The President’s Desk out now

Shaun with my copy of the book

Finally, The President’s Desk is now available in all good, bad and indifferent bookshops.

Did you know that Woodrow Wilson was a Transvestite? FDR was killed on the orders of Churchill? Grover Cleveland almost married his own daughter? The White House was burned to the ground by Herbert Hoover? Bess Truman came from Outer Space?

Perhaps not, but if you like your history with a bit of spice, and a lot of humour, then this altered history of the American Presidency since the 1860’s, told through a piece of furniture – The Resolute Desk, is for you.

If not, look out of one of Shawn Micallef’s books, such as Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto.

 

Latest on “The President’s Desk”

Shaun and Francis at The Willy Lit FestDespite that fact that it won’t be available until October 6th, there’s been a bit more information recently on Shaun’s next book “The President’s Desk”. During a conversation last week, Shaun was kind enough to share some information about it with me, as well as appearing with Francis on stage at the Williamstown Literary Festival to delight the audience with a reading.

Shaun says it’s a book you can “dip-into”, with each chapter revolving around different American Presidents, with the desk being a central theme. He pointed out that just like people now days can watch a film in any order (with the power of time-shifted TV), so too can you read this book in any order. It’s a bit like a history book, with “some bits made up” to be more interesting.

A lot of the ideas in the book seem to have been hanging around for a while, with parts of the book having been “played out” with Kim Gyngell at the Festival 2 years ago, as well as some of it being published as part of Tony Martin’s former website.

Shaun prefers to only shop a book to publishers when it’s complete, for fear of promising something he later feels is a bit rubbish.

The real President’s Desk: The “Resolute” Desk

At the Willy Lit Fest, he read a part of the book pertaining to the last voyage of the HMS Resolute  (which later became the Resolute Desk, used by the President in the Oval Office) and the crew’s penchant for dugongs (or is that mermaids?). Francis countered with an excerpt from the chapter on Reagan, which seemed to be Shaun’s soapbox for how he felt about actors as people (ie. selling their whoredom)!

He didn’t have a copy of the finished book to show at the Fest (it’s being printed overseas), but he did produce a mini-replica, which was presented to the Hill family, who’d travelled from Newcastle to be in Williamstown!

The book also has a glossary of pro-nouns and a biography of Shawn Micallef (ie. the Canadian one who writes about architecture and spaces).

All in all, we can’t wait for October!

Sample content for Shaun’s next book?

Back in 2011, Shaun wrote a piece for Tony Martin’s website “The Scriveners’ Fancy” (no longer online) called The Resolute President. Move forward to recent times, and Shaun has hinted his next book is about the President’s Desk – one of which is called… The Resolute Desk.

Could this except from his original post on Tony’s website give us a hint of what’s to come….?

The President sat at his desk and ran his hands over the brilliantly polished timber. It had been only a month since he took office – and, in the rare moments he was alone, he still liked to revel in the newness of it all. He had managed to duck his security detail a couple of times to go off exploring, but as he was always on CCTV, they invariably found him after a few minutes. Even when he’d discovered that tunnel that Kennedy had used to smuggle in Marilyn Monroe, the Secret Servicemen had turned up in about forty seconds. The Oval Office was his favourite room, though, because LBJ had ordered all the wiring ripped out after Nixon. There were no cameras, no hidden microphones and, this morning at least, no people. He swivelled around on his chair to face the window and watch the peacocks in the Rose Garden. A gentle dawn filtered through the trees and chased away the last shadow of night, the distant drum of Washington’s waking traffic beating through the triple-glazing. A knock at the door broke his reverie and in walked Fellowes with a brisk ‘Good morning, Mr President.’…

New Book in 2014 – “The President’s Desk”?

Shaun joined Tom and Alex on Triple J Breakfast today, and was his usual irreverent self, discussing his award wins, his impressions and the non-sequitur discussions on his Vega breakfast show.

He also revealed he has been working on a book in his break from Mad As Hell, which he revealed as being titled “The President’s Desk” (although this could be a red-herring). We should expect to see it hit real and virtual bookshelves next year! Hooray!

Interview with Shaun on Mad As Hell

Shaun Micallef is such a funny, pleasant and gracious person – on his fiftieth birthday, and after finishing the filming of the penultimate episode of Mad As Hell, Shaun Micallef gave me some of his time to answer my (and your) barrage of strange questions.


Me: I wanted to start out to wish you a happy birthday – a few people in the audience knew it was your fiftieth.

Shaun: Thankyou.

It got mentioned in Who Do You Think You Are that you were coming up to that.

We did that about a year ago, in August (last year).

Do you have any plans on how you will celebrate your birthday? Obviously you’re working on Mad As Hell at the moment, but maybe anything on the weekend?

No, it’s not really something that if I even if I had the time I would actually set aside, I’m not a party person anyway. So, for me it’s just spending a bit of time with the kids, which we did, we saw the Three Stooges film on the weekend. And my wife and I will go and see Barry Humphries tomorrow, so we’ll celebrate it going and seeing things… being amused by other people.

Was The Three Stooges any good?

It was alright – it was fine.

It worries me a bit.

You can’t be snobby about the Three Stooges, it’s not like they ever had high art. It’s sort of a low rent approach to the jokes, the Farrelly’s didn’t high tech it. It doesn’t look like a Jim Carrey film, it looks like a Three Stooges film. It looks like 3, Three Stooges shorts tacked together, so there’s a certain ramshackle, shit quality about it, but it works.

It’s like maybe if someone did the 60’s Batman again (which got mentioned during the recording) today…

It might be a bit too self aware, that’s the trouble with irony. There’s no irony in this film, which is good.

Mad As Hell, how has it been working back to the ABC? The last time was of course Welcher and Welcher.

It was too. A very different show, although Welcher and Welcher was originally designed to be in front of a live audience, that’s why the sets look so cross-arched, they look very theatrical. It was my first time writing a sitcom, I didn’t write it properly. It was so complicated, there was no way it could have been shot in front of an audience. So we shot it like… I don’t know what it was like. It fell between the stools I think, it wasn’t quite farce, it wasn’t quite drama, and it wasn’t quite a sitcom. And because we didn’t have an audience, it played faster, so we often finished 3 minutes down on time. So I’d be off writing another scene, or if I couldn’t think of one, Francis and I would muck around, which we did a couple of times.

Is that how you ended up with the bin scenes and things like that?

Oh that was planned, but things like singing George Formby songs and Francis attacking me with a Frankenstein mask on, just a few bizzare endings were… and one show we book ended with as a memory because we were 5 minutes down.

So it was missing the pacing of the audience laughs?

Well it was too fast, because it wasn’t riding the audience response and relaxing – it was quite fast. But anyway, I must admit I haven’t watched it since it went to air, it’s been many years now. I’ll look at it again one day, I’ll learn how to do a sitcom and have another crack at it.

The title Mad As Hell, was that a spur of the moment thing when you began talking with the ABC, or was it something you’d planned to do?

It was originally called Newsnight, which oddly enough is the title of the show on Channel Ten. They’ve decided to use Newsnight, which is an old English show hosted by Jeremy Paxman. And the ABC said it’s a bit too straight, so Gary came up with Mad As Hell, which we thought was funny… Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell, so we suggested that, they liked it and we went with it. Originally it was just going to be called Mad As Hell, and Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell in the press materials, but it seems to have become… as much as I would prefer my name not to be part of the title… Myf Warhurst’s Nice, Judith Lucy’s Spiritual Journey… you put the comedians name up front – that’s the franchise.

Were you always keen to get the Newstopia writing team back together? I know you worked with a number of them on TAYG, but was that always something you wanted to bring back?

I had always wanted to do a bit more with Newstopia, I always thought that it had been cut short of where it was going to go. Indeed the next step of Newstopia was going to be a live audience, and opened up. But we couldn’t do it because of TAYG. I suppose we brought that approach of having a live audience, and… not softening the material, but making it a little more accessible. And one of the major differences between this and what we had in mind for Newstopia is that the material is a lot more domestic and obsessed with Australia. And we don’t tend to do that sort of “let’s make light of something serious and horrible” which is what we were doing on Newstopia, which you can do without an audience, quite easily without seeming cold and heartless. But if you do it in front of an audience, they’ll either shrink from it, or they’ll laugh and the folks at home will go “ooh that’s a bit… you can’t make jokes about that.” Some of those jokes we did on Newstopia….

.. there were a lot of things in warzones and …

that’s right, obviously being on SBS, we were obsessed with international news and on the ABC, we’re not as obsessed, which is good I think.

Do you think that focus has come about due to the change in station?

A little bit, that’s true. But also on the second episode we did a story about Syria, which would have been at home on Newstopia, and it just didn’t feel right. And there were a few jokes that were sort of a little harder, and we thought “we just don’t want to make that show, we want to make sure it doesn’t look like it’s insensitive.” So therefore, apart from a few of those, we call them TJs, those three jokes where we say coming later on it’s this, this and this, where we can deal with international issues very quickly without dwelling on it, we don’t tend to deal with international stories at all. It’s mainly… the obsession is the pettiness that is Australian news. Or occasionally, as we do with Sky News, just the way some Australian media reports things. Very rarely, because that’s the Hamster Wheel’s gig and we don’t want to go into their territory, or even Jonathon Holmes’ territory on Media Watch, so we don’t tend to do that much. But we’ve done that 3 times, and we seem to be whipping Sky News, which I quite enjoy.

The cast, you mentioned (to the audience during the taping) it was a concious thing to mix up the age range…

I didn’t want it to be an old show.

How did you come together? Obviously you’ve worked with Francis and Roz before.

That was the appeal, I would always do something with Francis, and it had been a while since I’d specifically worked one-on-one with him. Roz, I hadn’t really worked with since The Micallef P(r)ogram(me), and I scratch my head now thinking “gosh, she’s just so good, why wouldn’t I use her in everything?” The truth is, I enjoy collaborating with new people, and I think this show is bit of both. The certainty of Roz and Francis… just the pleasure of working with them. I’d seen Veronica on the Ben Elton show, Live From Planet Earth, and I thought she was fantastic in it. Quite coincidentally, Andrew Denton recommended her because he worked with her on Hungry Beast. And Veronica and I corresponded, and we auditioned, and I think she’s fantastic. Emily, Gary had worked with on Comedy Inc, when he was writing for Comedy Inc, and I thought she was great too. She was almost in Newstopia, we almost approached her to be in Newstopia, but I think was doing Comedy Inc at that time. So that was nice to work with her. And Tosh Greenslade, is actually… I think this is his first TV, in fact I’m absolutely sure of it. Francis worked with him in theatre, and recommended him, not just because of his name. And he’s great, I mean he’s really good.

It has been mentioned, “there’s nothing about him” and “where has he come front?” And you had to press release a few times that he’s not related to Francis.

It’s just an unusual name, and for it to turn up twice in a credit roll begs the question doesn’t it?

And this question got answered (in discussion with the audience), will there be another series of Mad As Hell – you’ve said yes, absolutely there will be.

From about mid-February on.

So next year. And you’re hoping (another) for the election later next year?

I hope so. I’m doing a drama, so we’ll see if that’s shooting or not.

More generally, something I have noticed with some of your work you do, I noticed it on TAYG, even with Tom and Alex (on Triple J), you’re very good at slowly unleashing the absurd-ism. On TAYG, you were a little bit straighter to start with, and slowly the Meercat came out, and the use of the Blue Juice music, and on Triple J it only took a 3 or 4 weeks before you were playing sound effects on tape decks. Is that a concious thing, or does it just happen that way?

Oh I think it happens, but it’s different though. On Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation, I was a hired gun to front someone else’s show. So the process was a bit slower, but once you’re in charge of the writing you can start to bend things. You could argue that the more absurd it got, the more alienating it got for certain members of the audience – maybe not, I don’t know. I think I just started to get comfortable with it. It’s not a concious thing. You can see it with the development of this show, it’s quite odd now. We’re back in the world that we always inhabit, we start bending the edges and playing with the transitions. The content is always there, make sure all that fun doesn’t overwhelm the content, it still has to mean something and be about something. It’s a particular song, with a particular bunch of lyrics, but the way we sing it is peculiar to us I think.

And when I’m guesting on things, like Tom and Alex or Gordon Street Tonight or whatever, the agreement is always “we’ll can I just have fun, can I do what I like?” And they’re like, “sure, do what you want”. Usually, but sometimes it doesn’t work out that way, like the Channel Ten breakfast show.

That was hilarious, because at the time that happened, I noticed it, blogged about it, and a few people watched it, and then 2 months later it hit the Internet and people were saying it happened the other day. But it happened in March or the end of February.

I think people assumed it coincided with when this show (Mad As Hell) went to air, and thought it was a plug for that show.

But Your Gen was still on?

Yeah, it was about TAYG. It hadn’t actually gone to air.

I’ve been reading your books, Preincarnate, The Moment, which I’m still not sure what to think, and your latest, Ahead of the Game. All of these had an element of time shifting in there, is that a subject that fascinates you?

Might be, yeah, I hadn’t really thought about that, but I guess that’s true. It’s all about perception, which is a particular thing I quite enjoy. It might be because my grandmother had Alzheimer’s, and over the course… I could see hunks of her memory disappear. So that might account for some of the stuff, that’s all happening in the mind. Time travel… maybe I just like time travel stories.

Do you plan to write any more fiction? I know you said Preincarnate was to be your only novella.

I’m writing another book at the moment, but it might be another year or so before I get time to finish it, but that will come out.


And while Shaun ran out of time on the night, he agreed to answer more questions by old fashioned email. So stay tuned over the next few weeks, as I add the interviews with Tosh (Greenslade), Stephen (Hall) and the part 2 of Shaun!

Short Shaun stories

Shaun, not usually known for being one who’s internet-focussed, has released some new writing in the form of an eBook.

Ahead of the Game is a new short story from Shaun, just released through Penguin Shorts. Caspar Jolley is a thrillseeker with a gift for always staying one step ahead. Doctor Evelyn Flowers is a woman of science – and sensuality. Brought together by an off-street speedboat-racing catastrophe, will they be able to overcome a bizarre and confounding injury?

Also, Smithereens has been made available in a shortened eBook form, appropriately titled A Selection of Smithereens.

All of these (plus some of Shaun’s older titles) can be bought through Amazon’s Kindle service (or any other eBook service). The Kindle app runs on PC, Mac, Android or iOS – so there’s no excuse not to get some Shaun to read!

The Book of Everything Ever

I forgot to mention that the Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation Book of Everything Ever is now available at all good book shops (or those still in business!). Got my copy the other day.

While Shaun’s photo (from Micallef Program days) is all over the cover, his only contribution is the forward. But it’s written by Michael Ward, who has worked as a writer on almost all of Shaun’s shows, so you’ll certainly recognise the humour – very enjoyable.

According to an old wifes’ tale, a girl who places a watermelon under her pillow will meet her future husband at the chiropractor.

On 18 April 1956, Prince Rainier of Monaco married actress Grace Kelly – but what sort of actress was she? a) A film actress, b) A stage actress, c) A television actress or d) an appalling actress

Australia is the largest producer  of Australian films in the world.

Work by the TAYG Writers

Along with Shaun, both Stephen Hall and Michael Ward have formed the core writing team for every episode so far of Talkin’ Bout Your Generation.

Stephen might well be remembered for his portrayal of Burt Newton in The King telemovie and Warren in The Hollomen. Both have appeared in roles in Shaun’s other shows.

Both Stephen and Michael are appearing in “Bond-A-Rama” – a re-enactment and celebration of every James Bond movie on stage. It’s on at Chapel off Chapel in Melbourne for a limited time during August.

Also, Michael has compiled the “Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation: Book of Everything Ever”. It contains over 1500 quiz questions, along with a number of dubious ‘facts’ and some re-creations of our favourite games from the show. It’s available from August.

You can read excerpts from the book on Tony Martin’s “Scriveners Fancy” website.

Shaun’s Moment

Shaun’s short story “The Moment” is now available to read as part of “Humanity: A Short Story Collection” which you can purchase and read on your Kindle or Kindle reader for PC. (It’s also available on Android, so I’m going to use my phone to read it). It’s more of a serious offering from Shaun, following the path of his work like the Blackjack series.

What’s more is that “The Moment” is being adapted into a short film! You can try the interactive feature or watch the preview on the official website. My opinion – it looks eerie…