Relax, Rachel.

Australian cinema-goers don’t care about your ‘fragile egg’.

Couldn’t sleep, so I got up at an eye-bleary hour to read my trusty Sydney Morning Herald news online. And there was an article screaming to be read – an opinion piece or, as I later discovered – a precious tirade from one of Australia’s sacred movie cows –

Rachel Ward.

Her article took sharp aim at the current crop of journalists attacking dark films like hers – or, as RW likes to call them, ‘fragile eggs’. She moaned about the lack of marketing dollars big, bad Hollywood productions have oodles of. And then she took time to splash a little vitriol at our home-grown commercial hits – Muriel, Priscilla, Ballroom and anything with a winking Hogan or bicep-flexing Jackman in it.

P-lease.

Now, I think RW is a fabulous-looking woman, drenched with integrity and intelligence. I loved her in Thorn Birds… admire the way she saunters down the red carpet, unaffected by the rainshower of flashbulbs, barely a hint of lip-gloss, a Botox-bare beauty… her celebrity marriage remains intact, she writes and directs her own movies and she schleps about her Balmain suburb in bohemian coats, nursing her frothy caffeine salve in a biodegradable cup.

An artist worth aspiring to – or is she?

As I read her recent SMH piece, I found myself getting more and more and more irate. But it wasn’t the pretence, self-righteous turns of phrase or even the staggering lack of regard for our mainstream Aussie filmgoing public that stirred the Foundis Bile. No.

It was the incredible irresponsibility of her views that floored me.

As a creative producer with movie-making stars in her eyes, I’m constantly looking to successful film artists who have ‘made it’ for counsel, wisdom and, hell, I’m just going to say it – good business sense when it comes to the supposedly dark art of making an Australian movie that, er, attracts audiences, makes money and stays on our cinema screens for longer than 10 minutes.

The Aussie film landscape is, at best, bleak – slumped audience figures, box office and of course the relentless round of slit-your-wrist stories somehow deemed worthy of projection up on the silver screen.

RW calls these films ‘entertainment’. And David Stratton chimes in with, ‘…if all you want from cinema is an easy ride, mindless entertainment, the best Australian films are not for you.’

Pompous, elitist, wank.

As an ever-juggling working mother, my time is precious – I crave escapism. Any movie I make the time to see has to make me FEEL GOOD ABOUT LIFE. Otherwise, DVDs work just fine at home, in my own time, when my son has gone to bed and I’m settling in for an evening of organic chocolate, grapes and parmesan, thank you.

I don’t want to see a movie that’s ‘good for me’. Give me life-affirming, up-lifting, splashy, big-hearted movies that will make me feel 10 kilos lighter as the credits roll.

Call me certifiable, but the big screen by definition, shows us the world ‘larger than life’. Stuff’s bigger up there – the stories, the feelings, the people, the situations. It’s a huge medium – so the tales spun in the dark need to be worthy of the space they’re granted for 90 minutes.

And here’s where RW’s blatant irresponsibility comes into the big picture (literally)…

As an AFTRS graduate, I’ve met the would-be filmmakers and heard their pitches, read their outlines and smelt the desperation they have to make the next ‘worthy’ Aussie flick. And then RW with all her contacts and celeb mega-wattage goes on record to support more of these bloody movies. Enough. This is not what I, we the untested filmmakers should be aspiring to if we have any desire to succeed and make a CONSISTENT living out of this industry.

Is it so wrong to aspire to Priscilla, Striclty Ballroom or Muriel’s Wedding flicks again? What’s so evil about grinning good looking stars of Jackman’s ilk? What’s wrong with a little unreality up on the big screen? What’s wrong with COMMERCIAL SUCCESS?

PEOPLE WANT ENTERTAINMENT AT THE MOVIES. Hollywood isn’t called the Dream Factory for nothing. Like it or loathe it, their popcorn machine is making money and people are going in their droves to see their flicks – including waddling, about-to-pop, pregnant women like me.

Last night I braved the rain and the dark and an impending labour to see Nora Ephron’s new movie, Julie & Julia. I looked around at the all-female audience. You could almost smell the excitement in the air. The promise of a movie that ticks their boxes – entertaining, fun, engaging, moving – was palpable in that cinema. 

And Mr Stratton drones on…

‘For those of us willing to be challenged and excited, movies like Blessed (another rip your heart out and sit on it, kinda flick) is another really fine Australian film’.

Enough! Can we bring a little balance to Aussie films, please, please? An alien landing in Australia right now, judging our people and country purely on the stories making it to the big screen, would think we’re a nation of incestuous, depressed, racist, self-indulgent wankers in need of a vat-load of Prozac – or several viewings of Tootsie.

Our audiences can connect to lighthearted, Mr Stratton, Ms Ward. Just because a movie is light doesn’t render it superficial or mindless.

When RW goes on record to self-congratulate her ‘fragile egg’ or Stratton wets his pinstripes over Blessed they’re both flashing green lights for all our film students. It’s okay to tell obscure, small stories.

I was at a seminar at AFTRS recently where a student in the audience announced he too was writing another so-called bleak film, but it’s uplifting, he grinned. The speaker – Fight Club producer, Ross Grayson Bell – gave a tired smile and moved on to another question.

These movies don’t make money – their creators have to wait around for another hundred years before more funding money trickles down to their tired laptops and they can play at self-indulgent filmmaker again.

My gripe in a nutshell is this…

It’s very, very easy for Rachel Ward, cosy and comfortable in her Balmain abode, married to the Aussie film icon / larrikan, address book stuffed to the gills with earth-moving movie contacts, an established career billowing assuredly behind her bohemian coats – very, very easy for her to get up on her soapbox and lecture on fragile eggs, criticise Hogan, Jackman, Muriel and Priscilla and hold dark Aussie movies up to the light as the only movies worth seeing on the big screen. You’ve already ‘made it’ Rachel. You’ve already tasted success. You know what it’s like for people to say ‘yes’ to your projects.

But spare a thought for the rest of us. Stop and think about the budding filmmakers still intent on making the movies NO ONE WILL GO AND SEE. Sure they’ll be critically acclaimed, win a few gongs – but for what, art? Only, ART? It’s self-important and nothing at all do with the audience – the reason we’re in this business to begin with!

Here’s what we need more of.

Less Ward. Less Stratton. And more, many more positive commercial movie role models – more Millers, Luhrmann, Beresfords. These are the people who should be writing opinion pieces, presenting movie shows. These are the folks who should be speaking at our film schools, educating us on commercial film nous sadly lacking from the pious pieces penned by the likes of Ward and Stratton.

Just like our audiences, we the filmmakers need stories of inspiration, big-hearted courage and uplifting endings that leave us feeling anything is possible – even if nobody knows who we are – yet. 

And when we are inspired, by passionate, positive, successful, unpretentious movie artists, there’s no telling how big, how beautiful and how unfragile the Australian film industry will become.

© Phyllis Foundis 2010