Why Australian Cinema Is Comatose

It's Not Because Our Films Suck?



Goodness those movie stills above bring a shudder, don't they? That very shudder is the impact of Australian Cinema.

Last week, I posted on Flaming Horses how badly our films fare in the domestic marketplace. Now, we find that the new president of the Screen producer's Association of Australia (commonly known in the industry as SPAA - note how it sounds like some leisure activity) says it's because the Australian audiences have been given a steady diet of downer films.

"As producers we have to present a regular and consistent diet of entertaining and provocative material to cinemagoers," Ginnane told delegates today.

"We've been making, in the main, dark, depressing pic pieces. Nobody goes to see them."

Ginnane - who has worked in the TV and film industry for more than 30 years and was a pioneer of Ozploitation flicks such as Patrick, Thirst, Fantasm and The Survivor - said filmmakers should not expect government funding if they produced movies that Australians did not want to see.

"We have to recognise that the feature film side of our industry has for some years now completely failed to connect with and find an audience, and this must change," he said.

"We cannot simply expect $100 million worth of support a year to be handed over by government if our share of the theatrical box office remains at at an appallingly low 2 to 3 per cent."

Sure Mr Ginnane. The fact of the matter is, anybody who goes to a funding body with a genre film gets turned away because the content isn't 'Australian' enough. This has led to years and years and years of producers, writers and directors trying to come up with non-genre films that please the perverse funding criteria and their stupid, ignorant film bureaucrats - that audiences hate. So what would be the point in blaming the producers and writers and directors who toil under this idiotic regime?

I can take any action movie or comedy that might be the slightest bit of interest to the average punter to a funding body and the chorus in unison is "no, we won't fund that film because it's not good enough".

"Good enough how?" You might ask, and then they get some idiot reader from somewhere to come up with 3 and half pages as to why they shouldn't fund your project, then it's piss-off-thank-you-very-much, don't pass go, don't collect $200.

I've been on this merry-go-round for 15 years, trying to understand just what a film bureaucrat thinks is a viable project. The Film Finance Corporation as it existed in the 1990s and early 2000s was a complete and utter joke that lost money, but even these people (who were pulling down mighty fine studio-exec salaries I might add) were asking for the ridiculous preconditions from the producers, writers and directors before they'd fund a project. Like 50% international pre-sales on distribution or a commitment by an International A-List actor. They joke is, they used to make a 40% return on the dollar spent and the value was $100million plus each year.  That's to say, they weren't bringing back $140million from the $100million, they were returning $40million from the $100million spent.

No bloody wonder they reconfigured that piece-of-shit organisation.

Who Wants This Crap Anyway?


There's no point in Ginnane saying this to other producers other than to commiserate some more, as they do, year after year at SPAA. You hear this every year: "What's wrong with our Industry?"

It's no longer an industry, it's a hobby farm!

"What happened to our talent?" the sort that can go to Hollywood, all go to Hollywood. Once they are there, they see no reason to come back and do stuff here.That includes and is not limited to any number of these good ol' Aussies done good on the world screen. Heck, if it was me, I wouldn't come back to suffer this either.

Part of the big myth of the Australian Film Industry is that it has some kind of raison d'etre. Clearly, the lukewarm.. nay, sub-zero reception it gets from the domestic market is a reflection that it is completely unnecessary to the Australian consciousness to have an Australian film industry.

The fact is, it's always Top Down when it comes to decision making in the Australian Film Industry - nothing is left to the market or even the creatives. Considering the amount of accountability to the market that has been enforced on other aspects of government businesses, it's high-tide they let the market dictate how the tax-payers' money is spent in developing Australian films, if at all. The people who want an Australian Film Industry apart from actual people who make films seem to be politicians, journalists, and film bureaucrats who need to parasite off real people trying to do tangible things.

Aussie artists, painters, and sculptors don't care.

Aussie musicians, don't care.

Aussie novelists and poets don't care.

There's really no real love for it beyond the film making fraternity, which just so happens to include chumps like me.

As market demands go, there is far less demand for it than the people profess. I know for a fact that academics at University of Sydney and NSW who lecture in film choose to see Hollywood fare over Australian content. It's because it's better produced - as in, there's more budget in a crappy US comedy than there is in all the Australian films put together. It's just a lot easier on the eye.

It's Too Late Anyhow

Hollywood itself is raising a white flag to comic book content and game content this decade. They're adapting those comic books with colourful heroes and making special effects extravaganzas with bone-crunching action and loud explosions. That's a good movie on a Saturday night, right?

I recently saw 'Max Payne' starring Mark Wahlberg, and it was just the same old stuff, wrapped in a different coloured patina. Is it good? sure. Is it great? probably not. Was it fun? Yes. Would I have rather seen an Australian film that night? No Fucking Way!

Why is that?

It's because there's one guarantee in an Australian film and that is whatever action it has won't be cathartic, it will be emotionally masochistic or subconsciously homo-erotic, or gruesomely gross or lame. It just won't be cathartic. It sure won't be a lot of fun.

The problem is, when Hollywood is already committing to making reams and reams of Marvel Comic character movies and DC comic character movies and even obscure things like Mystery Men and Animal Man, then what chance has a simple Australian film with a 5million dollar budget got in this context? It will almost be like sending out a mouse to do an elephant's job.

Yet, that's the way the global industry is going, where global capital investments are flowing into a range of vehicles that are primed to hit the market in the pleasure centre. meanwhile Australian films get made having been vetted by government bureaucrats who have never, ever had to put their judgments on the line like film makers do.

As it is, the reconstruction of the Australian industry is falling behind that curve as well as the ramifications of the global credit crunch. So, Antony Ginnane thinks making lighter movies is going to do the trick, huh? That makes me laugh. :)

The Baseball Analogy You Need To Know


Imagine the world's film industry as the baseball system in America under the MLB.

Now, Hollywood, is like the Major league, best of the best. Most money, best everything. And the Industry in the various European nations, Latin America and Japan, are literally like the Dominican and Mexican leagues and the Japan leagues. Good leagues around the world, but there's a language barrier. But the Anglophone industries such as England, Australia, NZ and Canada are effectively minor league systems for the major league/Hollywood league.

This is because we all speak and work in English, and the people of these nations mostly reflect the white person culture of the USA, so transitioning into the Hollywood system is a lot easier. Let's face it, Russell Crow has made more inroads into Hollywood than say, Antonio Banderras on dint of being able to fake Americana - and like sincerity,  if you can fake that, then you've made it.

The logical question to ask then is, how are the relative Anglophone nations stacked in terms of talent? UK's good NZ is on th way up, Canada is steadily supplying talent, but wherefore the Australian talent?

A long time ago in the 1970s, when the film industry was being revived under The Plan, it had a few 'star players' who made it a very attractive base of talent. Imagine Hollywood is like, the New York Yankees. back in the 1970s, Australia was like AAA. But then all our great talent - Peter Weir, Fred Schepsi, Phil Noyce, Gillian Armstrong et al. graduated to the big club, which left Australia at about AA strength. Even so, it managed to produce Baz Luhrman and Jane 'piano' Campion. But by the 1990s, the Australian industry had slipped to High A, and then in the 2000s, you'd have to say that it had slipped to Low A. All the while, everybody, SPAA included kept insisting we were AAA, bordering on the majors.

The bare facts are, even if we stacked up on talent through all the redundant film schools we have in this country, there's not been a real industry that churns out films, for something like 15 years. As a result the talent-base shrunk.

How did this shrinking of talent-base occur? It's pretty simple. We stopped producing volume. And every time the powers-that-be went and over-invested in a few, rather than spread our investment far and wide. Sure, we had the talent, but if you don't develop the talent, then it never pays off. And we really didn't let the talent play, so to speak.

The immediate investments always looked good when they returned Oscars on some of these films, but in the end, all it did was to dry up the future of the industry. It's been so bad for so long, it's like a ball club that hasn't broken .500 for a lo-o-o-ong time. That's the story of the Australian Film Industry, told as a baseball story. We are now the GCL Pirates of world cinema, and we sure as hell aren't the New York Yankees.