[This is part two of a post about my first face-to-face meeting with Producer/Actor James With]
Ordering a coffee and museli to fuel our minds for the early morning meeting I notice James leaning sideways towards the waitress trying to catch her busy eye. He’s doing it very deliberately. I begin to think he’s either acting out for a laugh, or he’s a habitual flirt, an expat who has spent too long in Thailand, until that is I hear that he is trying to ‘win her attention, to get a smile from her’.
Why all this is necessary becomes clear when James quietly tells me that she carelessly spilt his first drink in a slap dash manner before I arrived. She didn’t even bother with an apology. Hearing this I point out to him that he appears to be adopting a Buddhist inspired way to clear the air and make her feel much more at ease. He smiles at the thought. Unfortunately for the waitress we can see that even as she darts around the cafe she appears to prefer being uptight and busy, than pleasant and chatty. Dispensing smiles to relaxed customers ready to enjoy good company and good coffee doesn’t sit easy with her today. Pity, the Journal Cafe otherwise has alot going for it.
James and I continue.
Thailand – Perth Shift
James brings to my attention the fact that he and his partner Para Isidro (pictured) moved to Perth just over a year ago. Whilst the move was for James a return to Australia, for Para who originally hailed from the Philippines where she had a long career in the entertainment industry the move was to yet another foreign country.
When asked as to why the move, James sighted increasing costs and difficulties with running a dance school over in Thailand as the two main motivating factors. Political upheaval also got a mention, he had seen a few in his time there.
He went on to intimate that foreigners teaching modern forms of Western dance were not the most welcome of business types in Thailand. He grinned and nodded when I used the term ‘cultural hegemony’ to try to sum up what it was that the Thai authorities were trying to fight against.
“Yes, hip-hop is not the kind of dance they want to encourage,” James said with a slightly jaded expression. It became clear that such a business was going against the grain with Thai authorities who wanted traditional Thai dance to predominate over Western forms.
Perth though is receptive to the style of dance workshop that both James and Para run. Their latest January dance workshop Smooves by all accounts went well. Hip-hop here in Australia is not taken as such a culture attack on our dance culture. One might say Australia has always had a problem with Cultural Imperialism, but our indigenous forms of dance have stood up to waves of influence remarkably well.
Thailand it seemed had been otherwise good for James’ acting career. He gives me a quick inside story of how he was cast the Preacher in Sly’s Rambo 4 film. “Sly was very hands on with the final casting,” he explains with a tone that suggests his knowledge and experience runs much deeper than we have time to explore it. “He’s the one who made the choice. He picked me.”
We leave Rambo in the Burmese jungles and jump back to Western Australia.
Western Australia
I am keen to hear about James’ return to Australia as a Producer. What has the transition been like for him? Is he finding it easier to work on his production slate over here compared to being based in Asia?
I ask out of personal curiousity. I also ask because a few years ago I myself returned to Australia with ideas (dreams really) to pitch, produce and promote movies, television series and travel/cultural documentaries. Unlike James however, I naively came up against the reality of Australia’s media Gangland (Mark Davis’ term for the small number of powerful Australians who determine the cultural landscape of Australia’s creative industries), chronic funding problems (the pathetic mix of a lack of risk taking and favortism), my own inexperience (no formal production schooling), lack of pre-production support and Australia’s paranoid political climate; the post S11 paranoia about any projects that would be inclusive, wholistic and multicultural.
In response to the first question James’ grimace is enough for me to understand. I read it in a flash. His expression tells me things are happening, but nowhere near as smoothly as he had initially expected. He’s not defeated, but far from happy with how things are panning out. A few more words from him more-or-less confirms my nonverbal cue reading.
He’s rather frustrated and incredulous about the reception he has been given coming back to Australia. He’s been off the radar as it were. A common story in Australia’s culture industry circles. After working in the film industry in Asia and the USA, he doesn’t understand why not all the doors are opening. “Are they truly that unreceptive?” he wonders out loud. One by one, he starts to throw grenades. Seeing I am not defending, and that he can no longer hold back, the Western Australian film industry comes under fire, until that is he starts to widen the story to explain why he’s over here in Melbourne.
It all boils down to one phrase. Film Victoria is ‘proactive’.
Sadly for Western Australia, James is finding that the people and policies at Film Victoria are making it very hard for him not to shift the entire production of ‘All the Tired Horses’ to the eastern states. I can see he is uncomfortable with admitting it that he is considering it. His body language suggests he is awkward with the idea of his own disloyalty to the state where he grew up.
Seeing James react this way, I sip on my coffee and let silence shift the topic. He’s good with silence, better than I, so I jump in with another line of questions: Baz’s Australia.
Australia
James’ critique of Baz Lurhman’s film Australia is measured.
He mostly cites the problems associated with the look of the film. From James’ perspective Baz faced difficulties associated with varied scenes; a film jumping from outback scenes with wild locations, to scenes dense with CG, to studio scenes, then back to stylized sets and back outside again. Stylistically and technically it didn’t work for James.
Whilst I didn’t agree, the closing scene with the Elder walking away with his grandson with his bare backside showing was too much for James. In his thinking that closing scene just shouldn’t have revealed nakedness, if for no other reason than that it would have upset or offended foreign audiences. He was happy for me to include this comment in the blog, for it to be an ‘on the record’ comment as it were.
When I said that I thought Baz came across as being confused about who each scene was filmed for, James tended to agree. Some scenes in my mind spoke to Australian audiences, whilst others were really too much of an Australian audience to stomach, and may well have been more appealing, that is to say, deliberately directed at American audiences. I said to James that I found this overall confusion over which audience was being considered with each scene to be jarring, to which he acknowledge that he did understand what I menat about this confused feel to the film.
Leaving Baz alone, conversation turned to the stars of Australia and we chatted about Nicole Kidman not so much as the actress, but Nicole as the film promoter. James had quite a few cutting remarks to make about Nicole’s appearance on David Letterman’s program after the release of the film, none of which I will repeat here, suffice to say that in his view Nicole wasn’t the most relaxed of interviewees and that the box office might have reacted differently had she and Dave got along better. Meow!
All the Tired Horses
Wanting to avoid falling into the slanderous trap of fim bashing with its eternal wellspring of negativity, I made an attempt to turn talk to James’ own film slate and in particular the film he is currently in pre-production with ‘All the Tired Horses’.
He followed my lead and this change of topic had just the right affect. James’ whole posture shifted. He had more positive energy, but he also became more focused and yet slightly more cautious with expressing his views. It became immediately evident that he was now talking as a Producer, and as such it showed that he was self-aware of carrying the shared responsibility of a film that was still in pre-production; that critical time for all films where they either come to life with tremendous drive and energy, or die an invisible painful death often dragging those closest to it with them, particularly who refuse to move on to the next project of equal or greater promise.
Talk of All the Tired Horses confirms all that I have been wanting to know. Can James pull this off? Is he as a the Producer able to pull together all those lose threads, from finance, cast, crew, distribution, marketing and the like? Half an hour latter after taking in his experiences in Japan, Thailand and LA he has me convinced.
He has so much faith in the script, the Director and his ability that I am beginning to see that the experience in Western Australia with the film authorities over there have far from beaten him. It would have been easier to have the entire production in one home state, but the industry, for those of us who have been involved, certainly doesn’t work that way.
As our banter turned to the power of online social networks and marketing online we both sensed the rest of our day was looming. He finished his museli and was rewarded with an unexpected smile from the waitress. He had won us both over.
For an actor I was pleasantly surprised James wasn’t more animated and for a Producer I was surprised he was so candid and trusting with his views. This made for a refreshingly rare encounter in both regards. Overall though it was James’ unmistakable decency and openness with me as a near stranger that impressed me the most.
Welcome home to Australia James.
