On the life and films of Andrew Leavold - Barrie Pattison digs deep and discovers THE SEARCH FOR WENG WENG (2013) + PUB - THE MOVIE (2022)

Andrew Leavold

We are not talking film school and a history of subsidised documentaries, when we consider the case of Andrew Leavold. In the best Tarantino tradition, his formation as a filmmaker was running a video store, managing to parlay Brisbane’s Trash Video into the hub of out of kilter film activity in the city - often the one place there where you could find whatever was weird or transgressive on VHS.

When the video business died, Leavold took his act on the road. The highlight of the presentation I saw him give was an Iranian film showing a villainous Salman Rushdie overcome by flying Holy Korans, which persuaded the debauched female lead to take up chador wearing. They were going to ban that one in the U.K. until Rushdie came to its defense.

Leavold’s idée fixe (why don’t people talk about idées fixes anymore?) was Weng Weng, the three foot tall Philippino composite of Bruce Lee and James Bond, star of all but forgotten dubbed Pinocheapos For Your Height Only and D'Wild Wild Weng. Seven years, a communications degree, three mortgages on the store and a model exercise in crowd funding later, Leavold turned this into the 2013 feature documentary The Search for Weng Weng, which hit the festival circuit worldwide.

But we are getting ahead. With minimal training and experience Andrew Leavold had taken a camera to the Philippines to record the Weng Weng story. He was filmed in the airport parking lot getting the news that his hero was dead. That he compares to the moment in The Simpsons when Ralph Wigum learns that his passion for Liza is not reciprocated and Bart, freezing the video, isolates the frame where you can see his heart break. There was plenty more heartbreak ahead when the only prospect for the Weng Weng project was to include it in Mark Hartley's Screen Australia 2010 Asian schlock compilation feature Machete Maidens Unleashed! - a choice offered as ten percent of a funded project or all of nothing.

Leavold ended up buying back his footage to make his own In Search of Weng Weng, representing Weng Weng as action hero become tragic victim of exploitation, become Catholic icon. The result is surprisingly involving. It's remarkable that this one summons the know-how to convince audiences that it's not a put on, not an unhealthy cash-in on its sad little man subject and not something you should pass over for another look at Barbie.

The film itself is a shrewd mix of clips, interviews and accounts of its makers' adventures in the Philippines, which included being guest of honour at Imelda Marcos' 81st birthday party. Slowly, Leavold finds his way to the subject's low cost plot in the cemetery where the Manila homeless live among the grave markers.

Leavold went touring the planet promoting his documentary. The highlight of his attention-getting live introductions is always Leavold revealing the shoulder tattoo he had done in Manilla, showing Weng Weng in a religious aura.

Despite the interest that the project stirred, Andrew Leavold didn’t find himself deluged with offers to fund the string of projects for which he had deposited caches of material in cupboards round the planet. We never did get to see his study of the Philippino porn film industry, which at its height involved stellar personalities from their industry.

Instead he managed to get support, from ex-Chauvel Cinematheque organiser and Crypto speculator, Executive Producer Bret Garten, for his next documentary Pub - the Movie, a study of Melbourne identity Fred Negro. 

It’s very hard to comment on Leavold’s new(ish) film. You have to locate it in a line that runs through the Sixties US Underground comics, Robert Crumb in particular, Robert Downey (senior), John Waters or South Park. It’s crude, juvenile and slap dash. This makes it a suitable rendition of its subject, Melbourne’s St. Kilda native Fred Negro, who drew a strip cartoon called “Piranhas in Love” and headed up a band called “I Spit in Your Gravy”, a name that used to catch my attention on gig posters before I found the back story.

Fred’s childhood was already out of whack. (“Dad was really disappointed that I didn’t want to be a tax accountant”.) Art school wasn’t all that successful either (“I did all my stuff in the pub”) and Fred was drawn into that entertainment scene. “Six foot trannies singing about fat bellies and black and white tellies. I’m staying here.”

He had an act called The Human Vacuum Cleaner, where someone would hold his ankles and push Fred across the floor licking up Twisties. Pretty soon he was masturbating on stage while he played guitar, recruiting bar waitresses to join the band and be photographed naked in the bath with him. He used the slogan “Objectifying women since 1989.” The local scandal sheet followed his activities with enthusiasm. “The Truth - they just loved us!” One of his entourage was starving, pounced on the roast chicken that Fred fornicated with on stage and found it was full of maggots. “It didn’t matter so long as you were shocking someone.”

This all went down big on the great St. Kilda Thursday Night Pub Crawl. One musician remembered Fred on stage with them “He wasn’t in the band. He just kept playing.” However, with fame spreading, the Gravies found themselves in the first half for Waylon Jennings at the Rod Laver Arena, facing a contract with Virgin and turning up in the Tamworth Festival artists’ area with Smokey Dawson. The chief constable told them “I love your act but if you ever play a note in Tamworth, I’ll throw you in jail.”

There’s footage to go with all this but it’s murky video with poor sound. I would have liked to have seen more of the nice animations Leavold spaces it with. There are interviews of the survivors of those days. The questions that I wondered about are addressed as the film goes on. We learn that “Heroine hit St. Kilda hard” with a lengthy montage of photos of musicians and sidekicks in drug deaths. Negro survived, going without food for days, and he raised a family. Rather than stories of neglect and abuse, his daughter describes him as the ideal dad who harvested her childhood scatology for his strip cartoon, with them wondering who exploited who.

But the lifestyle was not without cost. One of his fans saw Fred’s marginal occupations and commented “I think Fred is one of the best cartoonists in the world and he’s cleaning toilets.” His publisher (“I got complaints from the first issue”) finally had to drop his strip. (“Too many vaginas”) though Fred did manage to produce a Piranhas coffee table book - and he survived to front his own movie here. 

Pub the Movie is not for everyone. It should come in a sealed plastic bag with a warning. It’s unpolished and parochial. The people who would find Fred Negro off putting in person are just as likely to reject a film about him but it is as authentic a representation of Australia’s notion of outrage as we are likely to get. Despite my initial reservations, I kind of warmed to it.

This leaves us with a situation where Australia’s hardest-charging filmmaker remains indigestible to all the processes that could make his life easier. In a period when suitable subjects for Australian documentary films are more clearly demarcated than ever, it’s hard to see the way forward. I can’t see Andrew Leavold making a tribute to the Matildas. He has learned his lessons the hard way, acquired his skills and not let one of the world’s most conformist environments grind him down. That’s a record that requires more attention than it's getting.