The director of the Melbourne international comedy festival has accused “keyboard warriors” who know little about the event of creating “a complete bin fire” and a distressing “shitstorm” after the death of Barry Humphries.
The festival has denied “cancelling” the lauded satirist and comedian, who died in Sydney on Saturday, at the age of 89, despite his name being stripped from the MICF’s main award in 2019 over comments he made about the transgender community.
The festival’s director, Susan Provan, defended the 2019 decision, telling Melbourne radio station 3RRRFM it reflected the event’s inclusive and diverse community. She said the criticism directed at the festival after Humphries’ death was “weird, sad and really, really inappropriate”.
“We found this whole thing really distressing because as I said on Saturday night, we posted a tribute. So much of the media has claimed that we did nothing. We were out there in the same way that everybody else was,” Provan said.
“And then this complete bin fire [with people] focusing everything on the comedy festival. I think it’s just awful. How must his family be feeling about this whole legacy and everything being turned into this shitstorm with the [MICF]? It’s just totally inappropriate and wrong and distressing,”
Provan said there was no doubt Humphries helped raise the festival’s profile at its inception almost four decades ago, but stressed this was a “tiny, tiny, tiny part of his career” and the focus on it was “a bit sad”.
On Sunday, actor and Humphries’ friend Miriam Margolyes told the ABC that he had been “very hurt and saddened by what happened after the Melbourne festival” and she believed MICF had “cancelled him rather late in life”.
Film director and friend Bruce Beresford also said the decision to remove Humphries’ name from the award was “a disgrace”.
“I mean he’s one of the great comic geniuses … how can you take his name off an award like that? How offensive, how insulting,” he told ABC Radio Melbourne, adding: “It was a point of view. I don’t think it was malevolent or malicious.”
Provan said the 2019 decision was very controversial at the time and criticised those who sought to highlight it after Humphries’ death, rather than focusing on his achievements. She said some critics had unrealistic expectations of how the festival should have responded.
“I had many email exchanges with Barry over that event and we all moved on. But of course, driven I think by some of his friends and now, when a lot of people are hurting, it’s exploded again,” Provan said.
“People saying things like, they should have turned out the lights and filled the venue with gladiolus! There’s hundreds of comedy festival venues and what on Sunday, we’re all going to race around and buy up all the gladiolus in Melbourne?
Victoria’s creative industries minister, Steve Dimopoulos, is now in talks with Humphries’ family on an appropriate way to mark the artist’s passing. A state funeral is one of the options on the table.
