‘It makes you laugh and makes you cry and makes you cry again, and makes you cry again’

June 10th, 2007

After visiting the set of Australia, The Sydney Morning Herald have put together a fantastic article, complete with images and multimedia. The article, Australia Dreaming on a Carpet of Fake Red Dust even provides us with our first glimpse of dialogue from the film,

In A darkened warehouse in a Queensland coastal town, the director Baz Luhrmann issues an unlikely instruction. “Can we have a little more sweat for Jack, please?” Given the baking heat, Jack Thompson, playing a sozzled accountant named Kipling Flynn, must be sweating heavily already in an improvised studio in Bowen. But details matter on a $US100-million (AU$120-million) film, so more sweat it is. Thompson is playing a scene opposite Nicole Kidman.

Luhrmann calls action:
Flynn: If King Carney’s good Christian wife ever makes the same discovery that you have, Fletcher’s hopes of marrying his daughter would be dashed.

Ashley: I’m going to the authorities. I’ll be telling them everything.

Flynn: Carney is the authority around here.

Accompanying multimedia:
‘On the Australia Set’ [download], is a slideshow featuring various images of Luhrmann, the sets and the shoot. Baz narrates throughout the slideshow about the making of the film.

The second slideshow is entitled ‘Behind the Scenes in Bowen’ [download] consists of images from around Bowen and various promotional photograps. The audio differs as it is voiced entirely by local residents talking about their brushes with fame during the shoot. It’s quite an endearing piece.

US producer Mac Brown, whose last film was The Departed, says the film also taps into the stolen generation story. “A woman from England comes to this far away land called Australia and discovers life,” he says. “It’s a big epic story that spans years, that has moments of history. People are born and people die. There’s a war.” And the script? “It makes you laugh and makes you cry and makes you cry again, and makes you cry again.”

Finally The Sydney Morning Herald take us on a tour around the make shift town. Read on to get descriptions of the Bowen film set.

On the balcony of the Territory Hotel, created for the film, Luhrmann tells the visiting federal Communications Minister, Helen Coonan, that Bowen has proved to be a good choice for 1930s Darwin despite being windy. “They call it Blowin’ Bowen,” he says. “But actually it’s been only a good thing because when the bad weather comes – at least it blows away very quickly.”

Touring the set, while a second unit films 150 cattle being driven into a yard, it’s obvious why Australia is costing so much. Designer Catherine Martin, who won two Oscars for Moulin Rouge, has created an entire town that is “a creative interpretation” of Darwin and Broome at the time. There are the stockyards of the Carney Cattle Company, run by a cattle baron played by Bryan Brown. The red dust is an illusion – it was mixed for camera tests in Sydney then shipped to the set.

The Territory Hotel looks like it could serve beer. It has a bar with a suggestive 1939 calendar, racing odds chalked on a blackboard, stuffed crocodiles in a cabinet, faded photos of horses and bulls, and signs saying “Kanga bitter”, “Stewed wallaby and vegies – 5 bob” and “No non-whites”. The locals would love to keep the pub as a tourist attraction but it is due to be bombed once the set changes to wartime Darwin. Already, an army tank is under green plastic nearby, military tents are being assembled and blue screens have been erected near the wharf so computer-generated warships can be added later.

Behind the pub is the Chinatown brothel, Faruk’s Palace of a Thousand Bees (using extras supplied by the local Chinese and Thai restaurants), Wu Fang’s laundry, corrugated iron humpies and a market garden. The colours are as lavish as the detailing is intricate: at the Star Soup Shop, there’s a half-eaten bowl of noodles, Chinese checkers and a Chinese newspaper on battered tables. The Sunshine Emporium offers hats on blocks, slippers, pans, bolts of cloth and lamps.

And the Pearl Picture Gardens is an open-air cinema with plaster kangaroos and posters for The Wizard of Oz and Let George Do It out front, packets of Fantales, Jaffas and Minties on display in the foyer and rows of deck chairs in front of a big screen. A sign says “no spitting”. The cinema has been used for a scene in which the wet arrives – drenching everyone – during a movie.

The film is a vast enterprise covering 6.5 hectares on the waterfront and involving this day almost 400 cast, crew and extras. Four weeks into filming, there are five months to go. Luhrmann, who is the same perpetually enthusiastic figure he was on the set of Moulin Rouge, is filming next in Darwin, Kununurra, then back in Sydney. “I never see him eat,” says Mac Brown. “I never see him sleep … he’s just moving forward always.”

source: Sydney Morning Herald
image: Peter Rae

Entry Filed under: Baz Luhrmann,Cast,Crew,Media,Nicole Kidman,Press