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Who put the devil in you?
John Safran is the original prankster, knocking the wind out of various pompous sails, from his introduction on the TV series Race Around The World through to his infamous rummaging through Ray Martin's rubbish bin. Music Jamboree - his healthy stab at the music industry - is now on DVD, and FILMINK's Erin Free caught up with Australia's cheekiest enfant terrible.
For fans of rock and pop music, John Safran's Music Jamboree is undoubtedly one of the funniest shows to ever grace Australian television screens. Whether he was uncovering Beck's Scientologist leanings, selling Watchtower magazines while dressed as Prince or hyping his own boy band Jewtown, Safran was consistently, raucously on the money, skewering the pretensions of the music business with deft strokes and wild flourishes of imagination. But Music Jamboree was also litigation waiting to happen - with Safran making a mug of 3AW announcer Steve Price, hoodwinking Melbourne street press magazine Inpress and proving the abject stupidity of a trendy nightclub's door policy by getting people over "the velvet rope" by putting them in a mask and claiming they were from the band Slipknot - and there's only one TV channel that would air the show.
"SBS is a pretty diverse place," Safran says of his employers down the line from Melbourne. "Even the staff are from all different ethnicities. They're not so pressured like the ABC where it's a bunch of old, white guys worried that they're going to upset Asians or something. With the ABC it's like battered people, like 'Oh my god, we can't upset one person. We'll be talked about in Parliament. They'll close down our funding and stuff.' SBS have every minority group complaining about the news every night. Like, 'You gave 45 seconds more to the Macedonians and only 30 seconds to the Turks.' They're like, 'We're over it!' And in that context, my show is probably nothing!"
One of Safran's principal collaborators on the series was filmmaker Richard Lowenstein, who's directed music clips for some of the biggest names in the business, as well as having a very close relationship with Australian rock superstars INXS. "He's so great," Safran says of Lowenstein without hesitation. "He comes from a creative perspective - he's a director first even before being a producer. He really followed through with my stuff, saying, 'I like what you've done in the past and I'm going to let you do those kind of things again.' He's just so different from the experiences I've had in the past. When I was at Channel 7 for The Late Report, it was like, 'hey, we really love that Ray Martin thing but we don't want you to do something like that again.' Richard knows how to build a good team and stuff like that. It's just like everyone was motivated by creativity rather than 'We have to get this show out.' His production company was never going to make a fortune out of my show. So it's kind of easy when everyone's on board like that."
Richard Lowenstein also knew where some of the bodies were buried when it came to the music industry. "He promised this big thing at the start, where he said he knew about this cult that a couple of the members from INXS were in," Safran laughs. "It was after the Kick album when everything was falling apart. I forget who it was, what the details are...but they joined a cult. I was like, 'Oh my god! This is unreal!' But it was never actually substantiated with anyone. Richard was there. But I imagine he was taking drugs. But I imagine it was true..."
And if you thought Music Jamboree was cheeky, then John Safran has an even more audacious kick planned for his next series. "I'd like to tackle religion. Seeing I was able to turn a music show into basically a religion show. It seems like it's going to be an easy crossover."
John Safran's Music Jamboree is available now on DVD through Madman / The AV Channel.