By Jackie Shannon
Back in March 2022, the Australian film and advertising industry lost one of its most gifted practitioners with the passing of cinematographer and director Jeff Darling, who created the striking imagery for big screen works like The Crossing, Young Einstein, The Place At The Coast and George Ogilvie’s superb TV movie Princess Kate, as well as directing a host of shorts and a long, long list of TV commercials for big names including Qantas, Diners Club, Pernod Ricard, Maybelline, Jaguar, Coca-Cola, and BMW.
“Jeff was a gentle, kind and immensely generous collaborator,” director Alex Proyas (Dark City, The Crow) said upon Darling’s passing. “I had the good fortune to collaborate with Jeff many years ago when he was still a cinematographer. In all the years I’ve worked with many great cinematographers, my work with Jeff remains the most fulfilling partnership of all. It’s as a truly gifted director in his own right that Jeff is known the world over, with decades of the most sublime visual storytelling to his credit. Jeff made pure cinema – his work employed the poetry of the moving image, something only this unique artform can express. Jeff’s brilliance shall be hugely missed by so many friends and colleagues who were touched by his genius.”
Now, over a year since his passing, Jeff Darling’s final work as a director will make its bow at The Tribeca Film Festival. The comic thriller He Went That Way stars Aussie actor Jacob Elordi (Euphoria) and Zachary Quinto (Star Trek), and melds and twists genres with aplomb. In 1964 in the heart of America, nineteen-year-old serial killer Bobby (Elordi) hitches a ride with celebrity animal handler, Jim (Quinto), who’s peeling down Route 66 with a very important charge: TV star chimpanzee, Spanky. The relationship between these three very unlikely figures becomes increasingly strained as their journey continues.
Sadly, He Went That Way will stand as Jeff Darling’s final work as a director. He was set to adapt Robert Drewe’s book The Drowner (with a script by Justin Monjo), but passed away before that could go into development. “Jeff Darling was the most quietly spoken, ridiculously talented genius director and cinematographer,” says Darling’s friend and collaborator, Bruce Hunt. “He pushed the boundaries of commercials to something above and beyond – they became exotic enigmatic intersections of the best in cinema, art, photography, performance and sheer poetry. His interpretations were unique, and always a challenge to the expected. He worked everywhere in the world, but I think he was happiest in Australia and New Zealand with a family-like tribe of his own. He inspired generations of filmmakers and enjoyed making a production company home for them – after his start at Window Productions, he started production company Black, breaking into the European market and USA, and then opened @radicalmedia in Australia with myself, Nick Robertson and Loewn Steel, and went on to start Moth Projects and Velvet LA with his wife, producer, and rock, Sarah Blair, giving directors and researchers and assistants their first starts in the industry, including his sons and daughters. He also started the perfume brand ‘Map Of The Heart’ exporting to the toughest market in the world, France. He taught himself photography and then cinematography and was the youngest cinematographer to win the AFI for one of his many collaborations with director George Ogilvie. His aesthetic and daring inspired a generation of filmmakers, writers, and creatives. We were lucky to have him and will miss him greatly. Vale Jeff.”
He Went That Way will screen at The Tribeca Film Festival.
