STACK NZ Mar #60

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with DARIO RUSSO .

Danger 5 reminds us of other curious, surreal comedies with intentionally cheap effects like The Mighty Boosh and Garth Marenghi’s Dark Place . Are you a fan? DARIO RUSSO: I loved Boosh when it came out. That was always such an excitingly unusual show; it was really inspiring to see something that bizarre. That was definitely a massive inspiration, as was Garth Marenghi , which I guess is more directly comparable to the style of things that we’re doing. [ Marenghi ] was a very conscious and deliberate retro rip-off, and what we’re doing is too bastardised to even be an accurate ‘80s retro rip-off. Your previous series, Italian Spiderman , utilises cheap production to great effect, too. Have you always found this funny as a style device? Especially at high school, I would always love watching shitty ‘80s horror movies with my friends and laughing at them, sort of, in parts where the production values had fallen short. And if you go back to the ‘50s, especially with movies like Plan 9 from

Outer Space , which is heralded as – arguably – the worst film ever made... they’re clearly, earnestly trying to create a special effect and it’s not fooling anybody. That’s funny. Was this always a deliberate part of your filmmaking, or did it begin from literally having no budget? I mean look, we’ve got talking lion creatures, we’ve got people dematerialising, we’ve got an anaconda strangling two men. We do not – and never would – have a budget to create a sense that even vaguely resembles reality, and at the same time I don’t think we really want to. Because it’s like a live action cartoon; the suspension of disbelief is out the window to start off with, and then it’s more about a fun representation of everything. Why do you prefer actual crafted objects to CGI? I just think people have a better time when they’re looking at puppets rather than at CGI. You know it’s fake either way, so screw it – why not actually have a tangible object that the actor can respond to? I think that speaks to the early ‘90s upbringing and my

generation of kids – we were exposed to a lot of children’s programs that had puppets and stop motion animated characters. The nostalgic heart lies with puppets, and now we can put it into an adult context. I think a lot of people respond to that, even if it’s on a subconscious level. Tell us about your first recollections of watching Shaun Micallef, and how you felt when he asked to be involved with series two of Danger 5 . I remember being young enough to not really know what I was watching, and laughing at Milo Kerrigan. I think that qualifies as Micallef always being in my life. Full Frontal and Fast Forward – that’s my first recollection of Shaun Micallef, so having him actually engage us was absolutely surreal, such an unbelievably positive affirmation to have this dude involved who you respect so much. I still don’t really believe it happened. I watch the show now and... “F*ck, Shaun Micallef’s in this!”

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