Having spent my childhood in a family hell-bent on cracking each other up, it came as no shock to Clayton Jacobson when his younger brother Shane ambled into his advertising production business, improvising a character that was somehow both absurd and oddly relatable for the staff. Because nothing says “team bonding” quite like toilet humor, right?
Shane, moonlighting as a lighting technician at stadium shows and festivals, found himself sharing space with the “dunny men” of the toilet-hire world. If you think comedy is a highbrow art form, try hanging out with the folks who manage portable toilets; you’ll find their banter has been steeped in an odd but effective mix of cynicism and practicality. “They were ‘working classy’,” Shane remarks, with a twinkle in his eye that suggests he’s tasted the rich flavor of their humor.
Clayton had previously experienced the aromatic joys of cleaning toilets while attending Swinburne Film & TV School, earning a PhD in “life’s not-so-glamorous jobs.” He recognized the tragic humor in Shane’s antics. “Without sanitation, you have nothing. You have disease, you have anarchy, you have death,” he philosophically declares. Clearly, he’s holding a mirror to our society, and it’s cracked, revealing a lot more than just reflection.
This year we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the cinematic masterpiece *Kenny*, a budget mockumentary following a highly relatable, heartwarming portaloo plumber. It was so good that it even managed to rake in nearly $8 million at the box office, or as Shane might say, “that’s a tidy sum to wipe away any doubts about our creative capabilities.” Celebrate it we shall, with a screening and Q&A at the Aacta awards festival this month. Popcorn and laughter are mandatory.
Kenny, forever embedded in the fabric of Australian culture—much like the smell from a portaloo—was first intended for short film festivals. The Jacobson brothers courageously approached Splashdown, a real portaloo hire company, to involve them in their cheeky venture. They made the movie with a budget so tight, it could probably squeeze the humor right out of a joke. Shane took center stage while Clayton donned multiple hats: director, producer, editor, and—ironically—most likely the guy who made the catering decisions. Talk about multi-talented!
By the mid-2000s, while mockumentaries were smashing box office records (here’s looking at you, *Borat* and *Best in Show*), *Kenny* stood its ground amid political farce, like an oasis in a desert of “be alert, not alarmed” propaganda. “There was so much talk about watching your neighbors,” Clayton reflects, perhaps wondering if he should have added a spy subplot featuring a nosy neighbor. Now that’s comedy gold!
Kenny Smyth—a character so disarmingly decent he puts the rest of us to shame—emerges as an underdog who actually isn’t a criminal (take note, *Animal Kingdom*). In an ironic twist of fate, Clayton believes that portraying blue-collar Australians as anything less than genius—those ingenious uncles who know how to fix everything from a broken toilet seat to existential dread—is a serious insult. These are the same values that shaped a whole generation of Australians, one that has since realized that blue-collar work is where actual sanity resides.
When *Kenny* first graced the screen at the St Kilda Film Festival in 2004, Clayton was blissfully busy in Japan filming a commercial, completely unaware of the uproar that Shane was about to unleash. Once informed about the audience’s wildly enthusiastic reactions, it became apparent that collective toilet humor could unify us all—and sometimes silence speaks volumes, especially in a world where laughter is both the escape and the reflection of our daily grind.
