Yes, We Have Several Questions For Ben
Rob Sitch and Santo Cilauro (centre) filming a crowd scene at Oaks Day 2010. Image: Flickr user piggley (http://bit.ly/p63z3S)
Australian production company Working Dog is preparing a new comedy feature film, its first since 2000′s The Dish. It’s called Any Questions For Ben?
Co-written by Rob Sitch, Santo Cilauro and Tom Gleisner and directed by Sitch, it began shooting in October 2010, when it went by the working title 25.
Josh Lawson (The Librarians, Chandon Pictures), Christian Clark (Neighbours, Home and Away) and Daniel Henshall (Snowtown) star as three young bro-dudes in their mid-twenties (hence the working title), living it up in Melbourne’s restaurants, bars and clubs.
Rachael Taylor (Red Dog, Summer Hours) also stars. Taylor found love on set with Lawson after having dated Matthew Newton and subsequently taking out a two-year AVO against him.
Taylor and Lawson have been dividing their time between Australia and the US. Taylor has been riding high in Hollywood with an eight-episode guest appearance on Grey’s Anatomy and a role in the new Charlie’s Angels. Lawson, however, has had less luck, co-starring in the critically savaged Alyssa Milano sitcom Romantically Challenged, which was commissioned for 13 episodes, produced six and screened only four before ABC canned it.
The Enthusiast would like to thank Working Dog for the opportunity to ask Ben a few questions. First: after a feature filmmaking hiatus of nearly 12 years, will the production team still have the magic that made The Castle (1997) the kind of cult classic you’d take straight to the pool room?
After all, it’s only their third cinema release. Frontline and The Hollowmen still stand up as blue-chip TV satire, and The Panel and Thank God You’re Here were fresh and zeitgeisty when they debuted. Even Santo, Sam and Ed’s Cup Fever was plenty of fun.
But Working Dog disappointments such as Funky Squad and Russell Coight’s All Aussie Adventures, and their recent series of Jetlag travel guide parodies (Molvania, Phaic Tan and San Sombrero), all show that taking the piss can be pretty lazy, too.
The Dish (2000) is perhaps not the best indication of what Working Dog can do. It just showed that, given a bigger budget, they could produce the same kind of retro sentimentality that marred Richard Curtis’s crate of crappy ’60s clichés, The Boat That Rocked.
Our second question for Ben is whether these ageing jesters, whose best work is fondly remembered by Gen-X, are adequately equipped to say something shrewd about Gen-Y hedonism. There’s nothing wrong with pitching to a younger audience, but there’s also something to be said for writing what you know.
Third, naturally, we are wondering whether Ben will buck the trend of Australian big-screen comedy by not being shit.
We hope so. After all, these guys took the piss out of professional wogs 20 years ago… meanwhile, Big Mamma’s Boy just opened in cinemas last week, while last year’s Kings of Mykonos had the tenth biggest opening weekend in Australian box office history.
Any Questions For Ben? is out on Australia Day 2012 through Roadshow.
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The scary thing about Frontline is that you think Rob Sitch is taking the piss but then a mate saw him at Darwin airport wearing a black skivvy and you just know that that is what he is really like.
The Castle had, as Jeremy Clarkson would put it, soul. There were a couple of significant points of law raised, that were not just critical to the story, but perhaps to the state of the country, then and now.
The Dish was beautiful in it’s humble portrait of old fashioned Anglo Saxon scientists, innocently mumbling along. I have spent many a geological or botanical expedition with such fine chaps, and I hope the young ones coming through uni will always feel comfortable about keeping their spectacle case in their breast pocket.
Freshly made sandwiches delivered in an EH station wagon ? I was in tears as I remembered family picnics.
It’s all about freedom and responsibility, as P.J O’Rourke would say, and Dale Kerrigan stood his ground, in an unassuming fashion.
It’s about the vibe.
Any questions for Ben, is a pleasant , light film, with graceful caresses for our old fashioned fondness for tennis, gentlemanly behavior, and the simple fact that every little thing she does is magic.
For some reason I found my mind picturing Ben being taken for a therapeutic drive in a Jag E type, or setting up tennis coaching schools in Oman . Was the film really set in the sixties , when advertising artists ( I have an uncle with just such a career ) would go yachting, with British Airways pilots, and create advertising campaigns ? ( Now there’s an idea for a movie !)
It rings true, in places, just softly.
Thank you for a gentle, pleasant film.
Lighten up, unpublished critics.