Marc Fennell - The Mission
Australia was first introduced to Marc Fennell as 'That Movie Guy' on Triple J radio. Since then Marc has developed his critical thinking skill set to go on to become a Walkley Award-winning journalist & documentarian. Ahead of the release of his latest SBS documentary series, The Mission, Marc sat down with Pario to discuss the show & his career journey.
That Movie Guy
Before discussing The Mission we wanted to take some time to explore Marc's journey from a radio film critic to a documentarian, podcaster & journalist.
While his time as 'That Movie Guy' Triple J wasn't Marc's first media gig it was his most public-facing & where he began to make a name for himself. What made Marc's movie reviews so compelling at the time was his approach to both the critical aspect & the production.
On the critical thinking side, Marc approached his reviews from the point of view of simply being "an audience member with a microphone". As he explained to Pario, he did this because he was on a mainstream radio station.
"With Triple J, nobody was seeking me out. My reviews were sandwiched between DMA's & Hilltop Hoods, so people would come to Triple J for the music & then suddenly there's this annoying guy telling them about a movie. That means I had to work extra hard to justify why people would listen to me at all."
In turn, that thinking influenced how Marc went about producing his reviews.
"I spent 90% of my time thinking about what the opening line was going to be," explained Marc. "I look back now & I've realised those reviews would have been perfect for TikTok existed back then... I would say something outlandish, then roll back to explain what I actually meant by that outlandish thing & then loop it back at the end."
Fuck Me Moments
As we dug deeper into the archives of Marc's journey we discovered something that clearly influenced his entire career - learning how to capture an audience's attention from one of the best in Australian media.
Marc's media career began as an 18-year-old under the learning tree of renowned TV interviewer Andrew Denton. Looking back with the benefit of hindsight Marc realises just how influential that period was for his career, particularly in regards to generating ideas & capturing attention.
"Andrew used to measure the success of his shows based on what he called, 'fuck me moments', which is how many times in an episode people would lean in & go, 'fuck me, is that real?'," recalled Marc. "I've always had that in the back of my mind ever since... so I know when I have that moment I need to make sure to capture it for an audience."
These days Marc says he is forever writing down ideas for projects to "bottle the feeling" in the moment.
"If it's ready to go, then it's ready to go. If not, I just keep it then go back & look at all of my ideas every couple of years to ask, 'What could you be? Are you a book? Are you a podcast? Are you a TV show? What are you?'. I quite like that process of doing an idea audit."
Embarking On The Mission
One such idea that presented itself as immediately ready to go was The Mission, which is now streaming on SBS On Demand. When asked to describe the series Marc said, "I've realised I make weird documentaries but this one is an art heist caper about 2 not particularly good criminals... that starts in the West Australian bush & ends up taking me all the way to New York, London & the streets of Manila."
When Marc & his Director, Corrin Grant, first heard the story of this 1986 art heist that had their very own "fuck me moment" & thus knew almost instantly that they had to make this documentary. So as soon as they wrapped up their prior project they began working on The Mission & soon found this story was stranger than fiction.
"This story is genuinely one of the weirdest stories I've ever come across," Marc told Pario. "Normally when you find something with a weird one-line idea it starts weird but then gets gradually more normal... This is a really unique one though in the sense that it starts weird & just gets weirder."
Marc revealed that this story got so weird & so dark that he even wanted to give the series a completely different name.
"At a certain point, I actually wanted to call the series The Many Crimes Of New Norcia because what you have with that place is layer upon layer of crimes. Some of the crimes are comical or downright farcical, like the theft of the artwork. But then as you get deeper into the layers of those crimes, you find some stuff that is genuinely evil."
Follow Marc’s creative journey on social media at: @MarcFennell
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