BRIAN McKENZIE


Do you see yourself more as a documentarist or as a feature film-maker - or as both?

I've always worked in parallel. I see myself as a film-maker - I've been a film-maker since I was a teenager. While I was at college I developed very solidly as a still photographer. That's when I became fairly focused and committed to documentary work. My still photography tended to gravitate towards situations where people were gathered in groups or where there were social functions, some sort of ceremony, or portraits of people at a particular location. I did a series called `Fitzroy Portraits', portraits of people I found in the street in Fitzroy. So that's where my documentary work sprang from.

Prior to that I had made two short drama films which I had written. They were, I suppose, quasi-experimental. Then I became pretty committed to still photography, which developed in a documentary vein, so then I returned to film-making via documentary.

There's something distinctive about your films which make them quite unlike others. Perhaps it's the photography. But it seems to be the combination of the people you're interested in and the social environment from which they come. The films are portraits, glimpses of life.

Yes. I feel I have over the years evolved a pattern of working and a way of doing things that I don't think I share with too many other people. I take the time. I think I've got faith in the people that I'm making films about, even though at various points during the production I sometimes scratch my head and wonder what it is that I'm actually trying to get at. But I don't tend to go in with a script and a very solid, premeditated plan about what the issues are. Well, actually, you do have to go in with a script because the only way you will get finance these days is with a fairly solid written document.

Pat and Eddy's Greyhound Racing Family is reminiscent of your other films, your other portraits. You seem to take the time to stay with your characters.

Sometimes, as in the case of Pat and Eddy, I had a document which talked about all the things that they do. And, of course, you realise soon enough that you're probably barking up the wrong tree and the film's really about something else and that the people's lives that you've described on paper for various administrators and executives isn't being reflected in your material. So, you sort of scratch your head and work out it for yourself, `What is coming out of this? What are the patterns? What can I catch hold of and focus on', because you can't just shoot film willy-nilly. You have to start identifying particular patterns and threads that build, almost, a narrative and, at least, a thematic continuum. That's a very interesting sort of process. It does take a lot of thinking and scratching and there are a lot of wrong moves.

What drew you to Pat and Eddy in the first place?

Well, most people I simply come across, somehow, in my life. I don't usually set out to say - in this case - I'll make a film about greyhounds. Pat and Eddy operate as cleaners. This is not shown in the film, although I did film a couple of sequences of them cleaning but subsequently got rid of them. They didn't really add anything to the portrait. They were cleaning an apartment of a friend of mine - in fact, the producer of Stan and George's New Life, Margot McDonald?. She has a snazzy apartment in Carlton - you know what young professionals are like, they work all day and all night and they get people in to cook their meals and clean their apartment. Anyway, that's what Pat and Eddy do. They clean for quite a few people in the film world - Bob Weiss and a few other people like that.

Anyway, because I was with Margot during the production, she was always telling me about her cleaners, Pat and Eddy this and Pat and Eddy that, and, `Oh, now they've discovered greyhounds and that's all I ever hear about, how this dog's going to win this weekend and how it nearly didn't', and, `Oh, they're doing New Age medicine on the greyhounds now - their whole life has been revitalised through greyhounds'. I would hear this on and off for, I don't know, maybe over a year. Then I met Pat because she came to a screening Stan and George. One thing led to another and I thought it might make a nice documentary film.

So, at that stage you had to prepare the written document for funding?

Yes. So then I do what you do: I go out there with a little tape-recorder and just record discussions, get a bit of background and write up a document. It's a sort of a pseudo- script.

How long did you spend with them? At one stage of the film a race takes place in Albury, November '93, then there's another in July '94. So you must have been with them for quite a while.

I knew them for a couple of years, really, before I got the finance for the film. It was a long time before anyone said, `Yes, you can make the film'. The Film Commission said, `that's it, we're not going to make any more films with you. Forget it'. So I languished for a few years and I made an ABC documentary A Place to Belong, which was the only film I've made that wasn't generated by myself. Film Victoria, the ABC and Film Australia had put their heads together and decided they were going to make a documentary about urban sprawl. They started off but things didn't go so well. They spent quite a bit of money researching and scripting. Then the ABC made their own documentary about urban sprawl and decided that this one was barking up the wrong tree, `Why don't we make it more about people' - because I had made a couple of films for them before. So I went and made A Place to Belong, and that got me started again.

It went very well on the ABC and subsequently they said, `All right, you can make this one about greyhounds'. But up until then I had had it sitting there for two years; and I was very worried about what I was going to do with my life because no-one would even answer my phone calls. Eventually the ABC said, `Well, if you really want to make a film about greyhounds, go ahead'.

It is interesting to try to work out whether the family were told not to acknowledge that you were there and just to be themselves or whether they were conscious of your presence. Were they improvising? At the end, when you pose them in the photograph, they acknowledge that you're there.

I knew them for two years and probably filmed over about a nine-month period altogether so, by the time I started to film, they were very used to my being there in the kitchen, chatting away. So we knew one another reasonably well. I suppose you condition people to getting used to the idea that when and if you start filming, it will be just like this and it will just be me.

Instead of a tape recorder and a still camera, I will have a camera on my shoulder and a couple of other people there. I usually use only three - myself, a camera assistant and a sound recordist. I nearly always use the same people and they work very well in people's own homes and environments. They're not intrusive and they're very friendly, humble sort of people. So, although the situation increases by an extra couple of people, we seem to manage to fit in without disturbing things too much.

Whenever you make a documentary there's always an element of adjustment but people get used to you - well, me anyway, that's the way I work. There's a degree of `presentation' in my documentaries as well because people are aware of the film. They don't want to sit there having an enormous ding-dong blue in front of you, swear and throw furniture about. But, nevertheless, if you're patient and pick your moment, soon enough, things are revealed. That's what happens, I think, in this documentary.

The hard work is in the editing?

Yes. I might say that Pat and Eddy are particularly generous people, and Eddy, in particular, seemed to be relaxed and was the same from the first moment to the last. I don't know whether it was all my own doing in conditioning him well or whether it was just in his character, but he was very generous to do what he did and very much at ease with the situation.

It seems the same with Pat, particularly when she describes the death of the boy. It is very moving. Perhaps it was the way that the sequence was finally positioned in the film. But she spoke with powerful feeling. She must have had great trust in you.

That's quite a story really. I was at a point in the making of the film where I was floundering a bit. I had shot more than half my footage and I was worrying, that there was something that I felt that I didn't know. Subsequently I went back over my research tapes. Pat had told me - not the whole story - but she had told me at some stage that they had had a child and that he had died. But I hadn't remembered it, or I hadn't listened properly to that tape - something else was on my mind or in the flurry of activity I hadn't stored it away in my memory bank.

I went out on this particular day, thinking that I was going to have a talk with her. I just took my still camera and I recorded it. I was really worried that the film wasn't adding up to anything and there was something that I wasn't party to. Anyway, we were chatting away in the backyard as normal and I was taking photographs and recording. The talk was always about families - if I could manage to get them off the dogs - always about the families and their relationships with the various children and what they're doing and what they're not, or about each other. And then, as a passing reference, Mark was mentioned.

It was just what I was looking for. I suppose it sounds a bit mercenary, but it was a sort of clue, the missing piece in the jigsaw puzzle and my ears pricked up. Eddy was standing right next to me and he obviously found it quite uncomfortable for Pat to come out with it just like that and talk about it. He reeled back a bit. But she was very keen, very happy to talk about it. As she says, it's part of her life, but all the family mention how Eddy has never been able to talk about it.

By the end of the film we had a very vivid picture of the family, the way they talked about how they related to their children and the way the children said they didn't relate, especially to their father. You finished up with a detailed portrait of an ordinary Australian family - as well as the aura of the greyhounds.

What was cut for the ABC TV shorter presentation? Sections, or did you trim the whole film?

A bit of everything really - the film was sort of concertinaed. There were some sections: the first races at Albury are cut right down to only a very small portion of what there is there in the longer film. The whole opening section is gone, where Eddie talks to the camera, where you see the walking machine for the first time. That's all gone. A bit later, when Pat and Eddie are in the shed talking about the various muscles and manipulations and Pat introduces the dogs, that section has gone. Quite a bit of business in the kitchen has gone.

Also one or two of the fixing the car sections. Remember the shot panning around. It starts off with a door leaning up against a tree and it pans around all the bits of cars and engines and tools and eventually you get around to what was a motor car, and Eddie and Bradley have both got their heads down working - that section has gone.

It had to be done for TV programming time?

Yes, it did have to be done. But I tried very hard to present the case to the ABC that they should show the longer film. It's difficult because you can't actually show them a finished film.

During the screening there was a lot of laughter. Were people laughing with Pat and Eddy or at them? Have you been at screenings where people have laughed?

Yes, non-stop, yes. I think the audience is laughing at them. I think it's a bit of both. I think that's the nature of the beast. Life is funny. If you had the chance to videotape your day and look back at it at the end of the day, you would be sitting there howling at all the stupid things you did or said or - not even stupid things , but strange quirks.

That's what is valuable about the documentaries, they reveal some basic essences of life unfolding.

On the Waves of the Adriatic - was the experience of making that film more difficult, given your cast? Or were they less self-conscious?

No, it was not difficult at all, really. The three chaps, Graeme and Harold and Steve - their relationship with me was one of dedication from the moment they got used to the idea that I was going to come back more than once. I was a friend and someone they could rely upon, someone from the outside world that they could rely on to be there on a regular basis and they loved it. And, to a degree, it gave them that bit of a sense of importance and a role, a continuing role, for a few years.

Harold in particular, I think, really improved for a while. We were painting the house and doing various things and he was really able to articulate and stand up for himself if he was being picked on by the others. He really identified with the process of making the film. So in terms of my relationship with them and their commitment to it, that was never a problem.

For the first section of the film it was a bit dicky between Steve, Graeme's father, and me. Obviously he was a bit suspicious about the film and my motives - well, I suppose who wouldn't be? Whereas the three chaps, they didn't have a suspicious bone in their body, completely trusting. Steve came round after a while. I used to play chess with him. I also negotiated at one stage that I would only film inside the house if I helped to clean it up, because it was pretty bad. So we painted Graeme's room and painted the kitchen, quite a bit of work. There's a little sequence in there of us working - a still sequence, taking photographs.

Whom do you see as the audience for your films? Do you have an audience in mind? An art-house audience? or an ABC TV audience?

I've never really thought in terms of an audience at all. Where the films are shown and seen is really up to the people that have the control, distribution and exhibition. At various times I have had small cinema releases for feature documentaries. At other various times I seem to have had a good rapport with the ABC and they have been committed to giving me pre-sales and showing the documentary. Other times I have had no commitment from anyone, so they don't get screened. It doesn't mean that they have no audience, it doesn't mean that they're less interesting or less powerful or less worthy films to be communicated ... It just means that no-one cares about them, no-one who broadcasts or distributes or exhibits cares about them or wants to show them.

But overseas - you have said you can actually get a subtitled copy of On the Waves of the Adriatic in Paris.

Well, On the Waves of the Adriatic is a case in point. It's a longer film, 120 minutes, and by the time I finished it, there was less and less commitment on the part of the funding bodies and the people who were running the non-profit exhibition places like the Melbourne State Film Centre or, in Sydney the Opera House. There were exhibitors in various places around the country who, if it was a good documentary, would commit, maybe, to a two or three week season which be underwritten by the Film Commission, something like that.

People realised it wasn't going to be commercially successful - films at those places generally aren't and documentaries in a cinema aren't - but that it would get a good solid audience and it might break even if it was lucky. And it would have an airing, it would be a national release.

That's what happened with I'll Be Home For Christmas, which is really tougher, longer and technically a lot more flawed than On the Waves of the Adriatic. But by the time I finished On the Waves of the Adriatic, there was very little of that kind of exhibition going on - it was less keen. Of course, there's television, but they weren't ready at all to screen those sorts of films. They still aren't, actually. SBS will screen them if they're made overseas but they won't screen local films - they have never recognised that work here. It's real snobbery. In the case of On the Waves of the Adriatic, it's got a very strong multicultural theme running through it. SBS will often screen long, interesting and obviously, to a degree, what they term difficult documentaries that might come out of India or America, ethnographic and experimental films, but they have always turned their nose up at my films. At various times you get a bit bitter at that sort of thing.

Anyway, that film virtually didn't get screened here in Australia at all. I was so disappointed with the AFI's attitude towards the film - it didn't even get entered in the AFI awards. The AFI didn't even accept it into their documentary section so I decided that I wouldn't even let them have it, that I would distribute it myself locally - in non-theatrical venues - which is actually more hard work than anything else. You have to make videotapes and send them to libraries and ...

But it went to many festivals all around the world and it won the Grand Prix in Paris at Cinema de Reel, which is probably the major documentary festival in the world, certainly the major ethnographic festival and, subsequently, it was bought by the Pompidou Centre. They bought a subtitled print and bought the non-theatrical video rights. So they've got it. Their Biblioteque system has a French subtitled version available for all the libraries. You can go anywhere in France and punch into the computer and call it up. So it's well-known in France but it's not very well-known here.

With Love to the Person Next to Me - maybe it's Kym Gyngell and his acting style, the characters and life in St Kilda, all those people in the block of flats and Paul Chubb's screen presence, all the passengers and the conversation in the taxis - somehow or other the whole thing comes alive.

It was very much a low-budget feature fully funded by the Film Commission, $120,000 and we shot it on 16mm, in four weeks, I think, and it was pretty tough to make and we made lots of mistakes. It had a release at the Kino Cinema, Melbourne, for three weeks but it didn't make any money. It got mixed reviews. I've got mixed feelings about that film.

I think probably my biggest disappointment with it is that we never had any money to do a soundtrack properly. That particular film should live on the soundtrack. It's all about the sounds that you hear, the sounds that you replay, the various sounds that represent the different parties in the flats and how they impinge on the lead character's life. It never worked particularly well. We never really had the time or the resources to do it.

I have worked pretty much with the same group of people over the years. Ray Argall shot that film and ended up doing most of the editing. Ray was able to bring some real strength to that film and I think it scraped through with his collaboration.

It won the Ecumenical Prize at the Locarno Film Festival.

Yes, it did. I have actually won a few ecumenical prizes. I'm about the most irreligious person you would want to come across.

Is that how life has been or do you have a religious background?

I was christened into the Church of Christ. I don't know whether I was quite a teenager or a bit younger. My brother and I used to go to Sunday school and to church until I was 13, 14, something like that.

Stan and George's New Life. Stan's mother is religious. You have her listening to the religious radio program all the time?

Yes, but I think it's a very slight thing, though.

It comes through strongly as the audience focusses on her character, that's really what her life was, the radio evangelists and the hymn-singing.

I don't remember the evangelist. I only remember the hymns.

She talked evangelically .

Yes, she did. There was a degree of gibberish which came out of charismatic pentecostal speak, I think. I can barely remember. Have you seen a film that I made called Kelvin and His Friends? You should look at it. It's a portrait of a man. Kelvin went through a stage in his forties. He lived by himself in a boarding house run by a Jewish woman, an elderly German Jewish woman. It's about his life and his relationship with her, his obsessions about being in a sort of born again religion, about physical culture and the war. He was obsessed by these things, how they intersected or how he imagined they intersected. Any conspiracy theory you want to name, he would be able to babble on about it for hours.

Stan's mother is in the same vein?

The mother? That's probably where I got some of that from. I can barely remember but yes, she was a sort of strident single-dimensional sort of narrow-mind, religious, bigoted sort of a person, wasn't she? But I think it's very slight in terms of characterisation. In fact, in some ways they're easy shots. I think that's done in a lot in films, the religious maniac. I've seen it subsequently in quite a few films and regret having done it myself.

Do you see Stan and George as a good film?

Yes, but I don't think it's the greatest of stories. We tried very hard to make something out of it. I think it's a matter of having some sort of belief in your particular, not so much style, but presentation. It isn't so theatrical, and that runs through the performances, the editing style and the more classic sort of shots, style and the cast. So, in the end, if you can manage to imbue all the various parts with something that's fairly consistent, it can't be divided up or contaminated or corrupted. It's a complete thing. That's where I think that film has its worth. The script really lets the film down in the second half. It divides into two films, following a conspiracy thing. It doesn't really work. The focus on the odd couple in a workplace was working really well up until that point. Then the two elements fight each other for the rest of the film. Because of the delicate sort of storytelling and because it's slow, whatever action there is is really only in the climax. It doesn't particularly drive you along. It falls apart, I think, in the second half.

This is true of the conspiracy. The scenes in the office and Stand and George going out to lunch are very good scenes. John Bluthal as Stan's father and his scenes with Paul Chubb worked very well.

Yes. I think the actors were really carefully chosen and the concentration level on performance during the making of the film is something I can remember very well. I can't remember some of the characterisation - you point up Stan's mother - but I do remember working with all the actors to get a homogeneous style.

Whenever I'm listening to radio weather reports, I'm always reminded of Stan and his flat reading of his text and the bits of stilted conversation.

Yes, they have become personalites, haven't they, media personalities?

Comment on many films these days refers to `implicit' religion, which is basically values and humanity. If film-makers contribute to this kind of spiritual sense, it's by portraits of real people. This is a strength of your documentaries and feature films.

I think that's why they get ecumenical awards overseas. They're not looking for a film that is proposing a brand of religion or a belief or a faith. It's to do with a portrait of humanities, a humanitarian judgment. There's no ecumenical award in Australia, so I don't think it's appreciated or quite valued or at all comprehended here what ecumenical jury awards are, but in Europe they're certainly not based on religious beliefs.

You focus on people not well off, not affluent, who generally live in suburbs like Brunswick or Reservoir or St Kilda; you show us `battlers', a portrait-making of ordinary Australian battlers.

I think that's the case. I don't know whether I will live to regret that, whether I will say, `Well, I would have liked to...' I think that I have always had a bit of an ideological commitment - I don't know if I have now. Rich and famous and successful people are all you ever hear about and see and I'm not interested in them really.

The characters you choose are so dramatically or humanly interesting that they compel us to look in their direction.

Sometimes they're particularly idiosyncratic like Graeme and that little gang of three who rode their bikes, had various intellectual handicaps and couldn't read or write - they were out of the ordinary. But many are not. It's just that, by most scales, you would say they were very average and very ordinary.

And fairly decent human beings?

Yes, absolutely, but there's nothing particularly exotic or bizarre about them. I think my view is that I could, given a bit of freedom and the right amount of cash, make a documentary about anyone if they were a willing participant, and it would be just as interesting as the next one - it wouldn't really matter.


Interview: 18th September 1995