Movie review - "Alvin Purple" (1973) ** (re-watching)

 Look, not very good, but it has historical appeal. Big hit, of course. Right star, right amount of nudity treated the correct way. A 20 minute idea stretched out to a feature. Some fantastic actors and a deadly dull chase sequence.

Jack Thompson interview from 1975 Cinema Papers

 

The Australian films of 1969

 When exactly did the Australian film revival begin? Stork in 1971? Naked Bunyip in 1970? Bazza McKenzie in 1972? In terms of public acceptance, yes.

Then there was the year of 1969. Gorton was in. TV quotas were in effect. There was a rising cultural nationalism, so it seemed. Homicide was a hugely popular show. As was Bellbird. Riptide sold.

So there was the adhoc films of 1969. Consider these

* Adam's Woman

* Age of Consent - Michael Powell returns to Australia after They're a Weird Mob. A good screenwriter, interesting source material, international star, sexy subject matter. 

*Colour Me Dead - one of three Reg Goldsworthy productions, all with B grade international stars.

*The Intruders - big screen version of Skippy. Public didn't go for it.

*It Takes All Kinds - more Reg Goldsworthy.

*Jack and Jill: A Postscript - Philip Adams goes to the movies.

*Little Jungle Boy/Strange Holiday - two Mendes Brown productions.

*Marinetti - an Albie Thoms joint. 

*Ned Kelly - big name director and big music star

*Rise and Fall of Squizzy Taylor

*The Set

*Three to Go (some of it filmed in 1969)

* Two Thousand Weeks - Tim Burstall's famous navel gazing flop.

* You Can't See Round Corners - cheap knock off of the TV series. Actually a good idea because you could condense the story for a film, and colour gave it a reason to do it

Movie review - "2000 Weeks" (1969) **

 A famed production - Tim Burstall's first feature, hyped at the time (apparently) then critically reviled and rejected by audiences. Colin Bennett bagged it which is apparently a thing in Melbourne because he wrote for (gasp) The Age. A look at reviews of Australian TV drama in the 1950s and 1960s though shows critics can't be relied upon to support local product. 

It's heavily influenced by swinging sixties cinema - jazzy music, moving camera, sexiness (the opening sequence has Mark McManus having sex with Jeanie Drynan), flashbacks to his childhood. It's the sort of film that feels as though it should be in French,

I'm being a bit mean. It's a bold attempt to do something. An arthouse Australian film that deals with cultural issues. It is the sort of thing that David Williamson would cover so effectively - mid life crises amongst the chattering classes, with infidelity, jealousy, male competitiveness - but he had that wonderful vicious humour and sense of story that's lacking here. Burstall wasn't a natural screenwriter - nor, based on this, was co-scribe Patrick Ryan.

There's glimpse of bare backs and shoulders and a bit of nipple. I wondered that if Burstall had gone the whole hog and put in proper nudity he would've had a hit. He certainly learned that lesson. It was probably too early in the late sixties - a few years later it was on for young and old.

Incidentally the superb Oz movies website makes an argument in favour of B60sennett's review, reprinting it in full (see here). I still think that review is super super mean. Still, there's no denying this doesn't hit the mark. It's long. And dull. And really problematic - I mean Mark McManus punches his wife after she admits to rooting someone else, then she takes off her clothes (that's when we get the nipple) and I think their relationship is rejuvenated? Is that right?

It has some strong things. Jeanie Drynan is beautiful - real movie star beautiful. The black and white photography is nice. It takes a big swing.

Movie review - "Great Expectations: The Untold Story" (1987) **

 I'm not sure "missing years"sequels are ever a good idea... because if those years were so interesting why were they not in the original? Magwith is a great enigmatic character but if you lose the enigma by making him front and centre is he as interesting? They put in Pip at the start but we never get why Pip means so much. In the novel it's because he reminds Magwith of his dead daughter, isn't it? We don't see that - the film starts with Magwitch's trial.

In fairness maybe that was in the mini series version. The version I saw was a 100 minute cut down version. It feels like a TV movie - the run of the mill photography. Music.

The incident of Magwitch becoming a hang man is taken from a real life case that was dramatised in Rex Rienits 1960s ABC mini series.  Ron Haddrick was in one of those and he turns up in this, giving it a nice synergy.

I enjoyed the little arc of Sigrid Thornton falling for Robert Coleby and turning into a drunken trashback in the space of a few minutes. Bruce Spencer and Noel Ferrier feel like good Dickens types. I'm not sure John Stanton was up to his role - someone like Ray Barrett would've got more light and shade. But really this felt like something the Brits should've made. The actors would've been more at home.

Book review - "Home Truths" by David Williamson (2021)

Enormously enjoyable. Better than his wife's biography. Peak Boomer - there's an index "Williamson - real estate purchases". Invaluable. Names names of inspirations and circumstances. Has an engineer's thoroughness. 

Leaves out some stuff eg his Macbeth. Some bitchy swipes eg people being mean to Kristen. Both of them seem like big personalities. Talks a lot about kids. The Bob Ellis orgy is in there. 

Wonderful book though.

Movie review - "Alvin Rides Again" (1974) *

 They didn't trust in the concept of Alvin. The first twenty minutes they do... Alvin is irresistible to women including Briony Behets, Candy Raymond (who goes full frontal), Abigail and Penne Hackforth Jones among others.

But then the plot switches and becomes about Alvin having to impersonate gangster Balls McGee. He's depicted as an American gangster with molls dressed appropriately - it's all played in broad dinner theatre revue style. The central concept of Alvin is thrown out the window.

Nothing wrong with Alvin being a lookalike or being involved with gangsters but they forgot the basis of Alvin - that he's a nerd who is catnip to the ladies. Also Balls is so unrealistic it's this extra layer of unreality on top of the character.

Like why not make it that Alvin as Balls is now irresistible and all these molls go after him? Why not put him in a woman's prison? Or a nunnery.

This was annoying. The incompetence of this is annoying.

There are incidental pleasures: the randomness of the cast (Chantal Countouri, Kris McQuade, Frank Thring, Maurie Fields), an extended Brian Cadd performance.

I saw a 75 minute copy of the film - I remember seeing a long version where Alvin and his mate dressed up in drag to play women's cricket. It was a mean spirited sequence and isn't missed.

Movie review - "Duet for Four" (1981) **

 The collaborations of Tim Burstall and David Williamson were so crucial to putting the Oz film industry of the 70s on a firm footing that it's odd in a way this reunion slipped under the radar. Or maybe not... it was an original script, not based on a play, and it had sat in a draw for over half a decade, after it was written in the wake of Petersen's success.

That had starred Jack Thompson and this one features the actor they used when you couldn't get Thompson, Mike Preston - another muscly blonde, but far less good an actor. He plays a more macho Williamson type - he's broken up for from his wife (Diane Cilento) and has a new partner (Wendy Hughes) with little kids. He seems to have plenty of money, running a toy factory, supporting Hughes and some kids and also his ex Cilento who has a new lover.

The key roles never seem quite right. Cilento is very glamorous, it's good to see her in an Aussie film, but I never quite believed her, or Preston. Or come to think of it Michael Pate though it's nice to see him.

Gary Day plays another in a long line of his alpha sleezes but he seems more at home. There's some typically poorly drawn Williamson females, like the two girls at a party who stand around sizing up the attractiveness of Rod Mullinar and Preston. Hughes plays a woman complaining about looking after the kids and doing her PhD. There's other Williamson worries - the cost of divorce, concern about environment, the difficulty of remaining faithful, the hassles of dealing with an ex-wife, dealing with struggling teenage kids (he didn't have any then but he would soon and they'd be a constant of his plays from the late 80s onwards).

I wish it had been set in some industry other than toys. I mean, that is an interesting metaphor but it's really standing in for the Australian film industry, with its domination from America... and Williamson, who can and has done a lot of research on different fields, wrote this too quickly to do the research to really know it. If they'd done it on the film industry he simply would've known more. Maybe he was worried about being sued.

There's some 70s style nudity with some throwaway shots of Wendy Hughes topless in bed and Clare Binney topless in the shower.  sort of comes out of nowhere and winds up having a big part when pate tries to seduce her... I felt this role could've been combined with Thornton's or Hughes or at least the girl who plays Day's girlfriend, Vanessa Leigh. And maybe Comber and Cilento should have gone off to Queensliffe with the others. There's too many characters.

There's 70s style Williamson "shock value" with Day, Leigh, Binney and Preston sitting around watching a porno and Preston kissing Day's girl while Day is in the room. That is pure Don's Party (Binney was in that movie). So too is talk of middle class people subsiding others (lovers, kids), Warwick Comber being upset Cilento talked to an art critic from The Age,

The script needed another draft. There's no real reason why Preston's daughter Sigrid Thornton couldn't be Cilento's daughter as well (or was she? i'm not sure). There's another character too Arthur Dignam, who is Preston's lawyer, giving advice about the business and the partnership. Oh and there's Sigrid Thornton's boyfriend.

But you know something? I enjoyed it. I mean, it's not very good - too unfocused, too many characters, Preston isn't up to it, doesn't have many or even any really funny lines, the toy industry background feels underused. But there's interesting actors, it tells a story, I like the Aussies teaming up to take on the Yanks at the end. The domestic violence faced by Cilento feels all too real. It was an easy watch.

Play review - "A Handful of Friends" by David Williamson (1976)

 Interesting Williamson. Slower paced. More polite. More British. Which does make its explosions more effective.

There's a lot of short scenes, which I feel it didn't need to be. It all could have played out over the one dinner party. Was this the influence of Williamson going in to screenwriting? He gets extra power when he plays it in continuous time.

There's also a lot of sexual fluidity. Williamson clearly had a high old time in the 70s. The academic has affairs, one with a lesbian, his sister is incestuously interested in him but also sleeps with Sally, who is married to the academic's best friend, who has slept with both with academic and the academic's wife.

The best friend is a filmmaker - Bob Ellis said it was based on him but it reads nothing like him, it's more like successful Williamson (I think Williamson said Tim Burstall was an influence), with the academic being Williamson's portrait of himself if he never went into writing.

The most fun character is the best friend filmmaker and his wife - who is ambitious but not evil, and I feel Williamson describing Kristin. (Who the hell is the bisexual incestuous sister based on?). He's shifted the medium from theatre to film... I'm not sure that entirely works, there's lots of talks about critics and writing, it feels as though it would have suited theatre or books more.

There's some moments of great insight - such as the academic admitting he gets places by sucking up and "giving good interview". The wife is very sympathetic.

For me it wasn't a wholly successful play - a bit too flabby and uncertain, in need of another draft, I feel - but a lot of good things about it.

Play review - "What If You Died Tomorrow?" by David Williamson (1973)

 Not often revived and not super focused, but endlessly fascinating if you are a fan of Williamson because it is so clearly autobiographical.

Williamson writes about a successful writer, a novelist rather than playwright - the leap isn't super convincing, I didn't entirely buy his chats with his "editor" which were clearly meant to be director/producer (the relationship isn't the same). He was married with kids but has left his wife to be with a woman with kids who has left her husband. Unlike Juggler's Three we don't meet the abandoned partners but there's plenty going on - they live in an artist colony, he is visited by his editor (an alpha male... based on Tim Burstall?), a female editor who wants to poach him and sleep with him, his gay agent,  and his parents.

Because it's so based on real life the female characters are among Williamson's best -the harried, smart, greedy, engaging new love, the horny editor who had a fling at the colony, and his mother. 

The male characters are less impressive-  is this the one Williamson play where that's the case?

It's a brave self portrayal - Williamson shows himself to be super touchy about critics, threatens his step kids with violence, a groper when drunk. 

There's quite a hot seduction scene although Williamson can't help go for the gag (his character can't get it up). It's very early 70s with its artists colony and bickering greatest generation parents and tolerance of infidelities.

Williamson writes with real skill about his parents' generation. I'm surprised he didn't do that more.

Yet the piece isn't a whole success. It sort of ambles - it lacks the cohesive tightness of Don's Party. But an interesting, entertaining play.

Play review - "The Coming of Stork" by David Williamson (1970)

 Williamson's first hit - only a minor one but it was filmed, and the movie was a profitable hit at a time when people thought such things were impossible. The dialogue is fresh (for the time), funny and imaginative - Williamson had It. Stork is a wonderful character, tall, horny, hypochondriac, not dumb but also dumb. The banter with his mates is fun - alpha Clyde, quasi alpha Tony, future mens rights activist West.

It must have been a revelation at the time and much of it is still funny. Its remarkable also how Williamson still writers like this - male competitiveness, talk of dicks and money, insecurity about dicks, tossed away socialism. The one female, Anna, sleeps with them all, including a married man, Alan, who I forgot was in this -Alan left his wife and kids for Anna and is torn up about it. Williamson was already writing like a middle aged man. I guess he had a wife and kids by this stage. Anna is the first in what would be a long, long line of women who Just Can't Get Enough Dick, in particular middle aged dick.

I think Williamson's use of structure improved over the years, and he would learn how to tell a story with greater finesse. but he is very recognisably Williamson here. And even at this stage he understood the importance of narrative in a way most of his contemporaries never did, eg there's still a plot with Anna falling pregnant and the rest of the cast could be the father.

Movie review - "The Last of the Knucklemen" (1979) *** (warning: spoilers)

Tim Burstall was a bit cocky in the mid 70s about having his finger on the commercial pulse but like all directors soon discovered it was harder than it looked. The public didn't go to this. Or anything he made after Eliza Fraser, really.

It's a shame because this is a decent movie. Beautifully shot, some tough locations, a strong cast. It feels a little Sunday Too Far Away - men being tough in the outback - even though I think the play came first.

There's memorable scenes - the poker game between Mike Preston and Michael Duffield, some brawls, visiting the prostitutes. It's an interesting world.

But it lacks focus. Sunday had Jack Thompson this one is more all over the shop. It's an ensemble piece which is fine, but it lacks some unifying event. I guess Mike Preston is trying to take over from Gerard Kennedy... but that doesn't unify the other strands. You've got Michael Caton being a newcomer, and a guy who looks like Honey Badger the football player being mysterious, and a subplot about a robbery in the city which feels outlandish, and Duffield being old, and the prostitutes... It feels diffuse. The robbery stuff clangs - an escaped con working there feels natural but the story here feels at odd in its melodrama to the rest... especially Honey Badger being a kung fu expert.

I think more work needed to be done on the adaptation. Maybe really focus it around Preston trying to take over the gang. Use Kennedy more - he's hardly in the film. They can be trying to get allies. Or it takes place over one night. Or something.

I wonder if this is one of the films that David Williamson was referring to when his surrogate in Emerald City goes "I see films and know how they could be made to work but no one gives me a call."

Still, much to admire - an excellent chance for Duffield (who has a far bigger role than Kennedy), people like Steve Bisley are in it and so on.

Movie review - "Eliza Fraser" (1976) ** (re-watching)

Endearing in its way that it just wants to entertain. It's not very good but its heart is in the right place. It didn't need to cost as much money as it did - traipsing around the dunes and what not really could've been done anywhere.

The English cast definitely weren't worth it - I mean, yes, Trevor Howard is a great actor but he looks unwell and they could've gotten Frank Thring. John Castle is fine, but was he a name. And Susannah York is poor. Eliza needed to be a lively vixen - I don't think Wendy Hughes, the original choice, would have been perfect, though she would've been better than York; I think someone with lower class sparkle, like Jackie Weaver, would've been better. Or - don't laugh - Abigail. The way the story is constructed Eliza doesn't have to do much acting.

Part of the problem is also Williamson's screenplay which I think in its heart is more a theatre piece. It keeps changing focus on who the lead it - John Castle gets this intro, then he vanishes while the Fraser's go on the boat, then John Waters is given all this time and he vanishes, and Eliza/York doesn't do much except commune with the aboriginals. Then there's this duelling stuff between Castle and George Mallaby, and then the fight comes between Castle and Noel Ferrier, and Eliza is so passive. I wasn't sure how different Castle and Waters were meant to be - I mean Castle was a rogue, but wasn't Waters a convict, and there was Noel Ferrier...

Ugh.

They should have combined Castle and Waters' characters. Or  made them more different. Given Fraser/York somewhere to go  -started her as prim and moved her to raucous or something.

But it looks good and it's fun to see people like Bruce Spence and Dennis Miller turn up.

Movie review - "Kangaroo" (1987) **

Why did they make a film of this? I'm guessing the filmmakers went "well, DH Lawrence did this novel set in Australia... I guess we better make it..." But it feels like an adaptation of a famous text, rather than something made with passion. There seems to be no theme or emotional core.

I feel two major mistakes - Colin Friels and Judy Davis are excellent actors but this would have been better with imported actors - it would have felt fish out of water. Friels and Davis bring accents. (I stress both are fine, Davis is lovely, but it just would've been better with foreigners).

Tim Burstall once criticised Australian films for passive protagonists but Friels just hangs around watching at the end when there's a riot. He doesn't do much. There's hints at couple swapping but John Walter and Judy Davis go to bed; Julie Nihill is up for it but Friels doesn't go through with it. Friels goes for a nude swim and we get some brief full frontal and he does it on the beach with a fully clothed Judy Davis. Friels has a little bit of a crush on John Walton and Hugh Keays Bryne but not seriously, not like Alan Bates and Oliver Reed did in Women in Love.

There's a riot at the end and an assassination but it seems devoid of life. Maybe it would've played better in the trashier 70s with more sex and violence.

Movie review - "The Naked Country" (1987) **1/2 (re-viewing)

An odd film. I kept wondering why they made it. The baby boomer morality of Tim Burstall ("it's their land) sits uneasily on top of the small l liberalism of the generation above, the Morris West generation.

This really should have been made in the 1950s with Dennis Price and Maureen Swanson or someone - it feels like that, with its snarling cattle baron, his hot pants wife and the hard bitten cop (the David Farrar role).

Hero duties go back and forth - you think it's going to be the alcoholic Ivor Kants character, who sticks up for the aboriginals against his racist boss Simon Chilvers and is sensitive. But as the film goes on the sympathies head more towards John Stanton as the nasty but tough grazier. Rebecca Gilling is good as always but her part could actually be cut out.

And yet... the film does commend interest. It moves. It's fast. There's always something happening. Tim Burstall was a pace-y director - pace, pace, pace. Because Stanton is flawed and Kants you don't know who is going to win. Tommy Lee is an electric screen presence.  The aboriginal characters get decent screen time - Tommy has his own romantic plot (played by a non aboriginal actor which is unfortunate).

Visuals are great. The music isn't quite right. Solid support cast including John Jarrat.

Movie review - "Attack Force Z" (1981) **1/2

Some random thoughts:
* always good to rewatch but it's never as good as you want it to be
* great opening with the foreword and troops climbing out of the sub and canoeing to the island
* action sequences are perfunctory rather than well done and I really wish Phil Noyce had done it instead of Tim Burstall - Burstall was excellent on casting and story choices but Noyce was the better director
* the cast are extremely good and deliver strong performances - Mel Gibson does well in a relatively thankless role (his one thing is being bullied into letting the Japanese diplomat live by that diplomat), but he definitely feels very Z Force
* the ending rips off The Wild Geese and is a needless bummer - the whole ending has fashionable 70s nihilism with pretty much all the goodies dead for absolutely no reason which actually is kind of more true of the typical Z Special Unit mission (those were the locals didn't betray them) but makes you feel depressed watching it and might be responsible for the film underperforming at the box office
* disappointingly little is made of Jon Phillip Law being Dutch - a great idea (could have explored the colonial issues etc), thrown away
* it's really distracting that everyone is Chinese when it should be Malaya/Indonesia/New Guinea - they just should have said "island off the coast of Taiwan"
* best role: Sam Neill - the ruthless operative who shoots John Waters but who then points out the locals will be killed if they rise up
* the Japanese are really stupid for believing that kid
* there's a lack of pace and energy - too much ambling when they get on the island when it should be fast paced
* production values are very good.

Movie review - "Alvin Purple" (1973) *1/2

I'm not a wowser, or at least I don't think I am, and I absolutely acknowledge the box office success of this, which was remarkable. It's got a great title and Graeme Blundell is utterly perfect in the lead (any other actor and I think this would have flopped). And there are some very attractive women in stages of undress.

But it's a hard, hard, slog. It's so repetitive - women chase after Alvin. That was okay for the first half hour but as things went on it became more difficult. I remember the car chase being one that particularly broke me.

I mean I could handle it if there had been some solid comedy sequences, but it's a one note samba. There is novelty in seeing grand dames of theatre like Jackie Weaver running (or lying) around nude.

Movie review - "The Naked Country" (1987) **1/2

This film gets points for actually having some aboriginal characters with a bit of guts - they are tough, don't take any crap, are smart and honourable and get to have a sex life... which differentiates them from many Australian films of the time, which depicted aboriginals as poor little victims. The film might have done better had it gone down more of a blaxploitation route, but it keeps hedging it's bets - you're never sure who the hero is. Is it tough John Stanton who feels the blacks are uncivilised but develops a grading respect for them? Is it Tommy Lewis, the aboriginal fighting for his land rights? Is it drunken Ivar Kants, who is supposed to have served in WW2, Malaya, Korea and Africa as a mercenary, and has an affair with Stanton's wife, Rebecca Gilling? Is it Gilling, who looks bored?

Indeed, I'm never sure exactly what sort of movie this is - a modern day Western? An adventure tale? An examination of land rights? There's a bit of everything, but not enough of anything. They could have gone trashy and exploitative - sex scenes, lots of action, nudity, etc. They could have gone thoughtful. What's here is okay, and reasonably entertaining - there is a decent amount of action - but it feels undercooked. For instance, Gilling's affair with Kants feels as though it comes out of nowhere and ends - and doesn't have much of a point to it.

This is set in the 1950s and feels like a movie made in that era. You could imagine it being shot by Rank starring Anthony Steel, or David Farrar, with it stories of settlers clashing with natives, and local police trying to keep the peace, and bored sexpot farmer's wife, and non aboriginal actress cast as an aboriginal. It feels like a mix of Dust in the Sun, Where No Vultures Fly, Nor the Moon by Night. It's a potboiler but lacks the real giddy pleasures of such films - at least as they were made in the 1980s. Still, it's not dull and there are some beautiful shots.

Movie review - "Attack Force Z" (1981) **1/2 (warning: spoilers)

I remember seeing this film in the video store when I was a kid and thinking it was so cool - an Aussie guys on a mission action movie, how awesome! - then being disappointed when I saw it. Re watching it years down the track the same feelings remain. This should have been could, it could have been good, but it's never more than average.

It starts well - the terrific title, a scroll explaining what Z Force was, touching on their two famous missions, then listing the cast with their characters full name and rank. And there's a great opening of a submarine dropping off the men - and the beginning sequence where one of the gang shoot their own is striking. But then it gets bogged down with too many scenes of people peering over ridges and firing machine guns. That sounds exciting, even writing it, but not as you see it.

It's a fairly rudimentary trudge through the jungle. They could have done great things with Jon Philip Law being a Dutchman from the area whose family was killed by the Japanese, but its thrown away. (Is this island meant to be a former Dutch colony? It's never clear.) His romance with local Sylvia Change is very chaste (they snuggle, not have sex), and there are some silly bits like local resistance leader going all kung fu fighter on the Japanese. And the ending rips of The Wild Geese with the human McGuffin carking it at the last minute.

I will say this for it - the cast is great, and they all have distinct roles to play: callow Mel Gibson, who is bullied into the final battle by the Japanese diplomatic (who looks like a caricature of a Japanese from a war comic); ruthless Sam Neill who nonetheless has sympathy for the villagers; cheery Chris Haywood; sensitive Jon Philip Law. It's a great opportunity missed- they should look at remaking this.

Book review – “The Naked Truth” by Graeme Blundell

In Australian film history, is any actor more responsible for the success of the film in which he starred in than Graeme Blundell in Alvin Purple? Off the top of my head I can only think of a few – Jack Thompson in Petersen, Bruce Spence in Stork, Hogan in Crocodile Dundee. It’s hard to imagine who other than Blundell could have made Alvin work as well as he did: his sad eyes, gawky nature and unassuming nebbish face took the sting out of the central concept, and helped turn this one joke film into a massive smash. Alvin has not dated well – it’s repetitive and dull, all that nudity notwithstanding – but Blundell’s performance has.

There was something very Australian about Blundell – he was as Aussie in his way as the macho Chips Rafferty or Jack Thompson: shy best mates, quiet soldiers, Liberal voting businessmen who get bullied at Labor election night parties. And his background entirely suited his “look” – working class Melbourne lad, son of a ex-serviceman who worked in a shoe factory, loved cricket and died young, honourable and a little sad, (it was a shock to see a picture of Blundell’s father to find he didn’t look like Graeme Blundell).

At the time of Alvin, Blundell was already familiar to Australian cinema audiences through his lead role in The Naked Bunyip and support part in Stork. Indeed, with Alvin Blundell could make some claim to being the first new film star of the 70s revival. Unfortunately, he never enjoyed a follow up star part to match it in the way, say, Jack Thompson had in Sunday Too Far Away to follow Petersen. (Blundell did go into Don’s Party but that was an ensemble piece). Nonetheless, he was as busy as any actor in Australia during the 70s and 80s.

There was a lot more to Blundell than movies, though – he made an incredibly important contribution to Australian culture through his theatre work. He at the beginning of La Mama, the Pram Factory, the MTC; he was involved in early productions of Don’s Party, Norm and Ahmed (for which he was arrested for obscenity) and Dimboola; he helped set up Playbox and Kinsellas. Blundell’s never really been given credit for this – partly I think because of the Alvin thing, partly because of his problems with the Carlton set (he seems to have been politically a liberal rather than a hard-core leftist and those people seemed to cop it in the theatre land of the 70s). Nonetheless, it’s a massively impressive track record and it’s a shame he gave away setting up theatre companies after the late 80s.

For the past decade or so Blundell has mainly been a writer – his biography on Graham Kennedy is superb – and this autobiography is very well written, full of vivid descriptions and excellent analysis of various actors and directors eg George Ogilvie, John Sumner, Kennedy. I also think there’s a play (or a rom com) based on his experience writing a biography of Brett Whiteley with his de facto, Margot Hilton – it ended up ruining their relationship and Hilton ran off with the former lover of Whiteley’s wife.

Having said that, the book felt a little bogged down in places. I couldn’t think exactly what it was – maybe it a lack of joy and humour. Blundell seems tired by his experiences at times, particularly his marriages and the politics of the Australian theatre scene. There’s a little too much analysis and description and not enough life, if that makes sense. For instance, sketches of Frank Thring and Barry Humphries fairly leap off the page – maybe there needed to be more of this, or more stories. In particular I would have liked to have known a bit more about filming the various movies, putting on the shows (surely there was one decent anecdote from Pacific Banana?). But that’s just a personal opinion.