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bloody-disgusting.com
December 2005
Wolf Creek: Writer/Director Greg McLean
By Elaine Lamkin
With all of the buzz surrounding Australian director Greg McLean’s first feature film, the brutal and horrific “Wolf Creek”, he seems poised to inherit the mantle of such “renegade” icons as Tobe Hooper and Wes Craven. Already a hit in Australia where it opened November 18th, “Wolf Creek” is scheduled to open here in the US on Christmas Day. And if you’re looking for something “warm and fuzzy” for your holiday viewing, “Wolf Creek” is anything BUT that. It has already been likened to an Aussie “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” with bits of Spielberg’s “Duel” and Boorman’s “Deliverance” thrown into the stew. Bloody-Disgusting recently had the opportunity to chat with McLean during filming on his next horror movie, “Rogue”, and he seemed quite amazed at all the hoopla going on in the States about his “little movie”.
BD: How about a brief synopsis of The Greg McLean Story to date? I know you’re from Bendigo in Victoria, which isn’t that far north of the famous Hanging Rock of Peter Weir’s “Picnic at Hanging Rock”.
GM: That’s right. I’m from Bendigo, I’m 34 years old and I got my training at NIDA (National Institute of Dramatic Arts) in Sydney, in directing. But my background is in art – I completely storyboarded “Wolf Creek”. And some other famous alumni of NIDA are Mel Gibson, Cate Blanchett, Sam Worthington and Baz Luhrmann, who graduated just a couple of years before me. I actually had the opportunity to work with Baz and his wife Catherine Martin on the Australian Opera’s production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” as well as doing some pre-production on their film, “Romeo + Juliet”. And I was the director of OzOpera, the Australian Opera’s touring company. I also worked with the esteemed Australian director Neil Armfield on his production of “Hamlet” with Geoffrey Rush, Cate Blanchett and Richard Roxburgh.
BD: How did someone with such a classical background come up with something as nasty and brutal as “Wolf Creek”?
GM: I had been working on horror concepts set in the Outback for a few years and then one day I discovered Wolfe Creek (it’s actually spelled with an “e” at the end) on a map – I didn’t even know such a thing existed in Australia. That plus the Ivan Milat “Backpacker Murders” as well as the current Bradley Murdoch case in the Northern Territories got me to thinking. The Outback is like nothing anywhere else – there is NOTHING out there! So I started to put together the story of these young people traveling, finishing their holiday and running into something WAY beyond their control. And as it is set in the Outback, there is no one to help them for hundreds of miles. The isolation is one of the frightening things about “Wolf Creek”. That and Mick Taylor.
BD: Why did you want to incorporate the true crimes of Milat and Murdoch into “Wolf Creek”? That is one of the reasons it is being compared to “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, which is loosely based on the crimes of Ed Gein.
GM: That is one of the most horrifying movies ever made! I’ve seen it a few times but it’s SO hard to sit through. But then again, I think that the quality of truth in horror can intensify the horror. To KNOW that some of what the characters in “Wolf Creek” go through really happened to Milat’s and Murdoch’s victims makes it all the harder to watch. Right now, in the Northern Territories where Murdoch’s trial is going on, “Wolf Creek” has been banned because the government there doesn’t want the jury influenced in any way.
BD: So, the infamous “head on a stick” scene, which I took to mean something entirely different until I saw the movie, really did happen to some of the victims?
GM: Yes. Milat did that to a number of his victims and it was something he learned in Vietnam as Mick Taylor says he did.
BD: How did you go about casting the four main characters? Particularly the Mick Taylor character as I remember that actor, John Jarratt, from “Picnic at Hanging Rock”?
GM: He was indeed in “Picnic at Hanging Rock”. He played Albert Crundall, the young jackaroo or ranch hand who finds one of the missing girls. John is a magnificent actor and he was my first and only choice for Mick. He’s something of a cultural icon in Australia as he’s always played the “good solid bloke next door” and he hosted a TV show for a number of years called “Better Homes and Gardens”. So, to have him play a character like Mick Taylor would be like you Americans casting Jerry Seinfeld or Tim Allen as some ruthless, bloodthirsty killer. It has completely shocked a lot of Australians who have seen the film.
As for the three young people, we had an exhaustive casting search to find the perfect actors who could really give everything they had to this film. And all three of them ARE Australian – the girls just play British tourists. Kestie Morassi, who plays Kristie, has been in several films, including “Darkness Falls”, which I believe was a minor hit in the US. Cassandra Magrath, who plays Liz, has done a number of TV shows in Australia and Nathan Phillips, who plays Ben, has done quite a few films including the upcoming “Snakes on a Plane” with Samuel L. Jackson.
BD: The film packs an alarming emotional intensity. How were you able to bring that out in your actors?
GM: The actors believed how powerful the film could be if they made it as believable as possible. There was also a lot of trust between them – especially Kestie and John as they had to do that dreadful shed scene. At one point when they were in there, I really thought something had gone wrong and Kestie was actually being hurt by John, her screaming was SO alarming. I was outside, listening on my headset and I thought I was going to have to stop everything and make sure she was all right.
BD: That was something else I noticed about the film – it seemed like a documentary, that “cinema verite” style that “Texas Chainsaw” had. Was that a conscious decision on your part?
GM: Definitely. My DP, Will Gibson, and I really just let the actors go and we filmed them. There was a lot of improv, especially from John. I was going for a Lars Von Trier-style of movie. Since the story is inspired by true events, I thought that shooting it cinema verite would only increase that “truth in horror” quality.
BD: Another thing about “Wolf Creek” is that it doesn’t play by the standard rules of horror. A character you least expect to exit the film early does and you have been quoted as saying “Evil gets away, the bad guy doesn’t get punished, the lead character who tries hard fails.” Again, this is reminiscent of “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”. What was going on when you decided to “break the rules”?
GM: It was completely intentional on my part. I wanted to “break the rules”, as you put it. Take away the audiences’ expectations. Too many movies nowadays are SO predictable, SO stereotypical. It was time to shake people up. Life isn’t predictable, why should a movie always be?
BD: Some technical questions now – what was your budget? How long was the shooting schedule and although it looks like film, is it true you shot on hi-def?
GM: Our budget was $1.5 million Australian dollars which is about $900,000 US dollars and we shot for 25 days, mostly in South Australia and, of course, at the Wolf Creek crater which is in Western Australia. Mick’s mining camp was an old quarry we found and fixed up and we did indeed shoot on hi-definition.
BD: I saw the film as a three-act drama: getting to know the young people, meeting Mick and then hell. Was that the way you envisioned the film?
GM: Actually I saw it as a two-act piece – we have this long set-up, where you KNOW something is going to happen, just not when. And then, after the campfire scene, when the screen goes black and then comes back to Liz waking up, tied up in the office, THAT starts the climax where all hell break loose.
BD: Why did you use that line from “Crocodile Dundee” in the film? I have Australian friends who cringe when they hear anything about Crocodile Dundee or Steve Irwin, both of whom Mick Taylor resembled at first. And why did Ben using that line about “that’s not a knife – THIS is a knife” suddenly change Mick’s demeanor as well as the tone of the film?
GM: Crocodile Dundee and Steve Irwin are both popular cultural exports, totally associated with Australia, as embarrassing as they can sometimes be to Australians. And when Ben teases Mick with that line from “Crocodile Dundee”, Mick takes it as Ben reducing him to a cliché, a joke. And Mick isn’t having any of that.
BD: At the end of the film, a statement is made about the “unreliability” of the surviving witness who was held in police custody for 4 months. What is that all about?
GM: That’s what happened in the Murdoch case. There was one survivor and her story was so outrageous, some crazy guy in the Outback who did all these horrible things, that the police naturally assumed she must be in on the crime so she was considered “unreliable” and held in custody until the facts became more clear.
BD: Will there be a “Wolf Creek II”?
GM: I’m not quite sure. It’s a film that stands on it’s own so well, I don’t know how a sequel could add any more to the story. Just let the ending remain enigmatic.
BD: What is your opinion on the state of Australian horror films?
GM: It’s not in a very good state at all. Movies in Australia are state-funded so the government doesn’t want to finance a film that might cast negativity on the country or affect the tourist industry. I’m sure people are now going to want to go see the Wolf Creek crater like everyone went to Uluru (Ayers Rock) after “A Cry in the Night”, about the Lindy Chamberlain case. There have been a few good horror movies from Australia, the most recent being “Undead”, but most seem to be coming from New Zealand, like Peter Jackson’s “Brain Damage” (“Dead Alive”) or “The Ugly”. It would be great if “Wolf Creek” energizes the horror film industry here. It opened on November 18 and the response has been overwhelmingly positive.
BD: Also, just for fun, I read that you made two appearances in “Wolf Creek”. What were they?
GM: I was the old man’s body and I was one of the police officers escorting the survivor at the end.
BD: You are currently filming your second feature film, “Rogue”. What can you tell us about that?
GM: It is also a horror movie but this time it’s a crocodile that’s preying on man, not one human preying on others. We’ve been filming in the Northern Territories and now we’re filming about two hours outside of Melbourne. John Jarratt is in this one too but you would never recognize him as the same fellow who played Mick Taylor. Radha “Pitch Black” Mitchell, Sam Worthington and Michael “Alias” Vartan are also in the film. It’s about a rogue crocodile, just your regular-sized croc, nothing enormous, that is terrorizing a group of tourists on a river cruise. We still have about six weeks of shooting so the film should be out at the end of 2006.
BD: How would you sum up the “Wolf Creek” experience?
GM: It was exhilarating but it was intense and exhausting. When the DVD comes out, there will be a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff of everyone goofing around. With that intense a movie, there has to be a LOT of goofing around.
© bloody-disgusting.com 2006
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