By James Mottram
“He’s definitely like Eddie Murphy in The Golden Child,” director, Wayne Blair, tells FilmInk at The Berlin Film Festival. “He’s like the Aboriginal Golden Child. That would be a good way to describe him.”
Though hardly one of Eddie Murphy’s most beloved films, Michael Ritchie’s 1986 action-fantasy-adventure flick is not a bad reference point for the ABC-TV production, Cleverman, which is being pitched in the most simplistic and saleable terms as the first Australian production to feature an Aboriginal superhero. In The Golden Child, Murphy plays a private detective charged with finding and protecting The Golden Child, a Buddhist mystic who has been kidnapped by an evil sorcerer. Sure, Cleverman – the first episodes of which premiered at The Berlin Film Festival – doesn’t have a wisecracking private eye at its centre, nor any Buddhist mysticism, but this is also a tale of a foreshadowed spiritual leader, and the enormous societal changes that he brings.
Created by Ryan Griffen, Cleverman stars Hunter Page-Lochard (Around The Block) as Koen West, a young man living in a futuristic world divided into humans and “sub-humans” – or “hairies”, on account of their hirsute appearance – who have been confined to an area called The Zone. As Koen inherits special abilities that make him The Cleverman, a whole new world of power and responsibility opens up to him. “He definitely is the unrequited hero, which is great,” says Wayne Blair, who alternated directing duties on Cleverman’s six episodes with another actor turned director, Leah Purcell. “You get enamoured with those types of stories from the day that you were born. Cleverman is one of those first ones that will definitely be seen as an Aboriginal unrequited superhero of some sorts. He is a superhero, which hopefully kids or young people around the world will grab and hold on to, because the intellect behind our Cleverman is quite unique.”
Cleverman is indeed unique, but he shares more than a little with today’s crop of movie superheroes in that he’s no simple one-dimensional, white-hat-wearing good guy. This is a character with layers, and a whole grab bag of flaws. “Koen has got to step up in his own life and be a better person,” says Blair of his central character. “He has to fully grow into who he should be, spiritually, for his family, for himself, and for his community and, I suppose, the world. Initially, he’s a fly by night con-man. He’s charming, he’s sleeping with his best friend’s girlfriend, and he’s taking advantage of the world. Then he just has to grow up, unknowingly.”
Ryan Griffen, who drew from Aboriginal folklore and even sought permission from Aboriginal elders to make Cleverman, explained before the series’ Berlin premiere that he wanted to take 60,000-year-old stories and “put them in a modern environment.” Commissioned by ABC Indigenous, the show ingeniously mixes a futuristic, dystopian feel with mythology that’s been around for centuries. “Before colonisation – invasion – in Australia, Clevermen were very prevalent in tribes or clans in Australia,” says Wayne Blair. “I can only speak on behalf of the clans that we’ve talked about in our film, but since the English have been in Australia, Clevermen have waned away. They’re like shaman, to a certain extent. They’re quite special. In our modern day story, Cleverman is a hero that’s been there for 60,000 years. And unknowingly, he’s come back again in the shape of this young 25-year-old man.”
Backing up Hunter Page-Lochard as that Cleverman is a strong cast of local and international players. Alongside Deborah Mailman, Ryan Corr, and Australian-born Hunger Games star, Stef Dawson, there are even higher profile players in successful Aussie export, Frances O’Connor, and Game Of Thrones’ Iain Glenn. “It was one of those, ‘As if we’d get Frances O’Connor’ things, but then we just asked and she said yes, and it was like, ‘Whoa!’ I’ve never met Frances, but I’ve been a big fan of her work. It was the same with Iain Glen. I was a Game Of Thrones fan, and we felt that we should go for someone like Iain Glen for one particular role. Then we just thought, ‘Let’s go for Iain Glen!’ And he put his hand up too. I think people responded to the first two scripts. They were strong and they were different. I think Frances wanted to come home and Iain wanted a change, and they certainly got that. They’ve been absolutely awesome.”
Significantly, Cleverman is Blair’s first project to see release since he enjoyed enormous success with the music driven hit, The Sapphires, and the genesis of the TV series can be traced back to the final stages of that film’s production. Ryan Griffen was involved at Goalpost Pictures, the production house behind The Sapphires, and his concept for Cleverman found its way to Wayne Blair. “I saw the treatment three years ago,” the director explains. “I was supportive of it, but I politely passed. But twelve months later, I read the first two scripts, and I was so responsive. I thought, ‘Shit! If we’re going to do this, the time is right. We need to do it right now.’ And then we got an opportunity to do that. The money presented itself, and I read the first two scripts again, and was like, ‘Put your hand up, Wayne! Please put your hand up and go in 200%.’ So in the last twelve months, I said yes, and we just haven’t stopped.”
And it’s not going to stop any time soon. As well as debuting on ABC-TV in June, Cleverman has also been picked up by the BBC in the UK, and will screen on Sundance TV, to a potential audience of 53 million people. For Wayne Blair, it’s been a major pay-off. “It was a huge challenge,” the director says of Cleverman. “It was quite ambitious. I remember thinking, ‘How the heck are we going to do this? Tonally, how do we get this world right?’ We didn’t have the budget of District 9 or The Bourne Identity, but we had some hero elements in our show. We just had to do our homework and get it right, and I think that we have.” And the big question: will Cleverman continue? “There’s definitely scope for a second season,” Blair replies. “How that plays in the world market place, I’m not too sure. But there’s definitely an opportunity to kick our small little story on again.”
Cleverman will launch on ABC and ABC iView on Thursday, June 2 at 9:30pm. Stay tuned for more on Cleverman right here, and for more on the show, head to its Facebook page. Read FilmInk’s interview with Cleverman co-star, Frances O’Connor here.
