MICHAEL RYMER : AUSSIE IN HOLLYWOOD

  Australian director Michael Rymer first came to prominence with the feature film ‘Angel Baby’, a project he wrote and directed. It won a swag of Australian Film Institute awards including ‘Best Director’ and ‘Best Film’. Since then Michael has directed for both film and television including ‘Allie and Me’, ‘In Too Deep’, ‘Perfume’, ‘Queen of the Damned’, ‘Haunted’ and most recently, ‘Battlestar Galactica’. AUSUS Magazine spoke to Michael about landing in the US, his career so far, and his plans for the future.

Q: When did you first move to Los Angeles?

It was back in 1981. I left Melbourne with a very euro centric view of the world. I wanted to live in an Italian farmhouse or a French garret and listen to English music so arriving in Los Angeles was a bit of a shock to my system. Back then it was a shit hole. I was living in South Central. Burger King, McDonalds, Hungry Jacks. Just junk, junk, junk. It was really smoggy and if you wanted an espresso forget it. Car yards everywhere. And crime. Terrible black or white crime because we were in the ghetto. But I wanted to be a filmmaker and I liked the film schools here. So I said ‘…okay. Los Angeles is a desert, both culturally and physically. So if I can survive here I can survive anywhere’. Because whatever you have here you’ve built yourself. Starting from scratch, trying to build a life takes years. I’m sure you felt that in New York but it’s hard here as well because there’s no street life. You’re not all out there together.  

Q: Has LA changed a lot since you first came here?

Yes it has. I really enjoy it here now. There are lots of bars and restaurants. And I find Melbourne to be much more homogenous than it is here. It’s certainly a multicultural society but you don’t have the richness of the Latino or black cultures there. They’ve given us blues and jazz and rock and roll and without these art forms the world would be a much sadder place.  When I go back to Melbourne I always get a shock because I think ‘…oh my god. It’s so white’. I get a little of that same feeling when I go to Canada. But you get off a plane here in Los Angeles, you walk through any airport, and the racial mix is quite striking. It’s not just people passing through in turbans or kaftans. It’s a greater culture in a way I don’t think many foreigners understand. The way the minority cultures are accepted here.  

Q: You went to film school here in LA?

Yes. I went to the University of Southern California (USC). I remember having to a write a letter to get accepted. Everyone else apparently wrote a major thesis. I only wrote a couple of paragraphs. One of the first things I noticed when I began studying here was how much better educated I seemed to be than the other students. The American education system is terrible. Unless it’s improved I feel like they’ve forfeited their future.  

Q: You also studied acting here?

I studied with a lady named Joanne Baron. I didn’t intend to study acting. I just went with a friend one day to watch the class and I became so intrigued with the whole process that I decided to sign up. It was a two-year Meisner course, based on the teachings of Sanford Meisner. I think another reason I took the course was that I thought it could help my directing. To learn how to communicate with actors in a language they could understand. Joanne and I have since worked together on two films, ‘Perfume’ and ‘Allie and Me’.

Q: ‘Angel Baby’ really put you into the spotlight. How did you research a story like this?

Well, basically the story is about two people who fall in love, two people who also happen to be suffering from schizophrenia. Jacqueline McKenzie and John Lynch played the two main characters. I researched it by spending a couple of months visiting an institution in Glendale, LA. I’d go there everyday. Just hanging out, going bowling and so on. I remember at one point I asked one of the guys how he’d like mental illness to be portrayed in the film and he said ‘…just show us doing normal everyday things. Show us doing our washing or something. We’re not that different from regular people’. I also spent a lot of time studying the game show that the character of Kate becomes obsessed with, ‘The Wheel of Fortune’. I tried to find the whole mythology of it. ‘Angel Baby’ opened a lot of doors. It won a bunch of Australian Film Institute  (AFI) awards and was in fact financed by the Australian Film Corporation (AFC). We made it for about two and a half million.  

Q: What opportunities came up for you after ‘Angel Baby’?

I was offered to direct a couple of studio films in LA. But these projects turned out to be a waste of time. It made me a lot more cautious about which projects I accept now. It was a frustrating period and so I went out and made a film called ‘Allie and Me’. We made it for eighty thousand dollars and shot it in nine days. I’m actually really proud of this film. There was no script. We just made it up as we went along. Four years after this project I decided to make another film that was completely improvised called ‘Perfume’. This time the budget was greater and we had a little more time.

Q: The next film after ‘Allie and Me’ was ‘In Too Deep’ with Omar Epps and LL Cool J?

Yes. We shot it in Toronto. It’s the story of a cop who goes undercover to investigate a drug kingpin. We almost went back to Canada for ‘Queen of the Damned’ but I’m glad we didn’t. The quality of actors available for supporting roles is much lower there than it is in Australia where so many actors work continually in theatre and film. The supporting roles are just as important as the leads. Every performance is essential in making a strong finished product.  

Q: Why was ‘Queen of the Damned’ shot in Australia?

I think that the main reason was because it is so much cheaper to shoot in Australia. There’s the exchange rate and the healthy government tax concessions. And labor is generally cheaper there. A movie like this would have been far too expensive to shoot in the U.S. It was a co-production between Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow, who I’m sure were influential in sending the project to Melbourne. And because the budget was low there wasn’t the pressure to cast big name stars. Stuart Townsend, for example, played the lead and he was relatively unknown before this project. We auditioned in LA, New York, London and Australia and he was simply the best actor for the role. It made the studio incredibly nervous but I think they accepted it partly because Aaliyah was in the film and she already had a large fan base.  

Q: How involved are you in the casting sessions?

I am very active and involved during the audition process. I do look at the tapes of actors but you can’t always be sure with just the tape. I’ve been burned in the past so I like to give direction during the audition. It’s very important that an actor be able to take direction. ‘Allie and Me’, for example, was completely improvised. I needed the actors to be flexible and able to just make things up. If an actor tends to get into a ‘pattern’ of doing the scene a certain way then he won’t be ‘in the moment’ and capable of taking that direction.  

Q: What led you to direct ‘Queen of the Damned’?

I loved horror films growing up. I remember one time, after ‘Angel Baby’, Courtney Valenti, the vice president of Warner Bros., asked me if there were any projects I was interested in developing and I said ‘…yes. I’d love to do the sequel to “Interview with Vampire’. Well it turned out that Jordan wasn’t doing it so I jumped on board and two years and six writers later we had a script.  

Q: Can you refresh us briefly on the plot?

The film version is an adaptation of the third book of Anne Rice’s Vampire Lestat trilogy. It’s essentially about a vampire who is woken from a deep sleep only, through a series of events, to become a rock star. However, in the process of becoming a celebrity he angers all of the other vampires throughout the world including Akasha, the queen of vampires. Philosophically it’s about immortality. It raises the question of what do I do and how do I cope with living forever.

Q: Critically ‘Queen of the Damned’ didn’t do well. What would you do differently in the future?

I think the main thing I learned from this film is that great films are made by a singular vision, that of the director, and not by committee. It’s a fine line to tread in the studio system. If you compromise excessively and give power to those who really don’t know what they’re doing, then you keep people happy in the interim but when the project fails you are held accountable. However, if you stick to your vision and don’t give in to compromise then the possibility is that they’ll fire you. So that’s the dilemma.  

Q: You’re most recent project was the mini series ‘Battlestar Galactica’, a far cry from your ‘Angel Baby’ days.

Yes, but I actually think I was quite well prepared for this project. I’ve directed art films, a studio film with tons of special effects and I’ve shot two films based largely on improvisation. This series was shot hand held and we wanted the characters to be very real. Just like everyday people. Not superheroes.  

Q: What was your experience like working with Edward James Olmos?

It’s always a fantastic process to work with great actors. He would constantly challenge me and come up with stuff that I would never have thought of. For example there’s one scene where everything is about to change. They’re about to go into battle. Olmos suggested that we should try to inject some humor into the scene, that we should shoot it with him sitting on the toilet. That’s the type of stuff he would come up with. One hundred and eighty degrees from what I could ever imagine he’d suggest. You can never presume to know where great stuff will come from.  

Q: What do you see to be the future of Australian filmmakers?

Australia has definitely produced many great filmmakers. I think the problem now is that there is no mentorship program for aspiring filmmakers. In the US you can work as a production assistant, you can work with the DGA. You can be exposed to the industry. I don’t know what the future is in Australia. There’s so little money available through the AFC these days.  

Q: Are there any filmmakers you admire?

I love Todd Solondz. I thought ‘Happiness’ was a fantastic film. Fred Schepisi. ‘Devil’s Playground’ is a terrific movie. He’s an excellent role model. Jane Campion. I like the fact that she is so uncompromising. Also Peter Weir. ‘Witness’ is my favorite film of his.  

Q: What will you work on next?

I’m heading back to Australia at some point to work on developing a Peter Carey novel, ‘War Crimes’. I’ve been working on it for about fifteen years. I hope he still let’s me do it after all this time! But it’s a lot of work. His writing is so visually intensive. The film version will be called ‘Easy Peasy’. I want to continue to work on different styles and genres. I like to do stories that are very character driven, which involve a more subtle character story. The closest I’ve come so far is ‘Perfume’. It’s messy, real work. There’s even some of this in ‘Battlestar Galactica’. I want to work with actors who own it. Who make it seem real.  

Q: How do you want your career to look when it’s all said and done?