Bruce Beresford - The Best Film I Never Made

I was in the van with the crew when my mobile rang. The conversation was brief, just a few secondsTheres no money. The films off. The mobiles (supplied by the production office) all stopped working a few minutes later. A day or so later the production office had gone. No one connected with the film could be found

This entertaining collection of stories by the accclaimed Australian director of Breaker Morant, Driving Miss Daisy and Maos Last Dancerand numerous operasincludes memoirs, brief lives, and revealing accounts of the film world and beyond.

Alongside unsung heroes from behind the camera and producers of dubious repute are Madeleine St John and Clive James, Margaret Olley and Jeffrey Smart, as well as a particularly seductive 1963 EH Holden-and Bruce Beresfords father, whose strange and startling decline in old age is charted in a poignant essay.

Opinionated, wry and entertaining, The Best Film I Never Made will delight and provoke in equal measure. It will appeal not only to cinema buffs but to those interested in music, art or literature.

Contents

He insisted he stay on in the house in the country after our mother died. Youll never get him out, friends said to me. They never want to let go, even though theyd be much better off in a retirement home. This was, sadly, true, even though my sister and I visited a number of places and then took him the brochures, along with improbable stories of the wonderful time he was going to have with all the other old people.

We werent being entirely selfish. He did very little work around the house or large garden when our energetic mother was alive and I saw no reason for an onslaught of activity. I doubted if he was capable of cooking anything at all. When I was a child, on the rare occasions our mother was away for a few days, he fed my sister and me on chips. Cut very thick. Cooked in lashings of oil. For every meal. I recall being delighted at the time.

What will you do all day? my sister demanded. He spluttered and rambled, trotting out his usual array of unfinished sentences, though the tone was unmistakableno pioneer home. I knew what hed do all day. Just as hed always done, but more of it. If there was no cricket or AFL on the television, an amble across to the general store, down to the tourist souvenir shop and/or up the hill to the pub (now smartened up and run by a couple of young men from Paddington), where he would bore anyone he could find with half-remembered and incoherently presented stories of his life as a travelling washing-machine salesman in the 1930s.

True, there were a few local friends but I suspected they were more the friends of our mother and would now take evasive action. Perhaps there were already very few left. Most were reliant on Zimmer frames and were given to dying on the bowling green or while sipping cups of tea as a television newsreader described events in a world they had long ceased to understand.

The first time I visited after her deathit must have been a couple of months, as Id been away workingI was amazed at the changes, even though I had foreseen them. The grass had grown up and either choked or hidden all my mothers flowers. The front door was jammed shut and there was glass all over the porch. It was dark and there was no light from anywhere in the house.

I walked around to the side of the house and pushed aside the pendulous passionfruit vine that hung over the kitchen door. I flicked the light switch with no result. The kitchen smelt and was filthy with empty baked-bean tins all over the floor and sink. (There were no dirty plates as he ate directly from the tins.) The living room had wet clothes strewn over the sofas and the moonlight revealed large mushrooms growing on the carpet. Newspapers were piled everywhere, hundreds of them. Hed hoarded them all his life, but my mother had succeeded in keeping them out of the house, apart from a pile in the bedroom, with the result that the garage was so full of them there was no possibility of using it for the car. The car, also, was full of newspapers.

The odd thing was that, although he bought newspapers every day, I could never recall him reading anything in them except the sports pages. There was no point in mentioning to him any catastrophe, revolution, political event, murder or robbery. Hed never heard of it. (He was evidently taken by complete surprise when he was called up for service at the beginning of the Second World War; he had no inkling of the approaching conflict or any clue as to the identity of the antagonists. The Australian army quickly realised that he would be a liability and sent him home. He spent the duration of the conflict, he explained to me, as a Sussex Street Commando. Commando! Imagining him swimming up crocodile-infested tropical rivers with a knife between his teeth, I used to boast about this to my school friends, until I found out from a much-decorated uncle that it was an office job.) If any effort was made to remove any of the newspapers, even the pre-war ones, he resisted vigorously, proclaiming, Theres an article in one of them I want to read.

I found him in the living room, sitting in front of the television wearing an old bean-stained dressing gown, watching the cricket. Gday, he said casually. Look at thisRichardsmy godfather, he can hit. Lookhelike Keith Miller. Remember when we saw Miller?Lots of

I remembered. Wed seen Miller lots of times at the Sydney Cricket Ground. Being burnt to a crisp at the cricket ground, while the agonisingly slow games drifted on day after day, was the main thing wed done together. He didnt show much interest in anything else, certainly not my schoolwork. I dont think he even found out Id been to university, though his interest perked up when I became a film director. We even went to a few movies, though the plots and characters all baffled him as theyd become so much more complicated since the days of Errol Flynn and Ronald Colman. After their deaths his interest in movies lapsed.

I stayed with him a few days. I bought some light bulbs and opened all the windows to let in some air. He shut them all again. I found him showering fully dressedexcept for his shoesso that he could wash his clothes as well as his body. He said it saved time. I said he didnt need to save time and should use the washing machine. I couldnt even persuade him to hang the wet clothes outside. He continued to hang them over the sofa and was happy to wear them soggy.

I took him out shopping and for some meals in the local town down the mountain. He was angry because I wouldnt let him drive the car. Hed always been an appalling driver and as a result had faced numerous court cases. Over the years he had lost his licence a number of times, not that this prevented him from driving for even one day. On the bridge over the Hawkesbury River I pointed out to him the spot where hed missed the bridge approach and gone straight into the river with my mother and aunt as passengers. Theyd all been rescued, in the middle of the night, by some American tourists. He scoffed at this proof of his incompetence, just as he snorted and avoided my attempts at involving him in a discussionas a prelude to reintroducing the subject of the retirement villageof the rundown house, the ridiculous diet (baked beans and ice cream), or even the fact hed never changed a light bulb but was content to sit in the dark and then find his way from room to room with a torch.

A couple of smart little restaurants had opened, all cappuccino, goat cheese and focaccia. He walked past these, insisting on Kentucky Fried Chicken. I protested, but had to give in. Almost anything was better than the baked beans. Was I imagining it, or were people walking towards us suddenly crossing the street? He waved (hed lived in the district for years and knew almost everyone) and called to them effusively, though they managed to scamper away, intent on appointments to right and left. Only one poor old lady on a Zimmer frame lacked the necessary speed and so was cornered and told about my career. How I had always been obsessed with films, et cetera, et cetera. He raved on and on to the poor old thing, skilfully blocking her feeble efforts to inch away from him. I doubt if shed seen a film since the days of Shirley Temple and had no idea what this director could possibly do. Didnt actors make up the stories?