They talk about how the emus seem to have squadron leaders who are outmaneuvering the Australian Army. There were newspaper headlines at the time which are just hilarious.
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Over a series of four different battles with different types of weapons, the military, the same military that had recently won World War I, could not defeat these emus. The Australian Army, which had gone and successfully fought the Allied powers in World War I had come home and was called up by the government to go to Western Australia and get rid of these emus. We’ve done loads of research, and the story is basically what really happened. How close do you plan to stick to the actual events of 1932? So I feel like it was the most relevant thing that I could find, the most relevant anti-war satire I could hope for. That happened, in a sort of microcosm, back in Australia in 1932. And that’s what we’re facing now: a war against ourselves, against what we have done to nature. The war that happened in 1932 was a war against nature, against the environment. In the end, the most important thing for me is the film has this deep message. I know all these elements shouldn’t fit together. There’s also this heartwarming drama component as well.
It was a biting satire, a hilarious comedy and it had this massive action-adventure component, because there’s an actual war against these emus. So when I got the script to The Great Emu War, it was basically everything I had been hoping to find in one serving.
All the Ealing comedies: The Ladykillers, Kind Hearts and Coronets. The comedy I grew up loving was very much the Anglo/Australian type. I have literally all my life been obsessed with making an anti-war satire, but I’d always wanted to make one that was accessible to as broad an audience as possible: an anti-war satire that an Indiana Jones audience would also go to see. There are a number of others, more recently JoJo Rabbit by Taika Waititi.
I lived in England for a little while and became obsessed with Powell and Pressburger’s The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. Strangelove was the videotape that I wore out the most when I was a child. I have been obsessed my entire career, probably my entire life, with making an anti-war comedy, an anti-war satire. What appealed to you about this bizarre true story, especially as you’re not Australian? Lina Wertmuller, Famed Italian Filmmaker, Dies at 93Īhead of the market, The Hollywood Reporter‘s European Bureau Chief Scott Roxborough spoke to the film’s director, Yaniv Raz, about a project he sees as equal parts Babe, Paddington, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Jojo Rabbit.
With Village Roadshow on board as producer and John Cleese attached, alongside Franklin, fellow Aussie standup Jim Jefferies and Kiwi comic Rhys Darby ( Flight of the Conchords, What We Do in the Shadows), The Great Emu War is heading to AFM, with Mister Smith Entertainment handling international sales. For the Emus.įranklin, who had never heard of the Great Emu War, turned the entry into a hit routine and, together with his friend and SNL veteran Rob Schneider, a film script for an anti-war satire. Now all-but-forgotten, the incident refers to a month in 1932 when the Australian government, in an attempt to curb the wild population of emus chomping on farm crops, enlisted a battalion of World War I veterans with machine guns and military training. Years ago, Australian-born stand-up Monty Franklin stumbled across an entry on Wikipedia about the Great Emu War.