User:Anthonyhcole/Phillip Adams

"He has written about three million words in books, newspapers and magazines; and he's spoken many more words than that as host of Late Night Live, four nights a week for twenty years." p.3

"...despite leaving school at fifteen..." p.3

"...born on July 12, 1939... in Maryborough in central Victoria, where his father Charles was a Congregational minister. Charles and his wife Sylvia... abuse by a hated stepfather... [paternal grandmother] 'worked in vaudeville with Charlie Chaplain as a juggler and seal-trainer' " p. 8

" 'She left me, aged three, with my maternal grandparents, Bill and Maude Smith, who raised me on their little flower farm in East Kew in Melbourne for most of the next ten years... I rarely saw either parent and, when I did it wasn't really successful.' " p.9

"Adams' grandparents were incredibly poor... Living in a little sleepout at the farm... whenever religious teachers at school told me there had to be a God because there had to be a beginning of everything, and God created everything, I would ask, "and who created God?" I once asked my grandmother and she boxed me on the ear; The only time she ever hit me. I realised I was on to something. It was the most important moment of my life, from which everything else followed.' " p.10 – 11

"He never mastered sport and to this day has no interest in it... the other children bullied him... Onr teacher took a similar delight in tormenting him. " p.15

" My mother dumped my father when he came home during the war... I stayed with my grandparents until I was nine or ten.' ...his grandparents were swindled out of their land by a... 'dignified, corrupt estate agent, who converted it into thirty building blocks, sold them to his mates in a fake auction and Bill and Maude were robbed.' " p. 16

" 'Reading [The Grapes of Wrath] made me realise how the weak are pushed around by the strong...' Aged fourteen, Philip began to turn up regularly to listen to [Communist Party] pronouncements [on] the banks of the Yarra River, where amateur orators used to speak on Sundays... After Phillip's mother remarried he moved in with her and her new husband, Michael Bourke. " p.17

" 'He was a psychopath, the most appalling creature, and for the next five years my life was hell. Not just for physical abuse: the occasional outbursts of violence were almost cathartic and released tension. It was his mental torture of my mother and me, and it meant that I couldn't sleep... she, as a cotton mill's personnel officer...' " p.18

" 'I remember trying to murder my stepfather when I was about eleven — it was highly ineffective' ". p. 19

" '[when I was fourteen] I moved back to my grandparents on the farm... When I was in my early twenties, Michael had a heart attack and died.' " p. 20

" '...all her life she denied that she had experienced a terrible marriage to Michael. Later, when I started writing about him occasionally in my Melbourne Age columns, my mother always denied it had really happened.' ...continued to live with his grandparents while he attended Eltham High School in Melbourne." p.21

"He wrote for the high school magazine and was praised by a couple of teachers. One of these teachers was so impressed that she decided to give Phillip a leg up. Her husband took Phillip into the city and introduced him to 'Jimmy' Haughton James who, with partner John Briggs, ran the advertising agency Briggs and James. ...at age fifteen, Philip walked out of Eltham High School into his first job..." p.22

"At just fifteen years of age, his job was mostly to deliver printing blocks to production houses on a bicycle. He was also writing for the communist Guardian. p.23

"...Phillip and many others left the [Communist] party after Russia crushed the Hungarian revolution in 1956, when Phillip was seventeen. ... Television was launched in Australia in 1956 and soon afterwards Phillip found himself running Briggs James' television department... [Bruce Petty] and Philip started making television commercials together." p. 24

"...switched agencies and joined Paton Advertising... [Brian Monahan and Lyle Dayman]... hired him as a copywrighter and creative director ... gave him an equal partnership in [Monahan and Dayman], which then became Monahan Dayman Adams (MDA)..." p. 25

"It soon became Australia's third biggest agency after George Patterson and John Clemenger. p.27

"In 1975, he conceived the 'Life. Be in it' campaign for the Victorian Department of Youth, Sport and Recreation. ...devised by Adams in 1980 was 'Slip! Slop! Slap!' for the Victorian Anti-Cancer Council." p. 30

"...the Qantas slogan 'Spirit of Australia' he remembers giving birth to it." p. 31

"The agency ... opened offices not only in all Australian capital cities but London, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Singapore and Aukland." p.32

"In 1983, MDA's partners floated the agency on the stock exchange then bought ... Mojo agency... In 1989, Mojo-DMA, with billings of $500 million, received a takeover offer from Chiat-Day of Madison Avenue, resulting in $A77 million being spread largely among the three partners. p.33

"...in the early 1960s... Brian [Robinson] and Philip started to make a feature film. It cost them $6,000, took six years of their spare time and was the story of a love affair between a kindergarten teacher, Jill, and a bikie tow-truck-driver, Jack — a story in nursery rhymes with a voiceover reading the rhyme. It was launched in 1970 and called Jack and Jill: A Postscript." pp. 35 – 36

"The proposition was that, simply by using nursery rhymes and stringing them together, they could make a feature film. '...the film won the grand prix at an international film festival, a modest one, the Adelaide-Aukland Film Festival, but nevertheless a kosher film festival.' Jack and Jill was the first feature film to win the Australian Film Institute Best Film Award. [Adams:] 'an abysmal thing, greatly embarrassing to look at in retrospect but with a lot of innovations, both in the way it was put together and the narrative style of using nursary rhymes.'

"It was the first of fifteen feature films that Adams made or helped to make in the sixties, seventies and early eighties, mostly as executive producer or producer. Amongst these films were The Naked Bunyip, Hearts and Minds, The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, Don's Party, The Getting of Wisdom, Lonely Hearts, We of the Never Never, Grendel Grendel Grendel, and Fighting Back." p. 36

"...Abra Cadabra in 1983. He acted as a radio announcer in Dallas Doll (1994) and as the voice of God in Road to Nihll in 1997." p.54

"[Adams and Barry Jones] peddled John Gorton an argument that America was gobbling up Australia's identity, which it indeed was. Gorton bought it and also bought Jones' and Adams' idea that the government should forget financing opera houses or art galleries and instead help cerate an Australian film industry. Gorton agreed to send Jones and Adams off on a six week world trip in December 1969 to study film industries..." p. 37

"[Their] report asked Gorton for $100,000, and he agreed to provide it. p.40

"Goff Whitlam was elected prime minister in 1972 and put a lot of money into reviving the film industry." p.41

"Phillip Adams was chairman of the Australian Film Institute, the Film and Television Board of the Australia Council, the Australian Film Commission and Film Australia." p. 52

"His two best friends, Paul Keating and Barry Jones..." p. 59

"He's an insomniac. Bob Ellis said, 'Phillip has never learnt to sleep.' " p. 60

"Adams doesn't look after himself; he never exercises and is overweight." p.68

"Adams' influence on the Labor Party has mostly been on individuals. p.82

" [Barry Jones:] 'You can cure people of dengue fever or you can try to cure the swamps where the mosquitos live — that's what Phillip tries to do. He wants to create an environment where people don't suffer. His primary role has not been to create policy but to encourage, goad or persuade people to take up particular issues." p.73

"Adams is a board member [of the Centre for the Mind at Sydney University]." p.77

""...when Rudd grew too keen on running Australia by himself and with a kitchen cabinet, his popularity both inside and outside the party crashed and he was knifed in the back and replaced by Julia Gillard ... Adams became really upset and quit the [Labor] party. He had never been to a party meeting anyway. ... After the federal election in August 2010, he said on Late Night Live that he had voted Green." p. 79

"[John Cain:] 'Phillip made an important contribution to Victorian Labor politics in the 1960s, when Labor was down and out in every sense after the 1955 split ... Phillip kept Victorian Labor going in those years. The party became an arrogant rump with no policies. Phillip went to Clive Stoneham (state Labor leader) and wrote two policy speeches, in 1961 and '62, as the source of ideas and traditional Labor policies and values.' [Adams] helped write Labor's policy speech for 1985... [Cain:] 'This was the time when political parties started to use focus groups and Philip was good at interpreting the results. Even after he moved to Sydney in the late 1980s he was influential in talking to opinion-makers.' " p. 82 – 83

"[Alan Jones:] 'Phillip didn't rate when we both broadcast on 2UE from 1988 to 1990 ...' " p. 89

"Adams was on the government-appointed committee that made aboriginal singer Mandawuy Yunupingu Australian of the Year in 1992... His contract expired in 1990 and was not renewed. Luckily for him, Brian Johns, the ABC's managing director, phoned him and asked him to present Late Night Live..." p. 90

"[Jim Soorley:] 'I asked Phillip to run a Brisbane Ideas Festival every two years and the city council would fund it. Phillip said, "Done deal." ' Adams has been involved in the festival since the first one in 2000, not only chairing sessions but also coming to committee meetings." p. 91 – 92

"The [Ideas] festival was suggested by Adams and the former Lord Mayor Jim Soorley and has been held every two years since 2000, with Adams in the chair. Adams is the Queensland government's Ideas Advisor and he has helped plan every festival." p. 147

"[Keating:] 'He is also a very attractive writer ... He has a great facility with words and this is part of his power. Great writers are also great thinkers. No-one can write well if they don't also think well, because that would be immediately apparent in their writing. What happens with Phillip is that he has a great penchent for synonyms. He tries to paint in synonyms, finding similar things to contrast with, to tell a story. He has the ability to use vfivid colours and thoughts in his writing. This comes, I think, from the fact that he has thought about most arguments beforehand. It means that his phrases and synonyms come pre-cooked. It's like turning out a high quisine meal. A lot of the ingredients have been cooked over time and they are brought together with great facility. ... Phillip's mind organises ideas and arguments and then intersperses them with colours. His mind can put charcoal on canvas but also use pre-mixed colours and add them to the mixture. This was why his columns read so clearly and visibly.' " p. 95

" [Keating:] '...although Labor people might not read what he writes every week, they would notice if he write things at odds with them and might ask themselves, "Is Phillip right? Is what he says worth considering?" So he is a litmus provider to the debate, particularly in the centre left. ... I used to call it the Only Way. The First Way was trickle-down capitalism where private ownership is everything; the Second Way is state socialism where there is no private ownership; but there had to be a better way. ... Phillip had the intellectual gymnastics to understand that. ... Phillip barracked for it.' " p. 97

"Many weeks in The Australian from 2000 to 2007, Adams attacked Howard... [Keating:] "Charming" is not a word you throw around much, but you can with Phillip. He makes the person he's speaking to feel important. ... He was very influential, when I was treasurer, in setting up the Film Commission and in general support for the Australian film industry ... Philip's influence in the Labor Party has probably declined a little, but that happens to all of us. ... We see each other regularly and talk about local and world politics. ...he's never toed the party line. p. 98 – 99

" [Keating:] 'He's a softie and, frankly, anyone with any brains is soft. What's the point of being hard. We're only here for a certain time.' " p. 100

" 'Barry [Jones] and I would write speeches for [John Gorton] and I remained quite good friends because he was a strong nationalist and he hated the fact that we had sold the farm to foreigners. Also, he was a republican.' p. 105

"During the Fraser government, Phillip was on the Advance Australia committee ... the committee's job was to make Australians more patriotic and to make them buy more Australian goods. p 111

" '...I was chairman of the Australia Day Council...' p.116

" 'My first reaction [to Howard coming into power] was to resign from everything to do with the government because I knew anything I was connected with would get no funds or support. p.120

" '[Hazel Hawke and I] set up the Children's Television Foundation...' " p. 126

" [February 2009] The [South Australian] premier Mike Rann announced the formation of the Australian Centre for Social Innovation, with Phillip as chairman." p. 133

"He doesn't have a suit but once he had a sports jacket which he bought to be presented with his forst Order of Australia badge by the Governer, Sir Ninian Stephen, in 1987." p. 139

"[Greg Mackie] asked Adams to help launch the [South Australian] Festival of Ideas in 1999 on alternative years to Writers' Week. Adams has played a large role in developing the ideas festival and chairing many sessions ever since." p. 143

" [Mike Rann:] 'Philip and Don [Dunstan] set up the South Australian Film Corporation in 1972... It was Philip who convinced Don to embrace film as an art form as well as an industry, and to use film to tell the Australian story, to help define us to the world and explain Australians to themselves. Almost every other state followed, but the idea came from Philip.' p. 145

"...he was on the Commission for the Future..." p. 147

"He has had particularly seven women in his life: His mother, Sylvia (their relationship is covered in Chapter Two on his childhood), his first wife Rosemary, their daughters Rebecca, Meaghan and Saskia, his current partner Patrice Newell and their teenage daughter Aurora." p. 151

" 'When [Rosemary] was nineteen and I was twenty-one we got married in a church." p. 152

"They moved into a small house in Hawthorn and bought the three houses alongside it. Adams put his rapidly expanding library of books and antiquities into the other houses, knocked down the dividing back fences and built a high fence around the whole compound..." p. 153

"He lived quietly with Rosemary and their young family at night, but once he went out their front door on weekday mornings, he worked not only in advertising at [MHA] and writing Age columns but also took part in government committees. p. 154

"After thirty years ... Adams and Rosemary ended their marriage." p. 155

"Rebecca ... now practices [psychiatry, privately] in West Perth." p. 156

"Meaghan ... has always been involved in non-government organisations, usually focusing on people with disabilities." p. 157

"Saskia ... works as an editor at Penguin Books in Melbourne." p. 157

"Aurora ... Edinburgh, where she will go to university for four years." p. 164

" 'I packed up and left home and ran away with Patrice Newell. who was comparing an SBS public affairs program when we met.' ... He was forty-seven; she was thirty.

"[Patrice] has written five books about the farm and the environment; she stood (unsuccessfully) as an independent candidate endorsed by the Climate Change Coalition in the 2007 NSW Legislative Council election; and she was at the top of the NSW ticket for the same coalition's unsuccessful tilt for the federal Senate in November 2007. The party received 0.89% of first preferences or 0.0622 of a quota, needing 1.0 to win a seat. She did not stand in the 2010 election. p. 160

"in 1982, aged twenty-six, [Patrice] found a job as a Seven Network researcher in Sydney ... She was soon reporting for Seven. ... switched from Seven Network to SBS Television as a news reader and current affairs host. ... stayed with SBS until 1986, when she became a presenter for the Nine Network's Today show. p. 161 – 162

"[Kerry] Packer asked Adams about a whole lot of things, including black holes. 'That's what I've got inside me, a big black hole,' Packer told Adams. The close friendship they ultimately shared revealed to each of them the fact that they had one particular thing in common: their brutalised childhood. As Peter Best, the composer, told me: "When Packer and Phillip teamed up in Adams Packer Films, Packer was the opposite of everything that Phillip stood for but there was something about Packer that Phillip liked. And, it seems, the reverse was also true.' Adams has written a biography of Kerry Packer that has remained unpublished. p. 170

" '[Adams Packer films] made not only The Getting of Wisdom but also a string of other films that were not to Packer's taste at all. One was an adaption of Tom: A Child's Life Regained... He didn't like Paul Cox's Lonely Hearts either, but roared with laughter when he saw Kitty and the Bagman... p.173

"Adams' friendship with Packer lasted for the next couple of years. They would often spend Monday nights together. Packer's personal assistant, Pat Wheatley, or his mentor, Harry Chester, would phone Adams and plead with him to come to Sydney because Packer was in another black hole or 'impossible'. They would sometimes send a plane for him." p.174

"[Bob Ellis:] 'Philip's influence on the Labor Party is less strong now. I put the critical years as 1968 to 1976 or '77. .. He mounted a campaign to dislodge Whitlam and install Jim Cairns and he wrote Cairns' speeches, thereby nettling Whitlam. ... everyone feels intimate with him but no one really knows him. He doesn't go to parties much, never carouses, never drinks.

Conversations with Richard Fidler 19 July 2006
http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2006/09/14/1740844.htm "I was born into a Congregational manse, and you don't get any poorer than that. In other words, my father was a minister; he rushed off to the second world war as a chaplain in the army ... When dad went off to the war, I then was taken up by my grandparents who lived on a dirt poor farm. Grapes of Wroth. Mother dumped the Reverend Charles Adams in favour of a rather sleazy businessman who was a sociopath who used to try and murder me. I'm not kidding. He wanted me dead and did his best to try and bring that about. He tried to run me over with his big black Studebaker; or he'd hunt me around the hills lugging a rifle. I spent my later childhood trying to protect my mother from this psycho. His own daughter had committed suicide and I think he was intent on making me another trophy. So, I had a rotten childhood. But it wasn't the physical poverty, it was the emotional battering, it was being an abused child; not a sexually abused - there's a lot of emphasis on that - but there are many more forms of abuse. And psychological abuse is just as heavy.

I left school at fifteen but I became a Communist at fourteen. ... If you don't believe in god you've got to find another belief system, another way of measuring right and wrong, and I decided I'd find it politically; and my new testament was Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath which I read when I was eleven or twelve. To me that was a revelation. It made me realise that injustice was socially structured; it was part of the system. A child feeling personal injustice suddenly realised that it wasn't just all about you; it was the way the world was run, in which injustice was more or less integral. So that led me to the Communist Party.