Australians don’t have a preconceived notion of what things have to be… we can go on a fantastic journey.
In 1905 Albert discovered Relativity, in 1906 he invented Rock and Roll.
My background was art school, documentary director and surfer with a keen interest in thrilling acts of life threatening stupidity.
We’ve got so many stories to tell, you know, we could take on the world.
You go overseas and people are oppressed and scared and worried but we’re not like that… we’re more like my films and how people come out at the end of seeing them – they feel good.
The obsession required to see a feature through from concept to release is not a rational thing to do with your brief time on this planet. Nor is it something to which an intelligent person should aspire.
It was always easy for me. I was born very rich and lucky.
All the jokes in my films, the comedy, they’re not me, I just try to hold a big mirror up to us.
The American formula things are out there but they don’t have any stories to tell – we have all the stories to tell – but they’re all formula.
Getting your screenplay right is the most important thing you’ll ever do on your film.
I support all Australian films.
It’s an infinite creative universe to explore so why chase conservative options?
So we have to be careful because if you don’t protect your culture you won’t have it for very long.
Can you imagine what it would be like if all the Aussie film talent was able to make Australian stories?
Then if your movie clicks with real audiences, you’ll be sucked into some sort of Hollywood orbit. It’s a devil of a place where the only religion that really counts is box office.
We cheer everyone who goes off to Hollywood and tells American stories but telling Australian stories is the greatest thing you can do.
There are a thousand weird untold stories in the Australian film industry, this has been one of them.
The journey of your first movie is not just beyond belief it can be truly beyond satire.
While the eyes of the world will be on us let’s show everyone that we have a great sense of humour.
In a kind of a way there’s a bit of that happening now so we have to be careful to preserve our culture.
If government and media and all of us in the Australian tribe got together, and the rock industry, we’d just be the greatest cultural force the world has ever seen – we’re such an amazing race.
It’s because we are so flooded with American culture that we’re startled when we see ourselves up there on the screen.
Now both my films have been number one at the Australian box office and it took about two years just to get the finance for this film, so if it’s hard for me then God help everyone else.
Movies are a complicated collision of literature, theatre, music and all the visual arts.
Three years after starting, by physically doing everything from raising the finance to special effects, we’d finally cobbled together our low budget film.
