I hate it when people ask me to name my favourite movie. Not because it’s a difficult question, but because I feel foolish when I tell them that my favourite movie is the last one that I saw. Because I just like movies. Or more specifically, I really like the experience of being in a cinema when the lights go down, the world goes black, and some storyteller invites me to enter a universe of his or her making. By and large, I abandon critical thought and blob along in a lava lamp of suspended disbelief for the next couple of hours, delighted to be a passenger of whatever ride I happen to be on. The thrill of vanishing into someone else’s story far outweighs whatever flaws it may have in structure, or character arcs, or whatever. And, unless it’s execrable drivel, there’s always some treasure to leave the cinema with, some reason to feel grateful for the experience. So here is my confession: I am an openly promiscuous movie lover with a voracious and undiscerning appetite.
It all started with The Sound Of Music, the first movie that I ever saw. I arrived in my creaking red velvet seat deeply resentful that my mother had dragged me away from my playmates to go and see something called a fillum. I was also deeply resentful about this stupid mustard-coloured bowtie that she made me wear. But then the curtains opened and the wall in front of me turned into a beautiful picture of The Austrian Alps and Julie Andrews came bounding over that hill. Well, I never. And there were Nazis! And poor orphaned children! And songs!
If Julie Andrews had been able to look out into her audience on that particular matinee, she would have seen a little boy in a mustard bowtie, his mouth agape in awe and wonder. Apparently I didn’t speak for days. But here’s what I learned: (1) A movie isn’t a movie without at least one good song. (2) If you want people to feel sorry for your characters, kill their mother. (3) Always try to throw in a love story. (4) Being hunted by ideologically evil men is utterly compelling viewing.
The next movie that changed my life was The Shining. I was driving down to a remote beach house on the south coast of NSW when I decided to stop off and catch a movie in Wollongong. In those days, Wollongong was more like a big country town than the hip-and-happening satellite city that it is today. People had no qualms about clutching the stranger next to them in scary movies, shouting, “Oh my God! We’re gonna die!” When Jack Nicholson put the axe through the door and “redrum” turned into “murder”, a crowded cinema rose as one, screaming their tits off. After, I proceeded to my remote beach house where I spent the night alone, listening to the pounding waves, clutching a butcher’s knife, waiting for Jack Nicholson to break down the door and chop me into little pieces. Fortunately, I am still here to report, he did not. However, here’s what I learned. (6) In the cinema, 10 percent is about what happens on screen and 90 percent is about what happens in the audience.
I didn’t see Peter Bogdanovich’s What’s Up Doc until some years after its release, but I will never forget laughing in such an uncomplicated way at the improbable antics of Ryan O’Neal and Barbra Streisand. I was transported back to all those 1930s screwball comedies that I’d watched on telly during my misspent youth. And here’s the thing that I learned about great comedies: (7) They charm you. (8) They can be sarcastic, or acerbic, but they are never mean or mean-spirited. (9) They celebrate silliness. (10) They substitute the expected with the unexpected. (11) They keep the air in the soufflé, allowing moments for audiences to process the ridiculous or absurd, creating space and permission to laugh.
My next life-changing film was Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Life-changing for the simple and obvious reason that George Miller very kindly gave me a job working on it. I was charged with directing “The Making Of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” which meant that I got to be on set every single day of the shoot, following the crew from Sydney to Coober Pedy, filming George Miller and George Ogilvy filming their movie. I was actually paid to badger them with questions about how and why they were making the creative decisions that shaped their movie. It was the best film school ever. And I got to meet Tina Turner. And go to her house in LA where we recorded the voiceover for the making-of. Here’s what I learned: (12) Tina Turner lives in a house that looks a bit like the Brady Bunch house. (13) Show, don’t tell. I learned this from both the action of the film (Mel didn’t say a lot but he sure did a lot of exciting things) and also from the experience of shooting the doco; I absorbed more about filmmaking from trailing those two brilliant directors than I could from any course or any book.
I remember sitting in the cinema, watching Pulp Fiction, thinking “this guy has really thrown all the storytelling cards into the air.” But he didn’t, of course; he rearranged them in a clever and innovative way. Just when we thought that we had discovered everything that there was to be discovered about structure, hero journeys, and characters’ arcs, Quentin Tarantino shifted our certainty, fashioning a compelling story into a bold new shape. Here’s what I learned: (13) The rules are useful, but they’re not dogma. Don’t forget them but don’t be afraid to work around them sometimes. (14) If you want to create something that rides the edge of the zeitgeist, you need to throw everything out and start again, remaining mindful of what has gone before.
Never have I seen lesson 14 so superbly applied than in the making of Mad Max: Fury Road. I don’t remember being conscious of a single thing other than what was happening on screen. I remember sitting down. I remember getting up after it was over. I was a little boy in a mustard bow-tie, unable to peel his eyes from the unfolding story. And boy, was it unfolding fast and furiously. There was scant movement in character arc; the rules were all shifting again. Margaret Sixel and George Miller were taking me to a place where I had never been before. This wasn’t just a movie. It was a ride and a game as well. Cinema itself was shifting. Here’s what I learned: (15) Like a great glacier carving its way to the sea, cinema is constantly changing. It may appear to be glorious and immutable, but it is not. Storytellers who are not mindful of the movement in the glacier will be inexorably mown down by it.
And under the glacier, no one can hear you scream.
The Lovers Guide To Rome is available now.
