Directors' cut: Phillip Noyce, Fred Schepisi and Bruce Beresford on life in the movies.
Sunday Life Cover Story - The Sun-Herald Magazine
October 8, 2006

Action Men

Three veteran Australian directors - Bruce Beresford, Fred Schepisi and Phillip Noyce - talk to Steve Dow about making movies.

Bruce Beresford

Before his 1989 film, Driving Miss Daisy, starring Morgan Freeman, won the Oscar for Best Picture, Sydney-born Bruce Beresford had directed some quintessential Aussie movies, including Don's Party (1976) and Breaker Morant (1980). Beresford, 66, is married to scriptwriter Virginia Duigan and has four children, daughters Cordelia, 37, and Trilby, 20, and sons Benjamin, 39, and Adam, 35. His latest movie is the hostage drama The Contract.

What makes a good director?
All the best directors have a point of view - it could be politics, economics, but it's more likely a view of human relationships. Above all, it's an individual way of looking at things.
Do you have a view?
No, I'm one of the hacks [laughs].
But you were in the vanguard of the 1970s new wave of directors.
I've never thought so. I don't have any particularly strong viewpoint or any individual style.
Which films encouraged you to direct?
A film that's not so good, called They Were Expendable [1945, directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne]. I was about six. It wasn't so much the war scenes that impressed me; it was the emotional scenes.
What's your proudest moment as a director?
When Driving Miss Daisy won the Academy Award far Best Picture. I thought, "Maybe I'm not quite as bad as I thought I was." Someone rang me and said, "Congratulations." I'd forgotten the awards were on.
Was it hurtful that you were not nominated for Best Director?
Not at all. I didn't think it was that well directed. It was very well written. When the writing's that good, you've just got to set up the camera and photograph it and working with Morgan and Jessica Tandy, I was aware that their acting probably could not be bettered. This was despite everyone telling me the script was dreadful and the film wasn't worth making.
Do you have to compromise in Hollywood?
I don't think so. It depends who you're getting into bed with. You can run across scumbags in Hollywood or here, or in Europe. I don't think they're any better or worse in Hollywood.
On set, do you have any special rituals?
I storyboard everything; I do sketches. Films work emotionally not just because of what people are saying, but how you visualise what they're saying.
Has an actor or producer ever intimidated you?
Horrified me, perhaps, with the suggestions producers make. Some of their casting ideas are appalling. Then you get to editing and they want to cut out scenes you consider crucial. It's rare you find an actor who's crazy, though.
You've never had problems with an actor?
Robert Duvall [in 1983's Tender Mercies] was very strange. He didn't relate well to people. He was hostile and completely lacking in any common courtesies. But he always turned up right on the dot, ready to work and was always word-perfect.
Have you ever made a bad film?
A lot of them were terrible. Sometimes I just make crummy choices. King David [1985, starring Richard Gere] had a horrible script. I kept going because I believed we would be able to improve it but it never did get any better. I knew it was bad before we started. But by then it was a huge juggernaut.
Which actor do you still hope to work with?
Russell Crowe. He's the best actor in the world. He can play absolutely anything with total conviction. I've got this script I wrote last year, called Curlow Creek, from the [1996] novel by David Malouf [The Conversations At Curlow Creek]. Russell would be sensational in it but then, of course, you know you're up for, like, his $20 million fee and 15 per cent of the gross. You need a big studio behind you to pay that.
Filmmaking can be a gypsy-like experience. How does it affect your personal relationships?
Virginia and the kids came to Bulgaria with me [for The Contract]. When you see each other [after being apart], it's more exciting because you get bored if you're there all the time. The family think, "Oh, when's this bloke going to go away again?"

Fred Schepisi
Melbourne-born Fred Schepisi, 66, made his feature-film directing debut with The Devil's Playground in 1976 but it was his 1978 movie, The Chant Of Jimmie Blacksmith, that won international acclaim. Schepisi has seven adult children from three marriages: Ashley, Nina, Quentin, Jason, Alexandra, Zoe and Nick. His third wife, Mary, is a painter. Schepisi is hoping to secure funding to shoot his first film in Australia for 18 years, Last Man, the story of Vietnam War veterans, with an ensemble cast including David Wenham and Guy Pearce.

What makes a good director?
Fitness and determination. You work extremely long hours under a great deal of pressure. Creatively, you have to have a vision and be open to allowing all of the collaborators to contribute.
What influenced you to become a director?
Our family had a fruit shop in Toorak opposite the Trak Cinemas, where I used to love going on Saturdays. I finished school when I was 14 and went into advertising, which was then a haven for novelists, playwrights and artists. And I started seeing "continental" films, which I thought were going to be very sexy.
Which films encouraged you to direct?
All of them. The great Swedish films of Ingmar Bergman, Italian films, French films. It was a golden era and here I was going along for a perv. From 17, I was doing television commercials, experimenting with film techniques. In the early '70s, I filmed an ad that was a direct knock-off of Fellini's La Dolce Vita, put in an experimental framework. It was a fountain scene, with everyone in their evening wear leaping around in slow motion, no sound, and then the ad cut to black, ending with the slogan: Durban - the world's most expensive toothpaste.
What's your proudest moment as a director?
We used a lot of my own money and a lot of my friends' money to do The Devil's Playground. We had to hire our own cinemas. The day my kids and I walked into Exhibition Street and I saw our banner outside the theatre, I thought, "Wow!" You were suddenly legitimised in some strange way.
What's good about working in Hollywood?
Not so much what it taught me, but what it confirmed in what I was doing. And then the fact that I, and a few other Australians as well, had a broader experience than most people there. Our films had taught us how to get bang for the buck.
What's bad about Hollywood?
You think they want you for originality and freshness but, in fact, what they want you to do is freshen up their genres. I fell across the research curse, when they ask test audiences 100 questions. I've been forced to leave things out. Barbarosa [in 1982, starring Willie Nelson] had a strong secondary story that had to be left out. In Iceman [in 1984, starring Timothy Hutton], a couple of powerful, shocking scenes were eliminated, mainly because the audience wanted to tear the film off the screen [laughs].
Have you ever made a bad film?
I've made some ... less than perfect ones, what
I would call slightly hybrid: I. Q. [in 1994, starring Tim Robbins and Meg Ryan] and Mr Baseball [in 1992, starring Tom Selleck]. In the original vision, we had a higher aim. I didn't realise that [Selleck] would have script approval. So after going through great tugs of war, what could have been a film with cultural clashes became more about sportsmen just banging heads.
What preparations do you make for a film?
Take Roxanne [in 1987]. I said to Steve Martin and his producer, "This is a very funny script but the first real laugh out loud is not until page 61. That's halfway through the film!" We did 19 redrafts of the screenplay. I spent a couple of weeks cutting and pasting and shifting the film around. I would rehearse with Steve and he would say, "I don't want to do that, that's not funny. This is the way it should go."
And I'd say, "Well, why don't we just try it?" I had the cinematographer primed to have everybody ready because what Steve does in rehearsal is not what he's gonna do when that camera goes on. He gets lit up, you know?
Which actor do you still hope to work with?
George Clooney. I met him while doing the awards rounds and I really like him. There's a novel called The Jukebox Queen Of Malta by Nicholas M. Rinaldi. He's suitable for the smooth, beguiling officer who's actually a scam artist.
Filmmaking can be a gypsy-like experience. How does it affect your personal relationships?
It's the hardest thing. I think we're today's circus people. It's very hard on your family. Mary travels with me and when everyone was younger and it was possible, I liked them to travel with me and be with me. Fortunately, Mary's an artist; she paints and often finds inspiration from our locations.

Phillip Noyce

Having made his name in Australia with Newsfront in 1978 and Heatwave in 1982, Phillip Noyce broke the US market with 1989's Dead Calm, starring Nicole Kidman, while his 2002 film, Rabbit-Proof Fence, brought critical and commercial glory. Noyce, 56, is married to film producer Jan Sharp and has two children, daughter Lucia, 25, and stepdaughter Alice, 31. His new film, Catch A Fire, set in apartheid-era South Africa, opens in cinemas on November 23.

Rabbit-Proof Fence gave validity to the experiences of the stolen generations.”
Phillip Noyce

What makes a good director?
Most people would say a good storyteller. I'd consider myself first and foremost a good storyteller.
Where does your storytelling come from?
The vaudeville tent shows that came to my town, Griffith, in south-western NSW - everything from the African pygmies to the Wall of Death motorcyclists who drove around a vertical cylinder, to Jimmy Sharman's boxing troupe. An indigenous friend once suggested we could make four shillings and get into the Jimmy Sharman show for free if we fought each other. So we did. And that was a huge lesson in storytelling and engagement of the audience because Jimmy Sharman would tell you the script as he refereed [laughs]. The white guy always won.
Which films encouraged you to direct?
When I was 18, I saw an advertisement on a telegraph pole, a psychedelic image for a screening of underground movies. It pushed buttons in me. One film was Report, directed by Bruce Conner [in 1967], which reworked footage of John Kennedy's assassination, and some Australian films by Albie Thorns, Aggy Read and David Perry. These guys were in the cinema foyer afterwards. Their mantra was, "Anyone can make a movie and everyone should." All of them had beards. I haven't shaved since.
What's your proudest moment as a director?
Rabbit-Proof Fence, easily - showing that film to Aboriginal communities around the country and seeing their response, because it gave validity to the experiences of the stolen generations.
What's good about working in Hollywood?
For about 10 years from 1990, I could make almost as many films as I wanted, based on the fact that all the movies made money. The good ones and the bad ones were still profitable [laughs]. Hollywood is an association of entrepreneurial dreamers. It's a collection of individuals who trade with each other, trade in dreams. You can let them f--k you or you can work within that association.
What were the bad films?
Sliver [in 1993, starring Sharon Stone]. In the version that was released, there was no internal logic. We were reshooting the ending - the film was opening the next week - and I collapsed and woke up with Sharon's vitamin doctor sticking a needle into my behind, filled with some vitamin concoction.
Have you ever erred in casting?
Val Kilmer as The Saint. Because Simon Templar [the original character] was a Brit and Val Kilmer could never be a Brit. He was cast because he was the only guy who said yes.
Has an actor or producer ever intimidated you?
Harrison Ford [in 1992's Patriot Games and 1994's Clear And Present Danger] was intimidating because he was so precise and he had worked with the best directors in the world. When we were shooting the climactic scene of Clear And Present Danger, where Harrison's character has to confront the president of the United States, Harrison quietly commented that the scene would be more effective if the camera was directly in front of his face, rather than the three-quarter profile shot I intended. We re-shot Harrison's close-up and that is the shot that appears in the film. What's your process of working with an actor?
I try to immerse the actor in the world of the character he or she is playing. Denzel Washington was playing a bedridden quadriplegic in The Bone Collector [in 1999]. I did three months' research and found a series of quadriplegics for him to spend time with.
Are you approachable
I try to be. But I must admit I admire the actors' and actresses' temerity for approaching me [laughs]. I am this bear of a man, surrounded by these normal people who appear like midgets. [Noyce is 196 centimetres tall and weighs 113 kilograms.]
Is there anything you used to do as a young director that you've abandoned?
I used to try to control everything. But I've learned to trust in the alchemy that I've created as a director in selecting all these people and putting them together.
Filmmaking can be a gypsy-like experience. How does it affect your personal relationships?
My children are grown up now so it's not such a problem. It was a problem for them growing up, constantly moving. But we could never predict where we would be in the next six months. The only thing that was certain was the family unit. Most of us, our strength is based on the compact nature of the world that we grow up in. We know everybody: the guy who runs the general store, the kid who delivers the newspapers, the milkman, and life is very ordered, regimented and restricted. The theory is that, as a result, we know who we are. So it had positives and negatives. My daughter, Lucia, now works for Amnesty International in Los Angeles, a vocation that she's eminently suited for, having grown up in Australia, America and Britain and having grown up in an international milieu of artists and performers.