There are a lot of theories as to why this trend exists; that the films coming out of Australia tend to be underdeveloped, don’t appeal to a large audience and are marketed poorly.  Another theory points to the quirky nature of Australian films.  Indeed, all of the films I have worked on since moving here have an element of what I’d call “fantastic reality” to them.  But if anything I think quirkiness helps sell a film because it generates a buzz.  Think about the Aussie films that you probably saw in a theater, Strictly Ballroom, Muriel’s Wedding, Babe (should have won the Oscar that year), Priscilla Queen of the Desert and Moulin Rouge.  Pretty quirky, hey?  And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the final number in Priscilla is to drag queens what the final number in Center Stage is to dancers, or what the Pamchenko twist in The Cutting Edge is to figure skaters; physically impossible but oh so deliciously fun.  We all love a little fantasy, so I doubt that’s the problem.

Even though my filmmaking experiences in Oz thus far has been limited and I’ve no knowledge of the marketplace on a professional level, I’ve developed some different theories of my own.  The first is that Aussies, and particularly Australian film makers, suffer from a crippling case of self deprecating humor.  It exists in the best of us.  Anyone with a modicum of humility makes fun of themselves and those of us with artistic talent tend to do it lot.  But Australians in entertainment do this so much that even American TV star Johnny Galecki, in his recent trip to Oz, felt surprised by how prevalent it was.  And he attended the Logie Awards (the Australian Emmys) an event intended to praise the great talent on Australian television.  You’d think that perhaps this applies only to the old hats, the vets of the industry who have probably done a few things worthy of making fun, but I find it amongst the fresh-faced hopefuls too.  I’ve already read three scripts by Aussies that each contained jokes about the hopeless state of the Oz industry.  Apparently they’ve never heard of self fulfilling prophecies.

But I think the main reason Australian films tend to fail in the US (the ultimate money spending target audience for most international fare) is because Americans don’t know a damn thing about Australia.  Bill Bryson said it best in his book In a Sunburned Country, “We pay shamefully scant attention to our dear cousins down under.”  Before I got here everything I knew about Australia I either learned from Steve Irwin or remembered from a brief Australian Renaissance in the 1980s thanks to Crocodile Dundee and Men at Work.  It was very little and hardly representative.  I have yet to see The Castle, a film that’s a cornerstone of Australian comedy.  And why is that?  Because it’s very Australian.  I probably wouldn’t have understood half the jokes in the film before I had moved here.  I’ve since been loaned a copy and I will see how many I understand now.  And with a great percentage of the film industry in Oz supported by government grants (a luxury for indy filmmakers if you ask me) many films coming out of the country are bound to be very Australian.  With plots, places, characters and jokes heavily colored by Aussies unique culture, those films are going to be mis-understood by international audiences.  Just imagine trying to explain Aussie rules football or, better yet cricket, to a Giants fan.  It just wouldn’t translate.

I’m not suggesting Australians write American stories and make American films.  If anything, we have too many of those already and the Hollywood machine is churning out more sequels then there are popcorn kernels consumed while watching them.  What I suggest instead is that Aussies spend a little more time advertising not just their movies but themselves.  They could stand to learn a little from their loud, self-important cousins to the north.  If we knew more about Australia, its history, its people, its traditions, its music, its fashion, its pop-culture, its slang, its lazy Sunday activities, its drinking games, its knock-knock jokes and everything else that comprises a unique culture, then when we see a preview for an Australian movie we’d be able to say “yeah, I get that.”  Stop making fun of yourselves and start telling the world how awesome you are.  Chances are, we will listen.  After all, in America everyone gets their 15 minutes, including a lot of people who shouldn’t.  Separate yourselves from the tabloid darlings with your talents and you might even get a whole 45.  Just don’t expect us to ever understand why you eat Vegemite.

With friends on both coasts in the US, e-mail had already become a quite a trusted friend of mine.  And then G-chat was just the icing on the cake.  Most of my online communication was still in fairly real time with friends I would have happily called and had the same conversations with (only you can G-chat topics at work that you probably wouldn’t say out loud, at least not in front of your boss).  But now the e-mails get sent with less regularity and I only have so many hours to chat before everyone I know in the US goes to sleep.  Afternoons online are quite quiet indeed.

But because of facebook, I can now not only keep tabs on those same friends but also on my childhood friends, friends of friends, classmates, business associates, former professors, bosses, and relatives I might have otherwise never knew I had.  What a weird and wonderful world we live in that I can see pictures from a wedding I would have attended had I been in the States, alongside photos of a former professors newborn son whom I’ll probably never meet.  Being on facebook is like attending a reunion of every institution and family you have ever been associated with.  But unlike the one on one conversations over cocktails that you might get at a real reunion, facebook is one where every guests grabs the mic and gives a speech at the same time.  It can be very hard to have a decent conversation over all that noise.

I love you guys, but I don’t need to see every video that amused you during your otherwise dull work week.  We probably know each other because of some common interest that we share, but that doesn’t mean I read the same extreme political columnists or listen to the same bands you do.  And it’s because I care about you that I have to tell you, the amount of time you spend playing farmville is just sad.  And don’t even get me started on those of you who complain about facebook on facebook.  If you hate it so much then just stop using it for f*^%$# sake!

What people seem to forget when they are using short form, instant e-communication, is to consider what they wouldn’t say if they were broadcasting on a different forum.  Over the phone, you might tell your friend about an interesting thing you saw on TV that week, or whinge a bit about how you’re feeling sick.  But would you call the same friend every five minutes to give them an update on the latest topic that was running through your mind?  Probably not.  So does your ex-boyfriend’s, co-worker’s, roomate’s cousin really care how many avocados you ate on Tuesday?  Probably not.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the internet has blessed my life with Skype.  I may be drinking my coffee while my friends are sipping glasses of wine, but we are still having a conversation over drinks just like we would in person, rude gestures and facials expressions included.   I not only get to have my weekly conversations with the parents but I can also see that they’ve never fixed the clock on the stereo in the living room.  Those little things add such a pleasant touch of home.  And no one on Skype bothers to tell me how many times they went to Starbucks that week.  They know that would be a waste of bandwidth.

So when communicating through the wonderful interwebs, that has blessed our life with such an abundance of information both exciting and mundane, interesting and dull, relevant and very much not, stop to consider this; does my friend living on the other side of the world, having her breakfast a full calendar day ahead of me, really care about what I’m about to post?  Or, would she perhaps like to hear about that crazy blind date I went on last week, that promotion I got at work, that I’m getting married, having a baby, getting a sex change or any number of other things that cannot be communicated in 200 characters or less and probably shouldn’t be broadcast to 300 people at the same time.  Maybe, just maybe, since she’s such good friend that I have her e-mail address, skype name, phone number, home address and enough information about her personal life to keep her from ever running for public office, I should have a chat with her instead.  Yeah, she’d probably like that.

So, naturally I was happy to find some like minded souls to endure the process with, and to find out that the permit issues, schedule setbacks, budget constraints and general insanity of the filmmaking process seems to be international.  This is a language I speak fluently.   But in Oz I do run into something new; a general question that even if not asked out loud I can see in people’s eyes when I explain where my accent came from.  “What are you doing here?”  True, I was born and raised in LA, the world capitol of filmmaking and I just spent ten years in NY, its not-so-little sister in “the industry.”  So yes, all of my connections (if you can call them that) are back in NY and all of the kids I grew up with who didn’t become lawyers found positions in the business that is Hollywood.  Most of the filmmakers I meet here are trying to get over there, so they can’t really fathom why I went the other direction.

I could write an entire dissertation about the many reasons I came all the way to Oz, life experience being chief amongst them, but everyone already understands those.  What I can’t seem to get people out here to see, is what an amazing filmmaking resource they have right here on their native soil.  The big studios set up shop in Hollywood because California offered almost every environment imaginable within one state and surrounded by a nice temperate climate.  Australia has that!  So what else do films require?  Money, for one, and there isn’t much of that in California or even NY these days.  But Australia has that!  Out here I’ve seen more opportunities for grants from each state and from the entire country than there are people to snatch them up (at least for a worthy film).  And what about a solid source of acting talent?  Hmm, well since a surprising amount of Hollywood’s biggest starts are Australian, and received their training in Australia at one of the most acclaimed acting schools in the world, I think it’s safe to say that Australia has that too!

So why isn’t the country crawling with wanna be directors and people who just happen to have a copy of their latest screenplay in the trunk of their car?  Why are the few people who dream in 16:9 trying to slap their storyboards down onto the overcrowded conference tables on Wilshire Boulevard?  It probably doesn’t help that, generally speaking, Australians tend to hate their own films.  I have yet to figure out why this is, but I’ve read several articles about how badly the home grown films do out here as opposed to when they are overseas.  And the filmmakers I recently met all seemed to agree.  They don’t like those “same old gritty stories.”  Aussie’s also have a lukewarm relationship with their biggest stars.  There are always current favorites and tabloid darlings, but Russell Crow’s and Nicole Kidman’s heydays have long past.  Gee, I’d still give them leading roles.  I just hope nobody badmouths any of Baz Luhrmann’s films around me, I might just deck them.

But if any of my fellow Aussie filmmakers were to ask for advice from someone with a little experience begging for jobs in the other hemisphere, I would tell them to ignore those snooty know-it-all American’s for a while.  The world does not need another cop drama set in NYC, another show about the spoiled and vapid in LA (think about what you have done to yourselves Los Angelinos!) any more reality TV stars, another heart-felt drama about a middle class American family, or any more parts that would be just perfect for George Clooney (Do you ever take a break, man?).  Take a page out of my favorite Australian’s book, and make your own movie, your own way.  Grab some of that money your country is so desperate for you to use to make them look good, take your camera out into the middle of nowhere (it won’t take long for you to get there) and film some of that great undiscovered talent that is going to sweep the Oscars one day.  You have everything you need right here, so use it!  I know you can do much better than re-making Mad Max (remember, that was a snooty American’s idea).

Hmm, maybe I ought to take my own advice.

The fashion is perhaps the most fun part of the day’s festivities.  Whether you are attending the race or not, you are expected to dress for the track.  Men wear fine suits with Easter egg colored ties and women wear tiny, highlighter colored dresses, with elaborate hats called fascinators.  I don’t know why they are called fascinators, but they certainly are fascinating.  Somewhere between a hat and a hair clip, they are decorated with feathers, flowers and all sorts of bright flora and fauna, and worn at a jaunty angle.  This tradition has to have come from Australia’s British routes.  The Empire lives on!

But at it’s core, Melbourne Cup day is just another good excuse to party.  It’s a formal holiday in Melbourne, and an unofficial afternoon off for the rest of the country.  Perhaps they realized long ago, that even though the race itself is only a blurry two minutes of jumbled up racehorses nosing their way to the finish, that the massive lunch and several glasses of champagne consumed before the race, would leave every Australian in a useless state for the rest of the day.

And just like the Superbowl, Melbourne Cup Day ends with stumbling and a little vomiting.  Yes, everyone may look classy but being well dressed doesn’t increase your tolerance.  Melbourne Cup attenders beware, if you vomit while still on the field, you will be on the news.  Their parents must be so proud.

This particular Melbourne Cup day came with a bit of an inconvenience for those of us living on the North Shore of Sydney.  Just when everyone was starting to stumble home post race, the trains broke down and legions of brightly dresses party goers were forced to walk home in the record heat of thirty seven degrees.  If you are only familiar with the Fahrenheit scale, just know that that’s HOT!  I’m very glad that as a brazen foreigner, I decided to violate race day fashion rules and wore flats.

Even though I have already been won over by the classy experience offered at the Hayden Orpheum theater, I couldn’t refuse an opportunity for promotionaly priced Gold Class movie tickets at another theater.  What is Gold Class, you ask?  I think it’s probably best described like this, as close as you’ll ever get to watching a movie in Spielberg’s private screening room, plus waiter service.  For the wallet thinning price of $32, a Gold Class ticket lets you wait for the theater to open in a lounge instead of a line, gets you a lazy boy style seat in the theater, complete with adjustable back and leg rests, offers a menu that includes more than just hot dogs and plastic cheese covered nachos, and waiter service that can time food deliveries with the beginning, middle and dramatic conclusion of the movie you’re watching.  Awesome!

Even though you have to pay extra for the food and drinks, they actually come at reasonable price, a decent (for Sydney) $7 per cocktail and $11 per dessert or entree (which we would call an appetizer, but they call them entrees here.  Which one of us is right about that?)   My malteser covered sunday was delicious, even if a little hard to eat while leaning back in a lazy boy, in a darkened theater.  Despite the hefty price, it’s an experience well worth repeating.

The other safe indoor activity we decided to participate in was getting ourselves cultured.  This was done at a combination of the Art Gallery of New South Whales, and the Powerhouse Museum.  The Art Gallery of New South Whales, is an interesting combination of the Met and MOMA, housed in a lovely landmark building in the heart of the Royal Botanic Gardens.  In addition to a large collection of historic paintings from all over the world, that included a fair number of Australian landscapes (makes sense) the gallery also displays the works of many contemporary artists.  Did you know that Christo once wrapped up a piece of the Australian coast line?  What hasn’t that man covered in fabric?

The Powerhouse Museum is more a kin to the Smithsonian, with a dash of the Exploratorium and a design museum, all rolled into one.  Located inside an actual old powerhouse, this massive structure houses an interesting collection of furniture, clothing, planes, trains, automobiles, satellites, spaceships and I saw more than one kitchen sink on display.  The lower level of the museum includes an area full of interactive displays, where you can experiment with electricity, magnets, chemistry, sound waves, gravity, and all other things that are only cool when learned about outside of the classroom.  I’m sure that had I been the primary target age for the displays, that I would have had a blast, but my mature Sunday morning gin haze was a bit overstimulated by the noise.  Personally, I wanted to play with the art nouveau era dressing table, but that’s just me.

It still gets a bit windy in the afternoons these days, but I can’t complain about the temperature.  I’ve enjoyed my cultural excursions around Sydney, but hope that this weekend will bring with it the opportunity to add to my steadily increasing number of freckles with a little sunshine.

And this is what it looked like about fifteen minutes before the show started.

So, not only did the Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace offer a pleasantly uncrowded movie going experience (unheard of during the opening weekend of any Harry Potter movie) in a graceful art deco theater, but also many other amenities not standard to the popcorn scented cattle corrals I’m used to seeing movies in.  If you’re going to pay $17 for a movie, which is pretty standard out here for any movie, not just the IMAX or special screenings one might pay that much for LA or NY, it might as well be here.
Instead of standing in line so long you inevitably sink to the rash producing carpet below, and spend your time contemplating how much uglier the dizzying pattern could possibly get, you instead sit on a velvet couch under the flattering light of well proportioned stained glass fixtures, and sip a glass of wine while you wait for the theater doors to open.  No one was playing the white piano perched in the corner of the room while we were there, but I’m sure the theater finds occasion to use it.

As you walk into the theater, you can take the time to appreciate the decor, instead of stomping off the shoes of several small children in your attempt to beat them to the good seats.  And once you’re in a well appointed seat,  you won’t be subjected to the same loop of badly animated ads and movie trivia questions (Yes, I already knew that Whoopi Goldberg worked in a funeral parlor).  For pre-show entertainment, the Orpheum opts for songs masterfully played on the impressively complicated Wurlitzer pipe organ.  I was already impressed by the decoration, so the fact that the organ rose from the stage, and the sound beat out of pipes built creatively into the proscenium, was just icing on the cake.  Did I mention the organ was complicated?  Mad props to Neil Jensen.

We still had to sit though a loop of pretty bad television style ads (the standards of which are lower in Oz than those played during daytime cable re-runs in the States) and the screen size would not have satisfied my super-sized American standards if I had sat much further back, but the experience was calm, classy and fun.  This is where I will be seeing all the movies from now.  It’s a good thing I found a new source of entertainment, since a third of my TV screen just went black.

To begin with, a lack of cable means you only have five channels.  I think with some sort of external box we could get an additional five for free, but a desire to remain cloistered in a dry apartment has prevented me from doing so.  By American standards, we might see that as having nothing to watch, but there is actually an astounding variety of things on from day to day.

During the day, standard American soap operas and talk shows dominate, but I have yet to figure out why Ellen and Oprah are about half a season behind, and The View seems to be right on schedule.  I might know where the soap operas were in sequence if A. I watched soap operas and if B. their plots ever actually moved forward.

International news comes on at lunch, and breaks up gaps between shows.  It may come as no surprise to news watchers that the programs here are far better, and far more informative than they are in the States, but to someone who used to avoid the news like it was the swine flu, this is an unexpected change.  The police blotter and crime news takes up an insignificant blip of time, as opposed to becoming a drawn out drama.  Human interest pieces are limited to things that are actually interesting.  And the news is stated simply, informatively, and without co-hosts to pass inane banter passed back and forth across the news desk.  I, however, do miss weather maps that are actually readable.  Australia is a big country.  I really don’t care what wind conditions are like in Darwin.  Zoom in!

To catch up with the weirder events in the news, you might choose to watch a show like Good News Week, where a group of comedians get together to play games associated with the oddest international events of the week.  I think what I enjoyed most about this show was its completely unstructured structure.  The comedians essentially rule the stage.  It was just like having a group of friends over for game night.  Eventually, everyone gets drunk enough that it doesn’t matter how the game is being played or who is winning, and the conversation degrades until you’re discussing fingering.  Yes, that’s exactly what they were discussing toward the end of the show.  And despite the fact that a popular sketch comedy show called Chaser was, just the previous week, suspended for making jokes about dying children, I have yet to hear about any sensor backlash from that.

And speaking of odd censoring decisions, why are shows like Man Men on at 8:30, while The Supernatural is on at 10 (in addition to being rated M for mature)?  And yes, Mad Men is on regular TV here as well as Flight of the Concords.  They are every bit as good as everyone said they were, and cable seems less essential now.  Primetime in Oz (which I think starts at 7:30 or 8:30, odd that) is also fleshed out with American shows like So You Think You Can Dance, Bones, Castle, Law and Order (of course) and the Aussie reality competitions like Master Chef Australia and the soon to be starting Dancing with the Stars Australia.  Pretty standard fare, even if the imports are still about a half season behind.  Please don’t tell me who wins So You Think You Can Dance, just give it a couple of weeks and then we can talk about it.

But perhaps the most fascinating shows, are the documentaries and quite real reality shows, which run frequently and are sometimes unnervingly uncensored.  I’ve already discussed the surprising doc, The Perfect Vagina, but to add to the graphic surgery in that hour of TV I have since seen spinal surgery, watched brain tumors being removed, see an entire team of rugby players give themselves a check for testicular cancer (in the locker room, all at the same time, without any clothes on, and without any “blur” put in during post) and seen real footage of people going to doctors about embarrassing illnesses on a show called, you guessed it, Embarrassing Illnesses.  The next time you have to go to your doctor for an emotionally uncomfortable procedure, just think to yourself, at least I’m not on TV.

In addition to TV watching I, of course, also had to test the DVD player.  Since I believe in total cultural immersion, it only made sense to rent Mad Max and The Road Warrior.  It was nice to see that having been here a while I could appreciate something about the movies I never would have noticed before.  In almost every outdoor scene there is one constant background noise, bird calls.  It just goes to show, the birds have and will always, even in a bleak apocalyptic future, rule Australia.

But, I don’t think you would ever see and ad in the States for help with premature ejaculations that featured an, *ehem* animated logo.  I’ll let your imaginations sort that one out.  And even though it was a documentary, on after 10pm, I’m not sure KCET would have ever played “The Perfect Vagina.” This British documentary featured no shortage of “fannys” or “lady bits” (as the Brits call them) and even footage of an actual labiplasty, a surgery I hope to never have to talk someone out of.

But among all the eyebrow raising ads, are hints of what I would call a few old fashioned notions.  Advertisers still imply that making a good roast is women’s business, and watching rugby is men’s.  The other day while walking around my neighborhood, my attention was attracted by a bright pink van.  Upon closer inspection, I saw that it was a handyman service called “Hire a Hubby”.  As cute as the van was, with it’s little stick figure wearing a tool belt as a logo, I’m sure the company name would have never made it past the planning phases in an American business model.  Even if it had, some political interest group or another would have attacked the company for promoting the stereotype that women can’t preform household repairs and, lacking a husband, must turn to a handy-MAN.  If you’re anything like me, you would think that they should go out and find something better to do with their time, but that wouldn’t stop them from getting press.

Of course, are all these ideas really so different from what we get bombarded with in the states?  Isn’t dishwashing soap still sold to women, and large TVs for watching “the game” still sold to men?  There is still a rating system for televisions shows, and it functions on parameters similar to those in the US.  Even the word “balls” was bleeped out during and episode of The View, though in the states we’ve grown far past “The 7 dirty words you can’t say on television”, of George Carlin’s day.  (well, maybe not most of them, but I think the FCC has come to at least accept “tits” (the word, not the act of exposing them during the Superbowl))  I think the only real difference is, that Americans worry much more about who they might offend, and get offended a bit too often.

Documentaries aim to bring about an understanding of something we couldn’t possibly understand if they were edited down.  Cute company names are created to help you remember them.  And funny ads are simply that, funny.  So I can only hope that my exposure to Australian media will, in addition to re-familiarize me with “Magnum PI” (You haven’t aged a day Tom Selleck), also encourage me to lighten up.