Ruth Harley: Screen Australia CEO speech, in full

Source: Screen Hub
Tuesday 3 March, 2009

'From what I’ve seen even in the short time I’ve been here, the signs that we have turned a corner are more than encouraging.' Titled 'To be, or not to be? What’s the question?' Ruth Harley gave the first formal speech in her new role at the National Screenwriters' Conference. Here is the text.

Good morning. It’s a pleasure to be invited to speak here at the Screenwriters’ Conference.

I feel I’m in illustrious company. The Screenwriters conference has an impressive tradition of bringing out the cream of the international writing community to share their knowledge and experience.

This year’s guest, Darren Star has an extraordinary record of creating film and television that connects to massive audiences around the world.

Before him in previous years, (to pick just two) there was the prolific and gifted Andrew Davies - and the brilliant Jimmy McGovern - all individuals who’ve highlighted the role of the writer in the film and television process - and who can claim that their work changed the medium.

That reflection on previous guests picks up on the two themes I’d like to explore in my talk this morning: connecting with audiences and change.

This talk is billed as my first public statement since being appointed. That is not quite the case. I’ve not given any speeches, but I have been out in public talking about the role and future work of Screen Australia.

Last week, I was also in South Australia for the Australian International Documentary Conference. That was not a speech, but instead a searching, although not unfriendly public interview before the conference audience from visiting British journalist, Steve Hewlett.

While the documentary conference naturally had specific concerns relating only to their genre, we also discussed broader issues relevant to all sections of the industry. And I think it’s worth repeating some of them here today.

Issues like, what is the real cost of consciously appealing to as wide an audience as possible? And, what does appealing to audiences really mean?

Did it mean having to appeal to everyone all the time, which is clearly unrealistic.

Or is appealing to audiences really just a form of ‘dog-whistle’ code for giving up on production with any cultural ambitions in favour of a race to the bottom for lowest common denominator commercialism?

Others wondered, have we hitched our wagon too closely to the fate of powerful, but potentially unsympathetic institutional beasts, such as broadcast networks? Does the market always know what is good for it?

Are broadcasters really only interested in ratings and their own values?

If producers and their teams really want to swap the uncertainty of Development Hell for the green lit world of funded production, are they trapped with few creative options other than falling into line?

The success and influence of your guests, past and present, reminds us that appealing to audiences doesn’t have to mean a sacrifice of creative integrity.

But, it is interesting how quickly that rather stark Faustian choice is raised when we make audiences rather than creative expression the primary goal for our productions.

I should also pause and note that while these concerns were raised by some documentary producers, the irony is that documentaries as a genre have been doing very well with audiences over the last few years - with both ratings and critical acclaim.

I say this partly to make the point that when we’re doing well, we should pat ourselves on the back and documentaries are doing well.

However, it’s also true that there are other areas where Australian production has not been successful - and that has to be faced squarely.

This seems to have been one of the reasons for the creation of Screen Australia and a radical revamp of the way the Federal Government delivered its support to the Australian film and television industries.

Part of the problem was deemed to be money and the way it is delivered. The introduction of the Producer Offset has significantly changed that and led to a primary goal of Screen Australia being to help Australian companies build viable screen production businesses.

I acknowledge that fine-tuning is required in the delivery of the offset. And that is currently under way. No doubt there will be much more discussion before we’re finished.

But the other issue to force change was the standard and performance of Australian feature films - at their own domestic box office.

The reality of this problem is well established. Whatever the details of the individual percentages local films achieved at the national box in any particular year, the most disturbing message was that Australian moviegoers were actively turning away from their local films.

Once a source of pride they were now described in one survey as “arty” and “depressing”; “potentially boring” and worst of all - like something “we have to watch at school.” Last weeks cartoon in the Saturday Australian had a very sharp cartoon to the point.

However the glimmer for the future was that most people in one survey said they liked to watch, “good Australian movies.” The cause is damaged, but not lost.

Last year SPAA President, Tony Ginnane added fuel to the fire when he said he’d rather jump out of a plane than watch most Australian films. What was noteworthy about that comment was not that Tony made a colourful aside, but that he included it as part of his President’s address at the annual producers’ association conference.

It was not an observation Tony meant to be taken lightly – it signalled growing determination in the industry to do something about it, as well as the Government. Maintaining the status quo is not an option.

Change is not easy. It’s easy to pick a feature film to bits, but making a good one remains one of the hardest intellectual and craft endeavours.

But before we start beating our filmmakers up too much, we should remember that others around the world are having second thoughts about their films as well.

Even Hollywood gets plenty wrong.

There are lots of reasons why people in major markets like Australia, North America and Great Britain have stopped going to the movies in the numbers they previously did - reasons like, increasingly busy lifestyles, the improvement in home theatres and competing forms of entertainment. But one big reason is – many films are not very good.

Films have to be of a size, scope and intelligence for people to make the effort to go out and spend their money. It’s a lesson we’re relearning from the days half a century ago when television brought visual entertainment into the home. We then learnt it all over again with the home video breakout in the 70s.

The current malaise was summed up by American writer, James Wolcott writing in the October, 2008 issue of Vanity Fair. Here is a series of acidic quotes that Tony Ginnane would have been proud to claim as his own.

Wolcott says: “The ideal time to go to the movies used to be in the dead of the afternoon…Now the ideal time to go…is almost never.”

Exasperated by an over reliance by Hollywood on banal formulas he described current multiplex offerings as clichéd pap:

He says: “It’s millionaires telling you there is more to life than money. Celebrities …that there’s more to life than fame….That war takes a terrible toll on the joshing innocence of our soldiers…That puking is the highest form of physical comedy, with kicks to the crotch a dandy second. That we are never closer to God then when Morgan Freeman consoles us in a voiceover, never closer to wisdom than when Tommy Lee Jones shares a chewed piece of beef jerky.”

Independent films fared no better: Echoing the thoughts of some of the retreating audience Wolcott wrote that “indie films are often worse (than Hollywood offerings), the characters so depleted by shrunken-head defeatism, dead-end prospects, deadbeat friends, … and a wardrobe carefully selected from the dirty-clothes hamper - that they can barely drag themselves to the diner to watch the new waitress tie on her apron. From the opening shot or first scratchy musical note, (it’s clear) there’ll be no Shawshank Redemption at the end of this bus ride.”

There are other commentators writing in a similar vein. The film business is in a world wide crisis, regardless of Australia’s particular problems. Films need to be worth going to. And to get us there they need an element of freshness and appeal. Slumdog Millionaire is a brilliant example. Funny, extreme, exotic and touching, it is a great story, well told and brilliantly executed.

Screen Australia feels a real urgency about the need to contribute to the better performance of Australian features with local audiences. But we also think there are encouraging signs in the midst of this highly challenging climate both overseas and domestically.

The films that are working are those that demonstrate just what the critics say is missing from the movies these days: quality and creative vision.

Last year, all hopes for the Australian industry seemed to rest on Baz Luhrmann’s Australia (p:Baz Luhrmann, G Mac Brown, Catherine Knapman, w: Baz Lumhrann, Stuart Beattie, Ronald Harwood, Richard Flanagan). It is a hugely ambitious film that offered a large-scale emotional experience and it was made possible by the new producer offset scheme.

We may have to go back as far as The Man From Snowy River (p: Geoff Burrowes, d: George Miller, w: John Dixon) to find an equivalent. Australia had an ambivalent relationship with local critics, but it’s still in the theatres - and it’s still speaking to audiences. $37 million and climbing. The second highest grossing Australian film ever after Crocodile Dundee (P: John Cornell, D: Peter Faiman, W: John Cornell, Paul Hogan, Ken Shadie).

In the recent past, Ten Canoes (p: Rolf de Heer, Julie Ryan, d: Rolf de Heer, w: Rolf de Heer) was another film that spoke to a significant audience, while at the same time touching on an important Australian cultural issue. Both those films created the momentum that made Australians want to make the trip to the cinema again to see their own films.

These films have a strong sense of authorship and creative determination crossed with more than a touch of inspiration. They are bold and imaginative and the audience responded.

Looking once again to the USA, in a blunt talk to the Los Angeles Film Festival, Mark Gill, of the company, The Film Department, and formerly of Warner Independent and Miramax reflected on the state of the movie business. He offered the observation that most of his colleagues thought the sky was falling - and he thought they were right.

His view was that America made too many films and that most of them were not worth the trouble.

The answer was to make fewer that were better. In a reminder that everything old is new again, his other sage advice was and oldie but a goodie: start with a good script.

Apart from the obvious benefit to the film, should it get made, the other advantage of a good script is the effect it has on the creative community. It draws actors and key creatives to it – maybe even at more moderate rates.

Gill’s advice on getting a good script, sounds banal and obvious. But he had his reasons. He was reacting against the movie industry assumption that had grown up in the decades since the most famous shark movie of them all, Jaws (p: David Brown, Richard Zanuck, d: Steven Spielberh, w: Peter Berchley) - that good marketing could overcome the defects of any film.

This thinking said, movies didn’t have to be good, just good enough to be marketed effectively. Those days, Mark Gill warns, are gone.

The audience is smarter, better informed and much pickier.

This idea that quality is back, takes us to some unexpected places. For instance, it suggests there is a special place for niche films like many we are able to produce out of Australia.

I have seen several really good independent Australian films lately from David Field’s The Combination (p: John Pirrie, d: David Field, w: George Basha) which is a tough contemporary portrait of a Lebanese family in Sydney’s troubled Parramatta - to Anna Maria Monticelli’s stark rendering of the very powerful JM Coetzee novel Disgrace (p: Anna Maria Monticelli, Emile Sherman, Steve Jacobs, d: Steve Jacobs, w: Anna Maria Monticelli) - to the delicate, wry compassion of Sarah Watt’s second film My Year Without Sex (p: Bridget Ikin, w: Sarah Watt) - to Warwick Thornton’s film Samson and Delilah (p: Kath Shelper, w: Warwick Thornton). Samson and Delilah will not gain a large audience at the suburban multiplex. However, it is a profound record of the pain and dilemmas faced by aboriginal communities as they battle the ravages of isolation and substance abuse. It is also a funny, vibrant poem about resilience and redemption.

It is a very good film and is an important part of the cultural conversation. Given the wider interest internationally in aboriginal themes, there is every chance it will be taken up by many of the specialists markets around the world. The definition of how we engage with our audiences must be broad enough to include a range of possible success measures like this.

Australian producer and director - and Screen Australia Board member - Robert Connolly has also written reminding us that when assessing the performance of local films we should be careful to consider the total audience of the film and not just the initial first release cinema audience. By the time, some Australian features which have not performed impressively at the box office have run through DVD, Pay-TV and Free to Air release they have often been seen by a substantial number of the local population.

It’s a fair point. The television screening of Little Fish (p: Vincent Sheehan, Liz Watts, Richard Keddie, d. Rowan Woods, w: Jacquelin Perske) on ABC last year scored an audience of over a million, following DVD sales of 50, 000 and cinema gross of $3.5 million.

My point about Australian feature films is that the discussion about whether they are succeeding, or not, is about to go into a more sophisticated phase.

It’s important that we learn from the detail of our information and see our challenge in the right context. Not every film will be like Australia; nor will be it like Samson and Delilah. There is room for both and plenty of others in between. I am thrilled by the good films I have seen recently and those I hear tell of in the pipeline and those in the BAFF now. In the next two weeks, I am privileged to be seeing Mao’s Last Dancer (p: Jane Scott, d: Bruce Beresford, w: Jan Sardi, Cunxin Li) and Bright Star (p: Jan Chapman, Caroline Hewitt d: Jane Campion, w: Jane Campion).

But feature films are not all we do.

We should also consider the changing nature of television and how that has radically altered the audience’s attitude to what they watch and what they consider worthwhile.

Going back to James Wolcott’s Vanity Fair article, his diatribe about cinema was just a precursor to an homage to the explosion of quality in American television drama.

The consensus is that writer/producer David Chase’s commission by HBO to begin his offbeat series, The Sopranos in the early 90s, was a landmark moment in the business; one that brought a new focus on quality writing as the life and soul of successful programs that connect with audiences.

Determined to make an impression in the marketplace, the cable operators went out on a limb to be noticed with sharp, individual and literate product. Their intention was to give people a reason to tick the box and add their channel to the consumer’s cable package. It was, in some respects, not that different from making the choice to buy a cinema ticket.

Just as Wolcott was dismissive of the current state of the movies, he waxed lyrical about the television revolution and what it meant for American culture.

He wrote, “To be a scholar of The Sopranos, or The Wire was to ford a thick tomato soup of anger, lust, alpha-malehood, corruption, sadism, treacherous intrigue, and raw power wrestling comparable to a Balzac novel…”

What followed was a litany of individualistic and intelligently scripted productions on both cable and free to air once the movement began to spread.

The CS.I franchises, Boston Legal, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Lost, Grey’s Anatomy, E.R., the X Files, Battlestar Galactica - and for some the recent Mad Men.

It’s interesting to note that the February issue of the Australian Literary Review published in The Australian, included a reference to the phenomenon of the new television drama.

Novelist, James Bradley writing under the headline ‘The idiot box grows a brain’ (it just shows that old prejudices about television die hard) proposed that television drama, at least in it’s more recent form, had taken over the work previously done by the novel. His particular focus was the emotional complexity of the main characters for Mad Men, the series reviewing life in a Madison Avenue advertising agency in the chic era of the early 60s.

The contentious case was that as movies sank into a slump, television just kept on getting better - giving audiences another reason not to go out.

Australian television producers have been quick to point out when criticism has been made about local movies inability to grab local audiences; that they have their own success stories to point to.

And it seems that either edge, or relevance are key components in the successful shows make-up.

The Underbelly series, with its dynamic energy has clearly connected with Australian audiences with its raunchy telling of a story that has become a strong part of our recent culture.

Packed to the Rafters reflects Australian social patterns making a hit show that picks up on the evolving nature of family life and the bar-b-q stopper question: just when do the kids finally leave home?

There are other dynamic series, such as The Circuit and East West 101, which have also gained attention and favourable comment.

So, my view is that while there are serious challenges ahead for some parts of the industry, we should be very careful not to lose perspective.

Yes, Australian feature films face problems, but then so do everyone’s. Cinema is not easy - and there is much good work being done.

Television is performing well, but that is no reason for complacency. Australian networks have a reputation for being extremely cautious; perhaps too cautious given the recent successes of some of the edgier product.

In terms of its relationship with writers, Screen Australia has endeavoured to come up with an approach that supports both highly experienced and less experienced professionals appropriately.

Where individuals have a stellar background we’ve recognised past achievements.

Where they are still building their portfolio we’ve sought to encourage positive team building, reflecting the reality that TV and film production is a collegiate activity.

We realise that some are disappointed in some aspects of this, but we hope with good faith and open minds we can find common ground.

Screen Australia wants an on-going dialogue with the industry with all our funding programs. If we can be shown there is a better way, we’re more than happy to listen.

However, the way we have framed our approach has come from careful research into what has and hasn’t worked in the past.

This is a new agency. It is supposed to be different from those that preceded it, because it was felt that a new approach was needed to ensure a better future for the Australian screen industry.

Our guidelines have been shaped with that in mind.

Our job is to support the industry by making sure the maximum resource is available for making Australian films and television.

As Deputy Chair, Ian Robertson noted when he spoke to the SPAA Conference a few months ago, we don’t seek to micro manage producers, or filmmakers.

But we do have an obligation to help ensure that what is being done is being done effectively. That means changing when necessary and it means focussing on connecting with Australian audiences.

We will do everything we can to help, but actually folks it’s over to you. It’s your gig. From what I’ve seen even in the short time I’ve been here, the signs that we have turned a corner are more than encouraging.

Love your work!