Cinema Papers no. 56 March 1986 (2025)

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I . d Schepisi
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TEL: 03/875 02 22

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FRONT LINES: A round—up of

the local films and people partici-
pating in the American Film
Market, a background to the
controversy about the Sydney
Fillmmakers' Co—Op, and a report
from the Film and History Confer-
ence. Plus festival reports from
London, Hyderabad, Havana
and the Film Nouveau season;
ourregularcolumnsfrom around
the world; and profiles on writer/
director Jackie McKimmie, actor
Colin Friels and actor/director

Jack Thompson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4

ANYONE CAN BE A
STUNTMAN ONCE: On loca-

tion in Sydney to execute a
record-breaking stunt for Dead-
End Drive-In, Guy Norris talks to
Nick Roddick about the stunt-
man as scientist and the highs of

jumping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..17

MAN OF PLENTY: Back in

Australia aftersixyears andthree
features in the US, writer/
producer/director Fred Schepisi
speaks to David Stratton about
collaboration with David Hare,
the magic of Meryl and the ones

that got away . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22

AHORSE FORALL COURSES:
With a track record that indicates
a penchant for pace, Brian
Trenchard-Smith has become
one of Australia's most success-
ful and sought—after directors. He
talks to Brian Jones about his

career . . . . . . . . . .[...]umentary, Half Life,
Dennis O'Rourke seems poised
to explode two myths — the cir-
cumstances of nuclear testing in
the Pacific and the notion that
independent documentaries
should be confined to the art-
house circuit. He talks to Nick
Roddick about his early films.
Half Life and his work methods

CHANGES: Producer Jill Robb,
director Robyn Nevin and ac-
tress Judy Morris talk to Debi
Enker about The More Things
Changenq
drama aimed at a neglected
slice ofthe market . . . . . . . . . .[...]actors, John Hargreaves, dis-
cusses his career in theatre, film
and television with Gail McCrea

PRODUCTION: A comprehen-

sive round-up of what's in pro-
duction in Australia, with special
reports on Kangaroo and Tracy,
plus our new Barometer, record-

ing feature film and televi-
sion production in Australia in
1985 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

WHERE THERE’S SMOKE
THENEIS BRIAN! Fred Harden

talks to Brian Bosisto, an innova-
tor whose cranes, camera cars,
wind and smoke machines have
taken the film industry by st[...]views of Alamo Bay, The Color
Purple, Half Life, Jenny Kissed
Me, Letter to Brezhnev, Marie,
The More Things Change...,
Out of Africa, Plenty, Sky
Pirates, Wrong World and Year
of the Dragon. Plus shorter
reviews of all t[...]r; Goddess: The Secret
Lives of Marilyn Monroe by An-
thony Summers; The Australian
Film Book, 1930-Today by Simon

Brand . .[...]

World with such major productions as.‘-

* PRISONER — CELL BLOCK H ‘A’ IMAGE OF DEATH

‘k SONS AND DA UGHTERS ISLAND TRADER

‘A’ THE YOUNG DOCTORS DEMOLITION

‘Ir NEIGHBOURS GONE TO GROUND

‘A’ CHOPPER SQUAD MAMA’S GONE A—HUNTING

‘k SECRET VALLEY THE NEWMAN SHAME

‘A’ RUNAWAY ISLAND PLUNGE INTO DARKNESS

‘A’ THE RESTLESS YEARS ROSES BLOOM TWICE

‘A’ BELLAMY THE SCALP MERCHANT

‘K’ PUNISHMENT CASE FOR THE DEFENCE

‘A’ WAT ERLOO STATION THE FAMILY WAY

‘k TAURUS[...]CONSENT

* ABBA — THE MOVIE THE ALTERNATIVE

‘A’ BARRY MCKENZIE HOLDS HIS OWN POOR FELLA ME.’

‘A’ ALLATSEA 7 MILLION DOLLAR FUGITIVE — THE
‘A’ THE DEATH TRAIN CONFESSIONS OF RONALD BIGGS
‘A’ THE NIGHTNURSE

Head Office Internatio[...]

Founding publishers: Peter Bei[...]om Flyan.

Signed articles represent the views of their
author. and not necessarily those of the
editor. While every care is taken with
manuscripts and materials supplied to the
magazine, neither the editor nor the pub-
lis[...]oss or
damage which may arise. This magazine
may; not be reproduced in whole or in part
wittgput the express permission of the
copyright owner. Cinema Papers is pub»

. Iished every two months by MTV Publish-[...]0 56, March 1986.

Limited,

‘Recommended price only.
Cover design by Ernie Althoft. Main
photograph: Dead-End Drive-In (photo:

Fiobbie Gribble). Inset." Meryl Streep in
Plenty.

_$/in Comniitrioru

cinema Papers is published
with financial assistance from the

AUSTRALIAN FILM
COMMISSION
and FILM VICTORIA.

AAA
A
A

Film Victoria

“Is there anybody there . . .?”

For no better reason than that this is the first issue of 1986 (the ‘January’ issue was actually published,
as these things tend to be, before Christmas), here are a few anniversaries. It is 85 years and five
months since the first film to be made in Australia, Soldiers of the Cross, was shown by the Salvos at
the Melbourne Town Hall. It is just under 20 years since Michael Powell’s They’re a Weird Mob, which
was more Australian than most ‘Australian’ films of the sixties, had its Sydney premiere. It is just
under fifteen years since Wake in Fright was shown at Cannes, and almost exactly seventeen since the
Melbourne prem[...]urstall’s Two Thousand Weeks, the first film of what David Stratton
would later call ‘the last new wave’. Finally, at time of writing, it is just over 24 hours since an
Australian director, Peter Weir, was nominated for Best Director in Hollywood.

On another tack, it is sixteen and a half years since the first broadsheet issue of Cinema Papers came
out of Carlton, and a little over twelve since the magazine began regular publication in October 1969.
Honesty forces me to record that it is also three years since Cinema Papers was forced to suspend
publication, and just under two since it started up again. It is also thirteen months, almost to the day,
since I took over the editorship.

This, as regular readers will have noticed (and as first-time readers may be interested to know), is the
first issue to appear in the new, reduced format, breaking with twelve years of tradition and probably
offending one or two people. We’ve done it for a number of reasons — people couldn’t fit the old
format on their bookshelves, newsagents didn’t like handling it. But the main one was so we could, at
last, afford to print on decent paper.

There are a few other breaks with tradition, too. The magazin[...]the policy of reviewing every film, however bad, that opens in Australia — have been revamped
and tightened up, and a few extra ones have been added, notably the Production Barometer on pages
62-63, which will become a regular, twice-yearly feature.

Early 1986 may seem an odd time to be blowing trumpets, though. 1985 was, by almost universal
consensus, a bad year for the Australian cinema. Leaving aside the third Mad Max, which did not make
the earth move as much as expected, the only local film to do proportionally decent business at the
Australian box office was Bliss, and that had to be four-walled by its producers. Certainly, none[...]d more than skate across the surface of the Great Australian Public — not the SAFC’s
expensive Robbery Under Arms (which is out this month as a miniseries); not The Empty Beach (Bryan
Brown may be a star in Hollywood, but he doesn’t seem to pull ’em in back home); and certainly not
Burke & Wills, on which so many hopes (not to mention careers) were pinned. One or two unkind
people have said that, in 1985, Cinema Papers backed nothing but losers with our cover pictures. It
wasn’t hard.

A mid-year audience survey, commissioned by the Australian Film Commission, revealed that
Australian audiences no longer went out of their way — or went out at all — to see an Australian
movie, and that few of them (less than 5°70) could name any Australian film made the previous year. I
doubt things would be much better if the survey were done again this April. But April 1987 might give a
better result. We’re only into the second month of 1986 as I write this, but already two of the best
Australian films for quite some time — The More Things Change . . . and Half Life — are on the verge
of release. It is too soon to say how they will do. But they get a lot of coverage in this issue, and we are
proud to be associated with them.

All of which hints at something of a dilemma for Australian filmmaking. The days of automatic
support for the sound of strine are long since gone, taking with them the quirky, low-budget films on
which the renaissance was built, and we are still a long way off the brave New World of films that aim
for — and squarely hit — their limited commercial targets. This is almost certainly a dilemma the
industry is going to have to sort out for itself, because there is every sign that the government no longer
believes in the notion of a tax-aided cultural and economic flagship. And the seductive options of
television may not prove to be a salvation either. The simple economics of the matter are that, in order
to make a miniseries that enough Australians will want to watch for the commercial channels to go on
putting up the money, you have to spend around twice as much as the channels can afford (or are
prepared) to pay. Which means overseas sales, overseas stars (and, quite possibly, overseas stories). All
of which mean, in turn, setting your sights on something other than Australian life and culture.

Cinema Papers supports the Australian film industry, and it supports Australian film culture: we
wouldn’t exist without either, nor should either exist without the other. But they are, increasingly, not
the same thing. That doesn’t mean we have to choose, however. It is an article of faith at 644 Victoria
Street that films are an industrial art form, that filmmakers, like anybody else, have to make a living,
and that commercial success is not some kind of cop-out. The film named most often in the AFC
survey was The Man From Snowy River. The fact that over 10% of the respondents thought it was
made last year indicates as much the film’s hold on their memories as it does their haphazard grasp of
chronology.

For what it’s worth, I thought Snowy River was terrific. But, even if we knew how to, we can’t just
make Snowy Rivers. As the experience of country after country has shown, a film industry built entirely
on the notion of hor[...]specific audiences —~ fails every time. Out of that
film industry, a film culture has to grow, because that culture will feed back into the industry and
replenish it, as the European new wave fed into the American industry, and the American industry’s B
movies fed into the European new wave.

The collapse of the Sydney Filmmakers Co-op, whether from natural or unnatural causes, seems to
signal the end of an era. But something has to grow in its place. So, in addition to supporting the
industry (which we will do in issues like this one, partly aimed at the American Film Market in Los
Angeles, where two dozen Australian films are on sale), it is the job — the duty — of Cinema Papers to
agitate for that something, to support the sort of films that will last. And part of that agitation is going
to be to say to the government bodies that subsidize us, as they subsidize other areas of the industry,
that it is their duty, too, to encourage that kind of filmmaking, not just on the fringes, but at the very
centre of the industry. Increasingly, it seems, this needs to be said. Lest we forget.

. Nick Roddick[...]

L fl! f ‘N g E_ ‘s

Buoyant Australian presence at
the Los Angeles market
20-plus Australian films for the AFM’s “banner

year”

With the disappointing results of
last year fading away, the Australian
film industry looks as though it will be
approaching the American Film
Market in Los Angeles (20-28 Fe-
bruary) in a fairly buoyant mood. it
should be an important market: this
years AFM will, according to Ameri-
can Film Marketing Association
director Tim Kittelson, be a "banner
year", with around 150 features cur-
rently slotted in for screenings in
nineteen West Los Angeles theatres.
The market itself is located at the
Beverly Hilton hotel.

There will, at time of going to
press, be upwards of 20 Australian
films on offer, represented by a
series oflocal and international sales
agencies. And there can be little
doubt that the AFM has, by now,
almost totally replaced Berlin as Au-
stralia's second biggest interna-
tional market outlet, after Cannes
and somewhat ahead of MIFED
(Milan in November).

Providing access to the all-
important American independent
film and ancillary circuit and to a
large number of overseas markets,
the 1986 AFM sh[...]erican sales
market. Although Varietylists eleven
Australian films and only four Kiwi
ones as being released in the U. S. in
1985, the Australian total was swol-
len by Satori's ‘I Love Australian
Films’ festival in New York in Fe-
bruary, which included brief show-
ings of se[...]early ten years
old. Without thatboost, Australia and
NewZealand would have tied at four
films each.

L[...]probably the major change
for this year's AFM — and one which
will have considerable significance
for overseas sales of Australian pic-
tures in general — comes as a result
of the announcement by New South
Wales Film Corporation Chairman,
Paul Riomfalvy, on 16 January, that
the NSWF C's West Coast represent-
ative, the Australian Films Office,
would henceforth be known as Au-
stralian Films international Inc.
Headed by the energetic Bob Lewis,
the renamed organization will act as
a worldwide sales arm for all inte-
rested Australian producers, not just
those connected with the NS WFC.

The announcement itself, which
was turned into something of a
damp squib by its coincidence with
a journalists’ strike in Sydney, was
made in the presence of Australian
Film Commission Chief Executive,
Kim Williams, clearly on hand to indi-
cate that NSW was not attempting to
muscle in on the AFC‘s marketing
territory. In fact, as Williams pointed
out, the AFC has, since 1984, been
backing out of direct involvement in
the marketing of product, and now
sees its role as providing "research,
information, advice and interna-
tional and domestic liaison

4 — March CINEMA PAPERS

What the change does cast into
some doubt, though, is the con-
tinued existence of the AFC‘s Los
Ange[...]ican representative Richard
Guardian.

With Lewis as all but officially ac-
credited American marketing repre-[...]for Guardian
hardly seems worthy of his talents,
and there are rumours he may be on
the lookout for another position.

Of the new Australian films on
show atthe AFM, the two biggest (in
terms of budget) are the Hoyts Ed-
gley Burke 8- Wills, and the
YarramanlUAA production, The
Right-Hand Man, which will be
looked after in Los Angeles by
UAA’s Californian affiliate, UAA[...]ng Burke & Wills, which
performed disappointingly in Au-
stralia, but which is generally rec-
koned to have a better chance
overseas. According to one of the
film’s two stars, Nigel Havers, who[...]een extremely
well received at private screenings
in the UK. The reason? Unlike Au-
stralians, who wer[...]two luckless explorers,
overseas audiences don't know
what’s going to happen at the end!

The Right-Hand Man, on
which we carried a location report in
our Christmas issue, is one of the
most eagerly-awaited of the 1986
films. A feature debut for Di Drew,
with a strong cast headed by Rupert
Everett and Hugo Weaving, it is a
period drama that deals with the
decidedly modern issue of sexual
s[...]lm Corpo-
ration’s crop includes Dead-End
Drive-In, ourcoverston/, of which a
promo reel will be on show; The
More Things chang[...]ged, the Ross Matthewsl
George Ogilvie film about a young
Aboriginal shearer fighting to be
united with his part-Aboriginal son;
and Going Sane, a comedy about
"a man ’s obsession with the passing
of time”, directed by Michael
Robertson, and starring John
Waters and Judy Morris. Lewis and
NSW marketing chief, Danny Col-
lins, will also be hoping to drum up
advance interest in The Bee-
Eater, another George Ogilvie film,
now shooting on the New South
Wales coast.

The Ross[...]on of Kangaroo (see loca-
tion report on page 42) is another
major contender for world sales,
given the presence of Judy Davis in
the cast and the name of D. H. Lawr-
ence on the credits. It w[...]er
Collins), who will also be looking
after Devil in the Flesh, a version

of Raymond Radiguet‘s novel relo-‘

cated to World War II Australia,

Australian movies to the world : the New
South Wales Film Corporation’: Danny

Collins (left) and Australian Films
International’: Bob Lewis.

which is the feature debut of former
Cinema Papers editor,[...]dbridge, of Nilsen Premiere,
will be representing a couple of
films.‘ Jenny Kissed Me, which he
produced and Brian Trenchard-
Smith directed (see the interview
with Trenchard-Smith on page 26);
and I Own the Racecourse, the
Barron Films feature abouta g[...]ieving
he has bought the Harold Park race-
course in Sydney.

Cori Films International, headed
by the omnipre[...]looking after this year's Yoram
Gross crop (there is a possibility that
Gross himself will be attending the
AFM), which include the completed
animation films, Dot and Keeto
and Dot and the Koala, and
promo reels of the two films which,
as part of Gross's regular annual
two-picture turnaround, are cur-
rently in production: Dot and the
Bunyip and Dot and the Whale.
Cori is also representing Malcolm
(discussed by Colin Friels in the int-
erview on page 14, where he also

A ‘L -4 - é.,, «u. =,
talks about his lead role in Kanga-
roo), the David ParkerlNadia Tass
film about an ingenuous tramways
employee who builds his own tram.
J, C. Williamson, who have a new
Los Angeles general manager in the
shape of David Armstrong, will be
handling a couple of smaller films:
Barbara Boyd-Anderson's The
Still Point, about a deaf girl expe-
riencing the traumas of adolesc-
ence; and Bill Bennett’s A Street
to Die, which won Chris Haywood
the Best Actor prize at last Sep-
tember's AFI Awards for his playing
of a victim of Agent Orange. And
producer Don Catchlove will be tak-

Hugo Weaving in The Right-Hand
Man.

Judy Davis and Colin Friels in
Kangaroo.

ing his colourful Shakespeare adap-
tation, Twelfth Night.

Other Australian product on offer
at the AFM includes the economical
soft-core movie, Leonora, which is
being handled by Showcase Video;
the fantasy film, Frog Dreaming,
the third Trenchard-Smith movie in
the market, starring E.T.’s Henry
Thomas; Fair Game and, possibly,
Australian Dream, a profile of
whose writerldtrector, Jacki Mc[...]

$12.50 for a full year!

If you are already a subscriber to CINEMA PAPERS, and
introduce a new subscriber, you’ll both be entitled to this offer.
*Or more (see over).

Place completed order form in a sealed envelope. Mail to:
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HURRY! OFFER CLOSES MARCH 30th.

Op dispute.

Arguments and resolutions follow Christmas Eve

liquidation.

On the afternoon of 31 January,
Mandy King of the Sydney Film-
makers‘ Co-Op Action Group rang
the liquidators of the Sydney Film-
makers‘ Co-Operative to find out
which of several bidders had suc-
ceeded in acquiring the 400—odd in-
dependent films distributed through
the Co-Op.

The liquidators, says King, de-
clined to advise the name of the new
distributor, suggesting that such an
announcement was up to that party,
it was another symbolic and singu-
larly useless action among many
that have accompanied the debate:
throughoutJanuary, the Filmmakers‘
Co-Op and the Australian Film Com-
mission have yelled at each other in
print across the breakfast tables of a
million homes in termsjust as empty.

From what has appeared in the
press, the public must assume that
there are two sidesto the conflict. But
careful reading of the stated objec-
tives of these two sides would reveal
that they share the same aspirations
as farasindependentfilmmakers are
concerned.

The arguments about why the Co-
Op has gotitselfintofinancial difficul-
ties are more or less irrelevant.

Thefirstindication ofpu[...]came with the protest at the AFC‘s
headquarters in North Sydney on 9
January. There is continuing argu-
ment about just why this happened,
since it is acknowledged that the Co—
Op’s directors were forced to place
the organization in the hands of a
provisional liquidator in December.
When the AFC failed to bail them out
with an emergency grant, in the now
accepted manner of other arts orga-
nizations, th[...]ing down for real.

On 10 January trading ceased.
That was the day after the staff went
to the AFC offices in a bitter mood.
Overthe next two weeks, statements
and letters, public meetings and the
formation of the Action Group gained
general press coverage.

But the first shot in the paper war
was fired by AFC Chief Executive
Ki[...]am on Friday, 10
January. His statement began: “A
number of damaging, mischievous
and inaccurate media reports have
been circulated in recentdays in rela-
tion to the insolvency of the Sydney
Filmmakers’ Co-Operative."

Williams went on to “summarize
the current position", saying the AFC
had approved a grant of $221,500 in
the 85/86 financial year, and that all
monies due to the Co-Operative up
until 31 December 1985 had been
paid.

He also stated that, back in July,
the AFC had advised the Co-Op that
it would notprovide any turtheremer/
gency fundin[...]-
vided extra cashflow assistance of
over $52,000~and pointing out that it
was at an Extraordinary General
Meeting of members on 18 De-
cember that the Co-Op voted to go
into receivership.

The AFC met with the liquidator on

9 January and agreed to provide
funds to cover one month‘s rental
and wages for several staff in orderto
allow an orderly wind-down, Wil-
liams said. He went on to say that
when Sue Kaufman, the administra-
tive co-ordinator, arrived for a meet-
ing on 9 January, requested by the
AFC, “she was accompanied by
several interested members and
staff of the Co-Operative, who
staged a minor demonstration".

On Monday, 13 January, the Co-
Op issued its rejoinder Media
Release, claiming that the AFC was
kept fully aware of its financial situa-
tion and that some AFC recommen-
dations, like an earlier move to
shopfront premises, had in fact ac-
celerated their problems. In the 17
January edition of The National
Times, a full-page advertisement
appeared, headed ‘Crisi[...]ndent Film‘.

Most importantly, the ad promoted
a public meeting on Sunday 19
January at Paddington Town Hall.
The Action Group was formed at this
meeting, and it passed several reso-
lutions, including resolution Number
4, which “urges the Federal Govern-
ment to increase the level of funding
to the AFC, and urges the AFC to
increase its allocation to the inde-
pendent film and video sector”.

The thrust of these resolutions[...]ummed up by none
other than Kim Williams, writing in
The Sydney Morning Herald on 21
January, when he stated thre[...]d: "1. The maximum expo-
sure of independent film and video
product to Australian audiences. 2.
The achievement of the maximum
possible financial return to indepen-
dent producers. 3. The provision of
an effective voice for the indepen-
dent film community."

The Action Group used a larger
numberof resolutions, but effectively
said much the same thing. And,in
another letter to the Editor of The
Sydney Morning Herald, Joy Toma
of the Action Group agreed that Wil-
|iams'out|ine of the future objectives
were[...]o— Operative".

By 24 January, events had taken a
step forward: in the time-honoured
tradition of bureaucracies the world
over, a working party was set up to
look into the state of subsidized film
distribution. A telex announced that
the Action Group would be ‘‘closely
monitoring the deliberations of this
working party, to ensure that it sup-
ports the ongoing national distribu-
tion and exhibition of these films in
the spirit of the old Co-Op”.

The spirit is obviously willing, but

/the flesh has been weak: everyone it

seems, is keen to see the continua-
tion of efficient distribution of inde-
pendent films. The films are, by
consensus, a vital artistic and socio-
logical resource. Somehow,
however, renting them out has been
financially unprofitable. The bill, in all
senses, has now arrived.

Andrew L. Urban

Gone west
and Film conference turns into a

History
mellow get-together

By the end of the first day of the
Third History and Film Conference,
held from 2-6 December in Perth,
almost no one was wearing an
identity badge. This was because
almost no one needed an intro-
duction to anyone else. It was
enough for almost everyone to see
almost everyone else again, to hear
what they had to say, to deliver
papers and to chat between
sessions.

An uneventful conference, then.
No jejeune polemics to stir the
blood, no raging confrontations. with
academics head-to-head, no
inspiring intellectual breakthroughs,
not even any delectable scandal.

By the same token, there was not
much to complain about, either.
Most of the papers were interesting
(to other academics, at any rate), the
amblence was g[...]ern Australia does have the
most beautiful campus in the
country), Steve’s had Guinness on
tap, the Conference dinner was held
at the Yacht Club, and the wine tour
was generously primed.

Am I saying that the film-academic
establishment has grown fat and
lazy’? I don‘t really think so. It's just
that opinions are not so passionately
held as once they were. Many of the
certainties of just a few years ago
now seem questionable, and
academics (like the rest of us) are
casting about for other approaches,
are willing to listen, and are waiting
for something worth listening to.

The most exciting things worth
listening to in Perth came, not from
an academic paper, but from a short
film — Floss Gibson's Camera
Natura. This is not an easy movie to
describe. It is about how the Austra-
lian landscape has been imaged
over the years, and it is an object
lesson in history-on-film, which uses
movies from the past as part of its
data.

What sets it apart from many other
efforts in the same genre is its
suspicion that there is no single
explanation for events, no ‘true
history‘ — in this case, no ‘true Aus-
tralian landscape‘. The result is a
densely-packed, ‘avant-garde‘,
talky, didactic and imperfect work —
definitely a must-see item.

The original idea for these Confer-
ences was to get historians and film
academics together, presuming that
the meeting could have some effect
on those respective worlds. That aim
was not fully realized this year,
because Australian historians stayed
away in droves. it seems that estab-
lished cultural areas — like history ~
don't like the idea that there may be
something to learn from upstart
phenomena, like the movies.

T[...]ting history types
were fish doubly out of water, and
the experience can't have been
much fun — particularly not for
Charles Geshekter of California
State. whose[...]provoked the
nastiest attacks of the week. Here, a
lack of film background meant that
Geshekter had almost no idea of
what he wanted on the screen —

and what he got from his crew was
simply a series of travelogue cliches,
neatly nullifying what sophistication
there was in the ideas behind the
film. The film people were not
tolerant, but Geshekter, interviewed
afterwards, claimed to have been
stimulated rather than wounded by
their vehemence.

The conference had a theme: the
thirties. You can see how the new
German Nazi films might be
squeezed into that theme, but it is
harder to figure out how Camera
Natura and The Parching Winds
of Somalia fitted. Nobody came in
period costume (more‘s the pity)
and. as it turned out. very little was
done with the thirties idea.

Take the sessions dealing in detail
with certain films. These were all
Hollywo[...]hich
the paper-givers apparently‘
reckoned were a bit strange. But,
although the strangeness was
remarked on, it was mostly not ex-
plained, or it was explained in some
off-hand way — that the early thirties
pre-dated the ‘classic’ period in
Hollywood was one of the ideas
advanced.

One of these papers was given by
Adrian Martin, a name that should
be familiar to readers of Cinema
Papers. Martin can usually be
counted on for provocative attacks
on film theory, academics and other
worthy targets; but, this time, he
seemed to be demythologizing him-
self in a long, obsessive analysis of
Peter lbbetson that contained not
one word of vituperation. At the end
of the session, you could have cut
the disappointment with a knife.

More fun than Martin was Barbara
Creed’[...](unspoken) movie words, "Me Jane,
you Tarzan“, in which the La Trobe
film academic set out to demon-
strate, with high good humour and
erudition, that Jane was more of a
partner to the ape-man than a sub-
ordinate.

On the other hand, Kristen (The
C[...]nema) Thomp-
son's analysis of The Black Cat did_
not match up either to the film or to
what she has done in print. It
seemed designed to smooth out the
peculiarities of this decidedly
peculiar horror flick which, to this
observer, was the wrong tack to
take.

Another chunk of the programme
was devoted to John Grierson, the
‘father’ of the documentary. in these
sessions, it was open season on
dad. Canadi[...](Queen's University) got off the first
round with an elegant, sophistical
argument designed to prove that
Grierson was not a true lefty, as is
usually presumed, but a closet
fascist (well, a neo-conservative
sympathizer. at least).

Mick Ea[...]s himself, publicly admitted
his Oedipal relation to Grierson, and.
showed a fine Humphrey Jennings
film, Spare Time, made und[...]. At
this point your reporter left, thus

missing a last-minute try for re-D

CINEMA PAPERS March — 5

There was more, of course. Lots of
sessions I did not attend, a couple
more papers I liked, and even one
session I chaired. The paper most
praised was delivered by John
Hartley, and dealt with where the
television set is located in Western
Australian homes (it is reprinted in
The Moving Image: The History of
Film and Television in Western Aus-
tralia, 7896 to 1985, to be reviewed
in the next issue of Cinema Papers).
But, in the end, it was all mellow.
Terribly mellow.

Bill Rout!

Briefly . . .

I Vicki Molloy has been appointed
as the new executive director of the
Australian Film Institute. Molloy joins
the AFI after six years at the Aus-
tralian Film Commission, which she
joined as manager of the Women's
Film Fund.

For the past t[...]Branch, responsible
for programmes of assistance to
new and innovative filmmakers,
cultural activities, funding to film and
video organisations, festivals,
special events and publications.

A graduate of Swinburne, who

has spent time working at the ABC,
the BBC and on numerous short
films, Molloy takes up her new
position on 17 March.
I The Australian Film Commission,
in association with the ABC, has
announced the awarding of the
1986 National Documentary Fellow-
ships to David Bradbury (Frontline,
Nicaragua No Pasaran) and John
Hughes (Traps). 64 candidates
applied for the Fellowships, valued
at $125,000.

The AFC also announced that Pat
Fiske would be the recipient of a
study fellowship.

Recent AFC appointments have

seen Geoffrey Atherden take up a
position as a part-time Script Office
consultant for three months, com-
mencing in mid—January. And, in the
Melbourne office, Claire Dobbin has
been selected as the new senior
project officer for the Creative
D[...]S: the annual St Kilda
Film Festival will be held in Mel-
bourne from 17-20 April at the
National Thea[...]d by the
St Kilda City Council, the festival
aims to showcase Australian shorts,
documentaries and features that
might not be picked up for a wide
commercial release.

Nigel Buesst has been appointed
part-time director of the festival and
co-ordinator Lee Holmes has
confirmed that the prizes of $300,
$200 and $100 will again be
awarded by a panel of judges.

Filmmakers interested in submit-
ting works, for consideration can
send them to Holmes on 1/2" VHS
tape or 16mm film.

Planning is also well under way for
the Melbourne" and Sydney Film
Festivals, both to be held in June.
The Melbourne Festival recently
appointed a new director, Santina
Musumeci, who takes up the[...]March CINEMA PAPERS

Michael Edgley International as an
administrator and publicist.

The Melbourne Festival will run
from 19-29 June at the Forum
Cinema Complex (which proved to
be a popular venue in 1985), the
State Film Centre and the Glass-
house Cinema. At the time of going
to press, negotiations were under
way for a programme of new wave
Super-8 shorts from New York, and
confirmation was pending on Lizzie
Borden’s Working Girls.

The Sydney Festival will run from
6-20 June at the State and Dendy
theatres. Although it is too early to
confirm many films or guests for
either festival, British filmmaker Ken
McMullen will be attending Sydney
and presenting his film, Zina. Two
recent films by Jean-Luc Godard —
Je vous salue, Marie (Hail, Mary)
and Detective — have also been
confirmed and there are hopes that
the French director will attend.

I Scripts for the Australian Child-
ren's Television Foundations follow-
up to the Winners series have been
developed and the ACTF is once
again assembling a diverse group of
writers, producers and directors for
the project. The nine-part series of
hour-long fantasy programmes has
been announced, a prospectus
should be issued in May, and the
ACTF hopes to go into production
towards the end of the year.

The Journey Writers: Ken Cameron

and Jane Oehr. Director: Ken
Cameron. Producer: Richa[...]n. Director: Mario Andre-
acchio. Producer: South Australian
Film Corporation.

Scared of Heights Writer: Roge[...]Three deputy members have
recently been appointed to the
board of Film Victoria. Actress Sigrid
Thornton, producer Jane Ballantyne
and broadcasting consultant Dion
Weston took up their two-year
positions from 20 December. The
new memb[...]rt-
time members Graeme Hodges,
Roger Le Mesurier and Ian
Crawford. The members of the
board are John Harrison (Chair-
man), Gavin Anderson, Annet[...]Rado, Jill Robb,
Brian Robinson, Charles Tingwell
and Bob Weis.

I Good news and not-so-good
news on the international front. In the
list of Top Foreign Rentals on video
for 1985 published in Variety in early
January, Careful, He Might Hear

You ranged among the top ten, with
Pauline a la Plage, Entre Nous,
Local Hero, Diva and Carmen.

On the other side of the Pacific,

however, in a list of the most popular
foreign features screened in Tokyo
in 1985, Mad Max: Beyond
Thunderdome finished a dis-
appointing eighteenth. In a market
that has been a stronghold for the
Mad Max films, it is surprising to see
the title coming in behind Police
Academy 2, 2010, Lifeforce and
The Karate Kid.
I Following the negotiation of in[...]ution deals for Bliss
— with New World Pictures in the US
and the Recorded Picture Company
in the UK — international rights to
Rebel have also recently been
secured.

Vestron Pictures have acquired
the US and Canadian theatrical and
home video rights to the film for a
reported $USl.5-2 million. Vestron
plan to release Rebel before the
summer, as the first film in a new
package of half a dozen titles to be
screened over the next twelve
months.

I Tribe, a feature to be directed
by Denny Lawrence, will have a
one-week workshop with Lawrence
and the actors in March, to enable
alterations to be made to the script.
Production is scheduled for Sep-

I

Naoko Abe and Georgina Pope
head the Tokyo-based sales
agency, production and distribution
company, Goanna Films.

John Baxter is a film reviewer for
The Australian and author of
numerous books on the cinema.

Rod Bish[...]es regularly
about film for the Los Angeles Times
and is Hollywood correspondent for
the Washington Post and other
publications.

Rarfaele Caputo is a freelance
writer on film.

Rolando Caputo is a freelance
writer on film.

Lorenzo Codelli is a freelance
ijurnalist based in Trieste, a contri-
butor to Postif and Italian corre-
spondent for the International Film
Guide. ~

Mary Golbert is a freelance writer
on film.

Ray Comiskey is film critic for The
Irish Times.

Christine Gremen is a freelance
writer on film.

Patricia King Hanson is editor of
the American Film Catalogue and a
contributor to the Los Angeles
Times, American Film and Stills.
fired Harden is a film and television
producer and has a regular column
on technical information in The
Video Age.

Paul Harris is co-host of Film Buffs
Forecast on SRRR and a regular
contributor to The Age.

Sheila tlohnston is a London-
based writer and film critic for

' magazine.

Brian Jones is an independent pro-
ducer, director, sorigtwriter and
journalist.

tember. The film will be produced by
Peter lmaru and the script has been
written by Barry Klemm. It is about a
family gathering over a weekend for
a funeral in a small country town.
I The Australian Film and Tele-
vision School's Melbourne office has
introduced a small pilot scheme
called the Tryout Program aimed at
assisting makers of film, television
and radio programmes in exploring
their craft.

According to Victorian manager,

Jenny Sabine, the scheme aims to
encourage people to test new ideas
in a working situation without the
high costs normally[...]ilable include rehearsal
space, actors, equipment and
access to technical advice.
I Despite reservations about the
Australian Film Commissions Co-
production scheme (see Cinem[...]producer Brian
Rosen was the successful applicant
in the first batch of contenders

His $2.4-million, four-hour
miniseries, Not For Glory, Not For
Gold is a co-production with
Canada’s Telefilm and may begin
shooting in May. Underwritten prior
to the 19 September modifications to
10BA, the miniseries is co-produced
and written by David Williamson and
chronicles the quest for the four-
minute mile. #-

Paul Kalina teaches meia studies
and photograghy at St. Eloseph
College and is a freelance writer Q

is

Peter Krien is film ggritiefor

Sunday Press.

Geoff Mayer is a lecturer in
studies at the Phillie Institute of "tie . .
nology.

Gail Mccrea is a postgraduate
student at La Trobe University.
Brian McFarlane is a lecturer in
English at the Chisholm Institute and
author of Words and Images.
Belinda Meares is a New Zea|an‘c?l-
born freelance writer working out ‘of
Pa[...]University of New
South Wales.

Mike Nicolaifii is a freelance writer
and contributor to Variety.

Dieter Osswald is a journalist aria
contributor to Eilmeoho.

Dasha Ross is a r
Close-Up, series on SB
Bill and iane Routt are a eouple
of Melbourne academics.

Tom Ryan lectures in media studies
at Swinburne, oontriutes to The
Video Age and reviews films for the;
3l;O Sunday show. I
dim Sohembri is a journalist at The
Age.

: for the

.:

i.
it

Mark Spratt is a freelance writer on _

film.

David Stratton is host of Movie of ii?

the Week on SBS and reviews
films for Variety.

R.tJ. Thmpson is a freelance writer
on film.

Andrew Urban is Australian corre-

and a regula
pages of T straiian

Michael Visontay is a journalist at?
the Sydney Morning Herald

kc

spondent for Screen International
ributor to the arts *

ARE NO
GREMLINS

DOWN UNDER

Unless of course you're[...]movie, “Gremlins.”

We were sent the negative and produced a
quantity of prints Whose quality matched the
finest in the world.

We have also produced prints of films for
U.I.P., Fox, Columbia, Disney and Thorn EMI.

Colorf'1lm’s rates are very
competitive too.

So contact Murray Forrest now
and get the Gremlins out of

your system.

Col[...]

REEEBSE

United States by Pat H. Broeske

Last stop

for two problem pictures

Moviegoers in and around San
Diego, California v a seaside resort
community with plenty of palm trees;
a famous zoo and an aquarium —
will decide the eventual fate of
Where Are the Children? Based
on a bestselling suspense novel by
Mary Higgins Clark,[...]weeks
of test screenings (beginning 24
.-January) to determine what kind of
release — if any — will follow.
Problems with the film, which
deals with a possible child murderer
who may also, it is implied, be a

child molester, could stem from the
fact that Coca—Cola, which owns

Columbia, doesn't want to be
associated with such unsavoury
subject matter. That, at any rate, is
the claim of some of those involved
with the prod[...]uding
director Bruce Malmuth, who did
Nighthawks, and who had to re-edit
his present film, delivering what he
calls "a slightly compromised
version of my original“.

It seems that his original version
had too many allusions to child
abuse by the Frederic Forrest
character, who taunts Jill Clayburgh
and her children. So Columbia did
its version — “which wasn't the film
we set out to do: it was diluted of all
its impact," says Malmuth. He then
did the tamer version (the one that
will be test screened).

Gone is a bathtub sequence in
which a little girl bathes while
Forrest, seated, plays with a rubber
duck. The scene ends with a strong
implication that Forrest gets in with
her, after first holding out the duck
and saying: “You're going to like
Oscar." Also removed is a scene in
which Forrest administers sleeping
potions to the children with a hypo-
dermic — “tastefully done,"
according to Malmuth.

The director is still hoping for a
national release: "What a filmmaker
lives for," he says, “is to see his or

8 — March CINEMA PAPERS

her film find an audience." By the
looks of it, Big Trouble, also from
Columbia, won't be doing that. The
film re-unites the In-Laws team:
Peter Falk, Alan Arkin and
producers Michael Lobell and
Andrew Bergman.

This time, Arkin plays a mild-
mannered insurance salesman who
turns to a life of crime with the help of
a swindler (Falk), so as to be able to
send his three kids to Yale.

Directed by John Cassavetes in
the summer of 1984, Big Trouble
was to be released in the spring of

Jill Clayburgh as the frantic mother
in Where are the Children?, which
has still to clear the hurdle of San
Diego.

1985. Then it was the summer.
When the film finally failed to show
up on the fall schedule, the studio
spokesman remained reassuring:
“lt’s going to be released: its just
that we're not sure when. But
probably before the end of the
year.”

But, aside from a disastrous test
screening. marked by numerous
walk-outs, in — you've guessed it —
San Diego, Big Trouble never
made it to the big screen in 1985.
According to Columbia marketing
vice-president Bob Dingilian,[...]emed so
right," said Dingilian diplomatically.
“But . . . well, comedy can be such
a delicate matter . .

Hopefully, all the elements will be
right — that is, releasable ~ in the
major productions now before the
cameras. Miami Vice’s Michael
Mann is directing Red Dragon at
Dino De Laurentiis’s North Carolina
studios. William Peterson stars as a
famed forensic pathologist called in
by the FBI to track down a serial
killer who murders entire families
beneath the full moon's light, and
who calls himself ‘the Red Dragon‘.

Mann is also producing Band of

before the shelf: San Diego try-outs

the Hand, now shooting for Tri-Star
in Miami. Directed by Paul Michael
Glaser, who helmed some
invigorating episodes of TV’s
Starsky and Hutch (in which he
also starred), and has since done a
couple of Miami Vices, the film is
about a group of hard-core juvenile
delinquents who are put through a
life-or-death survival course in the
Everglades, before being dis-
patched onto the mean, drug-ridden
streets of Miami.

Now filming in San Francisco, Big
Trouble in Little China reunites
director John Carpenter and star
Kurt Russell, previously teamed in
Elvis, Escape from New York and
The Thing. Fox tabs it "a mystical
action-adventure—comedy-kung fu-
monst[...]ory", about the
imaginary world beneath Chinatown
that is inhabited by ghosts. W.D.
Richter scripted.

Meanwhile, out in Splcewood,
Texas, Willie Nelson is being
directed by William Witliff (co-writer
and producer of Country, and of
Fred Schepisi's Barbarosa) in Red-
Headed Stranger. Nelson co-
produces — appropriately, since the
film is based on his 1975 concept
album about fictional preacher-man
Julian Shay, who moved to Montana
with his family in the eighteen-
seventies. The tale of love, loss,
revenge and salvation co-stars
Morgan Fairchild and Katharine
Ross. The film is being
independently financed, largely
through Nelson and his chums.

Closer to Hollywood, writers keep
coming — and coming — aboard
Jumpin’ Jack Flash, the Fox film
starring Whoopi Goldberg, which is
currently shooting in LA. Looking
through the names — ten to date 4
who've been through the project,
one local scribe has called the film
“the greatest boon to writers since
the residual”. Among them: Charles
Shyer and Nancy Myers (the
originals), David Franzoni, Diane
Hammond, M.J. Milworth, Richard
Price and Steven De Souza. Penny
Marshall is directing (she took over
from Howard Zieff, who left in
November because of “creative
differences”). The story is about a
secretary (Goldberg), who gets
caught up in international intrigue.

The seasonal story at the box
office is about the near neck-to-neck
battle between the prestigious and-
of—year entries, Sydney Pol|ack’s
Out of Africa and Steven
Spielberg's The Color Purple, both
reviewed in this issue. Pollack's film
claimed grosses, as of the first
weekend in January, of more than
$26 million. Spielberg's film, which is
on fewer screens. had ticket sales of
$13.9 million.

Several Christmas stocking-
stuffers have also had a dandy
season, notably Spies Like Us,
which grossed $43.7 million, and
Jewel of the Nile, with $39.7
million. And there appears to be no
stopping the Italian stallion: grosses
for Rocky IV, as of the same date,
were a bell-ringing $101.5 millionnk

by Belinda Meares

Uproar as private TV
falls to the Italians,
while Cannon moves
in almost unnoticed.

Readers may have heard that
France is at last taking the plunge
and going in for private television.
Committed to Iiberalizing the air
waves since its election in 1981, the
socialist government has, in doing
so, stirred up a hornet’s nest of
political and technical problems.

An optimistic report, com-
missioned early last year,
proposed two nationwide

independent channels and 40 local
ones, to be transmitted uncoded,
and to be financed solely by
advertising and sponsorship. This
long-awaited announcement sent
the French and European audio-
visual communities into a flurry of
activity. Prototype programme grids
were designed, and financial
backers solicited. The race was on
to get the new channels on the air by
Christmas, a comfortable few
months before the 17 March legis-
lative elections (which the socialists
are likely to lose).

Prime candidates for the two
national channels were Europe 1, a
partially state-owned radiolstation,
and CTL (Compagnie de Television
Luxembourgeoise), a peripheral TV
station which is received in north-
eastern France. As the autumn
advanced, however, it became
obvious that the dual-channel
scheme was impractical.

The fre[...]-
agedbyTDF(TelediffusiondeFrance)
— 17,000,000 and 19,000,000
households for the respective
channels — was obviously too

One man is now clearly emerging as
Germany's most successful film
producer: Bernd Ei[...]F. — wir
Kinder vorn Bahnhof Zoo
(Christiane F) and Das Boot (The
Boat), both released in 1981, not to
mention the most expensive
German film ever, The Never-
ending Story (1984).

Eichinger’s latest project, a co-
production with France and Italy,
also has an enormous price tag: 46
million marks ($27 million[...]Umberto Eco‘s bestseller, The
Name of the Rose. And there are
stars in abundance: Sean Connery
is playing the lead role of Brother
William, with F. Murray Abraham as
his adversary.

Filming, under the direction of
Jean-Jacques Annaud, has been
under way since November in the
monasteries at Eberbach and
Maulbronn. Exteriors were filmed in
Italy in January, and the world
premiere is scheduled for October
1986.

Eichinger’s[...]

The rumour was confirmed[...]. Silvio Berlusconi,
king of spaghetti television and the
so-called ‘assassin’ of the Italian
cinema, was girding his loins to
cross the Alps like his forebear,
Hannibal.

Associated with two of the
wealthiest men in France, Jerome
Seydoux (whose company controls
the airline, UTA) and Christophe
Riboud (younger member of the
Schlumbe[...]for France's fifth tele-
vision channel was his, as well as a
channel on France's future television
satellite, TDF1, which he leased in
the same week as British media
magnate Robert Maxwell.

An immediate outcry against the
decision condemned t[...]“gross favouritism". The
film fraternity was up in arms about
the lenient ‘cahier de charges’
(programme conditions), which
allow an inordinate number of
foreign programmes and the inter-
ruption of films by commercials.

The prominent opposition leader,
Jacques Chirac, is also out to
suppress the decision if he comes to
power in March.

TV baron or media bogeyman?
Silvio[...]by
privatizing one or more of the public
channels to create direct
competition. CTL, for its part, has
lodged an appeal with the Conseil
d’Etat against the arbitrary manner
in which the concession was
granted.

Mitterand himself has wisely
agreed to review the controversial
‘cahier de charges’. As for the
alleged villain of the piece, Silvio
Berlusconi has just completed a
public relations visit to Paris, during
which he gallantly promised to
respect the high (7) standards of
French television.

With all these upheavals in the
television world, developments on
the French[...]ted less of the limelight than
usual. The arrival in France of
Cannon Films, for instance, has
passed[...]n-Luc Defait, Cannons
French subsidiary will have an initial
capital of $US65 million, some of
which w[...]ion
of Godard's grandiose King Lear,
starring, it is hoped, Woody Allen
and Lee Marvin (the latter replacing
the originally t[...]fourth
French cinema circuit (after
Gaumont, UGC and Pathe), has
been taken over by British real
estate agents Michael and Anthony
Stevens. Minister of Culture Jack
Lang's[...]alf of the
production/distribution business
could not save the company, after a
100-million-franc loan had already
been extended to Gaumont.

The SOFlCAs (investment
companies for cinema and audio-
visual production —— see my column
in the January issue) are looking

Germany by Dieter Osswald

Eichinger continues his big-budget run;
Petersen in excelsis.

Mine. With The Boat and The
Neverending Story to his credit,
Petersen is already Germany's most
successful director. With[...]as directed the first wholly
Hollywood production to be made at
Munich's Bavaria Studios. To mark
the occasion, 20th Century-Fo><’s
Jean-Louis Rubin and vice president
Joel Coler flew in for the premiere.
in the meantime, another German
director was making his mark
abroad: Stefan Paul and his film,
Sera possible el sur, about the
South American singer, Mercedes
Sosa, were invited to the Rio de
Janeiro and Havana festivals, and
received a personal greeting from
from Fidel Castro at the latter.
While Otto — der Film, a staple
of this column, has gone on, with
over eight million admissions, to
become not only the most success-
ful film of 1985, but also the most
successful German film ever, the
sa[...]red by the book, Ganz

unten, by Gunter Wallraff, a piece of
investigative reporting about
immigrant labour. A film of the same
name will be seen for the first time at
the Berlin Film Festival.

As Germany awaits its first Boris
Becker film - which, to be fair, is still
nowhere to be seen — a film about
another sporting legend has started
sh[...]n
boxer Max Schmeling.

Another famous native son is at
the centre of Wurlitzer, oder die
Erfindung der Gegenwart, which
is about Rudolf Wurlitzer, inventor of
the eponymous music machine —
and about the Bavarian village of the
same name.

Thanks to the box-office
phenomena of Otto, Rambo and
Back to the Future, film business
was no worse in Germany than last
year. But the smaller distributors and
the smaller cinemas have had to
struggle to survive, and a few
mergers have resulted: Neue

good, however. Ten have been set
up so far, promising to release about
400 million francs for 1986
production.

Cinema attendances. on the other
hand, are still depressed — about
12% down on this time last year,
and 5% lower over the whole of
1985. Especially disturbing news for
French producers is the fact that
3.3% of 1985’s releases scooped
32% of the audiences. It comes as
welcome but slim comfort that the
years top-grossing film was a local
production, Coline Serreau's Trois
hommes et un coutfin, which has
outdistanced Rambo and is still
going strong.

Foreign successes have been
predictable, including Year of the
Dragon. Silverado and The
Goonies. On the art-house circuit,
mention must be made of an
engaging Russian comedy by Nikita
Mikhalkov, released here as La
Parentéle (Family Relations); an
excellent Quebec film, Le bon
débarras, and Wim Wenders's
Tokyo-Ga. Tim Burstall’s The
Naked Country —— known here as
Le chatiment de la pierre
magique (The Curse of the Magic
Stone) has come and gone without
a ripple.

Production distractions: Marco
Ferreri is to direct Christophe
Lambert in his next film, while
Sandrine Bonnaire will next appear
in a film by Jacques Doillon, with
Michel Piccoli for a partner.

Robert Enrico is shooting Zone
rouge, a social drama starring
Sabine Azima and Richard
Anconina, who plays a boxer (a
startlingly original idea!) But the
most interesting prospect on the
horizon is Passage du sauvage, by
Danish director Henning Ca[...]uin, will star Donald Suther-
land, Francis Yanne and Fanny
Bastien, and will be shot in Copen-
hagen and Tahiti. #-

Constantin with Tobis in February;
then the Filmverlag and Futura (see
my January column); and, finally, in
November, Atlas and Prokino. There
will almost certainly be more names
to add to the list.

Box-office leaders are the three
films mentioned above: Otto — der
Film, closely followed by Back to
the Future and Rambo. In fourth
place comes the German action

Britain
by Sheila Johnston

Bond (the real one)
to the rescue on the
British movie scene

Following my last column's cliff-
hanger conclusions as to the fate of
Goldcrest (still too soon to tell,
though Revolution has opened in
the US to uniformly bad reviews).
British Film Year now proudly
presents: the Travails of TESE, a
further instalment in the thrill-packed
adventure that is the British film
industry.

TESE (Thorn EMI Screen Enter-
tainment) is one of the country's —
indeed, the worlds — l[...]ith assets including
106 cinemas (the ABC chain), a
library of 2,000 films, a studio
(Elstree), together with Thorn
financing, production and distribu-
tion operations.

The company has been on the
skids for some years now, in the
wake of a series of box-office
disasters, headed by John Sc[...]reeway. Chief
executive Gary Dartnall had
managed to turn the tide, since his
arrival three years ago, from a
£10-million loss in 1982 to a modest
E12-million profit last year.

But earnings have still not been
enough to satisfy investors. The
acquisitions department put up a
feeble performance last year, with
purchases like Wild Geese II and
The Holcroft Covenant. And the
in—house production record has
been disappointing, too, with one
winner — A Passage to India —
and three box-office drongos:
Morons from Outer Space, Rest-
less Natives and Comfort and Joy

Verity Lambert’s contract as head. F

Connery, Eichinger (centre) andis a TV spin-off). Alan Parker’s Birdy
has beaten a slow start to become a
hit. But Cocoon, Legend, Roland
Emmerich’s Joey and the first three
AlDS movies have all flopp[...]

Then, last October, Thorn EMI an-
nounced its intention to "rationalize
its business portfolio". This meant
putting the entertainment division up
for grabs, in order to concentrate on
its multifarious other interests:
defence contracts, lighting, TV
rentals, music and microchips. Over
30 bidders joined the rush, including
the ubiquitous Rupert Murdoch and
fellow Aussie Robert Holmes
a Court.

But the two front-runners, the
Rank Organization and the omni-
vorous Cannon Group, each of
which already owns substantial
cinema circuits in Britain, were
greeted with a storm of protest from
the film industry. Faced wi[...]e attentions of the Mono-
polies Commission Golan and
Globus withdrew.

The field looked clear for a Rank
takeover, with Dartnall’s hopes of a
management buy-out apparently
dashed by his failure to top Rank‘s
£105 million ($220 million) bid —
until, at the eleventh hour, a knight in
shining armour arrived from down
under in the form of Australian
tycoon Alan Bond.

Bond, who put up a £10 million
($21 million) deposit only days after
Dartnall had finally declared defeat,
already owns a $2-billion corpora-

Italy
by Lorenzo Codelli

Fellini's latest tilts at
windmills of television

As has often happened with other
Fellini films, Ginger e Fred has
been seen and openly discussed
by, it seems, almost everyone, even
if it has still not opened commer-
cially. Abandoning the doomsday
tone of E la nave va (And the Ship
Sails On), the director this time goes
f[...]f two once-popular
dancing partners called Ginger and
Fred, during a stormy TV show
peopled by other star lookalikes,
from Marcel Proust to Bette Davis
and the inevitable Marilyn Monroe.
But exposing the networks’ vulgar
taste and absurd programming (with
echoes of Paddy Chayefsky's Net-
work) is just one of the aims of
Ginger e Fred. Fellini also manages
to find several more serious things to
say via the paradoxical hotch-potch
of gargantuan commercials and live
speeches by political and religious
leaders. The deafening chaos that
surrounds them does not stop
Ginger and Fred from reviving their
old steps for a magic moment —
even if it is interrupted by a pro-
tracted blackout! Giulietta Masiha

10 — March CINEMA PAPERS

tion, with interests in radio and TV.
He said he was interested in TESE’s
film and video library to feed these
outlets, and also hopes for a tie-up
between Australian productions and
Britain's ABC cinema chain.

But one of Dartnal|’s first moves
after the buy-out was to sell off a
cinema. Some say that, with Cannon
and Rank upping the ante, Dartnall
had paid an excessive price — £110
million ($231 million) — for TESE,
and may well be forced to sell off
further assets to repay his loans.

Meanwhile, however, the British[...]inues, with no
signs yet of the prophesied crisis in
film investment. Dance with a
Stranger is a hard act to follow, but
director Mike Newell is having a try
with The Good Father, a black
comedy starring Anthony Hopkins.

More comedy of the post-holo-
caust kind mushrooms in the shape
of Whoops, Apocalypsel, blown
up from the TV show, and When the
Wind Blows, an animated feature
based on Raymond Briggs’s book
about two nice pensioners trying
cluelessly to cope with the fall-out,
armed only with the British govern-
ment manual, Protect and Survive.

Produced by Morris West’s
Sydney-based Melaleuka, and
funded by investments from Austra-
lian banks and insurance com-
panies, The Second Victory is a
romantic drama set in England and
Austria in 1945. Scripted by West
from his own novel, it boasts an
international cast (Anthony
Andrews, Helmut Griem, Max von
Sydow and Renee Soutendijk) and
an unlikely producer-director,
Gerald Thomas, father[...]y, guided by the superlative
Marcello Mastroianni as the anarchic
Fred.

The issues raised by the film obvi-
ously concern the limitations that
should be imposed, by a much-
awaited law, on the current uncon-
trolled state of television. But the film
is not simply about the private net-
works: Fellini makes no distinction
between them and RAI: the arro-
gance remains the same on both
sides. And the political parties now
in government are still procrastina-
ting over their decision, thanks to
any number of behind-the-scenes
deals. They have even left their
beloved RAI without a managing
board.

On the movie front, Cinecitta
blooms again, thanks to international
co—productions like Momo, a
German-Italian effort adapted from
Michael Ende’s fantasy novel,
directed by Johannes Schaaf and
starring John Huston as the Time-
keeper. There is also Jean-Jacques
Annaud’s The Name of the Rose[...]ristaldi,
together with Neue Constantin of
Munich and Les Films Ariane of
Paris. For it, Fellini's art director,
Dante Ferretti, has built a giant
octagonal abbey near the Tiberina
road.

El[...]ro-

autumn’s crop could be The
Whistle Blower, a conspiracy
thriller set in the British government
spy centre at Cheltenham,[...]veral controversial real-life
scenarios. Based on a novel by
John Hale and directed by Simon
Langton (late of TV's Le Carre[...]People), it
stars the indefatigable Michael
Caine and Nigel Havers, as his son
who works at the centre and is killed
under mysterious circumstances.
Box-office receipts are still
buoyant, with new records set in
London's West End at the beginning
of November. Prizzi’s Honor and
The Emerald Forest continue to
make it a great year for Rank, in the
wake of such other hits as Crimes
of Passion and Desperately
Seeking Susan. Three low-to-
medium-budget British films, Letter
to Brezhnev, Supergrass and My
Beautiful Laundrette, scored suc-
cesses, and Plenty took plenty, too.

Of the Christmas releas[...]Movie got slammed by
reviewers across the board, but the
Salkinds’ latest caped crusader,
blanket-released for the Yuletide
trade, has been sleighing them in
the aisles up and down the country.

TESE's Gary Dartnall.

jects are finally starting. Francesco
Rosi is looking for locations in
various South American countries
for his adaptation of Gabriel Garcia
Marquez's Chronicle of a Death
Foretold, with a budget of $US10
million raised by several European
producers. And Paolo and Vittorio
Taviani are scouting locations in the
United States for their as yet untitled
film (from a story by Tonino Guerra)
about two Italian church restorers
working in Hollywood in 1915 build-
ing film palaces. Meanwhile, a
sudden illness has prevented
Franco Zeffirelli from completing his
Otello in time for Cannes.

Still eligible for competition are
Marco Bel|ochio's erotic remake of
Le diable au corps, II diavolo in
corpo, Nanni Moretti’s La messa e
finita (see my last column) and
Carlo Lizzani’s ambitious L’isola, a
large-scale biography of communist
leader Giorgio Amendola, con-
ceived in two parallel versions (one
for cinema, one for TV), and starring
newcomer Massimo Ghini.

The Christmas season did not
bring much cheer to local movies,
with Rambo, Goonies and Back to
the Future easily annihilating our
customary run of feeble comedies.
Perhaps it is time the panic-stricken
industry reacted more intelligently to
the problems: rather than call for
state protection, it might consider
deflating a few star salaries and risk
some more controversial topics.

Japan
by Naoko Abe and
Georgina Pope

More foreign films,

less cinemas and a

mixed crop of New
Year movies

During the past twelve months,
Japan has seen a 10°/o increase in
its cinemagoers. The increase took
place mainly in the first few months
of the year, with blockbuste[...]d by
Gremlins (US$16 million). This
year's answer to the above, Back to
the Future, Goonies and Cocoon,
are doing similar business.

The Kadokawa production[...]awa’s remake, shot with exactly the
same script as his 1956 version. The
film has grossed $US15 million.

Unfazed by poor box-office reaction
in the US and Britain to his Kiwi
comedy, Came a Hot Friday (which
proved a boomer on the home
market last August), producer Larry
Parr has a full kit of product for his
second appearance at[...]k-based Challenge
Film Corporation, of which Parr is
president and New York entertain-
ment industry investor, Henry[...]er
on the action movie, Shaker Run,
shot entirely in New. Zealand and
starring Cliff Robertson, Leif Garrett
and Lisa Harrow. It proved a big
seller for Parr at Cannes last year,
and begins an eleven-print release
throughout New Zealand on 24[...]arket
screenings of the Mirage youth film,
Bridge to Nowhere, directed by
Ian Mune, and pre-sale activity on
Queen City Rocker, which com-
pleted lensing on Auckland city loca-
tions in early December. Rocker is
directed by Bruce Morrison (Con-
stance, Shaker R[...]rector, Paul
Davis, who will be with Parr, Fownes
and (from London) Bill Gavin in Los
Angeles, says the team will be
"mopping up" Shaker Run sales,
and continuing to plug Friday.
Davis praises the profile achieved
f[...]film by its British distri-
butor, Miracle Films, in December,
and reports that the great majority of
reviews were “outstandingly good".

“But no box was achieved,"
laments Davis, “which is the same
story for all other New Zealand
feature films released to date in
Britain. So, no breakthrough."

Upbeat newsjor the industry here
is that director Geoff Murphy
appears to have resisted attempts

One hundred cinemas closed
their doors up and down the country
during the year, leaving a national
total of 2,000, compared with over
8,000[...]ties.
The closures, however, were pre-
dominantly in the rural areas, with
the larger cities seeing an increase
in fancy cinema complexes and
small independent houses,

The biggest event duri[...]ing the
week-long event hitting the 150,000
mark. And an Australian Cinema
Week. held in September, financed
by the Australian Pavilion at the
Tsukuba Expo, and organized by
Tokyo-based Goanna Films,
attracted capacity houses; it resulted
in a major distributor, Shochiku-Fuji.
purchasing Peter Weir's ten-year-old
Picnic at Hanging Rock The
release is scheduled for July.

Local product playing" around
Tokyo is currently a mixed batch,

attempting to cater to as many
potential cinemagoers as possible
during the peak New Year season.

Yari n[...]Shinoda, who gave us Shinju
tenno amijima (Double Suicide)
sixteen years ago, is definitely one of
the best. Once again, Shinoda
b[...]famed
playwright Chikamatsu. This time,
the film is set in Osaka in 1717,
during the Genroku Era, when the
culture of the common people was
flourishing, but the lives of the privil-
eged samurai were ruled by a num-
ber of taboos, including the strict
condemna[...]The film's two main characters,
Osai, the wife of an official tea cere-
mony administrator, and Gonza, a
handsome young student of the
ceremony, are mistakenly accused
of having an affair. Left with the
choice of flight or ‘magataki-uchi', a
custom whereby the husband kills
both his wife and her supposed
lover, they settle for the latter. But
Osai figures that, now she has
nothing to lose, she'll make the most
of Gonza’s company.[...]returns, announces
production plans

by Hollywood to lure him away. After
many months working on a project
for Fox, with the tentative title of
Hunter, Murphy is back. He
recently received development
finance from the New Zealand Film
Commission for a new feature, with
Angel of Death as its working title.
And, with Maori woman director
Merata Mita (Patul), M[...]g two features: the
aforementioned Angel of Death
and (another working title) Mauri,
which Mita will direct.

In keeping with earlier films by
both directors, the projects deal with
the evolution of New Zealand, and

the conflict between its colonial
origins and the struggle to rise
above them. Mauri is set in the
sixties, and will be “intensely Maori"
in conception and perspective.
Angel, set in the eighteen-eighties,
while predominantly Maori in con-
tent, will be more pakeha (Euro-
pean) in perspective. Dealing with a
story of land-grabbing, it will show
how justice in legal terms can
become injustice in human terms.

If the first Tikanga production
goes in front of the cameras later this
year, it will dee[...]itment of many of New Zealand’s
best filmmakers to indigenous (but
no less entertaining) themes. On 20

Cinema Papers No. 53) and Yoshi-
mitsu Morita of Family Game fame
—— co[...]efforts, both with comparatively
swollen budgets and well-known

actors. ltami’s Tampopo
(Dandelion) opened in eight Tokyo
cinemas to very mixed notices.
Morita’s Sorekara (And then . . .),
based on a book by award-winning
novelist Soseki Natsume and set in
the Meiji Era, when the west was
beginning to take a firm hold on the
life of the east, is a romance that falls
rather flat, and is well short of the
expectations it had generated,
despite an excellent performance by
Miwako Fujiya.

Director Toru Kawashima, who
recently had successes with Ryuji
and Chinpila (Street Gang), has a
new picture out on a major release
pattern. A cutsie-pie teenybopper

Alone again: Quiet Earth stars
Alison Routledge and Bruno Law-
rence in the Larry Parr/Ian Mune
production, Bridge to Nowhere.

January, Pacific Films, in association
with the NZFC, started shooting
Ngati on east-coast North Island
locations.

Set in the late forties, it tells of the
friendship between two Maori boys
and three families, two of them
Maori, one pakeha, in a rural com-
munity. The personal discoveries
made[...]e threaten-
ing social events of the time.

Ngati is the fourth in a line of new
features that have begun shooting
since last October. Queen City
Rocker and two films produced by
Don Reynolds’s Auckland-b[...]the total: Monica,
directed by Richard Riddiford; and
Dangerous Orphans, directed by
John Laing.

Other films scheduled to roll
during 1986 include a multi-million
dollar New Zealand-Canadian co-
pro[...]ng of
the Greenpeace ship, ‘Rainbow
Warrior’, in Auckland harbour. The
partners, Phillips Whitehouse Pro-
ductions and Filmline International of
Montreal, are confident that on-
location shooting will begin in Auck-
land in April or May.

Vincent (Vigil) Ward expects to
start work on his new feature, work-
ing title The Navigator, on South
Island mountain locations in mid-
year. March-April is the possible
start date for another Reynolds
prod[...]ot Flats, based on the Murray Bell
cartoon strip, is due for completion
and release at Christmas. A cool
$NZ5 million—worth of investment

A Meiji Era romance: Miwako
Fujiya and Yusaku Matsua in
Sorekara (And then . . .).

meets and, for some inexplicable
reason, is pursued by big, bad
yakuza gangsters. An absurd plot.
dreadful performances and Kawa-
shima's confusion between reality
and fantasy make this grim viewing.

The bag of foreign product is
equally mixed and, as with the local
fare, it is just a matter of time before
the usual post-New Year splatter
and bash is with us again. Richard
Attenboroughs A Chorus Line is
doing very good business, as is
Dance with a Stranger. And two
Australian directors have overseas-
made product opening in January:
Bruce Berestord, with King David,
and Graeme Clifford's long-awaited
Frances. 4

was snapped up in ten days, when
the producers sought financial input
from the public last year.

Christmas and New Year summer
holiday box-office winners this side
of the Tasman have been Rocky IV,
A View to a Kill, The Goonies,
Cocoon and the Australian-made
real-life adventure, World Safari II.
National Lampoon’s European
Vacation also had a strong impact,
but Santa Claus, The Movie fell off
sharply after opening well, Shaker
Run and Murphy's The Quiet
Earth, which has a big (for New
Zealand) sixteen-print release in
mid-February, are expected to pick
up the slick pace set for locally-made
features by Came a Hot Friday.

The most significant event in
broadcasting pre-Christmas (apart
from the long-running Royal Com-
mission, and the third television
channel warrant hearings) was the
appointment of ‘foreigners’ to two of
the industry’s most powerful
positions.

Nigel Dick, 57, an Australian
broadcasting executive who, until
1984, was executive chairman of
Southern Cross Communications in
Victoria, succeeds Ian Cross as chief
executive of the Broadcasting Cor-
poration of New Zealand. As
director-general of Television New
Zealand, Engli[...]n
Mounter, 41, replaces Allan Martin.
Mounter has a wide background in
television in Britain, and most
recently headed a new satellite-
operated three-channel European
te[...]e run by Thom EMI.

Meanwhile, TVNZ has announced
a strong package of drama produc-
tion for the new year, which includes
a miniseries based on the crash of
Air New Zealand Flight 901 into Mt
Erebus in Antarctica in 1979. Also to
be made is a series entitled Fire
Raiser, to be produced by Welling-
ton actress and producer Ginette
McDonald, 4

CINEMA PAPER[...]

His successor is Sheila Whitaker,
formerly of the Tyneside Film
Theatre. who was told she would be
in charge of LFF programming
for 1985. Meanwhile, Derek
Malcolm, film critic of The Guardian,
was brought in to programme the
1984 festival, and did so to such
good effect that he was invited to do
it again in 1985.

His broad-ranging approach,
mixing the esoteric and the
commercial, Third World cinema
with production from east and west,
and the policy of extending to other
London venues, away from the
South Bank, produced immediate
results. Attendances have doubled,
and the LFF‘s prestige has grown
considerably in his two years in
charge.

With Whitaker being given a
further promise that she would take
over the festival in 1986, the BFI
board was in a quandary.
Audiences during the year at the
NFT had slipped below the 51%
break-even point, and the building
of the new Museum of the Moving
Image nearby was taking up time
and staff resources. Should she be

Squabbles at
the top, but a
bum on
(almost)
every seat

London Film
Festival’s policy of a

wide choice proves
successful again

After mu[...]an of the BFI, Sir
Richard Attenborough, arranged a
compromise which looks more like a
truce: Malcolm has been
reappointed festival director, and
Whitaker has been given the title of
‘Executive[...]given private assurances
(without which he would not have
agreed to continue) that she will not
interfere in programming.

The festival itself provided more
o[...]the screen,
opening with Kurosawa‘s epic, Ran,
and closing with Michael Cimino’s
Year of the Dragon. in between
came such American-produced
blockbusters as Spielberg's
Goonies and Back to the Future,
directed by Richard Donner and
Robert Zemeckis respectively, and
the adaptation of David Hare’s stage
play, Plenty, directed by Fred

Fireworks and films in
Andra Pradesh

Filmotsav, the alternating, non-co[...]stival (see Cinema
Papers, No 51), took Hyderabad as
its 1986 location. it was an approp-
riate choice, since the capital of
Andra Pradesh is the most prolific
regional producer of films (170
features last year) and the city with
the largest number of cinemas in the
Country.

The festival literally took off with a
bang at a glittering inaugural
ceremony on 10 January, featuring
local dances and a spectacular
display of fireworks in the newly-
constructed open-air auditorium.

The only dampener on the
evening was the choice of opening
film, a small-scale Canadian produc-
tion called 90 Days, selected
because that's how long it took to
build the auditorium complex.

Of the six section[...]o-
gramme, the Main international
Section, though a highlight for local
delegates and the public because of
its glut of foreign films, offered a
wide but lustreless repertoire. A
numerical domination of films from
the UK and the US was evident,
though Australia’s entry, M[...]aul Cox, one of the few
foreign feature directors to attend.

The Indian Panorama, a
showcase of the 21 best Indian films
of the previous year, is always a key

12 — March CINEMA PAPERS

event for for[...]selection
means wide exposure, the oppor-
tunity to get invited to foreign
festivals, distribution, and free sub-
titling provided by the National Film
Development Corporation.

It opened with a Telugu film from
Andra Pradesh, Mayuri, the true
story of a dancer who overcomes
family objections and a physical
handicap to pursue her chosen
career. Though the year generally
produced a mediocre crop, a few
films stood out, varying widely in
subject and genre, but with certain

recurring themes: Chatterjee’s
Chopper, about unemployment and
political exploitation; Nihalani’s
Aghaat, about trade unionism; and
political manipulation of the media,
in Accident and New Delhi Times.

Exploration of relationships,
e[...]ega|'s
Trikal, set amidst the political
upheavals in Portuguese Goa,
Aravindan‘s Chidambaram and
Aparna Sen’s Parama, which
recently opened to much con-
troversy in Calcutta.

Filmotsav includes foreign showcase, Indian
panorama and women’s programme

tr E: s T I V, :A‘ I s I A N n: in

Schepisi.

in the large selection of American
productions, ther[...]ion of the superb
Broadway production of Death of a
Salesman, starring Dustin Hoffman,
Kate Reid, John Malkovich, Stephen
Lang and Charles Durning. In terms
of turning theatre into film, it was
neither as imaginative as A|tman’s
Come Back to the 5 and Dime,
Jimmie Dean, Jimmie Dean, nor
as stodgy as a filmed play, but the
acting was magnificent.

Another surprise was Henry
Jaglom‘s Always, a comedy based
on the break-up of his own marriage,
with the director and his former wife,
Patrice Townsend, taking the main
roles as a couple who arrange a
special divorce dinner. Wise, witty,
sad and funny, it is Jaglom‘s best
film yet.

Elsewhere, four Australian movies
featured in the programme, Ray
Lawrence's Bliss looked better for
the re-editing and shortening it got
since it was shown in Cannes, and
was the pick of the down-under
presentation, whic[...]o Had Every-
thing, Bob Ellis's undoubtedly
funny but rough-edged Unfinished
Business, and Dennis O'Rourke‘s
Half Life.

There was even more variety in
the New Zealand selection, though,
starting with Bruce Morrison’s
Shaker Run (with a too-seldom-
seen Cliff Robertson back in

in the glow of attention accorded
the above sections[...]ia
programme suffered from some
neglect. This was a pity, since the
organizers — the Film Societies of
India — had gone to a lot of trouble
to assemble a very interesting pro-
gramme.

The Third World Wo[...]is year, had no trouble attracting
media interest and controversy, par-
ticularly regarding the choice[...]lm for the’women of Asia, Africa,
Latin America and other emerging
countries, where women’s struggles

for identity are greater, especially as
regards breaking down stereotypes
and changing traditions.

There was also a Film Market,
seminars on Film and Technology,
and a great deal more. The
hospitality in Hyderabad was very
impressive: a city that is, by Indian
standards, quite drab turned on an
amazing display of welcome, the
organization was generally efficient,
and the lack of affectation of the
Indian filmmakers striking. Although
Filmotsav '86 may not rate high in
the hierarchy of world festivals, it is

certainly a worthwhile event.
Mary Colbert

business[...]on world
plant resources, The Neglected
Miracle, and John Reid's study of
Katherine Mansfield and John

Middleton Murry, Leave All Fair.
The sizeable British collection

ranged over film and television, with
most interest focussing on Defence
of the Realm, an exceptionally
good political thriller. Directed by
David Drury and beautifully shot by
Roger Deakins, it seems certain to
thrust Irish actor Gabriel Byrne into
the big time. He and the always
reliable Denholm Elliott are marvel-
lously effective as a pair of cynical
journalists on a major Fleet Street
daily, who become involved with a
Profumo-like scandal.

And Peter Greenaway, who made
The Draughtsman’s Contract,
came up with another audience-
puzzler in A Zed and Two
Noughts, in which he had some
serious fun with Darwinism and
evolution in the setting of a modern
zoo.

All that is just the surface,
however: the festival contained over
160 films, and aimed at both general
and specialized audiences. The
festival director, Derek Malcolm,
conceded that the event might have
been too large by, perhaps, a dozen
films, but few would argue with its
success. Thus, provided[...]ould be programmed
along very much the same lines as
this one.

Ray Comiskey

From

Lambert Wilson and Christophe
Lambert

top: Juliette Binoclz e,

The opening of the Seventh Festival
of Latin American Cinema in Havana
erupted with a shower of multi-
coloured fireworks, while conga
lines of musicians and dancers
throbbed through the crowds
gathered on t[...]ought down the final curtain on the
festival with a rousing discourse that
exhalted the establishment of a new
Latin American cinema in the face of
US cultural dominance. The role of
video was given particular promin-
ence when Castro announced that,
in future, the festival would be called
the international Festival of New
Latin American Cinema, Television
and Video.

The intervening two weeks, from
2-16 December, saw over 400 films
and videos screened in simultane-
ous sessions in eight cinemas
scattered through the city. Over
1000 participants from 40 countries
took part in the festival, twice as
many as last year and extended —
at Castro's insistence — to double
the length of time, thereby sharpen-
ing Cuba's profile as the rising
centre of Latin American culture.

Sealing the festival with the Holly-
wood imprimatur were a gaggle of
celluloid heroes: Robert de Niro,
Christopher Walken, Treat Williams,
Harry Belafonte and Jack Lemmon,
presenting his 1982 feature,
Missing.

Speaking to the press at a meet-
ing with young Cuban artists, de
Niro confirmed his interest in starring
in a Cuban Film institute production,

For the second successive year, the
‘Film nouveau’ festival was held in
five Australian cities during Novem-
ber and December, at a time usually
dominated by the summer block-
buster and the general Christmas
wind-down. Drawing large audi-
ences, it offered, according to the
programme, "a selection of high
quality features from the best that
contemporary French cinema has to
offer”. A non-competitive event, it is
also aimed at finding local distri-
butors for it[...]sappointment
felt at the films screened this year is
probably a reflection both of the cur-
rent state of French cinema and of
the conflict of interests inherent in
the festlva|’s own purpose. Last
year, France produced 160
features. And, plainly stated, the
twelve films screened presented a
clearer picture of a certain midd|e-of-
the-road filmgoing audience than
they did of a prodigious film culture.

The range was broad, but most of
the films, though technically com-
petent, were bland and ordinary
exercises in filmmaking.

The festival opened with Rouge
baiser, directed by Vera Belmont.
What started off as a potentially
worthwhile story (the daughter of
poor Jewish emigrants growing up
in the fifties under the influence of
communism, American movies and
the poet Apollinaire) evaporated into
a fluffy, Dynasty-like love story — a
role for which the lead actress,
supposedly a fifteen-year-old, began
to look naturally suited, and in which
several semi-nude scenes smacked
of exploitation.

Stars rush in
Castro — and Hollywood — give a major

boost to the Havana Festival’s profile

and word has it that_ noted Cuban
director Tomas Gutierrez Alea has
discussed a production of The
Tempest with him. So, while the
Reagan administration continues the
blockade of Cuba, the boys from
Tinsel Town are building the cultural
bridges.

While the Hollywood stars were a
prize catch, none of the prominent
features were making their
premieres. The joint winners of the
Grand Coral F[...]uraleza Vita
directed by the Mexican, Paul
Leduc, and the mysterious Tangos
— L’Exil De Gardel (Tan[...]mpressive was the pre-
dominance of over 200 film and
video documentaries covering a
gamut of issues pressuring Latin
America and the Caribbean. Mostly
stark and brutal in their messages,
they covered the foreign debt crisis,
the repression in Chile, and new
democratic openings in Argentina,
Brazil and Uruguay.

The dominant thread through
several doc[...]libera-
tion theology. Silvio Da-Bin pre-
sented a powerful 80-minute film
called lgreja De Libertacao

(Church of Liberation), examining
the way in which the Catholic church
has been one of the rare spaces in
which opposition movements have
found shelter during the 20 years of
military dictatorship in Brazil. As the
country reverts to democracy, the
church must redefine its role in
Brazilian society amid pressures
from the community and con-
demnation from the Vatican.
Particularly poi[...]Plaza De Mayo,
made by two women from the
United States calling themselves
Cine Chicano (Susann Munoz and
Lourdes Porfillo). Beautifully crafted,
the film built a quiet sense of outrage
as mother after mother detailed the
impotent rage they suffered at
having their children ‘disappeared’

The real face of
Fren[...]rench cinema’s latest hean-throb,
was seen both in this and in
Rende/z-vous, for which Andre
Techine won the awa[...]ear. The
film's real prize, though, should
belong to lead actress Juliette
Binoche in the role of Nina, a young
girl who is both lauded and tor-
mented by three men who mark her
path to independence and a career
in the theatre.

Though it was pervaded by a
haunting atmosphere, the fi|m’s
handling of its[...]rial was
less assured, ranging from the inept
— in the case of the dead actor,
Quentin (Wilson), who literally haunts
Nina — to the unconvincing (the
appearance of Scrutzler [Je[...]ant] more than half-way
through the film). It was as if wewere
expected to believe more than the
filmmaker was actually willing to
show or tell.

Jacques Doi|lon’s La tentation
d'lsabe|le,, produced by Marin
Karmitz, was something of a trial.
Taking place mainly in claustro-
phobic hotel rooms and bedrooms,
it was a film about a wickedly impas-
sioned man who, at times, seemed

willing to destroy his wife, her ex-

lover and present girlfriend, so as to
test her love for him. Acted with fist-
clenching hysteria, stylish and
theatrical, it was reminiscent of early
Fassbinder. it was also very wordy,
for which the subtitles were in-
adequate. But, if for no other reason,
it was worth seeing through for the
editing and jump cuts in the final
scenes.

The other Karmitz-produced film
was No Man’s Land. Written and
directed by Alain Tanner, it was the
official Swiss entry at the 1985
Venice festival, and its title refers to
the physical and psychological situa-
tion of four smugglers on th[...]er, each of whom dreams of
being somewhere else.

That much the film made clear
early; for the rest, it plodded to its in-
evitable conclusion. Though
immediately watchable — Bernard
Zitzerman’s photography is superb
— the film should have been more
than it was. Tanner’s ability physic-
ally to describe human behaviour
and interaction and to delineate
complex political and ethical per-
spectives, though present in his
choice of subject matter, was sadly
missing from its execution. Finally,
the image and metaphor of the title
was too slight to bear, andtperhaps

under the former junta in Argentina.
Another highlight of the festival
was the week of Cuban film screen-
ings and the film market, MECLA.
Cuba turns out up to ten features a
year and dozens of documentaries
and shorts. A slick and funny
75-minute animation called
Vampiros en La Habana
(Vampires in Havana) attracted a
lot of foreign buyers‘ interest. The
Cubans claimed to have secured up
to $US200,000 in sales and numer-
ous international co—production
deals. While insiders claimed that
market business was in the
$US1-million range — with brisk
trading on[...], Argentina, Brazil, Colombia,
Venezuela, Britain and Africa — it is
predicted that MECLA will become

the Latin American market.
Dasha Ross

The church looks to the future:
Leonardo Boff in Silvio Da-Rin’s
lgreja da libertacao (Church of
Liberation).

.- /H‘/‘I’

the most lasting and poignant image
was that of Jean (Jean-Philippe
Ecoffey), the young, cow-herd,
scurrying away on his bicycle.

In a similar vein — a film of which
one expected more — was
Chabro|'s Poulet au vinaigre. A
predictable po/icier, it was neverthe-
less made enjoyable by its quirkish
and satiric humour, and by Jean
Poiret’s playing of the cop. The
‘poulet’ of the film's title is both a
chicken dish and slang for police-
man.

For the rest, the films ranged from
the noteworthy to the awful.
L’amour en douce (Edouard Molin-
arc) and Quilombo (Carlos
Diegues) — which, in any case, was
from Brazil — were not seen, so
cannot be reviewed.

Daniele Dubroux’s Les amants
terribles looked every frame a last-
minute substitute, though the very
act of screening a film as cheap and
inept as this in a festival was
audacious. Tristesse et beauté
(Joy Fleury), based on a novel by
Kawabata, will probably disappear
into oblivion. And I would personally
wish a similar fate on Escalier C,
from Cousin, Cousines Jean-
Charles Tacchellaz a thoroughly
nasty and offensive film.

Finally, there was Paroles et
musique (Elie Chour_aqui), in which
the talents of Catherine Deneuve
were entirely wasted in an innocu-
ous story about a middle-aged
woman’s relationship with a rock
singer whose music would bring a
tear to the eye of even the most
hardened Lionel F[...]

Jackie McKimmie was in exuberant
form: she had got her first feature,
Australian Dream, in the can — or
rather, had just watched its “birth
and delivery" at a screening of the
final mix.

It may be her first feature, but Mc-
Kimmie is no stranger to writing
drama. She wrote plays in her early
days at Sydney University, and later
specialized in drama at the West
Australian Institute of Technology.
She was already interested in film,
but "just missed the boat": the
course was introduced during her
final year of study there.

But the encounter was inevitable;
and, when she began teaching, she
found opportunities to experiment
on Super-8 with her students.
Enthusiasm ran high: at the alter-
native school in Queensland where
she taught, she and her charges
even held dances to raise funds for
their activities.

Her real screen debut came in
1982, however, when a play she
had written was converted into a
telemovie, Madness for Two, and
shown on SBS. From that experi-
ence, McKimmie learned a valuable
lesson: in future, she would exert
more creative control.

In Stations, starring Noni Hazle-
hurst, which won the Greater Union
Award for Best Short Film in 1983,
she did just that: she wrote, pro-
duced and directed. Set in the fifties,
the film is based on a short story she
had written about a girl whose
romantic illusions are dispelled, if not
shattered, when she gets pregnant.
“It was easy to turn into a script,”
recalls McKimmie. “lt only took
three days. Really, it more or less
wrote itself, because I stayed very
close to the original.” She admits
that the film was a turning point.
And, through it, she was introduced
to Hazlehurst (who also stars in Aus-
tralian Dream), with whom she
struck up an immediate rapport.

14 — March CINEMA PAPERS

S[...]awards (Best Short Film at
Tyneside; equal first in Florence);
locally, it received the rare privilege
(for a short) of a commercial release,
backing up Careful, He Might Hear
You.

Buoyed up by the success, Mc-
Kimmie aspired to write a longer
piece. Australian Dream was first
submitted as a 50-minute drama to
the Australian Film Commission's
Creative Development Fund, then
later extended to feature length with
some valuable assistance from
script assessors Flon Blair and
James Ricketson (who appears in
the film as an Orangeperson).

She began the script in March
1983 and took it through seven
drafts, to be completed in August
1985, just prior to shooting. The
$600,000 budget was provided
under 10BA by the Queensland Film
Corporation, with an AFC distribu-
tion guarantee and a Channel Seven
presale. “There are advantages to
living in Queensland,“ quips Mc-
Kimmie. “And I have learned to
work on the phone a lot!

“The film is actually a bit of a
family affair," she continues. “I
wrote the script, co-produced it with
Sue Wild, did all the casting, and
directed. I needed to control the
vision: talk about the auteur theory!"
She laughs.

"The title evolved from a song
written by my husband, Chris, who
wrote many of the lyrics and per-
formed them with his band, The
Lamingtons (now no longer
together). He's an art teacher, so he
also doubled as art director, produc-
tion designer and clapper-loader.
No wonder we could manage on the
budget . . .!

“Australian Dream integrates
the reality and fantasy of suburban
life in middle-class Brisbane,” ex-
plains McKimmie. “Nonl plays
Dorothy Stubbs, the unfulfilled but
highly imaginative wife of Geoffrey
(Graeme Blundell), who is Butcher of
the Year. He is a man of consider-
able political aspirations, just as she
is a woman of considerable romantic
inclinations. She takes up a writing
course, meets Todd (John Jarratt) at

a party — he's actually an oppor-
tunistic con-man — and, from a very

slender seed, builds a web of
romantic and erotic fantasy around
their relationship. The film is very
much about realizing one’s fan-
tasies, wi[...]pecta-
tions reversed. It particularly focuses
on what can happen to a woman in
this situation.

"Much of the comedy is created
by the fantasies, especially
Dorothy’s erotic and romantic illu-
sions, which reach a point bordering
on delusion. These were wonderful
to create and shoot. We really had
great fun with them, because they
allowed us to be creatively excessive
— sort of Mills and Boonish. Noni
and I really indulged.

“The part was written with her in
mind from the second draft on and,
along the way, included numerous
exchanges with her. She really lends
tremendous energy to a movie.
Graeme’s terrific in this role as well.
And DOP Andrew Lesnie’s experi-
ence with experimental films could
enhance it, too."

But weren't there any problems,
working on her first[...]as the time
factor: directing the four-week shoot
and bringing it in on time. My only
regret is that we didn't have another
week. It was a matter of thinking on
your feet all the time. Apa[...]other actors.
Two weeks of the shoot were nights,
and we were working fourteen to six-
teen hours. We shot fast — on a ratio
of about 10:1 — and sometimes we
were getting seven minutes a day,
which is remarkable. Yet we didn't
compromise on quality. We'd go
with it till we got it right. But it was
absolutely draining.”

McKimmie smiles evasively when
asked about future projects. “Yes.
there are several on the boil; but
nothing definite yet." And what
about similarities between Austra-
lian Dream and Emoh Fluo, with
which parallels have been drawn?
"These are superficial," she says.
"It really is quite a different type of
film. You'll see!”

Mary Colbert

L ap year

Colin Friels, actor

If an actor's enthusiasm for a script
and enjoyment of a shoot is an
accurate measure of the quality of
the finished p[...]Frie|s‘s
two recent films should be ear-
marked as winners. Although he has
been appearing on screen since a
1981 debut in Hoodwink, Friels
asserts that only the work on Mal-
colm and Kangaroo have shown
him that making movies can be fun.
"I've made huge errors," he says.
“It's not because I didn't care: it's
just that I didn't have the ability at the
time, or I didn't understand what
was actually required."

For admirers of his performances
in Monkey Grip (1982) and the
spirited Buddies (1984), and for
those who discerned that he, alone,
may have emerged from the mire of
Cool[...]his critical self-
appraisal seems unduly modest. But
Friels sets himself exacting personal

standards and respects the rigours
and responsibilities that his craft
demands. Believing that acting
requires commitment, sustained
concentration and a passion for the
present project, he talks with
animation about the comedy
Malcolm and appears totally im-
mersed in the pleasures of making
Kangaroo (which is, at the time, in
its final days of shooting in Mel-
bourne).

The adaptation of D.H. Law-
rence's Australia-based novel by
Evan Jones has, according to Friels,
produced a fine screenplay. "|t's
very wordy, but there's nothing
flabby about it. What interests me
about drama — what interests any-
one, I guess Y is the interaction of
the characters. And, in Kangaroo,
the characters are fantastic. It's
great for an actor, because there is
so much for everyone to get their
teeth into.” Frie|s’s admiration for
the script is apparent when he dis-
cusses the difficulty of adapting the
425-page novel, written in a six-
week burst when Lawrence visited
Australia in the early twenties. “For
Lawrence, a novel was an adven-
ture of the unconscious. He wrote
like spurts of lightning and there is
nothing ordered about it. His mind
was like a sponge."

Among the other actors enjoying
what appears to have been an
extremely amiable shoot is Frie|s’s
wife, Judy Davis, who is playing
Somers‘s wife,‘ Harriet. The couple
have workedtogether in the theatre
and, though they had not actively

sought a film to do together, Kanga-
roo provided the perfect oppo[...]ls enthuses.

Given his previous screen roles —
as the less-than-magnificent but
highly charismatic obsession in
Monkey Grip, the rumbustious
miner in Buddies and the aspiring
Iron Man in Coolangatta Gold —
Friels has established a persona that
has its foundations in physical,
athletic, even macho characteristics.
Javo, Mike and Adam are doers not
thinkers, characters who exude a
restlessness and volatility that has
been the foundation of Friels's con-
siderable screen presence. By con-
trast, Somers is described in the
novel as “a queer little man” and
could be seen as a significant depar-
ture from the established mould for
the actor.

It is a variation that is consolidated
by the title role in Malcolm. "Mal-
colm is not remotely physical.” says
Friels. “He's somewhat retarded —
a very simple guy who hasn't grown
up. He works for the tramways,
builds his own tram and gets the
sack. So he takes in two boarders —
played by John Hargreaves and
Lindy Davies — who are small-time
crims. Individually, they are quite
useless, but they work well as a
team.”

Though the two films differ con-
siderably in period, style and sub-
ject, Friels regards both as valuable,
and is equally admiring of the two
directors — Nadia Tass, making her
debut with Malcolm and veteran
Tim Burstall. “There's no ‘This is my
film, you'll do it my way‘. They share.‘

Friels began his formal training at
NIDA and, following graduation in
1976, spent three years with the
State Theatre Company of South
Australia. In 1979, he moved to
Sydney and worked with the Nimrod
and the Sydney Theatre Company.
And he is returning to the stage early
in 1986, to co—star with Lauren
Bacall in Sweet Bird of Youth.

"Film is totally different to
theatre," he explains. "You work in
bursts. You do close-ups, you do
wide-shots, you do it arse-about. In
theatre, you work up gradually over
five or six weeks — or whatever the
rehearsal period is — and you work
through a performance. It's a totally
different rhythm. You don't act any
differently. It's still your job to take an
audience through a story, but the
process is completely different.”

Friels repeatedly stresses that act-
ing is a job, and one that requires a
measure of perspective. “People
put shit on me for doing Coolan-
gatta Gold and that's fine: they're
allowed to. But I'm no monk: I'm an
actor and I've got to work. I don't
feel ashamed of anything I've done.
Sometimes it hasn’t been satis-
factory; but I haven't stopped work-
ing since I left NIDA bec[...]work, the better
you get. You develop your taste, but
you need to keep your work in per-
spective. I mean, the world will keep
going if I don't do Kangaroo or
Sweet Bird of Youth. But, if you are
going to do something, you’ve got to
see some value in it. There's no
point in doing a film or a play that
you're not passionate about. It
should stir your blood.”[...].: _~; . c ,;. --

- 6;‘-

Jfiackifroim Dick to Joe

v ':' ’ _ ..

Jack Thompson, actor and director

Jack Thompson and the Aussie film
boom go almost hand in hand. That
distinctive stride, that fierce gaze
and the surprising gentleness which
is often just beneath the surface
have become a kind of Australian
emblem. So, too, has the man. Born
in 1940, Thompson first hit the big
time in the 1971-72 TV season, with
Spyforce. But 1972 was also the
year of the Cleo centrefold, and his
private life was rarely just that.
Though he had been in movies for
a couple of years by the time of Spy-
force (as, for instance, that memor-
ably unpleasant inhabitant of the
Yabba, Dick, in Wake in Fright in
1971), it was Petersen (1974),
Sunday Too Far Away (1975) and
Caddie (1976) that established
Thompson as a star — and pretty
much on a world scale, too, since all
three films did well[...]mmie Blacksmith

(1978), Breaker Morant (1980) and
The Man from Snowy River (1982)
consolidated the position.

As his face has become better
known, however, the other bits of his
anatomy have been less on show,
and the public profile has become
more a matter of reputation: Thomp-
son has achieved that difficult transi-
tion from star to actor, and the
eighties have seen him go truly inter-
nation[...]a
Oshima’s Merry Christmas, Mr
Lawrence (1983), in which he plays
the manic army officer, Hicksley;
and Paul Verhoeven’s Flesh and
Blood (1985), in which he is the
equally strange Sir John Hawk-
wood, an actual sixteenth-century
soldier of fortune who, in the film,
retires from the battlefield to cultivate
his veges and look after a brain-
damaged woman who has been a
victim of one of his campaigns.

Put these two roles together with
his other high-profile outing of late —
as Robert O'Hara Burke in Burke &
Wills — and you have a trio of
manic individuals with whom it is
initially hard to associate the affable,
disgustingly tanned persona of the
actor himself. Nevertheless, it has
been that manic quality — the

"crazy bugger" aspect, as he puts it
— that has attracted him to the parts.

“Those are the sorts of roles I find
fascinating — difficult, but fascina-
ting, in the same way I found the
character of Stan Graham in Bad
Blood fascinating. They are all real-
life human beings, and real-life
human beings do have these contra-
dictory qualities in them. Burke's
craziness, for instance, is the sort
that Sir Edmund Hillary must have
had — Cortez and Columbus, too,
and perhaps Cook: any of those
people who willingly put themselves
into outer space at a time when no
one knew anything about it. The
parallel I make with Burke is: What if
those men who went to the other
side of the moon came back and
discovered the shuttle wasn't
there?”

The approach to Hicksley in Mr
Lawrence — Thompson plays him

as a mixture of hero and buffoon,
ram-rod stiff in baggy shorts and
dilapidated tennis shoes — was very
much the actor's decision. Oshima,
renowned for setting up the camera
and letting things happen, would
only comment: "Thompson san
decided to play it like that."

“I think the script demanded it,"
says Thompson. “What the man did,
what he said, how he behaved,
seemed to me, in my experience of
human beings and my experience of
the army" (in which he spent six
years) “to be only explicable in that
way. He's a man on the edge, and
he's holding on to his human dignity
as hard as he damn well can. Those
are the characters that are interest-
ing to play. They're not one-dimen-
sionalz people are not simply crazy."

But it is the dignity that has re-
curred most often, particularly dig-
nity in the context of failure. ‘'I think
that is something we share with
other new-world and frontier
societies. There’s bound to be a lot
of failure, but the real quality that's
admired is the ability, under the most
awful circumstances, to maintain
human dignity — not to write off as
failures all those who set out and
don't come back. Because, if you

do, the entire society collapses."

Interviewed in Cinema Papers No.
54, director Graeme Clifford said he
had never considered anyone else
but Thompson for the role of Burke,
presumably because of his ability to
portray just those qualities. What
Clifford didn't say was how he got
him. '‘It was the year before last,"
says Thompson, “and I'd just been
in Los Angeles to talk to William
Friedkin about doing a film that
never happened. I was in the lounge
at LA airport, and Graeme came up
to me and said, ‘You don't know me,
but I know you're Jack Thompson,
and I'm Graeme Clifford’. l’d seen
Frances, and I thought it was just,
you know, one Australian filmmaker
saying hello to another. Then he
said, ‘Actually, I'm going to Australia
very largely to see you: I have a
script for you’. I read the script on
the plane and said almost immedi-
ately I wanted to do it.

“Graeme made the making of the
film an absolute delight: I have never
enjoyed making a film more. It was
just celebratory: every member of
the crew seemed aware that we
were involved in something more
than just a movie. It became a very
personal experience."

Thompson doesn't feel the same
way about Flesh and Blood. “I
found that probably the worst film-
making experience of my life," he
says. “It was a polyglot crew, the
weather was awful, and there isn't
one scene in the film where anybody
is having fun! In Burke & Wills, for
all the story of the trail across the
desert, there is also Burke's
delicious love affair, and the sense of
fun at Coopers Creek when they
play cricket. Right up to the last
minute, at least they think they're
going to do it, whereas Verhoeven’s
film is relentlessly morbid."

Thompson's next project is far
from morbid. It is a $2.5-million mini-
series, Joe Wilson, for Filmat and
Channel Seven, which will mark his
debut as a director. What took him
so long? “What a nice way to put it!
I've been very busy as an actor.
And, in a sense, I think it's easier to
get your first job as a director if
you've come out of the Film and
Television School. People in the
business are inclined to think that
every actor wants to direct, and
every actor, when he's been around
for a while, thinks he can! But l’ve
always wanted to. I directed some
stage before I came Into films, so I
leapt at the offer when Ray Beattie
asked me." Is he apprehensive?
“I'm apprehensive about how well I
can do it," he says, “not whether or

notlcan." ‘
Pre-production started on Joe

Wilson —- which will star Matthew
Fargher (King in Burke & Wills) and
Kim Krejus, with a script by Keith
Dewhurst — in mid-January, and
shooting is scheduled to start in and
around Mudgee and Gulgong
(where Henry Lawson set his
original stories) in March. “lt’s a
twelve-week shoot," says Thomp-
son, “then there's all the post-pro-
duction, so I'm tied up from now
until July-August. I'm beginning to
discover how demanding and totally
pre-occupying directing is . . . and
just how much less money you get
paid than as an actor!"

Nick Roddick

CINEMA PAPERS March — 15

This is the story of a stunt: It was done
, at dusk in a Sydney suburb last Octo-
~ her. At around $75,000,\it cost more
than any single stunt so far executed in
Australia, it set a world record for a
jump by a truck (162 feet), and it ended
' well. That last bit is important-. This is
not one of those stories about a charis-
matic daredevil who, halfway down
page two, hits a brick wall and endsup’
spending the rest of his life in ‘a wheel-
chair. Indeed, the fact that this story
does end well makes its about more
than just this stunt: it is about the
coming-of-age of ‘ the Australian stunt‘
industry, which is by now the equal of
any in the world, not just in truck'-
jumping, but in fire-gels and, thanks to‘
this same stunt, in car stunt safety
harnesses. Gone are the days of per-
suading drunken hoons to fall off a
O _ horse, a building or a train for ten
""’ bucks and; case of Four X. In the
mid-eighties,stunts are an integral rt
of the movie business. They have t ir
own science and their own dedicated
professionals. One of them, 25-year-
old Guy Norris, did the stunt in this
I’ - story. Norris is very successful: you
can tell that by the BMW he drives (not
new BMW,/it is true, but a BMW all
the same). He also works a lot — his
credits include Mad Max 2 (in which he
doubled for Mel Gibson), BMX
Bandits, Bliss and War Story — and,
watching the stunt in this story, you
can see why.

The stunt was f,9_i;Dead;End Drive-
.. In, it was planned with a slide-rule,
working drawings and speed tests, and
almost everything in it was custom-
built. It is the climax of the picture, in
which the hero, played by Ned Lander, '

crashes out to freedom from a drive-in

converted into a prison compound,
where he, along with a group of other
unemployed youths, has spent most of
the film. Lander comandeers a police
truck and, thanks to _a low-loader
which the authorities have been using
to unload cars, leaps over the box
office, through the neon sign that says

‘Star Drive-In’, lands outside the com-
. a pound and heads for the ‘hills. This, in

-. .ei ce, is exactly what Guy Norris
es 00. But he doesn’t head for the
t the end: the specially built,
‘ reinforced Ford truck has
.0, like a toy someone has
’ tie, and hits of it are”
rmafc from the boxfi
“as finally come to;[...]_as ecorded. with \
‘ yruclé, running at -
‘ nd (four .times the i
‘ ‘,a'"s'lo?w,-.nio_tion:§% -
<one., running at 36 g"-
» which pans with the
is ._t.'goes up the ramp; one on b

no

o.[...]

Originally, though, the break-out at
the end of the film was to have been
rather less dramatic. “Ned was just
going to burst through the gates,” says
Norris. “It wa[...]he top. He’d built this incred-
ible box office and this fabulous sign,
and they were just sitting there. We dis-
cussed the jump one morning and he
said, ‘Is it possible?’ I said, ‘Give me a
week and I’ll tell you’.”

The first thing Norris did was ring
the States and talk to two American
stuntman friends, Kerry Rossal and
Mickey Gilberts, who is second-unit
director on The Fall Guy. “What’s the
go?” he asked. “What do you
suggest?” Gilberts phoned him back
with some suggestions for the ramp
he’d need, and the one they finally
built was to Gilberts’s precise design.

“It’s a sine curve,” explains Norris,
‘‘which gives[...]ount of speed with the shortest
distance of ramp, and without any
chance of bottoming out. With an

18 — March CINEMA PAPERS

ordinary ramp, you’d lose a lot of the
impact as you hit the bottom, and
you’d dig in: you’d slow right down, it
would kick you down, your front
suspension would try to bounce off,
and you’d probably be off the ramp
before you got to the top of it. The
reason why people haven’t done these
jumps in the past is that you’d need a
ramp about 20 feet high and 50-100
feet long. You’d drive up it, then start
to fall. Mickey had done jumps off
earth mounds, and he worked it out
from that.

‘‘If you look at the rushes, you’ll
notice the truck squeezes up
and, as soon as you go off the
ramp, the wheels pop out. It
actually brings it off the ramp
and makes it jump!”

“The advantage with the sine curve
is that you can get so much speed on
such a short ramp. This one is only 25
feet long and seven feet high and, by
putting the curve on it, you can hit it
really fast, and it’s actually forcing you
onto the ramp all the[...]k
at the rushes, you notice the truck
squeezes up and, as soon as you go off
the ramp, the wheels pop out. It
actually brings it off the ramp and
makes it jump!”

Tests had told Norris what sort of

speed he could get the truck up to in

the fairly limited space available,
which was complicated by the fact that
he had to follow the curve of the drive-
in’s outer fence. By the end of the tests,
Norris had worked out that he would
hit the bottom of the ramp at between
55 and 60 mph. The ramp itself gave
him three or four in[...]nce on
either side of the truck’s front wheels.
But that wasn’t really a problem: he

had to be in exactly the right place any-
way so, although more ramp might
have been nice to see, it wouldn’t have
affected the stunt one wa[...],” says Norris,
“was getting through the sign in the
right place. I said: ‘My left wheel will
go through the ‘S’ of ‘Star’, and my
right wheel will be above the ‘n’ of
‘Drive-in’.” The photographs show he
hit it exactly. “It’s just like a hypo-
tenuse triangle: you take your angles
up higher and work it out on the slide-
rule until you get it. The advantage of
the sine curve is that you know exactly
where you’re going to start flying.”
The ramp itself was constructed[...]been no good,
because the stunt was done at dusk (in
the film, it’s supposed to be dawn),
and the early-evening dew would have
made it slippery. In actual fact,
though, Norris reckons he hit the ramp
at[...]

So good, in fact, that once he came
down (and came down off the high),
Norris immediately put a call through
to Kerry Rossal. “It was 3.30 in the
morning there,” he says, “andAnd he says,
‘What did you do?’ I said ‘I62 feet’
and he said: ‘You bastard!’ ”

The first time during the whole stunt
that Norris had the chance to think was
as he started up the ramp. Prior to
that, all his attention had been taken
up with hitting it at the right speed.
“That all went superquick,” he
remembers. “But, as soon as I hit the
ramp, it was just as slow as that” — he
makes a floating movement with his
hands. “I remember all the bits of the
sign going really vividly, and I remem-
ber seeing sky and more sky. The thing
the other guys said is: ‘Whenever you
do the big one, remember the view!’ I
remember looking over and seeing the
lighting tower, and it was, like, ‘Wow!’
— actually, it was more like ‘Fuck!’ —

and then I was going down and I saw
the ground coming up.”

This, in fact, was the dangerous bit
of the stunt. Anybody can jump off a
building: it’s the landing that’s diffi-
cult. In this case, the success of the
stunt relied on two things: the angle of
the ramp, and what happened to
Norris when he landed. The truck itself
had been specially modified, with a 500
lb weight to prevent it skewing in mid-
air, because of the greater weight on
the driver’s side. And it was specially
reinforced. “The engine and trans-
mission moved back a foot as I landed,

“You’re an egg between two
rubber bands, suspended in the
car: it’s like having two great big
hands around you”

but they couldn’t go any further,
because I had my own little cocoon
inside, and they were pushed under-
neath. It was very much like a racing-
car pod: the whole car could have come
totally apart, and I’d still have been
self-contained.If I hadn’t had that, I
would have had the engine on my lap.”

But the real problem was to protect
Norris from the impact. “The main
injury you have with a jump is spinal
compression,” he says. “They lost a
couple of guys in the early days, and a
lot of people got badly hurt. So, they

Do you believe a truck can fly? The various
stages of Norris ’s Dead-End Drive-In stunt, cap-
tured by motor racing photographer Bi[...]worked out this really ingenious system
of having a vest and a bunjie cord.
You’re an egg between two rubber
bands, suspended in the car: it’s like
having two great big hands around
you. But a suspension harness is a
really uncomfortable thing.

“The biggest jump they’d ever done
in The Fall Guy was around 150 feet,
but the Stuntman fractured three ribs
and wasn’t very well at the end of it.
And the biggest jump anyone’s ever
done was 186 feet, in the Dukes of
Hazard Charger: a guy went over a
train. But he was just wiped out. You
get a lot of rib and internal damage
with jumps. A friend of mine who does
a lot of the jumps on Knight Rider
always seems to bang up his kidneys.
He’s got an electric blanket, pre-cut,
which he puts round himself. He’s got
a 100-foot extension cord, which he
plugs in and walks round the house
with for about a week, until he’s
better.”

Norris, who is reckoned to be one of
Australia’s most innovative stuntmen
(he has developed his own fire gel ——
illustrated on the title page of this
article — which enables him to work
open—faced for a startling amount of
time), reckoned there had to be a better
way. His solution to the problem was

to suspend the whole seat, fitting it p

C[...]

Another record: Norris doing the ‘Cannonball’
stunt — riding a motor bike into a car and
cannonballing off — in Mad Max 2. Norris flew
62 feet.

up and I hit the roof. I kept waiting for
more, but that was it. All I could hear
was the churning of the camera: it
sounded like a mincer, because it was
going at 96 f.p.s. I thought: I’d better
turn it off; but the control had broken
when the film snapped as I landed.
Then I was back to normal again: all
the guys were running up, and I was
trying to get out really quickly because
it was so good.”

Watching Norris do the stunt from
the roof of a near-by building, it
seemed as if it broke down into three
stages: the roar of the truck accelera-
ting towards the ramp, culminating in
a hideous clang as the front end hit the
ribbing; then silence (neon exploding is
a very small sound compared with
what had gone before — a sort of
‘Pouffl’, like a flash bulb bursting);
and finally, a massive rending sound,
as the truck came down and started to
disintegrate. Then there was another
five seconds, until the stunt team
reached the truck and helped Norris
out. Against everybody’s expectat[...]own or lean on some-
body’s shoulder: he jumped in the air,
waved his arms about and shouted.

All of which reinforces his point,
really: what he had done had been
worked out in advance, and had gone
almost exactly according to plan. The
only problem was that, coming down
20 feet further on than anticipated, the
truck had missed the Ned Kelly. Not
surprisingly, Norris was happy about

20 — March CINEMA PAPERS

the stunt. “I’m pretty hard on myself,
and everything I’ve done is in competi-
tion with myself. But, this time, I have
to be honest and say, ‘I don’t think it
could have gone much better’. Now we
know we can jumpathree—ton vehicle
that sort of distance, walk away and
get those sorts of shots. So, I can say
next time[...]ver next
time, Norris will certainly plan it just
as carefully and for just as long — not
just to prevent himself from getting
banged up and having to walk around
in an electric blanket, but because he,
like most modern stuntmen, needs the
profession to be respected for what it
is. “The main thing now,” he says, “is
to get people to see that we aren’t
yahoos. In the old days it used to be,
like: ‘We’ll do it and, whatever
happens, happens’. Now, for a shot
that’s taken $100,000, it’s got to be
exact. People say, ‘Oh, you’re crazy!’

A stuntman prepares: Norris works on the truck.

Well, there’s obviously a degree of that
somewhere, or we wouldn’t do it. But,
mainly, it’s all worked out first. The
whole trick is picking up your cheque,
having a good time spending it, and
being able to do it again the next day.
Anybody can do a stunt once.”

Nick Roddick 4

11'; B k’ MB
Gaobazge 31%

You can’t keep a

‘Good Man Down’

PE TROV
.'/.a’f.:’.’é'.’/

PBL Productions Pty Li[...]vans Enterprises Inc.
2nd Floor, 435 Kent Street. Sydney 2000 c/— Hal Roach Studios lnc., 1600, N. Fairfax Avcnuc,
Telephone: (02) 264 9222 Telex: AA75785 PBL PRO (SYDNEY) Los Angeles 90046 USA

Fax: (02) 264 5852[...]

L

— March CINEMA PAPERS

Theatre on film: Schepisi on the Iceman set with
Lindsay Crouse and (on the table) John Lone.
Left, Schepision the Plenty set with Tracey
Ullman and Meryl Streep.

Top left, Schepisi during the shoo[...]avid Stratton catches up with Fred Schepisi, back in Australia with
his much-praised new film, Plenty.[...]or six years.
The last time I interviewed him was in
mid-1979; still depressed at the commercial
failu[...]revious year, he had signed with 20th
Century-Fox to direct, in America, his own
original screenplay, Bittersweet Love.

Soon after our meeting, he sold his
Melbourne house and left for Los Angeles
with his family. I met up with him a few
times during the intervening years. I had
din[...]e one evening, soon after
Bittersweet Love (about a twice-married
man having an affair with a young woman)
had finally fallen through, mainly b[...]ection at the
top of the studio. We had dinner at a
Beverly Hills restaurant soon after Iceman
opened. And there’d been the odd meeting
in between. But now, with his most success-
ful film, Plenty, receiving good notices in
Britain and the US and about to open in
Australia, Schepisi was back at the
Melbourne office of Film House, working
on a TV commercial for an insurance
company.

“I stood there with Freddie
Fields, then head of MGM,
underlining the funny hits in
the script to show him it
was a comedy!”

He’s made three features in those six
years, and there have been more than twice
that many projects that have fallen through
for a variety of reasons. There was
Partners, a tap-dancing movie for Lorimar,
and The Mandolin Man, scripted by
Herman Raucher (Summer of ’42), to have
been'set in Sydney and to have starred
Olivia Newton-John. There was Double
Standards, also known as The Other Man,
a screenplay by Judith Ross which, Schepisi
says, “would have had an impact on this
age like The Moon is Blue had in the
fifties”. Even with three big names
committed to the project (Gene Hackman,
Roy Scheider, Ann-Margret), the film, a
sophisticated sex comedy,was rejected by
the majors as “too old”, and still didn’t get
off the ground when re—cast with William
Hurt and Karen Allen. “I had them,”
Schepisi says, barely concealing his
frustration, “but they still wouldn’t make
the bloody thing. I st[...]lds, then head of MGM, underlining the
funny bits in the script with a yellow pencil
to show him it was a comedy! I’m serious!
He couldn’t see how funny it might have
been.”

There was also Meet Me at the Melba, an
original screenplay by Schepisi set in
Atlanta in the thirties, about a repressed
man and a free-spirited woman. “Too
soft,” said[...]

“In Plenty, what is being
said is greatly affected by
where it’s being said. The
‘where’ is sometimes a
comment, sometimes a
counterpoint, but always an
essential character in its
own right”

The only one of these films that
eventually did get made, but not by
Schepisi, was Raggedy Man. Written by
William D.Witliff, this was a story about
a young wife who leaves her husband when
she sees him cheating her with another
woman, and tries living alone in a small
Texas town; the year is 1940. Wittliff had
seen Jimmie Blacksmith and, soon after
Bittersweet Love fell through, approached
Schepisi to work with him on the project.
Sally Field had been cast in the lead, but
she had director approval, too, and it took
an agonizingly long time for her to approve
Schepisi. Eventually, she bowed out, and
Sissy Spacek entered the picture, also with
direc[...]months with Witliff, re-
shaping the screenplay. In the end,
however, the studio, Universal, bowed to
Spacek’s wishes: her husband,Jack Fisk, an
art director with no previous directorial
experie[...]this major dis-
appointment which eventually led to
Schepisi’s first American film, Barbarosa
(1982[...]uced). This western saga, about the
friendship of a Texas farmboy and a
famous outlaw, had been offered to various
studios, including Universal. It eventual[...]istribution
through Associated Film Distributors, a
company set up to handle ITC and EMI
releases in the US. The leads were already
cast. “They inte[...]ewed
them," says Schepisi. He’d seen Gary
Busey in The Buddy Holly Story, and was
very excited about him. “I’d heard he was
difficult, but I didn’t know he’d be quite as
difficult as he turned out to be.” But there

24 — March CINEMA PAPERS

was instant ra[...]lson.
Schepisi worked (uncredited) on the script,
and shot the film “with a great crew” on
locations in Texas. That ‘great crew’
included Australian Ian Baker, who’d shot
both Schepisi’s earlier[...]blems were avoided because of the
Texas location, and Schepisi was relieved to
be working with his old friend and
collaborator. Baker would later shoot both
Iceman and Plenty and, says Schepisi, is
unequalled for balancing the quality of his
work[...]the budget.
Sneak previews of Barbarosa revealed a
few problems, exacerbated by the fact that
the distributor, AFD (“Another Friggin’
Disas[...]time. Eventually, distribution of the
film passed to Universal (where it had
already been rejected at script stage) and,
despite positive reviews, it was virtually
dumped. One of the elements in the film
Schepisi looks back on with most pride was
his own casting of veteran actor Gilbert
Roland as Don Braulio. “He was fantastic:

72 years old, and a consummate
professional.”
Despite the commercia[...]Barbarosa, Schepisi was offered other
scripts. “In Hollywood, if you make an
interesting film, whether it works or not,
they appreciate what you’ve done. If you
set out to make a commercial film and it
fails, then they jump all over you.” One of
the scripts was Iceman, written by Chip
Proser and John Drimmer, and picked up
by producer—director Norman Jewison, a
Canadian with many commercial successes
behind him, from In the Heat of the Night
to Fiddler on the Roof.

The intriguing story deals with the
discovery of a prehistoric man frozen in the
Arctic ice, then thawed out into the 20th
century, and one of Schepisi’s first
problems was to discover what kind of film
J ewison (who’d originally planned to direct
it himself) wanted to produce. Overall,
there was agreement between the[...]sh over the final cut.
Chief problem, though, was to cast an
actor for the central role. A French-
Tunisian boxer was considered, then a
karate champ, then a French-Canadian
from way up north in the Arctic. Finally,
Schepisi settled on John Lone, whose
training and experience had been
remarkably varied (the Peking opera,
method acting in New York). He was too
slight for the part; but, after special
training, he added weight and muscle, and
his extraordinary grace and agility made
him a memorable figure.

Critics were generally kind to Iceman
(though some compared it unfavourably to
Ken Russel1’s Altered States), but its
release, in mid-1984, through Universal,
was not very successful, and it has,
so far, not played in Britain. Almost
immediately, however, Schepisi was
offered the opportunity to direct his next
film, an adaptation of the very successful
David Hare play, Plenty. The circum-

“Meryl is clearly the premier
actress of hfelr generation on
I in”

stances are unusually interesting. Hare
himself had directed the original London
and Broadway productions, which starred
Kate Nelligan, and was actively preparing
to direct his own first feature, Wetherby.
But neither he nor his producer, Edward R.
Pressman, wanted a British director to
make the film. “They wanted someone not
restricted by the very inhibitions the story
was examining,” says Schepisi. The first
idea was to have an American, then Hare
suggested an Australian (“They’re sort of
like Americans”), and several were
considered. A screening for Hare of The
Devil’s Playground led to a meeting, and
Schepisi, who had seen the Broadway
production of the play and much admired
it, got the job (the final choice, he says, was
between him and George Roy Hill).

Kate Nelligan was seriously co[...]role of Susan Traherne,
through whose eyes we see a Britain
declining from the end of World War 11
un[...]The trouble, says
Schepisi, was the budget: Hare and
Pressman wanted to open out the play, to
give it greater scope and scale. “There was
great scale which was only hinted at on
stage; but it pervades the atmosphere.
What is being said is greatly affected by
where it’s being said. The ‘where’ is some-
times a comment, sometimes a counter-
point, but always an essential character in
its own right. If we did it with Kate, we’d
have been limited to a $6—7 million budget,
if the budget could have b[...]ith Meryl Streep, it was still terribly
difficult to get the money. Also, Kate’s
particular approach to the character could
have been tempered and changed, but
Meryl brings different qualities to the part.
She’s clearly the premier actress of her
generation on film, while Kate is becoming
the premier actress of her generation on
stage.”

As usual, Schepisi collaborated (without
credit) on[...]play. “I shocked
David by insisting he put more and more
dialogue back in the film. He kept saying,
‘Are you mad‘? Every director in the world
wants to take the dialogue out!’ But I said,
‘Believe me, it’ll work this way because,
short of re—writing it totally to express it all
visually, we should concentrate on the
language’. lt’s a beautiful language piece.
Butan American
actress in such a very English role. It
certainly helped that Streep had earlier been
accepted in an English role in The French
Lieutenant’s Woman. During th[...]

Ullman is known in America as a pop
star, in Britain as a regular on TV variety
shows; Sting, who plays Mick, is also still
better known as a singer than an actor. Put
them together with the 81-year-old John
Gielgud, and you have some interesting
interreactions. “Giel[...]“He gets angry
with himself when he gets tired and can’t
remember lines, but he didn’t hold us up.”

Schepisi was amused when one US critic
wrote that, although the film was “exactly
the same as the play” and “nothing major
had been changed”, yet “somehow it all
seems new”. In fact, about a third of the
material in the film is new, and the play has
also been restructured. “The whole play
was out of chronology,” says Schepisi. “It
was a set of ideas in random time place-
ments, so you accepted the time-jumps
backwards and forwards. In the film, we
always went forward, though sometimes
with long time-jumps, until the very end,
when we go back to the beginning again.”

The fact that Hare had completed
shooting Wetherby before Plenty started
“gave him a better understanding of what I
needed,” says Schepisi. “It made him
much more helpful as a writer. He never
interfered with the direction; we had an
extraordinary collaboration — very happy
indeed. We had excellent communication,
and we talked out our differences.
Sometimes he changed my ideas, sometimes
I changed his.”

“David and I had excellent
communication, anda bit cynical of
critics. and Plenty hasn’t changed that.
Molly Haskell, in her review, listed all the
things she liked about the film, and then
said the only thing she really disliked was
the blunt, overly physical direction. “But
almost everything she listed as liking came
about because of my input,” says Schepisi.
He’s also amused when a reviewer, like
Pam Cook in the Monthly Film Bulletin,
reviews the film without even mentioning
the director. “It’s a compliment in a way.”

And next? He plans to film a
“wonderful” Steve Tesich script for Fox
about rich but emotionally under-privileged
kids in Boston, and would also like to make
another film in Australia. He might
produce in Australia too, but his plans
aren’t fully formed as yet.

His six years away have certainly

changed his life. He has a new, American
wife, and a young family. He has survived
and even prospered in a very tough world.
He’s as cynical as ever, but maybe a shade
less naive. I wrote once that his films were
about people trapped in a situation from
which it’s hard to escape. That was true of
his Australian films, and turns out to have
been true of his three American films too:
Barbarosa, trapped in a pointless family
feud; the Iceman, trapped in a strange and
hostile world; Susan Traherne, trapped in a
stifling postwar Britain that offers little of
the ‘plenty’ she craves. But one feels that
Fred Schepisi himself has broken free of his
traps: he seems to be looking to the future
with cheerful confidence. at

The film[...]Short.

People Make Papers (1965) Docu-
menlary.

And One Was Gold (I965) Docu-

mentary.

Up and Over Down Under (1966)
Documentary.

Switch On (I[...]The Priest‘ 1973)
Production company: Producers and
Directors Guild of Australia/Prm
ducers: Christopher Muir and John B.
Murray/Scriptwriter: Thomas
Keneally/Cast: Robyn Nevin, Arthur
Dignam, Vivc-an Gray.

The Devil's Playground (1976)

Production[...]minutes.

Iceman (1984. USA) Production
company: A Norman Jewison-Patrick
Palmer Production/Producers:
Norman Jewison and Patrick
Palmer/Scriptwriters: Chip Proser and
John Drimmer/Cast: Timothy Hutton,
Lindsay Crouse[...]oduc-
tions for RKO/Producers: Edward R.
Pressman and Joseph Papp/Script-
writer: David Hare/Cost: Meryl
Strecp, Sam Neill, Charles Dance/124
minutes.

A woman not under the influence: Meryl Streep
in Plenty with (left to right) Nicholas Frankau,
Charles Dance and John Gielgud.

Q
Sam Neil as Lazar, with whom a wartime
encounter dominates Susan’s postwar life.

The war is over: Streep as Susan Traherne,

finding none of the plenty she craves in postwar

Britain.

Sting as Mick and Tracey Ullman as Alice: in the
play, Ullman’s part was “smaller and spottier",
says Schepisi.

CINEMA PAPERS M[...]

He is a devout coward who has always
wanted to be Errol Flynn. He has been set
on fire eight times, knocked down by a car
three times, gone through a windscreen
once, has climbed down the lift-shaft of the
Greater Union Building and (scared shit-
less) has climbed the Sydney Heads without
a rope. Though he is considered a ‘hired
gun’ both here and in Hollywood — the
Red Adair of the Australian film industry
—— he still believes it is a privilege just to be
making films.

Privilege or no, his films are certainly
prolific: since 1972, he has made ten
theatrical features and seven telemovies. He
is probably the only director in the world to
be represented at February’s American
Film Market in Los Angeles by no less than
three films, all completed in the past year:
Frog Dreaming, Jenny Kissed Me and
Dead-End Drive-In. The other remarkable
thing about the director (in the context of
Australian cinema) is that his films nearly
always make money. But, at 39, after
working for more than 20 years in films,
Brian Trenchard-Smith believes he is only
just beginning to get into his stride.

“There is,” he says, “something you
always get in a Trenchard-Smith movie:
pace, a strong visual sense, and what the
movie is actually about told to you very
persuasively. Whatever I do, I’ll still be
applying a sense of pace: trying to find
where the joke is, and trying to make the
film look a lot bigger than it cost.” In the

Action, horror, exploitation,
tearjerkers, kids’ pictures,
training films — not yet 40,
Brian Trenchard-Smith has made
them all. Brian Jones talks to
Austra|ia’s most prolific
filmmaker — and one of our
most commercially successful.

industry, he indeed has a reputation for
cost-consciousness — something which he
himself puts down to a sense of responsi-
bility to a film’s investors. It must also,
however, have something to do with his
long and extremely varied career

Although his ancestors are Australian,
Trenchard-Smith was brought up in Eng-
land, and made his first film while at school
there. “I was a leading light in the school
Arts Society,” he says. “And, somehow, I
was given the job of making a film, on
8mm, about a year in the life of the school.
When I left, I put the film under my arm
and showed it around until at last someone
said: ‘We’ve got a job for you’.” That
someone was the Central Electricity
Generating Board, and they wanted a film
about pylons. From there, Trenchard-
Smith became a cameraman with a French
news company in London, then moved to
Australia.

“Ten days after arriving,” he says, “I

got a job with Channel Ten. I happened to
walk in at the right time. They said: ‘Can

you do news?’ I said: ‘Is the Pope
catholic?’ and started straight away.
Eventually, I got into cutting station

promos, and that led into doing trailers for
features." He did something like 80 of
those and, in the meantime, worked up the
nerve to ask the channel to give him a pro-
ject to produce and direct. For them, he did
several films, including For Valor and The
Stuntman — his first real encounter with a
profession that was to come to fascinate
him, as well as to play an important role in
his films.

Leaving TV, Trenchard-Smith was
writer, producer, director and even actor in
his early films — highly successful, highly
com[...]idemic (1975),
The Man from Hong Kong (also 1975) and
Deathcheaters (1976). There was also a fire
safety film for Film Australia, Hospitals
Don’! Burn Down (1977) — the title is, of
course, ironic — to which he applied his
usual principles. The result was a highly
effective safety film that also, unusually,
recouped its costs out of commercial sales
overseas.

In 1978, Trenchard-Smith went to the
US, where he spent some time at the Disney
studios. “They gave me an office on the
corner of Mickey Avenue and Dopey Drive,
and I was instructed to write in the morn-

ing, then go and look at a few shots of The D

CINEMA PAPERS March — 27

Back in Australia, he worked with pro-
ducer Tom Broadbri[...]ommercially successful films, BMX
Bandits (1983), and became interested in a
project Broadbridge was unsuccessfully
trying to get up. It was Jenny Kissed Me,
which he describes as “a tearjerker for
men”. “I identified with the human
tragedy,” he says: “a father could come
home one day and find his partner and the
girl who had called him daddy for the past
six years suddenly gone.

“One important element in the film is
commitment to family and children, as
opposed to individual selfishness and the
fear of the loss of freedom. I was trying to
show that the narcissism of the seventies
can put a family into a private hell. The
seventies had a trade-it-in, throw-it-away
attitude towards relationships: if they don’t
work out, move on. Well, there’s a price to
pay for moving on when children are in-
volved: you can irrevocably damage their
lives. And I’m suggesting that, in Australia,
where there has been a 40% failure rate in
marriages, there has been a fairly flippant

“The seventies had a trade-it-in,
throw-it-away attitude towards
relationships: if they didn’t work,
move on”

attitude that hasn’t really been thought
through.”

The original screenplay for Jenny was by
Judith Colquhoun, but there was difficulty
in getting it funded. “I wanted to give the
story more style,” says Trenchard—Smith,
“make the characters more sophisticated
and the feeling more upmarket, more
accessible to a wider audience. Judith,
whom I greatly respect as a writer, was not
prepared to make the changes, so I got
Warwick Hind to do it to my specifications,
then I cut about six pages, rewrote a couple
of scenes in a very minor way, wrote two
new scenes of my own, and made the neces-
sary adjustments during shooting, when an
actor was uncomfortable with this or that
line.”

The result, in other words, is very much a
Brian Trenchard—Smith film. But the other
two of his current crop have had rather less
than ideal preparation periods for him —
less than a day in the case of Frog
Dreaming. “Everett De Roche, t[...]ch CINEMA PAPERS

Trenchard—Smith at work on Jenny Kissed Me —

something of a new departure for him. He calls
it a "male tearjerker’f

and Barbi Taylor, the producer, tracked me
down to a Japanese restaurant, where I was
eating after finishing an episode of Five
Mile Creek for television. They gave me a
script and said, ‘Can you start tomorrow?’