By Dov Kornits
“It’s been 25 years,” John Polson sighs down the line from New York, where he now lives and works as a producer/director on the TV series, Elementary. “I can’t believe it. I was 27 when it first took place, so I guess that means that I’ll be 52 next year!”
Australian actor, producer and director, John Polson, is, of course, talking about his greatest creation: Tropfest. Starting out as a local short film festival on the streets of Sydney’s Kings Cross, the event has grown exponentially, and birthed big time behind-the-talents and featured high profile stars on screen in the process. It also put the very concept of short filmmaking into the public consciousness at large, becoming a marquee event on not just the annual film calendar, but the social/cultural calendar in general. Though a massive event looked forward to every year, Tropfest – which regularly clocked up thousands of attendees in its various outdoor homes of Rushcutters Bay Park, The Domain, and Centennial Park – has experienced its fair share of ups and downs, from storied and varied harsh criticism, to filmmaker, Paul Fenech (Pizza, Housos), famously stooging John Polson on stage when he won a major prize after entering the competition under a female pseudonym.
The biggest hurdle that Tropfest ever faced, however, came last year. The festival was nearly scuttled at the last minute, only to receive an eleventh-hour reprieve courtesy of CGU Insurance, who stepped in to cover the major funding shortfall prompted by severe financial mismanagement. With much of the blame attributed to Tropfest Festival Productions managing director, Michael Laverty, who handled the day-to-day running of the festival, Polson has taken a lot of hits (he copped a lot of flak for launching a Pozible crowdfunding campaign to raise money to support ongoing legal and accounting investigations to look into how the festival ended up slamming into a financial brick wall), but he’s also learned a lot of lessons.
“The biggest take away from last year is that the license model just didn’t work,” Polson tells FilmInk. “It seems naïve even saying it in hindsight. It worked for a really long time, and there was trust involved in making it work, but then it just didn’t work in 2015. The take away there for me is that either the festival is finished, or if I’m going to continue to have my name associated with it and the event take place, I can’t do the day to day. I can’t be the person paying the phone bills and running around in Sydney taking the sponsorship meetings. But with a huge amount of help from [multinational professional services firm] Ernst & Young, who came on board, it really helped rebuild the business from top to bottom. And that’s where we are. It’s all about transparency and accountability and big decisions being made by the board. That’s really the take away.”
Polson also admits that the enormous growth and change experienced by Tropfest has been a major player in the festival’s financial woes. “Tropfest is a different beast these days,” he says. “What became clear to me at the end of last year when people were up in arms about the idea that this thing might be finished, was that this is bigger than me. It’s bigger than a private festival; this is now almost public property, if you will. It’s a free event, and it’s a community event. People feel a lot of ownership of the event, and so they should, and I want to encourage that. It is bigger than me now. I don’t often like to think about the day that I’m gone, but the day that I am gone, I don’t want Tropfest to be gone too. It’s got to continue for another 25 years, another 100 years. Tropfest is an idea that deserves to go beyond just one or two people. I’m very proud of the past ten months, and of how far we’ve come, and who’s joined the board. Some great minds in Australia have given up their time for free to help guide this event now. We’re just starting to reach out to all the ambassadors who are the celebrities and filmmakers that have been associated with us over the years. We’re doing things properly. Not that everything was done terribly before, but obviously there was a flaw in the system and that blew up in everybody’s faces. I’m going to make sure that it never happens again.”
Part of that determination will now see Tropfest make its biggest move yet. After two decades in Sydney’s hip inner city, the short film festival will be upping stakes and heading out west, with 2017 marking its inaugural birth at Parramatta Park. “I’m excited,” Polson says flatly. “It’s a major change for the festival, and it was not a decision that came easily. There was a lot of soul searching around the office, but I honestly think that it’s a great step forward. We’ve always been prepared to take the plunge. When we moved from The Tropicana Café just down to Rushcutters Bay Park, everyone thought that was a mistake. And then everyone thought going to The Domain was a mistake because it was too big, and that it was going to be empty. It was the same when we moved from The Domain to Centennial Park. Obviously this is a big move, and it’s personal for a lot of people. But I stand by it. We’re moving to the geographical centre of Sydney. It’s a lot closer from the old venues than people really realise. It’s 35 minutes on the train. I did it myself a bunch of times when we were trying to figure out if we were going to be making this move. I have to be honest, I’m excited. I think that the people who truly love Tropfest, and have loved it for all the right reasons, will come with us.”
The fact that Tropfest is now streamed all over the world also makes the location of its physical home far less important than it used to be. And along with that, the move to Parramatta might actually allay one certain strain of criticism that Tropfest has copped over the years. “We’ve been slagged for being elitist, and people say that you have to be a professional filmmaker to get into it, or that you have to be a celebrity to get into Tropfest,” Polson sighs. “What better way to lay those rumours to rest than to say, ‘That’s bullshit. We’re going to Parramatta. We are the grassroots, and we’re not about the inner city only.’ For years, the criticism was that if you weren’t my friend, you weren’t getting into the finals and all that stuff. It’s just not true. Tropfest is for the people.”
Still, Polson certainly doesn’t deny that the move out west isn’t a risk. “If you’re going to be an entrepreneur and if you’re going to have a business, then you really have to be prepared to risk everything every now and then,” he asserts. “You can’t afford to sit back and let it go stale and rest on your laurels. You have to reinvent the wheel every year or two. And that’s what we’re doing with Tropfest, and we’re not afraid of that. Because at the end of the day, the heart and soul of the event is what it is, and you can’t change that. That’s really where my job comes into it: to make sure that that stays intact, and that’s by the choice of films and the people and the judges and the hosts as well as the venues.”
Obviously excited about what Tropfest has in store for its 25th anniversary, Polson continues to brim over with enthusiasm about what the festival has to offer. Still, considering his success and workload in the US (he’s also directed episodes of Blue Bloods, Without A Trace, Zoo, The Mentalist and many more), one has to wonder: why does John Polson still put it all on the line every year for Tropfest? “Trust me, there were a hundred times in the last twelve months when it would have been much easier to say goodbye than to keep it going,” he replies. “Much easier. But a lot of people had worked really hard for so many years, and I just couldn’t bear the thought of it going belly up over events outside of its control. That was the worst part. If it was something like we were no longer cool, or people weren’t coming anymore, or sponsors weren’t supporting it anymore, then I could almost understand it better. But to go down that way just didn’t seem right. My career has moved on a long time ago, but I’ve always wanted to give young filmmakers a platform that I never had. I hope that doesn’t sound corny. But it has created great careers, and it’s been a springboard for them. For that reason alone, it deserves to live. If it’s just one more avenue that the next Nash Edgerton, Alethea Jones, or Patrick Hughes can take, then it’s worth it. It’s there to help those people catch a break. And I didn’t feel that I had the right to decide that something that important should be finished. I felt pretty clear that my role was to do anything that I could to keep it going.”
Entries for Tropfest close on December 15, 2016. This year’s signature item is ‘pineapple.’ Tropfest happens at Parramatta Park on February 10 & 11, 2017. For more on Tropfest, head to the official website.
