In the sunny surrounds of the Marrakech Film Festival, DAVID WENHAM talks about serving on the festival’s jury, his role in the big budget comic book adaptation 300, the state of the Australian film industry and his brilliant career so far. BY DAVID MICHAEL.
Cricket isn’t exactly the national sport in Marrakech, Morocco, but it’s the first thing on the agenda when David Wenham and I meet at the start of The Marrakech Film Festival. It’s the second test of Ashes and we’re in deep conversation about the second day, where England’s Kevin Pietersen and Paul Collingwood have put on a record partnership of 310, threatening to make a first of the Ashes series. Picking out me English accent, Wenham says, “You must be pretty happy,” before pragmatically dimming and hope. “It’s a flat pitch, so unless something extraordinary happens, it’s heading for a draw already.”
Keeping track of the outside world is never easy at a film festival, but Wenham ensures me that he’s got the Ashes covered. He has him mobile phone sending him “pocket news” and he nods in the direction of partner Kate Agnew and daughter Eliza Jane, who are also present at the Mansour Eddahbi hotel complex where the festival predominately takes place. “They help keep me posted too,” he says, exchanging waves with his daughter.
After five minutes trading our expectations for the Ashes, it’s time to remember why we’re having difficulty actually watching any of the test match action. Marrakech is often referred to as being the shortest distance you can fly from London to enter a whole new world. Forget watching the cricket in a bar while you sink a few cool ones; it’s an Islamic country and alcohol extremely difficult to come across outside of the country’s hotels. Plus, the only cricket the locals have heard of is of the insect variety.
The sixth years of The Marrakech Film Festival is a particularly strong one. There are tributes to Susan Sarandon and Chinese director Jia Zhang-Ke, a vivid retrospective of Italian cinema, and a look back at the last decade of Indian cinema, as well as the various films in competition. The icing on the cake? There’s an Australian on the jury. David Wenham certainly knows how to pick the location of his jury service – his only previous experience was at The Hawaiian International Film Festival.
“As an actor, when you travel to film festivals, you think, ‘Brilliant, I’ll get an opportunity to go and see films’ but you never do,” says Wenham of life at festivals, when not on the jury. “Then when festival time comes around in Australia, I think, ‘I’ll set aside two weeks to go to The Sydney Film Festival’, but I’m always working and I’m never there. I don’t usually get the opportunity to see this great selection of films in such a short space of time, so it’s a gift.”
But the most exciting thing about Marrakech? Undoubtedly, it’s having Roman Polanski as the head of the jury, which also include European actresses Ludivine Sagnier, Sandrine Bonnaire, Paz Vega and Maria De Medeiros. “Oh, got yeah,” gasps Wenham of the director of
Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby, The Pianist and
Chinatown.” “Polanski’s president of the jury, the film festival is in Marrakech... you can’t say no that!”
Name checking
Chinatown, Tess and
Knife In The Water as his personal Polanski favourites, the actors adds: “After I was invited, I was on the plane back to Sydney and on the in-flight film selection was
Chinatown, so it was serendipity, and it was a great opportunity to revisit!”
Although his partner and daughter are present in Marrakech, there’s hardly time in Wenham’s agenda to make this a family holiday. Jury service entails watching a minimum of two to three films a day, and a whole host of function, dinners and jury meetings to attend. It’s only a couple of days into the film festival when we first chart. Wenham is visibly battling against the rigours of jet lag, having been Australia only a matter of days after returning from Los Angeles, before setting out to Marrakech. Polanski noticed as soon as they were introduced. “He picked up on my hazy jet-lagged state, and said, ‘I’ll get you a Coca Cola’, which he went off and did.”
So far, apart from seeing the first two films of the fifteen in competition that he’ll view during the course of the festival, Wenham’s first major engagement was to attend the festival’s opening gala screening of Martin Scorsese’s
The Departed, with Polanski and co. “I felt a little like an alien,” smiles Wenham in recollection. “I attribute a lot of that to jet-lag, but the language is a factor. The fact that English is my only language sets me apart. Unfortunately, I don’t speak French, and the majority of journalists were French, and English wasn’t a language that was coming toward me. So it was slightly bizarre at times.”
After talking abut his first trip to Marrakech, which was part of a three week stint in Morocco ten years ago, our first chat turns to his career as a whole, right up to his latest films. Marrckville may seem a million miles away from the exotic intrigue of Marrakech, but it was in Sydney’s inner western suburbs that Wenham was born, and then grew up learning his craft. Born to a mother who spent most of her time bringing up Wenham and his six older siblings (“It was a loud household,” he laughs), and a father who worked as an accountant for the same firm for 48 years (“Those were the day’s – people don’t do that anymore!”), Wenham ended up studying at the Theatre Nepean after failing to gain place at NIDA.
To support his studies, Wenham is often quoted in interviews as saying that he worked as a weekend bingo caller. Apparently, he did a few more interesting jobs too. “I was also a hay carter – out in the open, in the scorching heat. I didn’t last – that was a week,” he admits. “I also sold china and glassware in a department store, and I was a cameraman at the local greyhound track!”
Having built his reputation in the theatre, Wenham cites the adaptation of
The Boys from stage to screen as being symbolic of the gradual shift in his career to film. “One of the guys [Robert Connolly] involved in the play went to film school, and became a producer,” Wenham explains. “Then I came on board and we spent six years working on that, transforming it from a pay into a film. We were always aware that we wanted to make a piece of cinema and not a filmed version of the stage production. In the play, half in the backyard – so that’s not a film. Little by little, it’s come to the stage where I do more film than theatre, though I still do a play every two year or so.”
The 41-year-old actor has stated previously hat he always saw himself as a character actor, rather than a lead, when he graduated from acting school. “I got railroaded along the way and I ended up playing a few lead characters which was absolutely terrific,” he has said previously of domestic roles such as
Better Than Sex and
Gettin’ Square.
Internationally, his early intentions ring true though. Wenham has forged a firm reputation for being a versatile and accomplished character actor in Hollywood movies. Whatever the merits of the film, Wenham always delivers, from being Hugh Jackman’s meek and quirky vampire-hunter sidekick in the critically maligned
Van Helsing, to the virtuous and brave Faramir in Peter Jackson’s
Lord Of The Rings trilogy.
He’s under no illusions that his appearance on
Lord Of The Rings obviously bolstered his position in the Hollywood mix. “As they say, it has opened doors,” he says. In fact he’s quite candid about the whole
Lord Of The Rings deal, saying that he only got the Middle Earth gig because of a resemblance to British actor Sean Bean, whose character he plays the brother of. “I see it,” he laughs of the likeness. “It says on the internet that I was cast because we both have big noses, which is harsh but fair.”
On an aside, mention of
Lord Of The Rings brings up the subject of the fracas surrounding Peter Jackson not directing the proposed film of
The Hobbit. “In all honestly, I don’t know enough to comment because I’m just not in profession of enough information to pass a considered opinion,” says Wenham diplomatically. “I do think it’s a bloody shame that Peter won’t be doing it though. It seems natural that he’d do it.”
Being a character actor does have its drawbacks though, especially on larger scale productions. Talking about regretting not having the chance to meet Nick Cave while filming
The Proposition leads Wenham to summarise: “On most jobs, I miss most people completely. I’m something literally in-and-out in ten days.”
With his latest film,
300, Wenham enjoyed a much more hands-on studio film experience, narrating the film, as well as starring in it. Directed by Zack Snyder,
300 is a visceral adaptation of Frank Miller’s comic book, which tells the bloodstained tale of the 300 Spartan warriors who held their own against the massive force of the Persian army for three long days, before their ultimate betrayal.
Was Wenham dubious about the fact that the film would be shot entirely against a special effects bluescreen? And also about the prospect of acting mainly in leather underpants? “I didn’t know it was bluescreen and that it was going to be shot in the studio when I signed on,” reflects Wenham who plays Dillios, the story-spinning Spartan who survives the battle to tell the tale of their epic bravery. “I found out that it was going to be five months in Montreal, and it was going to go into winter, when it hits minus 20 there. I then bough Frank Miller’s book, and my first appearance is in the nude! My second appearance is in a pair of leather underpants! I suddenly hit the freak-out button!”
Having been literally cast in cyber space, Wenham received a call from the director he still hadn’t met, Zack Snyder, with the cold hard facts still eating away in his head: nudity, leather underpants, minus 20 degrees temperatures, and the strangeness of Montreal doubling for ancient Greece. “He guffled for about ten minutes, and then he said, ‘No, no, no! We’re actually shooting in a studio! You won’t be up to you neck in snow!’”
Wenham insists that the process of successfully bringing the comic book alive on screen wasn’t as laborious and detached as bluscreen work can often be. “People ask me if it was difficult working with just bluscreen, and I have to say on this particular film, the answer would be no,” insists Wenham. “All the actors were physically there; there were fifty stunt guys there all the time; and we didn’t have to imagine any characters in front of us, which was relatively easy, because when you’re acting you’re normally acting with somebody else who is feeding you and that’s what you respond to.”
Another thing the actor responded to was the presence of original comic book creator Frank Miller (
Sin City), who provided further insight into the role. “It was great to have a chat to ham to get an insight into his inspiration and where the film actually came from. The first film he saw was
The 300 Spartans [the slightly tinny 1962 film version of the story starring Richard Egan and Ralf Richardson], and that had such a profound effect on him that he always wanted to do a graphic novel on that particular story. I gotta say, I saw
The 300 Spartans, and I don’t think it stands up. But Frank obviously saw something in that film that sparked his vivid imagination.”
Ancient Greece isn’t the only period we’ll see Wenham delving into this year; he also appears in Ira Sachs’ 1940s period piece,
Married Life, also shot in Canada. It stars Pierce Brosnan as an adulterous man who plots his wife (Patricia Clarkson) death rather than shame her with divorce. Wenham plays a poet. “Its inspiration came from an English short story.” the actor explains. “It was a wonderful experience, and I loved working with Ira, who’s an extremely smart guy. I do most of my stuff with Pierce and Patricia; I’m a philandering poet... what other type is there?”
A couple of days later, with the festival in full swing, I see the impish figure of Roman Polanski leading his jury through the hotel to lunch. I call out to Wenham to see if he knows the cricket score. “I don’t but I can get it”, he says. It seems we’ve both succumbed to insular festival fever, and even forgot about the cricket. “Hang on a minute,” says Wenham, sliding his phone out of his jeans pocket. “I think they won,” he hesitates, as we both stare at the small screen of his mobile phone, which reads ‘Australia 513 & 168-4, England 551-6 dec & 129’. “That’s phenomenal,” he adds, still in disbelief before apologising for being the bearer of bad news to an Englishman, before excusing himself to catch Polanski and the rest of the jury.
Our final chat comes a few days later with one day to go at the festival. With his final press out of the way – rounding things off by having his picture taken with a journalist who more-than-likely knows him from
Lord Of The Rings – the festival publicist is granted her leave, before we sit down on a leather couch at the back of the festival hotel. First we summirise events in the cricket, still amazed by England’s shocking capitulation. “One session in the test changed the whole thing,” says Wenham, as we agree that England’s fate now rests in a 5-0 series defeat.
“Now, I’m on local Marrakechy time,” a decidedly perkier Wenham informs me on his now-tuned body clock. “I’m not sleeping very much – you start early in the morning to see films. you work through the day, and then there’s always something on at night to attend.”
Getting details out of Wenham regarding jury procedure is proving difficult. Understandably, he informs me, they’re sworn to secrecy, and he can’t divulge details, apart from that they’re sworn governed by “very strict and fair guidelines”. But he admits jury service has been a cathartic experience. “I’m learning more about film, much quicker here in a jury situation than I do on set,” he says.
But surely making a film is the best place to learn about it? “Without a doubt, but I’ve put in a lot of time on set, so that’s not a new experience. Having Roman Polanski talk about what he looks for in a film of what works for him in a film or what he looks for in a film is obviously illuminating.”
What he does inform me of is that in the end, decisions are made on the festival winners, principally through three formal lunches of up to three hours’ duration, where the jury discusses what they’ve seen. “Roman stressed the importance of taking our job extremely seriously,” says Wenham of their overall approach to their duties. “Some of these people may have spent years getting their film up, and than actually physically marking the film, and you want to respect that. He reminded us that
Knife In The Water won award at Venice, and how that award helped him gain recognition.”
So, has working on the jury gone as he’d envisaged it? “Not exactly,” he says. “I would have thought opinions would have been far more divided than they have been. I’ve been surprised by the fact that we really do have similar tastes. I thought there would be a lone sheep somewhere there, but not really. It’s like having a dinner party and all the guests have complimented each other in some way. This jury just clicks.”
You can tell that Wenham has enjoyed his time on the jury, especially socially, where he says there’s been a fascinating exchange of stories. I ask if he feels like he’s been representing Australia at all, in that context. “I’m not wearing the flag, but that’s where I come from, and they’re the stories I’m most proud of, and they’re the ones that I know.”
Talk naturally turns to his own work in Australia, after having spent so much time abroad recently. When he returns in two days time, does he envisage staying for a while? “Who knows? I’d love to spend more time in Australia. The last thing I did back home was
Answered By Fire,” he says, before feigning false modesty. “In fact, I picked up an award for it last night. I’ll just drop that one in!”
He’s talking about his AFI Award for Best Actor in a TV Series. So, did he do one of those classic “Sorry, I can’t be there tonight” video links? “No, because they were running over time; they knew the awards were going to be too long, so anybody who wasn’t there, wasn’t there,” he laughs.
He’s missing the Ashes, he’s missed out on picking up an AFI award – it looks like jury service hasn’t come at the best of times. “It’s fate,” he sighs. “There’s always something you miss out on. Being an Australian Rules fan, I’ve been away before and missed out on grand finals,” shrugs the Sydney Swans fan.
The state of Australian film and TV industry is a perpetual moan in the madia, but how does he view it? Shows like
Answered By Fire are few and far between, and surely the Australian television industry should, like other countries, provide a breeding ground and stepping stone for cast and crew to go into film. The future according to Wenham looks bleak. “We’re historically at the lowest levels of production in our history.” he sighs. “The government funding, particularly to the ABC, has gone to such a low, that where we were producing fifty to sixty hours of local Australian drama only three years ago, we’re now down to maybe ten hours of drama. There’s been a destruction of the institution of the ABC in Australia. That was the place where crews learnt their trade. For people who want to get into film, bar the limited places at film school, what do you do? Apart from making short films, I don’t know how you get to practice your craft. I’d love to be more optimistic about where we’re heading. I think the quality is certainly there... it’s just the quantity, which is due to a number of different factors. But I’m passionate about working in Australia. It’s what I know. It’s where I come from.”
After a little probing, Wenham reveals that next port of call after Marrakech will be Baz Luhrmann’s next project, a pre-World War II epic starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman, and currently carrying the working title of
Australia. Wenham has a week’s workshop as soon as he gets back from Marrakech, followed by several more before the film is due to shoot in mid-2007. “I worked with him on
Romeo & Juliet and
Moulin Rouge in workshop situations – it’s a creative experience,” says Wenham of Luhrmann. “Baz comes physically with the script, which is then work-shopped and deconstructed, and we can improvise stuff around it.”
Future domestic work beyond that, the actor hints, could finally see him jump behind the camera. “Robert Connolly [who produced
The Boys and directed
The Bank and
Three Dollars] has wanted to produce something I’d direct for some time, but it’s a matter of finding exactly the right project.”
He adds that he’s recently become one of those actors who is very much a frustrated director. “Yes, but it’s not something I’ve always been; it’s happened over the past few years,” he adds. “So hopefully, within the next few years. I’ll get the opportunity to direct a film.”
Has this desire come from working with good or bad directors? “A bit of both, actually,” Wenham concludes as we wind up the interview, before chatting off the record for a while. “The good ones inspire you to want to do it, and seeing the bad ones in action makes you want to do it out of pure frustration. The thing that upsets me the most working with those types of directors is that they don’t allow everybody on the film to realise their full potential, and that’s something I hate. I hate seeing wasted opportunities, regardless of what the person does. I want everybody to be as good as they can.”
It’s talk like that, I suggest to Wenham, which would probably make him the perfect candidate to manage the Pommy cricket team!
From here.
