For seven seasons, You Can’t Ask That has given voice to the misunderstood and marginalized Australians who face each other to answer the most brutal and unquestionable questions you can imagine.
The latest series includes bogans, gay men, role models, porn stars, and people who have suffered from postnatal depression, juvenile detention, addiction, and prescription drug addiction and dementia.
Loading
Co-creator, series director and interviewer Kirk Docker gives ABC Backstory an insight into the behind-the-scenes work, how the team finds people willing to answer difficult questions, and the questions they’ve found most challenging to ask. -se.
How Did You Can’t Ask That?
“It came out in 2015 and was created by me, Aaron Smith and Jon Casimir,” Docker said.
“Aaron and I worked together [ABC TV show] Hungry Beast and John is a creative from Gruen and worked with us as a mentor. So the three of us got it right and we wanted to do a show together.
Creators Kirk Docker and Aaron Smith, in front of the camera, are shooting the fourth season. (ABC TV: You Can’t Ask That)
“We created this segment in Hungry Beast which was a vox pop and, more than what were usually vox pops, which asked people’s political opinion or tested their knowledge on current issues, we made great universal questions to people about life: “What are you afraid of? When was the last time you cried? What has been the longest moment of your life? ‘
“When you stop people on the street and ask them for something personal instead of trying them on, people open up really quickly. If you really listen to them, they’ll tell you all sorts of things about their lives.
Kirk Docker filming vox pops for Hungry Beast. (Provided by: Kirk Docker)
“So we loved this kind of format, and we were also captivated by the kind of ‘ask me anything’ that was going on online at the time.
“And in 2015, if you remember, political correctness was a really hot topic. Everyone was very concerned about what to say and how you address people for fear of offending.
“People with great voices, politicians or celebrities or people with a great presence on social media, told us how we should behave or not.
“We wanted to address this environment and, instead of avoiding these big conversations, face it and pass the microphone to the person who never has a voice and let them speak for themselves, unlike the experts or commentators speaking on behalf of misunderstood and marginalized people.
“So it was a combination of all the things that came together, and at the time, iview was ordering content and we got a 10 by 10 minute track.
“When we were doing it, internally, the ABC said‘ Wow, there’s something in this ’and they decided to put it on the main channel and it went from there.
It takes about six months of research, filming, editing and post-production to complete a series of eight chapters of the program. (ABC TV: You Can’t Ask That)
“And now there’s something like 35 different seasons of the show around the world in nine different languages.
“It is the most successful ABC format in history, it is one of the most successful Australian formats in history.
“This is as exciting as it sounds because it’s one thing to sell your program overseas and people look at our content. is local, misunderstood groups, answering local questions, so when you see him appear in other countries they have their own curiosities and their own things you can’t ask.
“For example, Italy did a transgender episode in its first season similar to ours and it was very, very different.
“So it’s great to see it all over the world, but it wasn’t easy. We had to do a very intense campaign to get a second season, a third and a fourth season. It’s a challenging world to create content and it has to go on. feels relevant.
“You Can’t Ask That could easily have been a show that I think could be really worthy or very boring if you pay too much attention to it. I think it’s the joy and the humor that makes it really accessible.
“I think there are a number of reasons why it’s successful, and first and foremost, it’s the frankness and honesty that people talk about.”
Loading
How do you get a topic to focus on and find people willing to go to the show?
As content creators, we try to do things that excite us, that challenge us, that create moments of ‘f..k me,’ which is what Andrew Denton [Hungry Beast creator] he used to ask us at the office.
“And that’s something we strive for: moments that raise your eyebrows, things that people can discuss the next day, that challenge your own ideas, your own stereotypes, your own prejudices, that’s the which we are trying to do.
“We think of topics as a series of buckets, so mental health, gender, sexuality, sex, a disability, we often have something that is a really challenging topic, a heavier topic.
“When #MeToo was featured, we looked at sexual assault. I was especially interested in survivors of suicide attempts and we did this, domestic violence, people who had killed someone by accident.
“It was an idea we had for a few years, which we thought would be very interesting to investigate, how your life could change completely with a penny. And then we try to have something current: last year we did Chinese. Australians try to look at the coronavirus from a different angle.
Docker (top right) filming an episode about nudists. (ABC TV)
“So, we have these ‘cubes’ and then we think, ‘There are 10 hot questions you’d like to ask this group of people?’
“When we sat down with the producers and had a list of 15 or 20 questions, like with porn stars, we had endless questions; you know that’s a good sign, that’s a good topic.
“Then we tend to go public with a list of 12 topics and ask people if they have questions they’d like to ask or if there are people who would like to be part of this group on the show.
“This helps us determine what these final eight episodes might be and whether you can really find people to participate in the show; we’ve often suggested ‘lottery winners’ and it’s impossible to find people to participate in.
“To find virgins, the producers spent a lot of time on the Internet on Reddit and in the forums, with nudists, my producer went to lie on a nudist beach and talked to people in this way, for other topics going through the media or organizations is a very good research job.
Loading
“For each topic, we also try to find a person [who] You might recognize in this group, someone who might challenge your assumptions, someone a little different from the norm, and we also want a mix of age, gender, ethnicity, and sexuality within this group.
“We want to put people next to each other [who] they can surprise each other.
“So in the episode of gay men we have Barry Charles, also known as the ‘man of the water’, whose sexual fetish is the golden rains and is known to put himself in the drinking troughs of the urinals of gay parties and is a pretty gay icon.
“We sat him down with a pretty conservative 22-year-old gay guy who just wants to have a partner, wants to get married and have kids. So comparing notes was very interesting for them, but also for the audience. ., too: not all gay men are promiscuous, not all gay men want to get married. “
This portable set is taken all over Australia to film interviews with people. (ABC TV)
“My producers could talk to up to 100 people before deciding on this mix of the eight that make up the episode.
“And then once we’ve decided on these eight, they’re inside, it’s not like we’ve interviewed anyone and we didn’t like how it went, so we’ll do it to someone else.
“Every person, if he comes with the courage to tell his story, has succeeded and I can proudly say that no one has ever been cut.
“The backdrop and the set are packed in eight bags that we can take anywhere on the smaller plane, or we can pack in a car, which we install in someone’s house, in a hotel room or to a town hall.
“We go where the people are, which is important for us, because we will represent voices from all over the country.
“I could interview this person for two, two and a half hours. We’ll dig deeper, there may be 10 follow-up questions from the first initial question and it’s often in these follow-up questions that we really get into it. Interesting stuff. I want to overcome the type of answer superficial.
Filming in a cave at Coober Pedy for an episode about children. (ABC TV)
“So we could end up in the editing suite with 15 hours of stuff to be reduced to 30 minutes, which is a challenge.
“I’m going to give the editors, Kenny Ang and Nick McDougall, four episodes each. etc.
“Look at all the rush and come back with a dirty cut, which can be an hour and a half from those voices that link to each other.
“What we’re trying to do in the edition is not to tell eight individual stories, we’re trying to tell a unified story in a way that each person links to the next. [then] links to the next person.
“And the front and the end of the episode are very important, when they come in, they take their seat to show up, or the end where they sit down and say ‘thank God it’s all over’, or ‘I absolutely loved that’ because it’s a reminder to the audience that they’re just normal people, they’re not actors or experts.
“We have now done 64 episodes on 64 groups of marginalized and misunderstood Australians.
“You would never think that if you put a number like that and there are more.”