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Clip description
Julian Morrow, playing a security guard, leads a fake Canadian motorcade into the APEC restricted area, carrying Chas Licciardello dressed as Osama Bin Laden.
Curator’s notes
Much of the entertainment in stunt-based comedy lies in its unpredictable quality. But by the time this stunt was shown to The Chaser’s studio audience in the week following the APEC Summit, it had made national headlines and international news. The audience’s knowledge of the stunt is palpable – having seen it in the news, they and the 2.3 million television viewers who subsequently tuned in now got to see it from the Chaser team’s point of view.
They were rewarded by seeing The Chaser’s War on Everything at its best: controversial, funny and shocking, in terms of how far they can take a prank and what they can get away with. All while making a valid satirical point about the stringency of the APEC Summit security measures and how comparatively easy they were to flout, at least in part.
The legalities of television production are something a general audience often doesn’t have to think about, however this segment brings them into the foreground. Had the Chaser team broken the law? Despite the improvised elements of the team’s stunts, they are the result of careful preparation, not least of which are discussions with the ABC legal department. In an interview with ASO, executive producer Julian Morrow, himself a former lawyer, stated that they think through as many possibilities of what could go right and wrong as they can, although they can’t always predict the outcome. They also, however, consider the joke and what will make entertaining television. In this case, in Morrow’s opinion, simply approaching and then turning around in the motorcade might make a point but not look funny on camera: hence the decision to add a fake Osama Bin Laden as ‘the punchline’.
In this sequence, the point at which we see the motorcade turn around and Licciardello exit the car is where Morrow believed they had reached the limits of acceptable legal risk and decided to execute the punchline. The team had reached the end of the less serious ‘green’ security zone and were at the threshold of the ‘red’ zone, where entering without permission could result in immediate arrest. As it turned out, the size of the motorcade and the space it required to turn back took the team unwittingly into the red zone, at the same time as the Osama Bin Laden punchline drew attention to them, resulting in their arrest. Seven months later charges were dropped due to the tacit permission they had been given to enter the area.
