More On The Comatose Australian Film Industry

Whipping A Dead Horse Some More

Pleidaes sent in some links to do with the recent Antony Ginnane comments.

Here's the article in the Australian and here's the readers' responses.

The reasons for the industry's deep malaise are complex. One obvious factor is the vast opportunities that beckon successful Australian filmmakers to Hollywood, which quickly recognised and captured the talents of such masters as Bruce Beresford, Peter Weir, Robert Luketic and George Miller.

Another issue is the size of the local talent pool, especially of writers. Sometimes, this can result in good subject matter failing to reach its full potential when translated to the screen. Romulus, My Father, based on the memoir of philosopher Raimond Gaita, warmed the hearts of many audiences, especially migrants. A stronger script and fewer silences could have lifted it from being good to outstanding.

The industry's tax breaks, too, warrant attention. Initially, they played a positive role, helping establish a promising industry in the 70s and early 80s - the era of Sunday Too Far Away, Newsfront, The Getting of Wisdom, Gallipoli and Stormboy among many others. Their current impact, however, is debatable. Perhaps authorities overseeing the incentives should question whether they are facilitating - primarily for tax purposes - the making of films that otherwise might never see the light of day.

Critics, too, must bear some responsibility for the malaise. Despite strings of box office failures, it is difficult, sometimes impossible, to find a biting critique of Australian films. Rather than representing the public paying at the box office, too many critics act as advocates for the film industry. As a result, lured by glowing reviews, cinema-goers will be disappointed, and will not waste scarce leisure time on the next Australian film.

The grim, small budget Oyster Farmer is a such an example. Lauded by The Sydney Morning Herald as "seductive and affectionate", a film that "sparkles and broods ... its surface glimmering with speckled light and shade" it was awarded four stars by this newspaper's David Stratton. Encouraged by such accolades to see it, many cinema-goers found it pedestrian and disappointing.

Generally, the industry has been unambitious, priding itself for years on producing small films - so small as to be invisible. They are not cinematic and have all the qualities of an average telemovie. One of the problems appears to be the rush to production without adequate script and character treatment.

Oh dear. Let's go through this bit by bit.

The idea that Hollywood steals our best talent is something that's always held up as a reason why our industry is in trouble. This is not true. Even the example of people cited here are long-gone practitioners that got their start in the 1970s, except for one Robert Luketic who I wouldn't put on the same level as the two George MIllers, Peter Weir or Bruce Beresford. Those guys not being here is not why this industry hit the ditch and rolled over.

The stark reality is that Hollywood is always going to lure the best talent through money, but somehow our industry has failed to thrive when other anglophone industries have thrived under this exact same pressure. In the case of New Zealand, Peter Jackson singlehandedly brought a large chunk of the world's cinema back to Wellington. Why haven't our directors and producers done the same? England's industry continues to thrive, as does Canada. South Africa seems to be behind but their social policy agendas probably have more pressing issues than cinema in general or whether it is right that they get portrayed as the bad guys in 'Lethal Weapon 2'. So why has our industry failed so badly.

The answer lies in the sad fact that the funding bodies have repeatedly punished any and all productions that might have an actual international appeal through bad selection criteria and obstinate refusal to listen to actual practitioners as to how to actually help them get their film made. An international director of renown such as Fred Schepsi no less has pointed out just how perverse and anti-filmmakers these funding bodies with their film bureaucrats really are.

The usual complaints about scripts goes back to the point of development. If people want better scripts, they're going to have to reward writers better. That means producers, executives, directors and the funding bodies have to put much more money into the writers an their writing. It just hasn't been happening after many a promise. I know lots of good writers. Students of the craft who have toiled and toiled for very little money to reach... nowhere. And when I see just how much each and every film bureaucrat who goes to a SPAA conference to hear why the industry is in the toilet actually makes, I go for the vomit bag.

It's been going on for years. Nobody seems in the least bit interested in addressing this; the Labor Party seem to like it this way, and the Liberal Party want to wage a 'Culture War' instead of actually fixing it so that the market can dictate what gets made - which happens to be what should happen, which also just happens to be Liberal Party policy for just about everything else under the fucking sun. Well they sure flubbed their shot during the Howard years and Kevin Rudd is actually spending more money to reinforce the crappy institutions that suck the money out of the State coffers and returns 40 cents on the dollar.

That brings me to the next point about the tax breaks. None of these things work because the ATO adjudicates these things; and it is in their interests time and time again to not let anybody actually merit from the tax breaks. For nearly 12 years, 10BA's last years languished as people *failed* to prove how their film was Australian and therefore warranted the tax break. It just doesn't seem to matter what the government of the day says or does - the ATO is there to willfully fuck it up, free-of-charge, obligation free.

The result of all this has meant that nobody who actually is an investor in films wants to invest in an Australian film any more because they just don't want to go toe to toe with the ATO over definitions about what exactly constitutes 'Australian Content'. The ATO in turn have passed amazingly astygmatic judgments that said that if a film could be shot anywhere other than Australia, it couldn't possibly have 'Australian Content'. Yes, just try figuring that one out.

It's this kind of insanity that has led to just about every film ending up needing government assistance, and this usually means the crappy film bureaucrats get their stupid little mitts into these projects, effectively fashioning the cinema output in their criteria-driven agendas. And people wonder why it is that the Australian film industry serves up 'Oyster Farmer'.

As to the critics, it has to be said that their inability to separate out the bad from the good isn't their problem. It is that they spend so much time in knee-jerk bashing of Hollywood fare that they feel compelled to pitch hard for any Australian film. The way the industry is going, these tend to be fewer and farther in between, so they get all carried away just because somebody actually made something -*anything* - through what is perhaps one of the least productive development systems in the world.

While I do have a bone to pick with the critics, I will cite that elsewhere. For now, it has to be said that critics such as David Stratton are *not* the reason our industry sucks so badly. It's the people who *think* they can pass critical judgment as well as David Stratton who actually don't have his knowledge or experience, who happen to decide which films to fund or which people to fund, that are killing it every day, every week, every month, every year, year after year.

I'm sorry but it's that simple. The Australian Film Industry would be much better if they got rid of the film bureaucracies and directly invested that money into US studios in Australian soil with the single proviso that all that money HAS to be spent on Australian writers, producers directors and crew, with proper accounting at the end of each year to show that the money has been spent on such people. It would be exactly the same thing they did with giving Toyota that money to produce Hybrid cars in Australia. They would see much better returns, and it would provide the proper opportunities for our creative talent. The days of keeping inept film bureaucrats in cushy jobs, who stifle the industry more than they help it, just has to end.

Because he Australian Film Industry is an English speaking industry, it inevitably leads to being a sub-system for the US system. It is its curse, but it is also its blessing - a blessing that enables our talent to flourish as international talent. Talent from say, Serbia or Burkina Fasso don't share this advantage because they speak another language. That being the case, it is insane to try and keep it separate and independent when globalisation is the order of the day in just about any and every industry.

Speaking of Bad Critics...

This bit in the same article made me see red:

Obviously, international cinema styles have moved on from the great Hollywood movies of the 40s and 50s in which dialogue was everything. The move has been to the adventure epics, aimed at younger audiences and laced with special effects. Survival means producing something that people will go out for rather than wait a very short while for the home theatre experience.

Currently, the broader range of international films also provides good reason to stay home with a book, with offerings such as Burn After Reading, Body Of Lies, The Duchess and Beverly Hills Chihuahua on offer.

You see, I actually paid to see both 'Burn after Reading' AND 'Body of Lies'. They are worthy films by worthy directors in every single way. They are worthy of deeper analysis and discussion. If this opinion piece really thinks that these films are not worth heading out to the cinema, I think they are never going to set foot into the cinema to watch an Australian film.

If you can't be bothered to venture out to see a good film, avoiding it sight-unseen, how will you ever know if there is a good Australian film out there? The notion that they only want to watch good films that aren't American is exactly the kind of criteria the film bureaucrats use to bully the creatives in this country to make our pictures smaller, less universal, less interesting and entertaining, and ultimately less profitable.