“I Can’t Imagine How Lucky We’ve Been To End Up With Such Great Stories,” Interview With Richard Todd, Director Of DYING TO LIVE

Coming off the controversial but conversation starting Frackman, Margaret River-based Australian director Richard Todd has returned with his second feature length documentary, Dying to Live. The film, which looks at the state of organ and tissue donor registration in Australia, hopes to bring the light the urgency and necessity for people (not just in Australia) to become organ donors, as even though 150,000 Australians die every year, only 1/3 of the population are actually signed up to donate.

The film follows six waiting recipients; Kate, a 29-year old tattoo model who suffers from PRES Syndrome and has waited several years for a kidney and pancreas transplant, bikie Peter “Wood” Woody and 18 month-year old Levi who both need kidney transplants (Levi receives one from his parents, the single case of living donors being used in the film). Holly, who has lived with cystic fibrosis all her life, waits for a double lung donation, Tony is a cancer survivor who requires a new liver and lastly there’s Henry, an elderly Aboriginal painter who lives up in the Kimberley, wishes for a cornea transplant so he can return to love of painting. Todd’s documentary gently observes the trials and tribulations that are associated with being on the organ donation list, bringing to light the joy and catharsis that can come when an eventual donation arrives.

Whilst he’s currently touring the film around Australia after a prolific festival run, I had the opportunity to talk with Richard Todd about the difficult process of making the documentary, the importance of building a rapport with your subjects and the amount of crazy coincidences that occurred during filming that he calls ‘The Zaidee Effect’.

Alex Lines for Film Inquiry: Off the heels of the Southern Australian premiere, and about to start the Brisbane Film Festival screening, how has the festival circuit been treating you?

Richard Todd: Oh it’s been amazing. We had the world premiere at Sydney Film Festival, then we did Melbourne, I mean even being invited to those festivals was Disneyland for us and then on top of that we’ve had CinefestOZ (at my home territory in Margaret River), Adelaide, Brisbane and Byron Bay, so it’s been an amazing intro for the doco.

The film is quite confronting, both in what we learn, who we meet and who we get to meet, but also confronting in a sense that the film forces the audience to think about why they, and those around them, haven’t become organ donors. Have you felt this response from the different audiences that you’ve shown the film too?

Richard Todd: Yeah definitely. We’ve had pretty good Q&A panels at every festival screening, and a big part of that has been the response from the audience, so we’ve literally had people sign up online during the Q&A’s and it’s been beautiful. During them we’ve had people say “Hey, thanks for the beautiful film, I’ve just registered”, so that’s been quite an incredible experience to see the reaction and according to Donate Life yesterday, with the big controversy over the Jesus ad, they had 77 people sign up yesterday and I don’t know if that’s a world record for them, but I’m sure they don’t get 77 people signing up every day, especially the day that Prince Harry shows up and announces he’s gonna have a kid.

So to take it back a bit, how did you initially get involved with this project?

Richard Todd: I saw a story on the Today show, there was a guy called Alan Turner and he was talking about the fact that he had lost his daughter quite unexpectedly from a brain aneurysm, Zaidee, and at that stage she was seven years old, and I had a daughter kicking at the same age, so I was really drawn to that story because of empathy and because of my daughter of seven, at the cutest and most puppy-dog stage of her life, can’t get any cuter, and I was thinking about losing her.

The fascinating thing about the story was that Alan Turner and his wife Kim had spoken to their kids, Zaidee and Jaz about organ donation, thinking about if they ever went, the kids were aware that they wanted to donate their organs, and then this incredibly sad situation about losing Zaidee occurred, but at the day of that conversation, Zaidee had said that she wanted to donate her organs. So here’s this seven-year-old that had told her parents she wanted to donate, so when she passed away, they did, so that motivated me to make the film.

The other thing that occurred during that same conversation is that there was a few stats about how 80% of Australians would donate when asked, but only about 34% of them were on the organ donor registry list, so when I listen to that stat I went ‘Oh my god!’ how could that be in this amazing country of Australia, that there’s this massive inconsistency, so I thought that it would make a great doco, because of the stakes and emotions involved. I really felt in my heart, like Frackman, we could make a difference by using the documentary as a tool, so I woke up that morning after watching that Today show and decided that’s the next doco.

Being your second film after Frackman, how do you feel you’ve developed as a filmmaker?

Richard Todd: That’s a good question actually, I think that I learnt so much with the Frackman process because that was nearly 500 hours of filmmaking done over five years, with over a year in the edit suite – I never went to film school, and after 20 years of filmmaking, I learnt more on Frackman than I’ve ever learnt, so it was fabulous going into this one with a different approach to even how we would film, when we would film, how much we would film and then the way we storyboarded and took it into the edit.

Then there was also the chance to work with Lawrie Silvestrin, who I’ve been trying to work with for ten years, he was the initial first pick for Frackman, and the timing didn’t work out so it was amazing to work with probably the best doco editor in Australia, according to AACTA last year, as he won the golden statue for it! [Best Editor for Whiteley] He’s such a hard worker and a great guy so the process in the edit was so different then the one for Frackman.

Because I imagine there must be quite an anxiety in a documentary like this, because all of the factors, the waiting, the surgery, possible rejection, is all so unpredictable. How did you deal with that level of constant unpredictability throughout the three year shooting period?

Richard Todd: Oh look, that was the most challenging side, at least with Frackman, when Dayne Pratzky called me, I got on a plane and headed over and we’d just roll, so with this one, the not knowing was really tricky logistically, so our production manager Sandy who was based over in the Gold Coast, she literally had to find a crew, not only one crew, but several crews in four states, as we were shooting across Western Australia, Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria, so she had a shortlist of probably about three or four DP’s and soundies who were available and prepared and available to wake up at 3 or 4 or 5 am and get to a hospital ASAP whilst I tried to hop on a plane to get there myself.

Logistically it was really tricky and also you needed those moments, the phone calls and the preparation, the anxiety and how the recipient was feeling, whilst trying to cover a story of a donor family and then finding out that the hospital was trying to negotiate access for us because they trusted us, because even that access of the hospital took 2 years, to try and access all of the potential hospitals to shoot in, and to actually trust us that if the moment comes, to let you know, if the family is willing and if the transplant coordinator is willing etc. That side of it was a logistical nightmare, but I will say that we had, you can call it luck, you can call it coincidence, Alan Turner would say that it was Zaidee pulling the strings, but we had the most insane amount of serendipity when it came to timing. I’ll give you a couple of quick examples.

Holly, our lung transplant recipient, had a boyfriend in Margaret River and I’m in Margaret River too, and I was about to drive up to Perth to fly over to do a story on Alan Turner and Kate, who is a kidney and pancreas recipient, so I’ve got my full kit because I’m flying out at 6am to film them the following day, it’s about 4:15 am or some ridiculous time in the morning, I get a text when I turn my phone on from Holly that says “I’m getting the transplant, drive up with my boyfriend because I’m about to jump in an ambulance”, so I’m getting dressed as I’m reading this text, I jump in my car, race to Fiona Stanley Hospital, and arrive just as the ambulance gets there. What are the chances of that, me being in Perth, having my kit and getting that text message all at the same time?

The second one is that I’m at the Gold Coast, with my kids and my wife for a family holiday and I get a phone call from a Brisbane PA who tells me that Tony is about to get his liver transplant, where are you? and I’m like, I’m at the Gold Coast, so I jump in the car, and from Brisbane, because I didn’t have my kit this time, rang my DP that I used for Frackman who lives in there, and bang, 40 minutes later, we’re there filming Tony right before his liver transplant. The whole of Australia, there’s 6 characters and twice I happen to be there at the right time.

I imagine that luck has to play so much into it, especially in regards to the footage you captured at the end.

Richard Todd: Oh my god, well without spoiling the ending, as you know that was a one in a million as a filmmaker and I wasn’t even there, I was flying over from New Zealand when that happened, I put it in the hands of Ian Batt and Glenn Martin, my soundie that I’ve used forever in WA, if I’m not filming it or doing the sound, Glenn is my go-to soundie. Ian I worked with on the Schapelle Corby doco for some time, so I rang him up and said I can’t do this, are you able to do it, and in fact it’s funny because we thought that it was gonna be some footage of the honour ceremony till that happened, and again, talking about Zaidee pulling the strings – how did that happen?

We had a Q +A in Byron Bay and somebody asked me whether we set that up and I asked them “Did it look set up?” because I was watching it and it didn’t look set up to me, no way, it was just pure coincidence. Thank god the DP was recording, because as it was all happening, I’m going to the sound guy “Did he have the camera on?” and he’s telling me, mate, it happened right in front of us, so I couldn’t wait to see it. When I saw the rushes in the edit for the first time, my editor and I were crying our eyes out going Oh my god, that’s the ending.

You couldn’t fake the emotion that you see in that scene.

Richard Todd: Exactly, I was quite surprised, but people can get quite cynical about filmmaking. We’ve been asked that question twice about if we organised it, but we can’t, it’s illegal for a start, we wouldn’t do it, it happened, we were there and Holly didn’t know. For it to happen so naturally and beautifully in front of the camera was for me – I may never get that opportunity again.

The level of access you got into these people’s lives is incredibly intimate, what was the process in establishing a rapport with these people?

Richard Todd: I remember going to this documentary talk at a conference, it was really controversial, as it was Dennis O’Rourke, the director of The Good Woman of Bangkok [a documentary about a Thai prostitute], and he’s like a 60 year-old film director and it’s almost like that typical horrible kind of scenario of an old guy going to Thailand, but it wasn’t about that, he made this beautiful documentary about actually falling in love with her.

He did this talk at this conference and that changed my whole thinking about doco making. He spoke on this panel with these two people from the now-defunct AFC (Australian Film Commission), and they were talking about the ten best things you have to do to make the perfect doco, so they rolled out their ten points about how you need a great star or a storyline or a protagonist, all the film 101 stuff. O’Rourke said what a crock of shit, I need to have a rapport with an amazing central character and that’s the essence of my documentary telling. I sat there and went that’s the only thing I know how to do because I never went to film school, it’s about finding that relationship, that friendship and that trust, so that I get that type of access that other people can’t get.

There are great storytellers and great camera people etc. but I don’t think everyone can get the rapport for the access and I thought you know, if that’s what I’m gonna hang my hat on, which I felt even then as a non-film school kid that was having a crack at it, great, that’s inspired me to know that I’m on the right path. Definitely with this one, definitely with Frackman and definitely with every doco I make, I have to have a rapport with the characters. That’s actually more important than anything when making the doco, hopefully they’re trusting me and actually liking me and vice-versa, if you’ve got that relationship, then you’ve seen the moments we’ve managed to get.

Even with Dayne back with Frackman, same story, I needed that trust with him. You know it wavers, it goes up and down, you’re on such an emotional journey with people, you do argue and disagree at times, but the nice thing is, at the end of it, you hope that you still are really good friends and you’ve honoured that trust within the film.

The lovely thing with this one, with having multiple characters instead of just Dayne, the six-seven characters have all seen the film now, they’ve been to the festivals, and it’s lovely for them to see it and say that not only have you done a great job with the film but you’ve really honoured the portrayal of my life and my situation.

That trust has paid off essentially.

Richard Todd: Totally and you don’t know that until they see the final cut.

Because as the documentary entails, there’s hundreds of people on the transplant list, so what was the process for finding the different subjects for the film?

Richard Todd: I thought it was going to be really easy, went to straight to Donate Life, the Organ and Tissue authority, which are the State and Federal bodies, and I thought great, I’ll tell them what my plan is, that the motivation for the doco is to help their cause, which is to get people to sign up and have the conversation.

I thought it would be as easy as them telling me, yeah we’ve got these amazing people, but then they went nope, due to confidentially we can’t introduce you to anyone. I was like Oh my god, all of a sudden my story was looking pretty miserable after I’d already gotten really excited about it, but then we had to get pretty entrepreneurial about how we’d tackle it. I spoke to our local Margaret River Times editor, Warren Hately, who’s an old mate and said, look, can we do a story about where Frackman eventually landed and how much affect it had on the conversation in Australia but more importantly – I’m not trying to blow the trumpet on that one – but I want to segue into asking anyone in the district whether they’re on the organ transplant waiting list.

He put the ad in and we found Woody through that, also a couple of months later Holly, who was visiting her boyfriend down in Margaret River, saw that newspaper article and rang me up and asked if we were still looking for people. I had already connected with Alan Turner, I spoke to him and explained that Donate Life can’t legally introduce me to anyone and I asked if he could help me in that regards. He put up a Facebook post out through the Zaidee foundation, and then we found Kate through that, Alice and Levi we found through Al and then slowly and surely, through our relationship with the hospitals and the staff etc. we eventually found Tony’s story in Brisbane and The Lion’s Eye Institute helped with finding Henry’s story with the cornea transplant up in the remote Kimberley.

So they rolled out in very different ways and different times over the three years and they were all unique in the way we met them. Incredibly we thought that we may need 20 stories to end up with 6, but we started with 10 characters and eight of them are in the film, so again, it just felt like Zaidee must’ve been pulling the strings on that one, because I couldn’t imagine when it came to casting, how lucky we’ve been to end up with such great stories and great people, and getting back to that rapport, I feel like these people could be at my dinner table.

There’s a definite sense of luck in how most of these stories, within the context of the documentary, end on a good note.

Richard Todd: That was the total unknown at the beginning, we were like going shit, are we going to get transplants? Because you’ve got Kate, who’s been waiting for 7 years, so you’d think a couple years of filming she’d get one, but potentially you’ve got six characters that don’t get transplants at all.

That was the other real factor that we had no idea about, so when we got this unexpected surprise early on with Holly, that was the first one, she wasn’t expected to have one for at least 6-12 months, and then bang, I’m in Perth, got that phone call, I hadn’t even organised access for the hospital for Holly, because I was sure Kate on the other side, who had already been waiting 4 years at that stage, she was the one that’s gonna get done, so I was dealing with Victorian hospitals and thinking that was gonna happen first.

Woody, as he needed a third kidney transplant, was saying to me that he didn’t think he’d get the transplant anyway, so I wasn’t even worrying about trying to get access to Fiona Stanley in WA [where Woody’s surgery occurred] at that stage, and bang, I got that phone call and they were a great hospital to deal with, there was a bit of mucking around, I couldn’t get instant access but they, at 4:30am, did their best to get me in there as soon as they could.

Through your research, how does Australia’s organ/tissue donation rates compare to other Western countries?

Richard Todd: Well, I mean there’s stats and statements that in terms of developed Western countries, we lag behind. The interesting thing I got into the research is that we’re one of the ground-breakers with success rates of the actual transplant, which skews the figures a little bit, but we’re right up there with the leading countries in the world, maybe one of the best in research and how we go about it.

All of that aside, when we started the film we were at about 22 in the world, we’ve moved up the ladder to about 17 or 18 since then, I guess the biggest issue is just that massive disparity between people saying they want to, which is at 80% and then the actual 34% that sign up. I think that’s why we’re almost justified in saying this is not good enough.

The tricky part is that I was talking to Chris Thomas, from Transplant Australia, who does an amazing job of promoting organ donation and they have like a transplant-linking site (or a lack of better explanation of it). He was talking about how I shouldn’t be saying this sort of stuff, we’ve doubled organ transplants, numbers since 2009 have risen etc. but I replied yes, that’s great that’s it’s all moving forward in a positive way, kudos to organisations like his, Donate Life and the Organ/Tissue Authority, but seriously as a media/doco maker, I still see this disparity and go, wait a second, all of that aside, if you tell me 8/10 Aussies say they want to donate, but that same number aren’t actually on the list, then something is wrong, and we’ve got to talk about that.

There’s something going wrong from our perspective, we don’t want to sensationalise, because we do realise that people are doing great in the sector. We are hoping with the film and the media campaign around it, that we can expedite the problem and get rid of it. I’ve just spent three years hanging out with Kate who’s been waiting seven years and she nearly died three times while making the film.

I was out with her mother for the Adelaide Film Festival last night, and people were coming up to her and just going if I could donate today I would, to take away Kate’s pain, your family’s pain, so that’s where it comes back to me having to be a little bit cynical, and just to go yes, I love the amount of work Australia does, we are good at a lot of things, but somehow we’re not signing up and hopefully this film can fix that.

Like you said at the start, hopefully this film is a step forward towards that change then.

Richard Todd: Well that’s right. We’re not there to complain, we want a solution, that’s the whole motivation. As you know, we don’t make these kind of long-form cinema 3-5 year projects, earning 30-40K a year to be working 70 hours a week, for some payola in the end, hopefully this has defined me as a filmmaker.

I look at my wife everyday and she goes why don’t you just be a plumber and earn a few more bucks an hour, so we have to feel good about it all, to think we’re making a difference and based on Frackman, God Made Them Blind and the whale shark doco I made, I haven’t made many films in 20 years because they take so bloody long. I’ve got to feel like, if I’m gonna take 3-5 years, there has to be a reason for me earning dishwasher wages and to able to look at the wife and family and say: this is an important film.

I do think it was all worth it, you’ve made an amazing film. I do have to admit – I did well up at the end.

Richard Todd: Yeah, I took a mate of mine who happen to be in Adelaide, he’s a creative director in quite a big firm, and I took him to the festival screening to come have a look at the film. Obviously I can’t watch the whole film anymore, so I watch the start and I come back for the ending, I came back this time and he was sitting next to Kate’s mom Lisa, who had flown over for the screening and was on the post-film Q&A panel, and he was just howling.

He said, mate, my shirt is wet from crying and I thought, that’s fantastic. It feels like the doco has done its job. I think that the post-film interactions have shown the beautiful side of how the doco has affected people and also seeing people sign up, it’s totally everything we hoped for, we’ve had people come up to us and say yup, give me the form, I wasn’t sure but now I am.

Film Inquiry would like to thank Richard Todd for taking the time to speak with us.

Dates and Ticket information for upcoming screenings of Dying to Live, as it currently tours Australia, can be found here.

For any Australians interested in becoming organ donors or would like more information regarding #HavetheChat, can register at DonateLife. Americans who are also interested can sign up here.