Cinema Papers no. 32 May-June 1981 (2025)

OCR

Issue 32 $2.85‘

9 ’ Then with the movie ‘Z001’

of ;:ia(§nHett1ha<:i€it1;sOtnradical departure

Now we have a complete new era
called Motion Graphics—animation
cameras hooked up to graphic computers.
With it, you can reproduce the same
camera movement over and over. Building
up an image as you go, with the computer
ensuring the repetition happens with
complete accuracy.

So far, we have exposed 35 mm
Eastman Color Film up to 80 times and
l’m sure with that film we could go even
further.

Since ‘Z001’ computerised
animation cameras have continued to be
developed to meet the needs of movies
like ‘Close Encounters’, ‘Star Wars’ and
‘Superman’.

Animators continually have to
learn the new technology, but with that
knowledge, there is no limit to creativity.

That’s why the whole field of
motion.graphics excites me. lt’s a new area
with new things to learn. And it’s an area
we’re only on the fringe of exploring. It
also excites me that at FILM GRAPHICS
we’re the only ones in the Southern
Hemisphere with a computerised motion
graphic animation stand.”

Dave Denneen Animator.

K Kodak Motion Picture[...]

25 years and you’ve never seen athing he’s done.

Les, what led you into the
sound side of what is, after all,

a visual medium?

In fact I did start in the

visual side of the business — as
an assistant projectionist at the
Hoyts 6 Ways Theatre, Bondi!
Very glamorous. And I guess,
just by sitting through so many
movies I was intrigued by the
realism of the tracks; how the
director used sound to create
the illusion and build the right
atmosphere, and I wanted to
find out more.

So where did you start?

Supreme[...]urphys place. I think almost
everybody who worked in this
industry through the 50s and
60s worked at Supreme. It was
our Film and TV school in
those days, our studio system.
And I was lucky enough to train
for four years under the finest
technician this country has
produced, Arthur Smith — A.C.
Smith. From there I went to
“Skippy” for three years. I did
every episode — 91 of them and
one feature. Then to the States
for a while: then back to Aust-
ralia as sound supervisor at APA.

So what does it take to be a
good sound man?

I don't know, I’m still
learning.

Still, there must be some
things you listen for, that you
expect to hear on a track?

Well, you know I really
believe that the good tracks are
the ones where everything is put
together so well that it becomes
almost subliminal. I’m not
against shock action tracks by
any means, but I do like it all to
go together as one entity.

VVhat do film makers tend

to overlook about sound?

They seem to think you can
always phone it in later. And
you can. But I feel that the
performance the artist gives on
the floor 1S so important you
should do your best to get it
on the day. It also saves the
producer money. A couple of
minutes on the set getting the
right atmosphere, effects and

performance can save days lost
in post production trying to
re—create them.

I know you've worked on
many features, but what is the
film you’re most proud of, as
far as your own contribution
is concerned?

Oh, I think ‘Tim’ which
was shot in 1978, just after I
came to Colorfilm in fact. I'm
very proud of ‘Tim’ because
there is not one looped line in
the picture. We had locations in
the surf, at Mascot Airport, in
and out of cars, and its all
original material on the day.

I was also sound supervisor,
supervised the music score and
made the optical neg when it
was all over.

Any others?
Yes. I really think my best

achievement in the optical
transfer side of the business is
the very first neg that I made
on a picture called “Picnic at
Hanging Rock." I don’t know if
its common knowledge, but
“Picnic” was nominated for a
British Academy Award for
sound.

Is there one movie you can
think of that particularly
impressed you because of its

sound?

Vx/hen I was at Universal
they were dubbing the movie
‘Earthquake,’ and I enjoyed
going over to the theatre and
sitting with Ronny Pierce when
they were doing the earthquake
sequences. There were 59 cut
elements in those sequences — a
cut element is one complete reel
with elements on it — but there
were 59 effects reels in those
sequences. And to sit there and
see the Sensurround system
working, it was one of the most
spectacular things I can
remember. It stands out.

I understand Colorfilm
did all the release prints for
‘Elephant Man’ in this
country, didn’t that involve
some rather special sound
expertise?

Yes. ‘Elephant Man carried
a Dolby variable area sound
track, the first that has been

printed in this country. So we
had to do the research on the
configuration of the negative as
far as density, fog levels, cross
cancellation and that sort of
thing. Then print it and process
it and hold it to the control
parameters we’d set.

Do you expect to do more
of these?

Yes I do. I don’t really see us
in the near future producing
Dolby stereo negs in this
country, but well certainly print
more from overseas, At the
moment there are only three
Dolby cameras in the world:
one in Los Angeles, one in
London and one in Munich.
The one in l\/Iuriich is I
understand producing Dolby
Stereo Porn movies. I’cl dearly
love to go and see that!

VVhat can you offer the

film maker here at Colorfilm
that he won’t get anywhere

else in Australia?
Our optical transfer system.
I believe it’s the finest mono-

optical system in the world.
And so do RCA in America.

VVhy is that?

Because the cameras were
hand fitted by the man who
created the system in the first
place — Art Blayney. Vx/hen
I first went to APA I had the
opportunity to train with Art
for 6 months. He’s 80 years old
now and he really is the doyen

of optical recording. In fact, hes
just been awarded the Sl\/IPTE

Samuel L. Warner Award for
outstanding achievement and
contribution to sound in motion
pictures. I asked Art to put
those cameras together for me
in Los Angeles. It took him 16
weeks, and when those cameras
arrived here they were so well
set[...]ogether
and started running track. I did
not have to do a thing. And now
RCA are using our parameters
for the cameras they’re making
today.

And what does that mean
to the film maker?

It means we can produce a
track for him at least as good as
any he’d get anywhere else in the
world. We tend to look upon

Hollywood and London as
being the centre of the industry,
but our negatives out of here
print as well as any of them.

You must be really busy
now, what’s currently
happening at Colorfilm?

‘Gallipoli’ is ready for
printing now, and coming up
we’ve got: ‘The Best of Friends ,’
‘Partners,’ ‘Heat Wave’ and
‘Angel Street’ to name just a
few My personal aim here at
Colorfilm is to build the best
sound department in the
southern hemisphere. I think
our sound negs are fine, we’re
supplying magnetic xfers of
dailies to producers, and I’m
currently building up a very
elaborate sound effects library
Plus, of course, our new preview
room which will be ready in
November. It has suspended
walls and ceilings, big screen
35mm and 16mm projection,
full stereo sound — the lot.

Now Les, you’ve worked
in the States, at Universal.

Yes.

For Disney's, United
Artists, Allied Artists.

Yes.

You've had offers to go
and live and work in America,
what’s stopped you?

Because I’m a fifth
generation Australian and proud
of it. Look, I don’t want to work
anywhere else. The Australian
film industry is as old and
respected as any in the world.
And today its producing some
of the best films in the world.

And Colorfilm?

Well, of course, the people
make this company. My sound
crew is the finest I’ve ever had
and you don’t often get the
chance to work with technicians
like Arthur Cambridge, Maggie
Cardin, Bill Cooley and Roger
Cowland. Were a team.

We respect each other, and we
love this industry. Its as simple
as that.

colorfilm

Leo Burne114.2847 L

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99”“ Arnhem Land

DARWIN

urning the film wor
upside down.

The Australian film industry is Contact Ray Atkinson
on top of the world. (UK/ European representative)
There are ten new features Of Jim Hem)’ (NOW Ameikian
now in post production and FGDIGSGHIBIIVG) at OUF OIIICG at
another 20 in pre production for The new Le ReDh8eI-
release Wiihifl '81- Australian Film Commission,
Australia Film have the Le Raphael, 2nd Floor,
goods on these new features 3 Rue Henri Rhul, Cannes.
available for you at our office at

Le Raphae|_ /7ustra/ztanf:/In Connnission;

We also have unsold ._
territories on a variety of feature I 7
films which are r[...]

Front cover: Ornella Muti as Princess Aura in Mike Hodges’ Flash Gordon (see
review pp.177-78). insert: Bryan Brown and Helen Morse in David Stevens’ A Town
Like Alice (see review pp. 152-53).[...]

WNET-13

Nick Herd reports:

In February, two executives from the
Public Broadcasting Service station in
the U.S., WNET-13 New York, visited
Australia. Robert Kotlowicz, vice-[...]acquisitions and co-
productions, were invited by the Aus-
tralian Film Commission to speak to
filmmakers, distributors and broad-
casters.

There are 286 public television sta-
tions in the U.S. which are all members
of the PBS. The service was es-
tablished by the stations and the Cor-
poration for Public Broadcasting to
provide program distribution and
related services. The CPB is a semi-
government authority channelling
federal funds to individual stations and
into program production.

Although all stations in PBS are in-
dependent, it is accepted practice that
the stations in major cities originate
most of the programming seen on the
national network. PBS has its own
satellite to distribute programs
nationally, but stations have also
formed regional networks.

WNET-13, like most of the PBS sta-
tions, gets its funding from three major[...]t also has production facilities which it
is able to hire. The cost of program
purchase and production are spread
over the number of stations in the
network which pick up the programs,
but WNET-13 is more adventurous in
its programming than many stations
and often bears costs alone.

The station is known for its public af-
fairs documen[...]rchased films like Frontline, Lalai
Dreamtime and The Human Face of
China. It has a long-standing
relationship with Frederick Wiseman,
who is contracted to produce one
documentary a year of his choice for
them. WNET-13, along with other
leadin[...]ilm-
makers or with other broadcasting
networks.

The potential audience to which
WNET—13 broadcasts is about 11
million, although its average rating is
between five and 10 million. The
audience covers a wide cross-section
of the New York population, and has
many public service prog[...].

Kotlowicz and Gidney were ap-
prehensive about the future of PBS un-
der the Reagan administration. Since
PBS tends to be more radical and con-
troversial in its public affairs programs,
it has never been well received by the
Republican party.

Also, the improved ratings in recent
years have lost PBS the tacit support of

the commercial networks which feel
threatened by the fragmentation of its
audience by cable, cassettes and PBS.

Censorship

The main censorship issue of the
December—February period was the
banning of The Exterminator. An in-
dependent American production, The
Exterminator was refused registration
by the Commonwealth Censor in
December 1980, for excessive
violence. An appeal was lodged by its
distributor, Roadshow, and the Films
Board of Review registered the film
uncut in January.

A few days before its Adelaide
release, however, President Reagan
was shot with an exploding bullet. As
the film showed the making of a similar
type of bullet, various groups in South
Australia asked the Attorney General,
K. T. Griffith, to ban the film; this he did.

Then. Western Australia joined the
fray and banned the film, followed by

Queensland which took the unusual
step of banning itfrom drive-ins but not
hard-tops.

The film is now in release in New
South Wales and Victoria.

Other films to be refused registration
were Angel Death, Britt Blazer, Death
Trap, The Harder They Fall, l Do
Voodoo, The Sex Extortionist, Eyes of
a Stranger, The Salesgirls, Window of
Passion and woman of Vengeance.

Of those films that went to the Films
Board of Review, Faces of Death and
Angel Death were unsuccessful, but
Eyes of a Stranger was registered “R"
uncut and The Howling “M” instead of
Clearly, the Film Board of Review
views violence in films more leniently
than does the Commonwealth Censor.

New AFI Directors

At the annual general meeting of the
Australian Film Institute, on March 28,
three new directors were appointed.
They are: Don McLennan,[...]Michael Pate, actor-producer; and
Glenys Rowe, of the Australian Film
Commission. Each will serve a two-year
term before becoming eligible for re-
election.

T op Figures

In the last issue, Cinema Papers
reprinted from Variety its list of ‘‘All-
Time Champs”. in its March 30 issue
Time added to these figures by ad-
justing film rentals into 1980 dollars.
Thus, the 1939 Gone With the Wind has
its actual rental of $74.1 million re-
evaluated at $283.5 million. The "new”
top 12 is:

$ million
1. Gone with the Wind (1939) $283.5
2. Star Wars (1977) . . . . . . ..'.$220
3. The Sound of Music
(1965) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .[...]Jaws (1975) . . . . . . . . . . . . .. $186.1
5. The Godfather (1972) ..... $153.1
6. The Exorcist (1973) . . . . . .. $148.4
7. The Sting (1973) . . . . . . . .. $132.4
8. The Empire Strikes Back
(1980) . . . . . . . . . . .[...]. . . . . . . . .. $112.4
10. Close Encounters of the
Third Kind (1977) . . . . . . .. $103.5
11. Super[...]. . . . . . . . . . . . . .. $ 92.8

Represented in decades, the figures
are:

19305 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .[...]1

So, even though rentals have been
re-adjusted, the 1970s remain the great
boom period — or, at least, the time of
the most runaway successes. It could
well be the average 1930 rental was
greater than the average 1970 one.
Cinema attendance figures suggest
that would be so.

Scene from /he controversial" The
Exterminator.

A ustralian Screen

Legends on the Screen, the first title
in “Australian Screen", the new series
of books on the Australian film and
television industries, will be published
by the Australian Film Institute and
Currency Press in May.

Written by John Tulloch, lecturer in
film in the School of General Studies at
the University of New South Wales, it is
a 448-page study of the silent narrative
film, 1919-29. Tulloch examines,
through the trade journals of the
period, the professional, economic and
ideological constraints on production
and the complex operation of the Aus-
tralian bush legend.

In the work of film directors like Ray-
mond Longford, F[...]aumont Smith and
others, Tulloch demonstrates how the
legend of country productivity and
moral worth was promoted on the
screen at a time when economic power
was rapidly concentrating in the cities.

The gullibility of the Australian film
trade is captured in a presentation card
to Stan Crick (see illustration), Aus-
tralasian manager of the Fox Film Cor-
poration before his departure for the
U.S. It shows the exhibitors as puppets
in the hands of the U.S. giant.

The book has 115 pages of such evo-
cative illustrations, including a com-
parison of Australian and U.S. promo-
tional material, portraits and stills, and

mu .1 .u.. .-g. an...-.n.. i. San-Ir) s. «wk. \-.--upon -_...
1.. ru I‘|I— I--zpaann print a. in. drualllru in ,a_.,__

Reproducing the rare material
proved a huge task for the author and
publishers — and among the hardest
was obtaining copyright clearance from
the owners of long-closed journals. At
first regarded by some state libraries as
a grey area of right in the matter of
typography, this has now largely
been cleared by the Copyright Council.
But if any reader has information about
the present owners of the magazines
Film Weekly, Everyones and Picture
Show, the publishers and the National
Film Archive would like to hear from
them.

The second book in the series,
Government and Film in Australia, by
Ina Bertrand and Diane Collins, will be
published later this year. It examines
the effects of government intervention
— or lack of it — on the film industry
since the 19205.

National Library of A ustralia
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

International Film Conference

The director of the Film Section of
the National Library of Australia, Ray
Edmondson, left Canberra on April 30
to represent Australia at the 1981 con-
ference of the International Federation
of Film Archives in Rapallo, Italy.

After the conference, Edmondson
will go to East Berlin to see the new
acetate color film preservation vault
which has been built for the State Film
Archive of the German Democratic
Republic. He will also visit the West
German Film Archive Foundation in
West Berlin which holds past and pre-
sent German[...]ding copies of
historic art films whose screening was
forbidden by Hitler's regime.

Ed mondson will also go to London to
look at video preservation and film
laboratory facilities at the British
National Film Archive.

Melbourne Viewing Centre

The National Library of Australia,
with the co-operation of the Victorian
State Film Centre, opened a National
Film Archive viewing centre in
Melbourne on May 1. The viewing
centre, the Library’s first outside
Canberra, is at the State Film Centre's
premises in Macarthur St, East
Melbourne. it is equipped with the first
flat-bed viewing machine, for 16mm
and 35mm films, to be available for
public use in Victoria.

The centre will be small, but it will
enable filmmakers, film students,
critics and serious film researchers to
study films normally available only at
the National Film Archive in Canberra.

New Film Oflicers

The National Library of Australia has
appointed a Danish research chemist,
Dr Henning Schou, 32, as its new film
preservation officer.

The restoration of silent films, a field
in which he has worked at the Danish
Film Museum, will be one of his main
tasks at the National Library. He will
restore early Australian productions for

the National Film Archive.
The Library has also appointed

Bruce Hodsdon, 41, of Glebe, Sydney,
a former program director of the
National Film Theatre of Australia, as
its first fulltime Film Study Officer.
Hodsdon, a one-time secondary school
teacher, has been associated with a
number of film organizations over the
past 15 years, among them the Sydney
University Film Group and the Sydney
Filmmakers Co-operative, and has
wide experience in the distribution and
exhibition of films.

Hodsdon will be responsible for the
selection and purchase of films for the
Library’s film study section, which
provides a lending service to tertiary
and other film educators and to film
societies.

Henry Craw/'or(I, /JI'O(lll('€I' 0;/‘A Town Like
Alice.

Paul Fa/lair, male lead in Centrespread.

Addenda and Corrigenda

in the last issue of Cinema Papers
(No.31, p. 46) a photograph of Russell
Boyd was inadvertently printed in place
of one of Henry Crawford. Cinema
Papers apologizes to Crawford and
Boyd for the error.

The caption on the front cover of
Cinema Papers (No. 31) incorrectly
identified actor Paul Trahair as Peter
Trahair. The same mistake occurred on
the contents page. Cinema Papers
apologizes to Trahair for the error.

Permission for frame enlargements
to be taken from Dressed to Kill for use
in Tom Ryan's “Looking in on Dressed
to Kill” (Cinema Papers, No.31, pp 20-
25) was granted by Roadshow
Distributors. Cinema Papers thanks
them, and Alan Finney in particular, for
their co-operation.

A ustralian Film Marketing
IIIII---I--III-II---II

Colin James, formerly of the Vic-
torian Film Corporation, has, in as-
sociation with Filmco, established Aust-
ralian Film Marketing. This company
will offer three services to producers:
1. Servicing: AFM will supply main-

tenance (and, if required, produc-
tion) of the sales/servicing items
such as stills, posters, M[...]and
reporting of marketing expenditure,
including the issuing of quarterly
reports, and, if required, lodging of
company returns related to in-
dividual films and contractually re-
qulred annu[...]counts;
full disbursement and reporting
functions to all investors; and
lodging of EMDGS and Exporting[...]Work: AFM will offer ad-
vice on, and assistance in,
negotiating sales and distribution
contracts; the development of
marketing strategies and budgets;[...]s, including comparative
evaluation of offersjrom the same
territories. It will also offer regular
repo[...]t information,
which will include price movements
in the various world territories and
movements in the theatrical, free

television, pay television,
the[...]illary areas.
3. Sales Agent: Initially this will be
done through association with exist-
ing people or companies in each
territory. The aim is a more orderly
presentation of Australian films into
what is a highly-organized market-
place.
While Australian Film Marketing is
being initially financed by Filmco, it is a
fully independent private company.

Annual Application atAFTS

HOD-

There are two full-time AFTS courses
at the Australian Film and Television
School, one of which is a three-year
diploma course in all aspects of
production, direction, production[...]scriptwriting/research for film and
television.

The other course is in scriptwriting,
offering terms of up to 12 months to
reasonably well established writers.

The scriptwriting course gives a
chance to writers with some experience
to work as writers-in-residence in the
AFTS Writing Workshop. They receive
intensive gui[...]t-
writing techniques and ideas. They un-
dertake an introductory course in the
other craft areas of film and television,
and write scripts with and for students
on the diploma course, as well as
developing their own i[...]with applications.

Application forms and course in-
formation brochures are available from
the Recruitments Office, Full-time
Program, Australia[...]rth
Ryde, NSW 2113 —— (02) 887 1666, and
from the AFTS Melbourne office, GPO
Box 373, North Melbour[...]Film Festival director,
Geoff Gardner, reports on the 1981
Berlin Film Festival:

Berlin in February is probably the
greatest place in the world to induce
moans of discontent. And moans there
were, about the weather (bleak and
snowing), the films and the Festival
director. But one should really put in a
good word for director Moritz de
Hadeln. Berlin's[...]totally
computerized, is smoothly impeccable
and the avenues the Festival explored
were adventurous, unusual and, in the
sense of good work discovered, totally
justified. The South-East Asian section
in particular drew packed houses and
threw up highli[...]and Son and Ann Hui’s delight-
ful ghost comedy The Spooky Bunch.
The 38-film tribute to Sir Michael
Balcon was also a wonder of depth,
organization and documentation.

Berlin is also big enough and un-
wieldy enough for one to see the
phenomenon of “The Book”: i.e., a
carefully-planned timetable of events,
complete w[...]here early
or mid-film walkouts are deemed likely
to occur. This might be planned within
hours of arrival. John Gillett‘s is un-
doubtedly the most sought after Book,
one American festival director being
moved to ask early on, “Where is John
Gillett? How do I know what to see until
I've read his Book?"

Gillett, however, seemed to fail in
one respect, in that he had trouble con-
vincing many/any people to take up the
cause of viewing the entire output of the
Portuguese director Manuel de
Oliveira, the Festival's major re-
discovery. No doubt London N[...]m Theatre audiences can start get-
ting ready for a similar showcase.

The Competition has to be the blight
for a Festival director. Unfortunately, it
is too easy to judge performance simp-

THE QUARTER

ly on what turns up in this section.

By its nature, the Competition must
be international, yet so many countries
for whom the Berlin Festival is the
natural place to present their films, par-
ticularly those of northern and eastern
Europe, came up with a range of
mediocre work from which a selection
must be made. The Scandinavians in
particular disappointed in this respect.
And the East Germans did not show up
at all when they were knocked back for
the Competition and the Forum.

The three major European festivals
in Cannes, Venice and Berlin are not
only competitive, they are in earnest
competition for the increasingly smaller
number of good films.

The international mutters about the
quality of the Competition were
nothing, however, compared to the
local abuse from the German press and
German filmmakers. “Krise in der Film
Fest” was the front-cover headline of
the fortnightly news magazine Zitty and
copies were being left lying around all
the Festival clubrooms.

The trade also tended to take a dim
view, apparently because in the past
too many German films have been
critically m[...]apfel‘s Malou both opened com-
mercially before the Festival and it is
thought that both directors would have
been happy for their films to be in com-
petition. Their distributors said no.

More importantly, the German film-
makers decided to take a dim view of
proceedings and issued a statement
about the "grave crisis”, attacking the
Festival for alleged dilettantism and
finishing with a threat not to participate
in future.

The strangest of all Festival
phenomenon is the Word — that body
of instant opinion formulated in the lob-
by, which must contribute to a film's
fate. It happened most noticeably with
Claude Goretta’s low-key but striking
La provinciale. The packed audience
was gripped. They clapped and
cheered at the end. But the word was
"downer” and that settled that. The of-
ficial formulations will come later. I will
only say i loved it.

The official highlights were provided
by Goretta, by[...]tierrez
Aragon for Marakvillas and, of course,
by the towering American out-of-
Competition entries Raging Bull and
Ordinary People.

(For a fuller report, see Mari Kuttna‘s
report on pp 347-48.)

Australian Writers Guild

The National Guild Conference of the
Australian Writers Guild will be held
from August 10-11, and notJune 22-26,
as printed in the last issue.

Alex Ezard Retires
IIIIIIIIII-IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Alex Ezard, whose career in film-
making has lasted nearly 50 years, has
retired from Film Australia.

Ezard began, at 14, as an assistant
projectionist in Port Fairy, Victoria. He
then left (to be replaced by Robert
Helpmann) to study wig-making in the
U.S., from where he returned to work
as an assistant make-up artist on Ken
Hall’s it lsn’t Done.

He was in charge of make-up on Tall
Timbers, the first of 30-odd features he
did for Ken Hall, including Lovers and
Luggers and Broken Melody. He also
did Charles Chauvel’s 40,000 Horse-
men and Smithy.

After working between projects in a
newsreel cutting room, Ezard became
an editor on Into the Straight, Always
Another Dawn and Jedda. He also cut
Long John Silver and the award-
winning Anzac for television.

Ezard was an editor of Artransa for
many years and then joined Film
Australia in 1974. He retires to live in
Port Macquarie. ‘Ar

Cinema Papers. May-[...]

Dear Sir,

Adrian Martin quotes me in his
review of Now and Then (Cinema
Papers, No. 31, p. 69). He gets the
quote right, but does his best to get
everything else wrong.

Martin seems to think I am pre-
scribing for filmmakers; my only
defence is that this is a transparently
and destructively absurd thing to do. I
hope that when Martin presents us with
his accolade from Serge Daney (the
latest of the Parisian gurus?) — “what
in the cinema is important to us today
— he is not presuming to pre-
scribe; I hope he is merely giving
forceful expression to one of the
enthusiasms that intelligent and com-
mitted young critics are open to.

Any prescribing to filmmakers, on
whatever kind of critical hobby horse it
is mounted, can only reflect an
arrogance which is invariably the com-
panion of lack of concern.

My statement is simply a recognition
that films emerge from a culture and a
social structure, not from a vacuum.
Ten years of Australian films will have
done some of the kinds of things i
suggest — like “showing us ourselves”
— whether they set out to do so or not,
whether they do so by intent or by in-
advertence. They will have done so in
the same way that, say, three decades
of the American Western will have said
something about the U.S. where those
Westerns were made.

I wouldn't worry about Martin's mis-
interpretation, but for two things. It
follows an equally wilful misinterpreta-
tion of Barry Jones in a review of Blood
Money (Cinema Papers No. 30, p. 480)
and it coincides with a similar mis-
interpretation by another friend, Tom
Ryan. Both of them, having set up a
straw man, charge at it, demolish it and
jump on the pieces.

Who the hell wants “respectable",
“noble" films with[...]mes"? How am I declared —
horror of horrors — a moral humanist
(Leavis version) by Ryan? What are my
two good friends on about? They seem
to be assuming that a concern for
meaning and feeling in films entails an
addiction to the crudest kind of
thematics; perhaps it is necessary for
them to do this because their own posi-
tion seems to be concerned with a
narrow aestheticism. Here they are in
the pages of the same issue bestowing
critical favors in these terms:

“They offer us an insight into the

deception that is practised in the

name of fiction . . Tom Ryan, p. 25.

. . it compounds the generic trans-

gression by immediately destroying

the drama and returning to a play
with narrative forms.” Adrian Martin,

p. 68.

It may be clever, even useful, to
tease out such meanings. It may be in-
teresting, or important, or even fun, for
Australian filmmakers to involve them-
selves in self-examining, self-reflexive
film structures. But it is just possible
that it might not be the most important
thing for Australian filmmakers, or
critics, to concern themselves with.

Jack Clancy

The Curious Reply

Dear Sir,

We approach the task of writing to
you with some diffidence, having been
lumped together and dismissed as a
“curious contingent" by your reviewer
Adrian Martin (Cinema Papers, No. 31,
p. 101). But we earnestlytry to live upto

The Editor reserves the right to cor-
rect for style, abbreviate and invite
comment on all letters selected for
publication in "Cinema Papers".

stereotypes, so we are curious to know
whether Martin even went to one of the
lectures he swipes at. For good or ill,
Peter Jeffery’s talk on cartoons made
no reference to linguistics, so the
“linguistics-based analytic abyss” of
Martin’s “nightmare” was perhaps
dreamed in another place, at another
time.

About Bob Hodge's paper, our
curio[...]r Martin
walked out unnoticed by us, or just
went to sleep half-way through. Other-
wise he would have noticed that the
“results indefinitely postponed” were
delayed only for about half an hour. is
that too long for Martin’s eager em-
piricism? Bob felt a wee bit hurt that
Martin nodded off so soon (though no
doubt he needed sleep more than lec-
tures - don't we all) since he himself
was making precisely the point of Mar-
tin’s article: “positing real objects —
particular films, cinema history — and
asking that a theory be adequate to
them". (Incidentally, we didn't notice
anyone at the conference asking for in-
adequate theories. Who were these
miscreants?) In fact, Bob was insistent-
ly empirical, giving at tedious length an
analysis of the particular reception of a
particular film (The Empire Strikes
Back) and the opening of a particular
cartoon (Fanglace). He was critical of
“clnesemiology" for the same reason
as Martin, that it has failed to develop
adequate analytic practice (though
Martin feels no inadequacy in his own
readings, it seems).

Or was Bob’s crime his drawing on
linguistic theory? Semiology since
Saussure has always taken it for
granted that the study of language has
much to offer the study of other sign-
systems, even if the relation of film to
language is a problematic one. The
attempt to apply certain Chomskyan
notions is not self-evidently an absurd
and discredited enterprise, surely? Or
does Martin know something that Bob
doesn’t? If so, it would be a kindness to
tell him, and put him out of his misery.

Looking at the two reviews of the
conference in Cinema Papers, it is
paradoxical that Brian McFar|ane,
who claimed to find the theoretical
debates unfamiliar and difficult, still
gave a more judicious account of the 11
papers discussed, versus four by
Martin. Martin might reflect that there is
more to being a theorist than a
penchant for self-confident assertions,
and there is more to being an empiricist
than giving the prospectus for an un-
written paper on The Blue Lagoon.

As two people closely involved in the
planning and organization of this con-
ference, o[...]elighted with
its success. Martin's se|f-congratu|a-
tory doubts about it all notwithstand-
ing, the conference above all showed
the openness of people working in this
area to what others are doing. It would
be a pity if reviews of this conference
whipped up a “new" versus ‘‘old‘', or
“theory" versus “appreciation” con-
frontational reading of a conference
that was not without real issues, but
was characterized by a generosity that
augurs well for film and screen studies
in Australia.

Bob Hodge,

Peter Jeffery,

School of[...]drian Martin replies:

I assure Hodge and Jeffery that I
remained awake for the entirety of their
papers and that I stand by my opinion
of their work and the conference as a
whole. I consider it symptomatic of two
such people — striving to make film an
academically-respectable discipline by
recourse to such arbitrary, ahistorical

.and rarified system[...]stics (Hodge) and perception
theory (Jeffery) — that they cannot
recognize the methodological and
political rifts that marked the Perth con-
ference and Australian film education
generally, and that they ignore a debate
In which they too are implicated.

Money is Paramoun[...]tor of Cinema
Papers and just-retired director of the
Australian Film Institute, writing in the
previous issue of Cinema Papers (No.
31, p. 8), accuses the Sydney Film-
makers Co-operative of practising
"vertical integration", which he defines
in this case as the “linking of exhibition
and distribution on an exclusive basis”.

This isn’t any old chickenfeed ac-
cusation. It puts the Co-op up there in
the big league, with Paramount (not to
mention BHP and various multi-
nationals). Amazing that so many in-
dependent filmmakers, including David
Bradbury, cited by Murray as dis-
advantaged by the proposal, voted in
favor of it at the Co-op’s annual general
meeting last year.

Vertical Integration means control by
one commercial body of the means of
production, distribution and, in the
case of film, exhibition (e.g., Para-
mount) to ensure a monopoly of the
market.

It is quite absurd to liken the Co-op
to Paramount in this way; first, because
we are not a production house; second-
Iy, we are not commercial exhibitors. In
fact, exhibition land the Co-op as a
whole) is heavily subsidized, not a
profit-making, venture. Thirdly, we
could never gain a monopoly in film
distribution, nor would we wish to.
There are any number of small dis-
tributors, besides the Co-op and the
AFI, which operate now and will con-

tinue to operate successfully in the
future.

Finally, our stated aims and objec-
tives are so completely different to an
organization like Paramount that com-
parison defies credibility. (The aims
and objectives of the Co-op are stated
at the end of this letter.)

Just before I explain the details of the
new policy I want to correct one factual
inaccuracy of the letter. Murray says
that the new resolutions mean that, ‘‘In
effect, the Co-op will only exhibit the
films is distributes." This is true, and
with our limited funds it would be un-
wise to spend them on anything except
the films of its members. However, this
has been policy since being decided at
an AGM at least four years ago.

The New Policy

1. Filmmakers do not have to exhibit
their films at the Co-op in order to
have them distributed there non-
theatrically. There are some film-
makers/films who would obviously
be served better by exhibition with
the AFI. If they want national release,
and access to the more prestigious
cinemas the AFI has, this should be
their choice. The Co-op encourages
filmmakers to do what is best for
their film and exhibiting with the AFI
presents no conflict of interest.
There is, however, a definite limit to
how many short Australian films the
AFI can or will exhibit. There are
many that are not financially
lucrative enough in terms of general
commercial appeal to justify the
larger overheads of the Opera
House or the Longford, but that still
deserve exhibition. The Co-op
cinema serves these films. Co-op
seasons consist of films that
otherwise may not get exhibition
because of their political nature or
their form that does not fit existing
audience expectations of entertain-
ment.

. If you exhibit with the Co-op we do
ask for exclusive non-theatrical dis-[...]tually preferable as they
may already have set up a number
of distribution contacts during
pro[...]

In a period when Stardust Memories,
The Elephant Man and Raging Bull
have, with no ill effects, returned to
astonished cinema audiences what
should, I think, be called the miracle of
black and white (and which, in times
past, I have named amid general deri-
sion “the medium of the future”), it
might be a good idea, at last, to analyze
the differences between that eloquent
medium and its vulgar successor.

lmagine Casablanca in color — or,
Citizen Kane, The Best Years of our
Lives, Modern Times, In which We
Serve, The Pumpkin Eater.

The mind revolts against it with good
reason. The fact is that black and white
as a medium seems to confer on its
subject a dignity and credibility that
color seems to take away. It confers a
kind of royalty, too, as is seen in all the
radiations of the meaning of the phrase
"The Silver Screen”.

In your mind's eye, imagine The Last
Picture Show in color, and play it
through. In place of an austere classic
of provincial deprivation you are[...]something not so very far from three
episodes of The Restless Years. Why is
this?

In your mind’s eye, imagine The
Hustler in color: the felt on the pool
tables green, Paul Newman's eyes a
piercing blue, the balls a variety of
clashing colors in sudden motion. Why
is this prospect so much more daunting
than what we absorb from the film as it
IS.

In your mind's eye, imagine Wild
Strawberries in color: the old man's
parchment skin, the green hills rolling
by, the gay colors of the children's
clothes in the flashbacks to the summer
house. Why does the mind revolt?

Michelangelo Antonioni, when he
made films in black and white, like
L’Avventura and La notte, seemed to
be making sufficient statements about
the sterility and hollowness of 20th
Century Man; when he made films in
color, like Blow-Up, II desserto rosso
and Zabriskie Point, he seemed to be
trivializing with visual glibness the im-
portance of the questions he raised.
Was his art in decline, as has been
charged, or was there another reason?

Federico Fellini made films in black
and white, like La strada, La dolcs vita
and 81/2, which are regarded with

The Medium of the Future

PERSPECTIVE is a new column where prominent members of the
Australian film community will express their views on a range of areas.
For the first column Bob Ellis discusses the merits of black and white
cinematography. (Ellis will also be writing a regular column for Cinema

Papers.)

almost Biblical awe by people who saw
them in those more full-hearted years.
It is to be doubted. that the selfsame
people even saw Casanova, a work by
any rational criterion the equal of any of
the above. The simple fact is that
Fellini’s color films, though received in-
dividually with considerable praise,
have been, on the whole, adjudged as a
body of work as diminishing his once
Shakespearian reputation to that of
beguiling intellectual clown.

Ingmar Bergman has likewise been
shrunk to mortal dimensions by his
work in color. Merely to mention the
names of his black and white films —
Summer with Monika, Waiting Women,
A Lesson in Love, Afternoon of a
Clown, Smiles of a summer Night, The
Seventh Seal, The Magician, wild
Strawberries, The Virgin Spring,
Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light,
The Silence, Persona, The Hour of the
wolf, and Shame‘ — and then to men-
tion the names of his color films —- Now
About All These Women, A Passion,
Cries and Whispers, Scenes from a
Marriage, The Serpent’s Egg and
Autumn Sonata‘ — would suffice to
make the point.

It seems then (though, of course, it
cannot be proved) that the use of color
makes films more vulnerable to
criticism. In black and white, they have
an inviolable chastity that critics dare
not attempt to penetrate. In color, they
are easy game, Why are these things
so’?

The answers, I think, none of them
easily provable, all of them open to
question, are these.

Because it contains less information,
black and white is, like its cousin radio,
a swifter means of telling a story. A
story as vast as Citizen Kane could not
be told in color in a mere two hours,
because it is at one remove from
observed reality. Moreover, it pe[...]ft, epigrammatic and
melodramatic ways of telling a story.
The dark, sardonic theatricality of
Casablanca, a film in which the sup-
posedly Italian Sidney Greenstreet and
the supposedly French Claude Rains
both have English accents, is accep-
table at one remove from life in black
and white, whereas I suggest it would
not be in Panavlsion and color.

In the same way, films with unlikely
supernatural events in them, like The
Innocents and Repulsion, Rashomon
and Frankenstein, are more acceptable
in black and white than in color; and so
indeed are other kinds of films with un-
likely elements in them, like zany com-
edies. A comparison between Bringing
up Baby and What's up Doc might be
instructive here or, to put the com-
parison more precisely, between A
Hard Day's Night and Help! It might be
instructive as well to imagine any Marx
Brothers film, or W.C. Fields film, or
Bob Hope and Bing Crosby Road film
in color. Made today, they would have
to be.

The fact is, though once again it can-
not be proved, that black and white is
more of a verbal medium, more of a
narrative medium and more of a fan-
tastical medium. It is more of a visual
medium, too. It permits you to vary the

frame size more dramatically (as
Woody Allen does for instance in the
shot in Stardust Memories of the dis-
tant, diminutive elephant on the beach)
and to dissolve between almost any im-
age and almost any other, no color con-
sonance being necessary in the simpler
and harsher medium.

It follows, therefore, that black and
white is inherently more impelling,
more dramatic, more comic, more elo-
quent and, as a rule, more memorable
than color. That black and white
aggrandizes and color trivializes[...]eems
more obvious than not. It is more sexy,
too. A simple demonstration might be
the defloration scenes in One Summer
of Happiness and The Blue Lagoon.

Is there any use for color then, ex-
cept in obvious places like nature
documentaries on television and films
where costumes are an important com-
ponent of the effect, like MGM musicals
and Biblical spectacles? The answer,
even here, is in some doubt, when one
remembers the easy success of the
Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers black and
white musicals of the 1930s and the
overpowering effect of those black and
white cost[...]e Julius
Caesar and Throne of Blood, which
seemed to show the distant past more
truly in black and white, perhaps
because it resembled marble statues
and old engravings.

One way to deal with the question is
to look at some films whose effect was,
without argument, enhanced by the use
of color. One such film in recent times
is certainly Cabaret, whose aim is
moral confusion, and whose aim suc-
ceeded. The over-information inherent
in color worked in its favor in a film
agog with gigolos, transvestites, bisex-
uals and slim pubescent Nazi fanatics.
One needed not to know morally where
one stood in such a film, and color,
which trivializes and confuses, in this
case was of help.

Another more interesting case was
The Graduate. Although a part of its
theme was the bleakest possible view
of the prosperous priorities of capitalist
America, it cannot easily be imagined
in black and white, or looking better in
black and white. This, i suggest, is
because in this case color is used cor-
rectly, in lengthy lingering shots in
which one has time to grow ac-
customed to the image on the screen: a
little red car crossing the Golden Gate
Bridge, a girl observed through leaves
farewelling her parents, a single shot in
a hotel bedroom encompassing a
whole post-coital conversation. The eye
has time to drink in all the information
before the shot is changed.

This same lingering over the image is
used as well, with considerable suc-
cess, in the later films of David Lean
(the endless sand dunes of Arabia, the
creamy beaches of Galway) and the
later films of Stanley Kubrick (inter-
minable but somehow majestic shots,
in 2001 and Barry Lyndon, of almost
anything at all). The commercial suc-
cess of such films leads me to believe
that this is the way to make the distrac-
tion of color acceptable to an audience
— with longer shots in longer films.

Some films that are fast cut and in

ERSPEC T I VE

color, and have succeeded, usually
prove upon examination to be, like Star
wars, hardly in color at all — white
costumes down white corridors, white
gunfire in the utter black and white of
starry space — or, closer to home, like
Stir, where the color component is
negligible.

The idea that color in itself attracts
an audience is also, to my mind, open
to doubt. Cinema attendances plum-
meted throughout the 19605 when rival
television was in black and white.
Casablanca, recently on television, out-
rated all its garish rivals. On any night,
in any city cinema, the curiously loyal
are seeing for the fifth time the same
old Marx Brothers comedies and the
same stark Bergman tragedies in

the unendurable tedium of black and
white.
Merely because a rule seems ob-

‘viously true doesn't mean it finally is;

the evidence has to be looked at. Of the
black and white or partly black and
white features released in the English
language in the past 12 years — If, A
Man and a Woman, The Last Picture
Show, Paper Moon, Lenny, Newsfront,[...]ries —
only one, Lenny, has lost money. This is
a record eight times as good as the
color films brought out in the same
period. In 1963, Twentieth Century-Fox
was saved by a black and white film,
The Longest Day, from a financial dis-
aster by a color one, Cleopatra.

It may be argued against this that, in
these cases, black and white was well
used. My argument is it always is. It is
foolish not to use it all the time, so that
the silver screen may be revived, and
the cinema as an art form continue.

The loss forever of the special worlds
of Smiles of a Summer Night, Last
Year at Marienbad, La strada, Bicycle
Thieves and Citizen Kane is a tragic
one. Its replacement has been
something worse, a branch not of
narrative art but of interior decoration,
whose proper use is the television com-
mercial.

The time has come when we should
get back to what we value; the means of
expression that is more dramatic, more
succinct, more fluid, more impelling
and, statistically, more successful; the
medium in which all our fondest

memories are etched, the medium of
the future, black and white. *

Modern-day black and white: Raging Bull.

Qincma ?a;;ors, Mag-éiune —- IE5

Beginnings

Why did you decide to become an
actress?

Initially it was because I felt
there was something I could
explore. I didn’t quite know what it
was, so I started acting. That pro-
cess still goes on.

Also, I tend to be a bit timid
socially — oh, that is a nice way of
putting it! I can become selfish and
self-engrossed and not reach out in
the community. I can become a bit
closed. What acting does is force
me into areas that I would not
naturally go.

For example, I have always been
disturbed by, and fascinated in,
heroin addiction, but I would never
have had enough motivation to
explore it myself, had not a script
[Winter of our Dreams] come along
which forced me to do so. I went
out, learnt about it, and talked to
addicts. Suddenly, I felt involve-
ment with the community, and for
me that is a great thing.

Acting validates my existence as
well, because it makes me think
that, “Yes, there is a point to this
film. There is a reason for me being
a member of this community.”

It is true that I would be uncom-
fortable if I felt my self image was
that of a self-engrossed creature
who was disinterested with other
people. I know I have the potential
for being that, and acting constant-
ly forces me to watch and observe,
to understand and perceive.

Choosing Projects

Judy Davis as the prostitute, Lou, In John Dutgan s Wmter of our Dreams.

How do you select projects? Do you
get scripts sent to you or do you
chase them?

I have never chased anyone in my
life — director or otherwise. But if
there was a director I really wanted
to work with, and I knew he had an
interesting project, I probably
would chase him. I suppose any-
body would.

I have been quite fortunate in
that everything I have done was
offered to me. I haven’t had to
search for work.

At what stage of a project are you
usually approached?

It varies: sometimes the script is
finished, sometimes it isjust an idea
and they don’t have a writer. Then
again, the script can be partially

ll8 — Cinema Papers, May-June

written and they want to work on it
with me in mind.

How do you decide on a particular
role?

I look to see if I like the script.
Do I sympathize with the char-
acter? Is there some point in mak-
ing it? Do I agree with it from my
moral viewpoint? Do I think it is
worth making? Do I trust the dir-
ector?

The director is important . . .

Yes, though I don’t know many
yet.

What about a new director whose
work you don’t know. Do you have
a yardstick?

I would meet him and make a
fairly superficial analysis, I guess. I
would tell a lot by the sort of film
he wants to make and the films he
likes.

So, I check him out and then
take a risk, just as he takes a risk
with me. I am all for taking risks.

What about deciding between two
projects of equal standard, shooting
at the same time? Would it ever
come down to money?

It is unlikely one would ever get
two scripts that are perfectly bal-
anced in terms of how much one
wanted to do them. So you are
really asking me how importantly I
value money on a project. It is not
really important at all. But, let’s
face it, when we talk about money

in this country, we are not talking
about huge amounts. If, however,
there was a choice between
$500,000 and $10,000, then there is
a different set of factors to con-
sider. If it is a difference between
$20,000 and $30,000, or between
$10,000 and $6000, it is not much
of a choice.

Would you prefer to play an un-
interesting role for $50,000 or Lou
in “Winter of our Dreams” for
$5000?

What’s the point of doing some-
thing that is shit for $50,000. It
might mean that you will never get
a job again. And once you have
turned down a big salary, because
you didn’t think the project worth-
while, it is easy to do so again.

Also, bear in mind that I don’t
have children or a husband. I don’t
have any great responsibilities.
That absolutely changes an actor’s
position. I am very lucky.

Would you work overseas?
Yes.

If you had to choose between two
equally-good scripts, one of which
was Australian, which would you
take?

If one was in New York and the
other here, I might be tempted to
take the one in New York. That
would simply be because it is a new

Below: Lou and Rob (Bryan Brown) in Winter
of our Dreams.

country, a new experience and a
new culture.

Is it automatically an advancement
to your career to have international
experience?

Of course it is. There is no doubt
about it.

Are your decisions about what you
do ever influenced by patriotic con-
siderations?

I wouldn’t say I am a very pat-
riotic person. This doesn’t mean I
don’t want to live here, or I am
desperate to get away — I am not.
But I don’t think in those terms; I
am just interested in human rela-
tionships, wherever they take place.

I must admit I am more inter-
ested in what happens between
people than I am in making films
which try to sort out things about
Australia, or make statements
about what it is to be Australian. I
am much more interested in what
one person does to another and
what they do in retaliation.

Then again, Winter of our
Dreams is very much about what is
happening in Sydney to people on
the fringe of society. And that
really interests and disturbs me per-
sonally. I loved doing that film.
But, again, I would be just as inter-
ested if it was about drug addicts in
New York.

Rehearsals
'

You have just done two films back to
back. This must have meant very
little preparatio[...]me.
Are rehearsals usually long enough?

It would be a luxury to be able to
have, like some actors in the U.S.,
about 18 months to prepare for ,a
role. One could totally change one s
whole lifestyle and that would be
wonderful. But on Heatwave, I had
a week. Mind you, I knew about the
project for a couple of years.

John Duigan’s film is a better
example, because he offered it to
me about a month before I went
into rehearsal.

How long was the rehearsal period?

Three weeks, which was wonder-
ful. We didn’t need any longer,
because by the finish we were ready
to start shooting.

Some films might actually deter[...]cessive rehearsal
periods, because people may not be
able to utilize the time correctly. It
is very difficult to use rehearsal
time, especially if you come from
the stage, where you have a certain
concept of how you use the time.
The changeover is very tricky and l
haven’t mastere[...]stage rehearsals, you know
you have so many weeks to dissect
a scene and try it different ways. On
a film that is often hard to do.
.Iohn’s film is different, because it is
quite wordy.

Actually, the first film I ever did,
I couldn’t believe. The rehearsals
consisted of us sitting in a Noah’s

In Hoodwink, for example, I play
a lay preacher’s wife. I did it
because it was so different to any-
thing I had done. I knew I would
find it difficult. But the director
[Claude Whatham] helped me
through it; he was great.

If, halfway through a project, I
realized the director was wrong, I
couldn’t help but blame him
slightly, but I would blame myself
more for not trusting my intuition.
That’s why it has never happened. I
am a fairly good judge myself, and
I would know well before halfway
that things weren’t right. I would
remedy it.

What if the script is good, and your
intuition says go, but during rehear-
sals you find the director going
against what you feel about the
character. What do you do?

You have a fight on your hands,
that’s all. Well what else can you
do‘? You can’t back out. I simply
can’t totally go against my in-
stincts because I need them.

One of my problems is that I am

Judy Davis, as the hitch-hiker Lynn, in IgorAuzins’ High Rolling, Davis’ firs! feature.

conference room pretending we
were at Surfers Paradise. I just
couldn’t do it. I thou[...]le are crazy. Who do they
think we are?” And it was quite de-
structive for me; it threw me.

Some directors seem to have less
grasp on character than do the
actors. Have you found that?

No. I have been stretched by dir-
ectors, which I really need. I am not
at all happy about somebody
employing me merely to exploit
what they have seen before and
know I can do. I am always look-
ing to do something different.
That’s why I am an actor, I sup-
pose. If I were comfortable in my
own persona, I probably wouldn’t
be an actor.

just too direct. I should learn to be

more calculating — but I can’t.

At Work
T’

How conscious are you of technical
considerations during a scene?

Ideally, one’s relationship with
the technical apparatus of film-
making eventually becomes in-
stinctive, though it is very enjoy-
able sorting oneself through the
various technical disciplines.

I often look through the lens,
because I don’t know lenses prop-
erly, yet. It is also really important
for me to know how close a close-
up is, because I often do too much
with my face. Suddenly I am out of

frame and the cameraman has to
tell me. I feel foolish because it is
unnecessary[...]I am also aware of which print
directors decide to use. I know
there was a scene in My Brilliant
Career where, from a performance
point of view, a take was good, but
the camera was not as good as in
another take, where the perform-
ance was much down. I was really
concerned about which take they
were going to use, because I be-
lieve that the most important thing
is the performance. The public, by
and large, is more affected by this
than the technical expertise.

Do you like to check the editing?

If you trust the director, then you
will trust the editor he has chosen.
Editors are artists, and it would be
outrageous of me to demand any
sort of right of edit. He would
resent interference from me, as
much as I would from him.

But I would be fascinated to
watch some editing. I have asked
John if I can sit in for a couple of
days on Winter of our Dreams,
because the more I learn about the
editing process, the more it will
help me become a better film act-
ress. Equally, the more I know
about camera movements and the
technical aspects like lighting, the
more I can help the lighting guys.
Without them constantly having to
say, “Look, can you move a little to
the right”, because it is better, I will
know what to do and avoid wast-
ing time.

How are actors educated?

It is an actor’s responsibility to
educate himself. Actors have no
one to blame but themselves if they
don’t know anythin[...]ked with anyone
who hasn’t been more than eager to

Below: Marzin (John Hargreaves), the "blind”
prisoner, and the sexua11y—repre.rsed Sarah
(Judy Davis):[...]

teach me anything I wanted to
know.

Apparently you did a reshoot on
“Winter of our Dreams” because,
during the rushes, you told John
Duigan you didn’t feel the scene was
working. I imagine that is a fairly
rare occurrence . . .

I don’t think so, but I am not
terribly experienced. Perhaps what
happens is that actors get a little in-
timidated, and feel they haven’t the
right to say what they think, or
make suggestions. But it is import-
ant for actors to feel that they are
as much a part of the project as the
director and the cameraman — as
opposed to merely feeling
employed. Actors mustn’t be un-
necessarily submissive, because
they are important. Mind you,
there is the master ringman, who is
the director, and you can’t inter-
fere with that.

I20 — Cinema Papers, May-June

Obviously, John is exceptionally
receptive to that way of thinking.
But he is not the only one. Most
directors I want to work with would
be the same.

T ypecasting and Abuse
m

Would you ever use a stimulus as a
way of getting a certain effect in a
scene?

No. I know that a lot ofactors in
the US. take cocaine to give them
whatever cocaine does, but I don’t
think that’s right.

I guess the question is: Do you
get drunk to do a scene where you
are supposed to be drunk? Well, I

Below; Kate {Judy Davis) comforts[...]wave.

Harry (Sam Neill) and Sybylla (Judy Davis) in Gillian Armstrong’: My Brilliant Career.

don’t agree with that. An actor’s
job is to understand what it is to be
drunk and then reproduce it. That’s
his craft and his art. I don’t want to
see someone drunk on the screen; I
want to see an actor who is in
control.

I know an actor who had to play
a junkie, and he thought, “Well
there’s no way I can play it without
having been there.” So he went and
shot up. Well, there is no way I
would have done that for Winter of
our Dreams. My job was to reach a
point of understanding, and then
try to reproduce it.

Did you research the drug experi-

ence to the point where you were
satisfied?

Oh, I am never s[...]t up, I wouldn’t
have been satisfied.

You see, the important thing
about shooting up is not the shoot-
ing up itself, but what is at work —-
the fundamental principles behind
the shooting up, which is the addic-
tive personality. And you can get
the same thing with other experi-
ences, like sexual orgasms, drug
orgasms, emotional orgasms. It all
Comes from the same seed. And, for
me as an actress, that is what I have
to find. Then I show a variation of
it.

Another big issue is: Do you
want an actor, or do you want
someone who is suitable for the
role? Do you want to use the actor
as a potential artist, but certainly as
a good craftsman, or do you want
to exploit him for what he is? Ifyou
want an alcoholic, do you get an
actor who is an alcoholic, or do you
get a good actor?

Now, if you get the actor who is
the alcoholic, what you are doing is
encouraging the thing that is going
to destroy him. You are encour-
aging all his weaknesses. For me,
that is very wrong.

On one film, they actually got an
actor who was an alcoholic. It was
dreadful to see this man shaking at
midday, trying to get through his
job. Those terrible people simply
employed him because he had the
shakes. And, apart from making it
an unbearable experience, it didn’t
help him overcome his problem. It
is an abuse of people and has noth-
ing to do with acting.

Audiences pay $5 to be stimulated
for 90 minutes. To a certain degree,
that is emotional blackmail. And to
create this effect, directors often use
emotional blackmail on actors . . .

I know directors who do that,
and that just makes a difficult job
more difficult.

I have also suspected in the past
that there has been a tendency
among some crew to have a rather
peculiar attitude towards actors. I
have s[...]ctims of premature char-
acter judgments and even at times
ridiculed. It’s not good to treat
people like that. In fact, there are a
lot of ways filmmaking can abuse
people unintentionally.

There have been a couple of
country towns I have worked in
where the film unit has not left
many friends behind. It seems to be
the nature of the industry and it
gives me the shits. I used to think
that film people were a bunch of
turds — give me a stage any day.
But then working with John
Duigan, and on Hoodwink and
Heatwave —. in fact, most of my
recent experiences — have been
quite the reverse. I have grown to
understand better some of the enor-
mous problems involved in making
a film; and consequently developed
far more respect for all the effort,
dedication and sweat people put
into it. I believe that some of the
most creative minds are now

Power
m’

Apparently[...]h crew on “My Brilliant
Career”, particularly in the ward-
robe department . . .

I would say that I was difficult on
Career, but only because I didn’t
talk to people. I just thought they
were all out of their minds. I
couldn’t believe what was going on
around me. I wasn’t difficult in that
I threw tantrums or refused to do
things, I just walked around like a
pain in the arse all the time and that
made me difficult. Maybe they are
used to actors who joke and so on.

Aunt Helen ( Wendy Hughes) attends to
Sybylla in My Brilliant Career. Despite the
acclaim, Davis considers her p_e_rformance
"inhib[...]d rather neurotic .

Relationship with Crew
T

New actors often don’t use the crew
as their audience . . .

Oh, you should never do that. It
was Jim Sharman wh_o gave_me
that tip long before I did anything.
He said, “Never use the crew as
your audience, because if you do, it
means you are projecting too far.

Even if you project to the camera-
man behind the lens, you are pro-
jecting too far.” This is how I
understand it.

Do you believe in developing a posi-
tive relationship with a crew?

It is crucial for a central char-
acter to be a pillar around which
the crew can become involved and
excited. This is another reason why
it is terribly hard for beginners to
be put in a central position in a
film.

One thing I have learnt since My
Brilliant Career is to stop pretend-
ing the crew isn’t there. On My
Brilliant Career, I wouldn’t include
them in my reality. It was me and
the camera and the other actor.
That was the area of concentra-
tion. I didn’t trust the crew; I was

frightened of them. I also thought
that they weren’t part of the reality

of my creation. _ .
Well, it caused a lot of tension in
me and, I think, among them.

Is that perhaps why your perform-
ance is so strong?

No, that’s why the performance
is inhibited. It is not a strong per-
formance; it is a tense perform-
ance, and rather neurotic. But it
does have the sort of edge the char-
acter needed — gritting of teeth and
so on.

With John’s film, it will be inter-
esting to see if people think I am

better or worse. I have learnt —
and it is so much a personal thing
— not to be so introverted. On
Winter of our Dreams everybody
was involved. The crew was very
sympathetic, warm and generous. I
didn’t actually look at them during
a scene, but they were there; they
were included in my reality. I
didn’t pretend they weren’t there.
They didn’t intrude on my concen-
tration.

The crew felt this, too. At no
point would they have felt excluded.
It is rea[...]cause you are
so close. But I didn’t understand
that on Career. But then you can’t
understand that until you have
grown that way as a person. I am
more generous now. I have learnt to
be more open and not so precious
about myself.

Evaluating Performances
T

When you evaluate a performance
by an actor you respect, can you put
your finger on those aspects that
make it important to you?

The actors I most admire have
made definite decisions. They have
decided on the objective in a scene
and then played it. That’s why I like
Robert de Niro. You are never in
any doubt with him as to that char-
acter’s objective. He pursues it until

he is blocked and then he finds it
and pursues it again. You can view

JUDY DAVIS

Lou on the streets of Kings Cross, Sydney.
Winter of our Dreams.

his whole performance that way.

I don’t like casting people
because of their particular quali-
ties — like a brat to play a brat —
because they are not in control.
Whereas, if you cast an actor, when
he plays that brat he can throw light
on what it is to be a brat. Robert
Menzies is that sort of actor. He
brings all levels and dimensions to
the character he is playing. You
understand there is an artist at
work.

It is nice to see the artist in the per-
formance . .

Yes, and it is very rare. Who can
do it? It is something you need to
work for.

You have obviously been able to do it
at times . . .

Oh no! Oh my God, not yet. That
will take me years.

It is very much to do with truth.
Yet so many actors are full of
tricks. But you can find an actor
who has actually tried to find out
the reality of an emotion. Take, for
instance, the performance by Meryl
Streep in Kramer vs Kramer. There
is a moment in the court scene when
her character is talking about her
child, and you can see that Streep is
actually creating a real emotion
and a reality. It is terribly moving,
and an intangible thing. It is very
clear if it is there, and that takes
generosity, courage. ~k

Cinema Pape[...]

HAT happens to a

playwright’s style

when he turns

scriptwriter and
adapts his own works? David
Williamson has written the
screenplays for four film
adaptations, but they were
directed by three people who
interpreted the elements of
his style quite differently.
Cecilia Rice examines the
results.

.j__.?.

illiamson has written 10 plays

and eight screenplays in the past

10 years. His early plays were

among those first produced at

Betty Burstall’s Cafe La Mama
Theatre and the Australian Performing Group’s
Pram Factory in the late 1960s and early ’70s.
Along with such cont[...]Barry
Oakley, Williamson wrote and produced plays
that were distinctly local in a challenge to the es-
tablished but foreign theatre of the day. In fact,
Williamson attributes his success to the demand
created for Australian drama by the Carlton
theatres.

The Coming 0fStork was his first play profes-
sionally performed in September 1970 at the
Cafe La Mama. This was followed in July 1971
by The Removalists, and Don's Party at the
Pram Factory in August 1971. By the end of that
year, Williamson had written the screenplay of
Stork for direction by Tim Burstall[...]s first financially-successful
film produced with the aid of Australian Film
Development Corporation funds.

The AFDC was founded by the Gorton
Government in 1970 to boost the Australian film
industry. Williamson has ridden the crest of the
resultant film boom as well as becoming
Australia[...]ralian theatre, film
and television audiences may be explained by
Williamson’s traits of style which are partly a
product of the performing conditions of the
Carlton theatres. He is distinguished by a par-
ticular combination of realism with comedy. His
early plays present aspects of Australian society
as he saw it. They are written in prose with short
lines of dialogue and an abundance of swearing.
Four-letter words are used in displays of aggres-
sion and as terms of endearment — according to
Williamson, this is a peculiarly Australian habit.

Williamson’s more recent plays, written for a
different type of venue, show a maturing of that
style. Of Jugglers Three he says:

“The verbal violence is more polished, the

rationalizations more verbose and there is

contact with the fine arts and music.”

His latest plays were written for establishment
theat[...]ere by then staging Australian
plays, probably as a result of the recognition of
Australian playwrights forged by the Carlton
successes. Jugglers Three was written for the
Melbourne Theatre Company in 1972, followed

in 1973 by What If You Died Tomorrow, com-
missioned by Sydney’s Old Tote Theatre Com-
pany for the opening of the Opera House. The
Department (1974) was written for the South
Australian Theatre Company at its new Festival
Centre and A Handful of Friends also
premiered there in 1976. In 1977, The Club was
first performed at the Melbourne Theatre Com-
pany. Williamson’s most recent plays are
Travelling North, first staged at Sydney’s
Nimrod Theatre in 1979, and Celluloid Heroes,
a play about the Australian film industry, writ-
ten for Nimrod’s 10th anniversary celebrations
at the beginning of 1981.

Williamson’s plays do not extensively pursue
the motivations of single characters, but explore
their behaviour in given social or sexual situa-
tions. The attention shifts from character to
character, and group to group, as these situa-
tions are set up and a network of relationships
established. Characters do not undergo great
change in the course of a play because
Williamson believes that in real life people do
not change. Often, a character is diminished in
his attempt to cope with his surroundings so that
he becomes a stereotype and his actions farcical.

ssential to Williamson’s style is his
humor. The crispness of his dialogue
gives the plays the fast pace necessary
to comedy, and his plays are packed
with jokes that are usually sexual in
their overtones (giving rise, along with his thin
portrayal of female characters, to the criticism
of his works as sexist). But Williamson’s
characters display a variety of moods; they are
sometimes funny, sometimes brooding and
violent. Tension is manifested in violence and
abuse, but this is always relieved with humor. To
Williamson, everyone has a dark side and when
a number of people gather this is exposed.
Williamson makes no apology for his realistic
style and he describes himself as an ambivalent
writer, portraying his characters with enough af-
fection for the audience to identify with each,
but making such accurate observations of real
life that they hurt. Williamson describes his style
as occupying the borderline between naturalism
and satire (naturalism in the broad sense).
Williamson claims to make a satirist’s plea
for personal honesty and his criticism of
Australian society is deliber[...]

characters floundering in their particular cir-
cumstances, he makes a comment on the society
prompting their behaviour. In The Removalists,
where tension mounts to physical violence,
Williamson criticises “competitive male
behaviour”; in Don's Party he attacks “trendy
left-wingism”; and The Club may be seen as a
cynical perusal of boardroom politics. However,
to his audiences the environments are also
familiar and this, along with the ease of
character identification, is the key to William-
son’s popular success.

Meanwhile, after adapting Stork to a screen-
play in 1972, Williamson wrote the script for
The Family Man (1973), directed by David
Baker as part of the Libido portmanteau. In
1974, he adapted The Removalists for direction
by Tom Jeffrey. In that year, he also wrote the
screenplay for Petersen and in 1976 the script for
Eliza Fraser, both directed by Tim Burstall. In
1975, be adapted Don’s Party, directed by Bruce
Beresford who also directed The Club, released
in October 1980. This is Williamson’s most re-
cen[...]d’s latest feature.
Williamson has also written the screenplay for
Peter Weir’s Gallipoli, which is in post-
production.

While a play is generally associated with its
writer, a film is linked with its director and it is
he who has creative control over the final
product. When adapting his play to a screen-
play, the playwright-cum-scriptwriter may be
asked by the director to alter his plot. When
shooting and editing the film, the director may
misinterpret or ignore the playwright’s style. ,

The directors, Tim Burstall, Tom Jeffrey and
Bruce Be[...]urstall’s Stork, Williamson extensively
changed his original plot to include a variety of
locales and exterior shots. In his filming of The
Removalists, Jeffrey did not include many ex-
teriors and employed a lyrical style that clashed
with Williamson’s conception of the film. The
result was a piece of filmed theatre.

Beresford managed to open Don’s Party
without altering Williamson’s plot and including
a minimum of exteriors, by using an extremely
mobile camera. This was again used in The Club,
which includes a large number of exteriors
without loss of plot. It is in cinematic technique
that the differences in styles of the films are
derived, despite a common scriptwriter and a
series of plays with some common themes.

124 — Cinema Papers, May-June

Stark (Bruce Spence). the pivoml rharacrer in Tim BursIaII's_/7/m. Stork.

Stork

The Coming of Stork is a nine-scene play set in
two locales: the bedroom of Anna’s flat and an
inner city Melbourne flat occupied by Tony,
West and Clyde. The play opens with Stork’s
arrival to live with the boys and, during its
course, he is revealed to be eccentric, hypochon-
driacal, awkward and violent. Anna is ostensibly
Clyde’s girlfriend but, after an encounter with
Stork, announces her pregnancy, the father be-
ing any of the boys or Anna’s middle-aged boss,
Alan. After an argument involving all
characters, the play ends with Stork and West,
now groomsmen, absenting themselves from the
weddings of Tony to a socialite and Clyde to
Anna.

In the process of adapting the play,
Williamson learned how to write a screenplay.
As producer and director, Burstall edited
Williamson’s script, explaining what should be
excluded. Williamson developed the basic struc-
ture of the plot but did not specify visuals. At
Burstall’s request, he included a number of fan-
tasy sequences. These give Stork (Bruce Spence)
a psychological depth not shown in the play. His
character is extended and Stork becomes a more
central figure to the film’s action. His is the only
subconscious to be explored as he is placed in a
variety of situations.

The situational aspect is true to Williamson’s
style and Stork has Williamson character traits,
but the extension of character is part of Bur-
stall’s conception of film. According to
Williamson, Burstall believes a film revolves
about one central character and, seeing the
world from his perspective, the film follows that
character on his exploits. In Stork, because the
action revolves more heavily around Stork,
Willia[...]ion development is altered.

Burstall gives Stork a different visual treat-
ment to the other characters ofthe film. Stork is
present in nearly every shot, physically or by im-
plication; either he is just outside the frame or
the camera represents him subjectively observ-
ing the reactions of others to him. The camera
often travels with Stork but holds on other
characters in a sequence, emphasizing his height

and volatility, and setting him apart.

Although Stork is now more central to the ac-
tion, he is still a practical joker and a
hypochondriac. After going to Monash Univer-
sity with Anna and being thrown out, Stork
searches for a job. His lunch with Clyde’s boss,
Alan (a prospective employer), ends with Stork
vomiting his prawns. He then attends an Art
Show that Tony (Sean McEuan) is hosting and
here plays the smoked oyster routine of the play,
in which he stuffs an oyster up his nose and eats
it to shock Tony’s society guests. Later, Stork
plays football with a sock, as he does in the play,
feels ill and believes he is dying.

When the other boys have a party, Stork
cowers as he does in the play, and after an unsuc-
cessful attempt to seduce him by Haline (Jan
Friedl), Stork begins his encounter with Anna
(Jacki Weaver). Anna then ann[...]rk and West (Graeme
Blundell) disrupt her wedding to Clyde (Helmut
Bakaitis).

Throughout the film Anna has been openly in-
volved with both Clyde and Tony. The film ends
with Anna, Clyde and Stork-the-Stowaway driv-
ing into the sunset as he wonders at the inability
of modern science to produce an anti-toxin for
tetanus.

All the actions of the film are intercut with
Stork’s eight fantasy sequences. He sees himself
as a motor-cyclist “doing Australia on a
machine”; when searching for ajob he is the as-
sistant secretary to the ACTU and then an
engineer in Antarctica; before disrupting Tony’s
Art Show, he fantasizes of himself with Anna
showing her how to make “chunderscapes”;
when he plays football with a sock, he is a
professional on the field; when he worries that he
will die, he imagines his funeral and then dreams
of a relationship with Anna; and when cowering
from the party, he sees himself as a soybean
farmer.

Thus Stork’s psyche is explored. The fantasy
sequences take place over 24 locales, 11 of which
are exterior. This is how Williamson opened his
play for Burstall, involving the writing of new
plot material.

The film is stamped with Williamson’s humor.
The comic environment is set in the credit se-
quence when Stork is sacked from GMH. He
strips to his underwear and is chased around the
factory by l'11S boss. This is played in fast motion
without dialogue and, because it is slapstick, it
immediately establishes the film as a comedy.

But Stork is also introduced as a misfit and a
dreamer. Williamson’s humor is maintained and
typical jokes pervade the film. For example,
when Stork arrives at the boys’ house he discus-
ses the “mole situation” with Tony and Clyde:

Clyde: Your talk is mightier than your stalk,

bo .

Stdlrkz That means I’ve probably got a socio-

economic hang-up!

When their relationship is consummated, but
Stork discovers that Anna is not going to leave
her lovers for him, he says:

You’ve dealt a death blow to my masculinity

Anna, a death blow — It may never rise

again!

The jokes are typical of those flowing
throughout the film; Williamson uses a play on
words with sexual overtones. They are the type
that always raise a laugh from the audience and
serve to break the tension of serious scenes.

Edward McQueen-Mason has edited Stork so
as to maintain Williamson’s pace. A cut occurs
with each line of banter and some scenes were
deleted because they slowed the film. The cutting
can therefore be exhausting for the viewer,
especially as Burstall has used one-shots rather
than longer two-shots to emphasize the separ-
ateness of Stork’s characterization.

The film shows its timing in the Australian
film revival. In parts, it is crudely put together.
There are a number of continuity mistakes and it
seems to be over-cut. The acting is “big” or
overplayed for laughs. And while Stork cannot
be described as theatrical, the impression is that
a large number of locales were jammed into the
film to make the original play into a film.

The Remo valists
'

The Removalists, designed and produced by
Margaret Fink, was released in 1975. Fink saw
John Bell’s production of the play at the Nimrod
Theatre in 1971 and chose it for her first film
production. After approaching David
Williamson to write the screenplay, she sought a
director. Because she wanted the film to be inter-
national in appeal, Fink unsuccessfully invited
Roman Polanski and Ted Kotcheff. Tom Jeffrey
then showed an interest and The Removalists

(Martin Harris).

I

became his first feature as director. For the
previous 14 years, Jeffrey had worked for the
ABC, where he directed Pastures of the Blue
Crane and episodes of Delta and Dynasty.

Williamson wrote the early drafts of the script
before Jeffrey was contracted. These show an in-
tention to open the play by extending the plot, as
he had done with Stork, and to include exterior
shots, a variety of locales, extra characters and a
flashback. All but one of these extensions were
deleted for Fink because she believed that the
original play needed little alteration to become a
film.

Once Jeffrey was chosen, he went through the
drafts with Williamson and made suggestions
for re-writing. Some of these suggestions were
adopted in the script. Williamson also included
the equivalent of stage directions for the actors,
but did not specify visuals or camera angles.

The final cut is much closer to the play than
the early script drafts and differences in plot
from playtext to film are minor. Fiona’s name
has been changed to Marilyn and the action is
set in Sydney rather than Melbourne. In Act
One of the play, Fiona and Kate make one visit
to the police station and in the film they make
two. In the film, Ross and Simmonds make a
trip to the local milk bar (the surviving
Williamson extension), but their dialogue may
be found in the play so that the plot is not altered
by this.

The Removalists opens with Constable Ross
(John Hargreaves) arriving at a small police sta-
tion manned by Sergeant Dan Simmonds (Peter
Cummins), who quizzes him until Kate Mason
(Kate Fitzpatrick) and Marilyn Carter (Jacki
Weaver) arrive to report domestic abuse by
Marilyn’s husband Kenny (Martin Harris).
Marilyn is leaving Kenny, but he will not part
with their furniture. So Simmonds contracts a
removalist (Chris Haywood) to help the
policemen empty her flat.

As Marilyn prepares to move, Kenny arrives
home unexpectedly and, just before the
removalist, Kate and the policemen join her.
Kenny is handcuffed to a partition and, while the
flat is emptied, makes loud protest. His verbal
abuses of the women, removalist and policeman
provokes Simmonds[...]Kenny. It is finally Ross who beats Kenny until
he thinks him dead. Kenny revives and the three
(Marilyn and Kate have already left with the
removalist) settle their differences over a beer.
Kenny then drops dead and the play ends with

DAVID WILLIAMSON

Constable Ross[...]band. Kenny

Ross and Simmonds beating each other to
mitigate their guilt.

While the play was a commercial and popular
success, the film was not. By September 1980, it
had not recovered all its production costs. Why
is this when the adaptation was so close? The
answer lies in the fact that the film is theatrical.
Not only are the plots of play and film close, Jef-
frey overuses mid-shots and most of the action is
contained within the frame, creating the effect of
the proscenium arch. There are few exterior
shots and sets were used instead of real loca-
tions. As well, the actors’ movements are at
times theatrical. The film is virtually a filmed
play.

Perhaps this fault can be explained by Jef-
frey’s previous experience only in television
directing or by the fact that Margaret Fink, as
producer and designer, was so unwilling to allow
changes to the original play for the film. But this
is not the only failing ofthe film. IfWilliamson’s
traits of style could be placed in two categories
they would be “realism” and “humor”. The first
is retained in the film, but the second is denied.

Williamson describes his play as a “black
satiric comedy”. His use of humor makes the
play a comedy that turns black with the use of
violence and the death of Kenny. In the film the
dialogue is often funny, but there are no visual
cues to comedy. The blackness of the credits, ac-
companied by the music of Galapagos Duck,
create a symbol of menace which recurs
throughout the film. Because Jeffrey emphasizes
the dark moods of the characters without
providing a balance in the visuals for their
lighter moods, the mixture of moods necessary
to dark comedy is not created.

The style of the film, according to
Williamson, is “lyrical”. His fast pace is
destroyed by Jeffrey’s use of pauses, so that
while the plot ofthe play is not altered the action
is slowed. In these pauses the camera focuses on
shots of realistic detail. In the first scene, such
shots indicate tension (the film may be divided
into two long scenes coinciding with the acts of
the play). For example, Ross plays with an
empty pencil sharpener at the station and at the
milk bar fiddles with a salt shaker until he spills
the contents.

In the second scene, the pauses no longer in-
dicate tension because the atmosphere is so
openly violent. Instead, they provide an at-
mosphere of personal tragedy. For example,
close-shots show drawers being emptied, toys be-

Cinema Papers, May-June —- 125

Implied action becomes explicit: Don (Jo/in Hargreaves), Mack (Graham Kennedy), Mal (Ray Libe[...]Labor confidence. Mack, Don and Cooley harangue the

Barrett) and Cooley (Harold Hopkins) throw the stripped Susan ( Claire Birmey) [mo the pool.

Bruce Beresford '5 Don ’s Party.

ing packed and the marital bed being dis-
mantled. Pauses are also used to imply violence.
During these, the reaction shots of the women
convey its ugliness. When Kenny is beaten to
death, the camera shows Simmonds tying his
shoe laces.

The attention to domestic detail in pauses
renders the film a suburban tragedy rather than

a black comedy. When a short line ofdialogue is
followed by such pauses, it becomes poignant
rather than funny. As a result the film is not a
comedy that turns black and the first shots begin
a slow crescendo of violence.

Don ’s Party

After seeing one of its Sydney productions of
Don’; Party, Jack Lee obtained the screen rights
and, in 1974, he approached Phillip Adams to
produce the film. Lee was to be its director and
with Adams he met Williamson, who began
work adapting the play to a screenplay. Lee then
withdrew from the project (retaining his finan-
cial interest) and Bruce Beresford became the
director.

In Williamson’s first drafts the drama was ex-
tended so that the film would not be confined to
the one stage set of the play. These extensions
were discarded because they did not work. Once
Beresford was chosen, he went through the script
and suggested the re-inclusion of some segments
deleted by Adams and Lee.

Some of Williamson’s changes do survive.
While the play has one locale — the interior of a
house — the film has several, including ex-
teriors. Of these, the earlier exterior shots are
farthest from the house so that the confined at-
mosphere of the play is not destroyed as the
films action continues. As well, action only im-
plied in the play is explicit in the film, the main
examples being the screening of the characters’
sexual encounters and the credits showing Don
and Kath Henderson (John Hargreaves and

Jeanie Drynan) voting. V
The play’s 1969 setting is kept, but the location
is Sydney’s Westleigh instead of Melbourne’s
Lower Plenty. Since these suburbs are similar,
the suburban, middle-class milieu of the play

survives. ' _ .
Slight changes in characterization were also

126 — Cinema Papers, May-June

made. Ray Barrett plays Mal, but because he is
too old for the part he becomes Don's ex-
university lecturer rather than a contemporary
ex-student.

Williamson’s original[...]tially by these changes. Don’s Party opens
with the Hendersons voting, followed by their
preparations for the arrival of nine guests to
their election party: Simon (Graeme Blundell),
Jo[...]ns) and Susan (Claire Binney). All but
two expect the Labor Party to win the elections.

As the party progresses, the group tellsjokes,
swaps partners and makes sexual advances.
Meanwhile the election results are telecast.
While the party is still genial, the results favor
the Labor Party. But as Don’s party deterior-
ates into aggression and violence, polling begins
to favor the Liberal-Country Party.

During the evening the individual and collec-
tive failures of the group are revealed. The film
ends with the disbandment of the party and the
announcement of a win to the coalition.

Once again, in the writing of the screenplay,
Williamson made no specifications for the con-
struction of visuals, although he did provide at-
mospherics, and he did not participate in the
editing of the film.

In the film, Beresford uses a mobile camera to
capture the equal contribution to the action of
all the characters, the changes in atmosphere
and variety of moods. The fast pace necessary to
Williamson’s humor is thus retained.

Despite the closeness in plot of the film and
play, the film is not theatrical like The
Removalists and Beresford’s method for opening
the play is not as crude as Burstall’s in Stork.
Early in Don’s Party, Beresford breaks the
audience’s association with the single perspec-
tive of the proscenium arch: the line of action is
crossed as Don watches television and mirror
shots are also used to give opposite perspectives.
These erode the audience’s sense of the theatre.

Beresford uses a wide variety ofcamera angles
and a number of point-of-view shots to show the
guests’ interactions. For example, when Mack,
Mal and Don tell Jody the duckhunterjoke, the
camera is subjectively the joke teller and atten-
tion is on the reactions to the joke. In this way
the audience identifies with the teller and the
result is raucous laughter from the audience and
party guests.

conservative Simon ([...]’s Party.

Such shots are mixed throughout the film with
long-shots, medium-shots and close-ups, and
edited into quickly-paced sequences. The camera
weaves among the guests, travels with the
characters one minute and holds on them the
next, and the depth offield is frequently altered.

A world beyond the frame is implied as some
action takes place off camera. Don’s muffled
reply to Jody and Simon’s request for dry ginger
comes from a bedroom at a different end of the
house. This happens early in the film and later,
when Mal argues with Jody about status, the dis-
cussion begins in the background before the
camera focuses on them. In this way, a feeling of
real space is built into the film. Additionally, it
was shot in a house in Westleigh as Beresford
believes that films shot on sets are too theatrical.

The Club
'

The Club was produced by Matt Carroll for
the South Australian Film Corporation and
released in October 1980. It is the second of
Williamson’s adaptations to be directed by
Bruce Beresford, with Don McAlpine as[...]ill Anderson as editor.
Once again Beresford uses a mobile camera to
open Williamson’s play. In fact, his technique
might be said to have reached perfection —
some would say over-development — because he
includes a gamut of camera angles and freely
uses close-ups and wide-angle lenses in his quest
to open the play.

The main dissimilarity to Don’s Party is the
large number of exterior shots found in The
Club, probably more than Burstall used in
Stork. But in contrast with Stork, Williamson’s
plot is not changed in content to allow this.
Rather, Williamson has reorganized the
narrative structure of the play so that all the ac-
tion of the film is founded in the play. The
dialogue is similar but what began as a one-and-
a-halfhour confrontation in the play becomes in
the film a battle continuing over weeks.

Wil1iamson’s two-act play is set in one locale:
the boardroom of an anonymous Melbourne
football club. It features six characters: Gerry

Cooper, the club’s administrator; Ted Parker,
the club president; Laurie Holden, the team

Bringing exterior action into a pla y: the recruit (John Howard) tests out his strength at training.
The coach (Jack Thompson) watches on. Bruce Beresfordk The Club.

coach; Danny Rowe, a long-standing player;
Jock Riley, a committee member, former player
and coach; and Geoff Hayward, the team’s
newest player. The action is the confrontation
between the six before the club committee
meeting. Laurie has threatened his resignation
and taken his grievances to the press, Ted is in
an uproar because he has been defamed, while
Danny threatens a players’ strike in sympathy
for Laurie.

One of the main disputes is the extravagant
$80,000 paid for Geoff, who is playing badly and
defying his coach. Ted has a personal interest in
him because he staked $10,000 ofhis own money
and is now going bankrupt. Geoffis playing bad-
ly because of the hostility he has received from
the other players, who are “put out” by his price.
Consequently, he is disillusioned with football
and plays while stoned and the club is losing the
premiership. _

As the group argues, it is revealed that Laurie,
Danny and Ted are to be dismissed from the
club because Jock and Gerry are dispensing with
club tradition and adopting the business ap-
proach instigated by Ted. Ted’s resignation is
eventually forced because the club will not see
him through an assault charge laid by a stripper,
arising from an incident at a social evening. In
fact, it is Gerry and Jock who have leaked the
story to the press in a bid to remove Ted.

Finally, Geoff realizes that he’d rather be
coached by Laurie than anyone else and the
team, represented by Danny, agrees to aim for

the finals so that the committee will be forced to
renew Laurie’s contract.

For Beresford’s film, Williamson altered the

narrative structure of the play so that its ex-.

positionary passages are treated in the film (ex-
positionary as distinct from implied). The film
opens with a team-training session followed by
Geoffs signing up. It shows his hostile reception
by the team, the game in which Ted goes to the
coach’s box to instruct Laurie (Jack Thompson)
and Laurie’s subsequent encounter with the
press.

The confrontation of the play begins in the
club carpark. The backstabbing continues at the
club’s social night, where Ted (Graham Ken-
nedy) is provoked by the stripper. The actual
assault is the one event of the play which is only
implied in the film.

The various interactions of the group continue
in the locker rooms, bathrooms, recreation
rooms, offices and football field of the club. The
action is taken outside its bounds to Jock’s
(Frank Wilson) business premises and Geoff’s
(John Howard) and Ted’s homes in suburban
Melbourne. It includes the fantasy sequences in
which Geoff tells the yarn of his sexual en-
counters with his legless sister and mother. In
all, the film includes 28 scenes, 20 of which are
exterior.

Because the action spans the entire football
season, ending with the club’s win in the grand
final, the film features a number of football
games. In these, the key movements of the

The back-room boys: Gerry (Alan Casse/I), Ted and Jack
(Frank Wilson). The Club.

Gerry bids goodbye to the ousted Ted in front of an astonished
coach. The Club.

DAVID WILLIAMSON

Before the camera cuts: Ted (Graham Kennedy) begins to undress the stripper. The Club.

players are screened in slow motion. The as-
sociation with the action replay of television is
strong. As well, a large number of extras appear
in the film as the crowds are shown in the
grandstands enjoying the game (they include
Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser). The main ex-
tras are the football players comprising the
team.

The players and club premises are those of the
Collingwood Football Club in Melbourne.
While the anonymity of the club is destroyed,
the realism necessary to Williamson’s style is
created. In fact, the film relies largely on the
football games for authenticity and interest, and
their inclusion is logical.

But the film is not just Williamson’s play in-
tercut with the occasional football game. Once
again, Beresford uses a mobile camera, and
many of the exterior shorts of the film are wide-
angled. Inside the clubrooms, a variety of angles
similar to those of Don’s Party are used as the
camera follows the characters up the stairs or
views a couple in argument over the pool table.
Beresford is free with his use of close-ups and
profile shots. The camera moves so freely that,
at one point, it makes two 360° turns about
Geoff and Laurie on the field. In this way the
series of confrontations embracing the film are
relieved in the visuals and the situational aspect
of Williamson’s style is retained.

In the film’s course, the absurdities of
character are brought out. Ted is the football
club president who has never played a game;
Jock will not allow any player to beat his record;
Danny (Harold Hopkins) is ageing and sensitive
about it; Geoff nurtures a fear that he is not
good enough for his team; Gerry (Alan Cassell)
is the best club administrator, but does not like
the game and is ruthless with his members;
Laurie is motivated purely by his love ofthe club
and belief in its traditions. Each is exposed for
what he is during the battle.

Thus Williamson makes his comment on male
competitive behaviour and the degeneracies of
the club. His distaste for boardroom politics ex-
tends beyond the club in question as he criticizes
a modern trend away from tradition to pure
economics. It is Beresford who presents the is-
sues with intensity in his filming ofThe Club. Es-
sential is the thrill of the game. Beresford cap-
tures a mentality that is popular and familiar,
and in this way he attracts the audience to whom
the messages will apply. 1:

Cinema Papers, Ma[...]

Tom Ryan interviews the director of The Stunt Man and Getting Straight.

1.I

redients: a film set; a director; an actress;

a ugitive-become-stunt man; a love story; a
satire about illusion-making (“How tall is King

Kong? ”); a comedy; an adventure; a beginning, a
middle, an end (preferably happy).

In what ways are the Academy
Award nominations for “The Stunt
Man” important to you?

Unashamedly I confess that,
along with the childhood dream of
becoming a director; there is a
fantasy of winning Academy
Awards and the recognition ofyour
peers that goes with it. So, this is
really like having one’s fantasy
realized.

Also, there is a very significant
reward which is part of the
unwritten contract that comes with
Academy nominations: namely, it
becomes easier to finance and
execute your material in the future.
You are a more prestigious
commodity.

You are quoted as having said that
your pre-I970 career in filmmaking
made you “the best of the two-dollar
hookers”. And you describe your
experience in “exploitation” films
as “misspent youth”. Do you really
believe that about your early work?

No, though the metaphor about
the two—dollar hooker is, in a sense,
true. If there had been more money
available, a more significant
director would have been hired. But
as there was only two dollars
around. I had the premium. This
gave me the chance to make trades
with the producers who hired me. to
say, “HI give you all the exploit-
able thrills you want, if you keep
your hands off.”

It became a tremendous training
ground for myself, my wonderf[...]my actors, including
Jack Nicholson. We were able to
break some new ground in learning
to tell stories and developing new
techniques for telling them.

The Editor would like to thank Village-
Roadshow and Alan Finney for their
generous co-operation in helping conduct
the above phone interview.

l28 — Cinema Papers, May-June

What were the important influences
on you during this time?

There was Laszlo Kovaks, who
made his first film for me. He was a
young Hungarian refugee, who had
gone to film school in Hungary,
and I was an un—notorious director.
I hired him to do A Man Called
Dagger, and he did the next six or
seven for me.

We developed a marvellous
working rapport, the short-cuts
that shared experience teaches you.
We also developed some interesting
techniques. Later, I got him into
the union, for his first union film,
which was Getting Straight, also
my first major studio film for
Columbia.

In terms of films that were of
major influence on me, more as a
potential filmmaker than as an
audience, I would say films like
George Stevens’ A Place in the Sun
and Elia Kazan’s East of Eden.
Kazan‘s film was an important
experience in the way it reached in
new directions, showing me how the
rules could be bent on the edges of
style and reality.

One of the recurring visual elements
in your films is the use of the
“critical focus”, or the “rack
focus”, style of shooting. What do
you see as the aesthetic advantages
of shooting that way?

The whole style of critical focus,
that Laszlo and I developed, seems
to be much closer to the way the
human eye and mind perceive the
reality around us. I look at you,
then my attention goes behind you
for a moment at someone passing,
without shifting my gaze at all. The
focus changes and returns to you,
all in one continuous move.

So, it is all a matter of blocking
in a continuously moving master,
hopefully without the viewer ever
becoming aware of it. And you do

the coverage according to the way
the master is played.

This is a style that was born
around my swimming pool one
summer, with an 8mm camera. I
showed the result to Laszlo and we
started to develop it, incorporating
it onto 35mm on my next feature,
which was a motor-cycle film called
Hell’s Angels on Wheels. It has
developed from there.

Are you troubled that it is also so

2. Director: Richard Rush. Directed Merle
Oberon in 0fLove and Desire, 1 963. “Not content
with this single achievement”, he pursued a career
in “exploitation ” films, 1 960-1968. Graduated to
“respectable ” films in I 970 with Getting Straight
(“the bestAmericanfilm of the past I 0 years ”.'
Ingmar Bergman). Freebie and the Bean, 1 9 74
(“the best film of the year”: Stanley Kubrick).
Spent I 0 years on The StuntMan. Nominated for
Academy A ward as best director for The Stunt
Man, J 98].

often used in television drama?

No, because all technique is a
pool from which we drain. The
close-up, which is now part of any
film drama, is an unlikely technique
which we have borrowed and use[...]nother reason I don’t mind its
proliferation is that anything in
filmology, in the collaboration
between the audience and the film-
maker, eventually becomes

acceptable. Familiarity tends to
make a technique invisible and less
distancing for the audience. It
becomes a part of the syntax of
cinema. And for any film stylist,
part of the challenge, part of the
adventure, is to extend the syntax a
bit with every film, so that the
vocabulary of the film, the phras-
ing, becomes more exciting and
interesting.

Thematically, one can find a pre-
occupation in your work, through
films like “Hells Angels on
Wheels”, “The Savage Seven”,
“Psych-Out”, “Getting Straight”,
and now “The Stunt Man”, with a
group of people who cut themselves
off from society, rejecting its values
and trying to discover their own. Is
that something that interests you, or
is it there by chance?

I find that I can’t really get
involved with a film, with the
structure and making of it, until the
sub-text, the thematics, is clear to
me. Then it becomes equally
important for me to bury those
thematics, to make them invisible.
So you don’t really talk about your
theme, but invent a conspiracy of
events that ends up saying
something to the audience.

You have probably become
aware of my t[...]e easily than I
have. Only recently did I realize
that I keep doing the same thematic
material, although the surface
always changes. And this basic
material is a fascination with our
token morality, the kind of slogan-
ized, bumper-sticker morality
which is expedient and arbitrary.

What comes out of The Stunt
Man, I think, is that because we
don’t know the truth, we are
constantly inventing it; inventing
rules of right and wrong, good and
bad; inventing enemies to test our

strength against. And the film’s
study of illusion and reality is a
development of the same ideas that
were buried in the other films about
the relationship between rebel
heroes and the arbitrary morality of
the society from which they retreat.

The American involvement in
Vietnam seems to be a recurring
reference point in your films,
explicitly in “Getting Straight” and
“The Stunt Man”, implicitly, I
think, in “Freebie and the Bean”
and “The Savage Seven”. What do
you see as its function, both as part
of your history and in these
particular dramatic contexts?

I think there is no escaping that
the Vietnam war was the major
focal event of the last generation.
Its implications need to be seen in
the light of this question of an
arbitrary morality, in the way we
invent right and wrong,
expediently, for the moment. We
fought a war, calling up the echoes
of patriotism and all the things we
had been trained to since infancy,
without ever being forced to
examine the morality against the
context.

The shock to our collective
system, and to our individual way
of looking at the world, that comes
from this kind of examination
seems inescapable material, if you
want to make any kind of social
commentary in your films.

Much of the writing about your
films is oblivious to any social
commentary they might offer. For
example, while it seems to me that
“Freebie and the Bean” takes a
critical distance from its two
buffoon cops, the reviews saw it as a
celebration of the chaos of their
violent behaviour . . .

This is part of the danger that
comes with the conviction that one

shouldn’t talk about thematic
material in the film itself, that it
really has to speak within the rules
and structure of good enter-
tainment, that you can only find the
thematic statement by recognizing
what is going on behind the violence
or the humor.

In the case of Freebie and the
Bean, there were only about 15
critics in the U.S. who really
tumbled to what the gymnastics of
doing the film were about, who
made the Herculean effort to
identify the statement in the films
dramatic structure, which plays in
Tom and Jerry style and then
switches to reality to alter the
audience’s perception of what it has
been cheering or laughing at.

You have compared making a film
to fighting a war, calling it an
“insane commitment”. Was the war
background an element in Paul
Brodeur’s book that initially
attracted you to “The Stunt Man”?

The attraction in Brodeur’s book
was the idea of a fugitive hiding his
identity by posing as a stunt man on
a film, and then falling under the
dominance of the director. This
seemed a marvellous context in
which to examine the universal
paranoia we have about controlling
our own destinies and lives.

The story offered all the spice for
a giant action film, and so fulfilled
a commitment to solid enter-
tainment. But it also became a
marvellously tough clothes-line on
which I could hang all that
thematic laundry.

You spent almost a decade getting

“The Stunt Man” made and
distributed. What were the kinds of
problems you faced, and why didn’t
you give up and do something else?

I must confess that the nobility
isn’t as great as it sounds, because if

Cinema Papers, M[...]

Nina (Barbara Hershey), in the guise 0,/‘an old woman, setting in motion the illusion of rescue, The Stunt Man.

all those years ago somebody had
said to me. “It will take you nine
years to make this film”, I
probably would have walked away.
However. on a day-to-day basis, it
was impossible to let go.

It was a rave review novel.
written in I970 by Paul Brodeur.
Columbia owned it and, beca[...]ad success with Getting
Straight, they offered it to me. I
hired Larry Marcus to do the
screenplay with me, and we spent
nine months on it. When we were
through I was hopelessly in love
with it. It had turned out exactly

the way I wanted.

Unfortunately. the rest of the
industry didn’t share my enthus-
iasm. Columbia had just run across
hard times. and was unable to
finance the film. The other studios
in town were scared to death of it.
They all gave a variety of reasons,
such as the references to the
Vietnam War, which were taboo
because the war was still on, or the
references to Hollywood, which
made it a risky subject.

But what it really added up to, as
it turned out. was that the film was
very hard to pin down. It was multi-
levelled. The question was: What is
it? Is it a comedy? Is it an action-
adventure’? Is it social comment?
And the answer was. “Yes, it is all
of those things.” But it couldn’t be
given a comfortable label.

Every time they offered me a
film. I would say. “Come on, let’s
do The Stunt Man.” And they’d
say. “Hey! Will you get out ofthe
office.” Frankly, I had to make
another film, so I did Freebie and
the Bean, and when it was
commercially successful, I went

I30 — Cinema Papers, May-June

back to saying, “Let’s do The Stunt
Man.”

Finally, an independent
financier, Melvin Simon, agreed to
make the film, and to my ideal cast:
Peter O‘Toole, Steve Railsback
and Barbara Hershey. With every-
one involved, there was a kind of
commando-like dedication to
making the film. We would go out
and “capture” the footage every
day, rather than shoot it.

When we finished the film, which
we all liked a lot, we offered it for
distribution. And, to my surprise,
the studios had not changed their
view. They thought it was too risky
commercially and that they
wouldn’t be able to sell it. So we
took the film out and previewed it
in Seattle. I broke one of the rules
and allowed it to be reviewed at the
previews. This is usually a taboo,
because if you get a bad review it
can hurt your chances. However,
we got rave reviews in Seattle and
tremendous statistical results from
the preview.

I brought this back to Holly-
wood but they said. “That’s not
enough. Go do it some more.” So
we went to Phoenix and repeated
the performance, with reviews and
with statistics.

Charles Champlin, who is the
film critic for the Los Angeles

3. Thernatics and Stylistics: “Reality is yours to deny. . ./In a world

where nothing is what it seems . . . lyrics of the song, “Bits and Pieces”,
from The StuntMan, whose narrative construction revolves around two

thematic questions: What is reality? What is illusion ?

Its movement transports its central character, the fugitive, Cameron (Steve

Railsback), and its inscribed audience, to wards a point of a wareness where
illusions are transformed into “reality”. As the director, Eli Cross (Peter
0’T0ole), lea ves in his helicopter and the actress, Nina (Barbara Hershey),
comes to Cameron ’s side, the solidity of the fictional world is finally fixed. The
narrative has come to its end, stripping away the facade which has concealed the
site of reality.

Yet, in challenge to this synoptic reduction, a further moment, as the voice of Eli
Cross is raised in a teasing threat beyond the final credits: “Cut the boy out of
the picture. ”

Of whom does he speak .7 Not of Cameron who, as a stunt man, fills in the gaps
of risk left by the star actor, and thus has no part in the film. 0fRailsback, the
star actor? Impossible, for a defining characteristic of a narrative realism is to
erase the marks of its production.‘ Eli Cross cannot cross the border of fiction to
address Railsback. O'Toole to Railsback? Again impossible, for the voices of
actors cannot speak within the film, except in the disguise of role. So the logic of
the form is denied — “no one”speaks to “no one”.

Earlier, there are two sequences — of Cameron, the outsider, an observer of the
action sequence being shot by Cross and his crew on the beach; then of
Cameron, the participant, in the action sequence moving from the tower to the
brothel. In both there is a continuity: no setting-up of a sequence of shots, of
before and after, emphatically an illusory flow of cause and effect whose

fragmented identity is concealed by skilful editing.

But here a difference from the construction of classical narrative as thematics

and Stylistics meet at a point of confrontation, where the solidity of the fictional
world is simultaneously asserted and denied. In a film whose thematics speak of
the process of producing cinema, to offer, through its own production, a denial

of that process, is to disavow itself, again, of the logic of the form.
Belief and disbelief in a sustained flow of intersection, whose meeting-point
coincides precisely with the creation of T he StuntMan within and against “the
syntax of (a narrative) cinema”.

Times, liked the film and sponsored
it at the Dallas Festival. It is a non-
competitive festival, but the papers
there voted it best film. We sent this
accumulated material back to the
industry, but it hadn’t changed its
view. People said, “Okay, appar-
ently it pleases the critics, it pleases
the public, but there is nothing that
indicates it will attract a mass audi-
ence.”

So, we felt we had to do a test
market some place. We went back
to Seattle and opened a test run. It
is still playing in that same theatre,
36 weeks later. We set records the
first week.

Well, the effect of this tremen-
dous success on the industry was
that it declared Seattle a non-
market. If Seattle liked The Stunt
Man, there must be something
wrong with Seattle.

We figured we had to do a more
dramatic test market, so we picked
Westwood in Los Angeles, which is
probably the most competitive
cinema market in the world. We
were able to get a theatre for six
weeks and a peripheral group of 10
theatres around Los Angeles.

During its first week, the film
became the box-office champion in
Los Angeles, running about 50 per
cent over every other film. Also in
that week, the film won the Grand
Prix at the Montreal Film Festival
and Fox picked it up for worldwide
distribution. It was a great week
after nine years of messing around.

How dangerous is the sort of energy
that you seem to expend on film-
making? You are reported as having
collapsed in the cutting room on
“The Savage Seven”, and as having
had a heart attack during the pre-
release period on “The Stunt Man”

On The Savage Seven, I only had
in my contract three weeks of
cutting time, and I collapsed with a
bad case of the flu while we were
working on the last reel. The result
is that the last reel has never been
quite satisfactory because they
never let me back into the cutting
room.

On The Stunt Man, I am afraid it
was a heart attack. It was a classic
textbook case of stress. I had very
clearly lost a round of the battle to
get distribution, after all those
successful previews and the acclaim
at the Dallas Film Festival. I came
back to town and nobody would
move forward with the film. It was
very disheartening, if you’ll pardon
the pun, and I could see some
moves being made that would be
very destructive to the film. The
heart-attack was perhaps an
unconscious way of trying to
prevent them.

Running through most of your films
seems to be a tension between the
emotional flow of the narratives and
the play with the intellectual issues.
“The Stunt Man” seems to bring
this right into focus, setting the
dramatic development of the

/nm the bro/hel. The Stunt Man.

characters’ relationship as a foil for
the manipulation of point of view
which underlies the way in which
those relationships are constructed

That’s a very good description of
the syntax games we were trying to
play. I had a special advantage in
The Stunt Man, and that is the
structure ofthe film within the film.

The Stunt Man is a contem-
porary story, placed in the present,
in a time—lock of perhaps three
days. However, the film within the
film, Eli Cross’ film, is a period

A.

piece, a World War 1, anti-war epic
that spans 50 years. But,
coincidentally, the themes of both
films, mine and Eli Cross’, are the
same. Therefore, Eli can talk about
them and I never get blamed for it.
That is a neat position for a
director to be in.

Also, it is logical that Eli should
express his concerns. because he is
on the last three frantic days, trying
to make a film that will come out
the way he wants. That gives me
more hook in terms of dealing with
my thematic material. He says
things which can become anchor

Director E/i C ross and slim! man Cameron in preparation on the so! of (/1? World War / film.

The Sum! Man.

posts for the audience as it works at
the emotional flow of my film.
Part of the fun on The Stunt
Man, and part of the self-imposed
rules of the game, was not to nail
everything down too tightly. I
wanted to leave a certain amount
open for the audience, to let it
invent some answers for itself.

There seems to me an underlying
Oedipal structure in the relation-
ship between Eli, Nina and Cam-
eron. How conscious were you of
that in preparing the film, and now,
in looking at it?

I think any film that plays
around with illusion and reality has
to use and examine that central
character of so many of our
fantasies in the Western World: the
dream—girl image. She is the
creature across the crowded room
for whom we are constantly
searching. that face we keep
expecting to meet around every
corner. She is certainly a composite
of images from early infancy. I
remember picking out a girl at
kindergarten to fall in love with.
How far is that from Oedipal
orientation?

Nina is that dream—girl image of
a character you can never quite get
your hands on,[...]g and
changing. Almost every film star I
know can be tempted to play the
fantasy in her audience’s mind. It is
almost a schizophrenic outlook.
And there seems to be something
about it carried in the very idea of
star quality. I think there a[...]

I The taskof evaluating the films screened at
the 12th Annual Swinburne Premiere Screening
has been[...]nd time consuming. Ideally,
this task should form a part of a dialogue and
not become simply the musings of a critic from a
darkened theatre. What it involves in this special
case, from the point of view of a critical
methodology, occupied my mind for some time;
the rest of my time was taken up with repeated
viewings of the 27 films (excluding videotapes).

By and large, I have written about those films
that I responded to most strongly because,
blended with the attempt at critical rigor, there
is a mass of personal idiosyncrasies. This is as it
should be since all these ingredients are essential
to a vigorous dialogue. The few omissions
reflect the limits to my eclecticism.

Scripting was generally one of the strong
points in all the films. This obviously reflects
careful and detailed preproduction planning and
has resulted in well-integrated scripts with
cleverly-handled ideas. On the other hand, I am
disappointed that this obvious care has not
resulted in a stronger ideological component in
the finished films. I am, of course, not
promoting a narrow political line; rather, I am
using the term “ideology” in the broader sense
defined by Althusser in For Marx as “a system
(possessing its own logic and rigour) of represen-
tations (images, myths, ideas or concepts, as the
case may be) existing and having a historical role
within a given society?” In a sense, given this
definition, my criticism becomes a challenge; yet
I am prepared to defend it on the grounds that to
argue contrawise would be to reduce the
signification of the term ideology to triviality.

Perhaps, sometimes, the very cleverness
shown in manipulating the script militates
against the ideological openness of the text. On
purely practical grounds as well, I am surprised
that the open-ended script was not used more
often. This would seem to be a solution ideally
suited to short films, and one which would avoid
the feeling that the ending is contrived merely to
close the text, rather than arising naturally from
the central situation. Points related to this issue
will become clearer in the discussion of in-
dividual films.

Looking at the group of films as a whole, I
feel that the ones which work best are those
where the filmmaker could operate with a degree
of expressive exaggeration. Obviously, the
animated films fall wholly into this category.

I. “Realism and the Cinema", Christopher Williams (ed.),
BFI Readers in Film Studies, Routledge & Kegan Paul,
London and[...]apers, May-June

But one can also add those films using live-
action shooting and working within the mode of
satire.

I would like to draw attention mainly to the
success of the soundtracks of these films and
contrast it with the frequent failure ofthe sound-
tracks of the films working within a much more
conventional dramatic mode. There must be
some valid conclusions that can be drawn from
this contrast of success and failure.

On the technical side, I am surprised at the
demise of the dolly shot. There are very few at-
tempts at moving camera apart from travelling
shots from vehicles. There may be obvious tech-
nical reasons why a limit has to be applied, es-
pecially in low-budget productions, but I feel it is
also a mistake to eliminate dolly shots entirely,
because here it seems to have resulted in the
atrophying of a feeling for what can be achieved
with the moving camera.

In the few examples where a zoom lens is used
to achieve a change in field size during a shot
(excluding the crash zooms for dramatic
emphasis), the movement seems to be so ten-
tative and lacking in assurance as to suggest that
sheer practicality may have killed an important
filmic nerve. On the other hand, the occasional
use of the high-speed camera for slow-motion ef-
fects needs to be discussed and evaluated, to
decide what its real potential might be and how
it might be used for full effect. Simply to follow
the prevailing pattern that prescribes the man-
datory use of slow motion for explosive or
violent action is not enough.

Finally, there is an objection that needs to be
expressed with regard to the way the publicity
handout for these films has been presented. The
printed program gives the impression of mis-
takenly propagating the cult of the director, by
selectively displaying the photographs of those
who have been designated as directors in each of
the productions.

My objection is that this results in the obscur-
ing of a pattern of co—operative work that seems
to be apparent from the credits. The names of
certain individuals crop up regularly in a number
of productions; sometimes, such productions
also seem to be related thematically. With
regard to some of the films, I would quite
seriously argue that this practice of designating a
director has led to serious distortions. The
ramifications may be quite serious, yet they do
need to be faced. Filmmaking is often described
as a collaborative activity. Should the contribu-
tion of some people (in this instance Richard
Zatorski might be a case in point) be de-
emphasized as a result of established practices in
the industry?

For the want of an alternative, in this article I

will continue to refer to the names designated in
the publicity handout; but this whole question
needs serious consideration.

I Of the films included in the program, some of
the most notable successes operated, either
wholly or partially, within the mode of satire.
For instance Zok, by Norval Watson, purports
to show “what happens to drunk surfers in debt
to the Mafia” (according to the publicity blurb).
The film stars, among other people and things, a
dog named Bruno, which also turns out to be the
narrator. The script is a clever send-up of the
surfing lifestyle and has some memorable lines.
But the film also develops creditably on the
visual level, notably in its use of the main loca-
tion, the derelict hectares on the lower Yarra
beneath the arch of the Westgate Bridge.

In the film, this structure takes on a symbolic
significance as a high-flying ramp propped up
over the rotting swampland that marks the
entrance of the river into Melbourne’s non-
descript bay. The low mounds of weed set
against stagnant water, where Zok sits wrapped
in a blanket drinking, link with the dereliction of
the heap of abandoned car bodies where he
works out his frustrations. The vistas from this
point establish the particular visual stamp of our
city from the south-west: a high-rise central sec-
tion struggling to protrude into a polluted sky,
through the dcspoiled wasteland and factory ef-
fluvia of a crescent of industrial suburbs.