Before I rip this awful shit to pieces, let me be clear: I have been a real David Farrier fan in the past. His Dark Tourist stuff, his Tickled and The Cryptid Factor have all been great work and I would have put me in the fan category, but his appalling character assassination of Sean Plunkett and the wet woke stuff at The Spinoff have all made me queasy and increasingly he’s used his platform to go on woke crusades and cancel culture lynchings.
In those woke social media lynchings you can at least accept that there is some ultra liberal identity politics value that is the motivation, unfortunately for his latest offering, Mister Organ, you can’t even give his work that pretence of higher motives because it’s not that.
It’s a vicious attack and public profiling of a suburban arsehole who David keeps losing to which sees David using the most graceless and unprofessional journalism to justify the whole documentary.
How did the NZ Film Commission give him $750 000 for this?
Is the NZ Film Commission actually saying the stunts and crimes against journalism committed by David in this documentary are the highest standards of journalism that they want to associate with?
Look at me getting ahead of myself!
As you can see, I think this is a disgraceful documentary, an appalling use of $750 000 and raises serious questions of the NZ Film Commission.
Let me rewind and start from the beginning.
I went with Damien Grant to the movies to review the documentary, he reviews it in his Sunday column today alongside this review from me and an anonymous review from someone who was in the scene that David Farrier explores.
First up, I knew Brent who David focuses on in the Documentary. I lived above his Bookshop in Grey Lynn, I was around for the Tuesday Night Poetry events and while I never talked to Organ, he was around that scene.
Organ was part of a subculture of Queens and gay life that was hurt and damaged around the edges in the mid 90s in Grey Lynn Auckland. Brent, my landlord, was part of that world and tried to give it some purpose and a home with his poetry nights.
The insinuation that Organ was responsible for Brent’s suicide is a grotesque over reach.
I knew Brent, I was aware of the dispute between him and Organ over that bloody model boat and while there is little doubt in my opinion that Organ is a hypnotic, overwhelming and intense arsehole, Brent was an exceptionally gentle and passive person who could feel intimidated by a gust of wind.
To make Brent’s suicide the gotcha smoking gun moment by Farrier is not the craft of journalism you expect from a Taxpayer funded documentary, it is a crass and sad conclusion to a documentary that increasingly becomes personal and where David, as far as I am concerned, let himself down horribly.
The documentary starts interestingly enough about the crazy mad buggers at Bashford Antiques who would clamp cars outside their arsehole antique dealership in Ponsonby. The rigid enforcement and glee the private owners felt when clamping anyone stupid enough to park there became the stuff of urban legend.
Of course Bashord Antiques could be as big a prick as they liked because it was their property.
Farrier did a hilarious series on The Spinoff about these lunatics and starts focusing on the clamper, who is Mister Organ. But when Mister Organ sues him for stealing billboards, the whole tone of the documentary starts turning as David gets more and more pissed off that someone he clearly detests is constantly besting him.
This draws Farrier into Organ’s world and his past and rather than simply shrugging it off and going about his next project, David keeps digging and the more he digs the less he finds, but the extreme nature of how far Farrier is prepared to go to get Organ leads to some truly disturbing journalism.
David doorstops family members of Organ for Christ’s sakes! He turns up at their door at night with cameras and tape running without their permission!
The only time you doorstop someone as a journalist is to catch a politician who has been involved in a scandal and is refusing interviews, a priest accused of child abuse who is refusing interviews and corrupt police who are refusing interviews, you don’t doorstop people for your personal documentary where you are attempting to slag their family member!
How is that level of gutter journalism acceptable for a documentary that ultimately is little more than a $750 000 vendetta?
I’m not defending Organ or his broken damaged world, I’m just saying you can’t justify 3 quarters of a million in taxpayer money on using your platform to shit on someone just because your ego can’t stand being bested by someone you think is beneath you!
This is such a shitty, nasty and needless documentary that I honestly can’t believe the positive reviews I’ve read!
At no point does anyone pull David aside and say, ‘Mate, there’s no story here, if we keep going down this path we are the bullies now’.
Watching David make himself out to be the victim in all of this is truly woke level snowflake trigger gas lighting at its finest.
Mr Organ may be a an unpleasant wanker, he may be a manipulative Rasputin, but it really does say something that the highlights of the documentary are when he’s giving David shit for his terrible journalism.
This has the distinct desperate feel of someone who was given a lot of money for a documentary that doesn’t have any real purpose and spends 90 minutes trying to justify itself.
“How the fuck did this cost $750 000 when The Working Group can’t get a fucking red cent” I said to Damien as we left the empty movie theatre.
How indeed.
1 Star
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Good on you Martyn
I agree.We’re developing a nasty habit of lynching with impunity anyone deemed to not share “our values”
A kind of sliding scale morality, where we can become the bullies and still believe ourselves to be the “goodies”
Yeah have to agree. Farrier was the Grifter in this piece of woke revenge porn! Anything that spinoff touches is revenge of some kind.
I remember while all this was the rage, they at spinoff were wetting themselves in Farriers harassment of Organ(as if his name isnt shame enough) and co humiliating the guy.
Sure he was a prick, but this is where the millennial woke bitches show their age, fuckn 12 year olds!
I hope Farrier ends up in court with his bif with Sean Plunket for his threats to him about Plunket calling him out for been a duplicitous prick.
A $750k Grift!
Surprise, surprise – Mister Farrier produces another piece of crap. At the taxpayer’s expense.
Insightful review thanks, actually enjoyed all three reviews mentioned.
$750,000 of tax payers money on absolute tripe – so many of these awful ideas that get significant money from creative NZ who are giving millions on absolute bizarre crap – probably a lot of conflicts of interest.
Problem in NZ is that the deserving never get any funding because the system is led by those who often have their fingers in the trough themselves or are just plain dickheads who don’t really know much about art.
Who would fund this meaningless and actually mean non ethical shit documentary?
savenz Creative New Zealand, the same yokels who pulled the funding on school students producing and acting Shakespeare, doubtless because they are unable to comprehend greatness, being mud larks fairly devoid of working grey matter? The same imbeciles who spluttered that William S was an imperialist, which is a downright lie ? The philistines who wailed that the great bard buggered up the colonisation of New Zealand?
You flatter them by calling them dickheads. They appear to me to be destroyers, and part of the ongoing assault upon western culture and civilisation for no good reason whatsoever.
Minister of Culture Sepuloni needs to explain how these people get to constitute a body dispensing funds for such questionable undertakings, and why. Given her shameful track record abolishing the Commissioner for Children, Carmel’s prioritising is looking decidedly sociopathic IMO.
as a child I was brought up with ‘don’t laugh at the disabled'(actually a word discriptive of a particular condition was used) and god knows it’s difficult with some rightards…..but this doco seems to be what the woke decry in others, punching down.
This took me 3 minutes to read. Thanks for saving me from wasting 90 minutes of my life x
One only needs to see David Farrier’s Twitter posts to understand the character of the man and the hypocrisy of his failed production. That said, the blame must ultimately be directed at the NZ Film Commission for wasting valuable money that could have been used for noble purposes. A disgrace, really.
The film Commission’s website seems to have gaps in it re funding, although maybe I just couldn’t be fucked spending too much time on it.
I can only suggest they funded it to that level based on past proven track record (such as with Barry Barclay or Gaylene Preston)
They appear to give out relative pittances to unknown plebs such as for script and ‘professional’ development.
Do they ever review their past decisions, not just based on economic return on investment but also on whether or not the project is/was complete bullshit. There do seem to be one or two grifters in the industry (not to say Farrier is one of them)
Maybe they need to call in the consultants. (NOT! I’d rather a creative grifter than a bullshit artist consultant grifter. The consultant grifter would go through all the available funding in no time)
Ekshully, I wonder if Farrier did a cost-benefit analysis and decided the $3/4m was cheaper than incarceration in the prison system plus court and polis time wasted.
I don’t have the emotional capital to feel sorry for any of these supposed ‘victims’, or anyone else that just loves being the contrarian to show just how clever they are. Better things and people to feel sorry for
The way it rolls can we expect Cameron Slater being granted millions to do a doco about all those he considers scumbags who bullied him?
I didn’t mind it. Then again I’m not up to speed on Farrier’s true character. I live in Otorohanga not gay (happy/bright) Ponsnoby.
it is possible to make a doco about the mentally ill Marwencol springs to mind(guy with brain injury) the difference is the maker of that doco wasn’t a cheap middle class sneer fest, didn’t anyone in the funding body look at a rough cut and bin it…..no, because they all like a good sneer