Who’s the former Carlton player pelted with pastries (specifically two meat pies and an Aussie pizza) in a film currently featuring at ACMI’s Screen Worlds exhibition?
If you guessed the Blues’ former 14-gamer Paul McCormack then treat yourself to a jam tart, as McCormack and a host of other models appear in filmmaker Marcus Lyall’s Slow Service, which was produced back in 2003.
Why McCormack completed this unusual cinematic cameo is another story altogether – and it’s a long story,” according to the man in question.
“I was in Adelaide playing footy for Norwood, during which time I got involved in some drama classes and a bit of acting,” McCormack said. “I landed a few little roles here and there, and the opportunity to appear in Slow Service came through Marcus, who’s a friend of a friend of mine Shauna Keenan, ‘Crackers’ Keenan’s niece.
“Marcus said to me ‘We’re filming these slow-mos in Melbourne, would you be interested in being part?’, and I said ‘no worries’.
It happened a few years ago now, and if my memory serves the pizza was loaded up with spaghetti.”
Shot on a high-tech, ultra-slow motion digital camera normally used for industrial purposes such as crash-test dummy demonstrations, Slow Service introduced a new element to the gallery experience: the food fight. In it, we see slow-moving swaths of pumpkin soup, dollops of pea mash and the apocalyptic cloud of white flour landing on Lyall’s hapless subjects, McCormack included, each unable to avoid the imminent crash.
Incredibly, Slow Service’s genesis involved a film crew, a large studio, 50,000 watts of lighting, a large supermarket trolley of food and ten days of post-production.
McCormack’s acting foray was not confined to Lyall’s film. He appeared in a television commercial for Hostplus, and later as a racist cop in Jay Harkness’ Australian feature film “Dope”. Of his celluloid appearance in the latter, McCormack advises “there are a couple of scenes in there, but a few ended up on the cutting room floor”.
McCormack then bobbed up at the Fringe Festival in the play “Electric Zoo”, in the role of Robert Wright – one of five prisoners killed when a fire was lit behind the bluestone walls of Pentridge’s maximum security west wing in which they were barricaded back in 1987.
Now a teacher at Parkdale Secondary College (and resident coach of 2nd division football club Bayswater), McCormack conceded that his days as a thespian are all but over. As he said: “It just got a bit too difficult with auditioning and even then you’re no certainty of getting the job”.
Slow Service can be seen in its entirety at Screen Worlds – a permanent exhibition at ACMI, Federation Square, which tells the remarkable story of the moving image. Screen Worlds is open daily and is free of charge.