By Erin Free
WHAT’S IT ABOUT? Charlie Perkins is one of the most controversial and complex figures in modern Australian political and social history. A tough, resourceful and uncompromising warrior for Aboriginal rights from the sixties through to his death in 2000, Perkins led a life filled with drama, conflict and incident. A member of The Stolen Generation, the determined and keenly intelligent Perkins was the first indigenous Australian to graduate from university, after studying at Sydney University while working part time cleaning toilets. Also a highly skilled soccer player, Perkins played for Everton in the UK, but roared out when the coach slagged him off as a “kangaroo bastard.” He eventually took off for Wigan, where he toiled briefly as a coal miner. Perkins was fiercely involved with Aboriginal activism, and was one of the key members of 1965’s Freedom Ride, a bus tour through NSW protesting discrimination against Aboriginal people in small town Australia. Threatened by angry white locals at every turn, the violence-wracked Freedom Ride became a major media event. Also a key figure in the 1967 referendum which finally gave Aboriginal people the right to vote, Perkins was a constant figure in Australian politics, taking the fight to White Australia at every turn.
WHY WOULD IT MAKE A GOOD MOVIE? An explosively divisive figure for both white and Aboriginal Australia, Charlie Perkins almost demands his own big screen biopic. The activist/politician’s story works on a number of commercially viable levels: it’s an underdog tale, a rebel tract (Perkins infamously called the Liberal/Country Coalition government in WA “racist and redneck”), a potent drama (in 1975, Perkins rescued white hostages held by an Aboriginal gunman in The Department Of Aboriginal Affairs in Canberra), a political history piece, a love story (Perkins controversially married Eileen Munchenberg, a descendant of one of Adelaide’s prominent German Lutheran families), and a rise-and-fall spectacle (in 1988, Perkins’ career imploded when he was dismissed from office after granting public funds to an Aboriginal club that he chaired so it could buy poker machines). In short, Charlie Perkins’ story has the lot.
WHO SHOULD MAKE IT? Charlie Perkins’ daughter, filmmaker Rachel Perkins, not only directed the documentary Freedom Ride about her father, but also helmed the highly successful musical, Bran Nue Dae, and the superb small screen biopic, Mabo. Her intimate knowledge of the subject, combined with her impressive filmmaking chops and newfound power in the local industry, would make her the ideal choice to mount what would ideally be a three-hours-plus epic to rival similarly themed US biopics such as Malcolm X and George Wallace. With popular films on the Aboriginal experience like The Sapphires and Samson & Delilah, and well received TV series such as Redfern Now and Cleverman, there’s certainly an audience for a big, sprawling film about Charlie Perkins.
WHO SHOULD BE IN IT? Young veteran, Aaron Pedersen (The Circuit, Dead Heart, Mystery Road, Goldstone) is the best and most high profile Aboriginal actor in Australia, and would be the perfect choice to embody Charlie Perkins’ voluble mix of physicality, intensity, and charisma. Abbie Cornish would be a good fit for Eileen Munchenberg, while Dan Sultan (Bran Nue Dae) could play Perkins’ longtime friend and fellow sporting and political figure, John Moriarty, with eye catching supporting roles for Richard Roxburgh (as major supporter, Reverend Ted Noffs, who was instrumental in getting Perkins into university), David Field (who could play Bob Hawke again after doing such a great job in The Night We Called It A Day), and Bryan Brown (whose legendary status would befit the gravitas of Gough Whitlam).
