Bruce Beresford was at the forefront of the Australian film industry’s “new wave” of the 1970s. After the international acclaim that greeted Breaker Morant, he was lured to Hollywood, where he directed Robert Duvall’s Oscar-winning performance in Tender Mercies. It was the first of his many Southern dramas, which have included Crimes of the Heart, Driving Miss Daisy and Rich in Love. After recently completing work on what has become his latest hit, Double Jeopardy, Bruce Beresford recently returned home to direct an IMAX film about his hometown called Sydney—Story of a City. It was at this point that I caught up with him to ask him about his career.

Stephen Lynch (MM): Your latest Hollywood movie, Double Jeopardy, has a larger budget than most of your films. Can you tell me a bit about it?

Bruce Beresford (BB): It’s a thriller with Tommy Lee Jones and Ashley Judd. A woman is accused of murdering her husband, goes to jail, and when she’s released several years later she skips bail because she finds out her husband faked his own death and she sets out to find him. Tommy Lee Jones is a parole officer who has to chase her down.

MM: What was Robert Benton’s involvement?

BB: Robert did a polish on the script, but it was written by the two guys who wrote The Rock, Doug Cook and David Weisburg. I didn’t have much interest in the idea initially, but then I thought it was quite an interesting thriller script, and I’d never done anything like it before, so I thought it might be fun.

MM: It’s not a genre you’re usually associated with. What challenges did making a thriller present?

BB: Perhaps the main thing was that it was essential to keep the film moving pretty briskly. Also, I was careful during the making of the film to try to keep the audience in suspense and not know certain things. As it turned out, everything I was

Ashley Judd and Tommy Lee Jones on the Double Jeopardy set

concerned that they didn’t know was given away in the trailer. When I complained, someone at the studio said to me, ‘Audiences don’t like going to films unless they know what’s happened.’ So I thought, ‘Bugger it, what does it matter.’

MM: I imagine the action sequences needed to be very tight.

BB: Yes. I storyboarded all the action sequences way, way in advance of doing the film, because they’re so elaborate. You just can’t turn up on the set and say, ‘What if the car rolls over the sand hill here?’ Everyone’s got to be prepared, and it takes months to work out. There’s a sequence in the film where a car goes off a ferry, and I had to storyboard that in enormous detail. You can’t make it up as you go along.

MM: Tell me about the scene where she’s trapped inside a coffin.

BB: That was hard to do, from a lot of points of view. Filming in an anamorphic format inside a coffin is pretty difficult. So I did a number of camera checks in the weeks preceding the shooting of the scene, storyboarded little sequences, then got them to shoot those. Afterward we’d have a look at the test sequences and work out the best way of doing it. It had to look claustrophobic, otherwise you’re lost, it wouldn’t have worked.

MM: Has the success of the film come as a bit of a surprise?

BB: Yes, it has. Though it didn’t surprise the studio. They told me early on that it was going to be very popular. So I’m pleased that it turned out as well as it did. Certainly the most gratifying part is if you watch it with an audience, they love it. They eat it up, which is nice for a filmmaker. To see the audience absolutely enjoying something, you think ‘Well! I might have done something right.’

MM: Do you think it might be more commercial than some of your more recent films?

BB: I bloody well hope so, because it cost so much money. The others have been pretty cheap.

MM: I’ve heard concerns over the believability of some situations.

BB: Well, it’s certainly more believable than The English Patient. I thought about that at first, then I thought, ‘Wait a minute, is this less believable than The Piano?’ No. So after that it didn’t really worry me.

MM: Did the gun cause some concerns, with her being able to take it on a flight?

BB: No, she just put the gun in her bag and checked the bag through. The only things they check through are the things you’re carrying onto the flight. And she’s only on a domestic flight, where they don’t go through the luggage you put in the hold.

MM: The basic premise of Double Jeopardy—does it stand up?

BB: It’s certainly open to debate. The thing is the way the film presents it is accurate enough; it’s never been put to the test. Now you can always argue that if she went to shoot him the second time, then it’s not the

Judd and Bruce Greenwood on Double Jeopardy

BB: Yes, and a number of others, as well, but it is certainly true that the trailers that they make these days give away absolutely everything.

MM: Let’s go from your most recent hit to your first. Like many of your movies, Breaker Morant was based on a play.

BB: That’s true. I think there’s about six of them. I quite like filming plays because the characterizations are so solid, and I like to be able to deal with those very well-developed characters on screen. I mean, just because it’s a play doesn’t mean it can’t be filmic. It depends on how you break the shots up and the way you look at what’s going to be filmed. I always try and make the audience forget that it was a stage play.

MM: What was the reaction to the film overseas?

BB: In England they hated it, but everywhere else it got good reviews.

MM: Do you think it was perceived as anti-British?

BB: I don’t know if it was that. They just didn’t like it. Gallipoli was shown there at almost the same time, which is somewhat more anti-British, and it was a huge success. So Peter pulled it off and I didn’t. I’m never quite sure why they disliked Breaker Morant quite so much.

MM: You mention your contemporary, Peter Weir, who left for the US at about the same time as you. Over the years you’ve certainly been more prolific than he has.

BB: That’s probably because I’m making films with lower budgets, not getting any fees and I need the money (laughs). I like to keep working. I like to keep busy, but I have made a lot of very low-budget films. Driving Miss Daisy I actually directed for nothing. Nobody wanted to finance it. Finally they said, “We’ll give you the money provided you take no director’s fee.” I agreed because I had such faith in the product. I knew it was going to be a wonderful film.

MM: So how did you feel when it took the O

From Beresford’s new IMAX film Sydney: Story of a City

BB: I must say I never got my knickers in a twist about that. The film was done and I was proud of it. I never imagined it was going to win the Best Picture Oscar, so I was quite pleased when it did. I didn’t get myself upset because I wasn’t nominated, but at the same time I was a little surprised. When we were trying to get the money together for the film, one reason that was consistently given for not investing in it was that everyone kept saying no one could direct it well enough to entertain an audience for 100 minutes of watching three people essentially chatting in the kitchen. You just couldn’t do it. It would be boring. So when the film was a big success, I thought now at least they will see that maybe it was directed reasonably well because it was entertaining. But then everyone sort of said to me “Oh well, the direction was non-existent. It doesn’t look like there was any effort involved at all.” Ultimately, though, it didn’t really matter.

MM: Like a lot of your films, it was set in the American South. What is it about that setting that draws you to it?

BB: Nothing! It’s just that I happened to have stumbled across a number of very good scripts that were set in the South. It’s just an amazing coincidence, really. There’s no significance whatever.

MM: Your first American film, Tender Mercies, was also set in the South. What differences did you encounter between making an American film and an Australian film?

BB: Tender Mercies is actually a very low-budget film, but it was a huge budget compared to anything I had done in Australia. My fee for Tender Mercies, which was actually very modest, was something like five times all of my Australian films combined. Also, I was surprised as to how big the crew was, and I remember being amazed that all the actors had caravans, because I was used to actors just sitting around the set.

MM: The film’s press kit referred to your surprise that you could say, ‘I think I’d like 20 people there’ and before you knew it they were there.

BB: Yes, that was all a bit of a surprise. In Breaker Morant, we had so little money we used the same soldiers attacking the fort as defending it. We’d put them on the horses, and then when we were finished with that shot, we’d dress them in British uniforms and put them behind the guns. It was the same group of men. So it was great to have a little bit more freedom.

MM: One of the other common themes within your films is a “conflict of culture,” perhaps most notably in Black Robe.

BB: Perhaps it’s unconscious that I have made films along those lines. I think it’s because when I was young, about 23, I went to Nigeria, and I lived there for a couple of years working as a film editor for the Nigerian government. I was the only white man in an all black film unit, and it was an eye-opener for me. Suddenly I saw everything from somebody else’s point of view, from the African’s point of view. Inevitably, I learned to think like them and to have an approach to things like them. So when I came across scripts later on which dealt with major clashes, I think I had an intrinsic understanding of them.

MM: Mister Johnson, I suppose, is the reverse of your own situation.

BB: I desperately wanted to film Mister Johnson when I was actually in Nigeria. I was glad to be able to go back and do it.

MM: He was an African who adopts English customs.

BB: And eventually messes it all up. It’s based on a true story; based on a novel by Joyce Cary, who was a district officer in Nigeria in the area where we filmed the movie, and

Bruce Beresford

MM: There has been a high caliber of scriptwriters for your films, such as William Boyd, who wrote the script for Mister Johnson and also A Good Man in Africa, from his own novel.

BB: I’ve worked with some really first class writers. Horton Foote, Beth Henley, David Williamson, Brian Moore—they were all absolutely major writers. There’s a huge difference working with them and a lot of the guys who turn out competent but ordinary scripts. It’s a great pleasure to be able to direct a scene written by any of those people, because your job is so much easier. The dialogue makes sense, the subtext is there, and you can talk to the actors much more intelligently. There are so many scripts that are just a load of garbage. When your actors come to you and ask, “Why am I doing this?” you have to say “Well, the real reason is because they want to get you from A to B and there’s no other way to do it than this silly method.” There’s no real logic to it. But once you’re dealing with a superior writer, it makes the whole job not just easier, but a pleasure.

MM: Paradise Road was your first film in Australia for 10 years. What changes did you notice in the Australian film industry during that time?

BB: It had become a lot more sophisticated. The technicians were much more savvy about everything, and of course everybody now had trailers. But they hadn’t fundamentally changed. The Australian crews were still down to earth. They don’t get carried away with any phony glamour, and they’re not afraid to give you their opinions. They’re also very good with the actors. They don’t kiss their bums, but they’re perfectly polite and straightforward and I think the actors appreciate that. On Paradise Road one of the crew called out to Glenn Close and said, “Hey Glenn, mate! Just move a bit to the left so that light hits you there. O.K., mate?” And she looked up and said, “Oh, yes. Certainly.” I thought nowhere else on earth would someone call out to her like that, but it was good. He wasn’t rude, he wasn’t offensive, he just had a nice Australian frankness about him, and it makes it easy to deal with.

MM: I get the impression there’s a camaraderie on the Australian sets, where everybody chips in.

BB: That’s true, they do.

MM: Is that very different from your experience in America?

BB: No. I must say the American crews are very good, and I have a lot of great friends over there, but there’s certainly a somewhat more relaxed atmosphere on Australian sets. There’s a less “us and them” feeling about it all.

MM: I suppose an illustration of that would be the sharing of directorship duties with cinematographer Geoff Burton on Sydney—Story of a City, which would have to be one of the most expensive Australian films for some time.

BB: Well you can’t make a cheap IMAX film. You’ve got to have an IMAX camera, and you’ve got to use 70mm film. It’s always going to cost you a fortune. It’s a very expensive process.

MM: What are the difficulties associated with making an IMAX film?

BB: One is that you can’t cut very fast because you’d lose the audience. The screen is so massive, with so many things to look at and capture the attention of your senses, that the shots have to be on screen longer to be absorbed. If IMAX scenes ran the same length of time that they do in an ordinary 35mm film, they would appear to be too quick, because your brain can’t process them fast enough. So you’ve got to be careful of that. Also, when you’re shooting the film you can only do about four to five set-ups a day, because the camera is so cumbersome. There’s only a tiny amount of IMAX cameras in the world and they’re all rented out of the IMAX Corporation. So you have to fly them in from Toronto, which is a big deal, along with some IMAX guy who’s standing there all the time to fix the bloody thing when it breaks.

MM: Unlike the IMAX film, the majority of your films have been low budget. What’s your perception of how the independent scene in Australia compares to that in the U.S.?

BB: It’s somewhat similar to the independent scene in the States.

I don’t think the way they’re financed is the same, but some of the films are similar. I suppose it’s because these days people in that age group of 25 to 35 years old, who are making the films, have similar cultural experiences. Australia and America are probably the two most alike countries in the world. There are a lot of differences, but they’re also very much alike in a lot of ways. It’s not surprising that a lot of the preoccupations are similar. MM

Stephen Lynch is a freelance writer and frequent contributor to MovieMaker who makes his home in Sydney, Australia.