Race reflections — RATW finale

After 27 years 10 months and 16 days, come Sunday night I will no longer be reigning champ of ABC's travel doco-making show Race Around the World. Hallelujah. What a great reboot it's been.

After missing a few episodes while at the World Cup, and then binging to catch up, I’m now hanging on weekly episodes as they play each Sunday night. I’ve enjoyed this third series so much. It isn’t just nostalgia for the hundred days that changed my life, a hundred day stretch that was so other worldly, so adrenaline packed, so stressful, so exhausting, so illuminating, so beautiful, so foreign, so lonely, that they’ve almost been blocked from my memory. But there’s also nostalgia for how much much I loved the first series, turning on the TV in a share house in Canning Street, marvelling that the world was out there, that there were corners that looked like this, that people my age were able to meet people and tell stories and share mini documentaries that didn’t come across like anything else on television. In story one, Olivia Rousset did her doco on the porn actor who was struggling to ‘get wood’, and I fell in love with the show (and a little bit with her ❤️). In story 9, John Safran streaked through Jerusalem, although I thought his bit about kicking his footy into occupied southern Lebanon and asking the border guards if he could go across to get it was equally as strong.¹ In story 10 he put his Saddam Hussein doll on the It’s a Small World ride at Disneyland. This was mind blowing television.

I think our second series didn’t quite measure up to that, but it still had its moments. Cate Anderson made a film about a Japanese artist who made ice sculptures out of pigs blood, and it was incredible as the red blood melted and wept out of the eye sockets of these frozen white faces. Rachel Bannikoff discovered two street savvy 11 year olds in Cork, who ‘found’ racing pigeons, and then tracked down the owners seeking a reward. After a few of Safran’s, I think that’s maybe the best story made across the first two series. But the brilliant thing about the show is that many will disagree with me, because the documentaries were all so different and didn’t conform to some sort of cookie cutter standard that we come to expect, whether it be a news journalism Dateline shaped cookie, or a poolside pina collada Postcards shaped cookie.

(L-R): Lucinda, Mikaela, Jayden, Elliot, Kate, William

I wrote after the first episode of this reboot that the producers and Racers had taken whatever flame had drawn so many of us to the 90s version of Race, and breathed purpose and vitality into it. They’ve made some terrific upgrades. In the show’s first iteration, there were eight Racers, not six, and so the round of films split over a fortnight, which was slightly unsatisfying. Six racers and six films across the hour is better, and it’s lovely seeing the Racers on screen, particularly for the postcard section at the top of the show. Zan is a true pro, and brings pace and sunniness to a bright set. When the films roll, I sometimes feel for the Racers copping full frontal feedback to the face, and keep in mind that these episode shoots can sometimes last hours. So they sit there in a hotel room (or a cold onsen) hard smiling in souvenir shop hats, and it might be 2am in the morning after a brutal few days editing, while people tell Australia that they’re a little bit shit, and here’s why.

Having said that, that is why people like the show, so it’s a necessary punch in the face, however difficult it is to receive. Indeed the harsher judges like Margaret Pomeranz, Bruce Beresford, Leigh Sales and Nash Edgerton have often said the thing that I was dying to say, and I think Todd Sampson said the thing the entire country was dying to say when William said that he didn’t much like his Madagascar bullfighting masterpiece. You didn’t like that! Because it was a ‘just a thing’ you found! But what a thing! FFS William! Don’t tell us we’re wrong not to like the other ones as much as this one! We’re not wrong. I’m going to send it to Thom Yorke to see if Radiohead want to make a filmclip around Madagascan bullfighting! Thank you for saying what you said, Todd, even if I think you were speaking total shit about who was immersed and who wasn’t immersed that week. Why wasn’t Elliot immersed? He was living on fucking Cat Island in the Bahamas with a family and no other human beings (I do think the story was unfocused, but he was immersed!) More immersed than William, who filmed a public event that was in front of him (brilliantly). He was also more immersed than Kate, and the tragicomedy of her Romanian story in which the subjects got to be in on the tragedy but not the comedy. But what does immersion mean? How is it measurable? Why am I trying to measure it now, in critiquing Todd? It was a dumb theme for the week.

The earlier requirement for racers to be in their films was a much better idea. Safran harped on about this, and there are some who will argue that turning the camera around as a matter of obligation diminishes the potential for something truly artistic, startling, genre bending or weird, but fuck it, I agree with John. We already have boundless opportunities not to watch Foreign Correspondence or Dateline. This is Race Around the World. We want to bond with our favourite Racers, we want to get to know them a bit, and we can’t do that if they’re never in their films.

I think John’s been excellent as the permanent third seat. I get frustrated when a judge critiques a film for not being the film they wanted to see made, ‘couldn’t we have heard more from the kids?’ and Safran does this a bit, but his knack at knowing what kernel in each film should have been the film is actually incredible. Safran says Elliot should have started a story in Monaco, and then had his cathartic episode almost as a record scratch, and Safran is right. Safran says Mikaela should have made the entire film about the sheep and goats painted up and braided like they’re the livestock in Nanny McPhee and ignored the pan flutes and pottery in Argentina, and Safran is right. He’s also boosted Lucinda for delivering boldness and humour straight down the barrel. The series needed Lucinda, who is as good in front of the camera as any Racer has been. That is a skill too, just like shooting landscape, and I’m glad John rewarded her. Our era had TV critic Tony Squires, who was funny and warm. John is funny and not particularly warm, but he’s sharp and insightful and I think a straight up storytelling genius. THE MAN SENT A REMOTE CONTROL SEAGULL OUT TO SHANE WARNE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MCG WITH A LIT CIGARETTE IN ITS MOUTH WHEN SHANE WAS CHEATING ON HIS NICORETTE CONTRACT. ‘Nuff said.

The Race producers must be ecstatic about the grandstand finish lined up for Sunday. After nine stories, all six of the contestants can still win. It’s made all the more interesting for the fact that Olivia Rousset is on the panel as a fourth judge, and representative for all past winners of the show 😊.² It also means that there are three more votes to be had, so if a Racer gets top marks from all four judges, he or she could jump eight points. The gap from first to last on the leaderboard is currently four points. I might add here that the two votes for best film, one vote for second best film is an incredibly stupid scoring system. There are no shades of grey in that. A weekly score of 3 to 6 doesn’t provide fair reward for a blinding effort, nor is there any reward for consistency. You can make the third best film in a strong week and get one or zero points. Even the Brownlow Medal does better with its 3-2-1. We were marked out of 20, which I thought was fair, but then maybe I would?³

Bolivia, story 1, 1998

Who do I want to win? To be honest, I’m struggling to say. It’s almost as if I feel like a Race Around the World Gandalf, and I just want all the hobbits to get back to the Shire, safely and with their minds intact. They’ve all had their brilliant stories, and they’ve had their less brilliant stories too, and that’s actually the show’s secret weapon. Because when Zan is introducing each film, you get a flicker of dopamine that you don’t get watching most TV, because the story might be great, or it might be absolutely terrible, and it’s the gamble that makes it interesting.

The other thing the show gives me is a great flood of global perspective and wonder. My heart was beating out of my chest watching Jayden with the Bedouins last week. Those shots from the Jordanian desert were just gorgeous, and it somehow feels more real than seeing it in a lifestyle magazine show. I think it’s because I can imagine Jayden in that place, and feel his wonder, and picture that guy I saw swimming in Jersey last week now flying his drone into the midnight desert sky. I can feel how this place is affecting him, also because he’s telling me how it is. It’s an emotional connection we build as an audience.

I also love it when a Racer finds a small story in a tiny corner of the world, and we’re suddenly seeing a little Azerbaijani girl with a cardboard cut out of her dead father, or a poor fisherman who we think is going to be the guy we’re rooting for but who’s actually blowing up the reef, or a town full of weird arse stuffed dolls, or a kid standing on a pile of snow in Greenland, or a wellness influencer pecs out and poolside in Bali. I love it when it’s a story so tiny that a proper journalist would never dedicate time to it, but it reflects some greater truth.

A still from Zan’s instagram of this week’s show

After story 7, I sent an instagram message to all six of them, just because I remember how hard those hundred days got, how the cumulative deadlines drove me to breaking point. I was completely driven by fear. Any failure was going to be public failure. I’d make something so terrible that the judges would feast on me, I’d be famous forever as the fuckup. In the postcards we’ve seen Lucinda nearly crying in Paris, Elliot actually crying in Monaco, and Mikaela open up on just how hard she was finding it all. I can’t believe she’s 22 and making stories like the one she made in Newfoundland. I broke down in Milan airport after day 30, because I couldn’t believe there were SEVENTY days left to go. I used to divide the ten days into sections —

days 1-4 were finding the story
days 5-7 were for filming and shotlisting
days 8-10 shotlisting, paper edit and sending

For me, it was choosing a story that was emotionally exhausting. Every interaction has to be upbeat, inquisitive and focused. Every stranger on a bus, every conversation with a cab driver, you never stop smiling and you never stop saying hello. I still have nightmares about the ones that got away. In Israel, I was on a bus heading towards Magdal Shams which is a town in the Golan Heights that I thought had a ‘shouting hill’, a place where family members who were split from one another when the border shifted after the Six Day War in 1967, met on facing hills and yelled news to each other through megaphones. You might think that sounds like a great story, and I did too, and I was so in love with it that I didn’t get details from 18 year old twins next to me on the bus, a boy and a girl, who were going home to pack their bags on what was their last night before entering the army. They got off the bus. I arrived in Magdal Shams and was told that the shouting hill was no longer a thing. I didn’t have a phone number, so my twins were gone too. Fucken hell, I’m getting stressed just typing this. I loved it when Margaret Pomeranz did her reprise on the show, and offered a mea culpa on how hard she’d gone the first time. ‘I don’t think I fully understood … ‘ It was really generous.

There are 22 of us who have now completed the Race. It’s an endurance event, full of life highlights, but it’s not ‘fun’ in the way it might sound on the pamphlet. It is, however, a life changer, and I’m so pleased for Jayden, Elliot, Lucinda, Mikaela, William and Kate that the finish line is here. Hopefully, it launches careers, as it did for many of us. Hopefully, there’s a fourth season afoot.

I love this show.

The trophies are much much classier than in 1998

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The Elephant in the Room goes off to printers on August 20th. I’m printing names of friends & supporters (or their kids) who committed to copies on thank you page. It’s a glorious picture book about the world’s biggest idiom, but there’s also other idioms hidden in every illustration. It’s fun! Register name here or send on to a friend with kids aged 3-8.

More than 70 baby elephants and their keepers will be thanked so far! Put your kids name in there! Support this as a quasi ‘go fund me’ (no actual cash until I have the books)

1. It’s only in getting to know John subsequently (we did Breakfasters in 2002) that I can fully appreciate the leaps of imagination this took. There is absolutely no athletic universe where John Safran kicks a footy far enough for it to clear two barbed wire fences.

2. No I didn’t get a call. Smiley faced emoji. I was pencilled in for a session during the training course, and would have loved to have met the Racers. But the producers cancelled the session, because I don’t think they’d worked out I live in Melbourne!

3. Safran will point out that this is my second blatant reference to the fact I won the show. I just want to say, in fairness, that this one is in a footnote. I haven’t mentioned he came last.