Wake in Fright (Ted Kotcheff, 1971, Australia/USA) is the subject of a forthcoming book by writer and
filmmaker Peter Galvin. Peter is interviewed here by critic, author and former Sydney Film Festival Director Lynden Barber*
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| From the opening shot of the film. This was only about 45mins from Broken Hill - the railway links BH to Sydney. The buildings and Tiboonda 'station' seen here were shipped to the location using the same kind of equipment used in transporting heavy machinery in mining. (Click to enlarge all photos.) |
Based on Kenneth
Cook’s novel of the same name, first published in 1961, it’s the story of a
young school teacher, John Grant (Gary Bond) who becomes stranded in an outback
city called Bundanyabba (the Yabba) on his way home to Sydney where he plans to
spend Christmas holidays.
What follows is a
lost weekend of boozing, cruelty, lust and violence. The plot provides John
with a series of ‘guides’ – Yabba locals - each of whom challenge his bitter
snobbery of the Outback while tapping his own buried desires…
 |
| Gary Bond as John Grant downs a beer watched on by Chips Rafferty as the Yabba's top cop Jock Crawford. Most of the film's interiors were shot on real locations in Sydney or AJAX studios in Bondi Junction and Paddington. |
 |
| Jack Thompson made his feature film debut in Wake in Fright and credits Kotcheff as a particularly fine 'actor's director'. |
By the end of the
70s it was difficult to see. By the 90s its
original materials were thought lost.
The film’s editor, now esteemed producer Tony
Buckley (Caddie, Bliss), spent years in the search before he found Wake in Fright’s original neg and sound
in order for it to be restored. It was
re-issued in 2009 and since then has screened in hard top theatres and been released
on home video formats in Australia, USA, Japan and the UK (amongst others).
Peter Galvin, an
occasional filmmaker, screen studies teacher and long-term writer on film has
spent years researching and writing the book which not only details the making of
the movie, and the life and work of its key players but also explores the
origins of Ken Cook’s novel on which the film is based.
Still, he is
quick to correct any assumption that this is to be a volume for fans only or
the kind of publication that will attract only the most dedicated of cineastes.
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| Promotional pic for the book designed and created by Peter Galvin. |
Instead he hopes
it will appeal to a mainstream audience interested in biography and Australia’s
pop culture of the 1960s.
“There’s material
here that you would expect,” he says, “the influence of the Cultural Cringe in
culture and politics, the mechanics of TV and film as played out in boardrooms
and nightclubs, the film culture scene in Sydney and Melbourne, the behind the
scenes trade-offs in business where ego is a casualty in getting a project to
‘greenlight’…but there’s also lots of other intriguing stuff that’s part of a
rich historical mosaic that throws the story of the making of the film and its
impact into relief: Sydney’s illegal gambling dens of the 60s and the history
of Two-up; Aussie slang and accents; the compelling reach of the RSL in every
corner of the culture here in the 60s; the role of the kangaroo as pop art
symbol; the dominant masculinity confronting feminism and gay lib; a portrait
of Broken Hill, a strange city then, run by a Union (it was the key inspiration
for the book and the main location for the film); live TV drama in Canada and
the UK…”
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| Wake in Fright was in competition at Cannes in May 1971. This gatefold giveaway poster was used to promote it. The title used on all O/S prints, Outback, was the brainchild of UA's marketing dept., the film's worldwide distributor. Popular with the jury - led by famed French star Michèle Morgan - it was a finalist for the top prize. In the end, Losey's The Go-Between won the Palme d'Or. |
INTERVIEW
Why is Wake in
Fright important?
Well, I’m not
writing a book that sets out to argue that it is. I mean for me it’s a given. I
don’t want people to think the book is in the ‘this is a great work and why’
genre of film criticism or one those lengthy testimonials with lots of great
filmmaker minutiae.
(I have to say I’m not snob about either of
these angles on this kind of subject.) That said, I do think the film is
important. There’s
an assumption – backed up by received history – that the film was a watershed,
a focus of optimism arriving right at the threshold of a new decade. It was
understood as a rallying point for a nascent film industry and it was accorded
a great deal of respect by filmmakers and many critics on first release in
1971. Its reputation has only grown since and I would argue that it is indeed a
classic. Though such labels are always up for grabs, no?
Trouble is, Wake in Fright is not a film that has ever received a great deal of
critical attention in the sphere of scholarship/the academy/or middle brow
critics, so that familiar swing we know – ‘freshly discovered classic /
consensus / revision / new estimation’ - has never happened to it on any kind
of scale.
Why is that since the movie’s critical reputation is
so strong?
Well, I’m not in
the space but even as a casual professional reader there is a lot of stuff out
there begging for the attention of researchers, academics etc, and frankly Ted
Kotcheff is not now, nor was he ever positioned as an auteur by anyone. Which is, to be blunt, the
lightning rod for special scrutiny amongst academic critics of a certain kind –
and those who publish their work in peer reviewed journals and books. He was
not even the first choice for the project, he was a hired gun…though once he
did take it on he really made it his own…which created all sorts of issues.
Really? What sort of thing are you talking about
here?
You’ll have to
read the book.
How did the book start?
That’s a long
story. Even the short version is a long story.
Try.
OK. By this stage
– it’s been, like most books, I figure, a lengthy gestation, many years in
fact. It’s taken on the aspect of an obsession.
 |
| Johnny McLean (with camera) and crewmates on location in the outback near Broken Hill in Feb. 1970. From JMs private collection |
I studied
Australian Cinema at UTS - this was the late 80s - and that’s when I really began
to look at the films of the Revival as
cinema in a fresh way. I started teaching Australian cinema in the late 90s.
I have always
leant heavily toward to an auteurist
sensibility. I think that it is true that even the most banal sensibility can’t
hide behind a camera. One needs to heavily qualify it. But then something like Bazza McKenzie leads one into a discussion
of the Sydney Push, Ubu Films, the Satire boom of the 60s, the Melbourne Eltham
scene, the Film Societies and the traditions of a certain kind of Aussie comedy,
Brit-Aussie competitiveness and how those attitudes and sensibilities are
formed and collide…
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| On location in Broken Hill. Dir. Ted Kotcheff is centre framed in the jacket |
Does A Long
Way from Anywhere touch on these feelings?
Yes. It is a
narrative which is very much about the forces within the Australian experience
of the late 60s that played a role in influencing the Revival. I remember an
old friend, a producer – he left the film industry a long time ago – saying to
me that ‘Australia, in the late 60s invented a film industry’. That thought
really resonated – even if on close scrutiny it’s a leaky premise. But still
the idea that ‘necessity is the mother of invention’ does have some merit in this history. I mean it is true that there was a powerful feeling in
the 50s and 60s here that a cinema of our own is something we needed! This was exactly how it was
written about and discussed.
Is this your first book?
Yes. It actually
came out of an abandoned project. The model for the abandoned book was Otto
Friedrich’s City of Nets. My book was
a social and cultural history /group biography of the Australian Feature Film
Revival. But I was too young, the scope of the book too big, and I discovered
it was very hard to write about people who are still living.
What happened?
I moved on to
more teaching and getting involved in screenwriting – I sold a script and took
on some writing commissions and made short films…
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| Camera crew poses for a snap at the Tiboonda set near Broken Hill. Feb 1970. From JMs collection. |
When did you see it?
On TV. Bill
Collins Picture Show. Late night. I was still at school. It completely blew
away. My parents come from the bush – though not the Outback. I recognised the
attitudes, the vernacular, even the way people moved and all those silences, the awkwardness strangers take on
when faced with forced intimacy and the emotional claustrophobia that comes
from the pressure of performing in
order to fit into a mood in a social situation – and the reckless choices that
can emerge when confronted with opportunities that offer a chance to escape
that feeling! I can articulate my feelings
now…then I just knew it said what I felt.
Now I know what I was experiencing was a kind of authenticity. And as style, I
loved it.
Today it’s thought
of as a sort of gothic mood piece. But in the way Kotcheff moved the camera and
Tony Buckley’s editing and the choice to demonstrate drama physically and in cinematic terms – there was a kinship with that
robust kind of movie making which in the 60s was thought of as the tropes of
action cinema. I’m thinking of Frankenheimer. In researching the film, I
discovered indeed the producers approached action directors before Kotcheff
took the job!
But most
importantly it was the first time I ever experienced an immediate shock of
recognition on every level. I recognised it was both stylised and true. And the acting was really very
good.
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| Belguim poster used in the films original rel. 1971-72. |
The search for
the film and its restoration.
As I mentioned
Tony Buckley was editor on the film. Every so often over many years he would
drop anecdotes about its making…Tony has the native instincts of the historian.
And he carefully detailed the story of the search for the film in his memoir Behind a Velvet Light Trap – it lasted
years.
So, I was very
conscious – as I think the most casual film fan here was – of the search for Wake in Fright – mostly because Tony was
very good at publicising it. Once the restoration was underway I thought it
might make an interesting oral history and since the NFSA were central to the
process I felt they might be interested in a book.
When was this?
2008. Tony had
tipped me that by early 2009 the restoration would be ready for release.
I was intrigued by the fact that there was very
little written about the novel and very little about Ken Cook, the novel’s
author. He’s a tremendous character: a genuine eccentric, an under-rated writer and
terribly adventurous and restless. So right from the start I felt that the
story of the film began with the story of Wake
of Fright the novel.
By April/May 2009
I had interviewed almost all of the surviving cast and crew in addition to
friends and relatives of Ken Cook. It was a firm basis for a monograph and I
raised the idea with the NFSA.
What happened?
Nothing.
They weren’t interested?
Definitely not in
a book, by me.
What did you do?
I pitched what I
had to SBS Film (now SBS Movies) as a three-part monograph, which looking back
was more than a little pretentious – but they took it, bless ‘em, thanks to the
SBS Film editor Fiona Williams. Meanwhile, the NFSA had their own monograph
planned through Currency Press, the Australian Screen Classics series edited by
Jane Mills.
A writer was
commissioned but the planned book never materialised. It’s never been made
clear – at least in public – the precise reason why this project was not
delivered (of course there is no call for it to be made public!). In the end
Tina Kaufman wrote a monograph for the CP ASC series - an elegant blend of
memoir and anecdotal history. But the NFSA came back to me before that!
Why?
They needed a
media kit. So, I was commissioned to do it. They offered a good cash deal and
since I was financing a short film I took it. Part of the deal was that I
wouldn’t claim an authorship credit. That was my idea.
Because of the SBS thing?
Yes.
You returned to the project about two years ago, why?
Part happenstance,
part design, part necessity. I had always wanted to do a hard copy version of
what I ended up calling A Long Way from
Anywhere. The title is a nod to Broken Hill, which is the model for the
Yabba in the book…it’s a bit of a saying Outback folk have used for decades
about remote locations but it’s often directly linked to the Hill…but I also
like the way it suggests that cultural isolation we identify with as part of the
Australian experience of the 60s.
I wrote the text
of the online version very fast. There’s a swagger to it I don’t like. The
balance is not right between commentary, anecdote, analysis. It’s not entirely
fair to some of the real-life players in that their contribution isn’t accorded
the space it should. Its principal virtue is that it featured an enormous
amount of fresh material not found elsewhere, and some very funny and
insightful anecdotes.
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| The very classy ad used in trade papers for Wake in Fright's Cannes debut bought by Group W in order to market the movie and promote theirambition as 'players' in the film world. NLT hated UA's promotional work and the OS title. |
Did you go in with a set of ideas – a sort of thesis
you wanted to prove?
No. But when
planning the book, I knew I had no desire to add to the large library of books
on Australian cinema that are scholarly expressions on certain well-trodden
themes (and again those books are invaluable!). Besides, I don’t
think I am at all qualified to write that sort of thing (a piece of
self-assessment I am certain will meet with enthusiastic approval from the
academics I know!!)
Instead, I wanted to write a book of popular history and do it as a narrative. No one has ever a written a narrative history on an aspect of Australian cinema where biography is equal to other significant factors of historiography. There’s been memoirs, and things like Ina Betrand’s Australian Cinema book, and interview books and TV shows.
Instead, I wanted to write a book of popular history and do it as a narrative. No one has ever a written a narrative history on an aspect of Australian cinema where biography is equal to other significant factors of historiography. There’s been memoirs, and things like Ina Betrand’s Australian Cinema book, and interview books and TV shows.
A Long Way from Anywhere is really a book that attempts to capture the moment of Wake in Fright – that point from the early 60s right through to the
dawn of the new decade. The changes in the Australian experience were
extraordinary. Which is why it’s a social and cultural history. The aim is to
create as vivid a portrait as possible of the filmmaking and showbiz subculture
here c.1961-1971 through a select cast of real-life characters all of whom had
direct or indirect impact on the making of Wake
in Fright and the Australian Feature Film Revival here. So, this part of
the book is very conventional narrative history. I’m after a blend of
biography, film criticism, film history, social and cultural history all told
in a very intimate way but built on a solid foundation of original research
with special attention to the principles of sound scholarship.
Talk about the research?
Well, that’s been
very enriching and very exciting. I can boast I’ve uncovered a great deal –
much more than I thought I would. But it has been tremendously difficult in
that I don’t have a budget and I am in Sydney and so much of the primary
sources are to be found in the UK, the USA, Canada, France, Poland and Norway
and here in Broken Hill, and at the National Library.
What was your research process for the O/S component?
I wrote a lot of
emails and begged strangers for help. Happily, they were kind, professional,
efficient, forthcoming and in all instances provided me with more than I asked
for and pointed me in the right direction whenever I needed it. When people
heard about the book they were very enthusiastic. I’ve dealt with libraries and
archives in England, France, Norway, Poland and the USA.
These were documents and so forth?
Yes! Manuscripts,
professional miscellany, reviews of the film, stills, business archives,
private letters, newsreels, TV archives... I’ve also tracked down extras, cast
members with tiny roles, in addition to doing much biographical work on the cast
and crew and at NLT and AJAX Films - AJAX provided film services to the production– talking
to friends, sourcing private memorabilia. Most of these people I am talking
about died a long time ago including Gary Bond who played the lead in the film.
Is a lot of this research unique to the project?
Certainly! Early
on I received the co-operation of the Wake
in Fright Trust. The Trust is the copyright holder. With their support and
permission, and with the tremendous assistance of the Trust’s lawyer Raena
Lea-Shannon I was able to gain access to the entire archive of NLT which is at
the Mitchell Library in Sydney. Very few people have seen it and fewer still
have seen it all. I spent many months perusing every single bit of it! But I
should point out that the pioneer for the TV part of my story is Albert Moran.
His published stuff on NLT, though there isn’t much of it, is great.
What I have you discovered?
You’ll have to
read the book. But I set out to answer certain questions. Right now, they have
answers on the public record which in almost all instances are garbled, or flat
out wrong.
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| John Grant (Gary Bond) wanders through the desert in a vain attempt to escape the Yabba and the outback. This was one of many spectacular second unit shots in the film. Bernie Jeffrey, a Broken Hill local, was the stand-in for Bond and actually did this shot. |
For instance?
Well, the
identity of the film as an Australian film. This is not so cut and dried. But I
remember just before the film was relaunched in its reissue in Australia at the
Sydney Film Festival in June 2009. It was without question one of the hot
tickets of the festival and I asked a professional colleague, a local, someone
who was a producer, who was almost but not quite a contemporary of the film
whether they were planning to go to the screening. They were not. And their
reply was disdainful: “They’re not trying to say that’s an Australian film now, are they?”
Now on the
surface that attitude as wrong as it is, is easy to understand. Kotcheff is
Canadian, the nominal producer presented himself as English (he wasn’t), the
screenwriter was English/Jamaican, the DOP Brian West was a veteran of the
English studios. The money was 50/50. Half of it raised here by NLT and the
other half presented to NLT by their American partner Group W, a Westinghouse
subsidiary.
Still, once one
understands all these roles in business terms and understands how the film got
prepared to the point of production c.1968 – then terms of identity need to be
reassessed. Or to put it another way NLT the Australian producers were
responsible for the film. They found it, developed it, packaged it, cast it, and
searched out and found an overseas partner in order to make it…because they and
they alone made the key decision: to make
the movie! Aside from the cash, which is not insignificant, one could
describe Group W’s practical and aesthetic contribution to the film, as, and
I’m being kind here…negligible.
Who was NLT?
The founders were
Jack Neary, entrepreneur, promoter and talent agent, Bobby Limb, a star in the
60s on TV big enough to rival Graham Kennedy, and Les Tinker, a businessman,
who died soon after NLT was formed in the early 60s.
The deal NLT made
with Group W presented certain hurdles all justified by an understanding of the
market and also those points that traditionally are ways to exert executive will
over the creative process: Group W demanded director approval/script approval
and a star part that would be acceptable in America. They reserved the right to
make changes as well as demanding NLT be entirely responsible for the making of
the film! They also wanted a package: two films a year for five years and NLT
had a number of properties Squeeze a
Flower, The Long Shadow and Wake in
Fright. Group W got their deal and NLT got their money. ***
As to Wake in Fright the material is of course
Australian – indeed Australian-ness
of a kind seems crucial to an understanding of its content.
There’s no
question that in a certain significant way Wake
in Fright is an outsider’s view of Australia. But then Ken Cook felt like
an Outsider, in that place, the Outback, when he first went to Broken Hill in
the early 50s and that’s the entire basis of the story! Still, if one takes
Kotcheff as the author of the film – that’s a critical convention that deserves
to be respected - and highly qualified. But it’s interesting Wake in Fright arrived during a wave of
‘internationalist’ productions. I’m thinking of Blow Up, Last Tango in Paris, to take two prestige pictures. The
national identity of these pictures is confused with their production identity
and the identity of the auteur which overwhelms everything! But there are
countless B movies where the money might be American and British or German or
French, the crew from all over and the film shot in say, Spain whose
appropriateness to the story is less significant to its attractions to the
production as a cheap place to shoot!
This was Group
W’s preferred model of operation, incidentally. They were part of 30 movies and
none of them made any money but as tax breaks they were blockbusters! Of course,
the issue of the identity of Wake in
Fright is made sensitive in the context of 1971. The point being that local
pros in film wanted something they could call their own without question. I was only reading the other day a
conference paper delivered by Tom O’Regan (from the early 80s) where he very
eloquently summarised the push for a Revival in the 50s and 60s as part of a
surge of new nationalism amongst intellectuals/artists – and they were quite
dismissive of the ‘foreign film made here’ picture and it was not to be confused
with the indigenous thing. But those same writer/critics O’Regan was talking
about: Colin Bennett, Sylvia Lawson, Mike Thornhill to name three prominent
figures at the time – they really got behind Wake in Fright and framed it as an Australian film – if directed by
a Canadian! All that aside, I discovered something interesting. Amongst below
the line crew at the time WiF was
thought of as Australian made, no question!
Do you see the book as an opportunity to alter
peoples view of how the Revival evolved?
Absolutely. If
the book, God help me, has some merit it will be trying to give a fresh
portrait of what happened in the world of film here between 1968-1972. I mean
the odds were stacked against Wake in
Fright from the start.
How do you mean?
Well, a lot of
properties start off as ‘orphans’ and if they can’t find a home soon after they
get to the marketplace they are branded as ‘difficult’. That’s code for
un-makable…sometimes the block has something to do with the content, or the
star part is unattractive, or the production demands make it costly on the
expected returns…there’s countless reasonable reasons and even more plausible
excuses not to make a movie than can
ever be reasons to make a movie and
the Wake in Fright property fell foul
to these realities immediately.
I’ll correct one
popular assumption about the films evolution from book to screenplay to movie
in answering this. Joseph Losey never
had the rights to Wake in Fright.
Dirk Bogarde and his long time companion and business partner Tony Forwood set
up their own production co. in the mid-50s. After Bogarde left Rank he wanted
to smash his matinee idol image which he made fun-of and loathed. He searched
for vehicles to star in and produce and bought the movie rights to Wake in Fright soon after the book was
published in London in 1961. He had visited Australia in the war years. I think
he recognised there was an opportunity to explore some stuff in the piece about
role play in a hermetically sealed environment and submerged murky sexual
feelings…things that we know interested him and themes he would return to. Of
course, he made that movie The Servant,
didn’t he?
What happened?
He hired Evan Jones (5) to
write the screenplay and attached Losey to it as director. He even
paid Losey to commit his involvement to it. It was announced. It fell over.
From what I understand the market felt the film’s commercial prospects
negligible and the money was never there – I mean I really think that they were
never that serious about it since they never came out here to investigate the
possibilities and for Bogarde and co. it was just another property amongst
many.
A few years later
Morris West bought it and the Jones script for a new production venture he has
set up in Rome with Maurizio Lodi Fe (Bread and Chocolate). West actually wrote an uncredited pass on the
script and this version was thought to be lost. But I found it. West, like Bogarde and co. struggled with
it. I think both these groups didn’t even get to the point where they had found
solutions to the film’s production challenges – beyond throwing money at them
and I think that’s why they foundered.
How did it come to NLT?
You’ll have to read the book. But they saw no
reason to bring in another writer since Jones’ work was excellent, Cook had
been close to its development from the start and Cook had ties inside NLT…but
NLT paid for a re-draft. Still, there’s a lot of drama in the story precisely
because the market and indeed professional filmmakers just couldn’t put Wake in Fright together with NLT. It
made no sense. They made variety shows. They made kids shows. They did TV
variety specials. They guided the careers of a huge roster of talent through
their agency interest…but their management team had absolutely no experience in
either the business of films nor the making of films and the showbiz scene here
couldn’t believe that as the old studios in the USA were being disrupted by new
models and global audiences for movies were shrinking this small but prosperous
TV and talent co. in Sydney wanted to get
into the movies! I mean the players here thought they were insane.
Because there was no film industry?
Because there was
no film industry.
What’s the explanation?
Well, the
personalities involved, and their network played a significant role.
Jack Neary was
widely admired for his decency, and his eye for fostering talent…but Neary was
considered ‘old-fashioned’ and there was suspicion that the wrong co. got hold
of a great property. Still, there was a belief that no matter what - NLT would
see this through.
Bill Harmon is
crucial to the story. He was the driving force behind Wake in Fright at NLT, the executive in charge of production. He was
an outsider. An American, Jewish (NLT was full of Catholics), very showbiz,
Broadway, a veteran of live TV on US network, who had worked for some
hard-cases like Jimmy Durante who knew how to take a hit from talent and keep
cool. Neary had hired Harmon to ride shot gun on production at NLT. After that
NLT had a reputation as ‘cowboys’.
But what I
discovered in the NLT archive was that very early on in the life of NLT Harmon
convinced the execs to spend time and resources on ‘schooling’ themselves in
the minutiae of movie making. They didn’t rush into it. They took years to get
to the point where they felt confident to move forward. Their ambition had credibility. But the trouble was
they had no track record and the perception that they were maverick cowboys
became impossible to displace…until people saw the film. That changed
everybody’s mind. But by then NLT were coughing blood.
Why?
You’ll have to
read the book.
Visit
it and like the A Long Way from Anywhere
FB page
https://www.facebook.com/alongwayfromanywherethestoryofwakeinfright/
1. Lynden Barber is a Sydney-based film teacher and journalist
and a former artistic director of the Sydney Film Festival.
2. Some of the titles Galvin is thinking of include Newsfront (Phil Noyce, 1978) Caddie (Don Crombie, 1976), The Devil’s Playground (Fred Schepisi,
1976), The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (Fred
Schepisi, 1978), Alvin Purple (Tim
Burstall, 1972) Sunday Too Far Away
(Ken Hannam, 1975), Picnic at Hanging
Rock (Peter Weir, 1975), The Last
Wave (Peter Weir, 1977) and Stone
(Sandy Harbutt, 1974).
3. Squeeze a Flower was rel. in early 1970 to great indifference. It was
directed by American Marc Daniels. The
Long Shadow based on the novel by Jon Cleary was never made.
4. According to Australian contemporaries these following films
were in the ‘foreign films made here’ category: Kangaroo (Lewis Milestone, 1952, USA), Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (Leslie Norman, 1959, USA|Aust.|UK),
On the Beach (Stanley Kramer, 1959,
USA), The Sundowners (Fred Zinnemann, 1960, USA|UK|Aust.) and all the Ealing
Films produced here including The
Overlanders (Harry Watt, 1946, UK|Aust), Bitter Springs (Ralph Smart, 1950, UK|Aust.), and The Shiralee (Leslie Norman, 1957, UK).
5. Evan Jones had worked with dir. Losey on Eva rel. in 1962. Another e.g. of an
‘internationalist’ production, incidentally.
A Long Way from Anywhere The Story of
Wake in Fright An Australian Classic will be published in 2019.
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