Cast Mates by Sam Twyford-Moore

Author:Sam Twyford-Moore [Twyford-Moore, Sam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: NewSouth Publishing
Published: 2023-05-23T00:00:00+00:00

It was a boyhood dream come true, and many of Hogan’s boyhood dreams did come true, which leads to questions about who in Australia is afforded such good fortune. Hogan, after all, had much of Hollywood accessible to him following his meteoric rise. His very first feature film rapidly became the highest grossing Australian film of all time – both at home and internationally – and it has remained in that exact position, unbeaten, since its release more than 35 years ago. Its commercial performance meant that its cultural reach was all encompassing. The phenomenon hit my life extremely early: in a home movie, taken at my christening party, my dad, carrying a heavy portable video camera on his shoulder – while recording straight on to big clunky VHS tapes – did a mock interview with one of my first cousins, Beau, about him having just caught a crocodile, a fantasy brought on by the croc-mania in the air around us. ‘Say something to Sam about the crocodiles you saw today … how big were they? Were they 20 foot? You better say something! This is all going on the news tonight … How big was the crocodile you caught this morning?’

‘Five … ten foot!’ he says.

‘Ten foot? That’s only a little one,’ my dad prods.

‘Nah … 30 foot!’

‘Thirty foot? That’s more like it. That’s a big one, isn’t it.’

A little later dad starts speculating what might be next for the child prodigy crocodile hunter in front of him. ‘Are you off to New York next week? What are you going to do over there? Are you going to see all the film stars? Go to all the parties?’

‘Catch more crocodiles.’

‘Catch crocodiles in New York? That would be excellent. I don’t think anyone has ever done that before … not for a longtime anyway.’

This escalating exchange of exaggerations was driven entirely by the recent release of Hogan’s Crocodile Dundee (1986). In the same home movie, my grandfather comments that my father looks like Paul Hogan / Crocodile Dundee – a comparison many Australian men must have heard in the aftermath of the movie. It was proof of how adored Hogan was at home that year, but he had an unusual, winding pathway to the kind of global fame that would result in misquotations at family BBQs. Indeed, the laconic Hogan became a leading man about as late as you can get in Hollywood; he was 46 when his film hit with American audiences. To Americans, the Crocodile Dundee character might have come out of nowhere; to Australians it was a clear linear career progression, a logical projection of Hogan’s onscreen persona, only now outfitted for a much larger screen. Pre-fame, he worked as a rigger on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, but while still perched high above the waters, he wrote a letter requesting to audition for a televised variety talent competition. He went on the show primarily to take the piss out of it, but he was such a hit he was invited back again and again.

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.