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David Farrier and Michael Organ (Photo: Supplied)
David Farrier and Michael Organ (Photo: Supplied)

Pop CultureNovember 16, 2022

Review: Mister Organ leaves a trail of emotional damage in his wake

David Farrier and Michael Organ (Photo: Supplied)
David Farrier and Michael Organ (Photo: Supplied)

David Farrier’s latest documentary sees him follow an odd car clamping saga to a much, much stranger destination. It’s a gripping and troubling watch, says Tim Batt.

This review was originally published on Flicks.

There are a lot of reasons to worry about David Farrier.

He seems to have a sixth sense for pursuing banal subjects of investigation that eventually lead to the darkest side of humanity. At this point, you have to wonder if this talent isn’t something connected to his own psyche – that something inside the journalist/filmmaker is self-generating a gravitational pull that invites villains and sociopaths to enter his orbit. Even when he thinks he’s just writing a Spinoff piece about frustrated Ponsonby car owners, it eventually devolves into a six-year journey about which he told Flicks: “I fucking hated the whole experience”.

As you may know, the genesis of Mister Organ was an inquiry into what the heck was going on at an Auckland antique store that became infamous for clamping cars in their car park. Where the story goes from there really must be seen to be believed.



Over the course of 90 minutes, a deeply unsettling tale is unspooled about the sort of character in life that I personally take great care to avoid. Farrier runs towards these burning human dumpsters at the same speed any sane person would flee from them, and luckily for the audience he brings cameras and a journalistic fervour. There’s a terrifying moment where the film’s subject, Mr Organ himself, says to David: “You knew right from the start what you were doing. You didn’t know all the facts, but you knew what you were doing.” There’s something to that.

Another reason to worry about David Farrier is his propensity to entangle himself with truly deranged and dangerous people. Tickled had David D’Amato; this project has Michael Organ. Or Micheal Organ. Or Michael Organe. Or Michael Organ O’Sullivan. Or perhaps even Count Michael Andrassy-Organe. The transmutability of his name turns out to play a far larger role than the initial impression of a petty crook that the film offers up.

Mister Organ
Michael Organ and David Farrier enjoy a coffee and a confrontation on the streets of Whanganui. (Photo: Supplied)

The hurricane of emotional damage seen here in the people who’ve been left in Mr Organ’s wake is chilling. Farrier himself spends countless hours trying to get some sort of a grip on the guy, to extremely limited success. There are one-sided phone calls between the filmmaker and protagonist that last for three hours. Bizarrely, there are coffee dates between the two that leave Farrier in a fugue-like state. Farrier has featured a generous amount of himself in the movie, as a way to try and display how Organ operates, because explaining it is utterly futile. Like trying to describe how a dull but never ending headache feels to someone who’s never experienced one.

There are many lenses to view Mister Organ through. Psychologists (both amateur and qualified) will have a field day observing the film’s subject, while recalling different parts of the DSM-5. Reality TV enthusiasts who live for drama will be entranced by the twists and turns this story produces. Personally, I have a passing interest in the occult and recognise aspects of Aleister Crowley-style Magick in Mr Organ. There is a quality of shaping reality to his will that is reminiscent of the would-be alchemists and cult figures of a bygone era. Perhaps I’m just being influenced too much by his goatee. It seems equally likely that he’s fashioned it precisely for the purpose of subtly evoking the devil.

The film itself is a gripping watch. I commend all involved in achieving a disciplined 90-minute run time out of an investigation that has taken six years to complete. I can’t imagine the information and scenes that wound up on the cutting room floor. Despite its brisk duration, however, it’s no mean feat to hold an audience’s attention for even this amount of time with sparsely soundtracked talking heads—which makes up the majority of this film. But once again, Farrier has somehow attracted – or been attracted to (it’s hard to tell) – another unbelievable real life character that is fascinating and mesmerising in the worst ways possible.

I worry about David Farrier. I worry for whatever it is inside him that gives him the ability to both find and somehow tolerate existing alongside these people long enough to uncover the incredible stories he brings to light in his films. I also worry about the very real danger he appears to put himself in to pursue these stories. I recommend anyone who has the bandwidth to watch something pretty mindfucky head along and see it at the cinema as soon as possible.

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Fifa president Sepp Blatter is pelted with fake dollars in a protest during a press conference, July 2015. (Photo: FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images)
Fifa president Sepp Blatter is pelted with fake dollars in a protest during a press conference, July 2015. (Photo: FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images)

Pop CultureNovember 15, 2022

Fifa Uncovered shines a spotlight on soccer’s rot

Fifa president Sepp Blatter is pelted with fake dollars in a protest during a press conference, July 2015. (Photo: FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images)
Fifa president Sepp Blatter is pelted with fake dollars in a protest during a press conference, July 2015. (Photo: FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images)

The Netflix documentary is an uncomfortable history lesson ahead of next week’s World Cup, writes Catherine McGregor.

This is an excerpt from The Spinoff’s weekly pop culture and entertainment newsletter Rec Room – sign up here.

The 2022 Fifa World Cup will surely go down in history as the most morally dubious sporting event since the end of apartheid. That this year’s tournament doesn’t even come into focus until episode three of Fifa Uncovered is a mark of how deep and pervasive the rot at the heart of world soccer’s governing body really is.

The series is screening ahead of this weekend’s opening ceremony in Doha, and if you’re wondering why a World Cup is happening now rather than at the height of (northern hemisphere) summer when the tournament is usually held, well, good question. The answer lies at the end of a thread of corruption stretching back to 1974, when Brazilian João Havelange was elected Fifa president – with the help, Fifa Uncovered alleges, of numerous brown envelopes of cash delivered to voting nations.



Havelange came into the role with big plans for a parochial organisation that at the time was still being run from a small upstairs office on a Zurich side street. Many of his ideas were positive: he created the women’s World Cup and multiple regional tournaments and programmes that embedded soccer in poor nations across Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, helping transform the sport into the world’s game.

He also oversaw the tidal wave of corporate cash that began flowing into Fifa’s coffers, from the sale of TV rights – more shady arrangements, more kickbacks – and massive brand sponsorships. These deals were pioneered by Havelange’s right-hand man, and eventual successor, Sepp Blatter, a Swiss marketing man who almost single-handedly turned soccer into the most valuable sports product in global history.

As Fifa president, Blatter presided over an orgy of corruption largely centering on Jack Warner, head of soccer’s North, Central American and Caribbean confederation. Along with his sidekick, the marvellously named US sports administrator Chuck Blazer, Warner embarked on a scarcely believable run of bribe-taking, including $10 million in exchange for his votes in support of South Africa’s World Cup bid. That money was ostensibly a donation to fund soccer initiatives for the Caribbean’s African diaspora, the descendants of slavery, but nothing ever came of it. The money went directly into Warner’s pocket.

And so it went on until 2010, when the hosts for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups were decided. If Russia being awarded the 2018 tournament (over the UK, the clear frontrunner) was a shock, the 2022 winner was a complete bombshell. Fifa Uncovered tells how Qatar, a tiny gulf nation with a terrible national team, no football culture to speak of and not a single stadium of its own, used its eye-watering oil wealth to buy votes.

German players send a message to Qatar prior to a World Cup qualifying match, March 25, 2021. (Photo: Tobias Schwarz – Pool/Getty Images)

Defending Qatar in the documentary is Hassan al Thawadi, the head of the nation’s bid, who makes decent points about the value of bringing the World Cup to the Middle East for the first time and the racial undertones of some of the criticism – then goes and spoils it all by wiping away hilariously fake tears at the memory of the backlash. This is the chance for the interviewer to go for the jugular, yet when al Thawadi challenges him to name specific instances of corruption, he stumbles, allowing the Qatari to shrug off the allegations as coincidence and sour grapes.

It’s a frustrating moment, but elsewhere Fifa Uncovered does a great job of laying out the shameless venality and abuse underlying this month’s tournament. It’s important that everyone is aware of the human rights violations – against women, the LGBTQ community and, perhaps most horrifically, migrant workers – that remain facts of life in Qatar. Facts that Fifa members conveniently ignored in 2010, blinded by the dollar signs that are now an unavoidable part of the business of soccer.

‘Like a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle, each member is vital to the whole picture. Join today.’
Calum Henderson
— Production editor

Fifa Uncovered culminates with the 2015 raid on Fifa’s Zurich HQ at the direction of the FBI in New York. All told, 41 people were arrested and 18 were charged, Jack Warner among them; he still lives a life of luxury in Trinidad & Tobago where he is fighting extradition to the US. For Fifa, the financial corruption may have been reined in but the willingness to turn a blind eye to dictatorships and human rights abuses remains. When the World Cup kicks off next week it’ll be up to the fans to remind Fifa what fairness in sports really means.

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