During the four years of Martin/Molloy there were two Federal Australian elections, both of which provided seemingly endless comedic content for the duo.
Several sketches were created on the topic of the 1996 election between Paul Keating and John Howard, aided by Tony’s impressionist skills.
In this sketch, popular culture and politics become intertwined, with ‘Al Pacino’ as Paul Keating and ‘Robert De Niro’ as John Howard in an amusing retelling of the final election debate of 1996.
Pacino and De Niro had recently been paired for the first time, with great fanfare, in the movie Heat (Michael Mann, USA, 1995) which opened in Australian cinemas on 15 February 1996.
Content warning: this clip contains homophobic language.
The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia acknowledges Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work and live and gives respect to their Elders both past and present.