Latest / Cinema Yūgen / Unlocking the Cinematic Odyssey of Philippe Mora

Transcript

Unlocking the Cinematic Odyssey of Philippe Mora · Cinema Yūgen

0:00
G'day. That's right. It's that time again. Time for Cinema Yugen.
0:07
Music.
0:17
Yes, Cinema Yugen and classic this episode, a requested classic is Philippe Moura,
0:25
the great Philippe Moura, who began his
0:29
film work in 1973 having met producers David
0:32
Putnam and Sandy Lieberson his earliest
0:36
efforts were the documentaries Swastika
0:39
about the rise of Hitler and brother Can You
0:42
Spare a Dime about depression in mid-70s he moved back to Australia where he
0:49
and a friend would start Cinema Papers a leading film magazine Down Under But
0:53
his collaboration with the American agent Dennis Hopper was what really got
0:58
him noticed with Mad Dog Morgan,
1:00
a very effective, based-on-fact story about the outlaw Daniel Mad Dog Morgan,
1:07
who became what he was through circumstance.
1:12
He was the first Australian-made film to get a wide American release.
1:16
Producers to united artists were impressed
1:19
at the amount of bloodletting in
1:23
the film and several years later moira was
1:26
directing for them enjoyable gruesome
1:30
and silly monster movies like the
1:33
beast within he's also responsible for
1:37
one of the great werewolf pictures one of my favorites anyway
1:40
which as the howling three the marsupials anyone who
1:42
can put a werewolf in a twos
1:45
who gets my vote but he is more than
1:48
just mr werewolf he has directed christopher walken
1:51
in communion he has made some incredible documentaries he is an incredible artist
1:58
if you don't know philip's work as an artist you should check that out too but
2:03
here is my chat with the great man himself not solely Mr.
2:09
Werewolf, but my captain, Invincible.
2:12
Here he is, the return of Philippe Moira.
2:17
Well, good morning to you. Thank you very much for that intro,
2:21
Kent. I haven't spoken to any kookaburras lately, but I intend to as soon as
2:24
I get back to Melbourne. All right, very good.
2:29
Well, it's great to finally talk to you, mate. Listen, you're a very,
2:33
very accomplished man. And you've got over 40 credits as a director going,
2:38
you know, going all the way back to shorts and documentaries.
2:41
Then, of course, your big first film, which is now now lauded as a as a classic
2:47
Mad Dog Morgan, which, of course, the late Dennis Hopper, the late great Dennis Hopper.
2:56
And then we just go through a whole, you know, a whole plethora of,
3:00
of eclectic films, The Beast Within, The Return of Captain Invincible,
3:05
A Breed Apart, a couple of Howling movies, Howling 2 and 3, Death of a Soldier,
3:11
Communion, Christopher Walken, Back in Business, Snide and Prejudice.
3:17
Another favorite of mine is The Pterodactyl Women from Beverly Hills.
3:22
You certainly, you certainly tried it all, mate. You weren't afraid to get out
3:26
there and do something different.
3:29
Well, you know, the thing is it takes a long while to get any film going.
3:36
And I made a decision. I didn't want to – the industry typecasts you.
3:42
They typecast you in Australia. They typecast you everywhere into making a certain kind of film.
3:49
And then, you know, there's some directors who just basically made the same
3:52
film their whole career. I didn't want to do that. Right.
3:55
Because of the amount of time it takes, I tried to make every film pretty different, really. Right.
4:01
That's why it's eclectic, you know, the different interests. Yeah.
4:05
But, no, it's good to see. And, I mean, of course, during the course of that
4:09
whole section that I very briefly went through,
4:14
you were very privileged to direct some of the great actors and character actors
4:19
that have graced the screen over the years.
4:22
Of course the the most
4:25
notable uh and and there's a
4:27
great documentary and an interview on the mad dog morgan disc with you talking
4:34
and and talking about dennis hopper and all the craziness surrounding his his
4:40
rum drinking and method acting we should say in mad dog morgan.
4:48
What was it what was it like to work with Dennis and then that interview that's
4:53
on there looked like you caught up with him after several years,
4:57
well you know I think if I'd been experienced Kent excuse me I'm going to cough,
5:04
sorry if I'd been experienced I don't think I could have handled it but because
5:10
I didn't know really it was my first experience with a Hollywood actor I thought
5:14
well I guess maybe they're all like this I just have to deal with it.
5:18
But I'd be probably, you know, now more experienced, it would probably,
5:22
well, it just would be more difficult.
5:24
I saw an interesting movie last night, a documentary called Andy...
5:30
Jim and Andy. Oh, yeah. It's about Jim Carrey. It's a documentary about Jim
5:34
Carrey making the Andrew Kaufman biopic.
5:37
Oh, okay. I've been waiting to see that. Was it good?
5:40
Oh, yeah, absolutely fantastic. And I was at reception for it afterwards. I met Jim Carrey.
5:45
I spoke to him. He's really the nicest guy I got. I was so impressed with him just as a person. Right.
5:52
Chatted to him for a bit. But in the movie, there's scenes of where he is in
5:57
character as Andy Kaufman, impossible to deal with, and Milos Forman's directing him.
6:02
Right. And I just saw Milos Forman dealing with it, and I thought,
6:08
my God, that's me dealing with Dennis Hopper.
6:11
Because, you know, Milos Forman says things like, he's like,
6:15
Jim Carrey's going off in all directions.
6:17
Right. And Milos Forman says, you know, can you tell Jim that we have to make a movie?
6:22
Right. Shame.
6:26
So look it was it was difficult because
6:30
I'm a painter as well and Dennis
6:33
was a painter we were both artists really and
6:36
I think that was the connection so Dennis did
6:40
listen to me because he did respect me as an artist aside from anything else
6:44
so I think that was a close bond and I think you know he was kind of a renaissance
6:53
guy He did fantastic photography. I'm sure you're aware of that. Yeah, yeah.
6:57
And he was an excellent director. And unfortunately, they didn't let him make too many movies.
7:02
Yeah. But they're all good. Yeah. There's a new documentary coming out,
7:06
I've noticed, about Dennis.
7:08
I forget the title. There is. There is. It's called Along for the Ride. I'm in it. All right.
7:14
I'm in it talking about Mad Dog. And it's about his relationship with his good
7:19
friend at the time, such a Del Manitou who actually came out with him to Australia. Right, right.
7:26
So, yeah, no, apparently it's very good. Yeah, I'm very interested to see that when it comes out.
7:30
And talking about your artistry, there's something I've always wanted to ask,
7:33
and it's only ever briefly sort of talked about, was an awful exhibit and something
7:42
to do with a brick through a window.
7:44
Well, what it was was this. This was London in 1970.
7:49
Right. and we did an exhibition.
7:54
Protesting the war in Vietnam, basically. Right. And there are about eight artists,
7:58
including Martin Sharp from Sydney, and then London artists,
8:03
all of whom are quite famous now.
8:05
But my contribution was a sculpture made out of meat.
8:10
Right. A sculpture of a man sitting on a chair made out of meat.
8:15
And the point of the work was protesting man's inhumanity to man.
8:21
Like, this is a corpse. But there was another agenda I had at that time.
8:26
I was quite radical, really, and I didn't think that real art was something that you should sell.
8:33
So my solution was to make something that no one could possibly buy.
8:37
This is a long story, but I'll try and make it brief.
8:40
But anyway, it started rotting. It started rotting, and Princess Margaret would
8:46
go to this restaurant across the street from the gallery every Tuesday,
8:50
and she complained about the odour.
8:52
And the Scotland Yard came into the gallery and they said, look,
8:55
there's been a royal complaint and what is that?
8:58
And the gallery owner said, well, it's a work of art and God bless him.
9:02
And the police, the officer said, look, we don't care what it is.
9:07
It's a health hazard. Get it out of here.
9:09
And then, so then it got deeper.
9:13
Then Ziggy, Ziggy Krause, he took it to his garden in Highgate.
9:17
He put it in his garden and his neighbors who were Brits Didn't like Germans. He was German.
9:23
They didn't like Germans because of the Second World War.
9:26
And they called Scotland Yard and said their neighbors murdered his wife and
9:31
the corpses in the garden.
9:34
I have the distinction of being the only artist I know who did a work which
9:39
was mistaken for a homicide victim. Wow.
9:42
That's a great story. There's a movie there.
9:49
No that's fantastic i'd only i'd only ever read little clippings about it and
9:53
even on wikipedia there's only something very briefly about it but it was something i was always,
9:59
curious about because uh i know that you've had a career as an artist as well
10:04
as a filmmaker for those who don't know yeah you were born in you were born
10:08
in paris in in 1949 Right.
10:11
Your parents briefly came over to New York before coming to Australia, is that right?
10:18
Exactly, yeah, on route too, because they had family there. Right.
10:21
And they stopped in New York and then they came to Melbourne.
10:24
Right. And then your parents were restaurateurs?
10:28
That's right. So you're talking 1951. Yeah.
10:31
And they had a sequence of three really famous restaurants in Melbourne,
10:36
for sure, because my dad got the first liquor license for a restaurant in Melbourne.
10:40
Can you imagine that? Wow, yeah. 1955.
10:43
So that was a sensation. Yeah. And there's a film connection because it was
10:48
the only place to go in town when they shot on the beach in Melbourne.
10:54
Okay. All the cast would eat at the Balzac and I would come home from school
10:58
and have dinner with Ava Gardner. Wow.
11:01
It was, you know, fantastic. So I had a pretty privileged childhood in that respect.
11:06
And then, so you came to, like most people who want to work in movies,
11:11
you made short films, which eventually, you know, found your way into documentaries.
11:17
And then, of course, Mad Dog comes along. Well, another thing I've always wanted
11:22
to ask you about, you're the only person I know, a very intriguing figure to
11:26
me, was Frank Thring. Yeah.
11:29
Now, I first saw Frank in the Chuck Heston movies. He briefly appears in Ben-Hur and also El Cid.
11:39
He started the chariot race in Ben-Hur. That's right, yeah.
11:43
Really, I didn't know he was Australian. I thought he was British for the longest
11:47
time until I was old enough and started reading about all this stuff.
11:54
He did those big films, everything from that to Thunderdome.
11:58
And what was Frank like as a bloke? I mean, he even did, he was the boy.
12:03
I just loved the guy. He was just a fantastic, unusual man.
12:08
His father was one of the founders of the Australian film industry. Wow.
12:14
FT Productions, it was called. Right. And I'm not sure which chain it turned
12:21
into, whether it was Hoyts or Greater Union or one of them.
12:24
But he grew up in show business in Australia. Right.
12:28
And then he went to London, he was a great, he did Shakespeare.
12:32
He was recognized as a pretty young actor in those years and he actually ended
12:37
up being, I shouldn't say ended
12:39
up, started out being best man at Lawrence Olivia's wedding to Vivian Lee.
12:44
Wow. So he was really well-known. And then he kind of specialized in decadent
12:49
Roman leaders or just decadent leaders.
12:52
Like he chopped Kirk Douglas' hand off in The Vikings. Right, yeah.
12:59
And he had the most incredible, unrepeatable stories on the record,
13:05
which if I get to see you in Queensland one day, I'll tell you,
13:08
but I don't want to repeat it now because he specialised in blasphemy and obscenity.
13:14
That'll be great. I'll look forward to that, Philip. That'll be great,
13:16
mate. But, yeah, no, I always found him intriguing.
13:19
I thought he was British because he's got that wonderful accent and that slight sort.
13:25
I mean, he was even the voice of Zeus in Hercules Returns, which I thought was great.
13:32
Yeah. Dennis, in his rum-fueled method, madness.
13:38
By the way, I just should say this about Dennis. There's a lot of stories about
13:42
the rum, for example, and all of that. Right, yeah. But he always delivered.
13:47
Whenever I said action, he would just click into that character.
13:52
I mean, he would just... That was kind of amazing. Now, I think it's because he was trained.
13:56
He was a Warner Brothers contract actor when he was 18.
14:01
And they really trained them there in continuity, horse riding, fencing, you name it.
14:08
So his continuity, everything was always great.
14:11
And look, let's face it, a lot of people drink rum, but they don't make easy rider. No, that's true.
14:19
What I was going to tell
14:22
you he was terrified of Frank
14:25
in his rum method acting mind
14:28
because Frank is the man who has kind of turned his balls into a tobacco pouch
14:33
you know the last line of mad dog don't forget the scrotum and every time Frank
14:39
would see Dennis he'd sort of look him up and down and focus on a particular
14:44
place and Dennis would just take off He got really scared.
14:49
And Frank would say, what's the matter with Dennis? Every time I show up, he runs off.
14:57
That's fantastic. And, of course, you got to direct Frank again in The Marsupials
15:02
or The Howling Three, which is another. Frank, yeah. Yeah.
15:07
Well, every time I could, I cast him. So we were good friends.
15:12
Because that's another hoot of a movie, never to be repeated,
15:16
I think, a film like The Marsupials.
15:19
Yeah. Well, you know, it's absolutely amazing to me still because I was talking
15:25
about it the other day. It's still absolutely amazing to me that some people
15:30
didn't realize it was supposed to be funny.
15:33
They just thought it was like the worst horror movie they'd ever seen in their life.
15:39
It's baffling to me.
15:43
It's obviously a send-up. Yeah, totally.
15:48
I still baffle at people. We go, oh, that's not a very good werewolf movie.
15:53
And I said, well, it depends on your, you know, I said, it's not really meant
16:02
to be a serious werewolf.
16:05
You do know that, don't you? And they said, well, no.
16:08
And I said, well, no, it's not. Look, I mean, there's even a film within the
16:13
film called It Came From Uranus. Yeah.
16:16
And I said, look, I mean, if you've taken this film seriously,
16:19
there should probably be a disclaimer on it.
16:22
Yeah, that's right. Please don't take this seriously.
16:27
Well, you know, the American distributor, when they read the script,
16:32
they said, Philippe, are you sure this is a horror movie?
16:35
I said, yeah, it is. Do you know, have I ever seen a marsupial birth where the
16:42
ember of the fetus comes out and crawls up into the womb outside the woman?
16:47
And they go, no, you're right, that's gross.
16:52
I loved it. I loved it on Mark Hartley's documentary that was briefly about that.
16:58
He tried a mouse or something, and it was suffocating. It was suffocating. Yeah.
17:05
My original title for it, which I still like, was A Worm With A View.
17:11
Oh, I nearly spat my water out, Philip. Ah, A Worm With A View.
17:17
A worm with a view so that's but we I settled on the marsupials yeah yeah but
17:24
the original title was you calling three a worm with a view,
17:30
oh mate I wish in some I know I think it still works yeah well it's certainly
17:36
not Merchant and Ivory but,
17:39
Oh, sorry about that. I just had some water come out my nose,
17:44
but that's great. I hope in some alternate universe that that still is released
17:50
under that title. That'd be fantastic.
17:52
Yeah. Maybe I should make a movie called that. Go in with them. Yeah.
17:55
Well, it could be the howling, I don't know, come back and do another.
17:58
Howling 87. The howling 87.
18:03
It's funny. like i i was talking to brian trenchard
18:07
yeah you know earlier and i
18:10
said isn't it funny like when you fellas went over to america
18:13
or you know the americans came you know and i said brian did leprechaun four
18:19
no three and four and i said you were doing like the howling two and three i
18:25
said you know what was it with what was it with you know you guys and your you know horror sequels,
18:32
You know,
18:33
because what was funny was with Brian or what Brian was saying,
18:37
he said, well, they wanted me to do three and three had quite a sensible budget
18:41
because it was set in Las Vegas.
18:43
And then that was so successful. They turned around and said,
18:45
we want you to do another one, but for half the money. And it's set in space.
18:51
So, so he was like, crikey. Right.
18:55
They wanted me to get, they wanted me to go on as well, but I didn't want to be Mr.
18:59
Werewolf. I just didn't want to do it but that is funny the Aussies are the
19:05
sequels I think once you've done a ballerina turning into a werewolf I don't
19:12
think there's anywhere else to go after that good on you mate I think that was it.
19:19
But yeah like I was saying you've had the privilege of directing quite a plethora
19:23
of great actors Rutger Howell was another one who you directed twice in a breed
19:29
apart and what was the other one?
19:34
Precious Five. Precious, yeah. That's right, Precious Five. Yeah,
19:37
he's a terrific actor. He's a very, you know, original kind of actor.
19:42
I saw him originally in a great Dutch movie, I think Paul Verhoeven directed
19:48
it, called The Soldier of Orange. Right.
19:50
And then, of course, I saw Rucker in Blade Runner. Fantastic. Yeah.
19:55
And he really, you know, He's just one of these original guys.
20:00
And I found that he was learning English when I worked. He's still learning
20:04
English when I worked with him.
20:07
And the interesting thing about that is his delivery, the syntax is different,
20:13
so his delivery is different.
20:15
Christopher Walken's mother was German, and his father was Scottish,
20:21
and he grew up learning English with those two parents.
20:24
Different accents and syntax. That's why he has this strange delivery,
20:28
original delivery, which is quite mesmerizing. Yeah.
20:33
I heard a really great... Go ahead. No, I heard a really great story about Christopher
20:37
Walken from an actor who played his son in one of the Batman movies,
20:43
Batman Returns, I think it was.
20:46
And the actor's name was Andrew Brianarski. And he was a bodybuilder before he was an actor, right?
20:54
So he's a he's quite a massive guy and of
20:57
course Tim Burton's sitting there and they're deciding whether or not to cast him
21:00
as as Christopher Walken's son
21:03
in the film and so he's
21:06
staring at him and he said I
21:09
want to cast you but I said I don't know how to justify the fact that you're
21:12
the size that you are and Christopher looks like the way he does and then Walken
21:17
pipes up and he says well you know he says during the depression my father was
21:25
my grandfather was a baker,
21:28
right and he said they couldn't afford
21:31
flour so they used sawdust right
21:35
so then when my father
21:38
came along and i was born we had flour okay
21:42
so i look the way i do and then he points to brian ask
21:45
you and he says you you had orange
21:48
juice that's funny
21:52
no but uh it was a great story he ended up making mashed potatoes with uh with
21:56
christopher walken for thanksgiving that year so it was it was a great yeah
22:02
well he's a wonderful actor christopher you know he was a child star he was yeah yeah and.
22:11
Yeah, a lot of people... Just tremendous. And, you know, communion was difficult
22:15
to cast because casting a writer is difficult because it's not exactly an action role.
22:20
Writers don't do much except sit in front of a commuter or typewriter.
22:25
So, you know, what do you do?
22:27
Christopher's face was so interesting. Yeah. I thought, oh, this guy,
22:32
this will be great. He'll be doing action in his face.
22:35
Yeah. It'll be an action movie on his face.
22:39
And again, it was like flying. If you're a director with an actor like Walken,
22:44
it's like you're flying a great airplane. Right.
22:47
I imagine that once, you know, some of these guys, you really don't.
22:52
It goes back to that old theory, like if you've cast the movie well,
22:55
you know, you have very little to do.
22:59
You've kind of got to let them, you've kind of got to have their wings and just take flight.
23:04
I think that's exactly right. And, you know, when there's someone who I know,
23:10
directors, we laugh about it a bit, some mates of mine, that if the actor can't
23:16
act, you go, God, now I've got to direct.
23:20
That's great. You directed James... Oh, not that again.
23:25
Yeah, you directed James Coburn, too, in A Death of a Soldier.
23:29
What was that experience like? He must have been...
23:32
Well, that experience was really great. I mean, I'd grown up in Flint movies
23:39
and James Coburn in The Great Escape and all those movies.
23:45
So it was a treat for me to work with him.
23:49
We had the same agent here called Robert Littman, actually, a legendary agent.
23:53
He passed away, unfortunately, way early.
23:56
But Bobby Littman kind of put that death of a soldier together with me and James
24:02
Coburn as a package. Right.
24:04
But yeah it's sad how a lot of them you know you sort of you go through when
24:08
you're doing research for um.
24:10
For interviews and stuff and writing pieces on film and stuff like that,
24:14
and you start to look through the names.
24:17
Like, a guy you directed a couple of times and was in, oddly enough,
24:21
was with Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner was Brian James, who is no longer with us as well.
24:28
Yeah, Brian James, fantastic character actor, huge amount of credits,
24:35
died way too young as well.
24:37
And he was a good mate. And if you've worked with someone before,
24:42
it just makes it easier when you work with them again.
24:46
There's a whole lot of formalities and things that you don't have to worry about.
24:51
And that's why you'll find a lot of directors, especially in the golden age
24:56
of Hollywood, they had the same cast in just about every...
24:59
If you look at John Ford movies, Howard Hawks and so on, they had the same key
25:04
cast members in movie after movie.
25:06
And I get that. It's kind of a repertory company. Yeah.
25:10
Which, I mean, which doesn't hurt. I mean, if you've got a good rapport with,
25:13
with certain actors and even certain crew members, you know,
25:17
I know it's typical for directors to retain,
25:20
you know, editors and cinematographers and composers and they,
25:25
you know, they try to work with them each time around.
25:30
Absolutely. Yeah. Because it's everyone, you know, it's, it saves time really. Yeah.
25:36
Another person you work with that I did have the privilege of meeting once,
25:41
partly because he's a local, he's a Warwick boy as well, Warwick,
25:45
Queensland, was John Seal,
25:46
the Academy Award winning Director of Photography, John Seal.
25:52
Absolutely. He was the operator on Mad Dog Morgan and the DP on Mad Dog Morgan,
25:59
Mike Malloy, who's a brilliant DP.
26:01
He was Kubrick's operator on Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon. Yeah.
26:09
And he brought John Seal onto Mad Dog. He said, this guy is great. Yeah. And he was.
26:18
He was a superb operator, and he became a superb DP, but I'm sure,
26:23
I'm not speaking for him, I'm sure he learned a lot from Malloy,
26:26
and Malloy in turn learned a lot from Kubrick. Yeah.
26:29
He seemed, when I finally got the chance to say g'day to him,
26:33
because he was born right here in my hometown,
26:38
and I said, you know, for the longest time, he was sort of afraid to take that lead position as DIA.
26:45
Like, he liked being an operator, and he sort of didn't have the confidence
26:48
to take that next step or he didn't have enough confidence in himself anyway.
26:54
And then finally, I think it was Brian Trenchard said when he finally did BMX
27:00
Bandits and he said, you know, John, you really need to do this.
27:05
He said, I think it's time.
27:07
And so that was one of the first credits he had as director of photography along
27:13
with Alvin Purple, I think it was.
27:16
But, yeah, really. Yeah, excellent. What is your hometown, Kent?
27:20
In Warwick, Queensland.
27:22
Yeah. Yeah, it's about, oh, what should we say?
27:26
About an hour and a half drive over the Great Dividing Range from Brisbane.
27:32
Right. Yeah, just this side of the black stump, as they say.
27:36
Right. It's a good title for a movie.
27:39
Yeah. Yeah, but so after all your, you know, a great run, all those eclectic films, you came,
27:47
you started coming back into documentaries, which is what you've been doing
27:50
over the last couple of years, any days with titles like Three Days in Auschwitz,
27:56
what else have we got here?
27:59
Three Days in Ash, which is an interesting thing because Eric Clapton did the soundtrack.
28:03
Yeah, oh, that's great. And I had no idea that Eric had an interest in World
28:09
War II or the Holocaust, for that matter.
28:11
But it turned out that he did. So he did an incredible soundtrack on this film.
28:16
It's a one-hour documentary. It's got a theatrical release in much of the United
28:21
States, which absolutely boggled my mind. It's so hard to get documentaries distributed. it.
28:27
That's a personal film about my three visits to Auschwitz and each visit became
28:33
heavier than the previous one because I kept finding out I had more family members
28:37
who had been slaughtered there.
28:40
And then we found documents and so on and so forth.
28:45
So that's an interesting... So the subject of the Third Reich and Hitler is
28:51
something, of course, I started off with in 1973 with Swastika,
28:57
with David Putnam and Sandy Leveson producing,
29:00
which caused a world wits when, with my colleague, Lutz Becker,
29:04
we found Eva Braun's home movies in the Pentagon.
29:07
Wow. And that was a sensation because no one had seen Hitler in color,
29:12
let alone cinema verite style. It freaks people out.
29:17
Totally. He's playing with kids and all this stuff. Yeah. People were saying,
29:21
how can you show Hitler playing with kids? I said, look, if you don't understand,
29:24
if you don't realize that Hitler was a human being, you're not going to see the next one coming.
29:30
He wasn't an alien. He wasn't from Jupiter or Saturn. He was a guy born in Austria.
29:37
And the whole point of the film is that he did play with kids.
29:40
That's what the Germans saw.
29:42
So that was a whole, you know, a huge impact to me on my career,
29:47
of course. And that film's shown in universities still all over the world.
29:53
It was used at Harvard to teach history in a course the professor amusingly
30:00
told me that students called the course Crowds and Doubts. Okay.
30:08
Jeez, we're full of good titles this morning, mate. Goodness.
30:11
We should be writing some of these down.
30:15
But no it's a tremendous film and you
30:18
know always a you know always a sort of a
30:21
touchy subject isn't it i mean there's there's people that well
30:24
it's it's yeah it's you know the person who broke the curse on it i i think
30:29
is mel brooks right with the with the producers all right yeah because uh you
30:35
know when that guy sings springtime for hitler in germany right i mean it broke
30:40
the curse And Mel Brooks says,
30:42
I think, in a recent documentary called The Last Laugh, he says that you can't make fun of victims,
30:48
but you can make fun of perpetrators. Yeah.
30:52
And I think that's right. So I think, you know, any way you deal with the Nazi
30:56
issue, and it's still ongoing, they're still finding out more and more stuff.
31:01
You think, you know, you've got to have, obviously, you've got to be sympathetic to the victims. Yeah.
31:07
I think he loved having jabs at the Nazis all the way through his career.
31:11
I mean, there's some Germans in blazing saddles and there's,
31:16
and to be or not to be and, you know, I think you.
31:19
Absolutely. You know. No, it's a theme for a lot of Jewish artists for the obvious
31:26
reason, you know, like what the hell happened?
31:31
No but it's it's it's you know it's it's it's something that that as is often
31:39
said should not be forgotten right and and there are you know there's there's ways.
31:47
You know it's been it's been told in it's been
31:50
told in in in many different ways under
31:53
many different guises and and all these sorts of
31:56
things but it's it's it's a subject that that needs
31:59
to be like you said examined because it's
32:03
something that you know it's something that that could
32:06
possibly not be a one-off you know there's you know it's like you said it's
32:11
it's there are genocides there are genocides occurring now unfortunately we
32:16
just don't know what the hell's going on i mean there's stuff going on in africa
32:19
and syria and we just don't know But look,
32:23
I didn't make the film directly, but I'm the subject of the film.
32:29
It's a documentary. It's called Monsieur Mayonnaise. Yes.
32:34
And Monsieur Mayonnaise, it's out on DVD in Australia. Mm-hmm.
32:38
And it is the story of my father in the French Resistance.
32:42
Right. And his code name was Monsieur Mayonnaise.
32:47
Right. Because he noticed that the Nazis wouldn't open sandwiches if mayonnaise
32:54
was coming out of it because they didn't want to get mayonnaise on their gloves.
32:58
And my dad was in the resistance and he said, look, put all documents,
33:02
money, passports, everything valuable in wax paper, smother it with mayonnaise, they'll never open it.
33:08
And they saved thousands of kids.
33:12
Like this and I just I recently met one of the kids that my dad saved a professor
33:19
of psychiatry a professor of,
33:23
psychiatry in Philadelphia and that's in Monsieur Mayonnaise
33:26
and it's an interesting movie yeah well that's tremendous because it's a survival
33:30
story it's a positive story yeah no that's tremendous tremendous but isn't that
33:36
also the that's the title of one of your graphic novels isn't it Monsieur Mayonnaise
33:41
exactly So I started doing the graphic novel,
33:45
which is out now on Amazon.
33:48
But the documentary started because Trevor Graham, who made the documentary,
33:56
said, would you be okay with me filming you making this comic book, this graphic novel?
34:05
And I said, no, sure, go ahead. and then it expanded into going to Europe and
34:11
seeing the places that my mother and father had lived in during the war and
34:15
how they survived and so it became a really intense experience for me,
34:20
I'll tell you that. Yeah.
34:22
You've also done another one, which is the ABCs of the...
34:28
The ABC of the Holocaust. Yeah, ABC of the Holocaust. That's obviously related. Yeah.
34:33
And, you know, there's a lot of stuff you can't film, you can't show,
34:37
and some of this stuff I found it actually easier to do paintings and drawings of.
34:43
Right, yeah. And I've always thought, I'd emphasize this, that I've always thought
34:49
comics were the closest art form to movies.
34:52
Right, right. Because in, not theater, because theater is like the equivalent
34:57
of a really long wide shot for an hour and a half.
35:02
Comics have editing. Comics have different angles. They have narrative. They have timing also.
35:09
And I don't think it's a coincidence, but many, many directors were comic book artists.
35:16
Kurosawa, Alain Rene, Fellini, all these guys.
35:20
And if they didn't actually make comic books, they love comics I think that's
35:26
it's a storyboard totally totally,
35:29
yeah totally and a lot of ironically a lot of the good storyboard artists began
35:34
as comic book artists as well,
35:37
yeah for sure no of course the same thing yeah so no,
35:42
a lot of them they don't get enough credit they really don't get enough credit
35:47
these storyboard artists no no certainly in Hollywood I don't think they get
35:51
enough credit no do you know Paul Power Yeah. Yeah.
35:56
Absolutely. Yeah, Paul. Yeah, we were talking to him the other day, and he's a character.
36:01
Yeah, you spoke to him, did you? I did, yeah. Yeah, we spoke the other day.
36:06
And he, of course, started off in doing cartoons for a newspaper and then comics
36:14
and then worked for Hanna-Barbera for a little while and then found his way
36:19
into pictures and worked on some amazing movies.
36:24
I know. Yeah. I know. The credits are amazing.
36:27
You know, and they, like you said, they really don't get it.
36:31
I mean, you know, one of his famous stories, he worked on The Goonies with Richard
36:36
Donner, and he said, you know, am I doing a good job?
36:39
You know, because he didn't really sort of say anything, you know, is this what you want?
36:43
Or, you know, because you didn't really sort of give him direction.
36:46
He said usually the director says, okay, I want to see this, and I want to see this.
36:50
But he really wasn't giving Paul any direction.
36:53
And finally he said to Paul, he said, look, you draw it and I'll shoot it.
36:58
If I don't like what you've drawn, I won't shoot it.
37:02
That's funny. You know, that reminds me of Cary Grant's first job with Alfred Hitchcock. Yeah.
37:10
And all Alfred Hitchcock would say was action and cut.
37:13
Yeah. And Cary Grant said to Ingrid Bergman or whoever it was,
37:17
look, I'm worried about whether I'm doing the right thing. all Mr.
37:21
Hitchcock says is action and cut.
37:23
And she says, well, you'll have to ask him about that. I can't speak for him. Just ask him.
37:28
So he goes to Hitchcock and he says, sir, you know, I'm sorry to bother you
37:31
with this, but I don't know whether what I'm doing is the right thing,
37:34
just like the Paul Bowler story.
37:35
I don't know whether I'm doing the right thing. All you tell me with respect is action and cut.
37:42
And Hitchcock says, Mr. Grant, you do your job and I'll do mine.
37:49
Or like the uh or like the one that you talk about on the the commentary of
37:55
mad dog morgan with uh john ford and and the duke and he says you know whatever
38:00
you do don't act yeah i love that story yeah what do you do there's a lot to
38:05
that there's a lot to that of course Yeah.
38:08
You know, I mean, it's many of these, many of these great stars,
38:15
they're not just acting, they're just being.
38:18
Yeah, totally. And like you say in that commentary, and anyone who hasn't heard
38:23
the commentary should listen to it, but you talked about Dennis and David Gulp
38:28
a little doing this, and you say they're not acting, they're just, they're doing it,
38:33
you know. Right, right.
38:36
Yeah, that's a hard place to get to for actors, but they're the greatest actors.
38:41
Yeah, when they just... I mean, comedians is a different thing.
38:46
I mean, Jim Carrey, he's quite extraordinary in some of those movies.
38:51
He's obviously acting, but it's different because it's kind of caricature.
38:55
It's very, very, very, very different.
38:59
You know, Marcel Marceau, I kind of grew up with this acting thing because Marcel
39:05
Marceau was my godfather, the mom.
39:08
And he would visit us all the time. He was a beautiful man and a great,
39:12
one of the greatest actors.
39:14
I mean, when he performed in Hollywood, every star was waiting outside the dressing room.
39:18
I enjoyed walking past them.
39:21
I fucking go straight in. but he was so respected by the major actors in the
39:29
world Marcel because what he did was unbelievable he mesmerized you with silence for two hours,
39:36
that's acting I'm a client.
39:39
I've always been a fan of one man shows,
39:44
I'd only ever seen the actor Stephen Berkhoff in the parts of course that he
39:48
played for Kubrick and he always played the bad guy and he was a bad guy in
39:52
Octopussy and one of the Rambo films.
39:55
But I saw him, I don't know if you ever saw him, but I saw him in,
39:59
he did a theatrical show called Shakespeare's Villains.
40:05
And it was just tremendous, just him on stage and he goes through,
40:09
you know, the villains like Iago and Richard III and so on. And it's just him.
40:16
And the only thing he has to work with is the light changes.
40:20
Like when he does a scene for Macbeth there's a red light over him and then he does.
40:25
Another one and it's a it's a yellow light and then there's a white light and you know,
40:30
and you know for nearly two hours it is absolutely great yeah it's absolutely
40:35
enthralling to watch this guy who i'd never seen it like i said other than in
40:39
the the films that he had done,
40:41
where did you see that in brisbane yeah that was at
40:44
the lyric theater he went around
40:47
the world with it i'm sure i don't know if he still does it
40:50
or not but yeah it was absolutely enthralling
40:53
to watch just one guy hold this whole audience
40:56
with with nothing he didn't have any props or no didn't even
40:58
have a stool with a glass of water on it he just you know just kept
41:02
going and going and going and yeah and it was just absolutely
41:05
mesmerizing to watch and i had a different i i now have a different respect
41:11
for him because you know i thought well he's just a you know in the parts it
41:16
really doesn't the film actors in film really don't show you how good they are
41:22
until you've seen them do. No, that's right.
41:24
Well, I mean, anyone who can do Shakespeare like that is obviously great.
41:28
Yeah. And, I mean, he, yeah, you, I think until you've seen an actor really.
41:34
Sometimes outside of the cinema and do the traditional, do something on the
41:40
stage or something, you really don't know how good an actor they are.
41:44
Right. You know, not in every case, but in some cases. I know it's trendy today
41:49
for certain actors to, you know, I'm doing, you know, doing a Broadway run of
41:54
whatever else, but I mean, that's, you know.
41:57
Well, yes, speaking of that, Christopher Walken is an excellent stage actor. Oh, yeah.
42:02
I've never seen him, but I can't imagine. He was doing quite a lot of stuff in New York. Yeah.
42:08
I'd be very interested to see,
42:09
I heard that Bruce Willis was going to do a version of Misery on stage.
42:16
Oh, that'll be really interesting. Yeah, I was like, yeah, take my money now. I want to see that.
42:22
But, yeah, but tremendous. Yeah, like I said, if you ever get a chance,
42:27
Stephen Berkhoff, Shakespeare's Villains, if you ever come across him doing
42:31
it again, it's really worth checking out.
42:36
But anyway, Philip, I've taken up way too much of your time.
42:39
It's been absolutely a pleasure.
42:41
A long time long I've waited to have the opportunity to have a chat with you. Good on you, mate.
42:47
I hope the books do really well, the ABCs of the Holocaust and Monsignor Mayonnaise, both on Amazon.
42:54
Yeah, thank you. Thank you on Amazon.
42:57
It's on, you know, it's the digital age. They're all the digital books.
43:01
They're digital books, okay.
43:02
Are you ever going to put out a print one or just digital? Yes,
43:06
there'll definitely be print versions, but we started out with this Kindle version. Right, okay.
43:12
Well, check out both of those. Philip Mora, he's a talented artist,
43:17
director, now a comic for graphic novels.
43:21
Are you a big fan of comics yourself, Philip?
43:24
I love it. I love it. Yeah. I used to collect graphics illustrated when I was a kid. Okay.
43:31
I don't know whether you ever saw them. Yeah. And I did really well in English
43:37
lit in high school by reading comics.
43:41
Cool. You haven't been tapped to join the Marvel Universe yet, have you?
43:46
No, I don't know that I'd do that. Okay. There's not so many. I don't know that I'd do.
43:51
That's another story, yeah. Yeah, I don't. I mean, how many men in tights do
43:56
we need to see? I don't know.
43:59
At least Wonder Woman. Now there's one woman in tights. Right, yeah.
44:05
That's a little bit better for me. I don't know. it seems like
44:08
you know the the comic book movies have become the new walmart
44:12
in hollywood and and nearly everyone's working for them
44:14
so i just i just this gets back to and
44:17
then i'll let you go because this gets back to captain invincible
44:20
this is full circle in our conversation because before
44:24
i made captain invincible no superhero had
44:27
problems yeah and after and after captain invincible who was an alcoholic every
44:33
superhero not only has problems but the movie is about his problems or her problems
44:38
yeah they just need to bring back the musical numbers I think Philip make them a bit more fun.
44:46
Yeah anyway mate listen it's been absolutely tremendous I hope it all goes well
44:50
for you I can't wait to to check out all the new films and the new graphic novels and uh,
44:57
Yes, if you're ever in Brisbane, give me a bell. I'd love to. Oh, definitely.
45:01
So, listen, send me a link to this if you don't mind. I will,
45:04
totally. I'll email you a link.
45:05
And, yeah, because I'd love to hear some of those, some of Frank's stories sound intriguing.
45:11
Yeah, yeah. That'll be us to be live. All right, then.
45:15
Okay, well, look, thanks very much, Kent. Thanks, mate. Yes,
45:19
Philippe Moura, he is a top bloke. He's an Aussie.
45:23
He's a top Aussie bloke, top Aussie filmmaking bloke. And I say again,
45:27
I really love The Howling Three.
45:30
Check out the link. If you don't know Philippe's work, I'll put a link in the description.
45:35
And go check him out. He's a very talented man.
45:39
He is a pillar in the Australian film community and certainly a great part of cinema history.
45:47
Philippe Moura, check out the link in the description.
45:50
And as always, my little Eugenites, thank you for listening to us on the Spotify. or wherever.
45:57
You choose to listen to your favourite podcasts. I'm Kent Hill and until next
46:00
time, you've been listening to Cinema Look.
46:08
Music.