Earlier this week Flynn from Film in Revolt sat down with the directing team behind his most anticipated film at Sydney Film Festival, Birdeater. Written by Jack Clark and Co-Directed with Jim Weir, Birdeater explores the relationship of Louie and his fiance Irene which is tested when he brings her to his own bucks’ night. What follows is a descent into the dark psyche of the modern larrikin archetype.
Flynn Boffo: You both came from AFTRS!
Jim Weir: That’s where we met. We’ve been working together on all of our short films from the very first one we did, first year. Yeah, like up until now. Jack was usually the DOP on my movie, I was usually the AD or sometimes the producer on his.
We hadn’t co directed anything until Birdeater, oh we did one music video before that. But I think we just knew that it was going to be such a mammoth task to make a low budget indie feature over the course of three years. We wanted as much manpower behind it as possible. And, having two people equally invested, working as hard as each other, pushing each other made a huge difference. And also by then, Jack and I were creatively aligned, we knew we wanted to make the same feature.
FB: Did one of you conceive the idea and bring it to the other? How did the initial idea of Birdeater from?
Jack Clark: I brought the idea to Jim about three years ago, as kind of an exercise. We’d been wanting to develop a feature for a while and we were both very excited about it. It was a skeleton version and then we spent the day white boarding, feverishly getting down a broad structure. We didn’t have any kind of deadline at this point, we just were excited about the idea of having something [fleshed out] start to finish.
Right after that, Jim saw a post from a production company called Breathless Films, and they were looking for micro budget films to pitch. We didn’t really know the extent of the material thereafter. But we put through what we had – a very broad outline of the film. We went into chat, and they were interested. They wanted to know more but we were underdeveloped, all the other films were accepting had full scripts. We didn’t even have time to think about it, there was nothing else at the time competing for our interests. We just went for it and then did a full 20 page treatment in about two weeks. Which was pretty full on, they bought that treatment and then from that point on went into a six month scripting phase.
FB: I found many similarities between Birdeater and Wake in Fright. How do you feel the men in Birdeater are different from the men in Wake in Fright?
JC: That was a seminal watch for us here at AFTRS. I think it was the idea and it’s something that we’re interested in exploring future films as well. But the masculine larrikin culture that exists in something like Wake in Fright. It’s something that’s very quickly becoming a boogeyman in Australian culture where we still use it as a symbol, perhaps, of like the colonial Australian larrikin, but how it relates to men. Now, instead of metropolitan areas of Australia, where most of us live. I think that link is not really explored. We see that in our everyday life, we see that sort of language, and character archetype reflected in the way that private school men talk, and they’ve swallowed it up as part of their own masculine identity.
We were interested in taking those Wake in Fright archetypes, and then feeding them through a young white male Australian demographic that had grown up, in the city, had never spent any time in the bush, but was somehow, fuelled by that same ethos and questioning how unhealthy that is. It is a weird kind of sustaining of that ghost of the Australian larrikin that I don’t think is going to go away anytime soon. But it’s becoming something that’s a little bit harder to define and becoming a lot more enmeshed in our current relationship with gender politics, it’s sort of incompatible with that as well. It was that combination of transplanting it from something that’s really easy to hide, you know, it’s out, it’s out in the middle of Australia. It’s sort of a horror movie. It’s supposed to sort of be like the backwards vision but moving that to a younger Australian audience was interesting to us.
FB: I saw that in the men who are very clued into appearing feminist. One even mentions the Bechdel Test. I can see you’re looking at these traditions that don’t necessarily fit as comfortably in our current society. How did you get to the bucks night?
JC: The original idea was a much more focused relationship drama about a couple that had separation anxiety. That was our starting point, that was what we’re really interested in. And we were building it around a midpoint or a climax, where those two people were separated, because that felt like a really inevitable story and then we thought, well, how do we do that? What’s the device to do that? Well, we said, what is a remaining archaic institute that would separate two people? It’s a bucks party. Because it separates the genders.
There’s this weird kind of cultural expectation that you will be deliberately separated. That’s kind of the whole point. We thought, well, invite girls to the Bucks party. The groomsmen are upset about that, there’s going to be an inevitable separation where that’s kind of reenacted. And then that became like, the more interesting Oh, that’s not more interesting that that kind of central character of that central relationship focus was still going to be the heart of the film, but the context of it being in a bucks party, where women were also invited. We were aware of the genre potential of that or the kind of high concept like pitchability of that. That was a really interesting format.
FB: Film in Revolt is a platform for youth to explore film. You’re currently living the dream of any film student. I wanted to know what advice you would pass on to aspiring filmmakers?
JC: I’d say watch more movies. I don’t think anybody’s watching enough movies, me and Jim always talk about like the catalog in your mind that might even if you’re not consciously thinking of references when you’re building a scene, but your brain is and it’s filtering through everything you’ve seen, and it’s making a version of what it thinks a scene should be, how it’s shot, how it looks, how it’s cut, how its performed, and every time you approach a scene your brain is kind of doing that work. Jim and I quickly made a choice in film school that we were going to try and diversify that library and try and find the weirdest stuff and just as much stuff as we could, because then it would mean that unconscious thought process, it would be more interesting. So that’s a big thing.
JW: I would echo this advice I heard from Ira Glass when I was in film school. It’s something I always think about. It’s really hard being like a young artist making your first few projects because usually, like if you’re in film school, you probably have a really good taste in movies, but you’re just going to compare you first few shorts to your favourite movies and you’re just going to see an enormous gulf in the quality and execution.
That can be really disheartening and it’s just about making more stuff and doing it again and slowly, that gulf between the stuff you make and the stuff you really love is going to get smaller and smaller. I think that kills so many film students. Like how many people will direct a movie in first year and then never direct anything again for the rest of film school. How many people say that they have this short that they’re definitely going to direct as soon as they graduate film school, but they graduate and then they just get a regular job and they never make it. It’s classic advice, but it is just doing it and also being a really harsh critic of your previous work so it can improve.
JC: I don’t want to say I’m aggressively pro film school but I’m definitely pro film school in my experience because it just meant we met people. Friendship is such a valuable resource at this level where, you know, it’s like the two director thing, but it’s also just like with that DOP with our editor, with our composer, these are all people that we’ve just built up years of friendship and trust with. Which has been the fuel for them to just like motor for four years on this project for very little money if any and for that to feel like it is an honest transaction that you’re not exploiting somebody in the crew. You’re going to need a level of favours. And in order for that to not feel like you’re exploiting somebody, especially if you’re the director or you’re the person who’s come up with the concept there needs to be that feeling of trust that comes with genuine friendship, which I think we extend to all of our heads of department.
It’s the only reason we’ve been able to make this at all, it’s our most important resource. Definitely in the last year where things have really relied on individual heads of department, really pulling their weight, understanding the process, and understanding our lack of resources.
Interview by Flynn Boffo
Birdeater screens at Sydney Film Festival on the 11th, 14th and 18th June.