Veteran director accuses A Place To Call Home writer Bevan Lee of being part of ‘the sickness that prevails’

Wow. Michael Thornhill seems to be way off the mark here. Surely the opinions of a TV show’s creator and producer are equally, or possibly more important, than those of the set-up director.

Bevan Lee has an enormous number of successes behind him. He has a strong view of how one of his shows should look and feel. It would be disrespectful to him (not to mention potential commercial suicide) if his views were not taken into account.

Any producer worth their salt, will form a close relationship with the director. Part of that relationship is exactly what Bevan did. In his case however, he was also the creator. His vision is both justified and essential.

I wonder if the director of A Place to Call Home has the same complaint. Somehow, I doubt it.

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This speaks more of the directors’ POV than of a writer and producer’s failings. Of course the creator of a series will have that discussion with a producer. That is wholly organic. The director/s have to ask the Q, ‘OK, here is the brief, if I want to be a part of this project, how can I grab the baton and run my leg of this race to the best of my ability.’

Auteur theory is dead. That doesn’t mean there cannot be leadership. There must be leadership and management but there must also be collaboration and respect for the concept developers.

Film doesn’t just exist on set. It is pre, shooting and post. Each step of the process is story-telling.

In conclusion, the writer, the creator of the project is wholly within their rights to have that discussion and especially in the TV medium.

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I have been watching A Place To Call Home with considerable interest.
There is little doubt that it will prove to be popular with audiences, its simplistic voyeurism and its period setting ( not always accurate) will assure that, if nothing else.

In my opinion it is not great drama and it is hardly an epic, but it has the ingredients of a successful soap opera and it promises to satisfy those who want to be entertained by gossip and voyeurism and don’t necessarily wish to be taxed intellectually.

Mr Thornhill talks about a “sickness that prevails” and not only does he have a right to his opinion, he most certainly has the credentials to back them up.

I believe that there is at least one other sickness that prevails in the Australian TV/Film drama worlds, and that is the almost total absence of any dramatic or theatrical consideration in the production and in the direction of creative work.
Though each likes to think it is possible, the final print cannot be driven entirely by the scriptwriter, the actors, the producer, the director, or the editor.

Books, however well written, fail to translate directly to films; dialogue, like music is simply an arrangement of notations on a page, actors are needed to bring the writing to life and directors are essential to realise the overall vision; but, directors must also understand the unseen force, the dramatic pulse that must eventually be felt by the audience, and this is the component so often missing in many TV and Film productions.

Too often there are scenes in which tensions appear from nowhere, where love is declared by a talking head and where anger is expressed by the actor being allowed to use more volume to deliver lines as simplistic as “I hate you.”

Characterisation is a process, the characters once formed must have life and driving forces beyond anything that can be found in the script or imagined by a director, and this is where and why collaboration is so vital.

So, what is the function of a producer? Do you know, in more than 40 years in the business, I have never been able to work that out, but I am convinced that they are important to the scheme somewhere.

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Thornhill’s rants are always entertaining.

I’m still laughing about a spray he gave nine years ago.

He’s the Ray Hadley of the local industry…

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Oddly, I thought that the producer hire the director and that director was meant to do the job they were hired for.

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Film is the Director’s medium and Television is the world of the Writer/Producer, they teach this during the first week of film school.

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Auteur theory is dead. Or was that god? One and the same on a film set I guess…

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@Graeme Watson

Do they? well, as it happens, it is a part truth, but it is one of the things which has retarded film making and television in our country and film making in particular.

Many film directors (often out of work television directors) get carried away with the language of film and the technicalities of cinematography and forget that they have a story to tell and a cast of actors, each one with a character framework and back story, and most often overlooked, a setting and a number of bit part players and extras. All are part of the process and all contribute to the final result.

Theatre (film is theatre) is a collaborative process and only when this occurs, does a performance in film, theatre or television have a chance of working well. So often the two or three stars are shot to buggery whilst the landscape and the rest of the cast gets to say whatever is written for them.

There seems to be almost an obsession with getting the words exactly as they were written, instead of rehearsing a scene, the actors are are too frequently asked to run the lines whilst someone checks the book . To hell with motivation and emotional charge or poetic expression, just get those words in synch with the script, which may or may not be either good or appropriate.

In the theatre, the words of Shakespeare or Ibsen or Tennessee Williams are often cut or rearranged, but not the words of Fred Bloggs in film or television Oh no, they must be verbatim.

This artistic privilege must not be abused of course, major re writing or re-characterisation is a drastic measure reserved for appalling scripts, which are thankfully uncommon, but they do happen along from time to time.

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Do they? well, as it happens, it is a part truth, but it is one of the things which has retarded film making and television in our country and film making in particular.

Many film directors (often out of work television directors) get carried away with the language of film and the technicalities of cinematography and forget that they have a story to tell and a cast of actors, each one with a character framework and back story, and most often overlooked, a setting and a number of bit part players and extras. All are part of the process and all contribute to the final result.

Theatre (film is theatre) is a collaborative process and only when this occurs, does a performance in film, theatre or television have a chance of working well. So often the two or three stars are shot to buggery whilst the rest of the cast gets to say whatever is written for them.

There seems to be almost an obsession with getting the words exactly as they were written, instead of rehearsing a scene, the actors are are too frequently asked to run the lines whilst someone checks the book . To hell with motivation and emotional charge or poetic expression, just get those words in synch with the script, which may or may not be either good or appropriate.

In the theatre, the words of Shakespeare or Ibsen or Tennessee Williams are often cut or rearranged, but not the words of Fred Bloggs in film or television Oh no, they must be verbatim.

This artistic privilege must not be abused of course, major re writing or re-characterisation is a drastic measure reserved for appalling scripts, which are thankfully common, but they do happen along from time to time.

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The director has to be able to do their job, which is transforming the ideas of the show into reality. Every new production has a ‘show and tell’ where people can bring in references and influences. The key point is collaboration. Of course a series creator can have input. Lee’s quote that ends this article is just fine. It’s his quote from The Age that Thornhill was reacting to, that implies the decision about the colour palette was made before the director was hired.

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@Carl

Yes, I find your view a balanced one in this case (though the word “their” forced to fill the hole left by the absence of a common gender always grates on me) and I consider the job of the director to be the dominant one of the creative pool.

What has happened in the case of A Place to Call Home? I can’t help feeling that a hero or guru seems to have been anointed on the strength of having written a fair to middling series which became (not unlike many bad novels) enormously popular with a large number of people.

[quote] “A Place To Call Home is my project, creation and vision, but it’s also a collaborative relationship with the director. I find it very odd that Michael would say the creator of the series can’t form a bond with the director and discuss things like the colour palette.” [unquote]

This helical statement is rather like the iron fist in the velvet gauntlet.
A writer must be well acquainted with the process of editing, a process which can demand the excision of a much loved word, phrase or even an entire scene.

A collaborative process is one which precludes such ideas as “My project, creation and vision” There is always ( at least there should always be) respect, integrity and honest intent, but a theatrical work in progress is a very different project from say a corporate or an engineering one.

It is difficult to understand from the comments presented in the article whether the colour palette was a discussion or a fait accompli, but right or wrong, it does seem to me that the latter is the most likely.

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