Film maker Phil Noyce: Interview
July 5th 2008 04:51
Phillip Noyce provides David Jobling with an insight into the New Wave of 1970's Australian Film
David Jobling: Were there any Australian films when you were a youngster that really inspired you and made you think about becoming a film maker?
Phillip Noyce: Well when I was a youngster there was no such thing as an Australian film as far as I was concerned. I think there were films set in Australia such as Robbery Under Arms or Smiley Gets His Gun but they were made by British film makers they weren’t what you’d really call Australian movies – the first Australian movie feature film that I saw was Tim Burstall’s 2000 Weeks. That was in the Sydney Film Festival in 1968. It didn’t exactly inspire me, mainly because of the riotous reception that the film received from the Australian audience, an audience who were completely unaccustomed to seeing themselves up there on the silver screen and were equally unaccustomed to seeing Australian characters speak the truth about their emotions. If 2000 Weeks had of been Swedish I’m sure it would have been acclaimed as a masterpiece; but on that evening in June 1968 Tim Burstall was humiliated by the response to the film. People were laughing, calling out. We were like babies who have just seen ourselves for the first time in the mirror. Amused. Disarmed. Not able to accept what we were seeing. So that was not an inspiration to me, but later that year I was to have an experience that did inspire me and that was not to see feature films but to see short films. I saw one of Aggy Reads films one of Albie Thoms’ films at a collection of so called underground movies. I’d been wandering through Glebe having escaped from the upper North shore and I saw a poster with a psychedelic image on it with the title on it “American Underground Movies” well the word underground was all it needed to get me there.
They were showing at what is now the Footbridge Theatre; underground conjured up an image of the risqué, the renegade, things that would excite an eighteen year old in 1968 and the next Sunday I was down at the Union Theatre (Footbridge Theatre) watching these movies and seeing movies that had been made outside the system. Movies that were made as personal expression and made cheaply; films that were made with a different aesthetic to Hollywood movies. Films that celebrated the very amateurish nature of their production vales as a positive virtue, and suddenly I was inspired. I was inspired to make movies because I could see that those kind of movies were the kind of movies not only that appealed to me but also that I could actually do. You don’t have to be perfect. You didn’t have to have all the equipment, you didn’t have to have professional actors, you didn’t have to have lights. All you needed was ideas and I certainly had some ideas so I went out and made a film.
David Jobling: What about people writing about film in those days – were there very many people you would have looked to in order to get some idea of the industry or the film scene around?
Phillip Noyce: Well there was a magazine published by Aggy Read and Albie Thom and David Perry called “Ubu News” which contained some film criticism as well as production news. There was a paper just starting, a broadsheet that was just starting in Melbourne called Cinema Papers which contained the the first sort of new wave of film criticism, and in Sydney there was some criticism coming out of the WEA (Workers Education Association) particularly the work of John Flaus who is one of Australia’s greatest film theoreticians historians. One of the greatest we’ve ever had, but there wasn’t much. There certainly wasn’t a lot of writing that might inspire one to think that you could make movies because making movies was something which we in Australia considered that we needn’t bother doing. 1968 was the height of the cultural cringe, the sickness that infected Australians for years that told us we needn’t bother because somebody else somewhere could do it better if it came to the arts, particularly the movies, and we were particularly told that by the Australian Press who were very nonsupporting of any efforts to make Australian movies, but more particularly by the film distributors, most of whom were American companies unlike now when we’ve got independent Australian owned movie distribution companies. These companies had a great time just being branch offices for Hollywood. The movies were made there and you know, the campaigns were worked out overseas and they sold the movies without too much fuss and bother to the Australian audiences. The idea was that we just didn’t do it well enough to warrant being shown on the silver screen. We were going to change all that but in 1968 that was the status quo.
David Jobling: You did change all that, you and your peers. People that came through the film school around the same time?
Phillip Noyce: It wasn’t people that came through the film school that changed it,. it was before that Tim Burstall, Bruce Beresford, Paul Cox were all making films in the late 60’s feature films and early 70’s before the film school got going. Film school was started in 1974 by that stage Peter Weir and Donald Crombie had emerged, and there was a fledgling feature film industry already in existence I was part of what is now called the first new wave. But the truth is I was in the second half of that first new wave – gee we’re getting down to semantics but the first group Beresford, Weir, Cox were older than me, just a little bit old enough for me to think that they were old and I was young at the time.
David Jobling: Do you think it’s changed a lot? What sort of change do you see now?
Phillip Noyce: What’s changed now is for the better and for the worse. In the 1970’s our audience had a real love affair with seeing themselves up on the silver screen they were amazed, like babies watching themselves in the mirror and we could make films really cheaply, and so it was the audiences fascination with seeing themselves their own stories, hearing their own accents, and so thankful tat we could make the films really cheaply and we could get enough support that we’d return our money just from the domestic market just in Australia. That’s no longer possible. The movies cost a lot more because now, what was an opportunity at the time has now become for so many people an industry. It’s a business, a way of making a living. Then, we never thought we could make a living we thought we were lucky enough to get one film up, we never thought it was going to be a job, we never thought there’d be any longevity in it. So the audience are no longer quite as enthusiastic as they were, but on the other hand at least our children have grown up with the expectation that they can work in the cinema, they can express themselves in the cinema and I think the Australian cinema while it hasn’t always been profitable commercially in strict dollar sense, has been of enormous profit to our hearts and our minds to our self-awareness, our self-image, to defining ourselves to making us think that the term cultural cringe, that we needn’t bother, is an attitude that is well and truly confined to ancient history. We now know that we should bother that we can do anything. We can make movies as good as anyone else in the world.
David Jobling: In fact some of the films you’ve made have been big American block busters, do you get much feedback from Australians particularly that it gives them a sense of empowerment or inspiration now?
Phillip Noyce: Well I think we Australians all gain a little bit of power from the idea that Russell Crowe is one of the sexiest men alive. Certainly makes the rest of Australian manhood think that they’re the ant’s pants.
David Jobling: Thanks for talking.
David Jobling: Were there any Australian films when you were a youngster that really inspired you and made you think about becoming a film maker?
Phillip Noyce: Well when I was a youngster there was no such thing as an Australian film as far as I was concerned. I think there were films set in Australia such as Robbery Under Arms or Smiley Gets His Gun but they were made by British film makers they weren’t what you’d really call Australian movies – the first Australian movie feature film that I saw was Tim Burstall’s 2000 Weeks. That was in the Sydney Film Festival in 1968. It didn’t exactly inspire me, mainly because of the riotous reception that the film received from the Australian audience, an audience who were completely unaccustomed to seeing themselves up there on the silver screen and were equally unaccustomed to seeing Australian characters speak the truth about their emotions. If 2000 Weeks had of been Swedish I’m sure it would have been acclaimed as a masterpiece; but on that evening in June 1968 Tim Burstall was humiliated by the response to the film. People were laughing, calling out. We were like babies who have just seen ourselves for the first time in the mirror. Amused. Disarmed. Not able to accept what we were seeing. So that was not an inspiration to me, but later that year I was to have an experience that did inspire me and that was not to see feature films but to see short films. I saw one of Aggy Reads films one of Albie Thoms’ films at a collection of so called underground movies. I’d been wandering through Glebe having escaped from the upper North shore and I saw a poster with a psychedelic image on it with the title on it “American Underground Movies” well the word underground was all it needed to get me there.
They were showing at what is now the Footbridge Theatre; underground conjured up an image of the risqué, the renegade, things that would excite an eighteen year old in 1968 and the next Sunday I was down at the Union Theatre (Footbridge Theatre) watching these movies and seeing movies that had been made outside the system. Movies that were made as personal expression and made cheaply; films that were made with a different aesthetic to Hollywood movies. Films that celebrated the very amateurish nature of their production vales as a positive virtue, and suddenly I was inspired. I was inspired to make movies because I could see that those kind of movies were the kind of movies not only that appealed to me but also that I could actually do. You don’t have to be perfect. You didn’t have to have all the equipment, you didn’t have to have professional actors, you didn’t have to have lights. All you needed was ideas and I certainly had some ideas so I went out and made a film.
David Jobling: What about people writing about film in those days – were there very many people you would have looked to in order to get some idea of the industry or the film scene around?
Phillip Noyce: Well there was a magazine published by Aggy Read and Albie Thom and David Perry called “Ubu News” which contained some film criticism as well as production news. There was a paper just starting, a broadsheet that was just starting in Melbourne called Cinema Papers which contained the the first sort of new wave of film criticism, and in Sydney there was some criticism coming out of the WEA (Workers Education Association) particularly the work of John Flaus who is one of Australia’s greatest film theoreticians historians. One of the greatest we’ve ever had, but there wasn’t much. There certainly wasn’t a lot of writing that might inspire one to think that you could make movies because making movies was something which we in Australia considered that we needn’t bother doing. 1968 was the height of the cultural cringe, the sickness that infected Australians for years that told us we needn’t bother because somebody else somewhere could do it better if it came to the arts, particularly the movies, and we were particularly told that by the Australian Press who were very nonsupporting of any efforts to make Australian movies, but more particularly by the film distributors, most of whom were American companies unlike now when we’ve got independent Australian owned movie distribution companies. These companies had a great time just being branch offices for Hollywood. The movies were made there and you know, the campaigns were worked out overseas and they sold the movies without too much fuss and bother to the Australian audiences. The idea was that we just didn’t do it well enough to warrant being shown on the silver screen. We were going to change all that but in 1968 that was the status quo.
David Jobling: You did change all that, you and your peers. People that came through the film school around the same time?
Phillip Noyce: It wasn’t people that came through the film school that changed it,. it was before that Tim Burstall, Bruce Beresford, Paul Cox were all making films in the late 60’s feature films and early 70’s before the film school got going. Film school was started in 1974 by that stage Peter Weir and Donald Crombie had emerged, and there was a fledgling feature film industry already in existence I was part of what is now called the first new wave. But the truth is I was in the second half of that first new wave – gee we’re getting down to semantics but the first group Beresford, Weir, Cox were older than me, just a little bit old enough for me to think that they were old and I was young at the time.
David Jobling: Do you think it’s changed a lot? What sort of change do you see now?
Phillip Noyce: What’s changed now is for the better and for the worse. In the 1970’s our audience had a real love affair with seeing themselves up on the silver screen they were amazed, like babies watching themselves in the mirror and we could make films really cheaply, and so it was the audiences fascination with seeing themselves their own stories, hearing their own accents, and so thankful tat we could make the films really cheaply and we could get enough support that we’d return our money just from the domestic market just in Australia. That’s no longer possible. The movies cost a lot more because now, what was an opportunity at the time has now become for so many people an industry. It’s a business, a way of making a living. Then, we never thought we could make a living we thought we were lucky enough to get one film up, we never thought it was going to be a job, we never thought there’d be any longevity in it. So the audience are no longer quite as enthusiastic as they were, but on the other hand at least our children have grown up with the expectation that they can work in the cinema, they can express themselves in the cinema and I think the Australian cinema while it hasn’t always been profitable commercially in strict dollar sense, has been of enormous profit to our hearts and our minds to our self-awareness, our self-image, to defining ourselves to making us think that the term cultural cringe, that we needn’t bother, is an attitude that is well and truly confined to ancient history. We now know that we should bother that we can do anything. We can make movies as good as anyone else in the world.
David Jobling: In fact some of the films you’ve made have been big American block busters, do you get much feedback from Australians particularly that it gives them a sense of empowerment or inspiration now?
Phillip Noyce: Well I think we Australians all gain a little bit of power from the idea that Russell Crowe is one of the sexiest men alive. Certainly makes the rest of Australian manhood think that they’re the ant’s pants.
David Jobling: Thanks for talking.
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