Auckland mayoralty: Diana Wichtel on Guy Williams and Leo Molloy - infotainment or interview?

Auckland mayoralty candidate Leo Molloy talks to Guy Williams on New Zealand Today. Photo / Three

Opinion

OPINION

Many practitioners of the media's dark arts will have experienced an uncomfortable stab of recognition the first time they came across American writer Janet Malcolm's much-quoted observation about her craft: "Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible."

Malcolm lays it out: "Preying on people's vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse." I'm sure I'm not the only hack who finds herself groaning aloud and hitting fast forward when, transcribing an interview, you hear your own ingratiating laugh, the craven attempts at flattery.

Trying to get something approximating some sort of truth or at least some good copy: it's always a dance with the devil. In the case of comedian Guy Williams' interview with businessman, Auckland mayoral candidate and self-described "c***" Leo Molloy, it's less a dance, more a couple of rounds in a boxing ring outside Molloy's bar, flailing at each other with the boxing glove equivalent of clown shoes. In an interview that is largely an exchange of insults and expletives, it's notable that one of the few things considered disturbing enough to warrant some censorship was the sight of Williams fighting in his underpants.

Guy Williams.

The interview was for Williams' TV3 show, New Zealand Today, a title that, given the crazy times in which we live, acts as its own viewer discretion warning. Molloy's strategy for wooing potential voters amounted to railing against woke people and calling Williams a beige-suited "soft c***". To which Williams replied reasonably, "It would be weird if I was doing this interview with an erection." Williams describes himself as a "volunteer journalist". This was a "comedy interview". Yet he asked the hard questions on our behalf: "Leo, help me understand why you're not a f***wit."

This sort of thing isn't new. Louis Theroux has been doing a more sophisticated version for decades, equipped with an air of benign, baffled curiosity and a freakishly high embarrassment threshold. Theroux once interviewed the vile Jimmy Savile, even putting the then-only-rumours of inappropriate behaviour around children to him. Savile was then still managing to hide in plain sight. They became friendly. After Savile's death and the horrifying revelations of his crimes, Theroux did another documentary as a sort of act of penance. When I spoke to him after that show he said, "What I didn't realise was that he would prove, in a sense, wilier than I was. I don't want to overstate it but the consequence for me was a sense of professional failure of a sort." Yet you wouldn't wish that Theroux had never interviewed those Nazis or told a ludicrously homophobic, antisemitic inmate of the Westboro Baptist Church, "Newsflash, brainiac, Christ was Jewish." He has shed some light in dark places, done a little good.

The stakes are hardly that high with Molloy, though Williams has taken flak for giving him a platform, even one as absurd as the subject. Williams' father, who steals the show in a scene where he just wants to watch the curling, knows Molloy. It's complicated.

Williams works hard to make his position clear: "No, I'm not going to vote for you, Leo. You are a ridiculous person." So does Molloy, channelling Charlie Sheen in his "tiger blood" tantrum days: "Never forget, as long as you're talking about me and they're talking about me, I'm winning." That sort of approach didn't work out so well for Sheen.

Should Williams have done the interview? To be fair, it's pretty funny. And it stands as an excruciating metaphor for the sort of media we consume in an age swamped with infotainment. After much regressive name-calling, Molloy rather hilariously tries to find some high ground to take. "Unlike you, I don't just open my mouth and words fall out," he tells Williams. "Leo," Williams replies, "you are just like me." He has a point. Neither of them has any shame. It's a transaction as old as journalism. Williams is just trying to get click-grabbing material for his show. Bingo. Molloy is just trying to get Auckland. God help us.

Next week: Steve Braunias