Aussies in Hollywood Podcast: Paul Hogan

Introduction:

A PodcastOne production.

Jenny Cooney has been a part of Hollywood for 30 years, reporting on all the Aussie stars, from Hoges to the Hemsworths, Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie and beyond. This is Aussies in Hollywood.

Jenny: So earlier this year I was sitting next to Paul Hogan at the G’day USA Gala in LA, and I was trying to convince him to do this podcast. He’s always been on my bucket list because Paul Hogan is obviously the original Aussie in Hollywood, but he was very reluctant and kept telling me he didn’t do this stuff. I didn’t give up. And cut to a month later, I ended up sitting in his living room, in his little home in Venice, about a block from the Venice Beach boardwalk – which is hilarious given it’s one of the number one tourist destinations for Australians – we got to chat about him hosting the Oscars, hanging out with Charles and Diana, and Liz Taylor, and whether or not the new Son of Dundee ad campaign could actually bring back Mick Dundee. So, here’s Paul.

I’m so excited that you agreed to do this, because everybody – everybody that has come here in the last 31 years since I’ve been here, they always talk about, you know, there was no Australian – you know, the first people that came I think were you and Olivia Newton John, and Mel Gibson, right?

Hoges: Olivia was probably first.

Jenny: Yeah.

Hoges: And then Mel. But Mel was an Australian when he got here, but he rapidly became an American, because he is an American and he was born in New York. And he became a superstar, so they didn’t all say, ‘Oh he’s Australian, Mel Gibson’. It was just, ‘Mel Gibson, superstar.’

Jenny: Right.

Hoges: So, yeah. And the first Australian accent that was heard in movies over here, was Bryan Brown. Did a couple of movies. He did four or five movies where he was an Australian in it.

Jenny: Oh yeah.

Hoges: So he was the pioneer of the language.

Jenny: I remember when, the first time I saw Mad Max here in America on TV, it was dubbed.

Hoges: Yeah, yeah.

Jenny: I mean I was totally horrified.

Hoges: They wanted to dub Crocodile Dundee too.

Jenny: No.

Hoges: But we said no, no way.

Jenny: Seriously?

Hoges: Yeah. They just thought our accent was too hard to understand. Which is rubbish.

Jenny: So, it must have been a very strange experience when you first got here. At what point, in this whole process, was your first trip to America?

Hoges: I’d been once or twice. Low key stuff. Because a cut up version of my television shows used to be on here in the early 80s. It was on like midnight sort of, coupled up with Benny Hill or something like that. Had a very small, but loyal, cult following. But I think the – then the tourism ads brought some attention to Australia. And then the Dundee follow-up sort of hit it on the head.

Jenny: Right. So, well go back to the beginning. I mean there’s a lot – everybody sort of knows the backstory that you weren’t – you didn’t grow up ambitiously deciding that you wanted to get into show business, right. So, what was your upbringing like, how did you – what was your opinion of show business, movies, TV, before you had anything to do with it?

Hoges: Never gave it much thought. Only ever got into television – and I was already grown up, I was like 30 – and I went on a talent show, with no intention or interest in winning it, just merely to take the mickey out of it. And that plan backfired, and it turned into a career.

Jenny: And that was New Faces, right?

Hoges: Yeah, yeah.

Jenny: Now that - was that – that was because you and your mates, when you were working on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, you were annoyed with the way they were mean to the contestants, is that -

Hoges: Yeah.

Jenny: Tell me the story.

Hoges: I thought it was cruel. It was – you know it was so called celebrities passing judgment on enthusiastic amateurs. And I thought it would be nice if, just once, one of the Christians jumped up and bit the nuts off the lions. So, you know, and talking about it at work, it was sort of someone said that phrase that I couldn’t resist, ‘someone should do it’ and I said, ‘Oh, I’ll do it.’ And so I might have been the only person who went on a talent quest, with no interest in winning it.

Jenny: That made you irresistible really, right?

Hoges: Yeah. That I didn’t care.

Jenny: How old were you when that happened?

Hoges: I think 30.

Jenny: Thirty?

Hoges: Yeah, 31, something like that.

Jenny: You knew you were funny, but had you ever done any stand-up?

Hoges: No, no it was never…

Jenny: You didn’t have an ambition to mine that humour in any way?

Hoges: No, I hadn’t been the sort of like wag around the campfire. I was always a smart-alec. Would have been a great heckler. And very opinionated. But I didn’t know everything that I thought was funny, that most people did too. Because that’s the thing about a comedy writer, if the majority agrees with what you think is funny, you’re a successful comedy writer. And if they don’t, you’re just a lone ratbag. So, fortunately what I thought was funny, so did a great deal of people.

Jenny: And did you grow up in a city, or in the country?

Hoges: Yeah. No, I grew up in the city.

Jenny: You were up the city.

Hoges: In the western suburbs. I was a westie.

Jenny: After New Faces, you got booked on some other shows from that, right? Because people found you sort of refreshing and amusing, right?

Hoges: Yeah, I got on A Current Affair – Mike Willesee sent Tony Ward down to interview me because they thought it was novel that this guy on the talent show worked on the Harbour Bridge. So, they come down and interview me under the bridge. And I took the mickey out of them too, so Mike Willesee said, ‘We’ve been looking for a man on the street segment, you know. And we’ve tried actors with scripts, and it hasn’t really worked. Would you be interested?’ I said, ‘Show me the script.’ And I said, ‘No, I can see why it didn’t work.’ And Willesee thought, ‘Oh, he’s a smart alec, this will work.’

So I used to come on A Current Affair occasionally and give the man on the street opinion about what was happening in the world.

Jenny: But that was where you met John Cornell, right?

Hoges: Yeah. Well, he was the producer. And it was him that sort of said – that knew what to do with me, and said, ‘You know, shouldn’t be doing bits here and there, as everything you say, what just comes to your head and you think of it, do you write it down?’ I said, ‘No I just think of it.’ He said, ‘Well start writing it down because you should have your own show.’ And it turned out he was right.

He saw more potential in me than I did. And we shared a sense of humour, so on we went. And I was happily able to leave the bridge.

Jenny: And what did your family make of it?  Because you already had – well you had – your kids were not little ‑

Hoges: I had four kids. Yeah.

Jenny: At the time, right?

Hoges: I had four kids then. Slightly embarrassed, no doubt, but sort of just went along with it. And they liked the fact that I wasn’t off going to work, I was always at home and available.

Jenny: At what point when you were doing the show, did you really feel this – like this passion like ‑

Hoges: Oh, laughter did that, you know. When you sort of get a room full of people, or you’re on television, and you think something’s funny and you sprout it out and everybody laughs, you sort of think, ‘Oh this is great. What a good job. I’m getting well paid. And my job is to make people laugh, forget about their troubles.’  And sort of it occurred to me it was the perfect job.

But I was still – somewhere in the back of my mind I was thinking, ‘I’m a rigger. That’s what I do for a living. And someone’s going to wake up and say, ‘Hey, you don’t belong up here with us. You’re not an entertainer, you’re a rigger’.  I sort of kept my – I had scaffold and rigger crane driver tickets and union tickets. I kept all of them for the first year or two.

Jenny: Really?

Hoges: Just in case. Yeah.

Jenny: So, you were quite willing to just say, ‘Oh, people are going to stop laughing at me at some point.’

Hoges: Yeah, yeah.

Jenny: Or ‘laughing with me’ I should say.

Hoges: Yeah.

Jenny: And the show lasted for over 10 years, right, on and off?

Hoges: Yeah.

Jenny: Different versions of it.

Hoges: Went like 11 years and was never beaten in the ratings. Undefeated for 11 years. So it was sort of – they hadn’t got sick of me.

Jenny: Well, I think we all grew up on a lot of the characters that you would start to do on a recurring basis.

Hoges: Yeah.

Jenny: You know, all those great like Nigel and all those, you know, Leo Wanker.

Hoges: Leo Wanker. A legend.

Jenny: Did you have a favourite?

Hoges: I love Leo. He was such a clown. Fearless, and full of self-aggrandisement.

Jenny: The tourism commercial came towards the end of that, is that right?

Hoges: Yeah.

Jenny: So, tell me about the timeline. You didn’t want to quit the show. You thought you would do it forever, or were you always thinking there’s going to be something else?

Hoges: Oh no, there was – I was starting to think there might be something else. And then I went to England and I did a couple of shows in England. And I actually launched Channel 4 in England.

Jenny: Wow.

Hoges: Which was a buzz to do, you know, taking comedy to the UK is like coals to Newcastle. And then I was doing the – I was doing Fosters ads in England, because no one in Australia drinks Fosters. But it was a huge success. And then John Brown, the Minister for Tourism, came and approached us about selling Australia to America. And I thought that was a good idea and that was the launch of the ‘shrimp on the barbie’ campaign, which was hugely successful. And actually, it’s in the Smithsonian Institute, that original ad.

Jenny: No.

Hoges: Yes, it is.

Jenny: Have you been there to see it?

Hoges: No. But it’s in the media section.

Jenny: Wow.

Hoges: It’s in there as an example of effective advertising in the 80s. And it’s a shrimp – people were saying, ‘It should have been prawn.’  I’d say to them, ‘I wasn’t selling Australia to you. You live here. It’s a shrimp in America.’

Jenny: Well, you didn’t realise at the time you were going to spend the rest of your life hearing that line.

Hoges: No. It eventually got replaced.

Jenny: With, ‘That’s not a knife.’

Hoges: Yeah.

Jenny: How did I know that?

Hoges: I don’t know.

Jenny: So, a lot of people think it’s an urban myth – but I’m pretty sure it’s true – you didn’t get paid to do the tourism commercial.

Hoges: No, no.

Jenny: I mean people must have thought that was insane, at the level of fame you had at that point. What were you and John thinking when they came to you and ‑

Hoges: I was getting nicely rewarded by Fosters. They were looking after me. And the idea that – as what John Brown said – you know, to push it past parliament virtually, was to sort of – one of the ways of demonstrating that it wasn’t some rort for me to get money out of advertising, was to say, ‘I won’t charge you for it.’  As simple as that.

Jenny: But it actually turned into the most brilliant thing you could have done, because it introduced you to the American public in a huge way, right?  I mean your show had already been airing in America.

Hoges: A little bit, yeah, in obscure places, on like midnight. And the tourism ads didn’t go all over the country either.

Jenny: No?

Hoges: No. By travelling here and doing tourism promotion, that the idea came to me for Dundee.

Jenny: So, yeah, talk a little bit about that. How did that come to you?  Like you were over – you were in America promoting Australia.

Hoges: Yeah.

Jenny: So where did the germ of the idea come from, just you being ‑

Hoges: It was going to be a sketch. I was in New York and was sort of like totally overwhelmed by the size, and the scope, and everything of New York, and I started in my head to write a sketch – Hoges in New York. And then I thought, ‘No, Hoges is urban. It should be someone from the bush and sort of …’ So I made up the character. And I virtually wrote the American part of it before I got back to – given him a background.

Jenny: Wow.

Hoges: It was just – it was the attitude that I found, or the curiosity people had to me when they were talking to me, and their view of Australia. And I thought, ‘Well, I’ll give them a romanticised, colourful view of typical Australian.’

Jenny: And it was kind of probably you had the experience – and I had it a little less, thanks to your film – but that Americans really were very ignorant about, ‘Ah, do you have kangaroos down the main street in town?’ You know.

Hoges: Absolutely. It was green on the map and it had kangaroos, and a koala flew the planes. And that was about it. And some knew Olivia Newton John.

Jenny: So, you went back to Australia and you told John about your idea, was that what happened?

Hoges: No, I wrote it first. A sketch turned into like an hour and a half long. And then I went back and said, ‘I’ve got this idea for a movie.’  And he immediately jumped on it, and we knocked the screenplay into shape with Ken Shadie and John. And raised some money and made it.

Jenny: Now when you say raise the money, like if you said that today everyone would laugh at you, because it’s just not that easy.

Hoges: Yeah.

Jenny: I mean, you didn’t think about – you didn’t go to a studio?  Or did they all turn you down?

Hoges: No, they – John went to Kerry Packer first, because we had been in business with Kerry for years.

Jenny: Right.

Hoges: On a handshake basis. And Kerry thought, ‘No, it wasn’t a good idea.’

Jenny: Oh, really?

Hoges: Yeah. He said, ‘You know, you can’t make money out of movies, you know, it’s too risky’ and, ‘Australian movies don’t travel’ and all that. And then John put together a packet and we had friends and about a third of the Australian cricket team put money up because, at the time, World Series Cricket was kicking off, and John was heavily involved in that, and I knew quite a few of the cricketers personally.

Jenny: So, who were some of the famous cricketers that invested in it?

Hoges: Oh Dennis Lillee, the Chappells, Rodney Marsh, and sort of – there was about six of them that put up money. They were well rewarded. And then ‑

Jenny: Wow. I’ve never heard that before.

Hoges: Yeah, and word got around. Then a mate of mine, who was a stockbroker in Queensland, got in touch with me and said, ‘I can raise the money’ and ‘how much do you want?’ And we said how much we wanted. And it just rolled in. And so people that invested got, I think, 1,200 percent on their money. And I was one of them. I was one of the investors. So it was a good gamble.

Jenny: Wow.

Hoges: Unprecedented. And unlikely to ever happen again.

Jenny: Yeah, because I remember the next time someone tried to do that, it was Barry Humphries trying to do it for the Les Patterson Saves the World.

Hoges: Oh yeah, yeah.

Jenny: Which didn’t do so well.

Hoges: That should have come out again now, and it’s sort of ‑

Jenny: Oh yeah.

Hoges: Les Patterson, and sort of draw lines with Donald Trump.

Jenny: Oh that would be – I’d pay to see that one.

Hoges: Sir Les – which one’s the classiest?

Jenny: Oh do we have to answer that one?

Hoges: No, no.

Jenny: So, wow that’s amazing. I didn’t realise that the cricket team, and all of those people were involved. So it was – so what was the budget you had to raise for the first one?

Hoges: Six million US.

Jenny: Wow. So it wasn’t a small amount of money back then, that was ‑

Hoges: No, no. It was – it turned out it was the most successful independent film ever made.

Jenny: Yep.

Hoges: Never mind Australian or not, just from anywhere. Kerry Packer kicked himself.

Jenny: Oh I – I imagine, you know, there were people for years that would say, ‘You know, I could have invested in that movie and I turned it down.’

Hoges: I know, yeah there were a lot.

Jenny: You probably had to resist yourself not gloating at people that had said no to you.

Hoges: But you know, you understand they’re reluctant.

Jenny: Yeah.

Hoges: It was sailing in unprecedented waters, so.

Jenny: So which part of it did you film first, the part in America or Australia?

Hoges: Oh no, in Australia first, yeah.

Jenny: Yeah. That’s right, because more of it was set in ‑

Hoges: I wrote it backwards, but we filmed it forward, yeah.

Jenny: Right. It premiered – did they do a big premiere?  What was the marketing push like for it in America?

Hoges: Oh no it – it didn’t open huge. And it opened in the fall, which was the burying ground in those days.

Jenny: Yeah.

Hoges: You know the summer stuff was over and you throw the smaller movies that may or may not work into the fall. And it went out there and it opened at number one, which they were all excited about. And then second week, and the third week, and the – and the fifth week it took more than it did – and it was still number one – than it did in the opening week. And that was what they call lightning in a bottle. And then everyone became experts. But it did – it did a lot of unprecedented things.

Jenny: And what was – where were you when that was happening in America?  Were you back in Australia?

Hoges: No, I was here. I was in New York, with the head of distribution at Paramount, who had sort of never left my side, and would tell me, ‘We just opened in Wyoming and it did …’ you know. It was very exciting. And it was sort of – just to see it keep going, and going, and going.

Jenny: So what was the moment where you realised this – you weren’t just happy that it had done OK, that this was a, you know, getting into like phenomenon status?

Hoges: Oh when they – when Paramount started to get excited and flustered doing the – sort of like about the third week or something like that, when it was expected to do, you know, like 25 million and they’d all break out the champagne and celebrate, and pat themselves on the back, and it wouldn’t go away, it just stayed there and kept going. That’s when I thought, ‘Oh this is – this is really something good.’  And then the shock was then to find out it went number one in Lebanon, and Chile, and Norway, and all sorts of places.

Jenny: Did you travel to any of them to promote it?

Hoges: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I did the work.

Jenny: Wow.

Hoges: Yeah.

Jenny: And that must have been amazing, because these were all other countries you’d probably never been to before.

Hoges: Yeah. Oh yeah, I got to see the world and sort of – and it worked everywhere.

Jenny: So why do you think that is?  Why do you think Mick Dundee worked in countries that you wouldn’t have even thought of when you were making it?

Hoges: I think it was easy to associate with him. One, he wasn’t Robert Redford. And he was a simple sort of naïve country guy – not stupid, but naïve. And he went into the biggest, scariest city in the world, and sort of sailed through it. And I think – like a farmer in Lebanon sort of thought of himself the same way. He could sort of like, he could handle that, yeah. It’s hard to say.

Jenny: I think that’s important to point that out, because the fact was he was smart.

Hoges: Yeah.

Jenny: And that’s what – you could – you know, he didn’t just go into situations and be a dumb blonde about it, so to speak, he ‑

Hoges: No, no he was smart. But he was also naïve.

Jenny: Yes.

Hoges: Yeah.

Jenny: How much of Paul Hogan’s in Mick Dundee?

Hoges: Yeah, he started out as Hoges in New York so, it was a countrified version, and sort of – and he had a lot of my feelings, and things like that. My sense of humour. But I wouldn’t be diving on the back of crocodiles and stabbing them in the head, and doing stuff like that.

Jenny: And I assume then that almost immediately Paramount said, ‘Well we have to make a sequel.’

Hoges: Oh yeah. Yeah. And I was reluctant to, but.

Jenny: Really?

Hoges: Yeah. My son – my oldest son helped talk me into it, because he was really keen about it. And we sort of – he sort of sold me the final line of, ‘But you can’t leave Mick Dundee in New York. He’s got to come home.’  And I said, ‘Oh yeah.’  So he and I worked on it – on the second one.

Jenny: That must have been really special, to get to work with your son on the screenplay?

Hoges: Yeah. Yeah well he had a similar sense of humour to mine. And, yeah, it was fun to work with.

Jenny: And then you shot the second film and even bigger success, right?

Hoges: Oh no, it didn’t do as much as the first one. But it still went number one all around the world.

Jenny: Yeah.

Hoges: But it went out ‑

Jenny: I don’t know if any sequels ever really ‑

Hoges: No, no. But it went out in the summer, so it made all its money really quickly, and then got swamped in the other big blockbusters. But it was still hugely successful, yeah.

Jenny: And when did you have your health challenge?  Was it in between the two films, or?

Hoges: Yeah, it was ‑

Jenny: It was a cerebral haemorrhage, right?

Hoges: A cerebral haemorrhage. Yeah, that was when the first one was about to be released.

Jenny: Oh my God, seriously?

Hoges: Yeah.

Jenny: Well, there’s good timing.

Hoges: Yeah.

Jenny: Were you lying there going, ‘Yeah, just my luck.’

Hoges: Yeah, no just was such – in such pain that I didn’t really care what was going on. And it didn’t last long. And it went away. It was apparently a defect in my brain. And a blood vessel burst. But it – lucky me, it burst in the back of my brain where I don’t use. So it didn’t do any lasting harm. And it should never recur. And it hasn’t, you know.

Jenny: Wow. You won a Golden Globe. Do you remember that night?  Were you there?

Hoges: No, I didn’t go.

Jenny: You didn’t go?

Hoges: No, no. I’m not much of an awards person.

Jenny: But then you wound up hosting the Oscars as well as being nominated.

Hoges: Yeah, that was cool. And that was – also was – it couldn’t possibly happen anymore. I didn’t have to rehearse, and I didn’t have to have a script, or anything up on the autocue because the producer then was Samuel Goldwyn Jr., part of the Goldwyn family, and he’d seen ‘Hogas’ – as he was calling me – on television. He said, ‘Oh no, he’s a funny guy, he’ll be alright. Don’t worry about it.’  So, there was no autocue. There was no – and they all had autocue, you know. It was sort of people looking at me like I was a freak and were following me around – Dustin Hoffman and Dom DeLuise – ‘He doesn’t – he didn’t have anything written down.’  And as I said, it was funny, but I’ve never been invited back.

Jenny: Well, you were co-hosting, right?  It was Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase as well?

Hoges: Yeah.

Jenny: What did that mean, just the three of you came out at different points, or were you together?

Hoges: No, most of the – I did the opening, you know, the stand there come out and you do five or 10 minutes and introduce the night and give your – do your bit. And I did, and took the mickey out of it terribly.

Jenny: Yeah, I saw clips of it, and you kind of pointed out to everyone that things weren’t going to be pretty if you didn’t win, because you’d come the longest way, right?

Hoges: Yeah, among other things, yeah. And tell them how to conduct themselves to try and make the show more entertaining. But it worked well. Yeah, and I got laughs in all the right places.

Jenny: Did you look out in the audience that night, and see people that you couldn’t imagine that you would be in a room with?

Hoges: Yeah, yeah.

Jenny: What were some of those moments?

Hoges: Oh it was just sort of like, ‘This is surreal but I can’t let it distract me.’  You know?  I’m speaking on behalf of the home viewer about what’s boring about the show, and what’s wrong with it, and I’ve got to get all that out, so – surreal. And I had Dustin Hoffman taking me around to meet Liz Taylor.

Jenny: What?

Hoges: Yeah.

Jenny: No.

Hoges: And I’m sort of like, ‘What?’  Strange seeing ‑

Jenny: And so she knew who you were?

Hoges: Yeah, yeah. She invited me to her charity ball, and I was her guest.

Jenny: Wow.

Hoges: Yeah, that was all sort of surreal. But yeah – but don’t forget I had sat through Crocodile Dundee II later, with Prince Charles on one side of me and Princess Diana on the other, so you know. If you talk about surreal experiences, that’s hard to top.

Jenny: What were the conversations like with them after the film?

Hoges: Oh we all had dinner after that, yeah. And they were talking about what a drag that the paparazzi was, for them. But they sat there and enjoyed the movie. So they laughed in all the right places, and elbowed me, and I thought I was – here I am with my royal friends.

Jenny: Wow.

Hoges: It was surreal.

Jenny: So it must have been like a big rollercoaster for a while there, that one situation you’d think, ‘I’ll never top this’ and then there’d be another one?

Hoges: Yeah. Yeah. I’ve had a ridiculous life. It’s just sort of – when you think about it.

Jenny: You’ve always been really nice to people that recognise you. I mean obviously that’s just your nature, and because you weren’t famous early and you know what it’s like ‑

Hoges: That’s a big help to be in the real world before, you know.

Jenny: Yeah.

Hoges: It’s just – see so many kids now that they hit fame at their teens, and they’re sort of – start to believe they’re superhuman or some incredible magic creature, and they’re not. They’re just lucky. And I think living in the real world first, gave me that advantage. I was sort of saying, ‘Don’t start thinking you’re something special, and that you float above the earth. You don’t.’  You know?

Jenny: Yeah. But then you had to – you had to be – what’s the word – gracious when people, you know, I don’t know how many thousand would come to you and recognise you by saying the same thing over and over again, and you would graciously pretend that nobody else had ever thought of that line before, right?

Hoges: Yeah, but of course you do. That’s – it’s their moment.

Jenny: Yeah.

Hoges: They come up to you and say, ‘That’s not a knife, this is a knife, hehe.’  And then they tell their friends and, you know, that’s terrific. That I think – I’ve thought of a line, and wrote it down, and used it, and it went into the language, you know that’s ridiculous.

Jenny: And it is. It’s pretty much well ‑

Hoges: Yeah.

Jenny: I mean the new Son of Dundee campaign, it’s you know.

Hoges: Yeah.

Jenny: There are those iconic moments that they put in there, because they know that the whole world knows those moments, right?

Hoges: Yep, yeah.

Jenny: Wow.

Hoges: Pretty cool.

Jenny: So I came to America right after Crocodile Dundee came out.

Hoges: Right.

Jenny: And I was actually working for Phyllis Diller, the comedian, I don’t know if you remember her.

Hoges: Oh yeah, yeah.

Jenny: I was her personal assistant for a few years.

Hoges: I do remember Phyllis.

Jenny: I met her at the Logies when I was a journalist for TV Week.

Hoges: Oh right – oh cool.

Jenny: And she brought me over here. So that was my – my incredibly lucky, amazing start. And then I came back – fell back into journalism after working for her for a few years. But I never met hardly another Australian those first, you know, three or four years I was here.

Hoges: Yeah.

Jenny: And people were – all I had to do was go into a bar and loudly order a drink, and everybody in the bar would quote Crocodile Dundee to me, and would then start saying, ‘And is it true, you have kangaroos?’  And I’d say, ‘Oh yeah, I get a kangaroo to school in the morning.’

Hoges: Oh yeah.

Jenny: And they believed every line, right.

Hoges: You’ve got to do it.

Jenny: I could – I’d look at them waiting for them to start laughing, and realise, ‘Oh my God, they’re buying this.’

Hoges: Yeah, they’re buying it.

Jenny: So you really coloured the, you know, what everybody thought of Australia for a long time.

Hoges: Yes. And a lot of people were upset about that. A lot of solicitors, and stockbrokers, and hedge fund managers, and sort of were annoyed at that image, thinking we’re all – but when they got over here they played it to the hilt.

Jenny: I thank you for all the free drinks I got.

Hoges: Yeah. Let’s just say we are wild and colourful people, you know. We’re not just regular folks.

Jenny: And to this day, I think, the accent is still – part of the reason why people love our accent so much is ‑

Hoges: Yeah, and it was sort of like ashamed and shuddered on at home, you know. I know there was even – when the tourist ads that the powers that be didn’t want me to do the ads because of this horrible accent. And it was only Bob Hawke who said, you know, ‘What’s wrong with his bloody accent’ that turned the final sort of, ‘Oh well, go ahead.’  And it’s – I don’t know how many times over here that people have said they love the accent, or it’s charming. It was only shuddery at home.

Jenny: Well when you have ‑

Hoges: And now we’ve got all these – every second person, your superstar, is an Aussie. Been watching shows and there’s sort of like, I knew about Hugh, and Chris, and some of the others – Nicole, and Naomi, and not to mention Margot Robbie who is sensational – but there is – so like Hawaii Five-0, the guy in that, I didn’t know he was an Australian.

Jenny: Alex O’Loughlin.

Hoges: Yeah.

Jenny: And most of them are – you know when you talk about their early days, they look at you and they say, you know, you did it and I think that that opened ‑

Hoges: Yeah, I think they look at me and say, ‘Well he did it, and he’s not very talented, so there’s no reason we can’t do it.’  I haven’t set an impossibly high bar, you know. I’m not exactly a legendary actor.

Jenny: Well, but I also think it was because prior to that, you had to be an American, you know.

Hoges: Yeah.

Jenny: If you were Australian, you could only get work if you changed your accent ‑

Hoges: Yeah, and you had to be ‑

Jenny: ‑ and pretended to be – Anthony LaPaglia was here not long after you ‑

Hoges: I know, yeah.

Jenny: ‑ and he had to completely lose – he lied.

Hoges:  There were the two LaPaglia brothers.

Jenny: Yeah.

Hoges: Yeah. And they sort of – nobody knew they were Australian.

Jenny: No, he had to lie in auditions about where he was from, because he didn’t want to go into that whole, ‘Oh I heard a little bit of your accent.’

Hoges: Yeah. No, and if you don’t tell them in advance, they don’t hear it.

Jenny: No. That’s true.

Hoges: No.

Jenny: So you – you had two of the biggest movies back-to-back. So I assume then everybody thought of you more as an actor than a comedian, or a comic actor.

Hoges: Yeah.

Jenny: And so were you in that system where you were getting lots of scripts and lots of offers?

Hoges: Yep.

Jenny: And what did you decide, you know ‑

Hoges: I didn’t ‑

Jenny: ‑ how did you decide to handle it?

Hoges: I never set out to be an actor anyway. I was – comedy was what I loved doing, and doing my own thing. I got spoilt because I’d had 10, 12 years in Australia of doing my own material, and doing what I thought was funny, and that spoils you, so that you – you know, other people’s scripts, don’t get excited about. And I didn’t want to be an actor. And I passed on everything that came, mostly because it wasn’t funny.

And I went ahead and I made – the next movie I wrote was Almost an Angel. And I wanted to do that because that was – come out of my head. And it was OK, but it wasn’t – nothing like a huge hit or anything. And then I always wanted to do a western, so I wrote ‑

Jenny: Lightning Jack.

Hoges: Lightning Jack. And cast Cuba in it. He was a great kid. And just had the time of my life doing it. And wasn’t – didn’t do it for the money, or sort of – or to be win an Oscar or something, because I’m not much of an actor. My friend, Gary Oldman, is an actor. And he’s a good actor. And I wouldn’t even aspire to do the stuff he does.

Jenny: I heard that you turned down Ghost. Was that true?

Hoges: Yeah, that’s one of the most famous ones that I turned down, yeah.

Jenny: Was it because it was not ‑

Hoges: I didn’t think it was funny enough.

Jenny: Because it wasn’t a comedy.

Hoges: No.

Jenny: I mean – so you decided you would only do films that were funny?

Hoges: Well only do what really appealed to me, or sort of – or at the time whatever, it’s all – I never wanted to be an actor, or a movie star, I wanted to do comedy. And I’d had quite considerable success doing what I wanted to do. So, you know, why change.

Jenny: Yeah, I’m not sure Ghost would have been the same movie – if it wasn’t something you were passionate about doing.

Hoges: No, no. It was a good movie, and ‑

Jenny: It was a great movie.

Hoges: Patrick was terrific in it.

Jenny: Yeah.

Hoges: The funny part is that Patrick was going to be in my movie, when it was put together. He said, ‘Yeah, I’d love to have a look at it.’ And then he took Ghost. And because he called me and said, you know, ‘They’ve made me an offer I can’t refuse, so I won’t be able to do your movie.’  I said, ‘What is it?’  And he said, ‘It’s Ghost.’  And, yeah, I don’t know how it would have worked with me in it. But I wasn’t that interested because I didn’t think it was funny. And I thought it was supposed to be funny.

Jenny: Well I think, yeah, Whoopi was probably the only funny part of it.

Hoges: Yeah, they put her in to lighten it up a bit, here and there, yeah.

Jenny: Yeah.

Hoges: Because it was one of the Zucker brothers.

Jenny: Yes. Jerry.

Hoges: And they had done, you know, wacky comedies. So I’m – when I read that script, I’m looking at it as a wacky comedy. And I thought, ‘No, not very funny.’  But, you know, no regrets, it’s sort of …

Jenny: No. Well I can’t imagine. I mean you’d already ‑

Hoges: It was a lovely movie, and I might have ruined it.

Jenny: I remember we did press – I remember I met you when you did a big press conference in New York for Crocodile Dundee II.

Hoges: Mm-hmm.

Jenny: There was an Aussie guy running international publicity at Paramount, called John Rentsch.

Hoges: Oh yeah.

Jenny: And then after that, I think I was on the set of Flipper, and Lightning Jack, and ‑

Hoges: To be quite honest, with Flipper I did it because it was 10 weeks in the Bahamas, and swimming with dolphins. I mean, and I’m, ‘That will be fun.’

Jenny: And you know Elijah Wood turned out to be a great ‑

Hoges: Elijah was the kid – yeah lovely, lovely kid.

Jenny: ‑ lovely guy.

Hoges: And he was like 14 or something when we did it. He was a nice kid. No, it was terrific fun.

Jenny: You’ve gone back to your roots of comedy since then, right?  You’ve done some tours and ‑

Hoges: I did a couple of tours around Australia, sort of.

Jenny: Yeah. How was that?

Hoges: Oh it was fabulous. I loved every minute of it. And it was easier, because it was just talking about my life, and the weird things that happened in it that were funny. And it was lovely to sit up with 1,000 people in a room and make them laugh. That’s what it’s all about.

Jenny: You know, when we were talking about before was that there are just so many Australians now that we didn’t even know were Australian.

Hoges: Yeah.

Jenny: Like Travis Fimmel, and all those people. People are always saying to me, ‘What’s in the water over there?’  And, ‘How do you explain it?’  Do you have any theory about why, 30 years later, we can’t even keep track of how many of them there are, when 30 years ago that was just never going to happen?

Hoges: Because all they – you know, they go on Home and Away or something, or Neighbours, and then they whoosh, that’s their entire sort of background. I don’t know. I don’t know what it is. There’s some – there must be some sort of reality, I think, to Australians. Because that’s – like you’ve met Chris Hemsworth and Hugh Jackman?

Jenny: Yeah.

Hoges: Terrific people.

Jenny: Yeah.

Hoges: Not full of themselves. Not putting on airs and graces. And that sort of comes through, I think. And even though they’re – watching Thor, and who’s, you know, a god with magic powers and everything – somehow there’s a reality about that, the person that’s doing it. And that sort of adds to it.

Jenny: Just like Wolverine?

Hoges: Yeah, yeah. You can’t have – no one knows why, but I just know it’s happening, and I’m thrilled to see it.

Jenny: I think – some people have sort of theorised that they feel it’s that Aussie – that they’re hard workers, that there’s a work ethic. I’ve heard a lot of directors who’ve said that they prefer to cast English or Australian actors because they know they’ll show up on time, there won’t be any antics, they work hard.

Hoges: Yeah.

Jenny: I think because when they were on shows like Neighbours or Home and Away, you know, again, you don’t get to have – you don’t get to skip to the front of the lunch line.

Hoges: No.

Jenny: You don’t – you get told, ‘Hey pick up one of the prop …’ you know, ‘… one of the microphone stands and carry it to the next set,’ right?

Hoges: Because it’s so little happening there in that business, there are limited opportunities. So that when you get the opportunity you make the most of it. You know, you do the work, and you turn up, and you don’t be a pain in the arse to everyone, because, you know, you’re pleased to get the job. And that sort of stays with you, I think.

Jenny: What do you think about the industry back home these days?  I know you’re friends with Shane Jacobson and ‑

Hoges: Yeah.

Jenny: You went back and did Strange Bedfellows, which was hilarious.

Hoges: And I loved doing it. It was – like Dean Murphy, who I – one of my protégés – he was, he’s got a brilliant dry Australian sense of humour, and Shane’s terrific. And I just loved doing that movie. I didn’t think it’s going to be up for an Oscar, or even going to travel outside Australia much, but it was just fun to do, you know. And with fun people. I had a great time.

Jenny: How long have you lived in the United States?

Hoges: Back and forwards – since the late 80s or something, yeah. More time here than there. I moved back home – go back home a lot, and I moved back there for three or four years in – when was that – early – late 90s, early 2000 or something. And then moved back here and so – now I’ve got this American son, so – who has all his friends here, and his music here, and is reluctant to move. But, you know ‑

Jenny: So you would move if it was just you?

Hoges: Oh yeah.

Jenny: For sure?

Hoges: Absolutely.

Jenny: So the reason you’ve been here so long is just circumstances of family and all of that?

Hoges: Yeah.

Jenny: It wasn’t – so you still always feel, in your heart, that that’s where you want to be?

Hoges: And I’ll be back there, yeah. I’m just – I’ll get there.

Jenny: You’ve just got to get him a job in Australia.

Hoges: Yes.

Jenny: What’s he into?

Hoges: Music.

Jenny: Ah.

Hoges: He writes songs.

Jenny: Well that’s great.

Hoges: Yeah.

Jenny: Wow. I love that you bravely live – we won’t say where – but a block from the Venice boardwalk.

Hoges: Yeah.

Jenny: I can’t imagine today that if you went down there, which you must do often, that you wouldn’t be recognised ‑

Hoges: No, I’m not, no.

Jenny: No. Really?

Hoges: No, no.

Jenny: Because it’s the biggest tourism attraction in America, for all the Australians especially.

Hoges: Mm-hmm. Oh no, no, I just put on my sunglasses and sort of shuffle along with my head down. No one – I do get sprung occasionally. But mostly, no. Mostly, no.

Jenny: By Australians or Americans?

Hoges: Both. Depends. Yeah, if I open my mouth and talk, sometimes that’s a bit of a trap. But otherwise ‑

Jenny: But at least you’re not wearing an Akubra hat or anything.

Hoges: No, no.

Jenny: So it’s not like, you know …

Hoges: No, I’m not – I don’t go down there in the Dundee outfit.

Jenny: I remember you shot the third Crocodile Dundee around that area too, didn’t you?

Hoges: I’m trying to remember.

Jenny: As I remember ‑

Hoges: Oh yeah, we did.

Jenny: Yeah.

Hoges: Yeah, we did on the ‑

Jenny: Because I remember the young kid that was in it – George Negus’s son ‑

Hoges: On the bikeway. Yeah, yeah, the third one was sort of like – oh I got talked into it, but was never enthusiastic – because I never wrote it originally. I had to rewrite the story, desperately trying to make it work. It turned out OK, but I think that the audience was not there for it, you know. I think it – trying to dig something up 20-odd years later, it sort of – I don’t think there’s one for now, either.

Jenny: So you’ve heard everybody talk about Son of Dundee and ‑

Hoges: Yeah. And it would be lovely with Chris Hemsworth, couldn’t do better for a son of Dundee could you, but – I just, I’m not sure there’s another one in it. I know the – I’ve been approached by agencies, and the studios, and some independent producers – suddenly a rush of them to do another one, but I’m not sure there’s another one in it.

Jenny: Would Chris do it?  Did you talk to him about it?

Hoges: Oh yeah, Chris is interested.

Jenny: Really?

Hoges: Yeah.

Jenny: He’d have to fight Hugh Jackman for it, wouldn’t he?  So TV being so big now, on the golden age, you wouldn’t think about writing a TV show, getting back to work there, or is that too much work?

Hoges: No, I found – a long time ago, when I started doing television, that the good stuff always comes straight out. When I was putting the sketches together – and I’ve had to write a dozen for every show at least – the ones that just came pouring out of my head would always work, and always funny. And the ones – the more I had to labour over them, the less they were. So it’s the same with a movie thing, I think, it’s sort of like, ‘Ah this is a good idea’ and it all pours out, that’s going to work. If you’ve got to sort of work at it, like the third Dundee, you’ve got to sort of try and make it work and – it’s never as good.

Jenny: Any regrets?

Hoges: What about?

Jenny: Career.

Hoges: No.

Jenny: Nothing?

Hoges: No. No, none at all.

Jenny: Well that’s pretty amazing too.

Hoges: If I had regrets, a giant hand should come down out of the sky and smack me to the ground, and say, ‘What do you want?’  No, no, I’m just – just been extraordinarily lucky. Luckiest man on the planet.

Jenny: Well I hope we get to see you in something soon. Sounds like you’re not giving up yet.

Hoges: No, not yet. No. But don’t care.

Jenny: Yeah. And seeing you at G’day is lovely, because it feels like you’re part of that circle of the beginning, and going all the way through to the new ‑

Hoges: Yeah I – I invented the word.

Jenny: G’day, yep.

Hoges: I didn’t start – I can’t take credit for the G’day USA thing – but I take credit for the word.

Jenny: And then so you’re the original at G’day. You and Olivia.

Hoges: Yeah.

Jenny: And sometimes Mel. And then we – and then you get to meet the Margot Robbies and the ‑

Hoges: Yeah. Yeah, it’s excellent.

Jenny: Luke Hemsworths.

Hoges: Yep. All the newies.

Jenny: So you’re the one that says, ‘Welcome.’  Well what’s the word for goodbye, so we can say that?  There’s no equivalent to G’day for goodbye?

Hoges: No. See ya.

Jenny: See ya. There you go. See ya, Paul. Thank you so much for doing Aussies in Hollywood. It was really lovely, after all these years of knowing you, to hear you tell your story

Hoges: You’re welcome.

Jenny: You’ve inspired so many people, and you’re so loved, and it’s great to hear it all.

Hoges: Oh, that’s nice.

Jenny: It’s true.

Hoges: Probably hated in some circles too, but, you know, who cares.

Jenny: Oh right on cue, here comes your dog, Henry.

Hoges: Oh here’s my dog.

Jenny: Oh hello.

Hoges: Hello, henry. Go walkies, hey?

Jenny: Aw. Alright, well thanks very much.

So shortly after we talked, it was announced that Paul’s returning to Australia to film a new movie called The Very Excellent Mr Dundee. It’s obviously not the Mick Dundee reappearance that we were all hoping for after the ad campaign, but it’s a movie directed by his protégé, Dean Murphy, in which he plays a version of himself on the brink of a Knighthood, who’s told to behave himself, and of course things go hilariously wrong. It will be Hoges’s first major acting role in 10 years, and another chapter in a story that’s not over by a long shot. That’s it, until next time, on Aussies in Hollywood.

Aussies in Hollywood is presented by me, Jenny Cooney, and produced in collaboration with PodcastOne Australia. Executive producer is Jenny Goggin. For more episodes go to podcastone.com.au, download the app, or search for Aussies in Hollywood on iTunes.