28.Jun.2009 Sunday Salon: A Day At Book Club TV Show

Jennifer Byrne, Marieke Hardy, Jason Steger

I invited myself over to the shooting of First Tuesday Book Club in Sydney last Friday. The idea to be an audience in a TV show is quite exciting since it’s something I had never experienced before.

First thing I noticed when I arrived at the waiting room was that the other people were all old and white (by old I mean retirement age and by white I mean, well, Caucasian). I was wondering if they’re exactly the group of audience that the show’s targeting. Being young and non-white I felt somewhat out of place. But after sitting in there was one lady next to me who was quite chatty so it was nice that we got to talk. She said she came with her (real) book club. What a nice outing for a book club!

The producer of the show then mentioned things like how we should spontaneously laugh when things are funny and spontaneously clap our hands especially at the beginning, the end of the show and the introduction of the guests.  So we practiced our spontaneous claps a couple of times. She made a note that we should keep going while she’s still clapping. Lovely. Almost like what I imagined happens at TV studio.

They were shooting 2 episodes that day. First was a special edition of show that discusses books around certain topic, which this time was titled Monsters and Bloodsuckers! After the recent popular books such as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Twilight, it was a good time to discuss how the “monsters” like vampires and werewolves came to be, why people read books that scare them. Of course discussion about scary books can’t be had without including Frankenstein and Dracula — Frankenstein being the first original monster in hundreds of years.

At the panel we had Jennifer Byrne, Will Elliott and Tara Moss, Catherine Jinks and Leigh Blackmore. I admit, I especially wanted to see Tara Moss, whose blog I occassionally read. Tara was looking gorgeous with high heels and model body. Too bad I sat at an angle where I could only see the side of her face throughout the entire shooting.

For the second episode we had the ‘usual’ book club, featuring The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa and The Collector by John Fowles. Talking about gorgeous,  the regular panelist Marieke Hardy was looking amazing with her vampirish outfit, blood red hair ornament, and blood red high shoes; also Jason Steger whose smile I’m always fond of — he always looks so endearing! For guests we had Eddie Perfect (Perfect? What a name!) and Sophie Gee.

I particularly found it quite interesting that minutes to seconds before shooting there’s always a team of make-up artists who “touched up” the panel already seated on the stage — brushed the clothes here and there, put a bit more lip gloss, a bit more hair spray, tamed that naughty strands of hair, brushed the oil off faces, rolled leftover lints off the black shirts; while the panel chatted with each other and seemed oblivious to the parade going on them. It looked comical.

It was a fine day. The whole thing probably took around 3 hours with half an hour break in between. I hope to do this again in the future. You know, if I ever have a free midday again.

The episode will be shown on Tuesday the 7th of July 2009 10pm at ABC 2. Or you can view it on First Tuesday Book Club website.

The books for next month (August) are Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides and something else that I can’t remember. I’m interested to read along Middlesex. It’s about time!