Rolf De Heer was in Adelaide (where he lived for many years before relocating to Tasmania) to promote Charlie’s Country, and he took the time to chat with me about the film and the state that star David Gulpilil was in around the time of its pre-production.
When you came back to Adelaide in 2012 to talk up your The King Is Dead!, Rolf, was Charlie’s Country already written?
Yes, it was written, and I was in the middle of financing.
And Charlie’s Country is your third film with David Gupilil?
Yes it is. He’s in The Tracker and he narrates Ten Canoes, but there would also be no Ten Canoes without him.
Some have suggested that Charlie’s Country is intended as a tribute to David, and that Charlie is based upon him to a point…
No, it’s not really a tribute. When I first wrote to David about doing the film he was in jail and he was lifeless. He was not well, and he had been on an alcoholic spiral, and I didn’t know if he could do it anymore. And so I thought that if this was ever going to work then it was going to rely upon his performance, and it’s got to be huge, but the one thing I didn’t know was whether or not he still had it in him. I thought that I wanted to maximise the chances of it being really good, and so I thought that we should make it in the milieu that David knows. Let’s put things into it that he can access, let’s put things in it that he’s close to, let’s draw upon his experience – but it isn’t about him. The character of Charlie is nothing like David, but David could access the things that he knows in order to play the part well, and not have to create a whole different character outside himself. David never lived in Ramingining during the ‘intervention’, David never went bush… And so it’s not about David, but there are things in it that he knows and is close to. When he went to jail, which was not long after he was in [last year’s film] Satellite Boy, he weighed only 39 kilos. He just wasn’t eating and he was drinking himself to death, but he’s much better now and hasn’t had a drink for three years. He’s significantly healthier than he was.
You co-wrote the script with David, so how difficult was that process given what he was going through?
He was in jail and rehab, but we found a way to work, as we would. I know him well enough and have for a long enough period of time for him to be able to talk to me and present things to me… Not tell me things or tell me exactly what he wanted, but just to talk about what he thought should be in the film. I’d come and see him and we’d talk and I’d check on some of his ideas, and then he’s go back to jail for another 23 hours, and then I’d come back and get another hour with him, and then I’d go off and work on my own again. I might have had up to two hours a day with him when he was in rehab, but that was pretty much how it was. And it was a fine way to do it.
Other than David the film is full of actors who have worked with you previously in small roles: there’s Luke Ford, Bojana Novakovic and Gary Waddell from The King Is Dead!, Gary Sweet and Damon Gameau from The Tracker and John Brumpton from Dance Me To My Song. Did they all appear for the chance to work with you and David?
They’re all great actors and it was a great way to do it. You know, there’s a film called La Grande Illusion [from 1937], and in it all the roles, even the smallest, are beautifully done, right down to the tiniest part. And I’ve wanted to do a movie in that way for a long time, but with low-budget filmmaking you don’t get the chance usually, especially when you’re filming in a very remote community far away from anywhere. Usually under those circumstances you’d get the local council bloke to play the part of the local council bloke… And it’s always a struggle and it’s always a compromise, and I knew we had to concentrate on David, and I had this idea: ask everyone I’ve ever worked with, everyone, to play these roles. And so I rang them all up and told them that it was a film for David and could they make a contribution, and I told them that I’d pay their airfare and they’d have an adventure and get Equity minimum. And they said yes – all of them!
How remote was the location?
Remote! We’re talking mosquitoes, nowhere to go, nothing much to do, food and water were difficult, you know, everything was difficult. And for me it was all-consuming… I mean, I didn’t set out to make this film: it was something that I had to do.
The film is all about the ‘intervention’ but the word is never actually mentioned…
No it isn’t. Over the years, I’ve been up there many times – I mean, we made Twelve Canoes [the multimedia follow-up to Ten Canoes] there – and the things I hear constantly are about law. They say, ‘We have laws, we have good laws, and we’ve had laws for tens of thousands of years, and you white men change your laws every week! How can that be law?’… They’re immensely frustrated by the changes that are constantly happening, and that is a bigger issue than just ‘intervention’. And intervention has shifted anyway: it’s now called ‘Stronger Futures Policy’, which really just means more intervention and for longer. And stricter… And so it’s about treating communities like that patronisingly, and changing the rules all the time.
And what can we expect from you next, Rolf? What will you next movie be?
I don’t know… It’s all about finance. It always is.
I Wake Up Screening 