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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781741154467 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Allen & Unwin |
| Publication date: | 05/01/2005 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 328 |
| File size: | 6 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Master of the Ceremonies
An Eventful Life
By Ric Birch
Allen & Unwin
Copyright © 2004 Ric BirchAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-74115-446-7
CHAPTER 1
A ceremonial virgin
It was November 2000. For the previous five years I'd been living in Sydney, and when the 747 landed in Los Angeles I felt like a deep-sea diver who hadn't expected to see the surface again. Drowning men are meant to see their lives flash before them, and I knew what was going through their minds.
It had been a big year — my wife of thirteen years and I had divorced, a business partner was never able to satisfactorily explain where several hundred thousand dollars of mine had gone, an ex-lover had also gone and cost me several thousand more, I'd had an angioplasty operation for a blocked artery, and, oh yes, I'd been the director of ceremonies, responsible for the opening and closing ceremonies of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. Of the events of that year, the ceremonies were the easiest to handle — at least I knew what I was doing.
I hadn't ever planned to become a 'Master of Ceremonies', as the Australian media dubbed me. Actually, I hadn't even known what to do after leaving school. I was born in 1945 in Sydney and learned to walk and swim at more or less the same time on the northern beach of Collaroy where we lived. My dad was in the Royal Australian Air Force, which meant we moved every few years, and so from an early age I became used to changing suburbs, cities and even countries. This turned out to be good practice for a life in television and event production. No one in my family had shown any signs of wanting to be a producer, although several generations on my mother's side have included amateur painters, writers and musicians. The men of the family tended towards the law, farming and the Armed Forces.
So, when I left school and started an Arts/Law course at Melbourne University in 1962, it was to be expected that I'd be a lawyer one day. Fortunately, a life-long attraction to blondes led me down a different career path. Only a few weeks after attending my first lecture, I spotted a blonde woman studying a notice board that called for volunteers to appear in, or work backstage on, the Arts Revue. I followed her through the stage door and promptly fell in love — with theatre. In a very short time I knew that backstage was where I belonged, and over the next three years I had a great education in theatrical production and learned a little about blondes as well. My law studies were less noteworthy, so both the faculty and I were delighted when I applied successfully for a job as a studiohand at the ABC television studios in Melbourne. Before long I had been promoted to floor manager, which meant wearing a tie to work sometimes.
One day Sir Robert Menzies, the double-breasted British-to-his -bootheels prime minister of the day, came to the Ripponlea studios to record a message about Australia's impending conversion to decimal currency. Sir Robert was an imposing figure, from his oversized eyebrows to his vast worsted suit, and I was a nineteen -year-old floor manager. Muttering that the coinage should never have been called 'the dollar' (he had favoured 'the Royal' as the name of the new Australian currency), Sir Robert settled himself into a chair on the set. Moments later he stood up and asked for something more comfortable. 'The chair is the most important part of a television performance,' he gravely told me as we waited for a new chair to arrive. Sir Robert clearly valued his bottom above any television interviewer — an insight into political priorities that has stood me in good stead over the years since.
I enjoyed television even more than theatre because I received a salary for doing my job, when I would have happily worked for free as I had done at the Union Theatre. After a year at ABV-2, I was selected for a director's training course and soon I had moved to Sydney, directing Four Corners and This Day Tonight, before starting a sawn-off rock 'n' roll show called GTK. In its own small way, it was a precursor to MTV, and I was very proud of it. Many years later the Australian rock historian Glenn A. Baker asked me to write liner notes for a compilation album he'd put together of performances from GTK. I wrote:
I don't try to tell my kids what it was like in the sixties. The photos show the heels and the flares, long hair and paisley shirts, beautiful people and long lost friends. But there's nothing that tells what it felt like to be trusted with a national television program at a time when I wasn't meant to trust anyone over thirty. ABC's Director of Television in those days was Ken Watts — one of the great unsung heroes of the ABC's Golden Age — who told me he wanted teenage viewers at 6.30 p.m. And that was it. No marketing studies, no demographics, no committees. So I got on with it and the result was GTK.
I'm still very grateful to the ABC for giving me and other young film and television people such amazing freedom to express ourselves. It has changed our lives — those of us who were directly involved in the production as well as some of those who were watching. It sounds pretentious to claim a philosophy for GTK — but in the late sixties we really believed that music was going to change things for the better and not just for the bankers.
GTK taught me all the things I didn't learn at kindergarten and remains one of the best times of my life. But I couldn't remain a twenty-something teenager forever, so I left the ABC and spent several years working as a freelance director in commercial television. In 1978 I returned to the ABC on contract to produce several variety series with Marcia Hines, Debbie Byrne and John Farnham and found the same cameramen and sound recordists still there. The ABC was a great place to work in those days, and I often wonder what would have happened if I'd stayed on as a television producer. I don't think I would ever have ended up as director of ceremonies for the Sydney 2000 Olympics.
Sitting on the tarmac in Los Angeles in November 2000, I seemed to have come full circle. Eighteen years earlier I'd produced and directed the opening and closing ceremonies for the Commonwealth Games in Brisbane — my first major international event. And then, as now, I'd moved back to Los Angeles to live and work.
People with less eventful lives occasionally ask if I have any regrets about mine, and generally I don't. Back in 1981 when my career as a television producer and director took a new turn, I certainly didn't regret it. At the time, I was in pre-production for an airshow that was to be televised live in celebration of the Diamond Jubilee of the Royal Australian Air Force. I'd been up in Malaysia for a week, risking my life at the bar in the Officers' Mess with Jeffrey Watson (now much better known as a bon vivant and frequent flyer on Channel Nine's Getaway) while we shot some video inserts for the program, and had then caught an RAAF Hercules cargo flight for the very long haul back home to Sydney.
To my surprise, on landing at RAAF Richmond, a sleek Commonwealth car was waiting for me, while Jeffrey and the crew had to catch the ABC minibus. It turned out that they were being taken home, while I was being taken to Sydney's domestic airport. Shagged out after the long flight and in need of a shower, I arrived at the terminal to find my boss, Alan Bateman, waiting with a first -class ticket to Brisbane and a smile like the Cheshire Cat. He'd arranged for us to present an outline for the opening and closing ceremonies to the Brisbane Commonwealth Games Foundation, but assured me that he'd do all the talking. He just wanted me for backup. While I'd been selflessly facing danger from unlabelled wine bottles in the Officers' Mess in Malaysia, back in Sydney Alan had gathered together a few of the ABC's finest minds to come up with suggestions for the ceremonies. They too had been exposed to some dangerous wine (Bateman is notoriously parsimonious with expenses) and had thought of several ideas of which Alan could only remember a flag on the field and a 3D version of Matilda the kangaroo, the Commonwealth Games mascot. Now we had a little less than sixty minutes' flying time to come up with a presentation. Sleepily, I asked for a piece of paper so that I could work out roughly how many performers would be needed to form a human rectangle containing a hollow circle about fifty metres in diameter. Alan whipped out a calculator the size of a credit card and we played schoolboy geometry for a while. It seemed that about 7000 schoolkids would do it.
By the time we landed in Brisbane I was asleep, but after showering at the ABC and changing into a suit from the wardrobe department, I was ready for the presentation. Alan told me that four different production companies had been invited to bid for the ceremonies, including the ABC. This was a very unusual situation because we were never in open competition with the other networks, let alone the independent production houses. In those days the ABC was regarded as the last bastion of gentlemanly amateurism, so I was a little overawed at the thought of competing against hardened professionals from the — gasp! — commercial networks and I was still more than a little jetlagged. Fortunately, Alan was at his best when competing, so he pushed me into the boardroom and away we went.
Alan thanked the Foundation for the opportunity. He explained that the ABC was the natural home for national events, and that we had spared no effort in gathering the ABC's full resources for an opening and closing ceremony that all Australians would proudly embrace. He then kicked me in the leg to ensure I was awake and declared, 'Ric will be producing the ceremonies, so he'll tell you what to expect.'
A boardroom table of faces turned to me as I rubbed my shin, trying to remember what we'd talked about on the plane. Playing for time, I outlined something that sounded extraordinary, while Alan confirmed that we had done all our planning on a computer — a very exotic piece of equipment in 1981. He told me later that a pocket calculator was a computer, and I guess it is. When I reached the part about presenting dancers from those nations that had big migrant populations in Australia, I got the attention of the Chairman. He was a Supreme Court judge, whose international travel schedule to jurist conventions was found later to coincide uncannily with the world's great horse races. As I described how a group of Australian Aboriginal dancers would introduce the segment and then invite dancers from many lands to join them in the centre of the field, the chairman interrupted with a merry twinkle in his eyes. 'Tell you what, Ric, all you'd have to do is chuck a bottle of sherry into the middle and watch those black buggers dance!' He roared laughing, while the others around the table chuckled. Alan, ever the diplomat, turned to the woman taking notes and said quietly, 'Strike those comments from the minutes.' I think the chairman was surprised.
It was my first experience with one of Queensland's 'colourful characters' and I never got used to them. Eventually a Royal Commission uncovered just how colourful some of the characters in the Queensland Government were and put them in jail. The chairman wasn't one of them.
Having presented the proposal to the board, Alan and I flew back to Sydney and expected to hear from the Foundation within a month or two. In fact, it was almost nine months before a decision was made. Meanwhile I had an airshow to produce, as well as the 1981 Australian Film Awards, a Rolf Harris special and an Australian entry for the Pacific Song Contest.
The Rolf Harris special was an unexpected chance to work with one of my favourite Australian entertainers. I went to school in England and so I'd first seen Rolf on BBC television, where he appeared somewhere between Bill and Ben, the Flowerpot Men and University of the Air. He told stories that involved a squid which he drew on the back of his hand, and he could paint extraordinarily rapid cartoon-like images on white walls using only a large wallpaper brush and black paint. Over the years, Rolf's career bounced around like the kangaroos he sang about — sentimental favourites like 'Six White Boomers' and the little soldier boy who had room on his horse for two, and music hall numbers like 'Jake the Peg' and 'Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport'. Often derided as a 'professional Australian', Rolf should instead be venerated as one of our great entertainers who made life easier for the many who followed him. While rehearsing and taping his show at the ABC's Gore Hill studios one day we were talking about the differences between Australian and North American audiences. He told me about a concert he'd performed in Canada.
'Mate, there was standing room only and I'd laid 'em in the aisles. The show was huge and the applause went on for hours, so when I got back to the dressing room I was feeling pretty good. There was a fella waiting there for me, introduced himself as tram driver from Melbourne who'd watched the show. Said, "Ripper show, Rolf. Now I'll tell yer where youse went wrong."'
I don't know what it is about Australians, but they're never too shy to come forward with suggestions — as they did regularly during the preparation period for the Sydney Olympics.
Soon after, I happened to be in Canada myself. I was responsible for the Australian entry in the 1981 Pacific Song Contest — a sort of Pacific Rim version of the Eurovision Song Contest dreamed up by Des Monaghan of New Zealand television. The inaugural contest had been held in Christchurch and now it was the Canadians' turn to host the event in Ottawa. A song contest is dreaded by producers because it means listening to hundreds, maybe thousands, of poorly recorded demonstration cassettes submitted by amateurs, in the hope of finding a gem. Of course, some professional writers also submit songs — usually the ones they couldn't sell to a record company. These days, the quality of 'demos' is much improved due to home recording studios and samplers, but that wasn't the case in 1981. I spent a few weeks listening to primary school kids clustered around a piano, singing of golden wattle, beaches, sunrises, and the rest of nature's bounty rich and rare; teenagers with romantic yearnings over three major guitar chords; and duets by well-meaning singers who should have known better. I assembled the top ten tunes from the thousands submitted, gathered a few musical judges to vote on them and we came up with a duet whose title I forgot long ago. A young New Zealander named Mark was teamed with a great Queensland singer named Brenda Kristen, and suddenly we had what sounded like a hit on our hands.
We flew to Ottawa at taxpayer expense, which at the ABC meant travelling the cheapest way possible. It took four connections and nearly two days to arrive, but once there we had a ball. To cut a long story short, Brenda and Mark did us proud and won the contest! We celebrated all night, and the next day Brenda and I flew back in economy class, she clutching the trophy, me nursing a hangover. In Vancouver, our plane developed an airconditioning fault and we had to wait at the ramp for the mechanics to fix it. We were stuck in our seats for four hours, during which time Brenda's carefully coiffed hair became limp and my headache got worse. We finally took off for Hawaii, where we changed planes for Sydney. We were almost into a third day of travel without rest by the time we landed and I was regretting that I'd asked Alan Bateman to arrange a press conference at the airport for our arrival. I'd also forgotten to tell Brenda about it, so when we stepped off the plane the photographers had difficulty deciding whether to photograph us or not. It's very hard to use a triumphant caption above a shot of people who look like rejects from The Osbournes. But the media has no mercy, so somewhere in the archives are photos of Brenda in sunglasses and a hat, looking like an angry homeless person holding a statuette, with me standing in the background looking even worse.
However, on the positive side, at last there was news from the Commonwealth Games Foundation. They had finally decided to accept the ABCTV proposal for the opening and closing ceremonies, which left me about nine months to produce the events. This was a mixed blessing. I couldn't remember my ideas for the show anymore, but I figured that they probably couldn't either. The ABC was highly confused to find that it had won a competition to produce the ceremonies and told me that I couldn't use any of its staff or resources. Apparently the ABC chiefs didn't realise that I was working for them at the time, because I was a contract producer rather than a staff member. They must have suspected that I planned to profit by using ABC resources for a project that was being financed by the Commonwealth Games Foundation to the tune of $750,000 — which the ABC considered was more than enough to produce the two ceremonies. Fortunately, Alan Bateman was able to make some arrangements that allowed me to work with ABC staff when necessary, but he couldn't provide a production office. So I was shown to a small brick garage with a room upstairs, across the road from the Gore Hill studios, that became the nerve centre for the Commonwealth Games Ceremonies Display Production Unit.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Master of the Ceremonies by Ric Birch. Copyright © 2004 Ric Birch. Excerpted by permission of Allen & Unwin.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Chapter One A ceremonial virgin,Chapter Two Magnets and maestros,
Chapter Three Beginner's luck,
Chapter Four The lanky yank,
Chapter Five California dreaming,
Chapter Six Pie in the sky,
Chapter Seven Spectak does Expo,
Chapter Eight Flaps over frocks,
Chapter Nine The happiest place on earth,
Chapter Ten Spectak goes east,
Chapter Eleven Tropical delights,
Chapter Twelve Capital Catalans,
Chapter Thirteen Another opening, another show,
Chapter Fourteen We go to a land Down Under,
Chapter Fifteen SOCOG gets serious,
Chapter Sixteen Teamwork, fun and games,
Chapter Seventeen More fun and games,
Chapter Eighteen Showtime,
Epilogue,