Typecast

Have you ever stopped to think how difficult it must be to be typecast? To find yourself in a job or series of jobs you hate but can’t break loose from.

The actor who is type cast. Can you think of one? I can - John Wayne was typecast but he loved it. He thrived on the drawling cowboy image. Marilyn Monroe tried so hard to get out of the mould, it killed her. Jim Morrison cast himself as the drug drenched loser and did just that, lost - everything, including his life.

The original actor who played Superman, George Reeves was typecast - so much so, he couldn't get another role when the series closed, so he killed himself. Tonight we’ll examine “type casting”.

One of the most dramatic cases of typecasting that I know about personally – besides myself, of course (we’ll go into that later) is that of one of the Stars of Hey Dad – Nudge.

I met Nudge once at a party – see I don’t even know his real name – and I said, “Hi Nudge” – well, poor Nudge, seems everyone in the whole country only knows him as Nudge. This party was a Z-grade party of wanna-be TV losers, such as myself – game show contestants, ex-soap guest actors, fantastic furniture commercial extras, and poor Nudge - he was there hoping to network with somebody, anybody, in order to revitalise his non-existent career. He was telling me that since doing Hey Dad, he just can’t shake the Nudge thing. Nobody wants him, nobody cares, he was broke, lonely, sad – a lost soul just waiting in limbo until the Hey Dad 25th Anniversary comes around so he can get back in there and do the shopping centre circuit. I said, cheer up Nudge, you were great in Hey Dad. That’s gotta make you feel good, huh? … at which time he wandered back to the bar, skulled another triple scotch on the rocks, wet his pants, vomited down his shirt front and fell down the stairs.

Typecast. Yes it can happen to anybody. But why does it happen? Well basically it is because humans are so stupid, they can’t see past the superficial surface. Baddies HAVE to have acne scars, or some kind of facial deformity, goodies HAVE to be beautiful, only Drop dead gorgeous people can feel true love that knows no bounds, and they have to have huge appendages and massive but firm and upturned breasts, otherwise we just don’t believe them.

It’s become so bad that people are undergoing painful surgical procedures, like breast and penis enlargement in some pathetic attempt to fit into these typecasts.

I know what I am about to say sounds ridiculous but it is true… it was reported in the Sydney Morning Herald that there is a growing trend of women going to plastic surgeons to have their genitalia remodelled to look like the ones in girlie magazines – and they don’t even realise that those photos have been airbrushed!! They are trying to attain something that is not even real!!

And then there are the typecast character roles – woe betide the poor suckers who fit into these categories – If you wear glasses – YOURE A NERD. If you are a big fella you have GOT to be a fighter and a footy player. If you are a woman of exceptional beauty, you’ve got two career options supermodel – or high class hooker. If you are male and enjoy dancing or playing the violin, hey, you’re a poofter – get used to it. And all you over 40 guys with receding hairlines trying to engage a younger woman in conversation – you dirty old man, you creep, you sleazebag!! Why don’t you just go and kill yourself?

Male child care worker – paedophile!!! Male nurse – Poofta! Woman with hairy armpits who likes to ride motorcycles – DYKE ON BIKE!!!

But it gets worse… man with great big pot belly and huge red nose – alcoholic!! Gaunt looking man lying on Cabramatta train station – must be a junkie!!! Man in a turban who can’t speak a word of English – Cab Driver!! Adolescent with shorts the size of a five man tent, Black TuPac t-shirt and baseball cap on back to front – HOME BOY!!!

Well I am here to smash these stereo-types to smithereens. How do you know the guy with glasses isn’t a complete moron? The big guy could be a florist. The home boy might like stamp collecting, And the woman on the motorcycle could be a happily married industrial chemist with three kids for all you know…

Tonight I am going to introduce you to some people who I think might help change your idea of typecasting, and prove that there is always more to a person than meets the eye, no matter how many hollywood movies and TV shows you might watch.

Firstly tonight, Mr Ziggy Tosh…. (TO LEFT) …What do you think of all this typecasting? Ziggy?

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(From right) Thank you. Well I’ve been living in Jamaica now for about 3 months, since daddy headed up the British Embassy here. It fitted in splendidly with my PHd I’m doing at Oxford. I’ve been writing my thesis on the socio-political ramifications of pharmacological variations across the british empire. Basically, I’ve been getting really wasted and shagging a lot of negro women. I am unable to substantiate my findings completely, until Daddy gets posted to India and I can spend a further three months in an opium den. It’s a pleasure to be here eh what, but I’m off to the cricket. Pip pip. Hoorah

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(FROM LEFT) Thank you Ziggy, have a smashing time. And now, here’s Captain Allen Richardson, an international Pilot for Qantas as he demonstrates how he welcomes his passengers on board his 747 Jumbo, proving that looks can sometimes definitely be deceiving. Captain? (TO RIGHT)

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(FROM LEFT) Yo! Qantas Airlines Dis be yo' main man, we be chillin at tray-five-o, if you be flexin get up off yo ass and shake that thang, my homies be packin’ know what I’m saying. if you wanna smoke chronic, just hang loose blood, my bitches be cruizin on up to yo ass with some forty-ounce 8-ball, so stop trippin and sit your white ass back down, we be in the hood in no time knowa’msayin, i be bumpin mo’ fo’ switches all da' way, man. Peace out!

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(from right) Yes, thank you Captain. Excellent. My final guest tonight is Night Club owner, mobster and racketeer Jack Trimbole. Jack, what you can you add to this discussion about typecasting? (TO LEFT)

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You know what I really love? Sunday picnics in the Park. Oh the absolute thrill of sitting in the shade under a blossoming Franjipanni Tree sniffing the delicate aroma of Jasmine as it wafts across the lake on a fine spring afternoon. I get out my little picnic basket , pull out some freshly backed French bread, spread some chilled butter from the esky, and some nice thinly sliced cucumbers, swiss cheese and maybe a little pate to top it off. Some ice cool mineral water, and water crackers. Mmm mm
Then its off for a brisk walk by the lakeside, feed the ducks, throw a stray ball back to the little children playing cricket, before heading back to Oxford street in the late afternoon to stock my runners for the nights trade. Absolute bliss.

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(FROM LEFT) Thank you Jack… As you can see, typecasting is a difficult business. In fact it is one of the great evils of our society. How can anyone dare to presume they know what makes someone tick just by what they look like or what they do? It’s a form of racism. Judging people on extremely flimsy criteria.

In fact I have been the victim of typecasting all my life. I guess we all have to some degree. When I was at school, my Curly hair got me the title of GollyWog. When I began playing music, I was a poofter. When I left school and got my first job in a bank, I was a “Bank Johnny”. I left the bank and joined a band, and became a poofter again. I dyed my hair blonde, and everywhere I went, idiots would go “baaaahhh!!!” . I started playing in piano bars and everyone called me Leo Sayer. I left the piano bars to play the big pub gigs and everyone thinks I’m Dave Gleeson from the Screaming Jets. I sing at weddings, and suddenly I’m The Wedding Singer!!

Typecast my whole damn life. How do I break free from this discrimination? How do I get people to see me for who I really am? A Neurotic, psychopathic, perverted, drug crazed lunatic with delusions of grandeur and an insecurity complex as large Warringah Mall.

Well maybe tonight I have gone some way to helping you see through the stereotypes we are bombarded with each day, and maybe somewhere down the track when I audition for the part of a Mongolian emporer, Zulu tribesman or Lybian Terrorist, you will look beyond my milky white night club complexion, anglo saxon facial features and accent, and give me the part because of who I am – not what I look like.

Did you recognise someone you knew in my show tonight? You’ll recognise a few interesting moments I loved and a few more I hated in next weeks program number forty - "it's my birthday".

I will take two recorders and link together some of the more interesting moments of my television training yesterdays from my very first lesson...so until next week and "my TV birthday" this is Stefan Sojka saying....goodnight.