Making movies is hard. It doesn’t matter what level, studio or independent, the fact that any film gets made is a damn miracle, despite what the weekly straight-to-DVD Bruce Willis film might tell you (this week it’s something called Reprisal, look, I’m sure the cast was paid well). This statement is exponentially doubled when it comes to the Australian film industry, as both aspiring and veteran filmmakers fight to make and distribute any film, fighting tooth and nail to make their voices heard.
Australian writer and director Heath Davis knows all about this – in 2016, after a series of successful short films, he made his feature film debut with Broke, an affecting story of redemption set within the Australian rugby scene, starring a terrific performance by Steve Le Marquand. Now with his sophomore follow-up, Davis has returned with something a bit more lighter, the comedy Book Week, which follows another fragmented man seeking redemption – even if he might not realise the need for it straight away. In her review for the film, Film Inquiry critic Zoe Crombie noted that it was “an intriguing look at a man in peril and the place of literature in a contemporary context”.
Set within the suburbs of Western Sydney, Book Week follows Nicholas Cutler (a perfectly sardonic Alan Dukes), a celebrated author turned high school teacher, who is on the verge of finally publishing another book. All he asks for is one week of peace in order to gain the trust of the last publishing house willing to release his work, and what he deals with instead is a pregnant co-worker, flings with student-teachers, a dying brother-in-law, troublesome students, and the long-going battle with the bottle.
I had the chance to speak with writer, director and producer of Book Week, Heath Davis about his new comedy, the state of the Australian film industry and how to get younger audiences to engage with classic books and movies.
Alex Lines for Film Inquiry: Where did the initial idea for the film come from?
Heath Davis: I would say about 2010, I just had a film not get made in the US and that project’s been kicking around for about 13 years. We got close in 2010, and the day before filming the financing fell out and we had some movie stars and a pretty good American budget. It was like a Hollywood film really, it was my dream and then that fell apart, which was pretty heartbreaking.
I then went back to where I grew up in Western Sydney to start teaching again because I’m a qualified teacher as well as a filmmaker and a journalist (which I used to be too) so I did that job so I could make some money in-between like a lot of teachers do. I went back and I was teaching English to these kids who were iPhone-addicted and trying to get them to engage with classic texts was really hard whilst going through that whole turmoil of what had just happened, so I started writing this film script in like a diary form to begin with.
These scenes were happening and there was this character and I was living in this world but I didn’t know it was gonna be a film at the time, but it started taking shape in film script form and I finished it and I thought that there’s something in this, so we rallied around to make my first film Broken in 2016, and I thought we could do what we did with that and crowdfund it and make it small with this script and do it in my hometown, so we streamlined from that to this, it was very hard but the script went through a few more changes when I knew I was gonna make it.
How much of your real life experiences and the people you met during that time would you say ended up in the final film?
Heath Davis: A lot, you exaggerate a couple of characters, but Nicholas’ character is a hybrid of other teachers and other stories I’d heard, some from when I was a kid at school, some from now and some especially from the older teachers.
Alot of them, especially in the humanities departments, PE or Sciences, got into teaching because they couldn’t get other jobs, some had undergrad degrees like PHDs, some were archeologists, some were marine biologists, physicists and musicians. There’s not a lot you can do with those professions, so they become teachers because it’s something they can do with those degrees, and it’s their passion, and they are passionate about what they do but it doesn’t mean the students are.
I’d seen how hard it was to engage kids in this digital age with classic texts and even film studies, trying to put them onto older stuff, Australian stuff – no interest, so that story of an artist in the modern world resonated not just with me, but based on other people and a lot of artist friends of mine who are having to do the double life and questioning whether they’re still relevant and what is relevant. That was the grounds of it, but it had to be a comedy always, a tragic comedy, as comedy and irony are good dramatic devices to get your themes across.
From your experiences from Hollywood, how do you feel they would’ve changed this film if you presented them with the exact same script you used here?
Heath Davis: They would not look at it, they would be like, ‘its a boring character piece’. I specifically wrote this script for our small budget, but the only way these films get made in the US now is if you have a star attached and even then they don’t really do well. They’re truthful, they’re about people, making connections, they’re art and they’re important films so they tick the film element but the film business side of things is dominating at the moment.
They’re not commercial, and it’s hard to get those independent films up now, so unless you had a name, you can give it to an agent or a producer, and they’ll be like I don’t know how we’re gonna make this film, I need this because the marketplace demands these types of movies. On a personal level I think they’d like it, but I know a lot of producers and production houses that aren’t necessarily making films they love, because they’re hard to get up.
What it might’ve actually achieved, because I’ve had this before with other scripts, is be a writing sample, because sometimes you can write a script on spec that will never get made, but agents and producers can see your ability as a writer, so this might’ve been a sample. There was a stage actually when Screen Australia got involved and there was a bit of script development money, so I brought on a good script editor friend of mine who’s based in LA who comes out and does workshops here, she’s from a commercial background (she produced a lot of the American Pie films), so she helped quite a bit actually, just with the structure, because it was a bit looser.
She was like, you’ve got the potential to do this if you do evolve it, so we did that a little bit and then I did throw it around some agencies and managers in the states thinking it might grab someone, and there was some bites but we wouldn’t have been able to put it together financially like that and make it in Australia, so in the end I decided to make it the way I planned to do so originally.
When was the decision made to crowdfund it?
Heath Davis: Pretty much from the beginning because it took forever for me to make my first film, and I’ve known other filmmakers who have made one film on a low budget and then they’re like “I’ve done the hard yards, I deserve this big budget” and it’s been 10 years and they haven’t made another film. I didn’t want to do that, I wanted to prove that I can make 2 good films and this was small always.
With the first film, the crowdfunding was great because you can connect with all these people, you get a following and they help you build an audience. It’s not a big budget film, but you can build your own little audience and I thought “this is really cool, we can do this again”, and do it where I grew up and involve a lot of people and students who never get that opportunity. So pretty much at the end of the Broke tour, I said let’s go do it and use the same model. It’s really bloody exhausting, but it was really rewarding at the same time. I don’t know If I’d do it again, but you never say never.
I imagine the freedom it gives you, there’s no producers breathing down your neck.
Heath Davis: Yeah, I’m the producer, it’s hard because you don’t have a lot of money so you have to be creative and you gotta get investments and favours, write for this etc. there’s a lot of begging and borrowing and that sort of stuff, but you do get to make the film you want to make. If I’d gotten a bigger budget, I wouldn’t have made a film as good as this film. It’d tick all the boxes so I said no to that, because for this story it had to be what it needed to be.
It’s one of those things, sometimes you get a bigger budget but you don’t love the film. In the last bunch of years, I’ve met some famous filmmakers and I’ll be like hey I loved your film and they’ll be like Pfft, that wasn’t my film, because the bigger the project, the less control you have on it (unless you’re Christopher Nolan or something), and very often the film that comes out is not the film that the filmmaker wanted to make, so that’s where the commerce comes into it a little bit – making the films you want to make is very hard.
Yeah, because the film is loaded with a cast of great Australian character actors, such as Alan Dukes and Tiriel Mora, who I feel that Australian film industry really dropped the ball with by not casting him in like way more movies.
Heath Davis: He’s really got dramatic chops and he never gets the chance, a lot of Australian films are made for the marketplace and they use the same faces all the time, because they think it ticks a box for maybe a pre-sale internationally or it might help you get an audience because they’re familiar with them but Australian films are struggling for everybody.
Independent film is struggling generally, so stars or pseudo-stars, that power doesn’t work anymore and when you’re making a film on my level, you can just be truer and cast the right actor, because we don’t have a big budget, it doesn’t take a super amount of money to recoup that but that’s where those decisions of marketing and PR and distributors in the marketplace get involved creatively, thinking you need this person who might have more Instagram followers, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re a better actor.
Generally the case the celebrity doesn’t really equate to skill sets, but as the filmmaker on something like that you don’t have a lot of those decisions, a lot of filmmakers I know who have made decent budget films very rarely get a say in the casting.
What was your casting process like for this film?
Heath Davis: Similar to my first film, I didn’t use a casting agent but I knew the actors that I wanted mostly, so when I wrote the script, some of them were in my head, so I approached a couple of them early on saying that I’m writing this thing for you, you can hate it if you like.
The lead actor I had originally was different and then because it takes a long time to get a film made, writing it and getting it made, you have an ensemble of actors who’re all working actors, so getting their schedules to all fit is just like, oh my god that’s a nightmare.
Every film you make will never end up with the actors you cast from the beginning till you get to camera, people will fall off just for logistic reasons and that happened with the lead but what I do now is I always have a hit list of people I know who could do it. We didn’t have a lot of options either because it takes a real actor to get the pathos and the comedy, and I didn’t want to make a TV-kind of movie, it needed somebody with chops so Alan Dukes was probably the second in line, and luckily he was available.
The use of ‘chapters’ and the multiple subplots weaved throughout the narrative gives the film a very similar feel to that, appropriately so, of a book. Do you feel that you were influenced more by the works of literature or film or a combination of both?
Heath Davis: A combination of both because a film can’t be an incoherent mess, funnily enough the draft I had before I brought on the script editor was a bit more semi-lucid, so it was more episodic, but we thought that it might impact it commercially.
Using the quotes and the crazy subplots like a book, that was all motivated and thought about and deliberate, but not everybody understood it when it was on paper. I was like, yeah it’s a film, but it’s told in the classic 1st person of a novel and novels can go on tangents and have multiple subplots, but not everybody got that, but it was intentional.
The subplots come together, even if its either narratively or thematically.
Heath Davis: They do and the two worlds – I always wanted his personal world, the book world and his school world to join together, and films have to do that, but that’s definitely what we discussed in terms of the structure, make it feel more loose and real.
I noticed that in most movies about writers, it’s their inability to write which is the source of the central conflict and drama, but with Nick, it seems to be quite the opposite, writing is the only thing he seems to have a pretty good handle on.
Heath Davis: Yeah that’s right and that’s kind of the world I was at. They always tell you as a screenwriter, you know it all starts with words on a page, that’s the one thing you can create and control, whether that turns into a film being made or not that’s a whole other kettle of fish, but actually if you love writing, you do it because you love it, it’s part of what you do, and understanding yourself.
I say I write because its my spiritual sustenance, it’s what I do, I get it out and I feel like I’ve justified living that day, but no-one can stop you from doing that – they can stop you from getting an audience or getting published or doing that sorta stuff. You don’t always see that in film, so I was like, okay, the writing was never his problem, his book, the one that never gets up, is good, and even the publishers will agree to that, but is it commercially viable? No, so that wasn’t the problem.
It was everybody else that’s his problem and then his other problem is the way that he treats people at the same time, but that all manifests from that idea of not being heard and not being able to live that life that he wants to and should probably deserve to, but the world has changed and he hasn’t changed with it.
That was one of the interesting things you subverted with his character, is when he meets with his potential publishers and they propose some specific changes to his book, to switch it from being about zombies to being about vampires, Nick seems quite alright with the idea.
Heath Davis: Yeah, he wrote this intentionally to be relevant again and that actual scene actually happened to me. I’ve been in agencies with young and really powerful people and they think like that and when you’re younger and a filmmaker, you just want stuff made. I’ve been in that room saying “I can do that” and you just want to appease these people who have the power.
That’s the reality for most screenwriters, they jump through hoops to get something made, so I wanted to accurately depict that, not being like “I’m too good for all that sorta stuff”, because he’s been through that before and now he’s come to the decision of “I need to be relevant, I’ll just write some trashy thing that’ll sell” and he does that and it’s still not working, so he’s sold out and he’s not receiving the benefits of selling out.
Do you see much of yourself in this character?
Heath Davis: There’s the teacher element of course, but it’s the frustrated artist in the modern world moreso. The rest of it you build this character and build in comedy and other things for dramatic purposes, but definitely being someone with a voice with something to say but without a big platform to be heard or ignored.
Making independent films is hard and you’re up against so much, so it’s frustrating and you go “why am I doing this?”, when you have something good to say and it has nothing to do with talent or ability, it’s just got to do with the times, but I’m not the only one who feels like that, the whole industry is like that, but how do we change it?
Kids too, I taught this film class at university and I did this lecture recently and none of the students had seen an Australian film, and they didn’t even know what independent meant. We discussed Australian film and not one of them had seen an Australian film, they didn’t really know much about independent films, they just know what they know from American pop culture and I had no idea this is how bad it’d become.
I’ve been teaching them and trying to get them onto it in the class, but they’re just on their phones. The actual ignorance comes from the fact that it’s not in their face, they don’t know about it and they don’t seek things out like we used to, they seek YouTubers out and they want to be in it too, whether it be selfies or YouTube videos. They don’t just want to be viewers, but famous people and content creators and that’s the other element we’re dealing with.
I think one of the major problems of Netflix and Stan etc. is that they don’t quite cater to older films, it’s either their original content or anything from 2000’s onwards.
Heath Davis: It’s the same with music too, all the arts, it’s hard for any disciplinarian. The next film I’m writing is for an older generation because they’re the core cinema seekers here, but eventually they won’t be around, so the future is younger and we’re not making stuff here that interests them, and that’s a problem because they’re the future like it or not.
I know in the UK they’ve started having “British Film” in their curriculum and having British filmmakers to actually visit schools to talk to kids and show British content, so maybe that’s what we have to do here.
What do you think is going to happen to the state of literature and the printing of physical books within the next 10 years?
Heath Davis: Well I don’t know, I’ve got reporter friends that don’t work as journalists anymore and they’re smart and bright but they don’t have a paper, like the Herald to work for anymore.
Although, hard copies are selling more than downloads again and vinyl records are back. I’ve got a mate who works at JB Hifi [Australian music/movie retailer] and they told me that vinyls are coming back, but it’s a very discerning kind of demo as it’s probably people aged 40+, my generation, but I don’t see kids buying vinyl that often.
There’s a subset of millennials who purchase them, who are interested in their aesthetic qualities.
Heath Davis: I think they’ll stay around for a while because you’ll get that demo, but beyond that I don’t know, because you’ve got to engage the youth to get behind these things, whether it starts with getting films made for what they like or just educating them on classic films, because a lot of them have seen this film. I’ve had kids, some were in primary school, some high school kids who were in the film, others who just knew someone and came out and had seen it, and I’m like you’re probably going to get bored by this film, it’s about a teacher, but even my nieces were like, I really love this film, and I was like, what do you like about it?
It doesn’t have YouTubers or any of that stuff, but they said it’s real, there’s an emotion to it, which is startling to them because they’re not used to seeing that, they’re used to Marvel or games that don’t have any truth or emotion to them, so when they see this, it’s liberating them or at least getting them interested, which is interesting to see, it’s all about getting them to know about something, or packaging it in a way that they get the chance to.
I do think part of that positive response to the film is because you treat your characters seriously, even though there is comedy in the film.
Heath Davis: There’s life problems they identify with and there’s consequences just like real life, which they can connect to.
The female characters have their own thing going, they’re not just love interests or pawns.
Heath Davis: That’s right, I don’t know, if I had the answers it’d be a better world, but I do know what’s not working – what needs to happen and how you go about that is beyond anybody’s control. The idea of going to the cinema needs a shot in the arm, they need to be a bigger experience, because watching a comedy there plays way better than just watching from home, by yourself at home with your phone.
It’s an experience and that community is what going to the cinemas is all about, you know most of the people that go out to independent film are baby boomers, the 40+ group, and that’s not just this film, that’s the nature of the beast, it’s all about how you get kids to want to come out and watch something like this? Indie film has to do what Australian film needs to do, we’ve got to create an incentive for them.
Yeah because last year, I did an article about the current state of the Australian film industry, and I noticed that there’s a huge teenage audience, roughly about 15-18 year olds, who aren’t offered any content for them.
Heath Davis: Maybe it’s a history of getting them at school, but you can’t just force them to go watch something as a class, it’s got to be more engaging, make them feel involved and excited, and then maybe that’ll start to happen, but content has got to be made for them, they’re celebrity obsessed a little bit, but for independent films you can’t get these guys in.
One of the major Australian titles coming out next year is the new adaptation of Storm Boy, that has both Jai Courtney and Geoffrey Rush, which will be another one whose audience I feel will be dominated by the baby boomers.
Heath Davis: That’s right, they’ll drag their kids along too and it might get primary school aged kids, but they won’t understand what an Australian film is, they’ll just see it. It’s probably the high school kids that can understand and appreciate it, but it’s really hard to go get them to see stuff. They still love Romeo and Juliet when I play that at school.
The Baz Luhrmann one?
Heath Davis: The Luhrmann version yeah, and at school I used to play Romeo and Juliet and 10 Things I Hate About You, they love that.
There was that nice boom in the 90’s where they were constantly adapting Shakespearean stories for contemporary audiences.
Heath Davis: 10 Things I Hate About You is an old movie now, it’s over 10-15 years old now, but they still love it. There’s something about it, and maybe it’s something we need to do again, they’re the future but we’re not getting them to watch these sorts of movies and as soon as they start wanting to watch these films, everybody else will start catering to them. It’s a tough one, but I love making movies, I like going to go watch new movies, so it’s not just about my film, it’s about keeping the film industry going.
Film Inquiry would like to thank Heath Davis for speaking with us.
Book Week will be released in Australian cinemas November 29, information about screenings and international distribution can be found here.
Does content like this matter to you?
Become a Member and support film journalism. Unlock access to all of Film Inquiry`s great articles. Join a community of like-minded readers who are passionate about cinema - get access to our private members Network, give back to independent filmmakers, and more.