Switching channels

May 19, 2005
Peter Thompson says that creating intimacy is one of his biggest
challenges interviewing for TV.

Peter Thompson says that creating intimacy is one of his biggest challenges interviewing for TV.
Photo: Supplied

Peter Thompson has enjoyed the challenge of moving from radio to television, writes Clare Kermond.

What's your second name again, Clare? How long have you been at The Age?" Before I can ask him anything Peter Thompson has a few questions of his own.

There is a well-worn adage that fits most professions: doctors make terrible patients, psychologists are all nutty as fruit cakes and journalists clam up tight when it's their turn to be interviewed.

After many years spent probing the hearts and minds of a huge variety of subjects, Thompson is awkward in the spotlight, but he is not unfriendly and as the minutes tick by he thaws out nicely, rather like a shy party guest.

Being the interviewee not the interviewer is not the only big change for Thompson. After nearly two decades on ABC radio, the veteran current affairs journalist has crossed over to television as the host of the interview series Talking Heads.

For the first time in many years the audience gets to see his face.

As his familiar, treacle-smooth voice pours down the phone from Brisbane, his home base, Thompson laughs often, usually at himself. Despite high-profile radio gigs such as hosting the flagship current affairs program AM, as a television interviewer, Thompson chuckles, he definitely has his L-plates on.

What he finds most difficult about television, he says, is all the distractions. Unlike radio, where there is just you, the subject and a big microphone in the room, for television you need lights, cameras, action and loads of people buzzing about the place.

"Creating intimacy, that's the big challenge. With all the production issues that go with television how do you create intimacy, how do you get people to feel comfortable talking about their lives?

"It's definitely easier in radio, you're two people sitting across a table with no distractions."

Talking Heads is an interesting twist on the interview show format. Thompson talks to the guest for a while before they pause for a short film, a kind of mini-documentary that gives an insight into some of the people and events that have shaped them. The subject is seeing the film for the first time.

The show's brief is limited to Australians and spans a huge variety of people. Writer Ruth Ostrow and dancer Paul Mercurio were among the early interviews.

Thompson says he has no wish-list of subjects but he would love to see the poet Sir Les Murray in the chair.

The list won't be influenced by Thompson's little-known expertise in economics. During an extended break from journalism he followed up a master's degree in business administration with a master's in public administration from Harvard. He says his academic background is often useful but he has no plans to specialise in profiling business leaders.

With eight shows under his belt Thompson says he has stopped being quite so tough on himself as he looks back over the tapes, but he has made plenty of changes to his style since he started the series.

The biggest changes, he says, have been about body language and relaxing more in front of the cameras.

Thompson pays close attention to his colleagues, but says he has no heroes. Pressed to name a television interviewer he admires there is a very long pause. Finally he suggests Andrew Denton and Michael Parkinson, but says each is good for different reasons.

"It's different things about all of them. Denton's got that repartee, Parkinson is like you've just dropped in for a chat and as a matter of fact I've got three friends here. That's really hard to achieve."

Another side of Thompson that will be unknown to most of his AM (and now Talking Heads) fans is his passion for the environment.

As a young reporter on Tasmania's This Day Tonight show in the early 1970s, Thompson became aware of a groundswell of opposition to plans to dam the Franklin River. He took a job with the Australian Conservation Foundation and made it his mission to support the Franklin campaign. He also wrote a biography of the Greens leader, Senator Bob Brown, and worked with him on a film about the Franklin River.

Today he says the battle over the Franklin still stands as a turning point for the green movement and politics in general in Australia.

"That was one of the formative experiences in my life and I still care very much about the environment. Tasmania was a good learning ground for me in lots of ways. Because it's small you can get things done and you can make a difference."

Because of his experience in news and current affairs, Thompson seems acutely aware of the vulnerability of people who agree to bare their soul on national television. Journalists, he says, know how harshly a person can be exposed in an interview, the subject often does not.

He says the best interviews are with those who have processed the hard times in their lives and feel more settled about the past. Some of the most difficult subjects, he says, are those with a deliberate strategy of not looking back.

"The more rewarding interviews are people who have got a capacity to reflect. There is a bunch of people who are very significant achievers but they are very action-oriented.

"You could ask them some fairly obvious questions about their lives and they come back with, 'Well, I haven't thought about that'."

Despite so many years in the business of asking questions, Thompson seems not to have lost his enthusiasm for the craft.

"If you know most of the landmarks in people's lives then part of the interview process is cueing people to reflect on those landmarks. Even with a good friend it's not all that often that you really have a heart-to-heart and talk through some of the really tricky terrain of their lives, and to do so uninterrupted it feels like a very special privilege."

Talking Heads screens tomorrow at 6.30pm on the ABC.


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