Film Facts:

Cast: Russell Crowe, Danielle Spencer, Robert Mammone -- Director: George Ogilvie -- Producer: Sue Seeary -- Written by: Ranald Allan

SOUNDTRACK - Regular Records
1. "Main Titles" (Martin Armiger)
2. "King Of The Road" (Roger Miller) Performed by The Proclaimers
3. "Nature Boy" (Eden Ahbez) Performed by Kate Ceberano , Drums - Peter Jones
4. "She's Not There" (Rod Argent) Performed by Crowded House
5. "For Your Love" (Graham Gouldman) Performed by Peter Blakeley
6. "Betty Wrong" (David Bowie and Reeves Gabrels) Performed by Tin Machine
7. "The Chase" (Martin Armiger)
8. "Here Comes That Feeling" (Joe Osborne and Dorsey Burnette) Performed by The Cockroaches
9. "My Boyfriend's Back" (Bob Feldman, Gerald Goldstein and Richard Gottehrer) Performed by The Chantoozies
10. "Nowhere To Run" (Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland) Performed by Stephen Cummings
11. "Love Letters" (Edward Heyman and Victor Young) Performed by Jenni Forbes
12. "Let's Dance" (James Lee) Performed by The Cockroaches
13. "Love Theme" (Martin Armiger)

Shooting Schedule: Oct 30, 1989 – Dec 16, 1989

Filming Location: Junee, NSW and Condobolin, NSW

Junee, 500 kms south west of Sydney, was the best choice for the town scenes. Producer Sue Seeary explains: "Junee won because of the layout of the town, its architecture and general ambience. We knew we could visually enhance the basic look of the town. Also, it was important that the main highway didn't run through the town we chose or that the streets were not too wide, so we could capture the roadside buildings in the Anzac Day march scene. Junee was perfect in this respect."

The mid-point between Melbourne and Sydney, Junee has been a railway town for more than 100 years. Much repair work on interstate freight trains is done there. North west of Junee is the small grazing and crop district of Condobolin (pop 3600). The geographic centre of the state of New South Wales, its topography is flat and open. "We chose the area on the outskirts of Condobolin for some specific scenes, notably the car chases, the train stunt and Meg's farm, because it has a broad, endless horizon, so it gives an impression of vastness and nothingness." (The Crossing – Presskit)

Awards:
1990 -- Nominated, AFI Award
Best Actor in a Lead Role

Release Date: October 18, 1990

Plot Summary:

Sam (Robert Mammone) arrives in his home town after 18 months away, hopeful that Meg (Danielle Spencer), the girlfriend he abandoned, will go back with him to the city. His return brings the outside world into the parochial confines of the town, provoking mixed reactions which fuel conflict. Meg, heartbroken when Sam left her, has begun an affair with Sam's best friend Johnny (Russell Crowe). On the eve of Sam's arrival, Johnny asks Meg to marry him. The marriage proposal, along with Sam's unexpected return, forces Meg to choose not only between the two men but also the type of life she wants. The Crossing is an evocative drama set in 1950s Australia and features Russell Crowe in an early starring role.

“…Meg is a farm girl with ideas of her own. As the film opens on Anzac Day she is involved in a passionate embrace with Johnny, a local lad with strong ties to the town who wants to marry Meg and settle down. At the same time, Sam is on his way back to town in a customized Holden. Sam has been to the city to make his name as an artist, and now flushed with the first whiff of success he is back to claim the love of his life, Meg.

The Crossing is a film full of emotional drama set around Anzac Day and the dilemmas of children towards their parents; whether they be dead Anzacs as Johnny’s father is and in whose shadow he has grown, or the more phlegmatic local pub owner who like the typical Aussie male has difficulty expressing emotions….”

Trivia:

George Ogilvie persuaded Russell to replace the front tooth that had been kicked out in a football match when he was 10, and never replaced. “Vauclause Public against Beverly Hills” Russell happily recalled. The Age, Nov 1, 1997

The Crossing made life-long friends of its leading actors. Russell And Danielle began dating shortly after finishing filming The Crossing. They would eventually marry in 2003. Robert Mammone was one of Russell’s groomsmen, and George Ogilvie was a guest at the wedding.

The soundtrack for The Crossing was mixed at Studios 301, the same studio where Danielle Spencer mixed her 1st CD “White Monkey” and where Russell Crowe mixed his first solo CD “My Hand, My Heart”

When asked by Ogilvie which roll he wanted, Russell said “All of them”.

In Condobolin, the production team sweltered in temperatures of up to 44 degrees C (that’s 118F !)

Favorite Scenes:

Scene where Johnny finds Meg and Sam at the dance: Russell’s face shows so many emotions all at once: anger, hurt, pain, helplessness, and humiliation – just a tremendous, emotional scene.

Opening sequence of Johnny and Meg in the barn.: beautifully posed picture and opening for the movie. Morning’s first light and all is easy and simple.

Random scene by the car: Just because it is a young Russell with foreshadowing of the mature man.

Not a scene from the movie itself, but the three young actors and director who would become lifelong friends.

Comments by Russell:

"Johnny's simplicity is part of his complexity and he has an inability to communicate his feelings to her (Meg), which is so Australian. He's a product of his environment and he wants to progress within it, to marry Meg and have a family, with all the stability that represents. He's tied to the town through his mother and his dead father." - From The Crossing press release

Russell does not identify with Johnny at all. Johnny, he explains, is totally at home in the country - hunting, being practical, "a down-to-earth, primal and atavistic man". Russell, on the other hand, is "not practical, can't fix cars and abhors the idea of hunting." - From The Crossing press release.

" George Ogilvie sat 16 young people in a room eight girls and eight guys and said, `It's 9 o'clock in the morning at the end of the day around about 5 o'clock, I'm going to know who's going to play the lead role in my film'. " Through the long day, they acted and acted, at one point required to ad lib; another read ``a set of dialogue which was just ridiculous. It was about apples and something and we had to do it in umpteen ways".

By the end of the day, Crowe's head was aching and he was torturing himself with misgivings about his efforts. "I get home and I get a phone call and it's George and he says to me `I think you have a great career in the cinema ahead of you. Which role would you like to play?' " This then was the big moment. "I started in the business at six and I didn't get that role in `The Crossing' until I was 26. So in between, even though I was working continuously in the theatre, that represents thousands of failed auditions for movies. It was just a huge thing."

“…To choose the cast, Ogilvie carried out workshops for the actors. "He'd get a group of about 12 young people in a room, then he'd explain the situation and we played games and improvised," said Russell Crowe who was the first actor cast. "George asked me what role I would like and I chose Johnny because I felt his journey had far more emotional turns," he said.

Ogilvie applied the same method for rehearsals. "We had three weeks rehearsal, but, instead of blocking out the scenes, we just discussed things and played games, but in that time we had every single part of our character indelibly printed in our minds. We became the characters without having to speak the dialogue," said Crowe. (Interview At "The Crossing" By Katherine Tulich - Movie November/December 1990)

As part of his preparation for the role, Russell spent time on a western New South Wales farm, shearing and playing two-up. His relationship with Danielle Spencer (Meg) and Robert Mammone (Sam) he describes as a "meshing of minds, a great mental kinship". (The Crossing – Presskit)

Russell Crowe explains his view of acting. Extracts from Andrew L. Urban’s notebook: On location: The Crossing, Junee, NSW, November 1989  Crowe had just finished working on the film Blood Oath (starring Bryan Brown, Crowe as a support) when he heard he had the role in The Crossing. He had already photocopied a borrowed script, and was anxious to work with director George Ogilvie.  Asked what it's like, now that he is working with Ogilvie, he grins and breaks into the verse of an old pop tune, quietly singing: "Heaven ... I'm in heaven ..." (from Dancing Cheek to Cheek). The answer is indicative of Crowe's other great love, music: he began professional life as a musician and songwriter. "I used songwriting to help prepare ideas about the character, to help set it down."

Comments about Russell:

Director George Ogilvie says: "This is not specifically in looks but Russell reminds me of James Dean in the way that he has the charisma Dean had. He's the sort of actor you watch work and you have no idea what he'll do next. That's rare, that mystery about him.”

This role earned him a 1990 AFI Award Best Actor Nomination and led Director, George Ogilvie, to comment,"There was a sort of hunger in Russell's eyes. Most young actors want to please. It can be a barrier. Russell didn't want to please. He wanted to be that role". (“Aussie Six Pack: Our Rising Movie Stars, by Rob Lowing, Sun-Herald, Sep 22, 1990)

Casting Director Faith Martin has a unique perspective, having cast both actors in their first feature film: Crowe for "The Crossing" in 1990 ... "Russell was very intense, highly intelligent and he drew you to him, which is what a lot of the greats do: the camera is interested in what they have to offer," Martin said. (Sydney Morning Herald --June 17, 2001)

"He has an explosive thing in him, that at times has to be released physically. At the same time, he had to be played by somebody with a very gentle nature. There is that duality." George Ogilvie (director of The Crossing) on the requirements of Crowe's film character, Johnny Ryan. - Cinema Papers March 1990

" - a man who can play almost anything, but I wasn't immediately taken with him. He had a very ' I'm Russell Crowe, who are you?' attitude. He was very polite, very gracious, but he made no effort to please me at all." - George Ogilvie (The Crossing) - Elle Oz) January 1992.

Robert Mammone valued the interaction between himself and his co-actors Russell Crowe and Danielle Spencer. "We talked to each other throughout the shoot, questioning certain aspects of our characters and how they affect one another. (The Crossing – Presskit)

HERE is the link to the press kit

Reviews:

STAR- CROSSED - LYNDEN BARBER
17 Oct 1990 - Sydney Morning Herald

JUST lately, teen films seem to have been raised as the standard bearers of the mainstream end of the Australian film industry. It would be easy to construct a theory about this, arguing that it subconsciously reflects the nation's own adolescence, its alliance of painful self-consciousness and freshness-cum-naivety.

On the other hand, perhaps a few producers have simply decided that teen movies are surefire earners.

The romantic drama The Crossing is certainly a noble effort, coming in several furlongs ahead of the artless The Delinquents, but its falls some way behind The Year My Voice Broke, the film with which it invites the most obvious comparison. Set over a period of 24 hours in a country town on Anzac Day, it's based around a young lovers' triangle, and nearly comes off. What prevents it from doing so is its erratic casting and a certain stylistic over-ambition.

Danielle Spencer and Russell Crowe display a touching tenderness as the lovers (along with the sophisticated pop soundtrack, they're the best thing about the film), but Robert Mammone is shaky as Spencer's ex-boyfriend, who has just returned to town, and some of the supporting roles are unconvincing. And while Jeff Darling's AFI award-winning cinematography has some impressive moments (the opening scenes, filmed at a dawn Anzac service, are stunning), it soon becomes irritatingly over-stylised, too often flooding the action in the golden glow of a sugar cane commercial.

The Crossing, then, is a little too eager to impress. Take the way it works in elements from Rebel Without a Cause and High Noon - a chicken-run car chase(done better in John Waters's Cry Baby), an over-abundance of lengthening shadows and shots of clocks. It keeps drawing attention to its own cleverness.

Everything in the film is orchestrated to build to a grand climax, but director George Ogilvie doesn't quite get the film's rhythms right. A pity, because there's a good-natured centre to The Crossing that makes you want to like it, despite the flaws.

“…But the true revelation is Crowe, in his first major film role. In most movies like this one, the boyfriend/fiancé/husband is usually either an overbearing jerk who causes the heroine much unhappiness, or an annoying sap whose constant declarations of love sound laughingly hollow. But when Johnny professes his love for Meg, it's clear that he means it. And when he is threatened with losing her, he reacts not with physical violence or menace, but instead seems to unravel at his own emotional seams. Crowe takes a character that could have been one-note and creates one who is masculine and practical, yet sensitive enough to know that his way of life is in danger and there's really nothing he can do about it.”

Thanks to Maximum Crowe

Web Related Links:

http://www.murphsplace.com/crowe/roles/characters.html

http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Cinema/1501/index8c.html

http://www.kylenano.demon.co.uk/crossing.htm