Alienhits Loves... Chris Lilley!
I wanted to start a new feature, hopefully once a week, that branches out from the normal music posts and focuses on either a person, place, movie, book, etc. that I consider to be 100% amazing. It's called Alienhits Loves..., and the first person loved on is Australian funnyman Chris Lilley.I’m very hard to please when it comes to comedians. Most of the popular ones do my head in. They remind me of the types of people I had drama classes with in high school--attention hogs with little subtlety and no off switch. Yet Chris Lilley is different. I think I’d prefer to call him a funny actor, because his brand of comedy doesn’t rely on punch lines or constant “look at me” showiness, but instead on creating characters that are brutally believable.
Lilley has developed two shows in his native Australia--We Can Be Heroes in 2005 and Summer Heights High in 2007. Both are Office-style character-driven parodies with a real fly-on-the-wall “is this real?” feel to them. He’s as compassionate as he is unflinching towards his targets. From Pat the “professional roller” in Heroes to Jonah the troubled schoolboy in SHH, he crafts characters that we care about while laughing our asses off at all their foibles. Both series are among the funniest things I have seen in my life.
Summer Heights High is my favorite of the two, mostly because of Mr. G. A self-obsessed drama teacher who’s painfully unaware of his flamboyance and how he is perceived by the rest of the school, Greg Gregson (to use his full name) is one of my favorite fictional characters of all time. For those who have seen the show, I urge you to check out the special edition DVD (unfortunately available only from Australia) for literally hours of deleted scenes that only serve to enhance the realism of the whole experience.
Lilley is developing a new show, his third, and I am waiting on pins and needles to see what he’ll come up with next. I’d love to see more of Mr. G and the hottest girl in year eleven, Ja'mie (like, seriously!), though I have faith in anything he comes up with. The man is a genius, and officially the funniest person on the planet.
A clip from We Can Be Heroes
A clip from Summer Heights High
Buy both DVDs here
posted by Nick at 5:18 PM
4 Comments:
Great idea for a feature! Reading your thoughts on things besides music (TV, books) over the years has always been something I enjoyed.
After meaning to watch it for ages, I finally caught up with Summer Heights High and LOVED it...but then, everyone should. I'm seriously tempted to get a Tsunamarama t-shirt.
I love nothing more than tsunamarama :)
Have you seen We Can Be Heroes??
I haven't! I didn't even know he'd done anything else until this post! That DVD set isn't as expensive as I thought it'd be, either....
Yeah with the exchange rate and everything its very reasonable, though if you're getting it through the Australian site you have to have a multiregion dvd player to play it :( (or your computer, I guess)
It's really worth it for the deleted scenes, though. Some of the extended Mr. G ones are among the best things ever put to film.
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