Paul Fenech made Housos in only eight months.
Picture: Kristi Miller Source: National Features
Vicky Roach, The Daily Telegraph, reports
Paul Fenech isn't sure why it takes Baz Luhrmann and Hugh Jackman so long to make a movie.
"I don't know what the hell they are doing," says the can-do comedian who gave himself just eight months to deliver Housos Vs Authority - based on his popular SBS TV series - to the screen.
Fenech, of course, is joking. Or kind of. It takes a pretty healthy ego to even attempt such an ambitious feat.
"I know the depth of the filmmaking is trickier, but essentially it just comes down to cameras and actors and a script," says the 39-year-old writer-director-producer-actor.
"To me, a lot of those guys are like heavyweight fighters - they come out every four years, have one fight, and then go and sit in the sun for a while.
"I guess that makes me like some sort of club fighter. I have to go every week otherwise I can't pay the rent."
Fenech is quite happy to position himself as something of a battler's director - particularly since he believes the position was going begging.
The filmmaker, who got his first job with ABC-TV as a stagehand sweeping floors, believes most Australian features target a very small demographic.
Which might explain why Housos fans in Sydney's often-maligned western suburbs have embraced characters such as the cop-baiting, thong-slapping Franky (Fenech) and his dole-bludging best mate Dazza (Jason Davis) enthusiastically in preview screenings across the country.
"The people I make films about are not the minority," says Fenech.
"The greater part of Australia is much closer to Housos than it is to, say, The Slap, for example."
Even the Boys in Blue appreciate the humour of Housos' raucous, in-your-face celebration of Australia's authority-challenging underclass.
While filming on location in Sydney's western suburbs, cast and crew regularly caught the attention of police.
"Every time we shoot a scene with the bikies or the Arabs, or any scene that has more than 10 people, a cop car will come by," says Fenech.
But once they realise its Housos shooting, they usually usually ask for a photograph.
"I can't believe it. The police are some of our biggest fans."
And the mission statement for Housos Vs Authority might well have been: leave no politically correct stone unturned.
In the film, the gang travel in a drug-laden campervan from the western outskirts of Sydney to the heart of Australia - so that Dazza's foul-mouthed girlfriend Shazza (Elle Dawe) can be reunited with the dying mother she hasn't seen since she was three.
Their socially unacceptable behaviour reaches a literal and metaphorical pinnacle when they spray-paint Uluru.
-- SEE Housos Vs Authority opens today.
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