When you look at it, laughter and daughter should rhyme, but to do so you’d have to pronounce the latter as dafter. Or the former as loiter. With intent. Which brings me to point. That laughter and daughter go hand in hand in a film called BUT ALSO JOHN CLARKE when the daughter is the offspring of John Clarke and the subject is John Clarke.
Not only is BUT ALSO JOHN CLARKE the feature directorial debut of daughter, Lorin Clarke, but also a uniquely titled film shot over many moons on the terra firma across Australia and New Zealand, capturing John Clarke’s biggest moments and lasting impact on generations of audiences, while offering rare glimpses into the man behind the satire.
Not only a defining satirical voice of his era, John Clarke infamously revealed little of his private world, but through an intimate series of recorded conversations with his daughter, writer, performer and director Lorin Clarke, audiences are invited into the spilt beans can of worms that was the personal life of the man whose humour skewered and impacted the national identity of both New Zealand and Australia.
These exchanges illuminate Clarke’s unwavering resistance to authority, his controversial decision to leave New Zealand for Australia in 1977, and his remarkable four decades in entertainment, from Fred Dagg to Clarke and Dawe to The Games and more.
Only forty-two of John’s friends, colleagues and collaborators, not only actors, but also comedians and journalists such as Ben Elton, Sam Neill, Bryan Dawe, Andrew Denton, Ernie Dingo, Jana Wendt, Shaun Micallef, David Wenham, Wendy Harmer and many more, share memories, insights and laughter as they honour and hold court on Clarke, the cross Tasman cultural icon.
Weaving together anecdotes and archives, BUT ALSO JOHN CLARKE is an antidote to the apocryphal, a treasure trove of memories, a loving gesture for one of our greatest jesters.
