BANNED FOR LIFE BY SCREEN AUSTRALIA BOARD!

“Some have a not unreasonable fear of being metaphorically keel hauled should they speak out in opposition to Screen Australia policy.” Sharon Connolly.

The keel hauling Sharon refers to is not merely metaphorical. I have been banned by Screen Australia for four years (May 2012 – May 2016) for being publicly critical of Screen Australia. I have asked questions that the Screen Australia board considers to be impertinent and made less than complimentary observations that cast doubt on the competence and integrity of Screen Australia personnel.

My worst crime, perhaps, is asking how appropriate it is for members of the Screen Australia Board to award large sums of development and production monies to themselves and/or production companies they have a close professional relationship with.

Given that I have no intention of ceasing with my criticisms, my asking of questions and making of less-than-complimentary observations of Screen Australia, my ban must, of necessity be a lifetime ban.  

C’est la vie!

I am now in the United States, rewriting screenplays that were once Australian stories such that they are now rooted in other cultures. Whether I will be successful or not in getting my films produced outside Australia remains to be seen but even if I am not, it is a pleasure to be in a working environment in which it is the quality of my screenplays that counts and not whether I am a friend of or have offended members of the Screen Australia board with my questions and observations.

My problems with Screen Australia began close to three years ago when I asked Martha Coleman in a public forum if she accepted any responsibility at all for the poor quality screenplays developed on her watch. Martha’s answer was ‘no.’

A few days ago, when I re-visited the videotaped interchange between myself and Martha (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nECoIAVZwV8) I discovered that it has been edited out of existence!

Screen Australia had no power to edit what was on my blog, however:

“Although Martha is captain of the Good Ship ‘Script Development’ in the Screen Australia fleet, it is not her responsibility as Head of Development, if the screenplays she develops are no good! This abrogation of responsibility is symptomatic of the major structural problem that lies at the heart of Screen Australia: No-one is responsible for any of its many failings.

Martha has had ample opportunity to demonstrate that she knows the difference between a good and a bad (or underdeveloped) screenplay. She clearly doesn’t. It is time to give someone else a go.”

My full blog entry is to be found at:

http://jamesricketson.blogspot.com/2011/11/who-is-responsible-for-2nd-rate.html

The more questions I asked, the more observations such as these I made, the more my relationship with Screen Australia deteriorated until I was finally banned entirely by Ruth Harley – with the blessing of the Screen Australia board! The board refused to provide me with any evidence in support of the proposition that I had ‘intimidated’ or ‘placed at risk’ members of Screen Australia staff. Fellow filmmakers Rachel Perkins, Rosemary Blight, Claudia Karvan and Richard Keddie all demonstrated their lack of commitment to transparency and accountability – refusing to meet with me, talk with me or acknowledge receipt of letters I sent them.

Martha Coleman segued straight from Screen Australia to Rosemary Blight’s Goalpost Pictures but to ask how much development money Martha approved for Goalpost before she joined the company, earned me a further two year ban. In the words of Glen Boreham, Chair of the Screen Australia board:

“That your deliberate, repeated and inappropriate personal attacks on Screen Australia staff through letters and internet publications appear intended to humiliate and damage the reputation of Screen Australia staff in a way that is unacceptable to Screen Australia.”

http://jamesricketson.blogspot.com/2014/05/why-screen-australia-board-should-be.html

I wonder how much of the $ 1 million set aside for Screen Australia’s new “Enterprise People” scheme will go to Rosemary Blight’s Goalpost Pictures? Will anyone within the ‘industry’ who is dependent on Screen Australia (or who may be at some point in the future) even dare to ask this question? Biting the hand that feeds you (or that you hope will feed you one day) is not a great career move!

The Screen Australia ban on me has induced me to start a new career as a non-Australian filmmaker. This not altogether a bad thing. A new challenge. And the ban has not been without its lighter moments – such as being arrested, twice, within the foyer of SA whilst doing nothing other than sitting quietly, reading a book. The poor police were bemused – both by Fiona Cameron’s call to the police to have me removed from the building and by my refusal to leave until I had been provided with evidence of my crimes.

On the occasion of my second arrest I spent a weekend in jail – during which I met two interesting men and gained some firsthand insight into what it is like to be locked up with no source of entertainment other than commercial TV. Other than being an interesting life experience who knows when it may become useful to me as a screenwriter!

http://jamesricketson.blogspot.com/2012/12/a-weekend-in-jail.html

I feel for all the young filmmakers who must now try to find a way of making the films they feel passionate about –knowing full well that in order to do so they probably have to align themselves with the likes of Goalpost and to accept that the bulk of Australian tax-dollars for Australian film will wind up propping up productions such as THE GREAT GATSBY, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN and other such films that make zero contribution (other than short-term employment for technicians and actors) to the development of a vibrant Australian film culture.

I wonder if anyone who is reading this has seen THE PIRATE MOVIE – made in 1982? Yes, it provided some short-term employment for technicians and actors but so what! The film cost $6 million, took only $1 million at the Australian box office and only $9 million world wide. So, it failed to justify its existence in economic terms. And culturally?

In the same year, the following films may or may not have made profit but they now form part of our film heritage:

“The Man from Snowy River” – George T Miller

“Lonely Hearts” – Paul Cox

“Monkey Grip” – Ken Cameron

“Far East” – John Duigan

Are we going to give 10s of millions of dollars to Baz for his next 3 D extravaganza (or PIRATES # 6) or will we spend these Australian tax-payer dollars on films that will form part of our cultural heritage? Alas, the answer seems all too clear.

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN - deja vous all over again!

"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.

Following is a piece I wrote about THE GREAT GATSBY a couple of years ago.  Very little other than the title of the film need be changed to make it relevant to the current PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN  5 debate. 

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.