By MIKE HOULAHAN
Andrew Dominik is blunt when asked why he chose Mark "Chopper" Read as the subject of his debut feature film.
"I'm very interested in violence," says the director.
If violence is what you want to explore, Read's exploits as one of Australia's most notorious criminals are a good place to start.
The heavily tattooed and much-scarred Read gained the nickname Chopper after he cut off his ears in jail, where he has spent 23 years.
He has been free for three years and lives in Tasmania with his wife and child.
He published the first of nine books about his life of crime in 1991, and has become a best-selling author. He wrote that he'd been involved, either directly or as a planner, in 19 killings inside or outside jail over 20 years.
For Chopper, Dominik fictionalised certain aspects of Read's story.
"The average person feels that a person who's committing violent crimes is basically free in some way - they're not restrained by morality and the things that supposedly keep the rest of us in line," Dominik says.
" "I actually don't think this is the case. I think what you see in Chopper is someone who's not free at all. He's really the prisoner of compulsive behaviour."
The film has raised many hackles. Tasmanian State Cabinet Secretary Fran Bladel said there was no value in making a movie to further glorify a very sad and dysfunctional person like Chopper Read.
Dominik is used to defending his film. It carries a disclaimer stating that Read, who has sold more than 300,000 copies of his books, had no direct involvement with the making of Chopper, and did not receive any payment for the sale of film rights.
Dominik insists journalists watch the film before talking to him.
"The film itself tends to torpedo most of their expectations about it being a glorification of a very unpleasant person," he says.
"So often in films that depict characters like this there's almost a supernatural evil quality about them. They're somehow more than human, or less than human. It's almost like there's this magical thing, evil, which I don't particularly believe in.
"Or they've got some sort of ideological justification for what they do, they believe they're right in some way.
"Part of the attraction of the Chopper story was that neither of those things were the case.
"What you see in the film is just like this out-of-control kid, just someone who's got really poor control over his impulses, and is just as disturbed by his own behaviour as the people around him ...
"That was fascinating to me. If you do these things and you find it disturbing, but can't control it, how do you feel?"
Dominik was born in Wellington and his family moved to Melbourne when he was aged 2. A graduate of the Swinburne Film School, he made his name as a director of commercials and rock videos, notably for Crowded House.
"Making an ad is like sprinting," he says, "whereas making a movie is like running a marathon."
Chopper is a very stylised film with a broad palette.
It begins in the stark surrounds of Melbourne's Pentridge Prison, which Dominik filmed before it was demolished. Its clinical background is contrasted in the second half of the film with the bright lights of the big city, when Chopper struggles to cope with life outside.
"The style just comes out of the practical constraints," says Dominik. "We filmed in Pentridge where he was in jail, and that's what it looks like. "But obviously you want all the technique working for you to enhance the story, and there was a deliberate effort to have no visual information in the first half of the movie. So when he was released it was just like this explosion of colour and noise and movement to exaggerate his agoraphobia on being released into the real world."
Dominik's casting choices were unusual and inspired. Most crucial was picking comedian Eric Bana, perhaps best known for his role as Con in The Castle, to play Chopper. He exudes unpredictability and menace, wrapped up in a chummy but clammy cloak of Aussie mateship.
Bana wasn't the only funny man in the cast. Most of the supporting players have done their time on the comedy circuit. Using a cast mainly of comedians to play brutal criminals might seem strange, but they fitted their roles perfectly, says Dominik.
"Criminals operate on front. Their reputations are very important to them, and their personalities are very, very important to what they do. You often see criminals portrayed as these surly tightlipped, rigid people, but if you spend time with any of them, they're not like that. They're incredibly funny most of the time, hysterical people."
The suggestion that Bana should play Read came from perhaps the most authoritative voice: Chopper Read.
Read played no direct part in the making of the film, but he did contact Dominik three years after the director had secured the screen rights and agreed to a much earlier request to meet.
Dominik describes Read as an endless riddle. The film uses Read's own words but is very much Dominik's in the telling.
It is a story he warned Read he might not like, but Dominik is not letting on what his subject thought.
"That's kind of private," he says. "It was very, very scary making the movie, because it's not a flattering portrait and it's very different from the way he portrays himself in his books. I was very worried at times about how he was going to respond to it.
"What he did have to say about the film was quite moving to me, and it's something I regard as personal."
- NZPA
* Chopper screens from tomorrow.
Herald Film Review
Struggling to find a funny side to Chopper
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.