Opinion

Q&A with screenwriter Craig Pearce

Craig Pearce, screenwriter for The Great Gatsby, spoke to Encore about working with Baz and writing for 3D.
Craig-Pearce

How did you get into script writing?

I always loved stories and acting and dressing up and being anything but myself and I never realised that was not something other people did. After leaving high school, I did a three year acting course at NIDA but always thought I would one day write. Baz was a good friend and he had a theatre company. He wanted to extend a 20 minute version of Strictly Ballroom. We got it to 45 minutes then he was approached by producers to turn it into a feature film. I started helping him out on the film while they were looking for a real writer but eventually Baz had to go to the producers and say, “There’s this guy who’s my best friend and he is a really good writer”. To the producers’ credit, they believed in Baz so we had two weeks to re-write it.

Do actors make better writers?

Not necessarily but I think to be able to write dramatically, you need to understand the process actors go through. Most writers understand the rehearsal process. They go hand-in-glove.

What sort of stories should Australian cinema be telling to be a commercial success?

The short answer is good ones – not that there aren’t any, but we need more good ones. Snowtown covered such a horrific subject matter but I love that film because it’s so well told. But less members of the general public will go to see Snowtown over The Sapphires. We have to embrace the fact that Shine, The Sapphires and Mao’s Last Dancer will be the films to attract audiences and we shouldn’t be ashamed of that. It is show business. What we don’t want to do is use the business part of show business to make repetitive crap.

Would you discount a story that doesn’t have an audience behind it?

What I’ve written with Baz has been Baz asking me to join him on a journey. I can’t talk about how Baz makes those decisions. But I can talk about the process when we do work. To be honest, we don’t think about the audience. We do, but once you say, “It’s a world within the Moulin Rouge based on modern music, that could be entertaining”, you don’t think “is the audience going to like this decision?” In fact, it’s almost the opposite. You think “how personal can you make it so we love it?’ With Shakespeare, we wanted to open it to a new audience. We’d joke we were the butchers of the Bard. But we knew why we were making it; for the love of Shakespeare.

How did you factor in 3D when writing for The Great Gatsby?

When we were imagining some sequences, thinking visually led us to some discoveries that would be inspired by the 3D.

The way Baz uses 3D is not in a special effects kind of way. It’s about how 3D can make you feel like you’re watching a stage play while standing next to some of the greatest actors in the world.

Craig Pearce is a screenwriter whose credits include Strictly Ballroom, Moulin Rouge!, Australia and The Great Gatsby.

Encore Issue 16This story first appeared in the weekly edition of Encore available for iPad and Android tablets. Visit encore.com.au for a preview of the app or click below to download.

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