Sideways is a great example – Alexander Payne’s breeze of a movie about the soon-to-be-married charm merchant Jack (Thomas Haden Church) and his final days as an oversexed bachelor. He promotes himself as something of TV star, but the reality is not quite so glamorous. His performances are generally limited to voice-over disclaimers on advertisements, and a “spray-n’-wipe” commercial is the cream of his showreel. Jack wants to spend his last days before tying the knot tripping through California’s Santa Ynez Valley with his lifelong friend Miles (Paul Giamatti), a browbeaten English teacher and wine enthusiast (aka alcoholic). Two years on from his failed marriage Miles is no clearer about how it all went so wrong. I don’t think the booze is helping as much as he thinks.

This flick did big things for a few careers. Paul Giamatti signalled with Sideways that he’d come a long way from playing Howard Stern’s nemesis ‘Pig Vomit’ in Private Parts. For years, Giamatti snaked in and out of big movies with tiny blow-ins, before staking his claim with a forceful turn in the Todd Solondz blitz-bomb Storytelling. If his haggard, galumphing portrayal of underground comic-book hero Harvey Pekar in American Splendor was the coupe de grace, then Sideways went one better. Miles might be something of a tragic figure but you spend most of the film laughing at his schmuckyness. That’s what is so great about the performance.

Per his character Ned Dorsey on the underrated TV sitcom Ned & Stacey, Thomas Haden Church finds a way of turning his character’s biggest shortcomings into loveable foibles. Ned Dorsey had an urbane, rapier wit – but instead of wanting to throttle him, you wanted to crack a case of beer with him and ride out his worst ribbing. Despite your best instincts, Jack is irrepressibly likeable in Sideways. You just have a kick basking in his company. Virginia Madsen (who plays a waitress that catches Miles’ eye) brings to her role the kind of weary, scuffed grace that could only come from years of slogging it out in B-movies. This turn must have been a tonic for her soul – she could now shunt Candyman from the top of her resume.

If a movie about a wine-tasting trip sounds unbearably high-brow, it’s not. There isn’t a snooty moment to be found in Sideways. Were they twenty years younger, the characters in Sideways would have bounced each other off the screen in a ribald teen sex comedy. It’s just that impending middle-age has left them too shell-shocked to trust their guts. The marmalade-thick jazz score keeps things whistling along, and there is no showing off in the screamingly sharp adapted screenplay that seems faithfully literate but never oxidised. You figure you’re just watching the comedy of the moment, but when you leave the cinema you realise you’ve seen one of the drama’s of the decade.

It’s the fact that Sideways harbours Shakespearean depths without showing the strain that makes me love it. It as fun as a night on the piss with mates, but it leaves you with a sediment of thoughts that last. A hangover, I suppose, but in a good way. It’s light and deep. You’ve got to love that.

Before Sunset is another one. The 30-something characters played by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy (who co-scripted this film) are meeting seven years on from their one night stand in Before Sunrise and they’re very different people now. Put simply, they’ve grown up. They breeze through picturesque Paris, and it feels like a chatty travelogue. But in their snappy, thrown-away, interleaving dialogue they’re getting to the very heart of issues like ageing, faded ambitions and how idealism head butts with a kind of weary realism in your twenties. Mostly we’re not even noticing. We’re too busy enjoying the sun-dappled Parisian backstreets and the vicarious caffeine and nicotine hits to realize that we’re parsing one nuggety philosophical diatribe after the next. These characters are showing us their wounds. They’re throwing up their dark, damaged secrets, and we’ve got a smile on our faces while we swallow them whole. There’s something beautiful about that. Not because the filmmakers are outsmarting the audience, not at all. Richard Linklater just knows that the stone fist wrapped in a velvet glove makes the most impact. You swoon first and ponder later.

The South African comic Pieter-Dirk Uys told me once that if you have a message to get across, a real hard-hitting message, don’t go ahead and poke your audience in the eye with it. That gets you nowhere. Tickle them behind the ear, and then when they turn to look at what is giving them such pleasure your finger meets their eye. That’s the right philosophy.

The same is true of Up in The Air. That’s a movie that I’m cautious to recommend – because I’ve had several people bite my head off for praising it. They thought it was gooey tripe. They though it was Hollywood scum. I thought it was mana from heaven. Jason Reitman broke down the Clooney character, the modern-day Cary Grant screwball guy with the readymade grin and the Casino hair and somehow made the whole thing a construction where we could see the seams. The Clooney archetype was inverted so that it now came suffused with darkness. He’s bleeding on the inside, man, but he’s doing his super-smooth shtick all the while. He’s flailing.

What can you say about Up in the Air? On the surface it looks and feels like a Hollywood star vehicle at cruising altitude. Just lounge back in the megaplex and enjoy being blinded by the stardust, right? But scratch through the airbrushed surface and you see a world of feelings underneath. You see dozens of barbed questions about, well, the meaning of life: is it easier to find meaning if we’re in perpetual, peripatetic movement or is it only if we stop and smell the flowers in our own backyard that we get to the quick of what life is all about? To have kids or not to have kids? To travel endlessly, and slide across the vast panoramic surfaces of life, to go ‘broad and shallow’ or to plant roots in your own little corner of the world, to go ‘deep and narrow’? It’s a movie about How We Live Now. I felt shattered by the existential emptiness of Ryan Bingham’s last line. How did this dopey Clooney movie make me cry my eyes out, I wondered over the credits? What genre is Up In The Air? Rom-Com? Sit Com? Screwball? Dramedy? I don’t know – it sure felt like a great Tragic movie to me. But then again, it doesn’t look or feel like one. That’s the point though.

Light and deep. It doesn’t get much better than that.

- It’s Not About The Camera

based on a 2010 speech by Julian Shaw

JS: I was really excited about speaking to you.
CR: Oh yeah?

JS: Yeah. But somehow I was a bit worried that you might be a man-eater in interviews. Could you see why someone would be nervous if they were to look back at some things like your interview with Chuck The Movie Guy? You kind of man-handled him.
CR: Can you just give me a second?

(CR leaves for thirty seconds).

* * * * *

(CR returns. Her tone of voice has changed).

JS: Are you ok?
CR: I’m good now.

JS: So, when you are picking roles – I mean let’s go to something like Black Snake Moan, which is such an anarchic movie – if you’re going to take a risk like that do you need to be very sure of the director and their previous work?
CR: … No.

JS: Do you want to elaborate on that?
CR: No.

JS: Come on?
CR: Well, I hadn’t seen Hustle and Flow and that wasn’t important. You might think that a role like Rae in Blake Snake Moan, you know, that you need to have faith in the director and a lot of collaboration, but really I just let passion blind me to common sense, I just let myself fall completely in love with Rae. I didn’t see how it could be perverted. I didn’t see how that would be possible. You can’t leave that to the director anyway, you have to see it in the writing.

JS: I guess some actors might looks at a role like that – a girl addicted to sex – and misunderstand that the way it’s written is actually very humanist…
CR: I didn’t see how it could be misunderstood, in fact I didn’t honestly see how it could be anything other than truly heartwarming. People have to take note, recognise these women, and – as painful and unpleasant as it sounds – maybe see people like Rae in themselves.

JS: I heard that Craig Brewer (director of Black Snake Moan) kind of like hesitated before casting you? I think he said that he thought you were too nice or something?
CR: I don’t know – ask him…

JS: Well, the thing is I can’t right now Christina.
CR: I can’t tell you.

JS: I know you said that you changed your diet for the role – you essentially went on a sugar binge. I’d imagine you felt terrible on set at times? I feel like shit when I eat too much sugar…
CR: I don’t know about that… did I change that much?

JS: Well, then let me change my question: how different was this diet to how you normally eat? Do you not care so much or are you one of those health-conscious, macro-biotic-diet LA actors?
CR: Wow, you are like really obsessed with this diet thing!

JS: (Laughs). I guess I think it’s just interesting, you know, that… people talk about getting into a character through costume or accent or some extrinsic things, but not necessarily through the food they put in their belly… it’s kind of novel, that’s all.
CR: I see what you’re saying. I basically just didn’t eat anything that had any nutritional value. To be honest I don’t diet, I’m just not that careful with my diet. But hey, also, I do pilates! So I’m in both camps. But you know it was not that different to how I normally eat at all, to be honest. Not much of a stretch.

JS: Do you have an addictive personality?
CR: No, not really. I don’t smoke much anymore either. I’ve cut down.

JS: Maybe you’re addicted to work?
CR: (Laughs). Yeah, you got me, I love to work.

JS: When you play someone like Rae, who is just swamped with negative feelings, do you need to tap into a period in your life – perhaps when you were younger – to get some authenticity to that?
CR: No. No! That is the thing, this was nothing personal. Nothing personal in my life did I use as fodder for this. Nothing in my life compares of course. Rae was completely different.

JS: I get the feeling your approach to work has changed then. I am loath to put words in your mouth, but I get the feeling that maybe earlier on in your career you were more quick to draw on your own experiences?
CR: You’re a savvy one aren’t you? Well, years and years ago if I had done the role of Rae I would have felt abused, I would have definitely felt more uncomfortable. It would have been hard. But now I feel in control over everything. I control my life and control my performance. If I gt back to Black Snake Moan I would say that movie has changed my perspective on life. That movie has changed me fundamentally as an actress. That movie changed the way I look at acting.

JS: Could you clarify that? I mean, come on, these are some huge statements!
CR: It’s about fully committing and creating someone else and transforming. And I’ve realised I can do that and I’m good at it. This is the most gratifying style to work in. So my identity as an actress has changed. I now realize I’m the ‘chameleon actress.’ So it has changed now that I know who I am and I what I can do. And I can sit back and look to the future and maybe look more to my financial life.

JS: So your outlook is pretty balanced these days?
CR: Yeah, it’s the most balanced it’s been.

JS: Just changing the subject a bit, I think The Ice Storm is one of the best films I’ve ever seen.
CR: Well thank you. I think that The Ice Storm marked a big change for me.

JS: I remember seeing Now and Then as a very hormonal young man and being a bit overexcited as well.
CR: (Laughs). Yeah, Now and Then was fun. I enjoyed it! (She laughs a lot). I just look back, not on one film and regret it, but look back on all my work and I just think ‘man I could have done a better job. I wish I’d known that when I did this role. I wish I knew what I did now.’ My work would have been far better.

JS: What is your dream role nowadays – if not ‘a psycho killer’ as you said when you were younger?
CR: Can I just say that I said that when I was 17, and I really, really do not want to be held ever again to things that I said when I was 17.

JS: Sorry, man.
CR: It’s cool. But look, to answer your question, probably something period.

JS: Uh, which period exactly?
CR: Uh, not this period. Something where I can transform. But I’d pick those big movies carefully. Those Hollywood movies… I just, if I ever get to that level of being super, super famous I want it to be because I am good at what I do. I don’t want to pretend.

JS: So you’re not ‘super, super famous’ now?
CR: Well, it’s hard to say isn’t it? Unless you are some kind of massive egotist. It’s hard to be objective about where you stand. Actually it’s impossible.

JS: Well I have to quote one thing from you, and I’m sorry. It’s a recent quote so maybe you’ll forgive me.
CR: Oh yeah?

JS: Yeah. I just saw this fascinating quote from you about being ‘an asshole’ when you’re not ‘vulnerable?’ I just saw that when I was prepping for our chat and I thought, ‘God, I want to know what that means!’
CR: Well, I think I was just being self-deprecating. I think that self-deprecating things don’t read well in print. I guess I was just trying to say it’s good to get me when I’m feeling vulnerable.

JS: Is that what has happened today?
CR: Maybe.

-    It’s Not About The Camera

(original interview from 2006)

Thursday 8 July 2010

Friday 9 July 2010

I get a call from John Kirwan. He’s in Auckland too, chilling out a little with his family after coaching Japan in the Pacific Nations Cup. We have a bit of a chat about how life in Tokyo is going for him and how my film on him is going. He wishes me luck for my meeting later that day with DRAFTFCB. They are the advertising company behind JK’s highly successful depression awareness ad campaign in New Zealand. A representative from the Ministry of Mental Health will be in attendance as well. The screening of my drama ‘All Blacks Don’t Cry’ goes well – they’re evidently delighted with the film and, more importantly, the film’s clinical correctness.

I’ve got a meeting with the New Zealand Rugby Union right afterwards at the Heritage Hotel to get briefed on filming the All Blacks game in Wellington the following week. It’s surreal sitting down with the media team and being surrounded by current All Blacks who are bouncing babies on their knees. During our conversation I feel a tall, powerful presence beside me. I turn around and look up into one of the most famous New Zealand faces of all time – Tana Umaga. He introduces himself with a beatific, deeply etched smile. I’m speechless, and can’t even get out the words ‘mate, you’re not the one who needs an introduction!”

That humility is a big part of the All Black manna, and it’s a vital quality for success I believe – whoever you are. I’ve met actors and directors that I look up to and normally the more big time they are the more of this quality they have. It’s the also-rans who exude arrogance and desperation in my experience.

Saturday 10 July

A huge day filming – starting in Auckland’s Papaptoetoe. Alison is a Maori woman I‘ve been following for Cup of Dreams who has had a fascinating journey with rugby. You’ll see it if you check out the film but suffice to say she has taken a beautiful arc. In a documentary you want your characters to arrive somewhere different to where they started. It doesn’t have to be a huge or cataclysmic change, it can be quite subtle but there must be some kind of emotional journey. I think Alison does that in this film. The most touching part is that her son Vettori, 19-months-old but hulkish already, is just so affectionate. He bounces over and gives me a big cuddle when I arrive with my camera, and keeps insisting on me picking him up. He sits on my lap at one point at the family table and tries to feed me some of his BBQ chicken, which I know is a great sign of affection. I can appreciate that it takes a lot to come between a boy and his food.

Sunday 11 July

Road trip from Auckland to Wellington, and it’s pure bliss. I love nothing more than being on the open road – and I’ve got a great task, to capture some of the scenic flavor of this beautiful country. This is one of the great parts about getting towards the pointy end of a documentary – you’ve done a rough cut and you’ve built (hopefully) a solid emotional core and story. Now you can layer on the extras, a bit like a car getting a nice new paint job and a polish. You can’t do it the other way around though – otherwise you get a lot of beautiful but meaningless images. Towns like Taihape, Rotorua, Taupo and Bulls flash by.

Tuesday 13 July

I’m up at six AM to get ready to film an All Blacks training run at Rugby League Park in Wellington’s inner-city suburb of Newtown. It’s a brusque morning and I think I had a bit too much Pinot Noir last night because the longer the morning stretches on the more my head throbs in the cold. I knock back a coffee which only worsens the dull ache, but I know it’s time to switch on and get some great shots. The All Blacks arrive on the training field, which is framed by a cathedral of trees, and it’s good to see the familiar faces of guys like Dan Carter, Richie McCaw, Keven Mealamu, Mils Muliaina and Joe Rokocoko.

From a filmmaker’s perspective these training runs are an interesting challenge to get right – it’s a strict policy of turning your camera around when the guys start to run through their tactics and gameplan so you’ve got limited time to nail your shots.

Dan Carter has the most unmistakable gait – he’s languid and elastic, with a permanent swayback, but he throttles along with shocking fleetness when he turns it on.  The All Blacks are deadly serious when it’s game time but they are a bunch of jokers otherwise. Piri Weepu sometimes does a little dance for me when my camera turns to him.

I am always reminded when I am in here – and feeling a little bit like that five-year-old boy who just fell in love with the All Blacks – to keep my cool and keep the bigger plan in mind. I can’t get too overawed. My producer Jonathon Green always says ‘the All Blacks are the object, not the subject of your film.’

July 17 2010

After a quick two-day return to Sydney, I’m in windy Wellington and it’s game day for the All Blacks. In a way, it’s game day for me too. I’ll be filming the team play South Africa tonight. It’s a moment I’ve seemingly been waiting my whole life for. I have to cast aside memories of watching the All Blacks with my Dad as a toddler for fear of being overwhelmed. I’m here to do a job, I remind myself. I wander around Wellington during the afternoon picking up the vibe. The game is all anyone seems to be talking or thinking about. There might be an electric current of anticipation in the air, but externally the town has become rain-raked and bitter overnight. I impulsively buy a pair of gumboots and a windcheater for the game. I’m still in Sydney dress!

Watching the Test through a telephoto lens is something like an out-of-body experience, but I’m covered in goose bumps during the anthems and haka. The South African anthem has a special emotional resonance for me after making Darling!, and often affects me as much as the New Zealand anthem. As always, I have tears in my eyes during both songs. The game is wide open – the All Blacks run the ball at every opportunity. It’s a significant success for their game plan and a coup for my footage.

The All Blacks during the New Zealand anthem.

With the RED ‘A’ camera shooting at 120fps we get plenty of the poetic moments I was looking for, moments that the TV cameras tend to miss. My goal is to capture the elegance and brutality of the game, the beauty and the force. We’re also trying to capture the personality of the players in this operatic and intense environment.

After the game I jump the barricade and shoot handheld as the All Blacks sign autographs and tramp towards the tunnel, exhausted but elated. It’s mission accomplished for them and for my crew too.

I head back to the hotel to back up my footage (a must when you’re shooting on solid state media) then duck out for a couple of drinks in Wellington. I head with an old friend to a bar near Courtenay Place and a dozen of the All Blacks are out in collared shirts and designer jeans having beers and glasses of red wine. The pub crowd is euphoric and there are plenty of high fives for the team.

It’s back to Sydney at 6AM, so I wisely only have a couple. It’s hard to resist at the time given the rush I’m feeling in my veins, along with the whole town, but I’m glad for my decision when I get to the plane, eyes hanging out of my skull, at which point I simply drop into a deep, satisfied blackout.

I used to go into interviews with a bunch of questions in mind – something I never do now. These days it is all about the conversation. The first ten questions you can think of have probably been asked a hundred times before. Your interview isn’t about fact-checking, it’s about getting an essence of someone.

Entering Hathaway’s Opera Quay hotel suite – my heart pounding like a tribal drum – I assumed I’d be the one asking the first question… but it was her.

“Do you want some chocolate?” she asked. “Let’s check out what’s in this hotel room.”

So we cruised around the mega-suite looking at all the free stuff. We found a gift basket from Disney filled to the brim with little champagne bottles (neither of us old enough to neck one), fruit and a small mountain of chocolate bars. We helped ourselves to the chocolate. Watching the child-like enthusiasm with which she ripped in spoke volumes about her – she was still getting used to the star treatment, and couldn’t hide her excitement about this upward trajectory she’d hit onto. The zeal of that chocolate hunt probably told me more about where her head was at that day than anything she could have put into words.

If you’re just starting as a film journalist my advice is to let moments like this sit. Explore them. Go with them. This stuff is gold. Remember, ‘Frank Sinatra Has a Cold’ – one of the seminal pieces of celebrity journalism – was written without getting a single interview with the subject. Words are deceitful. The body is truthful.

Of course, when you’re hanging out with your subject you still have your antenna on – you’re remembering pertinent bits. But it’s important not to go in with pre-conceived notions – you have to get a feel of a person, soak in their aura.

I’ll never forget how Anne Hathaway hugged her knees up to her chest in our interview, pulling constantly at the tongues of her hot-pink Puma sneakers. I was mesmerised by her doing this, and struggled to keep my mind on The Princess Diaries, my voice breaking time and time again as I dug out questions. I can barely remember what we talked about – I had to look at the transcript to remember details we’d discussed about Brett Easton Ellis books, Woody Allen movies and the relentless PR machine at Walt Disney Studios.

To this day the thing I remember the most is not anything Anne Hathaway said – it was those hot-pink Pumas.

- It’s Not About The Camera

JJ: Chris Doyle and I talked a lot before filming about all kinds of things – he is a person with so many ideas that he’s not protective of. They’re like fish swimming by, you just take them from the river and more come. His eye is important and always helps me grow as a filmmaker.

JS: Do you do a shot list?

JJ: I don’t have a shot list – with Chris it is in the moment. He’s tireless and moody and swings all over the map emotionally. He is a Wildman – they said Keith Richards met him and said ‘Chris Doyle is the Keith Richards of cinematography!’ The bottom line is you don’t get that kind of talent in a sane package.

JS: What about those words: ‘those who think they are important wind up in a cemetery – a handful of dust’, which we are reminded of all the time in the film?

JJ: Don’t ask me to be specific or explain it. Just a warning. I struggle with that. It’s not really my thing.

JS: Let’s talk about reviewers…

JJ: I really like the bad reviews. Talking to people who like it is not so interesting. I mean, take The Limits of Control – that’s not a mainstream film and it is open to interpretation. So any perspective, even a harshly negative one, is not a total shock. In fact it’s incredibly interesting. I really learnt early on that opinions are based on things not in your control. I remember someone writing about me personally under the pretense that they were reviewing Stranger Than Paradise, and they accused me of being a ridiculously pretentious asshole with white hair and black clothes. The reality is my hair is genetically prematurely white. I’ve been wearing black clothes since my late teens, it isn’t a phase. Reviews are like cheap street drugs – they take you up or down quick and they wear off quicker. Look Julian, any of my films… I can’t tell you what it means or be specific. My answers will be quite varied depending on when you ask. You won’t even get the same damn answers within the same damn interview. But with reviews, the bottom line is, they definitely don’t, like, bother my ego or anything. They’re a point of view.

JS: I’m feeling like there wasn’t much of a script when you started shooting The Limits of Control?

JJ: I had 25 pages of prose, a 25 page story… which is weird.

JS: Come on, tell me more about the methodology behind it…

JJ: I guess briefly I went through the characters in a sort of treatment – it was important but brief. I don’t want to know where they came from or where they are going. I don’t want to know the dialogue. We’ll have a few conversations, the cast and I. We’ll just write it the night before we shoot. ‘Oh, that sounds interesting’ – you know? I just had the idea with this one character of Lone Man to be played by Isaac De Bankole – he would be some kind of criminal on his own, going across Spain. That was about it.

JS: How did Bill Murray get in on this lark?

JJ: I just thought ‘how about Bill?’ (Laughs). The guy Bill plays – as you saw – is very nasty, and he’s not compassionate, not humorous – not one of the human characters we associate with Bill. He just said that it was a good thing for him to do. You know, going against what is emblematic.

JS: More and more people are shooting digitally. Is that something you might succumb to?

JJ: Film is something magical. I’ve shot my latest movie on film and I think I will continue to. It is all about light heading into a physical material – and light chemically reacting. Then projecting through a material… that is very magical. Digital does not have magic. But they’re all tools. People said figurative painting would end with the invention of photography – that’s just not true. Laptops and computers don’t mean you can’t write with a pen. Digital can do amazing things and be helpful so my plan is to see how long I can keep getting financing for my odd films and if I cant… look, to be honest Julian, I can forsee that becoming more and more difficult… Shooting digitally would eliminate certain problems and it can be all about what you’re expressing and not the materials like celluloid. I would use it. Yep, I’d use digital. Especially if my next one couldn’t afford to be shot on film. It could happen next time. My good luck might end. I don’t assume anything. I just exec produced something shot digitally and it came out great, and hey, Michael Mann does amazing things with that medium. No, I’m not against it. But there is still something in my heart that resists…

JS: How much are you surfing the net these days Jim?

JJ: I don’t have a computer and I don’t use them. Other people use it to get information for me. I don’t have enough time as it is to make music and read and write and meet friends. I’m slow but at the same time this model of film distribution is kind of coming to it’s end, and I can see that. The music industry ended in a way and there are new things that are positive emerging. Theatrical films – well, it’s looking more and more like it will just be people going to see Avatar 5 at the movies, but they wont be able to go see some smaller low-budget films unless they’re starting up ‘Cine Clubs’ like the seventies. But the theatrical model with the current economic system is out of date anyway – so it is almost certain to be problematic. But, you know, they have Netflix and you can wire it right into your TV and order it right in anytime. I am optimistic about it as well, but its gonna crumble, this system. It’s gonna crumble man.

- It’s Not About The Camera

The publicist who had been herding me through the hotel corridor to Electra’s suite nicked off to take a phone call and shooed me in. It’s not normal protocol – but I entered Electra’s suite alone.

She was instantly in view – on the other side of the room, perched in a two-tone seater against a dark curtain. Busty, spray-tanned, bleached tendrils of hair – just what I’d imagined. Normally when you walk into a room there’s a bit of an acknowledgement. But she didn’t so much as stir. It was as though I didn’t exist. I advanced a little closer, gingerly, and still there was not even the faintest sign of movement from her. I was a little stung. As I walked closer still I could see that she was truly engrossed… she was reading. Not just reading, but studying. Scrutinising. Her eyes raced across the page. Her lips were pursed, her brow gently rutted. Now I was just a metre away from her, and still no acknowledgement of my presence.

“Hey Carmen, what are you reading?” I finally ventured, breaking the silence which I took as an insult.

Now she looked up.

“The FHM guys just dropped this in,” she explained. I looked at what she held in her hands – it was a bulging sleaze rag with the title ‘We Choose The World’s 100 Sexiest Women’ in garish red type. Electra seemed like a kid showing off the best-and-fairest soccer trophy to her parents when she gushed – “and they put me in the top ten!”

Electra then proceeded to extend the magazine toward me, the perfect-bound spine yielding to the page she’d bookmarked with her thumb. I didn’t know what to do with the magazine – should I take it from her hands? She kept extending it, until it was less than five inches from my nose. My eyes re-adjusted to the extreme close-up view.

“What do you think?” she purred.

I was looking at a double page spread – Electra splayed across the cheery-coloured hood of a car which was lubricated with suds, bubbles and soap. She was washing it with a big, sopping sponge. In the image her topless torso was obscured only by well-placed locks of hair. The unmistakable centre-piece of the tableau was her derrière – which had swallowed a g-banger whole – leaving only a single diamond stud at her coccyx as the last visible remnant.

It’s not often that I’m speechless, but my mouth was dry like I’d been chewing cotton wool. She’ll never know what I thought, because out of the vivid silence the only response I could muster was: “I’m guessing that’s a rhetorical question?”

- It’s Not About The Camera

An estranged father springs a shock visit on his son

If you like your flicks subtle but serious, you’ll love this acting clinic by Rhys Wakefield and Marcus Graham. Graham plays a recovering alcoholic who has become estranged from his teenaged son.

The pair tease out a nuanced scene, leaving the audience to imagine the character’s shared past and ambiguous future.

IMDB PAGE FOR CLEARING THE AIR

GO TO WEBSITE

7″ / Stars: Rhys Wakefield, Marcus Graham.
HD-35MM
Key Art Poster Image by Patricia Casey / Distribution: QANTAS In-Flight Entertainment 2009

Director’s Statement

When I set out to make Clearing the Air my goal was to make a film that was, in the truest sense of the word, naturalistic. It’s a short and simple story – a fleeting reunion between an estranged father and his son, raggedly and impolitely thrown together at a hotel looking out on Sydney International Airport. Dad – a struggling entrepreneur – is rerouted from Papua New Guinea to Wellington via Sydney, and while there he reckons he’s “got to see” his boy. And so they come together for a few stolen moments – acutely aware that their reunion will end as soon as it’s begun. They go through their rituals, make small talk, listen and don’t hear, miss each other and occasionally connect.

This is not an entirely autobiographical film, although I admittedly drew on some of the circumstances around my own broken family. What I can tell you for certain is that real life doesn’t always involve yelling. Families die both noisily and sometimes with a deathly quietness. We don’t always say exactly what we think and hardly ever exactly what we feel. There is subterfuge, swallowed sputum, mumbles and silence. I’d like to thank Rhys Wakefield and Marcus Graham for trusting this instinct, and for illuminating all of the subtext that runs beneath their apparently prosaic review of AMEX cards, business assignments and life in a post-divorce world. They don’t raise their voices, there is no spleen venting – they just wallow together in a sad, sometimes hopeful sense of their changing relationship.

I wrote the role of ‘Dad’ for Colin Friels, who I’d directed in my photo-novel Modern Odysseus. When he became unavailable Marcus Graham stepped in and took the role in a direction I hadn’t anticipated. ‘Dad’, pre-50, became something like an ageing rock star – a man just beginning to fall out of touch with his son but clinging on for dear life. I won’t soon forget how Marcus conjured the necessary cheek and brittleness of his character to perfection in one magical first take.

I went to the same performing arts high school as young Rhys Wakefield, though we were a few years apart. I saw the plays he was in, and always thought he was an extremely promising actor. That he’s realised so much of this promise at such a young age is extraordinary. We caught up at the Berlin Film Festival in 2008 when he was there with The Black Balloon and I was there with Darling! I think we both decided it would be pretty fun to work together as soon as possible. He has a great gift for communicating the ineffable – so much is going on behind his limpid blue eyes. Rhys, in his phlegmatic stillness, was quite simply the perfect foil for the antic energy of ‘Dad.’

This is their film and I am grateful for the two trusting that not everything needed to be said, for hewing so close to the quilt of real life and for realising a dynamic that was – going back to that word – genuinely natural. I will always be grateful that they etched out a moment of such tenderness together in the final exchange – a brief and heartbreaking acknowledgement of a future that has now become deeply uncertain.

Julian Shaw, Sydney, 2009

Julian Shaw (right), directs Marcus Graham (left) and Rhys Wakefield (centre)

Rhys Wakefield (left) and Marcus Graham.

Rhys Wakefield (left) and director Julian Shaw in Sydney, Australia