Australian film has had its share of working class icons. One of our most famous exports, Crocodile Dundee, although an outback legend, was essentially a working class bloke. And Darryl Kerrigan, Michael Caton's character in The Castle, is another whose good Aussie blokeisms like 'How's the serenity?' entered the vernacular.
'Kenny Smyth', from the recently released feature film Kenny, is the latest blue collar, purple heart hero to hit Australia's big screen. Shane Jacobson plays Kenny, a 38-year-old plumber who installs portaloos and throws a mean left hook (but only in self-defence). A career comic, Shane is, with his brother Clayton, one half of the team that produced, shot and directed Kenny.
While The Castle had Australians talking about moving the Commodore to get to the Kingswood, Kenny Smyth's sayings might take a bit longer to enter common parlance. Take for example his thoughts on divorce proceedings:
'I reckon we need to cut out the middle-man. Just find someone you hate and give her a house.'
Whether it's sticking his head into a poo tank and remarking that it's a smell set to outlast religion, or fishing an unappreciative woman's engagement ring from the top of a dung heap, Kenny is the archetypal down-to-earth tradesman, always there with a helping hand outstretched and some hard-won advice.
While sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, Kenny also has a strong social critique. The movie is dedicated to those who do menial jobs and are often overlooked—and even sometimes scorned by their fellow Australians—as a consequence. During the speeches at the conclusion of the film's pre-release cast and crew screening, the Jacobson brothers called for a group of people in the third row to stand up and take a bow. Reluctantly, they responded and Shane announced that these guys, the Splashdown staff, were the real heroes and that they would be back at it for real tomorrow morning.
It would be interesting to get a sense of how Shane became Kenny—to find out what he makes of Kenny for representing underpaid and under-appreciated Australian workers. But in a clever marketing ploy in the lead up to the film's general release—a ploy that publicist Deb Fryers said had been particularly effective in country Australia—the media can't get Shane's opinions. We can only get Kenny's. And, to use the character's vernacular, the boy's not short of a word.
He agrees when I put it to him that some politicians