Following up his acclaimed US-made coming-of-age seventies-set comedy Growing Up Smith, Melbourne writer/director Frank Lotito saw a number of projects and momentum – including a meeting with Warner execs – fall away as Covid wreaked havoc on production globally.
Returning to Australia, where the pandemic was seemingly under better control, the former stand-up followed through with his directorial ambitions with Wog Boys Forever, the latest chapter in the popular Nick Giannopoulos headlined franchise.
Wog Boys Forever closes off the unofficial Wog Boy trilogy, preceded by 2000’s The Wog Boy and 2010’s The Kings of Mykonos, with Lotito’s effective ability of tapping the series’ Aus-centric nostalgia – having spent several years as an honorary Wog Boy himself, appearing in various stage productions of the Wog-verse – bringing a fresh but familiar adventure starring the film’s slacker protagonists Steve Karamitsis (Giannopoulos) and Frank (Vince Colosimo).
You’ve been vocal about the disappointment you felt with the way Growing Up Smith was handled and distributed after its initial success at film festivals. Did the experience taint your ambitions as a filmmaker?
“We opened the Montreal World Film Festival with Growing Up Smith. We did eight screenings simultaneously and had like two and a half thousand people watching the film at the same time. It was just such a huge buzz, but unfortunately the distributor shelved the film for a year. So things didn’t quite gel.
“But Nick Giannopoulos saw Growing Up Smith and really loved it. And gave me the job to direct Wog Boys Forever based off the screening he saw.”
You’ve worked with both Nick Giannopoulos and the Wog Boy franchise before, but as a stage actor. Was it strange to step behind the camera to direct, as opposed to interacting one-on-one with these characters?
“Yeah, I mean I started my career in this industry as an actor. Specifically, as a comic stage actor. I don’t like to use the word ‘wog’ comedy, I never really did ‘that’. But, my comedy was based on my upbringing as an Italian Australian, so it became tagged as ‘wog comedy’ or ‘ethnic comedy’. But really it was just me telling stories.
“I had become good friends with Vince Colosimo and in 2014, I was in the US producing another film. I got a call from Nick Giannopoulos offering me a job on the Wog Boy stage show back in 2015 because he had seen some of my work online. I had a four-month break, and so I went over and did the stage show with the guys, with Vince, Nick and Alex Dimitriades.
“To be honest, I had kind of steered away from that stuff at the time. I just felt like it wasn’t challenging for me anymore. And I really wanted to move into film and television.
“But the whole time we were rehearsing, I thought, ‘Is this stuff funny, are people actually going to come and watch this stuff?’ But we opened the show, and it was a huge hit.
“I think it’s that nostalgic thing because the show had been done before, the Wog Boys Live stage show and so that existing audience, that fanbase, would come and see the show and then the kids would come and see the show as well. This kind of new generation of audience.
“We played to sold out shows. We did Her Majesty’s Theatre [in Melbourne] and sold out every night and we did shows at the Enmore Theatre in Sydney, which was a 2000-seater, and sold out every night. Then at the end of the tour, we were like, ‘We should keep on going?’ We could have kept on going for the whole year, but I had to go back to the States and do another film, so we couldn’t.
“But when Nick saw Growing Up Smith, he saw that I really wanted to direct features and kept me at the back of his mind. And true to his word, he offered me the gig. It was my first gig since the pandemic started.”
The pandemic was a true shitshow, not just for the film industry, but across the political and social spectrum of well. What kind of vibe was your end goal for this one?
“We shot during lockdown number four, so it was a bit of a challenge, but we got through it. We got the film done, and it’s what audiences will expect of the Wog Boy movies.
“It’s more in line with the first Wog Boy, so all the old characters come back and Nick’s character, Steve Karamitsis, is at the centre of it all. It’s 20 years later and I don’t know if you remember in the first movie – [Derryn] Hinch kind of made him [Nick] famous. He was the wog boy who was on the dole and all that sort of stuff… And in this one, Steve is a down and out kind of guy; he’s a taxi driver, lives in a garage… He’s kind of alone. He doesn’t have a girlfriend or wife or a family and without giving away too much, he reconnects with his old mate Frank, played by Vince Colosimo, and they get that Wog Boy spark back again.
“There is a bit of a political subplot, where it’s the Wog Boy against the system. And of course, he saves the day at the end, but it’s a lot of fun getting there. There’s some big characters and some new characters that come on board. Audiences are really going to lap it up.”
You mentioned Derryn Hinch making his famous cameo in the first Wog Boy film. With the franchise having such longevity in Aussie comedy culture, did you manage any notable cameos for this latest chapter?
“Yeah, Hinch is back. He does a new cameo. Then we have Seb Costello from A Current Affair playing a journalist as himself. And there’s a very popular group at the moment called Sooshi Mango made up of three guys, and they’re in this movie. What’s funny is, one of them plays an Italian mother and when the editor started putting the film together, he’s like, ‘It’s really good that you’re being inclusive in this film’, because he thought the guy was transgender and I said, ‘No, no he’s just playing a character’.”
Frank (second from left) with Sooshi Mango at the Wog Boys Forever premiere. Photo by Mauro Trentin
Speaking of which, it’s been twelve years since The Kings of Mykonos. A lot has changed since then, especially with cancel culture and rise of Twitter trolls and accountable woke-ism having a real-world effect on the entertainment industry. Did you feel the need to be actively aware of how you approached certain topics, or themes in Wog Boys Forever?
“Yeah, look it was a tough one. Obviously, with cancel culture and this woke generation, it’s there, in the back of your mind. I did stand-up for a little while. I did a show a couple of years ago, a one-off stand-up show. I hadn’t been on stage for about six years prior to that and things had changed, and even then, I was kind of worried. ‘Should I say this? Should I say that? Is that going to really rub people up the wrong way?’ And so, you’re constantly in the back of your mind questioning whether this is kosher, if this is the right kind of way to do it, or say it? So yeah sure, to answer your question: Yeah.
“But just like back then, I think what Nick does best, is he knows his audience. He knows that a particular thing is going to get a laugh. Or this scenario, they’re going to get a kick out of. He’s not too worried about what other people are going to say or whether he’s going to get cancelled. Just as long as he is giving his audience what they want. So, I guess in retrospect there are things in the film that might rub people up the wrong way, but I also feel like audiences are going to get a real kick out of it.”
And should audiences keep their eyes open for a Frank Lotito cameo in Wog Boys Forever?
“No, no I’m not in the film at all. I was very close to doing a cameo. We shot during a period where not only was the pandemic on, but there was also a lot of productions reopening at the time. The Americans were doing shows, the Australians were doing shows and so crews were very hard to come by. We really struggled to find enough crew.
“We called in a few favours from friends of ours, a couple of whon happen to be actors. And we thought, ‘why don’t we just get these guys in the film as well? They can do a day here and a day there and do some of these smaller characters’. They work so hard – some of these guys have never done unit work before. This was just something that they really wanted to help out with and get involved in.
“So, that one cameo that I was going to do, I actually gave it to one of the unit guys that came in and he did a fantastic job. I thought it was really nice to kind of give back a little.”
Wog Boys Forever is in cinemas now.
