So Canada’s public radio book reading program Between The Covers is podcast. One whole channel (BBC Radio 4) for the U.K. is available through Radio Downloader subscription. So what about our friends in Australia? Are they making their shows available?
Yes, they sure aren’t!
ABC Radio National is still in bad shape podcasting wise. They’ve got their terrific non-fiction programs like The Philosopher’s Zone and All In The Mind pleasing everyone all over the world but their book reading program, called Book Reading, isn’t available except via 20th century tech called “streaming audio” (RealAudio or Windows Media). This is really bad.
I’ve said it before, and before and before and before, and most assuredly before – when oh when will ABC Radio National join the 21st century?
I bring this up because they’ve got a terrific sounding novel being broadcast right now:
Wake In Fright is an open-eyed nightmare played out under a scorching outback sun. On one level it’s a great, mad, hallucinatory yarn about landing yourself in the ultimate geographical cul-de-sac – a place without exit. But underneath its compulsively readable surface lurks another, even darker story; a sort of ‘bush existentialist’ tale about the nature of self-entrapment, and the way in which we are often the architects of our own worst dreams.
Wake In Fright
By Kenneth Cook; Read by Gabriel Andrews
15 Broadcasts – Approx. 3 Hours 45 Minutes [ABRIDGED]
Broadcaster: ABC Radio National / The Book Reading
Broadcast: 2006 / 2009
An open-eyed nightmare played out under a scorching outback sun, Wake in Fright is on one level a great, mad hallucinatory yarn about landing yourself in the ultimate geographical cul-de-sac, a place without exit. But underneath its compulsively readable surface lurks another, even darker story; a sort of ‘bush existentialist’ tale about the nature of self-entrapment, and the way in which we are often the architects of our own worst dreams.
Sounds great don’t it? Too bad almost no-one will listen to 3.75 hours of story sitting in front of their monitors.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Director Ted Kotcheff’s Wake in Fright honored at MOMA
A surprise private screening celebration in honor of Canadian Director Ted Kotcheff’s 80th Birthday.
(New York, NY, March 28,2011)— The restored 1971 Australian classic Wake in Fright was screened The Sunday on March 20th at The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in The Lewis B. & Dorothy Cullman Education & Research Building (The Celeste Bartos Theater) as part of a surprise private screening celebration given by his wife Laifun in honor of his 80th Birthday.
The event was co-hosted by Chris Meloni (Law & Order SVU) and Antonio Saillant (Angel Light Pictures). Mariska Hargitay (Law & Order: SVU), Brian Dennehy and Michael Talbott (First Blood) and many other close friends of the honoree attended this historical event and a special reception dinner followed immediately after the screening at the restaurant Bice NY.
Wake In Fright, released in 1971, is a sharply observed drama about a schoolteacher stranded in a hostile country town. Based on a novel by Kenneth Cook, it stars Gary Bond alongside Chips Rafferty, Donald Pleasence, Jack Thompson and Sylvia Kay. Directed by Canadian Ted Kotcheff, produced by George Willoughby and written by Evan Jones.
At the time of production, Kotcheff had directed two films, the Tiara Tahiti (1962) and Two Men Sharing (1969). After Wake In Fright, Kotcheff would continue to have a successful career as a director. His later films included The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1973), as well as the football comedy “North Dallas Forty” (1979), which he also co-wrote, Fun with Dick and Jane (1977), First Blood (1982), and Weekend at Bernie’s (1988). In the 1990s, he returned to directing for TV and the executive producer of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
38 years after its 1971 debut, ‘in competition,’ at the Cannes Film Festival, this film was declared a Cannes Classic in 2009 and was screened again as part of the 2009 Cannes Classics retrospective program, Kotcheff holds the honor of having one of only 2 films to have ever been screened twice at Cannes.
A landmark film in the renaissance of Australian cinema in the 70s, Wake in Fright was lost for many years and has been restored by Australia’s National Film and Sound Archive and re-issued and is now considered one of the greatest Australian films of all time. The film is distributed via Madman Entertainment.