The Chaser Report - EXTRA: 'Nitram' – putting Port Arthur on the big screen | Justin Kurzel & Shaun Grant

Episode Date: October 1, 2021

Justin Kurzel and Shaun Grant are no strangers to recent, painful topics, having collaborated on the acclaimed movie 'Snowtown' in 2011. Ten years later, they've tackled one of the darkest days in Australia's history – the Port Arthur Massacre. Their film Nitram is both an extraordinary feat of atmospheric, naturalistic filmmaking, and a powerful polemic supporting gun control – receiving rave reviews, and a Best Actor award at Cannes for its star, Caleb Landry Jones. Justin Kurzel and Shaun Grant discussed their film with Zander and Dom. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Good evening. A siege is underway in the Tasmanian town of Port Arthur, where at least 25 people have been shot dead in Australia's worst massacre. Another 26 are wounded. The gunman is holding police at bay. He's believed to be holding at least one person hostage. Most of the victims are reported to be tourists visiting the historic penal colony at Port Arthur. Welcome back to a special edition of The Chase Report. I'm one of the intern, Zander, and today Dom and I are talking to Justin Curzel, the director and Sean Grant, the writer of the new Australian film about the Port Arthur Massacre, Nitrum. Grant and Curzel previously brought Snowtown and the true history of the Kelly Gang to our screens, and Nitrum was most recently a finalist at the Carlin Film Festival in France. It doesn't name the shooter, nor does it show the actual shooting, yet it's a harrowing look at one of the darkest days in Australian history.

We understand this conversation may be difficult for some people to listen to, but we believe it's an important one that needs to. to be had. We talk about how they approach making such a sensitive topic and adapting it for the screen, how they went about casting this film, and what's changed in the last 25 years since 1996. That's after the break. When he was a little boy we used to play a game at a fabric shop in town, he'd go off and hide in all the big, tall rolls of fabric, and then I'd try and find it. He loved it. I loved it.

But then this one day, I went to find him and he wasn't there. I looked everywhere. Not in the silks, not in the cottons. Ran into all the shops, strangers were stopping to help me. Tears streaming down my face. aiming down my face. What did you do? I gave up and went back to the car.

But then, I heard someone laughing. I looked around. And there he was. Lying on the floor of the backseat, looking up. at me laughing, laughing at my pain, laughing like it was the funniest thing in the world. Justin and Sean, thank you so much for joining us here on the Chaser report. Yes, thanks for having us. Yeah, thanks so much. Your films in the past have looked at quite a few

dark subject snow town and ned kelly what drew you to this very very dark day uh well it was it was it was sean's script um i mean he he didn't tell me he was writing a script uh that was um you know influenced by um by that tragic day um so it it really arrived out of the blue for me um i mean i I think years ago we'd sort of talked about whether there was a particular sort of point of view or a particular way of looking at that particular event. But it was really quite a shock and surprise to sort of, you know, open up your inbox and see, you know, see a script sort of sitting there that is about that day. And, you know, and I live in Tasmania.

I have for the last four years. and I'm married to a Tasmania, I've been going back and forth for 25 years. In fact, Essie and I met probably a week before the Port Arthur shooting. So I kind of, you know, I'm sort of deeply aware of the seismic event of this and the very, very deep wound that it has, you know, in Australia, but especially down here. but there was something about the screenplay that was so affecting

and it was so powerful it was probably the best screenplay I'd read from Sean and it was really sort of this moment for me in the in the screenplay where the character walks into a gun shop and

you know without a license is able to buy two semi-automatic weapons like he's buying fishing rods and I guess at that moment that he does it Sean constructed this film in a way that it felt the character was at their most

dangerous I guess and there was just something so compelling about just the absurdity and the sort of tragedy that someone in this particular place and this dangerous was was yeah was able to kind of be in this scene.

And it was the most powerful scene when it was written. It was the most powerful scene when we shot it and it was the most powerful scene when we sort of edited it. It really was this kind of the heart of what I thought the film was about. So even though I knew that the film

would cause a lot of concern in regards to sort of making it, I felt very strongly that what it was trying to say, especially about gun reform, in a narrative, in a story, and emotionally, it packed a pretty powerful sort of punch. So the screenplay was just too incredible for me

not to try to sort of investigate it and see whether there was a possibility of being able to bring it to screen in a way that felt, you know, that felt gentle and felt sensitive and felt aware of exactly kind of what it was. How do you go about, you know, reading a screenplay like that? Do you have to take yourself out of your day, go outside? Is there a process to doing it?

The good ones you just start, no matter where you are, you could be in a cafe, you know, surrounded by people. You could be amongst your kids at a kitchen table or you could be, you know, in a really quiet place. They will always grab your attention. So the bad ones you. you lose focus pretty, pretty quickly. I mean, there's sort of, you know, some people take 10 pages, some 15.

I think there is actually a particular page in the industry that says if you're not, you know, if you're not there by page, whatever. It's probably page two. Yeah. Yeah, I've had that. I've had page two. But, yeah, when you've got, when you've got a good one, Everything disappears, and it's quite extraordinary.

You start to see it. You start to hear it and you start to feel it and you start to imagine what these characters look and feel like. And that's when you sort of know, you have to do it. Sean, I'm fascinated to hear that despite your collaboration with Justin, this arrived as a finished product in his inbox, really. What drew you to this particular story and what influenced how you decided to tell it,

focusing on the perpetrator in the way that you do? yeah it was different you know we work differently I mean this was the first kind of what we call a spec script where I just go away and write it and it was the first one I'd done since snowtown so snowtown I was you know it was one where I'd just written it and then sort of handed it over and I've been very fortunate to be gainfully employed since that film and I haven't actually had time but the idea like jazz mentioned you know I remember we kind of handed in the shooting script of Snowtown essentially and Justin and I didn't know each other prior to Snowtown and we enjoyed each other's company and we enjoyed the process of working together and you know he kind of

mentioned you know anything else in that head of yours you know looking at similar sort of themes or whatever else and and I you know like yourself you mentioned earlier before we sort of started recording it about where you were on the day of the event you know if you're old enough you remember where you were. We should have as Xander wasn't alive in 996. But yeah, I was at a family wedding and it was just the most consequential and bizarre day for me. Where were you, Sean?

I was in Bendigo at a country football game. I think I'd just played earlier. And then I was watching a game. The older guys were playing. And I clearly remember something had happened. And it was like Chinese whispers. you could see people whispering and talking to each other and it kind of wrapped around the oval.

And I was waiting to find out what is this conversation that's sort of taking place until it reached me and the news came across of this tragedy that occurred. And I think in the space of 12 days from that moment, you saw the worst of our nation and you saw the best in terms of the gun reforms and what we were able to achieve. You know, and a lot of people talk about Australia's

graph finest moments and they're usually involving a ball or a sailboat or something, I think what we managed to achieve in that period was the best of what we've done as a nation in lots of ways. So it was a seismic event. It was in my memory for ages. And when Justin mentioned it, I said, look, there's something about this event

that I think needs to be spoken about, but right then I didn't know why or how to do it. And it took me, I think, you know, we've been working together for a decade now, and it took me that probably long before I could. And it really, I guess the genesis of the screenplay came out of my life experience. I, you know, started working in Melbourne, and then my work took me to Los Angeles and where I lived for six years up until sort of COVID brought me home last year.

And, you know, in America, as you know, watching the news, mass shootings are all too familiar occurrence. And I just kept seeing them repeated. And every time they're repeated on the news, Port Arthur, raised by late night hosts or news broadcasters or whoever as, you know, this shining example of what can be achieved through gun reform. And I, and it just kept coming back to me. And then in sort of 2018, a few things sort of happened. My wife went to our local grocery store or, no, she was due to go to the grocery store and got called into work and couldn't.

And a gunman went in, started shooting. And that was very close, you know, in the U.S. wrote. The US, yeah, in Los Angeles that are Traders Joe's. Anyone that knows L.A. knows their Trader Joe's. And then sort of late October, early November, there were two mass shootings in the space of 10 days, one in Pittsburgh and one in Thousand Oaks, California. And it just kind of built up. And it was really, Mitt Ram came out of this frustration of what I was seeing and what I was

experiencing in the nation that I was living at the time. And yeah, and I really, I just sat down and wrote, and I kind of knew the why in that instance. I knew that, you know, I was fundamentally making an anti-gun film. That's what I was interested in doing, and I was trying to figure out the best way to do that. And over the years, I kind of started working on it and looking at it through police's eyes or victims or survivors or anything, you know, all different ways, different time periods. But it was really, it was building to that scene just was talking about. I had to place an audience in the shoes of someone that should not have a weapon to understand why we need gun reform and gun legislation and take them through, you know, 70, 80 minutes

of it and then go watch how easy this was and how easy it still is in certain nations. How do you decide what to include in a film like this? What kind of research do you do? Who do you choose to leave in? Who do you choose to leave out of the story? That's a good question. Well, obviously because of the sensitive nature of it, no one really wants to be involved in a story like this.

Like, you know, if you lived it, you don't want to be part of it. You don't want to mention, and I totally understand that. So, you know, I made choices very early on in the screenplay that I sent Justin. He was the first person to read it was if I could tell the story without including someone, I would do that. So there were fundamental characters, obviously, perpetrator himself and his mother. and father that kind of needed to be there. But there are ones that are left behind and people that know the story well will go,

oh, there was such and such and such was a character and such and such wasn't. And I just, if they didn't fundamentally change where I was, the story I was telling, then I chose to leave them out. And that was kind of my decision made. Yeah, that was just a kind of a moral decision. One of the really interesting things about it is,

we always ask why when something like this happens, and there's an unspeakable tragedies. We ask why. But most of us don't get to see that explain. Most of us don't get to actually understand in the level of depth that we get from this film, how an event like this happens. But I found the story quite weird and quirky

with characters that I wasn't expecting. Justin, how did you feel actually bringing this to life? And these moments of humour and bizarreness that some people might not have known about. What was it like trying to sort of anales? this story as you went through the narrative. Yeah, I mean, it was sort of interesting. You know, when I first read the screenplay,

it sort of started like a family drama. It was kind of like a check off when you can play. You know, it was sort of, you felt this sort of really strong sort of family unit. And what was also really quite telling about the screenplay is that I started to, it just felt familiar. These characters sort of felt recognizable. and familiar. I sort of, you know, I knew that boy that's, that's walking, you know, along the street, but you cross the road so you don't pass them. I kind of, you know, I know

the kid who used to hang out at school, um, who was far too old to be hanging out the front of the school and sort of, you know, playing with, with stuff with the kids. And I kind of knew that family at the end of the cul-de-sac in a kind of 50s brick home. Um, I know that fatigue that you can see on a mother in a supermarket that's sort of dealing. with, you know, a kid that won't sort of, you know, won't do what she's asking them to do. I mean, there was something that felt very, you know, I could just recognise it. And I think that that's, you know, when you're telling a story like this, and you're asking an audience to get to know a group of people,

and then at a particular point in the film, you're going to, you know, you're going to sort of show, how that, I guess, that person that you thought you knew, you don't, this family that you thought you knew, you don't, that was really important. So there is, you know, there's a, there's a world around it, a world, a world around these characters that, that was very strange and it was very odd. And the relationships are odd. But, you, you know, you. You know, the film deals with, I guess, isolation a lot as well. And all these characters in their own way were incredibly isolated individuals that kind of in some strange way needed each other.

When that sort of started to break down, then you got, you know, into a kind of really dangerous situation where you sort of could feel this particular character falling through the cracks. So, you know, the character in the film, Helen, who, you know, was a relationship that, that, that, uh, was sort of developed. Um, it is a really unusual relationship. It, you know, for the character of NITRAM, um, suddenly he is open to the world of music and the world of art and, and there's a sort of cultural connection that he starts to make.

And, and I found that, I found that really interesting, you know, Sean, I guess the other thing is, you know, Sean and I always thought. that this film was also about identity and about trying to be part of something that you're never going to be part of. And I think there's a, you know, especially in 90s Australia, there's a kind of physical kind of sport, surf world that for young men, if you weren't part of that, and you could never retain that, it's kind of like, well, where did you fit and sit? and that idea of never belonging to a kind of tribe never belonging to a group or never being accepted into a group you know in Australia we

we hold those things really close and dear we want to desperately be part of a kind of comradeship and this was a really interesting screenplay that kind of you know forced you to kind of look at well what is it if you're not you know what is it if you aren't that kind of you know type of Australian male, where do you go and where do you fit?

You know, we thought it was really telling that at a point where all those tribes have kind of left this character, that suddenly this gun culture came into his life that did accept him and did introduce him to this, you know, to a pretty dangerous world. So there was something, you know, there's something, you know, it's always a fine line when you're telling a story like this with a character like this, but, but, you know, it is also important to be able to allow an audience to kind of go, I feel like I know this world. And that was something that we were, you know, wanting to really focus on. For someone who wasn't alive during the Port Arthur Massacre, one of the most unsettling things

about this film was how deeply rooted it felt in an Australian suburb. It didn't have to be Tasmania. It could be right here where I am now. What did you do to go about representing Australia? in a way that felt offending on screen and could resonate with both people who are alive in the 90s and also now. I think it was really important, especially sort of 90s Australia. I think there are so many,

you know... I had flashbacks, definitely. Life was a bit more simple than 90s in the 90s in Australia. There was no real internet. So, you know, every Saturday night, hey, hey, Saturday came on. You knew the cricket was going to be on the Sunday. There were all these tropes that we all,

kind of knew what was Australia in a way and and they were really strong so that there was something very important about that to to bring on screen and and that you sort of felt even with will a fortune playing that I know that you know I I remember you know 530 while mum was cooking the chicken snitzel in the background was you know baby John Burgess you know that he was in my home every single night. Like that to me is Australia in the summer of 96. So there was something, you know, there's something that's really important, I think,

about those little motives. And there is a sort of, you know, I think Australia has changed a lot since 1960s. But, you know, what Sean and I were really aware of. And it's interesting, you know, we, it was such a seismic event. you know, that everyone remembers where they were, as we sort of discussed. But then you start to realize

that there's a generation, two generations, my kids now who are 15, who really don't know much about it. And down in Tasmania, when you speak to young people, because it's not spoken about very much, because it's almost taboo to talk about it. The conversation, the dialogue about it, is very it's very thin you know so it's it's you know we felt the power of gun reform because

we felt on that day we were shot as shocked as September 11th you know we felt the world had changed after after the Port Arthur shootings and the fact that gun reform happened in 12 days you completely understood and got why wouldn't it you know I mean it's extraordinary that it happened but why wouldn't it but now you know, it's 25 years, generations haven't really had an opportunity, I think, to sort of understand it, talk about it, discuss it. And, you know, I find that really curious that now those gun reforms, you know, are being softened. We have more guns in Australia now than we did in 1996. And, you know, that conversation about why it was so important at that time, you know, is one that we find difficult. talking about, yet there's a whole generation of Australians that, you know, it's something that happened, you know, before we were born. So it's, you know, I think it's, you know, we had a very, very young crew too, you know, and there was a long, a lot of people in the

crew that weren't really aware. So I think Sean and I found that quite shocking that, you know, it's for something, for something, you know, this event for us is something that's just there. It's just sits there. But, you know, for many others who weren't born when Port Arthur happened or who were very, very young, it's, it's different. There's also something about the film that is incredibly Tasmanian, and I can't quite put my, my finger on it. I'm someone who's been to Tasmania a couple of times.

You know, I went to Mona. I thought it was beautiful. I really enjoyed the waterfront and Hobarton. But I don't feel that I have any insight into. Tasmania's soul, but I think this movie somehow captures an element of that, the distance, the isolation, but then the sort of natural splendor, there's all these sweeping shots of the coastline and all this kind of stuff, and some of the pivotal moments happen in an incredibly beautiful seaside location. Sean, as someone who's not Tasmanian, how did you

try and put Tasmania in the film and how did you deal with the, I guess, distinctive nature of the society in the community you were writing about? Well, I mean, I probably leant on Justin a bit for that, having his experience being there as long as the event is, I guess he's been there for 25 years. So really, for me, it was just the Australian nature of it. And, you know, it's nice of you to say that, even though those things that you mentioned,

we actually didn't shoot. Obviously, the film was made in the Fair City of Geelong and surrounding areas. So that it gets that sense, you know, I'd probably defer to Justin as to how, as to how that comes across. It was convincing for me as someone who doesn't know Tasmania well enough to pick it. And I assumed that he hadn't filmed it there, given all the sensitivities. But am I right in saying that there's something really Tasmanian about this story, Justin? Or do you think it's more universalized?

I suppose perhaps it can be both at once. Look, there's a history in Tasmania that is pretty dark. You know, there's probably, you know, I mean, even the Port Arthur site, the level of violence and brutality that went on there with those that were imprisoned at Port Arthur is horrific. More horrific is probably one of the worst acts of genocide towards the Indigenous in Australia happened in Tasmania. You know, these, you know, those conversations people just don't have. you know we as Australians don't have we don't seem to be able to have kind of sophisticated honest conversations about really awful things that you know we did and you know so there there is a there are ghosts here and there's there's a lot of wounds and I kind of call it the albatross

around our necks a little you know that there's there's some darkness here that you know we we need to talk about and we need to discuss and it's just part of the fabric of this place also this place is the most beautiful place in the world it's it's natural elements of people the communities here it is truly sort of Australia's secret you know it's it's a just a gorgeous place

I mean I move back here from London to bring our kids up here because I just thought this is the best place for children to grow are. So, you know, it's, it's complicated. But, but unfortunately, you know, the Port Arthur shootings are part of Tasmanian history. And, and, you know, they, there is, you know, we, I think there needs to be a discussion and conversation about many things that have happened here. But, yeah. I went on the website for Port Arthur, the historical site, um, ahead of this conversation. notice that they do ghost tours.

I was just thinking, gosh, that would be the strange. Given what has happened more recently, I just couldn't even imagine having to deal with the legacy of that in a fun, spooky event. But it's always there, isn't it? It's part of the story of that place for a moment. Yes, you know, I've sort of recently heard, you know, you know, obviously before COVID happened that, you know,

there were a lot of international tourists very interested in sort of what happened, you know, on that day. in Fort Arthur, you know, and the guides are sort of, you know, sold, told not to talk about it and they're given a brochure to hand out to, you know, it's interesting, the Tasman Peninsula, it is one of the most beautiful parts of Tassie. It's, you know, it's just stunning. It's really is. And, you know, but there is a stigma, obviously, to it, because of, because of what happened.

So there is this sort of feeling of, you know, how do we move sort of forward and how do people see this place in another way, but at the same time being honest about, you know, what has happened there, not just with Port Arthur shootings, but also, I think, you know, back to its origins. One of the most incredible things about this film

is the performance of Caleb Laundrie Jones as Nitrum. He just won Best Actor at, Khan how do you go about getting that performance from an actor and what was it like having to choose someone to play this role uh well with it was very strange you know it so shouldn't have kind of worked in a way and Sean and I instantly sort of thought of him and I don't quite know why we did because he's American he's Texan and uh it just seems it just seemed like the the the strangest kind of choice, but our instincts kind of for some reason gravitated to this really unusual, interesting kind of looking guy who we'd known from a few films who we thought

was really super talented. And we just had an opportunity to meet him in Los Angeles and he came along to a sort of cafe and he was kind of wonderfully unlike anyone we'd met before and kind of inquisitive, intelligent, completely unique and strange and odd, but was we sort of instantly knew within the meeting. I think he bought some bald eggs. It's the way he was kind of like cracking the eggshells and eating them in front of us and stuff that, you know, you do as a director when you're sort of meeting an actor, you start sort of watching their mannerisms and you start sort of thinking,

is there something kind of here who is this person and then he followed us to our next meeting with another actor you know very pleasantly just didn't want to stop sort of talking to us to the point where we actually sort of had to say a lot we're going in for another meeting and you know say goodbye to him but Sean and I just knew instantly that we didn't know whether he could do the accent and that was something huge but we knew that for our vision of the character he embodied him straight away. So, you know, it was really then just sort of learning the accent, which is the hardest accent to learn.

I can't believe how good he will. I've never heard an American do it that well. No, no. You don't usually hear English. Like I thought Dev Patel in Lyon did a really awesome accent. And we have to try to give tutors to Jen Kent, who's the amazing voice coach. You worked with Deb as well online, worked with Caleb.

But not only that, You know, but also 90s Australia, Tasmania, that is a particular kind of accent as well. So it was really nuanced and I got him to watch a lot of 90s shows. So he watched a lot of home and away, a lot of, you know, Nangles, a lot of Hay Hats Saturday, a lot of a lot of sort of shows that come from the period. And it was really interesting. You do notice an accent change from what it is now. and Caleb came on set with a very, very particular sort of, yeah, accent from the 90s in Australia.

I imagine it wasn't enormously hard to put your wife, S.E. Davis in the role of Helen, but Judy Davis and Anthony LaPalia are also extraordinary. The whole cast is even the gun dealer pulls it off remarkably. How did you go about working with those legends of the Australian screen? Because they don't look like themselves to me in many ways in this film. Yeah, well, we knew that we wanted a really tight ensemble of four really fantastic actors. And then we surrounded those actors with non-actors.

So a lot of those other cast members around them are all from Geelong. And, you know, the travel agent's real travel agent, the car salesman or is a real car salesman, the doctor's a real doctor. But we really wanted this tight ensemble at the beginning. I mean, Judy is someone that I just adore. and I have for so long

and I've always it's always been a dream to work with her and fortunately she came on board and it was really interesting because she was talking about both characters and in the end she really felt as though the mother was a really hard role and

really crucial to the film and you know and Anthony were being huge fans since Lanthana and they all you know they all they all really keen on just sort of doing something simple, you know, and stripping back to, you know, something

very real and very authentic and, you know, which is really confronting at times, but, but it's actually can be incredibly liberating. And they, you know, we're very interested in, you know, make up and, you know, how, especially against some of these other people that were real, you know, real people in the film, how, how they would sort of match with them and blend in with them. So, you know, I mean, it's like Essie, you know, putting her in a pair of trap suit pants and telling her to get her hair redide and wearing braces and, you know, and everyone kind of looking and feeling quite simple, you know, that they were all pretty amazing. There was no vanity. There was absolute sort of belief in getting it right. And I do notice the same thing happened with Snowtown, you know, when you are working on projects that you've got to be.

very careful about and you know it's something has happened in real life with the characters that you're you know um that have been influenced uh that have influenced the characters written um you know it's really it's really important for there to be a sort of respect there and and for you to sort of walk tenderly um so we're very you know they're amazing people and they're incredible to work with, but there was also this sort of heightened sense of, you know, trying to get this right. I think a lot of people imagine directors is super hands-on trying to really micromanage a performance.

In what's it like trying to direct actors where you've got people from the real world, you've got people like Caleb Gordon-Jones and Essie Davis who are seasoned professionals. How do you try elucidate performances? Well, on this, on this one, I did something that, I took to the I took to the to the extremes a little bit I just I decided not to direct in a way you know I I didn't you know when you're working with non-actors

because you are working with people that have an authority on the person that they're playing so if you've got a doctor there on set that's playing a doctor that's been a doctor for 30 years well the idea of me coming in and telling him where to move what to say how to be whatever just seems kind of ridiculous kill us. But the idea of sort of saying, I think the scenes kind of about this, just something really simple and then allowing them to be, that becomes the real key. And in some sense, it's the way I work with Judy, Anthony, E.C. and Caleb as well, which was just to create

situations that feel very real and keeping the set really relaxed and just keeping things really simple and low key. And trying not to direct, you know, not coming in with, you know, a hundred things to say to an actor because, you know, when an actor is given 100 things, that's where you can see them thinking about when they're acting as opposed to actually just listening to the person opposite of them. And that was a huge part of this, you know, it was the first time I'd use so many reaction shots of people, you know, the character's actually watching Mittram. You know, a lot of it is about sort of watching what are they going to do? What does that look mean? You know, what does that walk mean, is there a shift there, what's going on? So it was really interesting how that

became a kind of style in the film of actually how you watch someone and how you look. So it was the first time I used probably so many reaction shots where you felt like you as an audience were watching with the mother, with Helen, with the father, this character that you couldn't quite trust. And could exploit at any point and does in the most shocking ways. Sean, in terms of writing this screenplay it's so stripped back and so sparse and in many cases so visual how did it evolve from your first draft was it always that minimalistic and and i guess simple particularly when you're dealing with someone who his ability to express himself is so um limited and it really says so little that how did you conceive of it in the way that it turned out uh i mean yeah i suppose i did look

it was always going to be that you know it was interesting coming from The last film Justin and I had done was true history of the Kelly Gang, which, you know, has quite a certain language to it, you know, and there's quite wonderful flourishes that I took from Peter Carey, and there was a totally different thing, whereas this was very much more stripped back to the first film, which was Snowtown and being, you know, very, very naturalistic as much as possible and keeping it really sparse.

And sometimes, you know, screenwriters are kind of, you know, when there's so little, the script can kind of be forgotten because, you know, normally it's the big monologues and, you know, those scenes that chew that are always talked about when it comes to writing. But, yeah, just to keep it as simple as possible, I know that's what Justin is attracted to as much as I to make it feel real. So when Zander talks about, yeah, that felt, you know, that felt familiar to me, that's the greatest compliment. That's good.

You know, is that it feels real, you know, it's interesting. and some of those, you know, placements of scenes and how they operate and making it feel relatable is what really sticks out in people's mind. Like, 10 years later, I still have people talk about, oh, you know, there's a scene in Snowtown when the protagonist is attacked by his brother, and there happened to be in the script was written that he's watching test cricket, you know, and someone's mowing the lawns outside and you can hear it. And those sort of things linked straight back to,

that's what I did when I was a teenage boy. And yeah, it's funny how if you can connect to what it was like for an individual, they automatically are immersed in the film and can relate to it, even when it's so removed. It's the cafe scene where the four of them sit down and it's so awkward. And yet so much is just unsaid in that moment, particularly given that the cafe is at the site. of the shooting later.

What exactly is going on here? Sorry, I don't know what you mean. He mows your lawn, you buy him a car, you mows it again, he moves in with you. What's next, marriage? He needed a car. He doesn't have a license. I didn't know that.

Yes, well, I guess you don't know everything. don't you have your own children no i've got a husband so which is he a husband or a son is that um was that hard to write because it just sort of trails off and uh you just see disconcerted you know these disconcerted faces well i do remember in my research discovering that they had all been to the site prior to the event. And that was like, well, that's, you know, we have to see that. There's something specific about, okay, so what happened here that would take him back there and do such a heinous act?

So, yeah, so it was the creation of having, and, you know, when you've got a, you write a film and there's all these, you know, there's four integral characters, but they don't actually interact very often. you know when they come together you've got to you know do your best to write a really important and hopefully a great scene and yeah I hope that we achieve that people speak about that scene a lot so Judy and Essie and Anthony and Caleb they're also wonderful in that that it was really exciting I was actually I am very tucked away I had to fill the corner of a frame in a shot so I'm sitting behind the four of them as jazz is directing them behind the

camera and i'm listening to this scene take place um and it was it was exciting on the day i remember judy and sys moment in particular is giving sort of the hair on the back of my neck standing up what's what was it like when you bought the guns out on this set and how did you go about deciding to shoot the final moments of the film it was truly awful when the guns came out and it because we because we kind of shot it chronologically, you know, and we're all living together. We're all living together in Geelong. COVID was happening, you know, and we're in a bubble, and the crew and everyone were all sort of living at the Geelong Conference Centre.

So we're all sort of one big kind of family working together, and we've sort of got Caleb playing this, you know, particular character. And you start it, you know, you start the film and, you know, they're a family scene. and there are there are scenes of sort of intimacy and connection and and it's it's really interesting in a film you kind of get lost in the the scenes that you're doing at the time as opposed to and then I just remember on the day when the guns came out and you suddenly go oh my god I don't see guns and the crew just looked at each other and went we you know it's the most extraordinary thing about Australia you just

don't see guns so and especially these guns semi-automatic weapons that are used on field, you know, and it was an instant shift. And I even noticed the crew's sort of relationship with that character and even with Caleb shifting, you know, where it really sort of marked the moment. But it was, it was horrifying. It was just horrifying. They are horrifying to look at, you know, when you, you know, these aren't, you know, these aren't hunting rifles.

You know, these are, these are, you know, military. Military. And it shocked me how foreign they felt. So, you know, the, the armor came on, put them on the table, and you could just see everyone sort of stand back and we'll walk back. Caleb starts to pick one up and you instantly felt uncomfortable. And, I mean, he would have a different relationship with guns because he's American, right?

Absolutely. What was that like? Well, for him, you know, when he went to school in Texas, you know, he went through security every morning to see whether someone was carrying a gun. You know, he's surrounded by mass shootings. I think, you know, I think there's been over 275 mass shootings in America alone this year, just this year. you know so there's a kind of everydayness that Caleb you know experiences and I have to say even when we're over in Kahn and you know we're talking to Americans that have sort of seen the film you get this real sense of hopelessness in them of kind of like you know it's not when a gun comes out in Australia everyone kind of goes holy shit what's that it's kind of well that's just part of our culture and how do we how the hell do we change this so when you talk to them about our reform forms changing bipartisan in 12 days. They're like, what?

So, you know, for Caleb, it was really different. You know, the tragedy for him is he's saying it's every day, you know, and guns are around every day. And they have been throughout my whole life. And you, you know, you understand how sort of fortunate we are here that that, you know, that that aspect of the gun culture is, is just no way near. as prevalent as it is in America.

Both Sean and Justin, you both made a lot of dark films. Does writing and directing these films affect your psyche, or do you think you get desensitized after a period of time? Look, for me, it definitely affects my psyche, sadly. Though people meet Justin and I, and we actually enjoy laugh, and we're not nearly as, I think they expect us to be dressed all in black and very morose individuals.

and we're really not that. But look, the greatest challenge for a writer, and particularly I can only speak on behalf of myself, but with Snowtown and with Knit Rand, the great challenge is when I'm writing them on my own. So essentially both were written, you know, conceived an idea and then I sat down and wrote them. And in that process, because you're not talking to anyone,

director or a producer and it's then it becomes a piece of work you're actually you know i'm in my room saying the lines out loud and you know and and it becomes quite claustrophobic so it's actually a relief when i've got to the end of it and and i could give it to someone like just and and we can look at it and talk about it in film terms because the hardest part in terms of my psyche is absolutely the first draft, particularly if, you know, I haven't mentioned it to, you know, true history was different because it was a book and Justin and I were on it very early together and we're sharing those ideas very early. But for the first film and this most recent, it's me in a room and it becomes all too

real and familiar. And then when I hand it over and producers come on board and cast, every person that comes into the world makes it that much. easier, I think, for a writer to deal with. But the initial part, yeah, is really, really draining. I mean, I describe it best as Snowtown. I was happily married when I started writing that screenplay and divorce by the second draft. Oh, gosh. So, yeah, it wasn't the best period. It can take a toll. But it's great to have someone, particularly someone you trust, and it's probably why Justin and I continue to work together, that you'd

trust each other when dealing with exceptionally sensitive material. How about you, Justin? What does this do to you making these films? Yeah, it takes a bit out of you. I mean, I don't think Sean and I are looking for violent material. I really, you know, I think subconsciously, I think there's probably things that we find really interesting about what it says about Australian culture and what it says about Australian men and what it says about our history that I think we gravitate to.

too. You know, with Snowtown, for me, it was, I was, you know, brought up in that area. I knew, I knew that area well and I felt like, you know, I needed sort of tell that story. To me, it wasn't so much about the serial killings in Snowtown. It was, it was actually about the community and, and how something like that can affect a community. But, you know, I, it's always just been the work. It's always been the scripts, you know, like Sean's written these scripts and they come to me and I really think they're amazing. So I feel like I need to make a film of them and, you know, and this one was really, really hard because I, you know, I know that it's, you know, the last thing I want to do is cause trauma for people, you know,

and re-trigger trauma. And I know this is a really challenging one. I guess at the end of the day, you know, it felt like a story that, that, that, needed to be told, I trusted the script and I trusted the way in which we would sort of go about it. And it hasn't stopped. I feel incredibly nervous about it, I think, and of being out there and what the reaction is going to be. And yeah, I mean, I'm, you know, Sean and I, it's interesting. We, you know, we're looking at what we want to do next. And a rom-com, perhaps. Well, we are. We're, you know, it's the first time that I think we've consciously gone. on what do we not want to be involved in?

What do we want to sit in? And what do we think is, you know, and I've got to say it was really interesting with NITRAM because with our first film, a lot of the violence was on screen and it was on screen for a particular reason. It was about the kind of corruption of a 16 year old and how violence starts to become them.

And there are a particular scenes in that film that needed to go to a particular place for us as filmmakers. With nitramp, it was the complete opposite. It was all about restraint. It was all about simplicity. It was all about what leads to an event of violence. So, you know, it's sort of directing something that was to do with family and to do with relationships. You know, I found, you know, to be really quite important for me as a director and that restraint was really important. So yeah, it's interesting at the moment. We're very much looking at things that, you know, are to do with a certain thing.

But we have checked ourselves. You know, we are sort of thinking what, why are we attracted, not attracted, why are we interested in telling some stories that, that, you know, have a certain darkness. I mean this is a compliment. I felt physically unwell in the last 15 minutes or so of the film. The ball of dread in my stomach was palpable. When I first heard of this project, I have to confess, I thought, why would we want to go there?

Why would we want to tell this story and bring this awful thing back in this way, given the memories of it? I now completely get it, and I'm so glad that I went on this journey and understood the nature of the problems in this way. I'm just wondering, in terms of Tasmania, Justin, how's this going to go down, particularly given that you're living there? No, I'm, you know, I'm, yeah, I'm concerned. I'm, you know, I'm hoping, we're trying to do it the most sensitive way.

We're still talking to cinemas down here about who will, who will release it. You know, and, you know, I appreciate and understand. I mean, I think when the discussion started, which was a very strong discussion when we were filming about what was happening, that we were making a film about the Port Arthur shootings, you know, I think there was a lot of discussion about the film that we weren't making. You know, it was, there was an expectation that it was going to be a particular thing. And that's hard, you know, that you as a filmmaker are making something and it's already being judged very heavily and you're kind of, I guess, you're, you know, you're being questioned as a person and as a filmmaker

as to what you're doing. So, you know, in some sense it's really important this stage where we feel, you know, like we need to show people the film that want to see it. In Tasmania, you know, there is a younger audience here that are very intrigued, I know, and, you know, so look at, you know, who, you know, weren't born. So around the time of the shootings, but, you know,

it's a tricky one. There's part of me which is feeling really nervous and really scared about it and apprehensive about it and sort of not wanting perhaps, trying to protect those here from seeing the film. And there's another part of me that feels as though we need to create an opportunity for those that want to see it to be able to see it. Do you stay off social media or keep away from reviews or reactions to the film online?

It's a, he, he, he, he read, yeah, he reads everything and I try to stay off it. And I'll tell him, Abby, no, they are. There's been some rave reviews, by the way. Let's be really clear that it's incredibly positive, and so they should be. And I just want to be really clear, having asked that question, Justin, I think it's an essential viewing. This keeps happening, and it's a flaw in masculinity and in the way that we treat certain people. And I feel guilty about how I've treated people in my own past. No, no.

Well, thank you for that, Dom, because, I mean, that's the reason I wrote it, is that it keeps happening. And if it didn't keep happening, the film wouldn't need to exist. But I just kept seeing these boys, I'll use the word boys and not men, based on their actions, you know, these angry white men continually doing it. And I could see that they had similar things in common, anger management issues, struggle at schools, quite often an absent father or a loss of one. And that was why I investigated it. That was why I sat down to write it because of that.

because, you know, I'm all for forgetting the man, but we shouldn't forget the events, you know, because if we do, evil ignored, is evil repeated and it just continues to come about. So I was really, yeah, it's really nice to hear that from you. But no, you know, look, in my defence, Justin did send me a review yesterday, and it was a good one, and he was finding them. I wasn't doing it. But yeah, you know, look, I do clearly remember sitting down. I think it was Australia Day Kelly gang came out on Stan.

And for whatever. Speaking of uncomfortable things, Australia Day, yeah. Yeah, yeah, Invasion Day. And we took a very distinct take on Ned Kelly. Look an iconic character and put him in a dress. And I knew it was going to be interesting. So, yeah, the sick tortured part of me sat on my couch on, and I'm not on Instagram or Twitter or that,

but I guess I could get on it. And I was seeing some, seeing some feet. feedback from some colourful feedback coming through, which, you know, look, I take it all with, you know, you're never as good as people say and you're never as bad as people say. I'm a big belief in that. So I've got a pretty thick skin. To be a writer, you've got to have a very thick skin. Is there anything planned next?

Do you think you'll end up doing the narrow road to the deep north or what projects you're looking at next? Yeah, well, we're really hoping to do that as a sort of TV series. It's an amazing book. Oh, gosh. actually you know Sean and I were talking about it yesterday it says a lot about how we view you know that particular part of our history as as well I mean I it's interesting you know Sean and I are very we do seem to sort of look at certain things that reflect on on

Australian history and and and then I guess what they mean now so yeah but we're really hoping that it's quite an ambitious project so we're just trying to make sure that we can do it justice and do it well. Look, if anyone could, I suspect the two of you could. It's an extraordinary book and I'm excited to hear that you're considering it. It's an extraordinary project. I can't believe the subtlety, the beauty and the horror that you've managed to pack into this film for making sure that we confront the difficult parts of our society and not just the happy-go-lucky parts. And thanks for joining us.

Cheers. Cheers. Thanks so much, gentlemen. And thank you to everyone who listened to this extended episode. Our gears from road microphones and we're part of the ACAST creator network. We'll see you on Tuesday.