Interviews

The sad fact about this worthy collection of interviews is that it has already dated, and it was dated on the day it was published. A bright, interesting, and useful journalistic account of the marketing of Australian movies to the Americans, it is redolent with the euphoria which followed the surprising arthouse success of Breaker Morant in the USA in 1981. Most of the interviews were recorded in 1982-3, and the book’s authorial conclusions are essentially those which seemed appropriate in 1983. What may have been quite a subtle interest in Australian film then has since been swamped by far more obvious and unequivocal successes – the Mad Max trilogy of genre movies and, of course, Crocodile Dundee. So, there is a degree of hesitation in this book – the careful positing of possibilities, the modest isolation of a trend – that would not be there if it were to be assembled now. It is a book of its moment, and that moment was four years ago. The authors, or their publishers, implicitly admit this by adding a 1986 afterword, but it only underlines the fact that this book has taken two years longer than it should have taken to reach our bookshelves.

Why do we like interviews so much? There must be a reason. Maybe it’s the lure – too often, alas, as in lurid – of confession: the ‘X Reveals All’ syndrome that deceives the mind into thinking it has always wanted to know what it is (finally) about to be told; or the more elevated sense of privilege and honour felt by those in whom such truths are confided.