The ABC Of on ABC – David Wenham tracks back through the ABC archival life of Jack Thompson, the beloved face of Australia’s film renaissance and arguably our first real movie star. This frank, revealing interview will surprise anyone who thinks they know this giant of Australian cinema.
Among stories of pivotal roles like Sunday Too Far Away and The Sum of Us, Jack talks about the roles he didn’t get, the meaning of poetry in his life and why he did that centrefold. For the first time, we show Jack footage of himself at the first ever Garma Festival in 1999 and Jack speaks passionately about his views on an Indigenous voice to parliament. A 1962 recording of Jack’s adoptive father, John Thompson, prompts an emotional tribute from this grateful son.
The ABC Of is an interview series, hosted by actor David Wenham, in which a range of prominent Australians revisit their pasts through moments drawn from the vast ABC Archives.
The seven featured guests, all icons of one field or another, also include: former Prime Minister Julia Gillard, cricket legend Ian Chappell, performer and indigenous advocate Miranda Tapsell, comedian and broadcaster Wendy Harmer, one half of Australia’s best-loved comedy duo Greig Pickhaver and feminist and intellectual Germaine Greer.
Each episode is a one-on-one conversation in which the questions are based on archival video clips. Before they sit down, the guests are unaware of the clips that have been chosen. In many cases, those clips travel past the choices you’d expect, the obvious markers of the guest’s CV, wending their way down delightful and surprising paths to footage that has not seen the light of day for decades.
Production credit: A Guesswork Television Production in association with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Executive Producers: Jon Casimir and Jo Long. ABC Commissioning Editor Julie Hanna.
The ABC Of – Tuesday 6 June, 2023 at 8:00pm on ABC and ABC iview
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