Stephen McCallum: 100% Street Cred

By Liam Dunn

1% is the gritty, violent, debut film of Australian director Stephen McCallum, who brings an epic, Shakespearean element to the story of an outlaw motorcycle gang in Perth, Western Australia and the battle between the two leaders for the heart and soul of the club. Ahead of its Sydney Film Festival screenings we had a chance to sit down with the director to talk screen violence, the legacy of Australian cinema, shooting his film in Perth, and the Shakespearean nature of outlaw motorcycle gangs.

How did you become involved as director of 1%?

 The script originally came to me from a producer friend of mine, Michael Pontin. We went to film school together and he really liked a short film that I made there called Six Straws. It was a colonial convict thriller set in Australia, a very visceral, masculine piece dealing with moral questions, and he really liked that. He said, “I have this script called 1% set in an outlaw motorcycle club and I think you will be really great for it.”

So I took a read of the script and it was pretty good but I thought it could do with a lot of work. It was written by Matt Nable in a really strong voice, but I thought the story could be a lot stronger. It was a traditional crime film where there is a gang war between multiple gangs, set in the ’70s, it felt like something we’d seen before, but what it had at the heart of it which I loved was this central dramatic premise of a man who has to choose between his father and his brother. I thought that was a really interesting concept.

So I said, if I was going to direct this film I would take this sort of visual approach to it and I had references to a lot of actual gangs, like skinheads and the tribal gangs of New Zealand, and also films like Romper Stomper and Once Were Warriors. I had this particular way that I see the world and I would bring a hardness and a “tribal-ness” to this world. I read the script and I said you could set it a thousand years ago, it doesn’t need to be set now and so I was interested in the tribalism as an expression of subculture. Then from there I just wanted to elevate the story and tell it as one conflict set in one club and also elevate the female characters, who were quite minimal when I first read the draft, I wanted to bring them to forefront.

One thing that is apparent in the film is it’s influenced by these earlier Australian films that portray toxic masculinity, like Romper Stomper, as you mentioned, and Ghosts… of the Civil Dead. Were you conscious of these films when you were considering the story?

I loved those movies growing up, like Romper Stomper and particularly Ghosts… of the Civil Dead as well, that was a big influence. For me, part of the interesting thing was seeing what makes someone want to be a part of this world, because it is such an inherently tragic, dangerous world, things don’t generally end well for these people in these clubs. They usually end up in jail, or they get thrown out of the club, or it ends violently, or they’re past their prime and don’t know what to do with their lives afterward. So yeah, it was all about why someone would want to be a part of that. What is the reward but also what is the cost?

This film is an ensemble piece so the casting process must have been more complex than just finding the right actors, as you also would need to ensure they fit together as a group. Can you talk to us a little about how you assembled the cast?

I am a performance-first director, even though I come from a real visual background. I love films where, like Romper Stomper, or even Animal Kingdom to some extent or Snowtown, they feel like they’re a real gang, they feel like a real group of people and the chemistry’s right and they feel like they would logically be together and hang out together. It all started from Matt [Nable] as the writer and playing Knuck, we knew that was the cornerstone of the piece, then building a cast around him.

For Paddo [the film’s protagonist], it was really important that he still had a sense of humanity.  We needed someone who brought a real charisma and humanity, who could be connected to straight away. Knuck’s all kind of ego and brute force and machismo and Paddo is more caring, you see that with his brother.

With the women it was like finding people who weren’t afraid of being strong female characters and just owning that. That has been really rewarding, the response, particularly from women, seeing the female characters [played by Abbey Lee and Simone Kessell] fighting each other rather than sitting around talking about men. Josh McConville is one of our great theatre actors and hadn’t done a lot of film, but he really relished the role of being Skink [Paddo’s brother]. It came from Ryan [Corr] actually, we had another actor attached to Skink and he couldn’t do it for whatever reason and I said to Ryan, who plays Paddo, who would be your dream brother and he said, “Josh McConville”.

Aaron Pedersen is in the film for what is really an extended cameo,but he’s always a welcome addition to any cast, how did he get involved?

Sugar was a really hard character to cast. I wanted someone with a real unpredictability to them and a real devil-may-care charm, different to Knuck, who is smart but you don’t know if he will kiss you or punch you in the face. We cast 30 different actors who all played it a little comic book villain or just didn’t quite get it, or too hard, too straight villain. Then our casting director, Kirsty McGregor, asked if we’d be interested in Aaron Pedersen. The role hadn’t been written as an Aboriginal, which I love. I mean, I love Aaron Pedersen, I loved him in Mystery Road and Goldstone and never really seen him play a villain before –  I know he did in Killing Ground, but this is a bit different. He brought a lot of unpredictability to the role, a lot of charm, and people love watching him.

A lot of people are noting the Shakespearean, archetypal nature of the story and characters but there is a relevancy to the present political climate of the old guard fighting to retain the status quo. Is that an element of the story you thought about when making the film?

I was thinking of the age-old conflict of father versus son. The young bull that has new ideas and is more progressive and isn’t just using brawn to get what he wants, he’s using his head. He wants a future where they’re not looking over their shoulder the whole time, where the old bull is coming out of prison and he is all about keeping the status quo – it’s ego getting in the way of what’s best. But I did think it was like big business or it was like a cult or a kingdom; in terms of Shakespeare, just focusing on that universal theme I thought was a really cool way, rather than making it just guys swinging their dicks around, quite frankly, and really it would have resonance. Everyone has been in a situation where they can see you can progress things forward and do things a better way but there’s someone stuck in the way. This is a heightened, more violent version of that.

The violence in the film is really harrowing, but the more intense violence occurs off screen. Was this approach to violence an important aspect in making the film?

The films I like to watch are ones that make me part of the story, so I have to work with the story to feel and sense what is going on, but also to understand and interpret, and a lot of those films don’t show violence or choose when to show violence on screen so you’re actively engaged in the story rather than being spoon-fed everything. We do that a lot in the film – not all the information is revealed – but I like films where you have your own backstory for the characters. Everyone will come out asking themselves about what was the history of Paddo and Skink, and how they got in the club – did Knuck save them? It’s all pretty universal so people understand which is good.

In terms of the violence, I wanted to approach the violence the same way we approached all the drama. We shot it to be as real as possible, we did long takes, for example, with the initiation, the whole scene was played out and the camera would react to what was in front of it. So the camera feels like it’s in the room with the performers and it becomes very subjective, unpredictable in terms of reacting the same way someone would react. I think you allow the audience to become a part of that and, like you said, it is always more harrowing what you don’t see, ten times more harrowing seeing someone’s face and imagining what’s happening. I think that’s what’s so confronting for people is that they’re involved in the story.

You shot the film in Perth, Western Australia, but the use of locations in the industrial areas and outer suburbs gives it a completely unique look. Can you tell us a bit about your approach to the shoot and the look of the locations?

I wanted to set it in Perth but I didn’t want it to be about Perth. I wanted it to just be an Australian city and it’s also the fringes of an Australian city. We’re so used to Perth being portrayed as this bright, beautiful place but not everywhere in Perth is like that at all. Areas around Kwinana and the eastern suburbs are pretty dicey areas for the most part and I just wanted to show Perth on screen in a way it had never been seen before. So we were very careful with the locations we chose. We probably looked at one hundred houses to get the one we used for Paddo’s house, but then also the riding shots that we chose, we wanted to add a sense of scale.

The danger with Perth is that it is so flat, it’s hard not to make everything just feel like a road, so we really researched a lot, using Google Earth, to find roads with dynamism and background and hills to give perspective. Shelley [Farthing-Dawe] was excellent. This is one of his first feature films and he is a celebrated cinematographer in the commercial arena but he really took it to the next level. One of the big influences for us visually was Sicario, we just loved that film, both of us, and also the first season of True Detective as well, and that made me think, can we bring a Gothic aspect to an Australian film? I also had 360 degree sets because I wanted the actors to be able to do whatever they needed to do, so if the actors wanted to move anywhere we would be ready to go. All the lighting was practical, all the exteriors were with natural light, we used very little equipment because we wanted to move fast, shoot fast, and keep the energy really high. Shelley was great at making things really beautiful out of the everyday and not too constructed.

Read our review of 1% here.