Phil Jeng Kane has written for AccessReel for more than six years. Before that he was involved in helping people make films through the Film and Television Institute in Fremantle and long, long before that, beginning in the 1980s, he made short films with his school friend Renny Gosatti.
After twenty-five years working in teaching and construction respectively, Phil and Renny have started film-making again, but instead of dusting off the old Super-8 film camera, they are making a web series for the Internet. “We saw all the toys available to young filmmakers these days and got jealous,” Phil says. Turns out that amateur filmmaking was a hobby fraught with obstacles back in the day. “One time we were watching a Super-8 film that we entered into this festival,” Renny says, “And we actually had to sit through the film jamming in the projector and seeing it burn.” Their films were short comedies with titles like GARY LIVES ON BONDI STREET, DUCK IN ORBIT and CUT OPEN MY HEAD. “We were a very obscure cult,” Renny says. And Phil agrees. “We were known to perhaps 10 or 15 indie film fans living in White Gum Valley and Spearwood.”
Jokes about the suburbs featured prominently back then, particularly about their beloved home of Mount Hawthorn. Now they’ve shifted their focus to Pegasus Point, jewel of northern Perth and remarkably hard to locate on a map. The duo find the coastal suburb the perfect setting to explore their new favourite subject: TOAST.
The result is THE TOAST WHISPERERS, a web-series of short episodes about creating simple toast recipes. As it says in the introduction, “they’re middle aged and untrained in the ways of cookery”. Nonetheless, with the aid of a chihuahua called Elvis, a cat named Pyewacket, family as crew members, a “robot boy” called Jet and a low, low budget more appropriate for a round of drinks during Ocsober, they have cooked up their show.
We’re inviting AccessReelers to suss out the first episode. We’ve put it here for your perusal. If you like it, maybe you can get on the Toasties’ Facebook page and share the love. The episodes will run on Wednesdays through December and January.
