Q&A with Scott Limbrick
“Some had heard the film was the first true masterpiece, so transcendent that it redefined the term; some that it had been shot by a great-grandfather-grandmother-father-son-granddaughter-great-grandson team over the course of several generations… but no one knew any of this for sure.”
~ ‘The Premiere’ by Scott Limbrick
In your satirical and speculative short story ‘The Premiere,’ the rise and fall of a civilisation takes place against the backdrop of one epically long and boring film. Can you tell us more about the inspiration behind your work?
Around the time I wrote this piece I'd been trying some more surreal microfiction on Twitter (sorry, I'd been in the same house for many, many months), and wanted to expand this to a slightly longer length. In particular I wanted to use elements of fiction, like the ability to warp space and time and to make the impossible feel almost visceral, that aren't always possible in different forms, or at least not in the same way.
I knew I wanted to compress large-scale human conflict, even as it expanded far beyond any kind of reality, and a movie theatre seemed like an interesting and isolated setting for this – particularly since these often host very traditional narrative structures. There's also something about a premiere that creates a real vibe, whether or not you're invited to it.
Your comedy show The Last Blockbuster on Earth was recently performed at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and your piece has plenty of laugh-out-loud moments. When did you first become interested in comedy and why?
That's a good question, and I think I was interested in comedy a very long time before it ever occurred to me to actually "do" it. In the purely interested sense, I moved around a lot growing up and I found being able to quote from things like ‘Austin Powers’ or the most recent episode of ‘Malcolm in the Middle’ was a pretty good way to avoid being bullied. Not the most original comedic origin story, but it's the best one I can stitch together for myself!
Other than that, I always enjoyed writing short funny pieces, but the main ways I write and perform now – through fiction and sketch or character comedy – took me much longer to try. I love comedy for its community-building, its small but sharp insights, and for how it can surprise, but for a long time I was mostly an observer. Partly the connecting point between enjoying it and doing it was studying politics and being interested in political satire, then realising that to be any good at satire you need to be able to write more generally first, then try to apply those tools. Then I lost a lot of faith in both my political and satirical beliefs! And now here I am, trying my best.
Your short story collection ‘Flaring Out’ was recently shortlisted for the Richell Prize - congratulations! What can we expect from this collection?
Thanks! That was very unexpected and exciting, but there's a lot still to write before it's a complete collection. I'd say this piece (‘The Premiere’) is fairly representative of the kind of work I'm aiming for within it – mostly speculative, sometimes satirical and often dealing with large spans of time. The stories are largely (in some way) about capitalism, technology, meritocracy and power, and most of the characters face a path to either a kind of transcendence or total collapse. Hopefully they're also fun/interesting to read!
What is the last book (or film) that made you laugh?
The last year has absolutely trashed my memory, but I'm pretty sure the last book I laughed while reading was Mary South's collection ‘You Will Never Be Forgotten,’ specifically the story ‘Camp Jabberwocky for Recovering Internet Trolls’ – even more specifically, the passage you can find online here. The last thing I watched that made me laugh a lot was the webseries ‘Tween Fest,’ an American show from a few years ago that I stumbled upon in the haze of being at home at all times and really enjoyed. Also, more recently and less at home, a bunch of live Comedy Festival shows in Melbourne, some of which I'm sure (and hope) will run again or be filmed for TV.
Scott Limbrick is a writer and comedian. His fiction has appeared in The Suburban Review and Westerly and his short story collection, Flaring Out, was shortlisted for the 2020 Richell Prize.