Gallipoli with Jennifer Kent

Introduction

0:00from a place you've never heard of a podcast you'll never forget okay for our guest uh just just for the context of what just happened that's the tagline of the film and he's put the word

0:33podcast it's the american tagline now i think it's an interesting marketing strategy it's kind of a tagline saying oh jesus this is a hard one to market from a place you've never heard of

Gallipoli Context

0:43you're leading a place you've never heard of hey guys i know this title is going to make no sense to you but but if you watch the movie you'll be happy about it after the fact right you won't forget it it's also it's a poster that's the final image of the film that's what's fascinating yes that the final image yeah that is really bold i thought it is but it's out of context so i guess you don't know that's what's so interesting about it is it's not uh obfuscating the ending at all

1:13but it is out of context in a way where you don't read into it and then when the movie hits that image it's almost twice twice as devastating to now understand what that image was you were looking at but platoon did the same thing and this is a movie that reminded like platoon really sort of sure is drafting off this movie and that's another movie where they had the the final image basically as the poster but basically final yeah this is the actual final image yeah you're right is platoon the year no it's years later it's 86 yeah yeah when i was a kid we used to uh actually

Personal Connection

1:47go to the cinema for school and so this film was a film that we all went to see this was a like a new release school field trip to the theater yes exactly and i watching it again last night which is 45 years later i could not believe that some images were emblazoned in my soul and one of them was that final image right i remembered that i also remembered uh jack's conversation with his uncle you know um

2:23uh that stuff about racing i wrote it down which is you know what are your legs steel springs what are they going to do they're going to hurl me down the track how fast can you run as fast as a leopard how fast are you going to run as fast as a leopard then let's see you do it and i was just like as a kid that really got to me you remembered it yes i do and how old how old would you have been

Timeless Themes

2:48when you saw it about 10 around 10 but the thing that's so devastating for me last night is as a 10 year old you see a film like this and you think what a terrible thing that happened in our history yeah um you know that's terrible but then you know as a woman in my 50s looking at this and seeing nothing has changed i just started howling i was like you know seeing what just happened in iran and knowing that the human beings the the so-called forgettable masses are the ones that always suffer

3:24and just to know that nothing changes this film it it gutted me last night and i i just felt wow this is a masterpiece hard agree uh jennifer some some lore on on this podcast this is blank check with

Podcast Introduction

3:39griffin and david i'm griffin i'm david it's a podcast about filmographies directors who have massive success early on in their careers such as getting to make possibly the most expensive australian film made up until this point but possibly the road warrior beat it by a little bit okay sure sure sure yeah it was basically at that level of the industry rising to establish this is the new ceiling of what could be made and uh being given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want and sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce baby we are talking about the film gallipoli yes from place you've never heard of podcast you'll

4:14never forget hopefully uh this is australia the place you've never heard of or gallipoli that's why that's why the american tagline is so funny the australian tagline was just peter weir's film of gallipoli okay very much a sort of like you know this is one of one of our emerging uh filmmakers has made a film about a very important historic event in australia right i guess it sold itself more in that in that way yes um this is a mini series on the films of peter weir it's called podnick at hanging cast that's right our guest today to my great excitement yep is one of my favorite

4:46modern filmmakers someone i've talked about so much and our and our guest from the furthest away that

Guest Introduction

4:51we've ever had this is true a record being broken so i don't think we've ever had a guest from so far away uh beaming on to the show before furthest away geographically furthest away in time you are you are far ahead in the future yeah it's tomorrow there yeah we're a day ahead there's like flying cars and shit around here because i was our friend rob sheer our mutual friend helped us yeah set this up and we were going back and forth about what days and times to throw out and i said monday evening and he went and just to clarify by that you mean her tuesday right yeah this is always i'm used to it

5:25i'm the master of okay so you realize i'm in the future right you have to deal with this all the time right yeah yeah yeah a day ahead but further you know later in the next day if that makes sense but anyway yes i'm here um we made the great jennifer kent the filmmaker behind the babadook

Jennifer Kent's Films

5:43and the nightingale two of my favorite movies of the last years yeah well is it well it's more than 10 years for babadook just it was just the 10th anniversary it was just last year was 10 10 years which is sort of unbelievable to me i often contend it is like one of the most influential films of this century it's a wonderful and i beyond just how much i i love it and how exceptional i think it is i do think there was a ripple effect across all of horror at a studio level at an independent level

6:15globally like i do think there was a turning point in that film and i've seen the entire language of horror change around it wow well you know not not we're not here to talk about me but in regards to that film it was really hard to get made actually because there's a big snobbery within the australian funding systems towards horror um and so i said to them it was arthouse horror and their response was you know there's no such thing as that and uh but that's the way i i sort of treated it that it was

6:52i mean to call it elevated is it it sort of is it's a disparaging term towards horror and cinema i think all horror is elevated because it's just pure cinema and i am 100 with you and i've i've always found the elevated horror thing very silly right it's backhanded yeah the fact that you had to call it arthouse horror and trying to get financing to make it shows that it was before the elevated

Elevated Horror

7:18horror conversation yeah yeah and now i think they're like okay bring us your horror you know right and that's good i'm i'm really happy that that means that other filmmakers who really care about the genre and there are many there are you know many of them in australia yes that they can get their films made but even finding a way to uh tell what is clearly like a story that personally means a lot to you that has big ideas and big emotions and big like uh story uh notions to communicate that

7:52it's not just like i'll make a horror movie because that's what can get sold or i'll take a different idea and i'll dress it up in horror when i saw babadook it felt like the atom was yeah of like oh this is a pathway for what yeah this genre can be and it has felt like i don't know i found it entirely transformative on like the landscape of horror uh as a movie i adore also i've told this story before on the podcast but i went to see it with my parents and like 40 minutes in my mother was gasping it was my second time seeing it i dragged them to see it because i loved it so much

8:25and like 40 minutes in my mother was like covering uh her mouth with her hand and i said it's really scary right and she went no you don't understand this is the only movie i've seen that depicts what it felt like to raise you as a child yeah he was he was he was the boy right here oh well me too i mean i used to like invent go-karts without brakes and you know send them rolling down hills with me in them and yeah i was pretty pretty maybe i wasn't seeing the babadook in every corner but um i i

8:59relate put it that way griffin i don't know if i was seeing the babadook literally but yes the movie did it certainly helped me a lot in terms of therapy it unlocked a lot of things yeah i mean i had one guy who wrote to me and said that his uh he lost his dad very young and his mom raised three boys and he said he said he's an editor and he was just watching it late at night like put it on half watching it and he said that he he was just sort of drawn in and by the end he said thank you you

9:30know this was more valuable to me than 20 years of therapy and as a filmmaker i mean that when you get that kind of i mean that's why i do it you know i i've really turned down a lot to make films that yeah and get a cut somehow sent back to me but no it means a lot to really reach people you know and you never know who you're going to reach i mean does peter weir know that you know someone's

10:01watching his film 45 years later and just ugly crying um about you know the messages of the film yeah and the futilities of war it's like incredible to me what what is your relationship to weir generally like are have you seen most of his filmography what you know did you i guess you grew up with these movies as you just said yeah well the interesting thing about you know without giving you a lecture on it but we didn't make it you were invited to give a lecture we just sit here

10:31while you give us an australian film lecture that would be just fine school or asses well okay let me start way back in the beginning um my great great uncles were film producers great great in the silent era and okay in australian silent yeah yeah and so my dad being low-key and sort of chill australian as we all are just close to before he died said oh did i ever tell you that your great great uncles were film producers and i said no and anyway told me the story that you know they they were also film

11:08distributors and they distributed the first film ever made which is the history of the net of the ned kelly gang the history of the kelly gang like a silent how long was the first film ever made like hearing the world wow period yeah and that was you know it's a feature length but a lot it's lost there's only bits of it now but then they went and produced like a lot of silent films with raymond longford and lottie lyle who were like big stars and we had in australia the most thriving film

11:39industry in the world it surpassed hollywood so there were more bums on seats to see our films than there was anywhere in the world including america and then the americans saw that and came in and went we want to we want that so what they did was they mafiosa style came in and put a stronghold on all of the australian cinemas so that australian films could no longer be made because they wouldn't be screened and so my great great uncles took these films that they were making and went round to town

12:14halls and public spaces and tried to screen them and they fought it and fought it and fought it and then they had to give up and they went into to live theater production right right i feel like australian cinema kind of atrophied right i mean like well well so that was in that was in the 30s and then for almost 40 years we didn't make any films right right right which is insane right when you're reading about peter weir sort of coming up in the 70s it's like there's really not much of an industry there's a television industry which is how he's getting started or

12:48but there's not much of a film industry but also people in these interviews we keep reading and quotes from him at the time you know talking about what the australian new wave represented even though we've lacked this context it's been very clear they're not just saying like oh and then a new movement or a new style came in the new wave was starting up the machinery again that's right that's right and then so it puts it into context right because if you look at okay in 1969 we had zero again uh i mean there was one filmmaker charles chevelle who

13:20who made like jedda which is a very odd kind of intentionally good but quite racist film and uh and we have none of those in america oh no but then so you had nothing and then you had wake and fright which is extraordinary and walkabout which is also extraordinary and walkabout yeah yeah yeah and um and they were both directed by you know non-australians but they're both masterpieces but it was because the government of all places and it was a bipartisan thing it was both the right

13:55and left wing uh two you know two prime ministers said well we're going to invest in um culture right we're going we're going to uh give you some culture yeah let's get some culture going and uh and what's extraordinary to me is it wasn't like aussie aussie aussie yeah aren't we good let's make sort of propaganda films about how great australians are these films were very they sort of equaled american independent cinema and european new wave you know the french new wave in that they were very

14:27critical of our society our culture and um very dark yeah odd and disturbing yeah like i we have a cinematech here in brisbane it's all free like they play incredible films and one of the films i had the other day was the cars that ate paris and you know even films like that they're just subversive and weird and brilliant right cars they paris we've we've covered yeah right then i've got his first major film yeah yeah yeah sort of strangely funny do you guys get that in terms of its humor

15:01i i found it very funny but i don't know if i'm finding it funny for the reasons he intended i right i think it's probably it's making fun of a sort of small town uh you know mindset that i think we both we did understand but then we there's certainly things we're probably not picking up on on this sort of like yeah small town mindset of the you know the the 70s that like it's it's satirizing in australia yeah it just felt sort of quintessentially australian to me that film and sort of babadook

15:32style humor as well and then i realized oh there is such a thing as australian humor why it's just to clarify in the 40 years where theaters are operating but australian films basically aren't getting made is it primarily american films that are playing there is it equal amounts of films from the uk right and from other parts yeah i think culture i think we yeah i think i mean it wasn't around but i i knowing from my mom who was a big you know sort of we call her a cinephile but she watched everything that came

16:05out and it was mainly hollywood i think that qualifies as cinephile yeah yeah give it the title like unintentional unintentional cinephile but we all we had we had a lot of british films made here you know the sundowners and chips rafferty was an aussie star he was an australian actor but he was always starring as the token aussie in british films that were made here right yeah um and you know those early weird films uh i mean picnic and hanging rock i don't know if you have a particular

16:39impression of that one i know that is sort of that's such a you know totemic one for aussie cinema i mean yeah it's it's one of my favorites i had to make a list for the age here um just today actually of my 10 favorite australian films wait what are your 10 favorite australian yeah i want to hear this was unrelated to the show you you were doing it for something else yeah yeah so i i had to make a list just because they're asking filmmakers what their favorite i mean i kind of hate making lists because it's filmmaking is not a horse race sure it's exclusionary to make a list but it's fun too

17:14but i made it yeah yeah so my favorite australian films uh for today were um wake in fright uh walkabout picnic at hanging rock uh the last wave the chant of jimmy blacksmith oh yeah that's uh right uh fred chepsey yeah right yeah skeptic yeah and uh he yeah he's that film made a huge impression on me especially for the nightingale i think uh gallipoli mad max

17:48snowtown 10 canoes and chopper i don't know 10 canoes i'm looking at that one either but i mean three out of 10 slots was peter weir yeah right you have three peter weir movies um yeah he's the last wave was a film we covered where i think we felt very out of our depth in terms of the sort of like the cultural stuff he's wrestling with there loved it it's a very interesting movie yeah you're just kind of aware that there's a bunch of stuff underneath the surface that we don't have the ability to uh pick up on but it was fantastic i think join the club in that it is you know it

18:23it's a film about sort of climate not climate change but it's an environmental film i think and and you know the aboriginal presence in it what i really admired that he did was just let them go right so they i so he what the story and i mean that's what i we did in in nightingale as well was uh you know the script was made in full consultation with palawa people tasmanian aboriginal people but that's what i think you probably is that what you're finding a bit confounding like oh my god

18:55what is this not even confounding i mean last wave i would say last wave is trying to confound i mean both last wave and picnic and hanging rock are are happy to leave you you know in the dark yes a little unsatisfied in terms of explanations and ready to wrestle with it which is which is great gallipoli is not that at all gallipoli is a very sort of straightforward it is you know punch in the jaw which is fine like i mean that obviously works great i'd say i don't think it's that we've been confounded by these early ones but there's almost like an anti dunner kruger dunning kruger

19:27syndrome thing where the more we try to do some research either going into the movie or after the fact then you start to become more aware of how much you don't know if that makes sense we're like oh let's get like a slight bit of cultural context on this i think that's why i do probably favor his earlier films that were made in australia and it's not because they were made in australia but there's a there's a tone to them that's very unconventional yes and it's really purely from him and and you really feel that i mean in the last wave i love that section where the older um

20:05aboriginal character is just saying to richard chamberlain's character who are you who are you who are you it keeps saying it over and over and the first time i watched it i thought oh my god who am i it worked who the hell am i walked to the kitchen got a cup of tea and thought who am i you know but um it's very aboriginal uh it's very authentic in that way um and yeah my memory of gallipoli having not seen it again last night was that it's a very conventional film

20:41that i enjoyed as a kid right that was my so it was you know it is very conventional but i would argue that now um it's like the antithesis of saving private ryan which starts off so gritty and confronting and horrific and then kind of goes into a much more romantic everything's going to be all right we're going to save this one dude who you know but this film gallipoli is where mates everything is going to be okay everything's going to be all right and then nothing is all right and like if

21:16you look at the structure of the film it's like an hour and 46 minutes and and i just clocked at this time you know that the first hour and 15 minutes you don't even sort of realize there's a war i mean you know there's a war because they tell you there's a war and even when they're in cairo they're having fun and it's about their relationship but it's in that last 35 minutes right 30 yeah 30 minutes and then and then in it gets serious all of a sudden and then in the last 20 minutes you're like oh my god

21:50this is this is a horror ridiculous i mean and it's yeah and i because gallipoli is such a you know pivotal you know i learned about that in school and like the battle you know that you know david grew up in london i grew up in england so so you know you know world war one we're all you know we were taught all this stuff like i think i thought of this movie as like a sort of definitive accounting of like what happened at gallipoli and what went wrong and what well you know about the big battle and then that's what i love about the movie is that it's not that at all it's like they're like you don't need to

22:22understand like what happened here except that it was lunacy except that they were just throwing people you know yeah over trenches the point is that it was meaningless run that way yes exactly yeah yeah and no no one was everyone was indispensable no one was going to survive that i mean it was an absolute failure in terms of you know if you look i mean i'm no army historian but any most australians can tell you that that was a failure and you know 130 000 plus lives were lost on both sides and and and they didn't achieve any got anything out of it and that it was a failure

22:57before they sent all these boys to die like it was already a conclusive failure and then there was this completely unnecessary mass sacrifice pushed on top of it to establish some lore within the history of our show jennifer when you were saying watching this you you view this as a period piece and then go i can't believe this kind of stuff is still happening today you know you were comparing it back to your experience of watching this for a first time as a 10 year old my relationship to war and movies is like perpetually frozen at the age of 10 where more so than any other type of film war movies tend to

23:32just make my brain short circuit for that exact reason i just become like a pollyannist child where i go i don't understand how this is real right more so than any fantastical genre film i just go like i don't understand how this is still how things get settled and i become so overwhelmed with anxiety that it's really hard for me to engage with them and i would say the war films i do like tend to by and large be movies that are not actually war films quote unquote as a genre they are films where war is a backdrop

24:03and there is some emotional tour story being told in front of the war i did not know what to expect from this film and i think i expected much like david right this is more a conclusive kind of epic retelling of this important moment in australian history and starting it and immediately realizing 10 minutes in oh they find out the war is happening in the newspaper there's just this kind of like did you guys see there's some war happening right right and and the fact that the movie is and i love the guy who's kind of out in the middle of nowhere and says oh is there a war going on yeah and this

24:35movie is really structured more as like a boy's adventure film in the sense that it is like these guys going off to join the circus right the war is kind of uh be friends these guys are gonna go be friends together you know everyone is like obstructed these boys are going off in a journey they could just as easily be looking for like a hidden pirate ship you know it could be like a goonie style adventure and they're approaching it yeah exactly and there's a word that we it's very dated no one says larrikin now but it's a very australian word that would would be used to

25:07describe these guys is you know larrikins that yeah that they're up for a bit of fun and they're a bit naughty and you know break the rules but it's all it's all gonna end well with a beer and a joke and that's why like and snowy i remember as a kid we all cracked up laughing at david argue um in that role he because he was so in such an innocent you know um and and then to say that's when i lost my shit last night watching it was when he was in the tent he said they're not they're not giving

25:42me food or water and i just broke down and from that point on and even when um i forget the actor's name but the the young guy at the beginning who's uh fighting archie on the horse and archie's running um remember when they read oh yeah i'm not sure uh let's see and then they they sort of see each other as the bully character's just about to go over the trench and he's an absolute mess uh right

26:13harold hopkins that's that actor right harold hopkins yeah yeah that's right right it's so well constructed actually as a script i feel it is yeah it's brilliantly constructed well and also i basically from that moment like just from the the tone and where the story was starting at the beginning i went oh i see what this is and he is setting me up for like the grand tragedy of this movie which is these guys aren't thinking of themselves as being in a war movie they don't understand what war is they think this is like the beginning of some rip-roaring adventure and some coming-of-age tale

26:47which is the story of world war one it's like this is a coming-of-age movie interrupted by the brutality of the world yes and and he delays it and delays it and delays it yeah till the absolute till they can't delay it anymore even when they they rip off all their clothes and they jump into the water and there's shells firing off around that's that's my favorite okay well that's i mean that you go oh i don't feel good here because that you know there's this sort of danger that's introduced underwater so so brilliantly like that but then when the guy

27:24comes up he's only had his arm hit and not badly so you think oh good you know back back to sort of laughing and having fun but it's and then when those shells go off yeah yeah yeah yeah brilliant brilliant right because even until that guy is like nicked by the one bullet even as their bullets floating past them it feels like it's just adding to like the beauty in the ambience right you know it's kind of this like visually ecstatic thing well just the whole thing with her at the beach and there's just like shelling going on yeah and they're just kind of like yeah well that's over there you

27:58know like you know like just that feeling of it's like yeah it's close but it's not here yet yeah um until that night until that night until that night yeah yeah yeah but like it's it's a sneakily uh sort of untraditional way to tell the story like it you know it is yeah it's not milking the the drama and the the kind of excitement of war it's not milking no right no because when war hits it hits and that's game over it's it that's the end of them all well not all of them but almost all

28:30we're said that like part of the big inspiration for this film part of it was that he went to visit the site and he saw the bullet casings and such that were still there well but it wasn't just that he saw the um the case of the um that it's gibson's milking's character gets it in the care package the beverage yeah yeah you know he saw i have to find it yeah i will look yes we have some research we can like he got he got the bath salts and the and the cookbook it's the eno bottle yeah so is that existing australian brand it's not anymore okay but and it was it when i was a kid it was it was

29:07still a it was still a thing so p so the audiences watching that would have gone oh yeah okay i know what that is that was the big thing he said is he went to visit the site there were still bullet casings there and then he saw an eno bottle and it was like immediately conjured the idea of oh these were just kids these were kids who were using the same products that i use today right yeah the banality of needing to take like an antacid in the middle of this thing uh made him conjure the whole thing which is also weirdly similar to how last wave came about he talked about envisioning

29:40seeing uh the object in the cave oh sure it's two consecutive movies where he finds an object and is like that's a good idea for a movie wow wow have you ever met him or interacted with him jennifer i have no idea i haven't unfortunately i haven't had anything to do with peter but i i mean i feel i know him because uh not no kind of stalkery way but just because as you know as a kid i saw these films and they're like a dream they're like a dream that i had um and they're and they're so

30:13important to our psyche as australians especially people in the arts and and in film so yeah he's he's an absolute master to me and i i would guess that many people don't know who he is in america do you think i think that he's yes a little bit on that edge it's part of why i really wanted to cover him if he's made a lot of very very well-remembered films yes that do linger in the cultural consciousness but he's not thought of as an auteur i mean obviously by film fans he's

30:47very well regarded but like you know in the gen in the larger public and he should be more you know and like in he's got such an interesting and varied filmography and he worked in every genre and even when he came to hollywood he kind of never had one thing that he did he kept kind of hopping between you know modes of storytelling which was so interesting david what's the matter i'm gonna share for you a horrifying tale a tale of woe and suffering

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36:52dot com slash podcast promo code podcast 15 i see i think jennifer when we're when my experience in telling people that we're about to cover we're yeah it's usually who is that and then i can list a couple films i'll say picnic at hanging rock i'll say witness i'll say trim and shall say master and commander and they'll go oh i didn't know one guy made all of those or yes i say peter weir they

37:26repeat back those four movies those are probably the and then they go what else did he make right and then i'll name the other movies and they'll go oh i didn't realize the same person made all of those it doesn't feel like anyone has a very complete notion of him here even if they know his movies but i know in australia picnic and hanging rock and gallipoli especially are those are very foundational movies to australians yeah and i mean i think even your average you know mom and dad would know of gallipoli it's like one it's like a bit like crocodile dundee or you know it's it's the

38:00kind of film that everyone saw or even if they didn't see they think they have that they feel they've seen it and maybe they saw it in school or something yeah it does right yeah i mean and it's the mel gibson sort of breakout movie you know there's a lot of right okay before we get into the context and open up our research dossier here now just only because you brought it up i must ask jennifer we covered the three crocodile dundee movies oh sure oh in in deep pandemic while we were losing our minds we we had never seen them before and we were kind of fascinated by being a little too young

38:33for them and knowing that they were such a good cultural phenomenon and there was one day where we watched all three of them in a row in like january 2021 losing our minds and yeah started kind of like skeptical like what is this what is this fad thing that was popular in the 80s and then like 20 minutes into the first crocodile dundee we were like this fucking rule i love this guy i'd watch 80 of these movies the drop off on two and three i found pretty severe right yes yeah right i i haven't seen

39:05two and three i've definitely seen one i mean did you go into paul hogan's kind of history of we tried to really i mean yeah he's still kicking around right i mean he's quite old at this point yeah he's he's sort of you don't hear about him now but yeah when i was growing up you know as a kid of the 70s and 80s he was this cultural icon and he had he was known as hogs you know and he he used to be a bit his claim to fame before he became a star was he helped uh work on the sydney harbour bridge

39:36so he he was a real aussie you know sort of laborer and but he was he was a larrikin if ever there is a use for the word larrikin he that's him you know with a capital l and he had a show called the paul hogan show right and we know that yeah yeah and it was funny i mean it was very aussie uh but and you know he had um he had as a co-star uh like an like a it was like sort of like the benny hill

40:08show or um i know what's the american equivalent i mean what is the it's sort of like carol burnett's or something but like yeah like it's like yeah maybe laughing or yeah yeah yeah it was a big popular sketch show right yeah sketch show exactly but but with ongoing characters yeah and so then for him to make crocodile dundee i have no idea how that who produced that film and then i'll be able to tell you maybe how it came about yeah it's a really good question because my two-pronged question

40:40was like how was it received in australia at the time and then how did australians feel about americans for the next three decades being like oh australia like crocodile dundee yeah basically becoming the one reference point yeah i mean i find it kind of hilarious how americans view australia anyway you know that you get off the plane and you grab your luggage and there's spiders all over it right you know scorpions falling from the sky a drop bear is going to like attack you and you'll

41:13basically be dead before you get to the taxi yeah and um you know we play on that too i mean and there is some truth in it like a my um ex his his cousin came from germany and we went to the sea and we were at an estuary and we were on this bridge and this kid went to his dad dad look down look down there's a manta ray and it was like a manta ray the size of a car and i've never seen that in my entire life but this poor german guy said that's the first thing he sees that's i i want to i want to go home

41:48look i mean yes we're talking i can tell you that it was produced by john cornell who i think was his sort of oh yeah so that was strop that was the guy right strop his side yeah okay okay only produced by him must have been other people he's the only listed producer the distributor was called hoyt's distribution yeah that's that's like a big cinema right yeah yeah it's a cinema rimfire films was the production company so then in that case it looks like they got some tax money yeah yeah in that case it must have come from from hoax must have come from those two i mean stroke a genius no and and isn't

42:24didn't hogan also have the cigarette campaign where he would always say anyhow have a winfield have a winfield right yeah oh my god and he did that um aussie laborer thing of like having your ciggies in your in your t-shirt like on your on like you tuck the sleeve yeah right yeah is a is a masculine thing to do it's so funny that we're talking about paul hogan because like he used the no i know no i mean we need to create a um what's the word i'm looking for a tapestry between these two points i'll just say the other the other thing about this movie is that the line jennifer already

43:00quoted the how fast are you going to run as fast as a leopard that yeah bluey look i have young children so i watch bluey all the time which is now my closest connection to australian culture the modern crock dundee and there's an episode that's set in very close to where i live right you're from brestman right yeah yeah yeah and i lived in sydney for many decades and then came back because i because i want to be close to my family of origin and i i love it here it's change it's not like bluey but it's not like bluey i really was hoping it was exactly like did the dogs talk although

43:35there is a bluey world or something that's yeah there's like a visible bluey yeah there's an episode of bluey called obstacle course that's where he says how fast will you run as fast as a greyhound is the line they use the second which it's it's an homage to glip oh really oh and bluey oh that's so sweet adib just said um where i am now is the composer is next door oh to blue it this is incredible the guy's a genius name's jazz yeah a woman oh cool yeah uh i'll make the other connected

44:07bridge i guess i just forgot this russell boyd shot crocodile dundee one and two who shot sure gallipoli who's a peter yeah i i noted i noted that last night that um russell boyd has done a lot as i wrote down the films he he did last wave year of he started on picnic and hanging rock and he did all of them through picnic and hanging rock that's right yeah and and then did master and commander he came back to master and commander john seal was a camp camera operator on yeah uh gallipoli

44:40and then he also did witness mosquito coast yeah um and had a great hollywood career i mean yeah yeah i mean he did like gorillas in the mist rain man children of a lesser god mad max fury road so um yeah that uh i think um he's another genius yes it's stuff like that that makes the australian film world feel small like that it's like and then you know he hooks up with george miller at the end but like yeah i know it's bigger than it seems it's just these names loom so large i think for

45:14uh american viewers like you know peter weir george miller yeah i think we punch above our weight to be honest though no in terms of you know the the size of the industry because when i was looking at making that list of 10 favorite films i got a bit depressed because i went on i don't know i i checked a few sites including wikipedia but that was the one that had most of the films and there's not a lot of films that have come out of australia right yeah yeah there's also just fascinating though to what

45:44you were saying earlier that you know there's the american new wave happening and the french new wave happening and both of them are happening in response to what are like massive film industries but industries that have started to become a little staid and are dealing with the like you know coming out of decades of things like the haze code and like the nazi occupation and all these things that were like sure really tightening and restricting movies and then the industry doesn't kind of know where it's at and then they finally empower this like younger group of film school graduates to start

46:18making whatever the fuck they want and they start making these films that are more wild and funny and out there and genre films and political films and movies that are speaking to like the disenfranchisement and irritations of the moment but that's like films that are made in response to what those filmmakers were frustrated other films weren't tackling versus the australian new wave as you're saying were films made in response to what was going on in the culture but they weren't responding to a deficit of those films in conversation uh they were responding to a deficit of movies period

46:51yes so to basically go to avoid yeah to an to an absolute void but then to come out of that and have the films be kind of so strong-minded in their messaging and looking at the early weird stuff and even watching um like homesdale and the early shorts and whatever yeah feels very very concerned from the get-go with trying to uh work through the kind of like politics of the young people of australia at that moment and also like constantly trying to reckon with the history of the land he lives

47:26on and the murky cultural mess of that yeah i think he was just really true to himself that's the feeling i get just from his films not from knowing him but uh you know that he had a certain kind of spiritual core that he wasn't afraid to kind of face and and embrace and and that's what i'm feeling when i watch especially those earlier films um i'm i'm seeing that i mean even did you cover the

47:59plumber oh yeah yeah we did we did did you are you a fan of the plumber we we just did that plumber yeah i love oh you just did it isn't it like i mean it isn't it like you know when you get i mean when you get that it's usually a guy but when you get that person in your house and they start asking questions about your life or you know i had one in the other day well are you an artist and i didn't like he didn't know me anything about me and i said oh and then i started offering up information i thought of the plumber it is maybe my second greatest anxiety trigger behind war

48:35is people in my home asking me questions yeah it's it's it's a it's a nice kind of very contained idea for whatever a yeah thriller a horror film whatever you want to call the horror the plumber but also a social comedy i mean it's funny it's funny yeah it's it's funny and i think he has this beautiful sense of humor this very black um australian sense of humor i don't know does that translate i guess in green card it's that's quite a funny film green card's very funny

49:07but green card's also so interesting i'm a huge fan of green card but it's it's also very sincere it's also quite a sort of you know it is a straightforwardly romantic movie but yes it is you know the the humor in it is not like it's not just a rom-com yeah yeah yeah no he and i think gerald dipardieu is fantastic in that i mean it's for many years since i've seen that but yeah he he is excellent in the movie um yeah i want to open up the dossier yes okay i'm gonna this is our research uh jennifer i'm just gonna take a look so the last film he makes before this is is the last wave yeah

49:41yeah so after that we are apparently takes a year off of filmmaking decides that he needs to watch more movies to teach himself to be a better filmmaker so he calls himself sort of a primitive filmmaker uh and says like i just i started with dw griffith i watched russian silent movies i watched hitchcock movies i watched chaplin movies i watched french cinema i watched you know whatever he's basically doing a sort of syllabus for himself in the 70s i guess so he's probably doing mostly like sort of pre-war cinema but he's going like chronologically region to region like filling in

50:14all the gaps of his understanding um this final sentence is so good he said um i was astounded astonished and fascinated with the great gift of these films and so glad that i hadn't looked at them earlier if i had i don't think i would have made films because i was at the bottom of the hill oh wow wow so when he says this whole kind of primitive film thing and you do look at like picnic and hanging rock and uh the last wave and cars they to paris they're so accomplished and

50:46they're so clear in their vision but they also do feel like outsider art in a certain way i almost on the level of what you're saying jennifer of like his spiritual connection rather than them feeling like they're conforming to the rhythms you know from other movies and then he suddenly watches a bunch of other movies realizes if he had known how differently he was doing things he would have been too anxious to ever make anything right i mean thank god he didn't watch other films that was going to be or even if it influenced those films and kind of uh polish the rough edges off them i'd be disappointed

51:18in that you know i think have like three under his belt yeah then go through this whole well four if you count the plumber which i know is like an hour no you should count the plumber yeah he's got he's got four four the plumber happens right after the sabbatical of watching movies for a year that's when he's in this state of what do i do next and the next thing he was trying to do was year of living dangerously yeah which this ended up jumping ahead of uh yeah he's also he's courted to buy by hollywood for the first time to make the thorn birds uh which is uh yeah which is obviously set in australia

51:53right that's based on a book yeah yeah calling mcculloch yeah uh herbert ross had dropped out peter weir is somewhat courted um but he basically realizes he's not right for the movie yeah and um he has this thing where he talks about how when he's trying to when he's prepping to make a film he gets this enormous collection of music that he has and he sort of picks out the tapes that he wants to listen to i mean it's the 70s and i do that now though right right and he just couldn't pick like

52:28the the like songs that were like really sort of speaking to him for the thorn birds and he's thinking like i'm not right for this but i can fudge it i'll do it and he's sitting at a bar afterwards and he's waiting for the writer to join him like why can't i find the sound of this movie why can't i find the song that triggers the right feeling for this and he says and this is he gives such interesting quotes in these interviews he says he puts a swizzle stick in his mouth he clenches it he starts like making a buzzing noise with it basically between his teeth yeah peter weir does and he says you know that's what my films are they have the sound of tension to them that's the

53:02fundamental sound i want and i'm just not feeling it with the thorn birds you know like he's like i'm not going to be making a movie that has that kind of quality to it so he drops out that's how he describes dropping out of the project it's very that's so fantastic and that was made uh into a mini series right yeah right that's that's the ultimate destination with richard chamberlain richard chamberlain yeah yeah yeah that's right because i mean i haven't read it but it's like an epic story right it's like a sort of generational like an east of eden type sort of like you know 40 year story yeah i think it was quite a pulpy if i'm i'm not trying to be disparaging but uh you

53:39know it's a bit of a not quite a bodice ripper but this is a a priest from memory i i look i don't even know if i've seen it but a priest who gets you know falls in love with rachel ward's character um it's yeah it serves that purpose i mean maybe it's more maybe the book i haven't read the book but maybe the book is deeper than that but yeah i can see why it wouldn't it hadn't it wouldn't have his name on it i i can see that yeah um the other crazy thing in this period of time is he almost makes what would become john carpenter's the thing yes what he's oh which i've never heard this before he's

54:15offered what what you know he's offered an adaptation of who goes there the the short story which had already been turned into the thing from another world yeah then he sees ridley scott's alien and he's kind of like well that's really good and that kind of has a vibe beyond that he was like i feel like i'm close but i can't quite crack the right way to dramatize this and then he sees alien and he's like well that's what i should have done right and then he would have done then he sees the thing and he's like that was also good i don't think you know like so you know that all works out

54:46oh my god that's amazing i didn't know that but then the two big things yeah the plumber comes about basically because he's at a dinner with a bunch of people and the story gets told of someone having a similar experience and he's like that's a good idea for a movie a producer at the table's like well you should do it right and he just does like i don't know if it's a full movie and he goes well but there's this tv thing you could do it quickly and i think in him trying to get out of his head after this movie watching sabbatical year he goes i'll just make this it'll be simple i'll get it up

55:16on its feet but then he makes this thing we referenced in the plumber episode yeah a heart head in hand which is a documentary about ceramicists it's a it's about a teacher uh called peter rushforth i've never seen it i don't know anything about it but it's sort of an actual documentary documentary it is an actual documentary yeah yes yeah it's a short documentary but the thing i got to find the quote here the reason i bring it up and i haven't been able to find the thing to watch it is that he basically it changed his approach uh in terms of how he um uh thought about how he made

55:52films uh he said he learned from watching the way that ceramics treated their work to apply this craft over art motto right and his quote is he said gallipoli was another period where i turned away from any sort of style attempting to reinvent oneself properly probably some people who didn't care for the film as much as earlier films said i missed your style or i preferred the earlier films and i said well style is just another tool for me i don't ever want to be trapped by style yeah yeah you know i

56:23think like like watching it with such distance now as in you know so long ago since i saw it i i i do think his soul is in that film in gallipoli i mean 100 it's it's it's very it's very intimate actually i mean a lot of it is really about two people in a frame or four people in a frame and yeah sure there's some dance you know there's like that tragic scene where bill hunter's character realizes that they're going to war the next day so he lets them have a drink you know but they're not

56:58it's not epic i wouldn't call that film there are some sort of crowd scenes that would have cost money but i don't i feel it's still a very human intimate film i still you know it's him it's still him i think it's an anti-epic in a really interesting way because it does have the scale and the production way it has some scale yeah you know it has the locations and and the big sweeping vistas at times and all of that but it's actually eluding all of the obvious story beats you expect in a kind of epic

57:30tail set against the backdrop of a war yeah i mean it's nothing like come and see the ellen klimoff film right yeah but but that is also an intimate to anti-war if you can call these films anti-war but uh you know it's it's that is also two people in a scene and mostly following one or two or three people yeah i mean come and that's also i mean gallipoli is it's you know it's a mundane thing in a way like the all these boys were just told like go over the come and see you're right it's the it's

58:03about an atrocity like it's like it's so hard to watch yeah so very i mean and and and like it's a surreal nightmare that film it's like it from the first frame you know this boy is you wondering what he's doing and he's pulling a gun out of the the sand i mean it it's one of my favorite films it's very cool i can see that it would be a film that had influenced some of the stuff you did i mean yeah yeah the big animating idea that i just got really hung up on here in the dossier is he said

58:34and it's sort of what got him starting about the idea of how to make a war movie a thing he hadn't considered before is he read an interview with igmar bergman where he had said you can do most anything on screen except kill somebody and that's where you can't suspend disbelief and we're kind of took that as a challenge right and he said that wasn't a bad observation but you can achieve everything with the suspension of disbelief which is a samuel taylor coleridge phrase in war films you

59:05see all kinds of injuries like arms and heads blown off and people dying the horror of war but i thought what if you didn't see much of that what if you just killed one person whom you've gotten to know and like and that was part of my structure apart from the key vision that these were young athletes at the peak of their condition and it's like right that's the whole idea of the movie of yeah you have these guys who seem kind of blissfully unaware of what lies ahead of them and you just kind of string along the tension of okay but when is when is everything going to get bad and instead you're going to end

59:38literally at the moment the guy dies you know yeah i mean spoiler the movie is just leading to yeah just yeah a flash frame yeah uh and you know what like it's such a to me like a lot of german films end on a freeze frame and it really annoys me yeah because it's like it's a stylistic thing but here is the only i think the only film i can think of where i cannot think of a better ending it it's like a bullet to your own chest that ending yeah and it it's it's the thing at 10 years old i remember

1:00:13yeah i remember freeze frame and obviously not a filmmaker at that age but it really worked on me it's also so funny for this film to come out of him being like okay challenge accepted how do you put a realistic death on screen yeah and yeah he he builds this movie that's a machine to narratively get to that point and earn it but but the movie ends before you actually have to kind of watch the guy die he does evade showing you that in a way well i mean that's the thing yeah that's the thing

1:00:46and and maybe it was just the mood i was in or whatever but i really i really it took me an hour or more to really come out of that state of you know really hit me hard watching it i i just i think i'd been watching news all day actually and uh just feeling despairing for him i was gonna say it's probably that's probably a bad way to pre-game gallipoli is remind yourself what's going on in the world today i watched it while my children were napping and uh i had to just turn you seen it go get

1:01:21him up i think i had maybe seen it in school truly but i don't i i could not remember this movie at all like i i if i saw it it was in high school so i don't really remember um yeah and uh i just sort of forgot like the entire sort of the storytelling approach he took and then was kind of blown away by it because i did keep thinking of platoon which i do i i don't know how consciously stone is borrowing from it but platoon gets you into vietnam fairly quickly like platoon is not uh mostly concerned with

1:01:53them not you know like you know like and whereas this is the opposite this is basically like the first battle that they're going to do is the last battle they're going to do and it's right at the end of the film and i i mean this is a sort of a random segue but i think the film um wolf creek actually does that too to to very different effect but you're you know you're i mean the slasher if you call it i'm not calling wolf creek necessarily a slasher but you know it's like a video it's like a video game normally that genre you just go oh another one another one but here yeah

1:02:27and it's i think it's like an hour in a fine way like you're like i can't wait to see what the next one is right yeah yeah but with these three yeah you spend an hour with them and you think oh they're idiots but they're kind of endearing and charming and then you know the shit hits the fan and that's what makes that film terrifying is the emotional investment and i think here as well you you invest but i just want to ask you what did bergman mean by that because i don't quite understand what he's saying so he felt that if you showed a death on screen people weren't going to believe it is that

1:02:58is that what he my interpretation is that he was saying that it is the hardest thing for audiences to suspend their disbelief on because it is the thing that you can't really there's no way to show an even partially real version of it in front of cameras is that because is that because people are like looking for the flutter of the eyelid or the the chest i guess i mean it's hard to i can't find whatever quote he's referencing because this is three weird right but but i could see it as an actor

1:03:29it's playing a thing you have no experience of actually living through and as an audience you know it's kind of weirdly the fakest thing on screen because yes yes two main actors can kiss and they're not really in love but they can go through the motion of kissing but yeah nobody's dying right and and i think weir's point was the way death usually is depicted on films is like in a war film you show bloody squibs going off you know you show crazy explosions and you don't get the intimacy of death but you get the kind of like the viscera of death and to try to do the exact opposite that is really

1:04:02interesting you know because when i look at this film everyone dies but no one is shown dying yeah so gibson's right but that's it yeah i mean gives yeah so people but the people who die die off screen or it's like they die off screen they fall down yeah yeah like snowy snowy we know he's on the way out and that's but but you know mel gibson's character jack is it yeah yeah jack jack no frank frank frank frank jack is bill carer yeah oh yeah yeah frank leaves before it happens of course and

1:04:34um and you know the the other barney it's like barney's dead he just is and that's devastating to hear that news because that's how that's how people did hear it right you know right rather than getting a big platoon style fall to your knees right with barbara playing yeah exactly yeah you just get a telegram like i remember my dad who was too young for world war ii but his brothers weren't they were quite a bit older and i i didn't know my granddad because he died before i was born but my dad said

1:05:09to me that when conscription came around my granddad would hide his sons in the cupboard wow um so they wouldn't be taken away and that to me is devastating yeah and that's that's that's the face of war like at the beginning when his uncle says i can't even remember what he but his response almost made me it i choked up at his uncle's response knowing um that is his you know this beloved nephew is going off to off to war and the thing that the setup of the movie is that like

1:05:45this kid has a kind of future ahead of him that's clear he does he has such an extraordinary ability well the also and this probably isn't maybe meaningful for audiences outside of australia but i think the unsung hero in this movie is mark lee like the actor i think his performance is so beautiful and innocent and there's something so real about it and you know he he didn't go on to be mel gibson he right he's he's an australian actor who he's an australian actor basically yeah and i think

1:06:18i don't think i mean look he was on this show called the restless years while he was doing this and then he went back to that and that and that's kind of like young and no uh like what are your shows like a soap opera right yeah yeah like like a long running you know um days of our lives kind of soap opera and so i think but i also think his his goal wasn't to conquer the world as an as a person i saw him in a lot of stage plays um when i was studying studying to be an actor at nider and

1:06:52you know i he was around then doing and a beautiful actor like it wasn't like he wasn't deserving of of more well but see in the 80s i mean because i i graduated in the year above kate blanchett and essie davis at nider and if we said we were going to hollywood to to be to be actors we would have been laughed out of the room you know it was really only after that that that starts you know when kate to hollywood yeah when kate and nicole and uh russell crowe and all these people but it was

1:07:27but at this stage when gallipoli was made 81 actors weren't actors weren't doing that and i think if mel gibson didn't have that uh dual citizenship he probably would not have either or or he would would have been more much more difficult if he wasn't actually born in america he's such a fascinating case but i even think beyond that there just was this energy around him of everyone going like holy shit we have we have discovered a new element we need to figure out how to like build

1:07:58industries around this yeah mel yeah mel gibson yeah yeah i mean he was a force of nature it was kind of you know mad max i mean he's so wonderful in the original mad max i mean he's talking jennifer about like this small group of filmmakers punching above their weight class it is crazy not just like we've already kind of established this thing where seeing the cars that ate paris is the thing that inspires george miller to make mad max right peter weir oh i didn't know that inspires him

1:08:30to go fuck i should make something for mel gibson well let me tell you let me tell you yeah it really interests me because he he meets with mel gibson i think for last waiver an earlier film and when he meets him he says like look i don't think i'm going to cast you in this i don't think you make sense for it you're not old enough but i really wanted to meet you and then so he brings him back for gallipoli and he says look i've cast mark lee who's this like angelic australian boy like and that's who he's playing and i need someone who feels modern and you feel modern like because i need someone who's

1:09:03going to resonate with like contemporary viewers you know in yeah right because mark is this you know feels like he's from an angel he feels like he's from decades ago whereas you feel like a more real person but also gibson is relating that but i believe it completely because that is how he feels in the movie you're like this guy's a little out of you know out of the ordinary like you know yeah he's behaving early in the film but he still feels time period too he still feels of the time like right and the additional layer is this is the guy who survives right that this is so much an end of

1:09:37innocence movie or we're through the prism of this specific character but also that like this is a turning point in the history of australia that's what i wanted to ask you jennifer right like that yeah this is the context i only have a little bit but gallipoli is the moment when australians are like why are we serving the british empire right like you know like it's the it's a very definitive sort of transformational moment for the country a little bit on in terms of like why have we been shipped you know halfway across the world to fight a war that barely you know involves us i think we've

1:10:07i think we've always had that towards the brits i think there's we were especially in that period seen as kind of like the the scum you know in the second yeah i mean yeah yeah like uh uh my friend went to to um uh to work in england as an actress and and one of the and he's very famous but i won't mention who but he said oh you're from the antipodes to her you know and it's like oh and he mentioned

1:10:38her name and he said ah susan i had a child woman called susan as a child you know it was it was sort of really playing on that class system whereas australians the brilliant thing about living in australia is we we don't have an active class system even though we came from this very sort of regimented class system of britain yeah no i think that's right that's one of the you know worst things about britain is i mean which as living there obviously i was sort of outside the class system

1:11:10because i was american right so yeah i wouldn't fall into the weird traps but then i would see others it was like oh yeah if you taught you know the word you used to describe dinner or the bathroom like immediately slots you in you know to a sort of into a sort of social class for everybody else definitely i think it's gotten better i think you know as the world becomes more i would assume homogenized but on that point i i actually felt sad last night watching it on some level beyond the tragedy of the film that i'm watching these iconic australian actors who are

1:11:46really aussie who are really australian right and i'm seeing our history and this beautiful australian culture i mean it's also it's not perfect like i think you know i know that from the nightingale yes you have confronted australian history yeah uh but that that there's a an identity that i feel uh has been lost and i would say that across the board um right that the kind of guys you're seeing

1:12:19in these movies yeah like just anymore no because now it's you know and no slight on you guys but there's an americanization of australia and culture and and it's sad i feel it's sad because i want to see i mean i want to see australian films and about australian concerns but this is an interesting question like how much is mel gibson the canary in the coal mine for that talking about his weird kind of like dual identity right yeah and that beyond just thinking he was a talented actor and you know

1:12:55seeing him in mad max and the fact that mad max had crossed over to the states more one of the motivating things for we're in trying to find a project to do with mel gibson was an understanding that the american studios were interested in mel gibson yeah mel gibson already just from the first mad max and even more so after road warrior was like hollywood is interested in this guy right how do we build a bridge to him if any australians are making movies with him we're more interested in importing them over here and if anyone can help us figure out how to translate him into a hollywood

1:13:29star that's infinitely valuable to us yeah and it is this weird thing about him where he's like one foot in both worlds yeah yes and i i think but i think he very quickly became and this is like absolutely no judgment because he was born in america but he became american he's yeah i mean there would be audience out there who don't even know he's australian i remember finding out that he had any time in australia because he you know exactly had an accent right and then he was in movies like the patriot i mean

1:14:00he was he was playing he went full america like he made all these sort of war movies and like you know he really leaned into it but then it also means that a lot of the other like america australian exports who crossed over into hollywood were guys where it was like well how good's your american accent sure yes you know the fact that they like let heath ledger be australian in 10 things i hate about you is unusual because very often it was we like your kind of rugged masculinity but can we add a little bit of like american oorah on top of that and then totally let you through the doors yeah i mean

1:14:34mel was you know he was a pioneer in in opening up the the the talent pool of amazing actors that come out of this country you know and and it's just been an avalanche of them ever since i feel compared to our population size there's so many beautiful actors here so the other thing i don't know much about jennifer is that like this is western australia right like the start of the you know where he's from yeah which i feel like is is a unique part of the country in and of itself

1:15:07right like because it's so massive and it's kind of hugely underpopulated it's mostly desert i don't like does this capture the culture of that part of the country very like deeply well i think it's very true to the fact like perth is the most isolated city in the world it's the furthest away from any other major city um i think yeah i think it very beautifully demonstrated that that you you know that that great scene whether we were mentioning before of the guy saying oh is there

1:15:38war going on i can imagine that i can imagine that back then yeah yeah yeah so i think i think that's very true just to give you a little more research right so weird does we mentioned him he goes to turkey he visits the beaches he's very stirred by it he brings in david williamson who he yes who is a sort of a playwright you know first and foremost who he talked to about picnic and hanging rock but they hadn't actually worked on it yeah and you know first they're like okay do we do you know a sort

1:16:10of full accounting of gallipoli like you know enlistments you know the evacuation of gallipoli the whole you know do we try to do a sort of big thing and then they they just sort of narrow it down to make up a story about two men like it's not a true story right like or anything like that but like let's just make this much more oblique what's also allegorical like this whole notion for him of this was a loss of innocence moment for the australian identity have character who represents that innocence down to the point that he will die in the name of a meaningless cause right that he will go

1:16:43out and walk straight into his death to represent an ideal they obviously when you know gallipoli winston churchill uh was very involved in like there were early drafts that had winston churchill as a character like they had a completely you know wide aspect you know uh but then it can be a bit boring right yeah it would be incredibly boring i mean it's it would be an encyclopedia article that immediately turns me off right yes me too you like him but yes i mean it's interesting historically but when you when you when you take something down to the super personal and

1:17:17it becomes epic actually emotionally there's room for it to be that whereas if you've got you know all these scenes with like masses of i mean there are battle scenes there but it's not focused on that it's actually very intimately shot then it it tells you the story of this whole battle that was pointless i think yes yeah i'm with you i'm with you griff i i feel yeah yeah i feel like it it it showed in a nutshell how pointless the whole battle was without showing i think our brains process these

1:17:49things in similar ways jennifer and it is that thing of like if i just see a sprawling battle scene of 80 000 people killing each other my brain kind of turns off because i can't even calculate what i'm seeing and i've lost the personal connection to that beyond just like ideologically not understanding how anything could get to that place yeah uh you know once we've evolved into having conversation right or other options emails other abilities to work out issues um but but yes this is a movie that keeps everything framed through such a personal lens and such a tight kind of two-person story

1:18:23and even like the kind of biggest scenes you see are when they're doing like the the battleground training in the desert yes and it's just like a bunch of boys wrestling each other in a backyard basically yeah yeah i mean even that how amazing how amazing was that scene where they were incredible all play acting dying yes it's it's just so beautifully structured this film and i think going back to that intimacy as a filmmaker i am much more attracted to that style of filmmaking

1:18:56myself you know i'm working on a sci-fi that looks to be shooting this year that is and that is so cool whoa yeah um and very exciting but it's it's um an adaptation of something but um even though the the the subject matter is huge that the the film is kind of somewhat intimate and i i personally i mean big films can be amazing and i i mean i watched ben-hur recently oh my god yeah well ben-hur is you can't

1:19:32believe that they made it like you can't believe but it's also brilliant it was made yeah it's a brilliant film and and so i'm not saying oh i don't like those but to make them i'm i would never choose to make a big big film so that's why a film like gallipoli just is my happy place yeah if you told me you were making like a gigantic action epic i would be surprised given the films of your so like seen so far i would i would be like oh yeah yeah i didn't know you yeah yeah i'm sorry i just need to call out yes truly two weeks ago jennifer david just texted apropos of nothing you know what

1:20:07scene really pops in ben-hur the chariot i mean it was a joke oh my god yes of course but you were re-watching it no someone else was someone else but you know what but you know what's amazing about that film and i look maybe it's not true but no one died i think no one that's maybe a horse i mean i'm not sure no no horses no horses unless they're telling us fibs they might be but but but you know unlike other productions of the period no one no animal or human died on that that's and and watching

1:20:41it it's so dangerous right when you're watching it you're thinking it's like this is gonna someone's instantly like they're gonna crash any second and you know it's i mean for real yeah yeah it's sort of like man max as well i mean like that's the the magic of the man max movies oh yeah david yes you look like a man who doesn't know that fast-growing trees is america's largest and

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1:23:41with it i got pelted pretty hard it's gonna leave a bruise how's that to-do list it's tough it's tough and life keeps throwing more things at me okay well is there maybe something that we could take off your plate have someone else help you out with perhaps a trusted tasker from task rabbit david i would love nothing more my ideal life is to do as little as possible as much as can be off my plate the happier i am i have children i have logistical responsibilities often of like i need to build a

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1:25:54so book trusted home help today that's 15 off your first task using promo code check with the task this film is funded by rupert murdoch yeah uh associated r and r i know i saw that at the beginning and i was like oh my god it's cast it basically was single-handedly funded by him and robert stigwood who's the guy who made grease uh produced grease and okay saturday night fever yes

1:26:29and murdoch is basically like you know let's make a movie in australia i mean i don't know how else they formed this company this ends up being the only film they ever make but to your point jennifer they basically were like it seems like something's going on in australia and they hire like an american film executive and they're like go there and like give us a rundown on the scene and he's like i've seen every australian movie over the last two months and there were like 12 extraordinary filmmakers here right there's absolutely a scene that's worth putting money into and they were very committed

1:27:01to that as a long-term project and then this ends up being a one and done right so but but peter weir formed the idea first and then yes yes yeah he's been trying to make a while i think like he spent a lot of 1979 trying to get it made some investors withdrew he starts working on other stuff and then they come and they fund it um it cost three million australian dollars which was the most uh the highest budget an australian movie had ever gotten at that point but obviously not incredibly high budget no no and what's that probably about 25 now or something right i mean it's it's not it's not insane it's well

1:27:36below obviously what american films cost at the time uh so yeah as i said about gibson like he was basically like uh you know brought in because he already has a lot of heat but also because weir loves the contrast between him yes perfect casting right mark lee was sort of something of an unknown i think that they just sort of found doing like uh photo he was on the the show i think that he started doing yeah he was on that he was on that show yeah so he wasn't he wasn't a big star

1:28:09or anything mark lee like the embarrassment of riches in this moment of this like generation of talent all coming up together is that russell boyd's the dp but john seal is the camera operator and john seal basically had already ascended to being a dp but everyone was like this kind of feels like the big graduation movie for the australian film industry yeah so we'll all just jump on board and work on this one together oh but this is interesting jennifer you'll be interested to hear this about mark lee apparently while he's doing gallipoli yeah he tells peter weir milish forman

1:28:40is offering me mozart in amadeus oh my god and he says like i'm not into it i'm not gonna do it and oh my god you know and weir says like look he stayed in australia he had kids he kept it simple this is a gibson quote oh no mel gibson says that sorry yeah it's not yes oh mel gibson was offered no no mark lee was offered it gibson just recollects him basically saying like i'm not gonna do it see that's what i mean about mark i just have this feeling that he he wasn't he didn't want to set the

1:29:13world on fire i know that he's also a musician like he had bands in sydney for many years you know and would play live his brother's a musician as well it's just you know not everyone wants that life right because it's it's not it's not the greatest to be a star i mean the fascinating quote because this is coming from gibson who is recounting mark lee's experience and mel gibson is someone who i think even mel gibson for his flaws would admit stardom made him insane like yes if i can read the

1:29:44quote yeah and this is from a 2001 interview mark gibson mel gibson recounts the amadeus thing and he said so it's a choice you make in a sense i don't think the full consequences of it hit me till later and i think mark had more of an insight into it he stayed in australia got married had some kids he wanted to keep it simple didn't want it to get nuts right for mel gibson too in 2001 say yes that guy maybe had it figured out how to not go crazy oh my god and what was mel doing around

1:30:16that time i mean that's like kind of that stage it's it's when he's still a huge star but it's the videos are coming off pretty soon after it's like signs and the patriot yeah 2000 is patriot chicken run and what women want the same year he was like top of the pile yeah in hollywood he was the highest paid actor in hollywood and he's like calling like hey i guess maybe that guy kind of had a good idea yeah yeah um but that's i mean you know in this movie it's like this grand tragedy that this young man doesn't get to live there is a similar thing even though the outcomes are very different

1:30:49of this guy kind of stayed true to his vision of his notion of what he wanted his career to be in australia and maintain some sense of like sanity that's what i mean yeah that's what i was talking about before of the resonance of this actor who kind of effectively disappeared yeah right right i mean of course he didn't no without being insulting his career there's like an innocence to the fact that he's preserved for many viewers is just the guy in gallipoli that's right and and and and like

1:31:20like a mosquito in amber you know he's right perfect angel but it's all accounts also like happy and balanced you know and then the mel gibson character in this movie the whole film is like building to this guy seeing how bad things are about to go right and trying desperately running in circles to do anything he can to stop it and he is powerless and all he can do is just choose to as mel gibson put it like he has the power to be a coward in this moment right which is the smart thing to do right but

1:31:53he doesn't save anyone else but can you imagine like just on a level of war trauma yeah if that if that character was real like you know that that those screams those screams of um of you know mel gibson's character towards the at the very end when he realizes he's missed it's just blood curdling um you know it's it's horrible and that that that human would never get over that never get over because it wasn't

1:32:27just one man that went up over the trench it was all of them it's metatextual stuff that only you can apply 40 years after knowing the branching paths of people in their careers but it is like right there is like the kind of survivor's guilt that you gain to push through whatever you need to push through to become the level of movie star that he did yeah which isn't to say that you have to like throw people in front of a train to get 20 million dollars a movie but there is that kind of like perseverance and pressure that does tend to break people yeah and it's interesting that they've gone

1:33:03similar ways to their i mean mark is still alive so he didn't die but it's it's perfect casting philosophically it weirdly like lines up and then this is the movie on the precipice of weird like tentatively going like do i go to hollywood yeah yeah yeah i mean the next film you know uh is living you're living dangerously that's right yeah is an australian american sort of co-production it's like it's a hybrid right yeah in between right and then witness is the film after that in which he's

1:33:35basically which is a beautiful film and he's yeah it's a witness is an incredible film i mean yeah it's one of my favorites do you guys feel that there was something lost in in that in that migration i mean i think that he's an incredible hollywood filmmaker and he made great movies here but yes there is there is something very whole about the those first few films right like there's there is and like that that you don't you know he made really good movies in hollywood but like you don't

1:34:05see it in the hollywood movies in the same way there's a soulfulness to his hollywood movies so that that never goes away yeah yeah but i mean even a film like fearless has a deep kind of spiritual yeah it does and you know like i guess it's like things like witness fearless uh green card even dead poets society he makes great movies about outsiders like he makes great movies about feeling out of yourself the truman show is like a masterpiece of that right like well that's yeah i saw that recently against each other right yeah yeah yeah i saw that one recently so he's very

1:34:37good at that but he also i mean the stories you hear with the you know in our research about the hollywood movies it's like he's just an extremely consummate professional like right yeah it's it's you know he's being handed other people scripts and he's coming in and he's going like yeah i think i know how to do this in a really good way like he it's a little less the story of like oh right i had a weird dream and began a creative process you know like you don't hear that as much you're right that few people have successfully um like survived that transition

1:35:07better than him right i mean he had a fantastic career i mean the the people that i think thrived in the migration to america were the european jewish community yeah i mean they right you know went across and created film noir in a way right right um off the back of german expressionism this kind of bleak uh way of looking at the world that i don't know if hollywood would make films like that anymore that's a great point though i think in a way like the the way i look at his

1:35:41career in a smaller quantity is similar to fritz lang where like i there i love his german work so much right and then the american films are so so interesting but it's like two distinct chapters of his career they're both great i would be more frustrated i think if we were doing this series and you're like oh peter weir only made two australian films before he jumped over to hollywood right and if the hollywood films were of a lesser integrity it would be more frustrating the fact that he has kind of a whole proper career of australian films that he has this five film arc

1:36:17right and i would have loved to see him do more but but there's also enough there and then when he goes to hollywood it's like fritz lang doing noir where it's like well this is not entirely driven by his personal motivation yeah yeah but he's finding a way to add a thing and he can tell stories in a minor key and like right jennifer saying like that's that's so new like and feel so different and i maybe he would have made those kind of films here anyway he would have graduated yeah maybe right i'm not saying he could have because we don't have the money we don't have the

1:36:50stars but what i mean is it's i don't think he was selling out or uh not being true true to which is sort of that's the because like you do see a lot of australian and new zealand filmmakers go to hollywood and they make like genre movies and they're not bad you know like they're not like you know but like i think of jeff murphy right like who's like an incredible new zealand filmmaker but even philip noyce is someone philip noyce yeah from like being like oh this guy makes great genre films too yeah oh he's kind of doing paychecky stuff right and then when he does rabbit

1:37:20proof fence it's like now he's getting back to what he cares about versus the paychecks it did feel like there was a consistency across weir's entire career yeah and i mean i know i know that personally you know having turned down many films right i'm sure you got brought i cannot even imagine still yeah no offense to it because it's fine like it's fine but it's but you but you also suffer by not accepting right because then they're like well you don't want to play the game then then what do we need you for well then you know your own the investment in your own projects can

1:37:52mean that there's few like longer years between right so i understand when you get offered those types of things what was the kind of calculation you were doing in in sort of like how how to test if you felt like there was a worthwhile opportunity there versus you know the dangers i mean i i'm a writer director and i would love to direct other people's things that yeah but it's unfortunately it's just i haven't had those scripts come that um that make me go oh you know i get like the goosebump

1:38:27test where i just feel so i have to i because i have to be deeply connected to something like on a very deep level because you you what you want you're going to stick with this story for a number of years so it has to be meaningful and you know i didn't watch marvel films so why would i want to direct them i right right right it's it's not it's no slight on that but i know it's no it's knowing and i mean you know i have like six scripts piled up that just no one wants to make but no i mean that that's not

1:39:00a pile of money god i got a hundred bucks no i mean it's not true because they're they're actually there's a few down it's an investment because there's a few now that are yeah that are backed up and but i i'm very devoted to them and i think being a writer director i mean these films actually i don't know if peter wrote did he write mosquito coast he was he always Paul Schrader once he goes to america i feel like green card is

1:39:33the rare yeah movie that he wrote himself by and large in america he's making other people's scripts now he's working on the scripts or whatever but uh it's just green card and then uh master and commander are the and then the way back his final film he wrote all of yeah but obviously in america he was i'm sorry in australia he's he's credited as a writer on on you know gallipoli he has story credit but not screenplay on last wave right cars they pass year of living dangerously his

1:40:04on the plumber credit yeah but you know yeah work with he would collaborate i feel like he's always been a fairly sort of he collaborates with other writers who yeah but but not strictly writer director he's not a full sort of yeah proper auteur type you know yeah that's not really like i'm very close mates with justin kazell who oh yeah yeah we've covered his film uh assassin's creed on this podcast oh okay okay probably because it's a big it's a big our producer ben's a big fan i think yeah i'm a huge fan of the movie not so much the game oh really oh i'll tell him i'll tell him that

1:40:40please please do please do it's not his finest hour from his perspective sure uh from our perspective no come on yeah i think it's so fun i revisit all the time it's such a comfort watch for me yeah jennifer the reason we covered it on the show is that ben had a period of months where he would watch it every night to try to fall asleep and it wasn't as some backhanded this movie bores me way it was that he found it so comforting that it was the movie that could calm his anxieties i was in a bad relationship at the time and i never played the game i just was like assassins i can fuck with that

1:41:17but wait wait wait jennifer why did you bring up justin i'm sorry i realized oh the reason i brought him up is because he's a brilliant director he is and he's and he and he's a i mean nitrum and snowtown snowtown's on my you know top 10 list but he yeah incredible movie he is a great i mean he's also in there i think a director who makes films with other people's scripts it's not like they just mail him the script and then he goes okay and now we're ready to shoot it's very much mcbeth feels very

1:41:50personal and individualistic he's very involved in script but um i you know i'm envious because it means he can make more films right he can take on a project a little faster right yeah and he may have four or five i can't write four or five i can maybe write three scripts maximum a year uh before i have to go on a holiday and have a sleep but he he can you know work on more i think directors who don't necessarily write their own stuff or all of it um can be more prolific you know i think even

1:42:23tarantino has said that he said yeah i've got to write the thing forever yeah yeah yeah he's actually producing the film that they're making so oh really justin oh curzel yeah yeah i am just realizing in real time jennifer just because ben is uh behind the producer console and he's not on the computer screen i'm realizing just to paint a picture for you ben is kind of an american lyrican wow oh really yeah a little bit a little bit i'm from new jersey kind of the outback of the states i was a smoker for

1:42:56many years do you like beer you've had your boisterous days i like to knock back a couple of cold ones from time to time sure the major i don't know if what you would uh think here but the major quality of a lyrican i think is to bullshit you yeah so kind of sort of like a trickster right like a kind of like a you know now ben you're very honest but you also do love swindler i don't know yeah and you make your now wife doing a bit only for a lot only for a laugh yeah right i mean i remember when i

1:43:31watched barry lyndon for the first time i was like hmm oh my god relating to this irish scoundrel yes yes it comes from it actually comes from ireland i think it's right we you know we have a huge sort of irish lineage here yes um so yeah it's probably an irish thing actually very it's all coming the other the other word is mateship right which is sort of like that's a very australian word for like kind of brotherhood or whatever yeah definitely and that's that's the essence of gallipoli right

1:44:03that's what we're says is the essence yeah that's what we realized we were making a movie about was about mateship which is why they have things like the rugby game that would sorry aussie rules uh