JOHN TATOULIS


You made television films and documentaries before you went into feature films.

I guess I'll start prior to that. I had an interest in film and television since I was very, very small. We used to live in Northcote and our local cinema was the old Westgarth Theatre and religiously every Saturday afternoon from age 5 or 6 I would go to the Westgarth Cinema and watch the film and the serials that preceded it. It was almost as if I knew before I was ten that I wanted to work in this industry. At high school I was into making short films. It was something that really interested me. And I was an avid cinemagoer right through my teens.

I then did a course Scotland in communication studies. Basically, it was a many-media course. It preceded media studies as a course. I wasn't so interested in film-making courses specifically, nor journalism courses. I was actually after a broader-based course, interested in selecting which way I would like to go. Having completed that, I worked as a producer and a journalist in the UK and then in Europe. At the same time I worked on a number of film sets as well. Then I came back to Australia and worked freelance for a number of publications, then worked for SBS. I was one of the first journalists that started on SBS, working in the Melbourne newsroom.

Then I moved more into the area that I really enjoyed: production. So I started working on documentaries and television specials as well as the odd small drama and formed the company Media World some 14 years ago. We just continued making the sorts of programs that interested us - drama documentaries and television series, children's series - and then slowly moved towards adult drama.

Your move into feature films?

We made a very low-budget feature, In Too Deep, shot on a shoestring, but it managed to open a lot of doors. We got a Paramount video release in the States and a bit of notice. We then went on to make The Silver Brumby, which was a family-oriented feature. We went into a spin off animation series of The Silver Brumby and then established an animation studio in Carlton. On that series I act as the executive director or supervising director. The next feature production was Zone 39.

Returning to In Too Deep, what focused your attention on the themes of inner-city life, police and society?

I think that all those themes are universal in terms of life in a metropolis like Melbourne. Melbourne is not dissimilar to other cities around the world and, subsequently, the problems aren't dissimilar. I was interested in two things in In Too Deep: one was the corruption of innocents and the other was the strengths and weaknesses of sexuality. And I wanted to set it in an urban landscape. What I was really keen to do was create a mood and a feel through a variety of ways. I believe that film is like a tapestry and all the components that go to making the texture of that tapestry are all important: sound, pictures, editing, performances, direction. If one doesn't work, then the final tapestry won't have the texture the director had in his or her mind to start with. If a film doesn't have a feeling, a feeling that has a texture to it, then it's lacking. So that was something I was very keen to explore: how do I give this film a feeling of claustrophobia, a feeling of heat, a feeling of menace and vulnerability. Whether I succeeded or not is a different matter, but that's what I was after in that very first film.

The atmospheric use of colour was part of the process?

Yes, it was very much designed, right from the outset. That was the look and the feel that I wanted and the soundscape creating the tensions that I wanted. It was basically a simple story. I don't think the story was its strength and I think I realised that, even when we started shooting it but, at the same time, I felt that maybe the technique and the feeling that I could bring to it would help take it above the strength of the story.

It offered a serious look at the police and corruption. You focus on society and questions of society which interest you.

Absolutely, yes. I think human beings are exactly that; they're human beings. There are no super beings. At every level of society there are good and bad people. Every nation has its good and bad people. What makes them so, I don't know, but they're there and, yes, there is a lot of corruption and no, it's not easy to stamp out - and how do you deal with it? I don't know. As an individual, I deal with it in a particular way; as a society, I don't have the answers. I don't think anyone really has. But it is something that's prevalent and I think it's something that's becoming more noticed because communication is growing so much stronger these days that we're actually being advised of it happening much more readily than society was ten or twenty or thirty years ago. So it appears that corruption is more prevalent.

It seemed quite a jump in theme and treatment from In Too Deep to The Silver Brumby. Your interest in a children's film? You had done children's television in the past.

The bottom line is that I like to work on projects that I find interesting. At the same time I'm not blinkered in what I appreciate. My reading sources are varied. I like romance, I like adventure, I like science fiction, I like historical pieces - as long as they are interesting or they're deemed to be interesting. The Silver Brumby was introduced to me by one of my partners many, many years ago - we were actually childhood friends - and it had a spirituality about it that I found incredibly intriguing. It really gave me a sense that there was something incredibly magical and raw and energetic about the Australian high country - almost mystical and mythological - and that's what I was really hoping to capture in the film, that element of spirituality that I felt was present in the book. Subsequently, when I met the author, Elyne Mitchell, I found that was exactly where she was coming from. She wasn't trying to write a linear story; she was trying to capture the whole feeling and essence that the Australian high country enveloped her in. So, in shooting The Silver Brumby, that was my main focus: to really tell a simple story well, but at the same time try and capture the essence of the spirituality that was being portrayed in the book as well as I could. Again it's getting back to that texture. I wanted to give the film a feel, a mood, a presence, and I'm very happy with the result. That was my main aim.

You got good reviews?

Very good reviews, yes.

Was the author's writing of the book a part of the original or did you add it?

I added that. The book deals with an animal kingdom in which the animals have anthropomorphic features. They literally communicate to each other. In fact the humans are peripheral characters. They're non-communicative characters in a sense. All the animals communicate at different, especially the horses. Now, I couldn't produce a live-action film that could get across everything I needed to say by trying to have the animals act without any other narrative device, so we created that storytelling device as a means by which we could actually keep the story moving when the acting of the animals could no longer tell the story. But the story that I used was actually a true story. It was how Elyne Mitchell came to write her book. She wrote it for her daughter. She was concerned that her daughter wasn't reading. Yet there's all this magic and mystery around them. So she decided that what she would do was try to write something that was close to her that was identifiable, that was readily accessible, and hope that in that way she could draw her daughter into the wealth of experience that books have to offer.

It worked very well for adults, identifying with the writer and it worked very well for children, identifying with the child and with the action. You went back to the animal kingdom for the series?

Yes. In animation you can suspend your disbelief considerably. The series is aimed at children aged four to nine and, yes, the animals do talk. There are humans in there but they can't actually communicate with the animals. So there is an animal kingdom with a human society and some interaction between the two, but it is a far lighter than the film. We've taken certain liberties so it's more `inspired by' the characters of the books rather than being a translation of the books.

If The Silver Brumby is `light', Zone 39 is surprisingly grim - very grim by the end.

There again it is a totally different film in the sense that it's certainly not a family movie but, again, it was a subject that interested me, a concept that interested me. In Zone 39, I was exploring a couple of things.

One was the way in which a person deals with grief, the loss of a loved on. I truly believe that someone doesn't die until we stop thinking about that person. I think once we forget that person, once that person ceases to live in our memories, then that person is truly dead. Often it takes a long time for that person to truly die in people's hearts. I wanted to explore this theme in an environment that I think we're heading towards, one of being like a society that is particularly unfriendly to the individual and particularly isolates the individual and controls that individual.

I think we're heading towards an age where those who control communication and those who have political power are going to unite and form what I believe will be almost political corporations, when a Rupert Murdoch and his empire join forces with - let's say a consummate politician like Henry Kissinger and his political party. These guys join forces to form a world political order, something like the United Nations, a peacekeeping force but with a commercial and a political side to it. I think we're moving towards something like that. We're moving towards an amalgam of media owners and politicians and I think that when that eventually does happen, there'll be a very powerful, insidious control over the individual and over what the individual will or will not be able to do, hear, see, say.

That was the world that I wanted to place this character in. One, he is alone because he has lost a loved one but, two, he's alone because that's how society is, or that's what society is becoming. And how do you deal with that? How do you deal with that double whammy? Yes, it's nihilistic, but I believe it's important to look at the strength of the spirituality of the individual. The film does not have a happy ending but, at the same time, I think it does have an ending that has some form of resolution for that particular character.

It's almost imagining the worst. It was hard to believe that the main actress is killed at the beginning and the main character at the end. But you're giving the picture of that kind of future society. The initial confrontation in the train and at the station was similar to scenes in American thrillers, so it had a dramatic credibility. Then you moved the hero to a more remote science-fantasy land. So it was a disturbing kind of science fantasy. Do audiences respond well?

We've screened it both in Australia, in Europe and in the States and the reactions have varied from, `Well, look, I just don't like this sort of film,' to, `Well, gee whiz, it blew my socks off.' It dealt with subjects that are grim, but it dealt with them in an interesting way, and it provokes thought. Now, I don't know. You try and create something for as wide an audience as possible, but at the same time you also try to create something with an integrity that you're hoping will be accepted by an audience as opposed to it being just formulaic and subsequently being automatically accepted by an audience. It is a grim tale, but at the same time it's a tale that I wanted to tell.

Even the issues of the environment are grim.

It's been described as a science fiction eco thriller. I don't think it's science fiction. I truly believe that the world that I was trying to portray in Zone 39 is not that far away, so I'd almost call it science fact. Designer drugs such as Novan are being tested as we speak. The technology that I was suggesting in that film is actually available today - not necessarily for general consumption, but it's certainly in advanced stages of development. The military is using sattelite-link type weaponry and personal communications.

Moving away from the militaristic side of things and the technological side - the environment is suffering enormously and will continue to do so unless something is done about it. Money and greed are more important for some than the legacy of what their greed causes. So it's all there, it's all here, it's all now. Whether Zone 39 is like today or five years or ten or 15 years away, I believe it's within our lifespan.

Peter Phelps gave a frantic and aggro performance, desperate. Satirists are perfectionists; they satirise things because they wish the world was better. Is your making such a seemingly nihilistic film working on the same principle: here is the worst; surely we need to do better.

Absolutely. I think that's very much the case. In one way I'm an optimist and in another way I'm a pragmatist. I believe that's where we're heading, but I think that it's important to make any attempt we possibly can to avoid that happening. I think it's my way of saying, `Hey, we can't treat individuals like this, we shouldn't be treating individuals like this and, hey, we can't treat our world like this.' I have a child five months old and I naturally hope that he will be able to grow up in a world that is going to be at least as comfortable as mine was and hopefully even more so, but I don't believe that's actually going to be the case. So I guess it is a little bit of a warning, as insignificant as it might be. I think we do need to look at those issues because potentially they're going to be very tragic.

In that sense people who make futuristic films like this are moralists with ethical concerns.

I think so. There are some who are totally exploitative, who are doing it simply for shock value and for commercial gain, but I think many are not. Many are moralists who are simply seeing what the future holds or seeing what they believe the future holds and trying to warn either themselves or others that that's the way we're heading: `Hey, let's talk about it.'

And next?

We have three feature film projects in development - and again they're varied. One is a magic-realism piece, it's a book that we optioned. It was written by a young West Australian author and it's called The Mule Spoke. It won the Australian Vogel award three years ago and the young writer was only 21 or 22 when she wrote the book - very much an Isabella Allende, Garcia Marquez style. It's going to be a challenge. We have a very fine script that we hope to realise within the next six to 12 months. I'll be directing that feature.

There is another feature that came to us as an unsolicited script. It was written by two Western Australians - again coincidentally Western Australia. One of them went to Duntroon in the early '80s and the story's actually set there. It deals with bastardisation and the effects of institutions that are disciplinarian. It's stark but real and very powerful. It's called A Mere Bravo. We've brought a young director on board for that - I won't be directing that film, I'll be co producing it with my partner. The director is Alan Tsilimidis. He shot a movie, Everynight Everynight, which was his debut feature, which is a very powerful piece, very gruelling. If you can sit through that, you can sit through anything. He's a very, very talented filmmaker.

The third is totally different again. It's a romantic comedy, a screwball comedy set in the Mediterranean, about a young Australian boy and a young German girl and how chance and coincidence and fate and destiny all mesh in order for them to meet and continue to meet along their quite disparate journeys - and finally they come together, so it's a lot of fun.

How do you see yourself within the Australian industry?

I see myself and the company I'm part of, Media World, as being distinctly Australian and distinctly independent. Media world has grown over the past five or six years. We now, as I said, have an animation studio which employs 50 full-time staff. We have a lot of creative people working under the Media World umbrella and infrastructure. It's a very exciting time because I truly believe that the filmmaking process and the television program-making process are collaborative processes and we have got a lot of very, very talented people in Australia and, in particular in Melbourne and in Victoria, and it's a matter of combining those talents and nurturing those talents and then amalgamating those talents in order to create something, joint passions coming together in order to create a finished product. So I think my role now is moving from the independently creative through to hopefully the nurturing of new talent. It's an exciting thing to be doing, working with new directors, working with new writers, working with new cinematographers and helping make their projects come to life as well as some of the ideas that we have.


Interview: 20th May 1997