by Abhi Parasher
“One morning, I was scrolling on Instagram, and I came across this guy just sitting in his car in front of his camera saying ‘I am so, so, stupid. I am a dumbass slave’,” shares writer/director Dane McCusker, whose feature film The Big Dog recently premiered at the Sydney Film Festival.
“As soon as I saw the video, I knew that world and that story. It all just came to me in a flash.”
The Big Dog, McCusker’s feature debut, recounts the few hours before alpha stockbroker Richard hosts a graduation party for his despondent son. However, he finds that his bank accounts have been drained by his “findom” mistress, Princess Paige.
A “findom mistress” is (usually) a non-sexual dominatrix hired by wealthy men to spend their money and humiliate them.
“The last couple of shorts I made before The Big Dog were exploring similar thematic territory,” says McCusker. “They all sort of explored this dysfunctional man and how that impacts his relationships.”
McCusker made the feature film as a part of his capstone project during his Masters of Directing course at the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS).
“I definitely came into the course quite strategically to make a feature. I had seen Sequin in a Blue Room do it quite successfully a couple of years before me,” says McCusker. “I wasn’t able to get anything up any other way. I was struggling to find money and I realised this would be a good way to at least get it shot.”
Attending AFTRS meant access to certain world-class resources. “Fortunately, and it’s weird saying fortunately about this, but COVID happened right when we started and so I was able to grab some of my super out to help fund it, which is a little risky,” the filmmaker laughs.
“It took us a while to find the rest of the money for post. A company called Slated in the US helped us find that last bit of cash along with a deal with a post house to get it over the line.”
Budget restrictions also informed McCusker in the early development process. “We had very, very limited resources and a lot of restrictions. So, one location, reduced cast, all of those kinds of things came into play just to make sure we could do a good job with the finite resources that we had.”
The Big Dog’s protagonist Richard (Julian Garner) presents a complex set of character traits that could be deemed “toxic”. Dealing with such a destructive male character was a sensitive matter that required a delicate touch.
“The thing with this story is that it positions the audience automatically to be in a place of judgement of that character and their behaviour from the beginning. I think it was very important to leverage that in the storytelling” says McCusker. “So, I placed the audience in a place where they could judge this guy, and then slowly throughout the story hopefully they find some salvageable humanity.
“At the same time, I didn’t want to justify or excuse anything he does. It was a real challenge trying to take him to task while also appreciating that every human has the ability to change.”
Not only was positioning the audience an important part of delivering the right message, but it is also a comedic device employed by the filmmaker.
“A lot of the comedy leverages on the audience being in a position of moral superiority. You watch the film knowing this guy is a piece of shit, and I think a little bit of the joy comes from wanting him to be punished,” explains McCusker. “Then, over the course of the story, that idea is challenged a little bit.”
For McCusker, an audience award at Sydney Film Festival (admittedly, from a home crowd) and a distribution deal with emerging company Pivot Pictures, speaks to a healthy independent film industry in Australia, paving the way for exciting and risky stories.
“It seems like the industry is changing a little bit. In the last couple of years, there has been a boom of good independent Australian films that have been made outside of the system here,” says McCusker. “Hopefully that continues and gains momentum so that people can do it without having to wait or go through the traditional processes.”
The Big Dog is in cinemas 9 November 2023
