Behind a Velvet Trap by Anthony Buckley

Author:Anthony Buckley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ART057000
ISBN: 9781742734583
Publisher: Hardie Grant Books
Published: 2009-08-01T04:00:00+00:00

On location in Charters Towers.

The dirt-covered main street.

Donald Crombie, left, ponders the next set-up whilst Lyn McEncroe, continuity, talks with composer Charles Marawood, visiting set to get a feel of the picture. Marawood, humming and chants, had the crew very intrigued.

Fred Schepisi knew we were looking for the young Michael Doolan. He rang from Melbourne. ‘I’ve found your boy – be at the Metro2 Crows Nest Sunday morning – but don’t tell anyone. I’m having the first screening of my film The Devil’s Playground.’ Donald and I were there right on the button. Fred had most certainly found our boy. Simon Burke, ‘Superjoove,’ was to be young Michael.

The financing of any film always finishes up as ‘intriguing’ and probably the most intriguing aspect of this picture’s financing was the substantial investment by the SAFC, even though it was to be filmed in Queensland.

The weeks of preparation prior to shooting are somewhat like a countdown for a rocket launching. Production manager, Ross Matthews, had completed a location survey of the Gulf Country with our director, Donald Crombie, where the early towns of the Gulf had virtually disappeared. Later we returned to Northern Queensland, surveyed Ravenswood and Charters Towers and selected the latter for the film.

On return from the location survey, Donald revised the screenplay and the search for the team of twenty Clydesdales commenced. We didn’t have to search far, for in Brisbane we found Don Ross, horsemaster, and twenty Clydesdales, eight of which were already working as a team. Don didn’t even blanch when we said we wanted to film at Charters Towers. Then the search for Paddy Doolan commenced. Casting is always paramount and it had been suggested we seek an overseas name, Stephen Boyd had been mentioned and I think a script was sent to him, when he suddenly died on a golf course, and the part of Paddy Doolan was given to Michael Craig. The other leading parts went to Robyn Nevin, Gerard Kennedy, Tony Barry, Marcella Burgoyne, Vincent Ball, Bryan Brown and Roberta Grant (who featured in a small part in Age of Consent).

The casting in Queensland had been very successful with twenty-six speaking parts being given to Queenslanders and two discoveries! They were the players for Granny Doolan and Grandfather Doolan. Grandfather was played by Andrew Maguire, the breeder of the mighty Bernborough. Granny Doolan was Tui Bow, stepmother of Clara Bow, the original ‘it’ girl. It seems that Tui went to Hollywood in the early twenties and fell in love with Clara’s father and married him. She had a wealth of stories of Hollywood in the twenties and thirties.

We were taken by surprise with an air traffic controllers’ strike so we hired a charter plane which took us eight and a half hours to get there, otherwise we would have lost a week.

The twenty Clydesdales arrived from Brisbane with horsemaster, Don Ross. When being marshalled into the yards, one of them knocked over a beehive. The bees retaliated by stinging the Clydesdales, who promptly galloped off into the bush.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.