The transition

Knock, knock. ‘Hi, Rosa, I’m home. I’ve been in the wilderness for twenty-seven years. I’ve done my penance, can I come in?’

I was so happy to be in Epping. It was a full house. Ebony and Daniel were sleeping on Nonna’s side, Zadia and Cobi on Rosa’s side, Jazzy in Rosa’s bedroom, me on the lounge. Nothing was really said between Rosa and me at first, but we were doing everything together. Shopping, coffee, drives to the northern beaches. A lot of that included the rest of the family. It was strange and wonderful. We went to the movies with Ebs, Dan and Jazzy. I sat next to Rosa, and we got about halfway through it when Rosa put her head on my shoulder. I was glowing like a teenager on his first date. The next a-ha moment came when we were walking along and Rosa took my hand. We’ve been holding hands ever since. We started talking about the prospect of being together. Rosa wanted little steps, careful consideration, holding back until we were absolutely sure of our decision. After all, she had been terribly hurt and went through ten years of hurt and heartache getting over me the first time. She was still shaking her head in disbelief that this was even happening! This suited me too. I’d been through twenty-seven years of unhealthy decisions myself. As much as I loved Rosa, I had to be sure for her sake and mine that this was going to work.

Zadia and Cobi flew to Queensland on Boxing Day to be with Cobi’s mother and grandma for Christmas. On 27 December Ebony and co flew home to Alice Springs. I was to drive to Queensland on the 29th. So on the 28th it was just Rosa and me. My relationship with Rosa reignited on 28 December 2012.

I was supposed to go to Adelaide to do Wolf Creek 2, but at the last moment the major investor pulled his $5 million out. I was now unemployed and I’d spent my savings renovating the house. I didn’t have anything to fall back on as I hadn’t been available for four months. My agent was trying to find work to fill the gap until I started Django Unchained in late March. I was limited, because I couldn’t accept anything that would go over into the Django commitment. Then my Django gig was delayed half a dozen times until finally I shot it in late July.

The major stars of Django had taken millions out of the cast budget. The rest of us with small parts got scraps. I got very little out of it but I had to do it. I couldn’t knock back a credit in a Tarantino film, but I went broke achieving it. It did prove one thing: Rosa didn’t take me back for the money.

I did manage to get three days in February on a fabulous horror–comedy called One Hundred Bloody Acres. The film got downloaded out of existence. Please don’t download illegally, especially independent films and up-and-coming music. If a film gets downloaded one million times, the filmmaker loses $20,000,000. We cannot sustain that, we will not survive! Our little country loses a billion dollars a year, that’s a billion stolen from us. We are the only industry in the world you can steal billions from and it’s supposed to be cool to illegally download? It’s the same as you going to pick up your pay packet and every week, it’s illegally downloaded and you’re expected to keep working for nothing for years. Would you be angry? Would you try to make it stop? When I was a kid, smoking was a cool habit, every movie star and every rock star did it. Then we were educated that it’s a filthy habit that could eventually kill you if you didn’t stop. Illegal downloading is a filthy habit that could eventually kill the Australian film industry if it doesn’t stop.

Jackson and Riley didn’t end up moving to the Blue Mountains. The decision was to stay at Doonan, and the house was taken off the market. On average, I drove from Sydney to the Sunshine Coast every second weekend for a year; it nearly killed me. I kept the caravan at Noosa North Shore, which was much cheaper than renting a flat, and the kids had a ball. I found a great mate in John who runs the joint. He’s been very supportive of me, for which I will be forever grateful. He’s a very giving soul, he lives for his children and his mates, playing poker and golf, and watching golf and his DVD collection and his Holden Caprice and his customers; lots of ands …and he lives.

Rosa and I were getting reacquainted. We’d had contact over the years, of course, but not a lot of deep and meaningful discourse. We were both on the path of finding the physical, mental and spiritual growth necessary to give life its best shot. Rosa had already been on that path when we were married. My awakening had begun with the teachings of my Aboriginal mates Donald Blitner, Tommy Lewis and David Gulpilil. I’d witnessed stuff with them that made me think there’s more to it than this physical experience on earth.

One of two things will happen when you die, nothing or something. Nothing is nothing but something? What a blast. So Rosa and I are going with the something, a much more positive option. If nothing else, pursuing that option inevitably leads to a better way of life. AA catapulted me forward. As Ernie would say, ‘You can imagine being eaten by worms and rats when you die or you can imagine your soul going to a beautiful place. I’ll take the second option, thanks.’

Rosa and I have a lot in common now. We’re not alcoholics, drug addicts, smokers or obese. We eat well, we’re healthy and we’re fit. We discuss our problems, we don’t yell. We try to be positive at all times, we face our problems, we find our way forward, we try to live in the now, not the past or the future. She is and always will be the only woman in the world for me, and me the only one for her. We have our differences, we fail, we’re not perfect, but overall it’s been four years now and it’s bloody marvellous. I’ve had a miracle in my lifetime. I’ve come home to Rosa, my angel. I look at her every day and pinch myself that I’m here.

The man is beautifully mad

In July 2012, Rosa and I were in LA to shoot my bit on Django Unchained. I arrived on set and was shown to the horse and cart I was to drive. I heard this voice behind me: ‘G’daaay, maaate.’

I looked behind me and it was Quentin on horseback getting into his part. I was in John Wayne country, the wild hills above LA where Hollywood had played for decades.

I worked with Jamie Foxx and Michael Parks mainly. Michael, one of Quentin’s faves, was an old-school actor who’d worked with everybody, and he told me a lot of wonderful tales. One of his best mates was Robert Mitchum: what a wonderful rogue he was, also one of my favourite actors. Michael was a pleasure to work with.

Jamie’s intensity burns straight through you, and he’s dedicated to getting it right. I had one scene in which I had to cut a rope. The props team had a rope held together with magnets, but when we tried the prop it looked false.

Quentin said, ‘Fuck that, just cut the rope.’

Jamie looked concerned.

I said to him, ‘I’m good with knives. If I cut you, you can punch me in the head.’

He looked me in the eye and said, ‘Okay…I will.’

I didn’t cut him, thank Christ – he’s a solid bastard. Between takes he was an easy guy to chat with. He had a teenage daughter and he was going through the shit that all dads go through, no matter how rich and famous they are. He just wanted to know how I handled that shit with my daughters.

The three things said to me most are, ‘Do the laugh’, ‘I loved you on Playschool’ and ‘What’s it like to work with Tarantino?’

Quentin Tarantino is an amazing man. He has a photographic memory, and he is a walking encyclopaedia when it comes to film. I asked him if he’d seen Wake in Fright. Not only had he seen it, but he knew all about it in detail: who the director was, when it was released and re-released, and so on.

He is a consummate filmmaker. He writes the film, develops it, directs it, edits it and markets it. He delivers it around the world like some kind of Hollywood Santa Claus, doing the song and dance at every port of call.

On set he knows exactly what he’s doing at all times, from the smallest detail to the big picture. Then he’ll have a blinding flash and take the scene off the horses and shoot it under a tree, refocus and be all over it. He respects his actors and allows them to do their thing, like all good directors do. He has the talent of adding nuance to what you’re doing without taking it away from you. Bad directors try to force their own perception, which usually ends in an argument. (I’ve found a peaceful way around that predicament, but it’s my secret, of course.)

I helped Quentin with the Aussie accent. I sat by him and he worked hard on getting it right, which he did for the most part. At one point he even gave me a compliment: ‘Nice directing, Jarratt.’ He got it wrong once and it was three lousy words. It was the only thing he said without me being there. The line was, ‘Shut up, Black’: he pronounced ‘black’ more like a South African, ‘bleck’. Ironically, Americans say black exactly the same way Aussies do. From that alone, critics described his accent as South African.

Quentin’s character in Django is blown up with dynamite, and he wanted to do the stunt himself. The blast was going to blow him off his feet. There was a soft bed of bark for him to land on. (Not so when I was shot: ‘We’ll cut on the gun shot, unless you got enough man in you to take the dive?’ Yeah, of course I did.) There were three or four cameras on it. The shot was stacked up so that all the action on camera looked like it was on the same line; Quentin was actually about 20 feet behind the blast. ‘OK, keep yer goddamn mouths shut until ya hear cut, don’t come runnin’ in all concerned if you’re not on the stunt team. Okay, let’s shoot it.’ The blast went off, Quentin went down like a bag of potatoes, the stunties raced in and stood him back up, he was fine.

‘OK, did you get the blast?…Good…What about the flame coming outta my saddlebag? That was good…Anyone have any problems at all…No?…All good…Great! Let’s do it again. Why?’

The entire crew yelled back: ‘Because we love makin’ movies.’

‘Fuck yeah!’

He did it seven more times, the crazy bastard.

He’s also a bit off the wall. Rosa and I were sitting under the shade of trees with a bunch of people between takes. He came up to us and said, ‘John, do you know the ballad of John O’Casey?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Come on, it’s a famous Aussie ballad.’

‘Nah, don’t know it.’

So Quentin decides to sing it to me, verse and chorus. ‘There wa-as Ol’ Jo-ohn O’Ca-a-sey.’ He sang it with gusto, conducting himself with a clenched fist swinging his right arm across his body. ‘And that’s the ballad of John O’Casey.’ As he was walking away Rosa commented, ‘That man is beautifully mad.’

Django producers were obligated to fly me first class, which is about six times the price of economy. Instead Rosa and I flew to LA then to New York, San Francisco and then home and it was still cheaper! This was Rosa’s first trip to the US. We played tourists in LA, going to Malibu, Santa Monica, Venice Beach, Rodeo Drive, West Hollywood, Sunset, the usual. Then we flew to New York.

This was our first time visiting New York. We loved it. Linley and James came up from Philadelphia and stayed overnight. They knew their way around New York and they showed us around. Linley and Rosa loved all the classy shops; James and I tagged along, and I used the time to get into Jimmy’s ear. The only thing that shuts Linley up is shopping. The only sentence she used while shopping was, ‘Oh look at this, Rosa, it’s gooorgeous.’ Linley invented a saying about women shopping: ‘Had to get it, fifty per cent off, pure silk.’ Rosa and I didn’t have a lot of money. All we bought me was a hat and a jacket: ‘Had to get it, fifty per cent off, pure lamb’s leather.’ True story. Rosa bought a small Native American rug and that was it.

Rosa’s niece Lidia, her son Eliot and her husband Hal lived in Brooklyn. They took us everywhere: uptown, downtown, across town, Central Park, Empire State, across the Brooklyn Bridge. We had a lot of laughs and ate a lot of good food. What a gas. New York, New York!

Next we went to San Francisco to see Brian. It’s always wonderful to see my brother. He’s everything Dad was, without the bad temper. Funny, larger than life, big solid guy, still fit as a mallee bull and he looks ten years younger than me, bastard. We took a long walk down to the fish markets, introduced Rosa to seafood chowder and went to visit the fur seals lounging around on the wharves. We took a trip across the Golden Gate and visited a colourful, quirky neighbourhood of houseboats that were like works of art.

At the airport I said a gut-wrenching goodbye to my brother. We managed to keep it together, then Brian walked off and we both started crying as soon as we lost sight of each other. How do I know that? I just do.

Back home

I’d formed a working partnership with Kris Maric and Craig Kocinski called OzPix. I wanted to make a film I’d written called Passing Winds, a comedy–Western like a cross between Blazing Saddles and Crocodile Dundee. It would cost about $6 million to make, and I figured we should start with something much cheaper: a two-hander that was gritty, gutsy and cinematic. I didn’t care if it was two men or a man and a woman. It needed to take place in a room or a house, some sort of interior, hopefully at night so background was not a problem. The budget should be no more than a million.

Craig said, ‘Kris has got one.’

I immediately thought, Oh great, it’s not enough that she’s a brilliant producer; she thinks she can write, too. I said, ‘Gimme a look at it.’

She wouldn’t let me look at it until she’d done more work on it. I gave her two months, and four months later I got it. It was called StalkHer.

I read it and I texted her, ‘You bitch, you can write!’

Wolf Creek 2

After the investor pulled out, Wolf Creek 2 was delayed for another twelve months, going into pre-production in late October 2012. We started shooting in January 2013. The script was as good as we could get it, which was about the only good thing to come out of the delay.

In the first film we had to provide the set-up for Mick Taylor, who wasn’t let out of the cage until well into the film. In Wolf Creek 2 we didn’t have to introduce Mick, who was in the film from the get-go through to the end. There’s a lot more chase and therefore a lot more action. Mick chases the Pommie in the Jeep with his trusty blue Ford F100 truck, a Kenworth and a horse: a whole lotta crashin’ and bangin’ going on. Especially ploughing the Kenworth off a steep hill into the Jeep below. The best crash I’ve ever witnessed!

I said to Greg, ‘Mick’s an outlaw, a badass, an outback cowboy – we’ve gotta put him on a horse.’ I dragged Heath Harris out of retirement, and he didn’t disappoint. He provided the fire-breathing black horse for Mick to scorch after the poor Pommie trying to run away. Mick rounds him up, leaps off the horse and whips the shit out of him. I love crackin’ a whip. Heath gave me his usual punishing lessons on whip cracking. When Heath teaches you something everything hurts: your brain, your ego and most parts of your body.

After chasing the Pommie around, killing some cops and farmers, and removing the facial structure of a German backpacker couple, Mick takes the Pommie back to his underground lair. Inside the lair, the Pommie is tied to a barbers chair and subjected to one of Mick’s favourite games, an Australiana quiz, and if the Pommie gets a question wrong – uh-oh!

This was a stroke of brilliance from Greg McLean. We go from a full-on action film to a mini-play; we rehearsed it like a play. Greg’s got the kind of warped mind I love.

The big north

It comes as a surprise to people that I’ve had a lot of fun playing Mick, especially Wolf Creek 2. My character is playing a game he loves and he’s having a ball. If I’m not having a ball, I’m out of character. The others weren’t having a ball; they had to play victims, scared out of their brains, especially the great Ryan Corr. Ryan remained a freaked-out Pommie for weeks; it was relentless, he didn’t take one tiny step backwards. He maintained the rage all the way. Ryan is going to make the big time and when he does, he’d better remember me, the little turd.

Rosa and Zadia joined me in the last couple of weeks. I’m not the best person to be around when I’m playing Mick – I tend to be a little bit too Aussie, brash and rude – so I didn’t have a lot of visitors. My mate Johnny Caravan came down from Queensland to watch the Kenworth crash; he thought all his birthdays had come at once.

Rosa and Zadia enjoyed themselves. We went to the property used for the school in Picnic at Hanging Rock, just outside of Clare. The majestic building is now a guesthouse. It felt a little unnerving coming back to it after nearly forty years. We went on to Burra, where we shot the tunnel sequences. Rosa’s sensitive to dust and there was plenty of it. It made her feel off-colour, which put a bit of a dampener on her visit. After that the show was over. Goodbye, Mick; hello, Sydney. Back to the real world.

Shortly after returning home, I picked up a nice little gig in Cairns, a corporate doco about the efficient use of electricity in the home. It was an opportunity to have a working holiday back in the big north. Rosa joined me towards the end of the gig, and we caught up with Nial, Sal, Max and Ray in Cairns. Rosa hadn’t seen them for years. Sal took Rosa to the local tourist spots including Kuranda in the Tablelands, then we all got together for a seafood meal down at the waterfront. We have a lot of history together: we’d honeymooned at Nial and Sal’s back in 1973, and Rosa had stayed with Max and Herb when I was doing The Great McCarthy in 1974. It was a wonderful night and very pleasant for Rosa to reconnect.

We rented a car and took a road trip from Cairns to Townsville. It’s a four-hour drive passing through the greenest part of Australia. The ocean views and the rainforested mountains hugging the coast are breathtaking. My favourite section is past Hinchinbrook, a large mountainous island with a narrow waterway between it and the coast road. The majesty of this green colossus can be enjoyed for many miles: the island is 40 kilometres long, north to south.

Another highlight of this trip was taking Rosa back to Silkwood, the town where her father was a cane cutter. She hadn’t been there since she was five years old, fifty-six years earlier. It’s a small town about 30 kilometres from Innisfail, with a few streets of old Queenslander houses, two or three shops, closed many years ago, a disused cinema, a primary school and a thriving pub. We found Rosa’s humble little family home, a tiny cottage. Rosa exclaimed, ‘Thank you, God, for the move to Epping.’

Rosa and her sister went to a Catholic school in Epping and were taught English by some rather refined nuns, so they have a moderate, refined Australian accent. I joke about what Rosa’s accent would have been like if she’d stayed in Silkwood and got a job in the pub. If I had met her there thirty years ago, what would she have been like? ‘Hey, you’re Johnny Jarratt, aren’t cha? I’ve seen youse on the TV. Wad are ya doin’ ’ere? Doncha live in Hollywood or somethin’? You wanna beer? What’s ya poison, darl?’ I can’t imagine it.

We kicked on to Townsville and I took Rosa out to my house at Pallarenda, my high school and up Castle Hill for a panoramic view of the city and out to sea. We could see our next destination, Magnetic Island, where we were heading for three days. I could feel my body fall into a beautiful relaxed mood as we approached this wondrous place on the ferry.

Herb was at Nelly Bay wharf to greet us. He and Nell had moved to the island permanently in 2011. Ah, the tropics. Off to lunch at Horseshoe Bay, back for a swim at Arcadia and dinner at Peppers in Nelly Bay looking over the warm Coral Sea subtly lit by a yellow moon, God’s lantern in the sky. The next day Herb drove us down a rugged track in his 4WD Merc to Florence Bay, a beautiful beach between Horseshoe and Arcadia that had somehow been saved from development, an untouched piece of paradise. If Sydney was close to Magnetic Island my life would be near perfect.

Venice Film Festival

From my coastal paradise to Rosa’s. Wolf Creek 2, fresh out of post-production, was selected for the Venice Film Festival, one of the majors. We had the coveted horror-genre midnight screening. Why was this was huge? Because film festivals primarily screen new works; it is very rare for a sequel to be chosen. We were met at the Venice airport and taken by water taxi to the Lido, the home of the festival. We passed through the Grand Canal, its historical buildings strangely rising, as if floating out of the water.

We were both feeling warmly nostalgic. Our last visit to Venice had been in 1975, when I was twenty-three and Rosa twenty-one, one of our most romantic experiences. It was a fitting place for our return to Italy thirty-eight years later. Rosa loves the art, the architecture, the people and the shops; my love is for the art, the architecture, the people and…that’s about it. We walked the streets and the little walkways until our legs turned to jelly, then went back to our cosy hotel to put our sore feet up.

The premiere was a grand affair. We were in the main theatre and had an almost full house. George Clooney had walked the same carpet the night before to present Gravity. Wolf Creek 2 was met with enthusiasm. As we made our way out of the theatre at around 2 p.m. we were greeted by hundreds of fans from all over Europe, mainly Italians. I was blown away. Many of them had printed my photo off the net. Greg and I had to stop signing after about an hour; we couldn’t get through them all.

StalkHer

We hit the ground running when we got home. After a two-year struggle, the OzPix team had managed to finally come up with the finance to make StalkHer.

We’d worked very hard on all fronts to get this film ready. It’s a complex, wordy screenplay that takes many emotional directions. We’d workshopped the script with not only the cast, the writer and the cinematographer, but also with friends from the biz we’d invited to give their opinions. It was a very thorough process.

Kris and Craig had the production under control and the budget allocated. Kris had an in with the fabulous Lynne Benzie, who was in charge of the show at Village Studios. Village is very supportive of independent Australian films, and it distributed Wolf Creek and Wolf Creek 2. Lynne looked after us and made it possible to hire Studio 2, just down from Studio 6 where Angelina Jolie was, like me, directing her first film. Coincidentally, at the same time Russell Crowe was directing his first film, The Water Diviner.

We went into pre-production in November/December 2013. Because my character is tied to a chair for 90 per cent of the film, I was going to be literally restricted in my directing. The upside was that the scenario is two people in a house on one night, so we could rehearse it like a play, giving me the rare opportunity to work out the entire film. I was lucky to have Kaarin Fairfax, as co-director and lead actress, for a few reasons: one, she’s a great actress and she could more than handle this difficult character; two, we’re old mates so we get along; and three, she’d stepped away from film work and concentrated on theatre so she could be there for her two daughters. Not only is she a very experienced theatre actor, she’s also directed a lot of theatre. Her input into StalkHer was invaluable in shaping the performances and we were both tough on each other to get it right. Consequently, she has a co-director credit in the film.

We had one more week of pre-production before the shoot. Because we only had one location (most films have thirty or forty), most of the crew were able to watch a full run of the film like a play, which enabled every department to see what they had to do for every scene. We also put a camera in high and wide so that we could watch the entire film back. In essence, I pre-directed the film, which made it a little easier to direct it while tied to a chair.

So why did I direct this film? We were running through the budget and when we came to ‘director’, I said, ‘We’re paying the director that much, we can’t afford that. I’ll direct it.’

What a tough gig I’d given myself. I’d start every day of the five-week shoot at 6 a.m., when Baba, my first AD, would pick me up. On the drive we’d go through the day’s work and what we hoped to achieve. When we arrived, I entered the back of the production office and put on my wardrobe (character’s clothes). In the production office, everyone would be trying to talk to me at once while I was standing there trying to put fires out. Next up would be half an hour in make-up, bliss, with Suzy ‘Black Bitch’ Steele, the funniest make-up artist on earth (and probably the most gorgeous elder make-up artist on earth). She’d have me in stitches. Kaarin would tell Suzy and me to shut up and run the lines. On set for the rest of the day I’d be trying to direct, remember lines and be convincing. At the end of the day I’d return to the production office to put out fires for an hour or so. I’d head home with Baba, work out the next day, get out of the car, grab Baba by the hand and we’d say in unison, ‘We are the white knights,’ I dunno why, Baba liked it and it sounded positive.

I was sharing my apartment with Zadia, who went to and from set with the make-up girls. Zadia has a passion for film and she works on the production side of things. She was amazingly helpful. I think I would have caved in without her.

Every night while she prepared me a meal I’d review the next day’s work from a director’s point of view, then I’d go through my lines over dinner. Every day there was a heap of them. After the meal, Kaarin would come up and we’d go through the lines together. Sometimes I needed to get outside, so we’d sit on a bench on the esplanade out the front and whisper the lines, so the passing parade wouldn’t think we were mad. At about ten or ten-thirty I’d hit the bed like a bag of cement. I did that five days a week for five weeks.

On Saturdays, I’d look through the following week’s work, both as the director and to learn my own lines. On Sunday mornings Kaarin, Baba and I would go to the studio and rehearse the entire following week’s work for a few hours. On Sunday afternoon I’d do nothing, then on Sunday night I’d go through the next day’s work and learn lines.

I have never worked so hard in my entire life. I think it was well worth it. We have a gutsy, gritty, intelligent comedy–thriller on our hands, something unique. Most people don’t work out what’s happening in the story until about 90 per cent of the way through.

Wolf Creek 2 premiere

Village Roadshow pulled out all the stops for the Wolf Creek 2 premiere. I did the usual and talked to every media outlet in Australia: internet, TV, radio and print. My mug was everywhere on buses, bus shelters and billboards.

There were premieres all over the country at drive-ins. Audiences loved it. Most felt a little uneasy sitting in the dark in their cars, expecting Mick to start banging a severed head on the roof.

The overriding response was that people loved it as much as the first film. I personally like the second one best, because it has more action and a few laughs in amongst the horror. So how was the highest-grossing Australian movie of 2014 treated? Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton, the supreme supporters of Australian film for twenty-eight years, the champions against censorship, censored our film by refusing to review it on TV. (Stratton did write a review in which he called it ‘horror porn’, so it seems I’m a porn star.) They could have given it minus 1 star, which would have been great publicity for us. Don’t get me wrong, the publicity we got from them not reviewing was fantastic and for that we were grateful, but even porn stars like me have principles and it’s the principle of the thing.

The AACTAs (the new name for the AFIs – I know, we’ve all tried, they won’t change it) is Australia’s local film awards night. How many nominations did the highest-grossing Australian movie in 2014 get? None, nothin’, zilch. You’ve gotta laugh, otherwise you might throw up. At least they’re consistent. In 2005 Wolf Creek was the most successful film in ten years, but did I get nominated? No.

Father of the bride

‘No matter what, this girl will always call me Dad.’ And Dad walked with his Ebony on his arm down the aisle to Daniel, her husband-to-be. It was one of the proudest moments of my life. I’m a long way off being the best dad around, but I’d made it with my Ebony, the toughest call of the many tough calls of my life. How do you become a father if you’re not even there for the pregnancy? If you’ve got any kind of will in you, that’s where you put most of it, into your kids.

Zadia, the wedding planner and matron of honour (I loved calling her ‘matron’ that day) did a spectacular job. She found the location, Ellington Park in Balmain, an elegant park shaded by massive Moreton Bay figs sweeping down a slope to meet Sydney Harbour. The ceremony was held in a gazebo. Ebony arrived in a classic fifties Chevy (her choice, my acquisition). This stunning, dark creature in an exceptional white wedding dress was my sensational daughter, followed out of the car by the equally sensational Zadia. Also there to meet them were my strapping, handsome sons, Charlie and William, in their groovy suits and stupid haircuts. Their mini-mes, Jackson and Riley, looked like little gentlemen in their dapper suits. And the flower on this genetic cake? Jasmine, my gorgeous granddaughter, the flower girl. I sang to her,

I love the flower girl,

Oh, I don’t know just why

She simply caught my eye

Down the path we all walked towards the nervously waiting, antici­pating groom. It seemed like yesterday that I’d felt the same with Rosa. I handed my beautiful girl into the trusting hands of her husband-to-be and moved across to Rosa, who had tears in her eyes spilling from the flood of love for her daughter.

We adjourned to the reception room of the rowing club at the bottom of the park, which we’d decorated with white fabric, floral displays and fairy lights. The tables were placed in a U shape with the dance floor in the middle. Charlie MC’d with his charm, wit and un-PC humour, putting us all in the mood for a right good time. Charlie and I sang an ‘Over the Rainbow’ duet, William sang an original, Baz sang ‘Moondance’ and Jackson sang ‘Count on Me’ by Bruno Mars. Riley was a little shy on the night. My four boys can all sing and play instruments brilliantly. What a great wedding! I don’t like weddings much, but it’s different when you’re the father of the bride.

The football finds a film

I went with Davo to watch our beloved South Sydney Rabbitohs give it to Manly at Gosford. Directly in front of us was a highly excited gung-ho Souths supporter. He was a Down syndrome man of about thirty, there with his mum, who looked to be in her early seventies. The guy was such a pleasure to be with. When Souths scored he’d jump up and down, yahooing at the top of his lungs and high-fiving with Dave and me. I thought to myself, What would happen if his mum passed away and he had no one, no siblings, other family or friends for him to go to. How would he cope? Thus the germ of an idea for my next film, Who Cares, Sal?, came into being.

I went home with this idea swimming in my head. I had to try to put it to one side and concentrate on editing StalkHer. Coming from an acting background and producing Savages Crossing had made me very familiar with pre-production and production, but post-production wasn’t so familiar and editing was my largest learning curve.

We ended up using three editors. Bernadette got appendicitis after a few weeks, Matt’s time was limited and we finished with Jeff. I learnt a lot and gave the experts plenty of room. I picked it up quickly enough to know whether the drama had been captured properly, and where we needed pace, pauses, drama or comedy. The editors were much, much more technically adept and had a great creative touch and a sense of what the film was about. I had the edge on what worked dramatically and what the audience needed to know, or not know.

My other saving was Kris. Remember when I wrote ‘The bitch knows how to write’? Well, the bitch knows how to edit and the bitch has an excellent ear for music, so she knew how to direct the composers. We worked very well together; the woman is amazing. OzPix needs to be successful because Australian film desperately needs Kris Maric.

StalkHer was approaching completion and we needed to get our next production off the ground. The way I write is that I wait until I’ve worked out the entire script in my head and then I write it. The idea for Who Cares, Sal? came very quickly. Sal is a Down syndrome man, very independent. He has a job in a sports store and represents Australia in martial arts at the Special Olympics. His mother is dying of lung cancer and he’s got no one else, so he has to find his father, a rock ’n’ roller his mother had a one-night stand with in 1983. That’s all I’m saying, I don’t want to ruin it for you.

I knew who I wanted to play the lead. Gerard O’Dwyer is a thirty-year-old professional actor with Down syndrome. In 2009 he won Best Actor at Tropfest: ‘I got three thousand dollars from Nicole Kidman!’ Gerard is perfect.

I’ve always been attracted to Down syndrome people. When I went to Nanna’s in the sixties we used to play with Reg. He was about six years older but he was a tonne of fun. Down syndrome people are far more emotionally intelligent than so-called ‘normal’ people, and their ability to love and deeply care for others is far more advanced. They know how to live, they know how to give and expect nothing back. They’re witty, funny, they know how to laugh and they’re not afraid to cry. They pride themselves on being individuals trying to make a positive difference to this world. You want the world to be at peace? They’ll teach you: they don’t like hurting people and they’re always nice. If I found out I was going to have a Down syndrome child, I would consider it a blessing. I would be excited by it. Google ‘Down syndrome restaurant owner’ to find Tim Harris’s YouTube video. It ends, ‘We are a gift to the world.’ You couldn’t have said it better, Tim.