KATE: [to the audience] Frankly, no. Colin does his best to appear confident, but just under that prickly surface is a monumental insecurity and an almost childlike desire to please. If I hadn’t been round to rescue him from the hucksters and operators, his career up to now would’ve been a disaster.
They exit. MIKE enters with his girlfriend HELEN. She’s a lot younger than he and is smart, engaging, buoyant and very sexy.
MIKE: Met Colin Rogers today.
HELEN: [impressed] Really?
MIKE: Had a long chat.
HELEN: Where’d you meet him?
MIKE: Film Commission.
HELEN: Did you just walk up to him?
MIKE: What am I supposed to do? Crawl on my hands and knees?
HELEN: [shrugging] I would’ve been a bit nervous.
MIKE: He’s just a working writer like I am.
HELEN: You haven’t had eight of your screenplays shot.
MIKE: His era’s over. The public wants excitement when they go to the cinema. Action, adventure—not a bunch of middle-class wankers chatting about their problems.
HELEN: Hate action flicks.
MIKE: Hate action flicks? Cinema is action.
HELEN: I occasionally like to exercise my mind.
MIKE: You want to exercise your mind—go and read philosophy. [To the audience] Apart from a tendency to worship anything that smelt of Culture with a capital C, who could fault her? I still look at her and can’t believe it’s me who gets into bed with her every night. I get erections when I hear her on the phone. I watch her talking to other men and wonder how they can keep their hands off her. And she’s funny. And she’s smart. And when we screw she goes ‘Mmm, mmm, mmm’, like she’s eating zabaglione, and when she comes she shakes like a jet hitting turbulence. [He pauses slightly and gives a worried frown.] I’m not putting this all that sensitively. What I’m trying to say is that if what I feel for her isn’t love, then it’s pretty bloody close.
HELEN: What was he like?
MIKE: Boring.
HELEN: I’d like to meet him.
MIKE: He’s boring.
HELEN: I’d still like to meet him.
MIKE: [shaking his head in disgust] The power of the media. Just because you’ve read in some women’s magazine that he sleeps in red pyjamas—
HELEN: [interrupting] In the nude. He sleeps in the nude.
MIKE: So do I, but it never seems to get you excited.
HELEN: You’re not famous.
MIKE: I’ll be more famous one day than he is.
HELEN: You get famous, I’ll get excited.
MIKE: People come from nowhere in this industry. You can make it on the basis of a three-line synopsis written on the back of a coffee chit.
HELEN: [mischievously rather than cuttingly] If that’s all it takes, why has it taken you so long?
MIKE: Because everyone wants tomorrow’s projects, but they won’t look at anything unless it’s got one of yesterday’s names attached.
MIKE stares across at COLIN as he walks onstage. The name from yesterday he intends to attach. He leaves the stage with HELEN as COLIN paces up and down waiting for the phone to ring.
COLIN: [to the audience] I gave Elaine the best outline I’d ever written. Three weeks later she still hadn’t phoned. For the first week I put it down to the fact that her five-hour lunches didn’t leave her with much time, or in any condition to absorb new material. The sheer rudeness of her silence was unforgivable.
COLIN paces up and down, makes a decision, reaches for his coat and storms out the door. He arrives at Elaine’s office. He appears outwardly calm but clenches his right fist and taps his right foot, his characteristic sign that he’s distressed. ELAINE looks up.
ELAINE: Colin.
COLIN: Just passing by. Thought I’d drop in and say hello.
ELAINE: How nice.
She knows what he’s here for, but pretends she doesn’t. There’s an awkward pause.
COLIN: Busy?
ELAINE: Yes, I am.
COLIN: Money’ll be hard to find this year.
ELAINE: Good projects always find their money.
She wants to avoid discussing the outline. She tries to look as if she’s desperate to start work again, but COLIN stands there shuffling, clenching and looking agitated and uncomfortable.
[With noticeable reluctance] Would you like some coffee?
COLIN: No, I’d better go.
He’s extremely reluctant to go, but having said it he has to finally turn and make for the door. He summons up his courage and turns back.
[Tensely] Oh, by the way. Did you get a chance to glance at my outline?
ELAINE: Your outline. Yes. Just a quick glance.
COLIN: [quickly] It’s very rough.
ELAINE: [nodding] It’s interesting. I was expecting something contemporary.
COLIN: [quickly] Were you? Why was that?
ELAINE: Everything else you’ve done has been contemporary, so I didn’t think the assumption was unreasonable.
COLIN: I wanted to move away from contemporary. People have been suggesting that it’s all I can do.
ELAINE: What people?
COLIN: Critics, friends.
ELAINE: Never let critics force you into areas you don’t want to go.
COLIN: I did want to go. It’s a story that’s important to me.
ELAINE: Coastwatchers?
COLIN: My uncle was one during the war.
ELAINE: My aunt wrapped Red Cross parcels, but cinema hasn’t suffered irreparably because her story remains untold.
COLIN: [upset] They were incredibly brave. They saved this country from invasion.
ELAINE: Do you think it’ll have wide appeal?
COLIN: Absolutely.
ELAINE: [with a false smile] Let’s have lunch next week and talk about it.
COLIN: You don’t think it’ll have wide appeal?
ELAINE: Let’s have lunch and talk about it next week.
COLIN: [in an impassioned outburst] Elaine, these men were incredibly brave. Didn’t you feel at least slightly moved by what you read in that outline? When’s the last time you saw anyone in today’s society risking their lives for their fellow countrymen. These men were heroes. Old-fashioned, genuine heroes. Can’t we make films about heroes anymore?
The phone rings. ELAINE looks immensely grateful. She picks it up, puts her hand over the mouthpiece and turns to him.
ELAINE: I’ll read it again and ring you.
She turns her attention to the phone.
Ross Productions. Carmel. I’m so sorry, I’ve been meaning to call.
COLIN clenches his fist. Now he’s finally burst forth he wants to continue the debate, but as he watches ELAINE nod and smile into the phone, he realises he’s not going to have a chance. He turns and leaves. MIKE walks onstage. COLIN picks up an outline and reads to himself.
MIKE: [addressing the audience] I had to pitch and hook him. No second chance. Deep down I knew he was yesterday’s man and I was the future, but not so deep down, all that media hype about him over the years impressed me against my will. He was such an arrogant prick he’d make anyone nervous. He stood staring at me as if I’m a wood grub and he’s a red gum. I took three indigestion tablets and it still didn’t stop the flames in my gullet and the fire in my gut. I remember thinking as I swallowed them, ‘Why are you doing this? What are you trying to prove?’ I knew the answer before I’d finished asking the question. I was trying to prove to every bastard who’s ever laughed at me behind my back, sneered at the mention of my name, or sacked me, that despite a less than glorious career in insurance, real estate, sales, advertising, burglar alarms and pigs, I was a top talent waiting for the right time and the right game and I’d found it. And every time I thought of Helen it made me even more desperate to succeed. I won her on a promise of future greatness and time was running out. I couldn’t exist without her. No way. So there I was, wood grub to the red gum, needing him to say ‘yes’ because none of those mis
erable merchant bankers are ever going to trust a script with my name on the front even if they love it, their wives love it, their secretaries love it and it gives off the odour of dollars. With Colin Rogers’ name on it, my career is launched.
MIKE turns to COLIN. COLIN puts down Mike’s outline and regards him with bemused disdain. Not quite red gum to the wood grub, but COLIN’s manner does indicate that he feels comfortably superior to him.
COLIN: Certainly full of action.
MIKE: Based on fact.
COLIN: Really?
MIKE: Absolutely.
COLIN: Shootouts?
MIKE: Anything goes up in the Gulf. It’s like the wild west.
COLIN: Next time I eat a prawn I’ll appreciate the drama behind it.
MIKE: Structure’s neat. Notice how when the seventeen-year-old spunk is hired as cook, she focusses all the tensions?
COLIN: Yes. What are you going to call it? Prawn Wars?
MIKE: [with a forced laugh] Night Boats.
COLIN: Night Boats.
MIKE: Nothing’s set in concrete. The girl doesn’t have to be swallowed by the crocodile.
COLIN: Saves her having to choose between the men.
MIKE: How do you feel about the overall concept?
COLIN: Sounds highly commercial.
MIKE: Absolutely. Would you like to co-write it? You’d get first credit of course, and we’d produce it ourselves so that we make some money, and keep control. No slow pans over Gulf sunsets, and no Jack Thompson and Bryan Brown. The only bit of decent casting in an Australian movie was the horse in Phar Lap.
COLIN: [bristling] I think the casting in my movies has been quite good.
MIKE: Who thought of Stewart Egan as the lead in Days of Wine and Whitlam?
COLIN: Elaine Ross.
MIKE: [nodding knowingly] Stewart Egan looks okay on rock clips, but he was a disaster on film.
COLIN: [coldly] I didn’t think he was bad.
MIKE: Producers who cast names instead of good actors and think it’ll earn them megabucks, don’t know the business they’re in. Egan might’ve been a big rock star, but the public know he can’t act, so they stayed away in droves.
COLIN: [coldly] Stayed away in droves?
MIKE: I know it made its money back.
COLIN: It made a healthy profit.
MIKE: It could’ve made a massive profit. It was a great screenplay. Didn’t it win the best screenplay at…?
COLIN: Berlin.
MIKE: [nodding] Not best actor. Not best director. Best screenplay. One of the best that’s ever been written in this country, but the public stayed away in droves because Elaine Knucklehead Ross cast a lead actor who’d make your average corpse look as if it was tap dancing. And why the hell did she let Scranton direct it?
COLIN: [defensively] He’s not my favourite director but he did a competent enough job.
MIKE: Scranton can barely direct shit from his arsehole. Your script made him, if you call success screwing up historical epics in Hollywood. Your scripts have made Elaine Ross too.
COLIN: I wouldn’t say that.
MIKE: She’s the one living in splendour in Darling Point. You’re stuck here in a terrace in Paddington. Why should she have the harbour views? You’re the one with the talent. Night Boats. What do you think?
COLIN: I’m not sure it’s my type of project.
MIKE: I don’t need an answer straight away. Sleep on it. It’s got colour, action, tension, pathos, romance. What were you working on again? Recent history, wasn’t it?
COLIN: Yes.
MIKE: Second World War?
COLIN: [looking up sharply] Why?
MIKE: You know Gary McBride at Channel Ten?
COLIN: No.
MIKE: Gary’s a mate of mine. Says Second World War always rates. What angle are you taking?
COLIN: [reluctantly] Coastwatchers.
MIKE: Coastwatchers?
COLIN: The men who stayed behind on Jap-occupied islands and reported Jap ship movements by radio. They saved us from a full-scale invasion.
MIKE: We could get this one up, mate. Gary said that if I ever had anything Second World War to come straight to him.
COLIN: I’m developing it for film.
MIKE: [shaking his head] Second World War doesn’t rate on the big screen, mate. This is television. Six-hour, eight-hour mini-series. I could get a pre-sale from Gary within a week, go straight to a merchant bank for underwriting, and we’d be shooting by August.
COLIN: I’d rather see it as a movie.
MIKE: It’s an epic story, mate. How could you tell it in two hours?
MIKE exits. COLIN crosses to discuss his future with ELAINE.
ELAINE: Television?
COLIN: A six-hour or eight-hour mini-series.
ELAINE: Colin, I know how passionate you are about this, and I truly want to believe, but I keep on stumbling over the fact that coastwatchers basically watched coasts. I can’t see eight hours of television.
COLIN: [passionately] They fought guerrilla actions, they were always on the run—they ran incredible risks! My uncle used to tell me the stories when I was a kid.
ELAINE: Colin, the impact an uncle can have on a young kid is one thing. If we go the television route I’ve got to sell the concept to network executives with sloping foreheads and Neanderthal brows who are living proof that we share ninety-nine percent of our DNA with the higher apes, and they only ever ask one question: ‘Why in the hell would Mr and Mrs Western Suburbs want to watch that shit?’ Which is an odd question when the opposition channel is featuring a wrestling bout between King Kong Bundy and Junkyard Dog, but they still ask it.
COLIN: Surely you can sell them quality occasionally?
ELAINE: There are executives in our networks, who, if asked to name an American intellectual would answer, ‘Sylvester Stallone’. Colin, if you want to go in a new direction, I’ve got the perfect project for you. Have you heard the name Tony Sanzari?
COLIN: Yes, but I can’t remember the context.
ELAINE: He’s the father of the two boys killed in that fun park accident.
COLIN nods without enthusiasm.
COLIN: Ah. Yes.
ELAINE: He’s waged an incredible one-man war against the authorities to prove it wasn’t an accident.
COLIN: [bored] He’s a bit of a nut case, isn’t he?
ELAINE: [quietly angry] I think he’s anything but a nut case. He’s got very convincing proof that the so-called ‘accident’ was organised by one of the country’s biggest crims so he could get the park condemned and buy it up cheap for development. And there’ve been two serious attempts on his life while he was getting that proof.
COLIN: If he’s got proof, why don’t the authorities do something?
ELAINE: Because a lot of money has been spread around to make sure that they don’t.
COLIN: I can’t get excited by corruption, Elaine, it’s so bloody sordid.
ELAINE: Can you get excited by the story of a father who’s so shattered by the loss of his sons that he’d risk his own life to get the man responsible? You’ve got kids. Imagine how you’d feel?
COLIN: Elaine!
ELAINE: [with a tough glint in her eye] It’s a powerful story and it should be told and I want you to tell it.
COLIN: I’m sorry. It doesn’t appeal.
ELAINE: Colin, I’ve paid a fortune for the rights.
COLIN: I want to do ‘Coastwatchers’.
ELAINE: ‘Coastwatchers’ is a turkey!
COLIN: [angrily] How can you say that? It hasn’t been written yet!
ELAINE: Colin, it’s a turkey!
COLIN: Alright. I’ll do it myself.
ELAINE: Produce it?
COLIN: Yes!
ELAINE: Don’t be ridiculous, Colin. What experience have you ever had in production?
COLIN: It’s about time I learned.
ELAINE: Have you any idea what’s involved?
COLIN: Nothing that any intelligent person cou
ldn’t handle.
ELAINE: Is that so?
COLIN: It’s time I started taking more responsibility for the key creative decisions.
ELAINE: Are there any creative decisions I’ve taken that you’ve been unhappy with?
COLIN: [averting his eyes] One or two.
ELAINE: Which ones?
COLIN: Casting Stewart Egan in Days of Wine and Whitlam.
ELAINE: [incensed] Egan was wonderful.
COLIN: I felt he was wooden.
ELAINE: Wooden?
COLIN: Mahogany, teak. Possibly even jarrah.
ELAINE: I’m sorry you didn’t mention your doubts about him when I showed you the screen tests—you didn’t seem to have any of these polished wood anxieties then. In fact you told me he was the only possible choice.
COLIN: [averting his eyes] I didn’t want to rock the boat.
ELAINE: You told me you couldn’t believe it was the same man who did the rock clips.
COLIN: [embarrassed] I can’t remember saying that.
ELAINE: You did.
COLIN: Everybody gets a bit over-optimistic when a film is coming together.
ELAINE: [coldly furious] Are there any other mistakes you think I’ve made?
COLIN: [backing off] This isn’t the time to nitpick over old grievances.
ELAINE: What are the others?
COLIN: I don’t think this is the time—
ELAINE: [intermixing] Richard Scranton as director? I suppose I made a mistake there too?
COLIN: I wasn’t entirely happy—
ELAINE: [interrupting] I don’t believe it. The man is now a top Hollywood talent. Has Hollywood been over here begging you to get on the plane?
COLIN: [stung] If I was prepared to write mindless genre pieces they probably would be.
ELAINE: [with Arctic coldness] I’m sorry you won’t do the Sanzari story, Colin. I think it’s going to make the writer who does do it very famous.
COLIN: [to the audience] That’s a threat that chills any writer to the marrow of their bones. A dozen other writers I’d hate to see collecting a bronze statuette flashed before my eyes, but for once in my life I stuck to my guns. Why was I so obsessed with ‘Coastwatchers’? Dogged loyalty to the memory of Uncle Jimmy. I was a lonely kid whose own parents devoted all their energies to bitter marital warfare, and Jimmy, whose own marriage had been a childless disaster, made me the son he was never going to have. I idolised him. His coastwatcher stories became sagas of infinite importance to me, and I questioned him about every rock, every tree, every close encounter, and every death. I wanted answers to the most urgent, chilling and unsettling questions in my young mind. How does one face death and how can one man kill another? Jimmy told me something he’d never told anyone else. He’d killed a Japanese soldier who’d come to the edge of a clearing in the moonlight. At first he couldn’t shoot, then the soldier began to urinate and Jimmy felt a wave of disgust and pulled the trigger and had had nightmares ever since. How could he kill a man for urinating in the open when he himself had done it half an hour before? ‘Coastwatchers’ had to answer that question. It was a shrine I was building to the memory of Uncle Jimmy.
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