letter to Glen Boreham, Chair of Screen Australia Board

Dear Glen

Further to the many letters I have written to you this past 16 months regarding Fiona Cameron’s tendency to play fast and loose with the truth and with Ruth Harley’s tendency to turn a blind eye to Fiona’s lies. Of course, you and the Board have likewise chosen to turned a blind eye to the lack of transparency and accountability exhibited by senior management at Screen Australia. In all my 40 years of filmmaking I have never encountered such a toxic combination of corporate dishonesty and incompetence as has been manifest during Ruth Harley’s reign as CEO. It seems that these qualities are prerequisites for positions in senior management at Screen Australia!

You will no doubt ignore this letter as you have the vast majority I have sent you. That Fiona Cameron is a liar, that she investigates complaints made about herself, herself, are of little interest to the Screen Australia Board! Mind you, these aspects of the way in which Screen Australia is run are not of concern to the Minister, the Hon Simon Crean either and it may be that the office of the Prime Minister feels the same. We shall see.

My most recent letters to the office of the Ombudsman, to the Prime Minister and to Caroline Fulton (copies enclosed) speak for themselves. They contain nothing that you have not been aware of for the past 16 months and have chosen to ignore – in the hope, I guess, that I would eventually simply accept that I have been screwed by Screen Australia and forget about it. Alas, this is not my style.

On Friday 16^th March I sent the following email to Nick Coyle, Screen Australia’s FOI officer. It also speaks for itself:

Dear Nick

It is important always to maintain one’s sense of humour when dealing with Screen Australia! Perhaps the same applies for employees!

I know that it is an incredibly complicated question and many meetings may be necessary to  find an answer, but how long does it take to find out which members of senior management at Screen Australia are public servants and hence subject to the Public Service Code of Conduct? It’s been over two weeks so far! How many more weeks is it likely to be? Mind you it would never have been necessary to call upon your services anyway if Screen Australia did not believe that it was necessary to keep this information secret!

I have another FOI request – most definitely the oddest I have ever made and, I suspect, the oddest one you will ever have to deal with. It is for a document (or documents) that do not exist. Let me explain:

In Nov 2010 Fiona Cameron wrote a letter to me that included the following assertion:

“Unfortunately it appears from your correspondence that you came away from that meeting with an understanding that your application for further funding for Chanti’s World had been effectively green lit. This is not the case. Nor could it be.”

For 16 months I have asked Fiona to produce the correspondence she refers to. She has not done so. This is not surprising because it does not exist. Not only does Fiona know it does not exist but so too do Ruth Harley and Glen Boreham. And the Commonwealth Ombudsman would have discovered that it did not exist also if he had bothered to ask Fiona Cameron to produce it. He did not. He simply accepted Fiona’s word (implicit in her letter) that it existed! As I say, a sense of humour is necessary in this age of transparency and accountability we live in!

There is, I suppose, the possibility that at some moment in 2010, having taken temporary leave of my senses, I did write the correspondence  that Fiona is referring to and, amnesia being a component of my addled state at the time,  have completely forgotten that I did so. So, in order to find out if such correspondence exists, what better way than to call upon the services of Screen Australia’s FOI officer with my strange request – for a document that I claim does not exist! If it does exist I will have egg all over my face and may well need to plead insanity. If it does not exist, Fiona has some explaining to do and an apology to make.

I do appreciate, Nick, that having Fiona as your boss must complicate a request  such as this somewhat but I trust that the fair administration of FOI is not affected by such details.

I am copying this to all of those in the Documentary section of Screen Australia who likewise know that the correspondence Fiona refers to does not exist but who have managed to maintain a conspiracy of silence this past 16 months. And I have attached my letter of two weeks ago to Prime Minister Gillard in hopes that she may put some pressure on Simon Crean to take an interest in the lack of respect for the ideals of accountability and transparency evinced by senior SA personnel. Not sure who to write to if the Prime Minister’s office ignores the letter. The United Nations!

cheers

Poor Nick! I do not envy him the dilemma he is confronted by. If he can’t find the correspondence that Fiona refers to (and he won’t be able to) this should be proof positive that Fiona was lying when she wrote her letter to me in Nov 2010. But then you’ve known that, Glen,  for a long time – you, the Board, Ruth Harley, everyone in the Documentary section of Screen Australia. For you to acknowledge now that Fiona has lied would amount to a confession that the entire organization, up to and including the Board, has had, this past 16 months, no interest in facts, in the truth, but will accept as Gospel whatever spin Fiona Cameron comes up with – with the blessing of Ruth Harley. As I have acknowledged many times, my dispute with Screen Australia is (to all but myself) a storm in a teacup. What this particular storm says about the management of Screen Australia is, however (or at least should be) a matter of concern to the Board and to the Minister.

best wishes

James Ricketson

cc Prime Minister, the Hon Julia Gillard

Commonwealth Ombudsman

2nd letter to Prime Minister Julia Gillard

Dear Prime Minister

Further to my letter of 27^th Feb.

I do hope that someone in your office read my last letter, will read this one and ask the obvious questions: Why is Mr Ricketson not writing to the relevant Minister, the Hon Simon Crean? Is what he says about Chief Operating Officer Fiona Cameron playing fast and loose with the truth, true? Does Fiona Cameron investigate complaints made about herself? Is this a job for our top spin doctor or is there a problem with Screen Australia that needs to be and should be addressed?

The interrelated problems that need to be addressed are:

Problem # 1: Simon Crean (or whoever the relevant person in his office might be) is not at all concerned by the ramifications of having, in senior management at Screen Australia, people who have little respect for the ideals of transparency and accountability.

Problem #2: Screen Australia’s Chief Operating Officer, Fiona Cameron, has little respect for facts,  for due process, and plays fast and loose with the truth.

Problem #3: Fiona Cameron investigates complaints made about herself. (Surely the days are long gone when a senior bureaucrat investigates complaints made about her own conduct!?)

Problem # 4: Fiona Cameron’s boss, Ruth Harley finds nothing inappropriate at all about Ms Cameron’s behaviour.

Problem # 5: Glen Boreham and the Screen Australia Board seem sublimely unconcerned that Fiona Cameron tells lies, that Ruth Harley turns a bind eye and that there is no functioning complaints process within Screen Australia.

Any independent observer in your office – looking at the facts, unswayed by spin – would arrive at one of two conclusions:

(1) Mr Ricketson is wrong, there is no evidence at all to support his assertions or

(2) Mr Ricketson’s assertions are backed up by demonstrable fact and need to be addressed.

Rather than acknowledge the shoddiness of an assessment of my project CHANTI’S WORLD by Clare Jaeger, the Documentary Section of Screen Australia closed ranks behind Ms Jager. That neither Ms Jager nor Ross Mathews had actually seen the promo that was the centrepiece of my application was of no consequence. With Ross Mathews refusing to answer any questions at all in relation to my complaint, I was left with no choice but to appeal to Chief Operating Officer Fiona Cameron to consider my complaint on the basis of facts. Ms Cameron decided not to let the facts get in the way of her decision to support Claire Jager, Ross Mathews and others in the Documentary section.  She overplayed her hand somewhat by placing on file statements she knew to be untrue – thus shifting the focus of my complaint from Claire Jager’s incompetence to my own integrity as a filmmaker. Instead of being a filmmaker with a valid complaint, Ms Cameron characterized me as a filmmaker miffed that I had not been given money that I had thought I would be given. I had, she claimed, said as much in correspondence to Screen Australia.  When asked to produce this correspondence Ms Cameron, like a petulant schoolgirl, announced that she would communication with me no further. That such dishonesty and petulance can be practiced by someone in Ms Cameron’s position beggars belief! And this is the person who looks into complaints made about Screen Australia’s inability to abide by its own guidelines!

If, perchance. Ms Cameron was unaware that the statements she placed on file were untrue, why has she, this past 16 months, done nothing to rectify her mistake? Why has she not apologized and corrected the file – as I have asked many times this last 16 months? Instead, she has informed me, in accordance with her own interpretation of the Screen Australia guidelines, that I may never again present CHANTI’S WORLD to Screen Australia for funding consideration.

And what is CHANTI’S WORLD? It is a documentary I have been working on for 16 years now – a record of the life of a young woman growing up on the streets of Phnom Penh from 8 year old beggar to 24 year old mother of five. CHANTI’S WORLD is the follow-up film to SLEEPING WITH CAMBODIA, completed in 1996 – a documentary that rated highly on the ABC and has been sold all around the world.  Alas, once Claire Jager had written her ill informed and factually incorrect assessment two years ago,leading to Screen Australia’s decision to back her and Ross Mathews regardless, the writing was on the wall for CHANTI’S WORLD as far as Screen Australia is concerned. Fiona Cameron’s decision that it can never again be presented to Screen Australia is both vindictive (in the pettiest way) and discriminatory. A person who behaves as she does should not be in the senior position she holds at Screen Australia – a position that requires total honesty and, when dealing with complaints, a commitment to the facts as opposed to a commitment to back up Screen Australia staff under any and all circumstances.

I trust that someone in your office will look at the facts here and make a determination based on them and not on whatever spin Fiona Cameron, Ruth Harley and Glen Boreham may present in their defence.

best wishes

Censorship and the Emperor's New Clothes

Encore’s reasons for deciding not to publish my piece about the ethics of presenting real people as characters in drama has induced me to do some thinking about the way in which censorship manifests itself within the Australian film industry. There are, broadly speaking, two forms of censorship – one that is imposed from outside and one that we impose on ourselves for reasons of self-preservation. The external form can all too easily lead to the self-imposed form – as I think has happened in our industry.

The Courtiers in The Emperor’s New Clothes epitomize the dangers of self-censorship taken to an absurd extreme. To suggest that the Emperor had no clothes on was not a wise career move for a Courtier hoping for advancement in the Emperor’s court! To what extent does the Emperor’s New Clothes dynamic operate within the Australian film industry? Are we, as an industry, as a film culture, as brutally honest with ourselves as we should be? Do we fear that revelation of how few clothes we have on might make the tax-paying public wonder why on earth it is supporting an industry that, with a few exceptions (broad Aussie comedies of late), makes films that most Australian’s don’t want to see? But I digress…

An example of externally imposed censorship:  Last year, during an ‘industry forum’  at which Ruth Harley and Tania Chambers represented Screen Australia and Screen NSW respectively, Encore magazine was given permission to film Ruth and Tania’s presentations but was told that it could not film the Q & A with the audience that followed. The official reason given was that the presence of Encore’s camera might inhibit filmmakers from speaking unguardedly. The actual reason, as disclosed to me, was that Encore feared it would be sued if it broadcast, online, filmmaker’s comments that Screen Australia deemed defamatory. And what might Screen Australia deem defamatory? Hard to know and we’ll never find out because the threat was sufficient to guarantee that no ‘defamatory’ comments  or observations were recorded on tape and hence could be broadcast. 

There is not much that can be done to combat this kind of externally imposed censorship other than to stand up to it and refuse to be intimidated; to call the bluff of institutions within society that have the power to use the threat of legal action to suppress debate or to prevent disclosure of information suggestive of either incompetence or corruption. One would like to think that various industry guilds and organizations would band together to protect the freedom of important and essential speech but it is not the case.   

The threat of externally imposed censorship can easily lead to the other form of censorship that can be just as insidious – self-censorship. Yes, caution is required in writing about a case before the courts – like ‘Mac’ Buttrose’s suing of the producers of PAPER GIANTS - but how likely is it, in reality, that Encore magazine would be sued for hosting a debate about the ethics of representing real people as fictional characters in which passing (and non-defamatory) references is made to PAPER GIANTS?  This is, in my view, a form of self-censorship that is as bad as overt external censorship when it comes to stifling dialogue and debate about issues of concern to us all as story-tellers.

If you believe, dear Reader, what I write here is, in you view, nonsense, you should be free to express this opinion. Unfortunately, with the demise of Encore as a venue in which divergent opinions could be expressed, there is virtually nowhere where ‘robust’ debate occurs anymore about contentious matters of interest to Australian filmmakers.

Creating fictional characters based on real people!

Another of my ‘opinion’ pieces (though I prefer ‘discussion starter’ myself) has fallen foul of Encore censorship. Inspired by a story in today’s newspaper, I thought my few words might open up a discussion about the thorny question of how to represent, in our stories, fictional characters based on real people – especially those who are alive.

"Imagine, dear Encore Reader, through circumstances beyond your control, that your association with someone (spouse, parent, child or friend) you become an object of public curiosity - so much so that some filmmaker thinks that the story of which you are a part (no matter how small) is one worthy of being immortalized on either the silver or plasma screen. There is only one problem, however, and that is that the realities of narrative story-telling necessitate that some liberties be taken with the biographical details of your life. In order for the character based on yourself to serve his/her dramatic function you need to be presented in such and such a way - even if ‘such and such’ a way is our of sync with the realities of your life. You may be a perfectly delightful, generous easy going person but the role calls for a bitch. You may be a decisive, no-time-for-bullshit, take-no-prisoners kind of guy who calls a spade a spade but the screenplay calls for a sensitive soul who would never call a spade a spade for fear of offending. The bottom line is that the dramatised version of yourself is nothing like the way you see yourself or, indeed, the way your friends (and/or enemies) see you. Does it matter? Do you have a right to complain? Are filmmakers under any obligation at all to consult with you before they immortalize your persona in pixels? The case brought by Ita Buttrose’s husband about his portrayal in PAPER GIANTS highlights a dilemma confronted by all screenwriters and other filmmakers who seek to portray characters based on living people whilst at the same timeserving up to audiences compelling drama? What do my fellow filmmakers think?” 

Tim Burrows, editor of Encore, declined to publish on the grounds that the matter was sub judice.

etc.

So, there is now another question worthy of discussion: Can we have a debate within the industry about the ethics of presenting real people as fictional characters in drama or must we remain silent for as long as the PAPER GIANTS case is in the courts – which could be years? Alternatively, I suppose, we could have a debate and make no reference at all to PAPER GIANTS!

letter to Prime Minister Gillard re Screen Australia

The Hon Julia Gillard MP

Prime Minister

Parliament House

Canberra, ACT 2600                                                                                                27^th Feb 2012

                                                                                   

Dear Prime Minister

It is more than a little absurd that it should be necessary to write to the Prime Minister of Australia to ask a simple question for which there is a not only a simple answer but an obvious one:

Is it appropriate that complaints made about the Chief Operating Officer of a federal government body that invests around $60 million a year in Australian film and television are investigated by the Chief Operating Officer herself?

I would have thought that the answer was a no-brainer. It seems not. Screen Australia’s CEO, Ruth Harley and the Chair of the Screen Australia Board, Glen Boreham, refuse to answer this question and the Hon Simon Crean has shown no interest in doing so either.

A member of the public who asks such a question is left with two choices: resign themselves to the fact that no answer will be forthcoming or keep asking the question until someone, at some level of government, answers it.  If that person is the Prime Minister, so be it.

To choose the latter course exposes the questioner to the accusation that s/he is a ‘vexatious complainant’ whose questions need not be answered because they have been asked so often – a neat and all too familiar tactic used by bureaucrats in the supposedly transparent and accountable era in which we live.  Instead of answering legitimate questions such as those I have been asking for over a year now the person asking them receives a response along the lines of Fiona Cameron’s:

“…please do not continue to waste my time. Neither myself or any other Screen Australia representative will enter into any further correspondence regarding these matters.” 

Much less time would be wasted, of course, if the Fiona Camerons of the bureaucratic world simply answered questions and did not place on file lies that absolve them of responsibility for answering such questions!

It has been suggested to me by various people that calling Chief Operating Officer Fiona Cameron a liar in public is likely to result in my being sued for defamation. I doubt it as it would then be up to Fiona Cameron, (and by inference, Ruth Harley and Glen Boreman) to demonstrate in court that what I have written in any of my letters to them is untrue. If I have lied, if there is one statement in any one of my letters that is not true, (and hence defamatory) then by all means sue me. I deserve to be sued.

Ms Cameron, Ms Harley and Mr Boreham all know that what I write is based in demonstrable fact (as would come out in court) and so will not sue me. They hope, given that Simon Crean could not care less whether or not Fiona Cameron is a liar who investigates complaints made about herself, that I will just give up and that the matter will be forgotten.

In terms of what you have on your plate, as Prime Minister, my complaint here is so trivial that it will not be brought to your attention. And nor should it be. Simon Crean or someone in his office should have dealt with this appropriately a year ago by asking Fiona Cameron to provide evidence in support of assertions she has placed on file that are damaging to my reputation. If she cannot provide evidence (correspondence she refers to my having written) then she should apologize to me and have the false assertions removed from the file.

What is important here, and what someone within your office should, I believe, attend to, is that the lack of accountability and transparency within Screen Australia. It is a lack that seems to be countenanced by Simon Crean. Perhaps he is too busy with more weighty matters to pay any attention to questions such as mine. This would be understandable, but surely someone within his office should be asking the very questions I have asked. If Fiona Cameron is allowed to lie with impunity, if she is the one who investigates any allegations that she is a liar herself and if  the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet is unconcerned about this state of affairs, what safeguards are there in place to guarantee that the $60 million or so of Screen Australia investment in Australian film is spent in a way that is untainted by even the suspicion of corruption. I am not suggesting that anyone at Screen Australia is corrupt. Merely that there is no mechanism in place to deal with such corruption if it is Fiona Cameron who is expected to investigate impartially and pass the results of her investigation up the line – to land, eventually, on the desk of Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.

From my point of view this matter will only reach a natural and just conclusion when I have received an apology from Ms Cameron and when her lies have been removed from Screen Australia’s files. It must also be officially acknowledged that this dispute began in earnest when Clare Jager and Ross Mathews decided to knock back a documentary submission of mine without either of them (by their own admission) having viewed the ‘promo’ (representing 16 years of filming) that was the centrepiece of my application.

best wishes

James Ricketson

cc the Hon Simon Crean MP

Screenwriting - art or craft?

Is screenwriting merely a craft or is it, can it also be an art? Whilst a screenplay is primarily the blueprint for a film, can its appeal (the finished film) have more to do with the artistic sensibilities of the screenwriter than his or her skill as a craftsperson? Silly questions whose answers are obvious? Maybe, but worth discussing. Are we, from both an industry and cultural point of view, so obsessed with questions of craft that we devalue the screenwriter’s capacity, at a level much deeper than craft skill, to tap into the zeitgeist, to understand not what audiences want to see (based on recent box office receipts) but what they need to see – even if audiences have no idea that they need to see it. By ‘need’ I mean a story that speaks (again at a deep level) to their desires, hopes and dreams in the present. The ‘present’ for the audience is, of course, a few years down the track for a screenwriter starting work on a screenplay. S/he needs to take the raw material of the present and imagine what the ‘present’ a few years down the track may feel like for the audiences to whom they wish to speak; whom they want to entertain. For instance, any screenwriter starting work on a screenplay today would be wise to take into account that in all likelihood his or her audience in a few years are likely to be in the midst of a serious financial crisis. And what sort of films are audiences in the midst of a ‘depression’ most likely to want to see? Did anyone other than Michel Hazanancius (writer/director) think that there would be an audience for a silent black and white film (“The Artist”) when he started work on it several years ago?

This ability to look forward, to guess, to have one’s finger on the pulse, is one of a screenwriter’s most important skills. Yes, s/he needs to have well-developed craft skills also but these are merely to serve the story that connects, that resonates with an audience. The most perfectly crafted screenplay can be (and often is) boring, predictable, clichéd. Does the desire for such craft perfection (encouraged by film bodies and script gurus alike) obscure from view what it is that really makes a good screenplay work for an audience? Do we admire the Sydney Opera House for the craft skills Joern Utzon demonstrated or for his artistry? Do we admire the skills of a cabinet-maker, a musician, a dancer….any form of artistic expression for the craft skills demonstrated by the creator? Or do we admire the way in which these artists have used their craft skills to create something that is not a clone of what has come before but which induces, in the viewer, the listener, a ‘wow!’ response?

Given that the influx of gurus and experts this past few years to our shores has failed to improve our collective screenwriting skills, the questions implicit here seem to me to be well worth discussing, debating.

Who is responsible for the 2nd rate screenplays developed by Screen Australia?

Most Australian films require the imprimatur of Screen Australia to get made. They require that certain readily identifiable Screen Australia employees, in senior positions, believe that the script is ready to go into production and that the production is worthy of investing large sums of Australian tax-payer money in. These readily identifiable bureaucrats make their decisions in the belief that the films they greenlight will appeal to an audience – whether it be multiplex, arthouse or somewhere in between. When the films turn out to be turkeys these bureaucrats do not feel in any way responsible for their failure and nor are they held to account in any way. Year in, year out they can make what are clearly bad decisions, keep their jobs and become more or less permanent fixtures – moving from one funding body to another, sitting on one panel or another and generally being treated as ‘experts’. 

Given Encore’s moderation policy, these readily identifiable bureaucrats cannot be identified. Why should they be treated with a level of deference not extended to filmmakers?  If a film critic (or Encore blogger) is able to say, in public, “James Ricketson’s film was deservedly voted the third worst at the film festival…etc.” and then go on to explain why is was so bad (“amateurish screenplay that needed a few more drafts”, say) why can’t this same level of criticism be levelled at Screen Australia bureaucrats?

Martha Coleman is Head of Development at Screen Australia. She reads every script proposal that receives Screen Australia development funding. She reads the various drafts that are developed with this funding. At the point where she feels the screenplay isn’t living up to the potential she felt it had at earlier stages in its development she can stop funding it. If she feels that the screenplay is getting better from one draft to the next she can continue to fund it. During this development period she is, to all intents and purposes, the head of a studio. When the producer, director and/or screenwriter feel that they have produced a final draft and that the project is ready to be considered for production funding, Martha is in the position to say, “Yes, I think this is a terrific screenplay ready to go into production,” or “No, sorry, but the screenplay still has flaws in it that need to be addressed before I can recommend it to my production investment colleagues as being ready to going to production.”

In short, Martha Coleman is in a very powerful position when it comes not only to the development of screenplays but to the decision as to whether or not the screenplay is ready to go into production. My own opinion is that most Australian films developed during the past three years were not ready to go into production at the time they were greenlit by Martha and others at Screen Australia. Many were not even close to being ready. Some havebeen so bad from a script point of view (A HEARTBEAT AWAY) that one can only shake ones head in wonder that anyone in the Screen Australia food chain thought that the screenplay would result in a film that audiences would actually want to see.

No doubt Gale Edwards (director) and Julie Kincade (screenwriter) felt as devastated as I did when audiences hated HEARTBEAT as much as they hated my film. HEARTBEAT will be an albatross around both their necks as they try to get another film made. That’s showbiz. However, for Martha Coleman and her script development team (with not one experienced screenwriter amongst them!), plus the Screen Australia Investment Managers who thought there was an audience for HEARTBEAT, the films dismal failure is not an albatross around their necks.  No number of such box office turkeys will threaten their jobs – as would be the case if Screen Australia not only acted like a studio but took responsibility for what the studio produces. If these senior bureaucrats are ever asked, in a public forum, if Screen Australia accepts any responsibility for the poor quality of Australian screenplays, here’s the kind of answer you can expect – this one from Martha Coleman.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nECoIAVZwV8

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. It’s not as if there is a shortage of other filmmakers with similar (or far more) experience than Martha who could step into her shoes! The same applies for the Investment Managers who thought that HEARTBEAT and so many other truly bad Australian films would find an audience. Why not give some other experienced filmmakers a chance to make their mark? And, if they don’t or can’t, give some others a go? New faces, new blood, different ideas and approaches are what is needed in an industry/culture such as the one we all work in. Such an approach would require a CEO at Screen Australia, Admiral of the fleet,  prepared to get rid of the dead wood that (excuse the mixed metaphors here) that clogs the arteries of the organization. But that’s another topic…