By Travis Johnson
Last night, Tuesday, June 14, saw the premiere of MESSiAH, the new short film by actor turned director, Damian Walshe-Howling, at the Sydney Film Festival. Handpicked from over 4,000 entries by The Weinstein Company, MESSiAH was produced as part of the Lexus Short Film Series. We managed to get a little time with Walshe-Howling only two hours before the film – his third – was unveiled to the world.
“They just put my first beer in my hand,” Walshe-Howling jokes. “You’ll get some loose answers.”
Set and shot in the remote Kimberly region of Western Australia, MESSiAH tells the story of a tourist couple who have a strange encounter with a mysterious Indigenous man (David Gulpilil) while travelling in the remote outback. Walshe-Howling admits he’s a bit trepidatious about showing the film for the first time.
“I’m really excited, I’d say, which is in between confident and nervous.: he says. “Of course it’s always really interesting when you’ve spent that much time with a group of people collaborating on a project that you’ve loved and everybody’s put their love into. There’s the cast and crew that’ll be here, and I know everybody there is really supportive, and that’s beautiful – and it’s always really interesting to put your film out into the world, because you’ve spent six months writing, and then playing, and then out on set, then the last seven weeks in dark rooms cutting it and doing the sound. Of course, this is the first time we see it with an extensive audience, so if I wasn’t nervous I think I’d be dead. You know what I mean? I think it’s just natural to have a few nerves. But I’m excited for people to see it. It’s just been a really wonderful experience.”
Growing up in a with an actor/director mother, Walshe-Howling says he was always interested in the arts, and that transitioning to a behind-the-camera position seems to him to be a fairly organic move. “I grew up around that rehearsal process and I was always involved in different ways, watching them self-create pieces and all sorts of things. So I guess, in a sense, that all rubbed off on me and acting was the one avenue that I took, but there was always an interest in telling stories through film. Cinema’s my favourite thing – I love it. Put me in a room with a bunch of seats and a screen and I can disappear for days. It’s a similar sort of thing happening for me at the moment with some of the television series that are around – things like Bloodline. There’s such great narrative happening in television as well. So yeah, I think it was just a natural progression, really.”
MESSiAH actually marks Walshe-Howling’s third time out directing a short film, following 2007’s The Bloody Sweet Hit and 2011’s Suspended, but its location shoot and sense of scale, if not length, makes it a step up in complexity and difficulty from his previous works. “Suspended, the second film that I made, had quite a bit of scale as well. I mean, not quite this much, but even The Bloody Sweet Hit was across a number of locations. In a sense I guess you just take it a step at a time – that’s the process. The budget was a substantial budget, so I thought that this idea deserves to be told in a way that showcase and is supported by the land itself.”
He chalks MESSiAH‘s impressive visual impact up to his cinematographer, Denson Baker (The Black Balloon, Oranges and Sunshine). “Dennison’s got such a beautiful eye, such a great vision. We collaborate on a level which is really quite wonderful. We discovered each other a few years ago and we really liked working together, and I was lucky enough that Dennison was between shooting features when I asked him to come out and do this and he flew out from the States, so that was wonderful.” Still, he notes, the decision to shoot on location was a difficult one. “A big part of the budget went into the location that we used, because you’ve got to transport everybody to that remote part of Australia, but everybody saw that was where it needed to be shot.”
Walshe-Howling is also nothing less than effusive in his praise of Gulpilil, who he wanted involved in the film right from the get-go. “David popped into my head when the idea came up, so I wrote the role for David. Not having known David personally and loving him as an actor when I was a child – when I was six years old I saw Storm Boy, which switched me on to indigenous culture and switched me on the David as a person. I’ve always loved him; he’s a favourite. I just think he’s magnificent. So to write it for him and to get it to him… and to have David Gulpilil call me on a Sunday afternoon and say, ‘I want to do your film’ is just magnificent – he just got it. He just said, ‘I get it, I love it, I want to do your film.’ That was a very special moment – probably one of my favourite moments in my life!”
With three well-received shorts under his belt, the next obvious step here is for Walshe-Howling to tackle a feature. It’s a notion he’s certainly not averse to. “The opportunities to do that would be very welcomed, whether it’s feature or long form television stuff. As I said, I love cinema, whether it’s my own piece – I’m developing my own pieces, as is everybody – or something that I collaborate on, or something that has a script, something that speaks to me, I’d definitely be interested in that process. One step at a time!”
