菲利普·诺伊斯访谈

Escape from Hollywood: a talk with Phillip Noyce
By Nina Rehfeld
July 28, 2003

"The story is even more topical now than it was fifty years ago when it was written."

How did you get from mainstream Hollywood to doing political films like Rabbit-Proof Fence and The Quiet American?

There were political films during the Hollywood years as well. Clear and Present Danger was dealing with some of the same themes as Graham Greene's novel. I just woke up one morning and decided that I'd had enough of working in Hollywood. I was enjoying myself, I mean, it was just like a kid in a candy store. But it was too much of a good thing. In this case, it was too much of the star system, too much of the Hollywood machine, the politics that go with that, too much of the pre-masticated stories, in particular, those that come from making bestsellers into movies, the predictability that comes with dealing with those big budgets where it doesn't really matter whether the movie is good or bad, they'll sell it to everybody and the audience will come - all of that made it seem that moviemaking had become part of a factory. A process, a conveyor belt.

Then, going back to Australia and working on Rabbit-Proof Fence seemed to be the antidote to all of that. But, more particularly, it was the story itself, Rabbit-Proof Fence. This is the kind of story a Hollywood writer could have been paid a million dollars to get wrong. You've got these three little children, seemingly powerless, completely irresistable as characters, faced with this seemingly impossible task. I mean, they might as well have been transported to Mars, they're so far away from home. You think they've got no chance and then they follow the umbilical cord of this mythical fence that brought their fathers, and if they find it, they get home. And ultimately, it ends with this bittersweet triumph that's very affirming. You know, it's the kind of stuff that, if you can invent it, you're doing very well. But it was real, so the story was really irresistable. It was the power of that story that got me to escape from Hollywood.

And you got the story when you were still there?

Yes, I was still there. I was working on The Sum of All Fears. I was going to make another $100 million movie. And the phone rang in the middle of the night and it was this strange woman. She said, "We have the perfect film and you're the perfect director to make this into a movie."

And this was Christine Olsen, the documentary filmmaker. She'd never written a script before, but she'd bought the rights to this story. And she'd written her first screenplay and now she was calling from Australia - she got the time difference wrong. It was two, three o'clock in the morning. And I thought, I've got to get rid of her quickly - but efficiently, because if I offended her, she would probably keep ringing me and ringing me, and so, I told her to ring my office the next day.

So I got rid of her and left a message at the office telling them that there's this crazy woman, she's got some story about stolen generations and everything, so try and just gently... get her out of our lives. But somebody didn't get the message, and so, when she rang the next day, they made friends. Christine sent the script, the assistant read it and then passed it onto someone else who passed it onto someone else... and they all started coming to me and saying, "You must read this story!" I said, "What story?" They said, "The story by that woman." I said, "No! Forget that story! We're doing this big movie. Don't waste my time."

Eventually, I read the story, and I thought, Oh, my God, what was I thinking? This is an incredible story. And there I was sitting on The Sum of All Fears. We'd paid a screenwriter something like a million and a half dollars to adapt this story and it still wasn't working. It was all bullshit and make-believe, you know. The Russians were... I don't know, I forget myself. But you know, it was supposedly based on reality, but the story wasn't working. And here's this simple, little, tiny movie. It didn't need millions of dollars. It didn't need stars. Seemed like the perfect antidote to everything that the Hollywood experience had become, despite all the fun I was having.

Did you have problems raising the money to make The Quiet American?

We did have problems, but then, there was so much money in the Neuer Markt, here [in Germany], that some of it had to go to a good cause. And that's where we found the money.

Sounds likely.

Yeah. No, we couldn't finance it in America. It was developed for a while at Paramount by Sydney Pollack and I who had deals there. I was making Clear and Present Danger and he was doing the John Grisham, the first one, The Firm. So we were making big movies for big studios and we said we wanted to buy this book. And they said ok, just to keep us happy. And we gave them the script and they read it and they said, "Oh, no, we can never make this. It's not commercial." We couldn't find the money, but eventually, we found it here.

Seems a shame that it only got one nomination for an Academy Award, Michael Caine's.

Well, in order to get nominated, you have to be seen. The movie was shown for two weeks in November and then it was not screened again until after the voting took place, the nominations, and to make up for that, usually you send out tapes or DVDs. But in this case, the tapes were sent out after the voting. [laughs] So it was impossible, absolutely impossible for it to even get nominated. It was a miracle that Michael Caine got nominated. Nobody who voted could see the movie! [laughs]

Could it be that the Americans don't want to see such movies, where the Americans aren't the heroes?

No, I don't think that's true. I think that when the final figures come in, the box office in America and in the rest of the world will be roughly the same. Which is usual for any movie. Nowadays, it's fifty-fifty, America and the rest of the world. So I don't think that the audiences in Australia, France and so on combined are going to be any bigger than the American audience.

The Americans have embraced it. If you look at the IMDb - that subject interests me also; what's the American reaction? - look at the American voters and the non-American voters. The Americans actually rate it higher. So that's not necessarily true. America is a nation that celebrates diversity and controversy.

There was a time after 9/11 when the film was in rough cut, not finished, and we were screening it in the New Jersey area, often to people who'd been involved in the attack on the World Trade Center. There, the response was very negative in those months after 9/11. Then, yes. People felt violated. They felt that the film was an aggressive act. But I think that period has passed.

How do you think the film resonates now?

I think it's amazing that Graham Greene was such a genius, or rather, that his observation was so acute, writing this novel with this character, Alden Pyle, the quiet American, this do-gooder, this evangelist who wanted to save the world, or the Vietnamese people. And that that portrait may be more true today than it may have been when he wrote it. That's remarkable. It is amazing that the story is even more topical now than it was fifty years ago when it was written.

"And now, they could say, 'See? It happened. 'Cause it's in a movie.'"

Coming back to Rabbit-Proof Fence, could you explain its success in Australia? I read that you guided this film from theater to theater in order to get it to Australian audiences who are normally not so open to such stories.

Yes, that's true. The film has now made a profit, and a good profit, because everyone's sharing in that, including the three children. We decided that we had to break through to that audience. So the first person that was hired was the publicity person. The marketing team was on months before the film got started and for the next 18 months, that's all they did: plan how to sell the movie.

The movie was a success because the audience wanted to receive the story. They wanted to celebrate the story. But historically, there has been a resistence to black stories, a resistence to the truth of our history. But you could feel - you know, before you make a film, you put up a finger - and you could feel this incredible want to celebrate that story, to come to terms with the past. But they just needed to be pushed over the cliff, just a push and then they would come.

So we worked hard to make those kids into everybody's child, to sell the movie. We toured in buses with the children, their families, going from town to town for months. All around, not just big towns, but little towns, too, theater by theater. We got all the theater owners to become, you know, disciples. We worked with the theater owners, particularly the independents, visited with them, stayed with them, and one by one, brought them in. So it became a movement, theater to theater. It was the little ones who made the film a big success. One theater could make a big difference. One of them made $300,000 from the movie. Just one theater owner who kept telling her patrons they have to see it. Worked it, worked it, worked it.

So was it a personal promotion for you as an Australian?

It was personal to me to prove that the audience was sophisticated enough to embrace the story. Whereas everyone else was saying that they couldn't. History told them that they couldn't. Every film was a failure that had indigenous themes since the 50s. Interestingly, the only other time that it was a success was also a story of stolen children. In the 50s. It was a film called Jedda. And that had been a huge success also.

Sounds like guerrilla marketing, a principle not unknown to Hollywood...

Oh, absolutely! Absolutely. Hollywood realizes that moviemaking is essentially an exercise in marketing. The product is just the excuse for the marketing exercise. [laughs] That's why they beat us, all of us with our national cinemas. Because we're thinking it's about art! [laughs] They know that the title is only there to be exploited, the images are only there to be exploited. So when I was faced with this conundrum - how are you going to sell this story? Three children? And they're black children? You know? And the bad guys are the white guys? Sounds impossible. And yet I'd seen in Hollywood that it didn't matter. They could sell anything. Two flies on a wall. As long as you could find the angle to pull them in.

How important is political filmmaking to you?

One thing I do know is that it's no use making a film unless people see it. So, you know, as the old Hollywood saying goes, if you want to send a message, ring Western Union. So, political filmmaking...

Well, it goes back to how we started in Australia, really. The New Wave, which came to Australia soon after your New Wave, but for the same reasons - it was baby boomers whose parents had given them the opportunity to express themselves, the new prosperity that came to Germany around the same time as it came to Australia in the late 60s and early 70s when your New Wave started to explode. It was a real political movement for us in Australia. You couldn't see an Australian movie if you wanted to because the cinemas were owned by the Americans, so even if we made any films, we couldn't get them shown. It was a really aggressive war that we were fighting to try and rescue the screens from them and to get our own stories up there. Making the films, whether they were entertainments or historically based, we were all joined in this nationalist movement to express our identity and to define it up there on the screen.

So what was important was that you were part of a debate between you and the audience. Between you and yourself. Because you're the audience as well as the filmmaker. We were defining our history. I mean, I can remember when Australians used to laugh when they heard the Australian voice from the screen. Like a baby looks in the mirror and laughs at its own face. Because we'd never seen it! We never saw our own images, we never saw our own experience on the screen. And at first, it was really weird for us.

But it was really important because the cinema is such an urgent art form and so strong. It was really important that we do that. So, these films were an important way to return after Hollywood, after playing in that big sandbox with all those expensive toys. It's not the same as being a part of this incredible debate. So when I made Rabbit-Proof Fence and it was being attacked and I became part of the debate, it was like I was being reborn again as a filmmaker. It was going back to the beginning.

How did the indigenous people of Australia react to the film?

Well, I must say that I'm not an Aborigine, so I can't tell you the real way in which they reacted, but it was interesting, because I expected, as a fat cat from Hollywood, you know, and a white person, to be attacked. Legitimately. Not for stealing children, but for stealing a story. And I was surprised when that didn't happen. That says more about that story and about our history, because what happened was, when we were touring the cinemas, there were so many people with presents. Not with placards saying, "He stole our story," but with presents. And now, I have them. Paintings, spears, shields, all sorts of presents. Sculptures that were formally presented by people who said, "Thank you for allowing us to say that it really happened." Because I was part of the mainstream, because I was part of the establishment, because I was white, because the movie would now be shown in the mainstream cinemas and not in the ghetto, in the art house, not shown to the converted but to the unconverted, Aboriginal people were thankful that this movie became part of popular culture instantaneously, not marginalized culture as an outsider story, but as the inside story, as the story for everybody.

That's just because, one, they've been denied a voice or a representation, particularly in popular culture, except perhaps for one person in the modern era, Cathy Freeman, the runner, who's celebrated. And two, because there've been so many attempts over the years to deny the truth of the stolen generations. There've been claims that it was based on false recall, that the stories came from people who couldn't face that their parents didn't love them or that the parents were incapable of looking after them, that they'd been separated for their own good, that they'd been saved from being murdered by full-bloods. There are people whose experience has been absolutely denied by mainstream culture, by the majority culture. And now, they could say, "See? It happened. 'Cause it's in a movie."

Made by a white guy.

Yeah. Made by a white guy from Hollywood. Must be true. [laughs]

How important is it for you to work with stars?

Well, they always help, you know. They help you find an audience, but more particularly, they help you find the money. The whole system of film financing is based on those stars. As much as they control the business nowadays, they can be irresponsible at times. No names. But their choices can at times allow unlikely films to be made. We spent years trying to find the right cast for The Quiet American and when Brandon Fraser and Michael Caine signed on - [snap!] - we got the money. Kenneth Branagh is not a big movie star, but he certainly helped us to sell Rabbit-Proof Fence all around the world. Pretty hard to sell a film starring three unknowns.

Do you always find the right actor for the right part?

No. No, it's a cross between who you want and who wants you. You have to meet the right people.

Did you ever imagine, while making The Quiet American. what Graham Greene might have thought of your work?

Oh, yes, constantly. Yes. He was a cranky guy who always hated the adaptations. I mean, he was really bitter about some of them. Michael Caine told me how he was at the Ivy, this famous restaurant in the West End in London for show biz people. Graham Greene came up to him after The Honorary Consul and told him that he thought it was a terrible version of his story. So, yes, we were constantly thinking, What's he thinking about this?

It's the first time anyone's attempted to seriously adapt the novel. I mean, the first movie changed the whole story, particularly the ending. In a huge way. In the first film, it was the Viet Minh who were responsible for the bombs. Had nothing to do with the American. Ever. The Englishman had been tricked. That's not the way the novel ends. The novel is the same as our film. So the first film was completely different because it was made in the post-McCarthy era during the communist witch hunts. I guess the director didn't want to be hunted down as a red.

What's the fundamental difference between adapting novels by Tom Clancy and Graham Greene?

Well, for one thing, Graham's not alive to attack me and Tom is. But there's also another difference. There are certain novels where your adaptation is done for different reasons. It's because of the fact that you revere The Quiet American that you want to adapt it. You've also got a religion of people who worship Graham Greene; you've got a responsibility to the literary classic to try and adapt responsibly. But no one could call Tom Clancy's material literary classics. It's popular but that doesn't mean that it's good. It's a different kind of responsibility.

Did you like the idea of making Jack Ryan younger, of getting Ben Affleck for the part?

I think it's probably a good idea but I couldn't do it. What are you going to tell Ben Affleck? Do it more like Harrison Ford? [laughs] I thought it would have been impossible. Because for me, there was only one, you know. But he'll get older, and eventually; he'll be as old as Harrison Ford, and then I could come back.