View From The Couch - 27/Mar/2016

Propaganda And Nothing But Propaganda

Some days you just don't know what to make of the government's views on the arts and entertainment industry. Other days, it's pretty damn clear what they want from its workers. And so today we find that the immigration department dropped $6million to make a Telemovie about what a bad idea it is to be an asylum seeker from Afghanistan or Pakistan, hoping to trek to Australia by water.

Government tender documents reveal the Department of Immigration and Border protection paid the Sydney-based Put It Out There Pictures $4.34 million to produce the movie. It paid a company called Lapis Communications a further $1.63 million for to promote and advertise it, bringing the total to $5.97 million. 

By contrast, Priscilla cost less than $2 million, Wolf Creek about $1 million and The Castle just $750,000. Even adjusted for inflation, the total budget of all three films works out at about $5.8 million in today's terms. 

Filmed across three countries, the ninety-minute drama tells the story of a small group of Afghan asylum seekers trying to get to Australia by boat. A trailer available on YouTube – which has about 1000 views – shows scenes of asylum seekers talking, arguing and crying in Afghanistan, Malaysia and Indonesia.

I guess the obvious thing about this is that this government views propaganda films as being more important than any film that gets made with government assistance through Screen Australia. When the government has a point to put across through film, it actually has a bit of financial wherewithal to make its point forcefully. 

I know it wasn't intended but there probably isn't a bigger insult to the film makers of this country than a production where the budget provided by the government is bigger than anything it would normally hand out to a local production; where the content is purely political; the funding came out of a department that has zero involvement with the arts and entertainment sector, and the production money went out to a foreign production entity. 

One would think - rather cheekily - that the department of Immigration should have been forced to go through the process every other producer has to go through to secure government funding, and tried to set up its own distribution deals overseas. 

The production also brings up some interesting issue like, who in Australia might have undertaken such a project. I'd imagine the vast majority of film makers are pinkos. Some are even heavily Regressive Left types. There would be a lot of people who would object to this project for being propaganda and for such nefarious intent. All you have to remind people is 'Leni Riefenstahl', and they would've run screaming. As such, the government would have had immense trouble getting any kind of creatives going on in Australia. It kind of illustrates just why it was made out in Afghanistan:

Put It Out There company director Trudi-Ann Tierney declined to be interviewed. However she has in the past had some interesting things to say about her own work, describing her films as "propaganda". 

The former Australian TV executive and actress moved to Kabul to manage a bar but fell into the local TV industry and found herself producing a highly popular soapie, which she wrote about in her book Making Soapies in Kabul. 

In the book she said she was ostensibly head of drama "but in truth I was nothing more than a propaganda merchant". She also says her work was part of the "psychological operations" NATO and its allies used to influence the values and behaviour of its Afghan audience in a way that supported the war effort.

It's all about the war effort boys and girls! There's always more money for that. 

Rejoice, It's Joyce Season

The interesting news is that the "vengeful micro parties" are going after Barnaby Joyce. 

The Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce is to be targeted by "far right wing" micro parties directing preferences against him in the seat of New England, according to the preference expert Glenn Druery. 

Mr Joyce holds the seat by 19.6 per cent but the micro parties revenge for being bundled out of the Senate is expected to greatly enhance independent Tony Windsor's campaign to retake New England. 

Mr Druery said on Friday the right wing micro party candidates would also direct preference against sitting Coalition members in at least 10 marginal seats.

The fun part of the news is that these are "far right wing" micro parties. These micro-parties are presumably for people to whom the current Coalition is not right wing enough. That's right, more right wing than the climate-change-denying', Coal-seam-gassin', asylum-seeker-hatin', gay-marriage-equality-resistin', Johnny-Depp-baitin', cockamamie Barnaby Joyce.

You wonder what the world has come to when a right ole rightwing nut like Barnaby can't rely on the far right wing nut vote.

A House For This Sinodinos

It's truly strange how political operators go about doing things and how money seems to swirl around the things they do.

Key Liberal fundraisers sounded out major donors to the party about chipping in to buy a house for Senator Arthur Sinodinos after the collapse of a potentially lucrative money-making venture. 

The audacious plan originated in early 2013 after Senator Sinodinos relinquished a 5 per cent stake in Australian Water Holdings, a company that later became the focus of a landmark corruption inquiry. 

Fairfax Media had earlier revealed Senator Sinodinos' shareholding in a company that employed Eddie Obeid jnr, the son of controversial Labor powerbroker Eddie Obeid.
At the time Senator Sinodonis said that although his shareholding was recorded on his parliamentary pecuniary interest declaration it was not publicly registered with the corporate regulator "because it was on a gentleman's agreement".

How does that even work? Could, say, Terri Butler the current ALP shadow cabinet secretary go to the unions and ask for them to find money to buy her a house? Wouldn't Malcolm Turnbull and his ABCC bill jump up and down and point to such shenanigans as exactly how the unions and the ALP were corrupt? Isn't that what Sinodinos is being accused at this moment? This is some really weird stuff - especially because you see names like Obeid thrown in there, and we know "Obeid" can only mean "corruption" in this part of the English speaking world.

At some point they have to just 'fess up and admit that corruption is corruption is corruption.
And then there's this:

How Deep Does This Rabbit Hole Go?

Here's a doozy. The same ICAC inquiry that dug up the dirt on Sinodinos has also dug up the name of Peta Credlin. Yes, they tried to suppress that name, but it's out in the open now.

The documents were suppressed last week by the head of the Independent Commission Against Corruption after lawyers acting for Liberal Senator Arthur Sinodinos raised concerns they could be subject to parliamentary privilege. 

But the suppression order was lifted on Monday after the speaker of the House of Representatives, Bronwyn Bishop, advised the commission that no claim for privilege would be made. 

The emails reveal that, in March 2011, while the Coalition was in opposition, Ms Credlin used a major donor to the Liberal Party, Brickworks, as part of Tony Abbott's campaign against the carbon tax.

Oh doesn't that look like a bucket of writhing corrupt worms right there? Turns out Lindsay Partridge of Brickworks - who classifies as a Developer - was donating "illicit money" (The Sydney Morning Herald's words not mine BTW) to the NSW Liberals and Federal Liberal Party through back channels. The emails leave a trail of totally awful illustration of how money buys you so much access you get to put words into the mouth of a Prime Minister. 

Frankly, it's ugly and despicable that this is politics in this country, and how we in the electorate simply have to take it. All we do get is to vote for some person who may or may not get into Parliament, and may or may not represent our interests in that Parliament.It's really vague what the vote gets the ordinary citizen. 

The rich on the other hand, clearly get to dictate terms on a daily basis. 

It's A New World Of Cinema

Australian Film On The Comeback Trail

It's taken 10years since the pit of despair leading up to the GFC, but the Australian Film industry seems to have turned around this year. I remember that pit, and long time readers would remember just how bad things got. Since then, the direct investment into film by the government has been rolled back substantially, while the high dollar knocked out the service industry side of the Australian Film Industry, but just as some flowers bloom in the desert at some point, Australian films had a bumper crop this year.

This has been a record year for Australian movies, which have collectively taken $84 million at the local box office, or 7.7 per cent of the total. That's the biggest result ever in raw dollar terms, and the best share since 2001.

What makes it truly remarkable is that just a year ago the local industry looked to be in terminal decline. 

In 2014, Australian movies accounted for just 2.4 per cent of the total Australian box office. Only once since 1977, which is as far back as the Screen Australia database goes, has it been lower; the 1.3 per cent share in 2004 makes that Australian cinema's annus horribilis. 

What's more, last year's result ($26.2 million) came on the back of a poor 2013 as well ($38.5 million, 3.5 per cent share). Had it not been for The Great Gatsby ($27.4 million), 2013 would have been a complete disaster.

You have to give credit where it's due, though it's hard to say just where it goes exactly. 

One of the reasons some of last year's Australian movies failed at the cinema was that people were given scant opportunity to see them. A week or two on a dozen or so screens with scant marketing barely counts as a release strategy when you're up against Hollywood movies on 500 screens with saturation advertising. But that's the fate of many an Australian movie. 

Those that cut through this year, though, tended to benefit from a wide release and hefty promotional spend. The Water Diviner went out on 299 screens, Oddball 289, The Dressmaker 384 and Mad Max: Fury Road a Hollywood-sized 542 screens. 

A wide release means a distributor can target their campaign around a narrow window of time, maximising bang for buck. Shane Jacobson did such a sterling job talking up Oddball it's doubtful anyone in Australia didn't know at least a little about the film by the time it hit cinemas.

But it takes a certain kind of product for distributors to have the confidence to go wide: an appealing story, star talent, good production values. This year's batch ticked those boxes, "but you can't reverse engineer it", says Screen Australia chief Graeme Mason. "If the distributors are spending millions of dollars – literally – putting it out there, they're not going to do that unless they see something commercially appealing in it."

So maybe it wasn't necessarily the quality, it was the marketing spend that backed a more palatable crop of films. In any case, you take any sign you can grab. Maybe there is a case to be made that Australian Cinema is at long last on the comeback trail. 

Paul Byrnes Still Sucks (Sun Still Rises In The East)

I find Paul Byrnes a terribly condescending moralist, mostly because his film cries in the SMH are more moral analyses than actual film crits. And so, he made a moral judgment about Sylvester Stallone and his films years ago, but for some reason he was moved to admit he was wrong about Stallone.

Stallone turns 70 next year and maybe this is a good time for me to apologise to him. For a long time, I thought he was just a meathead, like some of the characters he invented.
When I started writing about movies in 1984, he had become a poster boy for the American right. Ronald Reagan himself declared that Rocky was a Republican. Stallone had already made Rockys II and III, and he had done the first Rambo film, First Blood – which was actually pretty good. In 1984 he was paired with Dolly Parton in a country musical, Rhinestone Cowboy. Some wit declared it the meeting of the two greatest racks in show business. He was becoming a joke, but a very successful one. 

I think now that I was wrong. It's not just the phenomenal box office of his combined films, although that is a lump (more than $4 billion in grosses, adjusted for inflation). Stallone has had a major impact on the way movies are made now – in the way action montages are put together, the speed of the editing, the use of music. He has had an impact on how Americans see themselves, reaffirming their sense of right and might; he has redrawn the Hollywood map in terms of longevity, although he has had plenty of helpers there – from Eastwood and Schwarzenegger and all the other action has-beens who won't die, most of whom turn up in Stallone's Expendables franchise, another phenomenally successful Stallone idea that defies all notions of good filmmaking.

Ugh. Did you see what he did there? He's apologising for being wrong but still puts the boot in. You sort of wonder on what grounds the film critic has been endowed or earned such moral disdain for the practitioner - any practitioner - let alone Sylvester Stallone. I'm not a big fan of Stallone, but I've never held him in contempt or this low in a moral judgment sense. More so, I just don't get the impetus to give this mea culpa just because 'Creed' shows Stallone is still a decent actor given the chance. We knew that long ago, all the way back when the the original 'Rocky' came out. It's not some new discovery or revelation. 

If he's been dissing Stallone all these years even though he knew Stallone was a perfectly fine leading actor all this time, it strikes me as the height of intellectual dishonesty to mount such an apology. Paul Byrnes finally saw a movie with Stallone in it that he actually liked - and felt embarrassed enough to write an apology. It's truly pathetic. 

Budget Fallout 2015

When The SMH Calls You Stupid, You Just Might Be

The Wow-Just-Wow moment arrived in the Herald this evening, and it goes like this:

You would have thought Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey had learnt their lesson – after all, it had very nearly cost them their political lives.
But no. 

The paid parental leave debacle now consuming an otherwise soft and friction-free budget, is testament to the stubbornness of ageing white men and to the durability of their ideas, even really bad ones.

When the all-male Expenditure Review Committee members huffed their scornful reproach and conspired to nail greedy mothers involved in welfare "fraud", as Hockey readily agreed it was, it eluded their lofty wisdom that (a) this was egregious nonsense (b) their policy shift contradicted a core value to which the Prime Minister - no less - was thoroughly welded, and (c) some of their own wives had taken maternity leave from their employers, and the basic federal government scheme of $11,500 over 18 weeks. Oops. 

The stupidity of Abbott and Hockey now paring back entitlements are too numerous to list, but include that right up until months ago, they had wanted to pay $75,000 for six months to wealthier mothers – non means-tested. It was Abbott's "signature" policy remember – specifically confected to fix his "women problem". How's that looking now? Hockey had been its next most enthusiastic proponent. Both had argued it was an employment entitlement akin to annual leave and thus an inalienable right. Once a bitter opponent of paid parental leave (over my dead body) Abbott became unstoppable - a born-again zealot intent on staring down colleagues after foisting it on them without consultation.

Look, there are days where I think I might be the only person banging on about just how stupid WTE Joe and Phoney Rabbit can be, but amazingly, this is not the case. The mainstream journalists picked up on this thing and are writing it. I can't recall Peter Smark ever writing Bob Hawke was stupid, or Alan Ramsay writing Paul Keating was stupid, or for that matter John Howard who might have deserved it more than Hawke or Keating.

I mean, the logic is without flaw; these guys went out and shot themselves in the foot, in broad daylight. What are we to make of this? That it's a part of a some greater cunning plan? Words escape me. And so we're here today with the spectacle of a journalist of a major newspaper in Australia calling out our Prime Minister and WTE as stupid people. And here I was thinking that day would never come!

UPDATE: It's Idiot Season, Open For The Hunt

Today it's Peter Martin starting out with "Idiot":

What kind of idiot labels mothers "rorters"? 

It's the same kind of idiot who thinks it's a good idea to draw a line in the sand between the Coalition and Labor over super. Tony Abbott told Parliament last week there would be "no changes to super, no adverse changes to super in this term of Parliament, and we have no plans to make adverse changes to super in the future".
It was remarkable coming from a government whose Treasurer only six weeks ago reached out to Labor for a "bipartisan" approach on super, saying he had measures "under very active consideration". 

Labor took him at his word, announced its own very mild position, and had the door slammed in its face. 

Everyone knows something will have to be done soon about super tax concessions. The Henry tax review said so, the Murray financial system inquiry said so, and the government's tax discussion paper as good as said so. The cost of the concessions rivals that of the pension, and it is growing more quickly. To say that isn't so, after saying it was so, is to redefine reality. 

On mothers, Abbott took to the election a proposal for six months' paid maternity leave. He picked the period of 26 weeks rather than Labor's 18 weeks "to support women to have the best chance to breastfeed and bond with their infant for the six-month period recommended by international and Australian health experts". The Coalition's policy still available on its website cites the National Health and Medical Research Council and the World Health Organisation as experts finding that the minimum recommended period of exclusive care and breastfeeding is six months. 

In the meantime, Labor's paid parental leave scheme was ensuring that some women had more than 18 weeks. That was its aim. Its explanatory memorandum said the scheme would "complement" existing entitlements, being paid "before, after, or at the same time". Never intended as a substitute for employer-provided leave, it was an add-on that would bring some women close to six months. 

The Fair Work Ombudsman puts the intention beyond doubt. "Employer-funded paid parental leave doesn't affect an employee's eligibility for the Australian government's paid parental leave scheme," it says on its website. "An employee can be paid both."
So it's hard to know what to make of the sudden quasi-criminalisation of mothers who do as the law intended to get paid leave approaching the six months that Abbott insisted was the minimum needed for breastfeeding and exclusive care. 

Labelling them "double dippers" on Mother's Day and announcing that from next year they would be denied access to the government's scheme, Joe Hockey was invited by Laurie Oakes to agree that accessing both was "basically fraud". He replied: "Well, it is.

An object lesson in how to win enemies and influence nobody. I'm glad the press is finally seeing what I saw a long time ago. All it takes is track record of contradictory statements and obvious lack of reasoning by this government to demonstrate just how stupid are these people.

They Cut Screen Australia! What Sadistic Joy It Gives Me!

I don't know how to put this nicely, but the film bureaucrats of this land give me the shits. As a class of citizens intent upon improving our lives though propagandistic (and bad) entertainment, they are all George Brandises of the movie biz without the actual "I-got-elected-you-mofos" bit going for them. They are what you might call unrepresentative swill who have spent decades keeping the pool small, the water shallow, and mostly poisonous. So oddly enough, when their budget gets cut, I have no choice but to rejoice. So hooray motherfuckers, they fucked over the other motherfuckers. Really, I hope somebody loses their fucking job. I don't know who exactly that's going to be, or how it will be broached - I don't give a flying-fuckety-fuck - I hope it's somebody whose career in film-bureaucracy is brought to a fucking miserable end.

The cuts to Screen Australia have been denounced by Screen Producers Australia, which claimed they "will seriously impact the industry", and the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, which said "the cuts will undoubtedly impact the thousands of MEAA members who rely on these arts and cultural programs for work, training and development". 

The production designer of Mad Max: Fury Road, Colin Gibson, said though the cut was almost expected, he was sure it would have an impact on the industry.
"It's not really a government we were expecting too much largesse in the way of art or beauty to be coming from anyway," he said at the movie's vehicle show at the Sydney Opera House, ahead of the Australian premiere on Wednesday. 

However, Gibson added that he was "not necessarily convinced" that Screen Australia has the best system for supporting the industry anyway.
"So let's see if we can use the agony to our advantage," he said.

Cut it all, I say. Cut the fucking lot of them and throw them in the harbour to be eaten by sharks.

News That's Fit To Punt - 23/Sep/2014

It's Not The Burqa, Stupid

There are people making statements about the burqa and hijab, starting with Jacqui Lambie.  It's a funny thing - now the National Party is complaining that their anti-burqa message is being garbled by Senator Lambie's efforts. There's now an Islamophobia hotline to boot because anti-muslim sentiment has gone up in the wake of the arrests of the ISIL//ISOR-sympathisers and their random-beheading plot.

It needs to be said, hounding women with these head dresses is hardly going to achieve anything towards achieving the defeat of ISIL//ISOR or towards World Peace. If we're going on about Sharia Law and who intolerant Islamist muslims are, then it's probably worth talking about other religions that have a highly intolerant branch. Judging muslims by the behaviour of ISIL//ISOR is  like judging western society by the behaviour of Westboro Baptist Church. Complaining about the burqa is equally irrelevant as people who complained about bikinis. We've learned to live with bikinis, we'll learn to live with burqas.

Classical Music As Prestige Hobby

Pleiades sent in this story which deserves a bit of kicking around. It turns out that it wasn't just the ballerinas that got a reprieve from the Budget slashing knife wielded by Worst-Treasurer-Ever Joe Hockey; Melba Recordings which specialises in classical music recordings goat direct injection of $275,000 from the Federal Government, directly bypassing the Arts Council.

The story then tells us that Melba Recordings has been receiving Federal grant monies for a long time, and each and every time has been bypassing the Arts Council. This fact alone fills one with great mixed feeling - but I'll get on to that in a moment.

ArtsHub reports that: “Melba’s last published financial statements appear to be from 2011-12. They paint a dismal picture. The foundation recorded a $566,704 loss on revenue of only $630,848, of which the Federal Government grant was $500,000 – an extraordinary subsidy ratio of approximately 79 per cent.” 

“Melba’s sales record is equally glum. The 2012 annual report shows an “other” income, which appears to include CD sales, of only $39,225. Sales from earlier years were equally disappointing. In 2011 the foundation made only $18,000 and in 2010 as little as $3,500, according to a 2012 analysis by Samantha Randell, a researcher at the Association of Independent Records,” the website reported.

The amazing thing about classical music is not the years of devotion and training it takes to master the technique, only to end up teaching the stuff or working in some cruddy orchestra as fifth violinist down the back or something; it's that it keeps finding patronage in the most extraordinary places.

Like, the Attorney General's Office.

Jokes aside, you do wonder how valid it is to be spending money on a label of classical music, recorded in Australia by Australian musicians and artistes. On the one hand, it's good that there is a forum for classical musicians to get a go, recording stuff. Otherwise, it's forever going to be the cultural cringe of worshipping at the altar of 'Deutsche Grammophon' and 'ARKIV Produktion' and 'Decca Records' and all those wonderful, established recording houses in Europe. On the other hand you would think, if there's no market purchase whatsoever, it's in the same basket-case basket as Australian Film & Cinema. Why are we spending good money after bad to indifferent effect, pissing it into the wind when the very same government is screaming about cuts to everything worthwhile?
The mind boggles.

Equally, one understands what the funding selection criteria process would be like for a classical music label to undergo at the Arts Council. It would be a hard sell, and some weird-as left wing ideologue is bound to scuttle sending money to something so conservative and backward looking as a classical music label. They would have no shot - and as progressive and trendy-lefty as I am, the musician side of me wonders if the Arts Council should be the kind of arbiter body for something like this?
It would be really - make that tremendously - hard to make a case that an Australian playing 'The Goldberg Variations' on a harpsichord made in Australia was still culturally Australian in the way funding bodies like it. But is this a fair ruler with which to measure this kind of venture? Is this venture that lacking in national interest?

All the same, when you look at just how much money has been spent and how little money that's been made selling classical music from this label, one would have to conclude this is just this conservative Coalition wanking on spending public monies on something that belongs with private philanthropic enterprises. It says a lot about Australia that this sort of thing happens at all. Bottom line is this: why aren't Jamie Packer and/or Lachlan Murdoch forking out money for this instead of the government? What's wrong with these billionaires? Acute Philistinism perhaps?

Coming Out Of Hibernation

Salman Rushdie Speaks At Opera House

It's not everyday you get to see and hear Salman Rushdie speak live, so I went along to the Festival of Dangerous Ideas. I'm not so convinced these ideas at the festival are so dangerous - they seem more like ideas that would make great clickbait on Facebook, but I'm not really certain they're so damn dangerous. Mr. Rushdie was speaking to the notion whether Television was the New Novel. He spoke at great length of his experience in development hell for 18months but said "No, it's not."

The conversation could have been more interesting but the panel seemed to favour talking about the process whereby television writers are commissioned to write scripts and whether novelists were good at adapting to that challenge or not. Mr. Rushdie indicated he was surprised to find he was more resistant to it than he initially thought. Hardly earth-shattering. I could've told him that at the front end before he went into development hell.

He did say a couple of interesting things. One of them was that the bigger a TV series gets, the less likely it would end on a satisfying note. All such series should be finished with a comma and not a full stop, was his observation. The other notable tidbit was that novel writing is entirely processed internally, but script writing for television drags that process out into the open so that it can be shared with other parties. That much is true.

He also told a joke featuring two goats.

Short Film Screening

I attended the screening of a short film up at the Chauvel tonight. My good friend Guillermo managed to finish the film we shot last year. All I did was sound record it, but it was kind of gratifying to see my name in the credits. I hadn't seen that in a few years.

Anyway, the DOP and I got into a conversation with one of the producers about film funding in this country and I was surprised to find that there is a widespread belief that the funding system in this country is rigged so the same people keep getting grants, and that the better thing would be to stop the government doing direct funding and go back to a 10BA tax driven thing. Everybody's thinking it. The system is rigged, and it's part of the problem and not the solution. The belief is so widespread that nobody trusts the government to do the right thing. Now, this is just film making - not medical or legal policy. However, if the government was to screw up the medical and legal industries like they have screwed up the film industry, there would be picket lines and molotov cocktails on our streets. The fact that it doesn't happen is merely a reflection of how dejected the film industry is about how the government keeps working to make the business smaller in this country - even if it is inadvertent - and how small the business has become.

I'm just reporting this here because others in the business would want to know. And yes, it is always a bitch-fest when filmies get together.

Slack

I've Been Slack, Yeah

The writers' guild called me on my mobile today wondering if it was their administrative error or my lapse that I hadn't paid for my membership this year. I told the lady it was a bit of both - that I decided to let the thing slide while I thought about it. She asked what I had to think about and so I asked her if she wanted the short version or the long version. She said I should try the short one first.

The short version is that I made all of $1000.00 writing a draft for a screenplay this year. This $1000.00 is an advance against if-and-when the film gets up. The rest will be paid if and when the film gets up. Out of which if I paid my GST, and then full guild membership, I'd be left with about $550. Which makes me wonder why I'm handing over so much for my only writing income. Especially when they did nothing to help me negotiate my contract. I wouldn't have and couldn't have called upon them because their standard contract would have been laughed out of the room.

Besides which, the producer was my friend from Film School. I had to help him get the script sorted before he footed a bill to fly to Cannes to try and raise finance, another process in which the guild would prove utterly useless. Thus, it's really hard to justify the guild membership when there's so little to show for it; and a bunch of workshops and discussion groups and a newsletter and a glossy book each year where screenwriters get interviewed about writing... simply isn't much value. For that money I could head to the pub and hang out with people of my choosing, and the ensuing conversation might actually be more interesting.

The industry has changed greatly. It's not the bustling hive it once was where development led to things. Only a handful of films get made - and none of them get made without the government funding production costs. It's really hard to conceive of a guild in the context of an industry that's only there as an extension of the government.

I then asked her if she wanted the long version and she declined. I can't say I blame her much. I told her it's not something I hold the guild responsible for, but really it couldn't be just me, and the industry couldn't be supporting so many writers to call the writers guild a guild. And hence I told her I was thinking whether I should stump up the money for the membership or just spend it on my dentist - which, would have literally palatable results compared to a membership in a clan of writers equally hungry, disenfranchised, and broke as I.

She said she would relay back to management my concerns. I have no idea how 'management' is going to respond to my feedback. I doubt they would have anything to say. I'm not expecting anything, but at least they got a piece of my fucking mind.

How Did We Get Here?

Vicariously, Cannes

It's a weird sort of thing, but I have a project headed for Cannes to look for financing this year. It doesn't happen every year and it's been a while since I've had a script doing the rounds so it feels strange. The producer-director is an Australian citizen, a fellow graduate from AFTRS but he is a migrant from Lithuania, way back when it was a communist satellite state. He is, however, also a member of the European Film Academy. He's somebody in Europe, as opposed to a struggling borderline unemployable middle aged person back here in Australia; and this owes no small thanks to the complete retreat of the Australian government from supporting the Australian Film Industry.

We have approached Screen Australia for support but the answer we got was that the project was not going to be Australian content so we had no chance of getting any such support. We pointed out that 'The Great Gatsby' was hardly Australian content but received millions in investment from  Screen Australia, all on the back of its creatives being Australian and it being shot in New South Wales. The answer we got was "that was Baz and his team. You're not Baz."

In other words, Screen Australia supports only that which is already successful and doesn't need support. No surprises there. Who wants risks in the film industry? Crazier still, the institutional narrowness of having such a selection 'criterion' - while well known and understandable - can be a big filter that weeds out successful projects. It seems to be the negative imprint that matches the tremendously unsuccessful commerce that is the Australian Film Industry. Honestly, on some simple level my producer-director ought to be getting more support than he is, just as other producers I've worked with ought to have received more support, from their own government agency.

Frankly, it's a disgrace.

I've been wondering about how things came to this path for him and I. Obviously, I am neither European or the sort of screenwriter that aspires to the kinds of art house fare that is being planned with this project, but it still seems to me quite absurd that people properly credentialed as  Australian film makers should have to go look for funding overseas. I will point out that this is the third project in my life that the principal money would have to come from overseas before an Australian bodies would look to support it.

This is my blog, so I'm just registering my bubbling discontent right here. But really, I ought to be happy that my producer-director has hocked his whole life to get to Cannes on his own to look for funding. No? Instead, all I feel is a desire to kick Screen Australia in he crotch.

I guess if my producer-director does get his film up on the back of his trip to Cannes, that would be a kick in the crotch enough.

AUD At US 90c

As David Byrne famously sang "How did I get here?" Here's a random bit of information. Fox Studios in Sydney still has 22years left on its 40 year lease. For the last 18years it has been going, the second half has been marred by the high Australian dollar. In other words, the service subsector of the Australian Film Industry that faced America, has been knocked out by the mining boom and the subsequent high Australian Dollar. Screen Australia had to pay Baz Luhrman to shoot in Fox Studios in Sydney. The structure of investment right there is "good money after bad", without even getting into the quality of the project or the returns. In fact Julia Gillard as Prime Minister put money into 'The Wolverine' from her office to secure the shoot in Australia.

The irony might be compounded by the fact that the NSW Government gave 20th Century Fox a very favourable deal in that 40yar lease in the hopes that it would lead to a constant churn of projects at the Fox lot in the middle of Sydney, transforming the service sector and infrastructure. Back then, nobody thought the Australian Dollar would rise to parity or that it would stay over US 90cents for so long. The back of the envelope calculations that made it competitive and viable had the Australian Dollar between US45c and 55c.

It's easy to see that one of the most well equipped studios in the Southern Hemisphere is actually a bit of a white elephant infrastructure; a bit like an expensive Rolls Royce that only gets taken out on a rare Sunday. The Australian Film Industry's service subsector servicing Hollywood will not get viable again until the Australian Dollar practically halves in buying power again. There's really no other solution to the structural problem there.

 

Body Without Organs Part 2

Thunderous Objections Continue

You know a document has hit some kind of mark if the people against it are lining up to make their views heard. One gets the feeling the journalists covering this document were all pretty aghast at what was being presented, straight-faced and brazen, to a greatly sceptical audience.

Peter Martin slammed it saying the underlying assumption is that the only way Australia can get back to surplus was through cuts while leaving the current tax system untouched, while it even answered questions it was not asked like drastically cutting the minimum wage.

Michael Pascoe was just as pointed describing its approach as "casual brutality". He also pointed out the notion that if the states ought to compete with one another, it would result in putting the states falling behind now in a worse position, not better; and that those states would end up having to pay more. Australia is - last we checked - still a 'commonwealth' and not a 'competition of states'.

Steve Keen was more in a demolition derby mood as he pointed out the fundamental stupidity of Australia worrying about getting back to a surplus now, given the context of the world economy. The fundamental assumptions underlying the very exercise seems to be dodgy, while the preconceptions going in were just as misguided.

I know from Pleiades that the AFR s not happy either calling it 'illogical hostility' and decidedly critical of the notion of abolishing key industry support programs. The AFR is also reporting that customers are taking action, protesting the four major banks for their support of fossil fuel investments. Some of these are major funds looking to allocate funds to companies and projects that are genuinely eco friendly. The Federal Government is flying into a storm with its contrarian position on Climate Change, and its stated desire to shut down all these green initiatives.

Basically there has been a loud chorus of boos from the press gallery, which probably doesn't mean much to the man in the high office.  But it's interesting to note some of this is spreading out to the world and will have consequences for Australia's economy. If you look at the document it appears it is not that different to the sort of position statement that might come from the US Tea Party, and it would certainly be interesting to see how this document looks when lined up with the Tea Party's position statement. After all, as Michael Pascoe points out, it appears Tony Abbott really wants to turn Australia in to a facsimile of America.

Gen-X Will Retire At 70

In amidst all the brouhaha about the Commission of Audit and its audaciously hostile report, was the gem that Joe Hockey announced that the pension eligibility will be raised to 70.

The line he drew in the sand?People born after 1965. That's pretty much saying Gen-X onwards. I was going to lambast him for being born in 1964, but it turns out he was born 1965. So if you're an old school mate of Joe's you can thank him for that gift. He'll be drawing on his generous Parliamentarian superannuation as soon as he leaves Parliament while some of his mates might never reach the age of drawing a pension. If there is such a thing as poetic injustice, it might just be in there somewhere.

If you thought demographics was crap, and that distinctions like Baby Boomers and Generation X and Generation Y and Millennials were just marketing brackets then the line in the sand drawn by the Treasurer might just give you pause. I've pointed out before that Generation-X were the first to get hit with HECS after the Baby Boomer generation went by on free Tertiary Education. It's really no mistake that the boom is falling on the queue just in front of Generation X, because the Baby Boomers are fitting up the social cost of their lives and their education and their retirement on to Generation X.

I don't know if this is going to work. 2035 is 21 years away, and there's a lot of politics to be played out between then and now. It's long enough for another generation to grow into maturity and look at all the social costs being passed on to the latter generations and tip the balance the other way. I've pointed this out before but the ALP is already coming into the next Federal election with a front bench dominated by Generation X, headed up by Bill Shorten. The script might be written, but this movie is far from shot, cut and mixed. :)

Oh, Let's Cut All of It!

One of things that got put on the table for cuts was Screen Australia. Naturally there was an outcry from the usual voices.

"Culturally it would put us back in the stone age," said John L Simpson, producer and founder of the film distribution company Titan View of the Commission of Audit's recommendation. "I thought that Australians had got over the cultural cringe, the idea that the only culture engaging with is the culture imported into this country, but that's what's going to happen. We'll be a cultural backwater if we don't invest."

"It would have a devastating effect on the Australian film industry," said film producer and director Sophie Hyde. "It's already a very underfunded industry. We do so much with the small amount that we get, but I think that would effectively decapitate it."

Robert Connolly, a filmmaker and former board member of Screen Australia described the recommendation as "catastrophic". He said that Screen Australia receives around $100m a year and has funded some of the most successful homegrown television of recent times. On 9 February, he said, "there was the INXS biopic and the Schappelle Corby one and there were almost five million Australians watching drama that Screen Australia had invested in.

You mean it would upset your gravy train perhaps?.

The people most vocal about it are the people who have received the most support from the funding bodies over their careers. Honestly I'd like to see all of it abolished just to see what would happen. I've got no love for film making in Australia any more, so I really don't care if it goes to the dogs. Heck, if I can't have it, let them not have it, is how I feel. Screw the bastards with their mouths firmly attached to the government teat and above all, screw the film bureaucrats. They can go find a job in another industry and work until they're 70.

Yeah, don't cut it in half, cut the whole damn lot.

Pleiades Mailbag 13/Jul/2012

Gimme Some Truth, Part 101


Back in 2009, a film was shown at the Sydney Film Festival to what amounts to a storm of criticism for its dodgy contention that there were slaves where there were not. I wrote about it at the time  here, here, and here.The film's director's aunt came over to these pages to contend that what her nephew had done was totally acceptable and honorable - which, patently was not true, no in the least bit - and the brouhaha spilled over even on to this little blog.

In some ways, the whole episode contributed to my feeling that Screen Australia were ethically compromised from within to allow such a film to be made and furthered the impression by washing their hands of the business. The inside information I got at the time was that once the film was made, what was there to be said or done? They were simply going to let that film ride out into the sunset, but whatever acclaim that came to it, they would take credit (as is the way with Australian Film Institutions in general - but that's another discussion altogether).

It was all very messy. My own take away message was that if one were to value one's own integrity as a film maker, one could do much better than associate with the likes of Violeta Ayala, Dan Fallshaw and Tom Zubrycki; that one could do better than to open conversations with Screen Australia on anything that remotely involved public ethics; and that the so-called undecidability of authorial intent over a text had reached an apotheosis of stupidity where people were stating bare-faced lies and then denying they stated their lies.

“There’s no reason slaves can’t fly overseas”, said Dan Fallshaw, the co-auteur. “Slavery is a state of mind.”

“Slavery can be mental”, Violeta Ayala said. “I never said Fetim is a slave”, Dan said. “Other people in the film do.”

A slave with a husband travelling Qantas and lodged with an eminent Labor politician? “I never said she was a slave”, Dan said.”The film shows us the facts. The audience can make up its mind.”

But no-one is shown shackled in the film. No-one is shown being spoken to harshly. No-one is shown being humiliated in any way. The only person (and he is treated as a person) who is humiliated in the film is the camel, whom the directors paid the villagers to humiliate and murder in front of the camera.

That was three years go now, and discussing the issues *surrounding* the film was an experience I found on the whole disgusting, nauseating and heartbreaking to say the least. Yes, it broke me. I decided I wanted out from the Film Industry if this was the tenor of the debate. I mean, why would anybody want to stay after that?

Today, Pleiades sent me this link where Bob Ellis discusses the new film made by the cinematographer of 'Stolen' denounces the film and its filmmakers.

And so it was that in this mood Carlos’s film was shown to a mixed and mutinous audience at AFTRS, and a chairperson, xxx, announced at 8.10 that we had to be out of there by 9.05 and she would interview Carlos for forty minutes and then take questions — OR STATEMENTS — from the audience and from the perspiring, embattled Dan and Violetta endlessly waiting up on skype, and then favoured us with her own heroic autobiography for a couple of minutes while we looked at our watches apprehensively.

Her redundant conversation with Carlos then took place — what is your film about, she asked him, and we had just seen it — for, amazingly, only twenty minutes, and a logjam of multidirectional fury in the audience vented garrulously all over the occasion BEFORE Dan and Violetta, screaming in their turn on skype, were allowed to talk over the chairperson, who kept yelling back at their giant images up on the screen, shut up, she said, shut up, and it got to be twenty past nine and a woman kept asking will you all please leave now and I’ve rarely had a lousier time in my life. I and Philippe and Meredith Burgmann co-starred in the film, and it would have been nice to discover how it might have gone down with an unbiased audience but this was not, alas, to be.

I will write more about this after viewing the response to it which Matt Peacock, who was I think as angry as me, is going to put on 7.30 tonight.

I hate to be writing this entry only a couple of weeks after going back to AFTRS for a wonderful evening and rekindling my passion for film making, but I guess at some point we all have to confront this ridiculous evil somehow.

Bob Ellis says he was in the minority but the opinions I had found at the time were firmly on his side - the side that demanded nothing buy the truth - and I would contend to this day that those who support the Ayala and Fallshaw positions are philosophically bankrupt munchkins undeserving of whatever public forum they possess to expound their idiotic views. If AFTRS is essentially going to be a little haven of ideologically motivated moral relativists then I guess that's one tragedy.

But it also goes to core of what can be such a dogy area of epistemology in this part of history: the context-compromised documentary presenting itself as a depiction of reality or truth.The amazing thing is how these people insist on the veracity of their content while denying they made any false claims, claiming it is our fault for interpreting the presented information as saying they are claiming there is slavery. If that's not the most pernicious kind of sophistry, I don't know, maybe they should make films in praise of good Nazis who tried to protect us from evil Jewish Bankers - because that's the level of context-denial that's running through the defense of the film.

And what gets me is that some people are worried about 'Ted' or 'Human Centipede II'. Jeebus. If you really want to get up in arms with your pitchforks, line up outside AFTRS and where Dan and Violeta live. That's where the rot is setting in our public discourse.

As I've always contended on this topic, I'd like some truth from those people defending the film makers. Oh, and I will necessarily delete all comments of those defending 'Stolen' on this entry so you've all been warned.

UPDATE:

Here's a link to a Matt Peacock interview with Carlos Gonzales who made the film denouncing 'Stolen' and its makers.

Update 23/Jun/2012

AFTRS Is 40 Years Old

I got a call a couple of Fridays ago on my mobile phone. It was somebody from AFTRS. The first thing they said was that I was a hard person to find.

I told them it was because I was avoiding them.

They said they were having a 40th Anniversary. I asked if that was anything to celebrate. I mean, I didn't exactly throw a party when I turned 40.

The guy laughed and said a few people were of that position but that they were calling us anyway to let us know that they're having a bash and all the graduates were invited. So I said, yeah sure, send me the invite.

The invite came. It looked cheesy and it conjured up all the awkward reunion movie moments from 'Grosse Pointe Blank' and 'Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion'. So I said yes.

Last night was the do, and I'm here to report it was an awesome bash and I got back in touch with some amazing people. It's always about the people and it was nice to make peace with the lousy place - it's not even the old place - once and for all. Just seeing these people just filled my heart, and reminded me of a moment of inspiration long ago.

I'll probably still bitch about AFTRS now and then because kicking a guy when he's down has a certain sadistic pleasure, but all in all, I'm okay with it. I had a great time when I was there. Nostalgia masks great swathes of injustices and frustrations. I'd never go to my High School reunion or something for the University of Sydney Faculty of Medicine, but I'll always be up for going back to catch up with my old comrades-in-arms from when film making was a brave and noble calling.

Chris McK, SMurph, Josef, Boschy, Mariella, Gina, Greg, Simon, Tomas, Daniel, Hereward, Stavros, Melina, Kylie, and everybody else I saw and spoke to last night, I luv yuz all from the bottom of my heart!

I Get Asked What I Think Sometimes...

12.8 million For Hugh, Nothing For You

The news this week for film industry types is that Hugh Jackman is going to bring his next Wolverine production back to Sydney. Because the degree of my jadedness - my ad-jade-ment if you will - is at such proportions, I thought I'd just not comment on it until Pleiades brought this little thing to my attention:

You’d have thought that riches to rags story had taught Australian politicians that dumb subsidies don’t work and may have actually damaged the local film industry more than it helped.

Unfortunately not.

Last week the Australian federal government announced $13 million in support for production of Wolverine. The prime minister’s office gushed:

"To attract The Wolverine to Australia, the Gillard government granted the producers a one-off payment of $12.8 million which will result in over $80 million of investment in Australia and create more than 2000 jobs.

"The payment effectively provided The Wolverine a one-off investment package equivalent to an increase in the existing location offset to 30 per cent.

"Without this effective tax offset incentive, the producers of The Wolverine would not have chosen Australia as the location."

"That's just the nature of this government," thundered Pleiades. "It's all about bribing people. It's corruption and bribery that's marked this government."

I'm inclined to believe it's true. What's truly spectacular about this account is that 12.8million can buy you a lot of things in the film industry: development, advertising support, distribution support, publicity. Instead, Julia Gillard's government has chosen to hand this over to a Hollywood production on the grounds that it's going to be shot in Australia. Heck, there are any number of good film scripts out there to be made for a flat 12.8million. When you consider that the annual budget at AFTRS used to be 9million p.a. (I think it might even be less now), you think "wow, they really don't care about the front end of the industry, they only care about the rear end."

They could have done a lot more things with that money that actually helped.

All this is to say that it is incredibly dubious as to what merit there is in throwing this money at Hugh Jackman's production which is already funded out of the Hollywood machine. Now, I'm not taking anything away from Hugh Jackman who is able to do so, but you have to seriously question the ALP government where they really stand with regards to the rest of the Australian film industry. It's nice that some of the crew and special effects houses and post-production houses will get some business coming through, but when it's done, it's going to be the breadline for most of those people again. The ALP government can't be buying temporary jobs like that, they should be trying to re-establish the industry as a industry instead of this public-money-consuming sheltered workshop - assuming they're serious.

Which, they're not. So why am I bothering with this today? Oh yes, I got asked what I thought.

More On The Sheltered Workshop Thing

Here's a more detailed account of what they think they're doing.

Hugh Jackman is returning to Australia to make The Wolverine, his sixth outing as the Marvel character, thanks to a $12.8 million federal government subsidy.

And while billed as a “one-off”, the local film industry has its fingers crossed that the near-doubling of the standard assistance for a big-budget foreign production is a sign of things to come in next month’s budget.

The Wolverine is set in Japan but will be shot at Fox Studios in Sydney between July and December. Hugh Jackman will star and produce. “It’s so great to bring these big movies down there, to keep people working,” Jackman told the Today program from London, where he is filming Les Miserables for Oscar-winning director Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech). “I just have to say thanks to Prime Minister Gillard, she was instrumental with this.”

Yikes. Sounds awful already. Set in Japan but shot in Sydney sounds a bit like the Last Samurai which was set in Japan but shot in NZ. Nothing wrong with that, just that it looked really weird in many parts. I'm resigned to there being an alternative universe where there is a Japan that is totally on another planet with totally weird things going on. Even so... let that slide for now.

The patent myth - and outright wishful thinking on the part of SPAA - is that this is going to lead to there being more direct input from the Federal government to lure productions to Australia so that they hire Australian crew and talent. The other patent myth is that once this Wolverine Production starts or finishes in Australia that it's going to open the flood gates for more productions to come back through the Fox lot that is mostly sitting dormant right now, thanks to the high Aussie Dollar. When you choose to look at the funding through these two rose tinted glasses, then sure, this $12.8million seems like chump change. But as with the generous amount of government money dropped on Baz Luhrman's 'Australia' , there's nothing that strengthens the industry, nothing that gives it an ongoing mechanism for growth, nothing that allows for the Australian industry itself to grow unless you define the Australian Film Industry as a service industry for Hollywood in which case why are we doing this?

Haven't we been here before with Baz Luhrman's number?

The point is, it's not even good policy to be throwing money at a Hollywood production, just so it comes here to shoot. If they don't come of their own accord, it's proof positive that our service part of the film industry isn't competitive enough. We're either going to be competitive on the world market on our own merits or not. The producers hoping the government's going to make a habit of funding these things are uncompetitive swill, sucking on the government teat wanting more. I'm sorry but years and years of public funding has reduced our film industry to these kinds of producers getting the loudest voices.

On a personal note, I struggled greatly to convince the production for Kamui Gaiden to come here when their main objection was cost - and that was when the Australian Dollar was only 70yen. Had somebody handed even 5million on a platter, it probably would have happened here or NZ instead of Okinawa; but nobody was there to do it because it was during the time the FFC was being rolled into Screen Australia, just before the GFC hit. (And really, it was probably the natural course of things that it didn't happen that way, which was not only my loss but arguably Australia's film industry's lost opportunity.) Still, that was the last straw for me.

It goes back to the problem that the people who want the industry don't know what they're getting; the people in the industry don't know what market they're operating in; and the world really doesn't like in-between-ers, which is exactly what our film industry is.

Still Staying Away In Droves

Here We Go Again!

Pleiades sent in this link today. It's the aftermath of the AACTA Awards.

The Australian Academy is, by all reports, the brainchild of cherished Australian actor and current Australian of the Year Geoffrey Rush. It emerged from a review of the AFI conducted last year. Among its many laudable goals are celebrating the craft and skill of filmmaking, enhancing public interest in Australian screen culture and, perhaps most importantly, rescuing the annual awards ceremony from the increasing irrelevance it was sliding towards under the old AFI structure.

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. The AFIs were dowdy and unpopular. Australian film seemed perennially to be in the doldrums. No one wanted to watch the films that won prizes, or the prize night itself.
And so the new awards were moved to the January-February window, to take advantage of Oscars fever in the US.

As the AACTA’s website relates:“In line with international best-practice models, AACTA draws upon some of the well recognised and understood elements of the AMPAS (USA) and BAFTA (UK) models, while tailoring these to meet local industry needs and traditions, and to ensure that the AACTA organsiaton model and the AACTA Awards remain distinctly Australian.”

A new TV deal was signed with the Nine Network. Hollywood A-list stars were lured back to our shores to present awards — or at least to an accompanying US-based event, where they could be beamed to the Sydney Opera House on the night to show their long-distance support. No effort was spared to spruce up the glamour, and put back a little razzle-dazzle.

Judging by the ratings, however, it didn’t work. The AACTAs largely failed to catch fire with Tuesday night television audiences, attracting a desultory 314,000 viewers nationally for a delayed 9.30pm telecast. That’s a little bit better than last year’s AFIs, but well short of what Nine would have been hoping for.

Why the hell would you watch it? I don't even understand why people watch Awards shows like the Golden Globes and the Oscars so it escapes me what possible benefit there could be in watching an Awards show built around Australian film & TV content. I know it's curmudgeonly to say it, but it's true. Awards shows suck. The concept of handing out industry awards - in general - suck. Look, if they were handing out an award and they gave it to me for my film effort, I'd take it. You'd be a mug to turn it down, but it doesn't change the fact that an award for a film is a bit like a derivative of a derivative of the film, with no immediate connection to the value of the film itself. So apart from the people who are actually there to feel like they're in the running for a statue, what on earth could possess any entertainment value? And what if you just didn't care about the people or the films being talked about? - because let's face it, the Australian public sure as hell don't care. Why would there be an audience for an Awards show for a a film industry people didn't watch? Explain me that, Batman! :)

So naturally this is the bit that I beg to differ:

It is possible that Australia is on the cusp of a new golden era of cinema, if only we’re prepared to recognise what it looks like. The future of media in general is likely to be split into ever more and smaller niches, and in a sense this levels the playing field to allow small-budget Australian films to compete at festivals such as Sundance. In contrast, cinema in its big-budget manifestations may well have had its day, at least in the dominant sense of blockbuster mass-market culture.

If it were, I did not notice. I'm not being gratuitously mean; I'm just being as sanguine as I can be.

Hollywood On The Ropes

Problems On The Horizon

I stumbled upon this interesting article that talks about how Hollywood is narrowing and therefore shrinking in significance.

A generation of directors who thought they owned the business as kids in the 1970s had to decide whether to stay part of it or be artists. Steven Spielberg is the only one who may still be able to convince us he’s both: we will see with “War Horse” and “The Adventures of Tintin”. Francis Ford Coppola has gone back to being an artist, while moonlighting in wine and eco-villas. George Lucas exists in the gloom of his own big business. And Martin Scorsese is something of a wreck, trying to have it both ways, making music documentaries (George Harrison next) and television (“Boardwalk Empire”), and still directing movies without firing on so many cylinders (“Shutter Island”). Mostly born in the 1940s, they are of an age still to be our great directors, but they have yielded to a generation of new kids who do what the money demands. You see, we don’t have great directors any more. The computer makes our movies. Its efficient anonymity is the new style: look at the anonymous figures and the metallic sheen of “Black Ops”. That style, a kind of subtle fascism, haunts our films, from “Black Hawk Down” to “Battle: Los Angeles”.

The picture business likes to tell us, and itself, that it is doing very well. In the first decade of this century, America’s annual domestic box office pushed over $10 billion ($10.89 billion for 2010). But $10 billion, you realise now, is not so great. And in the small print you find that in 2010 1.37 billion tickets were sold, whereas in 2002 it was 1.58 billion—so in eight years, 13% of the audience has melted away. In the 1940s, as war ended and families were reunited in the dark, the figure was 4 billion tickets a year. And the population of America was half what it is now. That’s what “mainstream” once meant.

In that light, our venerable Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, now in its 80s, looks a little shaky. It has two physical incarnations: the Samuel Goldwyn Theatre on Wilshire Boulevard for tributes and events, and an exceptional research library, named after Margaret Herrick, the first librarian at the Academy, and an invaluable source for film historians. There are wistful hopes for a proper movie museum—something LA has never had. Mainly, it puts on the big show, the Oscars telecast. The bulk of the Academy’s revenue (about $70m a year) comes from that one show, and its audience has been wilting.

If anything, the demographic support for cinema may actually be collapsing in the traditionally strong demographic. There are many reasons for this, but I think the main culprit is that there's just too much competition for that same disposable dollar, while piracy offers a valve for the need for cinema to be met with much less cost. After a good 20years of mining the 18-35 demographic, it is finding it hard to get the next generation of the 18-35 demographic to be as hooked into cinema as the previous generation, Gen-X. Gen-Y just isn't into cinema like that, and it's showing up in stalled growth and diminishing audiences.

The repetitive adaptation of comic book content an the retreat of mature, general content from films has made Hollywood cinema itself a little disjointed from its marketplace. It's not developing its own content, it's buying it pre-packaged so we're not even getting proper story development on the screen like we used to. Worse still, the impact of world events have been such that cinema no longer seems as inviting as it once was. 'Armageddon' is harder to watch after 9/11. Movies about war are hard to watch after Iraq. All the while cinema itself is cocooning itself into a world of violent fantasies more than offering insight or understanding. It has to be a bad step.

Which brings me to the next bit. Here's an interesting article sent in from Pleiades.

War, violence and death have become the organizing principle of governance and culture in the United States as we move into the second decade of the 21st century. Lacking a language for the social good, the very concept of the social as a space in which justice, equality, social protections and a responsibility to the other mediate everyday life is being refigured through a spectacle of violence and cruelty. Under such circumstances, ethical considerations and social costs are removed from market-driven policies and values just as images of human suffering are increasingly abstracted from not only their social and political contexts, but also the conditions that make such suffering possible. Moreover, as public issues collapse into privatized considerations, matters of agency, responsibility and ethics are now framed within the discourse of extreme individualism. Unexpected violence, aggression and the "'masculine' virtues of toughness, strength, decisiveness and determination ... are accentuated," along with the claims of vengeance, militarization and violence.(1) The collapse of the social and the formative culture that make human bonds possible is now outmatched by the rise of a Darwinian ethic of greed and self-interest in which violence, aggressiveness and sadism have become the primary metric for living and dying. As the social contract is replaced by social collapse, a culture of depravity has emerged in American society. The spectacle of violence permeates every aspect of the machinery of cultural production and screen culture - extending from television news and reality TV to the latest Hollywood fare. Of course, this is not new. What is new is that more and more people desire spectacles of high-intensity violence and images of death, mutilation and suffering and their desires should no longer be attributed to an individual aberration, but instead suggest an increasingly widespread social pathology.

It's worth reading on. It's an article that highlights my own misgivings about where cinema is going wrong.

They're Still Talking About This?

Ugh. *facepalm*.

Certainly, positive momentum came to a shuddering halt in March, when four Australian films came and went quickly in cinemas. The Reef, Griff the Invisible, Wasted on the Young and A Heartbeat Away cost millions to make but only returned a fraction of that in cinemas. A report, to be released this month by Adelaide firm Convergen, confirms that in inflation-adjusted terms, Australian film has failed to tap into the boom in overall box office returns during the past 30 years. So, while overall demand has increased at the box office, Australian films haven't expanded their share.

An industry debate about how to improve the overall performance of the local film business is in full swing, with a push to give distributors greater influence in the movie-making process. The argument is that the current model relies too heavily on the funding and development relationship between Screen Australia and producers, which does not provide audiences with enough of what they want.

Just what that is, however, remains the $100 million (annual box office) question.

I don't know. It's almost not worth talking about here any more. It keeps going in circles, nothing gets better, and then Julia Leigh makes a movie that tanks. The rest of cinema are going through major ructions, and there's Screen Australia continuing with the tried and true formulae for failure. I can only shrug.

Bad Governance In Film Bureaucracies

$45,000 Farewell Party? Sure Why Not?

Today's entry also owes to Pleiades sending something in.

When Film Victoria boss Sandra Sdraulig left the funding agency after nearly a decade in the job, Film Victoria’s board decided to throw her a farewell party. Some very nice printed invitations were sent out to 280 guests, and a venue for the swanky cocktail party was duly booked. Melbourne caterers Damn Fine Food provided the canapes and drinks, and a special $10,000 DVD tribute was shot and produced for the occasion. There were even some nice-smelling toiletries from hipster favourites Aesop.

All up, Film Victoria dropped a cool $45,000 on the event.

Thank goodness it wasn't NSW, but in the broader scheme of things, it's all too typical of film bureaucrats. The article goes on to say this:

So what, you’re probably asking? There’s nothing particularly new about bureaucrats living high on the public purse.

But Film Victoria’s party is worth discussing, if only because the funding available to ordinary filmmakers is so small and difficult to access. It also tells us something about the different cultures at the top of Australia’s arts funding agencies, compared to the struggles down at the grassroots.

The truth is that in many parts of the arts, top public servants in funding agencies have almost nothing in common with the penurious artists they represent, effectively occupying a kind of salaried aristocracy in which they enjoy the kind of wages and conditions struggling freelancers can only dream about.

Sdraulig was getting paid upwards of $220,000 a year when she left, according to Film Victoria’s most recent annual report. In contrast, the most recent Australia Council report into artists’ incomes released by Macquarie University Professor David Throsby tells us that more than half of Australia’s artists earn less than $10,000 a year from their practice.

But the Sandra Sdrauligs of this world don’t often mix with the lumpenproletariat of the creative classes. Instead, their privileged position gives them access to wealth and power through the kind of glamor that the screen industry can bestow. And, because of the unique position of power they occupy, few will publicly speak out.

Which is roughly about what I've been blogging here for a couple of years. These days I've lost the energy to blog about the Australian film industry and its parlous state, but occasionally something comes along that is emblematic of the problems inherent in the system. Think of all that government money wasted each year on making films nobody wants to see - or get spent on parties nobody cares about for people who earn too much for doing so little of worth. It's like some Kafka short story, only, it's for real.

What Will They Do Without Him?

Bill Hunter Is Sick

Apparently he has cancer.

Family and friends have gathered around Australian acting legend Bill Hunter, who is gravely ill in a Melbourne hospice.
Hunter's manager Mark Morrissey confirmed this morning that his 71-year-old client's health had deteriorated since he was admitted to the Kew hospice two days ago.
"Sadly, he has cancer, and it's inoperable," he said.

I know the standard joke for years has been that he's the bloke in EVERY Australian film, from 'Gallipoli' to 'Muriel's Wedding'. What will the Australian film industry do when he's gone? Can they make any credibly 'Australian' film without this man? Screen Australia will be unable to approve any projects!

I jest. But it is profoundly sad news that he's so gravely ill.

Sleeping Audience, Angry Critics

A Typical Australian Film

I won't judge the film sight-unseen, but 'Sleeping Beauty' beauty sounds like it's quite a difficult film to watch.

Here's an early report from Cannes.

Watched by a capacity audience on the opening night, the work of first-time director and novelist Julia Leigh left some viewers speechless with its graphic look at the sordid sex life of young high-class escort, Sara, played by Australian Emily Browning.

Between her university studies, various casual jobs and bizarre friendship with a suicidal drug addict, Sara, the working name of the ice-cold Lucy, is put to sleep for "erotic" sessions with wealthy old men.

The audience hurried out of Wednesday's screening, many lost for words.

"It's Eyes Wide Shut without the engagement," one woman said as she left.

The Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney was among the first to post a review of the film, labelling it "psychosexual twaddle".

"[It] will no doubt have its admirers, [but] it seems a long shot to attract a significant following or herald the arrival of a director to watch," he writes.

Awards Daily's Sasha Stone said the film was dull and anything but erotic. "The best thing about the film is how disturbing it is. The film's biggest problem is how boring it is," she writes on The Wrap website.

"Yes, even with a pretty, naked girl, full-frontal male nudity, prostitution, drugs and casual sex, Sleeping Beauty turns out to be very slow and a little dull."

I don't know what it's about. I don't really want to know now that I've read the article. It's just a little too predictable that Julia Leigh, novelist and first time director, turned in a film that really doesn't work for the audience. We've been getting PR spills for weeks now on this film, as if it was going to be the next great thing; that it's going to Cannes, that it's going to put a new exciting director on the map of Australian cinema; but really, the cat is out of the bag.

It's not winning audiences, it's alienating them.

Screen Australia is going to wash their hands and run like hell as it always does. People will be asking how come this film got made on public monies? They'd be right to ask; and the answer is because it's exactly the kind of film Screen Australia are looking for. Yep, you go, guys, you winners, you. LOL. Fuck me dead.

I feel like David St Hubbins in 'This is Spinal Tap' yelling during a performance of 'Jazz Odyssey' - to the crowd who presumably came to see a puppet show - "On bass, Derek Smalls. He wrote this."

Here We Go Again

You Can't Judge Film by Its Audiences

But you can sure judge a flop by its dismal figures.

It proved to be a disastrous weekend at the box office as three Australian films - Griff the Invisible, The Reef and A Heartbeat Away - failed dismally to connect with local audiences.

Of the three, Griff the Invisible did best, taking a modest $66,344 on 20 screens, its so-so per-screen score of $3317 suggesting it will drop out of the top 20 by next week. That is, of course, unless a miracle occurs and the film becomes an unexpected word-of-mouth hit.

The Reef did poorly with its $58,196 take on 36 screens, its per-screen figure of $1617 indicating very little interest.

Worst of all, though, was A Heartbeat Away. The $7 million film directed by first-time film director Gale Edwards took a dire $44,204 on 77 screens, its abysmal screen average of $574 being among the worst of any Australian film in recent memory. The film's unqualified failure conjured the spectre of The Tender Hook, the 2008 Australian film that also cost $7 million and which took less than $60,000.

The combined take of all three films - $168,744 - was less than what the Liam Neeson actioner Unknown took across its fifth weekend. ($187,255 on 102 screens).

The figures speak for themselves, but just to be sure, none of them are on track to make any money back. The bottom of the article reads like this:

So the last thing the enterprise needs is catastrophic, clueless weekends like the one we've just had.

Sad enough that the films themselves reflected common shortcomings in so many local films. Just as sad was the lack of marketplace nous that has often seen good Australian films die at the box office. Three local films coming out the same weekend as two tent-pole Hollywood studio films? It's almost as if the films didn't want audiences.

If the weekend has any upside it's of being symbolic of the type of event we thought was behind us. Certainly the spectacle of an all-but-unwatchable $7 million Australian film playing to virtually no audience is something that should have been consigned to the past - and something Australian cinema can ill afford to indulge or repeat.

So just some general points:

* The issue of marketing remains key. Many people say they've never even heard of these films.

* How a debut film director can be allowed to helm a $7 million production has angered many, and with good cause. You could have made four Wolf Creeks for that. What happened to the idea of earning that kind of budget with a proven track record of successful smaller films?

* Quality script development continues to draw focus. People are clearly tired of industry rhetoric about how "the story is all", especially when those stories simply don't play.

* The hope is that this dreadful weekend might be the tail end of an era where these long-standing problems ruled. With a new audience-orientated mindset apparently governing production now, this weekend might be the final death throe of an old way of doing things. That's the prayer, anyway.

* Critics going "soft" on local films has again come up. CineTopia states again, for the record, that we NEVER go soft on a film, for whatever reason. The notion of giving Australian films a two-star tariff to encourage "support" for it is worse than useless, it's counter-productive. For what is to be gained by encouraging people to see films you think stink?

Goodness. Aren't they words of wisdom? But it keeps repeating. I'm sick of blogging about how AWFUL the whole venture of 'Australian Film Industry' has become. Yesterday I spent some time talking to my contact out at a funding body and they're just looking for good story ideas as much as the next studio. But screenwriting in this country is so weak, and the scripts out there are actually really mundane or terrible or worse, nonsensical. There's been 2 decades of neglect and the whole population of writers are in deprivation shock.But here are some problem areas that come from the neglect:

• Nobody knows what to write about because of budget reasons.


• Nobody knows who to write for, because most have never thought about the demographic of film viewers.


• Nobody knows how to deliver the craft. I'm sorry but that's the assessment.


• Nobody wants to see Australian films just because they're Australian.


• Nobody in the private sector wants to *invest* in such a losing venture. Nobody in their right mind anyway.

The bottom lines is that it's still early to see if anything can come back; but these kinds of weekends are not encouraging. I could say more but I don't have the energy any more. It's too frustrating.

Piracy Isn't Killing The Industry

On the same day in the SMH, we get this article. The interesting bit is here:

In February last year, the anti-piracy arm of the music industry, Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI), put out a thunderous press release claiming it had helped police "shut down one of Australia's largest illegal music burning operations" in Melbourne.

Acting on information from MIPI, police seized "close to 100 CD burners and approximately 25,000 discs containing pirate music housed in a suburban CD store".

MIPI's general manager, Sabiene Heindl, said at the time: "This is one of the largest and most blatant illegal music burning labs that we have seen for some time."

It was only this year that the case finally ground its way through the courts and further details were released.

Of the 25,000 "pirate" CDs that MIPI claimed it seized, 14,600 were blanks, while the remaining discs were mostly of Asian artists which the store, Lucky Bubble, had a licence to reproduce.

Less than 100 of the discs were proven to be pirated copies and the charges were dropped to the lowest possible level. The manager of the store, who claims the handful of pirated discs were placed in his shop by staff, in the end was let go with a $1500 fine.

It's a far cry from the hundreds of thousands of dollars in penalties and years in jail that MIPI warned about in its press release.

So, no, there is no big piracy operation going on out there. Just the old internet bit torrent thing that MIPI can't do anything about. So it's really a laugh when you see that REALLY LOUD announcement that goes "you wouldn't steal, so you shouldn't pirate" that kicks off half the DVDs out there, wherein they mount that argument that piracy is destroying the future of the Australian Film Industry.

Ah, no.

It's crappy films and crappy development and crappy government development agencies and government funding as corporate welfare that keeps Australian film genuinely uncompetitive, that is killing the future of this industry. If you want my opinion, 20 years of this stuff has already made it comatose.

Hey Look, Russell's Still Doing OK

He's just bought a $10m house in Rose Bay. He's doing great. He could have bought a almost one and a half Australian movie flops with that money.

Corporate Welfare

Excuse Me While I Punch This Ticket

This one came in from Pleiades today. It's about how our tax dollars end up helping Hollywood productions and how awful this is.

Confirming Sir Humphrey Appleby’s famous principle that you should “never commission an inquiry without knowing the outcome first”, the federal Arts Department’s 2010 Review of the Australian Independent Screen Production Sector makes a series of rosy findings about the state of the sector and the effectiveness of the government’s Australian Screen Production Incentive, a large tax refund to film producers.

More money is certainly leaving Treasury coffers: the report states that “in the three years since the introduction of the Australian Screen Production Incentive, the government has provided $412.1 million in support through the tax system, compared to $136.7 million in the three years before the package.”

But delve further into the report, and all sorts of questions start to pop up. First and foremost is the crucial question of whether those extra taxpayer dollars are really stimulating an upswing in domestic production across the board, or merely co-financing large Hollywood studio films such as Happy Feet 2 and Australia.

Arts Minister Simon Crean trumpeted the review’s findings. “The boost in government funding is a great achievement and contributing to the viability of the local film production industry,” he announced in a media release.

“Although it’s still early days, the increase in activity, particularly the production of Australian large budget films, such as Baz Luhrmann’s Australia and George Miller’s Happy Feet 2, and the box office performance of films such as Tomorrow, When the War Began shows the government support for the sector is having a significant impact.”

In fact, a close reading of the review suggests that the effect of the new funding arrangements is far less positive than the minister and the department claim. Much of the extra money — $169 million, in fact — has gone to foreign movie studios in the form of international production subsidies, though that’s not a fact that the review chose to highlight. But despite this, levels of foreign production in Australia have actually been falling, as the strengthening Aussie dollar and strong competition from other countries and locations have made the foreign production incentives less attractive.

On the surface, it's true, it is awful; But there are many other considerations, namely just how marketable Australian Films are in the international market place, and what is the likely return on the investment, that couch the awfulness of this happening. A film industry can't exist without an audience for it, has been the painful lesson of the Australian Film Industry during the FFC years. Trying something else is worthwhile.

There are many gremlins in that discussion of what that something else might be as well, but to cut a long story short, in an international distribution market that is half dominated by Hollywood, a film industry would be crazy not to put half its eggs in that basket. Rightly or wrongly (and there are many who say it's all wrong) American cinema dominates the market place in the anglophone world to the extent it is the representative cinema of the English speaking world. The rest of the anglophone cinemas of the UK, Australia, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand are in effect voices of the opposition in the wilderness, so to speak.

However, the audience makes no such distinctions. They go out to watch movies they think would be worth their ticket price. If that involves car chases an explosions and sex scenes (but without genitals) then they're happier than quirky Australian films about homosexuals and misfits with no particular point of joy. And God only knows the FFC was responsible for cavalcade of unwanted films like that. As Doug Mulray famously joked, you could have a story like 'Pitch Black and the Seven Pygmies', and if you had a one-legged Aborigine lesbian in it, we could get government funding to turn it into an Australian Film.

On the FFC, the article has this to say:

The review confirms a subtle shift in Australian screen funding priorities away from backing emerging film-makers and new voices and towards big budget, Hollywood-financed productions. This may result in bigger box offices for bigger-budget Australian films — or it may not. The federal government’s last effort at supporting commercial film finance was the Film Film Corporation, a 20-year initiative that acted as a for-profit investor in feature production. The FFC lost more than a billion dollars in that time-frame, booking investment returns of negative 80%.

The new policy gets around this problem by simply giving tax refunds to big producers, regardless of how much money their film eventually makes. And it’s uncapped and open-ended: the bigger the budget of the film, the larger the taxpayer contribution.

Obviously you can't win them all. It would be an ideal world where the Australian Film Industry didn't need any government funding at all. It would be even better if we didn't have to keep qualifying it with being an 'Australian' film industry - just, the film industry in Australia. It would be a nice day when every film made in Australia i a worthy world beater and a classic in cinema to parallel 'Citizen Kane' and 'Battleship Potemkin'. Like, that's ever going to happen.

All the same, because a film industry in Australia isn't viable, and yet there is so much cultural pressure that there ought to be a film industry no matter what, the governments of both Federal and State levels end up handing out monies. Undeniably , it is a bleak form of corporate welfare. The fact that a lot of it goes to Hollywood who don't seem to need it is perhaps besides the point, as it is used to employ Aussies to ply their trades.

Mind you, a better use of the money might be to buy shares in the Hollywood studios and appoint a board member  from Australia who uses his clout and *forces* these studios to make more films with Australian content in Australia. But of course nobody thinks of that, right?