Is There Any Point In Even Trying?

The 'Australian Film Industry' Is Not An Industry - It's A Rort For Superannuated Bureaucrats

I always get some flack when I call it as I see it, but put frankly, the Australian Film Industry is not an industry proper when you consider that it only makes 14 feature films a year and every single one of them gets a government grant to get to the crank in. Let's not even forget to mention that when it does get made, the Australian public lines up in queues NOT to watch them. They discover them years later and ask, "why do our films suck? I mean, why, do, they suck so-o-o-o MUCH?!"

That's right. The average Australian film goers hate our films and would much rather spend money on Hollywood fare or English fare or some exotic European movie than pay to see our own low budget, state-sanctioned, ideologically controlled, politically correct, historically-revisionist, culturally cringing craptastic, BORING MOVIE. I don't blame them as lately, I've felt the same way. Heck, for $12.98 at K-Mart, I'd rather buy an old, odd, DVD title than see a dumb Australian picture at the cinemas for $15.50.

The rest of us who (sometimes) toil in this business hoping to make anything are just in denial of this fact. Your average Australian tax-payer is always astounded at how much money goes to the filmmakers who manage to get funding out of this system - and then they promptly vote with their wallets not to support this system. It's been going on for years. Any time anybody says "I'd like to make a kick-butt genre picture," they get given the cold shoulder. Any time any body wants to make a picture that might go and earn export dollars, the funding bodies tell the producers developing the project claim it is "not an Australian Story".

Sometimes it seems it is a lot more important that the story is parochially Australian than the fact that Australian filmmakers are struggling to make their films. It's an insult that gets repeated year after year, after year. I wish I could vote them out like I would a government - but alas, I can't. Think about that. Think about the oppressive tyranny of that utter lack of options. That, my friends is the stench of bullshit emanating from these 'Film Bureaucracies'.

And with that, I bring to you the latest brouhaha in the disaster that is known as the Australian Film Industry.

GEORGE MILLER: We're kind of stuck in those old paradigms, where anything big, or anything Hollywood is bad. Hollywood is in turmoil, Warner Brothers is cutting down its production, the biggest studio in the world is cutting down its production by half.

So they're in turmoil, everyone's bewildered there, and we're somehow back here in this little back water, resting on our laurels, and we don't have a film industry anymore.

ANNE MARIA NICHOLSON: George Miller's tilt for the rebate is being hotly debated by the powerbrokers of Australian cinema. Many of them gathered in Canberra to celebrate the merger of the three major film funding agencies into Screen Australia. But it's the change to the way movies will be financed that was causing most of the excitement.

SIGRID THORNTON, ACTOR: I think this gives back some ownership to filmmakers. It's a very exciting period. It's going to go through some teething stages, and I'm sure that the Government will be responsive to those teething stages, and I think it will take time to settle.

BRIAN ROSEN, FILM FINANCE CORPORATION: It will allow Australian filmmakers to tell bigger stories. Because an offset basically delivers 40 per cent of your budget, which is a big step in the right direction to get your film financed.

ANNE MARIA NICHOLSON: Finding the right formula to finance films has always been tricky. the controversial 10ba tax incentive paid for many of the films in the 80s. It was a generous tax incentive which was often abused and eventually dumped.

Private investors scampered, and although the new Government incentive guarantees a refund of 40 per cent of a film's budget, the producers still have to find the other 60 per cent.

GEOFF BROWN, SCREEN PRODUCERS' ASSOCIATION: Financial markets are collapsing around us. Films are a very risky business. But that's the challenge for us. We've got to change our profile with the investment community. We've got to engage with them on a different level than we have in the past. It's not Government handout, it's bloody hard work.

ANNE MARIA NICHOLSON: Making films is one thing. Attracting audiences is quite another. Last year Australians spent nearly $900 million on movie tickets. But they spent only 4 per cent of that figure on the 25 Australian films released. And half of that was on George Miller's Happy Feet.

GEORGE MILLER: I heard a critic the other day, a serious critic, say "going to an Australian film is like going to the dentist; you know you ought to, but you know you're in for a lot of pain".

ANNE MARIA NICHOLSON: There were high hopes for Gillian Armstrong's new film Death Defying Acts. An a-list cast, a proven director and a good story. It was an Australian Scottish co-production. In the top 15 films, it came in a disappointing ninth on its first outing last weekend in spite of sophisticated marketing.

Another lower budget movie, The Black Balloon was the only other Australian entry coming in at number 11. Gillian Armstrong is used to the cut and thrust of movie financing and the whims of those who decide whether or not to fund a film.

GILLIAN ARMSTRONG, DIRECTOR: When we would tried to make me a career, we were knocked back by the AFC, the Australian Film Corporation, and it was lucky we had the New South Wales one to go to, because the AFC said there's been too many period films, go away.

ANNE MARIA NICHOLSON: So it could backfire?

GILLIAN ARMSTRONG: It could backfire by putting them all together and making a small number of people decide which films are made, so it's no easy answer.

ANNE MARIA NICHOLSON: And even star power is no guarantee.

CATHERINE ZETA-JONES, ACTOR: I've had a few little projects I've wanted to do in Wales and I've been just been knocked down. And I've gone personally knocking on doors. And it's like it's not really... it's too kind of like, it's too Welsh.

ANNE MARIA NICHOLSON: There's no doubt that this is a watershed moment for Australian films and why the key players are nervous about George Miller's criticism.

If he walks he says he'll take not only Justice League away, but also Happy Feet Two, which would probably qualify for the 40 per cent producer rebate.

GEORGE MILLER: We've virtually lost them to this country now. I just got off the phone trying to keep Happy Feet Two in this country.

Justice League is absolutely borderline. And we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars circulating through the economy, and more importantly, thousands of high-end skilled creative jobs in a sustained industry. Work for the next five or six years and it's been frittered away by people who do not understand the industry, they're stuck 20 years ago in the past.

BRIAN ROSEN: Look, there's a truth in what George has to say. Definitely the industry is a cottage industry.

There is a underemployment in the industry. We all know that, that people really only work six months of the year. And what we're hoping with the offset over the next five years, is that the industry will grow from $600 million to $1 billion, that's where it should sit to have gainful employment from everybody in the industry as it is at the moment.

ANNE MARIA NICHOLSON: But two important questions remain. What is an Australian story? And do audiences here really care about them any more?

Yeah, getting your teeth pulled is about right. It's just as I said. And in all the kerfuffle, you don't really get the sense of urgency from these government bodies that maybe this is not working out the way it should. My own personal experiences of this make me feel like there needs to be a serious revolution and these bureaucrats need to be shot against the wall or placed under the guillotine. It's criminal that they pull down immense amounts of money in government salaries while they put up roadblocks every which way to stop films from getting made. They all make Beth Morgan look like the Virgin Mary - at least with Beth Morgan, you had a shot at getting your building put up if you shagged her.

Meanwhile, the distributors are pulling out:

Palace Films was until recently the most active and sometimes very successful distribber of niche Aussie pics ("Chopper," "Ten Canoes"), but after suffering from an oversupply of underperforming fare, the shingle reined back its investment.

"We tried to reach a critical mass, but we had too many; it's so much work," Palace Films manager Benjamin Zeccola says.

"We are shifting our focus back toward international titles," he adds. "We will still support certain Australian titles, although we will be far more selective."

Roadshow Films has been the major distrib of broader Aussie fare, but the shingle has none dated, and only actioner "The Square" is confirmed for 2008.

Last year, Roadshow released "December Boys" with Daniel Radcliffe and Greg Mclean's frightener "Rogue," but neither met expectations.

Topper Joel Pearlman says the shingle isn't gun-shy. "It just depends when the scripts are ready," he says.

According to some producers, there a two reasons development as stalled -- first, the drawn-out review of film-funding prior to the introduction in mid-2007 of the new rebate; and now, the many questions about how the rebate can be best used.

Pearlman, though, has Roadshow raring to go. "Traditional funding mechanisms are still there," Pearlman says, adding that the company has a staff working on just Australian films. Roadshow has significant plans to capitalize on the new 40% rebate, Pearlman says.

Christ almighty, I hate my industry right now. Having gone past the fear, I absolutely loathe it.