Lawrence Leung on...
Lawrence Leung's Choose Your Own Adventure is all about fulfilling childhood dreams. Jonathon Valenzuela caught up with the titular comedian, and got his opinion on a variety of topics
By Jonathon Valenzuela
…satisfying the dreams of his childhood self
I think the eight-year-old me would be pretty happy and pretty disappointed with me at the same time. I think happy in the sense that I got to attempt to do some of his dreams; I think disappointed in the sense that I’m not very good at achieving them. I didn’t really do what he set out to do, so maybe I should've done the dreams back when I was eight.
...the dreams of his parents
They always wanted me to be a doctor. In the final episode, I try to be a doctor just to see if that's my calling, because I've done all my dreams so maybe I should do my parents' dreams. When I was growing up, I was always the funny bugger and they wanted me to be a doctor. My dad gave me math books as presents and I'd do math homework during school holidays - every day I had to do a page of this exercise book. That didn't really appeal to me as much as reading Choose Your Own Adventure books and drawing comics and all that other stuff. I had a very overactive imagination.
…involving his personal life in his projects
As a comedian you draw from a lot of different influences, and a lot of that has obviously been from my family and my own background as well as my own obsessions. But with the show, by the sheer nature of being on the ABC budget, the clothes on my back are the clothes I wear in the show. I still live at my parents' place - my parents in the show are my real parents. It's kind of a fun peculiarity having people like my mum and dad in the show because my relationship to them is not different from the show at all, apart from the fact that they talk more English in the TV show. I don't even think about it until we turn the cameras on because they're just mum and dad. My editors really love it, so we put more of my parents in.
…meeting his childhood heroes
I was pretty excited to meet Shabba-Doo - he plays Ozone in Breakin' and Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo. He was this guy I remember seeing on VHS so often just being the cool dude, just so cool. The movies are so cheesy now when I look back at them, but I remember just going straight out to the backyard and trying to breakdance right after watching these movies. It was pretty awesome to actually meet the guy in person after all these years and say, "Hey, you're my hero, at least for that weekend. I wanted to be you so badly."
…learning how to become a pick-up artist
I was really out of my depth. These guys are real, they run seminars all around the world, they've got followers in every country. They're quite amazing in the sense of how much self-belief they have about their particular theories. On one hand they’re giving guys self-confidence, on the other, they're turning people into pick-up machines that manipulate people's feelings in order to achieve seduction.
…the Rubik's Cube
When they release the DVD for the series, there will be an entire disc extra devoted to how to solve a Rubik's Cube. The step-by-step tutorial is longer than two episodes put together. I guarantee it to be the most boring extra ever made for a DVD. I just want the cube to come back and this is my way to help out. I remember it from my childhood and now all the kids with their iPhone applications and PS2s, what happens when the apocalypse hits and there's no electricity?
Lawrence Leung's Choose Your Own Adventure is on ABC1 at 9.30pm Wednesdays.
The Paradoxical Adventures of Lawrence Leung and Andrew McClelland is playing at the Factory Theatre
