by Shane Briant
This vest had tubes running through it that were connected to icy water. As I waited in my chair, the icy water would be pumped in. While I worked it would be disconnected and the water would become warmer – heated by my body. When we cut I'd be cooled down again.
Acting is often uncomfortable, yet actors often forget this as they read the script is that a film called 'Lost on an Ice Flow,' is probably going to be filmed in Greenland for six months and it's going to be ****ing cold.
Another example is a mask such as mine. After a week it becomes a real chore.
I especially liked working with Gigi – she brought the most unusual physical quirks to her character, making it totally unique. Her silver hair fringing that perfect white face reminded me of Marcel Marceau's granddaughter.
I returned to 'Farscape' eighteen months later to play a different role. It isn't customary to bring an actor back as another character, but since the only thing the viewer ever saw of Karvock were his devilish eyes, I was cast as a character that ultimately looked more like me – Colonel Traso Talnell.
He was a very amusing character. Not really a bad guy at all, but rather the perfect petit bourgeois bureaucrat. On the page, Trayso is an annoying man in charge of a Scarran controlled space station. I like to think I elevated the character to someone we have all met in real life – that very annoying man we encounter in council chambers to discuss new dustbins, that irritating person who professes to know all about 'the Iraqi question,' the recorded voice who gives you fifteen alternative numbers to punch into your phone to get the answer you want.
filmed adaptations of classic literature such as Chekov, Shakespeare, or Ibsen. But sci-fi? Why not work with the director and make your character truly memorable?
The ultimate galactic petit bourgeous bureaucrat Traso Talnell. 'Farscape.'
I enjoyed playing Trayso because he was so excruciatingly dull and boring. I made him vivid and interesting. I think, anyway.
Another brief footnote to this anecdote. My director friend Ian Barry happened to be directing a separate episode on a stage across from where Geoff Bennett was directing 'Fetal Attraction,' when a fire broke out on our set. It was quite serious and out of control for some time.
Ian tells me that everyone rushed out of our stage very quickly. Then several minutes later I ambled out (I promise I wasn't being brave – I simply didn't think I was in any danger) walked to Ian and said. "Looks like an extra day, huh?"
Hey, that's how actors feel about a well paying job – an extra day pays the electricity, and the water bills!
During the early part of the new millennium I took various roles in Australia's best-known hospital drama, 'All Saints.' It ran for many years on Australian television and was very popular. I played a surgeon whose hands were finally letting him down, and then came back as the love interest of the star of the show, Judith McGrath. There's not much you can bring to a hospital soap – all characters are normally pretty bland and actors are seldom allowed to go to town. This doesn't mean to say one can't have fun. On one occasion I was rehearsing a scene where the doctor I was playing was a patient. Halfway through rehearsals, a guy from the art department popped his head into the set and asked me the name of my character, because he had to make up a nameplate that would be placed above my bed. I told him my character was 'Dirk Diggler,' – the porn star in 'Boogie Nights.' My homage to Burt Reynolds. The art department guy left and soon was back with the name, which he stuck above my bed. No one noticed, and it went to air.
Judith McGrath is the ultimate Aussie professional television actress. I was looking forward to working with her, as her 'beau.' Less than a minute after we had started chatting at the readthrough she told me, "There will be no kissing."
There wasn't.
Around this time I had an encounter with a well-known Australian director that at the time made me see red.
My agent called and told me that a casting agent had telephoned her saying that P.J. Hogan had specifically asked to see me regarding a role in his forthcoming film 'Peter Pan.' Hogan had made two films that I thought were excellent, 'Muriel's Wedding' and 'My Best Friend's Wedding,' so I was definitely interested.
However, I was surprised because I'd been told that all the major and supporting roles had already been cast. However, since Hogan had personally asked to see me I drove over the Harbour
Bridge to meet him.
When we met, he shook my hand warmly and we chatted for ten minutes or so about the production. Then he began to fill me in on the role he had in mind for me.
"It's a very important cameo. I pay great attention to the smaller roles because quite often they make or break a film." (These are my words, but based on my recollection.)
To my mind, he was dead right about the small roles. I listened some more.
"This character appears in just one scene," he said. "But I think it's pivotal."
One scene? Never mind – it's amazing what one can do in one scene. And 'pivotal' to boot!
"In fact, the character only has one line," P.J.Hogan continued.
One line?
Thoughts of Jack Palance's sage advice about his seven lines in "Shane," sprang to mind. But this wasn't seven lines. Just one.
He picked up the script and carried on. "It's a board meeting, you see, and Mr. Darling is chatting away about dogs."
P.J was now getting quite animated; he clearly was going to enjoy his shoot.
"Then…suddenly…he can't think of a word. It's at this point that you lean across and whisper it into his ear. Kennel!"
I stared at Hogan. I resisted the temptation to stand and head butt the man. Had he really called me in to audition for a one-word role? I was flabbergasted.
"Let's do it a few times," he said.
I said the word 'kennel' twelve times. Don't ask me why, I think I was in shock. But on the sixth take I gave myself a limit. Twelve. Then I would poke him in the eye with a pencil.
He stopped on eleven, as though his guides were telling him enough was enough.
I left, smiling inanely.
I don't think he ever knew how insulted I was. He knew of my previous thirty-four feature films.
I was not offered the role. Since then I have discovered that many other seasoned Australian actors were asked to autition for the one-worder. I have no idea who landed the role. I hope he made the most of his split second in the sun.
'MURDER IN THE OUTBACK.'
'Murder in the Outback, the Story of Joanne Lees,' was the story of the terrible events that took place some years previously in Australia.
Joanne Lees and her boyfriend Peter Falconio were British tourists traveling around Australia when their car was stopped by a killer named Bradley Murdoch near Barrow Creek in the Northern Territory. Peter was ordered out of the vehicle and was never seen again – deemed murdered by Murdoch.
It was a fascinating case – the stuff of a great television film, so Granada Television and the New South Wales Film and Television office mounted a co-production.
Joanne Froggatt played Joanne and looked exactly like Lees. Richard Carter played Murdoch and was breathtakingly convincing. The barristers were Bryan Brown and John Wood. Spencer Campbell and Matt Carroll were the producers and the gifted Tony Tilse, with whom I'd worked several times before, was the director.
The story was researched within an inch of its life and I was asked to play the role of one of the two British journalists who were at the time closest to the action. My character, Richard Shears, was from the West Country of England. He wrote the novel, 'Bloodstain – the disappearance of Peter Falconio'.
At the time of Falconio's disappearance he was working for the Daily Mail in London. I was sent a video by the producers, in which Shears talks about the case. The journalist had a very pronounced West Country accent – so pronounced that I knew I'd have to do some serious work on getting it right.
On my first day's filming I felt I had the accent nailed. It sounded a bit weird, but then broad West C
ountry is a mouthful.
We rehearsed a few times. I noticed each time we cut that Campbell would stare at me and then whisper something to Tony. Eventually Campbell called out to me.
"What exactly are you doing, Shane?" he asked loudly.
I felt a bit stupid because Campbell was asking me this question, as if I'd done something wrong. All the eighty of or cast and crew could hear him. Tony would never have done this, but for some reason he didn't say anything.
"Richard Shears spoke with a pronounced West Country accent. I was sent tapes. That's why I sound odd," I replied.
A long pause. Then Tony spoke, in a kind voice. "I think we should lose the accent, Shane. It sounds ridiculous," he said.
"But…" I began again.
"Look, I appreciate it's accurate, but it comes out of left field like a cannon ball."
I lost the accent – but I tell you something, it's hard to do when you've had an accent in your head for a week.
During the shoot the director and producer conducted some very interesting experiments because they were curious about what so many people had found strange anomalies concerning Joanne Lees' version of events.
On the night of Falconio's disappearance, there was a full moon. A hell of a lot of people wondered how, on a night like that with a full moon and just short scrub around, Joanne could have hidden from the prowling Murdoch? Especially odd, since Murdoch had a dog with him. Surely the dog would have sniffed out Joanne Lees in a jiffy.
The scene was shot almost exactly where the incident took place.
First of all, the trained dog they hired refused to get out of the front seat, an identical white wagon to that of Murdoch, despite being ordered by its handler to do so. It was night and the hound
either. That was our thinking.
To test whether Joanne Lees could have hidden from Murdoch, Spencer Campbell walked away from the set into the darkness and found that outside a perimeter of twenty feet he could see absolutely nothing but the moon above.
Doubly interesting.
I wonder what Richard Shears thought of my portrayal? Actually he wouldn't have known it was based on him as the production company altered my credit from 'Richard Shears' to 'The Journalist.'
It's disappointing when you can't be real and accurate just because people think an accent sounds stupid. I wonder if people in the West Country of England think they sound stupid too?
ALMOST AN OSCAR!
Most of the things I look back on I remember fondly, while others for some reason I choose not to remember. Perhaps it's because the film or television production doesn't turn out very well, so you forget it. Other moments you prefer to forget. Occasionally you remember a day such as when I was caught up in the power play between Peter Collinson and Michael Carreras and I instantly erase the memory.
In 2003 I was working on a screenplay idea I'd had for some time, titled 'Worst Nightmares.' It was a concept very deliberately targeting the American 'Hannibal Lector' market.
I'd loved Thomas Harris' 'The Silence of the Lambs,' as well as both Anthony Hopkins' and Jodie Foster's performances, so I decided to write a thriller in the same genre, though it actually bore little resemblance to Harris' story – the 'darkness' was all.
It concerned a man calling himself 'The Dreamhealer,' who has an Internet website where, supposedly, he finds cures for those who have terrible recurring nightmares.
In reality, he tracks his victims down and makes their worst nightmares happen somewhere far away from the madding crowd – amplified a hundred times.
The Vanguard Press hardback edition.
I had been working on this project for over a year with a producer who had bought an option on it, when he asked me if I could come up with a script for a short film to showcase the talents of a well known and highly respected commercials director by the name of Richard Gibson who wanted to break into movies. I told my producer friend I'd give it a try, so I started thinking of suitable concepts. As I sat in my office thinking of ideas, my old friend Jeffrey Bloom emailed me. Since he'd written so many fine film scripts, I asked him if he had any brain-waves about my short film. It took Jeffrey under a minute.
"Have you ever read 'An Occurrence at Owl Creek,' by Ambrose Bierce?" he asked me. "It was made into a short film in 1962. The premise is all I suggest you work on. Put it into a modern context and you've got your script."
I did some research and found the plot line. 'A Civil War civilian is to be executed by hanging, but when the plank is kicked away, instead of breaking his neck, he manages to miraculously escape unscathed. Or did he?'
The idea had been used many times in films, most recently in Bruce Willis' 'The Sixth Sense,' where both Bruce's character and the audience find out at the end that our hero has been dead all the time.
Having been given the idea, I immediately thought of Iraq. Instead of the Confederate Army executing a soldier, why not the execution of a businessman in Iraq? I'd been wanting to express my sorrow and horror at what was being done in Iraq in the name of religion. Here was the perfect opportunity to say something I believed in.
I wrote a second short story, but Richard liked what ended up titled 'A Message from Fallujah,' best. So he got to work on the project, and like all directors, he began to make it 'his own.'
Without going too much into boring detail, Richard and I worked well initially, coming up with ideas that took the script forward.
Then he thought he'd make it better on his own, no longer discussing it with the writer. Oy!
We shot the film with Lance Henriksen in the lead role as the dead businessman. The first day we shot the Iraqi sequence on the sand dunes at the Kernel Oil refinery near Sydney airport the temperature soared to forty degrees Celsius. No need to light up the BBQ, just slide the meat on the bonnet of any car. The heat didn't stop Lance for a second. By contrast I almost passed out.
The end result was a triumph – for Richard as director, Philip Rang as DP, and Lance as our lead. I couldn't have been happier.
With DoP Philip Rang on 'Fallujah.'
With Lance Henriksen and Wendy in that filthy heat!
As it happened, the man who was to play a supporting role in the first scene couldn't make the shoot, so we had to find another actor. To my great surprise, both producer and director rubbed their chins. At such short notice, who could they find that might be up to scratch? Clearly they thought this a BIG problem. I humbly suggested that in view of my body of work playing leads in thirtyfive feature films, I could help them out. They agreed, somewhat grudgingly I thought at the time. I didn't see them actually dance with pleasure.
A long time went by as the project went into editing and postproduction. It lasted two months. I assumed all was going well because no one called me. Then out of the blue I got a call from the producer telling me in a very friendly chatty way that the director was asking me for half my writer's credit.
I was stunned. Why had he waited so long to even suggest such a thing? And why would he think he had changed the script to that extent?
changed radically. And here was the thing – the film was about to be entered in various film festivals around the world, the deadline was just twenty-four away – if I didn't agree to their terms they would not enter the film in any festival at all.
Would you think this was a deliberate ploy? Many would.
If this kind of thing should ever happen to you, never cave in and think 'Oh my God, I've done all this work and unless I agree to their terms it will all have been for nothing.' Don't do it. Be reasonable, sure. Don't roll over!
So, despite the threatening tone of my producer, I told him I was more than happy to have the Australian Writers Guild arbitrate on equal terms. If they thought Richard deserved half the credit – so be it. This seemed reasonable to me, but both director and producer would not have a bar of that – no arbitration. Instead they threatened to pull the film, saying they were saddened and offended at my unreasonable attitude. But by this time I was angry mysel
f. The producer told me it would be my fault alone if the film wasn't in competition at the Montreal Film Festival, L.A Shorts, Palm Beach, and quite a few other festivals. And what did he suggest as a compromise? He suggested that I keep the 'Written by Shane Briant,' but there should be a separate credit later to the effect, 'Screenplay by Shane Briant and Richard Gibson.'