SANTO CILAURO



How long did The Castle take from agreement on the idea to the final cut?

From the original idea to the final cut would have been about five weeks. We decided to keep everything in proportion. We decided to make a film very simply, so we thought we can't deviate from that idea - and we're very resolute when it comes to that. That's an advantage of having a group of four people as the creators, because there's always somebody to round you up and say, `Hey, you're heading off on a tangent'. So we said if we're going to do this the way we want to do it, we write it in two weeks and shoot it in ten days, then do a rough cut in about five days and then we'd do all the fine cut to fix it all up. We stuck to that.

The fact that we were putting in our own money meant that we had to stick to that timetable. If we were going to do it on our own terms, then we had to do it with our own money. So, we worked backwards: how much money do we have? There are four of us, so we pooled as much money as we could. Basically we were told by our fifth, silent and non-creative partner (who's just as creative when it comes to money), `you can shoot for ten days, probably eleven, and that's when the catering runs out!'.

And Village/Roadshow came in?

We'd been dealing with Village/Roadshow for a little while about various other ideas. We'd been sending memos to each other and whatnot; there was a memo about a particular idea that we'd written, quite a detailed memo; but we thought that rather than answering this memo, why can't our response be, `We'd like to invite you to the screening of a completely different film?'. They came, saw it and immediately signed us up for a three film deal. We hadn't been sitting on this film for seven years; in fact we'd been sitting on the film for four weeks at the time. So we're so glad to be able to do it in three steps and we thought, `well, we don't want to create the greatest film in the world in our first film, we want to build to it, and the best way to do it is just get it done, just do it, just get your film done and don't look back'.

The collaboration, then, whose basic idea was it?

We have a sort of a strange dynamic. There's four of us. We decided never to have four people write the same script. We think that's too many. So what we do is we sit around a table and set a limit on the discussion. We decide we won't talk for more than two or three hours and throw up various ideas - In the end we thought the best idea was that about a family that lives near an airport. Then two people put their hands up and say, `Leave it to us, we'll go away and write it'.

The others don't even hear about what's going on, so that they can listen to the first draft with completely fresh ears. Then they'll say, `Maybe it goes off in the wrong direction here; it needs to be that.' The two people then go back, fix that up and then basically take it from there. Then there's the fine tuning to be done.

Then everybody breaks up into certain roles: whoever feels closest to the performance side of it will say, `I'll direct it,' someone will say, `I'll shoot it,' and the others will say, `Look, I think I can cast it, I can edit it,' whatever.

You did the shooting?

You can call it the shooting. It was basically holding the camera and getting the action... so, yes, if you call that doing the shooting. I don't know what style it was. It was a storytelling style. The only thing that was important was the story. Therefore, what is the simplest way to tell a story? I don't think there was a tracking shot. There wasn't anything, probably about two panning shots, a couple of tilts or something like that. That was about as much as the camera moved.

Rob Sitch felt closer to the performance, so he directed?

We all take it in turns in directing Frontline. I think in the time constraints we had - we had to film it in that limited amount of time - Rob is a very good and very fast communicator and has also got a good eye for the clock, has a good overview on things, so he knows when things are getting too long. It's like, `Guys, one take on this because it's not important. Let's get on to that.' He's not pedantic. He's not as pedantic as possibly I am - not that I'm very pedantic, but he's the least pedantic in that sense - so therefore it was the perfect thing for him to direct.

The one-liners, do they come from you all?

Yes.

There were so many, and little jokes that could be hit and miss with the audience.

You do get surprised. Sometimes, maybe because you're close to the film, you're think, `Gee, that was a funny line, it didn't get a cracker from anybody.' But it's one of those things and I think we're used to it now. We've been doing comedy on television and radio for such a long time that we do realise that you're not going to make everybody laugh at the same time all the time.

It's difficult in a film like The Castle because our task was actually pulling out jokes. You have to give a sense of the story - unless people follow the story, they're actually not going to laugh at the jokes. You have to believe the characters. You have to believe the situation is there in order for you to laugh at the jokes, so if you throw in too many jokes, suddenly people start removing themselves from the story and that becomes counterproductive to the jokes. They'll stop laughing at certain jokes. They'll say, `No, I don't believe that this guy would actually do that.'

By portraying the average family at Tullamarine, there is the dilemma of whether the audience is laughing at the family or with them.

It's a difficult thing, a fine line. Sometimes I look at the film and think, `I hope people don't think that we're laughing at the family'.

People say this, that and the other about the comedy in Frontline, but we like to think we're all very mainstream in our senses of humour and our sensibilities. It doesn't concern me whether we are sitting at a preview in South Yarra watching the film and wondering whether we are a bit judgmental. I'm more concerned about what we do in the film and I think it's not that at all. Even if, at the beginning of the film you think you are laughing at the Kerrigans, `look at this, look at the house...', by the middle, you are barracking for them. It doesn't matter where they come from. They happen to be a family from the northern suburbs near the airport. But they are a family who have principles and who are judged in those terms.

An audience which was tempted to laugh at the family or automatically reacted that way without realising it, would identify with Bud Tingwell's character, the QC. Then the audience is with the family. By contrast, the characters in Frontline are into self-deception without realising it, whereas the Kerrigans weren't. Would that be a reasonable interpretation?

Absolutely. I think the characters in Frontline believe their own promos, they believe their own image, they've drunk too much of their own bathwater. These people, they have simple pleasures. It's just like I enjoy going out on the boat and fishing, I enjoy going fast and smelling two-stroke engine fuel. I love putting stuff in the poolroom, I love my kids, and there's no sense of an image of yourself. It's very, very sincere.

As regards Australian humour, it's in the tradition of suburban comedy with the appeal to the majority of Australians: Strictly Ballroom, Muriel's Wedding, Death in Brunswick, The Big Steal, Mr Reliable... It's the formula for surefire success in Australia: the lovable larrikin rebel who wins out over authority. Would you see that as one of the major themes that Australian audiences like to see?

I guess, because I like to see it. I've seen The Castle a lot of times and I still love it when Dad wins. Mind you, I love the wrestling, so I love guys getting thumped and, just when you think they're about to go, they come up and start thumping you back. I don't know whether it's specifically Australian. I presume it's a universal feeling. People like to barrack, people go mad at the footy because they just like to barrack in a group.

The fact that it was set in the suburbs - there was no conscious effort made. The only conscious decision we made about the subject-matter of the film was that we had to keep it simple because of the money we had to spend. Therefore, we wanted to keep the story about home and family, which were the simplest things we could possibly think of. That's as basic as it gets, we think. So we thought, okay, how does someone protect their home and love their family, really. `Well, why don't we set it next door to an airport?' `Oh, that means we're in the suburbs.' `Okay, there are neighbours.'

When Jane Kennedy's friends watch the film they go, `How did you get away with putting so much of your dad and your mum in there?' When Rob's parents watch the film they go, `How did you get away with it? That's about your dad, isn't it?' Unfortunately, my parents don't speak English very well, so they go, `What's it about,' that kind of thing. But my parents do know - they look at certain things and they go, `I've told you that about our next-door neighbour and you've put that in, haven't you?' And I said, `Yes, I have.' So it's drawing from each of our own experiences, which all comes from that quite mundane sort of lower to middle-class background.

A lot of it had to actually do with the setting. We wanted a place right next door to the airport, so we shot there. We knocked on someone's door and said, `Would you like to stay at the local motel while we shoot at your house?' So we kept on going in there with the set designer, saying, `This is where we could have a poolroom,' and while Rob and I were in there, we'd be saying, `This is another scene. How about this? He does this? How about in the backyard? That looks like a kids' cubbyhouse that used to be a granny flat.' Things get formed by actually being out there at the place.

You've drawn, visually and verbally, on a lot of Australian detail. While much of it might be universal, it's still distinctively Australian, say, the discussions about the flight to Thailand and the meals and movies, the kinds of souvenirs they bring back from Thailand, Dad's treasures in the poolroom or the things that Mum makes with her craft. It's the same with Denis Denuto's office. Where was it filmed?

My father is a lawyer in Sydney Rd, Brunswick, so we used his office for Denis Denuto's legal office. In fact, we used his office once, then the sun got in the way and it was too bright. I knew the chemist a couple of doors down so I asked Rocky if we could move the sign on top of his window. So, if you watch, you'll see it's not the same place. When he crosses the road, it's a different place. So, depending where the sun was, we kept moving down the road.

Michael Caton was a very convincing Dad.

I think Michael was just sensational. It wasn't just the performance. It was a very difficult task. He was in almost every single scene, a pressure shoot because we had to do it in such a short time. It was important that the person who was there all the time got on well with everybody and was patient. He was inspirational. It wasn't as if it were a two month shoot and he was really stretched. But he was stretched on the days and they were long days. He was still chatting with people at the end of the day. If he had been one of those actors who kept saying `I can't do this' or `this is not what I want to do', the film wouldn't have been made.

It was interesting with the casting. Jane did a fantastic job. I remember she saw a picture of Michael - we had to actually cast Michael in about a day or two because there was some problem - and she flew up to Sydney, met him and came back smiling, `This is the guy'.

There is so much optimism. You've touched on whatever it is in the niceness of the `Average Australian': lovable ocker, rebel individualist. But you also take shots at the law, as enemy, but law can also be ally, as with the Constitution. Once you focus on the Constitution, it gives a depth to the comedy. The phrase `on just terms', stands out. But there seems to be a touch of preach with Dad's speech about how he begins to understand the aborigines and the references to Mabo.

That's a bit of an Achilles' heel there. But, we decided from the start to be unashamed. It was a test of nerve whether we kept that speech about the aborigines in or not. We're not concerned whether it works or not. We wanted to be unashamed about the emotion and what we think about a home. We didn't want to pull back and say, `that's a bit cute'. We knew we were going to come out of the film and say that we went a bit too far there. The aboriginal speech is not the only place where we have gone too preachy. In retrospect there are a few other places where we should have pulled out.

On the other hand, in terms of political correctness, you have Dad make some very funny wog remarks where it didn't dawn on him that he might be considered racist.

No, that's what pops into his mind. That's interesting because I can't even remember when I saw the film yet, for some reason it's been the biggest influence on the film, and that was They're a Weird Mob. It was so candid and straight, absolutely plain. I remember seeing plain shots of houses and people saying simples jokes, `Kings Bloody Cross' and that kind of thing. It felt like, `this is just a plain painting, not cubism, it's not anything. And when I think of Australianism, I think of Ned Kelly, not because of his rebelling and becoming a hero, but because of the words,`stand and deliver'. I like the fact that the film is simple: here it is, and there's nothing more complicated than that. You either take it or you don't take it - and, as an audience member, I appreciate having that choice.

In terms of economic rationalism and government, there are probably a lot of sympathetic audiences. Corporations and government are taking over as in the film.

It's pathetic because a couple of us studied law but now we know nothing about the law. We completely forgot it a long time ago. So I had to speak to a couple of barristers that I used to go to uni with about the legal side of the film. And they said, `Yes, there's actually a clause in the Constitution about all this'. They told me about cases like this. There's a Greek guy who doesn't want to sell his house in Burnley because of the City Link. It's a horrible house, columns and all that. And he says, `But you don't understand. I've got my family that lives around here. It's the house that I want. I don't care what you think of the house. But, for me to build this house somewhere else and then gather my family around me, it's going to cost over a million dollars if you want me to do it'.

The lawyer told me that there are two acts in Victoria, the Grand Prix Act and the City Link Act, which actually exonerate - it's the first time in Australia, I think - individual companies from being sued for damages. The government says, `For you to do this, we'll take the blame for anything.' I think they've ended up moving the guy out, but it took them ages. It happened over a period of about two or three years.

When you think about it, okay, in a film it's a bit simple. The guy just doesn't want to move out. But think about it. If you are happy in your own home and it means something to you, there is too much going on. But there is really an element of, `Hang on, this place is an asset to all Victorians. Therefore you don't have an argument'. You actually can't have an argument about whether we're allowed to do this to the beach or allowed to build this sized shopping centre, because `it's an asset to all Victorians'. It's just, too easy to say that. You've got to be sensitive to people's values. People's values are real. I think it's a good thing psychologically to get back on track economically, but there's a limit.

Is the phrase `on just terms' in the Constitution?

Yes, in section 51.31. Had we had more time, we would have done a shot - perhaps that would have been our only tracking shot - actually showing the words, showing that it's actually a real quote. But we just didn't have time.


Interview: 6th February 1997