By Dov Kornits
After quietly freaking audiences out with 2024’s A Grand Mockery, idiosyncratic Aussie writer/director Adam C. Briggs returns with another transgressive eye-opener in the Gold Coast-set Phillip Philadelphia, which premieres at The Melbourne International Film Festival.
A bizarre fable of madness and malevolence, Brisbane-born writer/director Adam C. Briggs’ 2024 genre-bender A Grand Mockery announced a singular and transgressive presence on the Australian film scene. Proving that he’s no one trick pony, Briggs now delivers something equally strange and transfixing with the dreamy Phillip Philadelphia, which sees the eponymous British screenwriter (played by Geoffrey Vagg) languishing in a ramshackle motel on the glittery, sun-drenched Gold Coast, Australia’s holiday capital. In this absurdist, surreal queer melodrama, a young actor lover, a former colleague, and a drug-dealing neighbour weave their way throughout Phillip’s hopelessly dreamy fantasies…
What was the kernel of the idea behind the film? I don’t know, was it sort of archetypes about. How do you work basically? How does the idea germinate?
“I don’t want to sound like a wanker, but I’m pretty superstitious about the processes of my films. This is my fourth feature and they’ve all had pretty particular geneses. This one started with a pen I found outside a carpet store that had a box of three things…in that box, I found this wooden pen inscribed with the name Phillip Philadelphia. That prompted me thinking about this character immediately. It was quite a strange mystical event. The script came after that. My collaborator Sam Dixon helped with the script. He gave me one character who he ends up playing in the film, Buzz, who is Philip’s neighbor. I have a very open approach with collaboration. I’m not too interested in imposing too much of an authorial voice on it. It’s about communing with people I’ve worked with a lot, like Lauren Bride and Sam Dixon. I hadn’t worked with the two leads before on this film, so that was different for me. But yeah, there’s very much a shared meaning amongst us all there.”
Your films also feel very much steeped in film lore…
“Yeah, to a degree. I’m definitely not as psycho as some filmmakers that I know, but I mostly felt like I was watching game shows in the past year on TV. But I guess we had certain things in mind. Geoffrey Vagg who plays Philip is also extremely versed in cinema history, so we were talking about films probably more than I did with other people in the cast. You relate to everyone differently. Geoff introduced me to a couple of Dirk Bogarde films, like The Servant, and I took Jeff to see Pink Narcissus, which was quite inspirational.
There are definite references there. There’s a lot of late 19th century literature that was definitely in my mind. But I’m never really setting out to consciously mimic anyone. A lot of people have mentioned John Waters and stuff, but I don’t think I was thinking about John Waters at all…as much as I like John Waters! There was Merchant Ivory too…that was in my mind as well. The film is certainly crude, but I hope there’s a certain elegance in there too.”
The Gold Coast is a fascinating setting for the film…
“I guess to some people, it’s kind of a maligned place, and it has a pretty vapid history of being this resort city. But I was definitely imagining something coastal when I envisaged Philip’s environs. It seemed to me like a place that would appeal to this character who’s languishing in these effete modes of fashionable despair and lethargy. It just made sense to me that a British screenwriter would be drawn there with all the colonial markers that are pretty unabashedly evident there, as they are in a lot of places in the country. They’re just more garish there, and that seemed aligned. We had an interesting time there. We were really the freak show in town. We did have some invective thrown at us while we were there, which is probably not surprising. It is by and large a conservative place, but it felt very good to be there when we were filming.”
You were just copping it when you were out shooting?
“Oh yeah, absolutely. There were some interesting moments…some more intense than others. I hope some of that grotesquery is in the film. But the film is certainly not an indictment! I do like The Gold Coast…parts of it are beautiful and charming. I hope some of that comes through as well. I hope The Gold Coast Film Festival may want to play the film next year. Brisbane doesn’t have a film festival anymore, so we might send it out to The Gold Coast…I hope they take it. It would be a missed opportunity on their behalf if they don’t.
Is there a pressure to have your work really connect with audiences?
“We’ve been at it for a while, but it’s really been only in the past couple of years that there’s been interest in our work, and more of an interest from festivals and distributors. This film was still made in a period where I was making it really without any expectation necessarily of an audience. I’ve hoped that it would, but I wasn’t working with a producer on either of those two films. I certainly wouldn’t rule out doing something slightly more mainstream. I don’t know if I would be capable of it in terms of a creative voice…I’m not really sure.”
You mentioned John Waters…he seems to ride that line in some ways.
“He’s certainly had his time making films that were more Hollywood. He definitely dabbled in that realm, and I do appreciate some of those later films. I don’t think too much about how films are going to be categorised or registered, which inevitably has made them slightly difficult to place in terms of a market. With the last film, we were very surprised that we had a distribution interest and the most interest we’d ever had in any of our work. That was the most off-the-path film that either of us had ever made….a Super-8 feature film, filmed over many years. It was just a completely insane endeavor, but one that just seemed correct to what we were doing.”
A Grand Mockery was a genre piece, and Phillip Philadelphia is queer and cultish…
“With the last film, we were surprised to know that we had made a genre film. That’s how oblivious we are at times. But it was also a composite…the first half of the film is probably more of a social realist film, and not particularly genre or horror. People were picking prevalent things in it and then saying, ‘Okay, this is what it is because that’s how that kind of system works.’ So with this one, similarly, I think it’s a film full of a lot of contradictions and possibly perceived incongruity…I hope it resonates in some way that can have a life out there in the world. I’m not terribly good or interested in trying to place the film.”
Brisbane is very distinct as an artistic city in this country…
“I’ve tried to leave Brisbane, but I do have a kind of disgusting love for it. I have so many connections to people here that I would find it difficult to leave behind. I also like living somewhere that’s maybe culturally not very self-conscious. There’s a smaller arts scene. I don’t really feel much competitiveness or pressure, which I think exists in those cultural scenes in Melbourne and Sydney. It’s nice to pop in and just come back to the weeds where most people don’t really give a fuck about art or cinema. I’m not opposed to football, but I do think it’s some kind of national conspiracy to keep the population as intoxicated as possible.”
Queer cinema seems to be really connecting with audiences these days…
“A lot of people are responding because there’s some of the most real feeling there. The world is uniquely fucked up at the moment because of these old systems of confinement, so maybe there’s a bit of a response there, and more broadly to just underground film. People are looking for unfiltered expression. With traditionally funded films, their expression is becoming more limited as there’s more care put into whether it’s going to see a return on investment. With more transgressive cinema, the expression’s a little more unbridled because there’s just not as much money involved. Maybe people are responding to that…”
Phillip Philadelphia will have its world premiere at The Melbourne International Film Festival on Friday August 7 and Sunday August 9. For all ticketing and venue information, click here.
