Nothing funny about Aussie film courses, says Tim Ferguson

Film schools are ‘ripping off’ their students by failing to teach comedy writing and leaving them to produce ‘lecturing misery porn’, says filmmaker Tim Ferguson.

Comedian and filmmaker Tim Ferguson.

Leading film schools and universities are “ripping off” students by failing to teach them how to write comedies, instead leaving them to produce “lecturing misery porn” aimed at art house cinemas, claims prominent comedian and filmmaker Tim Ferguson.

An in-demand comedy coach, Ferguson has taught at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, RMIT and the Victorian College of the Arts, and he claims that in Australia, only RMIT teaches screen comedy writing as a specialised degree subject, despite the fact many of our biggest box-office hits – including Crocodile Dundee, Kenny, Muriel’s Wedding and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert – were comedies.

“What on Earth do they (film schools) think they’re teaching people?’’ the former Doug Anthony All-Stars member asked.

The fact the Melbourne International Comedy Festival was one of the nation’s most popular ticketed events also demonstrated how “the arts industry needs to take comedy more seriously. Universities that teach screenwriting and teach creative writing but don’t teach the principles of comedy writing are ripping off their students”.

Ferguson, who lives with multiple sclerosis and is performing his latest show, A Fast Life on Wheels, in Melbourne and Sydney later this year, said given the dearth of dedicated comedy subjects, screenwriting students ended up “writing lecturing misery porn’’. “You go and see it (at an art house cinema) … You get your head bashed in for a couple of hours – by actors, of all people – and when you leave, if the film has done its job, you feel worse. And you’re onside anyway because you’re the sort of person who goes to an inner-city cinema!’’

In 2016, Ferguson co-directed and co-wrote the romantic rural comedy, Spin Out. Although it attracted largely negative reviews from local critics, he said it resonated well overseas and that too many Australian films, “if they are (set) in urban Australia, it’s about the northern suburbs writing about the western suburbs. The diversity has to be from the ground up”. But he added: “All that stuff is changing … a new generation of writers who are hungry will start changing things.’’

Associate professor Richard Fabb, from Griffith University’s Film School, said “I don’t think it’s fair’’ to say universities were failing to teach comedy writing. He said Griffith gave its undergraduate screen students “a broad education’’ in order to maximise employment prospects across television, online platforms and film. While Griffith was “certainly not ignoring comedy …. It’s not a place for niche (genres)’’, he said.

He conceded most student films were serious or “heavy” dramas but felt it was “harsh” to argue “the typical 21- or 22-year-old just finding their feet” was creating “misery porn’’. He accused Ferguson of having a “vested interest … because he does work as a comedy teacher – a very successful one”.

David Balfour, director of teaching and learning at the AFTRS, said this film school’s degrees “embed the teaching of comedy writing through a range of subjects rather than as a stand-alone subject’’.