REMEMBERING ROB DICKSON
This week, the documentary filmmaker Peter Dickson released a book about his late brother, Rob – who played for Hawthorn and Brisbane, won the first season of Australian Survivor, and was an exceptional filmmaker himself.
It’s not like I knew Rob like others knew him. My time with him only lasted about three months. But it was an intense three months - enough to convince me that this was a man who deserved a book written about him.
I met Rob in 2007 on the set of Valentine’s Day, a telemovie in which a misbehaving Rhys Muldoon is sentenced to 200 hours community service in the form of coaching the town’s football team. Unsurprisingly, there was a lot of footy action on Valentine’s Day and part of Rob’s job was to make a bunch of actors, including me, Simon Lyndon (Chopper) and Steve Rodgers (The Code), look like they could play.
On the first day of training, Rob took a look at my skills and said, “Adam, I can’t teach you to be a footballer, but I can teach you to look like one.”
And so, three nights a week, we actors would go down to Glenferrie Oval and Rob would try to make us “look” like footballers. I must have found it confronting because I started a diary, which was unusual for me.
Here’s an extract:
“The guy teaching us is Robbie - he played for Hawthorn in the 80s. He thinks I’m useless, and always turns away from me when I drop the ball. I want to take him aside and say ‘Yes, I am useless. Just a little less useless than you think’.”
I got better and Rob started talking to me – telling me stories about his time on Survivor and his dreams of making movies. He explained his philosophy on shooting sporting action and how it had to be authentic. And he was true to his word because he made the football action onValentine’s Day super authentic.
For the first game, he brought in a team of wharfies who would take on our fictional country team made up of actors and extras. I started at half forward and manned up against a friendly wharfie, who shook my hand and introduced himself. Then, after the siren went, the wharfie punched me in the head and I dropped to the ground. As I lay in the mud, I could hear the wharfie yelling to his mates, “I just decked the Free for Free guy.” If you don’t know what he’s talking about. See below.
But as far as Rob was concerned, the problem wasn’t that the wharfies were playing rough, it was that they weren’t allowing us to win. And that was important because in the script it said our team wins. Now, you can cheat that kind of stuff in the edit to an extent – ie cutting to a scoreboard which says we’re winning. But it’s hard to do that when there’s no footage of us getting the ball. I remember Rob addressing the wharfies at three quarter time and saying that they needed to let the actors rack up more possessions because that’s what it says in the script. But it never happened. After that, we only played against teams of stuntmen who were happy to serve the story.
The filming went on for weeks, day after day, shooting football in the winter rain and mud.
After one game, I wrote in my diary:
“Robbie wanted us to take part in a melee in the middle of the ground, which was essentially a swamp. He was yelling at everyone: “Get in there!’ But I hung back. Hope he’s not angry. Don’t think he noticed. I think I’m getting a cold. Zero touches for the day.”
I then go on to detail in my diary about getting sick with strep and sitting out the second last game because I was too ill. Simon Lyndon was also crook. And we just hung out in the bus, which was our makeshift dressing room.
Here’s an extract where Simon tells me he ran into Chopper Read the other day.
Simon to Chopper: “I said, ‘You remember me?’ He said, ‘Nuh.’ I said ‘I’m Jimmy from Chopper.’ And he said, ‘Why didn’t you invite me to the premiere?’ I said, ‘I had nothing to do with the invitations to the premiere.’ He said, ‘That movie made millions and here I am bankrupt.’ I said, ‘We’re all bankrupt!’”
I was well enough to play the final game and had a good one. Well, a good one for me. I had a few snaps at goal, which went through for behinds. The team was disappointed that I didn’t kick straight, but I was stoked to bother the scorers at all. And when I came off the field, Rob had a big smile on his face.
He was genuinely happy for me. And I was happy that he was happy – even though, in the scheme of things, my footballing was terrible.
“Here he is,” he said, playfully punching me in the arms and guts. “Here he is! You got a couple of touches. Nice work, mate.”
And they were the last words he said to me.
Whatever Rob was paid on that gig, it wasn’t enough. Actors are whingers. They hate looking like shit. They hate being wet and cold. They hate any non-professional physical contact in the region of the hair or face. But we traveled out of our comfort zone because we didn’t want to disappoint Rob. He was funny, handsome, and had superior hand-eye coordination. I know I wasn’t the only one thinking: “Why am I in front of the camera and not you?”
Eighteen months later, Rob and his two sons were tragically killed in a car accident while on a family holiday in South Africa. The news hit me hard. How does the world rebalance itself when it loses that much energy, enthusiasm and hustle?
He Was My Brother - by Peter Dickson. Available here.