Broke dance
October 20, 2006

Boys just want to have fun

Glenn Robbins is no stranger to busting the odd dance
move as Kel on Kath & Kim.

But that was nothing compared with what he went
through to play Benny G in BoyTown, fellow comic Mick
Molloy's follow-up to Crackerjack.

BoyTown is the story of a successful 1980s boy band
re-forming 20 years past their peak, which meant the
actors playing them had to spend six weeks at a
Melbourne dance school learning to move like the
Backstreet Boys.

"It was hard," Robbins says. "You're in your 40s and
you've never done it before. It's hard aerobically, if
nothing else. We had half an hour the first time and
they said that by the end of it, you'll be doing
four-hour rehearsals. We went, 'Oh God.' "

Wayne Hope, who plays fellow band member Carl, says
the other actors wondered whether Molloy, who has
never been the fittest human on the planet, would need
an emergency unit on stand-by.

Robbins adds: "When you look at a movie like This is
Spinal Tap, those guys could all play and they had a
musical history. So that when they came to certain
scenes, they knew what they were talking about. We
didn't have any history."

But with plenty of cutaways in the editing, Robbins,
Molloy, Hope, Gary Eck and Bob Franklin move and
lip-sync like a "mature-age boy band".

BoyTown find a new audience among older women with
songs about dishpan hands, cellulite, divorce and
picking up the kids from school.

The script is written by Molloy and his brother,
Richard. The idea grew out of a sketch Robbins devised
for Molloy's short-lived television show in which they
cut themselves into a Human Nature video clip.

"We had the puffy jackets on and it felt really good,"
Robbins says. "Months later, they were watching it
back and Mick came up with this idea of guys in their
40s trying to rekindle what they did."

BoyTown
Director Kevin Carlin
Stars Glenn Robbins, Mick Molloy, Wayne Hope, Gary Eck

Source:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/entertainment/broke-dance/2006/10/18/1160850999811.ht\
ml



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