by FilmInk Staff

Nobody knew it then, but this would be one most enduring and successful creative teams Aussie movies have ever produced.

Three years later, they made their feature debut. 1986 might be remembered as the year that introduced Mick Dundee, but it also gave us Malcolm. Tass directed. Parker wrote it and did the cinematography. Both produced.

Starring Colin Friels in the title role, it was about an isolated, lonely inventor who finds a new life and a family when he teams with two crooks, John Hargreaves and Lindy Davies. This trio of misfits use inspired gadgetry to pull off bank heists.

Its set piece action sequences – a car that converts into two motorcycles, ‘Ned Kelly-armour ashcans’ dancing in the dark to the rinky-dink off-kilter melody of the Penguin Café Orchestra – are now classic moments in Australian cinema. Still, what made Malcolm a hit was its tenderness. It might have been fantasy of a kind, but its characters were rooted in reality.

In 1990, Tass/Parker did The Big Steal. It was another caper-comedy, made just as the teen movie was cresting. It paired two up and comers, Ben Mendelsohn and Claudia Karvan and the sparks flew. This one perfected the Tass/Parker trademark of eccentric realism and mined comedy gold out of cross-dressing used-car swindlers, a Nissan Cedric and the irresistible urge to own a Jag. Like Malcolm, Big Steal was an award-winning hit.

In the thirty years since, Tass/Parker have run their own studio operation, worked in the US, and been part of a raft of memorable films including Amy (1997) and Matching Jack (2010).

Tass is Jury President at CinefestOZ this month where her new film, Oleg, a documentary about Russia’s Brad Pitt, Oleg Vidov will screen.

Meanwhile Umbrella has re-issued Malcolm and The Big Steal as part of their Sunburnt Blu-Ray Special Editions.

We spoke to Tass/Parker about their work and career.

GETTING STARTED

Nadia, you were acting before the first film, Malcolm?

NADIA TASS “Yes. I was directing theatre at the Playbox and the Melbourne Theatre company and acting in a lot of TV (including Prisoner and Skyways).

All of that was so that I could make money and go to New York and go to the Actors Studio. It was about making sure I was prepared when it came to make my first film. I always wanted to direct films.

David you began in film as a stills photographer?

DAVID PARKER “Yes. My job was to record the process, the behind the scenes and the ‘drama’ of the story. I got to read the script. I selected what would be the key images. Some of the producers didn’t even think about that. Watching is a great way to learn. It was my apprenticeship.”

Tass/Parker began in the 1980s, a boom period for Aussie movies.

Your first two big hits Malcolm in 1986 and The Big Steal in 1990 really stood out. They were small, sweet, very human. They seemed like a reaction to the bloat of things like The Man from Snowy River, Bourke and Wills, Phar Lap and the Coolangatta Gold.

DP “Well, we would love to take credit for that. But I think the size of our films were a question of necessity because of the budgets we had [laughs]…but I do recall that Nadia and I would watch these films being made…the technicians, particularly the camera, lighting, grips got all the time in the world to set up a shot. We felt sorry for the actors. They had no time to work the scene.”

Of course, fine acting was a feature of Tass/Parker.

DP “We instilled a rule upon ourselves, where I would only get an hour to do the lighting and set the camera and the rest of the time was used for Nadia and the actors.”

NT “I start working with the material a long time before we actually shoot. I need to know that my vision will be executed. Once I know what I want, and someone makes a suggestion, I’ll know if it fits. Accepting it is a joy.”

Malcolm and the Big Steal make Melbourne look very beautiful. And grey.

DP “[Laughs] I shot a pilot for Francis Ford Coppola for The Outsiders. He said ‘I want the look you got in Malcolm.’ I was too honest, I said, ‘Francis, I don’t think I can make LA look like Melbourne.’”

Film sets are unique workplaces, known for their special pressures, and occasionally, the sort of behaviour that would not be tolerated in an office or factory. But your sets had a reputation for niceness.

NT “When we made Malcolm, a few of the crew looked at me and said, ‘she’s so young.’ It’s about trust. And respect. You must accept that challenge of creating a culture of trust. I wanted to create an atmosphere where everyone could give their best. The only way to do that is to ‘embrace’ the crew and cast. I need to be grateful and gracious about it. I had a vision but there’s a way to say ‘no’ without using a big stick. At that time there were very few female movie directors.”

MALCOLM

DP “I was doing stills on Bourke and Wills. We were on location in South Australia (in the Outback). I was writing the script at night.”

Malcolm creeps up on you. It starts off very quiet but reinvents itself as it goes along, a bit like the main character, becoming laugh out loud, wacky even surreal.

NT “Well, Malcolm the character was based on my brother John. He was incredibly intelligent but socially inept. The gadgets came from David, who tinkers all the time.”

DP “I was a hopeless student, but I won science prizes. I built a self-opening garage. I took a motor mower engine and put it on my sister’s bike. A friend pointed out that I had made a vehicle capable of 400 miles an hour with the gearing I had chosen to use!”

Malcolm won eight AFI awards including picture, screenplay and director. Parker was still working as a stills photographer at the time.

NT “About eight months after Malcolm came out, I was in New York at a talk at the Actors Studio hosted by Sydney Pollock. No one knew me. He started talking about this film from Australia. He screened an excerpt from Malcolm. I squirmed. He started to talk about [the nuances of this particular scene]. I thought ‘wow, he got what I wanted to do!’ Afterwards, I introduced myself. He said, ‘what am I doing this class for? You should be running it.’”

THE BIG STEAL

Did you feel then that Ben Mendelsohn and Claudia Karvan would become so special to Australian film and tv?

NT “Yes! Benny has these layers and layers of human complexity. But at the time, he felt he couldn’t do comedy. Claudia was eighteen and still at school. She could work off instinct and just absorb the comedy. Time and again, I hear ‘that movie has great acting in it!’ I look at it and see the mechanism of acting. I don’t want to see how the person gets there. I just want to be in the moment. [Both of them] could be immediate. Visceral.”

Like Malcolm, the comedy revolves around character and a caper. But it’s got some great lines. Like when Ben’s Danny picks up Claudia’s Joanna for their first date and her dad Tim Robertson says…

DP “‘Don’t touch her breasts.’”

NT “I think David had some serious adventures with cars when he was younger; did it involve swapping engines…can’t really say…[Laughs]”

MAKING FILMS THEN AND NOW

When Tass/Parker started making films, money flooded into the industry because of the tax-write offs involved.

DP “Crews went from film to film. [Yet, there were shonks]. I remember a screenwriter saying: ‘I got a call on Thursday to finish a script. They start shooting Monday!’”

NT “It’s hard to get a film up today without making compromises. I mean [you are asked] to adjust your narrative. Who’s asking me to do this? Do they not believe in my vision, do they not see it as worthy? Do they want to make their own film based on what I’ve presented? That needs to be examined.”

DP “There are films being made that I would not want to be involved in. They are not into the refinement of the script or the idea or striving to get the best cast because there is a market out there with streaming where you can say, ‘let’s knock it together as quickly as we can’, I hate that.”

NT “In the ‘80s, we were looking to raise the money from stockbrokers who had a sense of humour.”

Is it true that you and David had a meeting where you used one of the Ned Kelly ‘ashcan’ robbery gadgets as a ‘prop’? I read that you used a remote control, ‘drove it’ into some financier’s office, a [plastic] gun popped out and a voice said: “give us money for our film or we’ll blow your balls off!”?

NT “Yes! If you did that today, you’d get arrested!”

Shares:

Leave a Reply