form y separately published work icon They're a Weird Mob single work   film/TV   humour  
Alternative title: Sono Strana Gente
Adaptation of They're a Weird Mob Nino Culotta , 1957 single work novel
Issue Details: First known date: 1966... 1966 They're a Weird Mob
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

Italian sports journalist Nino Culotta is lured to Sydney during the mid-1960s to work for his brother's new magazine for migrant Italians. When he arrives in the country, however, Nino finds out that there is no magazine and that his brother has taken off with the investors' cash. Left in the lurch is his brother's business partner, Kay Kelly. Nino vows to pay off his brother's debt and gets a job as a builder's labourer. In doing so, he learns how to talk, act, and drink like an Australian male. His numerous attempts to woo Kay are repeatedly rebuffed with humorous results, but in the end she falls in love with him. Nino's introduction to the country and its culture finds him bemused but ultimately confident that he has a future here.

The Australian Centre for the Moving Image suggests this film is 'very much a product of the assimilationist view dominating Australian immigration policy at the time'.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Form: screenplay
      1966 .
      Extent: 114 leavesp.
      (Manuscript) assertion
      Note/s:
      • Unpublished screenplay (not for loan)

      Holdings

      Held at: Australian Film, Television and Radio School Jerzy Toeplitz Library
      Local Id: THEY

Works about this Work

Plus Ca Change...' Mainstream Representation of Postwar Migrants from They're a Weird Mob to Ladies in Black Wenche Ommundsen , 2023 single work criticism
— Appears in: Writing Australian History On-screen : Television and Film Period Dramas “Down Under” 2023; (p. 173-190)
Class Acts : TV Larrikins and the Advent of the Ocker, 1957–1984 Lindsay Barrett , Peter Kirkpatrick , 2023 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , 2 vol. 47 no. 2023; (p. 344-359)

'Stephen Fry has described the typical American comic hero as a freewheeling “wisecracker” compared to the English type, who is apt to be an aspirational lower-middle-class failure. With Fry as a prompt, we consider humour and class in the evolution—or devolution—of that representative local hero, the larrikin, during Australian television’s first three decades. This was a period that saw a realignment of the nation’s political, economic and cultural affiliations away from Britain towards the US, and in which the ocker came into sudden prominence as a less benign version of rowdy male identity. If media larrikins such as Graham Kennedy and Paul Hogan excelled at the kind of sketch-based humour that had its origins in vaudeville and were unsuited to sitcoms, ocker characters such as Wally Stiller from My Name’s McGooley and Ted Bullpitt from Kingswood Country found a home there. Our analysis of larrikin and ocker humour is triangulated with that of Norman Gunston, as played by Garry McDonald: a desperately aspirational failure with his own mock variety show who emerged from the dialogue between these two comic types. We conclude with some thoughts on post-ockerism and the emergence of the bogan.' (Publication abstract)

Straight to the Pool Room : Top 10 Films about the Australian Dream Luke Buckmaster , 2016 single work column
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 25 April 2016;
'The housing market may not sound like the most stimulating territory for a story, but it has been the basis of some of Australia’s greatest films'
Wogs Laughing - All the Way to the Bank Jordan Baker , 2016 single work column
— Appears in: The Sunday Mail , 31 January 2016; (p. 28)
How Weird Does This Mob Still Seem? Brian McFarlane , 2012 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Inside Story , May 2012;

'Impossibly remote in many ways, the late fifties are portrayed with verve and nuance in John O’Grady’s bestselling novel, writes Brian McFarlane'

They're a Weird Mob Peter Hourigan , 2008 single work review
— Appears in: Senses of Cinema , no. 47 2008;

— Review of They're a Weird Mob Richard Imrie , 1966 single work film/TV
Contexts in which to Place They're a Weird Mob and into which You Might Never Have Placed it Before Quentin Turnour , 2005 single work review
— Appears in: Senses of Cinema , July - September no. 36 2005;

— Review of They're a Weird Mob Richard Imrie , 1966 single work film/TV
Who's Afraid of Film-Making? B. Tivey , 1966 single work review
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 27 August vol. 88 no. 4512 1966; (p. 42)

— Review of They're a Weird Mob Richard Imrie , 1966 single work film/TV
The Old Wave at Bondi Charles Higham , 1966 single work review
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 27 August vol. 88 no. 4512 1966; (p. 41)

— Review of They're a Weird Mob Richard Imrie , 1966 single work film/TV
Talking About My Generazione Rosalie Higson , 2005 single work column
— Appears in: The Australian , 18 May 2005; (p. 10)
Laying Our Cultural Foundations Humphrey McQueen , 2007 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Age , 17 November 2007; (p. 19)
Larrikin Ockers and Decent Blokes : The National Type in Australian Film Comedy Felicity Collins , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: Creative Nation : Australian Cinema and Cultural Studies Reader 2009; (p. 154-165)
y separately published work icon 'They're a Weird Mob' Peter Rowe , Perth : Centre for Research in Culture and Communication (Murdoch University) , 2003 Z1666352 2003 single work criticism Research undertaken by a student of the Centre for Culture and Communication (Murdoch University) into They're a Weird Mob (1966). Includes aspects relating to the production phase, critical reception, principal performers and production crew, references and a synopsis
Wogboy Comedies and the Australian National Type Felicity Collins , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: Diasporas of Australian Cinema 2009; (p. 73-82)

'Popular Australian film comedy since the early 1970s has been dominated by reinventions of the national type. These reinventions involve transformations of the urban larrikin and the bush battler, first established in silent film classics such as The Sentimental Bloke (Raymond Longford 1919) and in Cinesound Studio's Rudd family comedies of the 1930s, directed by Ken G. Hall. These comic types continue to surface in popular film and television as the larrikin, ocker or decent Aussie bloke, exemplified in the 1970s by Bazza McKenzie, in the 1980s by Crocodile Dundee, in the 1990s by Darryl Kerrigan in The Castle, and most recently by cable TV showman Steve Irwin until his untimely death in 2006. Yet despite decades of multiculturalism, little attention has been paid to the impact of post-war, non -British immigration on Australian comic types. This chapter examines three popular comedies which champion ethnically marked characters as either 'New Australians' (They're a Weird Mob, Michael Powell 1966), 'wogboys' (The Wog Boy, Alexsi Vellis 2000) or `chockos' (Fat Pizza, Paul Fenech 2003). It asks whether 'wogboys' and 'chockos' - as diasporic, multicultural or new world comic types - have trumped the larrikins and ockers of Australian screen comedy, or whether 'wogsploitation' films are popular with Australian film and television audiences precisely because they tap into a long. standing national type without disturbing its key characteristics.' (Publication abstract)

Last amended 30 Aug 2017 11:40:40
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