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Russell Smith: the man behind Count Homogenized

Posted on 13 February 2012

Direction and Interview - Ian Pryor, Camera and Editing - Alex Backhouse
 Russell Smith: the man behind Count Homogenized

Selwyn Toogood is still remembered as Mr It’s in the Bag, despite a broadcasting career which ran more than 50 years. Karyn Hay is known as Miss Radio with Pictures, despite being reborn as a DJ and award-winning novelist. And Russell Smith will be forever associated with milk-mad vampire Count Homogenized, despite a long career acting on stage and screen.

In this ScreenTalk interview, Smith talks about his career inside and outside of the count’s cape, including:

  • How audiences greeted Count Homogenized with admiration, terror and profanities
  • Mad Count encounters with cows, live on Telethon
  • Count Homogenized’s birth at the hands of children’s TV producer Kim Gabara, on late 70s show A Haunting We Will Go
  • Hanging upside down in a telephone box as the star of It is I Count Homogenized
  • The unvarnished, unpasteurised truth over rumours the NZ Milk Board were the power behind the Homogenized throne
  • Smith’s time on pioneering comedy series A Week of It
  • Voicing truck-driving hippie Tussock on puppet tale Woolly Valley
  • His delight at playing “arsehole cop” Bernie Gregory on police show Shark in the Park
  • Directing children’s shows Mel’s Amazing Movies and The Nosey Parkers

This video is available on YouTube to embed and distribute via a Creative Commons licence.

 

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