Mental, written and directed by P.J. Hogan, an produced by Jocelyn Moorhouse with Todd Fellman and Janet and Jerry Zucker, was officially launched on the world as the closing night film of the Melbourne International Film Festival. It was a confronting treat.
As MIFF did its usual multicinema exhibition at important moments, it was a bit hard to work out how the audience felt about Mental, and the party was a noisy event full of tired people so no-one was deep in conversation.
One thing is for sure with Mental. With provisos about the money, the Hogan and Moorhouse team did exactly what they wanted, ably supported by a cast alive with the memory of Muriel`s Wedding, which grew in the same daggy, cartoonish suburbia awash with songs from a low-rent classic.
Tonally, the film whips in and out between comedy, melodrama, some vicious satire, expressionist melodrama and pure myth. Even on that level, it is pretty fascinating for filmmakers. It takes the traditional Hollywoodesque rules of script editing and drowns them in a bucket, and expects the audience to go with the silliness, and remain intellectually alert at the same time.
We at Screen Hub want to celebrate the sheer audacity and distinctiveness of the film. Hogan knows what he wants it to be, and makes it happen. And that, ladies and gennelmens, is like nothing else in Australian cinema, except Muriel grown up and gone feral.
Will it play in the multiplexes to an audience that will simply get the whole mental thing, and run with the exuberence? We hope so. At the very least, the film has both the best shark attack and the best fart in all of Australian cinema history.
Meanwhile, Mark Poole went to the MIFF conversation with Hogan and Moorhouse beforehand, and filed this report…
As his latest film Mental premieres at the Melbourne International Film Festival prior to it Australian release, it was terrific to turn up to hear P.J. Hogan and Jocelyn Moorhouse talk to Tom Ryan on Saturday before the premiere of their latest film Mental. The last time I’d seen the couple was years ago at The Deli in Toorak Road, right opposite the Bridal shop that was one of the spurs for Muriel’s Wedding (1994).
“I know you,” he said, extending his hand through the gloom of the MIFF Lounge at the Forum. But it has been 25 years and numerous films since I last discussed the art and craft of filmmaking with the acclaimed pair.
Mental shares many similarities to Muriel’s Wedding the film that launched PJ Hogan’s career in the United States. Directing such films as My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997), Peter Pan (2003) and Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009), PJ has worked out of LA since the mid 1990s, and so despite the importance of PJ and wife Jocelyn Moorhouse (who produced both Muriel’s.. and Mental) as the makers of Proof (1992), Muriel’s Wedding and now Mental, little has been heard of them since they departed our shores.
So it was a wonderful opportunity for film critic Tom Ryan to retrace their filmmaking steps, beginning with their studies at AFTRS Film School in the late 1980s, with other notable figures including Jane Campion.
They described how after graduating they languished in the land of television, mainly getting work as writers or script editors – Jocelyn recalled how she had worked on a show called Prime Time as an editor, which included doing research for future storylines. She explained how she came across a newspaper item about a blind photographer, and immediately showed it to Paul. They thought it was nuts, but started talking about why you would take photos if you were blind, and Jocelyn decided it had to be about trust – could you believe, if you’ve never been loved, the descriptions people give you of your photographs?
Jocelyn worked this idea into the basis for a short film, but was heartbroken when Film Victoria rejected the proposal because they thought it was a feature. “We are very thankful to them for that,” said PJ.
In expanding the project into a feature film, they decided that the character of Celia, played by Genevieve Picot, the lovesick housekeeper, had to be the key. “In the original script she only had one scene,” PJ recalled. Once they knew that Celia was going to be the main player everything fell into place, and it took on a life of its own.
A clip showing Hugo Weaving as the blind photographer driving a car and getting stopped by police demonstrated his great acting skill, opposite a youthful Russell Crowe, and the pair emphasised that casting was such a key to the success of Proof. Tom Ryan pointed out that PJ’s work has constantly uncovered great but previously unknown actors, and asked how they managed to do that.
“One of the things that really bothered us while we spent years in the wilderness before we got a break,” opined PJ, “was that every film seemed to star the same person wherever you looked.” So when they came to do Proof they were determined not going to cast the usual suspects. As well, there were budgetary limitations which precluded asking the top ‘name’ Australian actors at the time, so they decided to just try and find the best actors for each role.
When they considered Hugo Weaving for the main part, the general opinion was that after moving into television mini-series, he was all washed up. “Other actors had told us that they didn’t want their careers to end up like Hugo Weaving’s,” PJ said. And a casting director assured them that nobody would take the film seriously if he was cast. “But we tested him and he blew us away.”
PJ added that the money people who invest in a film always want to be reassured by betting on a sure thing. “However there’s never a sure thing in film.”
Jocelyn added that both Hugo and Russell Crowe were undeniably brilliant in the screen tests undertaken for Proof, but when others saw them they still couldn’t see it.
“You can’t make a good film with the wrong casting,” PJ emphasised. “Directing is all about casting.” That’s why he makes sure he sees everyone during the casting process.
Asked about involving Jocelyn and Lynda House to produce Muriel’s Wedding after the successful launch of Proof, PJ’s response was swift. “I begged Lynda and Jocelyn to produce Muriel’s Wedding.”
He explained that Muriel’s Wedding came into being through a long and painful gestation period. “I came from, to put it mildy, a dysfunctional family,” PJ told us. “My mother died in 1992, and I was so angry that I sat down to write that film.”
“I thought I would write about failure,” he added. “About someone who has no hope, and no success.” He described how at his mother’s funeral his father had a telegram read out from Bob Hawke, and posed for the cameras in order to come across favourably in the media, and that infuriated Hogan.
“I’ve met a lot of comedians and I’ve never met a more tortured and depressed group of people. I think that is where comedy comes from.”
“There is a long history of comedy coming from pain since Shakespeare,” said PJ. “Look at MASH – it’s one of the funniest films ever made. You realise the major characters are behaving the way the do because in their environment of pain and suffering all around them, if they don’t, they’ll go mad.”
He discussed one of his favourite films, The Apartment by Billy Wilder. “It’s a comedy but what you remember about it is how sad it is,” he told us. “There’s suicide, and it almost ends because the main character has shot himself in the head. But it’s still a comedy.”
PJ explained that in writing Muriel’s Wedding he didn’t have to experience to worry about he rules of scriptwriting, so he just put it down on the page. “And then nobody wanted to make it. It took me five years to get it financed.”
Jocelyn described how all they wanted initially was finance to develop the screenplay, but they couldn’t even get that. They were turned down by everyone. So they turned to America, who also didn’t want to know, mainly because it wasn’t set in America.
So they went to a French company, CIBY 2000, which had supported the work of Jane Campion, with outstanding success. PJ described in great detail how the script was assessed and discussed by what he termed ‘twelve angry people,’ as in the film Twelve Angry Men. And they were split down the middle, with half in favour of the film and half against. Hearing that the decision would probably go against them, PJ rang Jane Campion and asked her to support the film. She did, the head of the French company read the script and decided to go with it – not only with development finance, but production finance as well. “So this quintessentially Aussie film was financed by the French.”
No doubt this was a sound move, as Muriel’s Wedding remains one of Australia’s most successful films at the local box office, taking around $20 million here and $57 million worldwide, according to IMDB. As well as launching the careers of Toni Collette and Rachel Griffiths, it also featured a brilliant soundtrack of ABBA music.
“My sister was obsessed by ABBA,” PJ told us, but that too was a problem for the financing of the film. “In 1993 ABBA was regarded as a joke,” he explained. “One local distributor advised me to ditch the 80s music in favour of something more contemporary,” he recalled. Another person pointed out that the main character Muriel didn’t have a well of creativity. “Of course she doesn’t, that’s the whole point.”
Tom Ryan suggested that music is a key element of all PJ’s films, to the extent where they feel like they are on verge of becoming a musical. PJ agreed that music was important in his films, and mentioned the British writer Dennis Potter’s example with his television series The Singing Detective, which remains for him one of the best programs ever made in all media, film or television. “Potter said he liked to use music because we forget how much music expresses for us.”
Telling us that he listened to ABBA’s SOS for months on end in his bedroom as a teenager, PJ said he was drawn to outsiders because he grew up as one. “As Australians I think we feel like outsiders, growing up watching American TV shows and feeling that the exciting things happen somewhere else, and we just watch.” He added that for him, the best Australian films like Proof, Strictly Ballroom, Priscilla and Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith are all about outsiders.
Jocelyn said that it was while making Muriel’s Wedding that she got a call from Steven Spielberg to set up her work directing How to Make An American Quilt (1995). In fact Spielberg had a hell of a time getting through to her, because every time he announced he was Spielberg to the hotel receptionist, they assumed he was playing a joke, and refused to put him through. In the end, so the story goes, he had to resort to saying he was someone else. “He was a huge fan of Proof,” said Moorhouse, “and they wanted a woman director to make the film.” She said it was a great project to work on, and she was able to make it by and large following her own vision for the film.
Her second US film A Thousand Acres (1997) was reputedly tougher, with producers falling out and making life difficult in the editing room. However Jocelyn continues to enjoy great feedback from audiences who love the film, she said. Jocelyn has continued to work with PJ as a producer on Unconditional Love (2002) and as Executive Producer on Peter Pan (2002).
Finally, Tom played a clip from Mental where star Toni Collette is advising her young charges around a table in a Queensland café. “You gave Toni Collette her first break,” Tom suggested. “So how has she changed?”
PJ mentioned that during the shoot Collette would ask him how he thought she’d changed over the years. And he’d tell her she’s richer, and more famous.
“As a person, she hasn’t changed at all,” PJ replied. “As an actress she’s in total command now, while on Muriel’s she was nervous as hell – and so was I. But on Mental she was able to control that insecurity, because she’s Toni Collette now.”
There are obvious similiarities between Muriel’s Wedding and Mental, and with stellar perfomances from Toni Collette, Anthony LaPaglia, Deborah Mailman, Rebecca Gibney, Caroline Goodall and newcomer Lily Sullivan, let’s hope PJ Hogan’s 2012 film resonates with audience just as much.
by: Mark Poole Screenhub Monday 20 August, 2012