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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 21 October 2013

The Australian International Movie Convention (AIMC) wrapped up last week on the Gold Coast.  The event brings together distributors and cinema folk from around the country to showcase the films that will be released over the next 12 months.

It’s an interesting format.  Each distributor is allocated a slot of around 3-4 hours to promote their product.  So you get roughly 2 hours of trailers, clips and speeches followed by a full length feature.  I guess those who don’t like lots of ads and trailers before their movies wouldn’t be too impressed!

The list of films screening at the convention included Captain Phillips, Last Vegas, Philomena, August: Osage County, Enough Said and Dallas Buyer’s Club.  For most of the content, embargoes are in place to prevent reviews and any other comments from being published.  This is partly because some of the films aren’t finished and partly because the studios are looking limit publicity until closer to the date of release.

One of the key guests at this year’s convention was Peter Del Vecho – a producer on the new Disney animated feature, Frozen (to be released in Australia on Boxing Day).  Peter has been in the industry for a while working on such animated flicks as Treasure Planet, Chicken Little, Winnie The Pooh and The Princess & The Frog.

I was lucky enough to spend a few minutes with Peter to chat about Frozen and get his thoughts on the animated film industry…
 

Matt:  I’ve spoken this year with writers, directors and actors but this is the first time I’ve spoken with a producer.  Can you tell us what was involved with your role as a producer on Frozen?

Peter:  My job is to get the director’s vision up on the screen so I’m involved in the creative process right from the beginning and once we decide that we want to move a movie into production.  I work with the director to surround them with the right teams.  That covers staffing up the movie as well as scheduling it out to make sure we meet the release date.  In this case, it was a two and a half year process.  

Matt:  This film, like so many in the animated genre these days, is in 3D.  Is this a fad or is 3D something more permanent within the animated feature industry?

Peter:  Disney is committed to giving audiences the option of seeing our films in either 2D or 3D.  That said, there are a lot of special effects in Frozen that lend themselves to the 3D experience.  There are specific moments like Elsa using her ice powers but also the broader scope of the movie with all the snow.

Matt:  I was reading that the film, based on the fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson, had been floating around for a while but couldn’t quite get off the ground.  What’s taken so long to get to the point where we are today?

Peter:  Everyone loves the novel The Snow Queen but it’s very symbolic in nature.  It doesn’t naturally translate to the screen very well because you have to have real, believable characters in a real, believable world.  The turning point for us was when we had this character with the ability to create ice and snow and then had a protagonist who happened to be her sister.  By making them royal and giving them a kingdom, it raised the stakes because not only did this person have a relationship with the Snow Queen but she also had a kingdom that she felt responsible to.  It was that sibling connection that helped elevate the story to the point where it was clear that we had something special to bring to the screen.

Matt:  It’s got me thinking.  Are there a lot of projects within Disney at the moment where you’re not sure if they’re going to get off the ground?  

Peter:  We have a very healthy slate of upcoming films.  It’s probably the strongest we’ve had in terms of the number of films in development that look really exciting and promising.  From Tangled to Wreck-It-Ralph and now Frozen, you can feel the studio growing and we feel a lot stronger going forward.

Matt:  We’re here at the Australian International Movie Convention and there’s always a lot of talk about where the industry is going.  More and more people like to download movies to consume in their own home.  Do you see that becoming more frequent or do you still think the big screen experience is going to keep drawing people into cinemas?

Peter:  I personally love the big screen but we’re aware that we have to provide content in many different platforms.  As the world changes, we are going to have to adapt to that.  Clearly, there’s nothing like seeing the movie on the big screen with a big group of people – particularly a comedy where laughter can become infectious.

Matt:  When I grew up, I remember there being only one or two animated features being released every year.  There was normally a big Disney film like Beauty & The Beast, Aladdin or The Lion King.  Now, it’s a much more crowded space.  Does the competition make it tougher for you guys?

Peter:  There is a lot of competition but that’s healthy for the industry.  The fact that a lot of animated movies are being made is a great thing but we still need to try our best to rise above them all.

Matt:  I know there’s the best animated feature category at the Academy Awards that is usually dominated by Pixar and Dreamworks.  A Disney film is yet to win the award so do you have high hopes for Frozen?  Could this be the one?

Peter:  You’re correct that Disney hasn’t won the award yet.  I believe this is a project well worth a nomination and of course, I’d hope that it wins.

Matt:  If I can talk quickly about the cast in Frozen – there’s Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Jonathan Groff, Josh Gad.  One of the things I noticed is that they all come from a theatrical background.  Is that a coincidence or is something more behind it?

Peter:  I come from a theatre background myself.  The type of person I think works best for animated features is an actor who is willing to improvise and really help push the boundaries of the character.  My experience has been that in a lot of cases, that collaborative process is more prevalent in theatre.  Plus, it was important that whoever we hired did ALL of the voice work – whether it be the dialogue or the music.

Matt:  Before I finish up… do you have any plans to do anything exciting while you’re here in Australia?

Peter:  I did.  Yesterday, I went for a helicopter ride over the Gold Coast and there were some great views.  I couldn’t believe how beautiful the coastline is and how it seems to extend on forever.  You’ve got some spectacular beaches here.

Matt:  And can you tell us what you’ll be working on next?  I’m guessing Frozen has taken up a lot of your time over the past few years.

Peter:  It has been my focus and I’ve promised my family that I’m going to take a little break and spend some time with my kids before they head off to college.  There are plenty of projects in development and so after this film is released, I’ll start to focus on what the next project is.
 

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 08 October 2013

About Time is out in Australia on October 17 and it is definitely worth a look (you can check out my review here).  I was fortunate enough to speak to rom-com guru Richard Curtis about his new film. You can download the full audio of the interview by clicking here.

Matt:  Romantic comedies are my least favourite genre as I seem to find them so cheesy and formulaic.  But I can think of three that you’ve written that I’m a big fan of – Four Weddings & A Funeral, Bridget Jones’s Diary and a personal favourite of mine, Notting Hill.  What’s the secret?  How do you come up with a great romantic comedy?

Richard:  Thank you very much indeed for saying that.  I remember once bumping into the American comedian Chris Rock and he said “normally I don’t like these films but I think you’ve put in some ‘man’ jokes”.  I think that’s the answer.  I started as a straight comedy writer doing Black Adder and things like that and so I do try to make them as funny as I can for a wide audience.

Matt:  But I have to be honest – I didn’t like Love Actually.  I know it’s loved by so many people and it’s been seen on free-to-air TV a million times here in Australia.  I realise you get a lot of compliments but do you actually get people who tell you they don’t like a particular film?

Richard:  Oh yes. Particularly critics – they love telling me they don’t like the films (laughs).  On the whole, one of the lucky things in life is that if people are going to be unfriendly, they tend to do it behind your back and so you can wander around without knowing that everyone thinks less of you.  But yes, I do think Love Actually is a film that has split people.

Matt:  There’s a clear message in About Time and it seems to tie back to the lyrics from a Baz Luhrmann song that you mention in the film, “Everybody’s Free”.  Where did your inspiration come from for About Time?

Richard:  It came from a conversation with a friend of mine called Simon.  We were talking about what our perfect day would be.  We said it wouldn’t be flying to Las Vegas and winning a million pounds and then finding out we’d be nominated for an Oscar.  That would be too tense and worrying and full of strangers.

Actually, the perfect day might just be having lunch with your friends, dinner with your family and taking the kids to school.  I wanted to write a film about that but I couldn’t work out how to tell such a simple story.  So I decided to come up with a huge mechanic and introduce time travel through a person who can change everything in his life all the time and then have him still reach the conclusion that relishing a single day is the most important thing you can do.

Matt:  Time travel movies are always tricky because you’re going to have some viewers trying to pick out flaws and say “well that couldn’t happen because of the Butterfly Effect” or “let’s just go back in time and win the lottery”.  Do you have to put a lot of thought into making it “believable” when putting the screenplay together?

Richard:  You really do.  It’s full of complications as to what should be and what shouldn’t be.  It’s incredibly complicated and I’m sure there are some whopping big holes but it’s also a great mechanism for humour.  That’s the thing I really loved about it.  We’ve got quite a few jokes about travelling back in time and fixing romantic and sexual disasters.

Matt:  I like the way in which the two leading characters, Tim and Mary, meet for the first time – in a pitch black restaurant where they can’t see a thing.  Where did that idea come from?  Does such a place exist?

Richard:  There does!  There’s a restaurant called Dans le noir in London and I actually went out to dinner with Rachel McAdams and Domnhall Gleeson and it was a pretty freaky evening.  You really can’t see a thing.  You don’t know if you’re eating strawberry moose or chopped liver.  Also, it’s socially unnerving because you can’t hear a smile.  You’ll say something that you think is funny and it was greeted by total silence.

My motivation was wouldn’t it be lovely if you’d kind of fallen in love with a girl before you’d seen her.  I wanted to give her a big entrance.  Rather than having a pretty girl on the edge of a room, it would be fun to have someone you’ve already gotten to know but haven’t yet seen.  So when you get out of the restaurant, you’re already affected.

Matt:  And what can you tell us about Domhnall Gleeson?  I realise he’s the son of Brendon Gleeson and he’s had a lot of small roles in films but it’s a big step up to take the lead role in a romantic flick alongside Rachel McAdams.

Richard:  I’ve always loved the idea of introducing someone who people don’t know terribly well.  Hugh Grant was relatively unknown when we cast him in Four Weddings & A Funeral.  A lot of the films I love such as Gregory’s Girl and Breaking Away and Diner – these movies were full of young men who people didn’t know.

The great thing about Domnhall is that he has this terrific sense of humour.  He’s done a lot of sketch shows back in Ireland.  It was hard to cast him though because when he first turned up, he had an enormous orange beard because he was in the middle of filming Anna Karenina.  He looked like a serial killer from the Appalachian Mountains.  It took an act of faith to cast him but I think it paid off.

Matt:  I was reading on the internet that there were a few other actors that were being talked about for the female leading role but Rachel McAdams came in pretty late in the process.  Is that right?

Richard:  Yeah.  I’ve asked her to do things before actually.  She’s one of my favourite actresses.  We held back from asking her to do the film initially because she’d done The Time Traveller’s Wife.  I therefore thought she was just going to say no and hurt my feelings.  In the end, we did offer it to her and we got lucky.  She’s really lovely in this film and has to do this complicated job of going from first-time, young girl, romantic figure to a mother of three.  

Matt:  I was thrilled to see the cameo from Richard Griffiths who sadly passed away 6 months ago and I believe it’s the final screen appearance.  How did you get him for that short scene?

Richard:  I worked with him before on The Vicar of Dibley.  It was a really touching day because both Richard Griffiths and Richard E. Grant are in this scene where something goes massively wrong in a theatre.  It was the first time they’d been in a film together since Withnail and I which is one of the great English comedies.  It was a complicated day though because there were three of us called Richard.  So when anyone said “Richard”, all three of us spun to attention.

Matt:  I’m glad that we’re now at the end of another Hollywood summer blockbuster season because I’ve become exhausted by all the sequels and reboots, all the super hero and comic book movies.  Do you have any thoughts on the future of the film industry with so much money being spent these days on films that all seem to be created from the same mould?

Richard:  I actually love some of those films.  There are always people predicting that things are going to get worse but I see a lot of movies I really love at every level.  About Time was very inspired by a film called Like Crazy – a tiny little American movie that was made for about $250,000.  So while some movies are getting more expensive, there are still a lot of beautiful movies being made at the other end.  I’m not too gloomy.

Matt:  Would you love the chance to do a $200m action blockbuster?

Richard:  No.  I’d rather do a $200,000 movie that you make in three weeks.  One of the problems with movies is that they take too long and they’re a lot of hard work.  That’s why I’ve always loved television as the process moves so much faster.

Matt:  I’ll finish up by looking into your own future.  I was reading that you’ve written the screenplay for Trash, the new Stephen Daldry film.  What can you tell us about that?

Richard:  I just got back two days ago from Rio De Janeiro and I hope it’ll be a great film.  Stephen is such an interesting director.  It’s about three kids on a trash heap in Rio De Janeiro who find a wallet that they explodes through society.  It turns out to be at the centre of a scandal.  I think of it as The Bourne Ultimatum only with teenagers in it.

Matt:  Well, we’ve got About Time to satisfy ourselves in the meantime and I think it’s a great film, despite my aversion towards romantic comedies.  Richard Curtis, thank you very much for speaking with us.

Richard:  Well that review sounds a lot better than the dreadful Love Actually so it’s one I’m very happy with (laughs).

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 25 September 2013

The Turning is one of this year’s more original film-going experiences and while he was in Brisbane for a special preview screening, I spoke with creator/director Robert Connolly (The Bank, Balibo) about the film (oh, and you can check out my review here)…

Matt:  Straight out – this is an audacious project – the idea of taking 17 short stories and putting them together into a 3 hour movie.  What made you decide to take it on?

Robert:  Well, I love the book, I love Tim Winton, I love his huge body of work.  The Turning is all these different stories where some connect and some don’t connect.  In trying to think how to make it into a film, we came up with this idea that we’d invite 17 creative people to make on each.

It’s a little bit like the Paul Kelly concert where these performers were invited to perform their favourite Paul Kelly song in their own style.  That was the idea at the beginning of the journey and now here we are 4 years later with this finished work.

Matt:  Normally with a film I’m used to the credit “directed by” but here you’re the head and billed as “created by”.  What did that involve?  For example, how did you get all of these directors together?

Robert:  The first stage was inviting people that I liked including friends and creative people I admired.  There were also actors like Mia Wasikowska – the 23-year-old who I love watching on screen.  There were choreographers like Stephen Page and then Yaron Lifschitz from Circa who is based here in Brisbane.  It was a real mix of people.

I sent the book out with either a note or a phone call and said “we’ve got this idea – what do you think we could do with it?”  It’s a credit to Tim Winton’s work that people responded so positively and they found a story within the book that appealed to them personally and one that they wanted to explore on screen.

Matt:  So is that how you decided which director got which story?  Did you have a few directors who wanted to do the same story?

Robert:  Bizarrely, it kind of found a natural shape.  I let people pick 2 or 3 stories that they liked and it kind of took a form that I was surprised by.  I thought it would have been a little more complicated.  I think Tim’s work speaks of many aspects of our life and each filmmaker found something personal that they loved.

Matt:  I often think with movies that the less you know going in, the better, because it helps preserve the experience.  But there’s a lot in this film.  When I watched it for the first time, it took me a while to pick up on the connections between the characters.  Do you think it’s better if you know a little bit going into this film or would you rather people watch it knowing nothing?

Robert:  Yeah, I think you can go in knowing nothing and still enjoy it.  It’s like going into an art gallery or listening to an album of music.  If something intrigues you, you might want to find out a little bit more about it and that’s why we’ve created a program that people can take away from the cinema.  

I’ve always loved the idea that audiences don’t need to know everything up front.  The Hollywood thing is “oh no, the audience is confused, there’s something wrong” but I think audiences like a bit of mystery.  This film is like unlocking a puzzle and giving people the program with information about each short film was the idea that people might ponder it.

What I love is watching people fight about their favourites or the ones they don’t like.  You get this vehement discussion because no two people have the same list.  It’s a very personal experience watching the film.

Matt:  You’ve got some great cast members – people like Cate Blanchett, Richard Roxborough and Hugo Weaving.  Was it each of the directors who went and found those actors or were you helping out and pulling a few strings to get some big names in the film?

Robert:  Yeah, we helped.  We had a casting director, Jane Norris, and we had an approach to try to get some really good actors.  In the end, it was like a magnet for good actors.  There was something about the film that, once we announced it, attracted people like Rose Byrne and Hugo Weaving and Cate Blanchett.  I think they were drawn to Tim Winton’s work but also the boldness of the idea.

Matt:  It’s interesting the way the film is being released with an intermission half way through.  Is that something that you have a decision in?  

Robert:  It’s something I proposed.  The idea that there’s a program and an interval where you can grab a glass of wine was interesting to me.  I’m curious about the idea that cinema can be like a theatre event.  It’s like going to see a band or a live show.  I love an interval because you can reflect on what you’ve seen with your partner or whoever you’ve taken to the show.  It’s been a great result that the cinemas have all embraced.  They’re very aware that some audiences want something a bit different.

Matt:  With all these films being made concurrently, how was this film funded?  Was there a central pot of money that was divvied up amongst everyone?

Robert:  I raised the money and then divided it equally amongst the 17 filmmakers.  I like the fact that everyone had the same amount of money.  There was a nice competitive edge where everyone was trying to work out how to spend the money as effectively as possible.  It’s like renovating houses on The Block – people trying to work out how to spend the same amount of money differently.

Matt:  People seem to have shorter and shorter attention spans these days and so was there any trepidation by investors about the commercial viability of a 3 hour movie being released in cinemas?

Robert:  Interestingly, people were really up for it from an early stage – the idea of the interval and the program and the art gallery type nature of the project.  We’re at a time when being innovative is very attractive and people are trying to find new ways of making the cinema experience very exciting.  I was really fortunate to be supported considering how bold the project is.

Matt:  Tim Winton – the author of the novel – can you tell us what he thought when he saw the film for the first time?

Robert:  He loved it which was a great relief.  I promised that I’d take the finished film over to Fremantle and put it in a cinema to show him.  I did that for him and a mate while I paced around outside wondering what he thought.  We had lunch afterwards and he told that he loved it and he’s subsequently seen it three times.  He’s met the filmmakers and had discussions with them.  He’s a very generous man in that he gave us incredible creative freedom.

Matt:  I think about some of your other work like The Bank and Balibo, what have you got planned next?

Robert:  My next film is Paper Planes.  It’s a kid’s film that goes into pre-production in two weeks in Perth.  A young boy from the bush discovers that he has a genius aptitude for making paper planes ad so he travels to the world championships in Tokyo to compete.  So it’s about flight and he also meets a Japanese girl who is the Japanese world champion and they become friends.  It’s a great kid’s film.  It’s like a little fable.  I’ve got young kids and it’s definitely for them.  Very different from my other films.
 

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 23 September 2013

We’re seeing an increasing number of animated features being released.  There are currently 3 screening in Australian cinemas over the September school holidays – The Smurfs 2, Planes and Turbo.

Sharnee Rawson of The Sunday Mail was kind enough to get in touch with me last week to get my thoughts on the ever crowded animated feature market and the story ran in last Sunday’s paper.

It neatly sums up my thoughts and as it’s the first time I’ve been interviewed for The Sunday Mail, I thought it was worth sharing.  You can check out the story right here...