“We Have Trainspotting at Home” — Reviewing He Died With A Felafel In His Hand 32 Years On.

I absolutely adore Richard Lowenstein’s 2001 Gen Xer comedy, He Died With A Felafel In His Hand. A movie that showed me the horrors of sharehousing at, honestly, an age where I barely understood anything beyond crude, random nonsense. The film stars Noah Taylor as Danny, an author struggling to make ends meet as he jumps from haunt to haunt and couch to couch up and down Australia’s east coast. This year, the film celebrates it’s 25th anniversary with little to no fanfare.

You know…like Fight Club but…uhhhhhhhhhh

The film meant a lot to me as a teenager looking at the bleak future ahead and what was a very rose-tinted youth knowing that I too may be in this scenario in my near future. Staring a bunch of work experience in the face and uncertain of what I wanted to do or be when I grow up. All I knew is that I wanted to do something in tech and maybe a bunch of writing — I ended up becoming a Social Media Manager for a decade and frankly hating it, so you know, I guess that’s the same thing. All I knew deep down is that I never wanted to live in a sharehouse.

With the 30th of August coming up on the horizon, I decided before I watched the movie for the umpteenth time, I should finally read John Birmingham’s original novel. The film was decried as being “inaccurate” or at least, “missing the point” of the original book — so with that in mind, I was worried that I may grow a disdain for the movie upon reading it’s origins and I am very happy to report that the book is absolutely mediocre.

I’ll get this out of the way now but what Richard Lowenstein did to Birmingham’s book is give it purpose, drive and a sense of characterisation — someone to actually give a shit about. I could have torn the book a new asshole from a “2026” or “woke” standpoint — depending on how many worms are in your brain — but beyond that, the book, like a lot of Australian culture we once praised, is just empty.

Hey look — it’s AFI’s best movie of 1997!

Yes, there’s a lot of jokes about “boys being boys” and junkies being junkies and women either being whores or madonnas — unless they’re a lesbian, in which case they’re just plain “crazy” (women amirite?) — and then there’s a lot of weird xenophobia wrapped in there — but none of it’s funny or satirical or subversive — even for 1994. Just a year after, I can recall Vince Sorrenti doing his Temu Jerry Seinfeld routine about “tolerance” on Hey Hey. It’s largely gross out for the sake of gross out, which is fine, but even Death in Brunswick and Bad Boy Bubby had a better grasp to disturb and unsettle an audience than Birmingham’s attempts.

With a lot of characters and scenarios, which would no doubt have been at least interesting or at least partially original for 1994 — at least they’re short. That’s truly the best thing I can say about Birmingham’s book is that it’s broken up into 13 share houses across two hundred plus pages and I read it in a week. And then a month later I simply forgot about it until I finally decided to write about it here.

The hollow and shallowness of Birmingham’s book is not a nihilistic representation of the waywardness of Gen X, in the same way something like Coupland’s coinage or Palahnuiks’ impotent rage — it’s simply just nothing. It’s beyond nothing. It’s nothing in the face of doing and being nothing.

While it’s also not far for comparison, at least what I believe is that both the film and book are trying to ape Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting down to the eclectic soundtrack, drug-fuelled madness and semi-autobiographical style. The problem is Birminghan has no sense of how to build upon any characters beyond random quips, anecdotes and moments that wouldn’t look out of place as a spiritual sequel to The Prodigy’s Smack My Bitch Up Music video. And maybe, that’s the point — but what a boring point.

The worst crime Birmingham commits is trying to wrap it all up in a supposedly serious package with the death of “junkie” Flip — whom the book is titled after. However, it comes off as a little bit “after school special — even the whole junkie section isn’t dissimilar from Hubert Selby’s Requiem or even for a more local taste, Monkey Grip by Helen Garne — another book about drug addicts all living in sharehouses.

“We used to be a bloody country”

I don’t doubt that Birmingham was trying to write something original, Welsh had no influence on his work, nor was there any intention from him to tell more than a few colourful little tales about jumping from room to room — but the humour is no higher than your mate drunkenly telling you a “crazy” tale while trying to lean on a bar stool before the pub closes. However, after hearing the store once before — there’s no real joy beyond saying “yeah mate” and then leaving to get a HSP while he nicks off for a piss.

There’s a sequel — the extremely 1997 titled, The Tasmanian Babes Fiasco — which apparently features a bit more plot and some recurring characters from HDWAFIHH, but I have no intention to read it unless someone literally paid me to do so. The thing that I find deeply frustrated about the original book is the stranglehold it had on Australian culture for the decade after it’s release.

Few other books in all of Australian literaray history were able to achieve the heights and popularity of Felafel which included a play that is allegedly “the longest running stage play in Australian history”, the film and then a decade later a graphic novel based on the book — which I don’t ever look forward to flicking through while spending time in a used book store.

“Oh boy — less reading!”— Someone who bought this.

Another sin of mediocrity is Birmingham milking his “franchise” for all it’s worth by releasing the oddly titled “The Felafel Guide to Getting Wasted” and “The Felafel Guide to Sex” in the shadow of the film’s release. I don’t imagine only one guy buying this — oa guy perpetually stuck in 2002 who is so excited to be running the marketing department for Austar and is overjoyed by his monthly delivery of FHM subscription.

Yeah, why even try!

Nowadays Birmingham doesn’t do personal work but self publishes his novels — sci-fi and fantasy series that have garnered some recognition including a series of alternate history novels known as Axis of Time. One book which features odd fan fiction about Virgin co-founder and Epstein List alumni, Richard Branson who plays a young british RAF pilot. Also a quick glance at his Wikipedia page does look like Birmingham has possibly written that himself.

Now looking back, I can’t recommend Felafel to anyone but still 100% recommend people watch the movie. The movie has so much more going for it, has some great comedic moments and some truly fine writing, acting and directing. It’s no Trainspotting but it’s very Aussie, it’s sexy, it’s amusing, it’s someone who truly does love the original and wants to elevate it.

Thank God for Noah Taylor.

The best I can say about the source material is that I am fine with the aimlessness of the original book, it’s stance on the greedy nature of landlords, the chaos that ensues with so many dispirate and desperate folk who live among them — but there’s nothing to truly really care (or praise) about it, root for or even find relatable beyond “geez sharehouses are bad huh?”