DAVID SWANN



You say that comedy is most important to you, more important, perhaps, than drama.

I think comedy comes out of drama. I think comedy comes out of pain and how people relate to it or are afraid to deal with it. An old cliche is that comedy is very much in reaction; it's how someone reacts to adversity, or it's the pain that makes us empathise with the suffering they go through. So you laugh at someone else's pain because you share and understand and it. You can relate to it.

So, ironically, when I write comedy I get really serious about it. I spend a lot of time working out what I want to say in the story - I try to create a dramatic story first - then I look at what's absurd about it. Looking at the way human nature causes suffering for itself, thematically, is how I got into writing. Why is our family Christmas such an unhappy scenario for so many people? Why such a stressful scenario? Why does the family Christmas potentially attract so much conflict?

And the answer came that it is a result of trying to meet unrealistic expectations in the face of family history, that the past has accumulated many dramatic scenarios that have been left unresolved and they get brought to the Christmas lunch. The Christmas lunch, on the other hand, is a facade that people want to believe in; they like to believe that they have a family which is a haven, a sanctuary where they can spend time with each other, where they're unconditionally loved and accepted. And, as a Christian ideal, I think we all want to believe in it. We all want it but, in reality, we have to find and deal with the ghosts of our past.

So the past does rear its ugly head again. It's been repressed or suppressed for a number of years, depending on what incidents have occurred. And, after a while, these tend to rear their head creating volatile conflicts that people dread. On the whole, I don't think we like conflict.

So, in terms of what you were saying about pain, the lack of resolution as well as the repression with the heightened expectations mean that Christmas can be, as you have shown it in Crackers, quite a catalyst for pain.

Yes, it's ironical. It's a two-way street. It's that old analogy: the same well that brings you pain and suffering also brings you joy and, the greater the depth in the well, the pain and the dealing with suffering ultimately bring you greater joy. I suppose the up side is that, if we can survive the catharsis of conflict within family, we're always better off for it. A relationship is always stronger after trial by fire. It's just the fear that, if we don't survive this conflict, the family will disintegrate, our home will disintegrate, we won't have a home any more. And we really want this thing (symbolically and metaphorically) called home and what it represents for us.

So it's a two-edged sword; we ultimately have to deal with conflict. It's a question of how adept we are at conflict resolution, how honest we can be and also how lovingly we can express honesty rather than reaching a tumultuous point of frustration that explodes in a moment of fury. Then, of course, the words are fiery and they burn people and people go into reaction. You've got a drama of somebody dealing with the issues, getting caught up in the emotions of what's happening. Pretty deep for a comedy, isn't it?

Your short film, Bonza, also featured families - and dogs!

Bonza was a true story based on a family who were successful financially, well off, upper middle class - but they had enormous difficulty relating to each other in a loving, honest way, although they all wanted this love and acceptance from each other. Ironically, what happened in their family was that the dog became a catalyst for unconditional love, unconditional acceptance, loyalty, forgiveness. The family members could express all of their woes and frustrations to the family analyst, the dog, who would unconditionally love them regardless of what they did, warts and all.

In the true story the dog ends up eating half a packet of snail pellets and suddenly there's this approaching death catharsis which brings all the family members together because they all unconditionally love the dog. The tragedy and the comedy came out of this absurdity that they related to an animal in a way that they ultimately wanted to relate to each other. Sad but also very funny. I'm interested in that duality, between looking at pathos and looking at the absurdity of what happens when people can't ultimately express their inner truth.

In the end scenario the dog dies but then we realise it's actually sleeping pills. I changed the story so that there was a resurrection scene in the film. So, at the very end when they ultimately realise they do love each other and they express that, the dog's sort of reborn from the coffin in the backyard and wakes up. It had a very Christian-like mythology. There's a scene in it where the son really wanted to be a singer and a dancer and he was doing Jesus Christ Superstar at school, but his father wanted him to become a dentist, because dentistry earned 30 grand minimum when he got out of school. The son had failed the Higher School Certificate a couple of times. His dad had just lost his job, couldn't tell the rest of the members of the family because suddenly the breadwinner had lost his sense of who he was. He started wearing toupees, going to the gym, pretending to go to work when he wasn't. The son really just wanted to follow his heart for his path in life.

His dad catches him practising Jesus Christ Superstar, where he's put a crown of thorns on the dog and for rehearsal purposes is singing one of the songs from the show. Then gets severely beaten up the bum as a result of getting sprung. They're similar themes, both stories.

Staying with the dogs, the dog in Crackers is actually the opposite, it's the killer, and the family identify their hostilities with the dog.

Yes, the dog became an external representation of this kid's anger at not being able to accept his own father's death. The dog was an external manifestation of his rage and frustration at being unable to accept a new father figure in his family, so the dog causes quite a lot of havoc in the film as a consequence. Joey loves the dog but the dog hates Bruno. So, basically, it's an extension of his frustration and fear to embrace change.

Talking of the deaths of dogs - what made you kill the dog in the barbecue?

Well, it's interesting because I asked myself what's ultimately absurd about anger. Anger is incredibly destructive. I've rarely seen a good purpose for anger - and I've spent a lot of my life being angry for a lot of reasons and I've usually only created misery for myself and other people. At its worst it's nightmarish but, in a humorous light, it's ridiculous. It's an incredible waste of energy and time so I wanted to show how this kid's anger could ultimately show the audience just how life-threatening this expression of anger could become. The dog's in a situation where it's let off the leash and goes to maul Bruno but inadvertently dies in a very slapstick fashion. The irony was that the anger ended up imploding on itself. The source of anger ended up being its own downfall.

That's what I wanted to say about anger: you always end up getting more burnt by allowing yourself to be engulfed in those sorts of flames, literally and metaphorically.

It gets a big laugh, that scene.

Well, it's interesting, isn't it, that that's probably one of the biggest laughs in the film, yet you would think you can't kill a dog. In the context it works because you understand the premise is very real and the scenario could happen in reality. And isn't it ridiculous that this level of anger has reached this point of absurdity? It's ridiculous.

To take you further on Joey and the generations: at one stage, you have the photo being taken with the four generations of Australian males. You were saying a lot about Australian males, repressions and the angers. Where did that all come from?

I look into my own experience as a male in life and my own family, trying to identify who my stepfather was, trying to understand where his sense of values came from. There was a man who worked, came home, wanted the meal on the table - life was fixed. But suddenly he was thrown into a situation where that wasn't the case any more. His wife was also working, my mother, and it upset his applecart something shocking that she was earning more money than he did. The impact it had on him was quite extraordinary, to his generation.

This social revolution is still taking place. As a consequence men, ironically, because of their fear and ignorance, become victims and, because they become victims, the women they have relationships with also become victimised. So I was interested in exploring, I suppose, how each generation's dealing, from a male point of view, with the social revelation and revolution that's taking place in regard to identity, what is a man today, what do they represent, what are their values, what do they stand for? I find the whole area fascinating as a man myself, being a father and a husband, constantly redefining who am I as a husband, who am I as a father and who am I just unto myself.

Most women can identify themselves. The first thing they will tell you about is who they are, not what they do for a living, whereas most men are still caught in this trap of identifying themselves with the work they do. As a consequence, when they lose their job or they lose their partner, they're thrown into this incredible void of potential depression, frustration and desolation because, innately, they haven't defined who they are outside those other role models. And a lot of women are now leaving; they're saying, "Jack, I've had enough, I'm out of here." And suddenly Jack goes, "Well, who am I if you're not supporting me?" They're suddenly going to a psychologist for the first time in their life. And the psychologist says, "Well, you're not alone, mate. There's a lot of other men out there who are struggling to deal with the lack of identity and they have to go on that quest."

You created a lot of pathos surprisingly at the end with the theme of who can weep and the grandfather, Jack, crying. His father's generation had gone off and left family but now he speaks with some remorse for what he'd done and the consequences. The great grandfather relates best with the youngest generation. It was like Nobody's Fool with Paul Newman. He was a grandfather and he could relate better with his grandson than with the son. It seems important that the alienated son should unexpectedly weep at this father's death.

He's the one who really feels it the most. There's an old adage that women grow through pain and men grow through grief. Now, I don't know whether it's true in terms of women but I think childbirth is probably a good testament to that. But I think the grief thing is really interesting. It's a cliche to say that men aren't connected to their feelings. But rather than just saying yes or no to this, it's more important to ask what does it mean specifically? Grief is a huge issue for men. Symbolically, it represents aspects of death in their lives. The film deals with literal death - but it can be the death of innocence, the death of childhood, the death of an aspect of ourselves that's left ungrieved for because, as a society, we don't like dealing with grief.

We don't like dealing with death any more. It's a taboo. Once upon a time it used to be your granny was laid out in the lounge room for three days and you experienced death in every aspect and facet. Sex was taboo whereas now it is not so much taboo. But death - it's whisked away under the carpet and we're living in eternal youth according to modern science and the cosmetic products they advertise on television. So grief is an unknown quantity. But I think male groups in America now, especially the leading area of New Age, the Men's Movement, are dealing with getting in touch with the graves we've left on our path through our life and that we really have to revisit.

I know that's true of myself. As a male losing my father - he died of cancer when I was seven and the story's partly inspired thematically because of this - it was only when I was about 18 and it was Father's Day, I heard it on the radio as I was driving along, and I suddenly just started sobbing. It was the first time I think I really acknowledged the loss, of what losing my father meant. That started the journey of dealing with what it meant to lose that role model in my life and what it meant to grieve. I was so ill-equipped to deal with it emotionally and I think, as a man, I'll probably be still working on that until I put one foot in the grave.

Yet you spoofed a lot of the surface New Age stuff in Bruno's character and dialogue.

I think the really important thing about the New Age is to keep an element of scepticism - not just to embrace any old thing that rocks past and say, well, this is the latest thing, jump on it. It's saying be open to what is on offer, but be thorough enough to examine it properly so that you can sift through all the things that are on offer and discover what really has any meaning. There are some fantastic things in that movement that have been logged under this one banner. There's a lot of junk as well.

Bruno's a character that symbolically represents my generation to a certain extent, the Baby Boomers who suddenly started asking questions: "Why is my family so dysfunctional," and the word "dysfunctional" became the buzzword and a lot of self-searching followed the '60s revolution: "Who am I, why am I, what am I doing here, why are my parents like they are, am I like them, what am I going to inherit from them, do I want to inherit this or do I want to change?".

Joey has a chance to break the cycle of inheritance of prejudice and fear. He has a chance to break the chains. And that's very much the times we're living in. We're faced with this very large responsibility. Do we have the courage to do it, because it requires an enormous amount of self-examination and the courage to be honest - not just to be honest and intellectualise it, but be courageous enough to actually experience the feelings associated with what it all means. That's scary territory for men.

The women were more honest, even within the limitations.

I think women are. I think they spend more time networking with each other. Their communication skills have always been so much better than men's, by nature being a communal sex. Men are much more separate. They go out individually and they don't collaborate as much. But things are changing so fast. A year now is a hundred years in terms of change so having four generations of men in the story fascinated me. A man in his late eighties might as well be 1000 years old now, in terms of the values he represented and where he's come from, from a land of absolute certainty to a land of total uncertainty - and the shades of grey in between.

Joey's looking at the three generations above him and asking himself, "Which one do I align myself with?" In a sense, he aligns himself with all of them but, at the same time, there are things about all three that he doesn't align himself with. He's really having to try and sift through each archetype and try and work out what he wants to keep. He's faced with the dilemma, "Will I go down the same road or will I have the courage to change?" I'm optimistic enough to believe that men can change.

Religion? You showed the Christmas pageant at the end and the chaos. With Bonza you alluded to death and resurrection.

I've always been a Christian and I think, generally, Australian society is Christian, whether they acknowledge in language any more what those specific values are. I think they've lost the terminology to define what Christian ethics and values are but, intuitively, they still know what they are. Therefore, there's still a very strong empathy for the basic Christian principles. I suppose I relate to that very strongly in that it's still a part of me and I'm fascinated by the fact that, as a society, one of the few rituals we've retained historically is Christmas.

At Christmas we sing Christmas carols mindlessly but, at the same time, there's a part of our heart that gets touched, "This is a wonderful thing, there is real love in this whole ritual." In essence that's what it's about, about what love is, and we all want to experience that at Christmas time. We all hunger for it, ultimately more than anything else, that we are loved. So we go home, which is the heartland of love - we all like to believe that it still exists somewhere - and we celebrate a ritual that historically connects us to the most fundamental figure in our history that personified unconditional love, being Christ. We don't say that any more, but we still sing the hymns, we still do the ritual, we give of ourselves in the form of presents, even though it's highly commercialised and there are trashy elements associated with it.

But deep down, subconsciously, it's still embedded in all of us, that we want to be a part of a communal sharing that ultimately represents greater ideals than basic materialism and greed and selfishness. We want to believe that we are a part of something that is positive, loving, nurturing and caring, in the face of economic rationalism and negativity and suicide and drug abuse and the Channel 9 News.

So it's one of those few windows that's still there, as is Easter - and that's something I'm looking at incorporating into another story - of the absurdity on the one hand that they all go back to this house because they want these things, but all their prejudice and history is dragged to the fore and a lot of conflict ensues, but overall I'm an optimist. Even at the end of the story when chaos reigns again, they're all together. So what's happened in the story? They've been fragmented and you think this family is going to stay shattered forever. But the last scene in film says no, even though the scenario is chaotic and life is still and will remain even more demanding and more chaotic, they are still in the same space with each other, they are still working on how to knit this relationship and how to keep the family together.

I'm also optimist enough to believe that, symbolically, family is a microcosm for the larger aspects of the world and that's why I suppose I like writing about that theme, that I'm ultimately an optimist and believe that the light - call it love, what have you - will ultimately win out against the darkness, and that's what we're looking at in apocalyptic terms. I think the world is very much in the grips of this. We're in a battlefield now and, because we've lost clearly identifiable weaponry and shields to do battle with ignorance and fear and greed and racism, we're having to redefine what our tools are to deal with those. And that's a revolution we're having to do very quickly because the dark side's growing at such a rapid rate because of that level of ignorance and that level of self-neglect. So I try and look at it from the point of view that, if the family can redefine itself through the so-called nuclear family being disintegrated (which I don't think is so much the reality), it's just going through this enormous metamorphosis where extended families are now part of a family, that interracial relationships are now part of one family and this country as a whole is like a large family and we're having to learn to live with each other, we're having to learn to co-operate, to communicate and to be more loving and accepting, because the reality is we don't have a choice, we've got to go one way or the other. We'll either end up killing each other or we're going to learn how to live with each other. So I'm an optimist enough to believe that we can achieve that. Otherwise I'd stop, I wouldn't make films, I wouldn't ultimately use it as a platform to preach from the pulpit.

In terms of preaching from the pulpit and comedy and spoofing, the Australian imagination has tended to respond best to comedies, from Crocodile Dundee, the nice Kerrigan Castle family, as well as Death in Brunswick and Strictly Ballroom - we respond best to the nice larrikin. Does your sensibility (with your television spoof background with Let the Blood Run Free) lead you that way?

I've always been a very rebellious sort of person, an anarchistic sort of person, and I think that's very much a large part of the Australian archetype. We don't like authority figures and with good cause we're sceptical about totally trusting them. On the one hand, and there's a naive archetype that will follow a Pauline Hanson's point of view out of fear and ignorance. To go back to The Castle, it's really interesting because I was doing some teaching in Melbourne with scriptwriters and we analysed The Castle. It was quite controversial. The students thought it was unreal, the family a joke, one-dimensional, cardboard characters, it's ridiculous. But what we finally realised was that it was so successful because it was a fairy tale; the family weren't real, but they are what people wanted to be real so, therefore, they were perfect, totally and utterly unconditionally loving of each other, regardless of the adversity that their life had encountered, including armed robbery and the son being in jail. And you think, "Well, they don't seem to bat an eyelid about that. He could have been a mass murderer but they would still love him and he knows he's got a home and he loves Dad." Deep down we all say we really want this. It's absurd but we still really want it. In that sense I find it quite reassuring.

On the other hand, with Crackers, I think the characters are closer to being real in that they represent the sort of comic mix of foibles that make us all who we are. We have traits in us that are very nurturing and forgiving and, in Christian terms, quite empathetic and loving, but we also have aspects of ourselves that are on the dark side of the fence that get caught in anger and resentment and refuse to forgive. I suppose I try to explore that whole nature, that battleground between the light and the dark, which is what it is in reality. The comedy comes from heightening those particular idiosyncrasies. But there's light and dark in all the characters in the story, they're not just one-dimensional, they're hopefully a lot more believable.


Interview: 23rd June 1998

MONIQUE SCHWARTZ



Bitter Herbs and Honey - is it the only film overview of a section of the Australian Jewish community?

Yes, it's never been done before, so it's a first.

Did your own involvement lead to the making of the film?

Not really. It was Natalie Miller's idea. She said, `Why don't we do a film about the Jews in Carlton?' It came through the Jewish Festival of the Arts and it came to me through that process. Personally, I wasn't particularly interested in Jews in Australia because I'm more of a Zionist. I'm interested in Jewish history in Europe and I'm interested in Israel, not so interested in Australian Jewry. But the project came to me and I did the script. Then I started to interview the people very thoroughly and clarity came about what it actually meant, for the Jews in Carlton, and I fell in love with the film. I fell in love with the people. They don't love me particularly but I love them and I admire them. And I respect and admire what the people in Carlton did, which I didn't know about beforehand.

People were very nostalgic in the way they talked about Carlton but I wasn't interested in that at all; I was interested in what it actually meant in terms of identity, culture and those sorts of issues. They were the issues we pursued in the film.

You have provided an overview history of Jews in Australia by going back to the First Fleet, then the comments about the English Jews who came to Australia in the 19th century and their attitudes.

Yes. If anything came out of my own personal life, it would be that aspect. But I think that, in the way that we made it, the film does give an overall sense of what happened, what happened with the Jews coming to Australia. It also gives an overview and a bit of a feeling of Australian history. I think the reason the film has been very successful and very popular with people who are not Jewish is because everybody can plug into it, not only because of the struggles in the film but because it relates to a particular view of Australian history as well.

What about the contrast between the English Jews and their not wanting to emphasise their Jewishness and the group that came later from Poland to Carlton?

That was the thing that I really found interesting in terms of the contrasts in different ways of being who you are, different versions of identity. Because I'm such a Jewish nationalist myself, I've got my own preferences. So it was interesting to see the way that the Jews who were here earlier were completely disappearing into society. Whether they intermarried or not is not the issue. But it was in terms of their behaviour and in terms of the customs they developed as well as the things that they found interesting and the things they found embarrassing. This was very different from the Jews who came here later. They had a different way of identifying themselves. I thought that was very strong and this is a lesson for all ethnic groups or for all groups, be they Catholic or whatever, about how to conduct themselves in relation to your own identity. This is not to say that you should break government laws or the laws of the country. But, as Sam Lipski says, you've got to find a way of being able to maintain all the things that you are, within the parameters of the culture that you're living in. The Anglo Jews didn't do that.

Have they come back to a more explicit acknowledgment of their Jewish culture in the 20th century?

I don't think so, because a lot of this happened in the 20th century. I think that now they've just been overwhelmed. The Jewish community now is predominantly the Jewish community as it emerged from those people in Carlton, those Eastern European Jews. These Europeans, who came immediately before the war and immediately post-war, are those who set up all the elements which make the Jewish community identifiable. It's a demographic thing. So, the Anglo Jews are a minority. A lot of their children married people from the Euro Jews. But there are still some Anglo Jewish families, and I find them different. They can't maintain themselves in quite the same way as they used to because they're overwhelmed, numerically speaking.

That contrasts with Australian Catholicism. The early Irish Catholics were so assertive of their origins that they have dominated. Any Catholic group that has migrated since, like the Italians or the Maltese, while they're still very distinctive, they haven't overwhelmed that initial Irish thrust, whereas it seems the opposite with the later-coming Jews from Central and Eastern Europe.

Because the Anglo Jews had nothing to offer. They're nice people but they had nothing to offer by way of an intellectual engagement with Judaism, no cultural engagement, nothing. All they could say was, `Well, be a Jew between 9.00 and 10.00 on Saturday morning and on the Yuntif(?) on the Hiolifis(?). I imagine that the Irish Catholics and the Italians have a very definite way of being who they are. Different, but strong. It's there and it to do with being Catholic. This was not the case with the Anglo Jews. They had nothing to offer in that way.

The people interviewed showed great vitality and an engagement with culture. They also draw on long and distinctive traditions of language, music.

Yes, that's what brought me into the film, brought my heart into the film, this incredible engagement. It started five years ago - or a lot longer than that - because for five years I was the co ordinator of Jewish Radio 3ZZZ. That was the first time, really, that I came across the real oldies who are remnants of the Kadima, the Yiddishists. I come from a family where Yiddish was regarded very badly. It was not something that the family, my mother or my father valued. They were Viennese and my dad liked Herr Hochdeutsch and Strauss and Schiller and Goethe. These were the people he'd grown up with and the intellectual tradition he was very interested in.

I didn't know anything properly from my own life, so when I met people like Ben Fermansky and Moishe Eisenbatt and worked with them on a daily basis, I could see more. These were people in their 80s, totally dedicated to Yiddish culture, Yiddish language and the ideas that it generated. Moishe Eisenbatt is still writing books, publishing them himself and editing the Melbourne Chronicle. He was the editor of the Yiddish part of the Jewish News, totally engaged. That's fantastic. I respect it and value it.

There hasn't been a strong Jewish presence in the Australian film industry in terms of themes or stories.

No, not at all. Norman Loves Rose, or whatever that film was called, was so appalling that I repress it. I made a short film which went to the Berlin Film Festival. It was called Eine Famille Baum. It involved three generations of my family, but was dramatised. Aside from that, no-one has done anything on themes to do with Jewish issues. There are a lot of Jews who work in the film industry but they're all marginal in relation to their acknowledgment of Jewish living. They might acknowledge it, but they aren't actually engaged with the notion of what it is. They don't find it interesting.

Some documentaries about artists have been made. There's Rivka Hartmann's The Miniskirted Dynamo.

She's engaged with the mother-daughter experience. She's actually not engaged in any way at all with the notion of being Jewish.

Perhaps that's why Shine made such an impact, although it seemed a middle way between the Anglo Jewish who wanted to be secular and those who came from Poland with a culture, but somehow wanting to be secular.

Yes, it's a Jewish family. But, with the Anglo Jews, it wasn't that they were secular but they didn't get involved in the plurality of what being Jewish is. The Eastern European Jews were secular too, a lot of them; these Europeans, like, a lot of the people from the Kadima, are totally secular, they're Vundis. They're not religious but they're totally identified as Jewish and totally engaged with the history, the traditions, the culture and the language of the Jewish people. But Shine, I haven't seen it yet. I'm happy that it's all about a Jewish family. Then, on the other hand, I think, `oh go and see it, and it will really annoy me'.

Bitter Herbs and Honey is a film of great empathy and great elegance.

I had a person ring me yesterday, not Jewish, a Catholic, and she said to me, `It was just a film of great beauty', and she meant it. There's an elegance about the way it moves. It deals with very complicated notions but in a very refined way. It is elegant in an elliptical way as well.

You are happy with the way that you've crafted the film?

Very. I think it's beautiful. I can speak like this without feeling, `Oh, my God, I'm boasting', because Ori was the editor; Martin did the music and Sarah the production design. Laszlo did the camera work and Deborah co-produced and gave emotional support to the whole film. So I don't feel as if I did an awful lot. I said to Deborah, `But what did the director do? Was the director there?' because, when I think about everybody in terms of craft, I can't fault anyone.

Your film on the Gulf War?

I think there's a lot of anti-Semitism in the world. Sometimes I think that when it's not politically acceptable to say, `I hate Jews', which is actually what people feel, people say things like, `I hate Israelis', and demonise the Israelis. So I set about making a film about the Israelis to show them as people as I did with films about women. How do you make women acceptable for people? You do a different form of representation. And I found that the representation of Israelis was so foul it's unspeakable. So I went to Israel and wanted to do this film about the Gulf War because I found the whole episode very interesting - and my son was there as well.

Initially I was going to do it during the war but, by the time I got there, the war had just finished. I wanted to show the pluralism amongst Israelis and to represent them in that way. It's the Israelis who bear the brunt for the Jewish people, for the anti-Semitism against the Jewish people. Maybe I've been extreme. I don't think so. I could put it in a more delicate way, but the ideas are exactly the same.

What impact did the film have on Australian audiences?

The interesting thing was that it didn't sell to television. SBS said to me, `We love this film. We think it's beautifully directed, beautifully done. But if we show this film, we'll have to show a film about the Iraqis and we'll have to show a film about the Palestinians'. I said, `Well, first of all, okay if you do but, secondly, why can't we have a film about the Israelis, just about the Israelis?' `Oh, no, no, we can't have that.' And I said, `It sounds a bit like some sort of bias here'. They said, `Oh, no, no, we're not biased'. But that was the response that I got. I think it's true that there was bias against it and so it didn't get a television screening. Not that I care particularly, because I don't think television's a fabulous medium for films. It's okay. People get to sit in front of the screen, but I don't know that it makes any difference.

After Bitter Herbs and Honey and the Gulf War how did you come to make such a Catholic film as Pieta?

But everyone says it's very Jewish. I've grown up in a world that's very uncertain, where there's not a lot that you can be certain about. You can be certain of a couple of things and you better keep them in line. But, for the rest, you can't really be certain about anything. Through the course of my work, I have met a number of people who were very certain about everything, about the rhythm of life - they could say, `Next year it will be like this or the year after it will be like that'. They were very certain, very sure, very comfortable.

I was intrigued by the question of what happens if that uncertainty begins to unravel. And it happened in the Catholic domain. Catholicism was very luscious. For the people I knew and that I used as the basis for the story, Catholicism had entered into their lives in a luscious and a very physical way. It was as if you could feel it and you could touch it. Those nuns stirred people's - and my - imagination. You could smell Catholicism, you could feel it, you could touch it. Catholicism had entered into their lives in this way, as well as in the spiritual way. I was interested to see what would happen, how you could reconcile all the elements; then, once you had everything set up and it started to unravel, what would happen?

The original title of the film was Shadowplay?

It was called Shadowplay because everything bounces off everything else. Everything has multiple realities. Pieta was Jan Epstein's title because I'm no good with names. I thought of Shadowplay but we couldn't have it because someone else had used it.

All the sub-themes were interesting, especially what is justice? This is a very Jewish thing, concern about justice. I'd read stories about surrogate babies and they raised issues of justice. I knew that this woman, Mary, the central character, could confront these realities only in issues you couldn't argue about, like babies. And her art student was a surrogate child of her own, her little baby.

And she would protect her even to killing for her?

Yes.

That's very strong.

It's strong. But - I felt it at the time and I feel it even more strongly now - that if you take away someone's notion that there's justice possible within the culture, and if that is threatened, like this woman's notion of motherhood and of being caring and nurturing, people will do things like that. But it ends where she wants to be caught, she wants to be picked up - although you don't know whether she is or not. If she does get caught and goes to jail, that reaffirms her sense her sense of justice being done, and then she can have some optimism in the world, in the way things are ordered.

What really impresse about Pieta are the monologues. How much came from the performance? How much from the writing? How much from yourself because, from a Catholic point of view, the monologues are very Catholic?

It was all in the writing. I did interviews with people and then I wrote them. The monologues have a strong style and I'm very good at that. I can feel that style, you know, I can feel it. So, when people told me their stories, `Oh, this it was like; we went here, we went there and this is what happened', I thought I can be there and I can do it in that way; they're very poetic and I can do that. I can put myself in that position.

So you could imagine yourself as a Catholic schoolgirl with all that religious heritage and her reaction to the sexual education and repression?

Yes, I could smell it. I could see it. I could feel it. It was very sensual. That's the thing that engaged me. I spend a lot of time asking people about their lives, you know. Everyone thinks I'm a shocking nag, `Oh, God, the Schwartz questions, the Schwartz interrogation', because I'm really quite interested and when I heard about people talking about this part of Catholic life, I found it intriguing.

Did you see it as an authentic religion and spirituality, the way they talked about it?

Yes, I did.

Deep or surface?

I thought it was part of their lives. It was in the way that being Jewish is part of my life. And the beauty of whatever that is, I felt it was absolutely part of their lives, to a point where they could never not be that way. The script editor of Bitter Herbs and Honey is a really good friend of mine, Felicity Collins. She's a Catholic, brought up by the nuns and everything. And she says that, if you've had that sort of a training, it's never going to go. And I felt that about these people, that the Catholicism was part of the structure in their lives; it formed their lives, it formed them, even though they might mouthe different points of view. They might say, `Oh, I'm not a Catholic any more. Who goes to church? It's boring,' or whatever. But whatever the variations are, the structure and the way they formulate meaning in the world is Catholic.

Bob Ellis calls it a country of the mind.

Yes. It's there, it's the map of your mind and the map of your heart. You know what moves you, what's going to get in, what's going to get to you. If I were a Catholic, I'd make sure my kids were going to be Catholic trained in that way.

Pieta touches on all these themes of the good Catholic: sexuality, theology of Christ, confession, Christian art, the nuns and celibacy and idealistic living of life, struggle between men and women and God and asking forgiveness.

Yes.

You wrote the screenplay with great empathy?

For me, the Catholic church is problematic because it's been very bad for Jews, but with this woman who I like and respect and admire in a particular sort of way, I'd never heard anyone talk about this part of their life in this way, and I could see it. As she talked about it, I could see these things. I was able to follow the walk, I was able to walk with her, so to speak. But I can do that, because if I'm going to be interested in doing something about somebody, I can do it. But it was clear about the Catholic education that this woman had had. And the nuns were an incredible sort of model. I never could understand how anyone could be a nun, but it was clear that they were a fascination and a model of dedication and focus. There is singularity of purpose and focus, which are wonderful things.

Do you know the story of the Rabbis and the Holocaust. There are six rabbis sitting in Auschwitz saying, `None of this can possibly happen. There can't be a God, because none of this would happen if there was a God. There is no God'. They debate this the whole night. When morning comes, they all agree, `There clearly cannot be a God. Buut let's go and do the morning prayers'. Whatever else happens, providing they've got that, there can be optimism and they hope. It's similar with Mary. If she is picked up and she ends up in jail, she can feel that there's justice, feel that there's order, feel hope in life and so it doesn't matter that she's in jail. But, if she were out and around, having a good time, going to restaurants, going to movies, but felt that there was no justice, then there would be no hope, only despair, and she might as well be dead. So that's basically the point. That's really what the film is about.

Jewish mothers?

Yes, another Jewish project: the Jewish mother in film. I was away for about a year and I interviewed a lot of Jewish film-makers who have Jewish mothers in their films: Paul Mazursky, Richard Benjamin, Ernest Lehmann, Paul Bogart, Larry Peerce... In the meantime I did Bitter Herbs and Honey. So I'm going to re-contact and do more interviewing, then come back, write the script for it and do it. An hour and a half running time. We know how to do it and how to budget it: 55 minutes for TV, longer for theatrical release.

Australian content as well as American?

Well, no, because there's nothing in Australian films. But I will look at Israeli films as well as Yiddish films. It is the different approach. While it's more of the same about identity, Israeli films don't present the Jewish mother in the same way as in American films. The Jewish mother stereotype is a product of very specific classical Hollywood cinema, in a very specific time frame. It coincides with the desire of certain groups of Jewish men who want to assimilate and marry non-Jewish girls and give away all that old sort of stuff. It's an Oedipal issue in their identity where they reject the mother, have to get rid of her and distance themselves. In doing that, they're rejecting the culture and that identity. So, if you do the Jewish mother as grotesque and monstrous, then you can distance yourself. The Israelis don't do that with their mothers in film, and they talk about their mothers differently. It's totally different.

Mothers in classic Hollywood films, if the mother's bad - usually the ordinary mother, not the Jewish mother - she's bad in a very different way: she's bad because she's selfish, bad because she's sexual. Whereas the Jewish mother, when she's bad, she's the monster, she's always there, she's too interfering, she's there, she feeds you too much!

Shelley Winters portrayed a lot of these mothers.

Yes, I've interviewed her once already. I wanted her to talk about her own mother who had an opera voice. She has really wonderful memories of her mother in Louisiana, can you believe that, in the South. She and her sister would go walking, shopping and on their way back they'd hear their mother's voice wafting through the lilacs, singing songs, operas and music like that.

The mothers she has portrayed are never truly monstrous, absolutely monstrous. She doesn't see that what she's done is to portray them as monstrous.

But I'm going to speak to the directors' mothers, those that have got mothers still, and get them to have a word about it. So, basically, the film is about identity and male sexuality in America.


Interview: 19th August 1996

HOWARD RUBIE

My beginnings were very much in cinema. I joined Cinesound Productions. But before that I joined a company called Kingcroft Productions. I was a young boy, about 15. I left school at 14, tired of school and thought there must be another world outside. Kingcroft Productions, which was run by a bloke called Jack Kingsford- Smith and his mate Jack Gardner. Jack Kingsford- Smith was related to Charles Kingsford-Smith? and they had a production company, I think in Oxford Street near Taylor Square.

I really did learn many, many things about production, neg match, basic lighting, camerawork. I had to load the cameras and look after them. I had to plug all the lights in and do all that sort of stuff because the equipment we used in those days was pretty basic to what we use now. The Cine- Kodak Special was the pride and joy and we would do documentary films using Kodachrome, very slow stock.

Did I read that you were in Maitland?

Yes, I was certainly in the Maitland floods in 1955, but I had left Kingcroft by then and gone to Cinesound, in the camera department at Cinesound as an assistant. I went to the Maitland floods and I was there during all that disaster - in fact, I was the character in Newsfront. The cameraman who was killed was based on my story in Maitland.

That was the '50s?

That was the '50s, and I stayed with Cinesound then for about 14 years and I rose to become chief cameraman and also the news director .......... I think I had 28 cameramen at one stage, 28 in the camera department including Melbourne, and we had stringers in Brisbane and Adelaide, Perth and, I think, in Hobart and a few more around the place.

When did Cinesound actually come to an end?

Well, I had left by then but the Cinesound Newsreel went on for a number of years until the late '70s, I think. I think it was the last newsreel in the world. The one reason and one reason only was that in the legislation with regard to cinema, a subsidy was to be paid by cinemas or by the film studios to local productions. It's probably there sitting in the statute books in New South Wales. Now, the arrangement was that they either put money into feature films or cinema or they produced a newsreel.

Cinesound was the Greater Union Theatres side of things, Movietone was 20th Century Fox. The Kings and the Hoyts - the two cinema chains - produced this newsreel so they didn't have to put money into local feature film production.

Your career as a cameraman?

I was still with Cinesound. It was a charmed life in those days as a young fellow. I think I was 19 when I did my first overseas assignment to New Guinea for the opening of the Coast Watchers Memorial, 19 and a half in Tahiti on the last of the flying boats, 20 I in London and Europe. So as a young fellow it was a great, great time.

Then I went back to Thailand. Actually, that's a bit of a funny story. I had a strange airline ticket. I think it was the British Airways inaugural flight to London, and I went off by myself and took a 35mm Aeroflex - that's what you took in those days - so it was pretty heavy. The camera weighed 45 pounds. I took a lot of 35mm stock plus dry-cell batteries, plus tripod, plus a big metal box and a selection of lenses and all that sort of thing, so it was a fair bit of gear that you actually lumped around with you.

Anyhow, I came back, been to London and done the London shoot, then I looked at the ticket and spoke to the travel person who said, "Well, there's no reason why you shouldn't get off somewhere on the way back," so I chose Bangkok. Before I'd left, the boss had said, "Look, you must come straight back". I was a bit headstrong but I thought that can't be right, particularly as I was reassured by the BOAC person that I could get off quite easily.

So I got off in Bangkok and, of course, it was a very exciting place and I got all this great stuff, all sorts of wonderful material, then went into Laos and shot some stuff there, the Golden Triangle, then back to Bangkok, finished the trip in Singapore, then back to Sydney. In fact that was in the days of SEATO - the South-East? Asian Treaty Organisation - and I'd actually done a story of Australians in the backblocks of Bangkok and up on the Mekong, working away there, and it was a good story. It was a great character-building exercise for young guys - I think I've had plenty of character-building exercises.

So I got back to Australia and I got into all sorts of trouble because I had flouted the ticket arrangements, got off where I shouldn't have got off. But it was a good story, anyhow, good material.

Television started in 1957 and Cinesound was servicing Channel 9, and it was so exciting that one would never really ever have a sickie and you didn't want to take your holidays or do anything like that at all, because life was too good. Of course, it was in the days of full employment and there were plenty of jobs around. The chase of the story was really very, very good fun.

I worked with an English director by the name of Eric Fullilove at Cinesound. Until that time, all the serious directing had been done by Ken Hall. I do think there was an unconscious thing that Ken Hall was the director. And, in those days, it was the cult of the cameraman where you did your own photography and directing or the role of the director was somewhat suppressed or not really appreciated at all. The opportunities for directing were not great because of this business with the cinemas and there was no indigenous production going on.

Anyhow, Eric came along he was a breath of fresh air. Eric had been a director for quite some time in England doing documentaries and had won a few awards and decided to emigrate. He and I teamed up within Cinesound and I became his cameraman. So from him, I really learned how directors behaved and what they did so, eventually, it was a natural progression for me to start to direct my own material, which I had been, to certain degree, as a cameraman anyhow. So I became a director and I had another cameraman working for me.
Then I started to win a few awards as a director and I started to write. I would be writing my own documentaries and then producing them through Cinesound. For six years I wrote, produced, photographed and directed the Sydney to Hobart documentaries. A chap by the name of Ted Roberts used to write the commentaries and another chap by the name of Sven Liebeck used to write the music and we combined on quite a few projects over the years after that. But we were all pretty young and we didn't really know too much about what we were doing.

I then went to Ajax Films, which was a very up and coming, very gung-ho commercial production company, and TV commercials were starting to make their impact on the industry. I stayed there for quite a few years and I directed television commercials for them. Ajax Films had a contract to produce a series called Animal Doctor. This was roughly the same time that Skippy was being made. I was the first assistant director for the first 13 episodes, I think. Then it went into another 13 and I moved from there to director of that series in concert with .

Because I'd come from a technical background and managed to get into the positions that I wanted, I never really had too much formal training as far as working with actors so I decided I'd better do something about this. I became involved with a theatre group which had some very great luminaries of the time. It was called the Artists Group Theatre and we took over the Stables Theatre in Kings Cross after the Stables people moved out.

I'll just have to just retrack a bit. There was a lady came to Australia called Stella Adler. Stella Adler had studied with the Actors' Studio in New York and was very much au fait with the Method form of acting. I attended her course here in Australia. At that time there were a lot of actors out of work and we all got together, all fired up with this new form of acting. For me it was a new area because I started to work in the theatre, which I loved. We decided we would take over the Haven Theatre and, I'm not sure why, I became chairman of the Haven Theatre up there at Kings Cross.

We had with us David Williamson, Carmen Duncan, Pat Bishop, lots and lots of luminaries of the acting profession at that time, Gerard Maguire, Billy Hunter was also a mainstay of that group. Bob Ellis was also one of the writers that was attached to us. Bob somehow managed to buy the theatre from the Nimrod people. In some ways, I had really gone back to grass roots and begun to learn a section of the directing trade again. It put me in great stead because I really then had a superb technical knowledge of film-making then, at the other side, drama film-making, presenting, with actors, the dramatised story on screen. Once again it was a great learning experience.

At the same time I was teaching at the Film and Television School - I actually graduated the first students out of the Film and Television School, a group of camera assistants. I also got interested in the very early days of video editing. It was pretty much a crunch and grind, smash-bash thing. But I got into learning about it and teaching the skills of very early video.

At the same time or maybe a little after, I was fortunate enough to work on Wake In Fright. I was the first assistant director on that. Ted Kotcheff was the director, a crazy Macedonian fellow. We made that film out in Broken Hill and it was the weirdest thing. But it was, I think, a truly great an Australian film because it was an Australian story with many honest Australian elements in it. I was also the Second Unit director.

Did you do those kangaroo chases?

Yes, that was first and second unit. We also shot a lot of kangaroos in the making of that film, but following right behind all the people who did the shooting were the kangaroo shooters, the professionals, so these kangaroos were shot and within minutes were skinned, boned and in the freezer truck. It was quite an experience.

I was exposed to some fairly tough international stars. Gary Bond was the lead and went on to become a star of the West End, a great singer. Donald Pleasence, what a tough character he was. He turned up with his Israeli girlfriend, who was a lieutenant in the Israeli army. She was a beautiful-looking girl and he was a pretty tough nut. There was Chips Rafferty. We were shooting in Broken Hill and that was his home town. Chips had a reputation of being who he is. We had lots of very big drinking scenes and we decided that so our actors wouldn't get drunk, we would give them Horehound beer. And Chips refused to drink the Horehound beer, there's no way that Chips Rafferty was going to be seen drinking this: "All you do is you get it in one end and you piss it out the other, son. What are you giving me this bloody poison for?" He was looking after his image - particularly in his home town.

Many stories come to mind about that filmy. There's one particular scene, the pub scene with Chips Rafferty, Donald Pleasence, Jack Thompson - this was Jack Thompson's first big production. We were shooting in this place where we had actually built a hotel, at a railway siding about a hundred miles out of Broken Hill. We kept going. We got to take 10, 11, 12 and Donald kept blowing his lines and Ted Kotcheff was getting madder and madder and the producer, George Willoughby, was in the background and Bill Harmon and they were chewing their nails and saying, "Think of the overtime, think of the overtime. What's going on? It's all going wrong. We should be out of here by now." But Donald Pleasence had decided that the only way he could play the scene was to get drunk. And, of course, he started to lose his lines. I think we got up to about take 45 and the scene ran about two and a half to three minutes.

So that meant you only just got three takes, if you were lucky, in a magazine of film, and a magazine was 1000 feet long. We were going through film like mad. I remember looking towards the east, looking down the railway line that headed off towards Sydney and I could just see the sun coming up and I said to Ted, "Look, we'll have to finish soon, mate. Here comes the sun, another half an hour and it's going to be broad bloody daylight here." So, with that he blew up and George Willoughby blew up and there was a big fight and they fought for 20 minutes and up came the sun, so we didn't finish it and we had to come back a few days later and reshoot the whole thing, which we got then in about eight or nine takes.

But Ted Kotcheff was an incredibly dedicated fellow and he, as far as a director was concerned, was the auteur, the author well and truly of the film. He stuck to his guns. There were many, many people on the way who said, "Stop, don't do this, don't do that." The film was so good, because we could have bailed out on various scenes much earlier and not got to the real guts of the thing.

Out of that came a show called Spy Force, a series with Jack Thompson. I remember the producer, a chap called Roger Miram, rang me up and said, "Have you got a bloke called Jack Thompson working up there with you? What's he like?"

I said pretty good because we'd done a show with Jack, one of the episodes of Animal Doctor, so that's how Jack Thompson got to be in Spy Force.

All that was very much on-the-job learning experience. I guess it's possible now, but maybe not quite so physically practical. Whereas it might have taken me ten years to learn all that sort of stuff, at the Film School the young people there get, at least, the theory and a bit of practice in three years. They have wonderful facilities out there to do all those sorts of things.

Then I went back to Ajax Films and pretty soon after that started Spy Force. Then I left and became total freelance.

For what it's worth about the religious thing in the film industry in those days - it actually came out in Newsfront. There were certainly the Catholics and the Masons, especially in public life. In New South Wales, if you were a Catholic, I think you might have been in the Education Department; if you were a Mason, you were in the Electricity Commission or whatever. There were certain areas of life within Australia with those - I don't know what you would call them really - groups or allegiances. Cinesound was split up, there were Catholics and mainly Church of England. I'm Church of England. Remember how Catholics would come in on Ash Wednesday with a little bit of ash on their foreheads. People would say, "Where have you been?" "Oh, to church, the bishop put some ash on my forehead." And it was accepted as - well, that's what they did. But I would think that, for instance, if you were a Catholic working in the Electricity Commission, there's no way you could do it. The film industry was a bit freer and more accepting.

There were a couple of important things, I think, that happened at Cinesound. I don't know whether Ken Hall was the main instigator but he was certainly one of the major forces behind the opening of Australian Literature at Sydney University. I think as far as contributions to intellectual life in Australia, that chair - it was probably the first - was very important.

He was also a great friend of Doc Evatt. I went out to cover Doc Evatt one day, just towards the end of his career, this grumpy man who was keeping the press at bay. He came to the front door; I knocked, he said, "Where are you from?" I said, "Cinesound." He said, "Come in." So I did a piece on Doc Evatt.

Another thing I did do, which seems to haunt me all my life, but I don't mind it one little bit, is that I actually photographed Paul Robeson in the bowels of the Opera House. It was a dull, grey day. We set up and Paul Robeson came down - and I'd never heard the term before - he called the workers around and said, "Come on, comrades, come around and I'll sing for you." There was only the basic cement underpinning or foundations. It was totally open to the sky and a bit of rain was coming down. He sang Old Man River, and it was fantastic. I see it pops up every so often on television, that piece of film, Paul Robeson singing Old Man River.

Spy Force, we did 42 episodes, hung in there for a few years, and in its own way it was a very good show. There were bad episodes but there were some very, very good episodes. It was a bit Our Boys Annual, but we knew no different. We were running around Narrabeen with 303s and Awasaki(?) rifles and sticks of gelignite, blowing things up and blowing ourselves up - the sort of stuff you could never ever do today.

If we had a big battle coming up, we'd halt production for a few hours, everyone would sit around and we'd load the ammunition - crimp the 303 blanks, make all the blanks so that we had plenty of ammunition.

After that I was freelancing and I worked on many television shows. I went overseas for a thing called Bailey's Birds, went to Malaya and shot that. Other televison programs, Boney was one of them. James Laurence was a New Zealand fellow, a European who had a little bit of Maori blood in him. We dressed him up to be an Aborigine, - the sort of thing you could never ever do today, because he would be seen as a white man playing a black man. He was actually very good at it.

You did some telemovies as well.

Yes, I remember - I did The Scalp Merchant in Western Australia with John Waters. By this time I had teamed up with Roger Mirams, who I'd been working with ever since Animal Doctor.

And I think that gets us roughly to The Settlement. I had actually agreed with Paul Barron to do the remake of Bush Christmas, and we started off casting. We went round to the studio in Sydney. Tony Williams was the guy who ran it down there in Bligh Street. Young people performed for us. There was one very tall girl who was a cut above the rest and I said, "Okay, we'll have her. She's going to be in the film." Of course it was Nicole Kidman, and she was in the film.

I also went right up to the northern part of the Northern Territory, up to Gove and Elko Island and cast the aboriginal boy, who was just sitting in a building somewhere. We just happened to walk past and here was this kid strumming on a guitar. This aboriginal kid turned out to be a very good actor, but I don't know what happened to him after that at all. It might have been just a one-off thing, but he certainly was an aboriginal with a difference.

You didn't direct Bush Christmas?

No. It was very hard to say whether it was going to go or whether it wasn't going to go, and Robert Bruning came along and said, "Would you like to do a film called The Settlement?" I said, "Sure, okay." So I went to resign from Bush Christmas, which was almost up and running at the same time, and I got into all sorts of disagreements with Paul Barron. In fact, I was about to be sued by Paul Barron for not fulfilling the contract, but we had nothing signed. Paul wasn't able to give me a start date so I pulled out of Bush Christmas and decided to go with The Settlement.

Fortunately my friend Ted Roberts had written the screenplay, and Sven Liebeck ended up doing the music and we had a pretty good cast there, with John Jarratt, Billy Kerr, Ken Wilde, Lorna Leslie and Tony Barry. We made that film in four weeks, just out of Brisbane.

It's a very good representation of the '50s, the bush life, the small town and, of particular interest, a very interesting presentation of things Catholic at the time.

Yes, I remember it was. I was going out with a Catholic girl once. She always said, "Not until we're married," of course. We talked about it and she said, "Oh, it's all right to go with boys from other religions or whatever, but you've got to marry a Catholic." All this stuff was around well and truly, and I remember walking past Catholic churches and wondering at the number of people who went, as opposed to the Church of England church down the road where attendances were not all that great. But the Catholics somehow seemed to have this method of getting people to go. My cousin had become a Catholic and she was - I think she was called a Child of Mary or something. She wore a veil and I remember going along to this ceremony. Then we went along a bit later, she was about 17 or 18, and here was this handsome young priest up there assisting. And my cousin had only eyes for this fellow - "Isn't he beautiful?" And I didn't understand what was going on in her mind until I worked it out a bit later. So that's why, when we had that scene in The Settlement, Katy Wilde was really lusting after the priest because it was a safe thing to do.

If anybody told her that, she would have denied it instantly.

Exactly, and it could never be consummated unless there was a breakdown of things.

You had the ladies of the parish going out to stone Lorna Leslie, with their hats and handbags.

Appropriately dressed, yes.

"Whoever is innocent cast the first stone," and the wife did. The screenplay seemed to have the authentic touch.

Ted might be a Catholic because he understood that. It was the sort of scene that I had seen as a child in Yenda, where I was brought up, in the Murrumbidgee irrigation area. On the hot summer days the people would dress up and go to church or they would go to a meeting. The ladies would all have their hats on and the dresses and the handbags and off they would go. There was a narrowness in Australian thinking in those days and, even as a kid I could sense that didn't seem quite right. And yet in that area of the soldier settlements, the irrigation area, you were taught intolerance. It was there. The Italians had come in and they were starting up some of the grape farms, but there was certainly a difference between the way the Italians lived and the way the Australians lived. Intolerance is something that you are taught, really.

There was a lady I used to drive the sulky for as a kid. She was an ex-schoolteacher and I would drive her into town on a Saturday morning and she would be dressed to the nines on this hot day, with clip-clop, clip-clop. I guess that's where those three ladies came from, those impressions on me as a young person.

That's one of the strengths of The Settlement. You've dramatised the narrowness and yet you've shown the three wanderers as very engaging. It makes the intolerance so much more dramatically real.

It's one of these things that one does instinctively. While working on Animal Doctor, we handled all sorts of animals, particularly snakes. You learned not to be afraid of them. There's one scene in The Settlement where they come back into the hut - and I didn't realise how it affected people where there's a snake - and I decided to put the snake in the old fireplace. The John Jarratt character comes in and, instead of going, "Snake," crash, bang, wallop, kill it, he gets a stick and says, "Go on, get out of here," and the snake slithers off. I think it showed a sort of tolerance, an early conservation thing, that there was no need to kill this animal, no need to do that. I guess that probably came from childhood and growing up with sheep and cattle. There were rough times with the animals, but there was also great compassion from the farmers.

And this chap Stephens, Mrs Stephens' husband, lived on what we called the dry area, he didn't believe in tractors. He used Clydesdales or draught horses to pull his header, plough the field and build the soil banks. I was very fortunate as a young kid, I remember at about eight or nine, standing on the header with six draught horses doing the job. But old Mr Stephens - it was always Mr Stephens, I've forgotten his Christian name - he had this great love of animals, tolerance for the horses. He'd look after them. Here were elements that, if you were a city kid, were to be slightly fearful of. But there's this tolerance in the bush - I guess you got it a bit from the workers who used to come to the farm. They wouldn't kill things unless they really had to. They'd flick a bee away - they might kill a mossie, but that would be about it.

You have certainly done a lot of television, movies and other series.

Yes, there's plenty of things. I work overseas a lot. I have been doing that for the last, probably ten years, a series of telemovies overseas.

We did four South Pacific Adventures, we did Mission Top Secret as a pilot and we did a thing called The Phantom Horseman as another pilot, both telemovies, of which Mission Top Secret got up, and they were six telemovies in each set - Mission Top Secret 1, Mission Top Secret 2 - and 1 was shot in Spain, France, Switzerland, Germany, England and Australia; Mission Top Secret 2 was shot in New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Spain, Germany. That was 24 hours of program.

I've just finished a thing called Search for Treasure Island, which has been on Channel 7. It's a family show. Strangely enough, they just dump it here in Australia, but in Germany it's a big deal and they showed it as four telemovies.

I have at the moment two feature films on the go, both period pieces which I hope to get off the ground eventually. Everyone does. You've all got scripts in your back pocket or on your desk or whatever. Right now it's very tough to get projects off the ground. It's still possible, and I think in Australia we have as good a chance as anywhere, with the Film Finance Corporation and the system that is set up for Australian production.

I think it's easier in Australia initially to get something off the ground. I'm afraid I do think that the film industry is a little spoon-fed. It's probably pampered just a little too much, and I am concerned about the number of people graduating and wanting to work in the film and television industry. You've got all these places that are pumping out these students and I don't know where they're going to get a job. It's a great worry. I don't know whether you can stop it, but I think you could pull it back a bit. Still, that's life, and the best will survive anyhow.

I confirmed this with Jack Thompson. It's weird actually, but I think it's true and it's good. It's good because it's true. There was a scene in Wake in Fright where there were a couple of local guys that we'd actually picked up as extras, and they were outside the Silverton Hotel and one of these fellows invited him in to have a drink. And Gary Bond's character had said, "No, thank you, I've had a drink." And the fellow said, "What do you mean? a bloke drives you 50 miles," or whatever, "and you won't even come and have a drink." Now, that guy's name was Jacko, we knew him as Jacko. He was in a couple of other scenes I've just forgotten exactly. Jacko was a local guy and what you saw on the screen is what you got. He was just that sort of character.

Now, years later, in the second episode of Spy Force, we were portraying the Burma Railway down in a deep creek. And the story was - and it was true, of course - that, if one of these men got injured, they were sent off with a shot, they were got rid of by the Japanese. Anyhow, they're banging spikes in on the railway and this guy gets hit with a hammer. He says his hands are smashed and he can't work, so he's useless. Jack was in the scene and the thing was to implore this man to "Get up, get up, mate. Come on, you can do it." So for some strange reason I thought, give him a name, I'll call him Jacko. So, "Get up, Jacko, come on, get up, get up, Jacko." Now, the Jacko from Broken Hill had had a car accident and was near death, and for some reason as we said, 'Get up, Jacko', he got his strength back and recovered.



Interview: 2nd November 1998

CRAIG ROSENBERG



You were a writer before a film-maker?

Yes, I wrote short stories when I was in my last year of law at Monash. I won three or four national awards for my short stories - at the time there was a Fellowship of Australian Writers' Short Story Award, Independent Monthly Young Writers' Award, Australia Day Short Story Award - and I got a grant from the Literature Board, Australian Council, to do some more writing. Then I made a fateful decision to move over to screenwriting.

What made you do that?

Well, I was spectacularly poor. I'd won a few awards but it wasn't making me much money. I wanted to write and I thought I'd better enter a more lucrative arena, thinking that screenwriting was - but it really wasn't! I think I will always write fiction, but I began to feel that the audience for what I had to say was wider, into films. I also had some ideas which particularly lent themselves to a visual storytelling technique, for example, Hotel de Love is certainly a very visual film, with all the funny fantasy theme rooms and all that is going on there.

So it was a combination of wanting to maximise my possible audience and having some ideas which I thought would be best expressed in the medium of film. At the same time I won't give up fiction writing, but I enjoy screenwriting and directing just as much as my fiction.

You've sold some of your screenplays in America?

Yes, I sold a few. I go back and forth a bit from LA - I usually end up spending about 10 months of the year here and a couple there. I've sold four or five scripts now to studios - one to Paramount, one to Walt Disney, one to Warners, one to Interscope and I'm writing one for 20th Century Fox. I usually go over there and make the pitch with the producer, make the deal and then hightail it back to Melbourne to do the writing. Yes, five scripts for the studios.

Are they all comedies?

All of them have some comedic aspects. Some have a bit more drama than others, but most of them are predominantly comedies.

Why comedy?

I think it's probably because I like making jokes about relationships and `romantic comedies' is where I'm stuck in that regard. But I'm also branching out. I'm writing a thriller because I like to do interesting things with structures of movies. Which is very difficult to do in comedies because in so much of comedy, the structure is subordinated to the joke. Everything is about getting the joke out. And it's very rare, perhaps something like Groundhog Day, where they do do something interesting with the structure and keep it humorous. It is very, very hard to do.
I like doing interesting things with structure and I like trying to do original things with structure. So I'm going to do a thriller. That's one of my next projects. But at the same time I love doing comedies. I'll always do them. I like doing films which can make people laugh. I go to a film to laugh or to cry or whatever. If you can do both those things to an audience in a movie, I think that's a good contribution. I'm happy.

What about farce? Hotel de Love has a large amount of farce in it.

It does have a bit of fast-paced farce, but it's not as farcical as the traditional hotel farce where you're going to have swapping rooms and crashing doors and all that stuff. I tried in the second half of the movie to explore the more dramatic implications of what was happening, whereas the first half is certainly more comedic as the couples figure out who's who and what's what. But for what I wanted to do, I wanted to have a little bit of farce, a little bit of comedy, a little bit of romance and yet at the same time try and say something meaningful on a serious level about how we know who we're in love with and what good does it do us if we know.

It's very romantic in that sense. But you are very forceful on the idea of commitment and ultimate fidelity. Would you see yourself as a romantic?

I think so, absolutely. What's the alternative? The alternative is negativity, cynicism and despair, and what kind of a way is that to live? I mean, even if you're deluded about whether the eventual outcome of your life will be happiness, you're certainly going to be a lot happier if you believe that and probably make it more possible that it will occur if you're positive and optimistic and you believe in romance. I have to believe that that will increase your chances of finding love - you know, there's Stephen in the film, so obsessed with the percentages of love and figuring out what it is. He's so concentrated on it. You hope that he finds it, because he seems to be so single minded. So I would certainly think that I'm an optimist when it comes to love. The alternative is too horrible.

What audience did you have specifically in mind for Hotel de Love?

In terms of age? I really tried to make a movie that both people my age - and 10 years younger - and my grandmother could see. But I really tried to make a film which a broad spectrum of people could see. I hope that older people can enjoy it as much as younger people.

We have Ray Barrett and Julia Blake's story which takes up a lot of movie-time and it's just as much a sub-plot as the other two stories. They're dealing with a very different examination of what it means to love someone for a long time: can you get over when there are problems, and all th3 terrible - comedic yet terrible at the same time - implications of mortality that Ray's always dealing with.

So I tried to have not just a theme about young people wandering around a hotel wondering who they're going to make out with, but also the theme of how much these parents influence their kids and how much of the kids' ideas of love are based on what they've seen in their parents, and if that's negative, can they break out of that. Aden Young's character, Rick, talks about this a fair bit. So I really tried to make a broad film. I'm sure the marketing campaign will say it's a particular movie, but that's the movie I've tried to make.

You gave a great deal of attention to the negativity of their marriage contrasting with the love at first sight and romanticism of their son. And while the film did end happily, it seemed to be with a great regret that they hadn't made that resolution a long time earlier.

A long time earlier, yes, you're exactly right.

You could have romanticised the couple and it would have been a very light film, but you have included a darkness.

I did, certainly, and Ray's speech, where he inverts all the stuff that he's been doing comedically in the beginning of the film, he says, `Well, you know, my whole life has gone by here. I just blinked and it's over'. That's a terrible moment, I think, for him. To me it puts what the young people are going through into much stronger relief. It gives you a `seize the day' feeling. If you don't do this... `Look, you guys have chances. You say you're in love with someone, do something about it'. That's the message: do you love someone? Then do something about it. Otherwise you may end up thinking life has passed by and all I was doing was twiddling my thumbs.

I can imagine that at some point in their life they must have been madly in love, this couple. And even when they're comedically working off each other, you can still see they kind of enjoy it. It's based a bit on my father's parents, my grandparents, who were always bickering like that, always bickering. It didn't have quite the happy ending. I gave this couple a nicer ending than they had in life. And the messagee has got to me, seize the day.

When authors write that kind of satire with high expectations, they become moralists. Would you see yourself as - not in a moralising sense - a moralist through comedy?

It's a tricky word. Yes, I think I would in a specific sense in that I personally have very clear ideas of how I think people should live, and I may try and sneak that past them through a movie which tells jokes. But, at the same time, if someone said to me, `You're a moralist, aren't you?' I'd say, `Not me'.

You were very clear by the end where you expected people to be: romantic love, yes, but ultimately fidelity (and work it out) and that really is the ideal.

Absolutely, and if that has come across, then I've done my job exactly. I hope that's what will come out.

The `Australianness' of Hotel de Love? Do you see it as a specifically Australian comedy?

In some regards, certainly, the Aussie Rules football room, the language, the slang that creeps in occasionally is certainly Australian. But it's a story about love and love can be as specific as you want, but it's something which traverses the globe. The question of how do you know who the right person for you is has to be the world's biggest question, doesn't it? So I hope the theme is universal, and yet the characters and the setting are identifiably Australian. The only character who's clearly not Australian is Melissa, which is justified by storylines, where they have this romance, off she goes back to England and then she comes back.

If you were writing it for Warners Brothers or a Hollywood studio and for an American audience more specifically, would you have to change it much?

From a production point of view, if you were making this as a studio movie, well one, they don't make ensemble movies any more in America. They're star-driven movies. So no star actor in America would have taken on those roles because they would have said, `Well, hang on, that other brother is getting more screen time than me', or `he's getting the laughs', and they don't like that. So it really would have become one of the brother's story. My idea of the movie was that it's about both of them and it's about how they both find love by having these ideas about what love is and then bouncing off each other. So that would have been a problem.

Two, I think Americans don't do these stories very well. It's a small-budget movie where the characters drive the plot. I'm sure they would have made me introduce - you know, I'm always going through this with the scripts I write in Hollywood; some what I call artificial plot devices which they say are things that audiences like. But I disagree with them. I'm sure they would have given me some kind of artificial plot thing to keep it moving, whereas what interested me was the relationships. So I don't mind having 90 minutes about relationships. I enjoy that. I enjoy the way the story moves like that.

The jokes and the types of characters.

Yes, the comedy. It's difficult because there's a little bit of a Woody Allen movie in it somewhere, you know, the Ray Barrett jokes about the final banana sort of thing. Woody Allen does that really well, but he doesn't make American studio movies any more. He makes independent movies now. The comedy is Australian in its sense of humour, but I think that will translate. I could be wrong. I hope I'm not.

And the ironies that we enjoy that, somehow or other, Americans don't get? The Canadian response was favourable.

The funny thing is they loved the movie enormously. They had no idea what was going on when the piano player was singing `How's that?', the Sherbet song. But, I think they enjoy going to these movies, partly because it's another world and they learn a bit about a different language and a different culture. I notice myself when I'm watching movies from Ireland or somewhere where I don't quite understand every word but I enjoy it because I'm learning new words, I'm learning a new language and I'm learning a different culture. I get the big picture, even though I may not get the specifics. And I think that's what Americans who respond to these Australian movies do. They may not get the whole shebang but they'll understand that the goal umpire doing something when someone sits on the bed is a football joke, and they'll laugh at that. Some of the ironies slide through them a bit. They're not used to that in their movies.

The strength of your kind of movie is in the idiosyncratic characters and whatever the Australian sense of humour is.

That's true, and yet the interesting thing is that it can play well in Australia but Americans seem to find something - maybe it is its otherness that they find interesting, because so much of the American movies are conventionally structured and conventionally done. Then something comes along here and it's new and different from Australia. Even if they may not completely understand it, they enjoy its uniqueness.

Are you happy with the word `quirky' comedy?

Well, yes, but all the Aussie movies, they call them quirky. I'm not quite sure what it means. I suppose if it means an offbeat sense of humour, a little bit different... but there's more to the movie than calling it a quirky movie. I try to put other elements into the movie. I don't think `quirky' has become a put-down quite yet. It probably will in a few years. I've tried to broaden the thematic range of what the movie explores, so it's not just a quirky comedy.

Filming in Australia?

I had a dream run here. The crew was fantastic, the cast was fantastic, we all had a great time. I'm writing another script now. I'm writing one for the studios but I'm also writing an Australian one, which I would love to do next. So it's really a dream place to make movies here.

Working with David Parker was an absolute joy. He's so experienced; he has written, produced and shot feature movies. To have him as producer on my first feature was a remarkable luxury for me because, if I had a writing problem, I could throw it to him and say, `What do you think about this? Read this page for me'. If I had some shooting problem I would say, `What do you think about this?' as well as having him do his normal production responsibilities. So he was a real godsend. He was a dream and he's a lovely person and I think we've formed a long friendship out of the experience.


Interview: 25th November 1996

JAMES RICKETSON



Blackfellas has been referred to as the Australian Once Were Warriors. Is this a helpful description?

Strangely enough, I gave a videotape to the woman who wrote the screenplay for Once Were Warriors. She sent a note back to say she liked the film very much. She said, `It's very Once Were Warriorish'. I think she might even think that I made the film after Once Were Warriors but, of course, it was made quite a while before it.

I suppose it's similar in some respects, insofar as it's a hard and uncompromising look at its characters and their situation. But in this case it's made by a white man, rather than by an Aborigine. In the case of Once Were Warriors, the director is himself Maori. Not that that necessarily means anything in dramatic terms. A Maori can make a bad film about Maoris and an Aborigine can make a bad film about Aborigines. So to my way of thinking, it doesn't matter a huge amount in terms of the dramatic product.

The Australian Catholic Film Office gave Blackfellas its 1994 prize for the film that best dramatised human values. Once Were Warriors won the Ecumenical Prize at the Montreal Film Festival, 1994. What is your response to the churches' reacting to both films, especially yours, so positively.

I hadn't really thought of it in any great detail, but I imagine the response has probably been the result of people recognising that Blackfellas is an uncompromising look at the reality of the lives of these characters. This reality has connections back into the real world. I suppose we're all so used to being confronted - up until very recently anyway - by images of Aborigines which were either dishonest or misleading. We've moved into another phase where, because of the whole political correctness brouhaha, it would be quite difficult if someone was to try and make Blackfellas now. You would probably find a whole lot of people saying, `But hang on a second. You're simply depicting Aborigines as a bunch of drunks and car thieves'. So I imagine that the award is a recognition of the fact that it's an honest film. The Aboriginal community that the film came out of were delighted with it when I showed it to them. They thought it was wonderful, honest and true to their lives as they understood their lives to be.

What attracted you to the project in the first place?

I had made a film, the first of the series Women of the Sun, back in 1982, called Into the Flame, which was set in the 1820s. It was a first contact story of Victoria. I went to Arnhem Land to get a cast of tribal people, to bring them down to Victoria to act. That was my first contact with our indigenous people. I was 30 something at the time and I thought how odd it was that I have lived all my life in this country and had no idea about the lives of these people. Of course, that made me curious and interested. I got on well with the people I worked with, so when someone suggested to me that I read a book called `Day of the Dog' by Archie Weller. I thought, `Okay, I'll read it', so I did and I fell in love with it immediately.

It took a couple of years, for complicated reasons, to actually get the rights for the book. And then I set about making the film. Back in 1983 or thereabouts, I was doing a film for Film Australia which was eventually a feature-length film about an alcoholic rehabilitation centre for Aborigines out of Kempsey. In doing the research for that film, I went all over Australia and I wound up talking to a lot of Aborigines. I went to a few rehab clinics and spoke to Aborigines about the problems of alcohol abuse. That was at a time when, by and large, the media were not prepared to really talk completely openly about alcohol abuse in the Aboriginal community. This is a roundabout way of answering the question. But I found that when I was speaking with Aborigines, that they had no problems at all talking about the huge problem they had with alcohol. When I talked to white people, they were sort of embarrassed that a white person should be asking these questions.

So the Aborigines were saying to me that they would welcome a film that had a good, honest look at the problem of alcohol in their communities. In the process of doing the research, I stumbled upon the Nungarr community, which is the community out of which Archie Weller's book is written and out of which the film comes. I found myself one night in a hall with about 300 Nungarrs, probably one of three non-Aboriginal people there, and I was struck by the energy and the liveliness and the music. I thought, `This doesn't even feel like Australia to me. I've never been a part of Australia that's anything like this'.

I also thought, `if I don't know about this part of Australia, even though I've had more contact with Aborigines than probably 95 per cent of the rest of the population, then it means that the rest of Australians don't know about these people either'. So when I read the book, I was already primed, if you like, looking for a story that came out of that kind of community. And there it was.

What was the name of the film about Kempsey?

It was called The Haven.

It's not very well known.

You can actually get a copy from Film Australia. It's a feature-length documentary. It was made at a very strange period of Film Australia's history, when there was a changeover from one guard to another, and for some reason, when the film was completed, it was neglected. And then, by the time anyone got around to thinking, `What are we going to do with the film?', its time had passed. I still think it's a good little film. It's all about why and how it's difficult for Aborigines to get off the grog. It's also about success stories, about people who have actually managed to succeed or are in the process of succeeding. I think the film is quite relevant today, but it hasn't been pushed at all.

What was interesting about the centre was that it was run by an Aboriginal woman called Val. Val herself is an alcoholic, although she hadn't had a drink for 18 years. She believed that what was really important for Aboriginal alcoholics was to remove them from the community in which their mates were. If they were around their mates, of course the mates were all drinking. You can't just remove an individual Aborigine from the community; you have to take the whole family. You know what the consequences are if you just take one person away. They get homesick.

Val was focusing her work on Mt Isa, bringing all the people from Mt Isa to Kempsey in a bus. She'd bring an entire family. For the children of the family there would be mum, dad, maybe even an uncle and aunt there as well; it would be the first time they had ever seen their parents in a sober environment. She believed this was a much more successful way of dealing with Aboriginal alcoholics than the way in which white people often deal with the problem.

You wrote the screenplay for Blackfellas?

What happened was - it had a curious history - that Archie and I wrote the first draft of it together. The first draft is actually very, very different from the finished film. What I discovered was that Archie's strengths lay in his understanding of the community and in his original story. My strengths lay in my experience as a scriptwriter and in my capacity to give it a structure. Interestingly, someone asked me recently to talk about the film and adapting the novel. So I went and read the book - I hadn't read it in seven years or so - and I was amazed to find how little relationship there is, in fact, between the story of the film and the story of the book. I can see clearly in my own mind - it went through about twenty drafts - how it changed from draft to draft to draft. It's actually very different now from the original book. So, yes, Archie was involved in the first draft of the screenplay. Thereafter I sort of took over and just kept on changing it and changing it until I wound up with the film you've got now.

The title change from Day of the Dog to Blackfellas?

The title change happened after the film was completed. While we were having some test screenings in Fremantle, people were saying to us things like, `Day of the Dog? Where's the dog? I didn't see a dog...', all that kind of stuff. Then there was one guy - I was editing at the ABC in Perth and we used to go next door to get sandwiches at a sandwich shop, and after we had been going there for a couple of weeks, he said, `What are you guys doing?'. I said, `I'm editing a film at the ABC'. He said, `Oh, really? What sort of film?' I said, `It's a film about Aborigines called Day of the Dog. He said, `Oh, yeah, I've seen that'. I said, `No, you haven't seen it. I haven't even finished it'. He said, `I have seen that film. It was on telly'. I said, `No, you haven't'. He was thinking of My Life as a Dog, Dog Day Afternoon - he wasn't sure. But he felt that he had seen the film. There had been a lot of films with titles like it.

When we got to thinking about a poster for the film - and I wanted the film to be seen by a more general audience - we asked, `How do you actually sell a film called Day of the Dog which bears no relationship whatsoever to the story; there's no reference in the film to the concept of `every dog has its day', which is where the expression comes from. I started casting around for different ideas and eventually hit upon the idea of Blackfellas. I thought it's slightly provocative; there will be a few people who will think, `Hang on a second, you can't use that word', but knowing full well that within the Aboriginal community they refer to themselves as blackfellas and us as whitefellas and that's not a problem.

If you've been up in the Northern Territory - it depends on your tone of voice, of course - but you wouldn't have any problem at all calling people blackfellas. It's funny, as is often the case in these situations, it's white people with the very best of intentions who have never met an Aborigine in their lives who take exception to these names.

Your collaboration with the cast, John Moore and David Milpijarra?

There was no real collaboration with them. I had a finished script. The only things that really happened, I suppose, were to be quite honest, probably the result of just working through a few of the scenes. There's probably a little bit more swearing in the film now than there was when I finished the script but, again, that's true to the way these people talk all the time. But that's about the only change that happened as a result of the collaboration.

There were other little things that happened in the community beforehand. For instance, one concerned the scene were Polly and Doug find themselves in the bedroom alone, the scene were Polly tries to seduce Doug. In the original screenplay, it said, `Polly strips down to her bra and knickers'. Three girls came in to audition for the film. I was talking to them about it and they said, `There's no way we can do this scene'. I said, `Well, you know, I'm not asking you to be naked or anything like that. It's just like going down to the beach and stripping down to a bikini'. They all giggled and laughed and said, `There's no way we would do that'. I said, `you wouldn't even expose your bodies on the beach in that way?'. They said, `No, we always wear T-shirts', and indeed they do. I said, `Well, what about with your boyfriends?' We got very personal then and they said that, even with their boyfriends, even with the boyfriends that they're sleeping with, they're still reluctant to take their clothes off. I was struck by that and fished around for a reason. I thought that maybe there was a sort of a missionary aspect to it that went back a few generations. I could never figure out where it came from, but it certainly made me change the script because I realised that it was culturally inappropriate: that Aboriginal girls simply do not strip down to their bra and knickers in the way that a white girl might.

The response to Blackfellas from the Australian public? It did not receive wide distribution.

Well, I was disappointed at what happened in Sydney. I could see it coming. The whole thing was financed largely with government money and, to be quite honest, the distribution of the film as far as I was concerned was a mess, a disaster. It wasn't handled well. It was almost as if the distributors were slightly embarrassed. The people who put the money up for the film, their attitude was, `Look, it's a good little film, but really and truly no-one is going to want to see it'. So in Sydney it only ran for seven weeks.

The exception to that was in Melbourne where the exhibitor who saw the film and liked it was a film buff, and he runs a little cinema, the Lumiere. It ran there for 18 weeks. That was because it was properly handled. I went down to Melbourne and appeared on TV, radio interviews, and they did a story about me in the press. It was handled properly, so it ran for a reasonable length of time. I think that the marketing budget for the film was something like $25,000. Now, the other Australian film that was out at the time was The Heartbreak Kid. They spent a million dollars and the film did very well at the box office, or at least appeared to do very well. But that's because they spent a million dollars on prints and advertising. Now, I understand that they didn't make any money at the end: they spent a million dollars and probably got a million dollars back. But the fact of the matter is that they actually got behind it and basically said to the general public, `This is a film you should see'.

My argument, when the film was finished, to all the relevant parties was, `now we've got a film we want people to come and see'. Mabo had just hit the presses. It was front-page news at least once a week during that whole period. I said, `Look, Mabo is all about Aboriginal relationship with the land. This film is all about a central character who's obsessed with his relationship with the land. Why not publicise the film as one that every Australian who wants to understand the Aboriginal relationship with the land should see'. Now, it's slightly misleading, but only in the way that all advertising for movies is slightly misleading. But they didn't pick up on that. In fact, the distributor for overseas markets said to me on the phone - and I couldn't believe it - `Oh, James, when we promote it for overseas, we're not going to use the word `Aboriginal' at all. We're not going to mention the fact that it's about Aborigines, because it will be a turn-off to the audience'. So I think it was a mess, the way it was dealt with.

Is it a hopeful film or does it dramatise hopelessness without much hope?

Well, I think it's a film full of hope, myself. I know a lot of people have seen it and said, `Oh, God, it's depressing'. I don't see it that way at all. I think it's hard and gritty and doesn't pull any punches, but at the end of the film you've got Pretty Boy Floyd, who finally commits an unselfish act to save his best friend, and you've got Doug, having extricated himself pretty much from the life of petty crime and drinking, and you've got Polly and Doug preparing, at least tentatively, to make a go of it out in the country. To me, it's a very positive although tragic ending. But then a lot of people don't see it that way.

What about the John Hargreaves character? How real? and how much caricature?

Some people think John's a bit over the top. But from what I saw in Perth and from the stories that I heard from members of the cast, of things that had happened to them, in terms of his character and what he does and the way he behaves, there's no way he's a caricature. He might be a bit over the top in terms of his performance, but I think that's okay. Some of the stories that I heard... Jaylene, who played Polly in the film, because she had in fact been a street kid at one point, told me stories of just walking down the street, being picked up by the cops and being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, driven 15 miles out of town without any money and dumped at the side of road - just like a joke, to antagonise the kids.

At one time when that happened to her, they threw her out. I can't remember whether they broke her arm or sprained her wrist, something like that. She went to see the Aboriginal medical service the following day, and they recommended to her that she should lay charges against the police. She said, `What's the point? If I lay charges against them, they'll just victimise me'. I heard variations on that story over and over again.

There was another story where one of the members of the cast, who played only a small role, was in a play with a woman at around about the time we were rehearsing for the film. The woman was married to an Aboriginal man who was a policeman, and she had his car; they were driving back from the theatre. The police had got a report of some car being stolen, saw an Aboriginal man and woman driving a fairly flash-looking car - in other words, not a rustbucket - pulled them over to the side of the road, got them out at gunpoint, had them lying on the asphalt in the middle of the road with a pump-action rifles at their head, simply because they were black. Of course it turned out that this was her husband's car and her husband was a policeman, and they were both on their way back from the theatre. Now, that kind of thing goes on all the time. So, I hate to say it, but I don't think that the John Hargreaves character is a caricature.

It isn't that all police that are like that; it's only a particular kind of policeman but, unfortunately, the police force does attract some of these people. I have had a good deal to do with the police myself for one reason or another, and I've found just as many really decent blokes in the police force but it is a job that attracts some people who have less than honourable intentions.

Your Women of the Sun episode was set in the 1820s.

That was a story that had been written by two people, Sonia Borg and Hyllus Maris, an Aboriginal writer and a white writer. It was about first contact, about a man who was a convict and who was swept ashore - he was a castaway, or he jumped overboard, it was never quite clear what had happened - but he was adopted by a group of aboriginal people and became their friend. When white settlers arrived in the area some years later, he assisted them unwittingly in taking the land away from the Aborigines. Of course, there were the usual reprisals, one act of violence leading to another which eventually leads to the people being massacred. It was also a simple little story about a friendship between a white man and an Aboriginal girl which goes terribly wrong, a simple story, really, about dispossession.

Those stories of Women of the Sun contributed a great deal to changing perceptions in the Australian audience of the early '80s.

I think so. Interestingly enough, I remember a friend of mine when he first saw the film said it was the first time that he had ever seen Aborigines looking sexy on film. What he meant by that was that he actually thought, `These are attractive people'. One of the things I've discovered in the many different projects that I've done - when I've been talking to people who haven't had much contact with Aboriginal people - is that, even if they don't think that they're racist, deep down they have the idea that Aboriginal people are ugly. So it was quite a shock to them to find attractive Aborigines in Women of the Sun. And, again, when I was doing Blackfellas, I quite consciously thought I would like to have in the lead roles quite attractive Aborigines. As it turned out, they were also the best actors available - I was very lucky in that respect - because I didn't want an audience to be able to bring all of their normal prejudices. I wanted to get beyond and behind some of the audience's natural preconceptions and prejudices.

I hope that at some point in the not too distant future someone could actually tell a similar story and have, perhaps, overweight and unattractive Aborigines, but I think at this particular time it's probably fairly important to recognise the nature of the prejudices and try and work against them.

Your other films, Third Person Plural and Candy Regentag?

With Third Person Plural, which was made for $35,000, an extremely small amount of money to make a feature film on, back in 1978 or 79, it was just an experiment, really. I just wanted to see whether it would be possible to make a film on that small budget, shoot the whole thing with a hand-held camera, integrate improvised dialogue with scripted dialogue, work with a small core of actors on a character-based piece, which is what I did, and then to approach the editing of the film in an innovative way.

Now, I happen not to like the film myself. Having done the film - it was fun to do it - I decided that I didn't like it, and it certainly wasn't the direction that I wanted to go in. But as it turns out, there weren't many films of that kind that were made back then. Interestingly, since then there has been many a film that has been shot with a hand-held camera and that has employed some of the low-budget techniques that we employed there.

In the case of Candy Regentag, it was a screenplay that was given to me. I was asked if I'd like to direct it. The money was there, $750,000. I liked the story. It was a story about a difficult kind of love between a man and a woman that happens to take place in the context of a brothel. But the same relationship could easily have taken place elsewhere. The man is incapable of making any kind of emotional commitment to the woman. The film was not hugely successful and I suppose I don't really think about it very much now. It's probably not a great film, but it's all right.

On video it is called, Kiss the Night, and has a rather lurid jacket.

Well, they tried to sell the film. The film is not softcore porn, and yet they tried to sell it with that cover - the whole marketing of the film was as if it was a softcore porn movie. I went to a couple of afternoon screenings when it was showing at the Academy Twin and there were, literally, men with raincoats. People had obviously come along for the wrong reasons to see the film. The film wasn't marketed well. But then, quite honestly, I don't think it deserved huge success but it would have been nice for it to have been marketed a bit better.

Further projects?

I'm working on one now which is called Angel of Death. It about the rehabilitation of a woman criminal called Julie Wright. And I've just finished a treatment for another thing called And Nothing But the Truth, which is a thriller based on the idea of a current affairs host who has been kidnapped and held for ransom; the ransom is not a money ransom, but a demand that certain stories that have been put to air, be put to air again but told in a truthful fashion; the demand is made by someone who believes they have been maligned, defamed by this particular current affairs program. It's a thriller. Then another one I'm trying to set in the 1840s is a western, about a Scottish family and an Aboriginal family who occupy the same tract of land for a period of time and then find that the combination of drought and overgrazing make it impossible for them to work there any longer. So I'm hard at work on a lot of different things.

How do you see yourself in the overall picture of Australian cinema, your particular style and contribution?

I'm probably the last person you should ask that question of. It's probably easier for other people to say that. Clearly I haven't gone to Hollywood and achieved success. Who knows, in a year's time I might have made a film that is a huge success and suddenly agents and others will be calling from Hollywood saying, `Mr Ricketson, we want you to come and do a film'.

On the other hand, it's a very up and down kind of business, and I think you would find even if you look at someone like Gill Armstrong - Gill's an old friend of mine - she went through a few years of things not working out quite right for her, and films that she did do in Hollywood that didn't work out well. Then she would bounce back with something else. It's such a fickle industry. You know, I might never ever get to make another feature film, or my next feature film might be a huge hit and I'll suddenly be a hot director. Who knows? That's the way the business is. Anyway, one thing's for sure. You have to take a long-term view of it and not get too caught up in either your immediate successes or your immediate apparent failures.



Interview: 22nd May 1995

MONICA PELLIZZARI



The Venice Festival audience at the screening of Fistful of Flies gave you a long and enthusiastic applause.

Very unreal, isn't it!

The reaction during the screening and the applause seemed to indicate that the Italians responded much more than might have been thought.

Yes, absolutely - much more than Australians. But that's all right. Actually the film's been well received in Europe - all the Scandinavian countries really like it and have bought it. It's interesting that it appealed to those dark souls, the countries of the dark soul. I feel that maybe I should have been born in Norway.

The title. We all know what a fistful of dollars is, but what does a fistful of flies mean?

It's an Italian saying, `Un Pugno di Mosche'. If you look it up in the dictionary, it means, basically, to be left with nothing if you follow your wild spirit. It's often applied by women to women. If you follow your wild spirit, that is, you don't follow the right path to getting a husband, then you'll end up with no husband and, therefore, with nothing, because you can't catch flies. It expresses the view that a woman's path is created for her and she shouldn't stray from it.

So this is the story of Mars. Is she going to finish up with a fistful of flies or is something more going to happen for her?

I think we know the answer to that. No, I just tried to turn the metaphor on its head. Flies are dirty things, too, so why would you want to catch them? But she manages to catch them at the end and release them, so...

You also had the machine in the house loudly catching flies all the way through the film.

Yes. That was a metaphor. It was trying to put that whole metaphor in an Australian context because flies are something that are part of our daily life. Actually, there was a scene where they swallowed flies - but I had to cut it.

She did eat one at one stage.

Yes, she was walking down the street and swallowed a fly. So I was just trying to accentuate the whole symbolic element of flies and turn it on its head because it's transported to Australia.

The country town itself - was that familiar territory?

The town is a mish-mash of where I grew up - Fairfield. When I grew up in the '60s it was like a country town and now it's a big metropolis. I just wanted somewhere that felt a isolated, so I thought of a country town, population 1000 or so, and we invented Cider Gully (cider leaves a bitter taste in your mouth). It's also a mish-mash of Griffith where I did most of my research, but I didn't want to set it in Griffith, or else I'd have the finger pointed at me and I'd be dead. So yes, it's a mixture of Fairfield and Griffith. Some country towns are soulless, a sense of no future.

You dramatise your insights into a girl's growing up in the Australian context and finding her identity in Australia - but dominated by her Italian heritage on that growing up.

What I'm exploring is the conflict between growing up in an Italian family by night while by day you're in the more Australian context because you're at school. It's a much wider society and the values are different; they're much less patriarchal, much more democratic than you would find within an Italian family structure. So most people I know who are bicultural experience that conflict. It's also a class issue. It's a strongly working-class issue and cuts across all ethnic backgrounds. It's that working-class background that believes in the father as the head of the family. Italians also have religion as part of their family structure as well. Whether they practise it or not, it's still part of their way of being. I just wanted to look at that duality and the conflict that arises from that duality. You literally feel like a split personality: you speak English, you don't speak Italian, you don't speak dialect, you don't understand it. It's something that will really be expelled by the next generation.

The father's behaviour was brutal - some of the scenes were extraordinarily brutal. You could have such violence within any other group in Australia, Anglo-Saxon? or Vietnamese but, somehow or other, the physical beating and the brutality you portray bring it home very, very strongly. Is this characteristic of what you see as happening in such patriarchal families?

Oh, yes. The research that I did and the girls that I've met, be they Italian, be they Turkish, Muslim, Lebanese, shows this happens. They'd get murdered. I'm sure you're familiar with that Lebanese story from Melbourne where a father tried to kill his daughter because she was going with a non-Lebanese man. Some of the girls I interviewed in Fairfield in 1993, 18 years old, 23, would have the same stories - say, if they put a poster up or a picture of a boy, a dressed boy, or a football player or something similar, not only would the fathers have it torn down, but they would act brutally. One girl in particular, her father would use a steel boot to stomp on her feet - and this girl still lives in that house. Unfortunately she's unemployed, can't move, is trapped. This is the same street I grew up in. It's my brother's friend's cousin. I found that pretty horrific.

You know, whether it's a belt, whether it's a boot or whatever, it's there, it's there in a really major way and they're trapped, these people. I met them, and they were so hostile towards me because they sussed me out immediately. They're trapped in this mentality of 50s repression. I went into this girl's room and I modelled my character's room on her room. Her mother went through her photo album and threw out pictures of school dos and things like that. She'd been photographed with boys and her mother would actually get scissors and cut the boys out. This goes on and it's really tragic. Stuff that I've researched scares me.

It horrifies me in this day and age that all this is still pocketed, especially because of the possibility of humiliation, `We must keep this within the family, we must not speak outside the family'. They have suffered racism as well, so no-one breaks out. Some do eventually but they still stay there and they accept it. Like one Greek family. I met a girl and she told me about her best friend, 15 - this was 1994 in Marrickville in inner city Sydney - her father saw her kissing an Australian boy, an Anglo Saxon boy, and he waited for her to get home then he raped her in front of her mother, the other sister and the brother. And he said, `This is what you get and you're not ever to kiss another boy'. No-one did anything about it at home. The sister went to the police and reported it but they said they couldn't do anything unless the girl came forward. This girl ended up pregnant and had to have a legal abortion. She still lives in the family, won't do anything about it. These stories are out there.

They're frightening to hear. Where do the men get this brutality? Is it just handed on from their fathers and reinforced?

Yes, I think it's handed down and reinforced. It's a question of shame and they just don't think about anything better. Another family I met - this girl ran away from Parramatta; her family are Turkish Muslims. Her father put a video camera in every corner of every room in the house and had his monitor. He monitored her 24 hours a day so that she wouldn't touch herself, so that she wouldn't be with anyone.

And his own inconsistency means nothing?

That's right and that's very common.

A lot of men don't like my film because, I think, they see the father painted as too brutal. And, yes, he is. There were about 20 more scenes but, because of performance, I had to choose to focus the film on the three women and to make the film work. The father was dragging my film down. So there was much more dimension to that character and a lot more going on that's simply gone. That's the price I paid for my first feature.

I was telling Lynden Barber of The Australian, who didn't like the film because it was too in-your-face - which I take issue with - that we are bombarded daily with in-your-face violence from male directors and no-one questions that. I went to see The Rock and came out needing trauma therapy. But no-one questions that. And the moment you have an out-there female theme where female sexuality is not represented as very realistic for men, it's criticised. So I took issue with him - not that he was interested. It's also an Anglo Saxon tradition, I think, that these critics prefer more minimalist films, but I didn't make my film like that so, therefore.... It's interesting that Muriel's Wedding, Priscilla and films like that get away with it, but I don't seem to get away with it, not with the Australian male critics.

One feels very much for the mother, but she did brutal things to her daughter.

She collaborated, too.

She seemed to be trapped in the Italian context though her accent was very flat Australian. But you don't think all the time of the Italian thing, but that this is an Australian country town. There were some moments of great tenderness amidst the brutality, for instance when they chased each other round the table establishing mother-daughter bonds. The bonds were there but her mother perpetuated a complete ignorance about sexuality.

I think it's a question of survival or you need to be a certina personality in order to survive. Given the situation, you're chopping and changing as you go. I've seen this within my own family - the complicity that goes on in order to survive. I see it in lots of families, everywhere, what people do in order to survive. It is ultimately a question about survival and power. And when you don't have power within that family dynamic - and a lot of women don't - you have to do things to survive. That's where the dychotomy between the characters comes in.

Rachel Mazza was impressive as the doctor, an aboriginal woman in a country town. Was your choice of actor deliberate?

It was deliberate. When I went to Griffith, there were a lot of Aborigines there. I chose not to include this as an issue base for characters. I didn't want an Anglo to come in and say, `We know best'. I take issue also with the fact that we never see Kooris represented as professionals. I wanted to show this but without making any statement. I'm glad I made the film without going through the AFC Aboriginal vetting unit. I just kept describing her as a dark person. A lot of people picked up on that in Italy as a positive thing. In Australia it's seen more as a tokenistic gesture. But you don't just make films for Australia, so who cares?

There was no warning, there she was.

No reference.

She did what she could and was very supportive, as a medical person should be.

Yes, exactly.

Irrespective of Mars' heritage, you are exploring sexuality itself. That seemed to be important as well. Do you think that's an important theme for contemporary Australian audiences at the moment, this kind of explicit awareness of adolescent sexual growth and development.

What I wanted to do is to say its okay to explore for yourself. I find that a lot of teenagers have sex too young. They don't know themselves. Before you know it, they're involved in relationships that are way beyond them, get pregnant, get married - they don't know themselves, be it physically, sexually, emotionally, as people. I wanted to show this within a context that didn't involve relationship, that didn't involve exploring sex through boys. It was about coming to terms with sexuality yourself. I think there is a certain amount of power for an individual to be gained from this. Men know this and feel very threatened by it. So that's what I was trying to say there. I didn't want to go for the love story element - which is so classic. I wanted the character to be on her own and to be able to work things out.

More specifically religious matters and their influence?

Did you like the fact that the audience clapped when the mirror went through the sky? I thought it was great. I was blown away, but the Italian audience really understood the irony of all the Catholic references.

You could have been more critical about the church. You let the church off lightly; you allowed the audience to laugh with the confessional sequence.

But what about the belt-strap that goes through the frame with the Madonna in the background?

The church of the last decades has been through a lot of this kind of observation and would be as critical, even if not more critical, than what was shown in the film. An interesting comparison would be between the responses of Italian Catholics watching your film and the Anglos.

I'm not into criticising the church because I actually believe that people need their faith if that's what's required in order for them to survive. But I do believe it's a crutch for society, for a lot of people who would rather not deal with knowing themselves or the pain. I actually see that in my family. A lot of people, as they get older, go to the church. So I'm not critical in that sense. I'm more interested in the myth of Madonna as another type of woman represented in the film. It's present there, subtle, but it's pervasive, all-pervasive.

It's amazing, I was simply walking down a street and a girl shouted out, `Porca, putana, Eva' which means `Pig, whore, Eve'. And I thought, oh, this is interesting. Eve is seen as a pig whore. And this was mouthed by a 14-year-old girl. That's what fascinates me, this mythology about virgins, the Virgin Mary and Madonnas, how this has shaped our society. And, yes, I think this is bad.

Mars' father has that kind of sanctified Madonna spirituality.

Yes. But the classic saying is that men want their wives to be an embodiment of the Madonna, the mother, - and the whore. And in my film I had all of that and more, all those sorts of women represented.

You had the Felliniesque touch with the statue coming down from the sky.

Well, everyone says Fellini, but it actually came from a Super 8 image that my dad shot when I was about six, and I remembered it. I remember because Gough Whitlam was there and a helicopter was carrying the Madonna. I was in the parade and I thought it was great and exciting. That's where it came from. And what I wanted to do was juxtapose an image of the modern Italian- Australian girl and this stereotype. It was just an image, a juxtaposition. I mean, I got blocked for film funding because people said that I was ripping off Fellini! No-one really remembers that it wasn't the Madonna. It was a statue of Jesus Christ. In Italy they see it as a homage. In Australia it was, `Oh, God, you're unoriginal'. No matter how much I protested and said it came from an element of truth in my history, no-one believes you, because the attitude is so negative.

Your short films, Just Desserts and Best Wishes - how similar and how different from Fistful of Flies?

What I wanted to do was to take consciously images and notions from Just Desserts and place them in Fistful of Flies because I wanted to reach a wider audience. With something like Just Desserts, because of the fact that it's a short, it doesn't reach the wider audience. So I was interested in exploring, at a full-length level, the idea of women and sexuality. Just Desserts had women, sexuality and food as well. Best Wishes was something really specific on its own.

The sexual abuse issue which is so much more prevalent now.

Not prevalent; it's much more out in the open.

Out in the open, yes, and your portraying it, especially within the family. That was quite strong. You also show the church and its rituals. Again you made an association as you did with the Madonna in Fistful of Flies. In Best Wishes it is much more the formalities of the church - which, perhaps, enabled this kind of abuse to happen. Is that a proper reading of it?

Yes. Best Wishes is really about three days leading up to a religious event that's meant to be very important in a child's life. And it was ruined. Fistful of Flies is more about how the church has its influence. It didn't directly relate to what happened to Mars, it was more indirect. You just live with the church, you go along to these festas and see the Madonna coming through the sky - not because you're religious but because you want to show your clothes off! Indeed we had scenes in the film where the lover and the mother check out clothing labels and the father flirted with the lover, but we cut it all out. And I just find that they're not religious - people aren't as religious as we think they are. As I said, it's only when they get closer to dying that they become religious. So yes, I think that Best Wishes was much more directly linked to religious ritual, whereas in Fistful of Flies it's just about being there, part of your culture, part of your upbringing, part of the way things are done.

The nonna and what she contributed. She was sympathetic in the early scenes when Mars was very little, but later...? Is she a wisdom figure?

Yes, she was very much an example of what comes through once you've worked your stuff out, that there is hope for change. I actually know women of that age who have gone through massive change through a crisis in their life, where they have rejected the church, rejected the patriarch and gone out on their own. It's been really hard and they're very bitter but, at the same time, they are much happier than when they were having the crap beaten out of them. She's very much modelled on particular women I know. But what I wanted to show was that she, of course, did the same thing to Grace. Grace didn't get it from herself. She got it because it was done to her in the chain of violence. I think the nonna just realised that she was responsible and in some ways tried to make amends through the relationship with her granddaughter. I didn't have a grandmother, so I fabricated that element.

There seems to be some final hope for Grace. With all she had experienced, the terrible situations with Mars and then with her mother coming back home, Grace can actually have something of a life before it's too late.

Yes, exactly. That's what I wanted to portray at the end of the film. She might break through and find a life for herself.


Interview: 7th September 1996

PINK MOTEL

US, 1982, 90 minutes, Colour.
Phyllis Diller, Slim Pickens.
Directed by Mike Mc Farland.

Pink Motel is a small-budget, R-rated sex story. It has its amusing moments, takes the motel as a place for various sex stories - and treats them with a blend of seriousness and spoof. The film was written by Jim Kouf, who went on to write such films as Class, Disorganised Crime. The surprising proprietors of the motel are Slim Pickens and Phyllis Diller. They have ambitions, and Slim has all kinds of ideas of making the motel upmarket, especially with pink decorations, even elephants. The supporting cast go through the motions - with touches of prurience as well as touches of pathos.

1.Small-budget sex comedy? Humour? Insights?

2.The motel, the rooms, the seedy atmosphere? The musical score?

3.The proprietors, their age and experience, running the motel, attitudes towards the guests, knowing what they were coming for, keeping up their standards? Going across the road - and putting up the price of the champagne? Plans for decorations? Their love for each other?

4.George and Tracy, their affair, George being married, Tracy and the two years? His being self-preoccupied, presuming on her? She wanting a genuine relationship? Their arguments, memories, the champagne? George and his chauvinistic behaviour? Tracy and her growing resentment? Putting the lipstick information on the back of his shirt? The break-up of the affair?

5.The youngsters, their coming to the motel, their fears, ignorance, talking about contraception, tentative with each other, consent? Preparations for the night, things going wrong, the contraceptives? The fumbled encounter?

6.The jock, the prostitute, his incessant talking about his athletics prowess, her becoming exasperated? His not picking up the message? Her laying down the law, walking out - her return, calming him down? The relationship?

7.Skip and Max, promiscuous, self-important? Their picking up Charlene and Marlene? The act they were putting on? The room, putting up the curtain? Max and his boasting about techniques? Skip listening to him? The girls and their performance? The bungling sexual encounters and the farcical aspects? The girls and their pretending to be innocent, wanting protestations from the men? Making them wait - and then robbing them and their car?

8.The blend of permissiveness and fable about sexual encounters?

A PIG ACROSS PARIS/LA TRAVERSEE DE PARIS (FOUR BAGS FULL)

France, 1956, 82 minutes, Black and white.
Jean Gabin, Bourvil, Louis de Funes.
Directed by Claude Autant- Lara.

A Pig Across Paris is a story of the German occupation of Paris. It is based on a story by Marcel Ayme (whose story, Rue St Sulpice, was the basis for Ben Lewin's film The Favour, the Watch and the Very Big Fish). The film was directed by veteran Claude Autant- Lara.

The stars of the film are two veterans of French cinema of the middle of the century, Jean Gabin and Bourvil. They play ambiguous characters - involved in the black market, carrying several hundred kilos of pork across Paris at night for distribution for the black market. Bourvil is the ordinary citizen, a taxi driver caught up in the black market, clashing with his wife, not sure of himself. Gabin portrays a mysterious figure who turns out to be a celebrated artist. Comedian Louis de Funes is the black marketeer.

In their trek across Paris at night, the two encounter a wide range of French citizens: the owners of bars and cafes, sympathetic bystanders, the police, the German military. This is a blend of comedy and serious drama, tension building up in the finale with the two being caught by the Germans. A postscript, a sympathetic aftermath of war, brings the film to a conclusion.

1.Interesting and entertaining French story of the occupation? The offbeat characters? The situation? The black market? Parisians, Germans?

2.The black and white photography, the atmosphere of Paris during the war, the occupation, Paris at night? The musical score?

3.The short stories of Marcel Ayme? The adaptation for the screen? Serious and comic? The title?

4.French perspective on the occupation, on the black market, on the behaviour of French citizens? On the Germans? The perspective of the aftermath of the war? Later decades?

5.Marcel Martin and his wife? Their links with the black market? Playing the accordion while the pig was killed? The carving up of the pork? The possibility of carrying it across Paris? Marcel and Mariette at the bar? The clashes, the meeting with Grandgil? Marcel's suspicions, the clash with his wife, slapping her face, her leaving him? His bewilderment? Going after her, trying to prevent Grandgil going after her? The eating of the pork, drinking of the wine? The proposal - and his suspicions? His hold over Grandgil, Grandgil playing along with him? Going to Jambier? The pork, the money deals, Grandgil and his extortion of more money? The two of them going across the city, carrying the cases, handles breaking, dogs following and the devices of getting rid of the dogs? Evading the police, Grandgil and his bashing the policeman? Talking German? Going to Marcel's home - and Mariette overhearing Grandgil talking German on the phone (when he was only checking the German quote)? The mutual suspicions? The sympathetic girl thinking they were Americans parachuting in? Going to Grandgil's home, Marcel's misunderstanding about his being a painter? A celebrated painter, getting background and experiencing the occupation? The arrival at the black marketeer's, the shouting at the door, their being taken in by the Germans? The interrogation, the pretence about owning the pig (paralleling Marcel's story about Grandgil being his servant)? Grandgil being appreciated by the German commander? The assassination of the colonel, tension in German headquarters? Their being loaded as hostages on the trucks? Grandgil being taken off and saved? Martin going to prison? One night in occupied Paris?

6.The character of Martin, ordinary, the taxi driver, dumb, shrewd? Clashing with his wife? Suspicions of Grandgil? The money arrangements with Jambier? His wanting to keep his job in the black market? The tensions with Grandgil, the police, the dogs? Going to his home and the encounter with Mariette? Going to Grandgil's home? Wanting to be saved at the German command?

7.Grandgil, sullen, tough, washing his hands - and the suspicion that he was in the black market? Enjoying the meal, drinking? The job? His bullying of Jambier? Speaking German to elude the police, getting rid of the dogs? Allowing himself to be seen as Martin's servant? Going to his own home, his artwork, appreciation by the Germans? His being saved?

8.Jambier, the black market, the killing of the pigs, the cutting up of the meat? Money and deals? The phone calls to the receiver, the receiver and his wife, their tension, hiding the meat in the coal? The Germans at the door? Tensions for the black market?

9.The police, the people in the bars? Grandgil and his abuse of the proprietors of the bar, smashing their bar - and Martin following suit? The patriotic girl?

10.The Germans, the occupation? The commander and his French, appreciation of art? The tensions with the assassination? The grim reality of hostages?

11.The aftermath, Grandgil's success - and the irony of meeting Martin, carrying other people's cases? The bond between them?

12.The French tone of the film, characters, friendships? Memories of the war?

THE PICKLE

US, 1993, 103, Colour.
Danny Aiello, Dyan Cannon, Shelley Winters, Barry Miller, Jerry Stiller, Chris Penn, Ally Sheedy, Little Richard, Spalding Gray, Griffin Dunne, Isabella Rosselini, Dudley Moore.
Directed by Paul Mazursky.

The Pickle is an oddball film written and directed by Paul Mazursky. For almost 25 years, Mazursky has made offbeat comedies, some of them quite autobiographical. He looked at his own career (in the light of Fellini) in the early '70s with Alex in Wonderland. He looked back to drama and theatre days in the mid-'70s in Next Stop Greenwich Village. Here, approaching 60, he makes a film about a disillusioned and compromising film director - who makes an absurd science fiction musical called The Pickle.

The material about the director is both serious and funny - with parallels to the kind of film made by Woody Allen. However, the scenes we are shown from the film within the film, The Pickle, are too absurd to make an impact. They are beyond spoof. However, at one stage it is said that it is an attempt to mix Fellini with the Marx Bros. The scenes shown do not give evidence of this.

The film has a very strong cast with Danny Aiello as the lead as the disillusioned director. Dyan Cannon is his wife, Shelley Winters his mother, Jerry Stiller his agent, Barry Miller a precocious movie executive. There are a number of guest stars who appear momentarily - including Oliver Stone on a talkback show about conspiracies.

In the film within the film, there is a star cast of Ally Sheedy, Griffin Dunne, Isabella Rossellini, Dudley Moore and Little Richard - who is allowed to go off into memories of his own singing style.

It is difficult to gauge the intended audience for this kind of autobiographical comedy, serious drama, critique of the American film industry. As the film moves towards a very serious ending, the mood changes and one is unsure whether Mazursky is saying there is hope or that the American audience and film-making, with such successes as The Pickle, means that it is not worth fighting for.

1.The intended audience for the film? Popular audience? Film buffs?

2.The work of Paul Mazursky, his perspective on the film industry? Memories of past films? His offbeat style - the New York style, comedy of relationships? Subjective presentation of a director approaching 60?

3.The strength of the cast, the charism of Danny Aiello in the central role? The veterans and their guest appearances? The cast of the film within the film? TV guests like Oliver Stone?

4.The title and its impact? The visual presentation of the actual pickle? Its absurdity? Science fiction - but the pickle appearing at the end as optimistic symbol for Harry?

5.The structure of the film: Harry and his making The Pickle, the flashbacks to the production, the black and white flashbacks to his youth? The portrait of a director, the film within the film - the cumulative effect of Harry's work and life?

6.The quality of the spoof - absurd, the mix of Fellini and the Marx Bros? The Midwest, the vegetarian styles, Cleveland as the capital of an alternate universe, the dark city? The characters, the different styles of dress? Issues? The songs?

7.Harry Stone and his career, his life? The importance of the memories of the past, as a little boy, his grandparents, his mother, telling jokes? Life and death? The making of The Pickle as compromise? His relationship with his agent and discussing, the carry-on of the young producer, his relationship with his ex-wife, their discussion about their children, friendship, his going to her for a sexual encounter? Going to hear his ex-wife, singer and her performances? His current girlfriend, living in France, tax difficulties? The relationship with the much younger woman? The relationship, urging her to go back to France? His visiting his mother, the discussions with his mother? Her accepting the reality, regretting the past? Support for him? Revisiting the old neighbourhood, the dilapidated houses, the drugs? Discussions with the young black men? His meeting with his son, discussions about his drug addiction, being clean, the plans for a film - and the talking cat? His visit with his daughter, seeing his granddaughter and his delight? The meaning of his life? Finding the old projectionist, remembering their schooldays? Promising to have a drink?

8.The world of New York, hotels, the Plaza, the fans (including wanting sex)? Everybody knowing that The Pickle was to be previewed?

9.His personal collapse, empty relationships, the failure of the film? The reassurances that it would be good - with Phil and the director? Encountering everybody - and their all going to the sneak preview? His growing sadness, going to buy the pills, taking them, the tape and the variety of farewells - indicating his relationship with everyone? The phone call, the success of the film, his change of heart?

10.The celebration - and everybody there?

11.The seeming seriousness of the ending and his suicide? The decision not to die? Whether the decision to make The Pickle was a compromise or not? The ambiguity of the ending - that a film like The Pickle could be a success?

12.What was the audience left with in terms of entertainment? Understanding?

PIANESE NUNZIO - 14 IN MAY

Italy, 1996, 115 minutes, Colour.
Fabrizio Bentivoglio, Emmanuelle, Garguilo.
Directed by Antonio Capuano.

This is a controversial film. For an Italian audience, it is a grim look at the reality of the city of Naples, especially the poorer areas. It is realistic in its presentation of street life, criminals, prostitutes, the influence of the Camorra. It focuses on a young boy (played by Emannuele Gargiulo, an amateur actor, an apprentice goldsmith. The film also focuses on the role of the church with Fabio Bentivoglio as a crusading priest against social injustice. (Bentivoglio was later to play a priest in the Australian film, The Missing.)

Where the film is controversial is in its treatment of the priest. On the one hand, he is a champion of the church's teaching about social justice. On the other hand, he lives a lonely life, lacking emotional fulfilment. When he befriends the young boy, the sexuality and emotional drive force him to behave in compromising ways. One of the puzzling aspects of the film for non-Italian audiences is its treatment of the relationship between the priest and the boy, especially the sexual overtones. The film emerged in the mid-90s at a time when the church, especially in English-speaking countries, was rife with scandals. The relationship does not seem to be of concern to the Italian film-makers. Rather, they see it as the trigger for the Camorra to get their revenge on the priest rather than murdering him and the other melodramatic ways they had of getting their own way.

The film is very well made, gives an insight into the city of Naples - but raises issues about the priesthood, sexual relationships as well as the social injustices of a city dominated by Mafia groups.

1.A film of Italy and Naples in the '90s? Social background, moral, religious and church?

2.The impact of the credits and the vistas of Naples, the streets and the houses, the church, the slum neighbourhoods, atmosphere of authenticity?

3.The style of the film - drama, docu-drama - and the testimonies of the witnesses and their perceptions of the truth?
4.The fragments in the screenplay - the lives of the various characters, their explanations (or not)? The cumulative effect and the interpretation of Father Borelli and Nunzio?

5.The musical score, the Neapolitan songs - as sung by Nunzio and others? Their giving the Neapolitan atmosphere to the film?

6.The Mafia in Naples? The Camorra and its hold? The criminal families and their authority, the violence, the casual murders in the street? Information about the Mafia, the various underlings, the dons? Father Borelli and his denunciations? His refusal of the High Mass for the don? Refusal of Communion at the little girl's funeral to make his point? The church and the Mafia? The sermons, the interviews for the papers? The film as anti-Mafia?

7.The role of the church: the parish and the monks leaving, Father Borelli coming from a neighbouring parish? His life in the parish, popular? The example of his catechetics class with the youth and the parable of the sower? His other studies? The masses, the sermons, the interviews with the papers? The interdict and the reaction of the Neapolitan curia? The role of the church and the media in the fight against the Mafia? The people liking him and thinking this is what the church ought to do?

8.The opening with Father Borelli desperate, the nature of his prayer, being mugged and robbed? His meeting Giovanni and his friend outside the church? Dressed in clericals or dressed in jeans? The young men and the parable of the sower? Masses, the range of his ministry? His being perceived as a zealous priest?

9.Nunzio and his age and background, hearing him sing, his role on television? The background of his family, his father and the selling of the eggs in the street, the wig, madness, Giovanni, breaking the television? The Mafia contacts? Giovanni and the drugs? Nunzio and his mother's visit, her separation, her husband's madness, living with another man? His aunt and her having him at home, life in the family, Katia and friendship, sexual encounters? His friendship with Ada (the photos, their love - and the suddenness of her death by accident in the railway station)? The impact of her death, the funeral? His studies, thinking about being a priest (and the security of the life)? Father Borelli as his model? The singing on TV? Playing the organ? Father Borelli giving him the key, his meals in the presbytery, the scene of the chase around the table and Father Borelli holding him? His acceptance of Father Borelli, of the seduction? The impact of the sexual experience? A street boy, his "knowing innocence"?

10.Father Borelli and his sexuality? His background of being an orphan, isolated, living alone, not relating to the clergy? His emotional affection for a youngster? Playing the music in his room, the sexual encounters, the shower, the intimacy and affection? His sanctifying his eroticism? His prayer, the desperation of the beginning, the crucifix and his prayer to God, to Jesus as a man, homo erotic? A portrait of a paedophile, emotional immaturity, lack of affection? The housekeeper and her advances, his not responding? His knowing that he had committed a crime? But his rationalisations? The people knowing but not denouncing him? The build-up to the Stations of the Cross and his swearing to tell the truth about himself?

11.The drama of the Stations of the Cross, the rain, the people in the streets of Naples, as a demonstration against the Camorra? The contemporary prayers? Their social content? The parallel with Jesus? The various Stations, was Father Borelli meant to be paralleled with Jesus? Who was crucifying him? Was Pianese meant to be Jesus? Who was crucifying him?

12.Nunzio and his friends, his relationship with his brother, father? Living in his aunt's house, his relationship with his cousin? School friends? The social workers and their discussions, coming to the school? His relationship with the priest being common knowledge? The interviews in the headmaster's room? His changing his attitude after not wanting to report Father Borelli? His visiting him, the tension, the clash? Looking through his books, the locked room, the homo erotic photo? His being hurt? Sick? In the court, going to the toilet, the dove and his interpreting it as the Holy Spirit - and his decision to tell the truth about his experiences?

13.The theme of paedophilia and its importance, Naples' children and their innocence? The knowledge of the streets?

14.The background of the violence of Naples, the murders in the railway station, Ada and her death, the funeral - and Father Borelli's refusal to give Communion to make a stand against violence?

15.The role of the church in Naples, denouncing the Camorra? The laws of the church regarding sexuality and celibacy? A film of controversy about church and state in Italy?