At the airport I said a gut-wrenching goodbye to my brother. We managed to keep it together, then Brian walked off and we both started crying as soon as we lost sight of each other. How do I know that? I just do.
Back home
I’d formed a working partnership with Kris Maric and Craig Kocinski called OzPix. I wanted to make a film I’d written called Passing Winds, a comedy–Western like a cross between Blazing Saddles and Crocodile Dundee. It would cost about $6 million to make, and I figured we should start with something much cheaper: a two-hander that was gritty, gutsy and cinematic. I didn’t care if it was two men or a man and a woman. It needed to take place in a room or a house, some sort of interior, hopefully at night so background was not a problem. The budget should be no more than a million.
Craig said, ‘Kris has got one.’
I immediately thought, Oh great, it’s not enough that she’s a brilliant producer; she thinks she can write, too. I said, ‘Gimme a look at it.’
She wouldn’t let me look at it until she’d done more work on it. I gave her two months, and four months later I got it. It was called StalkHer.
I read it and I texted her, ‘You bitch, you can write!’
Wolf Creek 2
After the investor pulled out, Wolf Creek 2 was delayed for another twelve months, going into pre-production in late October 2012. We started shooting in January 2013. The script was as good as we could get it, which was about the only good thing to come out of the delay.
In the first film we had to provide the set-up for Mick Taylor, who wasn’t let out of the cage until well into the film. In Wolf Creek 2 we didn’t have to introduce Mick, who was in the film from the get-go through to the end. There’s a lot more chase and therefore a lot more action. Mick chases the Pommie in the Jeep with his trusty blue Ford F100 truck, a Kenworth and a horse: a whole lotta crashin’ and bangin’ going on. Especially ploughing the Kenworth off a steep hill into the Jeep below. The best crash I’ve ever witnessed!
I said to Greg, ‘Mick’s an outlaw, a badass, an outback cowboy – we’ve gotta put him on a horse.’ I dragged Heath Harris out of retirement, and he didn’t disappoint. He provided the fire-breathing black horse for Mick to scorch after the poor Pommie trying to run away. Mick rounds him up, leaps off the horse and whips the shit out of him. I love crackin’ a whip. Heath gave me his usual punishing lessons on whip cracking. When Heath teaches you something everything hurts: your brain, your ego and most parts of your body.
After chasing the Pommie around, killing some cops and farmers, and removing the facial structure of a German backpacker couple, Mick takes the Pommie back to his underground lair. Inside the lair, the Pommie is tied to a barbers chair and subjected to one of Mick’s favourite games, an Australiana quiz, and if the Pommie gets a question wrong – uh-oh!
This was a stroke of brilliance from Greg McLean. We go from a full-on action film to a mini-play; we rehearsed it like a play. Greg’s got the kind of warped mind I love.
The big north
It comes as a surprise to people that I’ve had a lot of fun playing Mick, especially Wolf Creek 2. My character is playing a game he loves and he’s having a ball. If I’m not having a ball, I’m out of character. The others weren’t having a ball; they had to play victims, scared out of their brains, especially the great Ryan Corr. Ryan remained a freaked-out Pommie for weeks; it was relentless, he didn’t take one tiny step backwards. He maintained the rage all the way. Ryan is going to make the big time and when he does, he’d better remember me, the little turd.
Rosa and Zadia joined me in the last couple of weeks. I’m not the best person to be around when I’m playing Mick – I tend to be a little bit too Aussie, brash and rude – so I didn’t have a lot of visitors. My mate Johnny Caravan came down from Queensland to watch the Kenworth crash; he thought all his birthdays had come at once.
Rosa and Zadia enjoyed themselves. We went to the property used for the school in Picnic at Hanging Rock, just outside of Clare. The majestic building is now a guesthouse. It felt a little unnerving coming back to it after nearly forty years. We went on to Burra, where we shot the tunnel sequences. Rosa’s sensitive to dust and there was plenty of it. It made her feel off-colour, which put a bit of a dampener on her visit. After that the show was over. Goodbye, Mick; hello, Sydney. Back to the real world.
Shortly after returning home, I picked up a nice little gig in Cairns, a corporate doco about the efficient use of electricity in the home. It was an opportunity to have a working holiday back in the big north. Rosa joined me towards the end of the gig, and we caught up with Nial, Sal, Max and Ray in Cairns. Rosa hadn’t seen them for years. Sal took Rosa to the local tourist spots including Kuranda in the Tablelands, then we all got together for a seafood meal down at the waterfront. We have a lot of history together: we’d honeymooned at Nial and Sal’s back in 1973, and Rosa had stayed with Max and Herb when I was doing The Great McCarthy in 1974. It was a wonderful night and very pleasant for Rosa to reconnect.
We rented a car and took a road trip from Cairns to Townsville. It’s a four-hour drive passing through the greenest part of Australia. The ocean views and the rainforested mountains hugging the coast are breathtaking. My favourite section is past Hinchinbrook, a large mountainous island with a narrow waterway between it and the coast road. The majesty of this green colossus can be enjoyed for many miles: the island is 40 kilometres long, north to south.
Another highlight of this trip was taking Rosa back to Silkwood, the town where her father was a cane cutter. She hadn’t been there since she was five years old, fifty-six years earlier. It’s a small town about 30 kilometres from Innisfail, with a few streets of old Queenslander houses, two or three shops, closed many years ago, a disused cinema, a primary school and a thriving pub. We found Rosa’s humble little family home, a tiny cottage. Rosa exclaimed, ‘Thank you, God, for the move to Epping.’
Rosa and her sister went to a Catholic school in Epping and were taught English by some rather refined nuns, so they have a moderate, refined Australian accent. I joke about what Rosa’s accent would have been like if she’d stayed in Silkwood and got a job in the pub. If I had met her there thirty years ago, what would she have been like? ‘Hey, you’re Johnny Jarratt, aren’t cha? I’ve seen youse on the TV. Wad are ya doin’ ’ere? Doncha live in Hollywood or somethin’? You wanna beer? What’s ya poison, darl?’ I can’t imagine it.
We kicked on to Townsville and I took Rosa out to my house at Pallarenda, my high school and up Castle Hill for a panoramic view of the city and out to sea. We could see our next destination, Magnetic Island, where we were heading for three days. I could feel my body fall into a beautiful relaxed mood as we approached this wondrous place on the ferry.
Herb was at Nelly Bay wharf to greet us. He and Nell had moved to the island permanently in 2011. Ah, the tropics. Off to lunch at Horseshoe Bay, back for a swim at Arcadia and dinner at Peppers in Nelly Bay looking over the warm Coral Sea subtly lit by a yellow moon, God’s lantern in the sky. The next day Herb drove us down a rugged track in his 4WD Merc to Florence Bay, a beautiful beach between Horseshoe and Arcadia that had somehow been saved from development, an untouched piece of paradise. If Sydney was close to Magnetic Island my life would be near perfect.
Venice Film Festival
From my coastal paradise to Rosa’s. Wolf Creek 2, fresh out of post-production, was selected for the Venice Film Festival, one of the majors. We had the coveted horror-genre midnight screening. Why was this was huge? Because film festivals primarily screen new works; it is very rare for a sequel to be chosen. We were met at the Venice airport and taken by water taxi to the Lido, the home of the festival. We passed through the Grand Canal, its historical buildings strangely rising, as if floating out of the water.
We were both feeling warmly nostalgic. Our last visit to Venice had been in 1975, when I was twenty-three and Rosa twenty-one, one of our most romantic experiences. It was a fitting place for our return to Italy thir
ty-eight years later. Rosa loves the art, the architecture, the people and the shops; my love is for the art, the architecture, the people and…that’s about it. We walked the streets and the little walkways until our legs turned to jelly, then went back to our cosy hotel to put our sore feet up.
The premiere was a grand affair. We were in the main theatre and had an almost full house. George Clooney had walked the same carpet the night before to present Gravity. Wolf Creek 2 was met with enthusiasm. As we made our way out of the theatre at around 2 p.m. we were greeted by hundreds of fans from all over Europe, mainly Italians. I was blown away. Many of them had printed my photo off the net. Greg and I had to stop signing after about an hour; we couldn’t get through them all.
StalkHer
We hit the ground running when we got home. After a two-year struggle, the OzPix team had managed to finally come up with the finance to make StalkHer.
We’d worked very hard on all fronts to get this film ready. It’s a complex, wordy screenplay that takes many emotional directions. We’d workshopped the script with not only the cast, the writer and the cinematographer, but also with friends from the biz we’d invited to give their opinions. It was a very thorough process.
Kris and Craig had the production under control and the budget allocated. Kris had an in with the fabulous Lynne Benzie, who was in charge of the show at Village Studios. Village is very supportive of independent Australian films, and it distributed Wolf Creek and Wolf Creek 2. Lynne looked after us and made it possible to hire Studio 2, just down from Studio 6 where Angelina Jolie was, like me, directing her first film. Coincidentally, at the same time Russell Crowe was directing his first film, The Water Diviner.
We went into pre-production in November/December 2013. Because my character is tied to a chair for 90 per cent of the film, I was going to be literally restricted in my directing. The upside was that the scenario is two people in a house on one night, so we could rehearse it like a play, giving me the rare opportunity to work out the entire film. I was lucky to have Kaarin Fairfax, as co-director and lead actress, for a few reasons: one, she’s a great actress and she could more than handle this difficult character; two, we’re old mates so we get along; and three, she’d stepped away from film work and concentrated on theatre so she could be there for her two daughters. Not only is she a very experienced theatre actor, she’s also directed a lot of theatre. Her input into StalkHer was invaluable in shaping the performances and we were both tough on each other to get it right. Consequently, she has a co-director credit in the film.
We had one more week of pre-production before the shoot. Because we only had one location (most films have thirty or forty), most of the crew were able to watch a full run of the film like a play, which enabled every department to see what they had to do for every scene. We also put a camera in high and wide so that we could watch the entire film back. In essence, I pre-directed the film, which made it a little easier to direct it while tied to a chair.
So why did I direct this film? We were running through the budget and when we came to ‘director’, I said, ‘We’re paying the director that much, we can’t afford that. I’ll direct it.’
What a tough gig I’d given myself. I’d start every day of the five-week shoot at 6 a.m., when Baba, my first AD, would pick me up. On the drive we’d go through the day’s work and what we hoped to achieve. When we arrived, I entered the back of the production office and put on my wardrobe (character’s clothes). In the production office, everyone would be trying to talk to me at once while I was standing there trying to put fires out. Next up would be half an hour in make-up, bliss, with Suzy ‘Black Bitch’ Steele, the funniest make-up artist on earth (and probably the most gorgeous elder make-up artist on earth). She’d have me in stitches. Kaarin would tell Suzy and me to shut up and run the lines. On set for the rest of the day I’d be trying to direct, remember lines and be convincing. At the end of the day I’d return to the production office to put out fires for an hour or so. I’d head home with Baba, work out the next day, get out of the car, grab Baba by the hand and we’d say in unison, ‘We are the white knights,’ I dunno why, Baba liked it and it sounded positive.
I was sharing my apartment with Zadia, who went to and from set with the make-up girls. Zadia has a passion for film and she works on the production side of things. She was amazingly helpful. I think I would have caved in without her.
Every night while she prepared me a meal I’d review the next day’s work from a director’s point of view, then I’d go through my lines over dinner. Every day there was a heap of them. After the meal, Kaarin would come up and we’d go through the lines together. Sometimes I needed to get outside, so we’d sit on a bench on the esplanade out the front and whisper the lines, so the passing parade wouldn’t think we were mad. At about ten or ten-thirty I’d hit the bed like a bag of cement. I did that five days a week for five weeks.
On Saturdays, I’d look through the following week’s work, both as the director and to learn my own lines. On Sunday mornings Kaarin, Baba and I would go to the studio and rehearse the entire following week’s work for a few hours. On Sunday afternoon I’d do nothing, then on Sunday night I’d go through the next day’s work and learn lines.
I have never worked so hard in my entire life. I think it was well worth it. We have a gutsy, gritty, intelligent comedy–thriller on our hands, something unique. Most people don’t work out what’s happening in the story until about 90 per cent of the way through.
Wolf Creek 2 premiere
Village Roadshow pulled out all the stops for the Wolf Creek 2 premiere. I did the usual and talked to every media outlet in Australia: internet, TV, radio and print. My mug was everywhere on buses, bus shelters and billboards.
There were premieres all over the country at drive-ins. Audiences loved it. Most felt a little uneasy sitting in the dark in their cars, expecting Mick to start banging a severed head on the roof.
The overriding response was that people loved it as much as the first film. I personally like the second one best, because it has more action and a few laughs in amongst the horror. So how was the highest-grossing Australian movie of 2014 treated? Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton, the supreme supporters of Australian film for twenty-eight years, the champions against censorship, censored our film by refusing to review it on TV. (Stratton did write a review in which he called it ‘horror porn’, so it seems I’m a porn star.) They could have given it minus 1 star, which would have been great publicity for us. Don’t get me wrong, the publicity we got from them not reviewing was fantastic and for that we were grateful, but even porn stars like me have principles and it’s the principle of the thing.
The AACTAs (the new name for the AFIs – I know, we’ve all tried, they won’t change it) is Australia’s local film awards night. How many nominations did the highest-grossing Australian movie in 2014 get? None, nothin’, zilch. You’ve gotta laugh, otherwise you might throw up. At least they’re consistent. In 2005 Wolf Creek was the most successful film in ten years, but did I get nominated? No.
Father of the bride
‘No matter what, this girl will always call me Dad.’ And Dad walked with his Ebony on his arm down the aisle to Daniel, her husband-to-be. It was one of the proudest moments of my life. I’m a long way off being the best dad around, but I’d made it with my Ebony, the toughest call of the many tough calls of my life. How do you become a father if you’re not even there for the pregnancy? If you’ve got any kind of will in you, that’s where you put most of it, into your kids.
Zadia, the wedding planner and matron of honour (I loved calling her ‘matron’ that day) did a spectacular job. She found the location, Ellington Park in Balmain, an elegant park shaded by massive Moreton Bay figs sweeping down a slope to meet Sydney Harbour. The ceremony was held in a gazebo. Ebony arrived in a classic fifties Chevy (her choice, my acquisition). This stunning, dark creature in an exceptional white wedding dress was my sensational daughter, followed out of the car by th
e equally sensational Zadia. Also there to meet them were my strapping, handsome sons, Charlie and William, in their groovy suits and stupid haircuts. Their mini-mes, Jackson and Riley, looked like little gentlemen in their dapper suits. And the flower on this genetic cake? Jasmine, my gorgeous granddaughter, the flower girl. I sang to her,
I love the flower girl,
Oh, I don’t know just why
She simply caught my eye
Down the path we all walked towards the nervously waiting, anticipating groom. It seemed like yesterday that I’d felt the same with Rosa. I handed my beautiful girl into the trusting hands of her husband-to-be and moved across to Rosa, who had tears in her eyes spilling from the flood of love for her daughter.
We adjourned to the reception room of the rowing club at the bottom of the park, which we’d decorated with white fabric, floral displays and fairy lights. The tables were placed in a U shape with the dance floor in the middle. Charlie MC’d with his charm, wit and un-PC humour, putting us all in the mood for a right good time. Charlie and I sang an ‘Over the Rainbow’ duet, William sang an original, Baz sang ‘Moondance’ and Jackson sang ‘Count on Me’ by Bruno Mars. Riley was a little shy on the night. My four boys can all sing and play instruments brilliantly. What a great wedding! I don’t like weddings much, but it’s different when you’re the father of the bride.
The football finds a film
I went with Davo to watch our beloved South Sydney Rabbitohs give it to Manly at Gosford. Directly in front of us was a highly excited gung-ho Souths supporter. He was a Down syndrome man of about thirty, there with his mum, who looked to be in her early seventies. The guy was such a pleasure to be with. When Souths scored he’d jump up and down, yahooing at the top of his lungs and high-fiving with Dave and me. I thought to myself, What would happen if his mum passed away and he had no one, no siblings, other family or friends for him to go to. How would he cope? Thus the germ of an idea for my next film, Who Cares, Sal?, came into being.
The Bastard from the Bush: An Australian Life Page 37