Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Something to Talk About for Stella Podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Sarah Lamarquin, your host, and every week I sit
Speaker 1: down with some of the biggest names in the country
Speaker 1: because when Australia's celebrities are ready to.
Speaker 2: Talk, they come to Something to talk about.
Speaker 1: In the thirty years between nineteen ninety and twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: seven hundred and eighty three films were made in Australia
Speaker 1: and David Stratton has seen every single one of them.
Speaker 1: Before retiring late last year. David spent nearly six decades
Speaker 1: reviewing movies, including an on air partnership with fellow critic
Speaker 1: Margaret Pomerantz that made them one of the most beloved
Speaker 1: double acts.
Speaker 2: In the country.
Speaker 3: To me, it was a winner, David, well, I'm afraid
Speaker 3: it wasn't for me.
Speaker 4: Margaret. I really didn't get onto the wavelength of this
Speaker 4: film at all. I thought it was patronizing towards its characters.
Speaker 4: I didn't find it funny.
Speaker 1: On today's episode, David joins me from his home in
Speaker 1: the Blue Mountains to discuss his new book, He's Enduring
Speaker 1: Friendship with Margaret, his thoughts on some of his most infamous,
Speaker 1: maybe even notorious reviews, including one that landed him in
Speaker 1: hot water with Julie Andrews, and the one film he
Speaker 1: thought was so bad he walked out of the cinema.
Speaker 1: David Stratton, Welcome to the Stellar Podcast.
Speaker 4: It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1: It's almost been a year since you retired. How is
Speaker 1: retirement treating you?
Speaker 4: Not too bad? I haven't been very well. One of
Speaker 4: the reasons I retired was that I lost much of
Speaker 4: my eyesight. So for a film critic, losing your eyesight
Speaker 4: is a pretty glum thing. I'm still coping. I can
Speaker 4: still watch movies, although they're a bit fuzzy these days.
Speaker 4: That I can still watch television. I can still read kindle,
Speaker 4: but I have to be very careful when I walk
Speaker 4: because in case I trip over things on which I'm
Speaker 4: avoiding doing. My other problem was that I fractured my spine,
Speaker 4: and so I had to learn how to walk again.
Speaker 4: Really so, but I've managed to do that pretty much,
Speaker 4: so I'm going well. My wife was looking after me wonderfully. Well,
Speaker 4: I couldn't do it without her. I've dedicated the book
Speaker 4: to her, and yeah, I'm look, I'm fine, really, David.
Speaker 1: I imagine over the course of your career, you have
Speaker 1: constantly been asked by punters what's your favorite film. It's
Speaker 1: a very obvious question for a film critic, and you've
Speaker 1: often cited Singing in the Rain as your all time favorite.
Speaker 1: Does that still stand today, especially since you clearly have
Speaker 1: seen a lot of films that you hadn't previously seen
Speaker 1: since you presumably last answered that question.
Speaker 4: No, I still love Singing in the Rain, and it's
Speaker 4: always loved musicals growing up, because you were. When you
Speaker 4: grew up in the late forties and early fifties, there
Speaker 4: was a new musical film almost every week, and most
Speaker 4: of the popular songs of the time were from movies.
Speaker 4: But the best of the musicals for me was Singing
Speaker 4: in the Rain. And again, I had a wonderful day
Speaker 4: with Jim Kelly. He invited me to his home in
Speaker 4: Beverly Hills and I was doing some radio for two
Speaker 4: GB in Sydney at the time, and I recorded a
Speaker 4: long interview with him, which was a wonderful experience. Was
Speaker 4: again he was a lovely, lovely man.
Speaker 1: So many people, of course remember you so fondly from
Speaker 1: your time on Australian screens, where your partnership with Margaret
Speaker 1: Pomeranz was one of the most famous double acts in
Speaker 1: Australian television. You are broadcast on the ABC from two
Speaker 1: thousand and four on the final episode on twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1: Of course, he'd been presenting together on SBS the Movie
Speaker 1: Show since nineteen eighty six. Again, this is not a
Speaker 1: question that you have not been asked countless times before,
Speaker 1: but nothing if not predictable. What was it do you think,
Speaker 1: David about that double ac that struck such a chord
Speaker 1: and I imagine still does continue to this day.
Speaker 4: Look, I honestly don't know the answer to that question.
Speaker 4: It came as a surprise to us. I think. I
Speaker 4: don't want to speak for Margaret, but I don't think
Speaker 4: we expected anything like that. And the fact that some
Speaker 4: of the SBS movie shows are still screening today on
Speaker 4: SBS during the day just stupefies me sometimes. Look, we
Speaker 4: we came from different, a different background. I had always
Speaker 4: I was a film nerd, I guess you would say.
Speaker 4: And I'd always been since I was a kid. I'd
Speaker 4: gone to every single film that I could, no matter
Speaker 4: what it was, I just wanted to see everything. Margaret
Speaker 4: was much more like a regular film goer. She had
Speaker 4: always gone to see the film she thought sounded interesting
Speaker 4: and wanted to see. I don't think she'd ever seen
Speaker 4: a horror film, for example, but suddenly she had to
Speaker 4: see those. So I had some sort of historical background
Speaker 4: of cinema and Margaret didn't. The combination of those two
Speaker 4: approaches seemed to work quite well, and people seem to
Speaker 4: like the banter between us.
Speaker 2: Have the two of you kept in touch very much, so.
Speaker 4: We talk probably once a week on the phone. Margaret's
Speaker 4: been to visit me in the Blue Mountains a couple
Speaker 4: of times. I can't get out about much anymore. But no, no,
Speaker 4: we're in very close touch and it's always a pleasure
Speaker 4: to chat to Margaret. We get on very well.
Speaker 2: David.
Speaker 1: I'd love to ask you specifically about some of the
Speaker 1: things that talked about in your new book, Australia at
Speaker 1: the Movies. You have broken it down into categories. One
Speaker 1: I'd like to talk to you about, I suppose is
Speaker 1: Australian comedy. For a country that really prides itself on
Speaker 1: our sense of humor, not as many classic comedies as
Speaker 1: we would expect.
Speaker 4: I think comedy is the most difficult genre to do well,
Speaker 4: because comedy means different things to different people. What I
Speaker 4: think is funny, you may not think is funny. I
Speaker 4: love Lauren Hardy and the Marx blothers, and you may not.
Speaker 4: You know, that's the difference. So I think it's hard
Speaker 4: to do well, or hard to get across to a
Speaker 4: wide audience. When I first saw The Castle, it didn't
Speaker 4: impress me terribly much. The humor wasn't on my wavelength.
Speaker 4: I've seen it since and I've appreciated it much much more.
Speaker 4: But it's really hard to do I think. And there
Speaker 4: have been some very disappointing comedies and have been some
Speaker 4: wonderful comedies, So I think that's the reason.
Speaker 1: What about romantic comedies, David. That is obviously a genre
Speaker 1: that is traditionally much maligned, and it sort of went
Speaker 1: away for a little bit from Hollywood, and it's having
Speaker 1: a little bit of a resurgence lately, I think, especially
Speaker 1: to streaming possibly, But again Australia, we haven't produced an
Speaker 1: awful lot of rom coms. I remember when there was
Speaker 1: a Claudia Carvin Hugh Jackman one in the late nineties.
Speaker 1: It felt like the first time in a long time
Speaker 1: that we tackled that. What do you think about romantic
Speaker 1: comedy as a genre and do you think that's been
Speaker 1: a bit of a missed opportunity for Australian filmmakers.
Speaker 4: Yes, maybe, Again, I don't think it's You've got to
Speaker 4: get absolutely the right actors to do rom com well.
Speaker 4: And Claudia Carwan is peerless in that respect. She could
Speaker 4: have done a lot more. She's a wonderful comedian and
Speaker 4: a wonderful actor. And Hugh Jackman, of course, is also
Speaker 4: very good. That early film The Big Steal with Claudia
Speaker 4: and Ben Mendelssohn is a very very nice rom com,
Speaker 4: sort of teenage rom com. But yeah, it's not easy
Speaker 4: to do. We haven't we haven't always just found just
Speaker 4: the right tone for the romantic comedies that have been
Speaker 4: the kind of romantic comedies that have been so successful
Speaker 4: in Hollywood.
Speaker 1: Another film that you revisit in this era, of course,
Speaker 1: is Lantana, which was a big hit with audiences and
Speaker 1: also critically acclaimed film.
Speaker 2: I wanted to ask.
Speaker 1: You, David a little bit about your thoughts on class
Speaker 1: in Australian cinema, because from my observation, there's quite a
Speaker 1: lot of working class films. We've got quite an affiliation
Speaker 1: towards quite gritty. Obviously a soft spot in this country
Speaker 1: for the crime genre, whether it's on television or in film.
Speaker 1: I remember thinking at the time that Lantana had, you know,
Speaker 1: a little bit of shades of American beauty and some
Speaker 1: of those other class suburban films in that it was
Speaker 1: about middle class Australians, and of course.
Speaker 2: A lot most Australians actually.
Speaker 1: Are middle class. What do you think about the notion
Speaker 1: of class and what role, if any, that might have
Speaker 1: played in modern Australian cinema.
Speaker 4: We're supposed to be a classless society, aren't we. It's
Speaker 4: not really true, but I agree with you the characters
Speaker 4: in Lantana, which is one of the great Australian films,
Speaker 4: I think we're mostly from middle class.
Speaker 1: So many films are revisited in your book. My deputy
Speaker 1: editor Nicholas Vonseca counted, and I believe he thought there
Speaker 1: were seven hundred and eighty three films that were referenced
Speaker 1: in the book. David. A lot of people would be
Speaker 1: surprised to hear that that between this thirty year period
Speaker 1: in Australia there have been that many locally made films.
Speaker 1: What do you think about that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Look, I think the first thing to say is
Speaker 4: that a lot of the films in the book never
Speaker 4: saw the light of a cinema screen or even screaming.
Speaker 4: So in order to write the book, I wanted to
Speaker 4: be as comprehensive as I possibly could and cover every
Speaker 4: Australian feature film, not documentaries, not short films, but feature
Speaker 4: films that had been made between nineteen ninety and twenty twenty.
Speaker 4: And to do that I had seen most of them,
Speaker 4: but there were quite a few that I hadn't seen
Speaker 4: because they were never screamed. So I had to contact
Speaker 4: the filmmakers, track them down, which was not always easy,
Speaker 4: and get them to send me a link to their
Speaker 4: films so that I could see it and write about it.
Speaker 4: So that's probably why there were so many, because there
Speaker 4: were a lot that were never never scene.
Speaker 1: Would I be putting you on the spot if I
Speaker 1: asked you to recommend one Australian film for somebody to watch.
Speaker 4: Look, I think there are a handful of really great
Speaker 4: Australian films. High on the list would be Samson and
Speaker 4: Delilah by Warwick Thornton, which is about two indigenous kids
Speaker 4: living in the outback near Alla Springs, and it's a
Speaker 4: love story in which no words have spoken. It's a wonderful,
Speaker 4: wonderful film. I also love Charlie's Country, which is after
Speaker 4: Hears film, which was the last film with David Golferlo
Speaker 4: and it's really almost biographical about David golfs towards the
Speaker 4: end of his life. It's another wonderful film. And then
Speaker 4: there'll be films like Muriel's Wedding, which I think is
Speaker 4: just terrific Adventures of Priscilla. I like Enormously Animal Kingdom,
Speaker 4: a terrific thriller, Lion. Do you remember Lion?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, that was a lovely film twenty seventeen. I think, yes, that.
Speaker 4: Was very good. And there's a little film again that
Speaker 4: nobody has seen called a Lion Returns, which was made
Speaker 4: at the height of the Islamic State dramas in the
Speaker 4: Middle East and it was set in a Muslim community
Speaker 4: in a Sydney suburb and it was about one of
Speaker 4: the members of the family who has just returned from
Speaker 4: Syria where he may have been involved with Islamic State.
Speaker 4: And it's a very tense film. It's a very impressive
Speaker 4: film in every way, but again very few people saw it.
Speaker 1: One of the films that you touch upon in the
Speaker 1: course of this book, of course, is Rompa Stomper, which
Speaker 1: is notable for many reasons. That film, for a start,
Speaker 1: it was a launching pad for little known actor for
Speaker 1: some of our listeners might have heard of by the
Speaker 1: name of Russell Crowe. But of course, David, you also
Speaker 1: quite infamously didn't like the film, and in fact wouldn't
Speaker 1: rate it at the time.
Speaker 2: I know that people see it as a racist film.
Speaker 3: I profoundly disagree. Unlike Margaret, I was troubled by rom
Speaker 3: Pa Stompa's extreme violence and promotion of racial supremacy. But
Speaker 3: the filmmaking was excellent, so I couldn't give it a
Speaker 3: poor rating. Yet I had to convey my concerns. Somehow,
Speaker 3: I can't score it at all.
Speaker 4: I'm afraid.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to ask you about a few different
Speaker 1: things about that. First of all, I suppose the feedback
Speaker 1: that you get when you take a position on a
Speaker 1: film like that that then really becomes a story in
Speaker 1: and of itself. And then I'd like to ask you
Speaker 1: also about any of the moments that really stand out
Speaker 1: for you when you and Margaret with that on screen
Speaker 1: dynamic did have a very newsworthy difference of opinion.
Speaker 4: Well with Ronvstomper. It wasn't that I trying to sort
Speaker 4: of step back a bit. As a film. It wasn't
Speaker 4: at all bad and Russell Crowe was extraordinary in it,
Speaker 4: I thought. So. It wasn't that I didn't like the film.
Speaker 4: I just didn't like what it was saying, or rather
Speaker 4: what it wasn't saying, because it was a film that
Speaker 4: where the protagonists were Neo Nazis, skinheads, vicious, violent ones,
Speaker 4: and it seemed to me and I still believe it,
Speaker 4: that it could have stirred up violence in it was
Speaker 4: the Vietnamese community in those days today be the Islamic
Speaker 4: community probably, and I think anything like that. There was
Speaker 4: no sense at all that that to me anyway, that
Speaker 4: the Russell Crowe character Handa was doing was not was
Speaker 4: not doing what he believed was right and and and
Speaker 4: it was it was. I just found that side of
Speaker 4: it repulsive. Now I made a big mistake. I acknowledge
Speaker 4: now I made a big mistake by not giving it
Speaker 4: a score on the movies. No, it was the movie
Speaker 4: show in those days. I I felt wrongly as it
Speaker 4: turned out, but I felt that I just didn't want
Speaker 4: to because I thought the film had some qualities, so
Speaker 4: I couldn't give it two stars or something like that.
Speaker 4: But at the same time, I couldn't four stars because
Speaker 4: I just felt it was a dangerous film. I guess
Speaker 4: I would say, I think that's what I felt at
Speaker 4: the time, a dangerous one. So I decided not to
Speaker 4: give it a score at all. That, of course, was
Speaker 4: used very skillfully by the distributor of the film to
Speaker 4: publicize and as a result, more people probably went to
Speaker 4: see the film. I did have some contact with people afterwards.
Speaker 4: You thank me for my stand on it. Of course,
Speaker 4: I also had contact from people who who hated my
Speaker 4: standard it. But anyway, there we are, and.
Speaker 1: Up next, what happened when Julie Andrews complained about one
Speaker 1: of David's reviews and David's thought on cancel culture and censorship.
Speaker 1: You've mentioned, obviously some of the most famous actors in
Speaker 1: the world that you have met throughout the course of
Speaker 1: your career, and you really have interviewed some of the
Speaker 1: most prolific and successful filmmakers, screenwriters, actors, creators of the
Speaker 1: last forty fifty sixty years, when you do review something
Speaker 1: that is negative or has constructive feedback that may not
Speaker 1: be received in the constructive spirit in which it was intended.
Speaker 1: Have there been any awkward moments or memorable moments that
Speaker 1: stand out for you where you were receiving that feedback
Speaker 1: in person about a review?
Speaker 4: That was not so much reviewing films with Margaret, but
Speaker 4: I was also for twenty years reviewing films for the
Speaker 4: American newspaper Variety, and Variety is of paper that is
Speaker 4: read by everybody in the film industry. And there was
Speaker 4: one occasion when for some reason, they had a preview
Speaker 4: of a new film by Blake Edwards, a director I
Speaker 4: liked very much. I loved the Pink Panther films and
Speaker 4: so on. But this was called a fine mess, and
Speaker 4: it was a mess. And they had a preview in Sydney,
Speaker 4: which I went to before they had a preview in America.
Speaker 4: And just as a matter of course, I just I
Speaker 4: send a note to my editor at Variety and said
Speaker 4: I've seen a fine mess. If you want a review,
Speaker 4: I can do it. And they came back and said, oh, yes,
Speaker 4: please do it. So I wrote this not very well,
Speaker 4: very negative review of I mean, it really was a
Speaker 4: terrible film. And I heard afterwards that Julie Andrews rang
Speaker 4: Variety to complain and asked, who was this David Stratton
Speaker 4: in Sydney who saw this film? Because Blake was not happy.
Speaker 4: So that was with the most prominent piece of nay
Speaker 4: saying apparently he was reading it over breakfast and he
Speaker 4: choked on his cereal or something. I don't know, but
Speaker 4: it's interesting because my colleague Paul Burns, who used to
Speaker 4: write for the Sidney Morning Herald when he retired, he
Speaker 4: said that one thing a film critic cannot be is
Speaker 4: friendly with a filmmaker. And I found that not to
Speaker 4: be true. I think you can be friendly with a filmmaker.
Speaker 4: I was friendly with a lot of filmmakers, but you
Speaker 4: have to still be honest about their film. And it
Speaker 4: was you know, when you're writing a review or when
Speaker 4: you're televising a review, your first duties to the reader
Speaker 4: or the audience, not to the filmmaker, and so sometimes
Speaker 4: I had to. I mean, I'll give you one example.
Speaker 4: Paul Cox, the Melbourne based filmmaker, was a very very
Speaker 4: good friend of mine and I liked his early films enormously,
Speaker 4: and then later in his career he seemed to lose
Speaker 4: it a bit and he had a new film. We
Speaker 4: reviewed it on the show. I gave it a pretty
Speaker 4: bad review, and I thought, well, I better g just
Speaker 4: Ringpaul and tell him warn him, and I did, and
Speaker 4: he said, oh, that's all right, you need to say
Speaker 4: it how you feel if you're a critic. And then
Speaker 4: the next day, after the show went to air, he
Speaker 4: rang me and said, you really didn't like it.
Speaker 1: But I would like to ask in about the more
Speaker 1: general question about censorship in film. You've always been very
Speaker 1: passionate opponent of censorship, and of course, as you and
Speaker 1: I are speaking in twenty twenty four, part of the
Speaker 1: new era of censorship is this notion of well, what
Speaker 1: we call cancel culture, which I think is a bit
Speaker 1: of a simplistic term, but obviously does speak to the
Speaker 1: fact that we're living in a time we're really policing
Speaker 1: opinions and the role of culture. But also this notion
Speaker 1: of criticizing a piece of work that was made five, fifteen,
Speaker 1: fifty five years ago through the prism of our current values.
Speaker 2: Can I ask you how you feel about that?
Speaker 4: I don't approve of it at all. I don't like
Speaker 4: this whole notion of cancel culture. I mean, for example,
Speaker 4: Roman Polanski may have done some bad things in his
Speaker 4: private life. I don't know, but Chinatown is a masterpiece
Speaker 4: and nothing will nothing will alter that. Woody Allen, who's
Speaker 4: been accused of things, never been charged, but now his
Speaker 4: films aren't shown in America at all, and that's to me,
Speaker 4: I mean, I think that's wrong. If you want to
Speaker 4: start accusing people who've done bad things and getting their
Speaker 4: films banned, you would never look at a Charlie Chaplin
Speaker 4: film because Charlie Chaplin did some pretty bad things. Errol
Speaker 4: Flinn did some pretty bad things. You know, you would
Speaker 4: you would not look at any of those film Those
Speaker 4: classic films are not condoning the actions of the filmmakers,
Speaker 4: But I'm just saying that the art that they created
Speaker 4: should not be confused with the character of the film
Speaker 4: maker or the artist.
Speaker 1: What it has absolutely been a conversation, this struggle, I think,
Speaker 1: with separating the artist from their work. And another conversation
Speaker 1: that has been happening of course a lot, particularly in
Speaker 1: film in the last few years, is whether it is
Speaker 1: okay for like an able bodied actor to play a
Speaker 1: character with the disability, or whether it is okay for
Speaker 1: a heterosexual actor to play a queer character. And obviously
Speaker 1: this has been something there's been a lot of discussion about.
Speaker 1: We've discussed it on this podcast with various people, where
Speaker 1: I think it's a real shame because apart from anything,
Speaker 1: I think we're shutting down our empathy, because we're sort
Speaker 1: of saying to people, you couldn't possibly have any empathy
Speaker 1: or capacity to imagine or inhabit the experience of anyone
Speaker 1: who isn't exactly on a parallel identity to your own.
Speaker 4: But you're opinion on that, well, again, my opinion on
Speaker 4: that is that actors are actors. They're meant to act.
Speaker 4: And I think where I would disagree take issue would
Speaker 4: be when, in let's say a Passage to India, Alec
Speaker 4: Guinness played an Indian. There were plenty of Indian actors
Speaker 4: who could have played that part at that time. Prior
Speaker 4: to that, when there were performances of Othello, you could
Speaker 4: say maybe that we're not the black actors who could
Speaker 4: take that role. Now there are, so I think now
Speaker 4: I would expect a black actor to play Othello. But
Speaker 4: I would never expect a gay actor to play a
Speaker 4: gay character, or that sort of thing is just taking
Speaker 4: it too far. What I do really object to strongly
Speaker 4: is what they call colorblind casting. And I'll give you
Speaker 4: an example. There was a film last year I think
Speaker 4: it was, or maybe the year before, called See How
Speaker 4: They Run a British Film, and it was set around
Speaker 4: the performance of The Mousetrap, Agatha Christie's play The Mousetrap,
Speaker 4: and there was supposed to be a murder of the
Speaker 4: theater where the play was taking place, and in one scene,
Speaker 4: the characters in the film visit the home of Agatha Christie.
Speaker 4: Now Agatha Christie was married to a famous archaeologist, white
Speaker 4: archaeologist called Max Malloween. In the film, he was played
Speaker 4: by a black actor. Now I find that reprehensible. I
Speaker 4: don't care what the motives are for it. I find
Speaker 4: it completely wrong. And you know, you see films like
Speaker 4: Wicked Little Letters in which supposed to be said in
Speaker 4: nineteen twenty and the judge is played by a black actor. Wrong,
Speaker 4: they wouldn't be, and that is wrong. I think it's
Speaker 4: just as wrong to give a role to a black actor,
Speaker 4: just as token is.
Speaker 1: There has been discussion that Gone with the Wind shouldn't
Speaker 1: be played anymore because it is the way that it
Speaker 1: is depicting people of color. And of course that's not
Speaker 1: to say that Margaret Mitchell probably should be doing a
Speaker 1: better job of some of that if she was writing
Speaker 1: that in twenty twenty four, but it is obviously was
Speaker 1: a really our famous novel and an amazing film, I
Speaker 1: would argue, and personally, I think that's crazy to look
Speaker 1: back at that through our twenty first century, twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four lens and say that that film doesn't have a
Speaker 1: place anymore. What's your lens for this, David.
Speaker 4: Look, I agree, I think it's I think it's important
Speaker 4: to remember that any work of art, a film, a
Speaker 4: player book, any work of art reflects the time that
Speaker 4: it was made. So Gone with the Wind reflects the
Speaker 4: opinions and the thoughts of people in nineteen thirty nine,
Speaker 4: and that's eighty five years ago, so it's it's it's
Speaker 4: nonsense to you can say, Okay, that's interesting. That's the
Speaker 4: way they looked at it then, and how wrong were they?
Speaker 4: They were really wrong, But that's the way they saw
Speaker 4: it then, and that I think is the way to
Speaker 4: approach it. I mean, even worse is the first great
Speaker 4: movie classic, The Birth of a Nation, which was made
Speaker 4: in nineteen fifteen and celebrates the ku Klux Ku Klux
Speaker 4: Klan and what was the president of the day? It was,
Speaker 4: I forget who was the president of the day, but
Speaker 4: screened it the White House and praise it to the skies.
Speaker 4: Of course you wouldn't do that today, but you should
Speaker 4: still be able to see the film because it's a
Speaker 4: great pioneering film with a very bad approach to race relations.
Speaker 1: And it can also be a bit of a mirror,
Speaker 1: can't it, and show us how far we've come?
Speaker 2: David?
Speaker 1: Has there ever been a film that you have watched
Speaker 1: and thought I cannot get through this, it's just yes.
Speaker 4: Tell me Assassin's Creed maybe an Australian directric called Justin Kurzel.
Speaker 4: After about an hour, I didn't have to review it.
Speaker 4: I would never walk out of a film I had
Speaker 4: to review, but I wasn't reviewing it, and after about
Speaker 4: an hour I thought, I just cannot stand this. This
Speaker 4: is just awful, and I walked out.
Speaker 1: Has it conver perly ever been a film that you
Speaker 1: did review? And we touch upon this a little bit
Speaker 1: with Rumpastompa, but something that you were quite harsh on,
Speaker 1: and then you've had cause to reflect since and think
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 2: Too hard on that, but in quite a big.
Speaker 1: Way, and think I wish maybe I could go over
Speaker 1: and reconsider my evaluation of that piece of work.
Speaker 4: I think The Castle probably there were two things that
Speaker 4: I had problems with over The Castle. One was that
Speaker 4: it was the first film made by this television group,
Speaker 4: Rob Sitch and the others, and it was a very
Speaker 4: televisual film. I mean, cinema to me is not just
Speaker 4: acting and writing and directing, but it's also cinematography. There's
Speaker 4: a lot of elements that contribute to making a great film.
Speaker 4: And I thought The Castle was not very technically very
Speaker 4: I mean, it was all right, but it wasn't special
Speaker 4: in any way. And then the other thing about it,
Speaker 4: I just didn't latch onto the sense of humor, and
Speaker 4: I admit that I found it condescending towards these battlers,
Speaker 4: and so I didn't review it very well. I've seen
Speaker 4: it since. I still think it's a very prosaically made film.
Speaker 4: The Dish is much much better, a big step forward,
Speaker 4: but I sort of got the humor more and in
Speaker 4: fact I laughed out loud when two or more as
Speaker 4: the lawyer in the courtroom talks about the vibe. I
Speaker 4: was laughing out loud.
Speaker 1: One of the reviews when you and Margaret were working together,
Speaker 1: that really stuck in my mind. It's an American film
Speaker 1: I'm going to reference here was Team America World Police,
Speaker 1: made by the part creators. Came out in two thousand
Speaker 1: and four. It was not long after the war in Iraq,
Speaker 1: and not sure if you remember the one I'm talking about,
Speaker 1: but it was animated and it had all these sort
Speaker 1: of celebrity character tours, so like Tim Robbins and people
Speaker 1: are actors of the day who'd spoken out against the
Speaker 1: war in Iraq, and the film was really parroting these
Speaker 1: say oh there, you know, Matt Damon. There were lines like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm qualified to tell people what to think because I
Speaker 1: read an article about it and it was I'm going
Speaker 1: to show my bias because I really agreed with you,
Speaker 1: because I actually think it was quite a conservative film.
Speaker 2: It's something I've actually discussed on.
Speaker 1: This podcast with other people about the way that it
Speaker 1: was really trying to silence celebrities from having a political stance. Whereas,
Speaker 1: funnily enough, in twenty twenty four, the reverses happened. Now
Speaker 1: celebrities get trolled if they don't speak out on every thing.
Speaker 1: So I think it shows interestingly, I think we've gone
Speaker 1: from one extreme to the other. So I did recently
Speaker 1: cite that film in a conversation here, but Margaret didn't agree,
Speaker 1: and she was saying to you, Oh, no, you didn't
Speaker 1: get it. I don't know if you I really remember,
Speaker 1: because I was watching it. I like, I say, I
Speaker 1: know I'm biased, but I thought, no, David's completely right
Speaker 1: on this, and it's not that you didn't get it.
Speaker 1: It was actually, I would say, quite an astute point.
Speaker 2: That's one that you know sticks out in my mind.
Speaker 1: Can I ask you a little bit about any of
Speaker 1: those moments where there was civil disagreement between you and
Speaker 1: Margaret but you may have felt a bit misunderstood either
Speaker 1: one of you, or did that tension ever then spill
Speaker 1: from the on air dynamic off set for instance?
Speaker 4: I don't think so. I mean, I remember the film
Speaker 4: you were talking about, and yeah, I mean I think
Speaker 4: I can't remember Margaret's thoughts and I don't want to
Speaker 4: quote her, but yes, I felt it was a conservative
Speaker 4: film that was trying to make fun of people who
Speaker 4: were trying to do the right thing. I can't remember,
Speaker 4: I think, I mean, we just obviously we disagreed. Otherwise
Speaker 4: Margaret couldn't have come out with her famous line, oh David,
Speaker 4: or whatever it was she used to say. But it
Speaker 4: never spilled over into into after the show was was
Speaker 4: was finished. We always we usually went out and had
Speaker 4: lunch after recording the show and had a glass or
Speaker 4: three of white So that the lost.
Speaker 1: Art of civil disagreement something that I fear is becoming
Speaker 1: increasingly rare in our modern culture.
Speaker 4: Well, I think it is. I think it is. It's
Speaker 4: distressing me, and I don't think the politicians are helping much. David.
Speaker 1: I'll have to let you go, but before I do,
Speaker 1: can I just get your thoughts on cinema. You have
Speaker 1: obviously spent a lot of time in cinemas over the years,
Speaker 1: I imagine, not only because of the era of streaming,
Speaker 1: but that's obviously something that you would be doing less yourself,
Speaker 1: of course, watching more things from home. And then of
Speaker 1: course we are more broadly as a as a world,
Speaker 1: not a global community. Of course, the pandemic really disrupted cinema,
Speaker 1: which had already been seen to be struggling a little bit.
Speaker 1: What are your thoughts about cinema as an art form.
Speaker 1: Do you think that people going to the movies will
Speaker 1: continue to exist as a way that we consume film,
Speaker 1: and if not, do you think that thanks to streaming,
Speaker 1: it's something that will still survive.
Speaker 4: I have a feeling. I don't know for sure. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's hard to predict the future, but I have a
Speaker 4: feeling that there will still be cinemas showing big films.
Speaker 4: I hate to say it, but superhero films, which I
Speaker 4: don't like much, but that sort of thing, something like Oppenheim,
Speaker 4: that kind of big prestige film. I think the smaller films,
Speaker 4: and in Australia, the foreign language films, the French films,
Speaker 4: the Italian films, will probably no longer be shown in cinemas.
Speaker 4: I think the future I hate to say it, but
Speaker 4: I think the future for the small cinemas is not great,
Speaker 4: and I think those small films will wind up on
Speaker 4: streaming and other whatever whatever other way. I mean. I
Speaker 4: think it's I think it's terrible when people watch films
Speaker 4: that demand to be seen on a sim the screen
Speaker 4: on their phone or something like that. I mean, that's
Speaker 4: not seeing the film at all, that's seeing a sort
Speaker 4: of pale shadow of it.
Speaker 1: My final question for you, David, is about the lost
Speaker 1: art of the film critic. We're living in a time
Speaker 1: where people hop on to TikTok or fire off a
Speaker 1: review online, and a film can be over before it's
Speaker 1: even begun.
Speaker 2: Do you think.
Speaker 1: Ever about what your professional life in your career might
Speaker 1: have looked like if you had been emerging to begin
Speaker 1: your career in.
Speaker 2: Modern day?
Speaker 4: Pretty different, I'm sure. Yeah. Look, it's like I was
Speaker 4: looking at a cafe that I like very much here
Speaker 4: in the Blue Mountains and the very first so called
Speaker 4: review was terrible. Now, and that was top of the
Speaker 4: list of reviews like half a star or something, and
Speaker 4: complaining about this and that and the other, none of
Speaker 4: which I've ever experienced in this particular cape, And I thought,
Speaker 4: how damaging this must be if people are looking it
Speaker 4: up to see where to go for lunch in the mountains.
Speaker 4: It's so wrong. And I guess the same sort of
Speaker 4: thing is happening with social media and movie reviewing, but
Speaker 4: there's nothing you can do about it. I mean, it's
Speaker 4: an understandable thing to want to post your comments on
Speaker 4: a film, even if they're uninformed comments. I mean, are
Speaker 4: you a better reviewer because you happen to know something
Speaker 4: about the history of cinema? I think so, but maybe
Speaker 4: it's not necessary.
Speaker 1: Also, the capacity, I think to self reflect. That's been
Speaker 1: very evident in our conversation today, and you looking back
Speaker 1: and thinking, I think, I would you know, reconsider the
Speaker 1: opinion of that or have that civil disagreement with your
Speaker 1: on air spiring partner Again, I think these equalities that
Speaker 1: might be missing from our modern discourse.
Speaker 4: Well possibly possibly, I don't know that I'm qualified to
Speaker 4: speak about that, but yeah, I think you've got You've
Speaker 4: got to be thoughtful, considerate in life, you know, let alone.
Speaker 4: I was never the kind of critic that wanted to
Speaker 4: attack a film or a filmmaker or an actor. You know,
Speaker 4: I never wanted to do that. I know that making
Speaker 4: a film is a a You pour your life and soul,
Speaker 4: your heart and soul into making a film, and it
Speaker 4: can take months, if not years sometimes to make a
Speaker 4: film and complete it and then to have someone destroy it.
Speaker 4: I think you can criticize it without being vindictive or
Speaker 4: really really nasty. So I was never the kind of
Speaker 4: critic that wanted to be really, really hostile. I wanted
Speaker 4: to be to say, look, you know this and this
Speaker 4: and this, but never to sort of demolish the whole thing.
Speaker 4: That was my aim. I don't know if I succeeded, but.
Speaker 1: David, it's been an absolute pleasure to speak to you today.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 4: It's been a great palue. Thank you.
Speaker 1: David Stratton's new book, Australia at the Movies is available
Speaker 1: to purchase by the link in our show notes.
Speaker 2: Thank you for joining us today.
Speaker 1: If you've enjoyed this episode, maybe give us a review,
Speaker 1: be like David, don't be unkind, hopefully a five star review,
Speaker 1: and make sure you're following us because we'll be back
Speaker 1: with another exclusive guest on Stella's podcast next week