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Short filmTranscript
00:06Andy hello hi Virginia well there wouldn't be a child in Australia who hasn't read or
00:12heard of one of your books yeah I feel like I've transmitted my love of reading as a child to
00:19the
00:19next generation so very satisfied about that so how did you come to speak fluent kid this
00:25may surprise you but I was a kid for quite a long time and that window just stayed open for
00:32me that
00:33feeling of like anything can happen an infinite possibility I can access that at any time well
00:42you've just published your 41st book and you're taking it on the road can I come along absolutely
00:47see you there great I'll see you in Melbourne bye I'm Virginia trioli and I've spent my life paying
00:57attention to creative Australians and wondering what is going on in that wild mind of theirs in
01:06this series I'll showcase artists and performers at the peak of their powers and tell the story of their
01:11triumphs their stumbles and why they make the glorious work we love so much Andy Griffiths is
01:22one of Australia's most successful authors he's the punk pied piper of children's reading luring
01:28kids to books all around the world you forgot to tell me about the age his treehouse just and bad
01:36books have been international sensations selling more than 20 million copies and Andy's popularity
01:44with kids has earned him rock star status I'm thrilled to be unashamedly celebrating the art of making
01:57because we are a country of so many brilliant creative types
02:15hello Andy hello how great to see you well I wanted to take us to a quiet space for a
02:21quiet little chat
02:22yes yes yes it's quiet but it's going to get pretty loud very soon there's a lot of kids out
02:27there
02:27waiting to be very noisy 200 of your fans for your new book yeah yeah and they get very excited
02:34should I have brought earplugs you should have you didn't get the memo I didn't get the memo
02:50are you ready to hear from Andy Griffiths
02:56thank you
03:00what are you normally studying on a Wednesday morning math all right would you like me to teach you some
03:07math
03:10I can count to 10 but I just can't always do it in the right order
03:19Andy he never has that distance that some author might get from the audience he's really tapped into
03:25what sort of makes kids excited what kind of like sparks their imagination and what kind of drives them
03:31crazy as well he loves that almost kind of combative relationship with with his audience
03:36this is my best climb ever
03:43it is
03:47I'll tell you the truth that is me but I didn't make the climb I fell and I fell many
03:53hundreds of meters
03:54until I died
04:01they realize quite early that this contract of responsible adult and child has been broken
04:06at the start and they think okay I gotta screw with this guy now
04:10he can't finish it does anyone want to finish the banana
04:16I'll throw it up in the air
04:20there's this complicated paradox with Andy
04:28he is both a chaos agent and a sort of a maestro an orchestra conductor in a way
04:37he he knows how to make those two things work together
04:42there's quite a lot of you I've only got one book I'll give you each a page from the book
04:48would that be fair
04:52who's happy for me to rip up the book and give you
04:58I think we actually found a few hundred lost books
05:03and with this wonderful magic
05:11that's the hero moment when the books were revealed you're all getting a book
05:15it was like Oprah Winfrey
05:19what do you get out of this
05:20the joy of the kids
05:22their inquisitiveness
05:23they're challenging me
05:25we're just celebrating
05:28reading stories
05:30silliness
05:31and that all feeds into positive pleasurable associations with books
05:38and farts
05:39oh there's always a fart or two
05:42yes
05:55in order to write Andy needs to play
05:58so at the bottom of his garden he's built himself a playroom to ensure that window to his childhood stays
06:05wide open
06:07this is the tree house
06:09yes
06:09it's where all the hard work gets done
06:16after you
06:18oh wow
06:22and the ten year old in you has never left you
06:25no he didn't
06:26he left me in charge
06:29is this a lot of your stuff from your childhood
06:32yeah many items have been retrieved from the shoebox I used to keep under my bed
06:39it evokes play for me
06:41I've got a direct window to that ten year old and so once he's excited then I'm I'm getting ideas
06:50to write
06:54oh I love these things
06:55oh they're cool aren't they
06:57I have one
06:57so you've got to make one move and the other stay
07:01you're really good you're a professional
07:03I spent hours on my grandmother's little donkey
07:06and I love there's no batteries in them
07:08no exactly yes it's finger control only
07:10one of my favourites is this little guy
07:13he's got an eyeball head
07:16and if we hold it like that he's got a little lever at the back
07:21got it
07:23the other thing in here is books
07:26how many books
07:27lots of books and some of the most important ones that have had an influence on me as a writer
07:33and from childhood as well
07:34absolutely this was one of the first books I ever had was Streville Peter
07:40I know this book I had this book too
07:42it's called Merry Stories and Funny Pictures
07:45there's not a single laugh in this book
07:47not really well there's a laugh of surprise
07:50the poor old little sucker thumb
07:52yes this is the one the red-legged scissor man
07:54yeah his mother goes out and says don't suck your thumb while I'm out
07:58or a man with long red legs and a big pair of scissors will come in and cut them off
08:02and then bang
08:03sure enough mother is right
08:06poor old Conrad gets his thumbs cut off
08:09and at the end he's just showing his thumbless hands
08:12and mama comes home
08:14ah said mama I knew he'd come
08:17to naughty little sucker thumb
08:19just when you want your mother to protect you and love you
08:22no sympathy
08:22she told you
08:23so even as a five-year-old I realised there was something a little absurd about this
08:29and there was some connection between horror and humour
08:32yeah humour helps you digest the horror
08:36right
08:36and stand it in a way so you need to build tension in your audience
08:41but then I'll like make them slip on a banana skin
08:45and suddenly the tension is released as a laugh rather than further nail biting
08:51show me another one what's another book that's really important to you
08:54oh um dr seuss was pretty important very early on this was a great book because he starts telling you
09:03about the full the different fish there are that there's blue fish and old fish and new fish and some
09:09are bad and then he just abandons it and just starts telling silly stories about anything and mind blowing imaginative
09:20scenarios
09:20yes
09:21a sing-songy surrealistic landscape which I just loved and I put that on my hand as a sort of
09:30well my arm as a reminder that's Mount Everest that's the pinnacle of what you could achieve
09:36a nonsensical book that you just fall in love with and so that's what I've always been trying to write
09:43don't start getting designs on yourself faster
09:47you know it's soos there
09:49you're still not there
09:50you set your sights high
09:51the origins of Andy's rebellious spirit can be found in his listening room
10:03it's a space filled with some truly impressive audio tech
10:07dedicated to his other great love a deep and wild collection of music
10:16how many years of collecting is this
10:18uh since I was 10 years old
10:21and how many do you think you've got all up
10:23don't know maybe a thousand
10:26well this one's for me because that's the models isn't it
10:28absolutely
10:29and the boys next door on the other side
10:31yeah perfect
10:32pick one for you
10:33uh oh how can you go past cosmic psychos
10:36love it
10:37punk rock at its finest
10:39what did punk give you because punk's been really important in your life
10:43yeah it's an energy that makes you feel alive and uh and that's what I try to get into the
10:49fiction
10:52and he loved and lived punk
10:54as a young man he fronted his own punk band called Gothic Farmyard
11:09did you love being in the band?
11:11yeah absolutely loved it because music has been important to me right from the beginning
11:16we can tell
11:17and um and when I'm writing it's a form of music
11:20yeah
11:20I'm listening to the words and do they sound good and the nice rhythm
11:24so there's a continuum there
11:27absolutely
11:27and when I hear a song that excites me it's like
11:32I'm so excited I want to grab that energy
11:34and transmit it through my fiction to my audience
11:38because I wanted my stories to be like that
11:41well that's so interesting because this is your youthful anarchic punk stage
11:46but that's a heck of a pivot from what I understand
11:50was a very stable very happy childhood
11:52absolutely yeah it was free ranging all around Dandenong Creek
11:58and the bush all around that area in the eastern suburbs
12:02and lots of books to read at night
12:05so surrounded by literature from a young age
12:08yeah and my mother ran a second hand book stall for the school fete
12:12and every year our spare room would fill up with all the neighbourhood's unwanted books
12:19did you get first choice?
12:20absolutely I'd spent hours in there going through books on psychology and philosophy
12:25pot boiler adult thrillers that I shouldn't have been reading
12:29but all grist to a growing readers mill
12:33we had a lot of kids in our neighbourhood
12:35and we were all out on the streets all the time
12:38and they gravitated towards me
12:40and I couldn't help telling them tall tales of things that I'd apparently done
12:47that were completely impossible
12:49and the more they doubted me
12:51the more I would invent supporting detail as to why this absolutely was true
12:56and it was like a game we were playing
12:59for no reason other than the enjoyment of it
13:03in his late twenties
13:04Andy qualified as a high school teacher
13:06and worked in country Victoria
13:09his writing life began with the challenge of trying to get the kids to read
13:13the kids didn't like reading or writing
13:17they said that's you know for losers
13:19and who would go to the library
13:22and by that stage late eighties
13:25children's literature appeared to be becoming safer and more messagey
13:31and the sort of books I loved were the anarchy chaos books
13:36that were just there for the sheer enjoyment of reading
13:39and so I started doing the same for my students
13:42so that was the beginning of you thinking I can write stories
13:46I didn't know that I could write stories
13:49but I knew these kids needed something
13:52that was a little bit more modern
13:54a little bit more punk rock
13:56and I'd been watching the young ones
13:59it was about the only television I watched in the eighties
14:02but that punk rock energy of the young ones
14:06I wanted to capture that in fiction
14:09and so that's what I applied myself to do
14:13Andy matched that energy with a steely discipline
14:17for ten years he banked half his annual teaching salary
14:20and then gave himself two years off
14:23to see if he could make it as a writer
14:25the words poured out of him
14:28and he discovered that he had an unexpected talent
14:31two years got me to the foothills of Everest
14:35it didn't actually get me up top
14:37but it certainly taught me I had a comedic gift when I wrote
14:41so I was like, ah, so I'm not Shakespeare
14:45I'm not Raymond Carver
14:48I'm this clown
14:49My life will take a different path
14:52Yeah, and in fact I couldn't get myself out of the books
14:56Andy was always the main character
14:58this is happening to me
14:59I tried
15:01but then I saw Seinfeld
15:03and I thought, well he's a character in his own sitcom
15:06I can be a character in my own book
15:08so that was a real breakthrough
15:09but I didn't think I would be accepted as a proper writer
15:14if I'm doing this
15:15but in the end that's all I could do
15:18was submit to the voice that came through
15:20And that's I guess what resulted in the first series of books
15:23the Just books
15:24Yeah, they were about me as a kid playing jokes on people
15:30and they were horrendous jokes
15:32but Andy always suffered more than anybody else in the end
15:36he never got away with it
15:38and that's what a book is to me
15:40it's a form of play
15:42and you might as well play hard rather than play safe
15:49Andy was never going to play it safe
15:51graduating from short stories to his first full-length novel
15:55Andy wrote The Day My Bum Went Psycho
15:58and his mission to get kids to read by any means allowable
16:02was underway
16:03it became an instant bestseller
16:06May your bum be with you
16:10The Day My Bum Went Psycho was the stupidest title I could think for a story
16:14and it would also help to loosen up
16:17what I felt was an overly precious approach
16:21to literature for children
16:22which there was always this idea
16:24it should have some moral uplifting
16:27or send some message
16:29Yeah
16:29So I wanted this to be like a Trojan horse
16:32to get everyone to say bum so often
16:35that they would just relax
16:38Was it 1,200?
16:41273 times
16:42Somebody counted up the amount of word times I said bum
16:46in a 50,000 word novel
16:49It was the beginning of what we might call your controversy period
16:52because there was a big controversy about this book
16:55I think it came from educational bureaucrats
16:57who got their bum in a twist
16:59about a particular poster
17:00Yeah, we had a picture of a baby's bottom on the cover
17:04It was like it was terrorising an entire city
17:07Yes
17:07And they said, oh, some people might get offended
17:10by the sight of a baby's bottom
17:12Then it was on page three of The Age the next day
17:16and I was having a ball
17:18It would have been a moment, I guess
17:19where you got to decide
17:20OK, what am I fighting for?
17:22Yeah, I need to be able to entertain these kids
17:26in the most powerful way I know how
17:28Whatever you write is not going to please someone
17:32I learnt that very early
17:34So I thought I have to please myself
17:36and I have to please my audience
17:38And the gatekeepers certainly have to be negotiated
17:41Yes
17:42But I'm not going to compromise for them
17:47In 2004, Andy and his collaborator and illustrator Terry Denton
17:52created another very naughty book
17:55They called it The Bad Book
17:57And it's as bad as you can get
18:00It's one of my favourites
18:02And this takes us right back to Seuss
18:04and to Grimm and everything
18:06But in the most concise little form
18:08It's bad little Betty
18:09Bad little Betty wouldn't get out of bed
18:12Was she being lazy?
18:14No, she was dead
18:17I love that!
18:18Poor little Betty
18:19But also, perfect
18:21Yeah, and then, you know
18:23Most children are not traumatised by that
18:26No
18:26Because they realise how stupid that is
18:28You know, it's like
18:29That freaked a whole lot of people out that book
18:31didn't it?
18:32Yeah, once again, they thought
18:33Oh, kids will be traumatised by this
18:36or they'll go and do bad things
18:38And I said, no
18:39This is a thought experiment
18:41They understand that if you call a book
18:43The Bad Book
18:44It's not really that bad
18:46It's a wink
18:48It's a wink
18:48But there was an obnoxious element in this
18:51which I think was a key learning moment for you
18:53about how far you can go
18:56and the jokes that you can't tell in a book for kids
18:59Yeah, there's a strain of dark
19:01you know, humour in Australian culture
19:04called The Little Willie Rhymes
19:07And it was like
19:08Little Willie in his best of sashes
19:10fell in the fire and was burned to ashes
19:13By and by the wind grew chilly
19:15but nobody liked to poke poor Willie
19:18And there are many such variations
19:21Yes
19:21Of these Willie poems from the 30s and 40s
19:23So I made my own
19:25Little Willie took a match and set fire to the cat
19:28Said Little Willie as it burnt
19:29I bet the cat hates that
19:31And then he takes a match and sets fire to his bum
19:34Said Little Willie as it burnt
19:36Gee, that was pretty dumb
19:37Little Willie took a match and set fire to his head
19:40Said Little Willie as it burnt
19:42Soon I will be dead
19:43Now, no one minded him setting fire to his own bum or his head
19:49But the cat got me into a lot of trouble
19:54The pylon was immediate
19:57Educators, commentators and librarians
19:59And scalded Andy
20:00In 2004, the bad book was removed from libraries and bookstores
20:06Around the country
20:07It was a lesson he's never forgotten
20:12I realised I'd transgressed the unwritten moral laws of fiction
20:17If someone does something bad
20:19They need to be punished in some way at some point
20:23Okay
20:25So I took it out
20:26I've had him set fire to his knee
20:28And he said, ouch, that's hurting me
20:30And there was never any more complaints
20:33So what is Too Far?
20:35And do you instinctively know?
20:37Or is that just trial and error?
20:38What's odd about writing comedy
20:41Is that you have to walk up to the line
20:43And then not cross over it
20:45And then the line changes
20:47Especially if you've got a long running series
20:49Like I do
20:50I'm on book 20 now
20:52If you showed me my writing in books 1 through 5 right now
20:56I might cringe a little
20:58I might not have written those jokes in the same way
21:00And so I think that that's a really tricky territory
21:03I think that humour doesn't always age well
21:06Once we expunged all this obnoxious stuff
21:10We were able to find other types of humour
21:15Hi, my name's Andy
21:17This is my friend Terry
21:19We live in a tree
21:21But it was the Treehouse series with illustrator Terry Denton
21:24That cemented Andy's reputation
21:26As the undisputed king of children's books
21:29He's got a bowling alley
21:31A see-through swimming pool
21:33A tank full of man-eating sharks
21:36Terry then drew this 13-storey wonderland
21:41And I recognised it instantly
21:43As a place I would want to live
21:46And any child and their parents
21:49Would also want to live in this place
21:51So I said, right
21:52Here's the book
21:53You and me
21:55And Jill, my wife
21:56And editor
21:58We're all living in the tree
22:00Trying to write a book
22:01But we're distracted by all the wonderful stuff
22:04That's going on
22:05Yes
22:06And that's why we can't write the book
22:07And so that just took off in a way we hadn't even expected
22:13Around, both in Australia and around the world
22:17The Treehouse series engaged readers around the world
22:20And was published in more than 35 countries
22:25What struck me really quickly was that we were on the same wavelength
22:29I'd been doing a lot of kids' books
22:32But I had never met anyone with a sense of humour
22:34That could, you know, drive me
22:36And bring out of me the stuff I wanted to do
22:39But somehow I was able to go into Andy-land
22:42As much as he was able to go into Terry-land
22:54Andy has another great passion
22:56One that gives him access to his creative state of mind
23:01Running has always come very easily to me
23:05I enjoy the repetitive, rhythmic motion of it
23:11I go into a different thought process
23:13You're just in a more broad, open state of mind
23:18Where ideas are coming and going like clouds
23:21And that can be really useful
23:24The big picture of what you're doing
23:27When you come back to nail it down into words
23:33Well, when you were learning to write
23:35You decided to apply your running regime to your writing
23:38Talk me through that
23:39Yeah, I thought, gee, if I applied a similar kind of discipline to writing practice as my running
23:47Perhaps I would improve writing
23:49So, yeah, I started a writing practice which consisted of timed writing
23:55Three minutes on the clock
23:57Put your pen down and start writing and do not stop
24:01So I was downloading my subconscious in three minute bursts
24:05Which eventually grew to ten minutes to half an hour to one hour
24:09So free running is almost parallel to free writing?
24:14Yes, yeah, you're not trying to control anything
24:17We have a free expression part of ourselves
24:21And we have an editor part of ourselves
24:24And you need to disable the editor for long enough to get the thoughts on the page
24:30And then you can make decisions about how much and how honest you want to be
24:34But get it down first, yeah
24:39And his new partnership with illustrator Bill Hope
24:41Marks his next chapter in encouraging another generation of readers
24:47I love the one where he's sitting on his throne there
24:50Can you go back to that one?
24:52This one?
24:54Yeah, show me the middle one
24:57That's beautiful
24:59You've created a new partnership with Andy now
25:02After so many years of him working with Terry Denton
25:04Is it hard to create that new rapport?
25:07It was surprising I think to everybody involved including me
25:11How well Andy and I got on
25:14I mean there's a 30 year age difference between us
25:17But at the same time we have a lot of the same kind of cultural references
25:21And a very similar kind of slightly chaotic silly sense of humour
25:27So are you young enough to have actually grown up with Andy's books?
25:30Yes, yeah, yeah
25:31I remember being in year 6 class and getting a copy of Just Kidding or Just Joking
25:38I can't remember which one it was
25:39And I remember there was a drawing of a half decomposing fish on the front
25:44That had a finger poking out of it
25:46And it was one of those things that just like scratched a little bit of my brain
25:49That was like this is weird, this is edgy kind of stuff
25:53I wonder why the squid is mad with this
25:55It could have some, I don't know, magical ink
25:58We could be trying to steal the ink off the squid
26:01Working with Bill is just a joy
26:04I can say something or a silly idea
26:09He's already sketched it before I've finished the sentence
26:12And that then suggests new avenues for me to expand on the story
26:18So things are developing very quickly with Bill
26:22Yeah, or it can just be an evil squid
26:25Could it just be an evil squid?
26:27I'll put some evil eyebrows on him so we know who we're talking about
26:30So it just allows me to go to different places with Bill
26:34And it's a very vast cinematic universe
26:39I think what's most exciting to me is that Andy
26:43When he last visited me I saw this spark
26:45I saw that he wanted to keep going and he had a new idea
26:49And he was really excited about it
26:51Andy's mind is so pliable that I don't think he'll ever stop writing
26:56And I think that's a good thing for readers all over the world
26:59Have bad books and naughty books and anarchic books had their day for kids?
27:04No, they will be with us till the end of time
27:08Or to whenever people finally stop reading books
27:12An anarchic, joyful, clowning kind of spirit
27:16It's something that's innate to human existence
27:20We need that comic perspective
27:23Well, when I see kids literally screaming at the sight of you
27:27And the sight of your books
27:28They're clearly not done with you
27:30No, unfortunately
27:33You've got to keep working
27:35I've got to keep going
27:36What colour is the stick?
27:38Brown
27:38Brown
27:39Brown
27:40No
27:41Correct
27:41What shape?
27:42It's just like such a fun game to play with kids
27:46Shaped like a stick
27:47Shaped like a stick
27:48Shaped like a stick
27:48Let's pretend what I'm about to say is perfectly reasonable when it's anything but
27:54So it's just one long game of let's pretend with an enormous audience of readers
27:59Absolutely, yes
28:00So, thank you very much for coming along today
28:04Thank you
28:05Andy Griffiths, everyone
28:07Big round of applause
28:13And the monkey
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