Mike talks Ozploitation and genre movies with Mark Hartley

Mike's already reviewed NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD: THE WILD, UNTOLD STORY OF OZPLOITATION, now enjoy his interview with director Mark Hartley... ME: Is this film the product of a lifelong love with Ozploitation?

MH: I think people kind of have this conception that the ten years I've spent trying to make the doc-o, or trying to get it up, that all I did was sit at home with a pile of VHS tapes and watch them one after the other. I obviously saw a number of key films on late night television when I was a kid, and they were PATRICK and SNAPSHOT, and THE MAN FROM HONG KONG, all of which featured in the doc-o. In Australia at that time you have to understand that we had embraced our artouse films as our mainstream films, you know, we were getting taken along to see PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK and things like that. And suddenly I saw these films on television that were like American films but they had Australian accents and Australian locations that I could relate to. So I sort of felt a connection to them because of that. And I went to read on them and in books on Australian film they weren't even mentioned. So that's where it all started, knowing that in a way there was this whole history of Australian cinema that had never been documented because we were ashamed of it. And for no good reason.

ME: What made you go to Quentin Tarantino?

MH: I didn't go to Quentin at all to get him involved in the project. I'd given up after about six years but I'd amassed this huge research document that was about 100 pages long, and I'd read an interview where he spoke about screening this scene from ROAD GAMES on the set of KILL BILL. So I just got his assistant's email and sent him this document saying that I've read that you are into Australian genre films - you might be interested in reading this, I'm working on a project, it's not going to happen but, you know, enjoy! And we got an email back the next day from his assistant saying Quentin's read your document from cover to cover, how can he help you get the project up. So we went over and shot an interview with him and that really re-invigorated my interest in it. I thought there's no way we won't get it up now after we've got four hours of Quentin -

ME: - four hours of Quentin??

MH: Yeah... 3 and a half of him and then half an hour of him and Brian Trenchard-Smith just chatting about each other's careers.

ME: That must have been an amazing thing to film.

MH: It was, it was great. But I have to be totally honest with you, after we shot Quentin I was going off to interview Rod Taylor and I was much more excited about that!

ME: That's great! ME: One of the things that comes across to me in the documentary is this massive sense of love. Sometime you find documentaries want to make a point, or have something to say, but in this everyone just seems excited about the material they're talking about. Is that something you believe a documentary needs to have?

MH:I hope the doc-o's not sycophantic at all. It's certainly irreverent in terms of what it's tackling and I'm sure we don't try to pretend that all these films are great because of course they're not, but one thing is that I've seen a lot of documentaries where they've just interviewed anyone they can get, whether they were critics now, or journalists now, or people who've written books. And I think 'Hang on. Why do I want to hear these people's opinions on films they weren't even involved in?' So I made a point when we did NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD of saying we'll only interview people who were there in he trenches making these films, or there at the time reviewing these films, or the next generation who has been incredibly inspired by these films, I didn't want anyone else involved. And when Richard Franlklin, who was a big part of the documentary and made PATRICK and ROAD GAMES, died literally two weeks after we shot his interview I realised that this was possibly the last time this story would be told by the people who were there. In a way it became a bit more important at that point, rather than people sitting around telling stories about the old days.

ME: I really think that it came across. Sometimes these kind of interviews seem a bit dry and that's one thing you could never say about NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD, some of it is really inspired - what made you interview someone in front of a stripper?

MH: Well, it was John Lamond who is known as Australia's master sexploiter. But originally there was going to be five main interviewees who were the focus of the doc-o, and they still are in a way, and that was John Lamond, Richard Franklin, Brian Trenchard-Smith, Antony I. Ginnane and Tim Burstall. Tim Burstall died in pre-production so we didn't get to him, we shot John first and we wanted to shoot them all in their own environment to give you a very quick shortcut to their personalities and their films, so we shot John in a strip club. We were going to shoot Ginnane in the back of a limo driving around Hollywood because he was the only Australian producer over there, we were going to shoot Brian on the set of TYRANNOSAURUS AZTECA or AZTEC REX, his latest his latest 15-day direct to DVD film and we were going to shoot Burstall in this dusty old book library. And slowly but surely we couldn't shoot in any of those locations: the camera was too bulky for the limo, Brian ended up shooting in Hawaii and we couldn't go there, so Brian is the only one who remains in his environment, which makes it look slightly incongruous but you know I don't have a problem with that.

ME: I still think it looked brilliant.

MH: And its upset enough people to make it worthwhile.

ME: Are you tempted to make a genre film?

MH: Oh yeah, sure. I'm working with Tony Ginnane, we're hopefully going to remake PATRICK.

ME: You're joining the remake bandwagon? Oh no!

MH: Well, we're joining the 're-imagining' bandwagon thank you very much.

ME: But you're going to do it much better than when Hollywood sabotages the J-horrors right?

MH: I'm trying think if I've seen a good one... I probably haven't. In fact I'm thinking if I've seen any to tell you the truth and I probably haven't. I didn't see QUARANTINE, was that bad?

ME: Yeah, QUARANTINE was a terrible remake.

MH: I saw My Bloody Valentine, and Friday the 13th actually, but this is the worst remake I've ever seen in my life.

ME: But it's in 3-D and it worked with the gimmick of 3-D.

MH: Yeah, but the 3-D stops and suddenly the bad acting starts about 40 minutes into it. And no amount of nude girls trapped behind mattresses can make up for that.

ME: Not even a mandible flying at you? Come on! You must appreciate the mandible.

MH: I appreciated the eyeball coming out of the screen. I mean I think the 3-D was great, it did what a 3-D film should do which is be absolutely stupid, but I'm really looking forward to Joe Dante's 3-D film that should have some more of the process sorted.

ME: What do you make of the rise of 3-D again? I'm personally pretty glad to have it rejuvenated.

MH: Yeah, My Bloody Valentine was just shot on tape and it looks so murky and horrible it just looks bad. I'm looking forward to seeing a good looking one. I don't know what that will be... Maybe Piranha 3-D, aren't they doing that as well?

ME: I don't know actually...

MH: But yeah, anything that sends a yo-yo forward out of the screen I'm tempted to pay my $14.

ME: Is there anything that can replace doing these stunts like they did in these Ozploitation films?

MH: Not at all. You realise now with CG that the excitement has gone out of it, and that you know that however real it looks it was not real and no-one was risking their lives on it, as opposed to the films featuring in the documentary where you know the people are very much risking their lives. There's no safety harnesses, there's no rules, they just went out there and "Really? You need me to jump out of the way of a speeding car? Sure."

ME: One of my favourite bits is when you see a car explode and you see the door fly within inches of the cameraman -

MH: They didn't tie the car door down! Yeah. Here's John Seale who won an Oscar for shooting THE ENGLISH PATIENT saying "When we'd see someone get hit by a car you wouldn't take him to a hospital you'd just give a VB and just tell him to stand a bit further from the car for the second take."

ME: That was one my favourite bits too! Although I had to explain to my girlfriend what a VB is! But thanks for talking to me, I really appreciate it.

MH: No worries, I'm glad you enjoyed the film. Thankfully it's not a soul-searching study of the African Yak.

ME: It is really fun. I hope people realise and go to watch it.

MH: I well I just really hope the people want go out and watch the good ones or the bad ones , just go to a video library and find them.

ME: It'd certainly be different to MY BLOODY VALENTINE 3-D!

MH: It's interesting actually, just to wrap up, it seemed to me that when I was researching this that everything has been documented in film. There is no kind of whole film history that hadn't had a spotlight shined on it. This seemed to be the last bastion in a way. It's very rare you can see a film doc-o and you might not know anything you see and still enjoy it.

ME: I agree!