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ROBERT CONNOLLY  

In 1998 Variety Magazine named Australian filmmaker Robert Connolly as one of the ten best emerging producers in the world. He has directed the films ‘The Bank’ and ‘Three Dollars’, while his producing credits include ‘The Monkey’s Mask’, ‘Roses are Red’, ‘All Men are Liars’, ‘The Boys’, and the soon to be released, ‘Romulus My Father’. AUSUS Magazine spoke to Robert about his vision as a producer, working with actors, and the challenges of filmmaking.

Q: How did you become a producer?

RC: I was working in the theatre and I met David Wenham. We put on a production of ‘The Boys’ at the Griffin in 1991. We became quite good mates and decided to make it into a film. It took five years after that to get it made. I was starting to direct theatre at that time as well and I just had a sense that if I left my life in someone else’s hands then I’d never get anywhere. The producing part seemed like an inevitable step to empower my own career. I went to AFTRS and used ‘The Boys’ as part of the application. I actually applied for only a one year course but they came back and offered me a three year course. So I was able to negotiate and include a directing component because I really wanted to be able to direct my own projects. It really helped me in terms of the relationships I formed. I met Rowan Woods. I met Tristan Milani whose shot all my films. I met the creative team I collaborate with really.

Q: You also met John Maynard there didn’t you?

RC: Yes. John was my mentor in third year and now he’s my business partner. At the end of that year John asked me if I wanted half his company. I was twenty six and straight out of film school! So that was the start of it. We went off and made ‘The Boys’. We made it for three million and every single person that was the head of department was working on their first feature. We used to turn up every day and we couldn’t believe we’d raised this money. There was a sense of really finding a way to make this film. And we’ve been in business for twelve years now with Arena Film and our distribution company.

Q: Have things changed in the industry since making ‘The Boys’?

RC: Definitely. There appears now to be a conservative industry methodology that all films seem to have to conform to. It’s passed down from the big studio films that shoot in Australia. I produced films on the back of Mission Impossible 2. All the crews had made a fortune on these big US projects so there was a real sense of … ‘this isn’t how it’s done’. As if the studio model is the perfect way to do it! Other countries throughout the world have great innovation, whereas we fall into the mini studio model. With ‘Romulus My Father’ a lot of the crews had come off big studio films. There was ‘Charlottes Web’ filmed in Victoria. There was a TV series, ‘Nightmares and Dreamscapes’. Many of the crew said that it helped them to do our film though, because they were able to earn all their money from the US projects.

Q: How did you crossover from producing to directing?

RC: I’d directed a lot of theatre and I’d always wanted to direct film as well. I just took a bit of a long term view of it. It was after ‘The Boys’ and David Wenham and I were looking for another film to do when a futures trader pitched me an idea that was to become the basis of the film ‘The Bank’. We started workshopping it. Each of the projects I’ve done has come out of wanting to tell that story. Sometimes I’m the right director. Sometimes I’m not.

Q: Does Arena Film have a vision?

RC: It’s increasingly a political agenda. ‘The Boys’ was an urban drama with a social political slant. Violence and all the contributing factors. ‘The Bank’ was an anti globalisation corporate ethics type of film. When it was released in America, it was on the back of Enron collapsing. We had a screening in Washington. It was at an ethics conference and they got the ethics advisers from the top five hundred companies to watch it! And ‘Three Dollars’ is the more recent political film, in terms of how can you make your life in this point in history in the face of increasing pressure to turn a blind eye to things that may have mattered to you in your early years. It juxtaposes economics with the individual’s morality, ethical standards and social conscience. ‘Romulus my Father’, our latest film, looks at the way we treat refugees and the whole issue of migration and racism and how a country’s formed. It’s an incredible story about this family trying to make their life here.

Q: Isn’t there a company in America that has a similar vision?

RC: Participant Productions. On their website it reads…’changing the world one story at a time’. I think we’re very similar to them.

Q: You’ve ventured into the political arena in recent times?

RC: Yes I have. The world’s in a terrible state. It’s time to rise up and be counted. Last year I led a campaign against the federal government’s anti terror bill. I stayed up all night and wrote an opinion piece on it and sent it off to the Herald. They ran it the next day. I appeared before the senate committee and argued about the principle of freedom of expression. It was like being in the McCarthy era. The law reform commission has now recommended that sedition being removed from Australian law. So I do see my role as a combination of being politically active and making films. And after ‘Three Dollars’ I had a meeting with the leader of the Opposition, Kim Beazley, travelled into the Styx River Forest with Greens Senator, Bob Brown, and the Coalition screened the film in Parliament. It’s amazing we’ve actually been able to get these films made because it’s such a conservative time with government subsidies, but it’s also amazing I’ve been able to talk with these people about these projects.

Q: Is there a certain ‘aesthetic quality’ you like to use in your films?

RC: The films are all aesthetically different. I think that rather than there being a consistent aesthetic quality as say, Mike Leigh uses, there is an interesting thing about the urban lives we live in the cities, and the satellite stories that happen on the outskirts of those cities and the characters moving between them. I think that’s something that keeps popping up in our films. For example, both ‘Three Dollars’ and ‘The Bank’ had sub plots set in regional Victoria.

Q: Where is our film industry heading?

RC: The industry’s shifting somewhere new with all this new media and we’re not quite sure where it’s going yet. In the late 1800’s, when film was invented, we were filming on thirty five mm so the idea that in the twenty first century we’re still using nineteenth century technology leads to people calling feature films heritage media! The box office has been declining and I know we’re on the verge of some major shift. All the big filmmakers, Spielberg, James Cameron and so on, have done a huge amount of research into 3D, because within two years all cinemas will be using digital projection.

Q: How does art house cinema fit into all this?

RC: Where art house cinema fits into all this I don’t know because the demographic is getting older and older. People under twenty five don’t go to see art house. They go and see a blockbuster or they stay home and watch a DVD. As a filmmaker, how you speak to a wide audience is the trick. Part of the reason I moved from theatre to film is that film can speak to a greater number of people. But do you just want to make films that play in the art house cinemas to a certain demographic? Take ‘The Bank’, for example. I made it a genre thriller rather than a more involved piece of art cinema because I wanted to reach a wider audience. It’s such a dilemma. Do you make the type of film that will get into Cannes or something that may be more successful at the box office?

Q: How do you make that decision?

RC: We talk about the audience we’re making the film for. With ‘The Boys’     we knew that at the Penrith Angus & Robertson their best selling books were true crime. So we knew that even though that was a very tough bold film we knew that it could reach a certain audience. There’s no science to it but that’s the producers job – to look at similar films and see how they’ve performed.

Q: How do you find the actors for your films?

RC: Through casting agents. My wife’s a casting agent, that keeps it in the family. And I just see as much stuff as I can. Expose myself to emerging actors. For ‘Romulus my Father’ we saw hundreds of kids. We brought the kid we eventually cast back four times. When you cast anyone there’s such of leap of faith you have to make. Especially with a kid and they haven’t done much other work you can look at. It’s agonizing. Looking at them do different scenes with different actors. Scrutinizing the tapes. Making sure they have enough range.

Q: Is there a certain way you work with the actors you direct?

RC: I’ve got a feeling that the best way to work with actors is to find the style that gets the best performance out of them. And so rather than imposing an overall philosophy I try to get to understand that actor in rehearsal so I can get a sense of how to work with them. A great example is ‘The Bank’. David Wenham responds well to technically precise direction. He wants technical tweaking between takes. Anthony LaPaglia, on the other hand, found that on the page his character was a bit stifled and in order to make it work he needed to loosen it up. So we improvised a lot and that gave a great looseness to it. A technical approach to directing him would have been completely wrong. It’s finding out what each actor needs.

Q: What drives you to make films?

RC: Without a doubt, in recent times, the political agenda of the work is what drives us. We feel a responsibility to use cinema to put a blow torch to contemporary Australia and contribute to some discussion or debate about where we’re headed. That’s what I find most rewarding about it.

Q: Are there any challenges you can foresee facing in the future?