Idiot Box
Clip 1: ‘Why don’t we get something different?’
2 min 19 sec
Taken from the feature Idiot Box (1996)
Original title classification MA – this clip chosen to be PG
Availability of the complete title
Curator’s clip description
After another heavy night of drinking, Mick (Jeremy Sims) walks home, past his disapproving brother Terry (Paul Gleeson). Meanwhile, a gang of bank robbers holds up a bank in Punchbowl, Sydney. The news is transmitted quickly over the airwaves. That night, Kev (Ben Mendelsohn) and Mick pool their limited resources for another night’s drinking. Mick likes the young woman in the bottle shop.
Curator’s notes
The film uses a lot of parallel story-telling techniques, and percussive editing to create a sense of temporal and spatial imbalance. We don’t know who the bank robbers are yet but their crime sparks an idea for Kev and Mick, once they see the bank camera video on the news. It attracts their attention – they too could become famous, or infamous, by robbing a bank. It is notoriety, in itself a sense of achievement, that drives them, rather than a desire to become rich.
Paul Byrnes, curator
have teachers’ notes.
