Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. In the right corner, in the blue trunks with red stars, is Latauro! In the left, in orange trunks is Morgan O'Neill. No nut-swipes (Latauro, I'm talking to you...) I want a clean fight, gentlemen... Go!
LATAURO VS MORGAN O'NEILL: THE AICN-D SHOWDOWN
Maybe that title is a little sensationalist, but it sure piques people's interest levels. Besides, Harry rejected my original title of NUDE JOLIE TO BATTLE ZOMBIES IN EVIL DEAD IV, so I was left with this.
I'm not going to re-hash the whole controversy here, but if you want to know the back story and why your favourite Downunder editor should be "versing" anyone, click on this link for the lowdown. Or lowdownunder, as I'm contractually obligated to call it.
I was offered the chance to interview Morgan, and jumped at the chance. I really wanted his take on the issue, even though of the three parties involved in the whole judging meshugaas situation (Morgan, Sam Worthington, and the producers of PG:A), I considered Morgan O'Neill to be the least responsible. Still, it would be good to ask him about it. (Again, click the above link if none of this is making sense.)
I had a pretty good start to the day, confusing Melbourne's Swanston Street with Flinders Street. This is pretty embarrassing for someone who has spent nearly all of their life thus far in Melbourne. In fact, if a tribesman from the Amazon Basin who'd never had any contact with the outside world, did not know what a city was, did not know what a car was, if that guy was chloroformed and kidnapped and woke up in the heart of Melbourne with no idea where he was or what was going... even under those circumstances, if that guy got Flinders and Swanston mixed up, I would still give him crap about it. That's the sort of confusing-squares-with-circles type of mistake you don't make. That's the sort of start I had to my day.
Luckily, I managed to find the correct road, find the correct hotel, and gather myself before the interview began.
My review of SOLO will be up in this weekend's long-overdue AICN-Downunder column, but suffice to say I was pretty impressed. The film's not without its flaws, but on the whole it's a pretty damn good effort, and something I would certainly recommend.
LATAURO: First of all, congratulations. I saw the film last night, and I was really impressed.
MORGAN: Terrific, thanks.
LATAURO: So you started out as an actor, attending NIDA and getting a few small roles in local productions. What made you write SOLO? Was it a GOOD WILL HUNTING situation where you wanted to write a good role for yourself?
MORGAN: The GOOD WILL HUNTING analogy is actually, I guess, pertinent, because the whole genesis for Project Greenlight, if you will, was the fact that Ben Affleck and Matt Damon had written a script, and it had sat in their desk for years gathering dust. Because at the point, they weren't Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, they were two unknown guys. I think their frustration was the catalyst for them. When it did eventually get picked up, they won an Academy Award for it, but the impetus for the American series was the fact that there must be a huge amount of really talented writers who put stuff out there, and it's just sat at the bottom of the pile because nobody had read anything by them before, no produced credits, all those things. So, they established the competition to give options to unknown writers. It's different from that in so much as I didn't write myself a role, as you saw last night. The characters in this are forty, fifty, sixty, eighty years old.
LATAURO: I was actually waiting for you to turn up...
MORGAN: I did -- I had a little Hitchcock moment in the middle of the film where I do a voice over. We couldn't afford to get anyone in to do it, so I'm actually the guy in the car as Colin pulls up. But it was never about writing a role for myself, it was really about telling a story that I wanted to tell.
To be perfectly honest, I was so shit-scared directing my first film, that the idea of trying to set up a shot of myself in twenty-one days with the pressure of such limited resources and such limited time was just going to be too much for me. So, I was more than happy to sit behind the camera and direct things from the other side.
LATAURO: Well, you also had cameras on you, so it probably would have felt like you were acting a lot, anyway.
MORGAN: Look, it was an incredibly pressurised situation to be in, for sure, because at any point they would have three documentary cameras documenting the trials and tribulations of making an independent film. It's ironic to be directing a scene between heavyweight actors like Vince Colosimo and Colin Friels and have one camera on them and three on me! It really didn't make sense. So there was certainly enough focus to satisfy the attention-seeking actor within me!
LATAURO: Now, you would have had to read other people's scripts as part of the Project Greenlight process. How many did you read, and what did you think of them?
MORGAN: I can't actually remember how many we had to review... I think it might have been five. Of the bunch that I read, I think one was really promising, and a couple more had promise, but reminded of first drafts of scripts that I'd read a lot, and were probably in a situation where it was going to be difficult to film. They needed to be worked, quite significantly, over. And one I thought was not particularly to my tastes, but that's the nature of twelve hundred or so scripts, or whatever they had, there's always going to be a big cross-section. It's extraordinary to consider, and it comes out of short filmmaking, too.
We have a festival like Tropfest, for instance, or St Kilda Film Festival, which I think between them generate more than nine hundred original short films every year, which is extraordinary. It's a huge number of filmmakers out there, and yet we only made sixteen feature films. So, there's this huge talent bank of talented, committed and passionate film practitioners; be they actors, or writers, or directors, or composers, or producers, or whatever, cinematographers, and yet it doesn't really translate to the feature world. Similarly with Project Greenlight, there were, at the drop of a hat, almost, all these screenwriters came out of nowhere, and it was really exciting to see. It was also exciting to have the scripts read by people who were also writers.
LATAURO: Now, I gotta address the elephant in the room. You went to NIDA with Sam Worthington, and graduated with him in '98. In 2002, you collaborated on the short film BIOPIC, which you wrote and directed, Sam starred in, and you both produced. Would it be fair to say the two of you have a personal relationship?
MORGAN: Look, I've never made a secret of the fact that I know Sam. In terms of BIOPIC, he certainly didn't star in it, he had a minor part in it. He produced it in as much as he was, I think, the only working actor I knew at that point who had any money, and so in that respect he became one of the producers. As I said, it's no secret that I know Sam, but also, it's impossible to work within the industry, which is a really, incredibly small industry, the film and television industry in this country, and not know almost everyone.
LATAURO: But when you get down to it... he was brought in to judge the final three...
MORGAN: Yep.
LATAURO: When it was down to that small number, shouldn't someone have said "maybe you should get someone else in"?
MORGAN: Look, it's not really for me to comment on, the process. I mean, my job in the competition was to write and submit a film, and then to shoot a video bio... I don't know whether you know about that part of the process, but it was an incredibly difficult part because it did involve the last fifty competitors [who] basically had to make a short film pitching why you should be the winner -- which is a distinctly un-Australian thing to do! I think it would have been the perfect thing in America, because I think Americans are so gung-ho about their abilities, but in Australia, talking yourself up is not a hugely evident part of our culture. So I had to do that, and then I had to shoot a scene from the film, which again was fabulous and difficult and all those things, and obviously answer questions that were pitched by all and sundry.
The judging process was nothing to do with me, and certainly I didn't have anything to do with the composition of that panel of eight people. And three of them ended up being producers/executive producers of the film anyway. To be perfectly honest, it was very much in the interests of those people to get the film right, and to make sure that the winner was the film that they wanted it to be. So, in that respect, I don't think the fact that I knew Sam had any bearing on the outcome.
LATAURO: Well, regardless of those issues, I was quite impressed with the script (Lat note: the script as I saw it in the context of the film). Given we don't generally make genre films in Australia, were you worried at all that the tone might be too similar to American or British films, given the sheer number of gangster films that have been made in those voices?
MORGAN: Look, I think that's a beneficial thing, and it was certainly something that I was trying to embrace in the film. My reading of the Australian films that have been made in the past five or six years... you know, it has to be said, they haven't been extraordinary years for Australian filmmaking, with the exception of maybe the last two. And I think we are on a big upcycle. Someone described it recently as the renaissance of Australian films recently, and I think that's in some ways true. But I think when we were making films that weren't garnering an audience, a lot of that was to do with the fact that we were making really self-consciously Australian films. And so many of them involved either a coming-of-age story, or it was a quirky comedy, or it was about really parochial Australia, and there's nothing wrong with that in itself, until it's the entire content of the output of a filmmaking nation. And there were moments there where you couldn't see an Australian film without it being one of those very specific kinds of films. On top of that, it made it very difficult for those films to travel, and part of the success of this industry is making films that are seen around the world, films that make festivals around the place. Because it is about generating an excitement, generating a critical mass of creative people, and if your films are only ever seen in your own country, it's too inward-looking.
So, what I was really conscious of the whole way through, like in terms of writing and directing this film, was to endeavour to make a film that was distinctly Australian, and as you saw last night, it IS distinctly Australian. It's set firmly within our vernacular, and it's obviously a story that is indisputably Australian, but it's not self-consciously Australian, in as much as it does have a resonance of film noir, which began in America, but also has very strong European influences, specifically English and French films. Also, it references a lot of those pulp novels and gangster fiction, and actually directly references Raymond Chandler and James Ellroy. Ellroy in particular is a favourite writer of mine.
So, I think there's a lot to be had by using the ghosts of films past, as an entrée, as a leaping-off point. Not resiling from that, actually embracing it, because in this it's actually one of the strengths of the films.
LATAURO: Making your first feature film on this scale has got to be a pretty big learning curve. What would be the most valuable thing that you know now that you didn't know when you started?
MORGAN: To be really technical about it, the thing that I learnt, the thing that I could have done better, has to do with shooting wide shots. I don't know how detailed your audience wants me to be...
LATAURO: Oh, they'll know what a wide shot is.
MORGAN: Terrific; I'll go further, then. What I didn't really consider was that in the composition and the editing and putting together of all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that is the film, the wide shot is used once, maybe twice in the composition of the scene. Usually it's in the beginning, sometimes it's in the end, and sometimes it's to reveal the geographical nature of the players within the scene. But it's almost never used from front-to-back. A lot of the scenes that we shot, we shot wide takes that were two or three minutes long, and we might have used ten seconds of it. Had I had my time again, I would have been able to fit a lot more coverage of the singles, the close-ups, the cutaways, had I not filmed two or three takes of a wide shot that we used so little of. So, next time, I guess I'll be more confident in the fact that I know where I'll be using the wide shot. Probably only shoot that part of it, because it would then allow us so much opportunity to delve into actual performance to get tight and interesting.
So, in that respect, it's a core learning, I guess, and it's a really simple thing to think about when you think in hindsight. But at the time you think, oh I got to get it! If the wide shot didn't work, you go back and you finesse the wide shot, but you realise that you're never going to use the finessed bit. The finessed bit, you're in here! (Indicates a close-up.) From that respect, I found it really interesting. I also found one of the other key learning tools is that less is often more. There are quite a few scenes in the film where we just didn't have time to get more coverage.
Some of the scenes that I shot with Angie and Colin in Colin's flat, the post-coital scenes, we had one take of, and it was just one, slowly-tracking wide shot. And they're really compelling, because looking back now, in the context of the film where there was cutting all the way through, you realise there's no cinematic trickery going on. That moment actually happened between those two people in that moment. And it wasn't about constructing a great take of Colin's, or a great take of Angie's. They were both buzzing and playing off each other in that moment, and that's actually really powerful. In some ways less is more. Another scene we just completely ran out of time on... I don't know if you recall the scene where Colin and Havannah, the only piano player, are sitting in the car at his place, and Colin's telling him to grow up. I'm not sure if you were aware of it, but we never actually come around on Colin. It's a dirty two-shot going past Colin onto Havannah. There's never a reverse on him.
LATAURO: I didn't realise that.
MORGAN: The fact that you didn't know that -- I love that!
LATAURO: There are so many shot where you spend a minute just on Colin's face while he's waiting for something to say, and I love those moments, but I didn't notice that one.
MORGAN: There are two set-ups for that entire scene. One, we crane down onto a shot looking at them, basically through the windscreen of the car. And there's one where we come in through the driver's side, looking dirty over Colin to Havannah inside the car. And I love it! It was completely by chance that we didn't have enough time. It was a night shoot, everyone was difficult to get, and we had to spend a long time getting lights set up to make it visible to the camera. We just ran out of time. I was saying to Colin when he saw the film, "I'm so intrigued by that." He said, "Mate, it's fantastic, because it's not actually about what I'm doing. It's about the effect of what I'm doing on the other guy." It's all about that. And much through good luck and magic, for me, it's a pivotal, emotionally-charged scene because of the nature of independent filmmaking, because we didn't have time to go the other way.
There are examples all the way through the film where not having the resources just forced us to be more creative and more inventive. It translates also to the fact that you feel like you're being creative and adventurous and new and different, and that affects everyone. It affects the crew. It affects the way Hugh holds the camera. It affects the excitement with which people make a set-up. And, you know, in some ways in some ways I think it does affect the atmosphere on set, and that affects the film that goes through the camera. You actually see that energy translated into the way people work, both in front of and behind the camera. I think someone asked in the Q&A last night... were you there for the Q&A?
LATAURO: Yeah.
MORGAN: Someone asked last night what I would have done differently if I'd had a lot more money. I don't think it would be ten times the film if I'd had ten times the budget. I don't think it would be significantly different. I might have shot it on 35mm if we'd have had the money. I might have gone through a two case canning process in the middle, rather than going to a B5 HD master, and risking seeing grain of the 16mm frame blown up to 35mm, which fortunately never occurred... but you never know that until the end of the process. There were all sorts of technical things I might have done differently, but in terms of the core body of the filmmaking, not having huge amounts of resources was actually more of a benefit that a hindrance.
LATAURO: This question is on behalf of my friend Paul, who watched all of Project Greenlight. He wanted to know, if you get a massive budget on your next film, are you going to blow up a car wash just to get it out of your system?
MORGAN: (laughs) Actually, I'm putting forth a proposition to the Australian Film Commission that car washes not be allowed in Australian films ever again. I can't believe that there wasn't a car wash in the whole of Sydney that wanted us to come and shoot for a day. It almost got kind-of comical at the end of it. We were shooting the final scenes for the film, and we were due to shoot the car wash the next day, and we got the call that it had fallen through. The third car wash we had. I thought, "This is jinxed! There's a reason we shouldn't be shooting in a car wash!" It was going to be beautiful.
The reason I wanted a car wash specifically is there was going to be water everywhere, and we were going to cut to the shower scene, and it was going to be directly replicating that. And for some reason, in my wanky, artistic head, I was thinking "it's going to be so powerful!". And at the end of the day, it mattered zero. All that heartache and stress was actually useless in the grand scheme of things, because the flashback stuff is powerful just by virtue of the story that it's telling. It could really have been shot anywhere. We ended up shooting in a factory complex where the stunt coordinator, Harry, stored his stuff in. He said, "Hey, I'll speak to the owner, I'm sure they won't mind." That was at seven o'clock the night before, and at six o'clock the next morning we were on set dressing it. But you realise it's actually first and foremost, fundamentally about telling the story in those flashback moments, and how it impacts ont eh person. But tell your friend Paul that I will never, ever in a million years write or shoot in or near a car wash. It's been said.
LATAURO: Finally, what's up next for you? Are you going to pursue the filmmaking, the acting, or the both?
MORGAN: I guess whoever's going to employ me, to an extent. But I think that they feed into one another. The fact that we were able to shoot over twenty-one days and get the performances that we did is due, I think, in no small part to the fact that I am an actor, and I managed to cut through the dross of what directors often talk about, which is shot composition, and the technicality of the filmmaking, and the lens size, and how we're going to crane down here and boom in there and I'm gonna come along here and punch in for that close up, it's going to be backlit and it's going to be sparkling off your ear, and it's beautiful and we're on a 75mm, so the background is buzzing and gorgeous, and it's beautiful... none of which is important to the actor at all! And I've been directed so many times on sets by directors who don't understand that there's nothing useful in that information to an actor. There's nothing you can do. I can't act better for your tracking shot. I can't be conscious of a crane coming in behind me. I can't be conscious of how the highlights are picking up me being beautifully backlit. Nothing that I can do as an actor at the point is going to help you achieve that technical end.
What I want to know, as an actor, is psychologically the truth of that moment. What I'm trying to do to the other person. How better to do that. How to be more persuasive. How to be less... whatever it is. And as a result of being badly-directed so many times, I was more conscious of giving the actors what they needed at that moment, and the net result of that was that we were able to shoot quickly. Also, I think we were able to generate, for me, amazing performances with such limited resources and limited time. So I do think they feed into one another, and I think if I were to be forced to give up, say, acting for directing, I think it would probably be to the detriment of the directing.
At the end of the day, if someone held a gun to my head and said you could only be one, I would be a director any day of the week. There's a control freak in me, and there's something pretty disempowering about being that tiny little brushstroke, and something incredibly exciting and addictive about having some control over the canvas. To be able to sort-of get all of these other amazingly-talented creative people to collaborate with their colours and their brushstrokes, and then to actually hold the canvas in the back and fix it that was or tilt it there or do whatever I can. For me, it actually seems to be a nice confluence of what little skill sets I have, to work as a writer-director. So hopefully it won't be too long before I'm working in that capacity.
LATAURO: Well, the best of luck with it.
MORGAN: Thank you, I appreciate it.
SOLO will be released in Australia on July 6.
Peace out,
Latauro
