Writer's Room: Rolf de Heer
Rolf de Heer has eleven feature films under his belt, the largest body of original work of any contemporary Australian filmmaker.
At Script to Screen’s August Writer’s Room writer/director Athina Tsoulis spoke to Rolf about his career, his outlook as a filmmaker and his award-winning films.
Making films you care about
The discussion began with how and why Rolf has resisted Hollywood despite its calls. The calls started after Incident at Raven’s Gate, the “science fiction mystery thriller” Rolf made before the famous Bad Boy Bubby. Rolf explained how the Hollywood offers came about and why he resisted them.
Rolf de Heer: "Raven’s Gate had an executive producer who hijacked the film in a way. We knew when it was financed that we were getting into bed with the devil. So it then became a question of how do you get something out of this – out of something you’ve lost control over? That liberated me to go as stylish as I would want to go. It liberated my thinking because in the end I didn’t have to perform, other than on my own terms – because he’d hijacked it anyway. So it was a film that was ultimately very stylish and Hollywood loves anything that’s stylish and it had suspense and some scares and some shocks and Hollywood loves that. So I began to be offered a lot of sequels – Aliens 3, Nightmare on Elm Street 5, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3 and some other original works, but all in that area – a lot of schlock horror stuff. I wasn’t much interested in that material and I learnt pretty quickly that Hollywood wasn’t a place that interested me as a filmmaker, so I chose to stay at home and make films that I cared about rather than films that made me a lot of money."
That brought the discussion to Rolf caring deeply about the material his films deal with, but first Rolf explained something of his unconventional approach to filmmaking.
Rolf de Heer: "I think to begin with I should establish where I am with regard to writing. Writing for me is filmmaking, directing is filmmaking, producing is filmmaking. I do all three and to me they are indistinguishable parts of the same process. The first half of making a film is writing it. Once it is written then I’ve done half the work.
Writing any sort of screenplay, particularly a good one, is very hard work and directing a film is very hard work, as is getting it financed. It is a year or perhaps two years of your life and it can end up being meaningless.
For example, you have a film you’ve staked everything on – you’ve lost all your friends because that’s how it’s gone. It may be perfectly good. However, the executive or distributor resigns and the new person doesn’t like it and so it sinks without a trace. You’ve got nothing.
I learnt this over my first three films and I came to realise the process is the most important thing. Then if the film sinks you have a wonderful year, or two years, of your life. And the best way for it to be great for you and for all the people working on it, is if it is meaningful: if you care passionately about it. Then other people will usually care passionately about it and everyone will have a wonderful time making it – it’ll be difficult but it’ll be worthwhile. And at the end of it you usually come out of it with a film other people care about too and it is less likely to sink without a trace. So yes, I have to care deeply about what I’m doing because if I don’t I’m wasting my life, I’m throwing it away, because it is too hard to do this stuff if you don’t care about the material you are working with.
That also means caring about people, in both a philosophical sense, and caring for the people you work with – you treat them well and you all have a good experience and you make something of value at the end of it and you think: that was great. And sometimes people do come to see it and it changes their life."
Speaking of what others think about one’s work, Rolf separates people’s opinions into two groups: critics and audience. He believes while it is helpful if the audience like your film, ‘they can like it and still no-one comes to see it’. Critics, on the other hand, can unfortunately make or break a film in terms of commercial outcome – but that doesn’t mean you should judge your film through the critics’ eyes. And here he returned to the story of making Raven’s Gate.
Rolf de Heer: "When the film was released in England they sent me the reviews - this big pile of about forty of the things. The first one started off: ‘Australians make some very bad films. This is the worst of them.’ It was hard to take. But as I read through things got better until the last one ended with the words: ’ ... a work of genius, Tarkovsky with pace.’ Someone had actually ordered them from worst to best! All of that spoke of the same film and I realised people are just going to have their own opinion and so they should, but it is as much a function of who they are as it is of what the film is."
Bad Boy Bubby
After Raven’s Gate came Bad Boy Bubby (1993), the film made for less than one million Australian dollars, which scooped up the Special Grand Jury Prize and the International Film Critics Prize at Venice. Interestingly, the story’s genesis was in the challenges of no-budget filmmaking. Rolf wrote Bubby over ten years, during which he actually made three other feature films. When he began he thought he would have to make a film with his own money for practically nothing, shooting at weekends over a long period of time with many different crews. So he decided he would shoot the first third in one room and from then on it would be as though the lead was seeing everything for the first time, so that using different DPs would actually enhance that effect. Thus Bubby was born.
In the end the film did attract finance and cost $AU 800,000. But Rolf still chose to use numerous DPs in order to give the effect of the world being continually new for Bubby.
"The visual differences in that film are so much greater than any one cinematographer could do – there are 32 different cinematographers – and it is seamless. I told them they could do what they liked – if there was anything they’d ever really wanted to try they should try it – as long as they passed the shots by me. One guy said he’d shoot everything on a 30 degree tilt and he did and it’s in there and no-one has ever said anything about it!"
Athina suggested that for Rolf taking risks is a very important part of filmmaking. Rolf explained that ’it is not about taking risks for the sake of it but rather about doing what is right for the film’. Again Bubby provided an example:
"On Bubby we recorded the sound in a way never done before, binaurally with one mic on each ear of Nicholas Hope. These kinds of things are seen to be quite radical so people leave you alone because they haven’t the confidence or expertise to comment."
Dance Me To My Song
Rolf’s Dance Me To My Song (1998) was a collaboration with Heather Rose, who initiated the project, co-wrote the film and plays the lead. In fact, the film opens as ‘A Heather Rose film’. Rolf explained how this remarkable film came about.
Rolf de Heer: "Heather Rose has cerebral palsy. She was an extra in Bad Boy Bubby and afterwards she began writing the screenplay with one of the sound technicians she’d met on Bubby – Fred ... The Australian Government at the time set up a chat room for disabled people to communicate and Fred was suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome and he re-met Heather on that chat line.
Heather Rose would ring the office occasionally and you’d have very long phone conversation in which very little was said. This one time she was having a birthday party and I went along and there was Fred and he told me he was working on a screenplay with Heather Rose. He asked me if I wanted to see it – they had 20 pages done. I said no – that’s the worst thing for you. If I say nothing you’ll be blocked wondering what I think (remember these were two very inexperienced writers). If I say something then you’ll be blocked because somehow what I say will make everything different. I’ll look when you’ve got a complete draft.
Six months later at another function I asked how it was going and Fred told me ’we’re still working on the script – we’re up to page 28’ And I thought: oh my god, of course – the process with Heather Rose will be so time consuming because that is how long it takes for her to say anything (because of the voice machine etc). So I said I’d read it because I realised that what I said could actually save them a year. What I got was a mixture of the most extraordinary stuff and the most terrible stuff. I agreed to attach myself to it as a script editor so that we may be able to get some funding. And we did. The first draft was 48 pages – if you understand how long it takes Heather Rose to do anything then you realise that is plenty long enough because it takes her three times as long to do things.
I would visit occasionally and we’d speak about the script. I had just produced a film for someone else which was very difficult and I needed to make something of my own at the end of it for financial reasons and my own reasons and the only thing close that I knew anything about was what Heather and Fred were writing. I thought I think I can get this thing financed because it is so off the wall and I knew to get it financed she’d have to play the lead role. And she realised that that was actually what she wanted to do.
So I rewrote it. And I knew we had to film it at her place because it is about her life and then she’s at home and doesn’t have to travel (which would be incredibly time consuming). The whole budget was 582K and the previous film I’d directed (The Quiet Room 1996) had been in competition at Cannes and cost only a tiny amount more than that. I didn’t show them a script. I just said, look I’m doing this thing and people gave me money."
After watching the gruelling opening sequence, Athina asked Rolf if, for him, it is important to shake people out of complacency:. ‘You break tabu all the time: in this film the disabled and sex (with an ordinary guy), in Bad Boy Bubby incest‘ Rolf explained:
"Heather Rose understood a lot about that sort of stuff – how people make judgements and it is material I’m interested in. Between the two of us I think we took it further than she thought possible."
The Tracker
The Tracker (2002) shocked viewers by representing part of Australia’s horrific history of massacres of Aboriginal people. Rolf first wrote the film ten years earlier when he discovered things about Australia which were not widely known that made him feel sick to the core. The most horrific events in the film are depicted through paintings.
Rolf de Heer: "The paintings were a function of the anger I’d felt ten years before when I’d first written it fairly graphically. But ten years later the bar on film violence had risen. I wanted people to understand how awful it was and I thought I had to get more and more violent to achieve that, to make people revolted by it. But I realised the experts do screen violence exceptionally well and you can’t compete with that and nor do you want to because you understand that screen violence doesn’t do any of us very much good. I had this problem – I desperately wanted to make it effective but to make it graphically violent would not only not be much good for us but would actually turn a lot of people off and they wouldn’t go and see it.
I was grappling with this problem when I was outside the office having a cigarette and the landscape painter Peter Cove was coming for a visit and I saw him crossing the road and I said , ‘don’t say anything, in there, I’ll be there in 5 minutes’. I went in and said ‘we’re working together’. It was like that – this instant thing where it is great because it resonates in a completely different way and it is acceptable viewing but it is effective."
Ten Canoes
Athina commented that Ten Canoes (2006) was the first film in Indigenous dialect. For her that is very moving because you don’t hear indigenous people speaking their own language growing up in Australia. Rolf agreed it is rare for a white Australian.
Rolf de Heer: "And look that choice was a function of the time – The Tracker was out (and there was a film in between these two for me: Alexander’s Project) and Rabbit Proof Fence (credit) and Beneath Clouds (credit) had come out – there was a golden summer of indigenous films. And there’d been nothing since then and I was thinking where do you go next? You need to go somewhere further.
So I thought I know I’ll go up with David Gulpilil to his people and he’ll co-direct and it’ll be in the language."
Athina asked if Rolf made a deliberate choice to have the voiceover so it could be screened in English. Rolf explained that that wasn’t the case and in fact the voiceover is a solution to problems because when they had almost finished filming there was a lot of amazing stuff but there wasn’t a film in there.
"When I started working on it I had no sense of how much voiceover there would be, if any. I thought there might be some because I didn’t know what we were going to get and I thought it would be a good bridge.
What the mob up there wanted was the most people to see it as possible. They are very language conscious and they wanted it so that when they speak it would be in their language but the storytelling could be in whatever language. And they can dub the voiceover but not the dialogue."
Commercial filmmaking: Rolf’s perspective
Athina commented that Rolf’s films are not commercial films. Rolf disagreed.
"I would say my films are commercial but my definition of commercial is different. If you make a film and it costs you $50 and you get everyone in this room to come and pay $2 then you’ve doubled your costs. You’ve made a very commercial film. The vast majority of films lose money. The reason my films are commercial is because the budgets are very low. They may not make large amounts of money or have large numbers of people coming to see them but dollar for dollar they do ok, they do better than average."
Is The Tracker based on a true event?
The film was completely feasible but was not based on a specific occurrence. Although, the character of the fanatic is very much based on a real character from over a hundred years ago. To this day there is still a reaction to uniforms in parts of central Australia because of him – he was charged with ‘cleaning up the centre’ and he did.
It’s set in 1922. There were actually massacres which happened well after that but you bring it too close and people simply don’t believe it. And I wanted to give it some connection to my life and 1922 was the year my father was born.
The police museum was very helpful when we were doing research around the chains – Aboriginals were still chained up in the fifties.
What was the response from Australian audiences to The Tracker?
The response was generally fantastic from both white and Indigenous Australians, which was important to me. Yes there was offense taken – I was spat on at one particular rural viewing.
Do you feel it made a difference?
Any film can make only a contribution to a slight shift in consciousness. I think The Tracker has made a slight contribution to a little shift and that it has done so is great. It is on curriculums – it is being studied quite a lot and so it lives on and continues to make a contribution of some sort.
Will you continue to look at the human condition and exposing us for what we are?
I’m not sure what we are.
I’ve had a bit of a break in that the last film I made was called Dr Plonk – it’s a black and white silent movie. I like it very much but it is one thing I thought I’d never do – make a film which is a reference to film. It stopped me in my tracks really. I’m extremely fond of it and I like it very much and I’m proud of it but I think, how did I drift that far? If I make another film it will be about something I care deeply about that’s not referential to film.
About Script to Screen
Script to Screen is an independent industry and community-wide initiative, established to develop the craft and culture of storytelling for the screen (film, television, and new media) in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Script to Screen's programme of talks and workshops provide opportunities for both established and emerging screenwriters to meet, share knowledge, and develop their craft.
The Auckland Writers Room series for 2009 is proudly supported by the ASB Community Trust and Stella Artois. Script to Screen is supported by funding from the New Zealand Film Commission.
