For John Clarke: 'He tried to cast light, not heat', by Andrew Denton - 2017

2 July 2017, Melbourne Town Hall, Melbourne, Australia

This eulogy was part of a 3 hour public celebration of John Clarke’s life, hosted by the Wheeler Centre.

John Clarke was a master of understatement, never better expressed than his description of golf, a game that he loved, and which sometimes loved him in return. And he once said of it, "That's the problem with golf, raise your left eyebrow and the ball's in the Yarra."

John had the keenest of eyes, but also the finest of hearing, and his hearing was finely tuned, not just to the cant of the powerful, but to the nuance of the punter. My favourite story about Australian barracking came from John, who was at a Collingwood-St. Kilda match years ago at the G when Plugger was still playing for St. Kilda and all the action was at the other end. And Plugger was on his own in the goal square, and someone in front of John stood up and called out loudly enough for Plugger to hear, "Tony, I'm going for a pie. Do you want one?" That was John. John would hear the little things that make sense of the big things.

I think it's undisputed that John was the finest satirist of our age, anywhere in the world, in my view. His ability over so many years to be both an X Ray machine and a moral compass was unrivalled, but it was the thinking behind that satire that set it apart. Years ago, I read an interview with John where he talked about satire as failing, unless it had some kind of positive aspect. He said you had to work out what the problem was, and at least try and offer some kind of an answer. And if you look back on John's work, that is there. He tried to cast light, not heat. Yes, there was anger in his work, but never malice. And to me, this was the most remarkable thing, that this man could, for so long, hold so close the red hot kernel of anger that lies at the heart of satire, but not be burned or bent out of shape by it. It was extraordinary.

Plutarch said that he who governs anger governs himself, and it's this I'd like to talk about tonight, about John in tribute to him. It's, of course, appropriate that we mark his brilliance as an artist in so many fields. But to me, his great brilliance was in the art simply of leading a life. I had the enormous pleasure of working with John's writing partner, Andrew Knight, many years ago, and every now and then we'd stop. And sometimes the conversation would turn to John with great affection. And I remember Andrew told me a story about when he was very early in his career, and anxious and was just starting to write with John. Andrew was also working at an advertising agency being run by Phillip Adams and John Singleton. Yes, that is as awful as it sounds.

Anyway, there was a crisis happening and Andrew's in the boardroom. This is in the days before mobile phones. And somebody comes in and says, "Andrew there's a Mr. Clarke on the phone for you." And Andrew says, "Look, I can't, could you tell him I'll call him back?" So the person goes off and comes back in a minute later and says, "Mr. Clarke says it's very important."

So Andrew excuses himself from this crisis meeting, goes to the phone and says, "John, what is it? This is not a good time." And John says, "Look, I'm just downstairs in the car. I need to talk to you. Can you come down?" And Andrew goes, "All right, I'll come down, but I'll have to be quick."

So he goes down in the lift, John's waiting in his car and Andrew leans in and says, "John, what is it?" And John holds up a Frisbee and says, "I reckon now would be a pretty good time to throw a Frisbee, don't you?"

So they go off to the park for an hour and throw a Frisbee. When Andrew gets back to the crisis meeting, it's still in crisis. It made no difference at all whether he was there or not. Of all the brilliant, talented people I've ever known or worked with, John is the only one to whom I would give the word ‘wise’. I can't tell you what I mean when I say wise. He didn't give a list of instructions.

John lived by example, not by declaration, but there was something about John which gave me enormous comfort because he was the person that I knew who seemed to most have worked out how to go about living life. And just to know that somebody had almost got there, was incredibly reassuring. He wasn't perfect. Of course, that was a very good idea. The last perfect person, we nailed to a piece of wood, but he was wise, and I deeply treasured that.

I would have to say that I have not felt the loss of a man so deeply since the passing of my own father. And when my father died, along with the many beautiful messages I got, came one from John. John always had the words, only in this case, they weren't his words. They were someone else's. It was just this poem by one of his favourite poets, A.J. Cronin, signed at the bottom, ‘from John’.

With the exact length and pace of his father’s stride
The son walks,
Echoes and intonations of his father’s speech
Are heard when he talks.

Once when the table was tall and the chair a wood
He absorbed his father’s smile
And carefully copied the way that he stood.

He grew into exile slowly
With pride and remorse,
In some way better than his begetters,
In others worse.

And now having chosen, with strangers,
Half glad of his choice
He smiles with his father’s hesitant smile
And speaks with his voice.

John Clarke knew. John Clarke knew human beings. John Clarke knew how to live a life. We've a bloody privilege to share his and we're privileged still. Cheers, John.

Andrew Denton discusses this speech in this beautiful episode of the podcast.

for Paul Cox: "At this stage I believe in nothing and everything", by John Clarke - 2016

filmmaker Paul Cox died on 18 June 2016, Melbourne, Australia

There is no available audio or video of this speech

When Paul Cox was moved from hospital into palliative care, we prepared ourselves for tough news. Paul was getting smaller and weaker, his voice was in retreat and family and friends had attended his bedside to say their goodbyes.

His siblings flew out from Europe. I didn't expect to see him again. A week or so later, Paul decided he was going home and explained to the palliative care people that although he loved them dearly, he would not be dying just yet.

He travelled home in a Popemobile-shaped taxi and began blessing people as he passed them in the street. This cheered him up enormously and when we saw him a few days later he rose to meet us, offered us coffee and sat rather grandly in a chair, chatting for hours with a keen emphasis on the future.

His voice was stronger, his memory was wonderful, his manners were elegant, his talk was clever and in some cases what he said was astonishing.

At 7 o'clock each evening, for example, he went out on to his little balcony in Melbourne and raised both arms high in the air in order to receive healing waves being beamed to him by a woman in Uzbekistan.

Paul was very amusing about all this but as he said, 'at this stage I believe in nothing and everything'.

A few years earlier, the first time he was going to die, he received a liver transplant and, in a state of profound gratitude, he continued writing and making films.

Last year he made a movie in which David Wenham played a man who has a liver transplant and falls in love. Paul met his partner Rosie when they were both receiving liver transplants. He was in his late sixties at the time and she is a beautiful Balinese woman of somewhat more tender years.

"I know what you're thinking Johnny," Cox said to me when he introduced us. "Rosie is much younger than I am. But I want you to know Johnny, my liver is younger than Rosie's."

Half a lifetime ago Paul and I wrote some films together and we've always stayed in touch. I'd never written a movie before and I quickly learnt it was no use suggesting to Paul a thematically consistent sequence involving sport, for example. That wouldn't fit in a Cox film. Too healthy. And there wasn't much interest in men who fixed cars and called each other 'mate'.

Paul's films looked like Dutch interiors with dappled light playing through the window and they were full of urban characters who were ill at ease, often slightly wounded or suffering from incongruity of some kind.

As with many collaborations, we wrote by talking a lot together and then writing separately. Paul's house was always full of good conversation. At one stage Werner Herzog was living in a shed in the backyard with a dingo.

Peter Watkins also lived there at some point, while he and Paul were discussing a film project. Peter had made the brilliant 1964 docudrama 'Culloden' in which 1960s British journalists report live from a battle which occurred in 1745. This strategy of anachronism was new in 1964 and the effect in 'Culloden' was terrifying.

Paul's public presentation was that of a serious artist but he was nevertheless given to fits of amusement which produced a snuffling and rumbling sound such as might occur if a badger were attempting not to explode. When he regrouped, he expressed matters once more in his formal mode, which was not unlike an antiques catalogue.

A suggestion which would solve a problem was 'good,' a great idea for a scene was 'fine,' and if he completely approved of a whole section of plot and dialogue he would pronounce it 'very fine'; as in 'I read that section again last night Johnny. That really is very fine.'

When Lonely Hearts, the first film we wrote together, was about to be released 35 years ago, Paul wrote me a letter which I have always kept. In the last line of the letter he said he hoped that having worked on this film together and seeing it come to fruition, would 'strengthen our shy human friendship'. It did.

Having received blessings from Uzbekistan, Paul announced he was going to America. The only people who thought this wouldn't happen were those unfamiliar with Paul's willpower. The doctors wouldn't allow him to fly across the Pacific for 14 hours so he'd negotiated overnight stays in Bangkok, Dubai and Frankfurt and then a trip across the Atlantic to Chicago.

His film Force of Destiny was to play at the Ebert Film Festival and Paul had been invited to speak. Rosie would go with him and make sure he rested, ate the right food and took his tablets. The couple left on April Fool's Day and that night Rosie, whose canonisation is imminent, sent a message reporting that Paul had gone out to dinner in Bangkok. This was probably a PB for the palliative care unit at the Austin but Cox was just limbering up. After Dubai and Frankfurt the official party arrived in Chicago and Paul made a gracious, honest and very engaging speech to an audience who couldn't believe quite what they were watching.

Following the festival, Paul and Rosie made their way home and Paul was planning another movie. The fact that he died on Saturday will probably slow him down a bit although I expect he'll call sometime during the next week or so with a revised schedule. "I'm still going to do it," he'll say. "Why not? I have some good ideas. I want to talk about it. Come to dinner."