Favourite Interviews of 2015

I’ve been very lucky with The Feed. I get to interview some of the most fascinating people in popular culture, technology and media. 

This year William Shatner opened up about losing his wife, Jeffrey Tambor spoke about his alcoholism, the girls from Orange is the New Black just mocked me, bearded Eurovision icon Conchita Wurst spoke powerfully about coming out, and electronic artist Porter Robinson taught me how to make music with Japanese robots. M Night Shyamalan wanted to end the perception of him as the 'surprise twist guy'. Rachel Taylor opened up about violence against women. 

We challenged the director of The West Wing to a walk-and talk-interview, and Hugh Jackman was uncommonly political about the proposed shut-down of remote indigenous communities. Chris Pratt just straight-up flirted. Yes, that’s how I am choosing to interpret it. 

These are a few of my favourite experiences this year. I hope you enjoy watching them as much as I enjoyed meeting them.  

Also, you can sit back and watch them as a YouTube playlist here

GEORGE TAKEI

From Japanese internment camps as a child to becoming the iconic Mr Sulu on Star Trek to coming out as a gay man in his 60s: George Takei is a master of reinvention and he is more than happy to call William Shatner on his bullshit. In fact, it's worth it for that alone. This is my favourite interview of the year. 

 

ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK CAST

Yael Stone & Uzo Aduba are crazy fun. We talk representation of women on screen and it turns out that they both thought they were going to get fired off OITNB, like, every single day. 

JEFFREY TAMBOR

Jeffrey Tambor has been involved in 3 of the most groundbreaking American comedies of recent history. The Larry Sanders Show pre-empted the rise of HBO & cable television, Arrested Development pushed American network narrative comedy further than it's ever gone before and Transparent has lead a wave of transgender representation on our screens in 2015. Tambor himself is one of the most generous, sensitive and articulate people I've come across. 

Jeffrey 'George Bluth' Tambor talks to Marc Fennell about his role in Transparent. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SBS2Australia Twitter: https://twitter.com/sbs2 Tumblr: http://sbs2australia.tumblr.com/

WILLIAM SHATNER

The original Captain Kirk has certainly lived long and prospered but Shatner's personal & professional life has been far from smooth sailing. At one point he was living out of a truck despite being a household name from Star Trek. He opens up about losing his wife Nerine to alcoholism. 

 

CHRIS PRATT

Somehow in the space of a year Chris Pratt has gone from being an adorable side character in Parks and Recreation to anchoring the 2nd biggest movie/nostalgia-fest of the year (Jurassic World) and the best Marvel movie (Guardians of the Galaxy) But what is so striking about this interview is that you hear an actor talking about actually making a conscious choice to *become* a movie star. Many times in the past I’ve asked actors to explain their career choices but this is the first time I felt like an actor was honest about it. Also you can enjoy the fact that Pratt dances like a sexpest, falls over repeatedly and simply cannot whistle. 

Jurassic World's Chris Pratt Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SBS2Australia Twitter: https://twitter.com/sbs2 Tumblr: http://sbs2australia.tumblr.com/

 

 

JOHANN HARI: WHY THE WAR ON DRUGS IS FAILING

Most people don't make a comeback with drug addiction. But Johann Hari is an exception to the rule. He was an award winning young journalist - and then 2011 it all came crashing down. He was outed as plagiarising his interview quotes from old articles. He quit. Handed back the prizes. And went away to travel the world, meeting drug dealers, mob hitmen and doctors, all to explore how our war on drugs is failing. Badly.

TROYE SIVAN

The YouTube star turned musician and actor talks beautifully about coming out of the closet in the age of social media and the power of the internet with a new generation. Sweet, articulate and very talented

CORNEL WEST

To many people ‘Racism’ is a sort of abstract concept. To the legendary preacher, activist and thinker Cornel West it is a lived experience that has coloured the way he sees the world. That’s not to suggest that he’s bitter. He’s not. But a life-long experience of bigotry has given him a view of politics, 9/11, Barack Obama that is fundamentally different from most people. 

 

GEORGE MILLER: MAD MAX FURY ROAD

This is the man that invented the Australian Blockbuster. The original Mad Max trilogy was a modern action movie franchise that WE exported TO America. Not the other way round. The process of making the original nearly wrecked George Miller, and indeed his best friend Byron Kennedy passed along the way. 

 

EUROVISION WINNER CONCHITA WURST

The Bearded Lady is the Eurovision Winner to rule them all. There’s a fascinating origin story behind the character of Conchita Wurst and the family that gave birth to her. 

 

AMY POEHLER

Handcuffs, Hilary, Mental Health, and why you want John Hamm on hand when you give birth. 

 

WALKING & TALKING WITH THE WEST WING DIRECTOR

Thomas Schlamme discusses Mike Myers, a blowjob and the surprise visit to The White House which changed the course of the career from one of the most prolific directors of our time.

 

MELISSA McCARTHY

Kristen Wiig made her have sex with a dolphin. In an audition. IN AN AUDITION. Melissa McCarthy is forthright, funny and fierce.

JIM MORRIS: PRESIDENT OF PIXAR

It's so rare to hear a business person speak with this amount of honesty about failure & frustrations. Disney Pixar are the most successful studio in the world. So what happens when you have to scrap everything halfway through and start again? 

 

BILL HADER

Amy Schumer's hit film Trainwreck got a lot of attention this year as did Schumer herself but it was her co-star that was the real pleasure to talk to.  

 

GRAHAM BURK: AUSTRALIA'S BIGGEST ANTI-PIRACY CAMPAIGNER

Village Roadshow's Graham Burke wants to sue you if you pirate movies. And he's very happy to say so.

 

ADAM HARRIS: AUSTRALIA'S ULTIMATE STAR WARS FAN

What would you do if you found out who had an inoperable brain tumor? For Star Wars fanatic Adam Harris, it was to fulfil a lifelong dream of travelling to a convention in the USA.

So, that's my list. Who would you like to see interviewed in 2016? Lemme know in the comments down below. 

Graham Burke: Australia's Biggest Anti-piracy Campaigner

Graham Burke is the co-founder of Village Roadshow. According to the Business Review Weekly he's estimated to be worth $153 million dollars.

Burke started working in cinemas in country Victoria at the age of 14. He has gone on to be instrumental in backing some of the most iconic movies; Mad Max, The Matrix and The LEGO Movie among them. He runs Movie World, and launched 2DAYFM.

He, as Village Roadshow, is also one of Australia’s biggest political donors. Since 1998, they’ve given close to AU$4 million to both the ALP and the LNP as they campaign for new piracy legislation, and personally lobbied politicians.

It appears to have worked. On September 1st a new code of practice will come into effect around Australia, meaning that if you get caught multiple times torrenting, your contact details will be handed over to copyright holders like this guy. 

Are you prepared to sue people for piracy?

Yes, it’s wrong. [They have] been warned, notices issued, that they have been doing the wrong thing. Yes we will sue people.

Are you concerned about the blowback? Because back In the 90s when the record industry started sending out invoices and lawsuits to single parents and grandmothers there was a storm of terrible publicity. Are you prepared for that?

It was really just a couple of instances of a bad news day, where they picked up a couple of instances of a single pregnant mother…

But all it’s going to take it a couple of those and it’s a really bad company story.

Not if its seen in the context that it is theft, and they have been doing the wrong thing, and they’ve been sent appropriate notices, and they’ve been dealt with accordingly. We’re certainly not going to be seeking out single pregnant mothers.

Do you have a list of people who are considered appropriate?

Well the criteria will be a person who is pirating movies.  We won’t necessarily know who they are, but if they’re pirating movies on a fairly large scale they’re clearly doing the wrong thing. It’s no different to the highways of Australia where we are pretty damn safe because drunken driving and high speed driving is kept somewhat under control. If there were no laws, if there were no regulations, we wouldn’t be safe out there. And if piracy isn’t addressed, there won’t be a Casablanca, there won’t be a Red Dog, and there won’t be a Gallipoli. There won’t be the business model that allows them to be made.

In the past year there’s been a large take up of Australians getting systems like VPNs (virtual private networks), and it largely took off because people wanted to access Netflix in the United States. I have a concern that with the rise of site blocking and this new code that it’s only going to shift more and more people to that environment. If more Australians are going in to the dark web, how do you go about dealing with that?

That’s why we’re going to put a big emphasis on getting people to do the right thing. I think if people are appealed to in the right way, they’ll react appropriately.

Korea was the country that got the worst epidemic of piracy first. Why? Because they were the first country with high speed internet. It got so bad in Korea that the entire home entertainment industry shut down. Everybody lost their jobs, it closed. It got so bad that the communications industry and the government worked together to address it, and a large part of what they did was a big campaign of be a good downloader, do the right thing. And the Korean results in combating piracy have been very impressive.

As part of that there are things that the content industry are going to have to do as well, and one of the other complaints is the amount of time it takes for Australians to get particular kinds of content. You’re in the movie business so we’ll focus on that: you released The Lego Movie, which was made here, but Australians had to wait months and months so you could align the release date around school holidays. And on the back of that you said Village Roadshow wasn’t going to do that again, but we are still waiting for certain kinds of content.

It’s a film that would have no audience if it wasn’t released in school holidays; if you released it in February nobody would go. So you wait until Easter.

In that gap when it was opened in the States and you knew you had to hold off until school holidays to release it, you must have known it was being downloaded in that gap. What was going through your head at that point?

I think The Lego Movie, as it turned out, it was much more than a kids movie. It was just a damn good movie. In retrospect, if we did it again, we would have gone day and date [release]. We didn’t realise how big a movie it was.

You also put on a screening of that film in parliament and it formed quite a key part of how you were lobbying the government. I want to talk about how politics works for you. Because famously Village Roadshow has given somewhere in the vicinity of $4 million.

Over the last ten or fifteen years, but yes, we are contributors. I think companies have a responsibility to their shareholders, they have a responsibility to their staff to provide them with security. And we also have a responsibility to be good citizens Part of that is contributing to charities and political parties to ensure vigorous and good government.

What does it get you? From an outside standpoint I have no idea how the conversation goes between, ‘we’ll give X amount to a political party’… does that give you buy-in when you want to call George Brandis?

I don’t believe it does.

You don’t think giving money to political parties means that they pay attention when they say; Graham Burke from Village Roadshow says he wants to have coffee?

I’d hope I’d get a coffee as a fairly significant employer of people in Australia. But not much beyond that, if the case is not good and strong and proper.

At the very least a choc-top.  You’ve been the most influential public person in the campaign against piracy. When you’re going to talk to Steven Conroy or George Brandis or Malcolm Turnbull, how do you pitch?

Piracy is theft and if it’s not addressed there’ll be a whole lot of Australian people out of work, both in terms of the production sector, the distribution sector and the cinema sector. It’s wrong and there are laws in 34 European companies to site-block [sites that enable piracy such as The Pirate Bay] and it’s been very effective. That’s how I pitched it.

If someone was sitting in front of you who had uploaded a torrent, what would you like to say to them?

I’d say; are you aware that what you’re doing is theft? Are you aware that ultimately the final extension of it is that there’ll be a lot of people who lose their jobs, and the richness of the community will be impacted? Because films and TV series won’t get made; there won’t be a business model to get them made.

Increasingly one of the other film companies, E1 Entertainment, has been releasing films directly on to digital platforms. They did it with The Mule, and Infini. Is that something that you would like to replicate in time?

No. For significant feature films there’s got to be some window so that the revenue can be earned in the theatres before it goes to the home entertainment window, at which point you’re tapping a lower cost audience.

If you weren’t also in the theatre business do you think you’d still feel that way?

Totally. The cinema experience, firstly, is a significant part of the revenue chain, but secondly it sets up the respect, the image of the film, for people to want to rent, buy and own it. Cinema puts the film on the stage.

Can you imagine a time where this beautiful palace to cinema doesn’t exist anymore? When films are just going straight to people’s houses and that people have elaborate home cinemas?

People will always want to go out. I have DVDs at home of movies, and I leave them lying there go and see them in the cinema.

When you own a cinema it’s a lot easier.

For me it was a pretty exciting experience when video first came out. My daughters would be looking at videos at home – because we had them when other people didn’t – and then on Sunday they’d say, Dad we’re going down to Doncaster to go to the movies. And the movie they were going to see was one that they’d looked at on Friday night on video. People will want to go out, full stop.

Just lastly before I leave you: are you more of a popcorn person or a choc top person?

Neither. I’m a water person.