Brake Fluid

When I got to Melbourne University in 1963, Brian Davies had already dropped out and begun what eventually became a stellar career, first in marketing and then in business management. Before his untimely early death at the age of 49, he was CEO of the largest pharmaceutical company in Australia, the Adelaide-based F. H. Faulding. His output, made between the early and the late ’60s, consisted of two medium length films, Pudding Thieves (1967) and Brake Fluid (1971), and two shorts, Una Filma Di (1964) and Watt’s Last Voyage (1965).

When I joined the Melbourne University Film Society (MUFS), Brian, Bob Garlick and Bert Deling were making films using the meagre resources of MUFS and, in Bob and Bert’s case, the Student Union. Bob and Bert’s films were never finished, but Brian hung on in and eventually completed Pudding Thieves. Throughout the long production and shooting time, Brian was held in considerable awe by the MUFS crowd. Rightly so too. He infrequently wrote about film, but what he did write in such places as Film Journal (which for a time he also edited), Annotations on Film and UFG/Melbourne Film Bulletin was remarkably insightful and displayed an understanding of what filmmakers do far greater than most. 

Pudding Thieves took years to complete, and the only people who got paid were those supplying the raw film stock (its price sky high because it was the subject of a tariff) and the lab which processed the film. Pudding Thieves had one huge public screening at the Palais Theatre in St Kilda, the proceeds of which probably returned a lot of its cost. 

Notwithstanding all sorts of flourishes (Brian once claimed that the film was like one of those fish that live in the mouths of bigger fish, the bigger fish being François Truffaut’s Jules et Jim [Jules and Jim, 1962]) and some nods to other sources like the mention of Colin McInnes’ novel Absolute Beginners, Brian was very unsatisfied with the film. Scenes had been written in fits and starts and both his choice and direction of actors left a lot to be desired. George Tibbitts, who also wrote the music, had a stentorian and quite unnatural voice, which was not aided by all the scenes being recorded without sound and later dubbed in. 

Following the film’s screenings in Melbourne and Sydney, Brian sought to rectify at least one major deficiency and threw himself into a round of theatre productions at Melbourne University and, towards the end of the ’60s, at La Mama Theatre. He wanted to work with actors, and one development of that was via a class he convened with Graeme Blundell and Alan Finney. It led to serious work being done with new Australian, and some American, writers by a group which eventually evolved into the Australian Performing Group and took up residence at the Pram Factory. Particularly memorable at La Mama of the shows Brian did was a production of Jack Hibberd’s Who?, a medium length Beckett and Pinter influenced three hander. On occasion the actors Lindsay Smith, Jon Hawkes and Martin Phelan would spin out with some hugely comic improvisations.

At this time Brian wrote an outline for another movie. He called it The Promethean and presumably intended his lead character to be ‘daringly original or creative.’ To this outline John Romeril wrote some scenes and later the credits acknowledged John Duigan’s on-the-spot improvisatory abilities by adding his name. Late in the piece, Jack Hibberd saw an early rough cut and suggested the film be titled Brake Fluid. 

A further unacknowledged script contribution came from Peter Carmody in the scenes which open the film at which he tells three stories, the third of which is barely started before the soundtrack picks up a musical note and launches into the story of Thomas, the man who can declare his love publicly but who is a shambling, timid mess in private.

Like Pudding Thieves before it, the only people who got paid were those who sold the film stock and worked at the processing lab. While I never saw the ‘script’, I did some running around to set up a bank account to pay the bills (the total spend was, as I recall, about $1800). I organised the people to turn up for group scenes and found a bloke who hired us a contraption you could use to have someone appear to be hanging by a noose.

Brake Fluid got most of its budget back when it won the fiction prize in the competition for Australian films at the Sydney Film Festival – a prize not without some controversy. Jerzy Skolimowski, one of the judges, is alleged to have been either a bully or somewhat underhanded towards his fellow arbiters…or both. It beat Peter Weir’s Homesdale and Michael Thornhill’s The Machine Gun (both 1971) and the announcement was met with some booing.

While Brian made no more films after Brake Fluid, his choice for the lead actor, John Duigan, went on to make a career in the business. Nigel Buesst photographed some of the scenes in Brake Fluid and shortly after cast Duigan in the lead for his own micro-budget film Bonjour Balwyn (1971). From there on Duigan made a couple of dozen features and films for television, won two AACTA Awards for The Year My Voice Broke (1987) and Flirting (1991) and continues to make films to this day. 

When I contacted Duigan asking for his memories about making Brake Fluid, he responded thus: 

I think Brian cast me after seeing me acting in Melbourne University Student Theatre [MUST] productions and at La Mama at the time the Australian Performing Group was forming. I was the youngest member of the APG ensemble that went across to the Perth Festival in around 1970. He may also have seen me in the title roles of Ubu Roi, and Jack Hibberd’s play Klag, in both of which I played domineering, arrogant characters which may have given him the idea that I could play a Director! Bert Deling also cast me as one in Dalmas [1973]. While I enjoyed films and actively sought out European productions by the likes of Truffaut, Antonioni, Fellini, Bergman, Louis Malle, Tony Richardson etc, my interests then were more in writing and acting – I wrote and directed street theatre plays for MUST, and was already at work on a novel, Badge, which was published by Macmillans a couple of years later. 

As I remember, films like Brake Fluid and Nigel Buest’s Bonjour Balwyn were mainly shot on weekends and occasional evenings, so I fitted them in around my theatre and academic work. Because of their no-budget strictures, I would often be given scenes – sometimes with big lumps of dialogue – half an hour before they would be shot, so I’d be busy trying to learn and execute the material and took little notice of what Bryan and Nigel were doing with the camera. But the experience in retrospect planted a seed. Afterwards I started watching films differently, analysing how they were structured, how directors chose to cover scenes, and the differences between film and theatre acting. So the experience developed a growing interest in the possibilities of the medium as an alternative focus to theatre.¹

I asked Duigan for any insight he was given about the character he was going to play:

As for the subject matter, the film remains enigmatic, as it was to me at the time. Brian would tell me it concerned a guy who could only declare his love in public. Perhaps he had a somewhat broader canvas in mind, that publicly impressive or authoritarian personalities often harbour confused or repressed emotional ones. However, in the pell-mell of rapid film making, I don’t recall him voicing this. Perhaps, like some film makers, he thought it unnecessary that his actors were privy to his wider intentions. Brian himself was an exuberant and charming individual, and his infectious positivity swept us all along with him.

Very beneficial when no-one is getting paid. Busy performing the scenes as they unfolded – I don’t remember there being any comprehensive script – I assumed his vision would become more apparent in the finished film. I think I may have been credited, with Brian and John Romeril, as co-writer. My contribution there was mainly, on set, to re-express some dialogue to better suit my or others’ delivery.²

Brian made his films in the days when you had to do it on your own. Phillip Adams was doing something similar away from Melbourne University with Jack and Jill: A Postscript (1970). Adams went on to become a powerhouse of Australian production, moving between making films and running the bureaucracies that from the late Gorton years were put in place to develop and support an industry. Brian walked away from it all.

Brake Fluid (1971 Australia 51 mins)

Prod Co: Monolithic Movies Production: Geoff Gardner Dir: Brian Davies Scr: Brian Davies, John Duigan, John Romeril, Peter Carmody

Cast: John Duigan, Margaret Jacobs, Alan Finney, Peter Carmody, Graeme Blundell

Endnotes