Int: Vincent Sheehan (Little Fish)

A resurgence of sorts is occurring in the Australian film industry and international audiences are reaping the benefits. Trying to emulate the more commercial aspects of the Hollywood industry, the government financing in the film sector perhaps handicapped themselves by placing smaller projects and national cinema in peril. Since 05’ the hemorrhaging seems to be coming to a halt thanks to personal projects which are giving all audiences the chance to discover another cinema without borders.

Winner of multiple Australian Film Institute and IF awards, Little Fish. is poised to become the next example of a national import that will move all audiences. Director Rowan Woods explores the world of Tracy Heart (Cate Blanchett) with a question she can no longer ignore. After four years of treading water and redeeming herself in the eyes of her hard-working single mother, she has set herself the humble goal of owning her own business. But the unexpected return of her ex-boyfriend Jonny (Dustin Nguyen), the criminal aspirations of her brother Ray (Martin Henderson) and the emotional draw of troubled family friend and ex-footy star Lionel Dawson (Hugo Weaving), creates friction for Tracy. Her dream soon becomes tangled with criminal boss, Bradley “The Jockey” Thompson (Sam Neill) with shattering consequences. As a result, Tracy’s bond of trust with her mother Janelle (Noni Hazlehurst) is tested and she has to confront her fears to find happiness. A story about families. About lies. And about learning to love again.

Behind solid narratives, unique filmic voices and a wealth of acting talent – it takes blood, sweat and tears to champion these projects. Little Fish will surprise audiences for its authenticity and quality – and with two low-budget features (Mullet & Walking on Water) under their belt Porchlight Films demonstrated how to nurture a project from conceptualization to development to realization.

Producer Vincent Sheehan (one-half of the production team) took some time out from his busy schedule at the Berlin Film Festival to speak with our Australian correspondent (fellow countryman) Samuel Hilton about the upcoming U.S release of this passion project.

Fish producers Liz Watts and Sheehan.

Samuel Hilton: How did you respond to the amazing reception Little Fish got here in Australia?

Vincent Sheehan: What was great about the reception was we kind of struck a cord with an audience. I mean an audience, you know, really connected to the kind of emotional journey of the characters and it affected them. I think there is a kind of truth in the world and a truth in the way Rowan captured the world that made the film really work. And the combination of Blanchett, Woods was pretty special.

SH: I know sometimes Australian films have trouble selling overseas because of elements of them that are particularly Australian. How has the reception being overseas on the festival circuit?

VS: The festival circuit has been great. I mean Toronto, the response to the film at the Ellegan at Toronto last year was probably, I mean it was great to play it to your home audience, the response there to an audience that doesn’t know our culture was probably the most rewarding moment because, you know, it traveled. What was beautiful about it traveling was the kind of journey of Cate, Cate’s character Tracey, was kind of a universal dilemma. You know, people connected to the relationship to the mother, the pain of the return of a lover and the loss of a dear family friend. You know, those things are just what we all experience. But I think what else connected was people kind of enjoyed and got sucked into a sense of Australia that they kind of were familiar with but saw a new side of it. A lot of people talked about how they’ve always liked or found the accent interesting but it was the mannerisms that they thought were distinctly Australian. I thought that was great, that was something Rowan does really well, he is very true to a sense of place and movement, you know?

SH: Yeah. How did the project initially come about?

VS: Rowan actually worked a treatment 10 years ago and his wife picked it up and started developing it. And when I got hold of it, it had moved the focus to Tracey and I said ‘Well that’s the kind of character I’m most interested in.’ And at that moment Jacqueline and I developed it for a couple of years until we kind of presented it back to Rowan. We always gave him first refusal on it and at that stage it was, you know, in reasonably good shape. And Rowan and Cate had known each other and had flirted around a few projects and ideas. This one just presented itself at the right time. She saw Tracey as a character she hadn’t played, a challenge. So you know, Cate and Rowan really wanted to work together.

SH: With the film set around some of poorer, poverty-stricken suburbs of Sydney, how was the research process was during the writing and the filming?
VS: I wouldn’t say it’s poverty stricken at all, I’d say its undeniably working class but their not poverty at all. It’s a South West suburb of Sydney which is this great kind of, I don’t know, example of multicultural Sydney. It was also like, Cabramatta was like, you know, Gough Whitlam’s seat in the ‘70s so it was like the classic working class tradition with this kind of wave of migration over 20 years. So it had this kind of fabulous and really quite unique Australian setting. Definitely not a slum or poverty, its kind of just working class.

SH: With the slew of international stars that Hugo Weaving, Sam Neill and Cate Blanchett was it hard securing the talent? I know you said Rowan and Cate have wanted to working on something but with Hugo and Sam?

VS: I think that Rowan and Cate, well especially Rowan is a real actors’ director. He was an actor so he loves working with actors. And everything is about performance and getting inside characters and Rowan’s process is just really attractive. Within Australia, people know about that, they know about it and Cate was very aware of that. So once Cate and then and then Marty came on, the project, and it because it does have a bit of an ensemble feel, becomes a project that people are really interested in. So you know Sam and Hugo and all of them responded to characters that were not like they usually play but also with a director in a world that was, you know, a challenge.

SH: Was it a difficult project to find backing for in Australia to get up and running in a time when Australia and the whole world has been going through a bit of slump in box office returns?

VS: Yeah, you know it is and the independent cinema is just, it’s just hard, very hard. Cate, the caliber of Cate and a few of the other cast made that path a little easier for us. But that said – it was still a really complex and difficult task.

SH: Many critics were labeling or discussing the Australian film industry as being in a creative slump. 2005 was certainly a return to form with Little Fish, Look Both Ways and Wolf Creek. How do you foresee the future of Australian film?

VS: I think the slump was a direct result of films being made to second-guess a commercial market and being the kind of principal trigger for financing some of those films were driven by television interests. And also kind of a structure of deals that were just only looking for what were supposedly commercial films. The irony of that was what they ended up making was a whole series of mid-range, mid-budget kind of non-funny, non-commercial films that didn’t connect with any audience. Never had the rigor of the script or the talent of the director or the caliber of the cast to compete with the American films of those genres in the market place. So what we had to do and what we’ve done and turned around in the last few years, the industry has actually gone back to making films that are kind just about who we are, driven much more by directors with strong story and great cast.

SH: The film portrays a multicultural group of characters and recently in Australia there have been those racial tensions at the beaches and in Cronulla. I’m just wondering how important do you think it is for film in particular to figure multiculturalism in the Australian national identity?

VS: That was never an intention; one of the things about the multicultural world was that…. it wasn’t an advert objective of the filmmakers at all. It was capturing a place and a group of people just the way they are. I think one of the things, there just was no kind of… Rowan just didn’t make an issue of the mixture of people and also the characters themselves just grew up in the Vietnamese community so it was just part of their world and their lives. In that sense, you know, it actually shows just how it does work. But that’s in hindsight and, you know, looking back at the film. And to the credit of Rowan and Jacqueline in developing the project, it was just about the place. There was no moralistic message in that although it just shows that in Cabramatta and those South Western regions, where groups of people have lived and worked, from different cultures, for 20 years, that it kind of works. The problems in Australia were from areas where the mix is not there, so the fear and kind of uncertainty builds in those areas.

SH: What are your feelings, and the feelings of those involved in Little Fish leading up to the U.S. premiere?

VS: The opportunity to actually play the film to audiences all around the world, especially in America, which has such an inward looking kind of approach. To crack that market and play your film or your television or your art of any kind is the biggest challenge and the opportunity to do that and say something about our stories and who we are and the way we think is just… that’s why we make them.

SH: How has your history been working in Australian cinema before Little Fish? And do you have any future projects on the line?

VS: We do actually. Liv, who co-produced Little Fish with me, her project the Home Sung Story goes into production in Melbourne next week. She is sitting next to me, looking a little stressed. We have a couple of other projects in development but our focus has always been very director driven and very story driven as well rather then second-guessing any kind of commercial kind of market. Actually go for powerful stories that are driven by directors with distinctive voices and I think Tony Cawlette’s Jewboy from last year is a great example of that. Those focuses find audiences and they work and that’s a commercial film.

SH: Is there anything else you want to say about Little Fish or its release in America?

VS: No, not really. Just looking for people to go into it with an open mind and let them get sucked into the journey.

First Look Studios releases Little Fish exclusively in New York and L.A on February the 24th, with a wider release to come in the following weeks and months.