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I was very much looking forward to meeting ‘butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth’ screen darling Naomi Watts. So intent to IMPRESS and not to be late to set again I took Miss Watts on a detour on Rottnest’s freshly bitumen roads. Later… I was told to avoid the pub or I would be ‘taken care of’ by the death metal inspired road workers whose work I had destroyed.
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Thank God there’s nothing a carton of beer can’t fix!
Needless to say, Ms. Watts was extremely friendly and she and Jackie McKenzie shared jokes that would make a fisherman blush. Not at all what I expected from the girl who turned Tom Cruise down for a lamb roast!
This was my first experience on a large lavish film set. A rare occurrence for WA. Funded by four unknown Arab producers we never met. The million dollar house constructed purely for the film was transported from Rottnest and lives still in Bicton.
Since then I’ve directed over 100 television commercials many of which you would know RAC, Browne's Coffee Chill, BHP, West Coast Eagles to name a few. I have done work for many philanthropic organisations such as Parkerville and Helping Minds. I have directed all of Danny Green’s Coward’s Punch campaign and the latest ‘think mental health’ ads.
Currently, I have 4 feature films in development and I am heading off next month to Queensland to direct a film entitled ‘The Great White.’
So that’s a little of my background but what I wanted to talk to you about is my passion behind the film. My driving purpose and how organisations like Rotary can become a part of the action.
So how does one get into the film industry? It would be true to say that it’s no parents dream for their child to go into the entertainment business. From its renowned instability to the incredibly small percentage rate of success.
It’s an industry of people associated with pipe dreams and fantasy, often seen as a glamorous and unrealistic ambition.
Therefore it can be hard for someone to grasp that film making itself is a TRADE. The set often looks more like a building site than a glamour scene. Shooting days are likely in excess of 12 hours, there are a million variables of light, sound and weather to contend with and all this is before you throw in the emotional dynamics of actors egos.
Like many project driven jobs commencing work is a product of many months and often years of preparation. All of this UNPAID until the first day of shooting. In the lead up to production, there are absolutely no guarantees. Governments can pull support for projects due to politics, finance plans can topple when a key actor pulls out. In truth, the reality of the film industry is even tougher than people think.
So why in God’s name would anyone go into it?
You will find you get the same answer from nearly everyone you ask.
It’s not a career ‘choice’ or for that matter a choice at all. It’s a CALLING.
Something that speaks directly to your heart.
I was 5 years old when I fell in love with film. It was the Magnificent 7 and it’s still my favourite movie. The hairs on the back of neck stood up as the rousing Elmer Bernstein score boomed out from our little black and white TV.
I was a pretty good footballer in my time. And…. like many of the, I’m sure ‘almost legends’ in this room, I like to think I would have made it if it wasn’t for injury!
Following the collapse of my AFL aspirations, I wound up studying commerce at University.
I was an average student until I took a course in film and got my FIRST A.
Unfortunately, my early 20’s was hindered by a bout of chronic fatigue. However, it was my passion for that film course that carried me through it. I would study in my bed and still managed to finish my degree.
It’s a calling you can’t ignore/ and mark my words if you do, you run the risk of feeling miserable for the rest of your life.
For once you have heard the call to film, it never goes away. No matter what amount of money you can make elsewhere.
The many times you will walk into a room with extremely successful people and yet you speak of making a film and a childlike sense of wonder and longing wells up in their eyes.
To live not doing your passion is not really living at all.
I was lucky enough to have parents that understood that. They were always incredibly supportive of me following my passion.
In fact, it was my mother who gave me a book by Professor Joseph Campbell whose philosophy inspired me. Campbell saw the greatest human transgression was “the sin of inadvertence, of not being alert, not quite awake.” The kind of life where you stumble through never knowing really who you are or what you are supposed to be.
Director George Lucas based the famous Star Wars series on Joseph Campbell’s book The Hero with 1000 Faces. When I found myself depressed in my Chronic Fatigue, Campbell put a sympathetic ear to my soul’s cry. To find the courage follow my passion.
He is famously quoted:
"If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.”
However when it comes to knowing your path.
"Many are called, but few are chosen."
And it’s that tension that everyone in the industry can attest to.
There have been seasons in my life of great success and solid work and then moments of horrific waiting, powerless whilst your next project and paycheck hang in the balance of things beyond your control.
Life has a way of reminding your ego there is a world beyond what you yourself can change. Moments that keep you humble and grateful if you let them.
In 2001 I was at the Boston film festival with my film ‘Wait til Your Father gets Home.’
I was set to fly to LA the next day but instead had a FEELING I should change my flight. For months I was booked to fly on the plane that ended up hitting the second of the twin towers on September 11.
I have kept the original ticket as a reminder it wasn’t my time and that I must be grateful and mindful of the life that I have been given.
I returned from LA determined to invest in the West Australian film industry…. Which until recently has been the Antarctica of the film and television world.
I have been asked many times why haven’t I moved?
Once again like going into film one has NO logical answer. Simply it’s where my heart is. There is so much talent and potential in WA from the many genius people we end up exporting to the EPIC and AWE inspiring landscape. I have encountered many industry people holding a misguided view that Eastern States creatives are somehow more advanced or capable than Western Australians. That somehow our somewhat geographic isolation means we are the ‘bush league’ of the entertainment business.
All it takes is VISION to change that.
Who would have thought 20 years ago sleepy little Wellington in New Zealand would be such a world-class film hub?
Peter Jackson and Lord of the Rings changed that.
WAAPA draws the best artists in the country to train but we have had next to nothing to keep them here after they graduate. WA yet has so much potential for film we are blessed with long sunny days, ideal for shooting, multiple vast unique landscapes and our proximity to Asia puts us next to the world’s largest emerging market.
My loyalty to WA appears to be finally paying off and in the next couple of years, we are set to see an explosion of projects being filmed here.
As I’ve learnt from the last 20 years who you work with can make or break a project. Loyalty is an interesting quality in the film industry. Many will tell you it simply doesn’t pay.
There are many times when I would work overtime, do low budgets, often use my own resources. You invest so much time and sadly that investment is often undervalued and overlooked. When the next TV commercial comes along with a bigger budget it often goes to another Director from the Eastern States. This rubs salt into the wound. WA has to get over its own cultural cringe and believe in its local industry. The only way to do that is build from WA to showcase what we can do. That is why I did my Samsung TVC, to show we can do epic scope productions here.
Joseph Campbell is most famously remembered for the paraphrased quote: “Follow your bliss.”
His philosophy has often been misunderstood to mean if you are following your bliss things should be EASY or without conflict. So much was this NOT his intention later in his life he stated that he should have said: “Follow your blisters.”
I don’t know if any of you have attempted to learn the guitar, I haven’t. If you have I am told at first the strings actually CUT into your fingers. That is of course until the tips blister, callous and become numb to the pain. I find it strange to think of playing the guitar as causing pain but it makes sense. You have to follow those blisters to create music.
It was Oscar Wilde who reframed Aristotle’s quote - he asserted:
“Life imitates art far more than art imitates life”.
Which speaks to films’ capacity to redefine and shape culture….
I am sure I have this in common with many of the people here this morning. We ask ourselves what will be our legacy? What will we leave our children? Will we have left a mark on the world?
Film is often the way we remember entire periods of history. Generations of school children will remember the Anzacs through the eyes Mel Gibson in my favourite Aussie film Gallipoli.
For me, the ’60s are defined by the film icons I admired. The cool machismo of the anti-hero, characters played by Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, Yul Brynner, Lee Marvin and James Coburn. Movies that defined the anti-establishment sentiments of the time - The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, Cool Hand Luke and The Professionals.
As a filmmaker, you have a wonderful opportunity to pose questions rather than preach to an audience. To give life and dimension to characters and stories that people wouldn’t see in their own life.
The essential democratic right of free speech gives artists freedom to create material to challenge authority. Film is a powerful tool in holding power to account. It is, therefore, one of the mediums a dictatorship will not only seek to censor but bastardise to propagate an ideology.
The most well-known example is in Nazi Germany. Released under the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, films were commissioned under Joseph Goebbels. These films helped shape a nation to have an anti-semitic and elitist view of the world. There is huge power in media and with much power comes much responsibility.
This is something I take into consideration when I approach MY work. Having started my career in advertising and commercial film. I now find myself moving to work with causes that I believe in.
My brother suffers from Schizophrenia and my father Keith who retired from politics is a hugely influential advocate for mental health. In 2013, at age 75, he called for a royal commission into WA’s mental health sector. He did this after a spate of suicides at the Alma Street Clinic in Fremantle, this led to a coronial inquiry.
Changing Legislation is so important in creating opportunity and equality…. BUT changing hearts and minds legislation cannot do. This is where art can yield its greatest results.
I am stunned still in my own life how ill-informed well-educated and compassionate people are about mental health. I have a photograph of my brother on my fridge and multiple people have commented on the so-called ‘look’ on his face. It actually took me by surprise but made me realise most people’s information about mental illness has come from film. In films, people with mental illnesses are almost always the villain and they are characterised as violent and scary.
I have worked on TV campaigns for the mental health commission, but these have mostly been centred around depression and anxiety.
This is why I am passionate about a new series I am working on entitled ‘Fuse’. Currently, we are putting together a series based on 7 characters with complex mental health issues. This project is a deep dive into the unflinching struggles of people with mental illness. It’s a beautiful and delicate look at how THEY see the world. There is much light and joy to be had not in spite of but through their suffering.
We believe this project is important and will have genuine SOCIAL IMPACT. My team is proud to be partnering with Helping Minds, whose CEO Debbie Child’s herself a member of Rotary and has graciously joined us here tonight. Helping Minds have invested 168,000 and we are actively seeking partners to match their contribution to achieve our target budget of 500,000.
All contributions to the project can be officially denoted through The Australian Cultural Fund, allowing individual and foundations to make use of tax deductions.
My brother goes to the movies once a week, he lives for that experience. It will be my joy to create something that he and other people suffering can see themselves reflected in. Something that humanises rather than demonises them. The research shows people with mental health issues are far more likely to be a victim of violence rather than its perpetrator. Yet many of them are not victims at all… they are Heroes. Heroes often for simply getting out of bed and facing the world.
The ABC, SBS and Screen Australia are committed to seeing these heroes represented on the screen. Although FUSE is a web series the intention is to develop the project into a long-form TV series. This will allow for international exposure to help contribute to a much needed cultural shift in perception. We will be filming on location at UWA and would love the support of Dalkeith Rotary or any individual Rotarians who share a passion for mental health and want to support the project.
One of the questions that is continually asked in and out of the industry: Is there a future for feature film?
As content is moving to ‘on-demand’ platforms like Netflix, Stan and Foxtel, are people still interested in going out to the movies?
Serialised content allows viewers maximum control and writers a larger scope to develop stories. This being the trend why do we still make film and why should we?
People talk of ‘binge-watching TV’ because in truth it can be consumed like fast food. And like fast food, is it likely to be an experience we remember? Or talk about? Maybe sometimes… if its groundbreaking but there is something about the power of film, about having to leave your house to go and sit in that dark room with no distractions. It’s a date, an outing, an experience to have with a dear friend or loved one. The fact that you often have dinner afterwards and discuss a movie in the car ride home.
It’s a communal experience, laughing or crying together reminds us of our humanity. That whatever social or political differences we have, our communal humanity is far more important.
I think all of us here would like our legacy to be something lasting. It would be an honour to think anything I did creatively stood the test of time but in truth, the real legacy is never work or money or buildings. It’s people. I would love to be remembered as someone who built up the WA film industry, that I stayed to true to the course when I could have left and that I invested into people that I loved to work with.
Debbie and I would love to talk you about getting involved in FUSE. I am looking forward to sticking around and having a chat with anyone that loves films or has questions about getting involved in the industry. There is always a way of becoming personally involved or knowing best how to support your children or your grandchildren in following their bliss.
To encourage the next generation is the greatest legacy any of us could hope for.
