September 2009

Out Back and Beyond

After filming across 3,000km of Australia, Shane Jacobson talks about his latest adventure and acting beside Paul Hogan

WORDS KYLIE MILLER

Since bursting onto screens in 2006 as the lovable Portaloo expert Kenny Smyth in the hit film Kenny, Shane Jacobson has been in constant demand.

Along with his director-brother Clayton, with whom he co-wrote the film, Jacobson spun the character into Kenny’s World, a travelogue-style comedy series for television. Since then he has appeared in two low-budget feature films, Newcastle and Cactus, and more than 250 performances of the musical Guys and Dolls, starring alongside Magda Szubanski and Lisa McCune.

The accolades have been pouring in, with Jacobson’s performance in Guys and Dolls winning him a prestigious Helpmann Award. Kenny also won several awards, including an Australian Film Institute’s best actor award.

But while he may be better known these days, Jacobson is no newbie to entertainment, having first trodden the boards at age 10. Over the years, he’s appeared in numerous amateur productions, worked in theatre restaurants, musical theatre and honed his comedy skills doing stand-up, before winning a regular comedy gig on Melbourne radio.

“I’ve spent my life singing, dancing and being an entertainer and an actor. For the duration of that performance people notice you, but once you leave that radio show or that theatre then you’re forgotten again,” he says. “The success of Kenny has opened doors that would have been slammed in my face before.”

One such door may have led to his latest role, co-starring with long-time hero Paul Hogan, in new Australian film Charlie & Boots. The script was written with each of its stars in mind.

“I got a phone call from the director Dean Murphy who said, ‘Would you like to work with Paul Hogan?’ I was like, ‘who wouldn’t?’

I couldn’t help but think when they rang Paul Hogan and asked, ‘Would you like to work with Shane Jacobson?’, he probably said, ‘Who?’.” As it happened Hogan had seen Kenny and signed on.

Jacobson plays Boots, the estranged son of Hogan’s curmudgeonly dairy farmer Charlie. A tragedy early in the film sets the men on a journey to repair their relationship as they take a road trip to fulfil a dream to fish off Australia’s northernmost tip.

Filming on location last year, the cast and crew travelled for eight weeks across 3,000km. The movie’s plot takes the pair from Warrnambool in Victoria to Cape York in Far North Queensland, through the Grampians, Maryborough and Echuca in Victoria, into the centre of New South Wales via Hay, Tamworth to Tenterfield, and then into Queensland, showcasing Miles, Dullaca, Emerald, Cairns, Yarrabah, Comet and the Great Barrier Reef.

“It was just great!” Jacobson enthuses. “It’s what Australians do with their leftover money when they get four weeks off and I was getting paid to be at work and to work with Paul Hogan and we got to enjoy ourselves and travel across Australia. I met hundreds, probably thousands of people.”

Most, he said, were laid-back locals who delighted in the chance to shake the stars’ hands and welcome them to their town. Hogan and Jacobson drew similar amounts of attention, Hoges as himself and Jacobson for Kenny Smyth.

“I am absolutely associated with Kenny and gosh, I can think of worse things to be remembered for. Some people are known for being great bank robbers or for being murderers. I’m known for being a lovable plumber from Australia.

“People do feel a natural warmness and feel that they can walk up and say, ‘Hey, how ya goin?’ They literally just come up and shake your hand.”

For Jacobson, another highlight of the film was the vast drive across the Hay Plain. “It felt really Australian to us when we were driving through the Hay Plain literally surrounded by nothing. Every now and again you’d go past a Ford or Holden ute, and know that the bloke was probably driving another 300km before he’d get to the neighbours.

“Australia has a little bit of everything. You have tropical rainforests, you have beaches, Sydney Harbour, Tassie… It’s a tossed salad of flavours and colours.”

Tamworth was memorable for a different reason, when the town was hit by record flooding and the cast and crew were accommodated in a hotel close to the swollen river.

“The hotel was built on four- to five-metre high pylons, then there was a grassy paddock hundreds of metres from the river. When we woke up the next morning, there was no paddock, the river was eight times as wide and, for a brief time, I felt like Noah because all I could see was water.”

Jacobson’s next project reunites him with his brother Clayton, and sees him playing Mordy Koots, an oddball, lovable American World War II pilot, in comic vignettes designed for mobile phone and internet screens.

But for now he can’t wait for audiences to see Charlie & Boots. “If audiences have as much fun watching as me and Paul had making it, then they’re going to have a ball!”

FAVOURITE DESTINATIONS: SHANE JACOBSON’S

After years on the road for work, Jacobson says that his favourite destination will always be Melbourne: “I’m always travelling with my job, so my favourite flight is always the flight to Melbourne. It’s the plane that brings me home,” he says.

Tasmania comes a close second: “As far as going somewhere for a really quiet holiday with stunning surroundings away from the rat race of the bigger cities, Tasmania is a fantastic destination that’s within our fence line of Australia with a little bit of everything to enjoy.”