He Died with a Felafel in His Hand

Plot synopsis:
=== Prologue ===
Danny (Noah Taylor), enters the lounge of his Sydney flat late at night and discovers that his roommate Flip (Brett Stewart) has died in front of the TV holding a felafel sandwich.
=== House #47: Brisbane, Australia ===
Nine months prior, Danny and Flip are sharing a house in Brisbane, with housemates Taylor (Alex Menglet), Milo (Damian Walshe-Howling), Otis (Torquil Neilson), Sam (Emily Hamilton), Jabber (Haskel Daniel), and Derek (Robert Rimmer). Anya (Romane Bohringer), arrives and becomes a new housemate. Later that night, Milo and Otis set the rules for a contest to see which of them can successfully romance Anya. The next day, a pair of thugs (Linal Haft and Nathan Kotzur) show up at the house and threaten them for not paying their rent. Anya asks to invite some friends over for a party. The next morning, Danny types out a horror story about masturbation and posts it to Penthouse. While checking the mail, he is devastated to find an invitation to his ex-girlfriend's wedding. A young Japanese girl, Satomi (Sayuri Tanoue), who speaks little English, comes in, declaring, "I move in now." After Satomi produces a wad of cash, Sam offers to let her stay in a narrow storage closet in the screened veranda surrounding the house. Anya's party turns out to be a pagan ritual, and a drunk Milo gets tied to the pole of the washing line. Taylor also invites over a gang of skinheads to help confront the landlord's thugs. Milo escapes from the neopagans as the skinheads start looting and vandalizing the house with chainsaws. Anya kisses Sam just as the skinheads manage to remove the entire back wall of the house. Danny quickly packs his belongings, leaves his boom box with Flip, and departs.
=== House #48: Melbourne, Australia ===
Three months later, Danny is living in Melbourne with a housemate named Iain (Ian Hughes). Danny attends the outdoor wedding of his ex-girlfriend (Pascal Delair) and best friend (Stuart Nicholls) in the pouring rain. When he arrives back home, Taylor and Flip arrive. Taylor expresses his pleasure at having discovered the joys of hiring prostitutes. Later, Sam also shows up after fleeing from an argument with Anya. Taylor checks the telephone directory for local prostitutes. Sam lies in bed with Danny and asks him to make love. Danny declines on the grounds that "we're mates." Danny is awakened in the middle of the night by loud music. He discovers Sam in the bath with her wrists cut. Danny comforts her, and she kisses him. In the morning, the two are awakened by two policemen (Tim Robertson and Robert Morgan), who drag in an unconscious Taylor and lecture Danny about morality. The policemen line up Danny, Sam, Flip, and Iain in the lounge to interrogate them. The cops threaten them, checking all their arms for heroin needle track marks and declares Flip a "pincushion." Danny asks Flip what's going on, but Flip reveals he has checked into a rehab bootcamp. The policemen reveal that Taylor had stolen Danny's credit card and charged over $8000 to it during a night of drunken mayhem. They also tell Danny that he owes more than $7,000 to the Brisbane landlord. Iain demands a lawyer and one of the cops draws his gun Iain panics and grabs for the gun, and gets shot in the ear. The cop warns Danny to be careful and Danny takes it as a threat, deciding to leave.
=== House #49: Sydney, Australia ===
Three months later, Danny is living in a tidy flat in Sydney with housemates Nina (Sophie Lee), 'Uptight Ivan' (Ivan Tatarovic), Dirk (Francis McMahon), and Taylor. Danny notices a newspaper article saying that Melbourne police have been cleared of responsibility for Iain's shooting. Sam arrives and moves into the spare room. An agent (Clayton Jacobson) from a department store credit bureau arrives, looking for a "Mr. Corcoran." Danny shows the man a drawer full of collection letters addressed to Robert J. Corcoran. Anya arrives, and soon after, so does a policewoman, Sgt. P. O'Neill (Skye Wansey), also looking for Corcoran. Anya and Sam argue about their broken relationship, which quickly escalates into loud sex. Nina urges Danny to get rid of them. Danny tells Anya that he just wants to be left alone, but Anya begins kissing him passionately. Sam appears at the door and sees them. Sam begins angrily packing her things while Danny apologizes. Sam declares Anya a "chaos freak" and heads out the door.
The roommates all complain to themselves about their problems. Dirk enters to declare that he's gay, but is disappointed by the lack of reaction from the roommates, who had all assumed as much. Danny loses his temper with Dirk, urging Dirk to chill out, since he isn't the only one with problems. Danny then locks himself in his bedroom with a telephone sitting on his chest. Taylor slides food to him under the door. Several hours later, Anya slides a cigarette through, and, sitting on the other side of the door, tells Danny a story about lovers, the plot of Solaris. Danny takes the cigarette. Taylor discovers that Penthouse has published Danny's story. As Taylor gives Danny the good news, Flip arrives at the door, and reveals that he has left rehab. Sgt. O'Neill arrives with a partner (Simon Wheeler). She adds up the amount due in Corcoran's bills as $28,000, and issues a summons to Danny to appear in court. At night, Danny tells Flip that he's going to be sent to prison for credit fraud, but Flip says he needs Danny because he's the only friend he has who is not on drugs. Flip leaves Danny's room to get something to eat.
Later that night, Danny starts packing his things in a milk crate. Loud music catches his attention, and he discovers Flip dead in front of the TV. A pair of cops declare Flip a "typical bloody junkie" and cover his body with a sheet, telling Danny not to touch anything. As the sun rises, Danny leaves with his typewriter, catches a ferry, and drops his typewriter into Sydney Harbour. Later, Sam encounters Danny asleep in front of her door, who, after waking him up, tells her that Flip has died. Danny and all of his former roommates hold a memorial service for flip. Each leaves a memento on a charcoal fire in a kettle grill in which Flip's ashes have been dumped. Danny sacrifices his old boombox. Anya gives Danny a cheque, ostensibly from Penthouse, and Nina declares that she and Anya, now a couple, are going to Paris together, where Nina hopes be a successful actor. Danny calls Sgt. O'Neill and identifies the now-deceased Flip as Robert J. Corcoran, and he and Sam set off down the street together.

Tags: absurd

Review:
Noah Taylor plays his part as a washed out and uninspired writer named Danny down to pat even though I think he must have the least amount of dialogue in the film.
I found her performance to be quite convincing and not contrived or overacted like some performances can be in these types of low budget art films.Romane Bohringer plays a spooky role as a pagan who takes her religion very seriously at times (The scene where she convinces one of her brainless flatmates to be a 'sacrificial lamb' upon a burning stake is hilarious) Her performances are also above average and generally tend to give the viewer the impression she is a witch bent on injecting chaos into any given domestic situation.
Also look out for some weird European dude who only says two lines during the film, "They are very, very fit." - Oddball stuff but makes for good humour, especially if you are a person who has been flatting at one time or another.
Ideas and themes of friendship and new beginnings are put across quite seamlessly into the plot as Danny experiences a rite of passage which takes him from being stuck in the past to looking forward to the future and leaving the mess (which follows him from flat to flat during the film) well behind.
Putting John Burningham's best-selling but episodic reminiscences of house-sharing into a watchable feature film was quite a challenge, but a veteran house-sharer, Richard Lowenstein (`Dogs in Space'), succeeds here by having several of the more interesting and bizarre characters follow the narrator (Noah Taylor) from city to city.
The felafel, in fact, a throwaway line in the book, is given centre stage, and the result is a well-focused tale of the horrors of house-sharing  it's the `Secret Life of Us' meets `Romper Stomper'.Noah Taylor is one of those actors who cannot fail if given a goofy role, and here he is perfect as Danny, the aspiring writer roughing it with a collection of druggies, minor criminals, aspiring sorceresses and actors, while trying to evade his creditors and write a prize-winning story for `Penthouse'.
Some of the landlord's agents do not lack colour either eg Linal Haft's rent collector as gangster in Brisbane.All these characters are somehow accommodated in the story, though an early peak (the great bikie party in the Brisbane house) is followed by rather a flat period in Melbourne.
Once the circus reaches Sydney, however, things pick up again  perhaps it's the more effervescent air.The tropical squalor of the first house, a battered `Queenslander,' reminded me a little of `Praise', a vastly different film in tone, but Danny is not necessarily one of life's defeated, though it seems like that sometimes.
If you have ever lived in a share house then I reckon you'll immediately appreciate this movie.I think Noah Taylor did a brilliant job in this movie, we need more like it.
I have to say I approached this movie with some dubiousness as I had read the book, which had no plot whatsoever, and was unsure how they were going to turn it into a film, but I found myself really enjoying this movie.
Basically this movie is about Danny, an aspiring writer who has lived in 49 different houses with an assortment of dead-beats, moontanners, lesbians, Satan-worshippers, neurotics, etc., etc., their antics and tangled relationships.
Despite the lack of plot this was a very easy and enjoyable movie to watch, although it put me off share-housing for life.
It captures the hopelessness of low-rent youth but remains incredibly hopeful, and explains why Australians always seem to be likable; every character in the film is bizarre in one way or another yet Lowenstein manages to highlight what makes them appealing enough to share a house with in the first place.
As for the note-perfect bit, the soundtrack is surprisingly star-studded and perfect for the film - a mix of sad, reflective pieces by those who are known for them (Moby, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, The Passengers) and interesting covers and Australian artists (Nick Cave makes it into two categories).
I'm lucky to have stumbled across this film in a convoluted and bizarre-in-itself way, because neither the book nor the movie are available anywhere in Canada (I've checked thoroughly)..
When I first saw this film I have to admit I was quite put out with the character being significantly different to that of Birmingham in the book and also the stories being quite different and most of them being left out altogether.
And although I love the book much more than the film, I have learnt to appreciate and respect the film for what it is.It's a fascinating story and Noah Taylor is just incredible as the main character, Danny.
(For example Sophie Lee from Muriel's Wedding.) There's something about Australian share house living that rings true with so many people.
Sometimes you have the feeling the script has missed out on some of the plot and character development, but otherwise it's an interesting film.
This is a great Australian movie about flat sharing.
whilst having a couple of flaws, all in all this a really good movie....it's style is nothing new and seems to have many similarities to 'occassional course language'(in style, use of music, and share houses) and a handful of other Australian movies, while editing the book comprehensively...some may think it strays from the book to much, but while the book is written messily etc.
After far too long a break, cult Australian director Richard Lowenstein has finally committed himself to film again with He Died with a Felafel In His Hand, a film based on John Birmingham's cult novel of the same name.Funny, philosophical and forthright, He Died with a Felafel In His Hand tracks the life of Danny (Noah Taylor), a terminally unemployed, debt ridden young writer who is in the midst of his 47th chaotic shared household experience in Brisbane, Australia.
The wiles of pagan princesses, neo-fascists and love interests aside, the Brisbane experience isn't even going to be Danny's last shared household experience.At Danny's side in each of the film's shared houses in which he resides are fellow drifters Sam (Emily Hamilton), Flip (Brett Stewart) and Anya (Romane Bohringer).
Brought together by the microcosm that is communal domestic life, these twenty-something's struggle side by side to try and understand the point of love, life and existence as they roam across shared households in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney.The games of cane toad golf played in the shared house in Brisbane, the policemen at the door with twitchy trigger fingers in Melbourne and the polished floorboards carpeted with over-inflated egos in Sydney all act as fitting tip-offs to the character of the city's in which the shared houses reside - effectively creating a neo-realism that is heightened by the film's use of on-location shooting.While this film shows that the shared household experience is often a source of comedy and melodrama, it isn't always a bed of roses.
Central character, Danny, describes the dictum that hell is other people well in the film, as he explains,   "I've lived in 49 shared households in what seems as many years.
I'm in a psycho-f***ing nightmare from hell and I'm f***ing fed up with it!"Having read John Birmingham's book, I can see how this film may upset die hard fans of the novel through its reduction of scores of shared house escapades to just three, however, I tend to think that Lowenstein's approach is the right one.
I felt that Lowenstein's crystallisation of the book's key scenes, played out through an amalgamation of its most intriguing characters, allowed the novel's most striking elements to intelligently come to the fore on film.Lowenstein's approach effectively brings to the screen a beautiful, brooding character study that's one part dirty realist comedy, one part existential allegory, but more than anything, a maturation of Lowenstein's own directorial style, as evidenced in his last cult hit, Dogs in Space.
This film's fine performances, allegorical dialogue, philosophical themes, use of music and sense of muted melodrama also stands up well alongside the fine tradition of American independent filmmaking propounded by directors such as Hal Hartley and Jim Jarmusch.Much like the cult novel and film versions of Less Than Zero, the story of He Died with a Felafel In His Hand has borne two great texts which stand up well in their own right, whilst also complementing one another.
While I do try to support the Australian film industry (being Australian myself) occasionally an stinker comes along and, I'm afraid, 'He Died With A Felafel In His Hand' is one of them.
Putting these characters to life would have been a difficult task for the director Richard Lowenstein and this is clearly evident as the film isn't as successful as the book.
While Noah Taylor is good as Danny, the tortured writer, the other characters in the film are two dimensional and not worth worrying about or caring for.
He Died With A Felafel In His Hand shows something completely different to all the pointless Australian films that rely on tasteless and crass jokes.
When you compare 'Felafel with American cinema it is clearly better than the Hollywood dreck that is distributed in Australia, very rarely is a movie of this quality released in Australia.Many people have criticized it's lack of story and plot but these elements are not necessary because the film relies on insights and ideas derived from the book.The cinematography is beautiful and there isn't a dull shot or sequence in the entire film, though it still manages to remain under stated.To put it simply this is one of the best Australian films I have seen..
few films leave me in the state which this film did, the first time i saw it was on commercial television and missed the first half hour, didn't really intend on watching the whole movie but by the end i couldn't understand why i felt so moved by this film.
i hired it the next day, after watching it all the way through, at the end i still had the same feeling as i did the night before, i thought Noah Taylor was great as was Emily Hamilton,but also the minor characters, flip and all the other house mates Danny had stayed with added both depth and comic relief to the film.if your thinking of seeing this movie i highly suggest you do, I've recommended this to all my friends, I'm a teenager so to get a group of pubescent teenagers through a movie with no college humor or breasts must mean the film has something going for it which appeals to audiences..
And he generally starts each piece based on a couple of lines on a poster he keeps on his wall (something like "Black is the ultimate").Somehow the people Danny shares these residences seem to all stick together, which is convenient since that means we also get to know them.
I guess the stage play must have been good, it ran for a long time in Aus. You can't really have a stage play with slow, dreary action and dialogue, but you sure can in a film.I've lived in share houses & flats in Aus and London and they were fun, with lots of great people and parties around at other people's flats, weekly tennis bookings, nights out at the pub (like The Lord Dudley in Sydney) etc.
Out of any film i am aware of it accurately depicts share house life in Australia with excellent dialogue and some really great performances.
This film covers a niche that is rarely seen in movies yet such an important social factor in the lives of young Australians, and it does it well.
The book made me wet myself laughing but the movie adds more heart and i can definitely recommend it especially (but not limited) to those who have lived in Australian share houses..
Five years of begging for money, writing umpteen screenplays and casting issues have delayed this adaptation of John Birmingham's cult classic novel.And now that we finally have it here to see it can be described as a big disappointment.First off let me say that if there are any fans of the book out there (and the amount of dog eared copies of Felafel I have seen seem to indicate there is), you will not like the movie.
It is no wonder that Bimingham wanted his name removed from the credits.As a movie totally divorced from the book it just may stand up on its own - but its lack of drama and its reliance on heavy handed character musings will work against it.The book is a series of recollections by the author of his share house experiences.
Now I understand that adapting the novel for the screen would have been a difficult task; when I first heard Lowenstein was undertaking it I said to my friends "that will be a difficult task" - but the screenplay is so removed from the book as to make any comparisons useless, other than to comment that the two are entirely unalike.But Lowenstein's solution - to make up a ficticious central character and artificially create a love triangle with his fellow house mates - is a bizarre and severly misguided one.
Instead of 90 minutes of rollicking fun and mayhem, we are treated to a film that tries to solve 'Life, the Universe and Everything', occasionally throwing in a watered down or totally made up exploit of share house living.There are many stories in it that would be great on the big screen - the exploits with the fish fingers, milk crates and their uses, the radio program and the raid, not to mention the furniture smashing sex session.
That the film employs the use of several upbeat songs to make the fact they are trying to liven things up to cover deathly boring script.The central character played by Noah Taylor is the emotional anchor for the film, and in that respect he does it well.
I have enjoyed many Australian films, and I make it a point to seek them out when I am looking for something new, but this movie would be awful no matter what country produced it.I tried to end the review at this point, but I am required to enter a minimum of ten lines of text to successfully enter this comment.
Well I try to see as many Australian films as I can to support our industry but when I see films like this it makes me wonder why.
Often I'll dislike a movie but still see that some people could like it - but how could anyone give 'felafel' more than two stars!
Sitting 'round Pemberton doing nothing, flicking through the channels, and stopped purely because of one of my (many) favourite tunes was on...Golden Brown by the Stranglers...of course that's the opening sequence to this movie.....Didn't know a thing about it really but just watched it in amazement.I related to the main character quite a bit purely because I travel so much and don't really have any proper roots, and feel that real frustration when people you're living with get so wrapped up in their own little problems when your own seem, at the time, insurmountable.I refer to a particular scene when Danny just blows up at the whining wannabe soap star....I think sometimes I should do the same!!
The film is a comedy, but be warned it also goes very dark at times.....one of the characters tries to commit suicide is one grim example.There's a bit of philosophy going on in there but you'd have to watch it a few times and probably read up a little to understand it....I didn't!
Because Movie Central was repeating this over and over again I ended up watching it a second time and got to understand it a little more...oh and if Emily Hamilton is single and ever in London/Whistler BC then I'd wine and dine her, that girl is hot....and a bloody good actress as well!.
If you would like to make movies in your life but you're not sure , watch "he died with a felafel in his hand" , you can't do worse than that.
Anyone that read the book `He Died With A Felafel In His Hand' - beware.
The movie adaptation is so far removed from John Birmingham's hilarious, original novel it's no wonder he wanted his name removed from the credits.Birmingham's book was a treat because it recollected the experiences of tenants in over 100 share houses across Australia: some outrageous, others painfully dull.
But apart from his short-term motivation to avoid trouble and get his prose into Penthouse, does Danny have a story to tell?It appears not, as he is stuck in a `crazy, uncoordinated and chaotic' world, making his character and his never-ending writing task so frustrating to watch.Like all good philosophy students, Danny is on a search for love, fulfilment and the meaning of existence.Through brooding in his room, strumming the guitar and displaying a general snootiness to everyone, he fails to find it, with his answer to all life's problems simply to pack up stuff and move house.It is difficult to feel any sympathy for Daniel's plight because he's just a dreamer - he is stuck `in a void of existential chaos' and he shuns the first signs of female affection so quickly (through characters Sam and Enya) one has to wonder if he really wants to find what he is looking for.
And his motivations are even harder to believe when these two women chase him all over the country to bed him.The film does pick up at the end when the writer is able to portray a shared house in its most realistic form.
i did however like the fat dude with dreadlocks and the cockney landlord who threatened noah taylor.this film just came across as another series of character viginettes, none of which were convincing or humourous.