Frank Shields: Saying So Long to 35mm with The Surfer

By Travis Johnson

“I suppose I’m the maverick in the business, you know,” Frank Shields muses. “Not many directors have directed five feature films now, been to Cannes and all that sort of stuff. It’s still really tough out there – it’s tough right across the board.”

He’s not wrong – it is still tough out there for an independent filmmaker, and Shields was and is a maverick. First making a noise when he made the 1974 documentary, The Breaker  – “I made that for seven grand, shot it in three countries and paid for actors and horses and rifles with cases of beer” – Shields’ first fiction feature, 1983’s Hostage, was a mainstay of suburban video libraries across the land. It’s his second fiction feature, though, The Surfer, that we’re here to talk about today, because it’s The Surfer which is getting a big screen airing as part of what Shields is calling ‘The Last Picture Show – a farewell to 35mm’.

“It’s a symbolic farewell to 35mm film projected onto the big screen,” he says. “It’s yesterday – the end of of an era. We’re having a celebration with it, and we’re doing it with a cult film I made. Of all the films I’ve done, I really love that one. We made it for nothing, on the road, in Queensland – Surfer’s  Paradise, the national park, we were tromping all over the place. It was like a family, it was terrific, it was the best experience I ever had making a film.”

Released in 1986, The Surfer sees Gary Day as a layabout who is drawn into a criminal conspiracy after his best mate is murdered over incriminating video tapes. A cross-country chase ensues, affording Shields the opportunity to film stunning-looking locations on the cheap.

Working to a slim budget was nothing new to Shields by that stage – he’d managed to organise an overseas shoot for Hostage with limited means, flying his department heads to Europe to shoot, which was a first for Australian cinema. “It was a 10 week shoot and it lasted 12 weeks [in cinemas] in the mainstream against E.T., Sophie’s Choice, An Officer and a Gentleman – I was pretty proud of that. In those days the funding bodies didn’t like anyone who made genre films. They were pooh-poohing me at the AFI Awards while I was down on George Street battling it out with all the giants.”

The Surfer was actually one of the last Australian film projects pulled together under the 10BA film financing tax incentive, which saw investors benefit from, among other things, a 150% tax concession. Famously, the system was ripe for exploitation, and was wound down in the late 1980s. “The thing about 10BA is that if we treated it right we’d still be making films through it – it’s just that the cowboys jumped on board and pretty much destroyed it. They ran it into the ground, mate. But, you only have so much plasticine in your hand, and that’s what you’ve got to make stuff out of…”

Still , for a small budget action flick, The Surfer punched well above its weight, screening at Cannes in the Directors Fortnight before going on to the Edinburgh and Berlin Film Festivals. According to Shields, this put even more noses out of joint on the home front. “The industry didn’t like it at all – they got really upset about that one. I know it’s ridiculous – and we were the only Australian film that year! The press were saying it was very unexpected and the funding bodies were very disappointed.”

Shields, however, stands by his work. “I think it’s a good film – it come out good.”

The Surfer screens at the Chauvel Cinema in Paddington tonight, December 12, from 6.30pm. Book tickets here.