October 2009

 

Dr. George Miller

He’s the wise uncle of the Australian film industry, the bespectacled doctor who directed the Mad Max films, The Witches of Eastwick, Lorenzo’s Oil and Happy Feet – the latter winning an Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film in 2007. With his production company Kennedy Miller Mitchell Productions, Dr George Miller also had a hand in films like Babe, Dead Calm and acclaimed television series Vietnam, Bangkok Hilton and The Dismissal. What characterises all of Miller’s work is an acknowledged desire to reach out to popular audiences both at home and abroad; to draw them in with classic but innovative storytelling. He’s often said that in his role as a filmmaker he wants to be “a catalyst for public dreaming,” an ambition that’s given birth to films with broad box office appeal.

As we approach the 2009 Samsung Mobile AFI Awards Nominations Announcement, the sun seems to be shining on the Australian film industry – or at the very least coming out from behind the clouds. In amidst the boutique and low-budget contenders for this year’s AFI Awards, there has emerged a series of accessible wide-release films like Australia, Charlie & Boots and the phenomenally popular Mao’s Last Dancer. In the next few months we’ll see more: The Boys are Back, Bright Star, Brand Nue Dae and Daybreakers –  big films releasing on an average of 120 or more screens.

What better time to speak to AFI Patron (and multiple AFI Award winner) Dr George Miller about the state of the industry, the need to connect with audiences and the challenges that lie ahead for filmmakers in the global arena? Here he talks with AFI CEO Damian Trewhella and editor Rochelle Siemienowicz.

Damian Trewhella: Thanks for taking the time to speak with us. We’re about eight weeks away from this year’s AFI Awards and we’re actually getting rather excited about what we’re seeing happening with Australian film at the moment.

George Miller: Yes, I’ve been watching it happen and the thing I would say is that there’s nothing wrong with the Australian film industry that a few good films won’t fix, and now eligible for the this year’s AFI Awards, there are more than a few good films. They’re very broad in their scope and range, and Australian filmmakers are working in every genre and with a lot more rigour towards their storytelling and therefore engagement of audience. So this is the sort of thing that is going to rejuvenate the Australian film industry, along with the recognition that the world media, and particularly cinema, is changing radically and we need to adapt just as radically to keep up.

Rochelle Siemienowicz: Do our films need to connect to a broad audience?

GM: Well a film doesn’t exist in a can, and it doesn’t exist in an empty theatre or in a DVD package. It exists in the hearts and minds of audiences. So it doesn’t make a lot of sense to make movies that have a very small audience, particularly for the cinema. That’s not to say that you can’t make movies for the web, but with the costs of cinema you need a broad audience.

DT: I’m just counting up the box office for the films in contention this year for the last 12 months and, it looks like we’re up to about $65 million or so which is very remarkable, and in the next couple of months Scott Hicks’ film The Boys are Back goes out and Bright Star, Bran Nue Dae and Daybreakers. Come January I think we’ll have reached a real purple patch of successful Australian films. How would you contrast this to other peaks in the cycle over the years?

GM: It’s difficult to remember another time when there was such a range of good films, and such a great number of them. In the past there were good films that would pop up like flowers among the weeds, but this year there are a lot of flowers. And the last time I had a sense of this happening was in the late 70s and early 80s. So it’s a very special time, and the AFI Awards will be a great celebration of that.

RS: As an industry do you think it is possible for us to move outside of this cycle of odd breakout box office successes peppered in amongst a lot of really boutique/festival films?

GM: Of course we can. I see it as a bigger opportunity and the proof of that is not far away in New Zealand. You have the gravitational pull of the Lord of the Rings movies resulting in something as spectacularly successful as District 9, and not only that, the ability to make films over there as wide ranging as Avatar, Tintin, Narnia and films like The Lovely Bones. So you don’t have to look very far to see success and what can be done. And there’s a very wide range of cinema coming out of New Zealand, and arguably Indigenous cinema too, as evidenced best by Whale Rider. So of course we can adapt [here in Australia] but it really requires a lot of rigour and a lot of inspiration. And we’re starting to see it. There’s a confidence  in the films that we’re seeing this year, each in their genres, and we’re really doing very well when you compare to industries that are a lot bigger than ours.

DT: It’s a great analogy you make with the films of New Zealand, and it makes me think of some of the films that have been very successful here, and they don’t necessarily look Australian. And some of the films you mention out of New Zealand don’t look like New Zealand films but they’re finding a global audience.

GM: I think it’s a global film industry. I mean you look at a relatively low budget film like Slumdog Millionaire, made basically by the British, but it did more for bringing India to the world than indeed of all of Bollywood, with its might. And you look even back at the Australian history and you see a film like Wake in Fright which brought a lot of Australian cinema to the world, made by a Canadian effectively. So you know I don’t think we need to be so chauvinistic that there are only Australian stories. You know Samson & Delilah is an Australian story. You get Beautiful Kate which is an American novel adapted to Australia. You get Mary and Max, a distinctly urban Australian story. So if you think of it as a global industry and you see what resonances Australian stories can have out there in the world, I don’t think it should be limited to one thing or the other. That’s a big mistake. Australian creatives, both in front of the camera and behind the camera, are very influential worldwide in cinema, but unfortunately they’re working overseas.  Whereas the New Zealanders have the capacity to bring the best of the world to a city a tenth of the size of Sydney and a ninth the size of Melbourne. And they do the work right there.

I think films can be driven by Australian creativity but they don’t necessarily have to be Australian. Those bigger more successful films do exert a gravitational pull on the Australian stories and it energises the Australian film industry so that indeed Australian stories will emerge as a result of that, particularly if there’s more employment because people can exercise their craft. You can’t run a good football team unless you play every week. You can’t develop a great team if you’re only playing occasionally, or once every six months. It just doesn’t work that way. People have to exercise their skills and it’s not just the technical skills, but the skills of writing and performing and acting and then in that sort of fervour of doing, new ideas are synthesised.

DT: One of this year’s fantastic films, Samson & Delilah is from someone who is emerging here, Warwick Thornton. But a lot of the success we’re seeing at the moment is from people coming back to Australia, Baz Luhrmann, Bruce Beresford, Jane Campion, Scott Hicks. It’s interesting and it would be great if we had more people being able to come back and work here.

GM: I think it’s kinda crazy that we don’t because everyone I know who lives overseas yearns to come back and work. I mean our best cameramen, the Dean Semmlers and Johnnie Seals and so on, they’re desperate to work here, but for the last 25 years they’ve worked overseas. There’s so many of them, and that includes our actors and directors and designers and our editors and just about everybody. That's why this year is so important because I think we do see it turning that people have broadened their horizons in terms of the potentials of cinema, and Australia is seeing that again. And there is a sense that they’re also anticipating the kinds of changes that are happening out there in the world. I don’t think any of us really understand how radically it’s changing. Hollywood is only making half the number of films it was making. And they’re rationalising hugely and trying to accommodate the adjustment to this new digital realm that is affecting just all of distribution in the same way that they record industry basically evaporated as a result of the web. It’s only a matter of time before a very similar thing happens to the moving image. In the same way that newspapers are evaporating or adjusting or adapting into the web, so the same thing will happen with the moving image. It’s going to require a lot of rigour and agility to anticipate and surf those changes rather than be swamped.

RS: What can filmmakers do in order to adapt to this new reality?

GM: I think probably the most important thing and at the core of it all is to really really think about a very fundamental thing. Not only how to tell stories, but why to tell stories? What is it in humankind that means we need to communicate or connect to each other through story? And if you start with that question it might lead to how do we do that better. And then I guess it’s a question of how do we avail ourselves of all the extraordinary technology available for us to do that.

DT: Moving on to something else that is very close to your heart, the Byron Kennedy Award last year celebrated the achievements of Chris Lilley, who has gone on in leaps and bounds and is developing a new show with HBO this year.

 

Dr George Miller and

2008 Byron Kennedy Award

recipient Chris Lilley

GM: Yes, it’s great! The Byron Kennedy Award is 25 years old this year, a quarter of a century. And looking back it is essentially an award for people who are pursuing excellence, often early in their careers. An encouragement award in some ways. And if you look back on who has won it you can see it as a predictor of future success.

DT: Two of the people you acknowledged very early on [in 1986] David Parker and Nadia Tass, have just come back and made a wonderful film, Matching Jack, which releases next year.

GM: Yes, and I remember Jane Campion [in 1989] who had just made Sweetie. She made it really clear that she was very encouraged by the Byron Kennedy Award, that it acknowledged that she was out there trying to do something interesting. And she went on to do very impressive work. You can say this is true of the AFI Awards in general. If you look at past recipients, those people both in front of and behind the camera, receiving an AFI Award often foreshadows success internationally and all sorts of other awards, including Academy Awards.

DT: Can you reveal anything to us about your next film, Happy Feet 2?

GM: What I can say is that it is going very well. Right now I think we’ve got a better film on our hands than Happy Feet 1, but we’ll have to wait and see. We’ve got two more years to go.