Funding funniness is a grim business
Funny business, it
turns out, isn’t especially funny.
Jemaine Clement has cast a reddened eye at the state of New Zealand television comedy – which you can’t help but notice is a topic that tends to make many of our funniest creative types weep fat tears of frustration, quite apart from the grumblings of a public showing serious signs of comedic malnourishment.
Clement does have real insiderand-outsider status. He and Bret McKenzie, as Flight of the Conchords, a celebrated and inventive live act, failed to attract TV support so went overseas to make their hit TV series. And now, Clemens and Oscarnominated writer-director Taika Waititi have taken another project that failed to engender domestic support, a series of mini-movies, to the US HBO network where it will come to pass with the backing of one of Hollywood’s biggest comedy hitmakers, Judd Apatow.
Meanwhile another project, spinning off from Waititi and Clemens’ successful movie, the vampire mockumentary What We Do In The Shadows, based on the exploits of two police officers who featured in not-so-major roles in the film, has been the subject of talks with TVNZ. But Clemens rather dryly says of the pitch: ‘‘We’ve already been told, before we even handed it in, that there’s no money for comedy and that TVNZ tried to make a comedy about a real estate agent and it didn’t go very well.’’
The comedic chops of Waititi, Clemens and McKenzie have been proven internationally and – more importantly, in this context – locally. And you could look at some of the projects that have been instead been funded, like Golden and Sunny Skies, and either heave heavy sighs or take up flaming torches to march upon the networks and New Zealand on Air.
To be fair, Clemens’ depiction of a comedic wasteland is too blinkered. May we cite BroTown, The Jaquie Brown Diaries, Hounds and (whenever it wanted to be funny, which was often) Outrageous Fortune. Not a long list, admittedly, but it’s hard to argue that the funders have completely failed to come up with the goods.
The fact remains it’s always been a galling, frustrating process making satires and sitcoms hereabouts. Back in the day McPhail and Gadsby, who enjoyed an enviably long heyday, had many a bitter tale of dealing with the funders of funniness. So, for that matter, did a key figure in our first real sitcom, 1974’s Buck House. One John Clarke. If we’d looked after that guy a bit better, our domestic TV history for the next four decades might have been a wee bit more memorable than it is.