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The Sum of Us

1994, Drama/Lgbtq+, 1h 39m

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Harry (Jack Thompson), a middle-aged father who suffered through the death of his wife, is ready to get back into dating. Harry shares a home with his gay son, Jeff (Russell Crowe), who is also looking for a serious relationship. Harry and Jeff, who are very close, decide to help each another look for potential partners. Jeff finds a boyfriend who is still in the closet, and Harry begins dating Joyce (Deborah Kennedy). She has a bias against gays, which puts Harry in a tough spot.

Genre: Drama, Lgbtq+

Original Language: English

Director: Geoff Burton , Kevin Dowling

Release Date (Theaters): Mar 8, 1994 original

Release Date (Streaming): Sep 14, 2020

Box Office (Gross USA): $743.0K

Runtime: 1h 39m

Distributor: Samuel Goldwyn Company, Hallmark Entertainment, Miramax Films

Production Co: Samuel Goldwyn Company

Sound Mix: Stereo

Cast & Crew

Jack Thompson

Harry Mitchell

Russell Crowe

Jeff Mitchell

John Polson

Deborah Kennedy

Joyce Johnson

Joss Moroney

Mitch Mathews

Julie Herbert

Rebekah Elmaloglou

Jenny Johnson

Geoff Burton

Kevin Dowling

Hal McElroy

Executive Producer

Errol Sullivan

David Faulkner

Original Music

Mark Seymour

Cinematographer

Frans Vandenburg

Film Editing

Faith Martin

Graham "Grace" Walker

Production Design

Art Director

Kerrie Brown

Set Decoration

Louise Spargo

Costume Design

Critic Reviews for The Sum of Us

Audience reviews for the sum of us.

A satisfying and somewhat stirring examination of love and family. Crowe and Thompson give solid performances despite limited production values. "The Sum of Us" made me smile, so I guess I gotta recommend it.

In 1994, I would imagine the idea of father and son, straight and gay, accepting each other without question would have been more groundbreaking. Hopefully in the 20 years since, this would not be such an unusual story.

Beautifully acted by two fine actors with a refreshing attitude to a modern father-son relationship.

[font=Century Gothic]In "The Sum of Us," Jeff(Russell Crowe), a 24-year old plumber who lives at home with his dad, Harry(Jack Thompson), is attracted to Greg(John Polson), a gardener he has talked with at the pub a few times. Jeff feels that this is the big night and Harry promises to stay out of the way.(Despite their friendship, the two men do have a tendency to drive each other crazy as housemates.) Harry, a widower, is also planning on getting back into the dating scene as he contacts a dating service and arranges a date with Joyce(Deborah Kennedy), a middle-aged divorcee.[/font] [font=Century Gothic][/font] [font=Century Gothic][/font] [font=Century Gothic]"The Sum of Us" is about how playing a gay character in a movie may not necessarily be detrimental to an actor's career. Its positive stance on openmindedness sometimes threatens to push the movie over the line into public service announcement territory but it avoids that fate by having a good eye for characterization. Also, its message about acceptance is broad enough to include living at home with parents and working class occupations. Certainly, there is nothing wrong with working with your hands. [/font] [font=Century Gothic][/font] [font=Century Gothic]The central theme of the movie is love and how it is passed down from generation to generation. Some people may be freaked out by Harry's behavior but in an ideal world, that is how fathers should act. But to be honest, I have no problems with the cordially laconic relationship I have with my father.[/font]

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‘The Sum of Us’ Tallies the Cost of Racism for Everyone

By Jennifer Szalai

Feb. 23, 2021
Share full article

Hinton Rowan Helper was an unreserved bigot from North Carolina who wrote hateful, racist tracts during Reconstruction. He was also, in the years leading up to the Civil War, a determined abolitionist.

His 1857 book, “The Impending Crisis of the South,” argued that chattel slavery had deformed the Southern economy and impoverished the region. Members of the plantation class refused to invest in education, in enterprise, in the community at large, because they didn’t have to. Helper’s concern wasn’t the enslaved Black people brutalized by what he called the “lords of the lash”; he was worried about the white laborers in the South, relegated by the slave economy and its ruling oligarchs to a “cesspool of ignorance and degradation.”

Helper and his argument come up early on in Heather McGhee’s illuminating and hopeful new book, “The Sum of Us” — though McGhee, a descendant of enslaved people, is very much concerned with the situation of Black Americans, making clear that the primary victims of racism are the people of color who are subjected to it. But “The Sum of Us” is predicated on the idea that little will change until white people realize what racism has cost them too.

The material legacy of slavery can be felt to this day, McGhee says, in depressed wages and scarce access to health care in the former Confederacy. But it’s a blight that’s no longer relegated to the region. “To a large degree,” she writes, “the story of the hollowing out of the American working class is a story of the Southern economy, with its deep legacy of exploitative labor and divide-and-conquer tactics, going national.”

As the pandemic has laid bare, the United States is a rich country that also happens to be one of the stingiest when it comes to the welfare of its own people. McGhee, who spent years working on economic policy for Demos, a liberal think tank, says it was the election of Donald Trump in 2016 by a majority of white voters that made her realize how most white voters weren’t “operating in their own rational economic self-interest.” Despite Trump’s populist noises, she writes, his agenda “promised to wreak economic, social and environmental havoc on them along with everyone else.”

At several points in McGhee’s book, I was reminded of the old saw about “cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face,” though she prefers a less gruesome metaphor — the drained swimming pool. Grand public pools were sumptuous emblems of common leisure in the early decades of the 20th century, steadfastly supported by white Americans until they were told to integrate them. McGhee visited the site of one such pool in Montgomery, Ala., drained and cemented over since 1959 so that nobody, white or Black, could ever enjoy it again.

It’s a self-defeating form of exclusion, a determination not to share resources even if the ultimate result is that everyone suffers. McGhee writes about health care, voting rights and the environment; she persuasively argues that white Americans have been steeped in the notion of “zero sum” — that any gains by another group must come at white people’s expense. She talks to scholars who have found that white respondents believed that anti-white bias was more prevalent than anti-Black bias, even though by any factual measure this isn’t true. This cramped mentality is another legacy of slavery, McGhee says, which really was zero sum — extractive and exploitative, like the settler colonialism that enabled it. She writes that zero-sum thinking “has always optimally benefited only the few while limiting the potential of the rest of us, and therefore the whole.”

Recent books like Jonathan Metzl’s “Dying of Whiteness” have explained how racial animus ends up harming those who cling to a chimera of privilege. While reading McGhee I was also reminded of Thomas Frank’s argument in “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” (2004), about how the Republican Party had figured out a way to push through an unpopular economic agenda by stowing it inside a Trojan horse of social conservatism and cultural grievance.

But there are major differences between their books. Frank derides the idea that racism has anything to do with what he’s writing about. Not to mention that McGhee isn’t a stinging polemicist; she cajoles instead of ridicules. She appeals to concrete self-interest in order to show how our fortunes are tied up with the fortunes of others. “We suffer because our society was raised deficient in social solidarity,” she writes, explaining that this idea is “true to my optimistic nature.” She is compassionate but also cleareyed, refusing to downplay the horrors of racism, even if her own book suggests that the white readers she’s trying to reach can be easily triggered into seeking the safe space of white identity politics. Color blindness, she says, is just another form of denial.

One of the phenomena that emerges from McGhee’s account is that the zero-sum mentality tends to get questioned only in times of actual scarcity — when people are so desperate that they realize how much they need one another. She gives the example of the Fight for $15 movement: Already earning poverty-level wages, fast-food workers began to ask what they had to lose by organizing.

Against “zero-sum” she proposes “win-win” — without fully addressing how the ideal of win-win has been deployed for cynical ends. McGhee discusses how the subprime mortgage crisis was fueled by racism, but it was also inflated by promises of a constantly expanding housing market and rising prices. Once the credit dried up, win-win reverted to zero-sum, with the drowned (underwater homeowners) losing out to the saved (well-connected bankers).

“We live under the same sky,” McGhee writes. There is a striking clarity to this book; there is also a depth of kindness in it that all but the most churlish readers will find moving. She explains in exacting detail how racism causes white people to suffer. Still, I couldn’t help thinking back to the abolitionist Helper, who knew full well how slavery caused white people to suffer, but remained an unrepentant racist to the end.

Follow Jennifer Szalai on Twitter: @jenszalai .

The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together By Heather McGhee 396 pages. One World. $28.

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The Sum of Us (1994)

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The Sum of Us rewatched – a loving father, a gay son

Russell Crowe gives a brave performance while Jack Thompson plays against type in this Australian classic tear-jerker

F ilms with direct-to-camera narration, featuring characters who address viewers as if they are part of their universe, are rare for a good reason. Audiences immediately pay attention when they are directly spoken to, but there are downsides to having characters break the fourth wall.

These moments draw attention to storytelling contrivances and shatter the window-to-another-world illusion that most filmmakers work hard to create. As the British critic VF Perkins put it: “It is not that these characters are oblivious to the camera. There is no camera in their world.”

Recently the House of Cards’ iconoclastic dog murderer and political schemer, Frank Underwood, ushered in a new appreciation of direct-to-camera monologues, but he was far from the first person to star in one (films such as Annie Hall , Ferris Bueller’s Day Off , Funny Games and Fight Club feature memorable examples). On the opposite end of the spectrum to Underwood’s venomous diatribes is the sweet and earnest ways with which Harry Mitchell (Jack Thompson) breaks — well, more gently nudges — the film universe illusion in 1994’s the Sum of Us. “He’s as much a friend as he is a son,” Harry says, introducing the audience to his gay son Jeff (Russell Crowe). “He’s not meeting a girl tonight. He’s what you might call cheerful.”

Directed by Geoff Burton and Kevin Dowling and adapted from a play by David Stevens, who co-wrote Bruce Beresford’s Breaker Morant , the Sum of Us can be broadly summarised with a high concept premise — a heterosexual father and a homosexual son try to find Mr/Mrs Right — but the film is far deeper than this line suggests. It begins with a black and white home-video-style reel, with Jeff reflecting on growing up and the impact his grandmother had on his life. Deeply personable and drained of (literal) colour, the scene has a quaint "life in the 'burbs" feel, reminiscent of Adam Elliot's poignant but quirky style . Plot-wise not much happens. Harry and Jeff both have love interests who reject them for different reasons: Jeff’s new beau, whose parents are old-fashioned, is spooked by being around such tolerance (an odd response, but not an unbelievable one) and Harry’s love interest has issues with Jeff's sexuality. For its first act, largely because of Harry’s unflappable and kind nature, the Sum of Us feels a little too idealistic and easygoing, almost as if it is turning a blind eye to prejudice. Act one ends when Jeff’s love interest rebels against his new and comfortable surrounds instead of embracing them, and it is around then the Sum of Us delves into grey areas. The film is most memorable for Harry’s beautiful temperament; this is a man incapable of intolerance towards people he loves, irrespective of the extent to which their lifestyles differ. It is the best kind of tissue box drama: playful, warm-spirited, beautifully written and performed, and speckled with humour and self-deprecation. Harry’s toast to Jeff and his new boyfriend (“up your bum!”) became the stuff of legend. To this day the Sum of Us features one of Russell Crowe's bravest performances. It came shortly after — arguably — his bravest, as a neo-Nazi in 1992's Romper Stomper . But it is Thompson who steals the show. How wonderful, and how deep a reflection of the actor's range and ability, that such a gentle character could be inhabited with such tenderness by a performer whose many iconic roles are Australian alpha males: the hell-raising footy coach ( the Club ), the stop-at-nothing lawyer ( Breaker Morant ), the sheep-shearing knockabout ( Sunday Too Far Away ). When Harry has a stroke after his romantic interest decries Jeff's sexuality, the third act swings into tear-jerker mode. But Burton and Dowling offset the sadness of Harry's physical and emotional downfall with splashes of caustic humour. "The trouble with having a stroke is people treat like you like a fuckwit afterwards," Harry, now confined to a wheelchair and incapable of speech, complains.

That line is delivered directly to the audience. A character who can no longer talk regains his ability to do so by breaking the fourth wall, making the Sum of Us's use of narration even more special and unusual.

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The Sum of Us

Top-flight star turns by Jack Thompson and rising star Russell Crowe, who play a loving father and his gay son, elevate this too-faithful adaptation of David Stevens' stage play. Audiences, straight and gay, should respond to the honesty and warmth of the father-son relationship depicted here, bringing the modestly scaled production positive word of mouth.

By David Stratton

David Stratton

Finding Joy 21 years ago
Twist 21 years ago
The Python 21 years ago

Top-flight star turns by Jack Thompson and rising star Russell Crowe, who play a loving father and his gay son, elevate this too-faithful adaptation of David Stevens’ stage play. Audiences, straight and gay, should respond to the honesty and warmth of the father-son relationship depicted here, bringing the modestly scaled production positive word of mouth.

A basic decision to retain the stage device of having the two main characters react to the audience, and, at times, talk directly into the camera, will be accepted by some and seen by others as a distracting holdover from the theater, which should have been junked in the screen adaptation. Device is particularly questionable toward the end, when the father is immobilized by a stroke, unable to move or talk, yet still moves out of character to relay his thoughts to the audience.

This reservation aside, the piece works because of the heartfelt script, in-depth characters and classy performers. Thompson is Harry Mitchell, a widower who shares a small inner-Sydney house with his son, Jeff (Crowe). Jeff has never made a secret of the fact that he’s gay, and the affable Harry is unquestioningly tolerant and accepting of his son’s sexual orientation. Almost too accepting: When Jeff comes home one night with a man (John Polson) he’s met in a gay bar, Harry joins them for a drink and a chat and insists on making the newcomer feel at home — until he unwittingly drives the astonished lover away.

Jeff is also unwittingly responsible for disrupting his father’s new relationship. Harry has met, via a dating service, and fallen in love with Joyce (Deborah Kennedy), a divorced woman still hurt by the rejection of her husband years before. Things go well until Joyce learns about Jeff, which is something she can’t handle. Her abrupt departure triggers Harry’s stroke, after which his devoted son gives up everything to care for his father.

Thompson gives one of his best and most controlled performances as the kindly Harry, while Crowe continues to display his maturing talent; his sensitive Jeff is quite a contrast with the monstrous character he played in “Romper Stomper.”

Supporting roles are solidly limned, especially Polson as the diffident would-be lover who has to put up with the hostility of his parents.

American Kevin Dowling directed the award-winning New York production of “The Sum of Us,” and his co-director, Geoff Burton, is wielding the megaphone for the first time after a distinguished career as cinematographer (most recently on “Sirens”). The theatrical treatment suggests that Dowling dominated the partnership; Burton’s cinematography is very professional but unobtrusive.

Given the high level of emotion in the subject matter, it’s notable that the most moving scenes in “The Sum of Us” are black-and-white flashbacks in which Jeff recalls that his beloved grandmother (Mitch Mathews) lived for years in a lesbian relationship after her husband died, but was cruelly separated from her companion (Julie Herbert) when it was decided the couple were too frail to care for themselves.

Southern Star should have a winner in Australia with this one, and international sales are also indicated, especially when Crowe’s career takes off with a couple of upcoming roles in mainstream U.S. pictures.

Production: A Southern Star presentation, in association with the Australian Film Finance Corp., of a Hal McElroy-Southern Star production. Produced by McElroy. Executive producers, McElroy, Errol Sullivan. Co-executive producers, Corky Kessler, Donald Scatena, Kevin Dowling. Directed by Dowling, Geoff Burton. Screenplay, David Stevens, based on his play.
Crew: Camera (color), Burton; editor, Frans Vandenburg; music, Dave Faulkner; production design, Graham (Grace) Walker; line producer, Rod Allan; casting, Faith Martin; assistant director, Carolyne Cunningham. Reviewed at Village Roadshow screening room, Sydney, April 28, 1994. (In Cannes Film Festival -- market.) Running time: 99 MIN.
With: Harry Mitchell - Jack Thompson Jeff Mitchell - Russell Crowe Greg - John Polson Joyce - Deborah Kennedy Jeff (aged 8) - Joss Moroney Gran - Mitch Mathews Mary - Julie Herbert Jenny - Rebekah Elmaloglou

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THE SUM OF US

What You Need To Know:

(Ho, L, SS, NN, A, D, Ho, M) Contrasts conventional & permissive moral views of homosexuality; 8 obscenities & 7 vulgarities; homosexual embraces (clothed); partial male nudity; alcohol use; drug use; and, homosexual & bathroom humor.

More Detail:

THE SUM OF US, starring Russell Crowe and Jack Thompson, is a tragic-comic drama about sons and fathers. Jeff and Gary have a lot in common: they are young, they frequent the same places, they even wear the same cologne, and they are homosexual partners. However, their fathers are far different. While Gary’s father seems to him “like a stranger,” Jeff’s father, Harry, condones his son’s homosexual lifestyle. Harry’s casual approach throws Gary off balance, making him “feel guilty” about their relationship.

Despite its controversial plot revolving around an accepting father and his homosexual son, THE SUM OF US is at once interesting, well-produced and startling, painting a candid picture of the homosexual condition. Casting and character development are excellent. Soft camera work and the movie’s Australian location add to the ambiance. Although not afraid to portray sexual shame, or the narcissistic posturing of the “lifestyle,” the movie stops short of dealing with the trauma and misguidance that brings innocents into this insidious, perverse captivity. While THE SUM OF US is an engaging film that provides insight into the role fatherhood plays in the homosexual condition, moral viewers will be offended by the movie’s adult theme of homosexuality, intimate scenes, nudity, and ribald humor.

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The Sum of Us

Jack Thompson (Harry Mitchell) Russell Crowe (Jeff Mitchell) John Polson (Greg) Deborah Kennedy (Joyce Johnson) Joss Moroney (Young Jeff) Mitch Mathews (Gran) Julie Herbert (Mary) Des James (Football Coach) Mick Campbell (Footballer) Donny Muntz (Ferry Captain)

Geoff Burton, Kevin Dowling

A widowed father has to deal with two complex issues: while he is searching for "Miss Right," his son, who is in his 20s and gay, is searching for "Mr. Right."

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The Sum of Us Reviews

1 hr 39 mins
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A gay man gets help from his understanding father when it comes to finding people to date, but the dad's new girlfriend isn't as open to the son's lifestyle.

THE SUM OF US, a warm and deeply affecting comedy-drama from down under, centers on the unconventional relationship between widower Harry Mitchell (Jack Thompson), a ferry captain, and his 24-year-old son Jeff (Russell Crowe), a plumber. The twist on this father-and-son tale is that Jeff is openly gay and Harry is boisterously supportive. When Jeff brings home his date, a handsome gardener named Greg (John Polson), Harry keeps interrupting at inopportune moments. He offers his son's suitor romantic advice, asks how he takes his tea in the morning, and discusses safe sex. Over beers in the backyard, Harry also gets Greg to open up about his feelings and dreams. Greg, who hides his sexual preference from his homophobic parents, cannot adjust to the cozy domesticity at the Mitchells'. Just when Harry finally leaves the lovers alone, Greg leaves. Jeff, who thought he had finally found someone special, is inconsolable and lashes out at his well-intentioned father. Harry is also looking for love and finds it with Joyce (Deborah Kennedy), an attractive divorcee whom he meets through a dating service. The relationship proceeds swimmingly, and they are soon discussing marriage. Then Joyce learns, to her horror, that Jeff is gay and Harry is not ashamed but proud. She breaks off the relationship, and moments later heartbroken Harry suffers a stroke. Jeff assumes the responsibility of caring for his father, who, paralyzed and unable to speak, communicates with Jeff using a buzzer rigged to his wheelchair. Harry's spirit and verve have not diminished despite his physical limitations, and he still manages to play matchmaker for his son and Greg. Disowned by his parents after they discover he is gay, Greg becomes more appreciative of Jeff's relationship with his father. As Jeff and Greg resume their romance, no one is happier than dear old Dad. David Stevens wrote the screenplay based on his award-winning stage play, which enjoyed a successful off-Broadway run in 1990. The film version racked up a slew of awards in Australia, including the best feature award at the 1994 Sydney Film Festival and top honors for the screenplay and star Thompson from the Film Critics Circle of Australia. In adapting the stage play for the screen, Stevens' only blunder was retaining the theatrical device of having the characters speak directly to the audience. A common practice in the theater, this seldom works in film and is a distraction here, especially when a post-stroke Harry delivers speeches about his frustrations at being unable to speak. Kevin Dowling, who directed the stage play, was reenlisted to helm the film version, codirecting with cinematographer Geoff Burton, whose camera is most effective in a series of evanescent black-and-white flashbacks that convey the anguish of Jeff's elderly grandmother and her lesbian lover, who are forced to separate. Russell Crowe and Jack Thompson are perfectly cast as the devoted father and son. From their "Odd Couple" banter to their wrenching heart-to-hearts, they complement each other in timing, style and temperament. Veteran character actor Thompson (BREAKER MORANT, MAD DOG MORGAN), gives one of his best portrayals here, and Crowe, who appeared in this year's THE QUICK AND THE DEAD, is being touted as the next Mel Gibson. THE SUM OF US received limited release in the U.S., its modest box office receipts attributable to its foreign origin and lack of domestic star power. Its subject matter may have also kept mainstream audiences away, and more is the pity. The fact that a father who openly supports his son's homosexuality is still considered aberrant in 1995 is a distressing notion. After all, as Harry says, our children are only the sum of us. (Sexual situations, adult situations, profanity.)

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Reviews of the sum of us 1994.

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★★ Watched by Chris Gelderd 26 Mar 2024

Day-time Aussie drama, here with a look at a father and son relationship between Jack Thompson and a young Russell Crowe. Hits all the right notes you'd expect from the topics at hand, but at times feels a bit too on-the-nose for what it's trying to say and present.

★★½ Watched by Roger Ebert 21 Apr 1995

The Sum Of Us

If there is anything worse than a parent who disapproves of your

sex life, it may be a parent who approves too much. That possibility is raised,

but not explored, in "The Sum of Us," an Australian comedy about a

dad who is so proud of his gay son that he pokes his head into the bedroom

during sex to ask how everyone would like his tea.There's

something unwholesome, even creepy, about the father's cheerleading role…

★★★★ Watched by LOUIE 19 Mar 2024

the lgbtq community (me) has forgiven Russell Crowe for stars

★★★★ Watched by Golden_Girl80 13 Mar 2024

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

Being American, the forth wall breaks were initially off putting, as well as all the slang I didn’t know. The forth wall breaks added so much to the narrative. The story turned out to be really sweet, although a little difficult to watch at times because of how non-chalant the father and son were about sex. From what I’ve heard Australian culture tends to be a bit more crass, which is what I think made this movie more progressive, or…

★★★★½ Watched by Sebastian Dean 10 Mar 2024

great blend of a feel-good film and a drama. russell crowe is fucking delicious and the aussie sensibility in general is so goddamn charming, god i love gay people

★★★ Watched by martha 05 Mar 2024

wasn’t overly keen on the fourth wall break narratives throughout but by god, my heart. i would like to thank russell crowe for once again being the love of my life

★★½ Watched by James Wrigley 03 Mar 2024

Just an insane film. Do not let the first 5 minutes of young gay Russel Crowe as a short shorts wearing football player fool you. Oscillates between absolutely absurd and uncomfortable and dull. Wild film.

Also young Russell Crowe with long hair look like a yassified Jonathan Ross which didn't help.

★★★★ Watched by camille 27 Feb 2024

a sweet, low budget Australian movie with a nice message, not sure it needed the bit towards the end that made me sad but over all i really enjoyed it ^-^

★★★★★ Watched by ilovewholemilk 22 Feb 2024

*russell crowe sitting on a chair with slutty shorts legs wide open me: is this porn

★★★½ Watched by Nessuno 21 Feb 2024

Fraichement auréolé pour son rôle de skinhead dans Romper Stomper, le jeune Russell effectue un virage à 180° (et reste tout aussi convaincant) avec ce personnage de jeune (plombier) homosexuel qui partage une maison, et surtout une relation particulièrement proche et ouverte, avec son père, le mec le plus tolérant du monde. Je n'ai pas nécessairement une connaissance approfondie des films à thématiques LGBT de l'époque (pas vu My Beautiful Laudrette ni My Own Private Idaho pour citer, si je…

★ Watched by llyaol 17 Feb 2024

…yeah, I think I’d rather just rewatch Saving Face.

★★★★★ Watched by Erin 16 Feb 2024

I can’t recall the last 15 minutes with all the tears obstructing my view

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Produced by, the sum of us (1994), directed by kevin dowling / geoff burton.

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Review by Laura Abraham

Films that explore the familial relationship are common in Hollywood. These movies tend to be formulaic in nature and many times lack the imagination or depth to be anything more than caricatures of a family. In the 1995 Australian film The Sum of Us, nothing is formulaic. The story centers on a father-son duo, of which the son is gay. The Sum of Us is a refreshing, if not over-the-top example of what a family without prejudice looks like. This is a motion picture that has a joke every few moments; however, it never seems affected or unreal. Although many relationships between fathers and their gay sons do not resemble the one in this movie, the easy connection between the actors brings a genuine tangibility to the screen. Russell Crowe (of the more testosterone-influenced film Gladiator) shows great depth here portraying not just a gay man but a man whose outward appearance really hides a shy, sensitive soul. Jack Thompson as Jack's father, Harry Mitchell, is such a funny, refreshing actor that one can not help but love Harry even as he takes the role of loyal dad to unnerving levels. The Sum of Us is a delightful look at relationships as well as a refreshing look at the power of films. When a filmmaker steers off the path Hollywood wholeheartedly embraces, sometimes you end up with a gem of a film. The Sum of Us is this type of film, showing what art can be when an artist embraces feelings over formula, as directors Geoff Burton and Kevin Dowling did here.

The Golden Chooks
The Magic Puddings

The Sum of Us

homosexuality

The original domestic VHS release pitched the film as “ A heartwarming comedy” , with “Award-winning Actors!” - Jack Thompson’s Breaker Morant , The Man from Snowy River and Russell Crowe’s Romper Stomper , Proof and The Quick & the Dead - and with music from Crowded Music, Diesel and Jimmy Barnes. There was also a quote “Terrifically funny … memorable, feelgood comedy” Xress.

On the back cover, there were more reviewer blurbs:

“This is the best Australian film of the year” The Australian

“One of the most all round entertaining and engaging pieces of cinema you will see in a long, long time” ABC TV/Radio

“It’s arguably the most important film yet” Time Magazine

“Greatly entertaining, very funny and very moving” Cinema Papers.

Four sets of laurels were also lined up:

Most Popular Film Sydney Film Festival
Best Actor Asia Pacific Film Festival
Best Screenplay Montreal Film Festival
6 award nominations Australian Film Institute

There was also a very short synopsis:

Internationally acclaimed, this very successful, uplifting comedy is filled with the irreverent and earthy humour of two mates: Harry (Jack Thompson) a charming, beer-drinking, down-to-earth widower and Jeff (Russell Crowe) his gay son, The Sum of Us is a wonderfully clever and extremely funny observation of a father and son relationship.

When it was still in the sales agency business and agent for the film, Southern Star’s website provided a more detailed synopsis:

Harry and Jeff are more than just buddies; they're more than roommates; they're family. In fact, for a father and son who live together, they get on like a house on fire, even if they do make an odd couple.

Harry's a real Aussie character - a hard-working bloke whose favourite recipe is frozen TV dinners. Harry can't cook but he knows how to captain a ferry around Sydney Harbour. Sure they get on each other's nerves, like the way Harry leaves the faucets dripping but hey, Jeff's a plumber, so he can fix it, right?

On weekends Jeff's first love is football with the local team. At night it's Sydney's wild and brassy bar scene. His dad doesn't mind, he's just glad to see his son happy. Harry's big hearted enough to accept Jeff's unconventional love affairs.

Like his father, Jeff wants a real commitment, a real family. But when he finds his ideal mate, what will dad have to say about it? Other parents might disapprove of Jeff's choices but to Harry, love conquers all. Trouble is, when Harry tries too hard to show it, he gets in the way and Jeff's big chance is ruined.

Harry's loneliness leads him to a computer dating service and a new woman in his life. When Harry falls for Joyce, his relationship with Jeff is tested to the limit. Harry wants to marry her, but should he tell Joyce the full story about his son?

Tender hearted Harry is unprepared for Joyce's reaction to the truth about his family. When disaster strikes, it's up to Jeff to pull their lives together in a way that might be just rosy for everyone. Starring Jack Thompson, Russell Crowe, John Polson.

Key Details
About the Movie
The Downunder Club
full head credits
full tail credits
full music credits

Production Details

Production company : Southern Star in association with the Australian Film Finance Corporation presents A Hal McElroy Southern Star Production; tail credits: developed in association with the Great Sum Film Limited Partnership; tail credit copyrights to Australian Film Finance Corporation Limited, Southern Star Entertainment Pty Limited. C inema Papers listed the production company as Quicksilver Productions while the film was in post-production but this name didn’t make it into the film’s credits.

Budget : $4 million (Murray’s Australian Film, Cinema Papers ); The Canberra Times , 7th August 1994 put the budget at $3.6 million in an interview with co-director Kevin Dowling.

Locations : Sydney, including shots of the Balmain peninsula (the Sir William Wallace pub is the local shown and remained a working pub at time of writing here ); Sydney’s Botanic Gardens also features, and provides the last wide shot which widens to take in the Opera House and the harbour. When dining on a date, Harry favours Zorro’s Spanish restaurant, a long forgotten place in Darling Harbour’s Harbourside Shopping Centre.

Filmed : the film was listed as being in post-production in the April 1994 Cinema Papers’ production survey, which contained these dates:

Pre-production 6/9/1993 − 14/10/1993

Production 15/10/1993 − 24/10/1993

Post-production 25/10/1993 …

Australian distributor : UIP (international sales in the beginning by Southern Star Film Sales)

Theatrical release : the film did advance screenings on the weekend beginning 22nd July 1994 in Melbourne and Sydney and opened the following Thursday 28th July in both key cities in a mix of GU, Hoyts and Village screens.

Video release : CIC

35mm colour

“Eastman EXR film system by Kodak”

Dolby stereo in selected theatres

Running time : 92 mins (Murray’s Australian Film ); 95 mins ( NY Times ); 99 mins ( Variety ); 100 mins ( Cinema Papers ); 101 mins ( LA Times )

Off air ABC running time : 1’35”24

DVD time : 1’35”24

Box office :

The Sum of Us was a solid hit in 1994, and helped cement the mythology of Russell Crowe as actor, moving from brutal neo-Nazi skinhead in Romper Stomper to above the title credit with Jack Thompson, playing Thompson's son and nice plumber gay boy next door.

Film Victoria’s report on Australian box office records a tasty $3,327,456, equivalent to $4,991,184 in A$ 2009, which relative to the film’s modest budget was good, solid arthouse business.

The film also scored a modest US arthouse release, generating US$766,464 after its March 10, 1995 release, with an opening weekend of $38,479, with the five theatres averaging $7,695. However it never broke wider than 30 screens, and in a way the play which ran off-Broadway for over a year commanded more attention (film data at Box Office Mojo here ).

All the same, this put the film at position 93 in the Screen Australia list of films that made over US$100,000 in a US theatrical release (data here ) as of May 2017.

The film also had theatrical releases in the UK and some territories, and also sold well in tape and television markets. However it didn’t do well enough in the UK to make it into Screen Australia’s list of films that did over £200,000 gross at the UK box office, nor did it score a mention in Screen Australia’s data for Germany.

The film picked up a fair number of nominations at the 1994 AFI Awards, but this was also the year of Muriel’s Wedding and T he Adventures of Priscilla . It did have one win:

Winner, Orlando Trilogy Award for Best Screenplay Adapted from Another Source (David Stevens)

Nominated, Best Film (Hal McElroy) (Lynda House and Jocelyn Moorhouse won for Muriel’s Wedding )

Nominated, Atlab Award for Best Achievement in Editing (Frans Vandenburg) (Suresh Ayyar won for Bad Boy Bubby )

Nominated, Soundfirm Award for Best Achievement in Sound (John Dennison, John Patterson, Leo Sullivan, Tony Vaccher) (David Lee, Glenn Newnham, Livia Ruzic and Roger Savage won for Muriel’s Wedding )

Nominated, Beyond Films Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role (John Polson) (Max Cullen won for Spider & Rose )

Nominated, AGFA Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role (Deborah Kennedy) (Rachel Griffiths won for Muriel’s Wedding )

Many remarked at the time on the inexplicable way that Jack Thompson’s performance wasn’t nominated for an AFI award (the nominees for best performance that year were Hugo Weaving and Terence Stamp in The Adventures of Priscilla , John Hargreaves in Country Life and Nicholas Hope winning with Bad Boy Bubby ).

Instead Thompson was awarded the Raymond Longford Award, which recognised his contribution to Australian film-making over 25 years, and incidentally soft-soaped the failure to recognise him in the film.

There was also some snark by Russell Crowe loyalists at him having missed out on a nomination.

The film’s DVD also notes these awards:

1995 Australian Film Critics Awards:

Best Actor: Jack Thompson

Best Supporting Actor: John Polson

Best Adapted Screenplay: David Stevens.

1995 Montreal Film Festival, Canada Winner of Best Screenplay;

1995 Asia Pacific Film Festival Winner of Best Actor: Jack Thompson;

1995 Turin International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Italy Special Mention;

1994 Sydney Film Festival, Australia Winner of Best Film.

(This last award was in fact the audience award for best film and not a SFF jury award)

Some databases also list the film winning the Best Film prize at the 1995 Cleveland International Film Festival for co-directors Geoff Burton and Kevin Dowling.

Kevin Dowling’s website claims some 17 awards for the film, including Best Feature at Montreal and Sydney Film Festivals, but doesn’t list the details.

Jack Thompson in his DVD interview says that the film opened the Mill Valley festival, which he attended, just after the film’s US release.

The film was in fact a festival favourite in 1994 and 1995 and did an extensive tour of the international film festival circuit. A full list is at Screen Australia here - the list includes:

Sydney and Melbourne Film Festivals 1994

Vancouver International Film Festival 1994

Montreal World Film Festival 1994

Chicago International Film Festival 1994

Toronto International Film Festival 1994

Miami Film Festival 1995

Seattle International Film Festival 1994

London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival 1995

Copenhagen Film Festival 1995

Singapore International Film Festival 1995

Flanders International Film Festival 1995

Availability

Because the film was picked up in the US market, The Sum of Us jumped the digital divide early and has remained easy to find.

It was released on laser disc in the States, and then MGM released it as a flipper in the golden era of DVD, with a widescreen and a 4:3 version.

It’s also been released on DVD in several editions with a few extras:

Interview with Jack Thompson : The most useful extra an 31’29” interview with Jack Thompson, divided into some 12 chapters with headings, such as script, production, parental bonding, on Russell Crowe, gender stereotypes, gay feedback etc.

Thompson has some interesting things to say - he thinks some of his scenes with Crowe produced the best work he’d done in his career - but unfortunately his short gobbets are punctuated with scenes from the movie.

This will likely irritate people who’ve already seen the movie and now just want to hear what Thompson has to say, and this “extender” approach means there’s actually much less Thompson than the 31 minute timing implies. It could be argued that the scenes are mean to illustrate what Thompson is saying, but they’re not so much illuminations as interruptions designed as padding. The film’s sound also points up the poor sound of the interview, done in what looks like a hotel or restaurant space;

Press gallery : four reviews at the time of the film’s release, including David Stratton’s review for Variety ;

Biographies - short bios of co-directors Kevin Dowling and Geoff Burton, writer David Steven, producer Hal McElroy, and actors Jack Thompson, Russell Crowe, John Polson and Deborah Kennedy.

Production notes : four short DVD style ‘pages’ of a press kit kind without any compelling insights;

Distinctions - a list of some of films awards;

Photo gallery - a reasonable number of stills, but not annotated, in a way typical of the DVD era …

As usual, the print special features have long been made redundant by information available on the internet, but the Jack Thompson interview will interest those who like the actor and/or want to know more about his thoughts on the film.

Southern Star also arranged a domestic release on DVD, and in one edition packaged it with two other at the time Southern Star catalogue items, Sunday Too Far Away and The Shiralee.

Olive also gave the film a release on Blu-ray.

Some of these releases are rare, and are priced accordingly in the second hand market, but the film remains easy to access, at least in the 4:3 format, having turned up in that form on the ABC and on streaming services.

The Academy framed versions seen by this site seem to be open matte and therefore contain the full 35mm image.

As for the film, The Sum of Us exudes humanity, compassion, middle class tolerance and liberalism and all the other virtues, and applies them to the issue of homosexuality, in the form of Harry bonding with his son, and getting excited when Jeff seems to have found a real relationship with Greg, while he himself pursues his heterosexual interests with Joyce.

This is done with such unremitting wholesomeness that only a few will wonder why Rusty doesn’t get more agitated when he brings Greg home and Harry immediately turns it into a threesome of chat and drink - peeing on the tomatoes together, asking “what’s your ambition?” and so on, when Rusty might have been expecting to have a bloody good fuck. Instead it’s like a boy bringing home his first date in the 1950s, only to cop an interrogation abut whether he can provide for her.

As a result, the film went down a treat with middle class liberal audiences and reviewers - it was amongst gays that a sense of irritation could be discovered.

Flip the situation and show Jack Thompson showing saucy magazines and asking about safe sex to his son’s heterosexual date, and the ingratiating attempt to pretend everything’s hunky dory would come across as a little peculiar and weird. As Rusty asks, hasn’t he got a movie to watch?

Later when Harry again interrupts proceedings, Rusty tells him to piss off, telling Greg he really does mean well, with the aim a laugh that made have come out of Dagwood and Blondie. There’s tolerance, and then there’s making a mess of a date, and then there’s his son - Greg having left - reduced to talking about the agony of it all, and drinking the Scotch bottle near empty. That’s hardly the sigh of a happy liberal family.

A sure sign that no feathers are to be really ruffled in this sitcom is that the sex actually never gets beyond a kiss and Rusty’s hand beginning to fiddle with Greg’s belt buckle.

There’s also the matter of breaking the fourth wall, which some will find engaging and some irritating. It’s part of the way that in many respects the film remains a play, with the intent to highlight the performances by the cast. And that’s where many will retain an affection for the show, with Thompson and Crowe going all out to bond with viewers and to be engaging in a cheerful way.

The speaking to camera allows them to be genial and charming, and works a treat. It's the other contrivances that sometimes make the story heavy going, such as Harry having a stroke, or Greg having a really bigoted dad, or Joyce turning out to be rampantly homophobic and so carrying the can for all the prejudices then current in Australia.

To balance the contrivances, playwright Stevens flings in so many events in life - loves lost and won, hope defeated and gained, fireworks, and an elderly couple separated and condemned to lonely deaths - that it would take a heart of granite not to have some kind of interaction with the characters and their stories.

For anyone interested in a 'try before buy' test, the ASO has three clips here , but given the easy availability of the film, for anyone interested in the cast or the film's subject matter, it might be simpler to skip this stage and cut to the viewing chase.

However curator Paul Byrnes reviewed the film on its first Sydney release, and his later ASO notes make an interesting 'compare and contrast' over the intervening years.

(Note: the illustrative images on this site are taken from a 4:3 formatted disc, with the contrast tweaked to help reveal cast and action. The images don't reflect the source material).

Writer and playwright David Stevens adapted the screenplay from his own play, which was partially derived from some of his personal experiences (in particular his celebration of a father very tolerant of his gay son). The play was published in 1995 by Currency Press - details of this and other editions are available at Trove here .

The play was revived in Australia in 2011 in various locations. AusStage lists details of the original February 1992 STC production here .

Curiously the film had most impact off-Broadway in 1990 - there is a review of that staging here , and details of production, cast and awards here . There were 335 performances, opening 16th October 1990 and closing 4th August 1991. More information is easily googled.

For more on the adaptation, financing and production of the film, see the interviews and The Canberra Times' story below.

There is also a short 4'21" set of interviews done for the SBS Movie Show, aired 30th July 1994 for episode 20 of the 1994 series, available here until December 2030. A cheerful David Stevens gets most of the space, talking about changes in Australia and how he wanted to do the play as a tribute to that changing face, and joking about a Campbelltown woman complaining to him about a line comparing Australian women to a breakfast cereal. Jack Thompson and Russell Crowe are also interviewed.

(Below: covers for two editions of the play).

According to Jack Thompson in his DVD interview, he invited Russell Crowe up to his place in the eastern Dorrigos, and they stayed together for two weeks, talking the script but also sharing activities such as walking and riding. Thompson jokes that his son was about 8 or 9 at the time and Crowe was down on the floor playing Lego with him and so they literally lived “father and son stuff for that period of time.”

By this time, Thompson was a veteran - wiki here - such that the film could crack a referential joke about his bare bottom routine in the revival classic Sunday Too Far Away , while Russell Crowe's star - wiki here - had been on a constant rise since Romper Stomper , and the publicity for The Sum of Us received some collateral attention as a result of Crowe going Hollywood and doing the western The Quick and the Dead with Sharon Stone.

The film is in many ways a father-son two hander, with John Polson as the love interest, wiki here , and a couple of character actors to sketch in the role of homophobia - Bob Baines as Greg's bigoted dad, wiki here - and Deborah Kennedy as Harry's uptight girlfriend - wiki here . (Kennedy achieved a form of notoriety by delivering the catch-phrase 'Not happy, Jan!' for a Yellow Pages television commercial).

3. Production:

(a) Breaking the fourth wall:

The film honours its origins as a play by having the key cast of Thompson and Crowe regularly break the fourth wall and address the audience.

Even after Thompson’s character has a debilitating stroke that means he's unable to speak, he breaks the fourth wall to tell the audience what he’s really thinking.

In his DVD interview, Thompson notes that the device comes directly from the “theatrical aside” and was very much part of the play:

“…it’s quite obvious that it’s an important part of The Sum of Us. It’s a lot of the wit, is the comment of both the father and son on what’s happening to them … and so there was no way that it could be done without…

All you could do was to try the different ways, so we actually tried, we actually tried ‘thinking it’, like … (he pretends to think with a variety of expressions, and then breaks into laughter) … doing it like nothing, while you do a voice over later on, and that of course didn’t work very well …even if we didn’t try and ‘think’ and just did the voice over …and we tried it sort of looking away from the camera, a whole lot of things …and in the end it only worked looking directly down the camera … "

Thompson then turns to the interview camera and looks directly at it:

"… you’re seeing down the lens and seeing it as that other member of what you’re going on, the audience … (Thompson says a cheerful “hi!” to viewers of the interview) … you know, I mean once you’re doing that, then you can communicate with them direct …I love it… I love the moment when it’s first revealed that Harry can still talk to you even though he’s had the stroke and lost his speech (laughing) … when he says, you know, “you know the worst thing about having a stroke is when people treat you like a fuckwit…” (laughs) … that’s so eloquent, you know, and the audience goes “oh yeah, Harry’s back…” (laughs and looks away from camera)

Thompson thinks the other thing about the device is that it allows an intimacy with the characters:

“...that can only be achieved more or less in that way … I mean, Hamlet’s soliloquy is a chance to get a look at him … a soliloquy is essentially an opportunity for the audience to get to know what the guy is thinking, not saying or doing, but thinking … so the aside to camera in The Sum of Us is an opportunity to get to understand intimately each character’s reaction to the world around them… and without it you would not know how Harry is after the stroke … without it you would not know really how these two people feel about each other …it allows the playwright to fill in a whole sort of pre-history with the tale about the mother and the lover, you know … it’s a wonderful device and I think beautifully used in the film too … back to the scene with the two elderly women …I mean, that scene is one of the most eloquent in it, the sort of dream-like mime of the parting of those two people who loved each other … pretty eloquent stuff ...”

(b) Locations:

The play was originally set in Melbourne and relocated to Sydney, ostensibly while maintaining the original working class atmosphere.

But the job taken by Harry - ferry captain - was relatively well paid - and by the 1990s, the area of Balmain and the surrounding peninsula featured in the film had already seen the working class largely displaced from the area, with the suburb being seen as home to artists, yuppies and basket weavers (see Peter Weir’s 1973 satirical documentary Whatever happened to Green Valley? for stories of displacement from the docks to the outer suburbs).

The kitchen was a set and this is obvious from the layout in the film - it clearly bears little relationship to the weatherboard house exterior.

There is an opening joke where Jack Thompson whips up mashed potatoes in a saucepan on the stove. In the process he jiggles his bottom, with his wry smile indicating he’s aware he’s referencing an earlier famous scene in the shearing picture Sunday Too Far Away , where he wiggled his bare backside in a competition with another shearer;

The gay magazine that Joyce tosses away was an issue of Campaign , which started as a newspaper in September 1975 and is noted at the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives here . It became the longest running commercial gay magazine in Australia. The first issue was gazetted just under titles like Bondage King, Bondage Mistress and Call Girl by the New South Wales government in its gazette of indecent and classified publications - see Trove here ;

The newspaper Greg’s disapproving father is reading while watching the Sydney Mardi Gras is the Daily Telegraph . The Mardi Gras happens in March, and pedants might suggest the story on the back page about Balmain rugby league full back Gary Jack (the headline reads Crackerjack ) was too early for the league season, but in 1994 the season began on 12th March;

Sydney's Mardi Gras was by the time of the film's story well on the way to becoming an enduring institution. It has a wiki here . The ABC had taken to screening edited highlights of the Mardi Gras, as this short history of the event here confirms, so it's entirely credible that Greg's dad could watch the event in television. The 1980 documentary Witches Faggots Dykes and Poofters charts the early days of the Mardi Gras;

By 1994 the event had certainly moved to the mainstream, though the prejudice displayed by Greg's father was still widespread. In a controversial move the ABC screened a 50-minute programme of edited highlights at 8.30pm in 1994. Despite the criticism the show gave the ABC its best ever Sunday night ratings. In 1997 the event moved over to Channel Ten, the first commercial broadcaster to cover the event;

The film features rather tentative kissing between Polson and Crowe. There are many claims on the first gay screen kiss dating back to the silent days - wiki queer cinema here - with Australia a little slow to catch up. A good starting point on the Australian scene is a documentary by Con Anemogiannis, The Hidden History of Homosexual Australia - 2005 short Fairfax review here . In later years academics also began to take an interest. There is, for example, a piece on homosexuality in Australian film at Macquarie University's history site here which looks at The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert and The Sum of Us . Googling will produce many other references.

4. Release:

The film caused some controversy and discussion, and not just because it featured a gay kiss between Russell Crowe and John Poulson, and some very limited attempts at love-making - though in the antipodes that was certainly enough.

As Jack Thompson notes in his DVD interview, the film polarised the gay community, with some angry and contending that there was no such thing as a Harry kind of dad. Thompson says that he met the real Harry, the source of David Steven’s inspiration for the play. Thompson says it was “ a tribute to people he had known and to an attitude he had seen.”

Perhaps because of the controversy and also because of a liberalising tendency that had been developing in Australia since the Whitlam era, the film did good domestic business and also attracted international attention, with Samuel Goldwyn picking it up for a US release.

The film mainly uses imported pop music to establish a mood, with Neil Finn/Crowded House songs used over head and tail credits, too well known to detail here.

For the lyrics for these songs and other details regarding the music - a CD was released of the soundtrack - see this site’s pdf of music credits.

6. The Canberra Times' Profile:

Mary Colbert looked at the film for the Arts and Entertainment section of The Canberra Times on Sunday 7 August 1994, page 21, under the header American to thank for Australian film Mary Colbert hears how the director of The Sum of Us got it to the screen (this story also turned up in other Fairfax papers, such as The Sydney Morning Herald - see this site's photo gallery for jpgs):

It is ironical that a quintessential Australian Film, The Sum of Us, was championed by an American.

In 1988 American theatre director Kevin Dowling boarded a plane from New York to Dallas, unaware that the next two hours would change the course of his career, recharge that of others, turn him into an Australiaphile and set him on an arduous six year quest.

On arrival at Dallas airport he called his agent to set up a meeting with then Los Angeles-based Australian writer David Stevens ( Breaker Morant ) to discuss the purchase of rights for the play he'd just read on the flight, The Sum of Us.

"I hadn't read anything in a long time to which I had reacted so strongly," he recalls. "I was struck by the mix of comedy and drama that flowed back and forth. David's writing was so idiosyncratic and unusual and the play had tremendous heart."

Based on an amalgam of autobiographical elements. The Sum of Us, A Comedy of Love takes as its central focus the father-gay-son relationship but also (as indicated by the sub-title) depicts homosexual and heterosexual love.

(The play was to have a similar impact on actors, American audiences and New York critics, and later, in an adapted film version, on distributors at Cannes and audiences at Sydney Film Festival, who this year voted it top of the poll.)

It had already made its debut at the Directors' Theatre in Los Angeles but Dowling sought New York theatre and film rights.

For a number of years he'd been interested in adapting dramatic works to film but had not managed to secure both rights. He and Stevens immediately struck up a rapport and decided to move on both fronts at the same time, though the playwright was initially sceptical about its translation to screen.

New York theatre producers were also reluctant to take on the work, pointing out that no Australian play had ever succeeded on Broadway. "Why will this one be different?", they asked. "Because it's better," was Dowling's reply. "Perhaps if we moved the action to the US", they suggested, but Dowling was adamant.

"I fought for a year and lost a lot of financing over my insistence on an Australian setting," he said. "Of course, when I also mentioned Australian accents they thought ... I'd completely lost my marbles."

But perseverance paid off and the play ran in New York's off-Broadway Cherry Lane Theatre for over a year to unanimously good reviews.

Reading one of these, Australian producer Hal McElroy, who knew Stevens's work, immediately asked Dowling for a manuscript. After reading it, he lost no time in offering to produce the feature.

American financial interests were short-listing stars to play the screen role of the father — Bob Hoskins, Jack Lemmon, Sean Connery ... But Dowling and co had other plans. Right from the start they had selected Jack Thompson. "David knew him from the Breaker Morant days and I was a big fan of his early films," says Dowiing.

The US financial interests then determined that an American should play the son and proposed Tony Goldwyn, established in the role on stage. "We tried to make the case for an Australian but they just didn't believe it would work for an American distributor," Dowlng says. Russell Crowe pursued the role.

When the main US investor died without completing financing, the team decided to seek Australian money, which would allow complete freedom of casting.

Dowiing says the Film Finance Corporation was the hero or the day. "They were involved in a much lesser role but when US financing fell through they offered to increase their involvement as long as all the components — except for me — were Australian."

The other saviour was Neil Belnaves (sic, Balnaves, see his foundation here ), of the movie company Southern Star, who took the brave step of not only taking on the project but of offering to make up the rest of the $3.6 million budget.

The gestation period had provided Stevens and Dowling with the luxury of observing audience reactions to the drama. The New York success had inspired Stevens and he ruthlessly — rare for an original writer — discarded non-visual elements.

The play was set in Footscray, Melbourne, but they moved the film to Sydney, for visual purposes. "I wanted to retain its working-class suburban flavour so I followed suggestions to use Balmain," Dowling says. "It was quite a shock to realise on arrival here that it was very difficult to find that. I thought, 'This is very wealthy working class you have here.'

"My biggest concern with Philadelphia ... and several other gay films was that they were so issue-based [on AIDS] that they lacked a real daily life context, a domestic base for the relationship. By moving it into suburbia we tried to anchor it in a reality antithetical to the gay-film cliches. At the same time, scenes such as the Gay Mardi Gras firmly root it in the wider local culture."

Performances, especially of the two lead roles, were pivotal to the film's success. Both Crowe and Thompson, with impressive records of macho roles, were undaunted by the potentially controversial nature of the material. "Russell was unfazed by the love scenes: as the perfectionist that he is, his main concern was 'Am I doing it right?'.

"My co-director. Geoff Burton, and I particularly wanted the love scenes between Geoff and his boyfriend, to be very romantic, reminiscent of heterosexual love scenes in the 30s films."

At Cannes screenings, the buzz labelled performances as "brilliant", adeptly balancing pathos with comedy.

"Coming here as a New Yorker I found the Australian sense of humour very appealing, very much like home,” Dowling says. "Australians particularly integrated it into all kinds of situations — light and dark — yet I was fairly astounded to find the discrepancy between what I experienced in everyday life and what I saw in your films.

"Very few integrated drama and comedy [they tended to be one or the other], perhaps it's a puritan hangover that the culture has thrown off the yoke yet the art form hasn't. I wasn't finding the actual humour of the people reflected in the films and it was especially frustrating in those I really liked such as Death in Brunswick or Proof which could have broken out and come close to showing it, but were thwarted by their containment."

The film balances the two elements through the use of the bold device — an descendant of the stage monologue or soliloquy — of the lead characters talking directly to camera.

"I felt that this play/screenplay is a sort of modern fable — naturalistic on one level and poetic on another — so the device reinforces it by creating an intimacy with the audience," Dowling says. "Some films — such as Singles — use it and then back off as if in fear. We decided to step out on a limb by continuing the device throughout; if we're going to fall on our faces why be timid about it?"

The Sum of Us also breaks new ground in a partnership between Dowling and director of photography Geoff Burton.

The Yin and Yang balance must be working. At Cannes the Americans were involved in bidding stakes, with Samuel Goldwyn Co emerging as the winner. Our fest audiences have given it the thumbs-up.

8. Co-director Kevin Dowling:

Dowling had an eponymous site here at time of writing which included this short bio:

Kevin Dowling is an acclaimed creator, director, and producer, whose success has spanned all areas of entertainment including Theatre, Motion Pictures, and Television.

He recently re-directed and produced the pilot to the new Amazon series Bosch and previously directed the pilots to Necessary Roughness at USA and Valentine for the CW. He is currently directing multiple episodes of The Americans, The Strain, Resurrection, and The Catch, and his body of work includes over 100 episodes of television series including Heroes, Ed, The Mentalist, Dead Like Me, Memphis Beat, Outsourced, Go On, Judging Amy, and CSI:NY, as well as producing Ed, Close to Home, K-Ville, Valentine, Necessary Roughness, Bosch and The Catch.

Among his many achievements, is the development and creation of the successful USA series Necessary Roughness, where he directed and executive produced the pilot, as well as the entire run of this successful series.

Dowling’s film debut, The Sum of Us, starring Russell Crowe and Jack Thompson, won 17 awards including Best Feature at the Montreal and Sydney Film Festivals, four Australian Critics Awards including Best Picture, and six A.F.I. nominations.

On stage, he directed the award winning New York premiere of The Sum of Us, starring Tony Goldwyn. That production opened to critical acclaim at the Cherry Lane Theatre and was awarded both an Obie and the Outer Critics Circle Award. He also directed the New York premiere of Jay Tarses’ play Man in his Underwear at Playwrights Horizons; the critically acclaimed New York revival of David Mamet’s comedy, A Life in the Theater starring F. Murray Abraham; and Ralph Waite in Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie. At the Williamstown Theatre Festival, he directed Inge’s Picnic starring Blythe Danner, Tony Goldwyn, and Gwyneth Paltrow; O’Neill’s Moon for the Misbegotten, starring Christine Lahti, Jamey Sheridan, and Pat Hingle; and an earlier production of The Sum of Us. He produced the musical Buddy, at the Shubert Theatre and was the maintaining director of The Nerd on Broadway, where he directed, among others, Peter MacNicol, Robert Joy, and Peter Riegert. Prior to The Nerd, author Larry Shue and Dowling were collaborating with composer Alan Menken on a Broadway musical based on Jackie Gleason’s The Honeymooners.

Dowling was a Founding Member and, for eight years, the Artistic Director of The Actor’s Ensemble. During this time, he directed more than 20 plays, including the first full scale New York production of Lanford Wilson’s This Is The Rill Speaking, the New York premiere of Dan Lauria’s Game Plan, his own A Child’s Piece, and revivals of plays by Harold Pinter and Sam Shepard. He later produced Mr. Shepard’s comedy hit True West, which ran for two years at the Cherry Lane Theatre and featured during its run such actors as: John Malkovich, Gary Sinise, James Belushi, Gary Cole, Randy Quaid, & Dennis Quaid. He also served as Artistic Director of the Cherry Lane Theatre from 1982 to 1995.

9. Co-director Geoff Burton:

Co-director Geoff Burton was on a roll in the 1990s as a DOP - see his sparkling, immaculate work for John Duigan’s Sirens - and it’s not entirely true to say this was his first film as a co-director.

Many who saw up close Burton work with writer-director Bob Ellis on The Nostradamus Kid thought that he deserved a co-director credit on that film - “whatever you think is a good thing, Geoff” Ellis used to sing out from behind the video split, leaving Burton, behind the camera, closer to action and actors.

But Burton’s first official feature film directing credit was on The Sum of Us .

Burton was inducted into the ACS Hall of Fame in 2005, and the ACS has a listing for him here which included this short bio:

Geoff Burton was born in the Hawkesbury River town of Windsor in 1946.

Years ten to fourteen were spent in a Cinema Paradiso lifestyle as twice weekly he helped the ageing local cinema operator lug weighty film canisters up to a lofty bio-box. In return he gained free admission to every session, inevitably developing an all-consuming passion for cinema.

In 1963 Geoff accepted a Film Trainee position at ABC-TV in Sydney, soon graduating into cinematography and starting a life-long relationship with the documentary genre.

Towards the end of the 60's Geoff moved to London and worked for the BBC, mostly on their mammoth Time-Life co-production,The British Empire. On the series completion he re-located to Geneva and from there free-lanced as a documentary director/cinematographer.

Back in Australia in 1972 Geoff returned briefly to the ABC as a drama cinematographer before leaving to join the renaissance of the Australian feature film industry.

As a freelance Director of Photography, over the ensuing three and a half decades he worked continuously on Australian, US and Asian feature films. Often collaborating with Director John Duigan, some of the most awarded favourite films over this period include:

Sunday Too Far Away , Storm Boy , A Street To Die , Romero, The Year My Voice Broke , Stir , The Wide Sargasso Sea, Flirting , Sirens , Lucky Miles, Blessed.

From 1980-82 Burton was Head of Cinematography at the Australian Film Television and Radio School where he championed the inclusion of documentary shooting as part of the curriculum. He followed this with the shooting of four TV drama series for Kennedy-Miller including the acclaimed Vietnam and Bangkok Hilton.

Parallel with his work in features, Geoff continues to make documentaries through his independent production company. Much of this work is in collaboration with his long-time anthropologist partner, Professor Sharon Bell. In recent years Geoff has added screen writing and directing to his film making skills and has co-written two books on cinema and continues to lecture and mentor young film makers.

Never completely able to give up his cinematographer's hat, Geoff continues to seek out and shoot innovative Australian feature films but now spends between-movies times on his vineyard in the Canberra District pursuing the perfect Shiraz.

10. Geoff Burton in Cinema Papers, Issue 100, August 1994:

Leilani Hannah and Raffale Caputo interviewed Burton about directing The Sum of Us , and about an adaptation of Chatwin’s Songlines , which never came to pass.

For the sake of completeness, it’s included in full here, and it began with a short introduction:

This interview can be considered an adjunct to the one with Geoffrey Burton published in the previous issue of ‘Cinema Papers’ (No. 99), in which discussion centred primarily on his career as a director of photography. Here, Burton discusses ‘The Sum of Us’, his first feature as (co-)director, and a long-cherished project, ‘The Songlines’, an adaptation of Bruce Chatwin’s book of the same name. (1)

The Songlines is Chatwin’s account of a journey through Central Australia and of a personal experience of enlightenment in his contact with Aboriginal culture. Chatwin explores a melange of ancient trails of song, invisible pathways ofritual journeys which have sung the world into existence.

The Sum of Us is based on a highly-successful stage play - successful, that is, in countries other than Australia. It was written by Melbourne playwright David Stevens, who is also a television and feature director, whose credits include The Clinic (1983), " Undercover” (1984), and A Town Like Alice (mini-series, 1981), which he also wrote. He now lives and works in the U.S.

The play is set in Footscray about a family situation between a father and a gay son, and how they both handle it. Essentially, it’s a love story between the father and the son. The film is re-set in the Sydney suburb of Balmain, and Burton co-directed it with Kevin Dowling (2), the play’s New York director.

Geoff Burton: There are autobiographical elements in The Sum of Us: characters who are like people David grew up with. A lot of situations come from his experience as a young gay man living and growing up in Footscray. But the actual story is not David’s story per se.

The play was staged in Australia in 1988 as part of the Bicentennial theatre effort, with the Sydney Theatre Company. It was in a period leading up to the Mardi Gras, when there were a lot of gay activities going on. This, in a sense, spelt its death-knell because the bulk oftheatregoers dismissed it as being a gay event.

I was shooting a film in Asia at the time and, although I knew about the play, I didn’t see it. The local production was reportedly very good, but it just wasn’t seen.

There was some testing of it in Los Angeles, where it did a few performances and, although people thought the play was interesting, it didn’t go much further. It wasn’t until the play opened off-Broadway that it really took off and ran for more than a year. Kevin Dowling, who directed the play for its New York release, is now my co-director of the film version.

Cinema Papers: Is Dowling in the same position as you: someone who hadn’t directed a feature film till now?

Burton: Yes. Kevin has no film experience but enormous theatre experience. His career is that of a theatre director, writer and actor. He has also had a long association with this play, something like five years.

When [producer] Hal McElroy was attempting to set up the project, and he was negotiating with David Stevens about adapting it, David said, “You must get Kevin to direct it. He has just done this fantastic version of it and it really works.” That’s how Kevin came to be involved.

One of the main reasons Hal decided to set it up as a co-directing exercise is because Kevin had no film experience. What Hal was looking for was someone like me who has enormous film experience but very little experience of working with actors. That’s not exactly true, I have worked with actors for more than thirty years, but not on a level of generating and assessing performance.

The whole process of co-directing has been very interesting because, early on, Kevin and I discussed how the relationship could be productive, non-competitive and tension-free. And it worked. It has been an extremely good collaborative experience, which is often hard in any endeavour like film.

Filmmaking relationships that are based on a hierarchical structure, although they can create tensions, invariably work. Because there wasn’t a hierarchy in this case, there was great potential for major tension, major confrontation and major failure.

I must say, I’ve been involved in a couple of co-directing ventures before, not with feature films, but with tele-features and dramatized documentaries. They have worked out very well, but at various stages during the process there was some tension. Consequently, I was keen not to go into this project unless I felt confident about the potential working relationship between Kevin and myself.

What has in essence made this relationship really work is that we approached the project on a genuine co-work basis: we resisted the idea of breaking the functions into what one would normally expect to be the relative work strengths of each person.

In other words, the most obvious thing to say is, “Well, you are a cinematographer. You’ve done thirty pictures and you know how to work coverage; look after the camera and where to point it. Kevin, on the other hand, knows nothing about the technical side, but has worked with actors for years and years; let him work with the actors.” That would be the most obvious demarcation, and under some situations that could work.

I’ve done shorter films with Rodney Fisher, including his first film after a long stretch of theatre directing, and Richard Wherrett when he did his first film. In those sort of relationships, one is really happy to take on a greater work load as a technical cinematographer. But on The Sum of Us, Kevin and I were very keen this wouldn’t be the case.

As a result, we smudged those lines as much as we could, and I contributed to getting the performances out of the actors, making decisions about performances and assessing the dramatic value and level of each scene. The same with Kevin, who also contributed enormously his ideas about the way the film should be shot.

Obviously, because of our respective lacks of experience on one side we often made silly mistakes. But often the strength of the relationship would pick up on those mistakes and say, “That’s not really a good way of doing it; let’s do it this way.” That’s how the pre-production, rehearsing and shooting worked.

In the editing, on the other hand, the co-directing decisions were far more even because we were both into processes which neither of us are very familiar with. We had a very good editor, Frans Vandenburg, who provided a good centre-road approach to the film. He is the one who probably generated more creativity than either of us here.

Kevin and I were in more of an assessing capacity of what the editor was doing, rather than laying down rules and saying, “Well, in my last picture I did a montage and it worked brilliantly.” That was not the way we were working because it was not what our experience indicated.

Cinema Papers: But given that Kevin is more stage-bound, so to speak, he would still have been relying on you technically?

Burton: That’s true. Things like screen direction and all those mechanical details about directing imagery, which you take for granted when you’ve made a couple of films, were all quite new for Kevin. He was quite surprised by all of it, and also by the translation of performance to film. Often, material that he had been really worried about, worked brilliantly on film, and vice versa. It had a lot to do with the actors’ relationship with the camera, of course, and the way they had been photographed - those subtle nuances which you mightn’t see off the video split or in the flesh but on a fifty-foot wide screen are very apparent. In this sense, I believe Kevin experienced more new things from the editing than I did.

The greatest thing I picked during the editing is the significance of attempting to maintain an emotional flow within, say, one long scene, shot over several days with multiple actors. That has been enormously interesting.

Cinema Papers : How did you get to know Kevin Dowling well enough to decide that it would be fine to work with him?

Burton: It was very difficult at first, because we had a short time in which to establish a working relationship. We were also in different countries. In fact, it was during the production of Sirens (John Duigan, 1994) when I started talking with Kevin via long-distance telephone. Then the producers wisely brought him to Australia six months before we started shooting in order to meet me, work out the basis of our collaboration, and to do some preliminary casting. But it was well into pre-production before we spent real time together working out our common goals and traits.

Although I am older than Kevin, we both came through a similar period of history. We had the same ideas of protest, a similar attitude toward the 1960s and ’70s. We largely share the same tastes in music and film. So, already we were on common ground.

An enormous advantage is that with Kevin being an out-and-out New Yorker, he says what he feels all the time, and very succinctly. There is never any doubt as to what Kevin means, and it’s a great at tribute New Yorkers have more than any other race. I say “race” advisedly, because New Yorkers are completely different, even to the bulk of Americans and especially to Los Angeles-based Americans, whom you can never, ever trust. Kevin is totally frank, totally honest. You know where you stand immediately.

In the end, I don’t think one can really make rules about any creative collaboration. Years ago I was involved in a film company called Artists Productions. The three principals were Pat Lovell, Tom Haydon and myself. Tom, who is now dead, sadly, was an extraordinary documentary filmmaker whom I had known since the very beginning. We made The Last Tasmanian (1978) together.

We had a great collaborative working experience, but it was all based on sheer fear and trepidation, angst and conflict. This was the way Tom loved to work. We were the greatest of friends, but every shot was fought over, every situation we got into was an argument. His attitude was that conflict produced the best result. Some people still feel that way; I don’t. I defiantly oppose this way of working because not only do I believe it is wrong, it’s also a dreadful way to have to live. But there are still directors who believe conflict produces the best results, and so you can’t lay down rules. It really depends on the attitudes and values of the individuals involved.

Cinema Papers: Is The Sum of Us a step toward fulfilling a long-time directing ambition?

Burton: Yes. I have always wanted to direct, and if the industry had been bigger when I joined, film direction would have been the track I headed down. As it was, there were very few films being made and very few opportunities to direct pictures, unless you made your own shorts, which we all did at that time. Professional opportunities were much less and cinematography was an easier track to take. I’m talking about the film industry of 32 years ago, which I realized with alarm the other day. In fact, at that time, there were no features being made, except an occasional part-foreign film like the adaptation of Nino Culotta’s They’re a Weird Mob (Michael Powell, 1966).

Cinema Papers: Is cinematography your second choice then?

Burton: Yes, except I was never in a career situation where I could say, “Okay, I am not directing, I’ll take cinematography because that’s my second choice.” I wanted to make films, and I still regard myself as a filmmaker rather than a cinematographer. I think it remains important to smudge those demarcations. As technology becomes easier and easier to manipulate, in future those functions are going to become much more integrated. I am just a filmmaker who has spent most of my career photographing other people’s films.

Cinema Papers : Have you always had this approach, which is different to most cinematographers ?

Burton: Yes, and I suppose it is different. I never planned a career in cinematography and said to myself, “I’m going to operate for ten years and then go on up the ladder.”

Cinema Papers : Instead, the story, ideas or world view has been the most important aspect to how you approach a film, rather than your working out an individual style?

Burton: Yes, and I think everybody should feel this way. I don’t believe it’s a unique attitude, but it’s true in my case. It gives you a philosophy for approaching the photographing of films. This is perhaps different to conventional cinematographers, where they are quite often looking for a chance to explore a particular style, or illustrate a way of shooting they have wanted to pursue, or see as reflecting their own style.

There is a great trap in this approach, and I think it has been a trap that has often been fallen into in Australian cinema. The cinematography has resulted in work which is basically inappropriate to the film. There are hundreds of films, and we shouldn’t run through titles, where it is easy to see that the cinematography is just detracting and/or distracting from the script’s and director’s intent.

It is not done maliciously, it’s just that the cinematographer is not saying to him- or herself, “I must find a way of photographing this film which is first and foremost totally appropriate to what this film is about.” I don’t think this is done often enough. It has been my philosophy in shooting films, and it’s probably why I spend more time with the script and the director before shooting starts.

The Songlines

Cinema Papers: Is the notion of landscape-as-character your attraction to Bruce Chatwin’s The Songlines?

Burton: Very much so. The Songlines is fascinating because it’s not just the landscape as a playing field for actors, as it is in a lot of other films. One example is a children’s film I did years ago called Storm Boy (Henri Safran, 1976). At times, the landscape had to change from being totally deadly and alienating to a place of almost nirvana-like enlightenment, even though it was basically the same stretch of sand and water. You had to manipulate the light, filtration and everything else to give the landscape its different role. That is one use of landscape.

What is more interesting is when you give the landscape some sort of mystical significance in its role. We attempted this and largely failed in The Year My Voice Broke (John Duigan, 1987).

Although the landscape of the hill is a haven for Danny (Noah Taylor) and Freya (Loene Carmen), and becomes a safe place when they are away from the urban tensions of the town, we actually wanted to make the landscape much more at one with the kids. It wasn’t just a question of them feeling comfortable, but for them to actually gain a strength from the land, from the hill, and from the cloudscapes that went past. This is something which is very hard to do and still keep a narrative going.

There are elements of mysticism in the film, like Danny’s attempts to telepathically communicate with Freya, and the fact they draw stars together. We staged major moments of aware ness and enlightenment which actually give the hill a certain importance in their lives. However, even though I think the film is very successful and gratifying, and I am pleased with it in the sense that the cinematography is suitable and appropriate, I would have liked to have linked the landscape closer to Danny and Freya. That was difficult to do because we would have had to illustrate other people being less comfortable in that land scape.

We were compromised by the fact that people weren’t uncomfortable, that the little old lady who lived in the house with the pianola was clearly and perfectly at home in that landscape. In fact, she was a sort of mystical character as well, and she drew the same sort of comfort the kids drew from the landscape.

There was a lot to do with The Year My Voice Broke which generated my interest in The Songlines. It is an opportunity to use landscape as a much stronger player because of the Aboriginal association with land. For Aborigines, land is the essence ofall life.

In white culture, you might make a film about the presence of a God, or a relationship between a man and a God. We do it in films all the time, once we identify the God. We can make it work because, although in white society God has many different forms, there is a God-head. Yet, by and large, the relationship is pretty hard to define.

Now, this is extraordinarily simplistic but from my understanding of Aboriginal culture the relationship is much easier to define. It has to do with their relationship to land. But if the land/ Aboriginal equation is like the white man/God-head, the parallel will become very hard to define on film, hard to make any sort of drama out of, and hard to visualize.

It is difficult for white society to understand, but, in the case of Aboriginal culture, the relationship with land is not so difficult because all around them, every day and in everything they do, there is a consciousness with the mysticism of the land. The land is what drives their life and what drives their death. So, in The Songlines we are basically attempting to illustrate the conscious ness and mysticism of the land.

For instance, a woman may be out hunting and through a cut in her toe, a scratch on her leg, or through her vagina, a spirit will come up from the land and she’ll become pregnant. A child will be conceived and born from the land, and usually she doesn’t know about this until the foetus starts to move. At the point the foetus moves, she is aware she is pregnant, and the spot becomes the child’s conception site.

The conception site remains the child’s sacred site for all of his or her life. It is identified by the elders and a tjuringa will be placed there for the child, or taken from there and put in a tjuringa store house. There is just no parallel to this in white culture or society.

Cinema Papers: A writer who springs to mind as a parallel to The Songlines is D. H.Lawrence and Kangaroo, though, given the description you’ve just offered, a comparison seems somewhat ridiculous, because in Lawrence the land is something indecipherable.

Burton: A parallel with Lawrence is not as silly as you might now think. He doesn’t pursue the same mystical track that Chatwin does, but in the sense of Lawrence being a foreigner in a new land the parallel is pretty exact. I think with Kangaroo Lawrence brings a perception of Australia that can only be that of a foreigner, as does Chatwin.

I’ve not had much to do with Lawrence in the sense that I’ve not done any research on him. But in pursuing research for the Chatwin film I’ve discovered that the attitudes of people toward Bruce Chatwin are so polarized in this country, especially from other writers. They either admire and adore the idea of the different view he brings, or they violently reject him as being out of hand for having done it. This is also true of academics and people in the Centre, whom Chatwin wrote about in the book.

In Alice Springs society, you are not really accepted until you’ve lived there for five or six years, and even then you are talked about in terms of where you came from. Chatwin was violently opposed because how dare he come into our society and three months later produce a book which in world terms has become the definitive book about Aboriginal culture and white Australia. But then there are the few who say “Hey, yeah, he is right. Maybe it’s okay to come and make these observations”.

I think Lawrence was reacted to in the same way, because there are a lot of cultural purists in this country who’d reject anybody else’s view of themselves.

Cinema Papers: How much has BeDevil (Tracey Moffatt, 1993) prepared you for The Songlines?

Burton: Every experience I am able to have working with Aboriginal people, culture and ideas is a worthwhile contribution to what I hope to do with The Songlines.

It’s interesting that whenever I’m involved with urban Aborigines, which I try to be as often as I can, I am constantly reminded of my obligations as a white filmmaker to allow the right amount of contribution from Aboriginal people. In fact, I seek out their contribution because, by and large, they have an enormous amount to say. Usually it is stuff you take for granted and think you can manage without, but they’ll tell you something about a specific aspect of relationships, for instance, which you just never think about.

It was in 1988 during the Bicentennial year when I had just heard about The Songlines and was really attracted to it. There was a germ of an idea that this was something I should pursue, largely because at the root of it all Sharon Bell (3), who is an anthropologist and anthropological filmmaker, and I were quite keen to make a documentary film about Professor [Theodor] Strehlow and his wife Kathlene, who have custody of an extraordinary collection of tjuringas and other Aboriginal artefacts.

For all sorts of reasons, the film became impossible to make: there were so many obstacles put up against making it. Nonetheless, there was a fascination with this idea of tjuringas and their relationship to land, and the question of whites in association with these sacred objects. Then lo and behold Chatwin writes this book and, of course, Chatwin had read Strehlow’s book, Songs of Central Australia (4), which was really his inspiration. So, there are links between Chatwin, ourselves and Strehlow in a sense.

At the same time, however, Sharon and I also decided to make a protest film about the Bicentennial, objecting to the invasionary attitude of the colonists. The film is centred on Radio Redfern, which is an inner-city, black radio station. The film is called 88.9 ( Radio Redfern ) , which is the frequency of Radio Redfern.

The Aboriginal community normally had two hours a day of airtime in which they could programme Aboriginal songs and shows. But for the month of January in 1988, they were going to operate Radio Skid Row twenty-four hours a day for the whole month. And through the radio station they were going to co-ordinate the long march of Aborigines coming from all around Australia to stage their march through the city of Sydney. The radio station was going to be the nucleus of it all, and we thought it would be a fantastic opportunity to film this month of protest from an Aboriginal perspective.

After a lot of negotiations with the people who run Radio Redfern, and their acceptance of us as white filmmakers, we got funding from Film Australia and staked out the place for a month, all hours of the night and day, and made an observation film.

In relation to my experience of Aboriginal contact in setting up The Songlines, what was interesting is that I learnt more from that month than years of shooting documentaries with Aborigines in out-stations or remote communities. Here was a chance to really relate one-to-one in a very close urban environment, and with blacks from desert-like towns who had arrived by bus and crowded into this little tenement in Redfern.

It was a fascinating experience and really important just to be able to gain acceptance, not by convincing them that you were not being exploitative, but by way of explaining what your intention is, by working with them to encourage their viewpoint, and from trying to get a world view from a tribal Aborigine whose first taste of the city is at the age of 60. That made me much more confident in making The Songlines.

Cinema Papers: Because they were willing to trust you?

Burton: Yes. It’s about gaining trust and about being fair. When you have been shooting there for a few weeks, and at 2:00 in the morning some old guy with a big beard throws his arm around you and calls you “brother”, you’ve established a rapport which is highly desirable.

The Songlines has to be like that as well. It mustn’t be a film of white supremists coming in and looking at people as exotic subjects.

But I must emphasize that neither is it an Aboriginal film. It is clearly a white film about a white man who goes on a journey of his soul - a physical journey as well - and is changed as a result of the journey, and what most changes him is his contact with black culture. I am not belittling the Aboriginal component of the film, but it still has to be perceived as a white man’s film, except that it is influenced beyond belief by black culture. Of course, the question of Aboriginal representation is a critical one and I will be looking for lots of guidance on this from Aboriginal filmmakers.

Cinema Papers: A good deal of cinematographers speak of working instinctively or by intuition and, when they do so, it often recalls the way jazz musicians talk about their music, especially their improvisations. It seems in no other two contemporary art forms is intuition so strongly emphasized or provides a parallel discourse. Also, especially since Chatwin’s description of the landscape in The Songlines is aural as well as pictorial, do you think there is as close a connection between photography and sound (and music) as there is between photography and light?

Burton: That is really interesting. There has always been a broad debate about cinema as art, as you know, and that debate extends into whether cinematography is an art or not. Of course, those of us who work in the industry and admire film unquestionably believe cinema and cinematography is art. But, one basic difference between this art form and virtually all other of the plastic arts is the emphasis on the monetary factor.

All I’m really saying is that with a feature film, for instance, one is constantly confronted with the business and investment of cinema, and there is always a reminder that the budget for shooting a film in five weeks is the same as for building a big block of flats. The investors could have chosen to do that instead of investing in your film.

Now, every other art form, except for some giant brass-moulded sculpture, does not have this sort of investment stake. It is a shame, and a terrible thing to say, but I believe it’s this sort of atmosphere which forces you to limit intuition in your work. A jazz musician is the most free of all artists because he or she can practise intuition via improvisation by sitting alone in a room with an instrument. You can feel and experience it in their music. Of all the arts, great jazz is the most free-spirited. You also see it in a lot of painting. You can see it in Brett Whiteley’s stuff; the freedom of the brush on the canvas is just extraordinary. How ever, the question is: What is at stake? What kind of pressure is there? I guess as some people become more and more famous, there is a lot at stake in how intuition works.

In terms of choosing the way a cinematographer lights, if you are intuitively wrong about the way you photograph a star this can quite easily determine the degree of success or failure of a film. It’s a wild assertion, but of all the factors that make a film successful, your intuition can contribute to its success or not. That puts great pressure on you and your intuitive responses. Therefore, in commercial feature cinema, I believe you can never be as responsive to your intuition as you would like to be. This is not to say that an intuitive response is not always there, because it is. The best intuitive response I have to a film is when I first read the script and can run free.

I annoy people sometimes because when I get a script I won’t attempt to read it until I can give the script the freedom it deserves, and when I can it is a really enjoyable experience for me. I go away and take up to a day to read the script. My intuition runs riot. You think about and imagine all sorts of sensory factors which may or may not be directly related to lighting; they could be related to music, or theatre, or to something else. But these are sensory responses to reading about what this project is, and invariably from then on the work becomes a process of compromise. And if you can finish a film and look at it and still experience and recognize those intuitive responses when you first read the script, it is something of a triumph.

Cinema Papers: Because of the extremely tight schedule, budgetry pressures and the added pressure of co-directing on The Sum of Us, how much did these pressures limit your intuition?

Burton: In this particular case less than a lot because my ambitions at the beginning were very realistic. The script helped because it’s a very tight narrative and it’s based on a proscenium performance. The script already had a whole lot of limitations built in.

Something like The Songlines is completely and absolutely different. There are so many ways of responding to the imagery Bruce Chatwin that there are a minefield of ways to go. My problem over the past three years has been controlling my response to it. The process of writing the script has also been a process of controlling my response to Bruce Chatwin, and that is why it has taken so long.

Cinema Papers: Do you feel you have found the right path?

Burton: I do. But who knows until the film is finished and seen.  It’s interesting to read the current screenplay and think back to my first responses to the book three or four years ago. I see roots and links all the time to something that occurred when I first read the book. Things that we threw out in the process years ago have come back in this draft. I’ve actually recognized them as the responses I had years ago. I think that says something about the power of intuition.

Cinema Papers: Do you think there is a danger in working on a script for too long?

Burton: There is never a danger of working on a script for too long. You can’t overwork a script.

Cinema Papers: Bill Constable (5) once said that, as soon as you see or read some thing, this is when you should hold on to all your ideas because from that point onwards you’ll lose what affected you most.

Burton: I think there are important points of inspiration and judgement which you have to recognize in the whole filmmaking craft. This is why in the case of The Sum of Us I was insistent we screen rushes on film because, for me as a filmmaker beyond cinematography, the most important response of all is the experience of rushes in a would-be theatre, in a darkened space, with other consciousnesses around you.

I am very fussy about the procedure of rushes because this is when you really have your first reactions to the imagery. As a filmmaker, you are going to see the images thousands of times over the next couple of months, but the first view of rushes will give an impression that is going to have the most effect on the way you deal with the film for the rest of its life.

Another important point is the first time you lay a piece of music, and the effect it has on you. I am really, really opposed to the idea of being offered up piece after piece of film music and seeing how each piece works or how it fits. A lot of sound editors and sound designers thrust this idea at you and it’s becoming easier and easier to do with non-linear filmmaking. I oppose it.

We went through the process of choosing music whereby you have an image in your mind of how a particular scene works and what it is saying visually, and then philosophically working out what sort of sound you want to associate with that imagery. You either have to find the piece of music or have it written, and generally your first response is always the right one. But it has tobe a considered response. It just can’t be an ad hoc thing.

Cinema Papers: But the difficulty would be your strong intuition as opposed to Kevin Dowling’s?

Burton: It hasn’t been a problem. Sure, we had different intuitive responses to some of the performances, which would be debated and one of us would agree with the other.

Everybody you talk to about co-directing imagines and anticipates conflict. We did a segment for the Movie Show and Margaret Pomeranz kept saying, “Where’s the problem?” What problem? There is no problem!

There are inherent logistical problems with co-directing, of course. It is slower. There is no question about that, because it’s not one person making one decision. You have to debate. You have to at least look at the other person. That’s the shortest way you can do it. But it can also be a two-hour discussion, which obviously slows down the process. That’s the only negative in this case.

1. The Songlines was first published in 1987 by Jonathan Cape, London. Bruce Chatwin died in January 1989.

2. Kevin Dowling, theatre director, was a founding member and Artistic Director of The Actor’s Ensemble in New York. His stage production of The Sum of Us starred Tony Goldwyn and Richard Venture, and opened at the Cherry Lane Theatre. The production received the 1991 Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway Production and the 1991 Obie Award for Outstanding Performance by Tony Goldwyn.

3. Dr Sharon Bell is a producer, documentary filmmaker and holds a Ph.D in anthropology. She has been recently appointed Dean to the School of Creative Arts at the University of Wollongong.

4. Songs of Central Australia was first published in 1971 by Angus & Robertson, Sydney. The author is also known as “T .G .H .” Strehlow; the initials stand for Theodor George Henry.

5. Bill Constable was a documentary cameraman at the ABC during Geoff Burton’s traineeship. He is currently Head of Film Studies at Curtin University, Western Australia.

11. Cinema Papers - Burton as DOP:

Leilani Hannah and Raffaele Caputo had previously interviewed Burton for issue 99, June 1994 edition of Cinema Papers , concentrating on his work as a DOP.

Again it began with a short introduction, before looking at a number of his films.

Filming The Sum of Us in a studio is mentioned in passing, a slightly incongruous outcome for Burton, who at the end talks of his passion for British neo-realism and the way it inspired his cinematography. Again the interview is included in full because of the insights it offers into Burton and his work:

Geoff Burton’s first film as director of photography was Sunday Too Far Away in 1975. His rise to prominence as a major Australian, and world, cinematographer corresponds with the renaissance of modern Australian cinema. Just as Australian cinema has gone through many changes, so has Burton’s. He is not a autocrat who makes every film he does look similar; rather, he is a great believer in finding the right style for every individual film and individual director.

This can be seen in such diverse work as Storm Boy (1976), A Street to Die (1985) and The Nostradamus Kid (1993). Since 1987 and The Year My Voice Broke , Burton has been John Duigan’s DOP of choice. Their most recent collaborations are Wide Sargasso Sea and Sirens . Not just content with being a top DOP, Burton has recently (co-)directed his first feature, with Kevin Dowling, The Sum of Us.

Based on the play by David Stevens, and starring Jack Thompson and Russell Crowe, it is the story of a father’s coming to terms with his gay son. At the time of going to press, Burton had also just completed shooting Hotel Sorrento, Richard Franklin’s first film in Australia since Roadgames in 1981.

Cinema Papers: At the 1993 Cinematographers’ Conference, you chaired a debate about whether there is an Australian style of cinematography. The issue was never really resolved.

Geoff Burton: I thought that seminar was terribly interesting, and did answer the question in a way. Perhaps what you and a lot of other people were looking for was a definitive, majority-answer by all the panellists - that, “Yes, there is a style of cinematography which is Australian.” But if there is an Australian cinematography, it’s not that obvious - and it is certainly not that easy to define.

In fact, all the contributors to the panel offered up all sorts of material which we talked around and about. Some made comparisons to foreign product, while others drew parallels among differing Australian product.

The most interesting thing was that what the panellists were showing were very Australian films and very Australian cinematography, but there seemed to be an inability to analyze and define why it is Australian.

Personally, I think it is unquestionable that there is a methodology of working, and a result ant cinematography, that comes from Australian cameramen.

Cinema Papers: Can you define it?

Burton: Not easily. There are elements of Australian cinematography which are quite easy to pin down, but how these elements actually contrib ute to a definition is very hard to say.

What we were also looking for was an answer to the second question: If there is such a style, does it travel? In other words, if John Seale is a typical Australian cinematographer, does the work he does in America have the same style as what he does back here?

What came out of the seminar is basically, “No.” In fact, Peter James spoke at some length about the idea that when you move, you move culturally as well. You adopt the style of the country you are working in, or what your em ployers are asking you to shoot. You tend to forsake your own cultural roots in a sense.

Cinema Papers: Can you resist it?

 Burton: Probably not very successfully. If I went to work in Hollywood to photograph studio pictures in the same way that I work with, say, John Duigan, I wouldn’t work there very long. The way I shoot John’s films is not very Hollywood. The way the Americans overlight, the way they shoot specific close-ups and so on, is very studio. We just don’t do all the elements which clearly define films as Hollywood studio pictures.

If one were to successfully exist in Holly wood, one would have to shoot a specific way, which is why the major Australian cinematographers working there - Dean Semler, Don McAlpine and John Seale - do just that. If you take any of their recent films, such as Last Action Hero, Rain Man and the Steve Martin comedies that Don McAlpine does, and look at them anonymously, there is absolutely nothing about those films which says they are shot by Australians.

These guys were basically new cinematographers from a relatively new film industry in Australia. The styles they developed or worked with in this country were never greatly advanced down the line, and they sort of moved out while they were still young and fresh.

But there is an interesting parallel when you look at the work of more established European cinematographers, such as Vittorio Storaro, Nestor Almendros and Sven Nykvist, and the work they did with their respective European directors. The films Nestor did with François Truffaut and Barbet Schroeder, for instance, are extraordinary. Look at Sven Nykvist’s work with Ingmar Bergman: entirely characteristic cinematography. The brilliant Italian dramas which Storaro shot out at Cinecittà are very much his films. You see them on the screen and know immediately they are his work.

Now, the three of them work or have worked in Hollywood - Nestor did before he died - and they have all produced Hollywood pictures. Look at Sleepless in Seattle shot by Sven Nykvist: it’s just impossible to look at that film and imagine this is the same cinematographer who shot some of Bergman’s most successful films. 

Cinema Papers: Would that also be because they left the directors they normally worked with?

Burton: Of course. When you try to define a style, are you talking about the individual cinematographers as creative artists? About a good director telling him/her how to photograph? Or about the collaboration between the two?

The point is that there are a number of factors and components to the debate. For instance, Nykvist hadn’t worked with many other European directors, so the difference in his work for Sleepless in Seattle is immense. But Almendros worked with maybe a dozen major European directors before he went to Holly wood, and was still able to maintain an Almendros style, if you like.

Working in Hollywood is sort of like cultural imperialism. But it’s not forced on you as an individual. You are choosing to subjugate your own cinema culture background to take on another. The ground rule is that unless you don’t, you are not going to work there. So, it’s a choice one makes.

Cinema Papers: A couple of years ago you made a statement that the intrinsic “Australianness” of our cinematography was in danger of being lost. Do you think the situation has changed?

Burton: I think it is still at risk. But whenever I feel Australian cinematography has become lost, a film or series of films will emerge and restore my faith and indicate that Australian cinematography is alive and well. Because there is difficulty in defining Australian cinematography, it also becomes dependent on the nature of the films being made.

Cinema Papers: What kind of films would they be?

Burton: The easiest films to evidence Australian cinematography, in the most simplistic terms, have involved landscape.

Cinema Papers: Isn’t the intrinsic quality of Australian cinematography firmly tied to landscape?

 Burton: I think landscape is the largest component of it, and probably the easiest component to recognize. There are also other less obvious aspects such as positioning, covering action, where and how you view people. In a derivative way, this is like landscape, because you always observe people from some sort of geographical situation. But this is less specific and harder to define.

The film Bruce Beresford did in Texas with Robert Duvall, and with Russell Boyd on cam era, Tender Mercies, is a good example. It is one of the best films Beresford ever made, and a film that I believe is Australian. Obviously, there is a landscape connection, because it is shot in Texas and the landscape is a bit like Australia’s. But the way of seeing or point of view clearly belongs to Russell Boyd, who is a past master at defining Australian cinematography. If you remove the American accents from Tender Mercies and show it to film theo rists who know about world cinema, they would probably say it is an Australian film.

I think landscape has been the greatest forming factor in Australian cinematography. Take, for instance, Wide Sargasso Sea, a film with American funding, made for an American studio and American release, and which, to all intents and purposes, is an international film because it has components for every country. I photographed it as though the landscape in Jamaica were a part of the dramatic elements of the film. The rainforest, the stupor of tropicality, and the climate play as much a dramatic role as any of the dialogue or the actors. I photographed it accordingly. I gave the surroundings a lot of photographic heaviness.

As a result, although the film is not very successful critically, every American review that has been half-accepting has mentioned the fact that the landscape plays such a big role. I just know this is because, and I’m not being immodest about this, it was photographed by an Australian. I honestly believe that had Wide Sargasso Sea been shot by an LA cinematographer, you wouldn’t have such a strong feeling of the land scape. You would certainly have the cosmetics of tropicality - sweat on the actors and that sort of stuff - but the feeling I was able to get of the oppressive rainforest surrounding these people, I believe, was only because of the experience of shooting landscape in this country.

It is totally subconscious; it’s not something you set out to do by saying, “I am an Australian and therefore I am going to photograph this film in a landscape-predominant way.” You don’t even make that decision, but you are aware of the part landscape plays in the basic cinematography of the work you are doing, in your visual representation. Somehow it’s taken on board and used. In this sense, landscape is the greatest significant player. 

Cinema Papers: Perhaps one reason why an intrinsic “Australianness” is at risk is because Australian cinema is at the tail end of a period through the 1980s in which most of the films dealt with the issue of national identity through the nation’s past. Landscape, of course, is an emphatic element of our past. So the intrinsic quality is not only an element of the land scape, it is part of history. But this changed when concerns of national identity shifted to a contemporary, urban Australia and our cur rent position in relation to the rest of the world. Here is where it is at risk.

Burton: I think that’s true. But, even as the desire for drama in the urban environment becomes stronger, there are ways of translating the style into an urban environment. Forget about the trees and paddocks; it is a sense of place that we do very well and there are elements of this in films set in urban environments.

There are lots of examples, but take a very domestic film about five people living in a house: Gillian Armstrong’s Last Days of Chez Nous (1992). It is set in a suburban terrace in inner-Sydney, but the sense of place in that film is extraordinary. You know exactly the environment these people are in, whether it is the little scene by the railway cutting, or the extraordinary parting scene by a park in East Balmain, looking across the water.

There is a sense of place in Chez Nous which is the “Australianness” I am talking about, and which I think we must fight to maintain. In Hollywood, it is so lost, especially in pictures based in Los Angeles.

We could go on at some length about this “Australianness”, but there is a key component which is worth mentioning here. One of the devices for maintaining the more mythical-rural look about our films, and translating this value into the urban environment, is the use of the verandah. I am a great believer in the verandah. I think it’s such a strong component of our culture. Artists have used it since first settlement, whether they be painters, writers or cinematographers.

The verandah is probably the most important playing or staging area in any sort of domestic situation in Australia, whether it be in the country where the verandah has some very obvious connotations, or in the city, where the verandah is architecturally carried over and continues to be the major meeting place, the major confrontation place, the major departure place. And when it does not figure in the emotional and psychological depths of the film, it is a half-entertaining place. I think the verandah is the most significant staging area we have within our culture.

For The Sum of Us, which is set in an inner-city, working-class cottage in Balmain, we built the house in the studio so we could have total freedom. But to generate the design for the studio set, we found an actual house on which to base the design, and where we could shoot the exteriors to match. Although we looked at a lot of houses, it wasn’t hard to find this particular one.

The house isn’t especially unique. There is nothing strange about this house; it’s just a typical working-class house. It has a balcony-verandah out the front, which is only a metre wide and runs the width of the house. The gate is at one end, and the door is at half-way toward the other end, so there is a staging area there for anybody who comes and goes.

All these cottages were tiny when built and expanded at the back to accommodate the family. The back verandah opened out onto a small yard, which is now closed off. One end has a sleep-out with a bed and the other has a bath. Then there is yet another room which comes off it, a further extension which has to be accessed through this back verandah.

I have always had this thing about verandahs, and it has been sitting there and niggling away for years. But then you build a set, you’re directing a film and working out the staging, and you realize again that the most significant scenes of this film are being played on verandahs. On film, particularly, the verandah is an extraordinarily important business area.

There is, of course, the famous American porch in films like Driving Miss Daisy (Bruce Beresford, 1989). In some films set in the American South, the porch figures significantly, but nowhere as near as much as the verandah does in Australia.

 Cinema Papers: You are obviously sensitive to landscape, whether rural or urban. Is it extreme to suggest that landscape is a silent character, and it has been used in such a way in the films you shoot?

Burton: Landscape is certainly a character-to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the film - other wise you are shooting people against a limbo set. But giving landscape its role is the most difficult part. It involves questions of whether you are going to make it alienating, comforting or whatever.

Cinema Papers: Have you ever worked on a project that you haven’t believed in?

Burton: I once shot commercials for a brief period. It is in the past five or six years that I have been able to only shoot drama. Up till then, there wasn’t enough continuous drama production to allow somebody to say, “I am not going to shoot anything else.”

Cinema Papers : But if it came to earning a living, you’d do whatever it took in terms of cinematography?

Burton: Sure. I’m not putting down commercials. A lot of cinematographers enjoy advertising more than anything else. Commercials are highly lucrative; one makes more money at it. But that’s a lesser consideration in my case. I personally think it’s much more interesting to put your skills at cinematography to use in a drama context.

Cinema Papers: But not just any drama context?

Burton: Of course you still reject scripts, and hopefully there is enough work about so that you can reject scripts. But there can be times when, say, in order to keep the kids at school, you have to earn money and maybe it’s a lesser drama or script than what you would like to be doing.

Aya (Solrun Hoaas, 1991) is a case in point. I really liked Solrun’s documentary Green Tea and Cherry Ripe (1988), and I thought Aya was a great chance to make a film about Japanese culture, which I have always been interested in. But the more we got into it and talked about it, the more I realized it wasn’t going to be a very good film. The script was not really strong, and I wasn’t sure Solrun could pull it off. But by then I was already committed.

As it happens, I think the film is very respectable and I am pleased to have made it. It’s not the greatest film in the world, but I think it will always be seen in hindsight as quite an important film.

 Cinema Papers: Did you ever believe in Garbo ? 

Burton: You have to have some belief or you wouldn’t do it. But your judgement can become distorted. I was seduced by the idea of working with Ron Cobb, who is a man I admire, and have done since the 1960s.

Garbo points to lessons about assessing projects. There has to be more than just the idea of working with a director, if there isn’t a good script to go along with your assessment.

Cinema Papers: Were you excited about the comic element of Garbo as well? 

Burton: Oh, yes. I had never shot or worked on comedy before and so it was something new. After Garbo , I didn’t want to do comedy again.

Cinema Papers : Isn’t Midnite Spares a comedy?

Burton: Yes, but it wasn’t meant to be. At the period of Midnite Spares , which was the height of 10BA, there were a lot of projects around - and not very good ones. Of those around for me to shoot, Midnite Spares was the best.

The guy who wrote the script, Terry Larsen, was a young writer who went and lived in the Western suburbs and got into the whole car-drug culture. He was a sociologist and I thought he was going to make a really interesting script out of the material. And it was good! It read very well.

Then came Quentin Masters, who is an old mate of mine from twenty years ago. We were both camera assistants in Vietnam in the 1960s. He lived and worked in London and he came to Australia and looked me up.

As it turned out, my relationship with him as a director was appalling. We had the most dreadful time, and from the first days’ rushes I wished I hadn’t taken it on.

The point is that your judgement is really tempered by all sorts of different factors. Some you don’t know at the time or cannot anticipate.

These experiences also point to the advantage of a long-term relationship with a director whom you do get on with. 

Cinema Papers: Which brings one to your working relationship with John Duigan. 

Burton: Yes. If John rings me and says, “I have a film, we must do it”, I’ll agree to it without knowing where it is, what it’s about or how good the script is. I trust his judgement. Sure we both made a mistake with Wide Sargasso Sea but, of the six or seven films we’ve done together, that’s the only one.

The real problem with Wide Sargasso Sea was the relationship between the producer and the director. There is no doubt about it. Maybe if that relationship had not been a problem, Sargasso Sea would have been a better film.

Cinema Papers: Then it wasn’t a mistake?

 Burton: Well, no, but it turned out to be one.

In terms of choosing projects, I guess what I am doing is, ipso facto, giving John the responsibility of choice.

Some years ago, we were both offered a big budget film. I was very keen that we do it, because we were to be shooting in Thailand, where I have a long association and a strong affinity with a Thai production company. In fact, the producers offered me the film before John. It was Turtle Beach , and John’s decision not to do the film - he felt there were insurmountable script problems - meant neither of us did it because of our close association.

If John is uncertain about a film, that rings warning bells and means I shouldn’t do it either. John knows what we both like to film, what we both like to do.

Cinema Papers: Are you similar people?

Burton: In some ways. We have a complementary relationship in terms of my photographing and his directing. John is not a technical person at all. All his energy on the set goes into working with actors, which I think is his strength. He allows me a lot of freedom in terms of the technical aspects of cinematography, which is very gratifying. This is not to say he doesn’t have strong opinions about the visual component of the film, but he is more likely to express them at rushes.

On the strength of the relationship over a certain number of films, I won’t offer up shots to him which I know he has never liked. He is not going to suddenly like them. On the other hand, John knows he can leave me alone to light a scene the way I want, because he is happy my interpretation of the scene is going to be okay. If two people get on really well together, personally and professionally like we do, then there is a lot to be said for the continuity of the relationship.

I guess what keeps the relationship really buoyant is that there is never any sense of competition between us. We are really just strongly concerned with the priorities of the film we’re making at the time, and with feeling a need to complement one another’s work.

Cinema Papers: You’ve done quite a lot of different films with very different visual styles, even between films like The Year My Voice Broke and its sequel Flirting . But apart from your name, is there a common element?

Burton: I think you’re right that all the films I’ve shot are different and encompass a wide range of film types. It has to do with the desirability of producing adaptive or applicable cinematography. I don’t think anybody could see my films anonymously and say, “That’s a Geoff Burton film.” I’m really proud of that, because it indicates to me that the work I do is designed much more to complement the film than to complement an individual style.

I prefer working naturalistically; I like realistic subjects. I always have and still do. That’s derived from a strong basis in documentary, and also the very strong influence of the realist British cinema of the 1950s and early ’60s when I was a young student.

I still admire those films so much: filmmakers like Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson, Lindsay Anderson; films like A Taste of Honey, The L- Shaped Room, This Sporting Life, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, running right up to films like Tom Jones and Far From the Madding Crowd; and cinematographers like Walter Lassally and Tony Richmond. They were the greatest influences for me.

It was a cinema based on showing British society of its time, warts and all. It was like the neo-realists in Italy at the end of the war. The filmmakers were actually producing entertainment out of poverty and distress. Although this period of British cinema was somewhat more refined than the neo-realists, they were taking people out of the slums of Glasgow to see themselves in the slums of Glasgow. Further more, they were paying good money to see these films because they found them interest ing and entertaining. It was not entertaining in the “belly laugh” sense of the Ealing comedies, but it was emotive cinema, it was active cinema, it was “change society” cinema.

The strive for realism in those films really influenced me the most. If given a choice now between something which is totally naturalistic and realistic, and something which is a fantasy, I’d go for realism every time.

See “Australian Cinematographer’s Checklist”, p. 58, for Geoff Burton’s Australian filmography.

The Sum of Us (1995)

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The Sum of Us

1994 directed by kevin dowling, geoff burton. starring jack thompson, russell crowe, john polson, deborah kennedy., reviewed by alison macor , fri., april 14, 1995.

Love is the greatest adventure of all, according to widower Harry Mitchell (Thompson) in the newest Australian export The Sum of Us. Co-directors Dowling and Burton mark their directorial debuts with a poignant and humorous film that celebrates the different manifestations of love between gay couples, women and men, and fathers and sons. Harry and his 24-year-old gay son Jeff (Crowe) live together somewhat in the tradition of television's The Odd Couple: Surface bickering belies a deep friendship and an even deeper parent-child connection. Yet while both men appreciate each other's company, each would like to have a romantic relationship. Harry is perhaps a little too interested in the progress of Jeff's love life; his enthusiasm to see Jeff happily involved with a deserving boyfriend threatens to overwhelm shy contenders such as Greg (Polson), a gardener for the local parks department. As Jeff haltingly pursues this relationship, Harry secretly embarks on his own quest for companionship by enlisting the help of Desiree's Introduction Agency. Through this agency he meets Joyce (Kennedy), a middle-aged divorcée who shares Harry's zest for life and desire for a friend who is also a lover. The Sum of Us explores the awkwardness of dating with great success, but it truly shines in its portrayal of the ups and downs of life within families. Thompson and Crowe establish their characters' father/son bond with apparent ease, creating slightly flawed but nonetheless appealing men whose respect and affection for each other make their relationship thoroughly engaging. When a crisis threatens to undo this relationship toward the end of the film, the resolution is that much more believable because of the actors' ability to portray such complex, human characters. Winner of the 1994 Sydney Film Festival for best film as well as numerous other accolades, The Sum of Us offers a slice of Australian life that is universal in its depiction of relationships, familial and otherwise. Rather than incorporate any cinematic bells and whistles, The Sum of Us provides a strong story fleshed out by effortless acting. As Harry reflects, “Our children are only the sum of us.” For better or for worse, children incorporate their parents' traits, and watching Harry and his son Jeff work out this equation makes for a simple yet moving film.

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Feb. 26, 2010

April 11, 1997

The Sum of Us , Kevin Dowling , Geoff Burton , Jack Thompson , Russell Crowe , John Polson , Deborah Kennedy

Heather McGhee, welcome to FRESH AIR.

HEATHER MCGHEE: I'm so glad to be with you.

DAVIES: You worked at the think tank Demos for a long time. Then you went and got a law degree and came back to it. And you write in the introduction that you were in love with the idea that information in the right hands was power. And you would do research. You would craft legislation. You'd talk to members of Congress and their staffs hoping to make change. And you write that getting to some of the ideas that motivated this book came from your discovering the limits of research and facts. Just share with us that journey.

MCGHEE: Well, I have always been animated by core questions about our economic dysfunction in America, why it was that people so often struggled just to make ends meet. I was born on the South Side of Chicago. I saw what happened when the good factory jobs and the good public sector jobs started to leave. And it felt like we could do something about this. We could, in many ways, have nice things, right? Universal child care and health care and reliable infrastructure and well-funded schools in every neighborhood. And the data was saying it would be in our economic interest to do it.

So I did spend about 15 years in economic policy trying to make the case for better economic decisions. But ultimately - and I started having a hunch that I was sort of using the wrong tool. And I think the election of Donald Trump really, with a majority of white voters, to me was a wake-up call. And I decided that ultimately, the facts and figures and reliance on a sense of economic self-interest was not actually going to be enough. I had to get at some deeper questions in this country. It wasn't that I had the wrong numbers. It was that I had the wrong deeper story about status and belonging, about competition, about deservingness, questions that in America have always turned on race.

DAVIES: Right. You write in here that when we ask people their opinions about, you know, racially neutral policy proposals or at least theoretically neutral proposals like raising the minimum wage or expanding public health care alternatives or even action to prevent climate change, people's opinions were affected by whether they thought that the demographic changes in the United States threatened the status of white people. That seemed to change the way people viewed everything. This was sort of an important realization, wasn't it?

MCGHEE: It was. I mean, it was - it's a really astonishing set of data. The psychologists Maureen Craig and Jennifer Richeson did this study. And then there's been a whole host of other ones to basically show that there is a predominant zero-sum mindset that's predominant among white Americans, more than among Americans of color, that basically is threatened by the idea of demographic change, that on a gut level feels like that is not in their own interest and that makes them want to pull away from some kinds of policies that are actually, you would think, in their economic interest, right?

The majority of people making under $15 an hour are white. The majority of people without health care are white. We all live under the same sky and are all going to be vulnerable to climate change. And yet making race salient, as, of course, Donald Trump did and Trumpism does, makes people more - white people more conservative. It's this zero-sum idea that progress for people of color has to come at white people's expense.

DAVIES: Well, you take us through some fascinating historical turns on how racism, discrimination, even slavery obviously was harmful to the enslaved and victims of racism but also harmed white people. And you write about a fascinating book published in 1857, you know, when slavery was still in effect in the South. And this book was by a white racist Southerner named Hinton Rowan Helper who looked at the effect of slavery on white people in the South. What story did he tell?

MCGHEE: So I myself am the descendant of enslaved people. And so I am going to be the last person to minimize the sheer brutality and dehumanizing force that was American chattel slavery. And yet at the time of the debates about abolition among white Americans, one of the most powerful voices was a white Southerner who was an avowed racist. And he wrote a book that basically said that slavery was benefiting the plantation class, but it wasn't benefiting the white majority in the South. And he saw that it was shortchanging the public development of the infrastructure in Southern states. He compared the number of schools, libraries and other public institutions that had been set up in free states versus slave states. In Pennsylvania, he counted 393 public libraries - in South Carolina, just 26. In Maine, not a very populous state, 236 libraries - in Georgia, just 38. And the tally was similar everywhere he looked.

So I read Helper's book. I also read some studies about how today we know that many of the poorest places in America are in the South. But what's interesting about it is we can draw a connection between the disinvestment in the original sort of founding centuries of America and the disinvestment during Jim Crow, where you really had an unwillingness among the elite to, you know, build schools in every neighborhood, to create robust public infrastructure everywhere. And that is relating to poverty today, not just among Black people, but among white people as well.

DAVIES: Yeah, it's a fascinating correlation. And, you know, I guess one might argue that, well, you know, the South was an agrarian economy. It simply generates, you know, less in the way of economic productivity. And so that's - might be part of the answer. Why did - what was it that prevented the planter (ph) class from providing libraries and schools to the white people?

MCGHEE: They didn't need to. I mean, really, the reason why wealthy people invest in the communities around them is because they need to to make the community livable for themselves, but also to attract and retain the people on whom their profits depend, whether it's workers or customers. But in the slave economy, neither was strictly necessary, right? So the source of plantation wealth was a completely captive and unpaid labor force. Owners didn't need more than a handful of white workers per plantation. And they didn't need or want an educated populace, whether Black or white. And their farms didn't depend on local customers, right? The factories were in the North. And the markets were, you know, in fact, even global. And so there was just a sense that it was a contained system and it wasn't necessary to invest in the public good outside of that system.

DAVIES: You also explored the days when, as there were efforts to introduce integration in parts of the South, that local elites, in order to maintain racial segregation, effectively cut off a lot of public investment, specifically the battle over swimming pools. You want to describe that?

MCGHEE: Yeah. This to me is really the kind of parable at the heart of the book. It's what's illustrated on the cover. In the 1920s, '30s and '40s, the United States went on a building boom of these grand resort-style swimming pools. These were the kind that would hold hundreds, even thousands, of swimmers. And it was a real sort of Americanization project. It was to create a, like, bath-temperature melting pot of, you know, white ethnic immigrants and people in the community to come together. It was sort of a commitment by the government to a leisure-filled American dream standard of living. And in many of these public pools, the rule was that it was whites only, either officially or unofficially. And in the 1950s and '60s when Black communities began to, understandably, say, hey, it's our tax dollars that are helping to support this public good, we need to be allowed to swim, too, all over the country, particularly in the American South but in other places as well, white towns facing integration orders from the courts decided to drain their public swimming pools rather than let Black families swim, too.

Now, I went to Montgomery, Ala., where there used to be one of those grand resort-style pools and where effective January 1, 1959, not only did they back a truck up and pour dirt into the pool and pave it over, but they also sold off the animals in the municipal zoo. They closed down the entire parks and recreation department of Montgomery for a decade. It wasn't until almost 1970 that they reopened the park system for the entire city. And I walked the grounds of Oak Park. Even after they reopened it, they never rebuilt the pool. And that, to me, felt like this just tangible symbol of the way that a population taught to distrust and disdain their neighbors of color will withdraw from public goods when they no longer see the public as good.

DAVIES: So the result was that in those communities, you'd had - you know, the elites had private clubs and private pools, but poor and working people of all races simply didn't have the public amenities. They were gone.

MCGHEE: That's exactly right. You started to see suburban backyard pools and these membership-only swimming clubs. In Washington, D.C., you saw over 100 new membership-only swimming clubs after you had pool integration. It's a small thing, and yet I began to see examples of the drained pool everywhere, in the way we withdrew from funding public education, in our inability to win universal health care, in the way that we have not innovated around the kinds of public resources that we all need, whether it's universal child care or broadband or high-speed rail. We've withdrawn from the sense of what we could do together in the wake of integration.

DAVIES: We need to take a break here. Let me reintroduce you. We are speaking with Heather McGhee. Her new book is "The Sum Of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone And How We Can Prosper Together." We'll continue our conversation in just a moment. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF THE INTERNET'S "STAY THE NIGHT")

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and we're speaking with Heather McGhee. She is the past president of the progressive think tank Demos, currently the chair of the board of Color of Change, a racial justice online organization. We're talking about her new book, "The Sum Of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone And How We Can Prosper Together."

You tell a story of how the U.S. government took a lot of steps in the mid-20th century to create a middle class, effectively a white middle class. Let's talk about this. One of the tools was the GI Bill, which provided assistance for education and home financing for returning military personnel after World War II. A lot of returning GIs, but this was not race-neutral in its implementation, was it?

MCGHEE: No, it wasn't. Like so much of the system of the social contract that really created the middle class in the middle of the 20th century, it ended up being filtered through racial segregation. It ended up being devolved down to local administration, which meant that Black GIs, even though they tried to take advantage of the benefits, were, you know, shunted off to vocational schools because they were not allowed in the South to go to the mainstream, you know, land grant colleges. It meant that the, in many ways most significant piece, the Veterans Administration home loan benefit was completely denied to Black service members' families because the Veterans Administration adopted the, at that point, two generation old practice of redlining, drawing lines, which is what the federal government did, around Black neighborhoods and saying these are risky. Just because it's Black people, these are risky. And so we're not going to backstop any loans that banks might give to communities in this neighborhood.

DAVIES: Right. So this had an important generational effect, right? Because those GIs coming back and their families benefited from education and investments in homes, which, you know, built up some assets for those families. And Black Americans were really left behind. And over the generations, that made a huge difference, didn't it?

MCGHEE: There's something so powerful about wealth. And the word wealth connotes, you know, diamonds and yachts. But we're really talking about a little bit of home equity, the fact that you grew up in a house that your parents owned, even if it was not a very expensive house, the fact that your aunt or uncle may have had some GM stock or a CD that they gave you, you know, when you turn 18. It's this kind of intergenerational wealth which was really created by public policy that, from the New Deal through the civil rights movement, was explicit about wanting to create middle class security and just as explicit, often, about wanting to make sure that the benefits of that went to white people only with racial covenants, for example.

The federal government created suburbs by investing in the highway system and subsidizing private housing developers but demanded whites-only clauses in housing contracts to prevent Black people from buying into them. Social Security excluded the job categories that left most Black workers out. You could even consider the New Deal labor laws that encouraged collective bargaining to be a government subsidy to create a white middle class because many unions kept their doors closed to people who weren't white until the 1960s. And so you had this sort of big social contract. And that's really what we see. It's not just a drained pool in this nice-to-have recreational facility. It's the kinds of policies that shifted dramatically in the late 1960s, '70s and early '80s to bring us the inequality era. And that's where we are today.

DAVIES: There was also a major public investment in public colleges and universities and community colleges - right? - which made it cheaper for a lot of people to go to school. I mean, I went to school in the '70s at the University of Texas. And the tuition was low. And my family couldn't afford to send me any other way. Well, they didn't send me at all. I worked my way through it. But that was possible. It was doable. That was when colleges - most college students were white. Over time, that changes. And then we see a different attitude towards the public investment, right?

MCGHEE: It's really one of those issues that I felt was important to include in the book. Back when the public was 90% white and the students who were going on to college were mostly white and, actually, mostly male, government picked up the tab, whether it was state governments funding the costs of their public colleges, like where you went, the University of Texas. And that was, roughly, about six out of 10 dollars would come from the states. And then the rest translated into tuition bills, which often a federal grant, whether it was a GI or the Pell Grant, which was much more generous two generations ago, would pick up the rest. And so you really could get a minimum wage job over the summer and work your way through college.

At Demos, we once did a report showing where every member of Congress went to college and what it cost then and what it costs now just to remind the decision-makers, most of them white, that there's something drastic that changed. And it's not that young people became less industrious or less willing to sacrifice. It's that government walked away from the deal. And it really was around the same time that the college-going population became more diverse and that this conservative, anti-government ethos kicked in in our politics. And that has a lot to do - the social science is now very clear - with these racialized ideas of who is the public and what they deserve. And so you started to see this privatization of public colleges. So now the majority of states rely on tuition dollars for the majority of the costs of college. And we shifted at the federal level from grants to loans.

DAVIES: Tuition is higher. Student debt is far more burdensome. And I think the critical point here is that when this change was made, it affected more white students than Black students in the end, didn't it?

MCGHEE: Absolutely. I mean, 63% of white students have to borrow now, right? This is the majority of white students are caught in this new system, which is just no way to run a country, right? We know that student debt is delaying homeownership, even marriage. It's making it harder for graduates with debt to save for retirement. And, of course - I want to be clear about this - like every aspect of systemic racism, it hits the target first and worst. Black students, because of the intergenerational racial wealth divide that we talked about, have to borrow more in order to go to college, come out owing more and then, because of discrimination in the labor market, end up having a harder time paying it back and, therefore, end up paying more. But the majority of white students are also in debt. This is the way, I think, that systemic racism works in an interconnected society. It hits the target. And it also distorts economic policy decision-making for everyone.

DAVIES: Let me reintroduce you again. Heather McGhee chairs the board of the online racial justice organization Color of Change. Her new book is "The Sum Of US: What Racism Costs Everyone And How We Can Prosper Together." She'll be back to talk more after this short break. I'm Dave Davies. And this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MCCOY TYNER AND BOBBY HUTCHERSON'S "ISN'T THIS MY SOUND AROUND ME?")

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies, in today for Terry Gross. We're speaking with Heather McGhee, past president of the progressive think tank Demos. Her new book makes the case that racial discrimination in the United States has been harmful to white Americans as well as people of color. "The book is The Sum Of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone And How We Can Prosper Together."

So we were talking about how government policy created a middle class in the mid years of the 20th century. And it was, essentially, a white middle class because there were exclusions for African Americans - assistance to homeownership and college education, retirement security, et cetera. It changes kind of in the '70s. And we do know that in the '60s, there were civil rights legislation. Some barriers came down. There was the Fair Housing Act in 1968. Is there a connection here between the growth of the civil rights movement and the assault on some of these racial barriers and the demonization of government among conservatives?

MCGHEE: There is, Dave. And I really wanted to untangle this knot because, as someone who spent a career in politics and policy where, really, the specter of the white moderate - right? - the typical white moderate in the center that we have to sort of hew towards, it's always trimmed the sails of policy ambition, right? We can't get too far out of the center. And the center is defined as this sort of white center-right moderate. But I was shocked to learn that in the '50s, the majority of white people believed in an activist government in a way that is even more radical than today's average liberal.

According to a really authoritative, every-four-year survey, 65% of white people in 1956 thought the government ought to guarantee a job to anyone who wanted one and provide a minimum standard of living in the country. And then, between 1960 and 1964, white support for these big government guarantees for everybody cratered, went from nearly 70% to 35%. And it stayed low ever since. The Black support for this - these kinds of guarantees has stayed high throughout the data set. So I wanted to know what happened. Was this, like, a fluke in the data? I mean, it was just such a dramatic shift.

So it turns out that - you know, what happened between '60 and '64? What happened is that you saw white Americans watch the march on Washington for jobs and freedom. They saw Black activists actually demanding those same kinds of economic guarantees that was part of the set of demands. You saw Kennedy start to speak about civil rights and make promises on civil rights. And then, you know, just a few years later, when Johnson signed the civil rights legislation, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, he knew. He said that this was when he was going to sign away, you know, the South by signing these bills, but - I'm paraphrasing - politically. But what he didn't know was that he was going to sign away the entire white vote for the rest of history, including the last election, right? That was the last election in which a majority of white people voted for what had suddenly become the party of civil rights.

DAVIES: You know, one of the points you're making in the book is that racism hurts everybody, and when whites and Blacks or whites and people of color manage to work together, it's better for everybody. And, in fact, reducing discrimination should yield benefits for everybody. And so taking us back to those years in the '60s, when, for example, you know, the Voting Rights Act, which really did open up voter registration to a lot of places in the South where it had been closed off by poll taxes and literacy tests, et cetera, was there a benefit for working-class and middle-class whites in those states where there was a different kind of racial balance in the voting population?

MCGHEE: I mean, this is the thing, right? It's this zero-sum idea that progress for people of color has to come at the expense of white people. But that zero-sum idea is a lie. It's a lie that has been aggressively sold, I believe, to white Americans by people who are very vested in the economic status quo and in keeping the concentration of wealth and power very narrowly held. And so you really see that in Southern politics, what V.O. Key called the sort of, you know, stranglehold of the plantation politics, where it was sort of one-party rule. And politicians before integration in the South didn't really have to appeal to a broad base about - you know, with promises of a better quality of life. They could just sort of market white supremacy and say, defensively, vote for us because we're going to keep the racial order. And so when the civil rights movement and the Voting Rights Act got rid of things like the poll tax, you actually saw a resurgence of civic life in the South that impacted and freed up poor white people as well.

DAVIES: So there, you saw more public investment in schools, perhaps, and libraries and roads and the kinds of things that improve lives?

MCGHEE: Exactly. So what you started to see was instead of running on white supremacy - right? - and running on segregation, candidates had to run on things that would actually benefit people's lives to get their votes, right? I tell the story of Governor Albert Brewer, who ended up facing off George Wallace. But it was a race where he tried to put together a sort of new fusion coalition that was going to be the white middle class, newly enfranchised Black Alabamians and working-class whites outside of the kind of Black Belt.

And in order to sort of give the promise of what this new politics could be, he called a special session on education and passed 29 bills to say that - you know what? - we actually need to educate our people, because pre-civil rights Alabama was a place where, you know, about half of the state's citizens had no more than an elementary school education, right? It was a place where the inequality and racism really had drained the pool. And so you started to see these big investments, things like universal kindergarten in these states in the South, because politicians had to actually compete for Black people's votes and for white people's votes on issues other than just segregation. And you started to see people realize, actually, there are these things that unite us. We all want good education for our kids.

DAVIES: You know, when we saw the Reagan revolution happening in the 1980s and you saw conservatives embracing, you know, deregulation for businesses, generally suspicious of government, regarding it as inefficient and unresponsive - you know, Reagan saying, the words you never want to hear are I'm from the government, and I'm here to help. And this - it was an effective sales pitch. And, of course, one way of looking at it is that, you know, for elites, for economic elites, for wealthy individuals and corporations, they want to cut taxes, and to cut taxes, what you want to do is cut the size of government. So there's a fit there. And it's not necessarily per se a racist idea. However, when you're selling it, it seems, I mean, it was very convenient to make the beneficiaries of a bigger government welfare moms, people in the inner city. And so there ended up being a distinctly racial appeal to the political pitch, wasn't there?

MCGHEE: There was. And, you know, it's often subtle, although, of course, in recent times it hasn't been very subtle at all. But, you know, there's that famous Lee Atwater quote from towards the end of his life where he really just lays it out. He explains how you go from explicitly racial appeals in the 1950s, and then it started to backfire because the civil rights movement has been effective, right? You don't actually want to call people the N-word. You don't actually want to make your political case for segregation and Jim Crow.

And so then it becomes more subtle. You say, in his words, stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. And you're getting abstract. Now, he says, you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things. And a byproduct of them is Blacks get hurt worse than whites. He says, we want to cut this is much more abstract than the busing thing and a hell of a lot more abstract than, he says, the N-word, the N-word, right? It's this idea that once the government sort of moves in a really incredible short period of time from the enforcer of the racial hierarchy - right? - the one drawing the red-lining maps, the entity that is creating the laws to segregate to, you know, in a very short time, that government moves from the enforcer of racial hierarchy to the upender. It's a core betrayal.

And what the right was able to do was say, you know, the government's no longer on your side. It's on the side of these undeserving people of color, these people you've been taught to distrust and disdain. And so you should trust the market, right? Turn to the market. Turn to individualism. Turn to the wealthy for your, you know, sense of identity and trust and your sense of how you're going to succeed in life, right? It's no longer going to be New Deal universal benefits. It's going to be, you know, the market. And that was Reagan's story. And that zero-sum idea that undergirds it is really still so animating in the right-wing language around makers and takers and taxpayers and freeloaders. It's animated in our debates over health care.

The Affordable Care Act is still unpopular among the majority of white people. Support for the Affordable Care Act has never gone over 50% among white people. The anti-government conservative ethos that holds the conservative and moderate wings of our politics together really still has a racialized narrative around who belongs and who deserves - that is what holds it together.

DAVIES: And yet more white people would benefit from the Affordable Care Act than Black people in raw numbers, right?

MCGHEE: That's right. That's exactly right. The majority of the uninsured are white people. I talk to folks in Texas where they refuse to expand Medicaid, where, you know, the rural hospital system is absolutely being decimated. You have this devastating story of a little - of a toddler who choked and her parents couldn't get to a hospital in time because their local, you know, county hospital had closed. And I talked to a, you know, white rural guy who said it's this gut-level rejection of Medicaid and Obamacare and all that it represents. And yet, of course, it's the majority of white people who are going without.

DAVIES: Let me reintroduce you again. We're going to take a break here. We are speaking with Heather McGhee. She chairs the board of the online racial justice organization Color of Change. She is the past president of the progressive think tank Demos. Her book is "The Sum Of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone And How We Can Prosper Together." We'll talk more after this short break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. And we're speaking with Heather McGhee. She's a past president of the progressive think tank Demos. Her new book makes the case that racial discrimination in the United States has been harmful to white Americans as well as people of color. The book is called "The Sum Of Us."

You write about the subprime lending practices in the 1990s that, you know, in some ways ultimately led to the 2008 financial crash. And there was a narrative here that, you know, these were subprime mortgages, cheap mortgages being pushed on people who probably shouldn't be buying homes and these were irresponsible borrowers making bad decisions. You looked at this and found it's a pretty different story, didn't you?

MCGHEE: That's right. In fact, leading up to the crisis, the majority of subprime and therefore more expensive loans were, A, going to people who had credit scores that would have enabled them to get prime or cheaper loans and, B, weren't for new homeowners. They were existing homeowners being aggressively marketed refinance loans that often ended up stripping equity and ending up in foreclosure. And the first targets for these kinds of toxic loans were Black homeowners.

DAVIES: Right. You know, I remember this. This was described as predatory lending by a lot of activists in the 1990s. And they asked the regulators, you need to do something about this. What happened?

MCGHEE: The experience of being one of the ignored and unheeded and outmatched few who were trying to raise the alarm about this really forever shapes my understanding of economic policy. What happened was, in many ways, these regulators and these lenders, there was a lot of greed, right? People were making money hand over fist. If you could get someone to pay 9% on a six-figure loan versus 5%, that basically doubles your money. That's huge, but it was also a little bit of racism too - right? - this age-old stereotype about Black people being risky, not being good with money. It's a tidy justification for denying Black people the opportunity to make money. And so it was a lot of greed, obviously, but it was also a lot of racism.

DAVIES: A lot of these people are essentially hustled, talked into these complicated mortgages. Many of them are foreclosed upon. And then, of course, the mortgages get bundled into these complicated securities that are sold on Wall Street, one of the things that contributed to this huge crash in 2008 and of course, the irony here is that a racially targeted marketing campaign which takes advantage of African American people. When the crash comes, what's the effect on working and middle class white people?

MCGHEE: It was devastation. When the crash finally came, everybody felt the pain. There were 8 million jobs lost, nearly $19 trillion in lost household wealth. In many ways, so many families that lost property value and houses still haven't recovered from the Great Recession. This is one of the most costly examples of racism ultimately costing everyone.

DAVIES: One of the things you write was that this had an enormous impact on the family assets of African American families. You said the - shrank the wealth of median African American families by more than half between 2005 and 2009. That is an astonishing number.

MCGHEE: Yeah. It's - this is the chapter that is the most - that is closest to my heart, that I get the most emotional about. I share a story of going to Cleveland in 2007 and taking a walk with some community activists who were showing how nearly every home on the street in the neighborhood of Mount Pleasant was no longer in the hands of the rightful owners, had been the victim of subprime mortgage refinances and then foreclosure.

And I remember so vividly just being totally overcome with just the weight of the history of it all, you know, I mean, to really see Black people who finally got their shot at the American dream that was denied so systematically for so long, people who, you know, so many of these were, you know, elderly Black folks who had finally been able to buy a house. And, you know, think about, like, their parents and grandparents in many instances had been, you know, subject to Jim Crow or even were enslaved people. And this machine of racism and greed had just sort of mowed down the neighborhood. And I remember running around the corner, excusing myself and then just falling to my knees and sobbing because it just felt like, why are we so doomed to repeat these mistakes again?

And, you know, I had that moment in 2007. And then, of course, a year later, I'm actually in law school, and I see Lehman Brothers is going into bankruptcy - right? - the company on Wall Street that had invested the most in mortgage-backed securities right at the end of the bubble. And it wasn't until I was writing this book that I learned that Lehman Brothers, the original brothers Lehman, were slaveholders who made their money in the Confederacy, running cotton behind the cotton blockade during the war and setting up the cotton stock exchange and just how tied up it all is.

DAVIES: Heather McGhee, thank you so much for speaking with us.

MCGHEE: Thank you, Dave. It's great.

DAVIES: Heather McGhee is the past president of the progressive think tank Demos. She currently chairs the board of the online racial justice organization Color of Change. Her new book is "The Sum Of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone And How We Can Prosper Together." Coming up, John Powers reviews the new HBO Max miniseries "It's A Sin" about a group of friends in 1980s London whose lives are forever changed by the arrival of AIDS. This is FRESH AIR.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Middle-aged Sydney widower Harry Mitchell (Jack Thompson) had been a surprising font of understanding and support to his gay son Jeff (Russell Crowe) from the day he came out. However, when their bond stokes resentment from Jeff's closeted Mr. Right (John Polson)-and brings out the bad side in the divorcée (Deborah Kennedy) that Harry's courting-they'll both be faced with tough choices. Affecting Australian comedy/drama co-stars Bob Baines, Sally Cahill. 100 min. Widescreen; Soundtrack: English. Region Free

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MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ NR (Not Rated)
Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 0.79 x 5.31 x 7.52 inches; 2.82 ounces
Item model number ‏ : ‎ VVE2179
Media Format ‏ : ‎ Import, NTSC
Run time ‏ : ‎ 100 minutes
Release date ‏ : ‎ September 4, 2020
Actors ‏ : ‎ Russell Crowe, Jack Thompson
Studio ‏ : ‎ Via Vision
ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08C5K5SKG
Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1
#34,932 in Drama DVDs

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The surreal almost supernatural atmosphere of Andrew Haigh's "All of Us Strangers" is present from the first shots, where the sunset light streaming through the windows of the new apartment building seems piercingly gold, almost molten. There's something weird about the light, like it's sentient, reaching out for this building in particular. Then there's the building itself. It's mostly empty. There are only two residents. It's like the building is floating in a spacewhere time either collapses or stretches out like an accordion. Things become possible, things like forming a fragile and unexpected love connection, or, stranger, like being able to speak and meet with the dead. "All of Us Strangers" does these things, creating a sense of uncanniness from the first time we see the golden light hit the building windows, like it's come across the vast abyss of space specifically for this time, this place.

Andrew Haigh's other work shows the director's interest in relationships and intimacy (although not in an otherworldly way). "Weekend" was about a one-night stand's transformation into something more substantial, occurring, as the title suggests, in a compressed timeframe. " 45 Years ", on the other hand, showed the devastating crack-up of a relationship. Both films showed Haigh's sensitivity to human behavior, as well as the good care he takes of his actors, the room he gives them to feel and create. Charlotte Rampling was nominated for an Academy Award for "45 Years" and no wonder. Haigh loves actors. "All of Us Strangers" is a quartet, featuring four memorable performances by Andrew Scott , Paul Mescal , Claire Foy , and Jamie Bell .

Scott plays Adam, first seen basking in that eerie molten glow, as though being pulled towards it. He's a screenwriter, supposed to be working on a new script, but instead puttering about and procrastinating. One night the only other resident of the building knocks on his door. This is drunk, flirtatious, charming Harry (Mescal), looking for a hookup. Nothing happens that night but a delicate thread is established.

On occasion, Adam gets on a bus and travels to the house where he grew up in a nearby suburb. Inside live his parents (Foy, Bell), who died in a car crash when Adam was 12. They are the age when they died. Adam shows up at the door, and his parents are eager to hear about what he's been doing with himself all this time. It's a reunion, but the intensity of feeling is too much. This sense of "too much" floods the film: every interaction spills over into the next, and the next, with scenes between Adam and Harry, Adam and his mum, Adam and his dad, alternating. There's no filler, no downtime. It's one heavy catharsis after the next.

Haigh's touch is light, though. He has removed the extraneous and distracting. Loosely based on the 1987 novel Strangers, by Japanese novelist Taichi Yamada (who died just last month at the age of 89), "All of Us Strangers" is about a man coming out of hiding, facing his past and his present, simultaneously. Losing both your parents in a car crash at the age of 12 is, of course, a life-altering event. He has gone through his whole life without witnesses. The reunion is not without its hiccups. When he tells his mother he's gay, she is shocked. It's like she's never even heard of such a thing. She worries it will be a "sad" life for him, a lonely one. Her views are outdated. (The flipside, though, is her fears are not unfounded. Adam is sad, Adam is lonely.) When he breaks the news to his dad, the interaction goes a bit differently. (Jamie Bell, always an interesting actor, is just heartbreaking here.)

This potentially maudlin stuff is elevated by the work of all of the actors. What matters here is not just what is being said, but the emotions underneath. All four performers pour pure, undiluted feeling into their performances. The emotion gives the supernatural "All of Us Strangers" a feeling of reality. This is how it might go if you met your dead parents again. You'd want them to know you. You have so many things you didn't get to say. You'd want to try to say them. There'd be no pussy-footing around, no small talk. You'd have the courage to get to the point.

In real time, the relationship between Harry and Adam unfolds with tenderness and care. Adam, nearly celibate, is uncomfortable with sexual touch and yet yearning for it. The generation gap is present. Harry has no concept of associating sex with a possible death sentence. They talk things out. These scenes, too, are amazing (and make you really feel the lack of frank adult romances in cinema). If there's no small talk between Adam and his parents, the same is true with Adam and Harry.

Some of "All of Us Strangers" might not work, particularly the ending, which felt convoluted and pre-determined. The premise may seem hokey to some, an artificially generated family therapy session. I can see how this could be the reaction. But I'll come clean. When I have a strong response to a film, as a critic I interrogate it, whether the response is positive or negative. I look for my blind spots, I question resistance, I ask myself what the film is trying to do and whether or not it does it successfully (as opposed to wishing for a whole other film to have been made). "All of Us Strangers" generated such a strong personal response it obliterated my ability to interrogate it. I had no distance. I'd love to talk to my father again, and let him know I'm doing okay, tell him he doesn't have to worry. I'd love to see his face again and hear his laugh. Through "All of Us Strangers" I lived out that fantasy vicariously. The emotion was overwhelming.

"All of Us Strangers" flattened me. Interrogation canceled.

Sheila O'Malley

Sheila O'Malley received a BFA in Theatre from the University of Rhode Island and a Master's in Acting from the Actors Studio MFA Program. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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All of Us Strangers (2023)

105 minutes

Andrew Scott as Adam

Paul Mescal as Harry

Jamie Bell as Dad

Claire Foy as Mum

Carter John Grout as Young Adam

Andrew Haigh
Taichi Yamada

Director of Photography

Jamie D. Ramsay
Jonathan Alberts

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“Leave the World Behind” Review: Parts Greater Than Their Sum

This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. The gateway to great art lies in caring for the artist.

By the middle of Leave the World Behind ’s hefty two hours and 18 minutes, I noticed a crick in my neck. Never had I watched a movie where I shook my head and said, “White people…” so many times. It was a shared sentiment.

Part 1: The House

Sam Esmail’s Leave the World Behind chronicles two families affected by an unknown threat; the Sanford family: Amanda (Julia Roberts), Clay (Ethan Hawke), Archie (Charlie Evans), and Rose (Farrah Mackenzie); and the Scotts: G.H. Scott (Mahershala Ali) and Ruth (Myha’la Herrold). Amanda has rented an Airbnb for the weekend and packed the family to go. When they arrive, they discover a gorgeous house. The kids especially love the pool, and Clay finds himself at home in the chef’s kitchen.

Things go well for the Sanfords until the Wi-Fi and cellular service goes out. In the middle of the night, a knock at the door sends a skeptical (and misanthropic) Amanda into panic mode. When they open the door, a man in a fancy tux and a younger woman in an elegant dress stand outside. He introduces himself as “George,” aka G.H. Scott, aka the house owner whom Amanda corresponded with through email. He meets Amanda’s seemingly racist suspicions with laments about the influx of modern technology: “If we’d talked on the phone, you would have been able to hear my voice, and you would know it was me.”

A power outage has crippled New York City, and G.H. managed to get himself and Ruth to the beach hamlet and safety. He acknowledges the strangeness of the situation and offers the Sanfords half of their money back in cash, along with the provision that he and Ruth stay in the in-law suite downstairs. Amanda begrudgingly agrees.

Though the synopsis of Part 1: The House seems pretty straightforward, the devil indeed hides in the details. While at the beach, Rose notices an oil tanker far in the distance. A few moments later, it appears to move closer. (This triggered my first “White people” moment.) While watching the gigantic oil tanker come closer and closer to shore, the people on the beach stand and watch. Only in the last possible moment do they finally scatter out of the way. It’s billed as a navigation issue, and everyone seems content with the explanation.

Another devilish moment occurs when the Scotts arrive. G.H. immediately addresses Amanda by name and explains his predicament. Yet Amanda can’t believe they own the house. Cue the back half of Part One, consisting of G.H. and Ruth trying to prove themselves to the Sanfords, especially Amanda. Ruth does so with biting wit and disdain. G.H. tries to remain diplomatic but can’t help throwing a jab or two. (When Amanda shares they live in Park Slope, G.H. calls it “affordable,” and the fall of Amanda’s face is truly remarkable to watch.)

Part Two: Too Many Ingredients

Ultimately, Leave the World Behind concerns the human condition clothed in a cyber-terrorism drama. Director Esmail made his name primarily for Mr. Robot and the popular podcast adaptation Homecoming . Both deal with apocalyptic worlds adversely affected by technology. Because Esmail cut his teeth producing series, his pacing feels suited to covering a multistory arc. In a two-hour movie, there’s far less need for sustained tension. The first time watching this film leaves the viewer pleasantly stressed with the mysteries that have yet to be solved. Upon rewatch, we anticipate a great deal of fast-forwarding. The Mr. Robot -like directorial flourishes add exciting visuals but do little to enhance or forward the story. Esmail sustains a throughline of “the animals are trying to tell us something,” but it’s difficult to tell if the animals are trying to warn them, trying to kill them, or are just mystic misdirection.

These moments also distract from the heart of the film. Once the movie places these scenes in the “we can’t do anything about it now” territory, the character interactions begin to shine. Julia Roberts does an exceptional job playing Amanda, inhabiting the “eventual millionaire” mentality of many middle-upper-class Americans. It’s “fake it till you make it on steroids,” as she acts much snobbier in her station than she may have the right to. Amanda’s marketing job reveals that she’s taken away only the absolute worst in researching people. She is shrewd and distrustful but also conniving, manipulative and selfish.

We learn that G.H.’s wife (and Ruth’s mother) is on a business trip in Morocco and returning to the country the next day. Amanda doesn’t know this and rants and raves about information G.H. tried to keep from Ruth to protect her. Amanda shrugs it off as though this injustice is only being done to her. When the Scotts arrived, Amanda kindled an immediate Karen-like disgust of Ruth, and the two got under each other’s skin. So when Amanda says things that make Ruth lose hope without even considering the impact it could have her (while at the same time attempting to shield her own children from the truth of what’s happening), it drives a wedge between them.

The narrative centers solidly on the families, so while we’re always pleased to see Kevin Bacon, his arrival as a survivalist doomsday lunatic feels a bit like overkill. The idea that people cannot trust one another, and that if the world goes to chaos, people will become feral and instantly turn on one another, is one that – while popular in movies – is hard to contend with in the real world. On the one hand, more than enough post-apocalyptic films portray this phenomenon that people should know how not to act when it comes to the decimation of humanity. On the other hand, humans are humans.

Part Three: Deep Thoughts

Leave the World Behind tries to tackle a lot. The movie wants to discuss race, class, international politics, an evil cabal of the world’s leaders, and the dangers of rogue technology. Ultimately, it has a message about believing in yourself and trusting intuition. Is it about taking the helicopter after asking God to save you from the flood? Yes. It’s all those things…and that may hurt the film in the eyes of most viewers. When unfocused time gets stuffed with too many topics, the filler seems even more elongated and unnecessary. If Esmil had focused on three or four interconnected talking points, he could have shaved an extraneous half hour from the film. He could have still kept the intensity while delivering a stronger narrative impact.

In the face of minor flaws, Leave the World Behind still blossoms. It will enchant and terrify viewers in equal measure. Some framing shots have a powerful impact and serve the movie well. The actors do top-notch work, with Ethan Hawke standing out as the hapless husband. Mackenzie shines as a Friends-addicted Rose whose only regret is that she may never find out what happens with Ross and Rachel. Myha’la Herrald , last seen in A24’s Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, also delivers a great performance. She has a manic sort of inner turmoil that belies her outer coolness. She plays a detached Gen-Zer with authenticity: though an adult, she still needs a mother.

Overall, while we can’t say the movie satisfies, Leave the World Behind doesn’t really want to appease. It wants to provoke thought and start conversations about its numerous themes. In that way, the film succeeds and deserves a watch.

Leave the World Behind premieres in theaters on November 22nd and then move to Netflix December 8th.

Score: 6.5/10 SPECS

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‘Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire’ review: titanic team-up goes crash, smash and bash

Is this the loudest, most destructive movie ever made? Very likely

“Y ou can’t have a titan with a toothache,” quips Dan Stevens’ Trapper in Adam Wingard’s latest – and wildest – entry in the MonsterVerse franchise. Indeed you can’t. But when Kong bites down on his latest prey and gets an infected tooth, there is only one solution. Drug the great ape up to the eyeballs and yank the offending molar out with the help of a giant heavy-duty aerial vehicle before replacing it with a falsie. Trapper, “the weirdest vet in the world”, is the man in charge, arriving in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire like a cross between Han Solo and Indiana Jones.

With the MonsterVerse now reaching its fifth film, you’d think you’d seen it all when it comes to Kong and his fellow Titan, the reptilian icon Godzilla. Which is why Wingard, back in the director’s hot seat after 2021’s much-loved Godzilla Vs. Kong , cuts loose here with a balmy storyline. Yep, one that includes a Titan tooth extraction, man-eating tree monsters and, later on, a gravity-free fight as beasts float in the ether bashing seven shades out of each other.

This latest instalment takes us deeper into Hollow Earth, the untouched world in the planet’s core where Kong now resides, keeping him apart from his rival Godzilla. But when an SOS comes from this subterranean landscape, Godzilla is put on high alert. Diving into the Arctic, he heads to the lair of Tiamat, a fellow Titan, to take him down and power up, all too aware that he’s about to face off with a new threat to his dominance and mankind’s safety.

Meanwhile, Monarch – the group monitoring Kong – intercepts the same signals. Last seen in Godzilla Vs. Kong , Dr Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall) decides to investigate, heading down into Hollow Earth with her deaf adopted daughter Jia (Kaylee Hottle), the last remaining member of the Iwi tribe that lived on Kong’s Skull Island. Joining them is Trapper, bullish Monarch military man Mikael ( Chernobyl ’s Alex Ferns) and Bernie Hayes (the excellent Brian Tyree Henry), another returnee who peddles his theories on the ‘Titan Truth’ podcast.

Wingard has a riot with Hollow Earth, or the “nightmare monster hellscape” as Bernie puts it, with a lost civilisation ruled by a serene queen (Fala Chen), crazy anti-gravity technology and a fiery inner lair ruled by a violent, whip-brandishing ape called the Skar King. Kong also meets a cheeky “mini-Kong”, who isn’t entirely trustworthy, while there are other beasts that will please those steeped in Titan lore. With all these creatures heading for a major smackdown, the humans become almost irrelevant – bar comic relief – once the fighting starts.

Undoubtedly, some will carp at the straightforward plot and thin characterisation. But Wingard does try out something different here, creating long dialogue-free sequences where it’s just the monsters going toe-to-toe. With Wingard relying on gestures, grunts and groans from his alpha-beasts, it’s like watching the most expensive silent movie ever made. Naturally, there’s also some next-level destruction as famous landmarks, including the Pyramids, get trashed. And while it won’t scratch an emotional itch, if it’s barnstorming building-bashing you want, then Godzilla X Kong delivers.

Director: Adam Wingard
Starring: Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Dan Stevens
Release date: March 29 (in cinemas)
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