He Died with a Felafel in His Hand

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
I've lived in 49 shared households in what seems as many years… I've lived with tent-dwelling bank clerks, albino moon tanners, nitrous suckers, psycho fucking drama queens, ACID EATERS, MUSHROOM FARMERS, FUCKING BROTHEL CRAWLERS, FRIDGE-PISSERS, HARDCORE SEPARATIST LESBIANS, AND OBSCURELY TIGER-SUITED JAPANESE GIRLS! AND NOW THE BEST FRIEND I'VE EVER HAD IN THE FUCKING WORLD WON'T EVEN FUCKING TALK TO ME! I'M IN A PSYCHO FUCKING NIGHTMARE FROM HELL, AND I'M FUCKING FED UP WITH IT!
—Danny

A search for love, meaning and bathroom solitude, with a lot of random shit happening in the meantime.

He Died with a Felafel in His Hand (2001) is a flamboyantly pointless housemates-from-hell story, based on a book by John Birmingham. Despite mediocre circulation, it’s become something of a Cult Classic among unemployed yobbos, leftist uni students, and anybody else who’s experienced the joys of sharehouse living in Australia. Memorable mainly for that scene in backyard Brisbane, plus a kick-arse Nick Cave-centric soundtrack and snappy writing that makes it the most quotable text since Oscar Wilde.

Stars Noah Taylor, Emily Hamilton and, for some reason, Romane Bohringer. And while most of the people described in the page quote show up in the film, all of them show up in the book.

Tropes used in He Died with a Felafel in His Hand include:
  • Aluminium Christmas Trees – One of the first shots in the movie is at the Brisbane house, where Taylor plays golf with a cane toad. Golf ain’t the half of it; cane toads have reached plague proportions and everyone turns a blind eye when it comes to how you kill them...
  • All There In The Novel - A lot of the film's dialogue and more obscure moments are lifted directly from the book.
  • Arc Words – Somehow everyone Danny’s ever lived with has met his mum.

Everyone: You really should ring your mum. She’s worried about you.

  • Asian Airhead – Satomi aka. ‘Tiger Girl,’ although it might just be that her English doesn't extend further than, 'I move in now, yes?'
  • Attention Whore – Nina the wannabe actress.
  • Beige Prose – Danny writes possibly the least arousing porn ever written. For Penthouse.

Danny: Enter me, enter me, she gasped...

Danny: Wanna get married?
Sam: Can’t. Gotta go out later.

  • Brainy Brunette – Sam
  • Camp Gay – Dirk tries to be this after coming out.
  • Chekhov’s Yarn – Danny’s masturbation story. It starts off as an off-the-cuff Tall Tale and ends up getting printed in Penthouse.
  • Cloudcuckoolander – Taylor before his ‘epiphany’ concerning prostitutes. He plays golf with cane toads, sets the washing-up on fire, calls for backup from neo-Nazis and shoots Danny in the head with a water pistol and declares, ‘If this were for real, you’d be dog meat by now.’
  • Cluster F-Bomb – The entire script. Truth in Television because it was made in Australia.
  • Dirty Cop – Apparently Melbourne’s finest work for the local casino. Almost Truth in Television at the time…

Detective: We're the police, sweetheart. Your civil liberties are about to be violated.

Danny: Ooh, ouch.
Taylor: Nasty.
Danny: That's gotta hurt.
Otis: That's a bad game, dude. Brings out the worst in people.

  • Ho Yay – Milo seems a bit too upset when everyone starts reading homoerotic Subtext into his favourite Rated "M" for Manly movie, Reservoir Dogs. Not to mention he seems suspiciously attached to Otis.

Flip: What about that bit where they’re all pointing their guns at each other?
Milo: What about it?
Flip: Well, maybe it’s not really their guns they’re pointing…

‘Put it away, Russ.’

  • Les Yay – Romane Bohringer pashing Emily Hamilton! Yay!
  • Land Down Under – As with The Castle, Australia’s own version of the trope: Sydney is horribly plastic and full of anal retentives, Melbourne is a town of corrupt cops where it’s always raining miserably, and Brisbane is overrun with cane toads.
  • Meaningless Meaningful Words – About half of Danny’s lines, mimicking the faux-philosophical ramblings of Australia’s semi-educated.
  • Object Ceiling Cling - 'It's a beef patty. Been up there for years.'
  • Ominous Latin Chanting – The neo-pagans in the backyard. Although it's actually a list of goddesses from every culture imaginable.
  • One Scene, Two Monologues – Frequently. These people don’t communicate well.
  • Only Sane Man – Arguably, Danny. Despite spending virtually the whole movie in a Heroic BSOD, he’s more or less the Only Sane Man by elimination.
  • Rated "M" for Manly – Milo’s favourite war movie, the ‘bonding’ session over Elvis’ cover of ‘You Were Always On My Mind,’ and everything Taylor does until his Melbourne brothel-crawl.
  • Refuge in Audacity – Milo’s ‘condoms with Aboriginal tribal paintings on them’ spiel. That he and Otis were stoned at the time from a home-made bucket bong isn’t really an excuse.
  • Sacred Hospitality – They serve tea and biscuits to the Brisbane landlord’s goon. While he’s threatening them.

Goon: Are any of you shitheads related to a copper or a poli? *Beat* (back to phone) Looks like we’re in the clear. *sip* Damn good tea.
Sammy: It's chai, from India. Biscuit?

  • Serious Business – Writing. And Nick Cave. And neo-pagan moon festivals…
  • Shell-Shocked Veteran – Parodied with Taylor. Not only is he not the American Vietnam veteran he acts like, he’s not even American (his accent switches halfway through).
  • Straw Feminist – Sam, at first.
  • The Bet – Played straight when the guys go ga-ga over Anya.
  • The Immodest Orgasm - Sammy and Anya in the movie, but it's pretty much background music in the book. John even admits that he could 'listen to his housemates going at it all day' and used to position his chair at the point in the house of maximum creaking and groaning.
  • Title Drop – Near the end, written on a wall Apocalypse Now-style. In the book it's the very first line.
  • Transparent Closet – Dirk.
  • Trash of the Titans - Ho-ly shit. Some of the filth mention in the book's opening chapter has to be read to be disbelieved.

A rat died in the living room at King Street and we didn't know. There was at least six inches of compacted rubbish between our feet and the floor. Old Ratty must have crawled in there and died of pleasure. A visitor uncovered him while groping around for a beer.

  • Very Loosely Based on a True Story - The movie is a very condensed version of the book, which itself is a collection of John's actual experiences in sharehousing. Definitely not a tale for those who wish to retain their faith in humanity.
  • Welcome to Hell – Sydney, during the segment ‘Hell is other people’ (which could have been the movie’s other title).

Danny: Welcome to hell.
Sam: At least it’s warm.

  • World of Chaos – Neo-pagan babes want to sacrifice one of the housemates over a backyard fire. The other housemates deal with it by calling in the local skinheads, who ride dirt bikes through the house, cut the back of the house off with a chainsaw and then stand around and sing ‘Auld Lang Sine’ with the pagans. Just another Thursday night in Bris-vegas…
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