Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

provided by

This clip shows Australian comedian Max Gillies in 1987, impersonating the then Australian prime minister, Robert 'Bob’ J Hawke, on Michael Parkinson’s television program. Hawke is also a guest on the show. Footage of Gillies talking about his life and craft is intercut with black-and-white photographs from his childhood and early adulthood, as well as photographs of him impersonating other Australian prime ministers, Malcolm Fraser, William McMahon, Gough Whitlam and Robert Menzies. A photograph of Gillies impersonating Groucho Marx is also shown.

Educational value points

• The clip features Max Gillies, the Australian actor, impersonator, satirist and producer, who is best known for his highly successful television comedy series The Gillies Report (1984 and 1985), The Gillies Republic (1986) and Gillies and Company (1992). Gillies (1941–) also appeared in acting roles in films such as Dimboola (1979) and in Australian television series such as All Saints and Blue Heelers. His political characterisations are the central features of his live theatrical shows, which have included The Big Con (2005) and You’re Dreaming (2001). Gillies was awarded a Member of the Order of Australia in 1990 in recognition of his services to the entertainment industry.

• Max Gillies refers in this clip to his self-consciousness as an adolescent. Gillies explains his skill as an actor and impersonator in terms of feeling more confident and secure when he creates a character to hide behind. From the age of 6 or 7, he discovered a talent for performing that made him popular with other children, and later, at Melbourne High School, he excelled at school debating and participated in school plays and revues.

• Max Gillies was a founding member of the theatrical cooperative the Australian Performing Group (APG), a group of creative artists based in Melbourne in the late 1960s and early 1970s who have since made their names as writers, actors, directors, musicians and arts administrators. Based at a converted pram factory in Carlton from 1967 until its demise in 1981, the APG produced a multitude of new Australian plays that reflected contemporary Australian life and social and political issues. The political impetus of protest against the Vietnam War and a desire for theatrical innovation gave its endeavours an edge, and despite a continuous shortage of funds, it set a new direction for Australian theatre.

• Some Australian prime ministers of the period after the Second World War are shown being caricatured by Gillies, who has made a feature of his impersonations of prime ministers. These include conservative prime ministers such as Australia’s longest serving prime minister, Robert Menzies, and John Howard, who became Prime Minister in 1996. Gough Whitlam, also included in the clip, was the first Labor prime minister after more than two decades of Liberal Party rule. His prime ministership ended abruptly in 1975 when his government was dismissed by the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr.

• Gillies is probably best known for his portrayal of Bob Hawke, Labor prime minister from 1983 to 1991. They appeared together several times on the same stage. The startling physical similarities between the two, Hawke’s apparent ease with the impersonation and Gillies’s ability to mimic Hawke’s voice and mannerisms make the impersonation compelling television.

• The clip features examples of Australian political satire. Political satire has played an important role throughout Australian history and is embraced by many Australians because it is both amusing and a means of exposing or denouncing political or social decisions and behaviours.

• The clip features examples of Australian political satire. Political satire has played an important role throughout Australian history and is embraced by many Australians because it is both amusing and a means of exposing or denouncing political or social decisions and behaviours. The Mavis Bramston Show, which premiered on Australian television in 1964, showed that topical television programs satirising Australian current events could gain large audiences. This television genre has continued with successful programs such as The Games (1998), The Glass House (2004–06) and The Chaser’s War on Everything (2006).

• The clip includes an excerpt from The Parkinson Show, a popular talk show that ran for 11 years from 1971 until 1982, produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The show featured nearly 1,000 of the world’s most famous people and 361 editions were completed. After the success of a program that featured repeats of the interviews from the first series, Michael Parkinson, the show’s host, returned to present Parkinson in 1998. In a list of the ’100 Greatest British Television Programmes’ compiled by the British Film Institute in 2000, Parkinson was placed eighth.

This clip starts approximately 10 minutes into the documentary.

Max Gillies walks on to stage. He greets Bob Hawke and interviewer Michael Parkinson. Elvis Presley’s 'I can’t help falling in love with you’ plays as he enters.
Max Gillies (impersonating Bob Hawke) Uh, how are you, Michael?
Michael Parkinson I’m very well.
Max Uh, so you in the entertainment business, are you?
Michael Uh, yes.
Max (impersonating Bob Hawke) It’s – I don’t want to deflate you, mate, but in respect of your impersonation, my dad doesn’t look anything like that, you know.
The audience laughs.
Max (impersonating Bob Hawke) Hasn’t got so much hair for a kick-off, you know. It’s all very well for you to smirk, Michael. I mean, you try doing that with your own Prime Minister, hey? I mean, you know…

Max is interviewed to camera. We see pictures of him as a child, an adolescent, and then as an adult performer playing various characters.
Max I’ve always enjoyed comedy, enjoyed, uh, having a good laugh, I suppose. And also a sense of – it’s a self-critical thing as well, I think. You find – like this at the moment. You take yourself too seriously, so you really want to send yourself up. And I use today feel very self conscious when I was younger, I suppose, adolescence, and I think that when I thought about it, I think that had a lot to do with why I started doing it in the first place. I think it was the old thing about hiding behind a character. You felt more secure because you weren’t, you know, you couldn’t be mistaken for being yourself, so you could feel less inhibited when you were pretending to be somebody else. I’ve been playing Bob Hawke for quite a while now, although I’ve probably done most of the Prime Ministers since the ‘50s. Fraser, Whitlam, and Billy McMahon, who took the stage very briefly. I was only a kid when Bob Menzies began his reign, but he managed to keep Australia chained to the British empire for almost 20 years.