Cinema Papers no. 113 December 1996 (2024)

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Australia gears up for its annual 'f' -A at "’~‘ "‘ .[...]an and bis debut feature, BY TIM HWTER H , : it * of it 1.9”‘ Summit 9 no-
Children of the Revolution. " I Q ' ' ' °‘ “ ' ' ’ ‘ ' .[...]A HOPGOOD ‘ ‘“ ' " "“"" ‘

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splasb on tbe in[...]' i A v -' " . - i ‘ "i '
Twenty-one years on, the making of BY JOHN B_ MURRAY : . at 39: V 04 4 u A’ ‘:1[...]nreview 51 . r it ' ;
58 A MICHAEL HELMS V1S1tS the set

Censorship
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of Peter Jackson s btzarre
Legal Ease 62
- horror fi[...]80 '
Martha Ansara is a filmmaker and convenor of the Filmmakers’ Oral History Group; Dominic Case is[...]ane Cook works part-time as a freelance Professor in the English Department at Monash University; Catharin[...]writer and at Cinemedia; Dena Gleason is a tutor in cinema studies at LaTrobe University; David A. Ha[...]ef censor from 1986-94, and presently consults to the communications and entertainment industry on cens[...]|bourne—based film historian currently involved in motion picture
ship issues; Fred Harden writes on[...]storation; Ian Stocks is a filmmaker and lecturer in film and television at Queensland

is a principal of Hart & Spira; Michael Helms is Editor of Fatal Visions: Tim Hunter is a Melbourne freelance writer; University of Technology; Raymond Younis is a lecturer at the University of Sydney.

A separate category, known as
FIFRESCI, the international film critics
award, goes to the best film in the
Discovery programme, usually consist
ing of directorial debuts. The 1996 jury
selected Lawrence Johnston's life.
Best Canadian feature, with a prize of
$CAN25,DDO, went to David
Wellington, for his adaptation of
Eugene O’Neill's Long Day's Journey
into Night.

The third Australian feature to gener-
ate a buzz in Toronto was the world
premiere of Craig Rosenberg's Hotel do
love. After laughing so much they fre-
quently drowned the post-joke dia-
logue, B00 punters welcomed
Rosenberg with 90 seconds of
applause at the end of the screening.
Rosenberg's question—and-answer ses-
sion with the audience, and a flood of
interviews with US. and Canadian
press the following day, demonstrated
not only the success of this particular
product but American audiences‘[...]bi/z_z} you Jo.’

nation with Australian movies in gen-
eral: how they are made and "why
they're all[...]scheduled
for February l4 (get it?).

Toronto is the main Canadian festival
where the stars come out to play, and
Hollywood execs consider the festival
an important test of their product
before it hits the mass market. This
was demonstrated by the litany of
actor-turned—director features on show
this year, and nearly every one of them
a debut. The most heavily promoted —
and closing night gala[...]an
unashamedly nostalgic look at
American society in the pre-Vietnam
'80s. Hanks‘ script, about a young[...]re
than a passing resemblance to a
younger Hanks. The writer-director
himself plays Mr White, the band's
hard-nosed manager; and when he
wasn't busy writing lines, or calling the
shots, Hanks was even writing some of
the songs. But it's the art department
that steals the show, with its kitsch
recreation of the Ambassador hotel
and the family-run appliance store,
complete with ‘the latest technology’
in Hoovers, washers and clock radios.

Another star debut — Anjelica
Huston’s Bastard Out of Carolina —
may have a harder time getting a full
theatrical release, thanks to Ted
Turner's disliking of the finished prod-
uct. Originally made for Turner
Entertainment, Huston’s adaptation of

was

Dear Sir. F

. i write in regard to an open letter to the AFI from

film director Richard Lowenstein, published in your
last edition of Cinema Papers [No. 112, October, p. 5].

Mr Lowenstein singles out the pre-selection of the
four films nominated for Cinematography in this year's
AFI Awards and questions the credibility ofjudges.

I would point out that all the judges who participated
in this event are members of the Australian
Cinematographers Society and that six of the eight
judges are accredited members, namely Brent[...]Jones
ACS, Joel Peterson ACS and Yuri Sokol ACS. The
remaining two judges, David Burr and Bridgid Costellofj.
although not accredited, are members of the Society
and experienced in the industry. (Barry Malseed and
Louis Irving AC3 did not participate in this year's “
judging.) ‘

May I further poin[...]ographetto . ,
be granted accreditation and given the rightito use the
letters ACS after theiriname‘ is considered to be the
ultimate accolade in the society and is highly valued.
To question people[...]y be considered naive and show little respect
for the views otsuch people — the likes of whom have
no doubt helped Mr Lowenstein's career.

All ACS members who participate in thejudging do
so with the professionalism, integrity and honesty that
is ex[...]sident ' - .
Australian Cinematographers Society.
The following open letter arrived at Cinema
Papers from the AFI's Ruth Jones: '

Richard Lowenstein's open letter to the AFI, :.
published recently in the October edition of Cinema
Papers, is big on rhetoric and low on logi[...]etinal nominations. He had ljrappilyg
panicipated in the process to that point, before disf
covering it was 'unrepresentative and undemocratic’. F
Why? Because the films he favoured didn't get up? ‘
But that's what democracy is, Richard — you live
with it, even when the numbers aren't with you.

Let's make a few things[...]jurors voted for Best Film nominations — not _

the six or so Richard implies. -

o He reckons it wasn't a good year for cinematogra-
phy and says the decisions of the cinematography .
jurors were wrong. Frankly, cine[...]better judge ofcinematographic quality than he.

The names, only witha short list of their credits as

DOP, 2nd Unit DOP, camera opera[...]d Boy Bobby, Babe,

Dead Calm, Strictly Ballroom, The Russia House,

Clear and Present Dangerand Evil Angels: David

Burr, Wild America, The Phantom, Beyond Rangoon

and [The] Mosquito Coast, Jaems Grant, The Needy

and the Greedy, The Good Looker and Only the

Brave, Marc Spicer, Hotel do love, Country Life and
Hapa Nui, Brent Crockett, Metal Skin, Ocean Girl,
The Feds and The Silver Strand (U.S. tele-feature); .
Yuri Sokol, Lonely Hearts, My First Wife, Man of
Flowers, Fran, Cactus and Warm Nights on a Slow
Moving Trairr, Joel Peterson, Faces of War, The
last Magician and Homelands: and Bridget Costello
who was a contributing DOP on Bad Boy Buhby.

Nor would the cinematography jurors appreciate
his implied sugg[...]ittered"
and "have axes to grind". What gives him the right
to suggest this when he was not party to th[...]? ~— - ,

- To suggest jurors are normally out-of-work industty

members is simply wrong. Read the full list of ‘jurors, . g ' “

printed in the Awards presentation programme and
judge foryourse[...]formed assertion on their behalf.

,0 Think about the alternatives to prr-.»selection.The:1,
American system, where you don't have to see the
films in order to cast a nominating vote? The British
system, where films are nominated on the basis of I‘

. how many write-in votes they accumulate?

Prior to introducing pre-selection, as few as thirty 1

people voted in some of the specialist craft categories

— this was the number that managed to see all the

entered films. Now that is an unrepresentative[...]icult enough ensuring one hundred people
view all the entered feature films. In 1996, in the non-

‘ fiction categories only, it would be necessary to see‘

more than 70 films in order to vote. lnxthis scenario
everyone really w[...]loyed.

;, Nominations and pre-selection are part of any s
democratic process and by utilizingthem we[...]ousands’, rather than hundreds, vote from [sicl
the nominated fi|ms‘{;_ _ ; ’ ~ H ,
~ The AFI does not have pre-selection in order to save‘

money. We had anexhaustiveconsu[...]arlier this year and, after extensive discussion, the

Awards Advisory Committee was unanimous in its 4' -» .. T C‘ E
, recommendations to the Board of the AFI that, on
F _ 1-balance, the interests of the industry were best served

by thecurrent pre-selection jury system.

The note appended by Cinema Papers to Richard's _’

letterrnaming the cinematography jurors was incorrect.
in future, feel free to check the facts with us before
publishing. ' .

j _ And, by the way, I was interested to read Cinema
Papers’ comments to the effect that winning 7 AFI

‘ Awards had had no effect on Angel Baby's perforé
mance at the box~office. I don't think the producers
would agree — and with a 44% increase in box-office,
on l 3 less screens, immediately following the AFl
Awards telecast (figures courtesy of Motion Picture

" Distributors Association of Australia). I don't either.
Ruth Jones ‘ V ‘>
Ch[...]

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Bastard features strong perfor—
mances by[...], Emilio Estevez (directs
ing father Martin Sheen in The War
at Home), Matthew Broderick (lrrr‘r'nr'tyl,[...]th Stanley Tucci).

llichard Lowenstein replies:

The focus of my mention of the cinematographers'
panel this year to select (or not select. as the case
may be) the four top films in their section misses
the point of my intended criticism. My gripe has
nothing to do with the films I favoured; that is only’
my "opinion", as duly noted.

One really must have one's head in the sand to
miss the quite public and widespread criticism
(ABC Radio National, SBS Movie Show amongst
others) of the nominations of all sections of the
AFI Awards this year. And as for democracy
we ar[...]mocratic. [ast time
I checked, democracy was "for the people by the
people", not "for the people by a small panel
hand-picked by bureaucrats". But, since cine
matography is the focus of these letters, let me
answer that.

Are lngerson and Jones really saying that
membership of the ACS is all that is necessary for
a cinematographer to sit on the AFI jury panel and
judge the most prestigious feature-film cinematog-
rapher award in the land? My understanding of
the AFI's procedure was that the jury members
(of all categories) had to have a feature-film credit
in the area of expertise they were judging. This is
indeed what[...]approach me to sit on a panel. Is this not so for
the cinematographers? Should this mean that
membership of the Writers’ Guild or the Directors‘
Association is all that is necessary to be able to
sit on the Screenplay and Director juries’!

I don't wish[...]Jones’ credit list and I
have no beef with any of the individuals concerned,
but I thought we were talk[...]ot 2nd Unit DOPs, camera and Steadicam
operators. The last time I spoke to my good friend
Steve Vlfind[...],
Country Life and Hapa Nui, not Marc Spicer. And
the list goes on. I thought Andrew Lesnie had shot
Ba[...]was thirty~
one! Are they all now able to sit on the jury panel?

Let's follow this theory through to[...]editors, production co-ordinators
able to sit on the jury panels next to the Jill
Bilcocks, Jane Campions, Laura Joneses and
P[...]ld a feature director submitting his/her
movie to the AFI Awards honestly believe that
someone who had only made a ten-minute short is
the best person to judge their feature’! I think not.
The director would rightly demand that he/she be
judged by someone, if not of equal stature, at
least in the same ballpark — that is what "peer
assessment" means.‘ The AFI has often claimed
its Awards are judged by i[...]r assessif 3

ment" has obviously been tossed out the window...

But to focus on this is to miss my poi[...]ed" and "axes to grind", I T
was not referring to the cinematographersf-'l. was
referring to the whole nature of the jury system
of pre-selection where a tiny group of industry
professionals have a disproportionate ef[...]r by as many . :
accredited members as possible.

The erratic nature of the nominationsare there

in the other categories as well (Best Film and Best
Documentary, among others). My criticism is not
with the ACS or the members ofa panel (it is their
"opinion", after all), my criticism is with the jury
system itself. A system where such a small panel
has to speak for the whole industry is fraught with
problems (as any u[...]will
tell you). It was a system that was brought in
during the turbulent days of the IOBA funding
where between 3540 films were being made
each year, with upwards of 25 of them being
unwatchable (I know, I had to watch most of
them). This situation does not exist any more. The
amount of films made per year is nowaround 20.
Surely, accredited AFI members from each section
of the industry should be able to see all 20 films

if they are going to vote democraticallyfor the
one that is the best of the year in their area of
expertise. Or are the panels of 6-8 always going
to do the bulk of our thinking for us?

I know from conversations with the AFI organiz- .
ers (who have done a marvellous job given the
judging system they have to work with) that low
attendances at the screenings from accredited
AFI members was a major problem with the old
system. Since 16 out of 20 films submitted this
year were screened twice[...]It may also give accredited
AFI members currently in gainful employment a
chance to be involved in the process of selecting
their "Best" fourof the year. Maybe _then the"
"nominations" would reflect the films with the
most votes and not a panel's arbitrary decision.

T If not, maybe we should rename the "Best Film

Award" the "Best of the 4 Films We Have Been
Allowed to Vote For Award".[...]wouldn't have a problem. ». ’

PS: Along with the two films mentioned in my_ —
open letter to the AFI, the exclusion of Life from
the cinematographer nominations also
seems to be a gr[...]on.

But, then again, this is only my "opinion".

The Editor replies: .

In her criticism of Cinema Papers Ruth Jones
gets some facts wrong and misses the point‘

Jones complains Cinema Papers didn't check
with the AFI first about who was on the pre-se|ec-
tion panel. She is correct. The reason is that every
year Cinema Papers has asked[...]nned 'it;=Perhaps
she could reinforce this change of heart by ‘
publiclyerevealing the true cost ‘if the Awards.

Naturally, Cinema Papers apologizes for the
errors or its faulty detective work, and to the two
DOPs wrongly listed. However. the fact remains
that. of the eight DOPs on the jury, only four had
shot a theatrically-released feature at the time of

Jones goes to great lengths to ‘smudge’ this[...]or Steadicam operator’. -And this is
done at the expense of people who should, and
deserve to be, duly accord[...]crediting Fran to Yuri Sokol. Kenny not
only was the DOP but was the camera operator.
Soko|'s credit was for "Additional Photography"
(not even one of Jones’ categories).

To set the record straight, the DOPs who were
actually responsible for the Australian features
mentioned by Jones are footnoted below.‘

At the end of her letter, Jones writes:

And, by the way, I was interested to read

Cinema Papers’ comments to the effect that

winning 7 AFI Awards had had no effect on

Angel Baby's performance at the box office.
These "comments" were published in May (issue ‘
I10) and have nothing whatsoever to do with
Lowenstein's letter (published in October).

Jones also gets confused, because the "lnbits'’ ;

' item to which she refers does not say what she

claims. Hather, it reads: =;

The AFI Awards seem to have had little bearing

on local box-office performance in 1995. Angel 1

Baby, despite its swag of seven Awards l...) A

ended the year with a domestic gross of

$869,591. Babe [...]
Thein Cinema Papers reported the
following facts on the 1995 threatrical release of
Australian films. Babe set an all-time record for
an Australian film in domestic release, and was
not entered in the Awards. Dad and Dave 0n 0ur
Selection, with a sin[...]outgrossed Hotel Sorrento, with two Awards,
which in turn outperfonned Angel Baby.

Angel Baby, despite the Jones—perceived promo 1
tional muscle of 7 AFI Awards, ended the year
with a domestic gross of less than $870,000.

.n this evidence, AFI Awards did not correspond , '

with hit success at the domestic box-office in
1995. ‘

Cinema Papers was not suggesting the
promotional opportunities of the Awards may
not benefit the performance of any individual
film — as. too, do weather and t[...]enuously insinuates.

"was Cinema Papers deriding the claims of Angel

Baby's producers.

This year, the low-budget, 16mm love and Other
Catastrophes, with no Awards nominations at time
of release; has already grossed more than $2 mil- .

glion. Shine, with no Awards nominations at the
time of release, has grossed more than $5 million. E , '

And if the AFI Awards are such a massive
boost to box-office, as Jones claims, why would

‘exhibitors reduce by 13 the number of cinemas ,

showing Angel Baby immediately after the

Awards? If the Awards are a true goldmine, the

number of cinemas would have been greatly

increased, not the reverse.

‘ Bad Boy Bubby (Ian Jones, plus 30 c[...]Hearts
(Yuri Sokol), Metal Skin (Ron
Hagen), Man of Flowers (Yuri
Sokol), Myl-"rrst Wife (Yuri[...]

lilnniticr 2 Mimi ttml
Ce[...]loeg,

Sandy Horbutl. Film under Allende, Between
the Wars, Arvin Purple

DIIIIIIIIII 3 (July 1514)[...]padopulous,
Willis O'Brien, Ifllliarn Friredkin, The True
Story ol Eskimo Nell

Monitor 4 lflienotbnr[...]erner Herzog,
Between Wars, Petersen, A Salute to the
Great MacAnhy

Number I lMmt,i»Aprit mil
Albie T[...]x Lemon. Miklos Jancso,
Luchino Visconti, Caddie, The Devils
Playground

llumtnr In (Sconce: mt)
Nagisa Oshimo, Philippe Moro, Krzysz[...]bb, Samuel 2. Arlioff,
Roman Polanski, Soul Bass, The Picture Show
Man

rrumm (Mull rm)

Ken Loactt, To[...]eling, Piero Tosi. John Dmkwoilh. John
Scot, Days of Hope, The Genirrg of Vlfisdom

Iflutohsr I! l.l:iIy1I17l
Louis Malls[...]eanine
Seawall, Peter Sykes, Bernardo Bartolucci,
In Search olllnna

lullhr II Illimtter IIITTI
Phil N[...],

Terry Jarzkrnan, John Huston. Luke's Kingdorn,
The Last Wave, Elite fire Lady

fliutiilnr It Iulon[...](Iowan. Trulfaut, John Faulkner, Stephen
Wallace, the Tavlani brothers. Sri Lunkan mm,
The Chant oi Jimmie Elaclrsrriith

lumber II llptil-J[...]loin, John Duigen, Steven
Spielberg, Tom Jeffrey, The Africa Project
Swedish cinema, Dairvnl, Patrick[...]I-tuppert, Brian May, Polish

cinema, Ivewslmnt, The Nightthe Prowler
Iiimlcr Iltflittviiiitir will[...]Iunliu II‘ (‘Hm-slime IQHI
Vietnam on Film, the Eantrills, French cinerria,

Mad Max, Snapshot The 0ddAngry Shot
Franklin on Hitchcock

Huh! § {Jul[...]onalism. Japanese
cinema, Peter Weir, Water Under the Bridge

Dnlfiarfllhllrdfl; IDI
Randal Kleiser,[...]I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I

A Guide to What’s in Stock

hlirmlmal (hiring! moi
Bob Godlrey, Diane[...]ke. Stephen Wallace, Philippine cinema,
Cruising, The last Dutfaw ‘ '

Numbufl (Dec Ifislan-III)
Sa[...]re[I10lll;III,
Richard Lester, Canada supplement,
The Chain Reaction, mood Money

Illumbsr It IMIrcII»ApriI 15!)
Bryan Brown, looking in on Dressed‘ to Kill,
The Lest Outlaw, Fattlrfi/in, Vlfinduws lesbian
as villain. the new generation

Number 33 Illay-Jurlelflll

Judy[...]winburne, Cuban cinema. Puttlic Enemy
Number One, The Aitemative

Nttlllm B (June-July IE1!)
John Duigan, the new tax concessions,
Robert Altrnanfloines Iitit[...]lublio, Blow Dirt, 'I?roalrer‘MeranL
Body H991. The Morrfrfim 590W)! River

Number 3? (April IQ]
Ste[...]Wendy Hughes, Ray Barrett, My Dinner with
Andre, The Return of Captain invincible

Number A1 (Number iii)
to‘[...]ader, Pater Tammer,
uliana Cavam, Colin lllggina, The Yaar of
Living Dangerously

Number I! (Illrnh IHSI
Mel Gi[...]Priingle,
Agnes Varda, copyright, $tnlrelloi2Ild.
The Man from Snowy River

Number 13 Iflihiuiie 1%}
Sydney Fella alt. Denny Lawrence,
Iiraeme Clifford, The Dismissal, Sumner
Incite Elliott's Careful He Mig[...]iwali, Jeremy Irons, Eureka
Stockade, Waterfront, The Eayirt the Rush,
A Woman Svflers. Street Hora

Iiutnher 47[...]hael Pattinson, Jan Sordi,
Voram Grass, Bodyline, The Slim Dusty Movie

Ilunrhr II (December SUI)
Alain[...]Eorurwceyk, Peter Schreck, Bill Cami,
Brian May, The Lastfiostinri, Bliss

Iluntber 9! (May Iflfil[...]Maliovejev, Ernoh fluo, Winners,
Morris W031‘: The Naked Country, MadMe1x
Beyond Thunderdome, Robber[...], Wills and
Burke, 77:: Great Bookie flabttery,

The Lancaster Miller Affair

Ilomlm lilulirmiy Illll[...]ien Thompson, Paul Verhoeven.
Derek Meddinqs, tie-in marketing,
The flight Hand Man, Birdsville

Mlllhr I ilhosh IQ?[...]herd~Sniith, John Hargreaves,
Dead-endDrt've-irr, The More Things
Change .,, Kangaroo, Tracy

CINEMA PA[...]Woody AlIen,,HeiriIIard I-Iautl, Orson Wifllcs,
the Cinéinathéque Francoise, The Fringe
Dwellers, Great Expectations: The Untold
Story, The Lasrfrantier

Nurulinr fl liopmmr lfll
Floben‘Altmun, Paul Cox, Lina Brocka,
Agnes Vartla. the AH Awards, The Movers

tluintteridlttweitibes in)‘ ,
Australian television, Franco Zetlirelli, '[...]an Polanski, Philippe Mora,
Martin Arminger, film in South Australia,
Dogs in Space, Howling ill '
Nunihrli (Munch I§1I
‘Scr[...]orilererice, prdducfion barometer,
lilm finance. The Story ofttie Kelly Gang

Ilumbnrfllflny 1!?)

G[...]wood, Elmore Leonard,

' ‘Troy Kennedy Ma rtln, The Sac/dice,’

Landslides, Pee Wee’: Br'9Advontu[...]I, James Clayden, Video.
06 Laurontis, New World, The Navigator,
Who's That Girl

flimiherfi l.Ianimy[...]ge Miller, Jim Jermuisch, ‘Soviet cinema.
women in him, 70mm, Tllmmaklng in Ghana,
TheThe
L‘/vilfleaid. feathers. Dceari, lilcean

Iluit[...]ry 1%)
VaIt0C.l Ste, nous, David Cronenbero.
1358 in retrospect, film sound
Last Teriwt‘at1'¢1t‘J[...]a ones '85. Dead Calm Franco Nero,
Jane Catnpion, The Prisoner of St Petersburg,
Frank Pierson, Pay W

Ilumlm 14 (J[...], Philippe Mora, Yuri Sokol,
Twins, Ghosts ill 0! the Eivil Dead. Shame
screenplay I »,

Iturnim 15 lieimiritur Ifl)
Sally Eorigers, the teen movie, animated.
Edens Lost Pet Semmry, Mart[...]le” Dundee overseas

IIulnIier Ti (Mitch tifll
The Emssirrg, Ray Argall, Return Name, Peter
Ereenaway and The L‘oo.r.... Michel Ciinent.
Bangkok Hilton, Barl[...]fellas, Presumed Innocent

Iltlmlllr R (Much III)
The Godfather Part III, Barber! Schroeder,
Reversal of Fortune, Bla ck Robe.
Raymond Hollis Loiiglord. Backslrdrrig

"HEIDI?" (“if 1”"
Australia at Cannes, Gillian Armstrong,
The Last paysat Elm I/nus, The Silence
ufthe Lambs, Flynn, Dead to the World,
Anthony Hopkins, Spotswood

I
I
I
I
I
I
I[...]tmZ../‘udgement
Dan Dennis O'Rourke, Goad Woman of
Bangkok, Susan Dermady, Breathing Under
Water. Ca[...]FFC part?

Number I Minoan I51)
liumper Stamper, The Nosrra damus K in‘,
Ereenlraeplng, Erglitball, Kathryn Bigelow.
H[...]'cinama, Steven Spielberg.
Hook, George Negus and The liedvnknnwn,
Fllohard Lowenstein, Save Lime Praye[...]I! lllhyaluno Iml
Strictly Ballroom, Hammers Over the Anvil,
Daydream Believer, Wim Wender's Until The
End at the World, Satyaiit Ray

Ninnlerfl (August Ifil
Can[...], teen movies debate

Number I (October ‘IH2I V
the Lastrasvs niche: Nous: niiliey Scott‘
1492. Ste[...]io
Manqiamele. Cultural Bitlerences and
Ethnicity in Austraficn Cinema.

John Fmnkenhelmers Year or the that

Number 31 (January II!)
Clint Eastwood and[...]Miller and Eros: MISCUHUUCL
David Elliott's Love In Limbo, 0n the Beach,
Australia's tirst films: part I

Nurtilierlzllorii ism v
Re[...]Miller and Lorenzo‘:
(Ill, Megan Simpson, Alex, The Lover, women
in Iiliit ond"leIevisien, Airstralizrs first iilms:
part 2

Ilumber 63 (May 1893)
Jane Campion and The Piano, Laurie Mclrinss
and Broken tligtrway, Tracey Moffatt and
Bedrzwl, Lightvvorks and Avid, AustraliaThe Hearwrcalr Kid,
‘Coming otAge' lilms, Australia's iirst films:
pin 4 '

Number S Iflcwhcr Mil
Lym'i«Marie Milburifs Memories & Dreams,
Franklin on the science of previews, The
Custodian, documentary supplement, Tom
Zubricki, John Hughes, Australia's liist films:
pan 5

Numberfi (Deceinhtr 1%)
Queensland issue: overview of film in
Queensland, early Queensland cinema,
Jason Donovan and Donald Crumble,

Rough Diamonds, Australia's first films: pan 6

Number I74 llprll IQII
Zll[...]htning Jack. Richard Fmnlilin on leaving
America. Australia's first Iilms: part 7

Iluiiiisril. (Jun Bill
Krz[...]plement, Geoflrey Burton,
Pauline Chan and Traps, Australia’: hrst films‘,
Part a ‘

Iiliunlm ‘M (aug[...]SW supplement, ernardo
Berioluccis Little Buddah, The Sum oflJs,
Spider Er Hose, him and the digital world,
Australia's Iirsl films: part 9

Nuiihit IDI -(Dublin ‘I[...]and Muriel's Wedding.
Ben Lawin and Lucky Bree/<, Australia's first
lilms: Port 9

Niuitlter ‘III? lbeeentber will ,
Once Were Warriors, tilms we love, Back of
Beyond, Cecil Holmes, bndsey Anderson,
Body Meir, AFC supplement, Spider & Rose,
Australia’: Firs! Films: Part I0

tlunilm tfl llllmlt[...]tieotlroy Simpson, Heavenly
Creatures, Eternity, Australia’; First films

Illoiriltor I04 lam will ‘[...]by,
Epsilon. Vacant Possession, Richard Franklin,
Australia's First Films‘ Part 12

I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I[...]asi, Jacqueline McKenzie,
Slawomir Idziak, Cannes Review, Ciaumotit
Retrospective, Marie Craven, Dad & Dav[...]and John Maynard on All Men

Are Liars, Sam Neil, The Small Man, Under -
the Gun. AFC low budget seminal

Ilimt‘ber1o7lDIeum[...]ler and Chris Norman talx about

Eabe, New trends in criticism, The rise of
=boutique cinema

Nurnhr 13 (February 13]

Conyuring John Hughes’ WhatlHaye Written.
Cthulu, The Top I00 Australian Film, Nicole
Kidman in To Die For

Plumber till (April lfil
Rachel Gritiilhs runs the gamut, Toni Collette
and Cast‘, Sundance Film Festival, Michael
Tolkin, Morals and the Mutoscope ‘

Number ill: um twl
Roll de I-leer[...]ave Serenade,
Richard Franklin

Number In (Mount IQ!
Scott Hicks and Shine, Theof the
Mavericks, Clueensland Sopplemenwart l,.
Sighting the Unseen, Rirherd Lowenstein

, , uiapto 0[...]

- BIOGRAPHIES OF DIRECTORS/ACTORS/PRODUCERS I
COMMISSION

- VIDEOS[...]Join our free mailing list for a quarterly update of new books and videos or over 20 years the AFC has proudly supported a dynamic
Australian screen industry and culture, through the

OPEN LATE: MON-SAT 9-9PM- SUN l2-30-6-30PM development, production and promotion of Australian programs
to audiences everywhere.

Cit[...]47 I230
L / Recognising originality and diversity of Australian programs

through:

development and production of film and television programs
I multimedia initiat[...]clond.demon.co.uk
or fax [08] 89 812045

WALK OUT OF ILAA WITH A SHOWREEL .

Direction, cinematography[...]g. Video Production and Video Editing. Any or all of these
can be on your showreel within the Diploma of Screen Arts programme at ILAA. Typically our

stu[...]actising professionals AFTRS qualified

INSTITUTE OF LENS ARTS THE VIABLE ALTERNATIVE

PO BOX 177 KALORAMA VI[...]

AUSTRALIAN FILM
RETROSPECTIVE IN
SPAIN

pain hosted a major retrospective

of contemporary Australian cinema
at the 41st Valladolid International
Film Festival.

Focus on Australian Cinema, present-
ed by the Australian Film Commission
in association with the Festival, also
screened at the prestigious Filmoteca
in Madrid.

Focus on Australian Cinema com-
prised 20 major feature films showcas-
ing the past 20 years of Australian
cinema, and included films by
internat[...]s well as
works from directors perhaps less
known in Spain, such as John Hillcoat,
Michael Rymer, Rolf de Heer, Nadia
Tass and Scott Murray.

A selection of short films was pro-
grammed with the features, including
Emma-Kate Croghan's Sexy Girl[...]Tracey Moffatt's
Night Cries - 4 Rural Tragedy.

In addition, several Australian films
screened in the Festival: Love Serenade
and The Quiet Room In competition, and
a noncompetitive screening of Shine.

From Sand To Celluloid, the package
of six short films produced by the
Australian Film Commissions
Indigenous Drama Initiative, screened
in the Festival's Punto de Encuentro
(Meeting Point) section.

COVER:
Melissa Morrison (Saffron Burrows)
in Craig Rosenberg’s Hotel de Love.

NEW INCO[...]Producers, distributors and other
rights owners in film and television
have the opportunity to access new
sources of income through the Audio-
Visual Copyright Society (Al/CS), a
non-profit copyright collecting society
representing owners of copyright in
film.

Since 1990 AVCS has administered
the educational copying scheme, which
was introduced into the Copyright Act
to allow educational institutions to
copy television and radio programmes
in return for paying a fee to copyright
owners. AVCS[...]million to be distributed to rights
owners since the inception of this
scheme.

AVCS is now establishing other
sche[...]not intended to replace individual
administration of rights in traditional
markets. There is no fee for participa-
tion in these schemes. The AVCS
distributes all money collected after
deduct[...]Four short dance films will

screen on ABC-TV as the

- culmination of Microdance, an

initiative of the Australian Film

1 Commission, the Australia

. Council and ABC—TV.

The four projects — two from
Victoria and two from[...]ciej

Wszelaki; producer, Elisa Argenzio.
0 Floom in a View choreographer, Kate

Champion; director, A[...]th St Kilda Film Festival, April

24th-27th 1997. The Festival
showcases recently-made Australian
short films, with awards to the value
of $10,000. Preview tapes must be sub-
mitted on VHS along with a handling
fee of $10 per entry. For an entry form
and more details[...]fest will take place on Sunday
23 February, 1997. In addition to
Opening Night festivities will be
Tropfest '97 General Screenings. All
films entered in Tropfest '97 will be
screened from Monday 24 February to
Sunday 23 March, in approximately ten
cafes along Victoria Street, Da[...]0 short films are expected
to be submitted before the deadline
of 17 January 1997. Fifteen will be
selected by loca[...]stival.

Garden Street Studios seeks short
films, of any genre, 16 or 35mm, made
within the last three years, that touch
on the theme of Australia as a coastal
culture/ surf culture/ beach culture.
Deadline for entries is 22 November.
A selection of films will be exhibited
at WyIie's Ocean Baths, C[...].21 9318 2334.

AUSTRALIAN
MULTIMEDIA
ENTERPRISE

The AME Board has approved AME

investments of:

0 $897,000 in a $2 million series of
CD-ROMS for five-to-seven year-olds
in 11 languages.

° $235,000 in a $530,000 health and
physical education learning[...]ey-based Multimedia
Learning Systems.

' $370,000 in a series of four English
language listening and comprehen-
sion CD—ROMs directed to the
ELICOS markets (English Language
Intensive Courses for Overseas
Students), to be developed by The
Facility Pty Ltd of Melbourne, with
a budget of $750,000.

° $204,500 in a series of three CD-
ROMS budgeted at $409,000 to be
developed by Knowledge Books and
Software of Brisbane, on physics.

maths and chemistry, direc[...]ilm and television producers
for its second round of the Children's
Drama Initiative.

The TVPF is seeking children's
feature films and television projects
which are primarily aimed at the B-13
year-old age group and which can be
produced on budgets which require a
contribution from the TVPF of $2 million
or less.

This year the TVPF is calling for
children's telemovies and ser[...]dy have an Australian commercial
network pre-sale in place for at least
the minimum amount required by the
TVPF for children's drama (i.e. $40,000
an hour).[...]not a prerequisite for a children's
feature, but the film must be able to
have its first Australian television
screening on either the Seven, Nine
or Ten network.

A selection panel consisting of a
writer, director and producer experi-
enced in children's drama will be
appointed by the TVPF to recommend
projects for funding.

A provisional ”C" classification from
the Australia Broadcasting Authority
[ABA] is not required at t[...]wever television projects selected
for funding by the TVPF will need to
meet the ABA's Australian "C" Drama
criteria prior to final approval.

Applications must be submitted by
the producer of the project with a fully-
developed script, a budget, proposed
schedule and a director attached.

The deadline for submission is
5pm Friday, 29th November 1996.

Producers with suitable projects
should contact the Project Assistant
of the TVPF, Clare Sawyer, at the
Melbourne office of the Australia Film
Commission on (61.3) 9279 3418 or
toll free 1800 634 205.

In this issue

The offices of Cinema Papers were
burgled and ransacked during
production of this issue. Unfortu-
nately, many of the materials
relating to Part II of the Oueens-

land supplement were damaged or
stolen, and could not be replaced
in time for inclusion. We anticipate
publishing those articles in the
next issue, and apologize to
readers for the delay.

CINEMA PAPERS ' DECEMBER 1995

5 >'
Total no‘ of issues Total Cost$ E 5 _§ §
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Card No. .. Z Z In 5 67! g
Expiry Date . . .
Signature

Cheques shou[...]ing Limited and
mailed to PO Box 2221 Fitzroy MDC Australia 3065. All overseas orders

should be accompanied by Bank Drafts in Australian Dollars Only
Please allow 4-6 weeks fo[...]es: Air Mail

Back issues:

add to price per copy of $6

-it a vision of the past, present and future

- anarthouse for the 21st century

cinemedia

- supporting organisat[...]j
programswhich enhance Victoriaasa ,
centre‘ of excellence for screen culture ~

incorporating Film Victoria and State Film Centre of Victoria
3 Treasury Place, East Melbourne,[...]

How did The Frighteners begin?

Every movie has a gestation s[...]y ideas and came up with
a simple, novel twist to the ghost story. We were,
at that time, interested in the idea of writing a cou-
ple of scripts a year for Hollywood — spec scripts,
not for me to direct. They’d just be a bit of work we
could do in—between movies.

So, we came up with this idea and wrote a two-
page outline which we sent to our agent in
Hollywood. He just keeps these things on file, an[...]s looking for story and script
ideas for a series of Tales from the Crypt movies —
big feature films. This was about three years ago.
The plan was that the guys who developed the Tales
from the Crypt show — Zemeckis, Richard Donner,
etc. —[...]as about a year after we talked that we
developed the first draft. We were writing it think-

Stuart (J[...]and Cyrus (Chi McBride). Eventually, when he got the first draft, he called
Peter J3Cl<S0f1'S The FF[hf€fl8FS- up and asked me if l’d ever thought of directing

it? lt was actually the first time l’d ever thought

11

—_ '[...]

So, I said, “Yes I’d like to. If you want me to make
it, how about doing it in New Zealand?” He said,
“Okay, if you can make[...]ne with a camera around New
Zealand taking photos of small towns and sending
them back. Bob and Universal were happy we could
do it, and then the whole thing came together rel-
atively quickly. F[...]aking Heavenly
Creatures through its final stages of post and into
festivals.

So, last year was taken up with that and getting
The Frigbteners to the stage where, this year, we
could start shooting it.

Was Heavenly Creatures a test for the computer
animation when you wrote the script?

Yes, in a way it was. It was actually an excuse to buy
the gear.

Around the time we were writing Heavenly Crea-
tures, I want[...]these rumours were going
around about how amazing the dinosaurs were. I

“AT THIS STAGE,

I HAVE NOTH[...]ng. It’s quite inex-
pensive but there was none of that gear in this
part of the world.

So, we deliberately wrote some sequences in Heav-
enly Creatures that could only be achieved[...]ely wrote morphing and

various other things into the script. The wish
to get the computer was a definite factor, rather
than the dramatic reason, really.

We just got one computer, and the various
canning and outputting things that you ne[...]res, we figured
out how to do it. George Port was the only guy
we had at that stage doing it.

We had this big package of about $1,000,000
of machinery from the States. It came in a big
cardboard box with one page of xeroxed
instructions [big laugb]. After the stuff arrived,
it took four to five months before[...]George had to figure out how it all
worked. A lot of experimenting and testing
went on.

Computer technology is so new in terms of
film that the sky’s the limit. It’s as much as your
imagination can enc[...]ested with this film?

We’re testing our limits in terms of the sheer
number of shots that we’ve got. The bread-and-
butter computer work on this film is ghosts.
We usually have actors playing the ghosts; not
always, but usually, actors shot against blue
screens and then they’re composited into the
shots that we’ve already done.

What is the special ghost effect that you're
going for, and h[...]efore Casper came out
and so were very interested in seeing it. Ours
is similar in that sense that they’re transpar-
ent and have a bluey glow. The main difference
is that ours were actors and Casper is a cartoon.
The story is Very much the relationship between
the guy that Michael Fox plays [Frank Bannis-
ter] and a series of ghosts. We never thought
ofthe ghosts in our story like a special effect.
We don’t make[...]and shot as you would with any
actors, only some of the characters in the scenes are
ghosts and some aren’t, but they interact as just a
bunch of guys together. It’s a classic Roger Rabbit
scenario in a way.

Our lead actor, Michael]. Fox, spends more than
half the movie acting to nothing, in a room, getting
into quite tight conversations with ghosts who are
put in later. So, it’s been an arduous shoot in that
sense. Every shot of that type is very time-con-
suming, as you have t[...]ce: once with
Michael, and sometimes months later the blue
screen with ghosts.

A crew member was saying your shooting ratio is
60:1.

43:1 at the moment. That’s the overall ratio
throughout the movie. My other movies have been
15:1. This is the one movie where I’ve never had to
worry about running out of film stock. Other
movies, there’s been major panic if I’ve shot over
the ratio, but this one has a budget where fil[...]

You've still managed to keep your hand in with
low-budget films like Jack Brown Genius.

Ye[...]long. We shot that just before
we started work on The Frig/vterzers. Shooting 30
set-ups a day with a small crew: that was great. I
certainly love being in the middle of all this [The
Frighteners], but the concept of doing a little film
with a small crew has its appeal.

Has thethe studio,
John Garbett, who has been with us and very sup-
portive and has come up with some good ideas for
the script. Fran and I have re—written the script all
the way through the shoot, which is the way we like
to work. We see the rushes and see how the film
is developing and we then re—write. just a[...]en inserting new pages. We just try
to keep ahead of ourselves and keep improving it
all the time.

The guys at Universal say this is the first time this

D mmers (J. ffrey Combs).
The’Frighteners.

hnny Bartlett
ake Buseyl.

has[...]write much
because, if they finance a film, then, in a year’s time,
that’s the film they want to see. But the folks at Uni-
versal have been really pleased bec[...]been good. We’ve been getting great
feedback on the rushes. They get the rushes on video
and they’ve been happy all the time. They’ve never
signalled any problems with the rushes to me.
And, after six months, I certainly feel I’ve been left
alone to make the film that I want to make. I don’t
feel that at any point they have tried to influence me
in any way at all. I’ve had total freedom.

Ho[...]ects and they have a first
look at them. That’s the sort of deal I like because
I’m interested in scripts. I’m still not enthusiastic
about shooting other people’s scripts.

You've talked about the genesis of the film, but
were the studios nervous in dealing with you?

I’m sure that they have been[...]’t been made
apparent to me. Bob [Zemeckis] saw the script and
liked it before the studio ever knew anything about
it. Bob had a development deal with Universal. In
other words, the studio didn’t even know the pro-
ject existed until they saw that script, by[...]iked it and wanted to proceed
with it. I’m sure the studio reaction to the project
probably would have been very different i[...]saying, “Read
this and I want to make this film in New Zealand.”

Were you granted creative freedom?

I don’t have final cut on the film. but I knew that
going in. Bob’s got final cut, so I have no qualms
about that. The guy’s made some great movies, so
I’m quite happy for him to have that sort of control.

Bob’s been Very definite all the way through that
I should make the sort of film I want to make. He
wants me to make this because of my previous
movies, and he doesn’t want anything, either from
him or the studio, to intrude on that. Otherwise, it’s
not[...]e alone. He has been very useful
with suggestions of scheduling and budgets, and the
nuts and bolts of getting the film made. He’s never
attempted to have major c[...]roach?

No, I haven’t. I’m very much shooting in the style
I’ve shot my other films, although this has the

encumbrance of motion-control cameras. If you’re ,.

not careful, you get nailed down a little bit by the
technology. The film has been as much a battle
against being controlled by the motion control as it
has been about just being able to let tip with the style
that I’m used to.

It's not a straight ho[...]ack comedy. It has ghosts and some
horrific stuff in it — some monsters and some
psychos. It’s sort of a weird one. Michael]. Fox
describes it as Truffaut meets The Mask [Charles
Russell, 1994]. Bob Zemeckis was going on the
other day with a description — a combination of
Ghostbusters [Ivan Reitman, 1984] and Natural
Bor[...]Hollywood always
has to categorize you and to mix the films to try
to explain it. That’s why I don’t know; it’s a pretty
oddball movie.

It has a lot of commercial elements because it is
a commercial st[...]and written by Fran and I, we’ve retained a lot
of that quirkiness and black humour that we had in
our other movies. That, immediately I think, is g[...]bit more interesting than if it were
a film made in America by Americans. It’s certainly
going to have an edge.

When did Michael J. Fox enter the project?

Again, the studio has been very supportive in cast-
ing and didn’t try to put anyone on the film. Fran
and I obviously took the casting very seriously. If
you get the script right and the casting right, it
becomes very difficult to make a bad movie. We
wanted to be sure we got the very best cast for the
characters.

The role that Michael plays is a difficult combi-

nation of straight drama and comedy. We came up
with names of Various comic performers because we
could see tha[...]rson, not a goofy clown.

When you start thinking in those terms, it’s hard
to think of actors. There are not that many that
you’d acce[...]ing, comic sensibility — who
can play that kind of straight comedy, like the Lionel
role in Braindead that Tim Baimc played. It’s a
straight role in a sense, but the guy gets caught up
in such ridiculous circumstances that he just has to
acknowledge the humour, whilst not actually cre-
ating it, not playing up to it.

We thought of Michael and mentioned him to
Bob. Bob has a relat[...]script and see what he says.” I met
Michael at the Toronto Film Festival and he was
willing to sign on and give it a go.

What do you think of the American-edited versions
of Heavenly Creatures and Braindead 1?

I loved the R-rated version of Dead/Alive. They took
about 17 to 18 minutes out of it and it’s really
funny. A bunch of us sat down with a few beers and
watched it and laughed every time it got cut. The
lawnmower sequence is virtually gone: Lionel walks
in the front door and then, the next minute, he’s
standing among these piles of bodies. It’s just gone.

I don’t take any of that stuff seriously. The whole
rating system in America is totally stupid. The un-
rated version is available to anyone who wants it.
The fans who want to see that sort of film can get

copies anywhere in the world, which is just great. So
who cares if someone puts out the R-rated version?

Heavenly Creatures is fine. We supervised a cut of
Heavenly Creatures that was about 10 minutes
shorter than the New Zealand version. We did
about 3 to 4 versions after it was released in New
Zealand. Miramax wanted it to be a bit shorter. I
had final cut on the film in the States, so Fran and
I tightened it. We actually prefer the American ver-
sion to the New Zealand one now.

Which version has Australia got?

Australia has a hybrid. Because we were tailoring
the 10-minute shorter version for the American mar-
ket, we were very much aware that the Americans
would not want to see the British tennis-party men-
tality, so we tailored one that We thought would be
okay in America. When we came to release it in
places like England, Europe and Australia, I got
them to stick back a couple of the scenes. The Eng-
lish sense of humour is more attuned to those scenes,
so we stuck them back in.

New Zealand is the only country that has seen the
longest version. America has the shortest version
and the rest of the world had an in-between version,
which was all done under my supe[...]ms like Heav-
enly Creatures got any attention by the Oscar people
and the Academy. That was good. ®

See Scott Murray’s[...]ckson, Heavenly
Creatures and computer technology in the New Zealand

Supplement of Cinema Papers, No. 97-8, April 1984, pp.
2[...]

Lee ROLinSOn is a unique figure in Aus-
tralian cinema, having been variously a writer, director
and producer of a stream of commercially-successful
projects. He has written[...]ies, feature films and television
series, and now in his retirement still deals with the
ongoing business of his worldwide sales.

In the early ’70s when the film community was
polarized around the ‘Art vs Industry’ argument, Lee
Robinson was condemned by some for his firm stance
in the camp of commerce. He recalls “a school of
thought” in that period which did not understand
that “the main tool of picture—making is money” and
which criticized[...]is View amongst those entrusted with
establishing the new government—funded film indus-
try that, as[...]and ex—Robinson
employee Albie Thorns observed in 19711, they com-
pletely passed over experienced[...]e
Robinson — which was absurd. Robinson was one of
a handful of filmmakers whose abilities had enabled
them to survive in the difficult days before govern-
ment support, in the days when most others went
to the wall. 1958 is a case in point: in that year,

lLlElE
lP%,<O)lB%llNS©N

—Z%§-[...]t/7 Lee Rofiilworz cmz9ucte3 by
Gra/mm S/zir/ey (in Augzwt 1976) an? mydelf (October 1995
Grzzfiam a[...]era I Ural Hzlafory

Group w/Jic/2 e/zcourageafl/In /ziafarzlzna to we aucb dourced. Acceaa

IV
Martha Ansara

to irztervitwd can be 0//taint? t/zrougfi the oral Hatory afllcer of H25
National F [1/n 0’ Sou/z9Arc/ziue. New /nembem of [/72 Gnzup are

alwaya welcwrur, :14 are u[...]

CINE[...]Hostage: T/ae Christine Maresc/7 Story (1983). The
industry recoiled in amazement when Shields’ The
S2/z17’e'r (1988) was selected for the Quinzaine des Real-
isateurs (Directors Fortnight) at Cannes, having
themselves received the film with derision at the pre-
vious year’s AFI judging screenings}

Yet things do change and it is interesting that in
1992 it was Lee Robinson who received the AFl’s
Raymond Longford Award. The sting of com-

non-commercial alike, now seem naive, crude[...]ich still confront Australian filmmak-
ers within the changed circumstances of today. 1996
marks the fiftieth year of Lee Robinson’s career, a career
which spans half of the Australian century of cinema.
There is much to learn from his accomplishments.

mercialism now muted by a patina of nostalgia,
perhaps it was time to regard Robinson[...]logical forces
to produce a relatively small body of work; and
it is true that some of these films, commercial and

1——

Clockwise from opposite: ON LOCA Tl()Nfor Namatjira
the Painter, ./Way 1946. Lee ROM/140/1, ll./l-llfl a[...]kl ll e—lo/zg frle/1124 until t/Je
lzzite/‘:1 recent ()ez1['/2. Rabi/1.10/I wad given a PI/it/rbe lrzl[...]/we crow? ace/ze afzzgetlfor t/Jefi/ml Jeque/Ice ofThe Phantom Stockman. Rufierl
Tuaawall of Jeddafame lezzga zz wou/z3e3/zollce/ml/1,[...]

A military historian during[...], Robin-
son wrote a large and detailed report on the
Portuguese Timor Campaign. His View of the Anzac
spirit of these Australian commandos continued to
be expressed in an enduring interest in films of adven-
ture, and directly in his last two features as producer,
Attack Force Z (Tim Burstall, 1982) and Southern
Cross (aka The Highest Honour: A True Story, Peter
Maxwell and S[...]on-
alized their exploits.

On his discharge from the army in 1946, Robin-
son learned that the newly—created National Film
Board was setting up the Department of Information
(DOI) Film Unit, later to become Film Australia.
Under the influence of John Grierson and the docu-
mentary movement, the DOI created a new kind of
film by a new breed of writers and intellectuals, the
creative interpretation of Australian nation-building:
men at work. Often the ‘real’ Australia was located
in the bush and the bush became Lee Robinson’s area
of expertise. Robinson, a successful short—story w[...]artist Albert Namatjira, and then asked
to direct the film. He recalls that when he told thethe difference.” Feature films were almost extinct and
the cameramen who had, in actual fact, been direct-
ing newsreel stories we[...]as Robinson
has said, “There were no directors in Australia.”

The DOI in those days was a cauldron of religious,
political and xsthetic debate; and film became a sub-
ject for intense study by the neophyte director. English
director Harry Watt, a former documentarist who

was in Australia making features for Ealing, was sup-
portive of the new filmmakers. He explained to
Robinson the mechanics of such things as overlap-
ping action, and invited him to Pagewood Studios to
watch the making of Eureka Stockade (1949)?

Robinson and his cameraman, Alex Poignant, set
off for central Australia where they spent months
researching and filming Namatjira the Painter (1947).
In those days at the DOI, filmmakers did their
research, shot their fi[...]a creative whole. Watt had emphasized
to Robinson the importance of the editing process,
and it became an aspect of filmmaking which Robin-
son was closely involved in — in the cutting-room —
throughout his career. From his[...]irection to his
real—life characters. Namatjira the
Painter even includes flashbacks of
Albert Namatjira played by a young
hunter known as Nosepeg. (Nosepeg
joined a handful of Aboriginal actors
in contributing an air of mystery and
local colour to Australian productions
of the ’50s and ’60s.) This film
remained in distribution for decades,
with a revised version in 1974.

mentary work, Robinson réeallsl

pleasure and the luxury of li'iiviiig7,

to research and think. Films were
l[...], although wire
recorders were occasionally used

In speaking of his location’ docu--"T

I"-d_escit'ingTf_liei s[...]vc l;%nt~l1. d lice
1 . , E I
D

. . \. . ,
time (in the absence of a larlge_ci=ew)3‘ ,_t1i’rc jiifiddctitun,

fo[...]s were gener-
ally dubbed later — a consequence of the unwieldy
nature of sync cameras as well as of stylistic devel-
opments. Filmmaking teams of two or three people
camped out or took cheap acco[...]he and
his cameraman, Frank Bagnall, spent weeks in
Broome on another DOI documentary, The Pearlers
(1949), just taking everything in. Then, when he’d
devised his shooting script, they shot the film in a day.

Later, in 1957, Robinson experienced a different
kind of luxury, collaborating with the famous Amer-
ican commentator Lowell Thomas on his High
Adventure series shot around the world for American
television. The budgets were lavish, the crews large
and you could ask for anything you wa[...]n as “an
expert on primitive peoples” because of his work in
Aboriginal Australia and New Guinea. And, appar-
ently, on this basis Thomas could have gotten him
citizenship in the U.S. Robinson, however, had
been working on the American series in order to
finance his own projects and declined the offer. He
recalls that he liked working with Thom[...]ion Australian, he was “so totally Aus-
tralian in every shape and form that I couldn’t
conceive of becoming a citizen of another country”.
He saysin J;_etr,05p‘cCt th[...]were distinctly Aus-
tralian and yet constructed in a way that could
command an international[...]

In 1952, when Robinson formed Platypus Pictures
with[...]ln).
l b on . L e by overse-as companies and some of
the local films were so poor as to be unreleasable.
Thus, the collective feature film experience of local

actors, technicians, directors and produce[...]CINEMA PAPERS ' DECEMBEH1996

restrictions on the raising of capital for any
but essential industries and film was not one
of them. Chips Rafferty had been refused an
exemptio[...]000 committed
by local businessmen for production of a fea-
ture about immigration problems and a
thir[...]It
was eventually sold to Ealing, where it
became the basis for the Siege ofPinchgut
(Harry Watt, 1959)). So, when Robinson, as

writer—director, Rafferty, the actor, and
George Heath, the cameraman, decided to poo their
skills to make th[...]-
ture with elements that would sell. This became The
Phantom Stockman.

By this time, Robinson had done a number of
other documentaries for the DOI in the Northern
Territory, including Outback Patrol (194[...]1949), while Rafferty had had
experience shooting in the Centre with Ealing’s The
O1/erlanders (Harry Watt, 1946). Robinson recalls
that his work in the Territory had given him an abid-
ing “fondness[...]ow seemed ideal to build a film around
to exploit the novelty of a Central Australian back-
drop. Within these par[...]pounds into a picture then, so there was no point
in going mad with all sorts of exotic locations and
production values and things[...]rd. And [...]
we created this mythical character, The Sundowner,
which was Chips, who became the Phantom Stock-
man, who had this affinity with Aborigines [...] And,
of course, we had to put a semblance of a love story
or a female interest in it and had to have a bit of
action, but basically Chips was going to solve the
problem through using his knowledge of the Abo-
riginal. That was the idea of it.

The Phantom Stoclzman is a story of Kim Marsden
(Ieanette Elphick), a young cattle station heiress who
sends for The Sundowner and Dancer (Henry Mur-
doch), his Aboriginal offsider, to track down cattle
thieves. The rustlers turn out to be in league with Sta-
pleton (Guy Doleman), the owner of a neighbouring
station. When The Sundowner is captured, he uses
mental telepathy to summon Dancer to the rescue.
love story sees Kim delivered from the unwelcome
attentions of Stapleton into the arms of a more wor-
thy suitor. To this plot, Robinson, w[...]iginal, added a soewliiat irrel-
evant appearance of Albert Namatjira as himself and,
more interestingly, deliberately reproduced Namatji-
ra’s compositions in shots of the same locations on the
premise that one couldn’t better the master.

Robinson began his drama career with a strong
belief in the importance of screen presence in his
l. _‘I()‘I.%‘;(:)n thacbasis, l’iEi%‘ho§e the Tiieanette
li%pl1icl<i,foi(’t:he rcT)l;- ofl“[...]’s Supreme Sound Studio set up a loop; sys-
tem of post—syncing, using the young June Salter as
Kim’s voice — a little—known fact.

In viewing The Phantom Stockman now, its

exploitation of unknown and exciting settings, its sim-

Clock[...]z/29
Lee Ra/Ii/z,/an an lacafimz at Ayera Rack on the High A’()ue/zture
JEFLZJ. T/Jere ll/(ZJ no roar} ta Z/2e Rock [/1 /95 7. The and Im Viqatar
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America wad the "Father af Cinerama ".

AN UNDER WA TER ace/zefram King of the Coral Sea, Bath C/Jipa
Rafiferly zz/19 B119 Ting[...]r arm aameti/rzea 3:1/zgeraua
zuzaerwater ace/zea the/nae/ve.1. Na Jazz/Jiea were 114:3.

CHIPS RAFFERT[...]/‘L/zg 1’/)6 mzderwaterfll/n[n_q rgf ‘King of!/7e Coral Sea’.
CHIPS RAI-‘FERTY, Paul E9/710[...]a-pm31zet[o/1 am! wit/2 Azwi/‘a[[1z a/I3 France in [956_/‘or 4‘/Jefi/In
Walk in to Paradise.

—i

ple action plot, and its externalized characters appear
to combine the documentary impulses of the era with
the proclivities of Hollywood B features. The film was
a financial success. Although crude and[...]t obtained both American and British
releases and in its first year returned more than dou-
ble its budget from overseas sales — in the B-picture
market. It was also well received in Australia.

The success of The Phantom Stoc/zman allowed Lee
Robinson and Chips[...]onal, and to devise a more ambi-
tious film, King of the Coral Sea (1954), drawing on
Robinson’s knowledge of the pearling industry. Again,
in the absence of name artists and experience on which
to sell the picture, Robinson developed the project
from a unique Australian background, and then found
a suitable story through which to bring it to the screen.
Once again, considerable thought went into the ques-
tion of commercial viability. As he said later:

The challenge really was to make pictures that were
internationally acceptable. Because there was no
way in the world that you could possibly get any-
thing like a tenth of the budget back in this country
and you had to get international distribution before
you could stay in business. And that was a thing of
not breaking too many rules in filmmaking. Just as
there are certain standard rules for directors — you
know, you don’t cross the line — there are rules
regarding making pictures. To start with, We knew
that We had a problem with the Australian accent,
getting it accepted overseas. So We were forced to
go to some extent to the Australian equivalent of
a mid-Atlantic accent. And there was an old film-[...]rylirigeglf

’ve gqta newistoriyline, put it‘ in an 015' location
1:ha%faniiIIar to ‘people. Mak[...]k or
Ens fingeies‘ or London. So we were aware of these
rules and didn’t want to break them.

Firstly, We had to work against the Australian
accent. And, secondly, We were giving[...]on, so therefore We had to be fairly
conventional in our storyline to be commercially
viable at[...]

King of the Coral Sea, more polished than The Phan-
tom Stocleman, is again a simple action film. It
involves an illegal immigrant racket and the kidnap-
ping of the daughter of Ted King (Chips Rafferty),
a Torres Strait pearler. Along with Rafferty, the cast
includes Australian actors who were just beginning
to build their world-class careers. The playboy owner
of the pearling company was played by Bud Tingwell,
who by then had appeared in several local features.
The villain was played by Lloyd Berrell, a part-Maori
actor who was one of Sydney’s most talented radio
and stage performers until his premature death in
1957 —— en route to England. Reg Lye, a chara[...]tor Jah/2 Quin/1, Lowell T /5017241.; exa/nz/1e.r
the dkull af'L(1.!r/eler. Fll/Iz[n_g are Kai!/7 Looln[...]Tlvamau frawrllell to IVa.;l2£1zg[o/1 to
explain the cl/‘ctr/nattzrzcea to the /-luatzzlzkz/1 An:/111.1./adar am? the

C/}(ZI'_q€«.l ll’El'€ WL-[‘baI'(llVI1.

—i3-0-£1—_

a seedy villain in the first of the roles which Robin-
son continued to write specifically for him. He, too,
achieved international success. The role of Ted King’s
American offsider was played by a sc[...]w himself into mastering screen technique

20

on the set, and rapidly learned how to get the most
out of his appearances. Bud Tingwell took Taylor
under h[...]out when you’re working with Chipsey.” Chips, of
course, was six foot five. “When you’re work[...]y and get on a rise.”
And I watched Rod through the camera, day after
day after day, and he seemed to[...]play two-shot scenes with
him. And I wondered how the hell he seemed to
grow like that. And one day I f[...]ut two
inches. He hardly had room to get his foot in but
he’d woken up to that was the way to get himself a
bit taller. Oh, he was smart, Rod.

One of the most successful elements of the film was
Ross Wood’s exquisite black—and-white photography
of the sail-powered pearlers around the little-known
Torres Straits. Wood, too, became Ro[...]avill.
Cavill started as continuity, soon took on the role

of production manager and eventually worked as a
wri[...]her own features.S Initially, Raf-
ferty had been the one who organized the film
scheduling, marking cross—hatches on big sheets of
paper. Robinson recalls — and others confirm the
story 4 that Cavill soon became involved in that

aspect of production and, with typical Australian
inventiveness, developed the strip board scheduling
system which — so indust[...]would have it
— consequently spread throughout the industry and
the world.

In a period when most Australian features were
not financially successful, overseas sales of King of the
Coral Sea returned its £25,000 budget within three
weeks of the film’s completion. The Australian box
office was also good, laying the foundation for South-
ern International’s expansion into co-production with
the French. In retrospect, it appears that deviating

from Southern International’s original strategy of pro-
ducing low-budget Australian films was, in the long
run, a miscalculation. While the first joint venture,
Walla into Paradise (1956),[...]aul-Edmond Descharme when Walla
into Paradise was in the final stages of pre-produc-
tion, and successfully adapted the adventure script to
accommodate two French stars.[...]o-
vided a director for a French language version of the
film along with 30 percent of the budget. In future,
the two companies would alternate in providing the
bulk of the finance and the choice of story and direc-
tor. With a small crew, Robinson set off for a
twelve-week shoot in the New Guinea Highlands.
Again, the film emphasizes travel and action, as Dis-
trict[...]y) and his New
Guinean offsider lead a party into the interior to
investigate jungle oil deposits. Foisted on the group
is a French woman doctor conducting malaria
research for the United Nations. The climax of the
film comes when McAllister, ever knowledgeable
about the ways of the natives, secures the co-opera-
tion of initially hostile tribes in building an airfield in
return for a promise to cure the chief’s sick children.
Witch doctors cause trouble, the explorers are
nearly massacred, but the children recover just
in time.

Shot under extremely difficult circumstances,
the £65,000 film was the second feature to be
shot in colour by an Australian crew — at a time
when c[...]ing high light levels and perfect colour
balance. The film was the first Australian feature
to be shown at Cannes, where the work of cam-
eraman Carl Kayser was highly commended. Lee
Robinson was delighted when his American agent
sold the film to Joseph E. Levine’s Embassy Films
for $60,000. Retitled Walk into Hell, the film
became one of the 100 top-earning box-office
‘ pictures of all time in America. Robinson recalls
; seeing Joe Levine in New York later:

He took me around to the clubs and said, “Eat
what you like, drink what you like. You’re my
guest while you’re in New York.” He said, “I
made millions of dollars out of you.” And I said,
“Well, Joe, I didn’t do t[...]en me if I had lost.” You know, you don’t get
the value out of what you make. Now, of course,
I know that Joe would have probably gone[...]but I didn’t know then. But I also
found later in life that our own agent was work-
ing with Joe Levine to buy the picture, and Joe
was giving a backhander to him t[...]ernational appeared to
be maintaining production, the overall situation for
Australian features was pretty grim. Since the ’20s,
filmmakers had been trying to get legislation in sup-
port of the Australian industry but to no avail. In the
twenty years between 1946 and 1966, only 38 fea-
tures of an hour or more in length were made, of
which eighteen were produced by overseas compa-
n[...]wholly-Australian films managed to
get a release of more than a week in a commercial
cinema. Robinson was well aware of the precari-
ousness of his situation:

Chips and I had done an analysis[...]t to
Canberra to lobby Menzies — we saw Fadden,
the Deputy Prime Minister, and I think we _‘
saw on[...]r. What we wanted ‘E-
was a plan like they have in England, the p68

CINEMA PAPERS ° DECEMBER 1998

And the industry panels voting electorate were
sufficiently impressed to nominate it in nine cate-
gories in the Australian Film Institute Awards in
probably the strongest and most diverse year ever.

Whichever way you look at it, Peter Duncan’s
imaginative debut, the black comic—tragedy Chil-
dren of the Revolution, has made a strong impact.

This story[...]arted out as an essay, a polemic I was
writing on the concept of blind faith. Iwas inter-
ested in how to prove to a Christian that God
didn’t exi[...]eople cope when every-
thing they put their faith in turns out to not exist?

As a short story, it wasn’t working because you
can’t offer the ultimate proof. Then I thought of
human gods throughout the course of history,
with some of the most dramatic examples in the
20th century being Stalin and Hitler, who flew
off the agenda because I wanted it to be funny.
That left[...]was a bank
manager, was a card—carrying member of the
Communist Party back in the 19405 and, through
him, I found a vehicle to tell this story. I remem-
ber how to the end of his life he adhered to his
communist principles. That concept of blind faith
really intrigued me and became the catalyst for
lots of other ideas. The story became a combi-
nation of these two things.

Was the main character of the fervent communist,
Joan Fraser [Judy Davis], base[...]ow a Joan, someone
who’s virulent and impatient in terms of their
world beliefs, who watches the news on televi-
sion and gets so frustrated by what’s going on in
the world.

I guess at the heart of the film is the concept:
How does a passionate, intelligent, rati[...]h good intentions and a good
heart reconcile late in their life the fact that what
they’ve been working for has been distorted in
such a way that it wasn’t just ineffective, it[...]ter reviews his opinion?

No, but I did see a lot of documentaries in prepa-
ration for this, amongst them one in which kids talk
about the impact of Stalin’s death as the worst event
of their lives — 11- to 12-year—olds who in 1953
believed that all science, politics and literature had
stemmed from him.

The fervency of the beliefs is extraordinary and
what’s fascinating now is that Stalin’s pictures are
going back up in Moscow. People are rehabilitating
him saying, “[...]ng else, we never had
it so good as back then.” The post-Gorbachev exper-
iment hasn’t worked and i[...]ct. It’s an
interesting time to make this film. In 1989, when I
started writing the script, the response, especially in
Russia, would have been quite different.

'\.

We[...]with your producer Tristram
Miall‘?

We met at the AFTRS graduation screenings early
in 1994 where my short, A Bit ofa Tiffwith the
Lord, was shown. Tris liked it and suggested we get
together. The scenario happened just as I hoped it
would. I’d[...]a screenplay ready for
graduation, though it was in a very unruly form of
203 pages of totally—unshootable material.

Tris warned me h[...]ed
it and things started rolling from there, with the
NSW Film and Television Office coming in with
development money to enable me to hone it into
something vaguely shootable.

Towards the end of 1994, Judy [Davis] read the
script and really liked it. Once she was on board,
we had a combination that was strong enough for
the FFC in April 1995 to agree to back it.

Did your short films have anything in common with
Children of the Revolution?

Black humour. As a writing student at film school,
I also got to direct The Ohituary, about a man who
is mistakenly believed[...]t too happy about
their reactions. It’s a story in which I was very much
concerned with turning points and structure to try
to get the laughs coming at the right place.

A Bit of £1 Tiff with the Lord is about a young mer-
chant banking priest [Richard Roxburgh] from
the Vatican who comes back for his mother’s funeral
on a property in western NSW. His father [Ron
Haddrick] is seeing angels, which faces the son with
a crisis of how to deal with that — it’s a bit mad and
ve[...]as a solicitor. It was
very interesting work — the best in the field — which
actually strengthened my resolve[...]isfying me. I knew I had to try some-
thing else. The best fun I’d had at uni — much to my
academic detriment — was doing revues, so ideally
I wanted to go in that direction.

At that stage, you could have veered towards
theatre. How did you make the choice to become
a filmmaker?

I’d always been[...]Hemsley] I’d written a 60-page script
called “The Discreet*Revolution” and sent that as
part of my application to AFTRS. When I went for
my inter[...]wanted to talk
about, and Paul Thompson [now Head of Film and
Television, then Head of Writing], who’s been a key
support in this whole process, was wildly excited
about it.

Did you continue to work on the Revolution script
at film school?

Not really. For most of the time it sat in my drawer,
but the ideas withstood a very important test: the
test of time.

The screenplay has been highly acclaimed. Can you

elaborate on the writing process?

I guess I did 10 to 12 drafts all up, but each one was
a lot of work. I wasn’t disseminating.

What I had when I first did the original script
became pretty much the first half of Children of the
Revolution: Judy’s character; her world in Balmain;
her trip to Russia; fucking Stalin; his death as a result
of that; return to Australia pregnant and the child’s
growing up. The first part fell into place quite eas-
ily.[...]

ical. She’s strong, intelligent, dynamic, everyone
in Sydney’s in love with her, so why not him?

I didn’t have the tougher material of what hap-
pens to the child once he grows up and how his
metamorphosis[...]to Joe’s jour-
ney early on and this is evident in the drafts. Many
were concerned with the second half of the story.
Joe took a number of journeys in the screenplay; he
was an academic, in advertising, a politician, unem-
ployed, ran for[...]I tried so many things
until I finally settled on the trade union leader. It
just felt right.

It was important to connect the two journeys.
They are two different people but a[...]ny parents, Joan has aspi-
rations for her child. The film also shows the
importance of the ‘baggage’ we carry; the mystery
of what makes us what we are.

So the forces of history create Joe but also doom
his relationship[...]’re sullied by human inter-
est and distortions of history. That’s Why the film
is in that quasi—documentary format — to say we’r[...]lleged truth, but we all know
it’s manipulated. The film makes the point that the
blurring of fact and fiction can be quite dangerous.

Joe [Ri[...]d lovers whose relationship is
doomed by history. The forces of history conspire
in such a way and so profoundly [Anna’s grand-
par[...]ercome it.

Anna's dream sequences — nightmares of Joe's
relationship to Stalin — play a pivotal role in the
plot and structure of this film.

She is the first person to articulate what everyone
else, in[...]ve
her visions and to tell Joe about them, it’s the thin
edge of the wedge; it’s the slippery slope to disas-
ter from there on. It’s a key point.

What prompted you to use the quasi-documentary
framework?

The format is important in terms of questioning the
truth of history. It was a ‘gift’ in this complex, dia-
logue-driven story to have the occasional interviews
with ‘experts’, which c[...]h archival footage, still pho-
tographs to enrich the story and create diversity.

Joan is a vibrant ch[...]ory contains
such strong material that keeping up the momen-
tum in the second half of the film, where her son's
story takes centre stage, m[...]y to that is not losing Joan’s char-
acter from the film, because she is its heart. The film
is really a metaphor of how I see communism. It
starts with a lot of heart and heady optimism, lovely
intelligent peop[...]It was important that Joan remains there and
for the humour to be maintained. Some of the
sequences between Rachel and Richard are quite
funny, but there is no question that there is a change
of tone as the story progresses; otherwise, the
metaphor wouldn’t work. Thethe entire spectrum from slapstick to poignant
tragedy?

The material being covered was structured in such
a way that it would reflect — on a metaphorical level
— the history of communism, starting off with great
humour, larger[...]up quite a bit older and
sadder. To have done it in a way that didn’t reflect
that breadth of tone would not have satisfied me or
the story that I wanted to tell. Whether or not the
film suffers from having those gear shifts is in the
eyes of the individual filmgoer, but I wouldn’t have
made the film differently.

The gear shifts were always inherent in the story
and we certainly discussed them. I always made it
clear that the film was going to start and end in the
way it does, and it was up to those people who we[...]his film
whether they were going to accept that.

The Russian sequences contain the most farcical

). Children. of

“I wanted an
icon to lay
Stalin. rven
]udy’s stature,
I thought it was
important that
the role was
played by some-
one familiar to
the audience —
to whom we
travel to make
a pilgrima[...]e
you trying to achieve there?

I made a decision in keeping with the tone of black
comedy that Stalin would not be treated in the
traditional way of being portrayed as a foreboding
ogre. I chose to treat him in a humorous way. I also
am aware from material l’ve read that anyone who
visited the Kremlin at that time found it to be a
larger-than-life experience. Therefore, it seemed to
me, the intellectual logic of it was to push that into
the realm of the bizarre, using as much dramatic
licence as possible.

I don’t think there’s anything in reality that’s more
strange than Stalin singing and dancing at the end
of a dinner party, because he did it at the end of
every dinner party he had at the Kremlin. The fact
that he sings a Cole Porter tune is certainly taking

a lot of licence, but from the western point-of-view
that has the resonances that are quite appropriate
to history.[...]in. ” What I was try-
ing to convey was a sense of larger-than-life in overt
comic terms which wouldn’t have worked in other,
everyday parts of the film.

But there is so much powerful iconography
attached to the period that people have an expec-
tation and understanding of Stalin. So, when you
travestize, it’s naturally going to be funny — as our
first impression of him doing up his fly or reading
Hollywood movie magazines.

In the early drafts, on her arrival in Russia Joan
was going to be appalled by the excesses, but that
just didn’t work in the story. It was much better for
her to be blown away by everything — psychologi-
cally drunk — on the whole trip. Working against
the grain is where the humour is.

Did you think of Judy while you were writing it?

The role required a person who could play from the
ages of 27- 69 with a lot of long diatribes; in short,
it required a brilliant actor and she is a[...]nt. I count my blessings every day that
she liked the script.

You'd already established a relationship with
Richard Roxburgh in A Bit ofa Tiff with the Lord.
Was that automatically extended to this project in
casting him as Stalin's offspring?

Absolutely. R[...]ting a co—op together to make it somehow. Given
the scale the film has turned out to be, it would have
been a catastrophic experience. Richard fired the
enthusiasm of Anne Churchill-Brown at Shanahan’s
Management and, as most of our leading actors —
Judy, Sam Neill, Geoffrey Rush, a star on the ascen-
dant as evident in his wonderful performance in
Shinez — are represented by them3, it was a great
asset to have this communication.

F. Murray Abraham is the only non-Australian actor
in the film. Did you intentionally want Stalin to be
pla[...]Judy’s stature,
I thought it was important that the role was played
by someone familiar to the audience — to whom we
travel to make a pilgrimage. There are probably a
number of Australian actors who could have played
him, but[...]al icon. Murray is an Oscar-winner, can look
like the most evil son of a bitch on the planet, and
yet he’s a charming and lovely human being. It was
a blessing that he was available and loved the script.

Geoffrey Rush’s performance as Joan's[...]iet under-
statement — so different to his role in Shine. Were

you using him as the antithesis for your larger-than-
life characters?

He’s the glue, the person untainted by the outer
world. The inner—world of that family is everything
to him, so he stretches himself in a herculean way
to keep everyone together, despite the interest in
the external world of Joan and Joe. That makes his
very warm character one of the most accessible in
the film, and I think Geoffrey just does a beauti-
ful, beautiful job.

I-Ie’s truly brilliant in Shine in terms of a truly vir-
tuoso performance as an actor - as an actor it’s a
bravura thing. In Children, it’s a far more under-
stated[...]

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A Film Australia Production 1996. Made in
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Corporation, ZDF a[...]

Did you intend him to be the character with whom
the audience can best bond? At times, in dramatic
terms, he acts as a sort of Greek chorus.

That’s right. You don’t have that many options in
this film in terms of characters that the audience can
latch onto. Joan is a strident zealot — there aren’t
that many of us out there — Nine [Sam Neill] is a
spy, Joe i[...]bout her. You’re pretty
much left with Welch as the audience’s personal
touchstone, although we all know the other char-
acters. That’s why, dramatically, I think it’s very
interesting that in the end he suffers more than any-
body. The person in the inner-world suffers more,
despite the fact that Joan’s outer-world dreams aren’t
realized emotionally, because ofof that passion
into his family. He presents that home-spun, simple
commonsense reflection of circumstances.

How daunting was it to be working
with such an experienced stellar cast —
some of this country's and the world's
best — as a first-time director straight
out of film school?

It was daunting working with them,[...]nting all right; leaving Judy, Sam
and Murray out of the equation, Geof-
frey, Richard and Rachel are such[...]experience was some-
thing on which I could rely; the fact that
I knew if I could effectively communi-
cate my agenda for the whole film or
a scene to Judy — or the others — I knew
it would come to life, happen. That
took a lot of pressure off. So I tried to
shape, rather than force, performances.

The most important part of my job
became keeping the whole film in my
head and trying to keep the nuance. I
found that difficult because it’s such a
big film and because we were shooting
all over the place, juggling to fit in with
the actors’ availability. Murray was only
here for[...]for four weeks,
Rachel had commitments to finish The Small Man4;
there was no continuity in the shooting sequences

«

What was your biggest challenge?

Getting the pace and rhythm right in terms of the
whole picture. Earlier in the shoot I was less cog-
nisant of pacing; I became more aware of its
importance as I got further into the shoot.

Did that mean much of the rhythm and pacing was
shaped in the editing room?

Absolutely. One of the concerns for funding
approval was not only my inexperience but that of
my editor, Simon Martin, who had worked as an
ass[...]cript editor on Children and was an integral part
of the team; in fact, his contribution to this film has
been enor[...]makes sense.

He wasn’t hard enough on me with the script
editing and paid for it in the end. We were in pro-
duction for seven months and I felt confiden[...]abuse at each
other. I find that was so important in the editing
process where you’re locked in a room with some-
one for 12 hours a day, 6-7 days a week. The person
has to have your sensibility and, while ot[...]ether anyone else could have been as sensitive to
the material. Bringing in Simon at script stage meant
that he had the distinct advantage of being acutely
tuned to the tone.

How did you plan the look of the film?

I had lots of stylistic conversations with the direc-
tor of photography, Martin McGrath, production
designer Roger Ford and costume designer Terry
Ryan. A lot of these related to following the tone of
the metaphor.

We started with warm reds and oranges, the
colours of idealism and commitment. In Russia, cold
blue and greys predominate, but as the story pro-

—-Z Nine (Sam Neill) and Anna (Rachel Griffiths).
Children of the Revolution.

gresses, and the idealism crumbles, so too does the
film lose warmth.

I storyboarded about one-third, but Danny Bat-
terham, one of the most senior [camera] operators
in the country, and Martin were very flexible about
coverage. Russian sequences were shot with a lot
of camera movement to reflect Joan’s all-at-sea
nature.

How did you use the camera to show Joe [junior’s]
increasing power?

We tried to show that through re-reflecting the
Kremlin segments. As his power—base expands,
things become increasingly a metamorphosis of the
Kremlin environment.

It works on an exponential curve; it is impercep-
tible at the beginning and gradually looking
backwards to that fun part of the film but with a
very different feel. Something’s gone horribly wrong
along the way.

So, in a sense, you revisited the Russian segments
in the latter part of the film?

Stalin’s office in design terms was the key to the
sequences in the Kremlin and also in the Australian
offices, because Stalin’s office becomes Joe’s office
and accommodates the various stages of Joe’s life.

How difficult was it shooting the Russian sequences
in Australia, to recreate the Kremlin, for instance?

It wasn’t at all difficult because we only had one
exterior. That was probably the biggest night of our
shoot: making the exterior of the Commemorative
Pavilion at the Showground into the Kremlin steps.
Roger Ford and Laurie Fahey, the art director, and
I had long conversations and they were wonderful.
The exterior was tough but I didn’t want it to be the
ornate baroque palace full of gilt chandeliers as it is
known. I wanted to play[...]y set-up with
straight lines — and then to have the twist in the char-
acters. I think that worked for the comedy.

How important was subtext in connecting the
personal and political worlds?

It was very important to connect the kitchen-sink
world of the film and the political power world
because that’s the heart of the journey for the

individual Zealot/1deologue’s relationship to the big-
ger structures. For Joan, world revolution is the goal,
but it starts at home with a kitchen-sink reality. One
of the things that frustrates her is that no one’s qui[...]wants to have a revolution.

Nine AFI nominations in probably the strongest, most
diverse field ever is pretty impressive for a debut.

I was absolutely thrilled. We went in with very mod-
est expectations and I’m just de[...]dit-
ing, because he was so integral, not only to the
editing but to the whole process.

What are the release plans for the film?

We’re opening nationally on Boxing Day and Mira-
max has picked it up for North and Latin America,
the UK and Italy. A May Day opening is being
planned for the U.S. ®

1 Recent feature credits as producer include Strictly Ball[...]’: Holiday (1995).
1 Shine (Scott Hicks, 1996).
The major exception being Rachel Griffiths, wh[...]

Congratulate the following
S . .,
AF} nominated feature films:
2 9

"‘::::'cHrLDREN or THE REVOLUTION

fie: AND omen CATASTROPHES

-R.

LOV[...]ydney: 53-55 Brisbane Street Surry Hills NSW 20l0 Australia Tel: 61-:2-928l T266 Fax: 6l-2-928l 9220
‘ Repr[...]-36 little a Street North Melbourne Victoria 305] Australia Tel: 6l-3-9348 9340 Fax: 61-3-9326 5493

U[...]

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AT THE NTERNATIONAL ‘ rounding this latest Aussie crowd-pleaser.

With the barrage of interviews you've just been
through, what were the North American press most
interested in talking about?

They’re fascinated with why the[...]tralian film they see; they’re fascinated with the
quality of the stories[which] they love; you know,
they mention Priscilla, Muriel’s Wedding, Shine.’
The perception is that it’s amazing that Australia
keeps turning out all these quality, low—budget[...]1LM f£s'r1vAL.

A RoIvIA.N':r:Ic‘. COMEDY 32-: IN
A c.o:..or.SRrLS:., '1:‘AcI<:’x‘ HONEY-
1v1[...]was WOIVLAJN

There was a question from the audience last night
about the funding for Hotel de Love.

Yeah, the guy said I was a capitalist!
They were interested[...]~Is — AND

Do you see Hotel de Love as part of a particular
.E,‘I-“‘E"C§$'I‘V£ C,OIVI?LI1VIE1‘ITS “ THE CROVJD. style or genre of Australian films that have enjoyed

‘-..[...]

I think it’s the most purely romantic comedy of
all those films. Muriel’: Wedding vacillated
between moments of comedy and moments of
drama, while Priscilla was more a comedy than
a r[...]their
little idiosyncratic charms. What they have in
common is that they’re Australian, they’re su[...], with great
music. Hotel de Love shares all that in common.
But the way each story is told is different. So, I
wouldn’t lump them together.

1970s music is an integral part of your film, as it is
in the three other films. Why was the '70s the
decade for your soundtrack?

First, we had the flashback scene, which was ten
years ago, and in the mid-’80s they were playing all
the 705 songs again. All the parties I went to redid
those disco songs. So we used a lot of the songs for
the piano player [Alan I-Iopgoodl in the movie. I
just find it hysterical that this old hotel pianist would
be singing these kind of songs, like “Howzat”.
is it that those songs are the ultimate in kitsch
romance?

Yes, the piano player certainly. My father was a
pianist a[...]se songs which people
just love. They are staples of a certain kind of lounge
lizard music. So, I stuck ’em in there.

3,!

'I[A] a writ!” _Y°'“-

spend Siz¢ 1'11-°1'l.f-H-3
inThe film seems to walk a fine line between
reality and a touch of surrealism, which again is
reminiscent of Muriel’s Wedding and Priscilla.
Do you consider that balance part of the
romantic comedy genre?

I think we probably had t[...]y Met Sally [Rob Reiner, 1989]
is very realistic in the comedy and the dialogue.
Our characters are real people in an almost

unreal place. It is not an i[...]l hotel and people have
to live and sleep there.

The humour comes from a lot of the
wilder aspects of it. In terms of the pro-
duction design, even though these rooms
were fantastically bizarre, they nonethe-
less had a bed in them and were real
rooms.

We had to be very careful in terms of
the acting, so that everyone stayed cen-
tred and wer[...]a little broader and have a little more
fun with the more peripheral characters,
like with the newly-married couple,
Bruce and janet Campbell [C[...]u have to keep them grounded and
focused and have the more zany, wacky stuff on
the periphery. A film like Four Weddings and a
Funeral [Mike Newell, 1994] is very similar in
that way, with grounded central characters and
a broad, comic aspect on the periphery.

The film does have a slightly dark undertone to
it, p[...]e]. At
times it is frighteningly real, especially the final
confrontation between them.

You need to have those kind of scenes if the
movie isn’t going to be just light and frothy the
whole time. I was interested in investigating
what’s wrong with this marriage, what’s wrong
with these people — not just focusing on the
comic aspects of their relationship, but viewing
them as people that are tragic. It’s a kind of
tragedy what’s happened to them.

All the relationships have some serious scenes,
like when Rick’s on the rooftop with Melissa. All
of these characters have their serious moments,

which I think you really need, otherwise the com-
edy will have no real inferences, no real meaning for
people.

Do you consider the outcome of the film is
determined by the constraints of the romantic
comedy genre?

It’s an interesting question. It’s hard to talk about it
without giving the ending away!

My advantage is you never knew who is the real
star of the movie, or I hope you don’t. It’s a weird
ense[...]into something else.

Because there’s a couple of permutations with an
ensemble, the normal boy-meets—girl, boy-loses-girl,
boy-gets-girl—in-the-end didn’t apply. We didn’t have
two stars we[...]son, and Rick and Stephen argu-
ing about it all. In that sense, it was advantageous
in that, hopefully, the suspense of who’s going to
end up with whom would go on longer than it nor-
mally would in a romantic comedy.

That seems to be an effective way of revising the
genre, of giving it a bit more longevity.

Yeah, it is and I don’t think they do that in Ameri-
can movies. Studios don’t really make en[...]mpletely star-
driven. It’s impossible to think of Hotel de Love with
someone who’s a star because it would completely
unbalance the ensemble: “Okay, this is the person
I’m following and, because this person is the star,
they’re gonna end up with this other person.”

Are you perhaps just sneaking in there with
Aden Young? He got some favourable comments
from the audience last night.

Probably yes, particularly in Australia.

The film actually balances the two male leads very
well; neither one outshines the other. But Aden
Young does have the name.

Right, yeah. But what can you do?

Perhaps by giving him the less sympathetic
character.

On initial reading t[...]n I was
casting it, I didn’t think, “Which is the bigger
role? Who should I give the bigger role to?” My
feeling is, when people ask, “Who’s it about?”, I say,
“It’s about both of them. It’s about how both their
romantic lives are a function of this strange rela-
tionship thcy’ve had, ten ye[...]nce off to someone else?” So, it’s about both of
them. I don’t see either of them being more or less
important than the other.

Prior to directing Hotel de Love, Rosenberg was a
scriptwriter in Hollywood. I-Ie’d studied law at
Monash University and published award-winning
short fiction in various literary magazines before
becoming involved in film.

What was your fiction like?
No jokes! All[...]then writing about relationships?
Yeah, all kinds of strange love stories.

What prompted the decision to try scriptwriting?

I’d finished my[...]to write scripts, so I thought I’d give it a go in Los

Angeles. It was a time when I was mortgage-l[...]t give it a go then, I might
not be able to do it in ten years. So, I took off.

I wrote my first script, “Eliot Loves Gabriela”, in
about four months. I got an agent and within a da[...]off Paramount and it may be getting made towards
the end of the year. John Cusack is attached to it.

How did you get a foot in the door in LA,
particularly without having gone to film school?

That was the most difficult part, because you can sit
in your room and write War and Peace, and write a
le[...]e I knew who had any con-
nection whatsoever with the film industry. Through
doing that, I got about fi[...]oves, who
also represents Ron Shelton [Tin Cup].

The next thing I was being offered scripts. I did
one[...]y; I’m writing one for Twentieth Century
Fox at the moment; and one for Disney. So, I was
just busy,[...]hours.

Did you always envisage Hotel de Love as the film
you would direct?

Yes.

Now that yo[...]

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Hotel de Love.

What is it about the process you really don't like?

Oh, God! Got a couple of hours? You know, it’s
really difficult if you just want to be a writer in Hol-
lywood, because you have to learn to give up[...]well, and
I wasn’t very good at that.

Have any of those scripts seen the light of day on film?

They’re all at various stages of development. I don’t
want to jinx things, but it looks like the Disney one
may be going ahead, and one of the others.

Are they all romantic comedies?

No, no, they’re different. Two of them are roman-
tic comedies, one’s a comedy but not romantic, and
the other’s a bit more serious. 50, it’s been pre[...]ld you direct someone else’s script?

If it was the right script, I would. IfI really loved
it and felt some involvement with the script and
that I could bring it to life, I would[...]and a studio exec who’s
going to be supportive of you. You have to
Search a bit, but they’re there, and you just have
to be careful about the people you work with.

What were some of the difficulties you encountered
in the transition from writing to directing?

The most apparent thing is that as a writer you spend
six months in intense isolation, and then as a direc-
tor you spend three months in intense exposure to
people. Everyone’s coming u[...]” It’s about communicating what you
want from the script to the people around you.
The most difficult thing is probably the unforeseen
things that come up every day, and having to deal
with them. You know, like losing the permit for this
location where you’re planning to shoot, and losing
the sun behind a cloud ~ just those unforeseen phys-
ical things that can happen on a movie set. But I
think the only way to deal with that is to try and turn
it to your advantage, and, instead of fighting it, work

with it and say, “Okay, we d[...]tic that we can do elsewhere?”

So, rather than the logistics of it getting in the way of
your creativity, it actually makes you more creat[...]. It spurs you on to new and fresh ideas.

To me, the real danger with directing is over-
preparing, such that you don’t allow things to
happen spontaneously in front of the camera. The
whole enormous organization is designed to cap-
ture some moment of truth, of real life, between
people. I think you always have to allow for the
opportunity to do that. You can’t be too structured
in your thinking about how you want to shoot
somethi[...]rector?

I’m being offered a few studio jobs at the moment,
so I may do one of those; or I may do another script
of my own which I am currently writing. At the
moment I’rn just reading and writing, and in a few
months I’ll decide.

Will you be heading[...]ie. My feeling
is that it’s simply always about the script and the
story. I’ll do a story wherever it’s set, if[...]I guess I will always write Aussie movies. ®

1 The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (Stephan
Elliott, 1994), Muriel’:[...]

entirely on location in a part of _Australi_a which had not
witnessed feature film[...]ifteen years, since
Fred Zinnemann s production of The Sundowners in 1960.

CINEMA PAPERS - DECEMBER 1995

THE MAKING OF SUNDAY TOO FAR AWAY
resulted from a unique set of g0vernment—initiated
circumstances. In the late 1960s, the Dunstan Labor
Government had taken advice from co[...]hillip Adams and political analyst Barry
Jones on the feasibility of funding film production
through state incentives. The result of their researches
was to lead to the setting up of the South Australian
Film Corporation, a state initiative. In broad outline,
the plan was to create a viable industry in the state by
consolidating government short—film and documen-
tary production to provide a pool of experienced film
crews, and, at the same time, to lay down plans for
feature film production using loan finance. Adams’
account of the process (in 1980) is succinct: “I devised
the South Australian Film Corporation [SAFC] which

C[...]c continues to survive [...] when Dun-
stan found the money, the money found the talent.“

In this determined effort at state capitalism,
described by Albert Moran in 1983, the SAFC was
designed to “Reflect our way of life with truth and
artistry [...] to provide opp[...]ftsmen to develop and express them-
selves within the film medium.”

The first feature from the SAFC was to be Sunday
Too Far Away, but before this production could be
launched there were to be a number of false starts to
the plan to make feature films. The prospects of finan-
cial success, for any feature project, we[...]t

Gil Brealey and Matt Carroll have expressed to the author
some reservations about this article appearing.
. _ has taken note of these concerns, but has decided
to publish as it believes the article is written without bias,
and goes to great lengths to represent and fairly discuss
the views of all the key players.

Equally important, ' is one of the few
true icons of Australian cinema. Whatever problems the
filmmalvers had along the way, whatever couragus steps
Brealey believed he had to take to rightly fulfil his role as a
producer, the result is a classic that continues to gain in
stature with the years.

flnly in celebration of this beloved film is this article printed.

35

36

Producer-in-Chief of the SAFC, felt that the main
problem facing the Australian industry was its dis-
continuity, because very few locally-produced feature
films had been made in the country for more than
thirty years? Australians had almost no useful expe-
rience in the production of feamres, and those who
did had gained their exper[...]were all learning
a great deal, and we learnt it the hard way”, Brealey
said.“

Also, there was no guarantee that the films would
find a market, as the local industry had long been
dominated by U8. and British distributors. Despite
this, the SAF C projected a somewhat naive optimism
that Au[...]ould find a viable market-
place or at least suit the needs of local audiences. The
board of the SAFC confidently announced, prior to
the production of Sunday Too Far Away:

It has now been established[...]ecover their production and distribution
expenses in Australia.5

The producers lacked experience and were conscious
of a formidable array of critics ready to pounce if they
made a failure. And, to compound the issue, politi-
cians were watching the enterprise with atypical
interest. Film production had been encouraged by the
previous Prime Minister, John Gorton. Peter Cole-
man, a member of the Australian Council for the Arts
in the late 1960s and early ’70s, recalls Gorton’s
enthusiasms: “[he] made clear in many speeches that
he wanted [...] to show the rest of the world.” Give
us some films and be quick, he seemed to say.5 Cole-
man also noted the “tendency to centralisation of
decision making, so that fewer people are having
a say in how it is spent”. He adds, “We wanted
results[...]”
Coleman recalled: “[There is] always a risk in Gov-
ernment patronage. Governments want something to
show for their money, something to show the pub-
lic, and something to boast to foreigners about.”7
The prevailing optimism about local feature film
production was further encouraged by the election
of the first federal Labor government in almost three
decades, under the leadership of Gough Whitlam.
The Australia Council began to address itself to the
promotion of Australian cultural values, however
vaguely these Values were to be defined in practice.
For the first few years of the Australiathe Australian Film
Development Corporation (AFDC), which loaned
money for commercial projects. For the first time in
recent history, many Australians working in the arts,
including theatre and film, saw the opportunity to
create works which were popular, a[...]and
began to develop projects which would reflect the
general optimism and idealism of the Whitlam era.

The activities of the SAF C were heavily influenced
by Premier Don Dunstan, an ardent supporter of the
arts. Through its groundbreaking development and
production of Sunday Too Far Away, the SAP C was
to establish itself as a prime producer of quality Aus-
tralian film. Sunday stands as one of the first successful
attempts at a period film, a “breakthrough with the
public [...] at its best a superb evocation of 19503 out-
back life”3. Sunday was one of the first
locally-produced films since fedda, made by Charles
Chauvel in the mid-19505, to make extensive use of
the Australian landscape, and it set a benchmark for
modestly-budgeted local production. The skills devel-
oped in the production of Sunday were to serve the
Australian industry in good stead, although some
painful lessons had to be learnt, particularly about the
process of project development.

The problems faced by the producers stemmed
mainly from the financial principles on which the SAP C
had been founded. In 1973, Gil Brealey recounted
details of his interview for the post of Director of the
SAF C, and his alarm when he learned the arrangements
for financing the Corporation’s activities:

I said “Well how m[...]pend each year?” [T]here were smiles all around
the table, and though nobody quite knew they
thought there’d be about $400,000 a year. When
I was appointed to the position I was told that it (the
operating capital and expenses) were going to be[...]d out that I tfid have to worry about
it — not the capital but the interest. We’d be up for

about $200,000 over five years just on interest.
Nobody had worked it out.9

One of the aims of the SAFC was to produce feature
films, so Brealey beg[...]e-
rial for its first feature. Brealey feels that the SAFC
dependence on loan funds put additional pressures
on the enterprise to find a viable feature project:

The South Australian Film Corporation never oper-
ated on a government grant of any nature, which is
something people don’t gen[...]n it — we had to choose

"SUNDAY T00 FAR AWAY"

The Sundays ofthe life i own

rléseltogntillose For me to care

an[...]llolid cfiiil 80 long

s my mind
ges behind

But the hi hts can et on down And things won't

stay orgo[...]ture projects that we could go ahead with
and one of those was Gallipoli.

Gallipoli was an ambitious[...]s, a military expert and a producer at Crawfords,
the large Melbourne television production house.
Crawfords had trained a stable of experienced writ-
ers and producers, and had deve[...]like Homicide. Jones had shown
a strong interest in historical subjects, and had pre-
viously been involved as writer-researcher on the
British-financed Tony Richardson production of Ned
Kelly (1970), which starred rock singer Mick[...]g with
Jones, as they had shared many experiences in the
Melbourne theatre world of the 19505 and ’60s. The
implications of the deal with Crawfords quickly
became apparent to Br[...]ious he
was prepared to co—operate, but that if the project
went ahead Hector was going to be very closely
involved, and would in fact assume it was a Craw-
fords production that happened to be made by the
South Australian Film Corporation. Now, politi-
cally that was of no value to us at that stage, because
we had to get some sort of clout if we were to
pursue this as producers in our own right.

aluable time began to be lost in negotia-
tions with Crawfords. Well—known writer
John Dingwall was contracted, but the main
obstacle to realizing the project was the
attitude of Crawfords, which demanded a
high degree of creative control over the pro-
duction and major financial participation. At an early
stage, Dingwall was asked to register the project at
the Writer’s Guild as being Crawfords’ property.

There were soon other unexpected political prob-
lems. The film would require the staging of large
battle scenes, and Brealey had contacted the Minis-
ter for the Army. He was told by the Minister’s office
that government support (required for the staging of
large battle scenes) would only be forthcoming if thethe Minister: “When I said
that we were thinking of working with Crawfords,
he was not pleased and he circled the name Craw-
fords and became very concerned about[...]itect-turned-producer,
who had previously managed the Australia Council’s
Film and Television Board, was made Head of Pro-
duction (so Carroll recalls; Brealey says Carroll
was, in fact, Production Co—ordinator), and became
involved in the efforts to solve the Gallipoli prob-
lems. The points of dispute seemed irreconcilable and
the SAF C decided to relinquish the project. Carroll
recalls that the break was acrimonious:

It was a terrible bloody[...]rsation because Gil didn’t want Craw-
fords, so the whole thing fell out of bed. All of a
sudden, I had a contract with John to write a pro-
ject, and Gil said, “Look, the only way to settle this
is to not do it”, and I[...]“Will you go
and sort it out?”1°

This left the SAFC with Dingwall still on contract but
no project to work on. Dingwall offered an original
idea, based on the career of his brother-in-law, who
had been a shearer involved in the great Queensland
shearers’ strike of 195 6. Working briefly as a rouse-
about in shearing sheds, Dingwall had listened to h[...]

So I went up to Sydney and sat down[...]idea. I’d like to do a script
about my brother-in—law’s life as a shearer.” And I
said, “I[...]do something on
shearers”, and Gil said, being the good old urban
Melbournian, “I don’t want to[...]Brealey says that he was immediately attracted by the
potential of the story and setting, and particularly by
its castin[...]pson [as Foley]. I had used
Jack Thompson for one of his first film appearances
back in the late ’60s at the Commonwealth Film
Unit. I had a terrific admiration for his work. He
was one of the few, in those days, with a gen-
uinely butch maleness abo[...]ilm treatment usually defines scenes and segments
in short outline form, but DingWall’s treatment
read like a short story. Brealey recognized the qual-
ity of the story, characters and setting, and became
very en[...]t was about 20 pages long and
was undoubtedly one of the most exciting things I
have ever read in the Australian film industry.” 13

“Shearers” had been written with a definite social
purpose in mind, and it had strong documentary ele-
ments. Dingwall wanted to record a way of life which
would soon disappear:

I felt the magnificence of the story of men who
would go into the middle of nowhere, and work at
this incredible pace for a period of six or seven

CINEMA PAPERS - DECEMBER 1996

weeks, just among themselves, for the title of being
the gun shearer — the fastest shearer. And then they
come into town wit[...]that they had bro-
ken their backs on, and do it in a dice game or a
card game, and then have to go back again.

Dingwall’s treatment portrayed the adventures of
Foley, a gun shearer who begins to lose his edge and,
at the same time, becomes romantically involved with
the daughter of a station owner, who has returned
home after a divorce. Other key elements of the story
are the camaraderie and competition between the men
who formed the “shed”, conflict with the station
owner (“the cocky”) and the growing threat of the
shearers’ strike as scab labour is brought in to com-
pete with the professional shearers’ wage demands.
This early document outlines most of the events

of the film, lists the kinds of incidents which would
be shown, and moves towards[...]ed as gun shearer, and losing his money
gambling. The shearers’ strike against reduced pay
and conditions begins, and Foley finds himself lead-
ing the men against police harassment and hired
toughs pr[...]town, but returns to consummate
his romance with the cocky’s daughter.

The film was to be a historical piece, set in the
recent past, depicting a labour struggle, as well as the
lifestyle of thethe Australian
spirit — ‘don’t give a stuff’, ‘do anything’, fight, drink,
everything was contained in that story.” The film
treatment also delineates some of the less-attractive
class divisions which exist in Australian society, fore-
grounding the workers against a less-than-
sympathetically—portrayed “cocky”, who refers
scathingly to the shearers as “scum.”13

Carroll asked Dingwall to fulfil his contract with
the SAP C by writing a screenplay from this treatment,
and found he had a strong personal commitment to
the story: “Part of my honours thesis was the shear-
ing sheds, as indigenous architecture [...] and so I
knew all the history of the Australian Workers Union
going right back.” Dingwall agreed, although in ret-
rospect he was less than happy about the financial

deal that was struck. Dingwall indicated his relatively
low status and the humble aims of the project by ref-
erence to the fees that were agreed to for his services:
“They asked me to do the script for a pittance, which
I did. I wrote the screenplay for $7,500, which
even then was a pittance, on the basis that I would
get 10 percent of the overseas profits. I have never
seen another penny.”

“Shearers” was announced in 1973 in a fulsome
press release. Carroll was attracted by the setting and
the visual qualities of the environment, and together
he and Dingwall discussed the settings for the film:

John then went off on a research trip. He went to

Queensland to track down his brother—in-law. I also

sent him up to where my brother lives in the bush

and we did a whole research thing. Out ofin conversation with
his brother—in—law, listening to the tales of shear-
ers’ lives, and recording these in note form:

I asked him to take me around to the old
shearers in Brisbane. Old Garth was based
on a guy whose son[...]ow
dresser, and he couldn’t find him. He looked
in all the windows in Sydney.

he title of the film came from a piece
of shearing folklore, which tells of the
effects of hard work on the sexual life of
the shearers, and especially the women’s
response to this: “Friday night too t[...]ht too far away.”” Sunday Too
Far Away became the title, as Dingwall recalls:
“It was just a saying they had the shearers’
wives. So I called it Sunday Too FarAu/ay. Now
that’s pure instinctive titling of the film.”
Brealey intended to raise funding for the pro-
ject through the AFDC, which would match the
SAFC’s own funds. Just as the AFDC approved
the project, Dingwall suddenly went back to
Queensland, and Brealey feels that this created prob-
lems in the development of the script:

The AFDC liked it [the treatment] and they invested
in the first draft. John Dingwall disappeared that
afternoon. He got the sudden news that his son was
ill or there was som[...]st draft.

Brealey lost contact with Dingwall for the period of
time he was writing the first draft, and his only con-
tact was through Dingwall’s agent:

It was disastrous from my point of view, because in
about six weeks’ time it was supposed to be del[...]ou
mean he’s writing too much, or is he writing
the characters too large or what?” She said, “Both,
actually.”

The main problem in developing the screenplay arose
from the many events contained in the treatment,
which was too long for a 90-minute feature. The

unusual form of the treatment created problems for
Matt Carroll:

The film was really only about half of that treat-
ment. We then went into a screenplay and there
were several drafts of it all — by largely me working

37

While the script was in development, Dingwall spent
another lengthy perio[...]d with Carroll
looking for suitable locations for the film (or, more
specifically, one suitable location, since it was intended
that the film should be shot entirely on one location)
and collected more anecdotes which entered the film
script. It was decided that the film would be shot in
the same shearing shed used for Fred Zinnemann’s
production of Jon Cleary’s The Szmdowners.

VY/ith more experience, the producers could have
recognized the problems inherent in the treatment.
The film story as presented by Dingwall is com-
plex, with a number of sub—plots and themes. The
storyline also contains a number of character inter-
actions, but does not follow a c[...]which sets up an audience—satisfying resolution of the
main character’s aims and needs. The needs of the
Foley character are obscure, and, even though the
characterization is strong and convincingly realized
by Jack Thompson, the audience is no more in touch
with Foley’s inner life at the end of the film than they
were at the beginning.

Foley is full of behavioural contradictions: he
enjoys the camaraderie of the shearing shed but also
longs for female contact; he works hard for the final
pay he earns, but throws it away in a card game; he
strongly supports the rights of shearers but only acts
reluctantly to try and protect those rights against the
scab labourers. Foley is really a cipher, a set of char-
acteristics; none is really consistent with the others.
But Foley is, above all, a worker and a part of an Aus-
tralian bush mythology. In the growing Australian
nationalism of the mid-1970s, Brealey was well aware
that these elements in the film would give it a better
chance of success:

Not only was it the film we all wanted to make, as
far as [being] a nationalistic film, but we knew
that the feeling of the community was that way. We
knew that we wanted this nationalistic film. So, it
was not only a personal sort of want to make that
sort of film, but it was also very carefully commer-
cially calculated.

Lmday, by relying on linked anecdotes and

the appeal of the extended yarn, eschews all

forms of causality in its plot. The texture of

the film is rooted in an everyday reality,

where trivial and often commonplace events

take on a sense of heightened drama through
the response of the characters, rather in the manner
of heroic stereotypes.” Thus, the shearers are natu-
rally competitive, and a simple task like washing
clothes becomes a competition in speed. The shear-
ers race to see who will finish first, heedless of the
fact that their towels have fallen off and their bot-
toms are bared. This may be an allusion to the
underlying homosexuality which is always present in
the myth of mateship, and the implications of this
scene intrigued reviewer Noel Purdon. To Purdon,
the scene illustrated the attitude: “We don’t care, we
have no secrets or sense of shame in the company
of our mates.”“

The search for a director began, and a few
prospects were mentioned, including the British direc-
tor Jack Lee. Brealey considered a[...]ustralian film. l’ve
always been very conscious of the difference
between English filmmakers and Austral[...]ible.

Ken Hannam, with extensive credits at both the ABC
and in the UK, was brought into the development
negotiations, although Dingwall still had not deliv-
ered a final script. Brealey sent the treatment to
Hannam in London: “Ken came back to me and said
it was ab[...]marvellous treatment and he would
love to work on the film.” Brealey also made the deci-
sion at this time to involve Hannam in the
scriptwriting process, although now he has mixed
feelings about this decision: “I think some of the deci-
sions that we made at that level were in fact Ken’s
mistakes.”

Brealey went to London to discuss the project
with Hannam, and the men were meeting when
Dingwall’s first draft sc[...]it was won-
derful to read, absolutely superb on the page, but
about half-way through we had probably covered
the first two pages of treatment. Ijust quickly flicked
through the end and I just threw the script to the
other side of the room. I was just so angry — I real-
ized he had [only] written half the picture.

Aside from the problems of running time, since the
budget would only cover a 90-minute film, Brealey
found that the script had major structural problems:

There was no climax - it just fizzled out at the end
— although the characterization was wonderful, the
humour was magnificent, all the things we had
looked for were there. So, I had a talk to Ken,
showed him the script and he felt the same way.

The other terrible thing was that it was almost the
same as The Sundowzzers. Now I knew The SL01-
downers very well and I got a copy of it out. A major
plot in The Spmdoumers, not the major one, but a
major sub—plot is in fact a shearing competition, and
it seems so repetitious and it wasn’t that long since
The Sundowners was made — so that again made a
really big worry about it.

Brealey returned from the UK and, in a meeting with
Dingwall, attempted to renegotiate the down-beat
ending:

I said, “At least one of the things we have to have is
a sort ofthe end of the screenplay, what hap-
pened was that Foley went back to his room of his
hotel and sat there looking like he was going to slash
his wrists — that was the end of the film. I said, “At
least we can get something of the drama of the scab
shearers coming in. At least have a conflict with
them so it leaves the audience kind of high and we
can leave it at a high point and say that out of this
comes so and so. At least it will be a drama[...]erstand that shearing
destroys peoplell” Hardly the subject of a feature
film.
Time and budget constraints began to have an impact
on the scope of the screenplay. The first real casualty
of the writing and rewriting of the script was the sub-
ject of the strike. The film treatment had as its finale
a portrayal of Foley’s role in the shearers’ strike,
against a court decision to make them accept lower
wages. In development, the script changed to a char-
acter profile of Foley and depiction of the shearers’
lifestyle. The group of main characters, men who
could have faced the strike and been changed by it,
were outlined in their working situation, and the film
ended where the strike would begin. The ending
seemed so arbitrary that Noel Purdon accused the
producers of tacking it on.”

Matt Carroll defends the decision to film this ver-
sion, because it was the one that Dingwall chose to
deliver: “We realized we couldn’t take it beyond
the strike in terms of length. Basically, the screenplay
that first came in ended at that point.”

Dingwall says that the failure to include the strike
was forced on him by the industrial conditions of Aus-
tralian filmmaking:

When I wrote the story, the real story is about the
shearing shed. The strike should have been abbre-
viated in part, but probably taken about twenty
minutes of screen time. That would have taken
the script to 115-120 minutes. At the time we
didn’t do, and still don’t, 120-minut[...]much to say.

I actually believe, if I had got to the draft further
down the road, I would have written the strike in.

CINEMA PAPERS ° DECEMBER 1996

Through an imperfect development of the screenplay
from the treatment, the character of Foley had been
diminished. Further drafts were needed to tighten up
the film’s narrative while retaining major elements of
the overall story. At the time, this arduous process of
refinement, common in Hollywood product, was not
fully understood in Australia. Technical problems
in the handling of the narrative seemed endemic in
the Australian industry of the time, a fact of which
Gil Brealey is now well aware:

The first draft had the elements of a great movie. It
is what we now know as a first draft of perhaps ten.
It had all the ideas there but none of the structured
development. We knew that there had to be a series
of drafts, but we didn’t know the levels to which
they should go.

Problems of development, lack of expertise in nego-
tiating script changes and the inexorable pressures of
having to work on minimal budgets had an effect on
many films of the time. Peter Weir’s experimental
The Cars that Ate Paris (1974) has an even more reces~
sive character, and, like so many films of the period,
simply ends rather than building to a climax. Noel
King, writing in 1980, saw the structure of Sunday
as indicative of a whole trend in Australian movie
storytelling:

Sunday purports t[...]abour
struggle at a particular historical moment, the events
leading up to the 1955 [sic] shearer’s strike in North-
ern Queensland. The fact that the representation of
this labour struggle occupies only a gestural or[...]kes Sunday Too
Far Away an instructive case study of the narrative
mode arguably to be found in many other examples
of the new Australian cinema. It is an historical real-[...][...] to a large extent Sunday seems a
repository of the strategies of narrative displacement
and character stereotyping found across much of
the new Australian cinema.”

However, as we already know, the motives for show-
ing the strike were extremely important, and the
changes were made only at a later stage of the film’s
development. Other critics observed faults in Sunday,

CINEMA PAPERS ' DECEMBER 1996

noticing particularly the hero’s lack of defined goals.
Barry Jones wrote:

Phillip Adams echoed my thesis that in many, per-
haps most, of our films the central character is a
recessive. [Foley] backs o[...]. Events
impose themselves on him. He spends most of his
screen time mucking about. The dramatic rivalry
between the two “gun” shearers carefully set up at
the beginning is simply thrown away at the end
when it appears that Foley doesn’t care any more.”

These character faults are not apparent in John Ding-
wall’s original treatment, which sets up Foley as a
man of conscience who possesses a rugged decency,
but is also capable of extreme violence if provoked.
In the original treatment, Foley is victimized by the
police supporting the scab workers, and, in a fight
with hired thugs, bashes one of them senseless. Foley
is provoked again by the police, beaten up and, under
a charge of resisting arrest, banned from the town for
two weeks. Foley leads the shearers back to town to

‘ ‘f
Foley, Old Gar[...]arAway.

reclaim Ivy’s pub as their territory.

In another scene, Arthur Black (Peter Cummins)
has b[...]most lynched by Foley and his mates” —
hardly the actions of a total recessive. Only the arrival
of the scabs, protected by the police, and the pub fight
appear in the final version of the film.

In the course of the film, as completed, Foley sees
that Old Garth (Re[...]near respectable
funeral and is able to deal with the appalling cook.
He holds the camaraderie of the shearing shed
together, even as his own career as[...]is threatened and ultimately destroyed. Assessed in
terms of Australian male behaviour of the time,
Foley’s actions, mostly on behalf of his mates, could
be seen as exemplary.

Foley changes from a character who can c0nfi—
dently state at the beginning of the film, “If I was
there, I rung the shed’’“, to a drunken, bitter loser,
who ha[...]his job. This
ending seems to have been forced on the film by a
number of factors. While the film attempts to docu-
ment a pastoral tradition[...]participants
dignity and identity, it is clear by the end of the film
that this period is closed, and that Foley’s plight is an
indicator of the issues which led to the strike of 195 6
and its outcome. On a broader scale, the film also

hints at a new role and identity for A[...]require new strategies for survival.
Severe cuts in the storyline reduced the possibility of
a happy outcome for the Foley character.

Another major problem in the narrative emerged
when the potential love interest between Foley and
Sheila Dawson (Lisa Peers), which led to the climax
of the original story, was destroyed through casting
decisions. Instead of a woman of Foley’s age, return-
ing to the country after a divorce, the Sheila character
was changed to a woman just out of her teens. To
overcome the age difference, a love affaire was
written in between her and the shed’s rouseabout.
This sub—plot was shot, but later removed in the edit-
ing process, as noted by David Stratton.“[...]ributes it to Ken Han-
nam. Whatever its origins, the change has been
identified as one of the film’s major faults, as it squan-
ders the possibility of a happy ending.

Brealey gives his account of the changes to the Sheila
character, which he says came about through
Ken Hannam’s input into the scriptwriting
process:

Ken spent about a fortnight with john. The
major change that he made was that he
turned the girl from a divorcee to a young
girl [...] I much preferred it the other way. I
think it is one of the weaknesses of the film.

Dingwall’s version of how the changes were
negotiated is quite different:

Gil really wanted [the changes]. Ken wanted
to cast a young woman, and G[...]was able to communicate with this woman
[Sheila]. The woman had more maturity,
she’d been through a divorce, there was
more pain and suffering there.

The most significant result of the change in
Sheila’s age is that Foley does not return to
claim her at the end of the film, as contained
in the original treatment:

He got out of thethe house to get some things.”

iven the personal politics that come into play
in the casting of major roles in feature films,
there are a number of possible explanations
for the casting of an ingénue in a key dra-
matic role. Lisa Peers plays Sheila, and does
a reasonably convincing job of depicting the
cocky’s daughter, who insists on seeing the realities
of life in the shearing shed. However, her exchanges
with Foley, in which the possibility of unrealized sex-
ual attraction was meant to be su[...]Gil Brealey acknowledges that he was too liberal
in his approach to the film’s casting, except where
Jack Thompson was concerned:

I gave Ken a great deal of leeway. When it came
to casting in the early stages, I said to him that it was
written r[...]at one, and said it was
definitely ]ack’s film. In fact, they got on like a house
on fire and there[...]had
his own way, he would have cast somebody else in
the Thompson role.

39

At one stage in the rewrites, the script was left with
Hannam, who produced a further draft which
included many changed lines and a change of empha-
sis in a number of scenes. The results of Hannam’s
efforts so appalled Dingwall that he successfully

A Matt Carroll feels that the problems that ensued were
argued that the d1rector’s lines be removed:

40

I finished my rewrites that took the girl down to an
earlier age. Ken said to me, “Look, if you like, I’ll
take the script now and type it up.” And in the typ-
ing Ken started to do a bit of rewriting. He had the
only copy, because in those days you didn’t have
copies, you just had the one copy. [...] When Black
Arthur beats Foley, and they’re in the pub and Foley
loses his money and they’re standing in the bar and
Ugly comes up to Foley and says, “What[...]as, “Go ask Black Arthur”,
because he has won the game right. Ken had added
in the line, “He’s your hero now.” When we got to[...]“You are right, I am
wrong.” He went back to the original script
which we had agreed on before he[...]g, and with considerable
pressure on him to start the film, Brealey pre-
sented Dingwall’s latest draft to the AFDC:

The two assessors, who had both read the pre-
vious treatment, were very disappointed. I s[...]ck and said, “No, that’s not a good
idea. Get the writer to go back and write the
second screenplay from his treatment that we
were[...]prepared to do that,
so I had to finally persuade the AFDC to let us
go ahead, and in the end they did.

Further doubts as to the value of the script came
from Brealey’s ultimate superior, the Premier of
South Australia. Brealey heard Dunstan’s com-
ments: “Don Dunstan didn’t like the script, and
asked did we really think this was the film that
was going to make us. And I had to pers[...]th it as well, which he finally
agreed to do. All the decisions were mine and
the responsibility was mine.”

John Dingwall was not present at the shoot
and pressing production problems emerged.
With the general lack of expertise came prob-
lems with weather. The remote location, where cast
and crew roughed it in makeshift accommodation,
was rained out, and this delayed production. In the
seven-week shoot, the actors suffered periods of low
morale, and line producer Matt Carroll describes hav-
ing to defuse an open revolt by the actors which
exactly paralleled events in the script:

Half way through the shoot there was this incredi-
ble actors’ strike that had nothing to do with more
than the fact they had become totally possessed by
these bloody characters. A couple of the actors lived
in their bloody wardrobe. They actually became
these[...]Long hours and inexperience made heavy demands
on the energies of all involved, but Carroll attributes
the film’s artistic and critical success to the crew
and cast’s enthusiasm. Even so, the production prob-
lems led to many delays and the film looked like
running over budget:

We never had made a feature of that size before. We
had no idea what we were in for. We were under-
crewed but we all had incredi[...]lm made with great passion, because we all
adored the script and there was this incredible belief
in what we were doing. And there were just monu-
mental problems to actually do it — to shoot in a

due to the script’s excessive length:

The script was long. It just wasn’t properly timed[...]shot as scripted originally.

Brealey remained at the SAP C offices while Matt Car-
roll managed the production.

Due to the length of the script and Hannam’s
shooting style, it soon became apparent that the film
would run much longer than was first anticipated.
This was a common enough problem with early films
of the revival, but such overruns inevitably played
havoc with budgets and the availability of key cre-
ative people became a problem.

At the end of the shoot, Hannam began work with
the editor on an assembly of the film and, accord-

ing to Brealey, only a few weeks passed before Han-
nam dropped a major bombshell:

I saw the first 30 minutes cut together and it worked
reaso[...]would be probably successful, and I went away on
the first holiday that I’d had for years. When I came
back, I expected that the whole assembly would
be finished. It had progress[...]ced that
he had been offered a job directing some of the
series that was being done here by a British com-[...]a phone call. He said,
‘Tm off. Can’t finish the cut. You will have to fin-
ish it yourself.” He[...]ough
money. We paid him $10,000 as a flat fee for the
whole thing, presuming that was a year’s salary.

Given Hannam’s experience at the ABC and BBC, he
could perhaps be forgiven for assuming the film
would be completed without the need for daily super-
vision. Brealey saw his priority as completion of a
version which would be accepted by the distribu-
tors and also satisfy his political ove[...], it ran over two hours. Brealey
objected to some of the technical defects still in evi-

I think John thought it was all lovely and[...]going to have to come
down extraordinarily to get the actual essence of
what it is about.”

Matt Carroll:

We had tremendous problems in the editing stages

because it was too long. It ran 150 minutes long,
and this is where a lot of the controversy came: that
the film was cut and there were two versions of it.

Once again, the problems of the expense of commu-
nication arose. Brealey flew to Sydney to[...]project —

Sunday Taa
’ I Far,Away.

episodes of the mini-series Lu/ze’s Kingdom” — which
left him little time to concentrate on the problems of
Sunday. Brealey was shocked when Hannam viewed
the film without offering any concrete suggestions fo[...]with his wife and various
friends, and we showed the full two-and-a-half
hours of it. At the end of it, I said, “What do you
want us to do with it?”, and he said, “Well, you
could get it down a bit in length.” No notes, no
comments or anything.

Editor Rod Adamson and Brealey started to reduce
the film in length, and this resulted in a two—hour ver-
sion which was again shown to H[...]s other than advising Brealey to keep

working on the film: “He said, ‘Just keep doing what

9::

y[...]. Matt Carroll states that he worked
closely with the editor to bring the film down in

length, after Brealey started to believe that the film
was a failure:

Gil, of course, hated it. He said, “This is going to
be the end of the South Australian Film Corpora-
tion” and things like that. I then got Rod Adamson,
the editor, and said, “Look Rod, we will get[...]

for the Australian
audio-visual produc-
tion industry. It faces

the possibility of broad—ranging changes to
its funding base and i[...]yright
and industrial—relations issues entailed in
the expansion of delivery systems. On top
of this comes continuous change in the
marketplace. DIANE COOK talks to Michael
Gordon—Smith, Executive Director of the
Screen Producers’ Association of Australia
(SPAA), and Association President Steve
Vizard, about SPAA’s world View.

peculation about the Australian audio-visual
production industry’s f[...]ubsidy levels, is widespread. Many are
alarmed at recent and proposed federal bud-
get cuts, and strongly concerned about the future of
government subsidy. Will federal government main-
tain theof the Income Tax Assessment Act?
How will the AFC fare? How will the ABC adjust
to proposed cuts?

On the eve of its eleventh national conference,
however, SPAA t[...]view. “It’s
a difficult and exciting time for the industry, but it
has been for the past decade, and probably will be for
a couple mo[...]chael Gordon-Smith. He is
confident that SPAA’s recent representations to Can-
berra have helped to temper the Howard
government’s policies, and views the current state of
play as better than anticipated prior to the past
election. This is the crux of SPAA’s business — nego-
tiation, political dialogue — and it is long-accustomed
to the challenge.

SPAA is the employer representative association
for the audiovisual production industry. It is respon-
sible for negotiating terms and conditions of
employment within the industry; its activities include
lobbying, the facilitation of information exchange and
networking, and the development of business and cre-
ative relationships. The Association also aims to
encourage debate on industry issues, and to develop
the industry’s profile and an awareness of its contri-
bution to Australian life.

From its earliest incarnation (1956), SPAA has
expanded to represent the interests not only of feature
film and television producers but those involved in
documentary production, commercials, corpo[...]

multimedia division as yet), with state chapters in View

toria, NSW, Western Australia, South Australia_ a»
Queensland. Council, as of October this year; c rn

prises Steve Vizard as P[...]adds that SPAA seeks to encou age, e
liaison with the Australian Film on
School. He also mentions initiativ’ b 12 ‘
panies to sponsor the attendance ‘ew
at SPAA’s annual Conference:[...]itors. I think it’s a good‘ dern

stration of the industry’s interest in self—renewal. 1 V ,

Is it difficult to achieve[...]agendas? Gordon—Smith:

It’s very frequently the case that there are differ-
ent viewpoints in the industry, depending upon the
changes proposed, and there’s a point where an[...]s those groups can’t be
arguing for an increase in one which is only achieved
at the expense of the other.

But Gordon-Smith likens SPAA’s membership to that
of the National Farmers’ Federation:

There are obviou[...]that are impor-

_ ,_ . , us], and it"sithe same in this

‘industry, 1 thin" , he fundamental thing[...]ent themselves well and
to come up with some sort of consensual view, and
advocate and argue it well,[...]an industries
that don’t. If you leave it up to the government to
be the arbiter, then you’re not solving any of their
problems — and government likes it when you solve
their problems.

Steve Vizard adds:

The points of difference are obvious. I think we have
to dwell on the points of commonality. We’re about
telling stories that we think are unique to Australia,
and that is our starting-point. I’m a great be[...]ERS - DECEMBER 1996 - SPAA SUPPLEMENT

5
i
=

in going to grass roots to get a sense of direction;
starting-point for all of the [current] inquiries
‘s: do we do what we do? The fundamental

4. thirrg_'is;;that members of SPAA are storytellers, and
,whiat,,'th’ey“want is the capacity to tell stories that

“‘re_1ia:e' to[...]s.

-_rnithfiidentifies effective lobbying as one of

~Sl’AA7s‘rnost\sig1iiificant achievements over the past
fe,W~year' attributing a Coalition policy turnaround

‘S_PAA’s efforts. He says that the Associ-

ion leaders to speak with the industry in the

» Ii aid-up to the 1996 Federal election was strongly

n uenitial in determination of 1996/97 Budget
allocations:

Over the past three or so years, there’s been a U-
turn in the position being put to the industry by the
Liberal-National Party Coalition. What was said
prior to the ‘Fightback’ election at the SPAA Con-
ference sent a chill up the spines of those who were
listening. Three years later, the commitment that
John Howard made at the Conference last year is
probably largely responsible for the industry not suf-
fering very savage cuts in the last Budget. We would
have seen substantially big[...]points to an “even-handed, apolitical approach,
in a sense”, as crucial to SPAA’s effectiveness:[...]urs to have
strong relationships with governments of all com-
plexions. I expect that our submissions in respect of
the Gonski review and the Mansfield review and
CER [and other issues] will be well he[...]

Michael is one of those rare creatures; he moves
between three camp[...]ive ease, with poise,
with dignity. I-Ie’s been the lynchpin in SPAA’s being
able to attract an almost unanimous supporter base
from almost all the film and television producers in
the country, for it to be a successful mix, and [for
SPAA] to achieve some real degree of success in
changing the statutory and commercial environment
in which we work.

Among SPAA’s chief concerns now are the review of
the ABC, the recent acceptance by Justice Davies in
the Federal Court of lobby group Project Blue Sky’s
arguments for po[...]product under
Australian content regulations, and the current review
of film financing (the Gonski review).

SPAA attracted criticism for its submission to the
ABC review, which suggested that the industry and
the ABC might be better served if the ABC were to
contract out production rather than produce in-house.
Gordon-Smith acknowledges that this view could be
seen as self-serving, but stands by the submission:

Obviously, if you’re a representative of the inde-
pendent production sector, you’re looking for ways
of making more business, but I actually think in this
case it makes a hell of a lot of economic and pol-
icy sense. The reporting of the submission would
lead you to think that we were in some ways argu-
ing for cuts to or that we were opposing the ABC.
Nothing could be further from the truth; we’re argu-
ing very passionately for the retention of a strong
and powerful public broadcasting system. We just
think there are ways in which it could be better man-
aged for more effective results.

In a country of six million television households,
it’s a mistake to look to examples of systems and

.x

structures that work in countries of 25 million tele-
vision households on the edge of Europe, or in a
place the size of the States. We think the ABC would
be much more cost-effective, much better engaged
with the creative life of Australia and better able to
tap into the creative juices of the independent
production sector if it was to contract out.

On the debate over New Zealand product, Gor-
don-Smith i[...]pts New Zealand product as ‘Australian’
under Australia and New Zealand’s 1988 Agreement
on Closer Econ[...]hed to facilitate mutual
trade benefits, and many in the Australian industry
have argued that such a trade[...]ultural issue, and that
to include screen product in its ambit would disad-
vantage Australian product (which is subsidized on
cultural grounds) in the domestic market. At the time
of writing, SPAA was seeking to become a party to
the ABA’s appeal of the case, due to go to court in
October. Gordon—Smith:

It’s a big issue in terms of the cultural precedent it
sets, for the relationship between cultural policy and
international trade deals. I think the campaign by
the New Zealanders has very little going for it. I
think from their point of view this is the first step
in a campaign to have access to the full range of Aus-
tralian assistance measures.

Criticizing New Zealand’s lack of content policy to
date, he says:

When you have dialogue with these people who
oppose the Australian standard GATT, believe there
is no place for public broadcasting in their broad-
casting environment, have no local content rules of
their own and then seek to get access to the bene-
fits of the Australian local content requirements, it
seems to me to be an act of extraordinary hypocrisy.
It’s so easy to be angry about it.

Regarding the future of government subsidy, while
SPAA has yet to co-ordinate its submission to the
Gonski review, Gordon-Smith says there is general
support for continuation of direct funding mecha-
nisms, in particular the FFC:

There’s no real interest in a radical re—shuffle that
would see, for examp[...]ven model. There are many
people, many companies, in SPAA that would like
.'to_ see structures which m[...]ore secure footing, which would
.make:tl'ief.life of independent producers a shade
more viable. But I think there’s more recognition of
- fthe:yaliije' of direct funding mechanisms and broad

support for the existing institutions.

Vi’/.a_rd claborateszz

D"irt§et_funding_:by government is a critical part of
supporting a viable film industry, but, more impor-
.gg;7[tl[e_;ii‘fs':§i‘i::e.titical part of preserving and
encouraging Australian culture. Th[...]~' uig-“can’t be complemented by other forms
of discretionary private—sector funding, where, fo[...]and other concessions are
attracted by investment in film and television. We

rtrsee them as mutually-exclusive positions.

One of SPAA’s most important forums for debating
industry issues is its annual Conference, which has
become one of the industry’s most popular events —

\_._M

as m[...]agenda. SPAA held its 1994 and 1995 Con-
ferences in Melbourne in conjunction with the AFI
Awards, and attracted record attendances — well over
500 each year. The 1996 Conference (13-15 Novem-
ber) continues the association, with which
Gordon-Smith says SPAA is very happy:

I think there’s a great deal of value in an event hav-
ing a Janus face looking in and looking out. It’s
very valuable for the industry’s annual event to focus
on issues which are important to the industry, to be
a gathering of the industry, but also for it to be
connected with a showcase and a marketing exercise
— an exercise in drawing the attention of the general
public to what’s made and to how fabulous it is.

Citing other advantages for both SPAA and the AFI,
such as increased interstate and foreign attendance at
the Conference and the Awards, Gordon-Smith
says SPAA hopes to continue the association: “I think
there are useful synergies which we haven’t yet fully
developed and exploited.”

The agenda for this year’s Conference is domi-
nated by the obvious big issues:

Having said we wanted to get away from a policy-
focused Conference, the industry’s in the grip of a
review of the whole structure of industry assistance,
and there’s the CER case and the ABC review. These
topics will get a lot of attention.

What we’re trying to do is to use [the Conference]
to kick—start a policy-making process, to try to have
the industry more involved in setting the agenda for
government rather than responding to i[...]directed to
answering policy questions. What’s the industry
going to look like over the next ten years? How can
Australia engage with the international industry?
What are the financing structures we need in order
to achieve that?

We’ve divided it by str[...]’re trying to
ensure they’ll continue [across the first two days] in
a way that lets the debate and discussion develop,
rather than being scattered across a series of ‘lucky
dip’ issues.

On the third day, we’d hope to attract some
people who are there for the AH Awards, to look
at more ‘creative’ issues:[...]violence and social engineering.
There are a lot of questions about censorship, screen
violence, influence on society, etc., which have been
brewing[...], but which have probably
been brought to a head [in Australia] by the Port
Arthur tragedy. The industry probably needs to
engage with these issues more than it has so far.

Confirmed guests at the time of writing include:
Maud Nadler and Richard Guardian[...]ictures; Mark Ordesky, Exec-
utive Vice President of Acquisitions for New Line
Cinema; Graeme Mason, Vice President of World
Wide Acquisitions for Polygram International Ltd;
Tom Rothman, President of Production at Twenti-
eth Century Fox; and Lachla[...]attendance by Roger Corman and repre-
sentatives of NBC, Warner Bros., and Samuel
Goldwyn. ABC Chair Donald McDonald will present
the Hector Crawford Memorial Lecture. ®

CINE[...]

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mam, ofAUSTRALIA LATE JANUARY J

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Bill Hunter.

it is being said, is the
strongest year for
the Australian film
., s. industry yet. Again.
It s[...]year for films — with some
notable exceptions, of course — we were assured
that the industry was powering ahead.

It is true that this year’s films are remarkable in
their diversity and maturity. This started with the
success of Shine (Scott Hicks) at Sundance, Love
Serenade (S[...]ove and
Other Catastrophes (Emma—Kate Croghan). The
Melbourne International Film Festival screened
half of the features nominated for AF 1 Awards this
year, as well as many of the documentaries and
short films. And here is where[...]e, and controversial comments start to
circulate: the AF I Awards.

John Hargreaves and
,Miche|e Fawdon.

ny examination of Australian film inevitably
turns to the AFI Awards, and the controversy

they always cause. This year’s nominations

have put many noses out of joint. Why did
L01/e Serenade only get nominated[...]tion Design and Best Costume Design after winning
the Camera d’Or at Cannes? Why was Rats in the
Ran/as (Bob Connolly, Robin Anderson) not nomi-
nated for Best Documentary when it is clearly one of
the best of recent times? And why was Rolf de I-leer’s
The Quiet Room, which was in Competition at
Cannes this year, totally overlooked?

The AFI Awards are no stranger to controversy,
whether it be over the pre—selection process, the nom-
inations themselves, or the telecasting of the Awards
night. But they are important, they are sought after
within the industry, and they are instrumental in the
Australian film industry’s growth, and have been
for thirty—eight years.

Beainnériss

t all started in 1958 at the Melbourne Film Fes-
U tival where the Director, Erwin Rado, presented
the first Australian Film Awards, co-sponsored by
Kodak. The aim of these Awards was “To direct pub-
lic attention to Australian films and to encourage high
standards in their production.” There were four cat-
egories[...]special Experimental Film Award.
Later that year, the Australian Film Institute was
established, with the staging of the Australian Film
Awards as one of its major objectives, and they have
staged[...]

Further awards were introduced in 1962 — the
Kodak Award for Best Black and White Photography,
and Best Colour Photography — the first move
towards craft-based awards, and recognition of the
various elements of a film.

1963 saw the awarding of the first Grand Prix prize
to Dusan Marek’s film Ad[...]for its “origi-
nal and imaginative achievement in the use of
symbolism in animation”, and proved for the judges
that the Australian Film Awards were being successful
in their aim to “stimulate and raise the standards of
film production in Australia”, a view that was echoed
by critic Colin Bennett the following year in an ABC
talk show. He also stated that international film fes-
tivals had asked to see the prizewinners, proving there
was an international market for Australian film.

A further award was introduced in 1967, the Film
Editors’ Guild of Australia Award for Best Edited
Film, and, in 1968, the Raymond Longford Award
was first presented. This[...]o Australian film-
making from an individual, and the first
recipient was documentary filmmaker Ian

Dunlop.

By 1970, the Australian Film Awards were receiv-
ing more than two hundred entries — quite an increase
from the sixty it was receiving a decade earlier — and,
for the first time, cash prizes were awarded to the
three most creative entries from money endowed
by the Myer Foundation. It seemed obvious that
the Australian film industry was making a comeback,
a[...]e.

Individual filmmakers were recognized further in
1971 with the introduction of Best Performance and
Best Direction Awards, won r[...]r
V .,»é*’..,“; 4;. it .- o as

hroughout the early ’70s, there was much debate

about award categories and judging methods.

John C. Murray commented in Lumiere:

Entries are invited under five categori[...]n. Granting that these five had some utility
when the awards were first established (and also
granting that the judges can move entries from cat-
egory to catego[...]), I don’t think they
have very much to do with the varied natures of the
films now being submitted}

Bennett wrote in The Age2 about the judging process

CINEMA PAPERS 0 DECEMBER 1996 ° SPAA SUPPLEMENT

which at the time consisted of pre—selection panels
and juries made up of professional filmmakers.

Personally, I have always had grave doubts about
the value of prizes picked ‘by the industry for the
industry’. Such competitions assume that the best
judges of quality are those who create it, not those
for wh[...]ay and Best Original Music
Score were established in the 1974-5 Awards, and
I-Ionourable Mentions were given for Best Perfor-
mances in Supporting Roles. Sixteen feature films
were entered, forcing the Fiction category to split into
Feature and Short Fiction, proving that earlier con-
cerns about the eategories were pertinent and
subsequently addres[...]e divided into Feature
and Non-Feature Films, and the Best Film Award was
presented for the first time, won by The Dez/il’s Play-
ground (Fred Schepisi). The judging process
underwent a major overhaul, and a model where pro-
fessionals voted for the films in their area of expertise
was adopted, with the help of various industry guilds
and unions. Best Film was decided by the guilds
and unions, together with members and associate
members of the AFI. Other new awards included Best
Supporting Actor and Actress, and Best Cinematog-
raphy in a feature film.

Hie Talscasts Begin

976 was also the first year the Awards were tele-
cast nationally by the Nine Network. Criticism
was not far away, and the telecast received an
unfavourable pasting by Ken Quinnell in Filmneu/5.3

Colin Bennett and Michael Thornhill debated through
The Age the merits of peer judgement, and whether
the Awards criteria should be craft—based or art—based.

Further craft awards were initiated in 1977: Best
Achievement in Sound Editing, Art Direction and
Costume Design. Concerns that the Awards Presen-
tation, this time telecast on the ABC, was too glitzy
and not relevant to the Australian film industry
clashed with the belief that, if the industry was to
receive the attention of the general public, such pre-
sentations were necessary.

The next year’s Awards were telecast from Perth
by the 0-10 Network, and 1979’s Awards were not
telecast at all due to an industrial dispute. This was
also the year the current Awards trophy was first pre-
sented.

One of the largest contentions regarding the Aus-
tralian Film Awards and television coverage was the
use, as with the Logies, of international film per-
sonalities as presenters. Theories were expounded
about the contradictory nature of Australia’s confi-
dence in it’s own film industry. Some said that inviting
international stars to host the Awards was hypocrit-
ical, and indicated to the general public that local
personalities were not deemed good enough, or well-
known enough. This undermined the whole aim of
the Awards themselves, and therefore could not be
taken seriously.

The AFI signed up with the ABC in 1980 to tele-
cast the Awards for the next four years, and, in 1982,
a pre-selection group was introduced. This consisted
of a core committee of twenty members recom-
mended by the various industry guilds and
associations, and professionally-accredited AF I mem-

bers willing to attend the pre-selection screenings.
This group was required[...]s
entered that year, and to cast four nominations in
their accredited categories. The nominated films were
then screened to all members, who would decide the
winners.

This system was widely criticized as being unde-
mocratic and too selective, and actually resulted in
the number of entries dropping in 1983. The system
was subsequently abandoned. New awards in the
Non—Feature categories were introduced, encom-
passing many craft awards, and, for the first time, the
Awards were presented as the AFI Awards, and not
just the Australian Film Awards.

In 1984, the Byron Kennedy Award was founded,
carrying both a[...]prize. Its
purpose was to recognize and encourage the pursuit
of excellence within the Australian film and televi-
sion industry, and could be awarded to anyone within
the industry. It was first awarded to Roger Savage.

Television’s growing relevance was recognized in
1986, and awards including Best Telefeature, Best[...]r and Actress were decided
on by an invited panel of industry representatives.
The controversy of the year was the withdrawal of
Crocodile Dundee (Peter Faiman) from competition,
and Cinema Papers published an article in September
1986 that questioned the Awards’ relevance and dis-
cussed the problems the AFI was facing that year. It
is interesting that many of the issues raised then are
still relevant today — the inclusion and exclusion of
films, eligibility, the effects of the Awards on box
office and television coverage.

, . e
Today s Beginnings

n 1987, the pre-selection process was again

revamped into the basic form still in operation

now. Film entries were pre—selected[...]en judged by all
accredited members - not just by the relevant mem-
bers for the various categories. All AFI members voted
for the AFI Members Prize, awarded for Excellence
in a Feature Film, which has now evolved into all
me[...]umentary,
Best Short Fiction, and Best Animation. In 1991, the
Young Actors Award for actors under the age of
sixteen was initiated and, in 1992, the AFI Members
Award for Best Foreign Film was first awarded. After
a rocky time during the early ’90s, television cover-
age was secured again by the ABC.

The success of Australian film in recent years, both
locally and overseas, has resulted in a spiral of recog-
nition and credibility. Proof Gocelyn Moorhouse) and
its success at Cannes in 1991 gave its AFI Awards,
including Best Film, extra credibility, which in turn
gave the film more recognition. Attendances for Proof
jumped by 20 percent in the fortnight following the
AF I Awards for that year, and it had already been run-
ning for seven weeks. The spiral continued upward
with Strictly Ballroom (Baz Luhrmann), The Piano
(Jane Campion), Muriel’s Wedding (P. J. H[...]ttendances for Angel
Baby increased by 44 percent in five days after it won
six awards last year, including Best Film, and, while
the telecasting of the Awards has been erratic during
that time, the AFI Awards now have a consolidated
place, not just within the film industry, but in the
minds of the general public as well.

Executive Director of the AFI Ruth Jones believes
the AFI Awards are a very good promotional hook
for Australian film:

People are reassured by endorsements and the AFI
Awards are a signal of quality for the general pub-
lie, and a final seal of approval for the local film
industry. Most people know what they a[...]s a
broader audience watching.

Jones talks about the growing commercial success of
both Australian films and the AF I Awards. “Australian
films are now screening in the multiplexes, and not
just the arthouse cinemas”, she elaborates, adding:

The Awards presentation has to be an event. It’s ter-
ribly important, because it’s the key to the public
image of Australian film. Frankly, it’s gotten bigger
every year, but that needs to continue as the indus-
try continues to grow.

To this end, the AFI Awards this year are going on
the Internet with a live Netcast - like the Oscars
earlier this year - which will attract a m[...]ience, and will continue, Jones
hopes, to develop in the future.

Whatever the controversies - and it can be argued
that controversy itself is an important element to the
Awards’ success - the AFI Awards serve a vital role
within the Australian film industry. ®

1 Lumiere, October 1973.
2 The Age, 8 December 1973.
3 Filmnews, August 1[...]

Pr0ud/ y supports

AUSTRALIAN FILMS
WITH THE UPCOMING RELEASES

/I41’/zaéeaa,

GARY SWEET 0[...]tor: CHERIE NOWLAN
producer: JONATHAN SCHTEINMAN

IN PBE-PRODUCTION.

JAMIE CROFT

director: MA[...]

The federal Coalition has already signalled a return
to indirect subsidies — quite possibly something
along the lines of the old 1OBA tax breaks, mere
mention of which provokes mixed and heated
feelings among Australian producers — and a phasing
down of the Australian Film Finance Corporation
(FFC), presently the principal source of funding for

Australian feature films.

With this article, Cinema Papers re—opens the topic
of how best to apply subsidies to what has become
a[...]s welcomes responses and
views on what is clearly the most vital issue presently
facing the local production industry}

CATHARINE MUNRO sets the scene.

he Howard government is returning to one of
its old ideas — high tax—breaks for film
investors — opening up the question of how
best to subsidize the industry.

The options boil down to two approaches. One is
the indirect subsidy in the form of high tax-breaks,
such as those that were offered under Section 1OBA
of the Income Tax Assessment Act during the 1980s.
The other is the present system of direct funding.
Hopes that the government will adopt both seem fan-
ciful given the current re'gime’s apparent preference
for small[...]budgets? It is not
about to give up large amounts of foregone tax rev-
enue and increase spending on films at the same time.

The Australian Film Finance Corporation (FFC)
is the largest government body that subsidizes films,
and many in the industry are highly sceptical about
its success. But no one canvassed for this article
would go on the record about the FFC, reflecting the
power of an organization which has a virtual monop-
oly over government subsidies to the feature-film
industry.

On the other hand, one of the great concerns
within the film industry is that bigger taX—breaks will
pr[...]ms because investors would not be
concerned about the success of their film, only the
tax write-off they would make.

FF C Chairman Chr[...]DECEMBEH1996 - SPAA SUPPLEMENT

ing to supporters of the pre—FFC days in the Corpo-
ration’s 1994/95 annual report:

Then fi[...]by tax and finan-
cial considcrations resulting in a larger industry
which produced demonstrably few[...]stralian cinemas and televi-
sion screens. Whilst the present position of the
industry is far from perfect it is vastly superior to
the position in which the industry found itself in
1986 and 1987.

But a glance at a list of films made before and after
the establishment of the FFC suggests that Lovell’s
assertion may be nothing more than an attempt to
justify the present system of funding which costs
the government much less than the high tax-breaks
provided for before the FFC was set up. What if, in
fact, the films made in the “bad old days” of 1OBA
were, on average, better than those made using
FF C subsidies?

In 1992, former Australian Film Commission offi-
cer Lynn Gailey compiled a list of the highest-grossing
Australian films to 1992 in real terms. Only 11 of the
44 films on the list were financed after the FFC was
established. Of course, since 1992 there have been
hits, such as Strictly Ballroom (Baz Luhrmann, 1994)
and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
(Stephan Elliott, 1994). But the number of hugely-
successful films made under 1OBA belies Lovell’s
warning.

The 1OBA tax scheme started in 1981 when the
Fraser Government decided to offer a 150 percent
tax write-off for investment in films, with 50 percent
of the net earnings tax exempt. According to the
Department of Communication and the Arts, bud-
gets for film features through division 1OBA rose from
$57.93 million in 1980/81 to peak at $105.60 rnil—
lion in 1985/86. While the number of films
skyrocketed, many argue their quality plummeted
because most investors had no interest in box-office
revenue, only their tax write-off.

Te[...]essful television series, produced a large
number of low-budget feature films during the hey-

13

14

day of the 1980s tax scheme. He is now chief exec-
utive of Southern Star. Ten years ago, Sullivan
thought that the scheme worked because it would rid
the industry of bureaucratic intervention. Now he
thinks the scheme was an administrative disaster. He
believes government subsidies in the form of tax
breaks are inflationary and a blunt instrument for
stimulating the industry:

10BA did throw vast amounts of money at the
industry and it overheated and it was calamitous.
The bad thing was that it caused a proliferation in
production which couldn’t be sustained by the cre-
ative community and put a big inflationary impact
on costs. It’s not sustainable in terms of growing the
business in an orderly way.

Many producers love high tax-breaks because of
the independence it gives them. For example, Jane
Scott, who spent three years finding the money to
make Shine (Scott Hicks, 1996), and got $3.5 million
from the FFC, wants them back. “Any scheme that
the government may be looking at is one that may
attract that sort of investment from financial mar-
kets”, Scott say[...]hn Morris argues there
is no need for a diversity of government funds while
there are “thousands” of sources out in the market-
place. He says the FFC is willing to provide the
cash if the film has a “marketplace at1:achment”. While
f[...]foolhardy enough to say it openly, there
are many in the industry who say that subjective and
even personal choices are made by the FFC, especially
when films are border—line cases as to the extent of
their private financing.

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In 1988, the Labor government abolished the
scheme and reduced the tax breaks to 100 per cent,
where they currently stand. It set up the FFC to dis-
tribute federal funding. Labor promised to lock in
$50 million a year in funding for three years starting
in 1995/96. Morris argues the move has made the
industry more market-driven while being cheaper for
the taxpayer. The FFC earned $25.5 million in the

1994/95 financial year and this is ploughed back into
the industry. By contrast, foregone government rev-
enue in the form of tax breaks does not produce an
immediate return. The cost to revenue of tax breaks
under 10BA peaked in real terms at $180.9 million
in 1984/85, with no direct returns to the government.

But what Morris fails to point out is that the indi-
rect returns are far-reaching. Firstly, the proceeds
of a successful film are returned to the industry, with
approximately four-fifths of a film’s budget taken up
paying those who worked on the film. A rich film
industry creates a bigger training ground for Aus-
tralian filmmakers. Also, the FFC’s returns of $25
million may sound a lot compared to its annual bud-
get, but they are the product of several years of
spending.

No one tries to argue that the film industry does
not need subsidies. While succ[...]vernment finance,
most projects are too risky for the profit-driven pri-
vate investor to participate in from the word go.
Consequently, the absence of government subsidies
is rare, with Jane Campion’s The Piano (1994) being
a commonly-cited exception. It was funded entirely
by Ciby 2000, a subsidiary of French construction
company Bouyges. But, in most cases, the high start-
up costs of a project, where success depends on
popularity, make investing in a film an unattractive
option for those outside the industry. More com-
monly, investment in films is left to those within
the industry: the state and federal funding bodies, and
a myriad of distribution agents and cinema chains.

Apart fro[...]r advantage for having a centralized body such
as the FFC is that it has encouraged more business
deali[...]as Mjramax and Polygram, to establish
themselves in Australia. For them, the FFC creates
a gateway through which buyers can enter the Aus-
tralian film industry. But FFC critics say these
businesses would have found their way here any-
way in an era when pay-television operators seem to
be h[...]uc-
tions as they can lay their hands on.