Interview - Shaun Micallef : Preincarnate
Author of Smithereens and
host of Talkin' About
Your Generation
By
Sean Lynch
Shaun Micallef is, without doubt, one of the
most unique comedic voices in Australia. His sense of the surrealism is
unparalleled, inspired by the classics in the form of The Goons and
Monty Python.
Yet over the last two decades, Micallef has created a comedic language
all his own (whether it's wordy diatribes, or crazy face pulling) and
has somehow managed to funnel that into more genres than
history's most distinguished writers ever could.
Not content with hosting one of Australia's highest rating programs in Talkin' About Your Generation,
Shaun Micallef has decided to venture into the world of novels with
"Preincarnate", which has now entered another re-print!
Web Wombat's Sean Lynch sat down with the comedy icon to talk all
things time travel, sketch comedy - and Greenland...
You've developed quite a unique type of time travel for Preincarnate, was
it a conscious decision to move away from the traditional time-travel
theories?
I'm a big fan of time travel stories I
suppose, I couldn't really recall anything that hadn't required a
machine. Perhaps The
Time Traveler's Wife [where it just sort of "happens"]?
But I wanted to explore the reasons how it
might happen - so I could go one way by using soul transference, which
I thought was an interesting idea.
Then getting back into the
future / present by using suspended animation... which is sort of time travel
if you just simply suspend their animation and they wake up in a moment
and they're in the future again.
So I thought : "Well there's a good story, a good device to go
backwards and forwards in that order". Then, maybe, if the going
backwards involved murder - going forwards would involve trying to stop
that murder in the first place.
I liked the symmetry of that - I quite liked
the idea of that being a third act : trying to stop your own murder.
Are you
worried that over the next few decades, time-travel nerds will try to
find holes in your space / time theories? I'd imagine there'd be a flow
chart involved...
Sean - that's exactly it! I spent five years on this. Six years,
really, if you include that first year where I lost that first draft...
which was great - I really enjoyed that day of my life.
I just didn't save the document and... it
just went.
What
was your first reaction when you lost it - some people just go into a
stunned silence, others throw things...
I just could not
believe it was gone. And I refused to believe it was gone.
I rang up my tech support guy who helps me
out with the computer - it wasn't even a laptop at that point - and he
said "Nup, no way. I reckon I can get bits of it back, but it'd all be
weirdly formatted".
I was happy to even do that at that point.
So he came around and told me what it would entail and how much time it
would take - and I thought "Maybe this has happened for a reason".
Do you
think it helped or hindered the project? Because you can never quite
replicate what you wrote the first time.
I have to think that it helped it - because the prospect of it not
being as good is just too depressing [Laughs].
But I think because it was the first draft that I lost, and a good 90%
of the book was written in the first draft, I actually think it
probably helped because the next draft being done from memory... I knew
where I was going to go. I basically had gone on the trip and had to
draw the map afterwards - instead of having to draw the map as I go.
I defy anyone to find holes in this - it's
been so plotted over time that it WILL NOT have any inconsistencies...
I like
the confidence you instill there - like an infomercial : "These knives
WILL NOT break"...
I challenge anyone - I'm happy to argue with them [Laughs]!
You've
been quite critical of the holes in Back To The Future II,
I hope for your sake you don't have to deal with that pressure 25 years
down the track...
A book is around a long time, it's always going to be there, and I'm
sure someone else will do their own flow chart.
I'm still reasonably confident, maybe Robert
Zemeckis will challenge me at some point [Laughs].
If it
were to be made into a movie - who would be your Marty McFly?
It couldn't be me - I think it needs a younger man. Um... Eric Bana [Laughs]? He
probably wouldn't do it after The
Time Traveler's Wife - it'd be too similar.
Um... Err... What are you doing? You might be well and truly available [Laughs].
Just
make sure it's not a Tuesday, as I do Zumba...
What
about Teacher Boy [a film written by Shaun and
produced by the folks behind Bran Nue Dae], has that developed any further?
No, not really. I suspect that probably won't get made. It's run into a
bit of a wall - because it's not particularly Australian or about
Australian types. It's more of a universal story.
It'll probably end up being that script in a
draw that maybe
gets made later on. But I've got to make something else. Who was that
director who made Inception?
Christopher
Nolan?
I think Christopher Nolan had to do Batman Begins and The Dark Knight
before he could do Inception
- so I think that might be my situation too. I have to do a couple of
HUGE blockbusters and then I might be able to do Teacher Boy.
So we
can confirm to our audience right now that you will be directing...
Um... some kind of super hero...
Well, when they do the movie version of Roger Ramjet - I'm
their man, I'll be happy to direct that one!
It's
essentially a cartoon that promotes a man taking steroids...
[Laughs]
That's right, that's right - surrounded by
children.
Outside
of TAYG,
what type of show would you look to getting up next?
I think the next thing I would do that involved character comedy would
be a refinement of Newstopia.
I don't think I'd go back to doing Full
Frontal - much in the way The Micallef Programme
was a more refined version of that - so I guess maybe something like a
sitcom or something like what Chris Lilley's done.
Maybe a
full length Roger
Explosion
series could be on the cards...
We toyed with that idea once and actually wrote it - and then Austin Powers came
out - so we couldn't do that now, but we had fully intended to make it
as a Special.
I think the closest we ever got to that was
an episode of Newstopia
with Inspector Herring running the whole way through. So maybe
something like that. I would have liked to do a whole series of
Inspector Herring episodes.
Finally,
if you could start your own "Richard Gere Gerbil" Hollywood style myth
to spread about
yourself in the press... what would it be?
That I secretly married Julia Morris in
Greenland. I need all those elements, especially Julia Morris.
Shaun Micallef - Preincarnate is now in it's Second Re-Print
through Hardie Grant
|
