bitch" statement, Steven Vidler, who is practising a scene with Helen Thomson. He plays Oscar- winning film director Bruce Delamitri and she is the Playboy model - sorry, actress - Brooke Daniels. She wants a part in his next film and will do just about anything to get it.
The cast is actually marking time. Nadine Garner, who plays the slightly schizophrenic murderer, Scout, hurt her ankle the previous night and has been carted off to the doctor. Fairfax makes the most of the hiatus, taking Thomson to the set and shooing everyone away so "Brooke" can practise her strip scene for the first time in peace. Elton has written a whole page of notes on how Brooke must do the strip ("It's so specific," says Fairfax. "He must've seen it somewhere."). Thomson stands with her skirt up around her waist, discussing the possibilities with Fairfax as shake-your-booty music plays in the background.
Later, Thomson says she'll be quite relaxed about taking off her clothes in front of hundreds of people on opening night. "It'll be polished by then," she explains, with a laugh. "It's when it's a bad strip that you don't want people to see it."
Elton has written about plenty of thorny issues - from air pollution and traffic chaos to poison-pen tabloids - but he frequently insists that he is not preaching, just ensuring that all the issues are out there to be discussed.
The central issue in Popcorn is screen violence. Bruce Delamitri has just won an Oscar for Ordinary Americans, a film in which 57 people are killed, sometimes to music, sometimes in arguably "sexy" ways. It is an Eltonised Natural Born Killers which, as the film did, causes an uproar in Hollywood.
Bruce, at the moment of his greatest triumph, is about to cop it big time. Two mass murderers - Wayne and Scout - have broken into his house to meet him and hopefully get him to take the blame for their recent killing rampage. Wayne (Steve Bastoni) adores Ordinary Americans, and Bruce is his hero. An enthusiastic killer, he knows the law will close in on him eventually, but has read enough magazines and watched enough TV to know that "there is an excuse for everything in the United States". Bruce and his films, Wayne has decided, will be the excuse, and the TV audience will be the judge and jury.
Bastoni has read an FBI book about psychopaths as research for his portrayal of Wayne, and says what makes these killers' exploits so chilling is that, until something breaks their grip on reality, they seem perfectly normal. "They could be your neighbour," he says. "Ted Bundy, for instance, was unbelievably normal. He was good-looking, high IQ, articulate, warm, seemed like a really nice guy. He just liked cutting off women's heads and mutilating their bodies.
"This play is disturbing at times because it combines comedy with realistic violence. It's the irony of the situation that is most funny. But just when the audience thinks they're off
the hook, they're laughing along and thinking, 'Isn't this a funny little play?', it will get really quite nasty. It's going to create a lot of debate and make people think about how they're affected by the media they absorb. They will discover that they're more affected than
they realise."
It might seem churlish to comment that the killers in Popcorn are eloquent in expressing their views and sharp in their observations on human nature. Playing with words is Elton's joy, so it would probably be hard for him to create a character who could not say, smartly and in minute detail, what he or she thought and felt. However, he does make Wayne and Scout completely, and hysterically, inarticulate for a moment when they see themselves on that white-trash icon, the TV.
While the cast have differing views on film and TV violence and the need for censorship, they are fairly united in their praise for Elton and Popcorn. Fairfax dismisses the idea that the play preaches, saying that Elton is an expert in the business, and from that vantage
point is simply expressing his view. If some think that is preaching, she says, that is their view. Flexible about most things, she is quite happy to suggest censorship for children - adamant that they should not see the play because, after all, its main message is that "there's enough violence".
Garner, who arrives on crutches late in the morning, is among the warmest in her praise for the play. She believes Elton has read the public mood cleverly by couching his moral line in entertainment terms. While agreeing that he has used the same devices he is criticising - violence and sex - she is impressed by the fact that, as he does this, he asks tough questions of viewers.
Thomson is not so sure. She likes the play, but feels that because it allows the audience to answer most of the questions, many will leave the theatre with their original views intact.
However, the see-sawing nature of the violence argument in Popcorn is the very thing Vidler loves. Having directed a film (Blackrock) which portrays rape and the aftermath of murder, he has been through the mill himself with censors. And even though he thinks Bruce is an "A-grade, prime-cut arse-hole", he has some sympathy for Bruce when he defends his film.
Vidler adhered religiously to censorship guidelines when shooting the rape scene in Blackrock, to make it disturbing without being graphically violent. When the censors still would not pass it, he says there was "this great argument about whether it's more morally reprehensible to show rape as something that is disturbing or something that isn't disturbing.
"I think [Popcorn is] fantastic because you're really torn between all the different views. One minute you're thinking, 'Yeah, the director is at fault. He's made these glamorous films and these guys are obviously copying that.' But then it's so clear that they're
psychopaths who aren't being influenced by anything else and they're manipulating that in order to save themselves."
Every rehearsal day is a long one, and although tensions may rise as opening night nears, today the cast is relaxed - already working without scripts much of the time.
Bastoni swaggers around with Bessie the Uzi, making wisecracks; Garner tries to keep up her normal pace, despite her crutches, but trips over occasionally; and Jane Turner, the only official comedian of the group, threatens to steal the show as Bruce's tragi-comic wife, Farrah.
At one point the stage manager sees a foam prop gun on the stage bar and, muttering that it should not be there, goes to remove it. Vidler, grabbing it in both hands, shouts, "Don't f---ing try and take my gun away from me - I'll foam you."
The safety aspect with the guns in Popcorn is in fact deadly serious. The blanks contain some gunpowder and can hurt or kill if the shooter is too close to the "victim", or others are not following proper safety procedures.
The actors spend an hour with an arms expert discussing the dangers, much to the relief of Bianca Rowe, who plays Bruce's daughter, Velvet. She loathes guns, thanks to the influence of her Vietnam vet father, Normie Rowe. "We're going to have guns pointed at
our heads, which is all very real and pretty scary," she says. "When you're onstage there's this rush of adrenalin and people can get careless, but they're really emphasising the safety of it, which makes me feel better. But just knowing that there's an element of danger will keep me on my toes."
Then there are the drugs. No-one's about to say there is a safe way to take drugs, but in an early scene Bruce and Brooke snort a few lines of cocaine. Realism naturally has to take a back seat here, but for a while Fairfax was stumped. What on earth could they snort?
She phoned her GP in desperation to ask him what might be safe for her actors. Lowering her voice to a mock whisper, Fairfax mimics his edgy return call which began, "Kaarin, um, about the drugs ... " She breaks off into chuckles and brandishes a slim
packet of his suggested alternative - glucose powder.
That's some sugar headache Vidler and Thomson are going to have.
Popcorn opens at the Lyric Theatre, Star City Casino, on May 8.
he hall has vast leadlight windows and a sandstone facade - far too tasteful a place, surely, to rehearse a play by England's steam-driven gob, Ben Elton.
I get out of my taxi in the leafy Melbourne suburb of Prahran and look up at the grand old building in some doubt. Then a man inside yells, "You f---ing bitch" at the top of his lungs. This must be the right place. It's the end of he first week of rehearsals for Elton's third play, Popcorn, which will premiere in Sydney on May 8. Cast members are sitting solo or in huddles working on their lines, chatting with director Kaarin Fairfax, or making a quick
cuppa. There are a huge box of fruit, exercise mats and an ab-cruncher. Everyone even has their own plastic cup with their name on it for the sake of environmental friendliness.
Fairfax sees me and her brow furrows for a moment. "Who are you?" she asks. "Oh, is it Friday?"
Over in the corner is the man responsible for the "bitch" statement, Steven Vidler, who is practising a scene with Helen Thomson. He plays Oscar- winning film director Bruce Delamitri and she is the Playboy model - sorry, actress - Brooke Daniels. She wants a part in his next film and will do just about anything to get it.
The cast is actually marking time. Nadine Garner, who plays the slightly schizophrenic murderer, Scout, hurt her ankle the previous night and has been carted off to the doctor. Fairfax makes the most of the hiatus, taking Thomson to the set and shooing everyone away so "Brooke" can practise her strip scene for the first time in peace. Elton has written a whole page of notes on how Brooke must do the strip ("It's so specific," says Fairfax. "He must've seen it somewhere."). Thomson stands with her skirt up around her waist, discussing the possibilities with Fairfax as shake-your-booty music plays in the background.
Later, Thomson says she'll be quite relaxed about taking off her clothes in front of hundreds of people on opening night. "It'll be polished by then," she explains, with a laugh. "It's when it's a bad strip that you don't want people to see it."
Elton has written about plenty of thorny issues - from air pollution and traffic chaos to poison-pen tabloids - but he frequently insists that he is not preaching, just ensuring that all the issues are out there to be discussed.
The central issue in Popcorn is screen violence. Bruce Delamitri has just won an Oscar for Ordinary Americans, a film in which 57 people are killed, sometimes to music, sometimes in arguably "sexy" ways. It is an Eltonised Natural Born Killers which, as the film did, causes an uproar in Hollywood.
Bruce, at the moment of his greatest triumph, is about to cop it big time. Two mass murderers - Wayne and Scout - have broken into his house to meet him and hopefully get him to take the blame for their recent killing rampage. Wayne (Steve Bastoni) adores Ordinary Americans, and Bruce is his hero. An enthusiastic killer, he knows the law will close in on him eventually, but has read enough magazines and watched enough TV to know that "there is an excuse for everything in the United States". Bruce and his films, Wayne has decided, will be the excuse, and the TV audience will be the judge and jury.
Bastoni has read an FBI book about psychopaths as research for his portrayal of Wayne, and says what makes these killers' exploits so chilling is that, until something breaks their grip on reality, they seem perfectly normal. "They could be your neighbour," he says. "Ted Bundy, for instance, was unbelievably normal. He was good-looking, high IQ, articulate, warm, seemed like a really nice guy. He just liked cutting off women's heads and mutilating their bodies.
"This play is disturbing at times because it combines comedy with realistic violence. It's the irony of the situation that is most funny. But just when the audience thinks they're off
the hook, they're laughing along and thinking, 'Isn't this a funny little play?', it will get really quite nasty. It's going to create a lot of debate and make people think about how they're affected by the media they absorb. They will discover that they're more affected than
they realise."
It might seem churlish to comment that the killers in Popcorn are eloquent in expressing their views and sharp in their observations on human nature. Playing with words is Elton's joy, so it would probably be hard for him to create a character who could not say, smartly and in minute detail, what he or she thought and felt. However, he does make Wayne and Scout completely, and hysterically, inarticulate for a moment when they see themselves on that white-trash icon, the TV.
While the cast have differing views on film and TV violence and the need for censorship, they are fairly united in their praise for Elton and Popcorn. Fairfax dismisses the idea that the play preaches, saying that Elton is an expert in the business, and from that vantage
point is simply expressing his view. If some think that is preaching, she says, that is their view. Flexible about most things, she is quite happy to suggest censorship for children - adamant that they should not see the play because, after all, its main message is that "there's enough violence".
Garner, who arrives on crutches late in the morning, is among the warmest in her praise for the play. She believes Elton has read the public mood cleverly by couching his moral line in entertainment terms. While agreeing that he has used the same devices he is criticising - violence and sex - she is impressed by the fact that, as he does this, he asks tough questions of viewers.
Thomson is not so sure. She likes the play, but feels that because it allows the audience to answer most of the questions, many will leave the theatre with their original views intact.
However, the see-sawing nature of the violence argument in Popcorn is the very thing Vidler loves. Having directed a film (Blackrock) which portrays rape and the aftermath of murder, he has been through the mill himself with censors. And even though he thinks Bruce is an "A-grade, prime-cut arse-hole", he has some sympathy for Bruce when he defends his film.
Vidler adhered religiously to censorship guidelines when shooting the rape scene in Blackrock, to make it disturbing without being graphically violent. When the censors still would not pass it, he says there was "this great argument about whether it's more morally reprehensible to show rape as something that is disturbing or something that isn't disturbing.
"I think [Popcorn is] fantastic because you're really torn between all the different views. One minute you're thinking, 'Yeah, the director is at fault. He's made these glamorous films and these guys are obviously copying that.' But then it's so clear that they're
psychopaths who aren't being influenced by anything else and they're manipulating that in order to save themselves."
Every rehearsal day is a long one, and although tensions may rise as opening night nears, today the cast is relaxed - already working without scripts much of the time.
Bastoni swaggers around with Bessie the Uzi, making wisecracks; Garner tries to keep up her normal pace, despite her crutches, but trips over occasionally; and Jane Turner, the only official comedian of the group, threatens to steal the show as Bruce's tragi-comic wife, Farrah.
At one point the stage manager sees a foam prop gun on the stage bar and, muttering that it should not be there, goes to remove it. Vidler, grabbing it in both hands, shouts, "Don't f---ing try and take my gun away from me - I'll foam you."
The safety aspect with the guns in Popcorn is in fact deadly serious. The blanks contain some gunpowder and can hurt or kill if the shooter is too close to the "victim", or others are not following proper safety procedures.
The actors spend an hour with an arms expert discussing the dangers, much to the relief of Bianca Rowe, who plays Bruce's daughter, Velvet. She loathes guns, thanks to the influence of her Vietnam vet father, Normie Rowe. "We're going to have guns pointed at
our heads, which is all very real and pretty scary," she says. "When you're onstage there's this rush of adrenalin and people can get careless, but they're really emphasising the safety of it, which makes me feel better. But just knowing that there's an element of danger will keep me on my toes."
Then there are the drugs. No-one's about to say there is a safe way to take drugs, but in an early scene Bruce and Brooke snort a few lines of cocaine. Realism naturally has to take a back seat here, but for a while Fairfax was stumped. What on earth could they snort?
She phoned her GP in desperation to ask him what might be safe for her actors. Lowering her voice to a mock whisper, Fairfax mimics his edgy return call which began, "Kaarin, um, about the drugs ... " She breaks off into chuckles and brandishes a slim
packet of his suggested alternative - glucose powder.
That's some sugar headache Vidler and Thomson are going to have.
Popcorn opens at the Lyric Theatre, Star City Casino, on May 8.
he hall has vast leadlight windows and a sandstone facade - far too tasteful a place, surely, to rehearse a play by England's steam-driven gob, Ben Elton.
I get out of my taxi in the leafy Melbourne suburb of Prahran and look up at the grand old building in some doubt. Then a man inside yells, "You f---ing bitch" at the top of his lungs. This must be the right place. It's the end of he first week of rehearsals for Elton's third play, Popcorn, which will premiere in Sydney on May 8. Cast members are sitting solo or in huddles working on their lines, chatting with director Kaarin Fairfax, or making a quick
cuppa. There are a huge box of fruit, exercise mats and an ab-cruncher. Everyone even has their own plastic cup with their name on it for the sake of environmental friendliness.
Fairfax sees me and her brow furrows for a moment. "Who are you?" she asks. "Oh, is it Friday?"
Over in the corner is the man responsible for the "bitch" statement, Steven Vidler, who is practising a scene with Helen Thomson. He plays Oscar- winning film director Bruce Delamitri and she is the Playboy model - sorry, actress - Brooke Daniels. She wants a part in his next film and will do just about anything to get it.
The cast is actually marking time. Nadine Garner, who plays the slightly schizophrenic murderer, Scout, hurt her ankle the previous night and has been carted off to the doctor. Fairfax makes the most of the hiatus, taking Thomson to the set and shooing everyone away so "Brooke" can practise her strip scene for the first time in peace. Elton has written a whole page of notes on how Brooke must do the strip ("It's so specific," says Fairfax. "He must've seen it somewhere."). Thomson stands with her skirt up around her waist, discussing the possibilities with Fairfax as shake-your-booty music plays in the background.
Later, Thomson says she'll be quite relaxed about taking off her clothes in front of hundreds of people on opening night. "It'll be polished by then," she explains, with a laugh. "It's when it's a bad strip that you don't want people to see it."
Elton has written about plenty of thorny issues - from air pollution and traffic chaos to poison-pen tabloids - but he frequently insists that he is not preaching, just ensuring that all the issues are out there to be discussed.
The central issue in Popcorn is screen violence. Bruce Delamitri has just won an Oscar for Ordinary Americans, a film in which 57 people are killed, sometimes to music, sometimes in arguably "sexy" ways. It is an Eltonised Natural Born Killers which, as the film did, causes an uproar in Hollywood.
Bruce, at the moment of his greatest triumph, is about to cop it big time. Two mass murderers - Wayne and Scout - have broken into his house to meet him and hopefully get him to take the blame for their recent killing rampage. Wayne (Steve Bastoni) adores Ordinary Americans, and Bruce is his hero. An enthusiastic killer, he knows the law will close in on him eventually, but has read enough magazines and watched enough TV to know that "there is an excuse for everything in the United States". Bruce and his films, Wayne has decided, will be the excuse, and the TV audience will be the judge and jury.
Bastoni has read an FBI book about psychopaths as research for his portrayal of Wayne, and says what makes these killers' exploits so chilling is that, until something breaks their grip on reality, they seem perfectly normal. "They could be your neighbour," he says. "Ted Bundy, for instance, was unbelievably normal. He was good-looking, high IQ, articulate, warm, seemed like a really nice guy. He just liked cutting off women's heads and mutilating their bodies.
"This play is disturbing at times because it combines comedy with realistic violence. It's the irony of the situation that is most funny. But just when the audience thinks they're off
the hook, they're laughing along and thinking, 'Isn't this a funny little play?', it will get really quite nasty. It's going to create a lot of debate and make people think about how they're affected by the media they absorb. They will discover that they're more affected than
they realise."
It might seem churlish to comment that the killers in Popcorn are eloquent in expressing their views and sharp in their observations on human nature. Playing with words is Elton's joy, so it would probably be hard for him to create a character who could not say, smartly and in minute detail, what he or she thought and felt. However, he does make Wayne and Scout completely, and hysterically, inarticulate for a moment when they see themselves on that white-trash icon, the TV.
While the cast have differing views on film and TV violence and the need for censorship, they are fairly united in their praise for Elton and Popcorn. Fairfax dismisses the idea that the play preaches, saying that Elton is an expert in the business, and from that vantage
point is simply expressing his view. If some think that is preaching, she says, that is their view. Flexible about most things, she is quite happy to suggest censorship for children - adamant that they should not see the play because, after all, its main message is that "there's enough violence".
Garner, who arrives on crutches late in the morning, is among the warmest in her praise for the play. She believes Elton has read the public mood cleverly by couching his moral line in entertainment terms. While agreeing that he has used the same devices he is criticising - violence and sex - she is impressed by the fact that, as he does this, he asks tough questions of viewers.
Thomson is not so sure. She likes the play, but feels that because it allows the audience to answer most of the questions, many will leave the theatre with their original views intact.
However, the see-sawing nature of the violence argument in Popcorn is the very thing Vidler loves. Having directed a film (Blackrock) which portrays rape and the aftermath of murder, he has been through the mill himself with censors. And even though he thinks Bruce is an "A-grade, prime-cut arse-hole", he has some sympathy for Bruce when he defends his film.
Vidler adhered religiously to censorship guidelines when shooting the rape scene in Blackrock, to make it disturbing without being graphically violent. When the censors still would not pass it, he says there was "this great argument about whether it's more morally reprehensible to show rape as something that is disturbing or something that isn't disturbing.
"I think [Popcorn is] fantastic because you're really torn between all the different views. One minute you're thinking, 'Yeah, the director is at fault. He's made these glamorous films and these guys are obviously copying that.' But then it's so clear that they're
psychopaths who aren't being influenced by anything else and they're manipulating that in order to save themselves."
Every rehearsal day is a long one, and although tensions may rise as opening night nears, today the cast is relaxed - already working without scripts much of the time.
Bastoni swaggers around with Bessie the Uzi, making wisecracks; Garner tries to keep up her normal pace, despite her crutches, but trips over occasionally; and Jane Turner, the only official comedian of the group, threatens to steal the show as Bruce's tragi-comic wife, Farrah.
At one point the stage manager sees a foam prop gun on the stage bar and, muttering that it should not be there, goes to remove it. Vidler, grabbing it in both hands, shouts, "Don't f---ing try and take my gun away from me - I'll foam you."
The safety aspect with the guns in Popcorn is in fact deadly serious. The blanks contain some gunpowder and can hurt or kill if the shooter is too close to the "victim", or others are not following proper safety procedures.
The actors spend an hour with an arms expert discussing the dangers, much to the relief of Bianca Rowe, who plays Bruce's daughter, Velvet. She loathes guns, thanks to the influence of her Vietnam vet father, Normie Rowe. "We're going to have guns pointed at
our heads, which is all very real and pretty scary," she says. "When you're onstage there's this rush of adrenalin and people can get careless, but they're really emphasising the safety of it, which makes me feel better. But just knowing that there's an element of danger will keep me on my toes."
Then there are the drugs. No-one's about to say there is a safe way to take drugs, but in an early scene Bruce and Brooke snort a few lines of cocaine. Realism naturally has to take a back seat here, but for a while Fairfax was stumped. What on earth could they snort?
She phoned her GP in desperation to ask him what might be safe for her actors. Lowering her voice to a mock whisper, Fairfax mimics his edgy return call which began, "Kaarin, um, about the drugs ... " She breaks off into chuckles and brandishes a slim
packet of his suggested alternative - glucose powder.
That's some sugar headache Vidler and Thomson are going to have.
Popcorn opens at the Lyric Theatre, Star City Casino, on May 8.
NASTY
They can't show that, can they? Metro wincingly unveils its Top Five Violent Films and Plays
1. Mean Streets - Scorsese at his most relentless.
2. Straw Dogs - A scary mix of horror and western.
3. Titus Andronicus - Shakespeare at his most gory: rape, murder and mutilation.
4. A Clockwork Orange - The aversion therapy ensures you can never listen to Beethoven's Ninth in the same way again.
5. Reservoir Dogs - Tarantino and that ear ... need we say more?
* Prolific little chap, isn't he? Those Ben Elton masterpieces in full:
Books
Stark (1989)
Gridlock (1991)
This Other Eden (1993)
Popcorn (1996)
Blast From The Past (1998) (since adapted into a play)
Plays
Gasping (1990)
(since released in book form)
Silly Cow (1991) (ditto)
Popcorn (1997)
TV
The Young Ones (1984)
Happy Families (1985)
Filthy, Rich And Catflap (1986)
Blackadder (1987-1990)
The Man From Auntie (1990, 1993)
Stark (mini-series) (1993)
The Thin Blue Line (1995, 1996)
© 1999 Sydney Morning Herald
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