DOWN AND DIRTY BUST-UPS IN MAKING OZ CLASSIC, NEWSFRONT
I got all my stuff out of storage after living overseas for five years and found this book, called Third Take, which investigates the making of several Australian films, including the incomparable 1978 classic, Newsfront.
Newsfront is famous for winning 11 AFI awards and often being in the conversation when it comes to the greatest Australian film ever. But less well known are the film’s Apocalypse Now-style on-set, off-set bust-ups.
Third Take’s highlights include:
· Producer David Elfick crashtackling Bob Ellis when he tried to reclaim his script from the film's production office;
- Actor Bill Hunter’s heart attack on the eve of production;
· Ellis's vitriolic campaign to have his name taken-off the credits; and,
· Ellis's advertisements in the National Times saying he'd "shoot (director Phillip) Noyce and Eflick" if they ever strayed onto his property.
The Film:
Shot for $500,000, Newsfront integrates fictional narrative into a decade of newsreel footage featuring the Maitland floods, the referendum to ban the Communist Party and the 1956 Olympic Games.
The Story:
Newsfront establishes the rivalry between two fictional newsreel companies, Cinetone and Newsco.
How it happened:
The original idea was to make a compilation of newsreel footage about Australia's postwar history.
After several discussions between producer David Elfick, Mad Dog Morgan director Phillippe Mora and Oz Magazine's Richard Neville and Andrew Fisher, it was decided a fictional narrative should be woven into the newsreel footage.
Elfick and Fisher wrote the first draft. Richard Neville wrote the next. Then, the concept was passed on to Bob Ellis.
Ellis didn't read Neville's script because he thought it would "confuse" him and when Elfick gave him a synopsis of the film, he perused two pages before throwing it across the room and jumping on it because it was "so dreadful".
The Inspiration:
The film was inspired by Australian film industry icon Ken G. Hall - director of 17 movies including, Smithy - the story of aviator Charles Kingsford Smith.
Between 1948 and '56, Hall also managed the weekly Cinesound newsreel - the basis for the fictional "Cinetone" newsreel in Newsfront.
When Noyce and Elfick sought Hall's help on the project, he told them not to make it.
"I said I did not think anybody in this day and age would be very interested in what Cinesound and Movietone may have been doing in the forties and fifties," Hall said.
Hall also told the young filmmakers that Ellis's script would not make a good film: "...(it) built to a climax...and anticlimax after anticlimax.
"Another glaring error was that the authors had ... flung handfuls of four-letter words, willy-nilly, at the dialogue," said Hall. "This was stupid...because the cameramen of the period were mature, intelligent men who did not behave like street-corner louts and just did not talk the way off-target authors had them talking."
Hall went on to become an adviser on Newsfront and proclaimed the finished product to be "excellent". His suggestion that the Maitland flood be recreated on the sandy and shallow Narrabeen Lake solved one of Noyce's biggest challenges.
The Director's story:
Problems arose when Noyce and Elfick couldn't raise enough money to film the whole of Ellis's screenplay.
Scenes had to be cut and, according to Noyce, Ellis waged a "one man battle" for their reinstatement.
"When it appeared that failed, Bob, almost like the ancient mariner, would grab anyone who would listen, including some of the actors who'd already been cast and recount the troubles that had befallen his screenplay," Noyce said.
"I still shudder when... I'd hear from actors something like, 'We should put this scene back in the picture,' or 'We should be doing what Bob tells us'.
"It finally reached the stage where David severed the relationship with Bob and we decided to go it alone without his day-to-day involvement in the various decisions on what to shoot or who to cast."
When Ellis saw the final production, with various rewrites from Noyce, he was livered. He told the director: "You have changed my screenplay to the point that it's unrecognisable, the film will be a disaster, therefore you can take the blame, and the credits I propose are "Screenplay by Phillip Noyce, based on a screenplay by Bob Ellis."
When the film was nominated for 11 AFI Awards, Ellis and Noyce sat naked in a spa and made one last attempt to reconcile.
Noyce told Ellis: "This is ridiculous, the film might win tonight, you and I know that you wrote the script, I rewrote parts and reworked the structure. But it's your screenplay, so let's just cut all the gags out here and get back to reality."
When Newsfront won the award for Best Original Screenplay, Noyce says he rose from his seat and "felt a bolt of lightning shoot past me - it was Bob Ellis running up ahead of me to receive the award."
After the Awards, Ellis took out an ad in The National Times accepting credit for writing the screenplay, but still threatening to shoot Noyce and Elfick if they ever entered the boundaries of his Palm Beach property.
Noyce on Hunter:
Noyce told the bearded Hunter that he would have to be clean-shaven to play respected cameraman Len Magurie. Hunter was not happy, but nevertheless, obeyed his director's wishes.
"...Bill emerged (from the bathroom) and for the fist time we realised we'd cast someone who had... more than one chin is the best way to put it," Noyce says. "Maybe this was the reason he'd always had a beard.
"All we could think about was, 'Well, he's got to get rid of some of these chins before we start shooting'."
The Screenwriter's story:
Ellis admits to being "staggered" by the success of Newsfront and attributes it to the "music, editing and performances".
When he saw the film for the first time, he didn't like it and neither did his wife Anne Brooksbank.
Ellis approached Elfick after the screening and the producer asked: "Is your name on it or off?"
The screenwriter, who refers to himself in Third Take as "a man of letters", says he was shocked by Elfick's abruptness.
"Because (Elfick) was quite abrupt at that moment, I said, 'Off!'
"I was advised a few days later to restore my name because it was stupid not to do so," Ellis says.
Ellis contrived the eventual credit: "Screenplay by Phillip Noyce based on a screenplay by Bob Ellis".
"...I didn't know the credit was going to be put on the end of the film instead of the front. I should have just put my name back on, but I guess I was young and furious and didn't realise the enormity of what I was doing.
"I just thought I was having a private quarrel."
THE ACTOR’S STORY:
As a result of Hunter shaving off his beard and revealing his "chins", he was assigned a personal trainer and put on a strict exercise regime.
"Well, I probably knew more about fitness than PJ (the personal trainer)," he told Noyce in Third Take. "What you don't know sire, is that I had a massive heart attack and Sandy Beach - God love her - took me to an acupuncturist two days before we started shooting."
Noyce: "You had a heart attack! When?"
Hunter: "Two days before we started we shooting.
Noyce: "You went to hospital?"
Hunter: "No."
Noyce: "How did you know it was a heart attack?"
Hunter: "I stopped breathing for a while."
Noyce: "Where were you?"
Hunter: "Down the beach with PJ and Sandy."
Noyce: "You mean the training we set you caused a heart attack?"
Hunter: "Virtually. I'm not telling you a fib. This actually happened. PJ knew, Sandy knew, and I certainly knew. Nobody else did. I still saddled up for the part, though."