By Phil Jarratt
I’ll be honest. I’d never heard of Macklemore until I got off the plane in Brisbane and grabbed the weekend papers last Saturday for the long bus-ride home.
We’d been somewhat preoccupied with the Bali volcano alert for the previous week, but better late than never to bone up on football fever, so I scanned the papers and my phone for the news from both codes as we crept up the coast in the long weekend traffic, but what I found more than anything was the hoo-ha about the megastar rapper and whether he should be allowed to perform a simple song about love between two people of the same sex.
Oh puleez! The increasingly desperate Tony Abbott had bought in, as you would expect, for the no vote, but I was surprised by the level of support he seemed to have in the community for this ridiculous position. So I abandoned the sports pages – happy to see Richmond get up after all these years and don’t really care, would like to see the Cowboys get up but know they can’t against the superstar Melbourne, so don’t really care – and went to the news and opinion pages to take the nation’s pulse on these matters.
Okay, it’s one thing for Australia to be duped into a stupid “survey” vote for blatantly political reasons and at a cost of more than $100 million – while Germany has no problem in offering its elected representatives a conscience vote on the subject – but now we are taking seriously the advice of a bitter and twisted former prime minister that we shouldn’t let a man sing a hit song about love!
I would say that it’s political correctness gone mad, but in fact there is nothing politically or morally or ethically correct about this position, fortunately smashed by the sincerity and moral strength (never thought I’d be writing that!) of the NRL. Ban a song today, burn a book tomorrow. It really is time for the Mad Monk to crawl back under his rock.
And for the record, I watched the game and I watched Micklemore, who still really isn’t my cup of tea, but I had goose bumps through the performance of That Song, and the positive reaction to it, which to me showed, yet again, that ordinary Australians are decent people of goodwill who believe, like Micklemore, in fairness and equality.
It’s film fest season
I mentioned in this column a couple of weeks ago the splendid Ombak Surf Film Festival in Bali, which offered some great films screened at a beautiful outdoor cinema within the wonderfully eccentric La Laguna compound. Now it’s Noosa’s turn, with the Noosa Surf Film Festival kicking off tonight with the opening of an art exhibition featuring the versatile Ozzie Wright and some interesting local artists, followed by the third annual Noosa International Film Festival later in the month.
The NSFF headliners include a couple of great films that I caught up with at Ombak – Taylor Steele’s powerful “Proximity” and Nathan Oldfield’s wistful “Church of the Open Sky”. The enduring Taylor Steele rarely misses the mark, and you can’t go far wrong if you focus on the incredible Dave Rastovich whose surfing on any kind of craft is mesmerizing. In Proximity, however, Rasta shares the spotlight with other personal favourites of mine, including Steph Gilmore (looking as relaxed as ever), Shane Dorian and Kelly Slater. Not to mention JJF!
At the other end of the spectrum, soulful Nathan Oldfield takes a laidback approach to why we surf, what we get out of it, and what we put back. I think “Church of the Open Sky” – a line often attributed to the original Nat Young but which in fact dates back to the visionary Tom Blake in the 1930s – is Nathan’s best work to date, and will be appreciated by his many local fans. And there’s quite a bit of Noosa and Noosa’s best in it.
Looking at the NSFF program, what really caught my eye, however, was a short film called “Phenomenality”, which is “the story of a man who drowned … and came back from the dead to sleep with the world’s most iconic supermodel, Twiggy. A big wave pioneer who died more times than Jesus, a man who constantly risked his life to find life … ”
Wow! Hats off to the blurb writer, but as I read on I discovered that this is a film about a bloke I know, Ric Friar, who is a legendary eccentric to be sure, but I didn’t know about him bedding Twiggy or his multiple deaths and resurrections! Originally from Cornwall, where he learnt to surf in the early 1960s, he slid a few on the northern beaches of Sydney before disappearing into the horticultural world where he focused on recycling manure (picking up the nickname “the king of poo”) and growing cannabis.
That’s all I can remember. Can’t wait to see this one!
And on the subject of upcoming film events, I’m really looking forward to the special live soundtrack screening of “Men Of Wood And Foam”, featuring the Band of Frequencies, on Saturday, 28 October as part of the Noosa International Film Festival. It’s going to be a huge night at The J. Tickets at niff.com.au
