NEW PODCAST EPISODE #57 — John Safran's eulogy for Father Bob Maguire
'Bob, you're dead. Do you want a state funeral?' Australian author and documentary maker John Safran becomes my first two time guest on the podcast. This is a funny, brilliant eulogy and episode.
It’s always hard to know what label to apply to
. Comedian doesn’t fit. He writes jokes, but the laugh is never as important as the underlying point. Documentary maker is getting closer, but there is an earnestness to that title that misses the mark. He’s not a prankster, although he pulls pranks, he’s not a journalist, although he writes some quite brilliant journalism.
I think the safest bet is just ‘author’. He’s written four successful gonzo styled non fiction books, and the term Safran himself uses in this episode is ‘valid troll’. He has a rare knack of finding some sort of moral truth, without ever moralising. Louis Theroux calls him, ‘Brilliantly weird and unpredictable’ and
made him the subject of this worldbuilding post, and commends him for ‘forever pushing the boundaries.’
John’s latest book is ‘Squat’ (Penguin, 2024) which is about the week he spent squatting in Kanye West’s mansion. It’s an incredible premise, just a ridiculous thing to embark upon, and you have to read it to appreciate the ‘valid’ bit in John’s ‘valid trolling’. Safran now has a live show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival called ‘Squatting at Kanye’s and Other Adventures’ which has unseen stories and offcuts from his 27 years doing his idiosyncratic Safran thing around the world. I saw the Sunday show and it was hilarious and fascinating, as John so often is. It’s also on next Thursday at the Comedy Theatre, and then travels to Hobart and Paramatta. (Details)
In the Speakola episode, we talk quite a bit about Squat, the decision to take the project in the direction he did, and his creative philosophies generally. Then the episode switches in a more standard Speakola direction, as John shares memories of his great friend and collaborator Father Bob Maguire, and the process of writing and delivering a eulogy for ‘the people’s priest’ at the state funeral.
Apart from being a funny speech, and so original in its opening concept, it’s also just really lovely. I think in 2023 I called it the eulogy of the year, and gave it a Speakolie on Triple R. Here is the video and the transcript, but listen to the episode. John is such an unconventional and rapid fire thinker, and I love listening to him talk off the cuff. And he’s just funny. See him this week. He’ll be the best sit down non comedian at the festival.
Ange & The Boss documentary still in cinemas!
Ange and the Boss - Puskas in Australia is still in cinemas this week! We’re still going well too. There are only two seats left tomorrow evening at Melbourne’s Cinema Nova, and although I don’t have times for the coming week, (released tomorrow), but Nova, Thornbury Picture House and The Picadilly in Adelaide are all hosting sessions.
See angeandtheboss.com for details.
My co-director Cam Fink and I travel to Hungary this weekend for the 5th Pápa International Historical Film Festival and for a couple of extra screenings around Budapest. Helló magyarország!
For Father Bob Maguire: by John Safran - 2023
5 May 2023, Melbourne, Australia
I spent so much time with Father Bob over 20 years, I feel I can auto-generate an A.I. chat between him and me, regarding today.
“Bob, you’re dead. Do you want a state funeral?”
“No!”
“Why not?”
“Ooh, I’m not sure about the state and the church colluding in matters spiritual. It worries me… I want a Tibetan sky burial, where they take you up the mountain and you’re eaten by the birds”
“Or I could push you out to sea on an iceberg”
“Oh yes, I’d like that”
“But Bob, a state funeral, because it’s such a rare honour, will really annoy your enemies, so it will be like, ‘needless to say I had the last laugh’”
And he’d go “Hmmm, enticing… but still no!”
And then I’d say “You always said, there’s no you and me, there’s only we. And the great we - all the people who loved you - need a chance to come together and say goodbye. And they’re not going to fit on top of that mountain in Tibet”.
And he’d say “Oh go on, have the state funeral. But no flags!”
Bob was like a reverse Native American. He thought his soul would be taken away if a camera wasn’t pointed at him. But it wasn’t because he was vain, it was because he felt such joy, and he knew it provided others with joy, grappling with the important questions of life in an irreverent way. A funny way of being serious, he would say.
While he might have been ambivalent about a State Funeral, he was always interested, obsessed even, with gauging the success, or otherwise of projects he was involved in. Calling me to ask about podcast download numbers, overnight ratings, book sales, follower counts. So, Bob you’ll be delighted to know that the eulogy I tweeted about you, was a blockbuster, my biggest ever, with 400 thousand views, 12 thousand likes. I’ll read it for you Bob, upload it to the cloud you’re no doubt sitting on now:
What was Father Bob like privately? Somehow kinder and funnier than he was publicly. We somehow ‘fought’ nonstop from the moment the record button was pressed in 2003, through documentaries, radio shows and books, right through to filming this year, but we never once fought. More than being kind in broad brushstrokes, he was kind in small ways. When an elderly congregant couldn’t catch the Collingwood matches, he organised tapes from Channel 7 that he would slip to her, along with the Eucharist wafer, during communion. Bob was wise as Buddha. He attracted all manner of outcasts, not all pleasant, but he was open hearted to those people too. I asked him how he did this and he said, “You don’t have to like people to love them.” When filming, it was an editor’s nightmare to cut from the shot before I’d burst out laughing each time Bob finished a sentence. I never thought Bob would ever stop making me laugh, but with the sad news of today, he finally has.
Thank you.