Dan Ilic - The Most Hated Man in Australia

 

The most dangerous thing I've ever done in my career is use a pun. Comedians, we hate puns. Puns are comedy punctuation. They're good for getting from one place to the next. They're kind of devoid of meaning. That's why we hate them so much. I don't know about America, but in Australia, we have very lax pun control laws. [audience chuckles] And our puns are usually handed down by our fathers. [audience laughter] And my dad's favorite pun is, you know, I tried to be a trapeze artist once, but I couldn't get the hang of it. [audience chuckles] It's doubly funny, because what you don't know about my dad is that my dad is quadriplegic. [audience laughter] 

 

So, when he sets it up, you know, it's, I tried to be a trapeze artist once. You can just see people go, “Oh, is that why you're in the wheelchair?” [audience laughter] But then, when he says, “But I couldn't get the hang of it, they just laugh out of sheer terror.” [audience laughter] It's amazing stuff to watch. That's what we call in show business an A grade pun. The reason why I'm telling you this is because wrong jokes and dark humor is how I've learned to deal with tragedy my entire life. Being facetious is a family trait. 

 

It was 2008, and I was not the well-established C grade celebrity that stands before you. [audience chuckles] I was putting together a fringe festival show at the Melbourne Fringe Festival. Now, fringe festivals are great places for comedians and artists to try out new work that might be not quite ready for everyone to see. But anytime you put on a fringe festival show, you put your heart, and your art, and your wallet on the line every time. We were a few days out from opening our show, and we hadn't sold a ticket. 

 

Now, my show was a musical comedy about a mine disaster in Northern Tasmania, [audience laughter] in a town called Beaconsfield. [audience chuckles] In April 2006, in Australia, the Beaconsfield mine disaster was the only state that existed. A mine collapse killing one man and trapping two men underground. But I was more interested in what was happening on the surface, above ground at Beaconsfield. It was like the town was about 50, but it grew to 500 overnight. Media and journalists started mining the local people for ratings gold. Every TV show, every radio station, every magazine and journalist, anyone with a public profile went to Beaconsfield to do their part for their careers, to be seen to be doing their part for the miners at the same time. It was really weird. 

 

One breakfast show had a musical concert in a park next to the mine. The very next day, the rival breakfast show held a very similar musical concert. Straight after, celebrity reporter Richard Carlton, he got an exclusive interview with the miners’ families. He actually had a heart attack and died in the middle of a press conference. One of our most famous TV presenters, David Koch, or Kochy, as we call him in Australia, jumped over the media barricades, and into the back of an ambulance to score an interview with one of the miners. It was really ridiculous. 

 

Watching at home, I was disgusted. I thought, this was crazy. A whole bunch of assholes are basically making reality TV out of this tragedy. I thought it was abhorrent, and I just thought, I need to write something about this. I need to write about this media exploitation of this disaster. So, I did. I thought it was like a Robin Hood affair, like, I thought, I was doing a good thing. Rob from the Rich, Give to the Poor. But for me, the pun came first. Beaconsfield, a musical in a flat minor. [audience laughter] [audience applause] 

 

Yeah, yeah. Thanks for your applause. Yeah, see, yeah. Yeah. See, not so bad. I know what you're thinking. Grade A pun. [audience chuckles] My dad loved it, so whatever. [audience laughter] So, I flew to Beaconsfield, I spent a week in the mine interviewing the locals, putting their stories in the show. And then, fast forward six months, we're three days out from opening night. Me and the Director Luke were standing on the stage, and we hadn't sold a ticket. Theatre is a strong word. It was like the living room of a 200-year-old terrace in South Melbourne, and standing on that stage looking at 30 empty seats, it might as well have been 3,000. [chuckles] 

 

I tried everything. I emailed every media outlet in Melbourne, tried to get them to write a story about the show. But no one in Melbourne wanted touch it. I was just at my end. I'd flown people from all over Australia to be part of this. I had a great director, and a great musical director. People from Sydney and Melbourne were all part of it. I was just thinking, ah, there must be something I could do. And I thought, well, I have one last idea. So, I emailed the Launceston Examiner, the local paper in Beaconsfield. I thought, I don't know, maybe someone will read about it in Launceston, and then pop over to Melbourne for the weekend, and check out the play. Maybe, I don't know. 

 

A couple hours later, my phone rang and it was a reporter from the Launceston Examiner. She was very serious, nonplussed, very professional. She wanted to know all about the show, and she asked if I had time. Standing on that empty stage in Melbourne, I suddenly had plenty of time in my schedule to talk to anyone about it. I was so excited to talk to her about all these jokes I'd written. I was having a great time. I was telling her about how Macquarie bank ran the mine at a loss, and how we wrote this song about Richard Carlton's death called The Carlton Cardiac. It was about the print media's jealousy of Richard Carlton, and how that was really funny. We said it was an arresting tune.

 

It was really exciting. I was laughing and having a great time. She wasn't laughing. [chuckles] She said, “Are you going to bring it to Beaconsfield?” And I said, “Yeah, of course.” I lied. I wasn't going to. [chuckles] She hung up and I went to bed. I woke up at about 11 o'clock that night. My friend Chris was calling me, “Dan, just letting you know I was just listening Tony Delroy's What the Papers Say. You're going to be on the front page of The Age tomorrow.” Oh, my God. The Age, the most important and prestigious newspaper in Australia, according to people that live in Melbourne. [audience laughter] Wow. 

 

I went to bed. The first phone call the next day was at 6 o’clock in the morning. It was Matt and Jo from Fox FM. They're your standard Fox FM breakfast crew. “Whoa. Tell us about your show. What's it like? Whoa. Good luck. Zing Boing.” [audience laughter] The next phone call was from Neil Mitchell on 3AW. He's a shock jock. He just yelled at me for five minutes straight, “You're the worst person in the world. How dare you? Would you write a musical about Hitler?” And I said, “Well, Mel Brooks has already done that.” “I'm not here to encourage your jokes.” [audience chuckles] And I was like, “Well, what are you here for? I don't really know [chuckles] what's going on.” 

 

So, for about five minutes straight, it was the most abusive phone call I ever had. It was insane, and about a million people were listening. Then, for the next two hours, 20 more phone calls from journalists and radio people all over Australia just calling me up to tell me what an asshole I was. My email inbox was filling up as well, with lots of emails from people telling me what a jerk I was, and just random death threats, and stuff like that. There was one email that stood out, though. It was from Senator Guy Barnett. And the subject just said, “Call me.” I was like, “Oh, wow, this is important.”

 

Now, the senator could either be one or two things. He could be just a massive fan of my sketch comedy work, and wanted me to emcee his [audience laughter] Liberal Party fundraiser. I assume a free chopper would be included in that. [audience laughter] Or, he was really excited that someone was talking about the media hypocrisy of that story. When I called him up, you would be surprised to figure out that it was neither. He was frothing over with rage. He said, “If you come to Beaconsfield, you'll be hung, drawn, quartered, and dragged through the streets from the back of a ute.” [audience laughter] I don't know if that's still Liberal Party policy. [audience laughter] I think they just take your citizenship now. [audience laughter] I think it's a lot easier. 

 

I was like, “Wow, incredible.” TV were calling, too. So, I had to call a press conference. I texted the cast and said, “Meet me at theatre half an hour before for the press conference.” When I got to theatre, there were two groups outside theatre. One, the cast who couldn't get inside the theatre, because two, there was 30 journalists blocking the entrance. I don't know who I was scared of most, the cast or the journalists. So, the lights went on, the cameras started rolling, the mics got shoved in my face. At that point, I thought, oh, my goodness, if all of you had just bought a ticket, we wouldn't be in this problem. [audience laughter] 

 

They started firing questions at me, “Why did you call the song The Carlton Cardiac? Isn't that offensive to the family?” I was like, “Well, I'm just stating his facts. His name was Richard Carlton. He had a Cardiac.” “Surely, Beaconsfield, a musical in a flat minor, is a little bit bad taste?” And I said, “Do you have any idea how hard it is to write a musical in a flat minor? It's very difficult.” [audience laughter] “Why haven't you changed the name of the musical?” “Because Beaconsfield, a rock opera, would just set expectations far too high.” [audience laughter] “What next? September 11th the sitcom?” “I'll think about it. But you know.” [audience laughter] 

 

it was incredible. I thought I was killing it. I was like, “Coming back with jokes, you know, really dark jokes.” Because that's what I've always done, as a kid, and growing up. But that night, we went back to watch ourselves on TV. It was pretty much impossible to not watch ourselves on TV. We were on every single channel that night. And I was far from killing it. I was nervous, I was a wreck, I was really defensive. I was looking at me going, “I hate this guy.” [audience chuckles] I was the most hated man in Australia that day. I had written a musical about media hysteria that was causing media hysteria. [audience laughter] In every question I asked, I just dug myself into a bigger hole. 

 

The rest of the day was really hard. I was emotionally and physically drained. It was exhausting. I was really nervous about everything. Suddenly, our little play had a lot more attention on it than we ever dreamed of it or we ever wanted to. We just needed to sell out [chuckles] a few shows. 30 seats. That night, I got drunk and went to bed, and just prayed, “It would all blow over.” But I woke up to amazing text messages and emails and messages from my friends supporting me saying, “Keep your head up. It's great.” One voicemail message from my brother, who at the time was a major in the Army. He had 200 people under his command, and he said, “Oh, Dan, I'm just letting you know that I've spoken to a few of the boys, and they're quite happy to go around tonight if there's any problems.” [audience laughter] The Australian army was going to be deployed to protect my 30-seat theatre? [audience laughter] Fantastic. I politely declined. [chuckles] 

 

And then, later that morning, there was one more phone call. I just picked it up and answered. “Hello Dan. It's James Carlton here.” James Carlton is a broadcaster, a journalist, works at Radio National here in Australia. But he's also the son of the late Richard Carlton, the 60 Minutes reporter who had died. “Dan, I just want you to know, while the world is angry with you, I want you to know that no one ever spoke to us. The family's not angry with you, I'm not angry with you. And this kind of hypocrisy that you're pricking with your art is just the kind of thing dad would love.” [audience laughter] [audience applause] 

 

And I can't explain how that phone call made me feel. It was just magical. For the first time in about 48 hours, I felt just okay. We opened the show, we sold out the run, the reviews were absolutely extraordinary. The best I've ever had in my [chuckles] career so far. I changed the name of the musical. I changed it to Beaconsfield the Musical. Because puns are devoid of meaning, and they're just comedy punctuation. Standing outside theatre on closing night, drinking a beer where just four days before I'd been in the wrath of the Australian media, I was facing down a current affairs camera running down the street. [audience laughter] I thought I would never use my jokes to hurt people again, unless they truly deserved it. [audience laughter] Thank you.