AFTER MIDNIGHT

I met Chris Kennedy and John Hillcoat when we were drunk.

Everybody went to the Crystal Ballroom in St Kilda to listen to music, find parties and score drugs on Saturday nights, and I probably bumped into them there and then made the connection back at school.

I met Frank Trobbiani and David Last at Swinburne, two second year graphics students who introduced me to Matthew Gown. Frank and David lived near the railway bridge on Glenferrie Road, and Matthew lived alone at number 764 Glenferrie Road, an old Georgian era flat on the second floor above a very seedy op-shop, and next door to a very convenient pharmacy.

Matthew smoked Stuyvesants, drank milky tea and was also a second year design student. He asked me, "Do you think?" I instinctively replied "I think so." The following day I moved in with him to be closer to college and begin my new life.

I liked cigarettes and drinking so much that I kept a half-bottle of vodka in my top floor desk at school. During life drawing class we’d dash up the stairs, have a slug and the drawing always went very well.

In 1980 I had no career plan and no ideals. I finished second year and applied for the four year graphic design degree stream, which would place me in an advertising agency for twelve months of paid work experience.

I failed to secure a job position, and I felt disappointed but relieved, and uncertain what to do. The head of the graphic design department Bob Francis told me I could continue my degree by doing a year of freelance work from the college.

I thought graphic design was commercial and passé compared to making films, and I joined the gang of filmmakers on the night I told my film student acquaintances that the design students were having a Friday night party in the life drawing room.

I recall Chris and John came along, bringing their friend Paul Goldman. He got bored quickly and decided to raise the stakes. There was a fire hose in the stairwell. It was a warm night and a window was open into life drawing, and I remember there was music and dancing inside.

It was dark, and as John jammed the escape door shut, Paul and Chris grabbed the fire hose and I helped them poke it thru the open window and wedge it shut.

The valve was opened and the life drawing room was quickly flooded. Somebody kicked the door open, saturated design students escaping as water surged everywhere.

I looked in as fellow designer Peter Becker walked by with a knowing smile, a soggy cigarette held between his lips. It was raining, like a thunderstorm had broken inside and put all the lights out. I ran outside into the dark with Chris, Paul and John, and we hid beside the train line and drank stolen whisky.

That was the night Paul asked me what my favourite film was. I said, “Taxi Driver”.

When asked the same question, Paul’s reply was “Goldfinger”.

I went shoplifting with John, creating a distraction at the cash register as he stuffed his overcoat with armfuls of 12 inch record albums, so many he could barely fit out the shop door.

He got away with it more than once, but I didn't.

ANOTHER TIME, ANOTHER PLACE

I had a poster in my bedroom, a photo taken at the time of “The Last Movie” (Dennis Hopper, 1971). I was unaware of this film, all I saw was an angry bearded man in denim, smoking a cigarette and holding an automatic rifle. He reminded me of Karl Marx and Charles Manson.

The by-line copy at the bottom of the poster, “Dennis Hopper is THE AMERICAN DREAMER and the camera is the weapon” triggered something, but I was unsure what.

I needed to soak up some film culture and Chris and I went to see the original Tobe Hooper “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” at the Barrel cinema in the city. The theatre was like a smoky bus inside, one claustrophobic aisle with three seats on both sides, the screen a two-metre postage stamp. If a tall patron entered, his head blocked the screen. I was told to “Get out of it” by some film buff.

The Barrel had been a strip joint/flicker palace and rub shop. Some entrepreneur had gone cultural and decided to screen real films, but with the reels looped, so there was never a break in the session. The film just played on and on, you bought a ticket and walked in, watched until the end and then kept watching through the beginning, up to whatever point you got bored.

You could stay there all day and watch it six times.

I went alone to see “Sweet Movie” at the Valhalla in Victoria Street, Richmond. It was a grand edifice that some hippy had taken over to screen golden oldies like “Lost Horizon” and “Casablanca”, animation festivals, surfing docos and head movies like a Jodorowsky epic or a Fellini marathon.

“Sweet Movie” is a weird ass French saga of a deranged cult of regurgitating murderers that live in a barge along the river Seine, led by a woman who sleeps in a box of sugar and abducts children with candy. Sounds like a film shoot to me.

The movie had started when a guy with a huge Afro haircut came in and sat right in front of me, when there were hundreds of empty seats and hardly anyone else in the theatre. I had to move. The Valhalla survived for decades on their eternal Saturday night screening of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”. 

Put your hands on your hips! No thanks.

Anthony Kitchener took me to see “Eraserhead” (David Lynch, 1977). The image seemed very dark because the projector globe was dim, and we left after fifteen minutes of the scariest film and sound I’d ever experienced. Anthony took me back a week later and it had the same impact in all its black and white glory.

After completing my graphic design diploma, I opted to transfer to the post graduate film course. 

PIG CREEK

Swinburne Film and Television School (circa 1980) had a great reputation. It was a rite of passage for many, one that smelled like my grandfather’s camera case. Today, film schools are perfumed with essential oils, pure wool carpet and the tools of litigation.

My grandfather made Super 8 home movies that he screened in a theatrette under his home. It had rows of seats, aisle lighting and a mechanical curtain.

It was in the blood, but I didn’t even know there was a film school at Swinburne until I heard about some students who set fire to a lecturer’s office. The blaze was extinguished before anyone was hurt, and lecturer Nigel Buesst promptly dubbed the accused students “The Gang of Four”.

The original gang of four were Chinese Communist Party officials charged with treason in 1976. In our case, they were Paul Goldman, John Hillcoat and Christopher Kennedy. The final gang member was Evan English, editing on a Steenbeck, his cigarettes and coke at hand.

Someone told me these troublemakers were involved in kidnapping a frozen chicken from the kitchen of lecturer Peter Tammer. They held it to ransom for a few days before releasing it defrosted into his swimming pool.

Their antics attracted me like a fly to stink. I’m an only child and these film people were involved in real brotherhood, working in a collaboration unstained by the black spot of commercialism. They were intelligent but dumb, optimistic and nihilistic, stressed out and driven by a creative urge. 

I met like minds telling stories with images, as Orson Welles said, “for the mastery of cinema.”

I liked their pie, and I wanted a slice. I fell in love with Vanessa Kortlang and danced away the weekends, hanging out with Chris Kennedy and himself, Nique Needles, who lived inside a wardrobe jammed under the stairs of a share house up Glenferrie Hill.

After completing my graphic design diploma, film school head Brian Robinson accepted me into the film course. I was vain, arrogant, repressed and ignorant: perfect film school fodder. I suddenly realised I had no idea how to make a film, aside from the fact you need a script, a camera, actors and time.

The teaching process in the graduate course seemed very hands off to me. The lecturers’ “deep end” method required students to delegate roles, grab a roll of 16mm and a clockwork Bolex, read the manual and shoot. I was nervous about the actual step-by-step process of filming.

In fact, beyond “Lights, camera, action…” I had no idea what was supposed to happen and in what order.

Fortunately, Robert Howard asked me to play Walter Logus in “The Man With No Cold Drinks”. I was nervous and I laughed, although I’m sure he thought it was egotism. Our relationship was scarred by that first impression, but my complete lack of any plan at all was coming together perfectly.

ROB HOWARD'S POSTER: "THE MAN WITH NO COLD DRINKS"

Rob directed his film, shot with a few exterior locations, but mainly in and around a Hotel in South Melbourne, or Little Hollywood as it was known. It took the better part of two weeks, and I learned a lot about the systems and practices of hands-on filmmaking.

During this time, I had a dream that I was an actor. In my dream, I was standing under a line of arc lights, asking the darkness beyond, “When we start shooting, how many of us are meant to die?” Silhouettes beyond the lights, in a kind of purgatory, offered no answer.

To give me space to work, and to avoid becoming involved in our films in any way, my flatmate Matthew Gown moved out of our flat at 764.

It was an act both selfish and generous, and my friendship with Matthew drifted.

We shot our first roll of film for a project; mine was three minutes of colour, shot in Nessa’s parents swimming pool with an underwater housing I hired for the swim.

The first project was to be edited in camera. Night, watery lights, shimmering surfaces, pool filter hum, muted voices. A struggle, Frank’s head thrust below the surface, David’s hands holding him under. The body floats away, my flipper got into frame in the final shot. It was assessed well.

I shot a second test film with a 16mm Baillieu, but this time the filmed material was to be edited to a piece of music. I set up a few redheads inside 764 and shot several long passes down the hallway, carrying the camera handheld up the spiral staircase and into the lounge room, where my school friend Brett Ford stood with his back to camera, wearing a large overcoat and playing guitar.

I intercut these passes to prolong the sweeping camera movements and to create staccato jump cuts. I tried to cut it in time with “Baby’s on Fire” by Brian Eno, from his album “Here Come The Warm Jets”.

NEARLY EVERYTHING I ENJOY ABOUT MAKING MOVIES IS CAPTURED IN THIS IMAGE, WHICH I PHOTOCOPIED FROM AN UNKNOWN FILM TEXTBOOK IN 1981. IT IS STARK, SEXXY, BROODING AND TOTALLY INTRIGUING - IS IT A KOUKALARIS, OR A CUCOLURUS? 

After the assessment screening, lecturer John Bird told the class that he could play any other piece of music to my editing and it would work just as well. I was disappointed, and his claim remains untested. That film project is now lost.

The final film assessment process involved some kind of point system I never understood, where each student would crew on the films of other students they collaborated with. 

I worked on two other student films as an extra and actor. Extra work was a good time. You got to dress in costume and wait for the crew to get ready to shoot, the rest was a dance and a prank. 

Whatever I learned at school I learned from other students, but a little voice in my head was already whispering, “Keep shooting. Button on and keep it on.”

Let God sort it out. After Rob showed me what a clapperboard was really for, it was time for me to “express myself”. My shortcut to Hell began with the script.

IT ALL BEGINS WITH THE SCRIPT

Some wit coined the term “Guerrilla Filmmaking”, derived from the Spanish word for “little war”. It refers to filmmaking by whatever means necessary.

It suggests a people’s rebellion; shock tactics in public places, unpredictable outcomes and secret manœuvres, life and death. I liked the idea of “skeleton” crews armed with lights and a camera, grabbing opportunities without permission, viewing our common world through uncommon eyes.

It’s all voodoo and very glamorous.

The head of the film school Brian Robinson and the lecturers John Bird and Nigel Buesst set exercises for students, and a lot of writing took place in the first semester in order to develop a final script for production, beginning mid year.

Brian’s exercises required students to explore ideas like image, sound and movement, resulting in simple half-page scenes. The fourth exercise became the basis for my first draft script. It was called "Little Doin’s In The Dunes” and included the first clear description of an incident that was used in the final script.

THE HANDWRITTEN PAGES OF "LITTLE DOIN'S IN THE DUNES" AS THEY WERE ASSESSED BY BRIAN ROBINSON

My experience of film was mainstream compared to the diploma students, who had a broader knowledge of movie culture. We watched a lot of stuff and I got filled in fast.

I was interested in making a short that referenced “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” (Luis Buñuel, 1972), “The Third Man” (Carol Reed, 1949) and especially “Alphaville” (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965).

I’d seen “Eraserhead” earlier that year, and the anxiety that film provoked had a major impact on me. These movies shared the sense of a dream, with the danger and wonder of worlds displaced by a surreal mysticism. I wanted to emulate these enigmatic and anarchic films, and all we had to do was point and shoot.

I wrote a summary of intention about the second semester final film project. This summary was to be used in discussion, for more writing and editing. I presented it to lecturer John Bird, and as required I read it out aloud to other students in the course to gauge the interest of potential collaborators.

During my reading a number of my peers walked out led by Bruce Kerr, a professional actor who trod the boards. He aimed to bring his skills to directing. Bon voyage buddy.

John Bird’s response to my proposal was: “An ambitious little piece…”, which it was.

JOHN BIRD'S ASSESSMENT OF MY PROPOSAL

I was most rankled by his comment, “I suspect you will not believe our judgements on the complexities entailed until you have attempted them yourself. I think you have neither the expertise available or the experience, yet, to realise this on film…”.

How right he was, and how like a red rag to a bull in a china shop.

I promptly asked my friends to help shoot a test scene. I bulldozed my first script summary and kept writing stuff connected to “Little Doin’s In The Dunes”.

In the process, I ripped off a few images and dialogue from the work of French cartoonist Moebius, mostly from “The Airtight Garage of Jerry Cornelius”, itself derived from Michael Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius saga. I accidently embraced the ideals of collage, homage and acquisition without knowing how post-modern I was.

I was self-righteous, hungover and pressed for time, so I plagiarised.

In fact if you compare some of Moebius' drawings from that comic with my storyboards, you'll see I "referenced" him for a few frames during the Janus assassination scene.

The “sampled” images and scraps of dialogue from Moebius inspired turning points in my plot, most memorably when Janus gets shot, his head bursts into flame and as he smoulders the heroine pleads, “But we were lovers, we were mad about each other.” To which the hero responds, “Come on, it’s too late for him. He’s smoking.”

So was I, and Mary Jane danced laterally with Peter Stuyvesant, the passport to smoking pleasure and substance abuse.

I elaborated on this material, wrote a new treatment and did some storyboards, making it into a supernatural conspiracy that brings separated lovers together.

LARGE STYLE FRAMES - PENCIL, BRUSH, INK AND WHITE OUT

I completed a very large pencil and ink drawing of the cockpit of the seaplane, which I've enlarged to give a sense of the detail.

I cast my friends Tim Skerritt and Frank Trobbiani as the lead protagonists and out of the blue Paul Goldman volunteered to be the Director of Photography and Camera Operator. He had spent some time at Swinburne becoming a talented cinematographer, and much of the film's impact is due to his grasp of the technical requirements of filmmaking and his complete understanding of what I hoped to achieve in ten minutes. 

Along with his girlfriend and camera assistant Lucy MacLaren and a few other volunteers, we shot the first major scene with Tim and Frank on a rainy night, using high and low angles, great "film noir" lighting and a smoke machine. The camera was severely flooded, redheads exploded and we all got drenched, but the scene worked and within a week I got the nod from Brian.

STILL FRAMES FROM THE TEST SCENE AS USED IN THE FINAL FILM, WITH FRANK TROBBIANI AND TIM SKERRITT PLAYING FRANKLIN AND DUMAINE

It was physical filmmaking, emphasis on the word making – no digital equipment. Working a light meter, adjusting lenses, walking backwards while shooting, recording sound with a boom.

It was all highly mobile and had great jargon. Magazines were loaded with stock inside a black bag like a magic act. Wheelchairs worked for dolly shots, tripods were big and heavy and tape recorders reel-to-reel. Exposed footage was processed overnight as the next day’s rushes, and sound was manually transferred from recording to cutting tape.

My only bloody skirmish was with a sound transfer machine. When the tape finished the weighted spools kept spinning. I tried to stop them and the spools bit me, tearing the knuckles off both hands. 

Shaken, I walked out like a surgeon waiting for gloves, blood pouring down my wrists and arms. The women at reception patched me up and I never went near the thing again.

I found a postcard of a very old William Blake etching, an image of a man about to climb a ladder to the moon, titled “I want. I want.” 

It filled me with hope and fear.

I went out at night and found locations where we could conjure dreamscapes.

In dreams we cross mysterious borderlands, down a maze of broken cobblestone laneways, gothic stone haunts invaded by sinuous nature. Collecting lost buttons we can never take home, climbing ladders into hideaways where well-known strangers and unrecognisable friends pick at their elbows, watching apocalyptic moons rise with big owl eyes.

After six rough drafts I typed up the final script, mangling it into a supernatural conspiracy.

THE NUT CASES AND LIGHTNING BOLTS OF THE MATTER

The script was finished. I had a story that suggested nightmares and wandering spirits. With hindsight I’d ripped-off Dante Alighieri, but is it plagiarism if you’ve never read the Divine Comedy, or is it archetypal narrative? Who cares?

Debra Beattie came onboard my little rowboat straight away. Being very courageous she volunteered to be the producer. 

Aside from Debra, my crew were all volunteers from the final year of the diploma course. One of these optimists, a fellow named Mark Atkin, joined me in the coffee room for a break. Talking about film titles, he commented that the title was the last thing anyone noticed.

I answered, “But it’s the first thing they see.” How wrong I was.

Like all scripts, it didn't have a title to begin with. By the fifth draft it was called "Elsewhere", and by the seventh draft it was "Meanwhile Elsewhere", as evidenced by the examples shown here. 

THE SYNOPSIS FOR THE FIFTH DRAFT

Paul told me the script could be seen as a little pretentious. I knew who Buñuel and Dalí were. I said, “Fine. Let’s be pretentious, so long as it’s not boring.”

I was totally dismissive of what I expected others to do for me, "It's only a film..." I said.

It was all going to be so simple. My “screenwriting process” had produced several scenes and four characters that needed casting. 

As far as I was concerned, my film required nothing more than a few friends working on a couple of night shoots and having a picnic at the beach.

A FOUR PAGE ROUGH TREATMENT OF THE SEVENTH DRAFT 

It was going to be a bloody waltz in the park.

I can reconstruct the narrative into a 3-act synopsis:

“Living in accord with nature, two lovers are separated by an envious mage of the city, Janus. The disconnected lovers, Dumaine and Corrine, must return a collection of keys that Janus has lost – the keys unlock doors to other dimensions. In the process of returning the lost keys, the lovers are working separately but strangely together, to entrap Franklin.

The Lovers are secretly aided in their task by Janus, a woman who throws typewritten notes out of her window. Franklin receives these notes out of thin air, giving him directions to follow Dumaine to the seaside. Here they meet Corrine, the Elsewitch, who flies them to the city for their meeting with Janus.

Janus gives Franklin the final key before realizing he is not Dumaine. In the ensuing struggle Dumaine shoots Janus and escapes with Franklin, who gives him the final key. Dumaine uses it to open a final door, sending Franklin back to Corrine. He is their sacrificial lamb – in a magical cataclysm, the keys return to the chair, the chair returns to the sea, and the Lovers return to each other.”

In the original script Janus was a single character, but due to scheduling problems and an actor leaving, I had to recast that character. It may have made the story unclear but that was never really my concern. 

Decades later, I'm still hooked because it’s all about love and loss.

DRAWINGS OF CHARACTERS AND PROPS - PENCIL & INK PEN

My approach to developing the film was based on a motto I’d read in National Lampoon, “Noogs Is Noogs” and the Zen idea that “Mind Over, Nothing Matters” which I read in an Uncanny X-Men comic. 

All very intellectual and high brow. It was recently pointed out to me that my love of 1970's "Hammer Horror" movies was a big influence on Meanwhile Elsewhere, and I'm pleased now to recognize the fact. 

If it's pulp, I eat it up. The bloodier the better.

I had to find people who could kind of act, but who (more importantly) would work for nothing. My girlfriend Vanessa accepted the role as the heroine and then promptly dumped me without explanation, which was very professional of her.

With my hands bruised and bandaged, I was now baffled and needlessly heartbroken. I put it down to the fact that she adored the pop star Adam Ant, and to this day I look like a big chubby queer when I wear blue eye shadow.

I expressed my sorrow and confusion in detailed storyboards.

The water damage you see above was probably caused by tears.

One evening a few of us, including Paul and John and another guy Brett Houghton, got into John Haddock’s film store and stole about a dozen cans of unexposed film. We got it back to my place, split it up and then chickened out and took it all back. Nobody was the wiser, including the culprits.

One of the major requirements of my script was to find some way for a human figure to fall out of the sky.

I asked my dad Mick to help, and he built a human armature out of plywood, with pine limbs and bolted hinge parts. Wrapping it in newspaper I built a dummy that would look like Frank, so we could toss him off a building while riding on a chair.

Brett's friend Garry Greenaway was training in surgical prosthetics. Using high-tech dental casting compounds based on a cutting-edge seaweed alginate, Garry cast Frank’s face for a life mask. 

Frank came out of the mould-making process with crumbling pink goop stuck up his nose and looking a bit like he'd been trapped in a sensory deprivation tank, but it was all worthwhile. The result speaks for itself - well, almost.

POLAROID 24 - FRANK'S PROSTHETIC HEAD

Garry worked very hard over the next few weeks, painting the silicone copy of Frank's face. He got the skin pigmentation and lips and eyebrows all looking great, but the proverbial jewels in the crown were the beautiful hand-made glass eyes which outshone the clarity of Frank's own soulful peepers.

Within a month we had access to a total head prosthetic which, along with a pair of complete hands that he cast from his own, were used in Garry's final assessment - even though it's a rare occasion in a medical university to make a whole head.