True flat wars turned into TV
Hamish and Andy have scoured Australia and New Zealand for the best true stories you’ve never heard - including one Dunedin student flat horror story, Jack van Beynen writes.
Andy Lee has always loved stories. Talking to people and hearing their tales has been at the heart of all the projects undertaken by Lee and his comedy partner Hamish Blake, from TV show Gap Year, to their numerous radio shows to that spot on Rove years back.
‘‘For Hamish and myself, we always think that we’re not that funny, but the people we have on are. It’s that third element that gets the best out of us,’’ Lee says.
‘‘We just love hearing people’s stories or their participation in conversation.’’
That love for stories was the genesis for Blake and Lee’s latest television project: True Story with Hamish& Andy.
The show’s premise is pretty simple. Each episode, an everyday Australian – or in one episode, an everyday Kiwi – tells Lee and Blake a true story.
It needs to be a good story; the kind that is trotted out at dinner parties or entered into family legend. They are often outrageous and always funny.
Lee and Blake haven’t heard the story before it’s told on camera, and their reactions and the questions they ask are an important part of the show. Lee says True Story is as much about story listening as storytelling.
‘‘When you’re at the pub with your friends and they’re telling you a story, the opportunity to call bulls-- on a moment, or throw a question at them about other aspects of the story, makes it a very different type of storytelling, rather than a single storyteller telling it exactly how they want to, like a lecture. This way you get agitated by a conversation,’’ Lee says.
‘‘That whole concept is that same thing, if we’ve got someone who’s a bit big for their boots, it’s Hamish and my job to challenge them if we think that something is not true, which has been a lot of fun in making the show.’’
The stories are re-enacted by actors, and the show cuts between the storyteller speaking to Hamish and Andy and the reenactments.
Tracking down a bunch of cracking yarns was a long process, though Lee and Blake SUPPLIED had to be shielded from it to prevent them hearing the stories ahead of filming.
They took submissions through social media and put out the call through their radio show and podcast. But the show also had a research team of eight people who cold-called towns around Australia, speaking to the places like the pub, the dairy and the post office in the hope of digging up gold.
‘‘We had a couple of hidden gems from that approach, and what I like about those ones is these are people who definitely didn’t expect to be on television.
‘‘These days with reality TV everyone’s so aware of the types of people who put themselves on TV, and it was really exciting to have people on the telly that really didn’t expect to be there. It’s probably more real than reality TV because you’re seeing real people that are happy to share quite embarrassing stories.’’
Of course, the team heard many more stories than the show had time to tell. Some were cut for SUPPLIED practical reasons. One New Zealand yarn, Lee says, was a cracker, but True Story‘ s budget wouldn’t stretch to allow for the live elephant its re-enactment would have required.
So what made a story good for True Story?
‘‘I think often somebody finds themselves in a situation where the odds of them getting out of it unscathed are high - so it’s either a triumph against the odds or a complete failure. And whether that’s the search for love or something that’s more deathdefying, it seems to be the case that you feel the excitement when there’s those stakes,’’ Lee says.
There was one Kiwi story in the mix for True Story, and it may be the best of the bunch. Without giving too much away, it’s the tale of an out-of-control prank war in a grungy Dunedin flat.
Although the re-enactment was filmed in Australia, Kiwi actors were flown over to make the re-enactment as authentic as possible.
‘‘We wanted to have it authentic. That’s the thing about this show, people tell their stories, you get lost in the world, and you don’t want to break that,’’ Lee says.
In the Dunedin tale, the storyteller - a guy called Sam - is played by Snapchat legend and Shortland Street star Tom Sainsbury.
‘‘He puts in an amazing performance.... He was asked to do some things that I don’t think he was particularly keen to do once he saw the full script, but he was brilliant.
‘‘A lot of [his performance] is great acting, but there was definitely a percentage of sheer repulsion,’’ Lee says. ● True Story with Hamish& Andy, Thursdays 8pm, Three