Frost/Nixon

Re-Interviewing History

One of the peculiar things about historic films is how they round in on people who existed and give them a new face. Inevitably the new faces are more charismatic than the originals, while certain facts get re-written for dramatic effect. It’s he nature of the beast.

I actually remember the original Frost Nixon interviews going to air in 1977 but I don’t recall the actual interviews. In any case, they were not significant moments of journalism that showed something new, but a significant moment in television where they managed to drag Nixon out from where he was living and thrust him into the limelight one more time. The problem with the film is that it accords it much more significance than the interviews actually had.

What’s Good About It

I like the period pictures that take a shot at the 1970s.  I guess it’s because I can remember them so well that I get more nostalgic than need be. I’m going to hate it when they start making nostalgic pieces about the 1980s or 1990s, but doubtless, they are on the horizon, looming. The film really is a splendid production design piece.

The acting is good, if a little overwrought. Langella’s Nixon is even stodgier than Hopkin’s Nixon in ‘Nixon’ but he does manage to convey something that Nixon himself never did in the original interviews and that is pathos. Nixon and pathos go together like Nuclear waste and kiddies’ lunch boxes, so Langella’s performance deservedly got the nomination for an Oscar.

The film actually fits in nicely with a whole range of films that have attempted to portray Nixon and his presidency, from the almost contemporaneous ‘All The President’s Men’ (which seems to grow in stature as more time passes), ‘Nixon’, and the hilarious satire ‘Dick’.

What’s Bad About It

The mock-documentary interviews that seek to contextualise the interviews only serve to make the film look for more gravitas than it deserves. Was David Frost really such a lightweight host going into the interview? I doubt it. Was Richard Nixon as spent and disconnected from the view on the street as the film implies? I doubt that too. Frost actually did have a nous for politics that was very well formed, going into the interview. And by the same token, Richard Nixon in the years following his resignation was still somebody with considerable political clout. I mean, Nixon is not somebody I like, but I understand what his contributions were.

My problem with it is that it sets out to paint a picture to say that the participants were more complicated than interviews themselves let on, only to paint a picture of fairly banal participants which is not a terribly accurate reflection of the participants at all.

What’s Interesting About It

Nixon on film is surprisingly multi-faceted and difficult as portrayals go. This is because he is at once too close in time and yet too distant as a persona. Even when he smiled it was like a grimace. The very first thing I was aware of in politics was in fact Nixon’s resignation, so he casts a very strange shadow over the political consciousness of Gen-X. He was at once the most corrupt evil politician of our times, but he was also the statesman who opened up dialogue with the Communists while railing against Communism itself. There’s Nixon and Kruschev doing the kitchen conversation, the detente with Brezhnev and Gromuyko; and then there’s the visit to Beijing to meet Mao.

Clearly the man was complicated, sophisticated and intelligent. He was most probably a better thinker than either of the Bush presidents and Ronnie Reagan. It makes you wonder what twisted him so much to let Watergate happen under his watch.

All the actors we’ve seen to date get good bites out of the Nixon persona but they get such weird portions of him. Langella’s Nixon is pugnacious, almost like a prize fighter, if a little punch-drunk from too many bouts in the ring. Anthony Hopkins’ Nixon was introspective and aloof to the point of near-incoherence. Dan Hedaya’s Nixon was hysterically paranoid. All of the interpretations are actually representative of how the world saw Nixon, and yet even after all these films we walk away feeling something of the unknowable about Nixon.

When we see the footage of the actual interview today, he is far less portentous than Langella’s portrayal. He’s actually circumspect and yet far less guarded. He flashes a smile in one of the interactions that Langella doesn’t. It’s not like Nixon was devoid of a personal charm – and he must have some of it to convince his fellow Republicans to at leas let him run for office.

He’s history’s bad guy because of his legacy, but when you look closer, there are many aspects to the man himself outside of his career that is actually quite interesting. The incongruity is such that dare I say, if he were a boxer, he’d be Mike Tyson.

The film offers one window into understanding Richard Nixon, but it’s one of many. Richard Nixon was a very strange man.

Excuse Me?

What Did She Just Say?

Screen Hub had this little entry from which I’m going to grab this bit:

In an interview with AFR arts editor Katrina Strickland, Harley said that with more limited funds, Screen Australia would focus more on films with mainstream appeal, with a view to raising the success of Australian film at the box office.

She told the AFR that “I suspect that little credit card films will carry on as before, big films like Guardians and Happy Feet 2 will carry on as before, but there will be a squeeze on those in the $4 million to $15 million bracket.”

“It’s more of a shade of movement, rather than a great big earthquake. More than 80% of funded films have been released on less than 100 screens. It’s not a criterion, it’s not for everything, it’s a shading of ambition,” she told Screen Hub.

Geoff Brown, however, told Screen Hub that this was the first time the Screen Producers Association had heard of it, and that he considered it a major reversal of Screen Australia’s position.

The rhetoric around the establishment of Screen Australia, he said, was that the Producers Offset would be allowed to deal with commercial success, while Screen Australia funded films to address “its cultural remit and areas of market failure.”

“If the Producers Offset is working properly, then Screen Australia should only invest in films with less than 100 prints.” The decision to provide any kind of focus on general release films was a major reversal.

Need we say more?

War Inc.

War As Carnivale

Sometime in 2008 as the Bush Presidency wound down, John Cusack and his troupe came out with War Inc. In many ways it was a pointed picture that satirised the American wars fought in Iraq and Afghanistan with much ‘privatisation’ of the war effort handed out to Halliburton. It’s a worthy subject matter and John Cusack has been known to mount snappy, witty critiques in his films such as ‘Grosse Pointe Blank’, ‘High Fidelity’ and ‘Max’. The film is directed by Joshua Seftel, but it’s safe to say, this is a star vehicle with the star’s authorial stamp emblazoned on the screen.

Unfortunately the film had the shortest of runs in the cinemas in Australia, and the story was essentially eclipsed by the stunning victory of Barack Obama. Thus I finally got to watch the film on DVD months after its immediate relevance had seemingly passed. That’s the caveat.

What’s Good About It

I have trouble saying this is a good film. Is it a bad film? I don’t want it to be, but it just might be. Maybe I’m expecting too much, but the breezy wisecracks about American values and the irony of a privatised war machine are all very poignant, but the film never actually comes close to addressing the cause.

The film dos make clear that privatising aspects of war to private companies that operate on profit is essentially condones state-sponsored mercenaries to play havoc on other people’s lives, and that this is going to to have tragicomic consequences. But this is no great discovery. Instead of showing why or how this is a real problem, the film chooses to describe the effects in fragments. Sometimes it looks like ‘Full Metal Jacket’. Other times it looks like a very bad trade show. The film nver finds the right tone to its comedy. It contrasts greatly with a film such as Nicolas Cage’s ‘Lord of War’ which is unstinting in its Machiavellian tone.

Marisa Tomei is good (but she’s not asked to do much), Joan Cusack is not so good. Hilary Duff’s made up accent is bizarre, even accounting for the made-up country -  whatever she’s supposed to sound like, she sounds bizarre. John Cusack by his own standards is pretty ordinary in this film. It does have some funny moments but the viewing experience on the whole is disappointing.

What’s Bad About It

As gallows humor satire goes, the film is nowhere near as even as ‘Gross Point Blank’ before it. Nor is it as insightful as ‘Max’. You get the feeling that the heavily ironic subjective reflection of those films got reworked to fit a greater story about geopolitics, but it’s actually so insufficient to addressing the issues at hand, it comes across as juvenile.

Also, the setting of a made up country called ‘Turaqistan’ was probably an attempt at trying to generalise the point rather than get caught in the specifics of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, but if the last decade has taught us anything, it’s not the general principles of war that suck, it’s the details that characterise each and every military action. Iraq has entirely unique reasons of its own why war there is fucked up, as is the case with Afghanistan, and this is before the perversity of Halliburtons and their private contracts to supply the US military.

In the end, the imagining of Turaqistan seems more racist and stereotyping of Central Asia than offering any kind of insight into war. Just as it lambasts American cultural imperialism, it enacts its own, and there’s no claims of irony that can forgive that miscue.

What’s Interesting About It

The film is in its essence, a kind of self-flagellation by Gen-X, over the war. The film in its structure is a re-run of ‘Grosse Pointe Blank’. Cusack is a reluctant hitman on a job. He seeks some solace from the brutality of his job. Meets a girl. decides that it gives him the impetus to quit. Turns out his target is not who he really wants to kill – he wants to kill his handler instead.

Dan Aykoryd makes an appearance, this time not as the rival hitman but his client. Instead, Ben Kingsley steps in to play the handler who he has to kill twice in the course of the film. Joan Cusack reprises herself role as the emotionally stunted assistant and Marisa Tomei steps in as the love interest.  In the process we see all the things that worked well for ‘Grosse Pointe Blank’ fail miserably.

What made ‘Grosse Pointe Blank’ so good was how the sense of irony spilled out from a decidedly subjective sense of history. The hitman was a Gen-X guy. His roots were in suburbia that oozed complacency and yet the spirit was so restless. All of that was against the backdrop of a very sunny Clintonian 90s.

In ‘War Inc.’ we find the same restless spirit slap bang up against the GWB Naughties, where the sense of fun has devolved into a gallows laugh, where ironic detachment is no longer quite enough to stand apart. In a sense, the film is trying to take a side against war itself but its protagonist is a hitman. It can’t relinquish violence as readily as it relinquishes ideology. And that’s interesting because we’re all living the very real nightmare wars right now. We’re just lucky enough not to be there in Iraq or Afghanistan. The ironic distance we can generate is simply the same distance that lies between where we sit and those countries.

In that sense, there’s a real desperation to this production that is palpable. It is as if Cusack and his troupe are desperately trying to find some answers as they go for the things that worked in the past, and failing. Are ‘getting the girl’ or ‘re-uniting the family’ structures enough of a story to critique a heavily post-modern war? Is the film media strong enough to take on the tidal wave of other news media operating as spin? If anything this film shows just how quaint film is in the scheme of media.

Ten years on from ‘Grosse Pointe Blank’, Gen-X is being asked to step up and somehow we’re all oddly failing. The self-reflexive, heavily subjective sense of self can’t shake the posturing to come at a straight anti-war or Pro-War position. This isn’t the Vietnam generation at all. There’s too much awareness of interests – both national and self – to do that. Instead, it grumbles and goes to work, even if it is dirty work. I doubt Baby boomers would take kindly to this film where principles are sacrificed readily, but the conscience is not. Let’s face it, Oliver Stone wouldn’t make this film. However it is possible this conscience of Gen-X made the difference in voting in Barack Obama.

Maybe in 5-10years we would understand this film and by extension 2008, even more. Right now, it looks like its flailing about in the dark, probing for a light switch.

Failing Incentive

A Slight Uptick They Say

I wanted to bask in the warm afterglow of the Yankees’ World Series win a bit longer and leave that entry at the top, but reality beckoned. My reality is that I’m in Australia trying to make films. I’m pretty close to giving up. I’d rather be a day trader if it weren’t for the fact that super-fast computers would beat me out of my tiny war chest.

Anyhow, the reality as it stands is that the incentive package for the film industry has failed, according to the 2008-2009 production survey.

Only $23 million was claimed from 17 feature films applying for the new 40 percent Producer Offset, an incentive that was introduced largely to build bigger budget local films and sustain production companies. The Producer Offset was expected to spark production volume well beyond $100 million.

And the 15 percent location incentive for foreign features proved ineffectual with not one international production claiming the incentive.

Only six foreign feature films began filming in Australia in the financial year, for a total spend of only $2 million.

All six were Indian films and none spent enough to qualify for the Location Offset introduced in May 2007. Foreign feature production usually averages $98 million annually.

In 2008/09, the value of production activity, as measured by the portion of budgets spent in Australia, totalled $688 million, $365 million of which was for feature films.

But two major US-financed films, Warner Bros’ animated films, Happy Feet 2 and Guardians of Ga’Hoole, accounted for the majority of this sum, well in excess of $200 million.

Only three feature film co-productions were begun in the 2008/09, spending $17 million in Australia, below the five-year average of $25 million.

Nevertheless, Arts Minister Peter Garrett said “The results show just how strong our local film and TV industry has proved to be in the last year.”

Thanks Mr. Garrett, I feel so good about it all now… NOT. ScreenHub has an entry by David Tiley too:

Food for thought. We have an unstable international sales environment, the dollar is 20c too high, and the rebate is costing the Treasury interesting amounts of money. Direct investment by government in the sector is looking like chickenfeed compared to the indirect taxation support of the producers’ rebate.

From a politician’s point of view, all looks well – which is why Minister Peter Garrett is making happy noises.

However, the sector experiences microscopic effects which can make or break companies, careers and the future of Australian storytelling. Garrett has shown many times since he was elected that he understands the value of small amounts of money in strategic places, so he realises the level at which real change and stability is played out.

As we shift from direct to indirect support from government, we are left to wonder how those projects driven by art and culture are faring. Screen Australia is busily increasing support for development, and decreasing production investments. Either culturally valuable production is squeezed, or it too goes into the marketplace.

And this calendar year, a lot of films that the screen community is proud of, did much worse in the cinemas than we hoped. That surely adds up to a problem.

I don’t see the numbers the same way, but I’ll take it as read for the sake of the argument. The principle of the government pulling out of direct investment is without a doubt the right move. The problem that is not really discussed properly is how projects qualify for the indirect taxation support, and whether that is ever going to help the industry grow in this day and age. It may actually be a 1990s solution to a bunch of 2010s problems.

Colour me sceptical but I just don’t see the tax department suddenly changing its tune and getting behind Australian productions, after years of targeting films as tax dodges and coming up with bizarre reasons why a production wasn’t ‘Australian’ enough for them. One imagines that even if the system started to function, if it turned out that many films were getting up and failing, they’d run back to the government to slam the door. There’s simply not enough trust or respect in the equation. And that fact in the end might explain why the new system is failing thus far.

World Series Game 6

Sweet Victory

Yankees Win World Series 2009

Game 6 went according to some kind of plan. Pedro Martinez was willing to pitch around Mark Teixeira and A-Rod, just to get to Hideki Matsui, and for perhaps the last time Hideki Matsui played like his nickname Godzilla, batting in 6 runs. The Yankee pitching, led by Andy Pettitte and closed by Mo, did pretty much everything it was expected to do – hold down the Phillies so the offense can pound out some runs.

I guess it’s the kind of pleasure you get watching a blockbuster – they spent the money to give you a thrill ride, and a happy ending. Pleasing the crowd is the iron rule of entertainment and the Yankees do have a world wide crowd to please. It’s all good.

Goodbye Godzilla

Jeter has this quote about Hideki Matsui:

“He looked like he wanted it bad,” Derek Jeter said. “Matsui is one of my favorite players. He’s one of my favorite teammates. He comes ready to play every day. He’s a professional hitter. All he wants to do is win.”

That’s mighty high praise from the captain o a team that has Tex and A-Rod and CC and AJ and Jorge and Mo. The scuttlebut is that it may have been Matsui’s final game in NY pinstripes. If so, it was a heck of a way to say farewell.

Everybody seems to be talking about what a long road it’s been and what a great finale it might be so I’ll leave it be. The guy got what he wanted in the end. We should all be so lucky.

When you think about it, 2009 is the year of the NPB. Ichiro and his guysfrom Japan won the World Baseball Classic, and now Matsui put his stamp on the World Series by becoming World Series MVP. It’s a good year for the Nippon Professional Baseball guys.

No.27

Goodness. So, I’ve seen 7 in my lifetime. I’m trying to get my head around that one. They don’t come as often as one would be made to think about all the talk about the money. Let’s get one thing straight, money alone doesn’t win it all, and certainly if you think winning the World Series is the only credible end to a season for a team, then you’re already thinking like the Steinbrenners.

I’m just glad it’s in the can. The next might take 10 years, 15, even but I won’t be forgetting 2009. This was a really, good, memorable squad.

In Democrats We Trust

Not a single title during the Bush years. Not a single title during the Reagan years or the Bush snr. years. All that money spent and no titles. The Yankees won 2 under JFK (‘61, ‘62), 2 under Jimmy Carter (”77, ‘78), 4 Under Bill Clinton (‘96, 98, 99, ‘00) and now 1 under Barack Obama (“hooray!”).

Makes you wonder why George Steinbrenner ever donated to the Republicans!

To tell you the truth I had an inkling this coincidental streak might run from the moment Obama won office and the Yankees traded for Swisher, and signed CC, AJ and Tex.

Let The Power Fall 04/11/09

Just Desserts

Has it been 10 years? Cripes Almighty! John Safran getting throttled by Ray Martin is going to be shown on the ABC after all!

THE ABC is inviting another battle with Channel Nine star Ray Martin following a decision to screen the long-lost John Safran pilot it banned more than a decade ago after complaints from the then A Current Affair host.

The ABC will broadcast the controversial documentary John Safran: The Lost Pilot “investigating TV presenter Ray Martin” as part of its summer schedule.

The one-off satirical doco contains the famous footage of Safran being throttled by Martin outside his home after the comedian rifled through the broadcaster’s garbage bins wearing a Mike Munro mask.

Martin claims ABC management gave him an undertaking the footage would not be aired by the ABC, but it turned up on Media Watch, infuriating Martin further.

For many years Media Watch ran the footage in its opening montage.

Martin’s reputation was damaged by Safran’s actions and he is still angry about the incident, referring to it as a sordid little incident with a “serial pest named John Safran”.

He devotes three pages to it in his current biography Ray Stories of My Life, published by Random House last month.

In the book he explains how the Safran incident was sparked by the broadcast of the Paxton series of stories on ACA, in which an unemployed family was portrayed as dole bludgers.

“Australia was outraged by the Paxton family’s lifestyle and attitudes,” Martin writes, but the story generated incredible ratings.

Safran was making the comic point that Martin was a bludger too because he was still at home at 9.30 in the morning.

Martin admits he “grabbed Safran by the throat, suggesting he mind his manners”.

10 years ago Ray Martion was the host of A Current Affair and he sent his crew in to tackle ‘dole-bludgers’  – in this case, the hapless Paxtons. The Paxtons if you may recall were three Melbourne siblings who had all been on the dole for some time and looked like the identikit for the kind of people who deserved to be reviled as ‘dole-bludgers’. Maybe it was the sign of the times of Australian Life under the particularly mean-spirited Howard Government, or maybe it was the 1990s and the enemy wasn’t as clear-cut as after 9/11.

In any case it was one big cheap shot at 3 people who didn’t exactly have a bright future at the time, who weren’t particularly well-educated and were not people you would consider to be world-beaters. Heaven only knows where they are today. The A Current Affair show exalted in humiliating the dole-bludging Paxtons over a couple of nights, dragging them up to Queensland and offering them a job far away from family and friends, and when they wimped out, made them look like the worst people since Adolf Hitler; All of which might have played into a certain kind of mean-ness that is out there in the TV viewing demographic. Let’s face it, it was a ratings-winner of sorts.

And the Paxtons, as they appeared on the show, really were pathetic and ill-equipped for the media humiliation. And let me remind the reader that this came long before the horde of people who voluntarily humiliated themselves on Reality TV. That particular brand of evil-crap was yet to come. It was in the day when media still pretended to be… uh… for want of a better word, ethical (hey, stop laughing!).

All of which makes John Safran’s illustration that maybe Ray Martin himself was not the best judge of people if he was going to have his daily life nit-picked by media, a very good point. It was such a brilliant skit that it didn’t need to be shown. The controversy was enough to dent Ray Martin’s reputation. What was – and still is – remarkable about all this is that Ray Martin didn’t see how Safran’s point applied to him as he called the stunt all sorts of names, and each and every one of his denunciations applied to his show equally. To this day, Ray Martin probably thinks he is above the same scrutiny just because he’s Ray Martin – which is laughable.

Yet, when you think about it, the point that applies to the Chasers going after a charity for the disabled applies equally to Ray Martin. If you’re going to go after somebody, go after somebody powerful. Picking on the weak is easy and makes a mockery of your stance as some arbiter of rough media-justice. Nonetheless, there was Ray Martin, essentially having the uncomfortable anal-probe of media applied to his life, reacting very badly.

It showed conclusively that Ray Martin couldn’t take what he was dishing out, and that maybe, just maybe, the Paxton kids were pretty gracious; after all Ray Martin’s crew did a lot worse to the Paxton kids’ reputations than what Safran’s stunt did to Ray Martin. It’s a good thing the show is going to air, just to remind us just how shallow media judgment actually is. To me, this episode is the nadir of Ray Martin’s public career and perhaps one to put in a fantastic collection of John Safran’s greatest hits.

World Series Game 5

Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Lose

*Ugh*

The Bats came to life way too late in the deal, and giving up 8 runs is never going to work.I don’t know if there’s anything profound to be said other than *ugh*.

Cripes. Is there anything positive to all of this except the fact that the Yankees scored 6 runs? AJ Burnett was a big disappointment giving up 6 runs in 2 innings which is as big a hole as you can land a team. I actually don’t blame him because I had a hunch he was going to blow up rather than pitch tight. Even Cliff Lee surrendered 5 runs in 7. It just wasn’t going to be a pitchers’ duel. But you kind of expect the Yankees to win the slugfests.

Oh well.

The teams head back to Yankees Stadium for Games 6 & 7. Andy Pettitte takes the mound on 3 days rest. This could get ugly against old archenemy Pedro Martinez. This ought to be fun. You’d think the Yankees can close the deal with 2 games in hand.

Xenophobia?

The Numbers

I’m more than a little concerned about the extremes of the asylum seekers’ debate. Here’s a typical piece on the side of the asylum seekers:.

The current mantra is that the refugee policy is ‘balanced’ yet humane, another obscene description pilfered from the previous government’s treasure trove of spin. In truth, it is neither. The reactionary paper The Australian, Rupert Murdoch’s terrier-like representative of Australia’s media landscape, was chortling in its joy. ‘Despite its political discomfort, exaggerated moralism and diplomatic scramble, the Rudd government emerges with more credit over the boatpeople surge than do its opponents on the Right and Left’ (Oct 24). It only took issue with the fact that Rudd might be firmer in his stance. Surely, the human flood was imminent if more stringent measures were not taken?

The election of the Rudd government was meant to be a watershed in various policies adopted and practiced by the previous regime, keen practitioners of ‘fear’ strategies.

But as countries are given complete freedom to determine how the 1951 Refugee Convention applies, we should not be surprised. There is no international tribunal with set authorities to determine the matter. Domestic implications, and fears, continue to play their poisonous role.

It has been shown that these boat people have an extraordinarily high rate of being accepted as refugees once they are processed. It has also been shown that such ‘solutions’, be they Indonesian or Pacific, are far more costly than home processing. But the lingering effects of such fictitious narratives as ‘queue jumpers’ and ‘terrorist sleepers’ remains. The bureaucratic indifference that has infected governments globally means that Indonesia and Australia are far from being alone in this lamentable affair.

What’s vexing is the notion that there are ‘queue jumpers’ as well as a queue. I’ve been laughing off the queue-jumping thing for some time now except I’ve never really considered what the hell this queue might be.

So in this light I was a actually stunned to find, yes, there actually is something of a queue and that yes, it is a problem if we just went and handed out asylum to people on a haphazard basis, according to Paul Sheehan.

Here’s Paul Sheehan’s take.

Australia is not a xenophobic nation. The argument is nonsense. Let me count the ways:

1. The number of refugees or humanitarian cases admitted by the Howard government was the highest of any government in Australian history, other than a brief spike after World War II. This legal intake did not generate significant public opposition or partisan division in Canberra. The number of humanitarian arrivals admitted during the Howard years was more than 128,000, says the field’s leading expert, Dr Katherine Betts.

2. The number of Muslims admitted to permanent residence was far higher during the Howard years than during any other government. The Muslim population rose from 200,000, in 1996, to 340,000 in 2006, a 65 per cent surge in 10 years. (Figures again supplied by Betts.) This surge took place during a time of rising violence by militant Islamists, and the murder of scores of Australians by Islamic fundamentalists. Yet the historic increase in Muslim numbers via legal channels generated no meaningful political opposition.

3. Australia has the highest number of foreign-born residents of any large, advanced Western democracy. The proportion is almost one in four. For years Australia has maintained one of the world’s largest per capita immigrants intakes, and the majority of arrivals have been non-European. Debate over immigration has flared only when the immigration stream has been abused by widespread fraud. The most sustained opposition has come from environmentalists concerned with sustainable growth.

4. People who arrive by boat present a more confronting challenge to legal, security and health screening than those who arrive by air and overstay their visas. Arrivals by air must present valid documentation before travelling. It is common practice for those who arrive by boat to destroy their travel documents, and engage people smugglers, measures designed to create a fait accompli, and make it more difficult to send them back to their nations of origin. This makes a far more difficult and expensive process of checking arrivals’ legal, security and health status.

5. The rigorous deterrence and screening of unauthorised arrivals is integral to national security. Some of those who have settled in Australia and later engaged in criminal behaviour or welfare fraud have arrived via the refugee or humanitarian programs. The screening process for such programs is more problematic. So, too, is the absorption process. A recent spate of convictions for terrorist activity within Australia has largely involved people who came as immigrants.

6. The Tamil Tigers, whose campaign for independence from the central government in Sri Lanka led to a long and bloody civil war, have received considerable support from within the Tamil community in Australia. In April more than 1000 ethnic Tamils blockaded the gates of Kirribilli House, the Prime Minister’s Sydney residence, calling for a ceasefire in the Sri Lankan Government’s military offensive against the Tigers. The Sri Lankan high commissioner to Australia, Senaka Walgampaya, said the Tamil Tigers had received significant support from Australia, a view shared by Australian intelligence.

7. The number of refugees or displaced persons in the world, more than 20 million, is roughly the same as the population of Australia, 22 million. Advanced economies could only accept all these people by incurring domestic social and economic costs, which they are not prepared to make. Immigration policies have ripple-on effects, hence the need for quotas.

8. The Rudd Government deploys a zero-sum refugee policy. Although it increased immigration and temporary-working visa intakes, it maintained the annual intake of refugee/humanitarian at 13,500. Government policy thus dictates that those who arrive by boat and are given asylum status have displaced people who have registered with the United Nations or the government. The 13,500 annual refugee quota is a real waiting line of people with real needs. It is a queue that cannot simply be rendered invisible or irrelevant.

9. UN laws and conventions pertaining to the treatment of asylum seekers have no override authority over Australian law. The concept of ”the international community” is no more than a rhetorical device. In reality the phrase refers to other like-minded human-rights activists overseas. Most democracies punish governments that fail the test of border security.

10. The 78 ethnic Tamils who have illegally occupied the Australian customs vessel Oceanic Viking are demanding rights that do not exist under international law. Most have been in Indonesia for some time. They want to settle in Australia, or another wealthy country, but that decision is not theirs to make.

What do you know? There is a queue. Deary me.

I can imagine a lot of people will be incensed with this analysis, but I don’t really see anything wrong with any of these points in isolation. Points 1 through 3 are probably beyond dispute; Point 4 is more opinion, but I sure as hell don’t disagree with it; 5 is a legalistic point, but it’s true – Otherwise, why bother having laws?; 6 is circumstantial, but it’s probably likely enough. 7 is indisputable; and so on.

All of these points bear reflecting on, but the one that got me is point no. 8. If the Rudd government is deploying the Zero-sum refugee policy – and it is theirs to replace – then it stands to reason that the boat-arrival-asylum seekers are displacing people who have otherwise undertaken due process.

I got into an argument about how realistic demanding due process on people who are fleeing enemy fire, but it has to be said that some people clearly managed it. I was then told I lack compassion. I sort of wonder whether the compassion goes to the people who undertook the due process in good faith, and if letting those people might constitute a different kind of lack of good faith on our government’s behalf. After all, it is going to take somebody, and it takes people on the basis of some kind of selection process. Even back in the late 1970, Australia took some of the Vietnamese boat people, but not all.

It really is up to each country to decide how they deal with this issue and the Pacific Solution was one, the Indonesian solution is another, and it’s all kind of unpleasant any which way you skin it. At best there’s a case to be made that the Rudd Government should consider upping the quota limit from 13,500 annually.

Yes, it doesn’t hurt to take the 78, but if the Rudd Government’s only going to take 13,500 a year, it is displacing 78 people who undertook to come to Australia in good faith. That much of it, it turns out, is true.

 

 

News That’s Fit To Punt 02/11/09

Film Industry As Venture Capital Project

In case you’re wondering why film projects fail in the market, here is a quick answer: they fail because the risks are high as well as the rewards. In that sense, each production vehicle is like a venture capital vehicle. If they were high reward low risk, there’d be a lot more of it happening. It’s the nature of high risk that the majority fail, but you stand to make a mint when you get a hit. Which is to say, it’s a little bit like venture capital.

Here’s something to consider from The Economist about Venture Capital:

Too many politicians treat entrepreneurship as yet another gravy train. Norway squandered much of its oil wealth investing in new businesses that were founded by the relatives of politicians and bureaucrats. Policymakers are also lax when it comes to designing venture funds. They try to insulate them from risk or allow public investments to crowd out private ones. The Canadian government’s experiment with venture capital failed because the Canadian Labor Fund Program had so much money that it frightened off private venture capitalists, while earning mediocre returns itself. New Zealand’s government, in contrast, did much better because it invested public money in private funds.

Mr Lerner points out that two foolish tendencies are particularly hard to resist when politicians are struggling with high unemployment. The first is the temptation to spread the wealth around to every region and interest group. France’s attempt to transform Brittany from one of its more backward regions into a hive of high-tech activity failed dismally for an obvious reason: entrepreneurial firms cluster in particular places. The second is a suspicion of foreign investors. The Japanese government lavished money on start-ups in the 1990s but was reluctant to embrace foreign venture capitalists. Japan now has one of the rich world’s weakest venture-capital markets.

Levantine wiles
The country that has led the world in promoting entrepreneurship has also done the most to plug itself into global markets. The Israeli government’s venture-capital fund, which was founded in 1992 with $100m of public money, was designed to attract foreign venture capital and, just as importantly, expertise. The government let foreigners decide what to invest in, and then stumped up a hefty share of the money required. Foreign venture capital poured into the country, high-tech companies boomed, domestic venture capitalists learned from their foreign counterparts and the government felt able to sell off the fund after just five years.

Last year Israel, a country of just over 7m people, attracted as much venture capital as France and Germany combined. Israel has more start-ups per head than any other country (a total of 3,850, or one for every 1,844 Israelis), and more companies listed on the NASDAQ exchange, a hub for fledgling technology firms, than China and India combined. It may not have the same comforting ring as “the Swedish model” or “the polder model”, but when it comes to promoting entrepreneurship, “the Israeli model” is the one to emulate.

That seems to indicate that if there genuinely is talent in Australia, then the government *should* necessarily let Hollywood invest in Australia freely and put their own cash into it, after Hollywood has picked which projects they want to make. So instead of having Screen Australia, you would invite development people from Hollywood to pick projects they want to make. When they pick the projects, then the Australian Government’s film fun would directly invest in the films as a partner.

This would take out the current idiocy of Screen Australia getting itself involved with development and creative input. The point is, Screen Australia *can’t* know what the market place is demanding, what is going to sell, what the other projects in development are and how it impacts what is in Australia. Of course, it won’t happen because

• it makes too much sense
• it would seriously put those film bureaucrats out of work
• too many Yank-hating nationalists would reject the idea
• too many Commercialism-hating communists and socialists would reject the idea

Yet, that’s the logical step if they want Australian creative content on the big screen. We just can’t do it any more on a world scale. We may as well face up to that reality, even if it hurts. At the same time, it would be exactly the same free market that everybody in America has to toil under. And that would be all the Australian film producers an directors and writers would want – an equal footing, fair shot.

All the same,  it might be the case that Australia is simply too far away from the cultural hub of cinema, and that no amount of investment will help. In any case, it’s celar whatever Screen Australia’s doing, ain’t working. Try this:

Film Crew Victoria Closes Up Shop

One of the three crew agencies in Victoria are shutting up shop according to Screen Hub.

Film Crew Victoria, one of the state’s three crew agencies, has announced that it will close its business on 13 November, potentially leaving crew without representation. Principal Michelle Wells cited “the current economic climate, declining membership rates, unpredictable production levels, tight cash flows, increasing operational costs…” as being behind the decision to close.

She told Screen Hub that the decision to close was “heartbreaking, you feel that you’re letting people down”, but that the agency was no longer financially viable.

Barry Woodhouse from Picture People Crew Agency said that “It’s quite a blow really, a lot of people are going to be left hanging.” The situation is potentially more acute because Picture People specialises in corporate and television, leaving only one Victorian agent, Freelancers Promotions, covering feature film and general production.

He agreed with Michelle Wells that production – even in television – was down in Victoria. “FremantleMedia has been doing a lot out of Sydney, Melbourne has been sort of kept in the dark.” The television production that Melbourne was seeing was smaller. “They’re not throwing big budgets at them, we’re talking three man crews, a lot of my crew are working on these things, they’re very plain, there’s not a lot of budget.”

Yeah, sounds like the industry is really thriving… Not.

World Series Game 4

Doing It As Drawn Up

Wow. The Yankees are up 3-1 in the World Series with a 7-4 win. Sabathia pitched 6.2 innings giving up 3, Joba blew the save but vultured a win as the Yankees erupted for 3 runs in the 9th and Mariano Rivera did his thing.

I don’t mean to be triumphalist, but I think it needs some pointing out that the 2009 Yankees won 103 games in the AL East. The 2009 Phillies won 93 games in the NL East where their potentially biggest rivals tanked due to injuries. Look, the Phillies are plenty good, but I think we’re beginning to see the gap in strength as the World Series rolls on. No disrespect to the Phillies who did win it all in 2008, but I think the 3 wins in a row to the Yankees reflects the relative difference in strengths.

That being said, the Yankees now face Cliff Lee against whom the bats stayed dormant, ad they send AJ Burnett to the mound. Of course, AJ Burnett is like Forest Gump’s Box of Chocolates – you just don’t know what you’re going to get. Okay, he did win Game 2 with style but will he get the Yankees past Phillies a second time is a reasonable question.

It’s not over yet.

Ain’t That Johnny Damon Something?

Here’s an excellent account of Damon’s one-pitch one-man double steal.

Take his at-bat against Lidge in the ninth. There were two outs. Lidge got ahead in the count 1-2. And then Damon, realizing that Lidge would try to put him away with that famous slider of his, decided to look only for that slider. “They really don’t teach you do it that way,” Damon says. “They normally tell you to look fastball because if you sit slider, it would be too tough to catch up to the fastball.”

But Damon just sensed that his best shot was to wait for the slider and hope for the best. He fouled off a slider, then another. Lidge tried to throw a couple of fastballs — one was called just off the outside corner (Damon was beaten on the pitch — the umpire could have called it either way), and the second was outside. Full count. Damon kept waiting for the slider. He fouled off a fastball. He fouled off another fastball. And finally, he hit the fastball for a single to left field.

It was remarkable stuff — “Just an unbelievable at-bat,” Yankees manager Joe Girardi would call it — and then Damon realized that he could steal second base on Lidge. You know the guy in your neighborhood basketball game, the one that plays ruthless defense, never-ending defense, in-your-face defense and you want to yell at him “Just STOP already.” Yeah, that’s Damon too.

He stole second base, and then he saw third base was open and in an instant he ran through all those calculations and decided to go for it. At first, Feliz reached out and looked like he had a chance to tag Damon. But he could not. Damon pulled away. “I’m just glad that when I started running, I still had some of my young legs behind me,” Damon would say.

Damon made it to third base. We’ll never know for sure if his play spooked Brad Lidge … I think it’s a fair guess to say that it did. Lidge promptly hit Mark Teixeira with a pitch. And then he threw two fastballs to A-Rod — one of the great fastball hitters in baseball history — and A-Rod ripped the second to left for a double. That scored Damon. Jorge Posada followed with a single that scored two more runs, and that was that.

Now, the Yankees have a stranglehold on the series. It’s hard to come up with a scenario where the Phillies come back from this. They do have Cliff Lee going tonight, which gives them a fair shot at sending the series back to New York. But they’re standing at the base of Mount Everest. And they know it. The Phillies really had to win Sunday night, and they played exactly the kind of gutsy game that it takes to win. They came from behind. They scored a late run to tie the game. They were at home, and Lidge seemed to be throwing well, and it all looked good.

But then Johnny Damon had the at-bat of the Series and he pulled off what might have been the first one-man double steal in World Series history. It was one of those plays that you never forget. The Phillies never quite recovered from that.

“I kinda had to see all that stuff develop,” was how Damon explained his play. Then he shrugged his shoulders because, hey, he isn’t really sure he saw any of it. He ran. His mind told him to go. Things just seem to work out for the guy. He’s lucky that way.

Well, that too.