Plenty of actors have turned to writing in order to give themselves a meaty script to sink their teeth into – the obvious example here is Affleck and Damon’s Oscar winning screenplay for Good Will Hunting.
However, Monica Zanetti (pictured above, centre), who both co-stars in and wrote the new independent Australian film Skin Deep, drew on something more personal when she put pen to paper – her own brush with melanoma, the potentially fatal disease that afflicts Leah (Zara Zoe), one of the film’s main characters.
“I had been diagnosed with melanoma at a young age,” Zanetti recalls. “And while I was one of the lucky ones, it opened me up to this whole world of incredibly brave young people who were dealing with a sudden death sentence in their twenties. So I was definitely inspired by that; but mostly it was the characters of Leah and Caitlin who came to me first, they stayed with me for about 6 months before it clicked for me what their story was and once I knew that I just started writing it, and writing it fast!”
The film charts one night in the life of Leah, who has been diagnosed with terminal skin cancer. Left to her own devices in central Sydney after her unseen boyfriend fails to pick her up, she makes a connection with Caitlin (Zanetti) an emotionally troubled rock chick. The pair spend the night wandering the streets of Newtown, discussing life, the universe and everything in between.
Once the initial idea came together, the project developed very quickly. “I wrote the first draft in about a month. We went into pre-production on draft four and we shot on draft fourteen, so there were quite a lot of re-writes in the weeks leading up to the shoot. I spent a lot of time taking my laptop to pubs in Newtown and writing there, just trying to really submerge myself in that world at all times.”
Zanetti had writing and filmmaking experience, having made the short film Guardian Elf and the Sydney Fringe Festival play Still Seeking Other, but reached out to emerging filmmaker Jon Leahy to call the shots on her feature screenwriting debut.
“Jonnie was a good friend of our cinematographer, Rodrigo Dawson, who suggested him for the job,” she tells us. “He’d done a short film called North Kids at VCA which had the same feel as Skin Deep. We then had a Skype meeting where we chatted about how we saw the film and realised we were very much on same page. Plus we liked each other, so it was a really easy decision to work with him in the end.”
Like so many independent artists these days, Zanetti and her team turned to crowdfunding to secure their production budget, activating a loyal support base via Pozible. “Knowing it was our first film we were never going to apply for any government funding for production costs and crowdfunding basically seemed like the most obvious answer. We’ve had such wonderful experiences with crowdfunding, it was amazing how generous and supportive people were to help us get over the line. We actually raised double our initial target.”
Shot almost entirely on the streets of Newtown, Skin Deep boasts an extremely authentic visual aesthetic – albeit one that came at the cost of severe logistical headaches. “Our amazing locations manager almost had a heart attack when she saw we were shooting everything in Newtown. Because parking isn’t necessarily excellent and there are no public toilets… at all! Luckily Newtown is such an excellent community and so we were taken in by businesses who allowed us to have our unit bases in their shops and offices. There was only one where we had to hire a base trailer, so we were pretty lucky!”
Not one to rest on her laurels, Zanetti has a number of plates spinning at the moment, creatively speaking. “I’m currently working with director Leon Ford (Griff the Invisible) on developing another feature that I’ve written and I’ve also created a political comedy web series which is currently in the funding application stages. Jonnie and I started the production company JAM Pictures earlier this year with Akos Armont and we just finished the short film On Hold For Taylor (about, yes, Taylor Swift.) through that company. I’ve also been doing a bit of work as a development consultant for Jungle (Previously Jungle Boys) and Essential Media. And I’m writing several other things at all times – I actually really need to take it down a notch!”
