PRODUCTION INFORMATION

For Serious, undertaking his own stunts is an important part of the filmmaking process. Yahoo explains: "To allow the audience to identify personally with a dangerous comedic situation, they need to see and believe that the actual character is physically present in that moment. An audience can feel cheated if the physical comedy is performed by a stunt guy with his face turned from camera at the last critical moment."

Says Ross: "It's something of a tradition in comedy - be it Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Roberto Benigni or Jim Carrey, the comedy works because the stunts are all performed in a pathetically heroic style by the character with his face to the audience."

However exciting, the film was nonetheless a fairly exhausting process for Yahoo. Says Ross: "He started work one morning by throwing himself down 16 flights of stairs in a garbage can avalanche. After lunch he had to fall off a TV aerial on an apartment building 28 floors above Sydney's Circular Quay." Says Yahoo: "If I thought about it for too long I probably wouldnÕt do it, but the fact is I really do enjoy it. In Newcastle, where I grew up, a bloke's right of passage to manhood is often dumb, life-threatening acts of extreme stupidity. I support that and hope that there'll always be a part of me which refuses to take a mature attitude on the subject. If in the end, the audience is entertained and we can make them laugh a little, then a small to reasonable amount of pain is okay."

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