Terrific documentary about the cult around Australia’s only biker movie. Is there an Aussie film with more devoted fans? Aussie bikers seem to love it with a passion – the respect with which it treated the sub-culture, the dialogue, the honesty of it’s ending, the maverick status of the director and the cast. I remember at high school the film had a group of devoted fans who would recite dialogue incessantly – and this was an all-boys private high school.
Sandy Harbutt comes across as an intelligent, well spoken chap (he trained at the Ensemble) who is a bit of an outlaw. So too are the rest of the cast – Roger Ward, Vincent Gill, Hugh Keays-Byrne, etc. – they look like they still breathe the ethos of the movie. (Idea for Aussie comedy – cast of Stone get involved in real life bikies and wacky chaos ensues.)
The film has unexpected resonance – Harbutt’s failure to get up another film (he spent nine years trying to get up Drums of Myrrh), the love Vietnam Vets and other bikers have for the movie and its cast. However, the sexism of Stone really isn’t explored – this is covered inadvertently to a greater degree in The Making of Stone, a contemporaneous documentary on the film narrated by John Laws, where some bikiers talk about gang banging women (“90% of us are into it”).
No comments:
Post a Comment