They Should Make A Movie Of That: I Am The Voice Left From Rehab By James Freud

By Erin Free

WHAT’S IT ABOUT? In the heady, coke-dusted eighties, James Freud – who sadly and tragically passed away in 2010 – was an Australian pop superstar, first as the frontman of The Teenage Radio Stars, then as a pin-up boy solo artist, and most notably as the bass player and co-lead singer/songwriter of the chart topping rock group, The Models. When the decade crunched to a close, however, James Freud was a man out of time: the scene had totally changed, and he was no longer an artist in demand. Though he’d kicked a drug habit developed while he was partying as a pop star, Freud’s lack of opportunities saw his dormant taste for booze catch fire again, and he turned into a raging alcoholic. He wrote his first autobiography – 2002’s utterly bewitching I Am The Voice Left From Drinking – about his days in the music industry and his apparent recovery from alcoholism. In his second book (2007’s equally page-turning I Am The Voice Left From Rehab), however, Freud hilariously reveals that he was actually drunk while he wrote the first book, and was also off his face while doing the press rounds and talking about how great it was to be sober. With grinding honesty, Freud tells of the toll that his out-of-control boozing had on his wife and two teenage sons, and how difficult it was for him to finally truly admit that he was an alcoholic who desperately needed help.

WHY WOULD IT MAKE A GOOD MOVIE? While offering a fascinating blow-by-blow account of life in rehab, I Am The Voice Left From Rehab is also blackly funny, with the vain, preening – and amusingly self-aware – James Freud making for a great narrator. From his crazed decision to move his family from Melbourne to The Gold Coast and his efforts to make a welfare-based record company a success, to the physical and mental breakdown that nearly killed him, Freud puts an absurdist, pithy spin on everything. His sad, sad passing would make a film even more affecting and bittersweet. “James’ battle with alcoholism has been well chronicled,” Michael Gudinski, whose Mushroom Records launched Freud’s solo career and that of Models, said on the musician’s death. “His two books on his recovery and five years’ sobriety were bestsellers and gave a lot of people who were suffering the same affliction comfort and hope. Unfortunately, James has succumbed to his disease and taken his own life.”

WHO SHOULD MAKE IT? With a resume boasting a long list of music videos and the viciously caustic, riotously funny 2006 gut-punch, Suburban Mayhem, director, Paul Goldman, is the right man for this job. He would give the film just the right mix of rock industry savvy, humanist grit, and cinder-black humour.

WHO SHOULD BE IN IT? A master chameleon adept at playing real life figures (his Andy Warhol in the sadly under seen Factory Girl is an amazing creation), Guy Pearce could hit the look and sound of James Freud perfectly, and he also has the natural charisma that would make the on-screen character both compelling and (against all odds) loveable. His sideline career as a musician (check out Pearce’s impressive album, Broken Bones) would help even more. As Freud’s smart, independent, but ultimately partially enabling wife, Sally, Justine Clarke (Look Both Ways) would bring the right mix of strength and sensitivity to the role. As well as potential cameos from real life figures such as Molly Meldrum and Bert Newton, there are also scene stealing roles for the various oddballs that Freud meets in rehab (Roy Billing, Anh Do and Katie Wall would be great as, respectively, an old drunk with anger issues, a romantically inclined drug addict, and a seductive junky), and the rogue’s gallery of addicts, doctors, and counsellors that he encounters along the way on his hard-fought path to – tragically only temporary – sobriety.