By Erin Free
“I like playing fuck-ups,” laughs Steve Le Marquand, the veteran Aussie actor who memorably tutored Heath Ledger on how to rob banks in Two Hands, and who essayed a very different kind of criminal in the TV series, Small Time Gangster. In his new film, Broke, the towering screen presence gets to go into fuck-up territory once again as Ben “BK” Kelly, a former rugby league star who has fallen prey to the dual demons of gambling and booze. He receives an unlikely helping hand, however, from Cec (Max Cullen), an ageing garbage collector and former fan. Cec offers to take the now homeless Ben home for the night, where he resides with his single mother daughter and fellow footy tragic, Terri (Claire Van Der Boom). Unable to resist his lesser urges, Ben’s addiction gets the better of him, and he robs the struggling family of their modest possessions (even flogging Cec’s dead wife’s urn) and hocks them to the local pawnbroker/crook, Neck (Justin Rosniak). Ben is eventually caught by the cops but is thrown a life line when Cec decides not only to not press charges, but to actually take him in permanently to help the former Daly M Medal winner turn his life around, to the initially sneering dissatisfaction of local cop and Ben’s former teammate, Sherro (Steve Bastoni).
For die hard footy fan Le Marquand, Broke (which also stars Brendan Cowell, Pippa Grandison, and William Zappa) allowed him to mix two of his true loves: acting and rugby league. “Yeah, that was certainly part of the appeal,” laughs the Penrith Panthers tragic. Another lure was the approach of writer/director, Heath Davis, who has helmed the impressive shorts, Spoon Man, Bee Sting, Bella, and Rabbit. Eschewing the usual scripted format, the director pushed his actors to improvise off a series of detailed scene descriptions. “I was a bit nervous,” says Le Marquand about the freewheeling approach, “but also very excited. We did something a bit similar on the film, Men’s Group, but that was completely improvised, and we were almost working from scratch on that one. That was pretty terrifying. With Broke, there was a lot there for us to work off.”
Candidly admitting that he’s “totally lazy” when it comes to research, Le Marquand prefers to dip into his own rich life experiences – which have included working on cattle farms and working the door at Australia’s roughest pubs (“I actually had a job bouncing at a Friday Night Fight Night, and that was probably the toughest year that I’ve ever had,” Le Marquand tells FilmInk. “The last fight of the night was always an Aboriginal bloke versus a white guy, and the crowd would just go crazy watching these two guys beating the fuck out of each other. I did a lot of fighting and drinking there, and from there I went straight into acting school”) – when it comes to creating his characters.
This time, however, the research wasn’t too hard to wrangle, with the film’s producer, Luke Graham, being the son of former NRL player, Mark Graham, a hard-working back rower who captained New Zealand’s international side, and stands as one of the country’s top-tier rugby league greats. Through Graham, Le Marquand chatted with a host of former NRL players about the difficulties of adjusting to life after footy. “It’s changed a bit now,” says the actor, “but until recently, nothing was done to help guide these guys in their lives after their football careers. A lot of these guys have fallen on hard times, and have gone out in less than a blaze of glory.”
With Broke financed through the crowd-funding website, IndiGOGO, the project has a real point-of-difference outside of its compelling and hotly contemporary subject matter. In what may be something of a first, all of the profits made from the film will be forwarded to the charity, Men Of League, which helps former NRL players, coaches, and officials who have fallen on hard times. “That wasn’t the sole appeal,” says Le Marquand, “but it was certainly a big part of it.” It’s another cracking role for the actor, who has excelled recently as an enigmatic cult leader in the chilling thriller, One Eyed Girl, and in comic mode on the Richard Roxburgh-starring TV series, Rake. “Let’s face it – it was all about being a movie star,” Le Marquand laughs when FilmInk asks about his initial goals when he started acting. “I decided that if I was going to do it, then I might as well do it properly, and at that stage, there were no real Australians coming through. This was before Russell Crowe. I’d get into arguments with people at acting school as well, because there was lots of noble talk about the theatre and putting on the best show that you possibly can, and my explanation was, ‘Well, I couldn’t give a fuck about the theatre!’ I used to complain that theatre was dead, which went down a treat! I said, ‘All that I want to do is be a movie star and make really good movies.’ That turned out to be a little trickier than I thought! Twenty years later, and I’m still trying to be an overnight success!”
Broke is screening throughout NSW, Queensland, and New Zealand in August. For all dates and ticketing information, head to Broke’s official website.
