Australia - We Make Good Movie.

This post has been a long time coming, and no doubt I won't be able to cover all the points I want to make, but I'll give it my best shot. 

When people talk internationally about Australian films, usually they mention Crocodile Dundee or Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Both very good films and both successful internationally. Heck, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (rightfully) won an Oscar for Best Costume Design and it's even spawned a stage musical. 

However, Australia has produced some even better films since they came out. Films that rightfully should have been successful internationally - Wolf Creek, Animal Kingdom, Lantana, The Loved Ones - barely made a ripple. Yes, Animal Kingdom managed a surprise Oscar nomination and a late career revival for Jackie Weaver, but it didn't do well enough internationally. 

The problem with the Australian film industry is that as a nation, Australian's have no interest in seeing Australian films. In the hey-day of the Australian film industry in the nineties, Australian's managed to keep films like Muriel's Wedding, The Castle, Shine and Babe at the top of the box office and with the high quality were even able to score a Best Picture nomination for Babe (yep, the singing pig film) and a Best Actor Oscar for Geoffrey Rush. 

And then something happened near the end of the nineties and through the 2000's - we failed desperately at making entertaining films. People stopped seeing Australian films. For a time we started making films about ourselves, which whilst they were still good, they became depressing. For a good decade or so Australian films were relegated to indie cinema's - where they still are relegated to - or festival circuits due to people avoiding them. Australian's films became synonymous with being depressing.

Granted, these depressing films were still great - Alexandra's Project is one of Australia's best films, but I tell you what, no amount of cold showers will ever wash the feeling of that film again. Three Dollars and The Bank were also great films, but just before the Global Financial Crisis, people weren't rushing to see these films. 

If they weren't depressing, they simply weren't funny. For a period of time we were throwing up terrible Australian comedies like You Can't Stop the Music or Lets Get Skase. The less said about Horseplay, Thunderstruck and Danny Deckchair the better. These were bankable films with bankable stars who made the transition from television to film, and they failed. There were good comedies that were released then - Lucky Miles, Undead, Dirty Deeds - but unless they featured a tubby man cleaning toilets, they just weren't successful. 

So what does the Australian film industry need to do to be successful again? Films aren't cheap to make of course, and Australia being a small country can't even have a film that is homemade be successful in Australia and have that be enough. A film like Tomorrow, When the War Began should have been able to have yearly additions to the series and be a self sustaining series, but given how much it cost to make it just wasn't ever going to be successful enough. 

Back when Muriel's Wedding was out, films could stick around at the box office for months on end. How Titanic made its money was by sitting out in cinema's for nine months in a row. Now films need to make their profit right there and then and there's no slow build for them. There's no ability to have the word of mouth build over time. Back when The Full Monty came out, it was slightly successful for a short period of time, but as more people saw it, more people talked about it and rewatched it. It was a major hit. It's a film which would have done great as an Australian film. 

Part of what helps us being able to make our own films is by being a place for international films to be made cheap. The Star Wars series, the Matrix series, Superman Returns were all major films that were made in Australia that helped boost the Australian film industry. We're still able to assist in producing some fantastic international films and that does certainly boost Australia's ability to make good films. The Great Gatsby, The Lego Movie, Happy Feet and Happy Feet 2 are all fine examples of successful films being made in Australia. Not to mention the CGI effects we've assisted with on major blockbusters like X-Men: Days of Future Past and the Men in Black series. 

But these aren't films that define Australia as a whole. Whilst there is a resurgence of good Hollywood produced films made in Australia - Moulin Rouge!, The Great Gatsby, Bright Star - they aren't stories about Australia though. Films like Tracks and Oranges & Sunshine are great films about the history of Australia, but not films that people have seen. 

If a film like Tracks was promoted properly, it would have been more successful. Audiences aren't averse to watching a drama, they just need to be sold the right drama. A film like The Square, Noise or Animal Kingdom should be at the top of the box office if they were marketed properly. But because they're Australian films, they're not given the money to be marketed properly, and they're also not able to be shown in the big chain cinemas, and they're also not allowed to be in cinemas for a long period of time to build word of mouth. 

So what does the Australian film industry need? More marketable films? Sequels? Australian stories that don't focus on the Australian part? 

Marketable films helps. However, they need to be high quality films as well. Like this years I, Frankenstein for example. It was an Australian written, directed and filmed film. And it was God awful. Stuart Beattie had written the multi-billion dollar franchise, Pirates of the Caribbean, had also written and directed Tomorrow, When the War Began, and when he's given a project like I, Frankenstein, well, it's terrible. And it was marketed up the wazoo. 

Sequels. For sure. Wolf Creek 2 was a success. And Red Dog 2 is coming along as well (Dead Red Dog?). However, we need to be quicker with getting these sequels out. The Wog Boy 2 came out ten years after The Wog Boy and was a colossal failure. If it had hit maybe two years after The Wog Boy, it would have still been able to ride on the success of the first film. Instead it took the international travel route - which seems to be the tact that Australian sequels follow - and was a box office bomb. 

The games industry is almost solidly built on sequels alone. A new intellectual property is a hard sell and generally doesn't perform as well as the sequels that are out there. So, build on that theory and release a few more sequels. 

Australian stories that don't focus on the Australian part? Well, let me clarify here. We should certainly tell Australian stories that matter, or stories of our past. However, they need to be less Strine. We are very accepting of being Australian, but there seems to be a disconnect with the audience when we see Australians on the big screen talking with an Australian accent. 

Take 12 Years a Slave and Samson & Delilah for example. People gladly saw 12 Years a Slave in droves - great reviews and awards helped it reach that goal. Samson & Delilah did well enough here in Australia, however, not 12 Years a Slave well. It had the great reviews - even a rare double five star rating from David & Margaret - and the awards to go behind it, but people just did not go and watch it. The Strine aspect probably didn't help, but the fact that it was a film about two aboriginals also didn't do it any favours. 

That's a deeper problem with Australia as a whole though rather than just Australian cinema goers. They'll happily watch a 'feel good' aboriginal film like Rabbit Proof Fence, but not one as dire as Samson & Delilah. They would be surprised by how enjoyable and funny a film like Ten Canoes is - a film which has more in common with Buster Keaton style films than Walkabout - but because it's a film about aboriginals with subtitles (double whammy of no sir, not seeing that) nobody saw it.

We're at a point with Australian cinema where the Federal Government has reduced funding to Australian films (and the less said about the abysmal treatment to Australian music and our non-existent game industry the better) and the onus has fallen onto the states to support local film. South Australian Film Corporation do a great job of making great Australian films - even ones that are based in West Australia, they have funded (Wolf Creek, Lucky Miles). Lotterywest is starting to help fund great Australian films - Red Dog for example - and that certainly is helping. 

Australian film goers need to accept Australian films more and stop writing them off as being depressing or bad. It's simply not the case. If our audiences will see films here, then the audiences overseas will see them there, and then we may have a vague idea of a film industry. There's hope yet.