For a professional actor on a mid-career surge, Ben Mendelsohn is uncharacteristically modest... “I’ve been doing this (acting) since pretty much the beginning of my teenage years, and I’ve been financially independent since I was fifteen but it’s not really a career, is it? It’s a series of jobs, is what it is! I mean, you will never get to be ‘Head of South East Asian acting’. You might have a great life but it’s not a career.”
It’s mid-morning and we’re talking in a café overlooking Bondi Beach. “Bondi’s got a bit hectic – I’m shifting basically. I remember seeing this great TV special when I was 12, it was about Penthouse Pets and one of ‘em lived in Bondi – and I remember all these shots on the beach and I thought what a promised land – Bondi! I love living here but it’s getting very hectic.”
1 July 2001
25 June 2001
Preview: ART/MUSIC: Rock Pop and Techno
We are used to hearing rock stars refer to themselves, often portentiously, as ‘artists’. And indeed what hopeful musician doesn’t aspire to the heady status of recording artist. Yet no matter how aesthetic the pose, we still call their wares music, not art.
Now a new exhibition begs to differ, seeking to blur the boundaries and reveal the artful underbelly of popular music in the 1990s and beyond.
ART/MUSIC: Rock Pop and Techno, opening this week (Mar 21) at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, examines the convergence of the visual arts and popular music through the work of international and local artists who make music the subject of their art, and, conversely, make music for an art-literate audience.
“The territory we’re covering here is diverse to say the least,” says the exhibition’s curator, Sue Cramer, who traveled to the studios and clubs of Berlin, London and New York to source works for the exhibition. “We’re presenting artists who use recordings or performance or installation to deal with the idea of music, or with music as a theme in their wider practice, or even just what it means to be a fan of popular music.”
Only don’t go expecting to sight rare Super 8 footage of the Velvet Underground hanging round Andy’s Factory, or an installation of Lennon-era bags by Yoko Ono. Nor will you find the sunday paintings of Britney Spears.
“The territory we’re covering here is diverse to say the least,” says the exhibition’s curator, Sue Cramer, who traveled to the studios and clubs of Berlin, London and New York to source works for the exhibition. “We’re presenting artists who use recordings or performance or installation to deal with the idea of music, or with music as a theme in their wider practice, or even just what it means to be a fan of popular music.”
Only don’t go expecting to sight rare Super 8 footage of the Velvet Underground hanging round Andy’s Factory, or an installation of Lennon-era bags by Yoko Ono. Nor will you find the sunday paintings of Britney Spears.
“It’s not an historical show but a survey of contemporary art practices,” says Cramer, sticking to her museum’s brief. Instead, “these are visual artists who are working today in diverse ways with forms of music that are popular today.”
Headlining the show is legendary New York DJ and artist Christian Marclay who since the late 1970s has attracted a cult following for his use of the turntable in both his art and music. With a business card that reads ‘record player’, Marclay is better described as a “sound sculptor” or “dadaist DJ” and his appearance is a coup for Cramer and key to the exhibition.
“Christian really is a central figure in this whole underground art/music movement,” says Cramer. Influenced by the Fluxus movement, (the 1960s art movement which typically and chaotically deployed numerous art forms simultaneously) and Punk, Marclay “never studied music,” notes Cramer, “and he found a freedom in the punk idea that you didn’t have to be academically trained to produce art. In fact, in an experimental mode, it can actually be a hindrance to be trained.”
Marclay uses the objects of popular music – records, CDs, turntables – to create what he calls “a visualization of sound”.
“It’s great that he’s coming here and will be able to perform as well as mount his exhibition which is a floor work of CDs.”
Headlining the show is legendary New York DJ and artist Christian Marclay who since the late 1970s has attracted a cult following for his use of the turntable in both his art and music. With a business card that reads ‘record player’, Marclay is better described as a “sound sculptor” or “dadaist DJ” and his appearance is a coup for Cramer and key to the exhibition.
“Christian really is a central figure in this whole underground art/music movement,” says Cramer. Influenced by the Fluxus movement, (the 1960s art movement which typically and chaotically deployed numerous art forms simultaneously) and Punk, Marclay “never studied music,” notes Cramer, “and he found a freedom in the punk idea that you didn’t have to be academically trained to produce art. In fact, in an experimental mode, it can actually be a hindrance to be trained.”
Marclay uses the objects of popular music – records, CDs, turntables – to create what he calls “a visualization of sound”.
“It’s great that he’s coming here and will be able to perform as well as mount his exhibition which is a floor work of CDs.”
Marclay will join Lee Ranaldo, guitarist for the seminal 1990s punk band Sonic Youth, in a special one-off live concert at the Sydney Opera House the night before the main exhibition opens. The concert will be complemented by free live performances by local Sydney DJs, to be held each Sunday at the MCA for the duration of the exhibition.
Cramer cites Sonic Youth’s experimental trailblazing in “noise” as a touchstone for many of the artists included in the show. Indeed another member of the band, guitarist Thurston Moore, returns to reprise his 2000 collaboration with local artist Marco Fusinato held last year at Sydney’s Sarah Cottier Gallery. The band also features in the inclusion of Sonic Matters, Sonic Kollaborations - a self-contained exhibition of printed material, videos and recordings originally brought together for Printed Matter Bookstore in New York.
Cramer hopes the sheer scope of the show - from American Charles Long’s sci-fi inspired collaborations with UK pop-group Stereolab, to New Zealand artist Julian Dashper’s abstract paintings on drum skins, to Australian Kathy Temin’s installation which simulates a teenage girl’s bedroom tribute to Kylie Minogue - will “generate a sense of excitement for what possibilities there are for music and art.”
Cramer cites Sonic Youth’s experimental trailblazing in “noise” as a touchstone for many of the artists included in the show. Indeed another member of the band, guitarist Thurston Moore, returns to reprise his 2000 collaboration with local artist Marco Fusinato held last year at Sydney’s Sarah Cottier Gallery. The band also features in the inclusion of Sonic Matters, Sonic Kollaborations - a self-contained exhibition of printed material, videos and recordings originally brought together for Printed Matter Bookstore in New York.
Cramer hopes the sheer scope of the show - from American Charles Long’s sci-fi inspired collaborations with UK pop-group Stereolab, to New Zealand artist Julian Dashper’s abstract paintings on drum skins, to Australian Kathy Temin’s installation which simulates a teenage girl’s bedroom tribute to Kylie Minogue - will “generate a sense of excitement for what possibilities there are for music and art.”
With more than 27 international and local artists exhibiting, spent art lovers can recover from over-stimulation in ART/MUSIC’s very own “chill-out room”. There they can listen to a range of recordings made or produced by visual artists while viewing a display of artist-designed CD and album covers.
Sydney DJ duo Sub Bass Snarl has organized the free Sunday performances where, in among the dub, electronic and jazz sounds, they will find time to lead discussions on the “cultural politics” of DJing in Sydney.
While ART/MUSIC dovetails perfectly with a institution seeking to remain relevant to a younger demographic, Cramer says ART/MUSIC “has its own integrity as a show – it’s a real topic with people and history and ideas.” The range of works on offer “will stimulate all ages and tastes and will stretch from experimental to accessible”.
However, Cramer may have unwittingly tapped into a nascent curatorial trend: NONE MORE BLACKER, the current exhibition (closing Mar 24) at 200 Gertrude Street Gallery in Melbourne featuring, among others, prominent young-turks Adam Cullen and Ricky Swallow, is subtitled: “New Australian Art Influenced by Heavy Metal and Glam Rock”.
ART/MUSIC: rock, pop, techno
Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 21 March - 24 June, 2001.
ART/MUSIC: Live
Presented by the MCA in association with the Sydney Opera House
The Studio, Sydney Opera House, 9:00pm, Tuesday 20th March 2001
Sydney DJ duo Sub Bass Snarl has organized the free Sunday performances where, in among the dub, electronic and jazz sounds, they will find time to lead discussions on the “cultural politics” of DJing in Sydney.
While ART/MUSIC dovetails perfectly with a institution seeking to remain relevant to a younger demographic, Cramer says ART/MUSIC “has its own integrity as a show – it’s a real topic with people and history and ideas.” The range of works on offer “will stimulate all ages and tastes and will stretch from experimental to accessible”.
However, Cramer may have unwittingly tapped into a nascent curatorial trend: NONE MORE BLACKER, the current exhibition (closing Mar 24) at 200 Gertrude Street Gallery in Melbourne featuring, among others, prominent young-turks Adam Cullen and Ricky Swallow, is subtitled: “New Australian Art Influenced by Heavy Metal and Glam Rock”.
ART/MUSIC: rock, pop, techno
Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 21 March - 24 June, 2001.
ART/MUSIC: Live
Presented by the MCA in association with the Sydney Opera House
The Studio, Sydney Opera House, 9:00pm, Tuesday 20th March 2001
First published in The Bulletin
16 June 2001
Moulin Rouge Splits Genders
A new poll has found that Baz Lurhmann’s MOULIN ROUGE has sparked a rift between the sexes, with women and men split equally for or against the controversial ‘Hollywood on the Harbour’ production. The snap survey of close friends and associates, taken at the weekend, reveals that of those who had actually seen the movie, sisters universally saw Lurhmann as a girl’s best friend, while for the masculine gender, it’s a case of ‘no Can-Can do’, Baz-boy.
Women, without exception, said that they “loved” the film. Some reported “feelings of joy” upon exiting the cinema, others hailed it “a creative triumph.” One Bondi-based IT consultant, who can’t be identified, declared it “the chick flick for a digital generation”. Fellow Bondi resident, Suze, claimed the film’s emphasis on “decoration, singing and dancing, tragic fantasy, and cultivating community” all reflect largely, if not exclusively, “chick aspirations.”
“It’s about the triumph of fashion over formula, of largesse over logic,” said Suze, a media advisor for a public agency. “Watching it was like leafing through the pages of a beautiful magazine.” Jodi, a skincare consultant from Bondi Junction, agreed. “It’s primarily concerned with looking good – and you know I can appreciate that.” Her friend Rachel, a photographic agent from Darlinghurst, declared Rouge “a romp” with canny Scotsman Ewan Macgregor oozing the “it” factor.
“Ewan is so dreamy,” sighed Rachel, prompting a loud scoff from her husband, Andrew. “It’s greatest sin is that it’s just plain boring!” said the self-described “tech-wreck survivor”. Like all the men polled, Andrew rejected the film outright, branding it “rococoesque and shallow”. Geoff, a commercial photographer from Petersham, said he simply failed to suspend disbelief: “The few moments of exhilarating spectacle are dwarfed by a maudlin landscape of overwrought sentimentality."
Josie, who actually works in the film industry, told The Bulletin she copped the full brunt of the emerging gender split first hand. “I walked out calling it visionary and the boy I saw it with ridiculed me for the next two days. “But seriously, putting aside the hype, I think if this film had emerged out of nowhere we'd all be calling it visionary,” Josie added. “And for anyone who grew up in the 1980’s the soundtrack is just fantastic.”
“That’s the problem” countered Alister, a print manager from Summer Hill. "It’s just postmodern pap. It’s got nothing to do with the real, historical Moulin Rouge. There’s no real connection with Paris, or the French, or the Belle Epoque!
“And there’s no CAN-CAN! Lurhmann should hang his head in shame,” Alister exagerated.
The only odd woman out in the poll was Catherine, a TV writer from Surry Hills, who vowed to “never ever” see the film. She blamed the climate of conflicting word of mouth for her indifference.
“I’m getting on with life,” she said. “Barring acts of god, I shan’t be going.”
-MICHAEL HUTAK
---
First published in "The Bulletin"
Women, without exception, said that they “loved” the film. Some reported “feelings of joy” upon exiting the cinema, others hailed it “a creative triumph.” One Bondi-based IT consultant, who can’t be identified, declared it “the chick flick for a digital generation”. Fellow Bondi resident, Suze, claimed the film’s emphasis on “decoration, singing and dancing, tragic fantasy, and cultivating community” all reflect largely, if not exclusively, “chick aspirations.”
“It’s about the triumph of fashion over formula, of largesse over logic,” said Suze, a media advisor for a public agency. “Watching it was like leafing through the pages of a beautiful magazine.” Jodi, a skincare consultant from Bondi Junction, agreed. “It’s primarily concerned with looking good – and you know I can appreciate that.” Her friend Rachel, a photographic agent from Darlinghurst, declared Rouge “a romp” with canny Scotsman Ewan Macgregor oozing the “it” factor.
“Ewan is so dreamy,” sighed Rachel, prompting a loud scoff from her husband, Andrew. “It’s greatest sin is that it’s just plain boring!” said the self-described “tech-wreck survivor”. Like all the men polled, Andrew rejected the film outright, branding it “rococoesque and shallow”. Geoff, a commercial photographer from Petersham, said he simply failed to suspend disbelief: “The few moments of exhilarating spectacle are dwarfed by a maudlin landscape of overwrought sentimentality."
Josie, who actually works in the film industry, told The Bulletin she copped the full brunt of the emerging gender split first hand. “I walked out calling it visionary and the boy I saw it with ridiculed me for the next two days. “But seriously, putting aside the hype, I think if this film had emerged out of nowhere we'd all be calling it visionary,” Josie added. “And for anyone who grew up in the 1980’s the soundtrack is just fantastic.”
“That’s the problem” countered Alister, a print manager from Summer Hill. "It’s just postmodern pap. It’s got nothing to do with the real, historical Moulin Rouge. There’s no real connection with Paris, or the French, or the Belle Epoque!
“And there’s no CAN-CAN! Lurhmann should hang his head in shame,” Alister exagerated.
The only odd woman out in the poll was Catherine, a TV writer from Surry Hills, who vowed to “never ever” see the film. She blamed the climate of conflicting word of mouth for her indifference.
“I’m getting on with life,” she said. “Barring acts of god, I shan’t be going.”
-MICHAEL HUTAK
---
First published in "The Bulletin"
15 June 2001
Interview: Ben Mendelsohn
BEN MENDELSOHN: NO BULLSHIT!
For a professional actor on a mid-career surge, Ben Mendelsohn is uncharacteristically modest: “I’ve been doing this (acting) since pretty much the beginning of my teenage years, and I’ve been financially independent since I was fifteen but it’s not really a career, is it? It’s a series of jobs, is what it is! I mean, you will never get to be ‘Head of South East Asian acting’. You might have a great life but it’s not a career.”
It’s mid-morning and we’re talking in a café overlooking Bondi Beach. “Bondi’s got a bit hectic – I’m shifting basically. I remember seeing this great TV special when I was 12, it was about Penthouse Pets and one of ‘em lived in Bondi – and I remember all these shots on the beach and I thought what a promised land – Bondi! I love living here but it’s getting very hectic.”
Mendelsohn is dressed smart casual, freshly shaved, hair combed and still wet from his morning shower. His world weary delivery, punctuated by a steady succession of ‘Styvo Reds’, are at odds with his image, which is reminiscent of a naughty boy wagging Sunday school. How refreshing, we comment, to find an actor not obsessed with his public image; a thespian, no less, unencumbered by “vaulting ambition”. Oops, spoke too soon…
“Oh, I have very unhealthy ambitions,” he protests, “but I don’t see the point in advertising ‘em, y’know? I don’t see the point in sitting down and telling you (slipping into mock American accent) what I’m gonna do next. Coz if I do it I’ll do it and we’ll know about it then.
"I can just see that quote coming up – ‘I have a lot of unhealthy ambitions’.”
If there’s blood coursing in his veins he should. On the back of good notices for his supporting role in the Hollywood blockbuster VERTICAL LIMIT, Mendelsohn is on a roll, with last year’s SAMPLE PEOPLE garnering him favourable press and anticipation high for his new release, a comedy drama called MULLET, which reunites the actor with David Caesar, his director in the 1995 hit, IDIOT BOX. And with CHILD STAR, his third film with director Nadia Tass, set for release in a couple of months, now is a good a time as any for ambition.
“Since the whole Vertical Limit thing my face has been back in the newspapers, and I’ve had a few more scripts come my way. I mean I’ve been in this business so long that I’m not expecting that much. It’s about working, y’know? About getting a bit of money in the bank, enough to not have to work for a while. I mean I don’t give a fuck – y’know? I don’t give a fuck.
“I hang out with a couple of actors but most of my time isn’t spent with other actors. My private life is not in the business. I’m not a big networker and luckily I’m not in a position where I need to do that and I’m glad about that. You’d go fucking mad – all you talk about is how much you’re working or how much you’re not working – I think about that stuff enough, I don’t need to pump it up any more.”
Having spent half his young life in the limelight, he’s more than accustomed to the drill. A new film, a round of publicity, same old questions: “It’s all bullshit, mate,” he intimates in reassuringly hushed tones.
Mendelsohn has been in the public’s consciousness since he was 15 and the HENDERSON KIDS was a hit on our TV screens. And it’s been more than 14 years since his remarkable film debut in the director John Duigan’s groundbreaking THE YEAR MY VOICE BROKE, a film that also launched the career of his contemporary, Noah Taylor.
He remembers the film fondly. “It was slated as a telemovie, in amongst a bunch of films that Kennedy Miller were doing for TEN. They loved it so much in the first weeks that decided to go ahead and make it into a feature. I had no idea it was going to be so big.
“Duigan was fuckin’ great! He’s like a horse whisperer. He’s got the abilty to point you in a direction and just let you go. They’re the ones I like to work with, and look at the performances he got out of us – they’re pretty fucken on the money!”
Mendelsohn won the first of his AFI Awards for the role, and a string of distinguished performances ensued in some of the local industry’s best films of the late 1980’s and 1990s - THE BIG STEAL, SPOTSWOOD, MAP OF THE HUMAN HEART, SIRENS, METAL SKIN (attracting his second AFI Award), COSI, and IDIOT BOX. He’s an actor that relies on his natural gift and sheer charisma. You can drop all that method "bullshit"!
“One of the misconceptions about performance is the idea that you can get it perfect, that the more you wring your hands about it the better it’s gonna be – that’s bullshit. If a director or another actor asks me what my motivation is, well, I tell ‘em it’s got nothing to do with them.
“I wanted to be a spy when I was a kid,” he says straight-faced, which somehow figures perfectly. “I left school at 15, and I haven’t ever formally studied acting. I mean talking about acting is a bit like fucking for chastity, y’know?” He checks for a second, and is obviously keen to impress that he’s still very serious about his work: “That doesn’t mean I don’t do whatever I need to do to get the performance up there, I just think there’s a certain cult that focuses more on the preparation than on the actual result whereas I think here’s a lot to be said for just jumping in and doing it. I do like to think I’m getting better at it, but I don’t know that! I’m very critical of my own work and I see the bits that don’t work before the bits that do.”
Mendelsohn’s aim is to be ‘in the moment’ when the camera is rolling, a characteristic self-evident in his easygoing performance in MULLET, a modest but moving comedy drama set in a small south coast fishing village. Headlining a bevy of accomplished Australian actors like Susie Porter, Andrew S Gilbert and Steve L Marquand, Mendelsohn carries the film with an easy Aussie charm. He plays the lead role of a bloke in his late twenties who returns home from the Big Smoke. When Mullet upped and left three years earlier he didn’t tell a soul, and so his friends, family and ex-girlfriend don’t exactly accept him back into the fold with open arms.
“Mullet’s a guy whose taken a turn in life and he can’t go forward without taking a counter turn… and so he has to go back home and try and reconcile what it is he’s trying to leave behind. Which is place, where he comes from, the situation with his family.”
Mendelsohn himself comes from Melbourne, but he’s been “living in Sydney close on ten years. I lived back in Melbourne in 96/97 for a year or so… I still see myself as an expatriate Melbournite more than a Sydney boy."
And after the exposure afforded by VERTICAL LIMIT, what about the ‘States? “Yeah, what about the ‘States? I dunno, I guess I’ll go over and have a look. I was there recently very briefly, saw a couple a people. I’ve got an agent there but I don’t talk to her. I got an agent in Britain too, but I don’t talk to her either.
“I’m Australian based until I’m not. More or less.”
One thing’s for sure, when he does do it, we’ll be the first to know.
MICHAEL HUTAK, 2001
Publication: Australian Style #53, July 01
ENDS
30 May 2001
Chopper for children
Mark “Chopper” Read has written a children’s book. Yes, the Mark “Chopper” Read, notorious self-confessed murderer and former stand-over man, now best selling author and media cause célèbre.
The 3000 word fable, to be illustrated by Sydney artist and 2000 Archibald Prize winner, Adam Cullen, is a far cry from Read’s previous titles such as “How to Shoot Friends and Influence People”, “No Tears for a Tough Guy”, or “Hits and Memories”.
“It’s called ‘Hookie the Cripple’ and I invented this story when I was 18 or 19,” Read told The Bulletin from his Tasmanian rural home, where, after spending 23 of his 46 years in jail, he now lives with wife Mary-Ann and two year old son, Charlie.
“It’s about a hunchback in 16th century Italy,” recounts Read, “who every day for 21 years is tormented by the local butcher to the point where he stabs him 21 times. When he goes to court, no one will defend him then just as all is lost the greatest lawyer in all of Italy steps forward…”
Read and Cullen are “in negotiations with several publishers” but, can a book by Mark Read about child abuse, fatal stabbings, and a criminal trial be a book for children?
“It’s less violent than an Aesop’s fable but I’m not talking about toddlers here,” Read retorts. “It’s for teenagers. It’s like an adult children’s story…adults would enjoy telling it to kids. I told the story to Andrew Dominik and he was gonna put it in the Chopper movie. But unfortunately Eric Bana couldn’t pull it off.”
“It’s true,” confirms Dominik, who wrote and directed multi-award winning feature. “We shot it twice with Eric, but it didn’t quite work, so we cut it. We are going to release that footage as an extra on the DVD.
“I always found the story of Hookie the Cripple completely fascinating in what it says about Mark. I think it’s very much a disguised version of Mark’s own story.”
Read’s own childhood was dominated by a religious zealot mother who, when Read renounced her faith, had him committed where he underwent electric shock therapy. After showing a “kindler, gentler” Chopper to the world in last months’ ABCTV documentary, Australian Story, is ‘Hookie’ Mark Read’s plea for understanding?
“No, I think that’s a very feeble excuse to blame childhood on how your life’s turned out. There are people who had childhoods as bad as mine that end up High Court judges. The story is what it is, and people can draw their own conclusions.”
In recent months Read has struck up a close friendship with Cullen, and the two talk several times a week by phone and correspond via hand written letters. Apart from ‘Hookie’, they are working on several other collaborations, and Cullen is planning a portrait of the man he calls “Chop Chop”.
“I’m interested in Australia’s criminal history and I’d read almost all of his books,” says Cullen, “so I contacted him with a view to doing an artwork and we hit it off straight away.
“Chopper almost personifies the kind of work that I’m doing which is really about the underbelly of the Australian experience.”
Says Read: “They reckon we’re the perfect combination. I’m the bad boy of the literary world – I don’t think anyone would confuse me with Bryce Courtney – and they call Adam the bad boy of the art world, the mentor of the mentally ill. In his case I think they probably just mean ‘artistic renegade’ ¬because Adam’s a pretty nice person really, a decent chap.”
Since writing his first book “Chopper: From the Inside” in 1991, Read has become a one man media event, publishing nine books, releasing music and spoken word cd’s, becoming the subject of an internationally acclaimed feature film, and making legendary appearances on live television, as Lisbeth Gore, Kerry Ann Kennerly and Alan Jones can all testify. In recent months Read has also been the subject of controversy over his appearance in several advertisements – one for a pair of sunglasses and another advocating road safety. But Read claims he’s profiting from his talent not his notoriety.
“No one has that much notoriety that they can go out and sell 500000 books. It’s not as if people are rushing out saying ‘oh, he’s notorious, we’ll immediately run out and buy his book, we won’t read it because we don’t like him, but we can put it on the mantle piece.’
“It’s quite obvious that people like what I’m writing.”
Critics are quick to point out that the victims of Read’s crimes or their families will never have the luxury of building a media profile out of their pain and anguish. Read, about to publish his tenth “true crime” book, fully expects more controversy over ‘Hookie’.
“There will always be the inevitable reaction whenever my name is mentioned,” he says. “My critics are blinded by their personal disgust that a person like me should dare to write a book in the first place. I’ve got to live with what my critics say about me, but I know when I’m dead other people will come along and have something else to say.
“I will probably never live down my past and I will just have to wear it. I’ve run out of answers trying, I simply have nothing to say.
“There is nothing I can say.”
---
First published in The Bulletin
The 3000 word fable, to be illustrated by Sydney artist and 2000 Archibald Prize winner, Adam Cullen, is a far cry from Read’s previous titles such as “How to Shoot Friends and Influence People”, “No Tears for a Tough Guy”, or “Hits and Memories”.
“It’s called ‘Hookie the Cripple’ and I invented this story when I was 18 or 19,” Read told The Bulletin from his Tasmanian rural home, where, after spending 23 of his 46 years in jail, he now lives with wife Mary-Ann and two year old son, Charlie.
“It’s about a hunchback in 16th century Italy,” recounts Read, “who every day for 21 years is tormented by the local butcher to the point where he stabs him 21 times. When he goes to court, no one will defend him then just as all is lost the greatest lawyer in all of Italy steps forward…”
Read and Cullen are “in negotiations with several publishers” but, can a book by Mark Read about child abuse, fatal stabbings, and a criminal trial be a book for children?
“It’s less violent than an Aesop’s fable but I’m not talking about toddlers here,” Read retorts. “It’s for teenagers. It’s like an adult children’s story…adults would enjoy telling it to kids. I told the story to Andrew Dominik and he was gonna put it in the Chopper movie. But unfortunately Eric Bana couldn’t pull it off.”
“It’s true,” confirms Dominik, who wrote and directed multi-award winning feature. “We shot it twice with Eric, but it didn’t quite work, so we cut it. We are going to release that footage as an extra on the DVD.
“I always found the story of Hookie the Cripple completely fascinating in what it says about Mark. I think it’s very much a disguised version of Mark’s own story.”
Read’s own childhood was dominated by a religious zealot mother who, when Read renounced her faith, had him committed where he underwent electric shock therapy. After showing a “kindler, gentler” Chopper to the world in last months’ ABCTV documentary, Australian Story, is ‘Hookie’ Mark Read’s plea for understanding?
“No, I think that’s a very feeble excuse to blame childhood on how your life’s turned out. There are people who had childhoods as bad as mine that end up High Court judges. The story is what it is, and people can draw their own conclusions.”
In recent months Read has struck up a close friendship with Cullen, and the two talk several times a week by phone and correspond via hand written letters. Apart from ‘Hookie’, they are working on several other collaborations, and Cullen is planning a portrait of the man he calls “Chop Chop”.
“I’m interested in Australia’s criminal history and I’d read almost all of his books,” says Cullen, “so I contacted him with a view to doing an artwork and we hit it off straight away.
“Chopper almost personifies the kind of work that I’m doing which is really about the underbelly of the Australian experience.”
Says Read: “They reckon we’re the perfect combination. I’m the bad boy of the literary world – I don’t think anyone would confuse me with Bryce Courtney – and they call Adam the bad boy of the art world, the mentor of the mentally ill. In his case I think they probably just mean ‘artistic renegade’ ¬because Adam’s a pretty nice person really, a decent chap.”
Since writing his first book “Chopper: From the Inside” in 1991, Read has become a one man media event, publishing nine books, releasing music and spoken word cd’s, becoming the subject of an internationally acclaimed feature film, and making legendary appearances on live television, as Lisbeth Gore, Kerry Ann Kennerly and Alan Jones can all testify. In recent months Read has also been the subject of controversy over his appearance in several advertisements – one for a pair of sunglasses and another advocating road safety. But Read claims he’s profiting from his talent not his notoriety.
“No one has that much notoriety that they can go out and sell 500000 books. It’s not as if people are rushing out saying ‘oh, he’s notorious, we’ll immediately run out and buy his book, we won’t read it because we don’t like him, but we can put it on the mantle piece.’
“It’s quite obvious that people like what I’m writing.”
Critics are quick to point out that the victims of Read’s crimes or their families will never have the luxury of building a media profile out of their pain and anguish. Read, about to publish his tenth “true crime” book, fully expects more controversy over ‘Hookie’.
“There will always be the inevitable reaction whenever my name is mentioned,” he says. “My critics are blinded by their personal disgust that a person like me should dare to write a book in the first place. I’ve got to live with what my critics say about me, but I know when I’m dead other people will come along and have something else to say.
“I will probably never live down my past and I will just have to wear it. I’ve run out of answers trying, I simply have nothing to say.
“There is nothing I can say.”
---
First published in The Bulletin
1 May 2001
Regional Leap
A renewed engagement with Asia was the pitch when the heavy hitters of art and capital congregated at the Art Gallery of New South Wales today (Wednesday). They were there to hear former PM, Paul Keating, officially launch the Institute of Asian Culture and Visual Arts, or VisAsia,.
With its headquarters in Sydney, and corporate backers like IBM and Malaysian construction giant IPOH Garden, the peak body is promising a ‘great leap forward’ in cultural co-operation throughout the region.
In a quest to develop new audiences for art and new sources of corporate funding, VisAsia will pool the resources of the AGNSW’s own Asian Art Department with those of other major public galleries in Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, China, South Korea, and Vietnam.
The unique model is the initiative of AGNSW director, Edmund Capon, and prominent trustee and 1996 Australian of the Year, Dr John Yu, who will serve as VisAsia’s first chairman.
Capon said VisAsia will provide the new Asian Art Gallery (opening early 2003, part of a $13 million re-development) with a steady stream of quality exhibitions from partners like the Hong Kong Museum of Art, and the Asian Civilizations Museum in Singapore.
Capon said he had personally invited Keating to appear because of the latter's ability to "send a message”.
“Our political body language toward the region in recent times has not been what you would call warm,” he said.
---
First published in The Bulletin
With its headquarters in Sydney, and corporate backers like IBM and Malaysian construction giant IPOH Garden, the peak body is promising a ‘great leap forward’ in cultural co-operation throughout the region.
In a quest to develop new audiences for art and new sources of corporate funding, VisAsia will pool the resources of the AGNSW’s own Asian Art Department with those of other major public galleries in Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, China, South Korea, and Vietnam.
The unique model is the initiative of AGNSW director, Edmund Capon, and prominent trustee and 1996 Australian of the Year, Dr John Yu, who will serve as VisAsia’s first chairman.
Capon said VisAsia will provide the new Asian Art Gallery (opening early 2003, part of a $13 million re-development) with a steady stream of quality exhibitions from partners like the Hong Kong Museum of Art, and the Asian Civilizations Museum in Singapore.
Capon said he had personally invited Keating to appear because of the latter's ability to "send a message”.
“Our political body language toward the region in recent times has not been what you would call warm,” he said.
---
First published in The Bulletin
20 April 2001
Freudian slip
In between dealing with a hostile press, public brawls with former and current staff, controversial appearances before Senate estimates committees, and complaints about the air-conditioning, National Gallery of Australia director, Brian Kennedy, has found time to pursue a painting – one with an asking price of $8 million, no less. News broke last Wednesday in The Australian that Kennedy would acquire British artist Lucien Freud’s 1999 painting After Cezanne for a sum that would make it most expensive painting ever purchased by an Australian public gallery. However on Friday Kennedy told The Bulletin that he was “taken by surprise when the story appeared,” and that the Gallery’s negotiations with the artist, who still owns the work, were continuing. As we go to press, Kennedy still has a $1m shortfall to make up from private benefactors in order to clinch the deal.
Suspicions that Kennedy himself leaked the story seem unlikely, given that it is highly unusual to seek publicity for a work you hope to purchase. There are fears now that Freud may now even raise his asking price, now that he is aware that the work is so keenly sought down under. And for the sale to fall through now would surely be a highly embarrassing nail in Kennedy’s professional coffin.
Informed reaction to the acquisition has, in general, been positive But not everyone is happy. One former director of a major Australian state gallery told The Bulletin that the NGA’s “whole collection policy needs to be reviewed and sharpened. Why in 2001 are we buying up the work of British artists? Why aren’t we looking to the Pacific or Asia or here in Australia for that matter?” And one leading benefactor to the NGA declared if he “had the choice of spending $8m on a British artist or a similar sum on Australian work I know what I’d be choosing.”
However William Wright, curatorial director of Sydney’s leading commercial gallery, Sherman Galleries, dismissed such criticism as shallow. “In New York they wouldn’t blink at such a purchase. It’s a worthwhile purchase.
“It’s a large composition, an excellent transcription of a remarkable earlier work (Paul Cezanne’s L’Apres-midi a Naples) that the NGA already owns. Freud is the best living artist of his kind by a long chalk and we have too few of them here.”
Should it make the voyage,
The Art Gallery of Western Australia purchased Freud’s Naked Man with Rat (1977) in 1983 for just $78,000. Today it is valued at $6.5 million, marking the $8m for After Cezanne as a fair market price.
The AGWA’s deputy director, Gary Dufour, says his Freud’s worth to his Gallery since it’s purchase has been more than simply fiscal.
“For smaller public galleries like ours, if you don’t have works in your collection that others want to borrow, it affects your ability to borrow works in turn,” said Dufour. “Our Freud has spent half it’s time with us out on loan to galleries all over the world – in Paris, Washington, London, Berlin, Frankfurt - if we hadn’t been loaning out the Freud for the past decade most of these major international galleries would not even know we existed.”
Asked which Freud was the superior work, Dufour said he wouldn’t comment only to say “I’m pleased that we have the one that we have.”
In the mid 1980’s the Art Gallery of New South Wales had the chance to buy an important Freud but decided the asking price of $360,000 too high. Three months later the work was eventually sold for $1.2 million.
---
First published in The Bulletin
17 April 2001
Saleroom’s Lot
An auction market in contemporary Australian art appears assured after the French-owned international auction house, Christie’s, conducted its second successful sale in the emerging category in Melbourne last week.
Bidding was brisk and competitive with a respectable 70% clearance rate on the 131 lots, which ranged in estimate from $1000 to $180,000.
Top selling lot at $99,875 was the late Rosalie Gascoigne’s ‘Lantern’1990. Other winners on the night were collectors of Brisbane conceptual artist, Robert Macpherson, whose ‘Scale from the Tool’ 1977 set a new saleroom record for the artist of $70,500, confirming his rank among Australia’s senior living artists.
Other artists to post strong sales include Ken Whisson ($49,350), Imants Tillers ($44,650) Robert Hunter ($32,900) and Dale Hickey ($32,900)
With few dealers or museum curators active, Christie’s Head of Contemporary Art, Annette Larkin, said buyers at the sale were predominantly younger, private collectors. “We also had a several successful bids from ex-pats in South East Asia - young lawyers and bankers earning US dollars in Hong Kong and Singapore who were eager take advantage of the exchange rate.”
The sale aggregate of $918,000 was, according to Larkin, “excellent, considering several big ticket items didn’t sell”. She said the total compared favorably with the $1.2 million achieved at Christie’s inaugural contemporary sale, held in Sydney last August.
The poor performing items were works by Howard Arkley, whose prices had skyrocketed since his untimely death in 1999. The formerly buoyant market for the artist’s airbrushed, day-glo images of suburbia took a stumble when four of five lots failed to meet reserve.
Arkley’s ‘Eastern Suburbs Pink Home’ - the sale’s ‘hero’ lot - was passed in at $130,000 against a low reserve of $150,000, however prominent Melbourne gallerist, Anna Schwartz, believes the correction was long overdue. “Howard would be turning in his grave if he knew his works were being passed in at that figure, but we can see the market for his work is in the process of correcting itself.”
Some dealers have been critical of Christie’s foray into their territory but Schwartz was supportive, saying the sale was “the best advertisement commercial galleries could get. Not enough of the art-buying public are knowledgeable about contemporary art – auctions like this educate them.“
---
First published in The Bulletin
Bidding was brisk and competitive with a respectable 70% clearance rate on the 131 lots, which ranged in estimate from $1000 to $180,000.
Top selling lot at $99,875 was the late Rosalie Gascoigne’s ‘Lantern’1990. Other winners on the night were collectors of Brisbane conceptual artist, Robert Macpherson, whose ‘Scale from the Tool’ 1977 set a new saleroom record for the artist of $70,500, confirming his rank among Australia’s senior living artists.
Other artists to post strong sales include Ken Whisson ($49,350), Imants Tillers ($44,650) Robert Hunter ($32,900) and Dale Hickey ($32,900)
With few dealers or museum curators active, Christie’s Head of Contemporary Art, Annette Larkin, said buyers at the sale were predominantly younger, private collectors. “We also had a several successful bids from ex-pats in South East Asia - young lawyers and bankers earning US dollars in Hong Kong and Singapore who were eager take advantage of the exchange rate.”
The sale aggregate of $918,000 was, according to Larkin, “excellent, considering several big ticket items didn’t sell”. She said the total compared favorably with the $1.2 million achieved at Christie’s inaugural contemporary sale, held in Sydney last August.
The poor performing items were works by Howard Arkley, whose prices had skyrocketed since his untimely death in 1999. The formerly buoyant market for the artist’s airbrushed, day-glo images of suburbia took a stumble when four of five lots failed to meet reserve.
Arkley’s ‘Eastern Suburbs Pink Home’ - the sale’s ‘hero’ lot - was passed in at $130,000 against a low reserve of $150,000, however prominent Melbourne gallerist, Anna Schwartz, believes the correction was long overdue. “Howard would be turning in his grave if he knew his works were being passed in at that figure, but we can see the market for his work is in the process of correcting itself.”
Some dealers have been critical of Christie’s foray into their territory but Schwartz was supportive, saying the sale was “the best advertisement commercial galleries could get. Not enough of the art-buying public are knowledgeable about contemporary art – auctions like this educate them.“
---
First published in The Bulletin
16 January 2001
Cunnamulla: Australia all over?
[Feature interview, The Bulletin, 16/01/2001]
Documentary filmmaker Dennis O'Rourke's talks about his controversial new film.
"CUNNAMULLA - it's a c**t of a place!" scream the provocative street posters for Dennis O'Rourke's new film. And on the basis of his intimate portraits of several inhabitants of that remote outback Queensland town, it's hard to argue with him. In O'Rourke's Cunnamulla, social and cultural disintegration spans the racial divide, cut through poverty, brutality, incarceration and ignorance.
"Grog, drugs, fighting, lookin' for women, breakin' n'enterin' - that's about all y'can do in Cunnamulla," says Paul, a young Aborigine facing 6 months jail on assault charges.
"There's no work," says Herb, the local scrap metal dealer. "We're all livin' on the blackfellas money on pension day." Then there's 13 year old Cara and 15 year old Kellie-Anne, who tell in uncomfortable detail of their promiscuous lives: "The boys here don't like usin' protection but I tell 'em any boy that makes me pregnant, I'll dump the kid on 'em." Neredah, the local taxi driver's wife, advocates public floggings as a deterrent for teenage pregnancy, or any other misdemeanor, for that matter. "And if they do it again flog 'em harder!" And you can't tell her husband, Arthur, "that they're not in-breeding in a town like this."
O'Rourke clearly courts controversy, and with Cunnamulla, you know he's going to get it. "We all have a dark side," he tells the Bulletin on the eve of the film's Sydney release. "I actively look for it, I want to go there, to reveal all those contradictions and hidden paradoxes which are all the things that make for great stories."
Contradictions like Jack: an Aborigine who openly refers to "those black c**ts", a pensioner who relies on sickness benefits yet denounces government for doling out handouts to those who "won't work". The very epitome of One Nation, Jack reckons "those c**ts John Howard and Peter Beattie should both be put up against a wall and shot." Ruminating on such matters, sitting topless in his kitchen in front of the electric fan, Jack cuts a compelling figure, warts and all.
It's unsettling, and that's just how O'Rourke wants it. "I think this film is really deeply disturbing to us and it says something about us in total," he says. "I'm looking for real people, that's where I'm trying to go. For everything you want to say you don't have to go looking for the big glossy subject. You can find life and truth and revelation and ultimately make political statements in the most unprepossessing or banal situations.
"If this film resonates then it's because you say 'yes, that's it!' that's life, it's the struggle, it's the tragedy of it all."
None of these "characters", as O'Rourke calls them, are easily pigeonholed. That's because, working completely alone, O'Rourke spent the better part of a year living with them, befriending them, winning their trust in order to capture the complexity of their lives on film. "Not only did I get to know them very well, they got to know me very well."
By becoming so involved with his subjects O'Rourke hopes to break down the so-called "critical distance" between the observer and the observed. He wants to debunk the conventional notion of the documentary filmmaker as the dispassionate, impartial observer of an uncomplicated reality.
"I get involved and place myself in relationship to my subject, and the audience has to see it through me. And by making myself vulnerable, or even deficient, or even of questionable character, I place the audience there as well."
It's a strategy that doesn't always work, like the last time he made himself "vulnerable", in his 1991 film The Good Woman Of Bangkok, in which he "cast" himself as a sex tourist who falls in love with a Bangkok prostitute after purchasing her services in order to make the film we see about her life. In fact he worked for three months with local NGOs to find the right subject for the "lead role". So while the details were almost fictional - he did "fall in love" with the good woman - the portrait of Bangkok's pernicious sex trade and its effect on the sex workers was not. But in blurring the line between documentary and fiction O'Rourke ran headlong into a torrent of moral outrage, as the normally righteously open-minded audience of Sydney Film Festival doubted and openly denounced his motives.
Ten years on, what he doesn't want with Cunnamulla is "what happened with The Good Woman, and that is to be hijacked by people who are in a terrible rush to avoid confronting a much more messier truth and reality than they want to know about."
But O'Rourke himself avoids some realities in favour of others. Cunnamulla's local Aboriginal activists are cut from the film simply because their "level of performance wasn't good enough… I started to film them but we're doing cinema here and it just didn't work."
He takes up the point, stridently: "There's several other films in there including the one that many people said I should have made which shows the so-called 'other' side of Cunnamulla. Well, what you see here is MY vision of the world, and it's not a simple one. It's my job to reveal the truth as I see it. No matter how uncomfortable. To those who say, 'oh, you shouldn't do that' - they're the frightened ones. They don't want to know.
"That's the responsibility of the artist - to say things that may be troubling. I'm not in the public relations game."
What does he say to critics like David Stratton and Margaret Pomeranz on the SBS Movie Show, who dismiss the film as nothing but a freak show? "I'd say to them 'get f**ked!' - David and his bloody pontificating! I love Godard's quote about critics: 'They are like soldiers that fire on their own men'. I love that."
Yet he does want the film "to resonate, provoke, and disturb - if it doesn't I'll feel I haven't done my job. We who are not making fiction films have an obligation not to pander, not to preach to the converted, not to just give the simplistic messages that people want.
"I can't put my finger on it, but I know this film speaks deeply about what it means to be Australian at the end of the twentieth century."
He's right: you can't put your finger on it. In Cunnamulla, the ultimate message – whether complex or simple - remains unclear. Whether you're a rampaging redneck, bleeding heart liberal, or PC social engineer, Cunnamulla will both confirm and deny in the same instant every prejudice or stereotype you might hold about Australia's Deep North and the plight of outback Aboriginal people. Certainly the viewer IS free draw her own conclusions but by closing credits we can conclude little more than that Cunnamulla is indeed a c**t of a place.
At the end of the film O'Rourke allows Herb, the scrap metal dealer, to poke fun at the filmmaker's own ultimate distance from his subjects: "You've got a soft bloody life - standing there with a half smirk on your face. Free hotels, free travel, flash bloody machinery. So what's next?"
O'Rourke pauses and replies "I might just settle down in Cunnamulla." But Herb, O'Rourke himself and the audience all know he's just been passing through.
CUNNAMULLA opens nationally in January.
- MICHAEL HUTAK
6 November 2000
Europeans fancied to lift Melbourne Cup
MELBOURNE, Australia, Nov 5 (AFP) - Irish entry Far Cry and England's Enzeli have firmed as favourites to lift the Melbourne Cup on Tuesday -- Australia's biggest and richest race.
Bookmakers report strong support for both the Martin Pipe-trained Far Cry, which has firmed into 7-1 second favourite, and 1999 Ascot Gold Cup winner Enzeli, which has been heavily backed this week into 10-1.
The other two European entrants, Arctic Owl and Godophin stables Lightning Arrow, both from English stables, also feature prominently in the market but have yet to be significantly backed in ante-post betting.
At a press conference Sunday, the visiting trainers all expressed satisfaction with the way their horses had settled in and preparedness for the big race.
"Far Cry is just as good as he was going into the Ascot Gold Cup when he ran second to a very good horse in Kayf Tara," said Pipe.
"Hes very laid back, doesnt worry about anything but he comes to life in a race so were very happy. We wouldn't change a thing going into the race."
Barring Arctic Owl, the European entries faired well in the crucial barrier draw.
Enzeli is perfectly placed in lane six, as is Far Cry in 10. Lightning Arrow in 14 will need luck, but they all do in two mile (3,200 metres) races with 24 runners.
Arctic Owls Newmarket trainer James Fanshawe said he was "not too disappointed" with the horses draw in barrier 21.
"Theres a long run to the first turn at Flemington so he has plenty of time to get into a position," he said.
While Fanshawe was concerned at the horses lacklustre temperament early last week, it worked strongly Sunday morning and was "much brighter now and more like his old self."
Enzelis Epsom Derby winning mentor, John Oxx, said his horse had not been flashy in his workout but he was still happy.
He did though sound a note of warning on the task ahead: "In these days of international competition in racing, to come halfway round the world and win this race is a much bigger task than people realise."
Melbourne property developer and former casino owner Lloyd Williams bought Enzeli last month from the Aga Khan for an undisclosed six figure sum, and promptly engaged local jockey Greg Hall for the Cup ride.
"We would normally have brought over Johnny Murtagh," Oxx said. "But Greg Hall is retained by Mr. Williams and he has the local knowledge.
"There is always a debate about who might be best -- the jockey who knows the horse or the jockey who knows the track. But the Melbourne Cup is a unique race, a tough race and Im not sorry to see Greg on the horse."
Godolphin stable manager Brad Marzato was bristling with confidence over Lightning Arrows prospects: "He has really picked up in his work and I couldnt be happier."
However, the five-year-old lacks the class of his fellow travellers and is the least fancied of the international runners.
Certainly he is rated inferior to Godolphins runner last year, Central Park, which ran a mighty race for second behind Bart Cummings 11th Melbourne Cup winner Rogan Josh.
Incredibly, Cummings will be without a runner this year after Oxford Dollar was balloted out of the race on Saturday night.
No Northern Hemisphere raider has been successful in the worlds greatest two mile handicap since Vintage Crops courageous Cup victory for Dermot Weld in 1993.
Every year international runners such as Double Trigger, Oscar Schindler, Arabian Story, Faithful Son and Travelmate have been touted as vastly superior to the home breds, but almost every year the local heroes win.
This year the John Hawkes trained Freemason will carry the Australian hopes.
Other local runners to attract betting support are Diatribe at 7- 1, and New Zealand's Kaapstad Way at 8-1, which will not run if the track is severely rain affected.
But after drying winds in Melbourne over the weekend, the track is likely to be in good order for "the race that stops a nation."
---
First published by Agence France-Press
Bookmakers report strong support for both the Martin Pipe-trained Far Cry, which has firmed into 7-1 second favourite, and 1999 Ascot Gold Cup winner Enzeli, which has been heavily backed this week into 10-1.
The other two European entrants, Arctic Owl and Godophin stables Lightning Arrow, both from English stables, also feature prominently in the market but have yet to be significantly backed in ante-post betting.
At a press conference Sunday, the visiting trainers all expressed satisfaction with the way their horses had settled in and preparedness for the big race.
"Far Cry is just as good as he was going into the Ascot Gold Cup when he ran second to a very good horse in Kayf Tara," said Pipe.
"Hes very laid back, doesnt worry about anything but he comes to life in a race so were very happy. We wouldn't change a thing going into the race."
Barring Arctic Owl, the European entries faired well in the crucial barrier draw.
Enzeli is perfectly placed in lane six, as is Far Cry in 10. Lightning Arrow in 14 will need luck, but they all do in two mile (3,200 metres) races with 24 runners.
Arctic Owls Newmarket trainer James Fanshawe said he was "not too disappointed" with the horses draw in barrier 21.
"Theres a long run to the first turn at Flemington so he has plenty of time to get into a position," he said.
While Fanshawe was concerned at the horses lacklustre temperament early last week, it worked strongly Sunday morning and was "much brighter now and more like his old self."
Enzelis Epsom Derby winning mentor, John Oxx, said his horse had not been flashy in his workout but he was still happy.
He did though sound a note of warning on the task ahead: "In these days of international competition in racing, to come halfway round the world and win this race is a much bigger task than people realise."
Melbourne property developer and former casino owner Lloyd Williams bought Enzeli last month from the Aga Khan for an undisclosed six figure sum, and promptly engaged local jockey Greg Hall for the Cup ride.
"We would normally have brought over Johnny Murtagh," Oxx said. "But Greg Hall is retained by Mr. Williams and he has the local knowledge.
"There is always a debate about who might be best -- the jockey who knows the horse or the jockey who knows the track. But the Melbourne Cup is a unique race, a tough race and Im not sorry to see Greg on the horse."
Godolphin stable manager Brad Marzato was bristling with confidence over Lightning Arrows prospects: "He has really picked up in his work and I couldnt be happier."
However, the five-year-old lacks the class of his fellow travellers and is the least fancied of the international runners.
Certainly he is rated inferior to Godolphins runner last year, Central Park, which ran a mighty race for second behind Bart Cummings 11th Melbourne Cup winner Rogan Josh.
Incredibly, Cummings will be without a runner this year after Oxford Dollar was balloted out of the race on Saturday night.
No Northern Hemisphere raider has been successful in the worlds greatest two mile handicap since Vintage Crops courageous Cup victory for Dermot Weld in 1993.
Every year international runners such as Double Trigger, Oscar Schindler, Arabian Story, Faithful Son and Travelmate have been touted as vastly superior to the home breds, but almost every year the local heroes win.
This year the John Hawkes trained Freemason will carry the Australian hopes.
Other local runners to attract betting support are Diatribe at 7- 1, and New Zealand's Kaapstad Way at 8-1, which will not run if the track is severely rain affected.
But after drying winds in Melbourne over the weekend, the track is likely to be in good order for "the race that stops a nation."
---
First published by Agence France-Press
31 August 2000
Australian Aboriginal Art
With interest in Australian Aboriginal art at an all time high, MICHAEL HUTAK provides a primer for Olympics bound tourists...
It is ironic that the most vibrant sector of Australia's booming fine art market is barely four decades old, yet it has sprung from the world's oldest continuous surviving culture -- that of the Australia's indigenous people, the Aborigines.
Although Australia's indigenous people have produced arts and craft for tens of thousands of years, the fairy tale story of the Aboriginal fine art market begins in 1971 when a young school teacher, Geoffrey Bardon, arrived in the remote outback Aboriginal community of Papunya. Noticing the unusual patterns his pupils would draw in the sand, Bardon gave them paints and encouraged them to paint murals on the classroom walls.
Then something amazing happened. The children's efforts stirred something in the Papuya elders and they began painting vivid representations of their ancestral stories and legends on any available surface. Soon word spread that vivid, highly stylised, intensely colourful works of art were being made in the desert; works which depicted like never before the richness of Aboriginal culture and its heretofore oral traditions. Not to be confused with abstract art, these works susually depicted stories of the "Dreamtime", more accurately known as "tjukurrpas", and were being painted on bark, paper, canvas, anything! via a style which utilised fields of small dots.
Recognition, however, that these first dot paintings might constitute "fine art" was not immediate, and a market was slow to emerge, although several galleries in Australian cities began exhibiting Aboriginal works. The retail market in Aboriginal art grew from $AUD0.9 million in 1970-71 to $AUD2.5m in 1979-80 but by 1986-87 it had reached $AUD7m, after a series of landmark international exhibitions in the early 1980s put Aboriginal art firmly on the shopping lists of North American collectors.
By the mid 1990s the market had matured to the extent that Australia's larger auction houses began to get wise. On June 30, 1997, Sotheby's Australia conducted the first ever auction devoted exclusively to Aboriginal art. The sale was a remarkable success, grossing $AUD2.7m and setting a new benchmark of $206,000 (from a previous best of $86,000) for any work by an Aboriginal artist.
In June this year, the record breaking work, Water Dreaming at Kalinpinya by Papunya artist Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula, was offered through Sotheby's Melbourne salerooms again and set another record of $486,500. Records were also set for other leading artists like Emily Kngwarreye ($156,500), Rover Thomas ($141,100), Shorty Lungkarda Tjungurrayi ($123,500) and Ronnie Tjampitjinpa ($63,000). The auction grossed $AUD4.4m and confirmed Aboriginal art as the raging bull of Australia art. And what is even more remarkable is that 62% of the gross came from overseas buyers, mainly North Amercan.
Fortunately, such stellar prices are reserved for only the very top end of the market, and international visitors to the Sydney Olympic Games won't need to spend such sums to acquire quality artworks by 'name' Aboriginal artists, works that will also represent sound investments. Paintings can come on canvas, paper or bark but you can also buy sculptures, weaving, carvings, ceramics, textiles or less expensive alternatives such as limited edition prints. Beautiful, fine works are available to suit all budgets.
But you will need to be aware of the pitfalls of buying art by "The First Australians". Upon landing in the Harbour City, you will be struck by the ubiquitous presence of Aboriginal art and design: on t-shirts, souvenirs, billboards and boomerangs, the unmistakable signature of Aboriginal 'dreaming', the dot painting style, is everywhere. There are plenty of opportunities to snap up a work that certainly looks like it came from the hand of an Australian aborigine but, as in all things, caveat emptor: indiscriminate buying might see you take home a dot painting concocted in a Jakarta sweatshop rather than a Western Desert workshop.
The success of Aboriginal art has also been marred in the late 1990's by several scandals surrounding frauds and the authenticity of works in the marketplace. Collectors should ensure they are dealing with reputable dealers who can provide satisfactory evidence of providence and/or certificates of authenticity. Look for dealers who are members of both or either the Australian Commercial Galleries Association, or Art.Trade, the Indigenous art dealers' association. To be doubly sure, seek out those dealers who act as direct agents for the remote communities that survive through their art. This means at least a portion of the sale proceeds returns to outback Aboriginal communities, who are among Australia's most economically and socially disadvantaged.
- Michael Hutak
WHO'S HOT and WHAT YOU SHOULD PAY
Prices vary widely depending on medium, condition, size and significance of the work in question. Beautiful works by all the artist quoted are available for under $10,000. These price ranges are a guide only for the best works on the market and are quoted for significant paintings in $AUD.
Price Range
Under $2,500
-- Samantha Hobson
$2,501 to $5,000
-- HJ Wedge
-- Rosella Namok
-- Judy Watson
-- Tracey Moffatt
$5,001 to $10,000
-- Kitty Kantilla
-- Yirawala (bark paintings)
$10,001 to $25,000
-- Michael Nelson Tjakamarra
-- John Mawandjul
-- Ada Bird Petyarre
-- Gloria Tamerre Petyarre
-- Kathleen Petyarre
-- Jack Britten (Joolama)
-- Queenie McKenzie (Nakarra)
-- Ronnie Tjampitjinpa
-- Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula
$25,001 to $50,000
-- Ginger Riley Munduwalawala
-- Uta Uta Tjangala
$50,001 to $100,000
-- Emily Kame Kngwarreye
-- Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri
-- Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri
Above $100,001
-- Rover Thomas (Joolama)
-- Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri
-- Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula
----------------------------
First published on www.worth.com
It is ironic that the most vibrant sector of Australia's booming fine art market is barely four decades old, yet it has sprung from the world's oldest continuous surviving culture -- that of the Australia's indigenous people, the Aborigines.
Although Australia's indigenous people have produced arts and craft for tens of thousands of years, the fairy tale story of the Aboriginal fine art market begins in 1971 when a young school teacher, Geoffrey Bardon, arrived in the remote outback Aboriginal community of Papunya. Noticing the unusual patterns his pupils would draw in the sand, Bardon gave them paints and encouraged them to paint murals on the classroom walls.
Then something amazing happened. The children's efforts stirred something in the Papuya elders and they began painting vivid representations of their ancestral stories and legends on any available surface. Soon word spread that vivid, highly stylised, intensely colourful works of art were being made in the desert; works which depicted like never before the richness of Aboriginal culture and its heretofore oral traditions. Not to be confused with abstract art, these works susually depicted stories of the "Dreamtime", more accurately known as "tjukurrpas", and were being painted on bark, paper, canvas, anything! via a style which utilised fields of small dots.
Recognition, however, that these first dot paintings might constitute "fine art" was not immediate, and a market was slow to emerge, although several galleries in Australian cities began exhibiting Aboriginal works. The retail market in Aboriginal art grew from $AUD0.9 million in 1970-71 to $AUD2.5m in 1979-80 but by 1986-87 it had reached $AUD7m, after a series of landmark international exhibitions in the early 1980s put Aboriginal art firmly on the shopping lists of North American collectors.
By the mid 1990s the market had matured to the extent that Australia's larger auction houses began to get wise. On June 30, 1997, Sotheby's Australia conducted the first ever auction devoted exclusively to Aboriginal art. The sale was a remarkable success, grossing $AUD2.7m and setting a new benchmark of $206,000 (from a previous best of $86,000) for any work by an Aboriginal artist.
In June this year, the record breaking work, Water Dreaming at Kalinpinya by Papunya artist Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula, was offered through Sotheby's Melbourne salerooms again and set another record of $486,500. Records were also set for other leading artists like Emily Kngwarreye ($156,500), Rover Thomas ($141,100), Shorty Lungkarda Tjungurrayi ($123,500) and Ronnie Tjampitjinpa ($63,000). The auction grossed $AUD4.4m and confirmed Aboriginal art as the raging bull of Australia art. And what is even more remarkable is that 62% of the gross came from overseas buyers, mainly North Amercan.
Fortunately, such stellar prices are reserved for only the very top end of the market, and international visitors to the Sydney Olympic Games won't need to spend such sums to acquire quality artworks by 'name' Aboriginal artists, works that will also represent sound investments. Paintings can come on canvas, paper or bark but you can also buy sculptures, weaving, carvings, ceramics, textiles or less expensive alternatives such as limited edition prints. Beautiful, fine works are available to suit all budgets.
But you will need to be aware of the pitfalls of buying art by "The First Australians". Upon landing in the Harbour City, you will be struck by the ubiquitous presence of Aboriginal art and design: on t-shirts, souvenirs, billboards and boomerangs, the unmistakable signature of Aboriginal 'dreaming', the dot painting style, is everywhere. There are plenty of opportunities to snap up a work that certainly looks like it came from the hand of an Australian aborigine but, as in all things, caveat emptor: indiscriminate buying might see you take home a dot painting concocted in a Jakarta sweatshop rather than a Western Desert workshop.
The success of Aboriginal art has also been marred in the late 1990's by several scandals surrounding frauds and the authenticity of works in the marketplace. Collectors should ensure they are dealing with reputable dealers who can provide satisfactory evidence of providence and/or certificates of authenticity. Look for dealers who are members of both or either the Australian Commercial Galleries Association, or Art.Trade, the Indigenous art dealers' association. To be doubly sure, seek out those dealers who act as direct agents for the remote communities that survive through their art. This means at least a portion of the sale proceeds returns to outback Aboriginal communities, who are among Australia's most economically and socially disadvantaged.
- Michael Hutak
WHO'S HOT and WHAT YOU SHOULD PAY
Prices vary widely depending on medium, condition, size and significance of the work in question. Beautiful works by all the artist quoted are available for under $10,000. These price ranges are a guide only for the best works on the market and are quoted for significant paintings in $AUD.
Price Range
Under $2,500
-- Samantha Hobson
$2,501 to $5,000
-- HJ Wedge
-- Rosella Namok
-- Judy Watson
-- Tracey Moffatt
$5,001 to $10,000
-- Kitty Kantilla
-- Yirawala (bark paintings)
$10,001 to $25,000
-- Michael Nelson Tjakamarra
-- John Mawandjul
-- Ada Bird Petyarre
-- Gloria Tamerre Petyarre
-- Kathleen Petyarre
-- Jack Britten (Joolama)
-- Queenie McKenzie (Nakarra)
-- Ronnie Tjampitjinpa
-- Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula
$25,001 to $50,000
-- Ginger Riley Munduwalawala
-- Uta Uta Tjangala
$50,001 to $100,000
-- Emily Kame Kngwarreye
-- Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri
-- Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri
Above $100,001
-- Rover Thomas (Joolama)
-- Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri
-- Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula
----------------------------
First published on www.worth.com
26 July 2000
Traffic (2000)
Dir: Stephen Soderbergh
...never fails to seduce.
It's beyond trite to say this is an landmark film, even though it is one of the most gripping and suspenseful thrillers I've ever sat through. This stylish and multi-faceted film sees Stephen Soderbergh display a command of the director’s craft that he only promised in earlier films like sex lies and videotape, King of the Hill or The Underneath. Latterly we have become accustomed to him bringing his independent smarts to the studio system in films like Out of Sight, or his crossover mainstream hit of last year, Erin Brockovich, a film which forced me to flip my view of Julia Roberts from appalling to appealing, such is the maestro's skill.
But Traffic is something else again - a film so accomplished it attracts critical clichés like moths to a flame. It is nothing less than the most authentic portrait of America’s drug trade yet committed to celluloid. With an all-star ensemble cast, filmed in 8 different cities and over 110 locations, it is a vast undertaking that takes the viewer on an exhilarating ride of intrigue, suspense and drama. Traffic’s tableaux is populated by characters which traverse all strata of the supply and consumption of illicit drugs, from the highest officials - both honest and corrupt - to the frontline victims of hard core addiction. Sparing us sermons on why people shouldn’t take drugs, the film ultimately demonstrates how America’s policy of waging an unwinnable supply-side "war against drugs” has only ended up entrenching organized crime, corrupting the public sector, and punishing the victims of addiction, while doing precisely nothing to stem the rising destructive tide of drug use at all levels of society.
Such a thesis is built quietly, subtly by a screenplay that intertwines three stories: an honest cop (Benicio Del Toro) trying to function within a “entrepreneurial” police force corrupted by the ruthless cartels that traffic drugs across the US/Mexico border; a conservative judge (Michael Douglas), whose appointment as the President's new national anti-drug czar coincides with his daughter's (Erika Christensen) slide into addiction; and a naïve society matron (Catherine Zeta-Jones) whose bourgeois life is thrown into turmoil when her husband is arrested for drug trafficking. Hitherto, she thought he was an upstanding pillar of society.
Soderbergh mixes up the cinematic styles for each thread of the narrative, for instance the Mexican sequences are given a dreamy treatment, shot hand-held by Soderbergh himself in saturated colours on a stock so grainy it could be Super 8. The sequences where Douglas’s anti-drug czar goes on a fact-finding mission to “the frontline”, inspecting border crossings, or high tech anti-trafficking facilities have a semi-documentary feel, again shot hand held. Zeta-Jones sequences are shot like movie-of-the-week, as her lady-that-lunches, faced with losing everything, must swot up on the family business of engaging hit men, laundering money and dealing with the Tijuana cartels.
The detailed portrayal of police work rings true, in fact the whole films proffers a “no bullshit” authenticity, wrapped in the hip, contemporary apparel of independent filmmaking. This is intelligent cinema that assumes - and demands - an engaged and interested audience. That said, it flows freely and with ease and never fails to seduce. The cast is so good they render superlatives meaningless. Just go and see it. Then we can talk.
---
First published in Australian Style.
Traffic (2000)
Dir: Stephen Soderbergh
...never fails to seduce.
It's beyond trite to say this is an landmark film, even though it is one of the most gripping and suspenseful thrillers I've ever sat through. This stylish and multi-faceted film sees Stephen Soderbergh display a command of the director’s craft that he only promised in earlier films like sex lies and videotape, King of the Hill or The Underneath. Latterly we have become accustomed to him bringing his independent smarts to the studio system in films like Out of Sight, or his crossover mainstream hit of last year, Erin Brockovich, a film which forced me to flip my view of Julia Roberts from appalling to appealing, such is the maestro's skill.
But Traffic is something else again - a film so accomplished it attracts critical clichés like moths to a flame. It is nothing less than the most authentic portrait of America’s drug trade yet committed to celluloid. With an all-star ensemble cast, filmed in 8 different cities and over 110 locations, it is a vast undertaking that takes the viewer on an exhilarating ride of intrigue, suspense and drama. Traffic’s tableaux is populated by characters which traverse all strata of the supply and consumption of illicit drugs, from the highest officials - both honest and corrupt - to the frontline victims of hard core addiction. Sparing us sermons on why people shouldn’t take drugs, the film ultimately demonstrates how America’s policy of waging an unwinnable supply-side "war against drugs” has only ended up entrenching organized crime, corrupting the public sector, and punishing the victims of addiction, while doing precisely nothing to stem the rising destructive tide of drug use at all levels of society.
Such a thesis is built quietly, subtly by a screenplay that intertwines three stories: an honest cop (Benicio Del Toro) trying to function within a “entrepreneurial” police force corrupted by the ruthless cartels that traffic drugs across the US/Mexico border; a conservative judge (Michael Douglas), whose appointment as the President's new national anti-drug czar coincides with his daughter's (Erika Christensen) slide into addiction; and a naïve society matron (Catherine Zeta-Jones) whose bourgeois life is thrown into turmoil when her husband is arrested for drug trafficking. Hitherto, she thought he was an upstanding pillar of society.
Soderbergh mixes up the cinematic styles for each thread of the narrative, for instance the Mexican sequences are given a dreamy treatment, shot hand-held by Soderbergh himself in saturated colours on a stock so grainy it could be Super 8. The sequences where Douglas’s anti-drug czar goes on a fact-finding mission to “the frontline”, inspecting border crossings, or high tech anti-trafficking facilities have a semi-documentary feel, again shot hand held. Zeta-Jones sequences are shot like movie-of-the-week, as her lady-that-lunches, faced with losing everything, must swot up on the family business of engaging hit men, laundering money and dealing with the Tijuana cartels.
The detailed portrayal of police work rings true, in fact the whole films proffers a “no bullshit” authenticity, wrapped in the hip, contemporary apparel of independent filmmaking. This is intelligent cinema that assumes - and demands - an engaged and interested audience. That said, it flows freely and with ease and never fails to seduce. The cast is so good they render superlatives meaningless. Just go and see it. Then we can talk.
---
First published in Australian Style.
20 June 2000
Gallery 19 closes
Another CBD `stepping-stone' Goes Under
By Nick Leys
When Gallery 19 closed its doors last Wednesday night a space where one of Sydney's few remaining artist-run galleries has displayed over 300 artists for the past two and a half years the invitation was more like an end of financial year closing down sale.
Several hundred well-wishers responded to the ``EVERYTHING MUST GO!'' bugle call, cramming into the previously disused coffee shop where artists including Adam Cullen, Max Cullen, Maclean Edwards, Simeon Nelson and indigenous artist Harry Wedge have hung their works.
Gallery 19's final exhibition called on displayed artists for a $20 donation ``to help meet our considerable wind-up costs'', with the gallery taking its usual zero per cent commission fee for sales.
A member of Gallery 19's 10-strong management committee, Michael Hutak, said the reason for the closure was the sale and redevelopment of the premises in the prime location of Campbell Street in Haymarket, opposite the Capitol Theatre.
``We were only able to keep the gallery going for so long because of the cheap rent, $300 a week on a month-by-month lease,'' he said after the doors had been shut for the last time.
``That's the only way you can run an artist-run space -- precariously.''
Gallery 19 is just the latest such display space to come to an end. In the last two years, other artist-run galleries like 151 Regent Street, Pendulum Gallery, Side-On-Studios and South have succumbed to rising rents in and around the Sydney CBD, a situation exacerbated by Olympics-driven redevelopment.
``The reality of the inner-city property market means the rich tradition of artist-run spaces in Sydney is coming to an end,'' Hutak said.
``I'm sad it's over, but glad we were able to get away with it for over two years.''
Archibald Prize winner Adam Cullen credited Gallery 19 and other spaces as crucial to his development as an artist.
``If these sorts of environments end, it sort of rings the death knell of art,'' he said.
``Artist-run spaces showcase art that is very fresh. It is straight from the artists' studios and so is usually of the best quality. I started in them, exhibiting in them for 10 years before being taken on by a commercial gallery those spaces are where dealers and owners get artists from.''
Fellow artist Mark Titmarsh said these spaces were of great importance for artists wishing to experiment with different media.
``They are definitely spaces for experimental artforms they quite often showcase the art of the future from up and coming artists,'' he said.
``They are the stepping stone between art school and commercial galleries.''
Anna Waldmann of the Australian Council of the Arts, which funds some artist-run spaces through the Emerging Artists Scheme, agreed the spaces were an important platform for emerging artists, but said they were always ``coming and going''.
``They are very fluid; that is their nature,'' she said.
---
First published in
By Nick Leys
When Gallery 19 closed its doors last Wednesday night a space where one of Sydney's few remaining artist-run galleries has displayed over 300 artists for the past two and a half years the invitation was more like an end of financial year closing down sale.
Several hundred well-wishers responded to the ``EVERYTHING MUST GO!'' bugle call, cramming into the previously disused coffee shop where artists including Adam Cullen, Max Cullen, Maclean Edwards, Simeon Nelson and indigenous artist Harry Wedge have hung their works.
Gallery 19's final exhibition called on displayed artists for a $20 donation ``to help meet our considerable wind-up costs'', with the gallery taking its usual zero per cent commission fee for sales.
A member of Gallery 19's 10-strong management committee, Michael Hutak, said the reason for the closure was the sale and redevelopment of the premises in the prime location of Campbell Street in Haymarket, opposite the Capitol Theatre.
``We were only able to keep the gallery going for so long because of the cheap rent, $300 a week on a month-by-month lease,'' he said after the doors had been shut for the last time.
``That's the only way you can run an artist-run space -- precariously.''
Gallery 19 is just the latest such display space to come to an end. In the last two years, other artist-run galleries like 151 Regent Street, Pendulum Gallery, Side-On-Studios and South have succumbed to rising rents in and around the Sydney CBD, a situation exacerbated by Olympics-driven redevelopment.
``The reality of the inner-city property market means the rich tradition of artist-run spaces in Sydney is coming to an end,'' Hutak said.
``I'm sad it's over, but glad we were able to get away with it for over two years.''
Archibald Prize winner Adam Cullen credited Gallery 19 and other spaces as crucial to his development as an artist.
``If these sorts of environments end, it sort of rings the death knell of art,'' he said.
``Artist-run spaces showcase art that is very fresh. It is straight from the artists' studios and so is usually of the best quality. I started in them, exhibiting in them for 10 years before being taken on by a commercial gallery those spaces are where dealers and owners get artists from.''
Fellow artist Mark Titmarsh said these spaces were of great importance for artists wishing to experiment with different media.
``They are definitely spaces for experimental artforms they quite often showcase the art of the future from up and coming artists,'' he said.
``They are the stepping stone between art school and commercial galleries.''
Anna Waldmann of the Australian Council of the Arts, which funds some artist-run spaces through the Emerging Artists Scheme, agreed the spaces were an important platform for emerging artists, but said they were always ``coming and going''.
``They are very fluid; that is their nature,'' she said.
---
First published in
25 April 2000
Losing Tickets, Gallery 19 -- press coverage
Odds-on favourite
Michael Hutak's "tribute to the little punter" is a cool reworking of the "found" object the artist's failed betting tickets. Exhibited in the genteel, poverty-stricken surrounds of Gallery 19, the visual gesture creates a kind of wallpaper, combusting high modernism and lowly craft. The art of the racetrack is one place where aristocracy and the herd meet, not only in Landseer's and Wallinger's world, where the racehorse is more inbred than bred, but in egalitarian Australia too, where 17 cents in the betting dollar is squirrelled by government. This mug punter's Losing Tickets are scanned, mounted laserprints. Their pristine surfaces resemble more the calligraphic registrations of Marinetti's speedy posters than any humble betting tabs. In the reprocessing of such objects, questions of ethics and more take turns, for Hutak was once a racing journalist. However, a nose for the track is not needed to rate this finely edged show. Phone 9212 4776. Until Saturday.
The Galleries - Courtney Kidd, 2 May 2000, Sydney Morning Herald.
---
Colourful racing identity
IF you spent five years trawling the racetracks of NSW and then found a job in the artworld, what would you do on weekends. Former Gadfly columnist Michael Hutak put to use his days spent scraping up the seamy side of the track by collecting bookmaker's betting tickets. He has blown them up, put them on a wall and that's art, baby, opening in an exhibition at Gallery 19, Haymarket, on Tuesday. Hutak says Losing Tickets is a "tribute to all punters who have done their dough'', i.e. Australia.
- Candace Sutton, 23 April 2000, Sun Herald.
21 April 2000
Baise-moi (2000)
CO-DIRECTORS: Virginie Despentes, Coralie Trinh Thi
CO-WRITING CREDITS: Virginie Despentes, Coralie Trinh Thi, adapted from Despentes’s novel.
PRODUCERS: Phillippe Godeau, Dominique Chiron
DISTRIBUTOR: Wild Bunch
IN A NUTSHELL:
In a grimy contemporary urban France, Nadine (Lancaume), a bored prostitute, and Manu (Anderson), a rape victim, hook up by chance and hit the road on a wanton sex tour and thrill-kill crime spree, fucking and killing almost anyone who wanders into camera-shot, and attracting a manhunt with inevitable consequences.
---
So extreme it was banned in its native France, BAISE-MOI is screening here as ‘FUCK ME’, and in the US as ‘RAPE ME’. While you're at it, you could add ‘SHOOT HER’, ‘STOMP ON HIS FACE’, ‘BLOW THIS OUT YOUR ARSE’ and ‘FUCK YOU TOO’. Starring two actual porn stars, co-written and directed by a female team whose credits include 'CUNT SUCKING SLUTS 5', this psychotic yet ice-cool satire is a rotten stew of gratuitous violence, actual hard core sex, and feminist buddy flick, shamelessly referencing THELMA & LOUISE.
The Office of Film and Literature Classification reckons STRONG SEXUAL VIOLENCE, HIGH LEVEL VIOLENCE, ACTUAL SEX, and ADULT THEMES, and that’s a fair call: a rape scene that repels you from the screen is the prelude to a rampage of quasi-feminist revenge, a brutal, sadistic assault on the world of the film and those that have to view it. That said, if you can stomach the violence – which is no less brutal than a thousand American teen horror flicks. And if you can ‘handle’ pornography the two leads can really act.
This is ultimately a bitter place where ‘the money shot’ meets ‘Iron Jane’ polemics meet arthouse pretensions. Despite being designed to solicit maximum mass-media outrage, BAISE-MOI will probably have more lasting impact on the adult film industry it pillories, parodies and attacks.
ANY GOOD?
Is it just payback for every act of sexual violence against women shot on film? Or is it merely a bunch of porno professionals out to demonstrate that punk’s not dead? Either way, the filmmakers couldn’t care less what we think: ‘FUCK US’.** (Two stars)
---
First published in Empire
1 April 2000
2001: A Space Odyssey -- preview capsule
Dir: Stanley Kubrick
Released at the height of psychedelic hysteria, Kubrick’s supra-philosophical mind fuck was billed as the ultimate trip, but was dismissed by critics as little more than a ponderous light-show with a few riddles thrown in for diversion, and thus didn't rate even a nomination for Best Picture at the 1969 Oscars. Carol Reed’s musical, Oliver! won that year, with Kubrick nominated for Best Director but also losing out to Reed. Thirty three years later, if you haven’t seen 2001 on the big screen, then take the chance while it’s going. But if you’re all Kubricked out - and who isn’t after the orgy of hype surrounding the maestro’s death and the release of Eyes Wide Shut - rent Oliver! instead and see what all the fuss was about.
---
First published in Australian Style magazine, national. April 2000
12 September 1999
Interview: Ken Done
Soon to open an exhibition in a upmarket shop, artist Ken Done remains an enigma, writes Michael Hutak.
THIS month one of Australia's best-known artists will open an exhibition of his work and launch a book to celebrate 20 years at the easel.
Perhaps unusually, it will not take place in some trendy gallery or cloistered museum.
It will be held on September 22 at the Elizabeth Street store of David Jones. Impresario Ric Birch will be master of ceremonies.
But then, the subject of this gathering is no ordinary artist. It is Ken Done . . . and already the art world is sharpening its knives.
Loved by the masses and loathed by elites, Done is the riddle of Australian art. In the 80s they said he'd never make it. And as far as they are concerned, although just about every Japanese visitor goes home with a piece of his work, he is still an outsider.
He is represented by no commercial gallery, doesn't figure in any major Australian corporate collections, has no works in any major state or national gallery and is virtually absent from fine art auctions.
His relentlessly sunny, day-glo approach to art has seen him almost universally dismissed as merely decorative and profoundly lightweight.
Every article about Done's art is duty bound to recycle the late Brett Whiteley's ultimate put-down: "I'd rather have methadone than Ken Done." It is his crown of thorns and crystalises how Done's work is held by the art establishment.
"I am the least commercial artist in Australia," Done lamented from Perth, on his way to Paris, where he will unveil a seven-metre square artwork that will hang outside the Australian Embassy until the end of the Olympics next year.
"I spend no time courting or trying to influence people in the art world, no matter if it's Sherman Galleries or Billy Bloggs. I just like to make pictures, I like being a painter. I'm 59 now and I've been painting pretty much solidly for 50 years and I only feel like I'm just getting started."
Certainly the most commercially and internationally successful designer this country has produced, when it comes to his art Done is the vanishing point where art meets commerce.
The more the world perceives him as successful, the less currency his "serious" art has in the established art world.
But it's precisely this recognition that money can't buy that Done clearly craves.
"Everybody wants people to understand what they do.
"If you're an Australian painter, it's only natural that you should desire that you're work is good enough to be hung in the National Gallery of Australia. It's what I am striving for and I don't shun that sort of recognition at all."
But what he has shunned is the traditional stepladder to acceptance in the art world. His profile has been due to self-promotion. Since his first public exhibition in 1980, Done has applied a business strategy of "vertically integrated marketing" to promote his artwork - he is the creator, producer, distributor and retailer of his own art. Since that first exhibition, he has run a gallery which sells only his work.
"I've never had a government grant and I've never wanted to be part of somebody else's stable," he said. "Opening my own gallery is no different from a chef opening up a restaurant. What I am doing is managing an artist-run gallery."
To art world outsiders - ie, the public - ignorant of this strategy, it might appear that Done already has all the success and acceptance he might desire. For instance, next week his long-time friend Ric Birch will launch a book, Ken Done, Sydney, celebrating 20 years of Done's visual love letters to the harbour he adores. The book will coincide with a major retrospective of his paintings.
SERIOUS art investors look upon a retrospective as a signal to start buying.
Done's retrospective is different. It's being held at David Jones's Elizabeth Street store and has been mounted by Done in conjunction with the retailer and greeting card company The Ink Group, which has published the book, again in conjunction with Done.
His daughter, Camilla, designed the book.
A David Jones representative told The Sun-Herald: "Exhibitions like this are only mounted when they are product related."
Thus a plethora of Done Design products will be on sale. But this strategy is nothing new for Done.
"I'm not going to die to prove the point, but the Art Gallery of NSW is quite happy to put Matisse and Picasso on T-shirts and coffee cups and then point to how it's helped their bottom line on the balance sheet," said Done "I'm just trying to do the same thing while I'm alive."
Done has at least one champion in the form of Powerhouse Museum director Terence Measham. Measham has written extensively on Done and in 1995 mounted the only significant exhibition of Done's design work in Australia.
"I feel very strongly that he should be included in State collections," said Measham. "I can't understand why you wouldn't want to. The onus should be on these directors to say why they don't collect him. Certainly there are many artists in State collections who are no better than him."
The only works by Done in the National Gallery of Australia are some textile designs done for Sheridan, which the manchester manufacturer donated.
In the National Gallery of Victoria it's the same story.
"We have no works by Ken Done," said contemporary art curator Jason Smith. "Nor are they a priority for the collection."
Art Gallery of NSW contemporary art curator Victoria Lynne concedes that Done "is a significant and very successful Australian designer with a very popular aesthetic.
"But I wouldn't say he has made a significant contribution to contemporary Australian art practice. His work is too much on the decorative side to be included in our contemporary collection."
In the early 60s Done went to Japan for the first time and has been returning since. It is in Japan that his art is most seriously regarded. His works sell for up to $50,000.
In 1965 he went to Mexico and New York before settling in London, where he would spend the next five years as creative director of advertising agency J Walter Thompson.
RETURNING to Sydney in 1970, he continued in advertising, but "somewhere around my mid-30s I realised there was no short cut to painting.
"So I gave up advertising totally and had my first show in June 1980 and I've been painting three to five days a week ever since."
While Done has devoted himself to coming up with the designs and images, it his wife, Judy, and two adult children - Camilla, 28, and Oscar, 23 - who run the Done merchandising and marketing empire with an estimated annual worldwide turnover of $50 million.
"Me?" he asks. "Ninety per cent of what I do today is simply studio-based painting."
In another context, Done would be happy to sing the praises of his business. Today, when we're talking about Ken Done, the artist, not Ken Done the brand, he plays it down.
"It's just a tiny Australian business is all. We have 10 shops across Australia and our gallery in the Rocks, and we distribute our merchandise throughout the world."
It's hard to feel sorry for Ken Done.
The only Australian artist to make the BRW rich list, Done lives in an idyllic beach house on millionaires' row overlooking Chinaman's Beach in Mosman, where he paints to his heart's content.
But still the weight of the world seems buried just below the surface of his positive spin-doctoring. The issue of his artistic credibility clearly dogs him as he lets out a heavy sigh.
"I've never tried to to be confrontational. Whatever it is I'm doing, my aim is always to make it as good as it can possibly be. All I can say is I'm trying my best."
T-shirts turn off auction houses
AT the Ken Done gallery in The Rocks, large canvases are on sale for up to $17,000. Yet since 1989 just four of Done's paintings have been offered at public auction.
Three were passed in and the other, a gouache and oil painting on paper titled Mosman Festival (1990), sold for a meagre $742 at Lawsons auction house in Sydney in September 1997.
Georgina Pemberton, paintings expert at Lawsons, is blunt: "I usually discourage people from bringing his works in because there simply isn't a market for them.
"The auction market is for serious, established artists."
"It's a question of should I buy one of his paintings or one of his T-shirts?"
Annette Larkin, Australian paintings expert at Christies' auction house, says Done has been "a fantastic entrepreneur and ambassador for Australia, but as far as being a serious artist is concerned, I'm sure he has his collectors, but you rarely see his work coming through the sale room."
The Sun-Herald asked Done why any serious collector with an eye on investment should buy his works?
"Because they love them! My works don't appear at auction because my buyers don't sell them, they keep them."
* Michael Hutak is editor of Australian Art Collector Magazine.
KEN DONE AT AUCTION SINCE 89
* Oil Paintings
Total offered: 4
Number sold: 1
Mosman Festival (1990), gouache and oil crayon on paper, initialled lower right, 62 x 45 cm. Lawsons Sydney 16/09/97, lot 124. Estimate: $400-$600 - sold for $742. Mosman Festival (1990), 8-18 March, gouache and oil crayon on paper, initialled lower right, 62 x 45 cm. Lawsons Sydney 10/12/96, lot 263. Estimate: $1,400-$1,600 - Not Sold. From The Studio Window (1991), oil on canvas, 75 x 102 cm. Lawsons Sydney. 20/09/94, lot 326. Estimate: $3,000-$5,000 - Not Sold. Morning Glory And Nasturtiums (1979), oil crayon, 42 x 43 cm. Lawsons Sydney 12/09/89, lot 137. Estimate: $4,000-$5,000 - Not Sold.
* Watercolours
Total offered: 4
Number sold: 2
Average price: $600
* Other media and drawings
Total offered: 2
Number sold: 2
Average price: $375
* Prints and graphics
Total offered: 13
Number sold: 12
Average price: $251
Source: Australia Art Sales Digest
----
Date: 12/09/1999
Words: 1326
Publication: Sun Herald
Section: News
Page: 58
9 August 1999
Where the art lies in the challenge
BURNING QUESTION: Why can't Sydney support a contemporary art museum?
SYDNEY'S declining reputation as a favourable environment for contemporary art, lagging behind not only that of Melbourne but increasingly Brisbane and Perth, is clearly illustrated by the Museum of Contemporary Art's near-death experience.
On Friday, Premier Bob Carr finally came to the party, announcing a $750,000 bail-out which will see the MCA clear to the turn of the millennium. And Sydney University, the MCA's parent body, has deferred a $600,000 debt.
The 11th-hour reprieve had much to do with incoming director Elizabeth Macgregor. But as usual, the politics of arts funding always comes with strings attached.
Describing Macgregor as "energetic" and "renowned for popularising contemporary art", Carr also set out the criteria by which his Government will judge her tenure at the museum: "Her task will be to attract new audiences to contemporary art in Sydney."
Macgregor, a Scottish arts administrator who starts next month, inherits an organisation characterised as an economic basket case and a cultural failure.
Born out of private bequest and public sector largesse, the MCA has always laboured under the unreal expectation that it could pay its own way as a self-funding commercial enterprise.
Its job should have been to develop a balanced program which would bring the true diversity of Australian contemporary art to a wider public, but instead of developing a grass-roots support base it was out chasing corporate dollars or seeking to entice social-climbing yuppies with free champagne.
Meanwhile, back at Sydney Cove, the most congested public precinct in the nation, the general public preferred the free views of the Opera House to the MCA's $9 admission fee.
Of course, there's a popular view that the problem is simply contemporary art itself. Making art isn't illegal yet, but you'd be forgiven for thinking that our artists stand guilty of crimes against culture, such is the dismissive vitriol heaped by conservative critics over the years.
Controversy-seeking philistines will always be ready to peddle the view that contemporary art is a sick joke pulled at the public's expense by a crew of talentless, shameless shysters.
There's no denying it can be mighty puzzling if you turn up expecting pretty pictures and are confronted with a room full of bored half-naked women, or a 30m puppy made out of shrubs. But challenging our expectations is what the best art has always done.
Sydney can support a museum of contemporary art, but it needs more champions of the art itself; more critics who actually like and understand contemporary art, and are able to convey their passion and insight to the rest of us.
Meanwhile, Macgregor is being hyped as the art-world equivalent of Police Commissioner Peter Ryan. But it beggars belief that an Australian with local knowledge, a passion for art and a talent for business could not be found.
We can host an Olympics but we can't run our own art galleries.
MICHAEL HUTAK (editor of Australian Art Collector Magazine)
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Date: 08/08/1999
Words: 535
Publication: Sun Herald
Section: News
Page: 46
6 August 1999
Interview: Kidman on Kubrick and 'Eyes Wide Shut'
So just who was Stanley Kubrick and why should you care? What’s so special about this filmmaker that he commanded such awe and respect in the movie business and could indulge his cinematic vision like no other director before or since? Nicole Kidman spoke exclusively to Juice a week before the Australian premiere of her latest, and by far most eagerly anticipated movie, the late Mr Kubrick's sexual sayonara to the cinema, EYES WIDE SHUT. We began by asking why do Kidman and husband Tom Cruise, two of the most sought after stars in Hollywood, give over 3 years at the height of their careers to participate in what is, despite the somewhat deceivingly raunchy marketing, an intellectual art film in the European mould?
"People have said 'How could you do this?'" says Kidman. "My answer, of course, was why not? I would have been mad to turn it down. There are very few times as an actor when you think I will be forever proud of this work - that it is timeless work - just in terms of the director. I can never be objective about my work. But I am so honoured to have been a part of Stanley's body of work. Full stop."
Based on "Traumnovelle", an obsure 1926 novel by an obcure Viennese novelist Arthur Schnitzler, the film stars Kidman and Cruise as two psychiatrists whose marriage is cast adrift when they embark on a series of torrid sexual adventures and experiments. Kubrick had held the rights to the novel for over two decades. In development for four years and produced under typically paranoid secrecy, it took 15 months to shoot in, according to Kubrick's biographer, "the longest continuous shoot in motion picture history."
From the opening scene of a naked Kidman, EYES WIDE SHUT is "truly the riskiest film of Kubrick's career", according to respected critic Janet Maslin, of the New York Times. "The man who could create a whole new universe with each undertaking chose the bedroom as the last frontier."
Less charitable commentators have dubbed the film "Eyes Glaze Over". The film relies heavily on the believe-ability of Kidman and Cruise's on-screen relationship, and Hollywood's hottest couple have a lot of credibility riding on the film's success. Past efforts don't augur well. The cars were more riveting than the acting in DAYS OF THUNDER while the most memorable thing about FAR & AWAY was watching the stellar pair struggle with working class Irish accents.
But the buzz is that it's Oscar time for Kidman at least. That she broke her schedule to talk to Juice testifies more to the weight of responsibility she feels to Kubrick and the film, than her own image. When the enigmatic auteur died just after completing the film, the burden of explaining to the public the master's intentions in the complex and dark project fell entirely to its stars. With an evangelistic zeal, she appears to be reveling in the task.
"Kubrick, Bergman, Kurosawa, Fellini - they were the great masters of the cinema - and anyone who is interested in films thatchallenge the way they think should see this film. You know Scorsese, (Sidney) Pollack and Gus Van Sant all saw the film thesame night and each of them came up after and hugged us. Scorsese said 'Can I hug you nowbecause you worked with the master and you have made one of the great films' -and coming from Martin Scorsese - also one of the great film makers of ourcentury - I thought 'Wow!'"
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Stanley Kubrick was born into a on July 26, 1928, in the Bronx. A brilliant but bored underachiever at school, Kubrick got his first break at 17, scoring a job as a still photographer for Look magazine. But the cinema was always where he was headed and between 1951 and 1953 he set about producing, directing, writing, shooting and editing three short documentaries. A brilliant chess player, he financed the films by hustling on the streets of New York, plus a relentless pursuit of the funds of friends and family. He would later say that making a movie is like chess: "It is a series of steps that you take one at a time, and it's balancing resources against the problem, which in chess is time and in movies is time and money."One-time beatnik, jazz drummer, and self-appointed expert on every subject from flying to poker to making hamburgers, it was Kubrick's know-all personality that set him on the road to filmmaking. "I didn't know anything about making films, but I knew I couldn't make them any worse than the majority of films I was seeing," quotes John Baxter in his excellent Stanley Kubrick: A Biography.
His uncompromising one-man-band approach would only realise 13 feature-length films over the next 40 years, but, apart from SPARTACUS (1960) where he was brought in to take over directing after shooting began by executive producer and star Kirk Douglas, each film has the irrefutable mark of its director. Film is a collaborative medium but with a Stanley Kubrick film, it is the director who is always the real star. But while his films - to date - have won 8 Oscars, none were for Best Director.
In 1954 Kubrick teamed up with producer James B Harris and moved to LA where the pair would make the three films which would establish Kubrick's reputation as one of Hollywood's brightest and most daring talents: the noir racetrack heist, THE KILLING (1956), the moving anti-war drama PATHS OF GLORY (1957) and the controversial LOLITA (1961), Nabakov's dry tale of illicit sexual obsession. LOLITA begins Kubrick's most successful quartet of films. The black comedy, DR STANGELOVE OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964), released in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Kennedy Assassination, is the ultimate expression of Cold War nihilism in the form of high farce. It ends with images of the atom bomb accompanied by Vera Lynn's wartime standard, "We'll Meet Again." The film was branded by the New York Times critic of the day as "beyond any question the most shattering sick joke I've ever come across". With Peter Sellars in three roles, it was a huge hit.
In 1968 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY was also panned by the critics on release as just a ponderous light-show with a few futuristic riddles thrown in for diversion. It too went on to box office glory, lauded in the age of psychedelia as the ultimate trip movie, a hyper-philosophical mind fuck.
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971) opens with a youthful Malcolm McDowell kicking a drunken tramp to death while giving a caustic rendition of "Singing In The Rain". Orange is arguably the most subversive youth culture movie yet made, and certainly a most prophetic vision of aliented urban youth which predicted the punk revolution by at least 5 years. David Bowie said that with Ziggy Stardust he "wanted to 'deviolence' the look of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE." Meanwhile The Times was holding Kubrick personally responsible for the unravelling of Britain's social fabric: "The cases of rape, murder and beatings attributed to the film's influence are too numerous to be dismissed as tabloid hyperbole. Tramps were killed, girls were assaulted and beatings were dished out as Kubrick's symphony of violence rang in then head of the perpetrators."
Kubrick was always mistrustful of Hollywood and had settled permanently in England in 1974. But he wasn't doing the Welles thing; he wasn't banished or in some self-imposed exile. He just liked England better. But after the violent reaction to A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, he became so reclusive for a period that an Englishman impersonated him for several months before being discovered.
In another recent biography, Vincent LoBrutto pins down all the essential elements of the Kubrick myth: "a cool, misanthropic cinematic genius who obsesses over every detail, lives a hermetic existence, doesn't travel and is consumed with phobic neuroses."
As is usual with myths, Kubrick the man was something quite different. "People always think he was this idiotic dictator," said Christiane Kubrick, his third and last wife of 40 years, after his death. "But he was always asking everyone's opinion on most things. What do you think of this? What do you think of that? Do you think I should have done this different?"
It's true he demanded take after take from actors, sometimes running to over a hundred takes. The reason? Because actors didn't know their lines. "If people don't do their homework, the only thing I can do is spend time doing multiple takes while they learn what their job is supposed to be." Aperfectionist to the last, but as Kirk Douglas would say to him after SPARTACUS: "That doesn't make you perfect!"
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To cinephiles Kubrick is the director's director, certainly one of the key artists of the cinema's second 50 years. Ever since the furore that greeted the release of Lolita, every new Kubrick film has been greeted as a landmark cultural event. But while he made seven features in his first decade, he took over 30 to make the final six. Many reading this may not have seen any of his films.icole Kidman is right to think Marty Scorcese makes a fine contemporary referee, but Hollywood hugging aside itÕs been twelve years since Kubrick's last film, the searing Vietnam War drama, FULL METAL JACKET (1987), briefly burnt up the screen then was pretty much forgotten.
You have to go back another seven to find THE SHINING, Kubrick's chilling adaptation of a Stephen King horror story and his most openly commercial film, but then clearly the work of a director treading water. Go back five years more and you hit BARRY LYNDON, a beautiful but boring 18th century period drama which picked up four Oscars (for music, cinematography, art direction, costume design) but recouped only $9.5 million of its $30 million production cost.
So it's still not surprising that Variety tagged EYES WIDE SHUT as having "questionable appeal for under-25s". It will "captivate older audiences more than it will mainstream Tom Cruise die-hards", said the movie industry bible. Bums on seats at EYES WIDE SHUT have more cellulite per square centimetre than those that sat through, for instance, AMERICAN PIE, the latest hit teen sex comedy which EYES WIDE SHUT ironically displaced from No.1 when it opened in July with a first weekend box office of over US$21million, a record for any Kubrick film.
Both films were rated 'R' in the US, for "strong sexual content, nudity, language and some drug-related material", but while American Pie is a funny but forgettable farce about "losin' it", EYES WIDE SHUT is an art film in the European mould which Variety called "a deeply inquisitive consideration of the extent of trust and mutual knowledge possible between a man and a woman."
Thus for Juice, Kidman is keen to dispel the vibe that this is 'adult fare' that's not really gonna be 'dope with the kids'.
"To underestimate the intelligence of a younger audience is patronising," counters Kidman. "I know when I was 16, l8 and l9 I remember seeing DR. STRANGELOVE, then LOLITA and then 2001. Then, when I was twenty-one, I saw A Clockwork ORANGE and it really shocked me and awed me - you know? All of Kubrick's films have that ability to shake the groundwork that you have, to shake it up and challenge you philosophically and I think young people today desperately want to see that - it's just they aren't given it that often.
"Kubrick was oneof the masters and this is his last film and I think young people are interested. Anyone who is interested in sex, jealousy andobsession will relate to this film, so of course it is a film for youngeraudiences as well as older audiences."
In the US, the film was heading for a dreaded NC17 rating which translates roughly into Box-office poison. In order to secure a R rating Kubrick agreed to alter 65 seconds of the orgy scene which is the centre piece of the film by adding digitally created figures to obscure the 'action'. Kubrick wasn't averse to such compromises, having gone through similar negotiations with censors on both Lolita and A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. Still The Los Angeles Times put to Tom Cruise that if Kubrick was such an uncompromising filmmaker, why didn't he have the courage to say with Eyes Wide Shut: "this film is unsuitable for a 15-year-old kid".
"Stanley knew he had to deliver an R-rated film," Cruise replied. "And he didn't think it hurt the integrity of the film. If I was 15, I'd like to have the opportunity to see the movie, even if I didn't comprehend everything.
"I don't think it's offensive to see people having sex, but that's just me."
The final irony is that although the uncensored version is screening in Australia, an R rating here means only 18 year olds and up can view the film without risk of prosecution.
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"I am in a world of shit," declares Private Joker (Matthew Modine) in the final moments of Stanley Kubrick's second-last film, the 1987 war drama FULL METAL JACKET. "But I am still alive. And I am not afraid."Sadly, Kubrick ain't alive anymore. But when you look back at his canon of thirteen dazzling, incredibly diverse features, you find he wasn't afraid to depict thirteen worlds that are indeed full of shit. Lightning rods of the popular cinema they may be, but they span four million years of dubious progress of the human race.
It's not easy to be light and breezy about Kubrick. Variously regarded as a pefectionist, myogynist, nihilist, anarchist, genius and visionary, Kubrick isn't about providing easily consumed entertainment, despite the fact that his films are immensely entertaining. Instead he is about spectacle, seduction, voyeurism, horror, atrocity, indifference, hypocrisy, madness, obsession, lust, suspense, anxiety, emotion, and ideas. No easy answers in that list, only uneasy questions.
His films are populated with common criminals, sexual deviants, juvenile psychopaths, insane purveyors of mass destruction, even computers that kill. The Shining, about "an ordinary guy who just wants to murder his family" according to Jack Nicholson, is typical Kubrick fare. Not a frame out of place, not a plot-point astray, not a moment of suspense or horror wasted, not a punter in the house that isn't scared witless. Nicholson himself couldn't wait to get off the film: "Glad to be off that one," he said at the time. "That was rough duty."
Not merely powerful stories brilliantly told, Kubrick's films created new benchmarks in their use of advances in filmmaking technology. In production design and art direction, 2001 on the big screen today feels more like a documentary from the future than science fiction. Many interior scenes in Barry Lyndon, his picaresque tale set in Georgian England, are lit with candlelight.
More than a director or technician, Kubrick was the complete filmmaker who took meticulous control of every stage of production from script through to marketing. "I know how to do virtually every job on a movie," he said in an interview in 70s. "I can light, I can record sound, I know where mikes go. I don't know how to act. But I'll tell you this, we will get the best shot."
One of the few American directors who had the prestige to make big-budget movies while working outside the Hollywood mainstream Kubrick was "the one person in the film industry who knew how the industry worked in every country in the world, remembers one Warner Brothers executive. "He knew all of the dubbing people, the dubbing directors, the actors, he had relationships with foreign directors who would supervise his work because he couldn't be there to supervise himself. We had to go around to every cinema to make sure the projection lights were right, the sound was correct, the ratios were right, the screens were clean."
Warners have released nine of his features on home video to coincide with the local release of Eyes Wide Shut. All his major films are in the collection except for A Clockwork Orange, which the director decreed be exhibited in theatres only.
As we write Clockwork Orange was playing in its 234th consecutive week of late night weekend screenings at Village's cineplex on Sydney's George Street movie strip.
"About 18 months ago we had to replace the print," says George Livery, general manager of Village Cinemas. "So we had to apply to Stanley to get hold of a new print, and he gratefully signed off on a new one. Of course also he had to approve of us showing the film in the first place.
"We get a lot film students at the screenings. ItÕs been running so long I canÕt remember why we decided to bring it back in the first place, although itÕs been in repertory really ever since its original release."
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It's understandable that EYES WIDE SHUT has been hailed - like John Huston's THE DEAD - to be Kubrick's 'last will and testament', the crowning acheivment of an extraordinary career. But the one thing the cinema's most famous control freak couldn't schedule was the timing of his own exit and he never intended Eyes Wide Shut to be a swan-song. That honour was to go to AI (artificial intelligence), based on a Brian Aldiss short story "Supertoys Last All Summer Long". Wanting to top 2001, which he believed was his most complete film, Kubrick spent seven years this decade developing AI. Throughout the early 90s he wrote several drafts with Aldiss and made exhaustive use of George LucasÕs peak special effects house Industrial Light & Magic but with Kubrick calling on ILMÕs resources to conduct more and more obscure and intricate experiments, Lucas eventually called a halt to work on the project, telling Kubrick they were too busy working on another film called JURASSIC PARK.Warner Bros had originally agreed to give Kubrick carte blanche on AI on condition that he first produce 'a quickie'.
Four years later that quickie - EYES WIDE SHUT - was in the can. Four days later, Kubrick died in his sleep in his English home.
But its clear that Kubrick has bought himself life after death - his films will remain to speak for him literally till doomsday. They will be there to remind us that movies can be more than just money making exercises in niche marketing, demographics, and manufactured entertainment.
Of course, with the exception for BARRY LYNDON, his films DID make money, which means he could keep making them. Kubrick proved that you can have it all - creative, critical and commercial success. His films have cost millions, made millions, and been watched by millions. But as he told his accountant after closing a lucrative deal with a major studio to make a picture: "You know, I'm glad they don't know I would do this thing for nothing if I had to."
Says Kidman: "He had a great belief in the cinema as an art form - so when you work with somebody like that, you say: 'I am willing totake the journey with you. I am privileged and honoured to take the journey with you.'"
- MICHAEL HUTAK
First published in Juice magazine
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