Funny As: The Story Of New Zealand Comedy

Funny As: The Story Of New Zealand Comedy

A five-part series that opens the archives of New Zealand entertainment to explore how we have used comedy to navigate decades of profound cultural change.

Premieres Sunday 21 July, 2019 on TVNZ 1.

Funny As: The Story of New Zealand Comedy

Paul Horan and Philip Matthews. With a foreword by Michele A’Court

From the Kiwi Concert Party to The Topp Twins, Billy T. James to Rose Matafeo, Fred Dagg to Flight of the Conchords, New Zealanders have made each other laugh in ways distinctive to these islands.

Funny As tells the story of comedy in this country through more than 300 pictures and an engaging text based on over 100 interviews with our best comedians. Published alongside a major TVNZ 1 documentary series at a time when comedy has never been bigger, the book takes us inside the comedy clubs, cabarets and television studios where comedians work;
it charts the rise of cartoons and skits, parody and stand-up;
it introduces us to how New Zealand’s funniest men and women have made sense (and nonsense) out of this country’s changing culture and society.

Funny As is the authoritative, hilarious story of New Zealand comedy.

[url=*View sample pages of Funny As: The Story of New Zealand Comedy][/url]
(12.8 MB, PDF)

About the authors

Raised in Palmerston North, Paul Horan was a member of the late-80s comedy troupe Facial DBX which featured Jon Bridges and Jeremy Corbett. Paul went on to set up the Classic Comedy Club – New Zealand’s only venue dedicated solely to comedy – in 1998. Paul was also the co-founder of the New Zealand Comedy Festival (in 1992) and wrote for the television series Topp Twins III. Shifting to Australia in 2000, he was hired to set up the writer’s room for Rove. He has since become a senior producer and script consultant for shows such as Hamish and Andy’s Real Stories and The Mansion. He helped create The 7PM Project and most recently the ground-breaking comedy Problems for the ABC. Paul lives in Melbourne with his partner Greg;
he returns to New Zealand often.

Philip Matthews is a senior journalist, reviewer and editorial writer whose work has appeared in the NZ Listener, Metro, Sunday Star-Times, Landfall, The Press, The Wire, The Spinoff and a host of other publications during his 25 years in the business. For more than 10 years he was an award-winning film reviewer for the NZ Listener, with two stints as the magazine’s arts and books editor. He sporadically maintains a film blog and is more active than he would like to be on Twitter. He has never performed comedy and can barely remember jokes, but people tell him he’s funny. He lives in Christchurch with his wife and three daughters.

*Features exclusive variant covers

Funny As features four variant covers featuring some of the very best in the business;
Billy T James, Fred Dagg, The Topp Twins and Flight of the Conchords.



July 2019, 248 x 200 mm, 336 pages, 200+ colour and black and white images
Jacketed paperback with four variant dust jackets, ISBN 9781869409005, $49.99

New series Funny As celebrates New Zealand comedy
KERRY HARVEY
Jul 11 2019

Stock up on popcorn and allow Paul Horan to take you on a hilarious tour of some of New Zealand's most side-splitting moments.

Horan, a television producer and one-time comic himself, is the man behind Funny As: The Story Of New Zealand Comedy, a five-part series looking at the coming of age of New Zealand's comedy industry.

Not only are there interviews with comedy stars Ginette McDonald, Taika Waititi and David McPhail, it also has more than 300 film clips – many of them unseen – from TVNZ's archives and private collections.

"
New Zealand comedy has never been better,"
says Horan. "
We've got Taika (Waititi), Rose Matafeo kicking goals (internationally) so there has never been a better time to tell this story – to look at the past and figure out where this (success) came from."


Horan came up with the idea for the series about 18 months ago after the death of Australian-based Kiwi comedian John Clarke, better known to New Zealanders as Fred Dagg.

"
I was at his big memorial service and I thought a lot of the elders in New Zealand comedy, especially TV comedy, are getting on, so I think this is the time,"
he says.

Horan has been at the forefront of the local comedy scene for more than three decades. Starting out on the comedy circuit in Palmerston North, he was in a trio with Jeremy Corbett and Jon Bridges before moving to Auckland and setting up the Classic Comedy Club, New Zealand's only venue dedicated solely to comedy, in 1998.

He is also a co-founder of the NZ Comedy Festival, which has just wrapped up its 26th year.

"
The first time I ever did comedy on stage was in 1985 and I stopped performing fairly quickly because I've got really good taste,"
he laughs.

"
I kind of went, 'You are not very good but you could be a great producer'. It was at a time where no one was producing or fostering comedians and that was much more fun for me."


Horan has since worked with comedians on both sides of the Tasman, including Rove McManus and The Topp Twins, and been a producer and script consultant for Hamish And Andy's Real Stories and The Project in Australia.

For the past year, he has been back here, interviewing more than 100 local comedians for Funny As.

"
It's one of the biggest, most complex projects I've ever done. In almost 30 years in TV, this has been the biggest by far. We're editing it right now and it still makes me laugh so that's a good sign,"
he says.

"
We interviewed 113 people and I reckon I knew or have worked with about 70 of them so it was kind of a trip down my own memory lane as well. It was great."


For a long time, being a comedian was not considered a real job and few made a living by making others laugh. In the past decade or so, that has all changed. 7 Days is celebrating its 10th year on screen and comedians are everywhere from breakfast TV to newspaper columns.

However, today's comedians were preceded by people such as Billy T James, McPhail and Gadsby, and Ginette McDonald's Lynn of Tawa.

"
These people fought the battle to get us to where we are. There's a great clip of the mayor of Tawa complaining about Lynn Of Tawa saying that she forced down property prices in the area,"
Horan says, adding the doco was an eye opener for those who took part.

"
Many were finding themselves saying things for the first time because comedians don't analyse what they do a lot and there's not a comedic studies like there's a film studies. Very few of them planned to be a comedian. There's no training course for comedians. It's all on the job and a lot of them have never reflected on why they've ended up where they are."


However they did it, those pioneers paved the way for the likes of Matafeo, Waititi, Flight of the Conchords and Rhys Darby, who have taken Kiwi humour to the world.

"
I think what we've really unveiled with this documentary is the confidence to be ourselves and tell our own jokes,"
Horan says.

"
Slowly we've got better at not copying the overseas thing, instead concentrating on what we do well.

"
Rose is a good example of what couldn't come from anywhere but New Zealand and what the Conchords do is so hyper New Zealand. They're some of the most New Zealand people in the world but that's where their international success has come from."


Funny As: The Story Of New Zealand Comedy, TVNZ 1, starts Sunday July 21 at 8.30pm.

How we found the lost Flight of the Conchords tapes
Paul Horan | Guest writer


A SHOT FROM THE UNAIRED, REJECTED TVNZ PILOT FROM FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS.

It’s the rejection that fuelled a comedy legend: the failed TVNZ pilot from Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement. Paul Horan writes about his hunt for the footage for the NZ comedy documentary Funny As.

There have always been people in my line of business that are desperate for credibility. After their years of fretting, lobbying and rebranding, the tax department now calls me a media and performance professional. But I think working in comedy, a deeply unprofessional profession, you have be a bit proud of your shonky lineage and the dodgy showbiz people who used often dubious means to make unlikely (and occasionally marvellous) things happen.

I stay in touch with this lineage by staying superstitious. Performance people are prone to stupid beliefs and rituals and I am proudly one of them. I have a friend who makes a ceremony of buying a new pair of shoes when he starts a TV show and throws them out on the last day. Then there are theatre makers that always hand out a copy of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness at the initial rehearsal. “Here’s a peek into the pitch-black maw of human evil. Now let’s warm up those vocal chords!”

But when I began work on a documentary series about New Zealand comedy, I thought I needed something particular. Usually I put something on my phone and read it on the way to work every day. My little private ceremony before a day of other people’s problems. This time I settled on Hart Crane’s poem “My Grandmother’s Love Letters”. It’s got this great cautionary line that goes round in my head: “Over the greatness of such space / Steps must be gentle”.

I needed this sort of deft footwork when we started to track down one of our comedy’s great unicorns. A VHS cassette that barely no one had seen but everyone had opinions of. The tape was the TV pilot episode that Flight of the Conchords made in 2004. It was during that year they were becoming noticed internationally – they had recorded a series for BBC radio and had a development offer from the UK’s Channel Four.


A SHOT FROM THE UNAIRED TVNZ PILOT FROM FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS.

This was unparalleled for a New Zealand comedy act at the time. The Conchords could barely believe it themselves, so they took up TVNZ’s offer to develop a pilot thinking that overseas success seemed a bit improbable and the idea of being able to do something in Wellington was pretty cool.

So, they made a seven-minute teaser based on the comedy premise that their band had been part of every major phase in NZ music since the early 60s and this was them recalling their tumultuous past. They set about cutting themselves into real footage of the Howard Morrison Quartet in 1963 and as a glam rock band appearing on the NZBC talent quest show Studio One in the 70s. TVNZ turned it down on the basis it was too expensive and not really what they wanted for a mainstream slot. The Conchords were disappointed, but within the year they would record their One Night Stand special for HBO in the US. This would announce them as one of the most innovative comedy acts of the new millennium.

The success of the Conchords inspired the local comedy industry. To most it is a source of pride (and to a few, jealousy) but the pilot became mythologised, even weaponised. Comedians repeated this story, saying “TVNZ let them slip through their fingers!”, “They didn’t recognise how good they are! So they won’t be able to see how good I am!”

Then, after it was repeated in media a few times it became an article of faith.

So, when I started telling people I was looking for the pilot, everyone had an opinion. Over 15 years, the story had become even more fraught. “TVNZ has destroyed it and they probably won’t even let you talk about it,” said one industry figure. “The Conchords are so angry they won’t let you near it,” said a similarly respected figure. I nodded as they clutched their pearls. This is where gentle steps were needed.


THE FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS BEING INTERVIEWED AT BATS THEATRE.

What they claimed as fact I knew was probably crap but, when the truth is this hazy, these ideas can become genuine barriers to finding it. Similarly, a lot of people who told me that John Clarke (who created our greatest comedy character Fred Dagg) didn’t come to New Zealand much because he was scared of flying. He wasn’t a fan of air travel, but it was never paralysing. It was more a factor in saying no to the thousands of things he was asked to do here. The facts, as often happens, had an ordinary complexity rather than a shrill show biz simplicity.

I thought I would ask the Conchords themselves first and then figure how to get the tape later. So over five months, four schedule changes and negotiations right down to the day, the affable but extraordinarily busy Bret and Jemaine sat down at Bats Theatre in Wellington in May this year. We talked on camera for nearly three hours, then towards the end I ventured, “let’s talk about the pilot …”

Whether it was the benefit of hindsight or age – this volcanic anger they were meant to have – never materialised. Not getting the TVNZ series had transformed them and enabled them to focus on overseas and for that they are eternally grateful. So there you go, done and dusted. I casually asked if we could show the pilot.

The response? Yeah sure. Don’t know where it is. Try Paul Yates, the producer of the pilot?

When I related this to Paul, an old friend, on the phone, he was surprised but immediately swelled with pride. “It was really quite good!” But like so many conversations that I had during this project it ended with someone trailing off and saying, “What a shame it never…”

Then I asked, “Do you know where it is?”

The master was nowhere to be seen, but Paul said he would have a look in his garage when he got back from holidays.


JEMAINE (RIGHT) IN INTENTIONALLY BLURRY FOOTAGE THAT MIMICS THE HOWARD MORRISON QUARTET.

After digitisation, couriers going to the wrong place and several delays, it finally arrived at my office on pretty much the last day of our deadline. Our tired team, who had viewed hundreds of hours of comedy, all shuffled into the edit suite to watch it.

I don’t shriek with glee as much as I would like to in my life. But on this rainy Tuesday, we all did. It was hilarious;
a peek at an amazing act just coming into themselves. We looked at it knowing that the supposed drama and the raging agendas that had been lumped on it amounted to nothing.

That day, we were able to look at it for what it was – just a joyous piece of fun. So, I will write in the margins of Hart Crane’s poem, right next to the “gentle steps” bit, a note on ignoring showbiz gossip and that the truth often lies in a garage in the Hutt Valley. Not very subtle, but I am a history guy not a poetry guy.

The fourth episode of Funny As, with footage from the lost Flight of the Conchords pilot, airs August 11 on TVNZ1 at 8.30pm.

'Too Wellington' - Footage surfaces of Flight of the Conchords' rejected TVNZ pilot



Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement did alright for themselves despite the rejection, taking the show to America instead.
Source: Seven Sharp

Footage from Flight of the Conchords' 2004 pilot episode with TVNZ is now seeing the light of day for the first time.

The original project, commissioned by TVNZ, involved a nine-minute teaser called Folk the World - which Kiwi comedy-music duo Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement hoped to expand into a 90-minute special, had they been given funding and air time.

Sadly, they weren't successful with the pitch on home soil, being told they were "
a bit Wellington."

But they seemed to bounce back just fine - going on to sucessfully pitch the idea to American cable network HBO, where the show became an international hit.

The footage has now surfaced as comedy docu-series Funny As, The New Zealand Story of Comedy airs on TVNZ. The five-part series opens the archives of New Zealand entertainment to explore how we have used comedy to navigate decades of profound cultural change.

“A TV exec said Bret and I were a bit Wellington when they didn’t want to do our show,” Clement explained on the documentary. “And when our DVD came out in America it was the top-selling DVD. I took a screen grab of it, sent it to the studio executive in New Zealand saying, ‘A Bit Wellington?’”

Watch the full Seven Sharp story in the video above.

Jimny_Firestorm2 wrote:I can't wait to watch this :#excited#: , I keep checking the NZ On Screen site. I'm not sure if by pretty soon they mean today or the next few days or weeks, but they said to keep an eye on the site, so I'm doing what I've been told lol.

Jimny_Firestorm2 wrote:Do you know if Taika is gonna be on this too? I was assuming he would be, but I had a look at the at the cast list on the NZ On Screen site and I couldn't see his name.

Jimny_Firestorm2 wrote:Yay! The extended interview is on NZ On Screen now, and it's longer than I expected. I'm so happy right now .