If you want to contact us, send an e-mail.
CLICK HERE
BACK , 67 , 68 , 69 , 70 , 71 , 72 , 73 , 74 , 75 , 76 , 77 , 78 , 79 , 80 , 81 , 82 , 83 , 84 , 85 , 86 , NEXT
15 MAY 2008.- BRUCE DAVEY, "We don't want to lose the magic." |
|
|
Source: The AUSTRALIAN
Life has come full circle for Bruce Davey, the Sydney accountant who joined forces with Mel Gibson in the late 1980s to form what would grow into one of Hollywood's most successful independent entertainment ventures.
After 20 years of rough and tumble in the most cutthroat of businesses, where he gained a well-earned reputation for driving a hard bargain, Davey has moved into his multi-million-dollar Sydney harbourside mansion, enjoying again living in what he calls the best city in the world.
Although he has handed the day-to-day operations of Santa Monica-based Icon, the company he started with Gibson, over to Mark Gooder (who was promoted from its Australian chief) Davey is still intimately involved as chairman of the board.
Last week, he was surrounded by boxes as Icon was moving its premises into the Dendy offices in Newtown, Sydney after purchasing the arthouse cinema chain from the Becker Group for $21million in a contentious deal which was completed on April 30.
"None of this would be possible without Mel," Davey said last week as he reflected on the growth of Icon into a serious independent film and television producer, sales company, distributor and, now, exhibition company.
Their relationship stretches back to 1980, when Davey, a chartered accountant with a clientele in the entertainment industry, was asked to help a young actor. "Mel came to see me with these shoeboxes filled with papers and three years of taxes that hadn't been done," he says.
"I remember that I got him a refund of about $1200 and he thought I was a genius. I suppose it started from that."
From those beginnings, their relationship grew until Davey became Gibson's business manager. "I did have opportunities (to work exclusively) with other clients, like Air Supply and actors like Judy Davis and Hugo Weaving, but there was something about Mel. I really believed in him. I think what I liked about him was the fact that he couldn't tell a lie to save his life."
Davey says the pair got to Hollywood by accident.
"Mel wanted to make Hamlet and the (Hollywood) agent he had who was helping him with it lasted about five minutes. It's pretty hard to get someone to give you money to make Hamlet," he said. "I told him that if he wanted to make this happen, someone had to roll up their sleeves and find the (financing) and he asked me if I wanted to have a crack at it and I agreed."
The pair decided to form a company and thought about names as they sat in the study of Gibson's cattle property in NSW.
"He came up with the name," says Davey, "We were down at his farm and I told him he needed a name and that it wasn't a good idea to have Gibson in the name because he had been involved in another company (which was not successful) and he looked across his den and saw a book on Russian icons and he looks up and says, 'Let's call it, Icon'. I thought, 'That'll work."'
And work it did, though it took many years for Icon to be treated seriously.
"Once we'd done Hamlet (in 1990), Mel said, "Can we do this again?" Davey remembers.
"We spoke to the studios and Warners was happy to give him a deal, mainly because they didn't want to let him out of their sights because of (the success of the) Lethal Weapon (franchise). But they thought Icon was a joke. I'll always remember that; they didn't take us seriously at all.
"They just thought it'd be one of these vanity deals they give stars, where they pay for your overheads and kick you some money and nothing comes of it. Sort of thing where they give you an office and money just so when they want to have lunch with you, they know where to find you.
"But even then, when he was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, Mel was different."
Click HERE to see PHOTOS
Davey said Gibson once told him the business was "about longevity".
"He says, 'While I'm an actor I want to use that (influence) to produce and direct because I don't think I'll always be an actor'," he said.
"He understood back then that he needed to have more strings to his bow. But when we went to Warners and said Mel had found a film he wanted to direct (Man Without A Face), Terry (Semel) and Bob (Daly), who were running the place back then, couldn't understand it.
"They couldn't believe that Mel wouldn't take $US15 million to make Lethal Weapon 3 but instead wanted to go and direct Men Without A Face for peanuts. They didn't get it because in Hollywood, it's all about money and Mel's not all about money. He's passionate and involved and wants to do things that have artistic integrity."
As Randall Wallace, who wrote Braveheart, which earned Gibson and Davey an Oscar, once said of Gibson: "He has not surrendered his soul to the idolatry of Hollywood."
But while Gibson has referred to himself as "a fiscal imbecile", such a charge couldn't be levelled at Davey.
Their partnership has been so successful in good part because they complement each other.
"I've learned so much from him. He really does set the tone," says Davey.
Gibson has been, of course, a lightning rod for controversy, seen by many Jews as an anti-Semite because of his interpretation of the death of Jesus in his film The Passion of the Christ and, of course, his notorious drink-driving arrest in Malibu two years ago, in which he reportedly slurred Jews.
"I know the kind of person he is," Davey, who plays his cards close to his chest, says. "He's a great guy and he sure doesn't need me to be defending him."
Before they became unfathomably rich with the success of the self-funded Passion of the Christ -- which cost about $US25 million and may end up making more than $US1 billion -- Davey and Gibson grew their company in ways few Hollywood players have done.
"We started to branch out the company really because we wanted to own our labours of love," says Davey.
"We started to see that we were paying other companies to do things we could do in-house for half the price, so we started in sales and distribution."
As a result of acquisitions in those areas, Icon now controls a lucrative library of about 250 titles.
The arthouse cinema chain Dendy also seems to be a natural fit for Icon because its upscale customer base - the so-called A/B demographic - jells nicely with the sort of sophisticated films that Icon makes and distributes.
But Davey laughs at suggestions that Icon has a grand media plan in Australia.
"We've never had a five-year plan, or a five-month plan or a five-minute plan for that matter," he says.
"From the beginning, for us it's always just been a matter of trying to capitalise on opportunities that present themselves and this was a good opportunity for us. I suppose if you want to describe our model it would be one of being opportunistic. I think Dendy is a brand that's strong in Australia and I don't believe it's been fully utilised."
Gooder underlines what he calls the "simpatico" between Icon and Dendy and says the coming months will see a marriage of the brands.
"That doesn't mean that we bought a cinema chain so we can show our films and our films only," he says.
"You have to view both entities as independent of each other, but obviously, there are great possibilities to marry them and of course we'll be doing that."
Gooder says he fully subscribes to the existing blueprint at Icon.
"There's actually a logic out of everything we do," he says.
"It's basically borne out of, 'How do you make money out of this business.' We ask ourselves that question, then we start looking for the answer."
Icon will continue growing but not in a way that changes the culture of the company.
"The last thing we want is to become a studio," says Davey.
"We don't want to become that top heavy. We want to be independent and passionate. We don't want to lose the magic."
|
Their relationship stretches back to 1980, when Davey, a chartered accountant with a clientele in the entertainment industry, was asked to help a young actor. "Mel came to see me with these shoeboxes filled with papers and three years of taxes that hadn't been done," he says.
"I remember that I got him a refund of about $1200 and he thought I was a genius. I suppose it started from that."
From those beginnings, their relationship grew until Davey became Gibson's business manager. "I did have opportunities (to work exclusively) with other clients, like Air Supply and actors like Judy Davis and Hugo Weaving, but there was something about Mel. I really believed in him. I think what I liked about him was the fact that he couldn't tell a lie to save his life."
Davey says the pair got to Hollywood by accident.
"Mel wanted to make Hamlet and the (Hollywood) agent he had who was helping him with it lasted about five minutes. It's pretty hard to get someone to give you money to make Hamlet," he said. "I told him that if he wanted to make this happen, someone had to roll up their sleeves and find the (financing) and he asked me if I wanted to have a crack at it and I agreed."
The pair decided to form a company and thought about names as they sat in the study of Gibson's cattle property in NSW.
"He came up with the name," says Davey, "We were down at his farm and I told him he needed a name and that it wasn't a good idea to have Gibson in the name because he had been involved in another company (which was not successful) and he looked across his den and saw a book on Russian icons and he looks up and says, 'Let's call it, Icon'. I thought, 'That'll work."'
And work it did, though it took many years for Icon to be treated seriously.
"Once we'd done Hamlet (in 1990), Mel said, "Can we do this again?" Davey remembers.
"We spoke to the studios and Warners was happy to give him a deal, mainly because they didn't want to let him out of their sights because of (the success of the) Lethal Weapon (franchise). But they thought Icon was a joke. I'll always remember that; they didn't take us seriously at all.
"They just thought it'd be one of these vanity deals they give stars, where they pay for your overheads and kick you some money and nothing comes of it. Sort of thing where they give you an office and money just so when they want to have lunch with you, they know where to find you.
"But even then, when he was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, Mel was different."
|
Click HERE to see PHOTOS |
Davey said Gibson once told him the business was "about longevity".
"He says, 'While I'm an actor I want to use that (influence) to produce and direct because I don't think I'll always be an actor'," he said.
"He understood back then that he needed to have more strings to his bow. But when we went to Warners and said Mel had found a film he wanted to direct (Man Without A Face), Terry (Semel) and Bob (Daly), who were running the place back then, couldn't understand it.
"They couldn't believe that Mel wouldn't take $US15 million to make Lethal Weapon 3 but instead wanted to go and direct Men Without A Face for peanuts. They didn't get it because in Hollywood, it's all about money and Mel's not all about money. He's passionate and involved and wants to do things that have artistic integrity."
As Randall Wallace, who wrote Braveheart, which earned Gibson and Davey an Oscar, once said of Gibson: "He has not surrendered his soul to the idolatry of Hollywood."
But while Gibson has referred to himself as "a fiscal imbecile", such a charge couldn't be levelled at Davey.
Their partnership has been so successful in good part because they complement each other.
"I've learned so much from him. He really does set the tone," says Davey.
Gibson has been, of course, a lightning rod for controversy, seen by many Jews as an anti-Semite because of his interpretation of the death of Jesus in his film The Passion of the Christ and, of course, his notorious drink-driving arrest in Malibu two years ago, in which he reportedly slurred Jews.
"I know the kind of person he is," Davey, who plays his cards close to his chest, says. "He's a great guy and he sure doesn't need me to be defending him."
Before they became unfathomably rich with the success of the self-funded Passion of the Christ -- which cost about $US25 million and may end up making more than $US1 billion -- Davey and Gibson grew their company in ways few Hollywood players have done.
"We started to branch out the company really because we wanted to own our labours of love," says Davey.
"We started to see that we were paying other companies to do things we could do in-house for half the price, so we started in sales and distribution."
As a result of acquisitions in those areas, Icon now controls a lucrative library of about 250 titles.
The arthouse cinema chain Dendy also seems to be a natural fit for Icon because its upscale customer base - the so-called A/B demographic - jells nicely with the sort of sophisticated films that Icon makes and distributes.
But Davey laughs at suggestions that Icon has a grand media plan in Australia.
"We've never had a five-year plan, or a five-month plan or a five-minute plan for that matter," he says.
"From the beginning, for us it's always just been a matter of trying to capitalise on opportunities that present themselves and this was a good opportunity for us. I suppose if you want to describe our model it would be one of being opportunistic. I think Dendy is a brand that's strong in Australia and I don't believe it's been fully utilised."
Gooder underlines what he calls the "simpatico" between Icon and Dendy and says the coming months will see a marriage of the brands.
"That doesn't mean that we bought a cinema chain so we can show our films and our films only," he says.
"You have to view both entities as independent of each other, but obviously, there are great possibilities to marry them and of course we'll be doing that."
Gooder says he fully subscribes to the existing blueprint at Icon.
"There's actually a logic out of everything we do," he says.
"It's basically borne out of, 'How do you make money out of this business.' We ask ourselves that question, then we start looking for the answer."
Icon will continue growing but not in a way that changes the culture of the company.
"The last thing we want is to become a studio," says Davey.
"We don't want to become that top heavy. We want to be independent and passionate. We don't want to lose the magic."
|
But Davey laughs at suggestions that Icon has a grand media plan in Australia.
"We've never had a five-year plan, or a five-month plan or a five-minute plan for that matter," he says.
"From the beginning, for us it's always just been a matter of trying to capitalise on opportunities that present themselves and this was a good opportunity for us. I suppose if you want to describe our model it would be one of being opportunistic. I think Dendy is a brand that's strong in Australia and I don't believe it's been fully utilised."
Gooder underlines what he calls the "simpatico" between Icon and Dendy and says the coming months will see a marriage of the brands.
"That doesn't mean that we bought a cinema chain so we can show our films and our films only," he says.
"You have to view both entities as independent of each other, but obviously, there are great possibilities to marry them and of course we'll be doing that."
Gooder says he fully subscribes to the existing blueprint at Icon.
"There's actually a logic out of everything we do," he says.
"It's basically borne out of, 'How do you make money out of this business.' We ask ourselves that question, then we start looking for the answer."
Icon will continue growing but not in a way that changes the culture of the company. "The last thing we want is to become a studio," says Davey.
"We don't want to become that top heavy. We want to be independent and passionate. We don't want to lose the magic."
15 MAY 2008.- DOCUMENTARY ABOUT THE NIDA ACTING CLASS OF 1977 (1st April???) 
MEL GIBSON
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
Mel Gibson talks about being diagnosed as bipolar in a new documentary about the NIDA acting class of 1977.
The Hollywood star was interviewed by his classmate Sally McKenzie about his memories as a student in a stellar year that included Judy Davis, Steve Bisley, Robert Menzies, Annie Byron, Debra Lawrance, Linda Newton and the theatre director Peter Kingston.
"I had really good highs but some very low lows," Gibson said. "I found out recently I'm manic depressive."
While the interview dates back to 2002, the actor and director has rarely talked about the condition.
McKenzie, who wrote and directed the lively Acting Class Of 1977, which screens on ABC2 on Sunday week, said yesterday that it seemed like a genuine comment but she did not want to delve further.
Other NIDA students had no idea that Gibson and Davis would be so successful.
"Theatre was very much the focus of our training," McKenzie said. "The thought of people being stars [in film and television] or having stellar careers was not really considered … It was all concentrated on the work and not on what was going to happen down the track."
The actress who plays Mystic Marj in the TV series Mortified remembers the young Gibson as "very polite, self-deprecating, shy, certainly talented and just a really nice person … even a little bit embarrassed about the whole acting thing."
And Davis, who declined invitations to be in the documentary? McKenzie said she was "intense, private, very talented and idiosyncratic".
|
|
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
Mel Gibson talks about being diagnosed as bipolar in a new documentary about the NIDA acting class of 1977.
The Hollywood star was interviewed by his classmate Sally McKenzie about his memories as a student in a stellar year that included Judy Davis, Steve Bisley, Robert Menzies, Annie Byron, Debra Lawrance, Linda Newton and the theatre director Peter Kingston.
"I had really good highs but some very low lows," Gibson said. "I found out recently I'm manic depressive."
While the interview dates back to 2002, the actor and director has rarely talked about the condition.
McKenzie, who wrote and directed the lively Acting Class Of 1977, which screens on ABC2 on Sunday week, said yesterday that it seemed like a genuine comment but she did not want to delve further.
Other NIDA students had no idea that Gibson and Davis would be so successful.
"Theatre was very much the focus of our training," McKenzie said. "The thought of people being stars [in film and television] or having stellar careers was not really considered … It was all concentrated on the work and not on what was going to happen down the track."
The actress who plays Mystic Marj in the TV series Mortified remembers the young Gibson as "very polite, self-deprecating, shy, certainly talented and just a really nice person … even a little bit embarrassed about the whole acting thing."
And Davis, who declined invitations to be in the documentary? McKenzie said she was "intense, private, very talented and idiosyncratic".
16 MAY 2008.- BRIT AND THE GIBSON ON HOLIDAY IN COSTA RICA
See VIDEOS, Private Jet and so on
Source: news.com.au
HOLLYWOOD star Mel Gibson is taking Britney Spears on holiday to his $31.3 million ranch in a remote region of Costa Rica.
The Braveheart star and the troubled singer will be joined on the weekend break by Spears's father Jamie and Gibson's wife Robyn, US reports say.
"They're just going away for a few days to relax," US celebrity website people.com today quoted a source as saying.
It is believed Gibson is concerned about his controversy-prone former neighbour's well-being.
The group, which is understood to have left on a private jet from Los Angeles this morning, reportedly plans to stay at Gibson's Costa Rican home and will return to California early next week.
The unlikely pair were first spotted together back in mid-March when they dined at Russian restaurant Romanov in LA neighbourhood Studio City.
It was not their first meeting, with Gibson, Spears and their families secretly catching up several times after the pop star was initially admitted to hospital in February in the midst of a paparazzi circus.
Spears, 26, and Gibson, 52, used to be neighbours when the singer previously lived in Malibu.
The father-of-seven, who has struggled with addictions and was this week revealed to have admitted being manic depressive, is believed to have reached out to the singer after seeing her in crisis and feeling concerned about her mental state.
Gibson's publicist said he knew nothing about his client's reported rendezvous.
According to the terms of Spears's custody agreement with ex-husband Kevin Federline, her two sons cannot leave the country without special approval, so they are not joining her on the trip.
Gibson purchased the property - that sprawls across 163ha of Costa Rica's northern Pacific Coast - in April last year, after selling properties in Malibu and Connecticut.
The cattle ranch faces Barrigona Beach in the Guanacaste province, about 300km west of San Jose, in an area where urban and tourism development is minimal
In the area where the property is located, most of the inhabitants live off ranching and farming in a wooded, mountainous landscape bordered by beautiful beaches.
|
|
Source: news.com.au
HOLLYWOOD star Mel Gibson is taking Britney Spears on holiday to his $31.3 million ranch in a remote region of Costa Rica.
The Braveheart star and the troubled singer will be joined on the weekend break by Spears's father Jamie and Gibson's wife Robyn, US reports say.
"They're just going away for a few days to relax," US celebrity website people.com today quoted a source as saying.
It is believed Gibson is concerned about his controversy-prone former neighbour's well-being.
The group, which is understood to have left on a private jet from Los Angeles this morning, reportedly plans to stay at Gibson's Costa Rican home and will return to California early next week.
The unlikely pair were first spotted together back in mid-March when they dined at Russian restaurant Romanov in LA neighbourhood Studio City.
It was not their first meeting, with Gibson, Spears and their families secretly catching up several times after the pop star was initially admitted to hospital in February in the midst of a paparazzi circus.
Spears, 26, and Gibson, 52, used to be neighbours when the singer previously lived in Malibu.
The father-of-seven, who has struggled with addictions and was this week revealed to have admitted being manic depressive, is believed to have reached out to the singer after seeing her in crisis and feeling concerned about her mental state.
Gibson's publicist said he knew nothing about his client's reported rendezvous.
According to the terms of Spears's custody agreement with ex-husband Kevin Federline, her two sons cannot leave the country without special approval, so they are not joining her on the trip.
Gibson purchased the property - that sprawls across 163ha of Costa Rica's northern Pacific Coast - in April last year, after selling properties in Malibu and Connecticut.
The cattle ranch faces Barrigona Beach in the Guanacaste province, about 300km west of San Jose, in an area where urban and tourism development is minimal
In the area where the property is located, most of the inhabitants live off ranching and farming in a wooded, mountainous landscape bordered by beautiful beaches.
18 MAY 2008.- WHERE IS MEL GIBSON?
PAPARAZZO LOOKING FOR MEL GIBSON
Source: La Nación (Costa Rica)
Britney Spears frolicked on the beach once again with her William Morris agent Jason Trawick , assistant Brett and 2,517 paparazzi in Costa Rica on Saturday.
And Mel Gibson? Where is cute Mel? Rumour has it that he flew back to Los Angeles on Friday evening.
We know that the situation looks desperate, but don´t give up hope! In compensation for this terrible disappointment, we present you with this beautiful pic of Mel on the beach (around 1890 AD).
|
|
Source: La Nación (Costa Rica)
Britney Spears frolicked on the beach once again with her William Morris agent Jason Trawick , assistant Brett and 2,517 paparazzi in Costa Rica on Saturday.
And Mel Gibson? Where is cute Mel? Rumour has it that he flew back to Los Angeles on Friday evening.
We know that the situation looks desperate, but don´t give up hope! In compensation for this terrible disappointment, we present you with this beautiful pic of Mel on the beach (around 1890 AD).
|
18 MAY 2008.- ICON SWALLOWS DENDY
MEL GIBSON
Source: Variety
Mel Gibson's tenacious Icon film distribution shingle has completed its takeover of the film division of the Becker Group, which includes Dendy Films and Cinemas, Australia's strongest arthouse brand.
Deal ends a year of uncertainly and Machiavellian maneuvers by shareholders in the Becker Group, which eventually saw minor shareholder Icon triumph, but not before the ankling of three key Dendy managers, Richard Payten and Andrew Mackie (distribution) and Mark Sarfaty (cinemas).
Icon topper Mark Gooder confirms the acquisition was formalized this month, and Icon has moved into Dendy's office in Newtown, Sydney. Four Dendy staff have been pinkslipped.
Since it was launched in 2001, Icon has become Australia's leading indie, following its successes with "Ladies in Lavender," "Death at a Funeral" and "The Passion of the Christ," among others.
Among Dendy's many winners were "Amelie" and the Michael Moore films.
The Icon Distribution and Dendy Films slates have now merged under the Icon banner; likewise the catalogs of the international sales divisions of both companies now come under Icon Entertainment Intl.
"(The transition has) been fantastically smooth, because (Becker's) Jonathan Page moved to Icon, communication has been good and they have been very attentive," says Melanie Coombs, producer of "Mary & Max," the debut clay animation feature from Oscar-winning director Adam Elliot.
"Mary & Max" is the jewel in the crown of Dendy acquisitions," Icon's Gooder says.
Icon Intl. also inherits Steve McQueen's "Hunger," playing in Cannes' Un Certain Regard and also in competition at the upcoming Sydney Festival.
.Dendy was not very acquisitive during the last 12 months, so Icon inherits a reduced slate of about 10 pics. It will release 25 titles in the next year, but plans to release 15 the year thereafter.
"We didn't acquire Becker to become a monolith of the Australian distribution business; we bought the company to acquire the cinema business," Gooder says.
Dendy Cinemas own 30 screens at seven sites along Australia's eastern seaboard. Cinema real estate is an asset envied by all Australian distributors.
"We were curious," Gooder says. "We don't have any longterm strategic plan. We like the cinemas and they fit the part of the business we're in."
|
|
Source: Variety
Mel Gibson's tenacious Icon film distribution shingle has completed its takeover of the film division of the Becker Group, which includes Dendy Films and Cinemas, Australia's strongest arthouse brand.
Deal ends a year of uncertainly and Machiavellian maneuvers by shareholders in the Becker Group, which eventually saw minor shareholder Icon triumph, but not before the ankling of three key Dendy managers, Richard Payten and Andrew Mackie (distribution) and Mark Sarfaty (cinemas).
Icon topper Mark Gooder confirms the acquisition was formalized this month, and Icon has moved into Dendy's office in Newtown, Sydney. Four Dendy staff have been pinkslipped.
Since it was launched in 2001, Icon has become Australia's leading indie, following its successes with "Ladies in Lavender," "Death at a Funeral" and "The Passion of the Christ," among others.
Among Dendy's many winners were "Amelie" and the Michael Moore films.
The Icon Distribution and Dendy Films slates have now merged under the Icon banner; likewise the catalogs of the international sales divisions of both companies now come under Icon Entertainment Intl.
"(The transition has) been fantastically smooth, because (Becker's) Jonathan Page moved to Icon, communication has been good and they have been very attentive," says Melanie Coombs, producer of "Mary & Max," the debut clay animation feature from Oscar-winning director Adam Elliot.
"Mary & Max" is the jewel in the crown of Dendy acquisitions," Icon's Gooder says.
Icon Intl. also inherits Steve McQueen's "Hunger," playing in Cannes' Un Certain Regard and also in competition at the upcoming Sydney Festival.
.Dendy was not very acquisitive during the last 12 months, so Icon inherits a reduced slate of about 10 pics. It will release 25 titles in the next year, but plans to release 15 the year thereafter.
"We didn't acquire Becker to become a monolith of the Australian distribution business; we bought the company to acquire the cinema business," Gooder says.
Dendy Cinemas own 30 screens at seven sites along Australia's eastern seaboard. Cinema real estate is an asset envied by all Australian distributors.
"We were curious," Gooder says. "We don't have any longterm strategic plan. We like the cinemas and they fit the part of the business we're in."
19 MAY 2008.- PHOTOS FROM THE MEMORY TRUNK, SEPT. 2007
Click Here, please
|
Click Here, please |
20 MAYO 2008.- PART 2, SEPT. 2007
|
|
20 MAY 2008.- ON HOLIDAY
Everybody except Mel Gibson sunbathed
|
Everybody except Mel Gibson sunbathed |
22 MAY 2008.- EDGE OF DARKNESS, NEWS!
Solveig Romero, Martin Campbell and Mel Gibson
- YESTERDAY
Solveig Romero, wife of film director Martin Campbell ( "The Legend of Zorro", "Casino Royale") was yesterday in Leon (Mexico) to promote her first short film: "My name is Arleyn".
According to Solveig, Martin Campbell will begin filming Edge of Darkness in late June in Boston. The actress and producer will play a small role in the movie, but she doesn´t know whether she will have the opportunity to work alongside Mel Gibson.
- LAST WEEK.- CANNES (France)
David Thompson, the former BBC Films chief, is running his own film and television production banner up the flagpole.
Dubbed Origin Pictures, Thompson's banner has backing from his former employer of 32 years through a three-year, first-look deal with BBC Fiction and has attracted producer and financier Anant Singh's support via Singh's Distant Horizon banner, who is likely to provide co-financing on Origin films.
Thompson also has organized a first-look development deal with sales and finance deal with FremantleMedia Enterprises.
First on the slate is Michel Faber's novel "The Crimson Petal and the White," which Thompson's Origin has optioned and is currently developing as a four-part drama serial.
The former BBC chief, who jets into Cannes on Thursday, also has taken on board several productions as an executive producer for the Beeb's filmmaking arm.
Titles he will exec produce for the BBC include Armando Ianucci's "In The Loop," Jane Campion's "Bright Star," Saul Dibb's "The Duchess," Martin Campbell's "Edge of Darkness," new films from Andrea Arnold and Pawel Pawlikowski, and an adaptation of Jon Ronson's book "Men Who Stare at Goats."
He also brought with him BBC Films development exec Ed Rubin and the unit's production exec Nicola Blacker to help out with Origin's ambitions.
Thompson parted company with the BBC last year in the wake of sweeping changes to the film arm's management structure.
- NOVEMBER 2007 -strike by the Writers Guild of America in the US.
Lantana co-writer Andrew Bovell has one US project stuck in the strike, the film adaptation of Edge of Darkness, to be directed by Casino Royale's Martin Campbell.
Bovell recently finished a script with the express aim of securing a leading male star.
"I just went hell for leather and delivered at the end of October, and now we have to wait and see what happens," he said. "I would have been in daily email contact previously with the producers and now we're not talking."
Bovell is busy enough working to deliver his next play, When the Rain Stops Falling, for the Adelaide Festival.
"I'm fortunate as I'm not Hollywood based and not deeply embedded in that industry. But I'd hate to see Edge of Darkness go down after four years because of this," he said.
|
Solveig Romero, Martin Campbell and Mel Gibson |
- YESTERDAY
Solveig Romero, wife of film director Martin Campbell ( "The Legend of Zorro", "Casino Royale") was yesterday in Leon (Mexico) to promote her first short film: "My name is Arleyn".
According to Solveig, Martin Campbell will begin filming Edge of Darkness in late June in Boston. The actress and producer will play a small role in the movie, but she doesn´t know whether she will have the opportunity to work alongside Mel Gibson.
- LAST WEEK.- CANNES (France)
David Thompson, the former BBC Films chief, is running his own film and television production banner up the flagpole.
Dubbed Origin Pictures, Thompson's banner has backing from his former employer of 32 years through a three-year, first-look deal with BBC Fiction and has attracted producer and financier Anant Singh's support via Singh's Distant Horizon banner, who is likely to provide co-financing on Origin films.
Thompson also has organized a first-look development deal with sales and finance deal with FremantleMedia Enterprises.
First on the slate is Michel Faber's novel "The Crimson Petal and the White," which Thompson's Origin has optioned and is currently developing as a four-part drama serial.
The former BBC chief, who jets into Cannes on Thursday, also has taken on board several productions as an executive producer for the Beeb's filmmaking arm.
Titles he will exec produce for the BBC include Armando Ianucci's "In The Loop," Jane Campion's "Bright Star," Saul Dibb's "The Duchess," Martin Campbell's "Edge of Darkness," new films from Andrea Arnold and Pawel Pawlikowski, and an adaptation of Jon Ronson's book "Men Who Stare at Goats."
He also brought with him BBC Films development exec Ed Rubin and the unit's production exec Nicola Blacker to help out with Origin's ambitions.
Thompson parted company with the BBC last year in the wake of sweeping changes to the film arm's management structure.
- NOVEMBER 2007 -strike by the Writers Guild of America in the US.
Lantana co-writer Andrew Bovell has one US project stuck in the strike, the film adaptation of Edge of Darkness, to be directed by Casino Royale's Martin Campbell.
Bovell recently finished a script with the express aim of securing a leading male star.
"I just went hell for leather and delivered at the end of October, and now we have to wait and see what happens," he said. "I would have been in daily email contact previously with the producers and now we're not talking."
Bovell is busy enough working to deliver his next play, When the Rain Stops Falling, for the Adelaide Festival.
"I'm fortunate as I'm not Hollywood based and not deeply embedded in that industry. But I'd hate to see Edge of Darkness go down after four years because of this," he said.
Solveig Romero, wife of film director Martin Campbell ( "The Legend of Zorro", "Casino Royale") was yesterday in Leon (Mexico) to promote her first short film: "My name is Arleyn".
According to Solveig, Martin Campbell will begin filming Edge of Darkness in late June in Boston. The actress and producer will play a small role in the movie, but she doesn´t know whether she will have the opportunity to work alongside Mel Gibson.
David Thompson, the former BBC Films chief, is running his own film and television production banner up the flagpole.
Dubbed Origin Pictures, Thompson's banner has backing from his former employer of 32 years through a three-year, first-look deal with BBC Fiction and has attracted producer and financier Anant Singh's support via Singh's Distant Horizon banner, who is likely to provide co-financing on Origin films.
Thompson also has organized a first-look development deal with sales and finance deal with FremantleMedia Enterprises.
First on the slate is Michel Faber's novel "The Crimson Petal and the White," which Thompson's Origin has optioned and is currently developing as a four-part drama serial.
The former BBC chief, who jets into Cannes on Thursday, also has taken on board several productions as an executive producer for the Beeb's filmmaking arm.
Titles he will exec produce for the BBC include Armando Ianucci's "In The Loop," Jane Campion's "Bright Star," Saul Dibb's "The Duchess," Martin Campbell's "Edge of Darkness," new films from Andrea Arnold and Pawel Pawlikowski, and an adaptation of Jon Ronson's book "Men Who Stare at Goats."
He also brought with him BBC Films development exec Ed Rubin and the unit's production exec Nicola Blacker to help out with Origin's ambitions.
Thompson parted company with the BBC last year in the wake of sweeping changes to the film arm's management structure.
|
- NOVEMBER 2007 -strike by the Writers Guild of America in the US.
Lantana co-writer Andrew Bovell has one US project stuck in the strike, the film adaptation of Edge of Darkness, to be directed by Casino Royale's Martin Campbell.
Bovell recently finished a script with the express aim of securing a leading male star.
"I just went hell for leather and delivered at the end of October, and now we have to wait and see what happens," he said. "I would have been in daily email contact previously with the producers and now we're not talking."
Bovell is busy enough working to deliver his next play, When the Rain Stops Falling, for the Adelaide Festival.
"I'm fortunate as I'm not Hollywood based and not deeply embedded in that industry. But I'd hate to see Edge of Darkness go down after four years because of this," he said.
Lantana co-writer Andrew Bovell has one US project stuck in the strike, the film adaptation of Edge of Darkness, to be directed by Casino Royale's Martin Campbell.
Bovell recently finished a script with the express aim of securing a leading male star.
"I just went hell for leather and delivered at the end of October, and now we have to wait and see what happens," he said. "I would have been in daily email contact previously with the producers and now we're not talking."
Bovell is busy enough working to deliver his next play, When the Rain Stops Falling, for the Adelaide Festival.
"I'm fortunate as I'm not Hollywood based and not deeply embedded in that industry. But I'd hate to see Edge of Darkness go down after four years because of this," he said.
23 MAY 2008.- VIDEO!
MEL GIBSON IN VERACRUZ, 30 April 2008
Click Here
|
MEL GIBSON IN VERACRUZ, 30 April 2008
|
23 MAY 2008.- MEL WANTS BRIT TO JOIN THERAPY GROUP
Source: The Bosh
MEL GIBSON wants Britney Spears to get more therapy
The Braveheart star and wife Robyn were on holiday with the singer and her dad Jamie at his private Costa Rica estate.
Mel, 52, wants Britney to join his therapy group, which involves daily AA and group support meetings — and hopes to introduce her to his drug counsellor Warren Boyd who helped Mel, COURTNEY LOVE and WHITNEY HOUSTON kick their habits.
Mel has repeatedly stepped forward offering help to mum-of-two Britney, whom he met while they were neighbors in the same Malibu gated community.
He even considered showing up at her home with Boyd after Britney, 26, was taken to a psychiatric ward in January.
A source said: “Mel just wants to reach out to Britney to offer help and support.
“He has offered to introduce her to the people who helped him, and is gently trying to encourage her to join his group therapy sessions in Malibu.
"He doesn’t want to pressure Britney, but instead says he’ll offer any help he can.”
Source: The Bosh |
|
23 MAY 2008.- PART 3, SEPT. 2007
|
|
25 MAY 2008.- ACTING CLASS 1977
PHOTOS from: www.actingclassof1977.com
Click to see video
Source: the australian.com
THE acting class of 1977, operating then out of old tin sheds at a one-time military camp beneath fig trees in Sydney's inner-city Kensington, produced some leading lights of film, television and theatre.
But not all in that famous group became stars.
There's little doubt the National Institute of Dramatic Art was an awful experience for some people. The tutors were contradictory and sometimes seemed to be as much in the dark about acting as their students. Learning was psychoanalytic, all about mental discovery and transformation, and the developing of a skin thick enough to resist the industry's tendency to humiliate and degrade actors.
As revealed in a witty new documentary, Actingclassof1977.com, screening on the ABC this weekend, nothing in their training prepared the students for how to deal with unemployment, auditions, agents or even directors. Writer-director Sally McKenzie was one of the class and this documentary of hers is an account of what happened to them all.
The actors describe a tough experience that at times was humiliating and manipulative.
The great survivor of the 1977 NIDA class was, of course, Mel Gibson. He remains a stalwart example of the way even great actors have to become their own champions, vigilant in the defence of their interests.
"I wanted to work, I enjoyed working," Gibson tells McKenzie. "The novelty of being noticed, of getting famous, wore off very fast, so that aspect of it has been the biggest pain in my arse." But he says celebrity took him over. "I couldn't stop; it's like an addiction, this game." Still, he admits to being at a stage where he is tiring of it all. "I'm at that place where I'm saying to myself, do I want to do this any more?" he says. "I want to reclaim my anonymity."
Mel Gibson and Steve Bisley
Judy Davis refused to participate in the documentary, which is a pity as she is the most eloquent of actors. She once told me that, for her, acting had been a confronting process of accepting that you can't hide "these pieces of yourself". To continue to act, she believes, you have to be prepared for everything that's possible to be revealed. "That's part of the deal as an actor," she said. What makes actors so crucial to the community is that they bear witness to those processes of self-revelation in the public arena. "If you are doing it with a degree of care, then probably the actor has a good chance of ending up saner at the end of the process."
Not everyone for the famous class of '77 would agree with her.
Directed with sympathy and discrimination, the documentary is a droll look at the nature of actors, what it's like to become one and the toll that their careers take. It's about survival and the terrible regret that accompanies those highly trained performers who don't make it and how their sadness never goes away.
It opens with McKenzie accessing an imaginary NIDA website as if to nostalgically relive history, sharing the collected memories of the class that included future luminaries Gibson and Davis. "It's a pity there aren't more famous people in it, especially when it comes to selling it overseas," McKenzie says dryly by phone from Brisbane, where she lives and sometimes still works as an actor.
Gibson and Davis became internationally marketable but, although some of their contemporaries have had sporadic careers in the theatre and television soaps, the rest have largely faded back into the obscurity from which they attended their first audition for the acting school.
Click Here to see Video
As her documentary opens, a large bottle of scotch at McKenzie's elbow gives the game away; she's like a classic female private investigator trawling the past to understand the present. Like a crime writer's heroine, her commentary is delivered with a kind of caustic compassion, trying to bring some humanity and justice into the frequently uncaring world of acting. The private eye conceit is a nice idea.
"It was about finding an overarching narrative and, at the same time, I needed a device that let me dip in and out of chronology," she says. Her footage includes filmed interviews, archival footage and revealing home movie sequences shot at various reunions. Initially, the reflections of the famous class, which begin the doco, are ironic and guarded, or just genuinely perplexed.
"My life in art?" wonders Gibson, doing his familiar hard guy face-pulling routine. "I don't really think of it as art. I think of it as a living. If other people mistakenly think of it as art, that's their misfortune."
Then McKenzie introduces her present-day characters more fully, each holding cardboard signs displaying their names to camera, just as they still do for screen tests. "I'm Steve Bisley," the craggy actor and former truck driver says, like a man running his eye over a previous incarnation. "I get cast in predominantly Australian police roles."
It's an amusing device pointing out how much auditioning the jobbing actor, no matter how famous, does in Australia. These days, they occasionally work at their craft while they teach themselves to diversify into other areas, as McKenzie has done. "It might put everyone off acting for life," she says of her program. "There is still such a small hole and so many people want to fill it."
The actors describe a '70s student existence that was obsessional, passionate, despairing and incestuous.
"We were all f..king each other," the irrepressible Bisley says.
Working Hard
Says Linda Newton, one who didn't make it and who works in zoo administration: "We spent the first year knowing they were going to throw half of us out; not very conducive to creativity."
"It was so primitive and so different to the way it is today," McKenzie remembers of the experience. "You go back now and you can't hear the figs dropping on the tin roof of the theatre during poignant moments." She shudderingly recalls three years of being on her mettle every moment, her life a perpetual performance. For the class work every day, the students needed to find a pool of liberated energy that had nothing to do with the way they presented themselves in life.
"I'm surprised anyone wants to act again after they leave NIDA," Newton says in the film. She's still a vulnerable attractive presence, but it's as if she was permanently cowed by the experience.
"They stripped you bare emotionally in order to make you a better actor," says Debra Lawrance, best known for her role as Pippa Ross on soapie Home and Away. "They didn't tell us that's what they were doing; I just assumed I was going mad."
Lawrance speaks revealingly of the day in final year when Sydney's only three show business agents came to see their work. "Some man said, 'Debra, you are going to be really good for film,"' she recalls, still aghast. "In those days we thought television and film, well you didn't do those; we had been trained classically for theatre."
McKenzie says the class was almost brainwashed to believe that screen acting was lowbrow and that the mark of an actor was their diversity. Instead, "we came out of NIDA and discovered there was a screen renaissance happening and acting was all about being typecast", the director says.
She says nothing in their training had prepared them for the callousness of the marketplace, where appearance was everything. The first thing they discovered about acting as a career was that being able to do it was far less important than being able to satisfy some casting director's whim, fantasy or exasperated expectation.
Actingclassof1977.com, directed by Sally McKenzie, will be aired by ABC1, Sunday, June 1, 3pm.
ACTING CLASS OF 1977
|
PHOTOS from: www.actingclassof1977.com
|
Source: the australian.com
THE acting class of 1977, operating then out of old tin sheds at a one-time military camp beneath fig trees in Sydney's inner-city Kensington, produced some leading lights of film, television and theatre.
But not all in that famous group became stars.
There's little doubt the National Institute of Dramatic Art was an awful experience for some people. The tutors were contradictory and sometimes seemed to be as much in the dark about acting as their students. Learning was psychoanalytic, all about mental discovery and transformation, and the developing of a skin thick enough to resist the industry's tendency to humiliate and degrade actors.
As revealed in a witty new documentary, Actingclassof1977.com, screening on the ABC this weekend, nothing in their training prepared the students for how to deal with unemployment, auditions, agents or even directors. Writer-director Sally McKenzie was one of the class and this documentary of hers is an account of what happened to them all.
The actors describe a tough experience that at times was humiliating and manipulative.
The great survivor of the 1977 NIDA class was, of course, Mel Gibson. He remains a stalwart example of the way even great actors have to become their own champions, vigilant in the defence of their interests.
"I wanted to work, I enjoyed working," Gibson tells McKenzie. "The novelty of being noticed, of getting famous, wore off very fast, so that aspect of it has been the biggest pain in my arse." But he says celebrity took him over. "I couldn't stop; it's like an addiction, this game." Still, he admits to being at a stage where he is tiring of it all. "I'm at that place where I'm saying to myself, do I want to do this any more?" he says. "I want to reclaim my anonymity."
Mel Gibson and Steve Bisley
Judy Davis refused to participate in the documentary, which is a pity as she is the most eloquent of actors. She once told me that, for her, acting had been a confronting process of accepting that you can't hide "these pieces of yourself". To continue to act, she believes, you have to be prepared for everything that's possible to be revealed. "That's part of the deal as an actor," she said. What makes actors so crucial to the community is that they bear witness to those processes of self-revelation in the public arena. "If you are doing it with a degree of care, then probably the actor has a good chance of ending up saner at the end of the process."
Not everyone for the famous class of '77 would agree with her.
Directed with sympathy and discrimination, the documentary is a droll look at the nature of actors, what it's like to become one and the toll that their careers take. It's about survival and the terrible regret that accompanies those highly trained performers who don't make it and how their sadness never goes away.
It opens with McKenzie accessing an imaginary NIDA website as if to nostalgically relive history, sharing the collected memories of the class that included future luminaries Gibson and Davis. "It's a pity there aren't more famous people in it, especially when it comes to selling it overseas," McKenzie says dryly by phone from Brisbane, where she lives and sometimes still works as an actor.
Gibson and Davis became internationally marketable but, although some of their contemporaries have had sporadic careers in the theatre and television soaps, the rest have largely faded back into the obscurity from which they attended their first audition for the acting school.
Click Here to see Video
As her documentary opens, a large bottle of scotch at McKenzie's elbow gives the game away; she's like a classic female private investigator trawling the past to understand the present. Like a crime writer's heroine, her commentary is delivered with a kind of caustic compassion, trying to bring some humanity and justice into the frequently uncaring world of acting. The private eye conceit is a nice idea.
"It was about finding an overarching narrative and, at the same time, I needed a device that let me dip in and out of chronology," she says. Her footage includes filmed interviews, archival footage and revealing home movie sequences shot at various reunions. Initially, the reflections of the famous class, which begin the doco, are ironic and guarded, or just genuinely perplexed.
"My life in art?" wonders Gibson, doing his familiar hard guy face-pulling routine. "I don't really think of it as art. I think of it as a living. If other people mistakenly think of it as art, that's their misfortune."
Then McKenzie introduces her present-day characters more fully, each holding cardboard signs displaying their names to camera, just as they still do for screen tests. "I'm Steve Bisley," the craggy actor and former truck driver says, like a man running his eye over a previous incarnation. "I get cast in predominantly Australian police roles."
It's an amusing device pointing out how much auditioning the jobbing actor, no matter how famous, does in Australia. These days, they occasionally work at their craft while they teach themselves to diversify into other areas, as McKenzie has done. "It might put everyone off acting for life," she says of her program. "There is still such a small hole and so many people want to fill it."
The actors describe a '70s student existence that was obsessional, passionate, despairing and incestuous.
"We were all f..king each other," the irrepressible Bisley says.
Working Hard
Says Linda Newton, one who didn't make it and who works in zoo administration: "We spent the first year knowing they were going to throw half of us out; not very conducive to creativity."
"It was so primitive and so different to the way it is today," McKenzie remembers of the experience. "You go back now and you can't hear the figs dropping on the tin roof of the theatre during poignant moments." She shudderingly recalls three years of being on her mettle every moment, her life a perpetual performance. For the class work every day, the students needed to find a pool of liberated energy that had nothing to do with the way they presented themselves in life.
"I'm surprised anyone wants to act again after they leave NIDA," Newton says in the film. She's still a vulnerable attractive presence, but it's as if she was permanently cowed by the experience.
"They stripped you bare emotionally in order to make you a better actor," says Debra Lawrance, best known for her role as Pippa Ross on soapie Home and Away. "They didn't tell us that's what they were doing; I just assumed I was going mad."
Lawrance speaks revealingly of the day in final year when Sydney's only three show business agents came to see their work. "Some man said, 'Debra, you are going to be really good for film,"' she recalls, still aghast. "In those days we thought television and film, well you didn't do those; we had been trained classically for theatre."
McKenzie says the class was almost brainwashed to believe that screen acting was lowbrow and that the mark of an actor was their diversity. Instead, "we came out of NIDA and discovered there was a screen renaissance happening and acting was all about being typecast", the director says.
She says nothing in their training had prepared them for the callousness of the marketplace, where appearance was everything. The first thing they discovered about acting as a career was that being able to do it was far less important than being able to satisfy some casting director's whim, fantasy or exasperated expectation.
Actingclassof1977.com, directed by Sally McKenzie, will be aired by ABC1, Sunday, June 1, 3pm.
ACTING CLASS OF 1977
|
Mel Gibson and Steve Bisley |
Judy Davis refused to participate in the documentary, which is a pity as she is the most eloquent of actors. She once told me that, for her, acting had been a confronting process of accepting that you can't hide "these pieces of yourself". To continue to act, she believes, you have to be prepared for everything that's possible to be revealed. "That's part of the deal as an actor," she said. What makes actors so crucial to the community is that they bear witness to those processes of self-revelation in the public arena. "If you are doing it with a degree of care, then probably the actor has a good chance of ending up saner at the end of the process."
Not everyone for the famous class of '77 would agree with her.
Directed with sympathy and discrimination, the documentary is a droll look at the nature of actors, what it's like to become one and the toll that their careers take. It's about survival and the terrible regret that accompanies those highly trained performers who don't make it and how their sadness never goes away.
It opens with McKenzie accessing an imaginary NIDA website as if to nostalgically relive history, sharing the collected memories of the class that included future luminaries Gibson and Davis. "It's a pity there aren't more famous people in it, especially when it comes to selling it overseas," McKenzie says dryly by phone from Brisbane, where she lives and sometimes still works as an actor.
Gibson and Davis became internationally marketable but, although some of their contemporaries have had sporadic careers in the theatre and television soaps, the rest have largely faded back into the obscurity from which they attended their first audition for the acting school.
Click Here to see Video
As her documentary opens, a large bottle of scotch at McKenzie's elbow gives the game away; she's like a classic female private investigator trawling the past to understand the present. Like a crime writer's heroine, her commentary is delivered with a kind of caustic compassion, trying to bring some humanity and justice into the frequently uncaring world of acting. The private eye conceit is a nice idea.
"It was about finding an overarching narrative and, at the same time, I needed a device that let me dip in and out of chronology," she says. Her footage includes filmed interviews, archival footage and revealing home movie sequences shot at various reunions. Initially, the reflections of the famous class, which begin the doco, are ironic and guarded, or just genuinely perplexed.
"My life in art?" wonders Gibson, doing his familiar hard guy face-pulling routine. "I don't really think of it as art. I think of it as a living. If other people mistakenly think of it as art, that's their misfortune."
Then McKenzie introduces her present-day characters more fully, each holding cardboard signs displaying their names to camera, just as they still do for screen tests. "I'm Steve Bisley," the craggy actor and former truck driver says, like a man running his eye over a previous incarnation. "I get cast in predominantly Australian police roles."
It's an amusing device pointing out how much auditioning the jobbing actor, no matter how famous, does in Australia. These days, they occasionally work at their craft while they teach themselves to diversify into other areas, as McKenzie has done. "It might put everyone off acting for life," she says of her program. "There is still such a small hole and so many people want to fill it."
The actors describe a '70s student existence that was obsessional, passionate, despairing and incestuous.
"We were all f..king each other," the irrepressible Bisley says.
Working Hard
Says Linda Newton, one who didn't make it and who works in zoo administration: "We spent the first year knowing they were going to throw half of us out; not very conducive to creativity."
"It was so primitive and so different to the way it is today," McKenzie remembers of the experience. "You go back now and you can't hear the figs dropping on the tin roof of the theatre during poignant moments." She shudderingly recalls three years of being on her mettle every moment, her life a perpetual performance. For the class work every day, the students needed to find a pool of liberated energy that had nothing to do with the way they presented themselves in life.
"I'm surprised anyone wants to act again after they leave NIDA," Newton says in the film. She's still a vulnerable attractive presence, but it's as if she was permanently cowed by the experience.
"They stripped you bare emotionally in order to make you a better actor," says Debra Lawrance, best known for her role as Pippa Ross on soapie Home and Away. "They didn't tell us that's what they were doing; I just assumed I was going mad."
Lawrance speaks revealingly of the day in final year when Sydney's only three show business agents came to see their work. "Some man said, 'Debra, you are going to be really good for film,"' she recalls, still aghast. "In those days we thought television and film, well you didn't do those; we had been trained classically for theatre."
McKenzie says the class was almost brainwashed to believe that screen acting was lowbrow and that the mark of an actor was their diversity. Instead, "we came out of NIDA and discovered there was a screen renaissance happening and acting was all about being typecast", the director says.
She says nothing in their training had prepared them for the callousness of the marketplace, where appearance was everything. The first thing they discovered about acting as a career was that being able to do it was far less important than being able to satisfy some casting director's whim, fantasy or exasperated expectation.
Actingclassof1977.com, directed by Sally McKenzie, will be aired by ABC1, Sunday, June 1, 3pm.
ACTING CLASS OF 1977
|
Click Here to see Video |
As her documentary opens, a large bottle of scotch at McKenzie's elbow gives the game away; she's like a classic female private investigator trawling the past to understand the present. Like a crime writer's heroine, her commentary is delivered with a kind of caustic compassion, trying to bring some humanity and justice into the frequently uncaring world of acting. The private eye conceit is a nice idea.
"It was about finding an overarching narrative and, at the same time, I needed a device that let me dip in and out of chronology," she says. Her footage includes filmed interviews, archival footage and revealing home movie sequences shot at various reunions. Initially, the reflections of the famous class, which begin the doco, are ironic and guarded, or just genuinely perplexed.
"My life in art?" wonders Gibson, doing his familiar hard guy face-pulling routine. "I don't really think of it as art. I think of it as a living. If other people mistakenly think of it as art, that's their misfortune."
Then McKenzie introduces her present-day characters more fully, each holding cardboard signs displaying their names to camera, just as they still do for screen tests. "I'm Steve Bisley," the craggy actor and former truck driver says, like a man running his eye over a previous incarnation. "I get cast in predominantly Australian police roles."
It's an amusing device pointing out how much auditioning the jobbing actor, no matter how famous, does in Australia. These days, they occasionally work at their craft while they teach themselves to diversify into other areas, as McKenzie has done. "It might put everyone off acting for life," she says of her program. "There is still such a small hole and so many people want to fill it."
The actors describe a '70s student existence that was obsessional, passionate, despairing and incestuous.
"We were all f..king each other," the irrepressible Bisley says.
Working Hard
Says Linda Newton, one who didn't make it and who works in zoo administration: "We spent the first year knowing they were going to throw half of us out; not very conducive to creativity."
"It was so primitive and so different to the way it is today," McKenzie remembers of the experience. "You go back now and you can't hear the figs dropping on the tin roof of the theatre during poignant moments." She shudderingly recalls three years of being on her mettle every moment, her life a perpetual performance. For the class work every day, the students needed to find a pool of liberated energy that had nothing to do with the way they presented themselves in life.
"I'm surprised anyone wants to act again after they leave NIDA," Newton says in the film. She's still a vulnerable attractive presence, but it's as if she was permanently cowed by the experience.
"They stripped you bare emotionally in order to make you a better actor," says Debra Lawrance, best known for her role as Pippa Ross on soapie Home and Away. "They didn't tell us that's what they were doing; I just assumed I was going mad."
Lawrance speaks revealingly of the day in final year when Sydney's only three show business agents came to see their work. "Some man said, 'Debra, you are going to be really good for film,"' she recalls, still aghast. "In those days we thought television and film, well you didn't do those; we had been trained classically for theatre."
McKenzie says the class was almost brainwashed to believe that screen acting was lowbrow and that the mark of an actor was their diversity. Instead, "we came out of NIDA and discovered there was a screen renaissance happening and acting was all about being typecast", the director says.
She says nothing in their training had prepared them for the callousness of the marketplace, where appearance was everything. The first thing they discovered about acting as a career was that being able to do it was far less important than being able to satisfy some casting director's whim, fantasy or exasperated expectation.
Actingclassof1977.com, directed by Sally McKenzie, will be aired by ABC1, Sunday, June 1, 3pm.
ACTING CLASS OF 1977
|
Working Hard |
Says Linda Newton, one who didn't make it and who works in zoo administration: "We spent the first year knowing they were going to throw half of us out; not very conducive to creativity."
"It was so primitive and so different to the way it is today," McKenzie remembers of the experience. "You go back now and you can't hear the figs dropping on the tin roof of the theatre during poignant moments." She shudderingly recalls three years of being on her mettle every moment, her life a perpetual performance. For the class work every day, the students needed to find a pool of liberated energy that had nothing to do with the way they presented themselves in life.
"I'm surprised anyone wants to act again after they leave NIDA," Newton says in the film. She's still a vulnerable attractive presence, but it's as if she was permanently cowed by the experience.
"They stripped you bare emotionally in order to make you a better actor," says Debra Lawrance, best known for her role as Pippa Ross on soapie Home and Away. "They didn't tell us that's what they were doing; I just assumed I was going mad."
Lawrance speaks revealingly of the day in final year when Sydney's only three show business agents came to see their work. "Some man said, 'Debra, you are going to be really good for film,"' she recalls, still aghast. "In those days we thought television and film, well you didn't do those; we had been trained classically for theatre."
McKenzie says the class was almost brainwashed to believe that screen acting was lowbrow and that the mark of an actor was their diversity. Instead, "we came out of NIDA and discovered there was a screen renaissance happening and acting was all about being typecast", the director says.
She says nothing in their training had prepared them for the callousness of the marketplace, where appearance was everything. The first thing they discovered about acting as a career was that being able to do it was far less important than being able to satisfy some casting director's whim, fantasy or exasperated expectation.
Actingclassof1977.com, directed by Sally McKenzie, will be aired by ABC1, Sunday, June 1, 3pm.
ACTING CLASS OF 1977
|
ACTING CLASS OF 1977 |
27 MAY 2008.- GIBSON TALKS ABOUT NIDA, Transcript "ABC" 2001
ROBYN NEVIN: The audition for entry into NIDA was very, very frightening. It was in 1958 or 1959, I've forgotten which year, and I was a very shy, unsophisticated 16.
MEL GIBSON: You know, I was just some surf dude that was hanging around who knew a couple of speeches and I was going to, you know, spew out my stuff, as raw as it was, and see if I could get a place there.
Click here to read transcript
|
ROBYN NEVIN: The audition for entry into NIDA was very, very frightening. It was in 1958 or 1959, I've forgotten which year, and I was a very shy, unsophisticated 16.
|
27 MAY 2008.- VIDEO
IFTA (Feb.2008).- Interview, Mel Gibson recipient of the Outstanding Contribution to World Cinema Award talks about the Irish film industry and shooting Braveheart, VIDEO
|
IFTA (Feb.2008).- Interview, Mel Gibson recipient of the Outstanding Contribution to World Cinema Award talks about the Irish film industry and shooting Braveheart, VIDEO |
|
|
|
|
|