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Location
shooting
The seven week shoot of main
unit photography began in Melbourne.Yarraville was chosen as an appropriate
inner city location and the outer reaches of Werribee stood in for the
Norseman approach to Perth, the location of the film's climactic scenes.
The budget permitted only
two weeks of location shooting which is a tough chore for a film that is
essentially a road movie in which characters are passing through changing
landscapes.
Casting
Dean and Morris were created
for the actors Noah Taylor and Hugo Weaving respectively. Shortly thereafter,
while reading Interview magazine, Stavros found a picture of Naveen Andrews
and instantly knew that he had found his Hanif. For the role of Mimi he
saw over 100 actors before deciding on MirandaOtto, who he felt embodied
the right mix of purity of heart and wisdom.
Cast
Interviews and Biographies
MIRANDA
OTTO as Mimi
Miranda, one of Australia's
most accomplished young actors, describes her character as 'light going
on dark' "She's a lighthearted soul with a black-and-white view of the
world who optimistically believes that goodness is always possible ."
"True Love and Chaos
captures
the claustrophobic atmosphere of four people in a car travelling across
open landscapes, getting on each other's nerves and the shifting alliances
that inevitably develop."
"Stavros wanted a naturalistic
style of acting so we changed lines a lot and it was a bit scary at first."
"All movie sets tend to
be slightly different because you tend to take on the mood of the particular
work that you are doing. Road movies usually involve a personal as well
as physical journey in which characters come to some kind of self-realisation."
Miranda feels strongly that
Australian cinema seems to be moving toward a more gritty, realistic style
that harks back to a less glamorous, Seventies-type cinema and shifting
away from the brashness of the Muriel's Wedding, The Adventures of Priscilla
Queen the Desert and Strictly Ballroom cycle.
"Those films were great
when they came along because they were a reaction against the personal
dramas that had preceded them," she says.
Miranda
completed her training at NIDA in 1990, where she was seen by a casting
agent and signed up to star opposite Martin Kemp in Daydream Believer
Miranda's
extensive theatre credits include The Bitter Tears Of Petra von Kant, Brilliant
Lies, The Real Thing, Time And The Room, Gigi, The Girl Who Saw Everything
and Sixteen Words For Water.
She
has been nominated for Australian Film Institute (AFI) Awards for Daydream
Believer (Best Actress) and The Last Days Of Chez Nous (Best Supporting
Actress). The versatile actor has also starred in
The
Nostradamus Kid, the internationally acclaimed Love Serenade, winner of
the Camera D'Or at the
1996
Cannes Film Festival, Doing Time with Patsy Cline and The Well.
HUGO
WEAVING as Morris
"Morris is basically a bullshit
artist who will run away when problems occur but he knows on some unconscious,
indecisive level that he is going back torevisit his past. He loses the
girl at the beginning, then he loses the band and his belongings. Everything
is gradually stripped away from him but you get the
sense that he still retains
something."
"In preparation for the
part of Morris, I watched such road movies as Five Easy Pieces and The
Wizard Of Oz. Trying to get into the muso mindset, I took guitar lessons
and read books on people like Lou Reed and Nick Cave."
"Stavros says that the dialogue
is there but it can be chucked out or changed - it sometimes seemed like
we were making it up as we went along but there was always a strong structure,
" says Weaving. "Road movies are a great genre to work in, containing a
physical journey and a forward movement."
"Stavros has got it all
in his head and he knows exactly what he is doing but he is flexible enough
to respond to new situations."
"Before we began, Stavros
and I spent a weekend in the country with other cast members in which we
got to know each other. When you work on stage with a group of actors it
becomes an incestuous little world of like-minded people but on a film
set you are working with a disparate group of people who represent a
microcosm of society."
Hugo
was born in Nigeria of English parents, and led a peripatetic existence
as his parents travelled through England, South Africa and Australia. His
father worked as a seismologist with an oil company and the family eventually
settled in Sydney where Hugo attended high school.
Almost
immediately upon his graduation from NIDA he took up a two-year, eight-play
contract with the Sydney Theatre Company in which he played a variety of
roles. He was subsequently signed up by the Kennedy-Miller team to
play
the ruthless English cricketer Jardine in the miniseries, Bodyline
Hugo
won the Australian Film Institute Best Actor Award for his memorable portrayal
of the blind photographer in
Proof
and has appeared in major Australian films such as Babe, The Adventures
of Priscilla Queen of the Desert,
and
Frauds
His
stage performances include The Taming Of The Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing
and That Eye The Sky
NOAH
TAYLOR as Dean
"When I first read the screenplay
I felt that my character was a rather depressing, bleak fellow but after
subsequent readings I decided to adopt a more comedic view of him."
"He's pathetic and seedy
by choice but also has strong moral convictions and you discover that although
he lacks control over his own life he is quite ready to point out faults
in other people."
As to working with Stavros,
Noah ventures the opinion that "his best asset, apart from being a great
writer, is that he is a visually cinematic director. and he allows me to
cut loose ".
Like Hugo, Noah had previously
worked with Stavros on his third-year film at the Australian Film, Television
and Radio School, Road To Alice. Noah feels strongly that there is "a new,
more diversified breed of writers and directors who are less pre-occupied
with Australian stories from our historical past and it is an added bonus
that I am working in a truly collaborative environment."
"Whereas the directors who
emerged in the Seventies were maybe influenced by French New Wave we are
now seeing filmmakers who are admirers of figures like Scorsese and Coppola,"
added Taylor.
Noah is excited at being
part of a younger generation of filmmakers, attracted to contemporary subject
matter with a cutting edge.
Frequently
cast as a youthful anti-hero, Noah has always sought out challenging roles.
Noah trained at St. Martin's Youth Theatre under the artistic direction
of Helmut Bakaitis, John Preston and Malcolm Robertson.
He
has been nominated for several Australian Film Institute Awards including
The Year My Voice Broke
(Best
Actor), Dad and Dave On Our Selection (Best Supporting Actor) and the multi-award
winning Shine (Best Actor ). The latter film, in which he plays the adolescent
musical prodigy, David Helfgott, has elevated Noah's profile to the extent
that his services are now being sought by international producers. Other
film credits include,
Dogs
In Space, The Prisoner of St Petersburg, Loverboy, Flirting, The Nostradamus
Kid.
STAVROS ANDONIS EFTHYMIOU Writer/Director
"Before I embarked on this film I watched every road movie I could get
my hands on and strangely enough the biggest influence on me was The Wizard
Of Oz, surely the grandaddy of all road movies."
" I wanted to build a feeling of mounting spectacle , holding off until
the end to create a cinematic avalanche, similar to the manner in which
Scorsese does in Taxi Driver," says Stavros.
Stavros likes to take a flexible approach to shooting, being able to
respond to new situations and build on the ideas in his script . "I'm continuously
looking for new ways to improve the film which sometimes results in me
changing my mind. This tends to drive some people around me crazy . But
when I see an
opportunity I go for it." Invariably it's to the benefit of the film.
Stavros was born in Cyprus and
moved to London with his family at the age of four. He left school at sixteen,
then drifted from job to job. At nineteen he migrated to Australia.
In 1985 Stavros became a student
at the Sydney College of the Arts studying painting and sculpture. He developed
an interest in film and made several experimental films. After completing
his degree he found that his focus had
changed, with an increasing
interest in the creative possibilities offered by narrative films.
He studied film at the Australian,
Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS) for three years. His AFTRS graduation
film, Road To Alice, a black comedy, wonthe 1992 AFI Award for Best Short
Film and he was named Young Filmmaker of the Year at the 1992 Edinburgh
Film Festival.
Recently Stavros produced the
internationally acclaimed feature film, Love And Other Catastrophes.
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True Love and Chaos Review