"A truly
international film is a film that you look at and wouldn’t know where it was
made. When you see (THE PIRATE MOVIE) you wouldn’t know apart from the last
credits that it was made in Australia…We’ve got all the talent that’s necessary
to make good films Now we’ve got to start thinking about what the rest of the
world wants and not be so involved in what Australian audiences want to see and
we’ll be in the film business." David Joseph, producer of THE PIRATE
MOVIE, 1982.
The budget for THE PIRATE MOVIE was $6 million. Australian box office: $1 million; worldwide box office $9 million.
WHY AN
AUSTRALIAN FILM INDUSTRY?
As film producers
and Screen Australia bureaucrats argue about whether Baz Luhmann’s 3D remake of
‘The Great Gatsby’ is more worthy than other feature films to be financed in
part by the Australian tax-payer, some questions are worthy of consideration:
‘What will
Australian tax-payers get for their $40 million contribution to the coffers of
Warner Brothers - an American producer of film and television entertainment
whose primary market is the United States?’
‘What will
NSW tax-payers get for their contribution to Gatsby’s budget – a sum that the
Keneally government tells us, with its customary lack of transparency and
accountability, must be kept secret?
That a
substantial part of Gatsby’s $120 million budget will be spent in Australia
will be good news in the short term for the film technicians who work on it and
for the providers of other services required in its production, but is it good
news, in the long term, for the Australian film industry?
Why is it important
that we have an Australian film industry?
Would it really matter if the federal and state governments stopped
subsidizing it and allowed it to die a natural death as other inefficient
industries are? (The Chinese could, after all, make Australian films for a
fraction of the cost!) Or if, for whatever reason, we feel that an Australian
film industry is in some way important to our culture, are there ways in which
$40+million of tax-payer’s money might be better spent?
The word
‘industry’ is problematic - conjuring up, as it does, a product for which there are identifiable consumers
and from which a profit is expected to accrue. Virtually no Australian films
make a return on the investment in them (the Australian tax-payer being a major
investor) and to pretend that they ever will is to delude ourselves and lead to
the wrong questions being asked. Imagine if we referred to ‘the Australian ballet
industry’, the Australian Opera industry’, the ‘Sydney symphony orchestra industry’,
‘the poetry industry’ and so on. As industries they are all abject failures so
why do we bother to subsidize them?
Drop
‘industry’ and think only in terms of ‘Australian film’ and the questions
become both more interesting and more pertinent. Harking back to the days when
political parties on both sides of the political divide felt that Australian
film was important provides us with a context within such questions can (and I
believe should) be asked today.
As far
back as 1963 the Senate Select Committee Report on the Encouragement of
Australian Productions for television felt that there was:
“a
responsibility to protect an industry with a strong cultural element.”
In the
late 60’s and early 70’s the various bodies involved in providing the industry
with a philosophical base stressed that:
“The
industry (should be) pre-eminently Australian in character, not dominated by
other cultures; that government sponsorship would support ‘film and television
projects of quality’ and produce ‘distinctively Australian’ films that would
‘provide the Australian people with a national voice and a record of their way
of life.”
The Report
of the Interim Board of the Australian Film Commission declared that,
“Australia,
as a nation, cannot accept, in this powerful and persuasive medium, the current
flood of other nations’ productions on our screens without it constituting a
very serious threat to our national identity. The Commission should actively
encourage the making of those films of high artistic or conceptual value which
may or may not be regarded at the time as conforming to the current criteria of
genre, style or taste, but which have cultural, artistic or social relevance. Some
may not become commercially successful ventures, but these may include films
which posterity will regard as some of the most significant films made by and
for Australians. Profit and entertainment on the one hand and artistic
standards and integrity on the other, are not mutually exclusive. In the long
term the establishment of a quality Australian output is more important for a
profitable, soundly based industry that the production exclusively as what
might be regarded as sure fire box office formula hits.
Baz
Luhrman’s GREAT GATSBY may well be a box
office hit. It might be a masterpiece. It will undoubtedly provide, for a brief
period of time, much wanted and needed employment for those who crew on it. It
will not, however, be an Australian story told for Australian audiences and
reflecting aspects of our own culture for the benefit of present or future
generations of Australians. It will be an American story with zero relevance to
Australia above and beyond the relevance that all great cinema (all great art)
has for mankind in general.
So, how
might Gatsby’s $40+million of Australian and NSW tax-payers money be better spent
to nurture the production of Australian films that speak to and of being
Australian? In this new digital in which it is possible to produce feature films
for comparatively low budgets and to distribute and broadcast these on a variety
of different platforms. As the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY revealed a couple of years
ago (budget $11,000, worldwide box
office in excess of $100 million) if a story captures the imagination of the
audience, it matters little whether it is shot on widescreen 70 mm or with a
mobile phone.
But that’s
just a one-off, like ‘Blair Witch Project’, it might be argued. Fair enough.
How about ‘The Kids are Alright’ -
budget $4 million, worldwide box office $30 million. Yes, the film was
undoubtedly helped at the box office by the presence of film stars (Annette
Benning, Julianne Moore and Mia Wasikowska) but why did they choose to work on
the film for a fraction of their usual fee? Because it was a terrific
screenplay. Could we make 10 Australian films of the calibre of ‘The Kids are
Alright’ (with or without stars) for the cost, to the tax-payers of one Great
Gatsby? Yes, if there were 10 screenplays as good as ‘The Kids are Alright’.
(Why there are not is an important question but space does not allow it to be
gone into here.)
Another low
budget film that most readers will not have seen (get the video out if you can)
is ‘Once’ - a $150,000 Irish film that took $19 million at the box office. Then
there’s ‘Catfish’, still screening around Australia. The film has taken over $3
million worldwide to date and, whilst its budget is not public knowledge, it
certainly looks as thought it could have been made for almost nothing. And this
is the point. Audiences (albeit niche) don’t go to see films such as ‘Catfish’
in the expectation of stunning photography and marquee stars. They go to see it
because it is fresh, original and in sync with the zeitgeist.
$40+
million would fully finance 20 $2 million features, 40 $1 million films, 260
$150,000 features and God only knows how
many films with budgets similar to that of ‘Catfish’. Take Nigeria, for instance, with no tax
concessions, no Screen Australia, no highly paid bureaucrats in control. 300
producers turn out around 1,200 feature films a year (budgets around $23,000) that are uniquely Nigerian in their
stories and themes and which have given rise to the world’s second largest
($500 million) film industry in terms of features produced. No, I’m not
suggesting that Australia emulate Nigeria, whose industry arises from unique
circumstances peculiar to that country. I am questioning, however, whether
$40+million of Australian tax-payers money might be better spent on maintaining
a continuous output of low budget Australian films that speak of and to our
culture. And, when the script warrants it, make $15 million films such as ‘The
King’s Speech’. (Australian tax-payers could almost fully fund three Kings
Speeches for the amount they are contributing to one Gatsby!) Or the Australian
equivalent of ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’. Despite the films lack of
stars and subtitles this $13 million film has taken over $100 million
worldwide.
‘The Great
Gatsby’ will have to take around $900 million at the box office to be as commercially
viable as ‘The Kids are Alright’. Perhaps it will, but it still won’t be an Australian
film.
