martyn coutts

Mad Max Remix
Bar Open
Melbourne International Comedy Festival

I have a special place in my heart for overdubbing film or tv. I am not exactly sure why – it is probably the irreverance of it. Some of my favourites are the D-Generation’s The Olden Days and Bargearse;

Oh so funny, still laughing now.

There’s nothing as postmodern as re-editing some existing footage into a new narrative and then doing your own voiceover. So how then does one go about remixing three of Australia’s most classic films into a new and funny audience experience?

With so much material it must have been hard to choose exactly what to go with in terms of story and characters. The main throughline of a young Max wanting to gain entry to Madame (Tina) Turners Dance Academy was hilarious and the cutaway to Max’s (day)dream of being a policeman in a tv show was clever and allowed a usage of a bunch of footage that would otherwise have not been available in the ‘A’ storyline. But in the end the choice of the ‘dance’ narrative was let down by there not being a large dance number at the end that could climax the story sufficiently. The hip hop dance sequence created out of Max getting up of the ground after having his leg broken was genius early on and this needed to be topped in order for the whole piece to make sense.

Apart from this problem, there were some very funny moments – some clever insights into dance, australian culture, masculinity and the three films as canon of aussie storytelling. I laughed hard at Eddie Sharp’s megaphone speaking ‘Drum and Bass Collective’ which had the right mix of coolness and hippy love. Any use of the term ‘chai yert’ gets my vote.

The voices in general were tight and spot on – most of the time I was following the screen, occasionally my eye would drift to the performers and I enjoyed this choice. The foley was amazing – there were times I forgot entirely that is was being soundtracked live and this is a total credit to the dudes who were carrying this out.