John Safran
For his latest series, John Safran's Race Relations, the ABC's John Safran does it all.
Being nailed to a crucifix in the Philippines, wearing "blackface" in Chicago, talking to his dead mother, and sniffing underpants -- all in the pursuit of a thought-provoking comedy about cross-cultural relationships.
"It's such a raw nerve issue in the Jewish community. You know when you're growing up that it's a big issue if you're going to date outside your religion," he says.
"It was a combination of things that made me want to do it. One was that it seemed like a sincere thing in my life, and even though it was personal I could put it in a wider context. On top of that I started reading a book by Rabbis about discouraging inter-marriage. One was called 'Gee, Rabbi Why Can't I Marry Her?' and another was called 'How To Prevent an Inter-Marriage' and another was 'Why Marry Jews?' It got my mind ticking over."
After the Hey Hey reunion's "blackface" controversy, Safran's antics in the second episode have already attracted headlines. In it he dons make-up to pass himself off as an African-American in Chicago, to try and learn what it's like to live under the skin of another culture.
"We spent heaps of time in pre-production working out how we were going to pull that particular story off. I was getting sprayed five times a day down at these suntan things on Chapel Street. And then I'd go and visit this 'Lord of the Rings' make-up guy for some other advice. But nothing was really working.
"Then we met this guy who won the Academy Award for Benjamin Button had been spending all year trying to solve this exact problem. So we piggybacked on his research. Because you can have make-up look credible to an audience at home but to pull it off in the real world is really hard."
Safran says he didn't have to scratch the surface of his subjects too much to find raw pain.
"For example a lot of Americans I hung out with in Chicago said, 'I don't mind who I date, the world's moved on blah, blah, blah'. You just have to ask the right questions to find they've got all this hurt inside from racism that you wouldn't have inside you if you'd grown up white in America."
But he also insists his documentary style is not deliberately out to cause offence.
"It's not like I'm watching all this Australian TV and figuring out how I can be more controversial than Packed to the Rafters or whatever. I'm more coming from a perspective of 'Oh I saw this really outrageous thing on relationships at the Melbourne Film Festival so I better do something more outrageous than that so people don't think I'm too soft or whatever…'
"But I really hope in the long run people look at the context of the show at what I'm trying to say."
John Safran's Race Relations airs 9:30pm Wednesdays on ABC1.
What do you think of Safran's antics? Comment below or discuss it in the Race Relations forum now!
About time he got back to doing something on TV. It's been too long