The Small Picture Podcasts

The Naked Truth is the very personal story of Graeme Blundell - Australia's first sex icon (by chance), a founder of the Melbourne's theatre groups La Mama and Playbox, which showed audiences that actors could speak in Australian English, and now an acclaimed writer and journalist. From his a childhood in Melbourne's working-class outer suburbs Graeme passionately followed his dreams to becomes a central part of Australian popular culture. He has worked in films, TV and theatre. The hit movie Alvin Purple made him Australia's first permissive pin-up, and he became a symbol of the early seventies - an era everyone still wants to be part of. Actor, director, producer, biographer, critic and journalist, Blundell established theatre companies and was there when they closed, watched the film industry through its many renaissances, and television as it became an addictive digital environment. In The Naked Truth Blundell writes about Australian life in the 40s, 50s and on with the insight of someone who was always part of the action - whether he wanted to be or not.

Actor, director, producer and writer, Graeme Blundell has been associated with many pivotal moments in Australian theatre, film and television. After working at the legendary Pram Factory and then Hoopla, he was co-executive director of the Playbox Theatre Company, associate director of the Melbourne Theatre Company, artistic director of the National Playwrights' Conference and artistic director of Kinsela's in Sydney. He has directed over 100 plays, acted in about the same number, appeared in more than 40 films and hundreds of hours of television. He is also an award-winning director and a prolific journalist. He wrote the bestselling book King, co-authored a biography of painter Brett Whiteley, An Unauthorised Life, and edited and compiled Australian Theatre: Backstage with Graeme Blundell for Oxford University Press. His columns appear most frequently in the Australian and he has also written for the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Sun Herald, the Australian Women's Weekly and Luxury Travel. He lives on the New South Wales Central Coast with writer Susan Kurosawa.

Graeme Blundell has long been on my list of people I'd wanted to talk to, so this was, to me, an excellent opportunity to ask questions about the things I'd always wanted to know!