John Birmingham is a funny, witty writer who often goes out of his way to lace into the jerkface faction of Australian society/politics as a journalist, columnist, blogger, prolific tweeter, and author of a few Quarterly Essays. He's also written a number of very good pieces of fiction and non-fiction, including his memoir 'He Died with a Felafel in His Hand'.
The book is filled with outrageous and hilarious vignettes about all the crazy housemates a young Birmingham encountered and the types of things they got up to, usually involving grotesque hygiene, a plethora of drugs and unexplainable human behaviour. The chapters bounce from one housemate to another, from one house to another.
Adapted by director Richard Lowenstein, the film's script is only loosely based on the book. Would-be writer Danny (Noah Taylor, 'The Year My Voice Broke', 'Shine') is living in his 47th shared house. His twenty-something flatmates, tomboy Sam (Emily Hamilton), the mysterious Anya (Romane Bohringer), neurotic Nina (Sophie Lee), Flip (Brett Stewart) and latent homosexual Dirk (Francis McMahon) each add different wrinkles to his chaotic life.
SWITCH: 'HE DIED WITH A FALAFEL IN HIS HAND' TRAILER
While both the book and the film are mordantly funny ('He Died with a Felafel in His Hand' features a death via overdose in the very first scene, the corpse clutching the aforementioned food stuff, played for comedy), the book is vaguely believable, whereas the film often leans into fantastical elements. Lowenstein's script strains to sew together the disparate vignettes of the book - written as a collection of Birmingham's own personal memories and quoted anecdotes from the hundreds of people he interviewed - into a coherent narrative on screen.
Highlights include Noah Taylor as author stand-in Danny. Taylor, as per usual, is terrific, embodying the conversational, observational, sharp and witty voice of Birmingham from the novel.
The soundtrack is worth a mention, too. Spiderbait, Nick Cave, The Stranglers,Snog, Deborah Conway... I'd totally forgotten about the existence of Wicked Beat Sound System until I revisited this film.
While both the book and the film are mordantly funny, the book is vaguely believable, whereas the film often leans into fantastical elements.
'He Died with a Felafel in his Hand' is being screened at the Sydney Film Festival in 2026, and I'm actually quite curious to see how it is received by modern audiences - how does this cohabitation horror story play in the context of the current Australian housing crisis? When you are 27 in 1992 and sharing a house on the Sunshine Coast because you like the beach vibes plus getting on the lash with your mates while listening to Frente!, I think that a housemate getting drunk and pissing in the freezer could have been seen as a hilarious social faux pas. But when you are 32 with a toddler and paying 80% of your fortnightly wage to live in a grim, mouldy bedroom in an uninsulated weatherboard shack in Petersham in 2026?
That is probably rather disheartening.