John B. Murray (back) with Elke Neidhardt and Bryon Williams, the leads in Libido: “The Husband”(1)

The Guild: A brief history

The Producers & Directors Guild of Australia was formed in 1968 in New South Wales by experienced practitioners in theatre (including dance), radio, film and television.

The Victorian chapter (hereinafter called the Guild in Victoria) quickly followed. Its founding members felt a sense of urgency to support the performing arts in what we knew was a critical stage of its continuing development and, hopefully, prosperity – so much so that in Victoria we were moved to act more autonomously than our status as a chapter suggested. We were rather jumpy on the blocks and cultivated this toey-ness in an era of philistinism in Australia. We were ready for a fight, rejecting the widely held fear of creative thinking and debate that a long period of colonization and conservative government had inculcated in our conformist society. The Guild in Sydney was more conservative and measured in its attempt to achieve the common goal.

The coming together

Our main concern at the time, while not neglecting other performing arts, was to pursue the clear sign of a film renaissance. We received a shot in the arm from a national, residential conference on the film industry staged by the Guild in Sydney, driven in the main by Roland Beckett, honorary secretary. Lord Ted Willis, a man respected for his political nous and knowledge of the arts and the film industry, was invited from London as key-note speaker. It was a timely initiative, one that helped us focus our activity and channel energy in the most effective way to overcome both political resistance and the lethargy and inertia that existed.

Soon after, two friends, Federal Member of Parliament Dr Barry Jones and advertising executive, columnist and filmmaker Phillip Adams, joined forces to become a decisive influence on the federal government’s thinking through Prime Minister John Gorton. Their views, while taking into account those of others, largely determined the manner in which film development would be encouraged and supported.

In a less formal manner, the revival of feature-film production and the industry was given a boost by The Naked Bunyip (1970), a film that investigated Australian attitudes to sex and censorship “In a funny sort of way”. It was conceived independently of the Guild in Victoria by Phillip Adams and me in early 1969. (See “The Genesis of The Naked Bunyip” by this author in the previous issue of Senses of Cinema.)

Stork

I took up the role of independent distributor-exhibitor immediately on finishing the film, and was able to overcome the barrier to distribution and exhibition created by the stranglehold of overseas majors since the late 1920s. The shutting out of local product had been the major cause of the decline in film production in Australia. When Tim Burstall completed his feature Stork (1971), from the play of the same name by David Williamson, well into The Naked Bunyip’s extended run, he decided to follow suit with the exhibition strategy I had devised. Stork’s initial release was successful and it was not long before Village-Roadshow offered to take up the program as national distributor and exhibitor. The Naked Bunyip and Stork generated much editorial coverage, building on a renewed interest in feature production engendered by the favourable response to earlier overseas productions shot in Australia, such as They’re a Weird Mob (Michael Powell, 1966) and Age of Consent (Powell, 1969). The time was ripe and, as a consequence, there was a dramatic change in the minds of the cinema-going community and a new note of confidence among Australian filmmakers.

The Guild in Victoria, of which I was then president, was a small body, requiring of prospective members major directorial or producer credits in narrative drama or documentary program material. In this way, we kept our organization lean and focused, and showed that we were to be taken seriously. Our regular dinner meetings, attended by about 15 core members – helped in part by the Green Room Club’s house reds – unleashed a fervour that created a battleground of ideas. These dearly-held, albeit sometimes only momentarily, concepts were often enforced by half-eaten bread rolls that flew across the table to finally leave their mark in the honorary secretary’s minutes. Noted guests of honour, such as Carl Foreman, Lord Ted Willis, Anthony Burgess and Robert Bolt – plus a procession of federal and state government ministers – even if teetotal, often staggered out at the midnight hour as if drunk. The somewhat Brueghelian scene I have painted might suggest an attitude contrary to our purpose. Yet, we knew that we had to clarify our thinking and find the best means to achieve success both at home and abroad.

The Challenge

Should we proceed with a continental style of filmmaking or encourage the development of a studio system? Should we promote unique Australian characteristics – kangaroos, koalas, beaches and bush fires – in order to forge a special place in markets dominated by Britain and America? What should we do about an Australian accent that could not be fathomed abroad and was usually dubbed? Would urban or rural aspects be more of interest to overseas audiences? Should we write from an Australian point-of-view and, if so, what was it? Who, actually, were we?

While these issues were difficult to resolve, the conviction grew that, whatever the content and style, the linch-pin was the skill of writing narrative drama for audio-visual media. We lacked this discipline in Australia since the opportunity to develop those skills had been denied for four decades. The Guild in Victoria determined to immediately devise some means to assist and encourage writers to adapt to the film medium.

At the same time – with the exception of the opportunities provided by our fledgling television industry – our actors had been confined to theatre and radio since the demise of our earlier-established film industry. There were few possibilities for them to hone their skills before a motion-picture camera. And it was a touchy subject, with many fine stage actors claiming that, once an actor, the medium didn’t matter; one could handle anything. In principle, of course, they were right. But their art was not always appropriately realised in front of an intimate motion-picture lens and with virtually one go at very short takes, where continuity of mood, expression and bodily movement were demanded for cutting and assembly purposes on film. When performing for the camera, unlike in a stage role, there is no long run during which one can develop a character.

The Initiative

The executive committee of the Guild decided that our objective should be realised through a workshop in which writers, theatre and film directors, actors and observers could participate, and that both theatre and film versions of the selected plays would be developed, refined and produced. At the same time, directors were encouraged to experiment within their own discipline, to try out methods and concepts which they might not otherwise have an opportunity to pursue.

The Environment

A major creative influence on all aspiring to work in film in the 1950s and ’60s was the Melbourne Film Festival founded by Erwin Rado. (See “The Genesis of The Naked Bunyip”.) It was the era when cinema auteurs became influential in Europe and some parts of Asia, and Erwin was quick to discern their ground-breaking approach to cinema, bringing much of their work to his Festival showcase in Melbourne.

Rado was the first influential figure to acknowledge the work of a local auteur: post-war immigrant Giorgio Mangiamele, whose films included The Brothers (1958) and The Spag (1961). Giorgio created his own Italian neo-realist cinema in Melbourne through the 1950s and ’60s right under our noses. He operated a photographic studio in Carlton to feed his family and support his passion for cinema as a tool for highlighting social injustice, exposing Australian xenophobia and as a means to express his sense of poetic and visual beauty. Giorgio’s feature, Clay (1965), was invited to participate at that year’s Cannes Film Festival. Yet, despite this recognition, Clay was ignored in Australia and Giorgio, who had almost entirely financed the film on his own, was forced to sell his photographic business and mortgage his home.

Within the same period, the National Institute of Dramatic Art was established in Sydney (1959), with its Jane Street Theatre ‘shopfront’ opening in 1966. In 1967, Betty Burstall triggered the theatrical New Wave in Carlton (Melbourne) with her innovative and intimate theatre, La Mama, following the style and purpose of its New York forerunner. 1970 saw the advent of a theatrical co-operative, The Pram Factory, close by. Similarly, in Sydney, the Nimrod Theatre pioneered an alternative stage.

Libido: “The Priest”

These sudden, dramatic initiatives acted as an extraordinary stimulus, not only encouraging experienced and aspiring playwrights in themselves, but the writing of original plays on Australian themes. This probing, searching, experimental theatre brought forth a new breed of Australian actor with a type of courage not previously evident. It was in part shown by the no-nonsense manner in which Elke Neidhardt, Robyn Nevin, Suzanne Brady (Ingleton) and Debbie Nankervis agreed to deal with topics still regarded as questionable, and to appear nude in Libido. In addition to the obvious challenge it posed for them, to do so was widely believed to harm an actress’ career opportunities. Male actors were not troubled by this factor, as there was no licence at all to show a man fully unclothed.

Of course, in retrospect, one can see that the 1960s – a decade that culminated in a belief that love and flower power would be our means of salvation – was a rare phenomenon for the Western World. There was an explosion in the untrammelled expression of new ideas, particularly styles and values in music: The Beatles, The Byrds, The Rolling Stones, Motown, Crosby Stills & Nash, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, The Beach Boys, The Eagles, The Band, The Grateful Dead, Joan Baez et al. Fashion design found new inspiration in Australia, and the established arts of painting, pottery and sculpture responded to a surge of interest from the general community. The Guild in Victoria picked up on this energy and boarded the train. We found a willing response from actors for our drama and film workshop initiative. All, including esteemed performers for whom agents usually claimed high fees, participated for minimum Actors Equity rates, with a moderate, additional fee to be paid if the project earned revenue. Film students of the Swinburne Institute of Technology (now incorporated in the Victorian College of the Arts) were inducted into our crews as part of their training. Directors and producers were drawn from Guild membership and contributed their services without charge. All of us appreciated the chance to develop our craft, and we enjoyed the wonderful sense of co-operation generated by this ‘off-Broadway’ theatre and film venture.

The Whole Workshop Concept

Christopher Muir, a member of the Guild in Victoria’s executive, and co-executive producer of Libido, explains more about the full initiative:

In mid-1971, the Victorian Chapter of the Guild received a significant response from Dr Jean Battersby, Executive Officer of the then newly-formed Australian Council for the Arts (now the Australia Council), to its appeal for assistance. She confirmed that the Council would contribute a total of $15,820 for the production and presentation of six 30-minute workshop films and their adaptation for stage performances. (A further contribution was made later.)

In response to press advertisements, 90 aspiring writers submitted scenarios based on the elastic theme ‘love’ as their starting point. Tim Burstall, Fred Schepisi, James Davern, John Murray, Oscar Whitbread, David Baker and Rod Kinnear were initially allocated director slots. As most of the submitted material proved impractical for production purposes, established writers such as Thomas Keneally, Craig McGregor, Luis Bayonas, Hal Porter and a then promising talent called David Williamson were invited to contribute 30-minute scripts to the enterprise. In this process, ‘love’ turned a touch darker, dived a little deeper: it became sex-drive, or libido. Directors – drawn from those previously named – were, by mutual agreement, chosen to work with the selected writers. They, like all involved members of the Guild, provided their services voluntarily.

By July 1972, five films at fine-cut, double-head stage were ready for screening and assessment.

Subsequently, in 1973, at the end of the workshop during which the screenplays were adapted for the theatre, George Fairfax (theatre director and executive member) supervised the mounting of the stage equivalents. The writers and stage directors were subjected to peer judgement in front of audiences – guests sometimes numbered close to two hundred in the St Martin’s Theatre auditorium.

Swinburne Film and TV Department students (who had helped on film production) attended, as well as media studies students from La Trobe University. Criticism was accepted with surprising grace; sometimes tempers flared, but Guild members – thanks to the group therapy nature of the infamous dinner meetings – were adept at pulling back from combustible situations.

After six winter Sunday presentations and seminars, it was clear that the Victorian Guild’s objectives had gained considerable credence. The aim to “establish a creditable reputation for the Victorian Guild with various government and commercial authorities along with the film, television and theatre professions” had been realised.

For this brief account, however, let us simply concentrate on the resulting four-part film, Libido.

Back to John Murray!

More about the Film

As the focus of the proposed films was to be Australia only – although Libido was later released in Europe – we put aside concerns about ways to reach international audiences and concentrated on communicating with Australian cinema-goers. Phillip Adams (executive producer) and I (producer and director) had gone through this exercise in 1968-9 after the box-office disappointment of Tim Burstall’s feature, 2000 Weeks, with which I had been associated. Nearly two years later, Adams and I concluded that our proposed feature could only safely be based on a topic close to many local hearts: we commissioned a treatment for a narrative drama featuring Australian rules football. After further thought, however, we still doubted our ability to overcome the lack of faith audiences showed in the talent of Australian filmmakers to create narrative drama films: this attitude was similar to the view Australians held prior to the advent of the Holden in the late 1940s, that we could not possibly produce a worthwhile motor car in this country. We reluctantly switched to a semi-fictional feature-documentary style for our survey on sex and censorship: The Naked Bunyip. (Director David Baker later chose a football theme for his feature, The Great MacArthy (1975), but it was only moderately successful.)

Libido: “The Husband”

The Workshop’s Film Topic

In 1969, sex – or, in the case of Libido, sex-drive – was not a subject openly discussed in our quite-relaxed-yet-somewhat-repressed society. Our heads had become divorced from our genitals. This gulf needed to be bridged and, as there appeared to be a growing desire in the community to do so, the Guild in Victoria resolved to pursue the topic in our workshop productions. It was a meaty subject that interested writers too, one they had not tackled in a specifically Australian context.

There are two episodes that deal openly with underlying psychological aspects of the sex-drive. First is “The Husband”, in which I took the subject a little further than writer Craig McGregor intended, revealing elements of paranoia in the male subconscious through the persona of a somewhat immature husband, a man made more vulnerable by his wife’s emancipation and growing sense of independence. (Germaine Greer’s book, The Female Eunuch, had just been released in Australia.)

Second is “The Priest”, in which Fred Schepisi and writer Thomas Keneally treated, with uncommon insight, the traumatic effects of church dogma and belief on the minds of a priest and a nun in love. This collaboration between director and writer also began a relationship that later resulted in Schepisi’s feature, The Devil’s Playground (1976).

Libido: “The Child”

For “The Child” and “The Family Man”, the sub-text was more implied than overt. In the episode written by Hal Porter (“The Child”), director Tim Burstall dealt sensitively – and in an impressive, sure-footed way – with a child’s inner emotions and the disturbance that sudden exposure to overt sexuality in an adult world could cause. With David Williamson’s story (“The Family Man”), director David Baker – always forthright and fearless – revealed an ugliness and contempt for women that sexual desire generated in certain men – those in whose minds the qualities of love and respect were not also developed.

While it is easily understood that a self-contained workshop could have freely taken up any subject, these were stories and treatments that I suggest would not have been revealed at that time by the light of a projector lamp if we had had to depend initially on commercial sources for funding and support. It was also not assured that the Commonwealth Censor would allow a visually frank and open work on our chosen topic to be exhibited.

The Decision to Exhibit Widely

While it had not been planned to release our short films to the public as a four-part portmanteau feature, during post-production we reviewed the possibility. We had to face the fact that a two-hour film of professional quality could not be finished without additional funds. I made contact with John Fraser of The Greater Union Organization (G.U.) and Rod Puskar of the associated B.E.F. (Film Distributors) Australia (B.E.F.), and set off for Sydney with my colleague, Burstall. We were determined to convince Fraser and Puskar that it was about time they invested in the undeniable future of the Australian feature film industry. We got them on a good day and left Sydney that night confident that they would participate.

Over the next few weeks, I completed a detailed budget. It showed a need for a further $36,000 cash component to take Libido to the commercial screen. A contract was negotiated with B.E.F. for which there was no precedent, I believe, as I am not aware of any Australian-based exhibitor or distributor previously investing in the production of a locally initiated feature film. We then required a production company and Guild Productions Pty Ltd was born under the Guild in Victoria’s banner. Within a very short time, the agreement was finalised between the Guild and MGM-B.E.F., the latter becoming an investor. The newly formed Australian Film Development Corporation contributed a Trust Deed and security documents.

For me, it was the beginning of a longish relationship with G.U. and B.E.F., during which time the film was completed, the marketing concept and style for Libido designed, and the feature promoted throughout Australia. Advertising and publicising a new film in the cinemas is commonplace today, but at that time Australian distributors and exhibitors had not had experience in assessing an unknown narrative drama, in drawing the strands of a film together to create an image and a strategy that would reach out and enthuse the cinema-going public. For more than 40 years, exhibitors had programmed the product of overseas parent majors, mirroring advertising and promotion patterns on titles for which the accompanying marketing components had been tried and tested overseas, then shipped here with the review print. And distributors in Australia had not been required to consider the wishes of the creators of films in the forming of their promotional plans.

For our part, having always enjoyed our independence as filmmakers, we had to recognise a distributor’s right to a final say on certain aspects. The association was rewarding and our separate organizations enjoyed their coming together on this new venture. There were some hiccups on contractual details as we ploughed new ground; we were, for instance, not enamoured of the film trailer produced by the distributor. It did not accurately reflect our motivation in dealing with the sex-drive of Australian characters and was designed to appeal to more prurient interests.

Overseas Release

Libido: “The Priest”

Libido was distributed in Europe by the London-based Anglo EMI Film Distributors Limited with moderate success. For one territory, we were faced with a decision a producer dreads: Anglo EMI advised that Spain had prohibited the film and would not reconsider a release unless “The Priest” was deleted in its entirety. Libido is a portmanteau film that I regarded as one work, having its own integrity. Nevertheless, in the interests of the film and our relationship with the distributor, I called Fred Schepisi to discuss the matter. He understood the dilemma and we reluctantly agreed that “The Priest” should be deleted for Roman Catholic Spain.

The film had been a slight problem for one Protestant country, too. I read in the Melbourne The Herald (20 February 1981) that the Australian Film Society (AFS) in London had screened Libido for its members. Jim Saunders, the AFS secretary, advised in a subsequent newsletter that one member had protested about the film quartet. Saunders explained that his earlier circular had not described the film’s content and that the member’s wife had not heard of the word “libido”. The screening surprised the couple as they had rather expected to see the well-known Australian actor Chips Rafferty riding off into the sunset instead of “four filth films”.

Saunders then announced that the coming screening would be of The Overlanders (Harry Watt, 1946), with the one and only Chips, followed the next month by Fatty Finn (Maurice Murphy, 1980).

Islam seemed to have no problem – at least, not the élite. Empress Farah of Iran invited Libido to participate in the 1973 Teheran Film Festival, of which she was patron. Christopher Muir, co-executive producer – whose work administering the theatre and script workshops underpinned our whole project – attended the Festival with me. We were accompanied by director David Baker and actors Debbie Nankervis and Bryon Williams. We found Iran tense, the people living in fear of Shah Pahlavi’s secret police, SAVAK, and unable to speak freely to us or to each other. Even so, there were one or two filmmakers who made themselves known, and I realise in retrospect that their efforts revealed the early days of a New Wave in cinema in Iran, one that, despite a repressive religious and political environment, limited funds and very few technical facilities, has gone on to create an impressive body of work. Iranian cinema, with its social consciousness, sensitivity and beauty, is now a similar phenomenon to the Parallel Cinema of India begun in 1955 by the great Bengali filmmaker, Satyajit Ray.

Technologically-speaking (the shooting)

For The Naked Bunyip, filmed in 1969, I felt I could not shoot on the widely used 16mm reversal stock (Ektachrome). It was virtually impossible to realise acceptable and consistent flesh tones and the stock was very contrasty, revealing little detail in shadow areas. Given that The Naked Bunyip was largely talking heads, I looked for an alternative, finally deciding to import 16mm Eastmancolor negative stock from Kodak in America. While this colour negative was widely used in the 35mm format, it had not been employed as a 16mm film stock in Australia. The style and content of The Naked Bunyip demanded portability together with camera magazines that would allow exposures of long duration: 16mm was therefore essential. Our laboratories had not, however, had experience in processing and printing 16mm negative. It required very careful handling and was very prone to picking up dust and sustaining cinch marks at the head and tail of reels during negative matching and laboratory processes. Once the emulsion sustained damage, it could not be satisfactorily restored.

For our narrative drama, Libido, 35mm film would customarily have been used to provide greater image and sound quality, but Libido was a workshop production with minimal funds available. Our total initial budget for the whole workshop, donated by the Australian Council for the Arts (now the Australia Council), was $15,820 at that stage. My fellow directors and their directors of photography being in agreement, I again imported – this time through Kodak’s Melbourne headquarters – a single batch of 16mm Eastmancolor negative on which all episodes of Libido would be shot.

There were only a limited number of sound-insulated 16mm motion-picture cameras available in Melbourne at that time, but we received wonderful support from four Melbourne production companies (see credits below), who welcomed the possibility of joining the Guild in Victoria in its attempt to encourage the development of feature film production in Australia. They provided most of the camera, lighting, sound and post-production facilities.

The revival of features in the 1960s and ’70s in Australia followed the European pattern of filmmaking. It was driven by writer-directors, not producers, production studios, distributors or investors. We filmed on locations with lip-sync recorded sound. It suited the Australian innovative spirit and we revelled in it. And, with Libido, we were allowed no luxuries. Each episode had to be shot within 6 to 8 working days. We went with the weather as it unfolded. There were no caravans for actors, no wardrobe vehicles or catering crews. We either took our own lunch in a brown paper bag or sent out for the ubiquitous white bread sandwiches from the nearest source.

The Post-Production

Whereas I had installed 16mm projection and sound equipment in the cinemas, theatres and halls I leased on a 4-wall basis to exhibit The Naked Bunyip, it was not feasible for Greater Union to follow suit. Nevertheless, we needed immediate access to their regular cinemas – all of which were fitted with 35mm projection only – to realise the full potential of Libido. Once the episodes were fine-cut, this meant blowing-up the negative from 16mm checkerboard A&B rolls of negative to 35mm, plus additional optical treatment for transitions, titles and credits – all of which Australian laboratories could not satisfactorily undertake at that time. It was another year before Atlab Film Laboratories in Sydney installed 16mm wet-gate procedures. I needed, therefore, to go to London. Paddy Seale, a UK filmmaker introduced to me by Robin Copping (DOP on “The Child”), acted as liaison. Even so, in order to complete the work within the facilities and time schedule allowed by our miniscule budget, I had to prepare the final-mix sound and the image components to ensure that all elements would proceed consecutively and without error or hindrance in a very economical use of laboratory time.

Libido: “The Family Man”

With four episodes, it was a challenge to make the credits interesting and informative. I didn’t want to interrupt the mood as our quartet screened in the cinema by supering credits over the tail of each episode. Yet, by placing them all at the end of the program we needed to remind audiences of the early stories that had been eclipsed by later ones. I began the laborious task of selecting single-frame 16mm images from which I could create a montage optically in the form of still photographs once the 35mm blow-up colour reversal internegative (CRI) had been produced in London. When I had story-boarded the more than 2-minute sequence, and produced and positioned the titling to be supered to exact timings, Bruce Smeaton (composer on “The Priest” and “The Family Man”) agreed to write and record additional music to suit.

The first priority in London was for Studio Film Laboratories to notch the A&B rolls of negative and produce a 16mm mute answer print as a guide. We then graded the image for the 35mm CRI. At the same time, we ran preliminary tests on the 3-track final mix before producing the 35mm optical sound negative. The beginning and end title sequences were treated optically as separate sections and spliced on to the first and last reels of the CRI. All went without a hitch and to schedule. Prints were then produced by Technicolor Laboratories in London. Now, in 2005, 32 years later, the CRI remains in very good condition and has been the source of the Umbrella Entertainment DVD master. The discerning eye will, however, notice the type of damage I have previously described at the head and tail of reels that now run continuously as Libido.

Being Nostalgic

Two years almost to the day after the initial release in Melbourne and Sydney, we had accrued sufficient money to pay all deferred fees, a task that I particularly enjoyed. Later, while it was not originally intended, The Guild in Victoria resolved to make a nominal payment to the producers and directors involved for their commitment to the project.

While in Australia we were conscious of a new dawning in narrative drama film at that time, it was not one with the richness and depth of an ancient culture such as that of India or Persia. And the early light in our sky was constantly threatened by the voluminous cloud of British and American film product that hung overhead, awaiting a release in our cinemas. Yet, to be involved in film making in Australia in the 1960s and early ’70s was a great privilege. The horizons were unbounded and the potential seemed limitless. We had the freedom and the responsibility to stand on our own personal record and create films without anyone looking over our shoulders. There was a co-operative spirit, considerable sincerity, little affectation – and we were not allied to market forces, to state and federal government investment agencies, completion guarantors and locked-in exhibition schedules. Filmmakers today are bound by different criteria. We were our own masters. We had the best of it.

I have continued to manage distribution of the film, together with The Naked Bunyip, since it was released in 1973. There has been virtually no interest in subsequent years – except for a short series of screenings by Showtime/Encore on cable – until Umbrella Entertainment released it on DVD in 2005 as a work of historical interest.

Principal Credits

The Husband
Director: John B. Murray. Scriptwriter: Craig McGregor. DOP: Eric Lomas. Sound recordist: Lloyd Carrick. Editor: Tim Lewis. Composers: Tim Healy and Billy Green. Made with the assistance of Filmcore. Cast: Elke Neidhardt, Bryon Williams, Mark Albiston.

The Child
Director: Tim Burstall. Scriptwriter: Hal Porter. DOP: Robin Copping. Art director: Leslie Binns. Costumes: Pat Forster. Sound recordist: John Phillips. Editor: David Bilcock Jnr. Composer: Peter Best. Made with the assistance of Bilcock & Copping. Cast: John Williams, Jill Forster, Judy Morris, Bruce Barry, Louise Homfrey, George Fairfax.

The Priest
Director: Fred A. Schepisi. Scriptwriter: Thomas Keneally. DOP: Ian Baker. Art director: Trevor Ling. Costumes: Bruce Finlayson. Sound recordist: Danny Dyson. Editor: Brian Kavanagh. Composer: Bruce Smeaton. Made with the assistance of The Film House. Cast: Robyn Nevin, Arthur Dignam, Vivean Gray, Vicki Brey, Valma Pratt, Penne Hackforth-Jones.

The Family Man
Director: David Baker. Scriptwriter: David Williamson. DOP: Bruce McNaughton. Set designer: Philip Blandford. Sound recordist: John Mulligan. Editor: E[dward] McQueen-Mason. Composer: Bruce Smeaton. Made with the assistance of Aranda Films. Cast: Jack Thompson, Max Gillies, Debbie Nankervis, Vicky Brey, Suzanne Brady.

Executive producers: Christopher Muir and John B Murray.

Endnotes

  1. An abridged and earlier form of his essay was released in booklet form with the DVD by Umbrella Entertainment.

About The Author

John B. Murray is the co-executive producer and a segment director of Libido, and subsequently the distributor of the film.

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