Reply to Topic
CLEAR BUT NOT-SO-PRESENT FILMMAKER: AN INTERVIEW WITH PHILLIP NOYCE
I receive a call at about one-thirty in the afternoon, telling me that Phillip Noyce's four-thirty appointment has been cancelled. He's running slightly late, and is currently flying in from Perth. Understandably, I'm extremely excited by this information, as although it's not said in so many words it's quite clear to me that, now, I'm actually going have an opportunity to take the phone interview that I was hoping to do and to transform it into a face-to-face conversation. Man to man, filmmaker to filmmaker, third semester film student to A-list Hollywood director. In my mind, it's going to be great.
At four-thirty, I'm sitting in the head of the film school's office with a miniDV camera hidden underneath the table, a microphone and book my professor Ingo Petzke's Phillip Noyce: Backroads to Hollywood sitting on the desk, while I slowly become more and more excited as Noyce's imminent arrival draws closer. And suddenly, he's there a big, almost sloppy man [although that might just be attributed to the fact that he's just been on a plane for six-and-a-half hours] slightly confused about what's supposed to be going on, and far more interested in just sitting down and resting for a moment than he is own having an interview with such a probing [and I don't doubt annoying] film student like myself. I understand and respect that I've been given a fairly significant opportunity here, and I understand and respect that he's probably not in the mood for me and my questions. But I have a page of notes a whole heap of things that I want to get out of him and whether or not he feels as though he's "dumped" with me [and I have a sinking feeling that he genuinely does, reinforced when he actually says so], I'm going to ask him what I want to, and ******* it he's going to answer...
And thus, for the next thirty-or-so minutes, I actively struggle with Noyce's lack of interest in the interview, occasionally pulling some genuinely insightful and interesting tips, anecdotes and stories from him, as though pulling teeth from a bedraggled and mangy but also far bigger and more important dog than myself. At the end of the interview, I feel as though I've been through a round with a master of conversational evasiveness, although I can't help but feel as though ultimately I'm the one who's come out the victor [if only through sheer determination]. Phillip signs my copy of Petzke's book with "To Matt, who asks and asks." I laugh and offer my condolences: "I'll tell you what. One day you can interview me."
The following snippets of interview are the major and most interesting points of my conversation with Noyce, punctuated by the moments in which the whole thing nearly came undone [as when he stopped to read the entire transcript of the interview the he did with Andrew Denton], and supported by my retrospective commentary on what I was thinking and feeling at the time.
MATTHEW CLAYFIELD (MC): [fumbles with the microphone; Phillip has decided to sit in a position where he can actually see the "hidden" miniDV camera; I continue to fumble] It's just it's all very...very low-tech at the moment.
[I begin to ask my first question, but Phillip is far more interested in the other student "reporter," a girl, who he urges to come and sit closer; she takes out a small cassette recorder and I, with my camera, feel like a fool.]
~
[Phillip has just discussed the tour around Australia that he's taken as a result of Ingo's book; somewhere in the middle of this monologue which is longer than I expect it to be he mentions my favourite of his films, Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002) and The Quiet American (2002); I use this as an excuse to get onto the questions I have prepared about those two films in particular.]
MC: Just talking about those mentions of Rabbit-Proof Fence and The Quiet American, for me personally, I haven't seen all of your films, but...are you looking for somewhere to plug that in?
[Phillip is currently playing with his mobile phone.]
I actually prefer Rabbit-Proof Fence and The Quiet American; I think that they're...
Phillip Noyce (PN): Have you seen Newsfront (1978)?
MC: Yes, I have, and I enjoyed it very much, but I...
[I am currently terrified of this man.]
I personally feel that Rabbit-Proof Fence and The Quiet American are your strongest pictures.
PN: Uh-huh.
MC: And I was just going to ask, they seem almost kind of linked...
PN: Which?
MC: ...
PN: ...
MC: Rabbit-Proof Fence and The Quiet American.
PN: Well, yeah, they're both about the corrupting effects of colonisation. And they both deal with colonisers who are full of the best intentions, and are absolutely convinced that they're doing the right thing, and are oblivious to the pain and suffering that they cause. So, they're exactly the same. The Alden Pyle character played by Brendan Fraser in The Quiet American is just a cousin of A. O. Neville [from Rabbit-Proof Fence].
MC: I was just going to say, for me the most effecting and frightening scene of Rabbit-Proof Fence is the scene in which Kenneth Branagh is doing the slide show.
PN: Yes. Which he did. Regularly.
[At this point, the Enough Rope transcript makes an appearance, and Phillip immerses himself in it for a good five minutes. The girl asks some Hollywood gossip question about Sharon Stone, which he ignores and keeps reading. I don't know what I'm thinking at this point. The camera is recording nothing, and I'm worried about the battery. Eventually, we get back on track, no thanks to the girl, who gave him the transcript in the first place... ]
~
MC: One of the things that I didn't think was different about Rabbit-Proof Fence and The Tracker (d. Rolf de Heer, 2002) was that they both felt like Australian takes on the Hollywood Western and...
PN: [noticing something across the room] What's that?
MC: I don't know, I've only just seen it myself. Hell, you've got good eyes. So, anyway...
PN: No, hang on, mate, what is it? What are they giving me?
MC: I think they're giving you a present...
PN: What does it say?
GIRL: "Visiting fellow."
PN: "Visiting fellow?" That's it? Oh, I thought they...why couldn't they make me a professor or something?
GIRL: Give you a doctorate of filmmaking...
PN: Why didn't they make me something that I could actually peddle? And use! And then I could get some position in, like, you know, Florida University of the Arts or whatever.
MC: ...yeah.
PN: Okay, sorry, mate.
MC: That's cool, that's cool. I understand that you're probably "interviewed-out".
[I am internally distraught by this stage.]
PN: No, no...ask me the question, I'm...ready.
~
MC: I was wondering if [the influence of the Western on Rabbit-Proof Fence] was a conscientious...
PN: No. No, it wasn't. I mean, obviously the little girls are dwarfed by the landscape, and you're constantly trying to express the distance between where they are now and where they want to be. So, that leads to a certain type of imagery that stresses dislocation and so on. And obviously there are many films that deal with similar themes, so they're all going to draw on the same dwarfing aspects of landscape and humans, or alienation from the landscape, the threatening nature of the landscape, the sustaining nature of the landscape and so on. Because it's a journey across country. There are many films with similar themes different stories, similar themes so naturally, visually, there'll be similarities.
MC: And it was the same thing with The Quiet American; I was wondering if The Third Man (d. Carol Reed, 1949), not so much influenced, but was something you were aware of. [The Third Man and The Quiet American were both based on novels by Graham Greene].
PN: No. Again, it wasn't an influence, The Third Man, really...
MC: It was just that some of those earlier scenes with Detective Vigo, some of the framing especially, seemed very reminiscent of The Third Man.
PN: Well, there was Dutch tilting, there was chiaroscuro lighting with, you know, heavy shadows and so on, but it wasn't related to...is that rain?
[Oh, God...]
MC: I think it is.
PN: ...wasn't related to The Third Man.
[Thankyou!]
It was just an interpretation of the story. It wasn't related to any film actually, that one.
MC: Mm-hm.
[Personally, it also reminds me a lot of Peter Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously (1982), but I don't tell Noyce this, for some reason.]
PN: We didn't look at any other movies or anything, no. It was a response to the material and Vietnam. And the characters.
MC: It's a beautiful film. Both of them are beautiful films, not just in terms of the whole, but also in terms of the visuals, and of course, we're at a film school and I would be crucified if I was to not ask you about Christopher Doyle and what it was like working with him and how that came about.
PN: I met Chris in 1979 in Taiwan. I was there, I was going to direct a war film. I argued with John McCallum, the producer, and didn't end up shooting the film, that starred Mel Gibson and Sam Neill and Chris Haywood...
MC: What was its name?
PN: Attack Force Z (d. Tim Burstall & Jing Ao Hsing, 1982). And Tim Burstall came in and took over the film before I started shooting, but while I was preparing the film I was given an interpreter a young Australian who spoke perfect Mandarin and perfect dialect, local Taiwanese dialect and this was a gentlemen who had run away from Australia several years earlier and immersed himself in Chinese culture, and dreamt of becoming a cinematographer, which seemed very unlikely given that he spent so much time in bars! And there was no independent cinema in Taiwan at the time.
MC: Mm.
PN: But as the years passed, so did the postcards, which turned into e-mails, and we kept up a relationship and I went to see Chris once when he was shooting one of the Wong Kar Wai films, and he told me to come to a certain location, in Hong Kong. Now, usually when you go to a film set, if you pick up the scent about half-a-mile away you can just follow the equipment and the trucks and the people and everything...
MC: And you'll find the film set.
PN: ...and you'll find it eventually, you get to the epicentre of activity; that's where they'll be shooting. In this case, I thought that I'd gone to the wrong square because there was nobody, nothing, not a soul, no evidence that anyone was filming there or even that anyone was...there. It was in the night. And then, finally, a car comes around the corner, and there's this Wong Kar Wai, two actors, Chris and one other guy. And that's the whole film crew! And Chris is holding the camera in one hand and a light in the other, and the guy is sort of just supporting him and being the dog's body. So, when we came to shoot Rabbit-Proof Fence, a film that would require manoeuvrability, that would need an approach that didn't dwarf the children and drown them in technology, that allowed them to be spontaneous, I thought, 'Chris is the ideal person. He'll work with, you know, almost no equipment, he won't get bogged down out in the outback, trying to move lights and all this stuff,' and that's what he did.
[I make some inane comment about one particular shot from Fence that blows me away every time that I see it. Phillip doesn't really know whether this is a comment or a statement. For a moment, I let my guard down and allow myself to be a film buff.]
So, Chris became a friend, and then came to stay at my house in Los Angeles. And so eventually I asked him to shoot not one, but two films. In a row! By the end of the second film we wanted to kill each other.
MC: [genuinely surprised and saddened; still in film buff mode] Oh, really?
PN: Yeah. It was just too long, you know, two films...
MC: Yeah. Do you think you'll work with him again?
PN: Probably.
~
[For a while we discuss some of his upcoming projects, among them adaptations of Tim Winton's Dirt Music, a piece called Kon-Tiki and a sort of "inverted Holocaust movie" called The Bielski Brothers...]
MC: I'm wondering if you've made conscious move away from pure action and pure spectacle, because with the last two films and now this one, they seem to have a more sombre, I guess, sort of...I mean, I'm just going off the plot description in the case of The Bielski Brothers, but...
PN: Oh, well, The Bielski Brothers...there's a lot of action in The Bielski Brothers. It's the real story of three Jewish brothers who, instead of following the other six thousand Jews who were machine-gunned to death on one particular day in 1941, including their parents and immediate family, they fled into the forest that they grew up in, in Belarus, and establish not only a small army, but built a Jewish village in the middle of the forest and remained immune from attack for the next three years. It's a flipside of the Holocaust story. Because in this case the banded together and fought back. Quite viciously, at times. So, the material will obviously lead to a certain treatment.
MC: I was wondering about how you've dealt with the "political" aspect of things recently, intentionally with Rabbit-Proof Fence and intentionally, but maybe not that intentionally, with The Quiet American, I mean, that became more political that perhaps it would have been had September 11 not happened. Has that been a...
PN: Well, obviously, as Mel Gibson and Michael Moore have shown us, the best kind of publicity is when you've upset someone...
[I can't help but wonder why, if this is the case, Miramax held back The Quiet American for a good year before Michael Caine kicked up a fuss to get it released...]
...because as soon as someone becomes upset by something, other people become curious. But you couldn't make Rabbit-Proof Fence or ultimately The Quiet American without becoming embroiled in a political discussion.
MC: [misquoting The Quiet American, if only slightly] "Eventually one must take sides if one is to remain human..."
PN: Yeah, you've got to take a side on...not that you would need to necessarily on the Stolen Generations, but you do within the context of the debate that still rages on within Australia. You know, once people used to say, "Well, let's avoid all politics, otherwise we'll scare our audience off," you know, that was a concept...a "truism," supposedly, to do with film distribution. But I think it's been proven completely and utterly wrong! [laughs]
MC: And this year especially!
PN: Yeah.
MC: And has that been a conscious thing? I mean, you look at something like...
PN: Well, I wanted to make the stories. Those stories. And obviously they...one thing leads to another.
[At this point, I make an incredibly stupid faux pas, noting that I'd like to get down to the "relevant" stuff on my list my film school questions to which, bemused or bewildered, Noyce replies, "You mean none of that was relevant?!" Next thing I know, I'm the last thing on his mind again in fact, right now, he's looking at the girl's ring-slash-watch thing as though it's the most amazing thing he's ever seen. She loves the attention, and yet I'm the one asking all the questions! I realise that I've bought this upon myself and, as a result, act snooty about it.]
PN: Oh, it's a watch!
MC: [snootily] Yeah, it's good.
~
MC: You went to AFTRS, didn't you?
PN: Yes.
MC: How was that for you?
PN: It was great. You know, it was a one-year course in directing, where we got paid a wage, and got given three different budgets. We had to employ professionals on our crews so we had to use the money as best we could, and beg, borrow and steal additional money. Cajole and trick everybody to make the money go further, just like in real life, so it was a very good training ground. Plus, everyone owned the films, so we could exploit them in any way that we imagined. It was a great course. We didn't have any film history, because there wasn't time, but we certainly had a crash course in guerrilla filmmaking.
MC: And, of course, you were leaving film school into an industry that...
PN: Well, there wasn't much of an industry, we weren't leaving "into an industry," but we were leaving into circumstances that were right for exploitation.
[He likes that word, I now notice; it's probably no surprise that he's the one who's gone on to be a successful Hollywood director he enjoys exploiting people, things and situations; the perfect hobby for a Hollywood filmmaker.]
The government had decided that they would "create" a film industry and we were lucky enough to be the first fully trained graduates that were "battle-ready". Like soldiers, you know, coming out of Duntroon or something, from where none had come before, straight to the top.
MC: And I'm wondering what you think of Australian film at the moment...
PN: [for the first time, Noyce settles, focuses and really chooses his words carefully; this is the man that my professor interviewed, not the man that's just been on a five-day press junket around the country] Well, there seems to be something wrong. There's a sickness. Which may just a fever and will pass. But there's certainly a sickness. Maybe it's just, you know, a cycle and it's in its negative dip at the moment. Maybe the "brain drain" has been too cathartic for everyone. But there's a new crop of films coming along shortly that utilise some of that "brain drain". Returning, for example, Jocelyn Moorhouse is making Eucalyptus (2006) with Russel Crowe; Little Fish (2005), Rowan Woods' film, will star Cate Blanchett; and Heath Ledger is going to be in Candy (d. Neil Armfield, 2005)...
[...along with Geoffrey Rush and Abbie Cornish, who was the best thing about the otherwise mediocre Somersault (d. Cate Shortland, 2004).]
...so, you know, there's reason to be optimistic given that the greatest asset that the Australian film industry has in theory are the performers that have come out of this county and have risen to enormous prominence worldwide. Now that some of them are coming back, maybe we might see, again, a return to the same close relationship between the films and the audience. It's been lacking over the last few years, you know, the films have seemed to have been made in a vacuum with no connect.
~
[Noyce is now getting restless; he's giving a public "lecture" tonight, and it starts in about forty-five minutes. Ingo is nowhere to be found, and when Noyce is told that he's gone home to get dressed, he laughs, but seems unimpressed...]
PN: Where's Ingo?
FILM DEPARTMENT HEAD: [sheepishly] He's gone to get changed.
PN: Oh! I see! So, he dumps me, and he goes and is doing his stuff and pruning himself and sure, having a haircut, shave, putting on his aftershave...listen, we've got to go and plan this lecture! Who's going to work the materials, are you?
[It's all very friendly, sure, but at the same time, sort of...not. There's a lot of awkward nervous laughter, and I've still not gotten through all my questions...]
~
[A photographer has come in, and now Phillip and myself are "pretending" to have an interview for the camera. He's actually pretending, and I'm still trying to throw in the topical questions that I've been hoping to...]
PN: Yes, mate. No, mate. No, no, that's not true. That was never true.
MC: Who are you voting for?
~
PN: Alright, mate, ask me a question.
MC: Alright. "Hands off our industry." What has the Howard government done to the Australian film industry? In your opinion?
PN: The Howard government?
MC: Yeah.
PN: Nothing. I mean, they haven't done anything for it. I'm sure that Howard, if he had his way, we'd all go away.
MC: Yes. We wouldn't make any challenging films.
PN: We wouldn't make any films.
PHOTOGRAPHER: So, you're a Liberal, eh?
PN: Yes. [laughs]
~
[Things are wrapping up. The photographer has left. I'm trying to wrap up with some final, decent tips or something. It's all very hectic. The head of the film department has just purchased like eight copies of Backroads to Hollywood for Phillip to sign. It's organised chaos, and I'm still sitting here shoving this ********* microphone into Phillip's face.]
MC: Any last words for all the film students who will be reading this interview?
PN: Um...
MC: Actually, what are you "guiding words" for aspiring filmmakers?
PN: That they should just pick up their handycam and make a movie. They don't need to learn anything, from anybody, except themselves and their lens. And there's no reason not to start...now. Immediately. After putting down this newspaper.
MC: Excellent. Thankyou very much. Now I'm going to get you to sign my book...
So, yes, while he may have struggled with me as though his very livelihood depended on it, my tumultuous interview with Phillip Noyce was ultimately worth it if only for these final, golden pearls of wisdom [not to mention, I now realise, the countless pearls that were scattered throughout the interview as well]. Phillip's final "call to action" is what I've been trying to communicate to both myself and to others in every waking moment of my studies here at Bond; I've been trying to instil in everyone I meet, as much as I can, through Cinιphilia and just in general, a desire to do something great and to do it now. The best [and perhaps only] way to really make things happen is to just get up and do them. I mean, it's certainly worked for Phillip Noyce. Just look at where it's gotten him.
~ © Matthew Clayfield, October 2004
__________________
www.esotericrabbit.com
www.esotericrabbit.com
to you. 