The Adelaide YouTube stars making their mark on the big screen
They are the Adelaide brothers who became billion-view YouTube stars after an underwater car stunt gone wrong. Now the RackaRacka duo's debut feature film is about to hit the big screen at a gala event. Read their incredible back-story.
SA Weekend
Don't miss out on the headlines from SA Weekend. Followed categories will be added to My News.
- Diving into the Hollywood shark tank
- Youtuber RackaRacka in court over underwater car stunt
- Also on Friday: Prankster avoids conviction for the stunt
- How to make the most of your Advertiser.com.au subscription
Adelaide twins Danny and Michael Philippou became YouTube stars after an underwater car stunt got them into trouble. On Sunday they will make their directorial debut with the film Mia, about a troubled teenager and her group of friends who discover how to conjure spirits.
The movie will be screened on Sunday, October 30, from 7pm at Her Majesty's Theatre and the twins will be walking the red carpet with some of the biggest names of the SA screen industry.
Read their story, as first published in SA Weekend on August 7, 2020.
********
The house where Danny and Michael Philippou live in Adelaide’s northern suburbs looks utterly normal but for the enormous candy-pink Cadillac limo parked out the front. Getting inside the front door isn’t easy. There is a 10-minute wait out the front while Danny cleans up the fake blood where he was filming.
The twins, 27, who are based in Los Angeles but are back home under the COVID-19 travel lockdown, have ricocheted in the most unconventional way from DIY filmmaking in their lounge, to YouTube stars and now the writers and directors of a horror film, Talk To Me, with Screen Australia and SAFC funding, and backing from Causeway Films.
It is the kind of trajectory that would have been impossible in earlier times, before the internet meant anyone with enough enthusiasm and inventiveness could post their crash and bash short films and videos for an international audience. It was perfect for Danny and Michael, identical twins who are quickly distinguishable by their personalities (and Danny’s dyed blond hair) and whose hyperactive creativity started spilling over into filmmaking while they were still at primary school.
“We’ve been making stuff since we were nine,” says Danny, the calmer of the two and the one who does most of the writing. “We used Dad’s video camera and then we broke that. We went through a bunch of video cameras that we broke.”
In their lounge there are numerous patch-up marks on the walls and ceilings where they would accidentally smash through a surface. But they are mischievous and funny rather than bad, even as they were bounced between Pooraka, Para Hills West and Modbury Heights primary schools where they could never be put in a class together. They ended up at Para Hills High and are still in touch with a couple of their teachers but concede there were others who were glad to see them go.
“I understand why the others hated us. We were a handful, ADD or whatever. We were always running around,” says Michael. “I got suspended 10 times in Year 10 and they said after three suspensions you got expelled but we never got expelled. I think they kind of liked us and hated us but kept us there.”
They started posting stunt-based, often superficially-violent videos for their friends, and wrote and filmed a series called Timaffy, which ran for 10 seasons from Years 8-12. They played around with YouTube but their content was often removed.
“We were just kids who beat the crap out of each other with light tubes, barbed wire, all that, and then we did the scripted stuff as well,” says Michael.
In 2013 they posted on Facebook Harlem Shake Gone Wrong, an idiotic and very funny take-down of a dance move in which they set fire to a car, which was picked up by US TV shows like Jimmy Kimmel and Conan O’Brien. They started making a series of “fake fails”, which included sticking knives into toasters and electrocuting themselves. They began branding their videos as RackaRacka to claim them as their own.
Their first big international success – and their huge online fanbase is now only 10 per cent Australian and 90 per cent overseas with a reach that extends to Brazil – was the 2014 Harry Potter vs Star Wars duel between a Harry Potter wand and a Darth Vader sabre, directed by Danny and starring Michael and an actor friend Remy Brand. It cost $200 to make, was watched more than 11 million times on YouTube, and won them an Australian Online Video Award and a trip to the US.
“That was the first YouTube video that went massive, it blew up. Oh my God, people wanted to talk to us,” says Michael.
They were doing well but at what? Their father supported their creativity but also told them to find real jobs. Danny’s solution was to sign up for a series of paid medical trials where he would be put in hospital for a month at a time, testing drugs that were not yet on the market.
“How many times did I have injections in me? My God, I was a lab rat,” Danny says. “But I was writing scripts while I was in hospital and I would use the money to fund our cameras and our shoots.”
They both studied film at the MAPS film school and were doing work experience on sets, mainly odd jobs that gave them the chance to see how shooting a film was done when you had a budget and crew. Both of them worked on the Adelaide-filmed 2014 horror flick The Babadook, Michael as a production runner and Danny doing work experience in lighting. Michael also started to specialise in stunt training.
“We met a couple of stunt dudes and we were showing him our stuff and he said, ‘You should get accreditation, you’re really good at getting hit by cars’,” Michael says. “It took a year and a half so I can properly do it and the stunt co-ordinators know that I am accredited.”
In the Sam Worthington Anzac TV drama, Deadline Gallipoli, it was Danny who played a body in a ditch who Worthington assumed was just another dummy when he fell straight on top of him. Michael also had stunt work in the zombie movie Cargo, with Martin Freeman, and Russell Crowe’s The Water Diviner.
They began an online blog and set up a hub in a rented house on Henley Beach Road that became the House of Racka and a drop-in zone for anyone wanting to take part in skits and sketches. “The House of Racka fitted into YouTube’s mould, which was what they were pushing at the time – longer content – and it was fun to film these blog/skits and try different things,” Danny says. “But after a while we didn’t want to be just chasing the trends of YouTube.”
It was also impossible to get any serious work done. Someone posted their address online and fans would jump the fence and drop in. It became the sort of house where they would go upstairs and find three strangers sleeping in their beds. “I couldn’t write there,” Danny says. “It was like a ‘here and now’ thing but it was so distracting having all these people running around.”
The goal was always to make a movie but at the same time their internet fame kept growing. Their relationship with YouTube also changed as the pressure grew to monetise what they were doing – put ads on their videos – which they were initially averse to because it gave the impression they were just in it for the money.
After they hit a million subscribers with Halo vs Cod, they decided they needed the income to offset the cost of filming. From then on, the car crashes became more convincing, there were bigger fight scenes, costumes and special effects but also direction from YouTube to be less violent and more family friendly.
When YouTube didn’t like a video they would demonetise it, remove the ads and park it in a corner of the internet where only diehard fans will find it. Now they post on YouTube only occasionally but they were also picking up international work, making videos for other people and being flown around the world including to Africa where they worked on Action Point, a stunt-a-minute Jackass-inspired film about a dodgy entertainment park.
They were financed to make three short online films and wrote and directed an advertisement in Norway for an internet-share box, working with a budget of $700,000. “That was strange working with people who don’t have English as their first language and we lived there for two months. It was a lot of fun,” Danny says.
At the start of 2018 Danny got serious about script writing. They were 25 and needed to find some proper traction to take the next step forward. Once the script for their new film, Talk To Me, was finished, they moved to Los Angeles hoping to interest a production company. They had been there often but wanted to live there to capitalise on what came up.
They knew they had to convince people they were serious enough to do more than just make attention-grabbing internet content. Danny also wanted to be somewhere without distractions. “I wanted to be in a space where I could just focus on writing, so it felt like I was back in hospital,” he laughs.
They had representation and management but even so they expected it would take a year or two. Within three months a US production company, Spyglass Entertainment, and producer Eli Roth were interested but they were also talking to the Australian company Causeway Films (The Babadook, The Nightingale), not just because they had worked on The Babadook although that helped.
Back then, Danny would drive actress Essie Davis and director Jennifer Kent around and hear how they discussed their work. He would also watch Kent on set where she was utterly focused on realising her vision.
“She was the first one where I went to a set and thought, ‘She actually cares about what she’s making’,” Danny says. “The other ones were just there for the job – and I think she butted heads with people because of that – but she had her vision and you could see that.”
Causeway were ultimately more supportive and responsive, getting back to them promptly with helpful notes and direction – being more motherly, Danny says. Choosing them also solved the problem of where to film because Causeway had a strong history with South Australia whereas the US producers wanted the film to be American.
“We wanted a mix; the main characters are American but I was like 100 per cent I wanted to shoot it here with people that we know, the crew who worked on the Racka stuff,” says Danny. “I wanted to be around home because it’s going to be a stressful experience. I am down to do the Hollywood thing and we are working on things for that but I just want to be at home first.” They came back in November with the idea of returning to LA but COVID-19 and their infamous car stunt intervened.
In September 2018 they started work on the underwater car sequence which saw Michael drive a customised car filled to the roof with water to the bottle shop of the Lonsdale Hotel. They had the car adapted so it functioned with working steering, brakes and indicators, and they drove it a short distance from a backstreet to the bottle shop. It was a stupidly funny prank but the police were not amused.
“We made it look as though we were on the road for ages but it was a really safe drive and the police had no issue with it when we first did it,” Danny says. “Michael has certificates for advanced driving and being a stunt performer, and we made the car with professional modifications. We didn’t just put a hose in the car and drive it.”
Michael was charged with a range of offences including dangerous driving and driving a car unfit for roads. A conviction would have life-changing ramifications for his return to the US and their lawyers were hoping to convince the court this was a harmless prank with no risk to the public.
“I do respect the police,” Michael says. Late last month the case was quietly settled with Michael pleading guilty to a lesser charge. He lost his licence for 14 days but there was no conviction, leaving him free to return to the US.
Right now, they are focused on being here and they plan to buy a house next year and move their father in with them. They hope eventually to split their time between Adelaide and the US but those plans are on hold and they are happy to stay for a while.
“Dad’s really sick, he’s got cancer, and we don’t know how long he has so we want to be around as much as possible,” Danny says. “He really supported us. He’d come home and we’d have glass and broken stuff everywhere, and all the neighbourhood kids, and I think Dad got used to that. He wanted us back!”
Their film will be of the horror genre but will not rely on the splatter and gore you might expect. There is a lot more to the Philippous than their Australian jackass brand. Among their shelves of homemade pseudo violence videos you can also find the works of Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, whose languid psychological thrillers were the staple of university students in the 1970s. They love the radical Korean director Bong Joon Ho, particularly The Host and The Parasite, and admire the way he mixes genres within one coherent story. And they love The Hunt, a restrained but stressful story about the unravelling of a man accused of child abuse, with Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen.
“That’s the kind of stuff that we respect, and it’s terrifying but it doesn’t rely on jump scares,” Michael says. “Our film is horror but it’s not going to be splatter. It has a couple of shocking moments but it’s not relying on that.”
They are keen to start making the film, which follows a lonely teenager, Mia, who conjures spirits through a disembodied hand including one claiming to be her dead mother. “The film is about connections, about natural connections and accepting them,” says Danny. “I think people will be surprised because it’s completely different to our RackaRacka stuff.”
They are in talks about casting and are mapping out scenes while COVID-19 restrictions are in place, as well as preparing some of the concept art. They hope to build some sets at Adelaide Studios and the domestic setting of the film means they will not need outside locations.
“I feel so fine about it right now,” Danny says. “I want to do it. I want to sleep tonight and wake up and start production the next day. It’s my whole headspace, I cannot wait.”
Adelaide’s pioneering bid to end homelessness in the CBD
A new move to learn the names and stories of the homeless is driving a bid to cut Adelaide’s rough sleeper numbers to effectively zero. Roy Eccleston reports.
Brainwaves, the SA Weekend quiz
This week in the quiz, bring your knowledge of 1960s movies, African countries, the human body, European languages, Elvis Presley’s music and Harry Potter’s family tree.