But Also John Clarke ★★★★
Three of satirist John Clarke’s best attributes were detecting bullshit, being kind and owning famously twinkling eyes – the latter drawing every viewer of his decades-long comedy career in on the joke. Clarke’s gaze was magnetic, as was his meticulous wordplay, deadpan delivery and ability to deliver sharp satire without being mean-spirited.
Comedian John Clarke is the subject of a documentary by his daughter Lorin Clarke.
This feature documentary, made and narrated by Clarke’s daughter Lorin Clarke, looks behind the eyes to discover his life, from unhappy childhood to blissful university years, from embarking on creating comedy to becoming Australia’s chief mischief-maker.
Clarke was a fairly private person, but here Lorin, and her dad, reveal the personal forces that shaped his ability to corral silliness and wit as an everyman figure while exposing the innards of political, economic and social flimflam.
It’s a joyful 99-minute excursion, full of home videos – Clarke was an inveterate documentarian of family life – archival TV and stage clips and interviews with people such as Sam Neill, Ben Elton, Bryan Dawe, Anne Edmonds, Jana Wendt, Paul Keating and Wendy Harmer.
The film’s heart is the audio interviews Lorin recorded with her dad in the years leading up to his unexpected death in 2017. He talks about his childhood in Palmerston North, New Zealand, where a difficult family life and disciplinarian school years inspired a deep distrust of authority, a desire to seek out humour and an understanding of impartiality.
A pregnant Lorin Clarke with her father, John Clarke, in 2011.Credit: Stewart Thorn
“I see two sides to things,” Clarke tells Lorin, a quality he attributes to having parents who couldn’t deal with each other.
We see the germination of his earliest, and subsequently megastar, TV character, gum-booted farmer Fred Dagg; the reasons Clarke left his home country for opportunities in Australia; and the method behind four decades of writing, creating and starring in shows and films ranging from The Gillies Report to Death in Brunswick, The Games and Clarke and Dawe, the long-running satire on Nine and the ABC.
