Popcorn Taxi is proud to present the first public screening of

YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE:

The Incredibly True Story

of the Hughes Family

plus

Exclusive audience Q&A with director

Brendan Young

(Love & Anarchy: The Wild Wild World of Jaimie Leonarder)

and singer/performer/actress
and all-round wild woman

Christa Hughes

(Machine Gun Fellatio)

Live on stage!

Monday November 9, 2009
7pm SHARP!

Event Cinemas, Bondi Junction
(formerly Greater Union)

Popcorn Taxi is proud to present the first public screening of a remarkable documentary on an extraordinary group of people that spans four generations: The Hughes family. The youngest, Christa, is known to many as the front woman of rock band Machine Gun Fellatio and one of the stars of Circus Oz. Her father Dick is a lauded jazz star, while her grandfather was a foreign correspondent and an international man of mystery – and best mates with Bond creator Ian Fleming. And that's just the beginning! The Hugheses have defied trends and enjoyed bizarre and far-reaching success along the way. And immediately after the film, director Brendan Young and Christa Hughes will join us live on stage for a lively Q&A that's guaranteed to entertain! PLUS, we're toasting Popcorn Taxi turning 10!

ABOUT THE CAST AND CREW:

Christa Hughes (The Showgirl)

Born in Sydney in 1974, Christa is known for her wild on-stage antics and powerful voice: a singer, songwriter, actor, comedienne, cabaret artist, burlesque stripper and outrageous pop star as well as being recognised as one of the world’s most celebrated musical garglers. She's probably best known as “KK Juggy” from the outrageous Aussie band Machine Gun Fellatio.

Christa started performing in her hometown of Sydney when she was just 15. She first performed with her father, jazz pianist, journalist and author Dick Hughes at the Shakespeare Hotel. This led to appearances on an array of television variety shows and jazz festivals, where she and her father became the only father-daughter jazz act in show business history. Her widely eclectic style bridges the world of vaudeville revues, traditional blues songs and classic jazz standards with a mainstream pop sensibility, underscored by a satirical and larrikin spirit. Christa has performed all over the world – New York, the Cannes Film Festival, Paris, Shanghai, Beijing, Vietnam, The Philippines – and spent a number of years as part of the cabaret movement in the UK, in both London and Edinburgh.

She first travelled to Hong Kong in 1998 to appear in Chris Doyle’s debut feature film, “Away With Words”. She has returned to Hong Kong as a solo performer many times since. It was in Hong Kong where she reconnected with her family past, where her grandfather – the celebrated foreign correspondent, Richard Hughes – was a key figure of the Hong Kong and Asian scene for decades.

Christa returned to Australia in 1999 and launched a highly active and eclectic career fronting the top 10-charting band, Machine Gun Fellatio, writing and performing her satirical musical shows “Beer Drinking Woman”, “Sleepless Beauty” and “Temptation”, as well as recording a number of solo records and appeared in both the stage and film versions of the opera, “The Eternity Man”.

In 2006, Christa joined the Circus Oz world tour in the role of Ring Mistress, performing across four continents over a two-year period. She headlined the “Famous Spiegeltent Show” at The Sydney Opera House forecourt in 2008, and has just recorded a new album with her father Dick Hughes, for release later this year.

Dick Hughes (The Jazzman)

In post-war Australia up until the late 1980s, Dick Hughes was a seminal member of the local jazz scene. Piano player and lead vocalist with a number of well-known combos, including the legendary Port Jackson Jazz Band, Ray Price Quartet and Dick Hughes Band, Dick has spent a life devoted to music. Born in Melbourne in 1932, his father Richard left the young Dick in the care of strict Catholic grandparents (following the tragic suicide of Dick’s mother) to pursue lucrative job offers as a journalist in Sydney. His father eventually relocated to Tokyo and Hong Kong, working as a celebrated foreign correspondent for The London Times.

Dick Hughes discovered jazz and blues at an early age and became a wildly devoted fan, historian and musician. As a young man, his passion took him to Europe and the UK, where he met and played with some of the great jazz men such as Sidney Bechet, Humphrey Lyttleton and George Melly. His personal encounters and friendships with jazz superstars such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington,  Eddie Condon and Billie Holiday are the stuff of legend.

Torn between a career as a journalist, following in the footsteps of his illustrious father, and his love of jazz, Dick wavered between both. As a journalist, Dick’s biggest coup was his coverage of The Beatles' sensational tour of Northern Europe and the Far East in 1964. He has worked as a music critic on The Daily Mirror and Daily Telegraph, as well as many years working as a sub-editor.  In 1977, Dick wrote Australia’s first ever book devoted to jazz: “ Daddy’s Practicing Again – An Australian Jazz man Looks Around, plus an entertaining autobiography “Don’t You Sing! Confessions of a Catholic Boyhood” in 1994. He's been a regular broadcaster hosting various jazz-related programs on ABC radio for more than three decades and still hosts a regular show on 2 MBS-FM. His other great passion is the Catholic faith. A devout believer, which at times seems at odds with his love of “the Devil’s music". Dick still performs on occasion with his daughter Christa.

Richard Hughes (The Foreign Correspondent / International Spy)

Based out of Tokyo and Hong Kong for over 30 years, Richard Hughes filed stories as foreign correspondent for the London Sunday Times, The Washington Post, the Far East Economic Review and many other international publications. Described by friend and author John Le Carré as a “Journalistic Eiffel Tower”, Hughes is considered by many as a genuine legend of the profession. An ebullient, bohemian, flamboyant and generous personality, his journalistic triumphs were equally matched by his exhaustive output of writing, travelling and entertaining some of the world’s literary greats such as SJ Perelman, Somerset Maugham and playwright Marc Connelly.

Born in Melbourne in 1905, Hughes got his start in journalism working on the short-lived Melbourne daily, “The Star”. When that paper collapsed, Hughes travelled to Sydney in 1936 to take up a position on Frank Packer’s “The Daily Telegraph”. Hughes was posted to pre-war Tokyo in 1940, filing stories on the build-up to Japan's entry into the war. During WW2, he was posted to Washington and Cairo, covering the Middle East campaign. After the war, he returned to Tokyo – never officially returning to Australia. His courage and assertiveness led to his biggest coup: The re-discovery and first sensational interview with British Soviet defectors, Guy Burgess and Donald MacLean, in Moscow. He formed a close personal relationship with his London Times foreign manager, Bond author Ian Fleming, and fellow espionage author John Le Carré. Both created fictional characters based on him – “Dikko Henderson” in Fleming’s Japanese Bond adventure, “ You Only Live Twice”, and Bill Craw in Le Carré’s “The Honourable Schoolboy”.

In 1961, he re-located to Hong Kong and became known as one of the worlds most celebrated “China Watchers”. It has been alleged that he used his journalistic cover to work as an agent for both MI6 and the KGB. Hughes wrote a number of books including the prophetic: “ Hong Kong – Borrowed Place, Borrowed Time” (1968) and Foreign Devil: 30 Years Of Reporting in The Far East (1972). Richard Hughes was awarded a CBE in 1980 and died in Hong Kong, in Janurary 1984.

Richard Hughes Snr (The Ventriloquist)

Born near Ballarat, Victoria in 1878, Richard Hughes Snr was one of Australia’s most eccentric and celebrated ventriloquists in the late 1890s and early 1900s.  He wowed audiences in vaudeville tent shows in rural Australia. In the cities, he played music halls and local community theatres, all before the age of 20. He wrote three popular books on the subject including the turn-of-the-century bestseller, “How to Become a Ventriloquist”.

During this time, he taught himself to play the piano and was known as a popular public speaker. He also contributed articles and theatre reviews for The Melbourne Age and The Sporting Globe.

At the peak of his success, Richard Hughes Snr fell in love with a fervent and devout Roman Catholic, Catherine McGlade. She frowned upon his showbiz associations and refused his offer of marriage unless he gave up his life on the road and on the stage. Despite his promising career, he bade farewell to his showbiz life and settled down to raise a family. Despite converting to Catholicism he became obsessed with the then popular cult of Spiritualism. This lead to an encounter with the cult’s greatest exponent, Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, on his speaking tour of Australia in 1910. This eerie cult included the art of séances and communicating with the dead. He maintained his obsession with this occult-like science until his final days in Melbourne, in the late 1960s.

Brendan Young (Director)

Brendan’s documentary credits include “The Two Donnies”, about the turbulent showbiz life of former TV celebrity Donnie Sutherland, as part of the SBS Cordell-Jigsaw documentary series, “The Two Of Us”. In addition,  “Love and Anarchy – The Wild Wild World of Jaimie Leonarder” was commissioned by Australian broadcaster SBS Television, and "Conspiracy" by Australia's Network Ten, which was produced by Oracle Pictures with Alex Proyas and Andrew Mason, of Mystery Clock Cinema.

In 1998, he made "Three Chords and a Wardrobe", which was voted most popular Australian short at that year’s Sydney Film Festival. The film was invited to a number of international film festivals including the Aspen Shorts Fest and The Cork Film Festival. It has also been sold to the Sundance Channel in the US and Canal Plus in Europe.

Brendan has worked for a number of high profile Sydney TVC production companies over the years, including Pod Film, AHT, and The Film Business, and is now represented by Brilliant Films. Brendan began with Sydney production house, Meaningful Eye Contact, where he directed commercials, music videos and wrote and photographed a number of film projects.  While at Meaningful Eye Contact, he completed two feature screenplays for Alex Proyas, the company's co-founder and director of renowned international feature films, "The Crow", "Dark City" and  “I, Robot”

Brendan graduated from the Australian Film Television and Radio School in 1989, majoring in cinematography and film direction.

He wrote, directed and produced his graduation film, "Wild Planet”, which was awarded the Gold Jury Prize at the Houston International Film Festival, The Red Ribbon at the American Film and Video Festival – San Francisco and Best Student Film at the Hof Film Festival in Germany.

Brendan has also worked as a cinematographer on a number of award-winning Australian short films. He has also photographed, edited and directed a wide range of music videos and shot commercials for noted international directors, Alex Proyas and Kier McFarlane.

Recently, he directed a series of hard-hitting television commercials for a nationwide anti-drug campaign.