1. Source:

The screenplay is credited to director Matthew Saville, with lead Darren Casey credited as script consultant and Kelly Lefever as the script editor.

It's interesting to note the number of members of the creative team that would go on to work on Saville's first feature Noise, including DOP László Baranyai, composer Bryony Marks, sound designer Emma Bortignon and sound mixer Doron Kippen. A number of cast members, such as Maude Davey, Cliff Ellen, Luke Elliot and Fiona Macleod also lined up for further duties in the feature.

For more on the origins of the idea, see the interviews below.

2. Cast:

Darren Casey as Roy: Casey was more stand-up comic than actor, but his Imdb listing here has him scoring a number of credits on TV. See the bottom of this page for a couple of early bios of Casey.

Luke Elliot as Simmo - at time of writing, the film's wiki incorrectly linked Elliot to an American musician of the same name. See Imdb here and see this note on Elliot's work as an acting teacher: 

Luke has been teaching acting and theatre for over 25 years, with extensive experience as an actor, on both the stage and the television. Luke has taught at the VCA, AFTRS, Victoria University and Courthouse Arts before coming to run the intermediate program on a Wednesday night at Mooregrace. For over twenty five years, Luke has worked with some of Australia’s finest actors including Bill Hunter, Jackie Weaver, David Wenham, Guy Pierce, Frank Gallagher, John Stanton, Pamela Rabe and many, many more. Luke has worked on many Australian feature films, short films and large and stages of all sizes across Australia, and the world.

The work Luke does with his students' centres around relationship and connection as a way of understanding wants, needs, actions and the role of an actor. It is experiential based learning and has a focus on game play and interaction, being in the moment and impulse. (also WM here)

Asher Keddie as Cate

John Clarke as Mike

Maude Davey as Vivian - see Imdb here, and also LinkedIn here (subscription required). The Sydney Morning Herald took Davey to lunch, here, WM here, and this was part of the conversation: 

...She recalls Barrie Kosky's work in the 1990s, theatre that invariably featured penises, "great big penises everywhere! I used to say I just want every one of my shows to have c---s all over it! And I think every show I've done since has."

As well as performing on stage, Davey is an accomplished director, writer and actor. She has appeared in Tangle, Offspring, Sisters and Chris Lilley's Summer Heights High. Film-wise, her credits include Noise, alongside Brendan Cowell,My Year Without Sex by Sarah Watts and the recently released 30 Minutes of Danger.

A love of arts runs in the family – her sister Anni runs the Fruit Fly Circus. The identical twins went to specialist theatre arts school John Curtin Senior High in Perth ("We kind of got bitten") and have written and performed together often.

Graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts, she was determined to write her own work. "When I was very young I was driven by a need to tell local stories, [about] where we were and who we were. There was a need to speak about the place and time. We felt very invisible. We felt like culturally we were British or American, that the colonial voices were strongest ... There was the idea that you had to create a local culture and I was interested in that."

First up was The Girl I Love, which premiered at La Mama, then went to the Belvoir in Sydney and back to Melbourne for a second season. She and Anni then teamed with Jane Bayly and Karen Hadfield to found a capella/theatre group, Crying In Public Places, which toured several shows nationally and internationally for a decade. More recently, her solo show My Life In The Nudewas a critical success in 2013.

In the 2000s, Davey began running theatre companies: Vital Statistics in Adelaide from 2002 until 2007 and then the Melbourne Workers Theatre for two years. She was devastated when the latter failed. "That hurt. I have to say that almost destroyed me."

She says she's been "just successful enough" to make a fist of working as an artist; it's not been easy. "In the 1990s, I used to get $100 for a gig, in the mid 2000s, $300, now it's back down to $150 – 10 years later it's practically '90s levels again.

"I suspect people would tell you there's much more money being spent but it feels tight."

Cliff Ellen as Gil 

Mickey aka Micki Camilleri as Terry - see Imdb here. Camilleri was singer and composer Joe Camilleri's partner. 

Costas Kilias as Lionel - also see below for a bio.

Simon King as Greg - see Imdb here. King was the producer on Saville's 2002 wedding mockumentary short Rhonda & Nigel, part of Roy's DVD package.

Fiona Macleod as Kaz - Macleod was a Lauriston old girl and was written up in 2013, see pdf here, WM here.

Fiona’s first acting experiences were at Lauriston on stage under the careful direction of Val Heath, who encouraged her to pursue acting as a career. Today Fiona is one of Australia’s leading voice artists, with several national brand campaigns to her name, and has worked on stage, in television and film over her twenty-year career. She co-founded theatre company The Other Tongue with playwright Jane Bodie, touring nationally and internationally. Recent stage credits include Almost with You by Elizabeth Coleman at La Mama, The City by Martin Crimp at Red Stitch (Best Actress nomination) and Construction of the Human Heart by Ross Mueller (Best Actress nomination). Recent TV credits include Paper Giants 2: The Magazine Wars, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries 2, A Dangerous Method, Rush, Lowdown, Satisfaction and Neighbours. Film work includes This is Mina, Noise, The Heartbreak Tour, Little Deaths, Floating and The Last Supper directed by Angus Sampson.

See also Macleod's agent, WM here, and her listing at EM Voices here.

Additionally, a number of comics helped out, as with a fleeting appearance Peter Rowsthorn.

John Brumpton and Andy McPhee helped out by playing the two bouncers involved in giving Roy a thumping, and the producer Trevor Blainey did a Hitchock as a pedestrian, but the image is so dark he's unrecognisable.

Andy McPhee had his own site here, WM here, and was also at Imdb here. 

3. Music:

Bryony Marks and Bret King composed the score. Marks would go on to be director Saville's partner as well as score his first feature Noise. See this site's pdf of music credits and also this site's listing of Noise.

4. Profile in The Age:

The Age ran a profile on 23rd October 2003 under the header Comic's dark side revealed, here, Trove here:

A new film sheds light on the world of comedy, writes Nicole Brady.

"It is strange," muses filmmaker Matthew Saville, "that in a year of films made by stand-up comedians, it's us that has made a film about a stand-up comedian."

Writer and director Saville's film, Roy Hollsdotter Live, is an atmospheric tale about Roy, a stand-up comic with a very dark side. Filmed in Melbourne, it is a successfully moody drama in which the handful of locations tell us much about where Roy is at in life.

Perhaps the best stand-ups are obsessive types, types who observe endlessly the quirks of daily life. Their routines are streams of consciousness about, say, watching television and wondering why the hell Batman is what he is. While the rest of us accept the character as a crime fighter in a funny suit, comics such as Roy Hollsdotter make us laugh with rants about the ridiculousness of a crime fighter in a bat suit.

And just as obsessions can be funny, they can also be dark - a point beautifully brought home in the depiction of Hollsdotter's nightly ritual of sitting in a souvlaki shop window, waiting to catch a glimpse of a former girlfriend as she drives home. Is he a stalker, as his best mate Simmo accuses, or a man with a harmless obsession?

Hollsdotter unravels as the film unfolds, going from star comic to a mean bloke up on stage, a bloke so consumed with himself he has lost his wit and insight. If he can't understand himself, how can he hope to see the world writ funny?

Saville, 37, has won several awards for the drama, including best original screenplay from the Writers' Guild, and now awaits the outcome of two AFI nominations.

He says Hollsdotter is an amalgam of characters and experiences and gives credit to actor Darren Casey for bringing him alive. Casey is, more accurately, a stand-up comedian - a "comedian's comedian", says Saville.

"There was a decision we had to make between casting an actor to do stand-up comedy or a stand-up comedian to perform a dramatic role - and both were fraught with peril," says Saville.

"But I was stunned by him . . . Darren became so involved with the script on a technical advisory level that he became indelibly part of it over the three years before we made it. I was spending a lot of time just hanging out with him, going and seeing shows with him. Rewrites were getting formed by his cadence.

"The Batman routine is just a lift from some of his old writing . . . All the stuff where he dies on stage I've written. I write bad comedy particularly well."

The film was a labour of love. No one came close to being properly remunerated for the work they put in. That's how it is with short films these days. And it is a truth that extends from the director through the entire acting and production crew, including the likes of comic actor John Clarke, who has a substantial role in the film.

Clarke plays Mike, the owner of the shabby venue Roy regularly performs in. His participation is typical of an informal local tradition in which those who have made it often perform in the films of up-and-comers. Saville describes Clarke's participation as "a kind act of altruism" that followed a campaign of gentle persuasion by producer Trevor Blainey.

The film was financed mostly by the Australian Film Commission, with additional funds from SBS Independent and Film Victoria.

Hollsdotter is screening as part of an eight-week series of Australian dramas on SBS on Friday nights. The series offers fresh perspectives on the universal Australian story and sadly, like Roy Hollsdotter Live, these are not the sort of films you would often see on other networks.

Saville likens SBS to US cable network HBO, which makes sensational drama series such as The Sopranos and Six Feet Under.

"Not to blow my own trumpet, but have a look at the range of these films (SBS is screening).

"There's a greater range, I think, in the depth and meaning in the stories that are being told than in this year's output of feature films, which are a little bit samey, a little bit quirky, urban-comedian underdog stories."

Roy Hollsdotter Live screens tomorrow at 8.30pm on SBS.

5. Profile The Age:

This profile ran in The Age on 5th August 2003 under the header Serious side of comedy, here, Trove here. It was written by Lawrie Zion:

He's so talented that others steal his comic material. But, after his girlfriend abandons him, Roy Hollsdotter lurches into a downward spiral and, try as he might, his best mate Simmo is having a hard time arresting his decline.

This bleak, but often hilarious comedy, which was filmed in the Gershwin Room at St Kilda's Esplanade Hotel, is the inspired creation of writer-director Matthew Saville, and features real-life stand-up comedian Darren Casey in a blistering turn in the eponymous role, ably backed by John Clarke as the venue manager and Luke Elliot as Simmo.

"I was interested in the notion of performance and the strange co-dependence between performer and audience," says Saville, explaining the origins of Roy.

"But, however talented the performer, it's the audience that ultimately makes a judgement."

If last Friday's screening is anything to go by, audiences who see Roy Hollsdotter Live are likely to want more. A VCA graduate, Saville acknowledges that his trump card is Casey.

"He saw the script in 1997, and said, 'I know Roy and he's a personal friend of mine'.

But Saville had some initial reservations.

"I went in there a little bit worried as to whether you cast a comedian in an acting role or cast an actor as a comedian."

He needn't have worried. The film has had one of the biggest raps of this year's local releases. Yet, despite the buzz, its prospects in the cinema are limited due to the fact that it only runs for 50 minutes.

But Roy Holsdotter has a promising future on the small screen as part of an initiative backed by SBS Independent and the Australian Film Commission, which has 10 short features in the works that are intended to provide the network with a roster of quality dramas. (The film will get two screenings on the network.)

For his part, Saville says he is "incredibly grateful for the opportunity of making a short feature". But he was also mindful of the challenge of anticipating exactly what kind of "end user" would be viewing the finished product.

"Would it be seen primarily on TV/DVD or projected on the big screen? Eventually we decided that we would shoot in a more intimate, television style."

Saville says filmmaking may become a full-time pursuit, though, for now, he remains gainfully employed writing and directing sketch comedy, and has a business designing title sequences. In the works is a feature called Noise, about a cop with tinnitus, which Saville describes as another exploration of damaged, Australian men.

Meanwhile, he feels that Roy has "purged a lot of demons and sated a lot of stuff I felt really passionate about. It's a great privilege to be a storyteller in any culture, and to be able to tell an intimate and personal one is a greater privilege again. The film is about friendship and I went on a journey with a bunch of friends myself when I made this, and it was lovely to watch them develop professionally and achieve some of the things that they wanted to do."

Roy Hollsdotter Live screens on Sunday at 5pm at Greater Union.

6. AFI interview with director Matthew Saville:

See Trove here for this AFI interview with Saville in its original format:

Matthew talks about the joys and challenges of making a short feature.



AFI: Why did you choose to make a short feature?



Matthew Saville: The screenplay for Roy Höllsdotter Live has a long, tangential history. The first draft is dated July 1994. Since that time it has had many incarnations, but since being optioned to Retro Active Films and producer, Trevor Blainey, the initial development of the script was as a feature-length film, ostensibly for the 'Million Dollar Movie' initiative of the late 90s. The script, however, was not one of the five projects granted production funding under the auspices of that scheme.



When the AFC announced revisions to its funding guidelines, introducing a concept of funding 'strands', we realised we were then ineligible to apply for feature film production financing at the AFC, as neither myself, as writer and nominated director, nor Trevor, as producer and option holder, had previous feature film credit(s). Rather than rescind Trevor's option (ending his long involvement with the project) and try to attract a producer with the necessary accreditation, and/or step aside myself (in favour of an adequately experienced director), we decided to truncate the script and apply for funds for the 'short feature' strand, for which we discovered we were (as a team) eligible.



AFI: What interested you about that length? What can a short feature offer that shorts and features can't?



Matthew Saville: As indicated above, the decision Trevor Blainey and myself made to develop and produce Roy Höllsdotter Live as a short feature was in response to the only financing opportunity that seemed tenable at the time, rather than any creative imperative.



Having said that, a 50-minute film is considered 'long form' by some (though few in the distribution community), and Trevor and I were keen to test our capabilities with the more intricate problems and opportunities (both in production and storytelling) inherent in a longer running time.



Since completion of the film, however, I've been given pause for thought as to what, exactly, a short feature is. The term seems difficult to define.



Despite being a short feature, Roy Höllsdotter Live has been fortunate to win a Dendy Award as a short film, has been nominated for two AFI's in non feature categories, and won an AWGIE Award for an original television script. Despite extensive research, I am yet to find a short feature category in any local or international festival.



To many, Roy Höllsdotter Live seems most comfortably described as 'a television hour'. Interestingly, the state film body, Film Victoria, has this year revised its guidelines, requiring a feature and/or two hours of television drama credits for at least one of the principles attached to feature productions seeking their support, rendering Trevor and myself (and several other Melbourne based filmmaker teams) ineligible for their support in a feature project despite recent short feature credits.



AFI: How did you settle on the narrative of the film?



Matthew Saville: I wouldn't describe the narrative as something that was 'settled upon'. The shooting script was borne out of the seven years the story and its sundry characters were developed, in concert with its cast, producer, AFC project development managers and several script editors (all with the kind support of the AFC). It is my strong belief that the project was greatly informed by the contributions made by the above, and by the talented, experienced and like-minded artists who shaped the film with their delicate empathy for its characters, and deep understanding of their universe. They also contributed with a seemingly inexhaustible passion for the medium, and extraordinary expertise in performance, cinematography, art direction, music, editing, sound recording and design.



AFI: What's your film about?



Matthew Saville: On one level, Roy Höllsdotter Live is a fairly routine narrative about a depressed stand up comedian who has taken to stalking his recently estranged girlfriend in a misguided attempt to cope with their relationship's demise. On another, it describes a fractured love triangle and examines the inherent fragility of even the most stalwart of friendships. It concerns, on some levels, the complexities of the transactions people make with one another every day; trust, love, anger, doubt, fear, blame, forgiveness...



AFI: How important was casting?



Matthew Saville: For me, the most definitive element of the film is its cast. We could so vividly imagine the cast in their roles - and were so ardent in that belief - that auditions were held to cast only one character.

The script was written for Luke Elliot to play the role of Simmo. Darren Casey's involvement in the film was critical. He was associated with the project three years before principle photography began and, in that time, made large and distinctive contributions to both the script, and my understanding of his character and the minutae of the stand up world. Maude Davey, John Clarke and Cliff Ellen were first choices for their respective roles. Such was the project's good fortune that they all were available and all agreed to be involved.



AFI: How has making a short feature given you the confidence to continue working in film?



Matthew Saville: The opportunity to work on a project of any length is a blessing, and I am indebted to the AFC for the opportunity to realise this film. It should be noted that the AFC was the sole development agency and first body to grant the project production monies. I am also grateful for the Commission's support during the long, sometimes difficult months it took to secure the remainder of the budget.



While I never approached it as a 'calling card' film, I do hope that Roy Höllsdotter Live goes some way towards increasing my profile as a filmmaker. Equally, it is my sincerest hope that everyone involved in the project has been given an opportunity not only to hone their skills, but have also been provided a forum for their work to be seen. I hope that Geoff Hitchins' AFI nomination for editing, for example, draws industry attention to his remarkable, though largely unrecognised talents. I hope it does the same for Luke Elliot who, bizarrely, has not played a lead role in a major film or television production since his debut in Holidays On the River Yarra. I believe Darren Casey's debut in this film is an equally powerful one, and I was very pleased when László Baranyai's work was awarded a Golden Tripod at the 2002 ACS Awards.



AFI: Future plans? Festivals?



Matthew Saville: Roy Höllsdotter Live has so far enjoyed a successful run on the Australian circuit, playing to strong numbers at the Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Sydney Festivals. Its inclusion in the 50 Minutes From Home tour will, it is hoped, gather audiences in Perth, Hobart, Darwin and Alice Springs. I look forward to its screening on SBS in October, which, with luck, will further broaden its local audience.



Internationally, the film has screened at the Locarno and Montreal film festivals, and has recently been invited to Cork. Trevor and I are committed to seeking out further screening opportunities at festivals overseas, in order to increase the project's profile. In this regard, I have found the new AFC website, its regular updates, and its links to other databases, an invaluable resource.

7. Sleepybrain.net interview with Matthew Saville:

This interview ran on Wednesday, 5th November 2003 under the header Bleak is a Really Nice Place, and was saved to Trove here. It was posted by Simon Sellars:

Matthew Saville is the writer/director of Roy Hollsdotter Live, one of the more successful of the recent batch of 50-minute short features funded by the Australian Film Commission, SBS Independent and Film Victoria. Starring standup comic Darren Casey and comedy titan John Clarke, it’s shot around Fitzroy and North Melbourne. It’s a darkly humorous tale of a comedian, Roy Hollsdotter, who stalks his ex-girlfriend with a long-lensed camera, ostensibly for new material, but really because the pain he feels at their separation is all-consuming. His best friend Simmo attempts to explain to Roy that his behaviour is “on a scale of One to Fucked-in-the-Head, a strong Seven”.

The film has been doing the festival circuit to appreciative crowds and recently screened on SBS Television. It has also garnered quite a bit of critical success, as well as a slew of awards. That’s not surprising: Hollsdotter boasts a dynamic script, imaginative direction and a genuine flair for authentic characterisation and dialogue. In some ways, it’s an Australian Withnail and I – spliced with a touch of Proof. It’s about testing the boundaries of friendship, love gone wrong and the redemptive power of having a laugh.

Saville is a busy man, with a lot of projects on the go. But for now he’s happy to have put Roy to rest, purging this highly personal project that has been kicking around for 10 years.  – Simon Sellars


Simon Sellars: You wrote the first draft of Roy Hollsdotter Live in 1994. Was it always tailored to 50 minutes?

Matthew Saville: No. We were chasing bureaucratic tails, I think. In 1998/99 we were being mooted as a possibility for one of the AFC’s “million dollar movies”. But five of those got funded before we did (including Mall Boy). And then that money ran out and suddenly the AFC weren’t doing low-budget features any more. We had to take stock, and what emerged from the AFC after that was that they were doing 50-minute films. So we had to rewrite.

SS: How did the cast fall into place?

MS: From the start, I wrote the script with Luke Elliott [who plays Simmo] in mind. And [producer] Trevor Blainey read the script in 1997 and said, “I know Roy” – and that was Darren. From that point on, for about five years, the only member of the cast that actually auditioned was Asher Keddie [who plays Kate, Roy’s ex-girlfriend]. You don’t audition for John Clarke’s role [as Roy’s boss]. You just get John Clarke – if you can. I said it would be great to get someone like him and Trevor said, “Well, why not John Clarke?” And he went and spent two months pursuing that.

SS: The acting is uniformly superb.

MS: Yeah. I’m not actually a great performance director, but I’m very good at casting.

SS:  What was John Clarke like to work with?

MS: Like riding a thoroughbred. You just hang on, basically. You get onto the bit that looks like a saddle, punch him in the guts, and hang on like hell. I didn’t do very much directing with him – I don’t know how you would direct John Clarke. I don’t know why you’d bother. You just say, “Well John, here are the lines from the script, please say something similar to what I’ve written down, and I’ll be over there if you need me.” Interestingly enough, he’s just directed a telemovie. I’d beg him to let me on a set to watch him direct, because he lives and thinks at a million miles an hour.

SS: Saville is an interesting man to interview. He’s sharp and witty but his answers tend to meander through many possible outcomes, stopping and starting before arriving upon a definitive version. At one point, he apologises and promises to “try and finish a sentence”. But I also learnt pretty quickly that it doesn’t pay to ask him obvious, cliched questions, like “who’s your favourite director” or “what do you like most about Melbourne”? He’ll either dismiss them (albeit charmingly) with a vague answer or stonewall you with one equally as silly as the question (see below). Above all, Saville challenges you to engage him.

SS:  What do you like most about Melbourne?

MS: The weather.

SS: When Victorian writers scooped the pool at this year’s AWGIE awards [including Saville for Roy: Best Original Screenplay for Television], did it signify to you a renaissance in filmmaking in this state? Is there a stronger film community here than elsewhere?

MS: Five years ago, everyone was moving up north and now everyone is staying down here. One thing I’ve done – and it’s just sheer laziness – is stand still. But I’ll tell you something: it seems that Sydney is becoming increasingly more difficult to shoot in. And I think it’s because of the Fox studios there and the amount of American productions. I worked on a sketch comedy that originated in Sydney, but they chose to come down to Melbourne in the end. But I sense the same thing in the inner suburbs of Melbourne: the differences between shooting in Port Melbourne, South Yarra and Narre Warren are tangible.

SS: You seem to like shooting around Fitzroy and Collingwood.

MS: I actually like shooting around Narre Warren! Roy is set in St Kilda, but it’s the St Kilda of the mid-90s – which doesn’t exist anymore.

SS:  The film was partly funded by SBS with a view to screening it on their network. During the shoot, did you keep that in mind and tailor your aesthetic to television?

MS: I think all I had in mind was that I was doing a longer narrative. I wasn’t even aware that we were shooting on video. You think of other things and other agendas, other problems that you have to solve, like dealing with actors and heads of department. But it was a great disappointment in pre-production when we did the figures and realised we were going to have to shoot on video. If you’ve been working with a script for seven years and you realise it’s actually going to be on video, and not film…well, nobody actually writes a video. People write films. So after that it was consolidation, and because of the talents of a lot of people they made it look good.

SS: Many people wouldn’t be familiar with Darren’s work as a comedian. How would you describe his stand-up routines?

MS: Darren’s style is observational and intimate: you need to spend 15 minutes with him to “get it”. A case in point: he did an appearance on Rove where he had three minutes and didn’t get a laugh for the first two. But then he got 10 laughs in the last minute. I was actually surprised he got any laughs at all, because all of his really good stuff takes 10 minutes to get through. You have to get to know Darren first. It’s kind of like settling down on the couch and finding out a little bit about him and his world view, and then what he thinks is funny.

SS:  There’s a fantastic scene where Roy is performing a routine about Batman. It’s all about why a crime fighter would choose to dress like a bat, and what would happen – in Roy’s alternate universe – if cops dressed in “bad-fitting blue underpants”. The routine indeed unfolds at a very relaxed pace, with the humour in the detail – like the description of a traffic cop suffering from a wedgie in his bat-tights. How much of Darren’s experience as a standup is in the character of Roy?

MS: Every day when we were filming at the Esplanade Hotel [where Roy performs his gigs in the film], Darren would say, “That wouldn’t happen. It wouldn’t get introduced that way”. And the “Batman” routine is his. I didn’t write a word of that.

SS: That explains why he’s credited as “script consultant”.

MS: Yes. If Roy was a cop show he’d be the “technical advisor”.

SS: There was an article in the Age about the high incidence of suicide among Australian males, apparently a result of the lack of support networks men have among themselves. Roy Hollsdotter Live addresses similar issues: men vs. women; what happens when male friendships break down; how men cope with emotions and feelings of loss.

MS: Men and women are different – there are no two ways about it. But to victimise one or the other is silly. Yeah, there are glass ceilings and so on, but men suffer their own problems as well. The character of Kate is sketched out and that’s a failing of the film, partly due to the fact that it’s written and directed by a man who wrote about something he understood – which is how little he understands women. I’m happily married and I love my wife, but I won’t pretend to understand the first damn thing about her except that I love her. I think the film largely functions along those lines – it’s a distant fascination.

SS: Most blokes, if they’re honest, could relate to Roy.

MS: In the last couple of decades men have had to lie and subvert the basic truth, by fudging and pretending that we know everything there is to know. My next film, Tinnitus [now retitled Noise], is about damaged guys as well, like Sweetheart – it’s kind of the same story but told on a different canvas. It’s about people scratching their heads and wondering where they fit in the world.

SS: Sweetheart is the short film Saville made after Roy Hollsdotter Live. It’s about a guy, Gavin, who’s pissed off – with life, his place in it, and the void where he thinks a woman should be. Gavin misses his mother and likes talking to strangers on the phone, but like all of Saville’s work, there is a strong seam of wry humour in the film to ease the way forward.

SS: Sweetheart’s a bleak little number.

MS: Is it bleak? I was at the first public screening of the film, along with everyone involved in it. Our constant catchcry – our mantra – was, “Oh god, is this depressing? Is this a dirge?” And at the opening people pissed themselves laughing. And we were all sitting next to each other wondering what were we worried about.

SS: But it does have an underlying melancholy.

MS: Yeah. Well, it’s had two public screenings and no one’s got anywhere near the melancholy yet. Roy and Gavin are both torturing themselves in order to reach out to something that they imagine is how people could relate to each other. And they’re dealing with regret, this vague, innate, sort of fibrous understanding that they had something wonderful in a relationship with a woman. They’re physicalising this ritual, not necessarily to solve it but to cope with it in some way.

SS:  In Sweetheart, you’ve got all that social comment in there – about how there’s no community, how we work until we die, and how it’s hard to form relationships as a result.

MS: Well, I’m not against bleak. I think bleak’s a really nice place to start, but if you can end with some little morsel of hope, then you’ve got a story to tell.

SS: I saw Roy Hollsdotter Live at the Melbourne Film Festival’s Russell St screening. It got a raucous audience reaction.

MS: Yeah, but the other session at ACMI was weird. They were all sitting on their hands, being all analytical about the duality of man and trying to work out if I was Werner Herzog. Everyone involved with the film was trying to astral project a collective thought: “Just try and enjoy, people. This isn’t art”. But at the Russell St screening – I think because the carpet’s filthier there – they settled in, put their feet up on the seats and just enjoyed it. It’s a funny old film because…well, for starters it’s not a film, it’s a video. And it opens with a raucous three minutes of jokes but hopefully it goes somewhere else, so that by the end of the film there are no jokes. You’re just stuck with these two guys dealing with this difficult period in their lives.

SS:  What was the reaction like at the interstate festivals?

MS: It went down well in Adelaide because I’m from there. Sydney was good and Brisbane I loved, because the audience was little old grannies and lots of people in cableknit cardigans.

SS: Saville moved to Melbourne from Adelaide in 1985. In 1989 he graduated from Swinburne Institute of Technology with a BA in Graphic Design. From there, he worked as an advertising art director and copywriter before deciding to study film at the Victorian College of the Arts in 1995.

SS: You made television ads once upon a time. Tell me about the transition from that to studying at the VCA.

MS: Well, I don’t think anyone actually “makes” ads. They’re a byproduct: you make ads the same way you make faeces. I was 29 when I went to the VCA. And that’s very old to be at the VCA. I was a mature-age student, and you’ve got ballet students there. And so I’d stand in the queue at the canteen with 13-year-olds. Breasts were sort of like a rarity. Actually, I think I was the only person at the VCA with breasts, but they were man-boobs.

SS: Saville directs sketches for Channel Ten’s comedy series, Skithouse, as well as designing titles for film and television. This keeps his eye in and, as he says, gives him “flying time” – experience in producing miniature films. But what about the relatively little-known discipline of titles design?

SS: Do you enjoy your work as a title designer?

MS: Well, you follow a brief, and there have been times when I’ve done stuff I’ve been really proud of. But I recently did a job that was shit. I totally fucked up, partly because it was a bad brief, but I can’t blame that because I’ve done good jobs from bad briefs (and I’ve done the inverse of that). The thing about titles design is that it’s an exercise in pure aesthetics. It’s 30 seconds of meaningless: colour, movement and somebody’s name. But there’s something meaningful in emptiness, I think.

SS: Tell me about your influences as a film director.

MS: Again, form follows function. I’m influenced by everything.

SS:  Are you influenced by specific directors?

MS: OK, well I’m gonna be John Cassavetes here and say I admire any director who completes a film.

SS: Can you see yourself directing someone else’s script or writing for other directors?

MS: No. People have given me scripts that I’ve really enjoyed, but I’ve had trouble imagining myself as the director of those. I’ve also had a script directed by someone else and it didn’t work out. It should have – there was no reason why it couldn’t – except that there are vagaries. I’d have to spend six months with a writer and drill them about what they wanted but having said that, I direct 20 scripts a week in sketch comedy that are written by someone else, although they’re only a minute long. But the wonderful thing about sketch comedy is you never deal with subtext. It’s all just plot: how funny is that joke? How loud is that fart?

SS: Do you have any interest in making documentaries?

MS: No, because I’m just in awe of good ones. I don’t know how people manage to make films in controlled environments, so I’ve never understood how you’d pull together a doco.

SS: I ask that because to me Roy has a strong realist aspect, an immediacy, in the standup scenes especially.

MS: I’m thrilled to hear that. That’s a wonderful compliment, because probably the films I most enjoy watching are documentaries, but I never purport to understand anything of how they’re put together. That really is thrilling because I often think the paraphernalia around a film shoot kills the spontaneity, so its great that you think it’s still there.

SS: It’s clear that sound design is an important element in Saville’s work. In Hollsdotter, Roy walks away from the scene of his misery, although we are unsure if he’s learnt any lessons or not. As he does, the sounds of the street continue over the end credits: traffic noise; the click of the pedestrian lights. This brilliant stroke – the work of sound designer Emma Bortignon – adds immeasurably to the ambiguity of the film’s ending, suggesting there is more to the story beyond the final frame. When I ask Saville about the importance of sound in Roy, he urges me to stop talking and listen to the ambient noise of the cafe we’re in – for a good two minutes.

SS: What do you see as the function of good sound design?

MS: I think a lot of DOPs get awards for good sound design. A lot of people walk away from films saying, “Gee, it looked beautiful”, when actually what they mean is it sounded beautiful. Sound works on a subconscious level and changes the way you look at things.

SS: You’re obviously fond of Melbourne. In Roy and in Sweetheart, it’s in the way you frame it – Melbourne clearly inspires you.

MS: Yeah, it does. But the way it’s framed – you’re talking as much about László Baranyai’s cinematography. László is like me, a bit of an outsider: he’s not from here, but he’s come to Melbourne and he loves the place.

SS: How closely did you work with him?

MS: It was entirely symbiotic and very fortunate. I knew on some level he would understand the film because he’s Hungarian and he has a “glass half empty” way of looking at things which is pretty Roy-like. I’d schlepped about on VCA films that László had photographed and I always liked the cut of his jib. I liked the way he lit shots and I liked his process, the rhythm of the way he works. DOPs – more than anyone on set – imbibe the rhythm of a shoot and he just had a very clean, low-maintenance way of achieving good results. I like a DOP who says, “Well, I’m going to light the scene this way” and works around not what the director is doing but what the actors are doing.

SS: Saville’s feature-film script, Tinnitus, is about a cop who’s going “a bit stir crazy for whatever reason. But the stakes are raised a little this time because he’s got a gun”. The project has Film Victoria development funding and is eight drafts in. Saville reckons he’ll finish the script soon. He’s also working on an opera with his wife, Bryony Marks, the composer who has done the music for all his films.

SS: Tell me about the opera.

MS: Bryony has briefed me to write the libretto for a one-hour opera funded by the Australia Council. It’s called Media and it’s about the taping of a current affairs show. The premise is a stroke of genius, being that those programs are the opera of our day because they are all about familial betrayal and simplistic binary notions of how people deal with one another: there is “good” and there is “bad”. I’ve no idea when this will be ready. At the moment I’m just writing the words and she’s writing the music. I didn’t think there was something harder than making a film in Australia but there is, and it’s putting on an opera.

SS: What are your views on the current state of filmmaking in Australia? As you imply, it seems like it’s more difficult than ever to get a film up.

MS: I have had trouble but I’m not going to cry about it because you could interview a bureaucrat about exactly the same thing and they’ll say, “Well, we don’t have enough funding”. It is difficult, but if it was easy everyone would do it. At some point, filmmakers just have to make their own decision as to whether to continue dwelling on how hard it is or whether to continue on the journey they may or may not want to take, which is being a filmmaker. And if you do it in this country, you choose to do it with certain difficulties. And what if you do go overseas? It may be easier but the rent’s not so cheap, or the weather’s not so good. So you’ve got something else to whinge about. That’s the catch, I guess: if you can find a country that’s easier to make films in, then I suggest you emigrate.

SS: Would you work overseas?

MS: If I wrote a script set in Antarctica, I wouldn’t try and shoot it in Melbourne. I’m not that parochial, but environment is important and I don’t think Roy would work if it was shot in Sydney.

SS: Do you aspire to be a fulltime filmmaker?

MS: I kind of think I am. I don’t wait tables, I don’t do corporate videos, and I don’t do ads (and I won’t do them ever again). But I’ll happily do titles design or whatever. I just love the process of filmmaking. I love it physically. I love the sound of a camera rolling.

SS: And then, as our conversation winds up, Saville asks me a question that echoes one of Roy’s funniest lines: “On a scale of One to Wanker, how did I rate?” Well, he’s no wanker. You work it out. I’m keeping out of it. – Simon Sellars

This is the full version of an interview that was originally excerpted in Inside Film magazine.

MATTHEW SAVILLE FILMOGRAPHY


2003: Sweetheart (writer/director/co-producer) 13 mins


2002: Roy Hollsdotter Live (writer/director) 53 mins


Happy Hour (director/contributing writer)

Ch. 7 Sketch Comedy Pilot


Gents (writer/director/co-producer) 3.5 mins


Rhonda and Nigel (writer/director/co-producer) 7 mins


2001: Jam (writer/producer/director) 3.5 mins


2000: The Hammer (writer/producer/director) 3.5 mins


The History of the Comedy Channel (writer/director) Series: 26×1min


1999: In the Home (writer/director/producer)


1998: Accidents Will Happen (writer) 22 mins


1997: Franz and Kafka (writer/director/producer) 6 mins


1995: Two pots, a caffe latte, a scotch and dry, a vodka lime and soda and a small antipasto with five forks (writer/director) 11 mins

8. Sleeptbrain.net profile of producer Trevor Blainey:

This profile ran on Sunday 30th November 2003, saved to Trove here. It was posted by Simon Sellars under the header Retroactively Speaking:

Trevor Blainey is enjoying himself. In 2003, the former accountant’s first film as producer, Matthew Saville’s Roy Hollsdotter Live, won everything in sight, with awards for best screenplay, best short film and best cinematography. But filmmaking in Australia is notoriously tough, and while awards give off a fuzzy glow, they don’t automatically confer the green light to future projects. Blainey tries to keep a lid on it, but he can’t help betraying an incandescent pride in the achievement s of the Saville/Blainey team. He must deserve it – he’s been on a long, meandering journey to get to this point. Blainey likes to tell the story of how he produced his first film, “nearly 30 years after missing an Accounting 101 lecture to go and see Play It Again Sam“.

Trevor Blainey’s obsession with film has always got the better of him. In 1973 he enrolled in Business Studies at Swinburne, but spent the year shooting pool, watching movies – and failing. He then finished an Economics degree at La Trobe University, winding up as an accountant for Coca-Cola AMATIL. In 1986 he became Finance Manager at the Australian Children’s Television Foundation. Blainey’s “utter intent was to do that for a while and then go back to the formal business world”, but being so close to cameras and sets at the ACTF reignited his true desire. Gradually, he came to understand that his financial management skills could help to realise a career in film. In 1993, Blainey left the ACTF to try his hand as a freelance Production Accountant – and to form Retro Active Films, at that stage more an idea than anything.

As Production Accountant, Blainey worked on 30 films, including The Last of the Ryans and Crackerjack, but his most memorable experience was on the set of crime flick Chopper. “A lot of the extras were ex-crims, because it’s hard to find actors with immense body mass, covered in tattoos and with insufficient quantity of teeth and hair. A few guys had ‘been in the life’. I got a call from the second Assistant Director: ‘Trev, this guy wants to know when he’s gonna be paid.’ I told him to get the guy to put a timesheet in and we’d pay him by Friday. He said, “No, no, you don’t get it. He wants to be paid NOW”. The second AD was shitting himself, while I had to carefully explain the mechanics of filmmaking to someone who clearly wasn’t used to it.”

Blainey was steadily gathering up the skills and resources needed to produce his own films under the Retro Active banner, but in 1997 that phase of his life was still dim and distant. That year, “Matthew Saville and I met on a feature film – he was the third Assistant Director. One night, we had one of those conversations that people have when they’re depressed, and their girlfriends are back in Melbourne, and they hate what they’re doing. We moaned into our beer about him wanting to write and direct and me wanting to produce.”

The future director then handed the future producer an embryonic Roy Hollsdotter draft. Blainey loved the script from the beginning, with its dissection of “what happens when love’s over. Hollywood typically has relationships that spark at the start and then it all breaks up. But Roy was beyond that: the couple had already broken up and we were looking at the after effects”. From that moment, they resolved to get the film made.

Blainey is animated when talking about Roy Hollsdotter Live. It clearly binds together many elements of his life – like Darren Casey, the standup comic in his first acting role, as the character of Roy. “Darren and I were university mates. He now reminds me that I said, all those years ago when he used to stand in our kitchen on Sunday nights and make us laugh, ‘One day, Darren, I’m going to make a film and I’m going to put you in it’”. Trevor, with crewmembers, on the set of Roy Hollsdotter Live.

Such was the strength of Saville’s script and Blainey’s nous that Roy Hollsdotter Live was tapped as one of the Australian Film Commission’s “million-dollar movies”. But the money ran out after the first few features were made. The AFC eventually funded a series of 50-minute “short features”, and Roy finally got up under that scheme – five years after Blainey first read the script. The budget was tight, but the film looks a million dollars, helped enormously by the goodwill Blainey generated during his Production Accountancy days. “We had an absolute dream crew. We asked these very experienced people [including comedy legend John Clarke] to work for absolutely bare minimums, but they did it because they knew me and they embraced the script”.

But Blainey’s industry experience won’t guarantee more funding. It’s a hard time to get features made, and Blainey notes that the AFC and Film Victoria are in the “scarce-resource management business”. Under new guidelines, producers can’t access development funds unless they’ve produced two hours of television drama or feature film. Roy Hollsdotter Live has a swag of awards, but it’s still only 53 minutes long – making Blainey ineligible. For now.

He knows he can overcome the obstacles, though. He’s waited long enough, and while Retro Active Films is still a one-man show operating out of a small Fitzroy office, it has a full slate of projects in development, including John Ruane’s feature, Kid Snowball. “I want to make films with an Australian voice,” Blainey says. “But I don’t want to necessarily populate them with the flora, fauna and architecture that people think is Australian. It’s the way we talk to one another that interests me, the effect we have on each other. I want Retro Active to be able to be spotted, for people to say that’s the sort of film they like watching”.  – Simon Sellars


9. Dendy and other releases:

For a short feature, the film was given a good theatrical outing and there were assorted stories about assorted releases.

IF magazine:

This note in IF magazine promoted the film's launch from 19th February 2004 at the Cinema Nova in Carlton and the Dendy in Newtown (Trove here):

Two acclaimed Australian short films - Roy Hollsdotter Live and the Oscar nominated Harvie Krumpet will be released theatrically as a double bill on February 19 at Cinema Nova in Melbourne and Dendy Newtown in Sydney, it was announced by Retro Active Films and Melodrama Pictures today. This unique Australian independent double bill combines the edgy urban drama of multi award-winning 53-minute short feature Roy Hollsdotter Live and the intelligence and humour of Academy Award nominated 22-minute animated short, Harvie Krumpet.

Directed by Matthew Saville (2003 IF Award Winner for Rising Talent), Roy Hollsdotter Live was the recipient of the 2003 IF Award for Best Short Film and stars actor and comedian Darren Casey as the moody comic genius Roy Fitzgerald Höllsdotter, a thirty-seven-year-old stand up comedian at the height of his powers plying a reasonable trade in one-liners and occasional sight gags in the back rooms of sticky carpeted hotels. When his best mate ‘Simmo’ (Luke Elliot) discovers that Roy is stalking his beautiful ex-girlfriend Cate (Asher Keddie), he tries to allay his growing concern by keeping Roy company and hopefully, out of trouble.

Nominated for Best Short Animation at this year’s Oscars, Harvie Krumpet received the 2003 AFI Award for Best Short Animation. The brainchild of director and animator Adam Elliot, narrated by Geoffrey Rush and featuring the voice of Kamahl, Harvie Krumpet is the story of an ordinary man seemingly cursed with perpetual bad luck.

Roy Hollsdotter Live and Harvie Krumpet were both produced in association with the AFC, SBSI and Film Victoria.

IF Magazine - 50 Minutes  from Home tour:

When the 50 Minutes from Home tour turned up at the Cinema Paradiso Perth, from 25th September to 1st October 2004, this was the press release in IF magazine, Trove here:

Presented by the Australian Film Commission and SBS Independent, 50 Minutes From Home - An Australian Film Festival features the work of some of this country’s most exciting new film talent. Screened as a series of double features, the films each average fifty minutes in length and are a great stepping stone for filmmakers between shorts and feature films.

Screening in the festival are Cold Turkey, Floodhouse, Martha’s New Coat, Preservation, Queen of Hearts, Roy Höllsdotter Live, So Close to Home, The 13th House, and The Forest.

All films are eligible for both the Lexus IF Awards and the Film Critics Circle of Australia awards, and Preservation and Roy Höllsdotter Live have also received AFI nominations.

The works have been described by the AFC and SBS Independent as “refreshing, marvelously realistic and authentic stories of contemporary Australian life”. The majority of the films have been funded by the AFC in association with SBS Independent, with other funding parties including ABC TV, the New South Wales Film & Television Office, and Film Victoria.

There will be a Q&A with producers of So Close to Home, Samantha Jennings and Martin William, on Thursday 25 September. So Close to Home stars Kerry Fox and Gillian Jones and is a moving story of a young refugee girl who attaches herself to Maggie (Fox) while on a train journey. The film will screen along with Rachel Ward’s Martha’s New Coat. Tickets are available from the cinema box office.

Ticket prices are: Full Price $13.50/Student & Unemployed $8.50/ Backpackers $10/Seniors, Kids & Pensioners $8

Films included are:

* COLD TURKEY directed by Steven McGregor, produced by Priscella Collins — starring Wayne Munro, John Moore, Kelton Pell

* FLOODHOUSE directed by Miro Bilbrough, produced by Peter Sainsbury — starring Victoria Thaine, Robert Menzies, Catherine McClements

* MARTHA’S NEW COAT directed by Rachel Ward, produced by Liz Watts, executive produced by Bryan Brown — starring Matilda Brown, Lisa Hensley

* PRESERVATION directed by Sofya Gollan, produced by Della Churchill — starring Jacqueline McKenzie, Jack Finsterer, Kris McQuade

* QUEEN OF HEARTS directed by Danielle Maclean, produced by Charlotte Seymour — starring Lisa Flanagan, Lillian Crombie

* ROY HOLLSDOTTER LIVE directed by Matthew Saville, produced by Trevor Blainey — starring Darren Casey, Luke Elliott, John Clarke

* SO CLOSE TO HOME directed by Jessica Hobbs, produced by Samantha Jennings and Martin Williams — starring Kerry Fox, Gillian Jones

* THE FOREST directed by Jo Kennedy, produced by Clare Sawyer — starring Anita Hegh, Julia Blake, Tony Martin

* 13th HOUSE directed by Shane McNeil, produced by Kristian Moliere — starring Damon Gameau, Rebecca Harvey, Shaun Micallef

50 MINUTES FROM HOME - AN AUSTRALIAN FILM FESTIVAL DATES:

Sydney - Valhalla Cinema: 10 Sept - 17 Sept

Melbourne - Cinema Nova: 18 Sept - 24 Sept

Perth - Cinema Paradiso: 25 Sept - 1 Oct

Adelaide - Mercury: 26 Sept - 28 Sept

Brisbane - Schonell Cinema: 2 Oct - 8 Oct

Canberra - ScreenSound: 3 Oct - 5 Oct

Hobart - State Cinema: 11 Oct - 13 Oct

Alice Springs - Araluen Centre: 24 Oct - 25 Oct

- David Michod

AFC press release, archived:

The AFC also did a press release about the film, which turned up in assorted parts of the 2003/04 annual report, Trove here.

Harvie Krumpet secured a cinema release, along with the AFC-funded short feature Roy Höllsdotter Live, at cinemas in Sydney and Melbourne. A DVD has subsequently been produced and is selling both nationally and internationally.

Having won the Dendy Award for fiction films over 15 minutes at the 2003 Sydney Film Festival, Roy Höllsdotter Live (w/d: Matthew Saville, p: Trevor Blainey), one of the short features funded by the AFC and SBS, continues to acquire commendations, winning the Australian Writers' Guild award for Original Television, Best Short Film, the IF award for Rising Talent (for Mathew Saville), and Best Achievement with an Original Screenplay and Best Achievement in Video at the St Kilda Film Festival. The film also screened at the Cork (Ireland), London Australian (UK), Montreal World (Canada) and Locarno (Switzerland) film festivals.

Four of the short features have been invited to overseas festivals. The Forest was invited to Telluride and Roy Hollsdotter Live to Montreal, Cork and Locarno. Martha's New Coat screened at the Sao Paulo, Brazil and Montreal World film festivals. Lennie Cahill Shoots Through won Best Feature Narrative and Best Lead Actor at the Tambay Film and Video Festival, USA.

In addition, The Forest had a theatrical season in Melbourne and Roy Höllsdotter Live, together with Harvie Krumpet, had a theatrical season in Sydney and Melbourne. Martha's New Coat was selected as the opening night film for the Sydney Travelling Film Festival.

Dendy release:

Finally, the Sydney Morning Herald did a story about the release of the package of Harvie Krumpet and Roy Höllsdotter Live which gives some insights into the release of arthouse product.

It ran on 20th February 2004 under the header When the carnival is over, here, Trove here:

Short films don't seem to have much of a shelf life, soon forgotten once the festival ends. But a couple of Australian shorts are taking on the box office, reports Katrina Lobley.
 (Screening Now together at Dendy Newtown, 261-263 King Street)

The people at Dendy Cinemas admit they're taking a risk. They're asking cinema audiences to pay to see two Australian shorts as a double bill: the 52-minute drama Roy Hollsdotter Live and the Oscar-nominated 23-minute claymation comedy Harvie Krumpet.

"A low-budget Australian film is a hard sell," says Dendy's head of exhibition, Mark Sarfaty. "A low-budget Australian claymation short, or a low-budget Australian featurette, is an even harder sell - we're talking the hardest-of-the-hard, here.

"The audience won't pay for either film [based] on the time."

The films' producers knew that, too. In fact, producers Trevor Blainey (Roy) and Melanie Coombs (Harvie), who share offices in the Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy, came to Dendy with the idea of screening their films as a package.

Dendy was receptive. Sarfaty says the cinema takes a risk like this about once a year. Its last risky venture was taking on last October's The Finished People, Khoa Do's no-budget feature set in Cabramatta. That gamble paid off.

"For a cinema to make money, the film really needs to take about $50,000 or thereabouts over the run of the film," says Sarfaty. "The Finished People ultimately took about $100,000 nationally, but probably 80 per cent was at Newtown.

"Each time [such a risk] is successful, it encourages us to try it again. But we believe there are some Australian films worth taking risks over."

The two shorts both feature flawed lead characters going through tough times.

Roy Hollsdotter is a 37-year-old stand-up comedian (played by real-life comic Darren Casey), who's stalking his ex-girlfriend, Cate. Roy's best friend, Andrew, keeps him company in an effort to keep him out of trouble.

Harvie Krumpet is a gentle soul who suffers affliction upon affliction - he has Tourette syndrome, is struck by lightning, has a

testicle removed, and eventually develops Alzheimer's disease.

"Both lead characters are suffering some depression and going through some sort of crisis," says Harvie's animator-director, Adam Elliot.

"There's a nice balance between humour and pathos, comedy and tragedy, bitter and sweet, so they're sensitive films."

As for the 32-year-old Elliot, he's still coming to grips with all the free stuff that has been coming his way since it was announced last month that Harvie Krumpet was an Oscar contender: plane upgrades, mobile phones, jewellery.

"It's amazing what it gets you," he says, still sounding dazed by it all.

"I'm only just starting to learn the power of the nomination."

It's hardly surprising his head is spinning. A few weeks ago, Elliot was on the dole and trying to explain to a Centrelink officer that he might have to leave the country soon to attend the Academy Awards.

"Of course, they don't believe you," he says. "They had to confirm it. Then they just stare at you and say, 'Why are you on the dole?'"

The answer is that Elliot mainly supports himself through speaking engagements at schools and universities, where he talks about animation and design.

"Over the Christmas break, it just goes dead," he says. "Now I've got the bookings piling up for when I get back."

As for Harvie's cinematic release in Sydney and Melbourne, Elliot is happy that more people will have the chance to see his "child" in action.

"But as I've always said, the great thing about seeing a short film is that if you don't like it, you can always shut your eyes and it'll all be over soon," he says.

There's also an Elliot family connection between Harvie Krumpet and Roy Hollsdotter Live. Luke, Elliot's older brother, stars as Roy's mate, Andrew.

Both the brothers are friends with Roy's director, Matt Saville.

Saville had been trying to make Roy Hollsdotter Live since the early '90s.

"I have a framed rejection letter dated October 10, 1994," he says. "[The film] has had a few incarnations: it was a short, then it was a feature, and now it's a short feature."

The ball started rolling on the project only when Saville met Trevor Blainey on a film set. Saville was working as third assistant director, while Blainey was the production accountant.

"We both said we wanted to be filmmakers when we grew up," says Saville. "Trevor said, 'Have you got any scripts?' and I gave him Roy.

"He came back within a week and said, 'I know this guy'."

Darren Casey, a non-actor whose hangdog features make for a perfect Hollsdotter, was a regular visitor to Blainey's house.

He immediately sprang to mind when Blainey read through Saville's script.

"Fifty-two minutes is a difficult length," says Saville of his featurette/short feature/long short (he jokingly calls it a "schlong").

"Trevor and I feel incredibly lucky to be riding on Harvie's coat-tails."

10. Writer/director Matthew Saville's DVD commentary:

There were two commentary tracks on the DVD release, which was perhaps overdoing it a bit.

One was by writer/director Matt Saville, the other by cast Darren Casey and Luke Elliot.

(a) Matthew Saville commentary track:

• Saville begins by charting the film's "fairly long history", noting that the first draft of the screenplay was dated 1994. In 1997, he was working as a third AD on a film and he met Trevor Blainey, "Roy's" producer, who was working as the production accountant. Saville jokes that his job was best described as "white and one please Matthew". Like all ADs he wanted to direct, and like all production accountants, Blainey wanted to be a producer. Saville mentioned he had a script, Blainey asked to see it, and a week later, he called back to say he knew Roy. It turned out he and Darren Casey were best friends, and for years would joke about casting Casey in a film. At the same time, Saville told Trevor he knew Simmo, because he was friends with Luke Elliot and had known him since the late '80s. Basically he'd written the role of Simmo for Luke. 

• Saville says he's been asked if the film is biographical or autobiographical and he says he'll plead the Fifth on both those questions. "It is, and it's a work of fiction with some truths in there, based on amalgams of people I've come across over the years, including myself."

• Saville says the only two people he had to go on a casting mission for were the characters of Cate and Lionel, ultimately played by Asher Keddie and Costas Kilias. Everybody else was people he'd seen in other films or theatre. During the course of the development of the film, which took seven years, he and Blainey would have conversations about who they'd like to play certain roles. Saville would say wouldn't it be great if they got someone John Clarke-ish, and Trevor would go, "why don't we just get John Clarke?" Saville says they were fortunate in that not only was everyone they approached available, but they were prepared to work on the film.

• The same thing happened behind the camera. Blainey had been a production accountant on some thirty films, so he knew who was around, who was in town and who was good, "so he managed to assemble a spectacular crew" eg sound recordist Lloyd Carrick, who had done Mad Max II and the very experienced DOP László Baranyai. The quality of the crew didn't reflect the film's low budget, and they also worked for reduced fees just to be involved in the project, "so it was blessed in that way".

• 4'4", when Cliff Ellen shows up (he's also seen at the end of Saville's feature Noise), Saville says they only had him for the day. They didn't really cast his role, Saville just asked if he could have Ellen, Cliff had a day off and so he turned up.

• 5'16", the title shot of clouds over the Melbourne CBD, Saville says he shot the footage himself from the roof of his house. They were the slowest moving clouds he'd ever seen his life and he jokes that it took about six hours of filming to get them and make them look like they were moving.

• 5'40", when Asher Keddie appears, Saville says he has a great debt to her.

• Just after the 6'00" mark, with Simmo and Roy on screen, Saville says "one of the themes of the film is the notion of friendship, the idea of friendship, especially in this country, Australia …Wendy Harmer once described Australian male friendship in a really elegant way, I thought. She said that Australia's the only country in the world where you can get your fridge moved for free…" Saville says Simmo represents that idea. The film begins with friendship in crisis, and Simmo trying to patch it up a little bit. 

• "What was important in the scene was that the story had already begun … I'm a great admirer of Raymond Carver and the way that he structures stories, in that he doesn't structure them at all …there's a new paradigm amongst, especially screenwriters, and I blame Robert McKee largely for this obsession with the three act structure…in a 50 minute film, it's probably hard to fit three acts in, so I took the Carver approach, which is just to sort of tell the middle act …and try to tell it with enough detail in the performance and the charactisation that you actually get a sense of what that first act was …and you might get a sense of what the third act will be … so you don't tell the beginning and the end, you just tell the middle …but the middle's told with a view towards where these people are gunna go, and where they've been as well …there was a lot of discussion during the development process of the film of why did Luke and Cate (sic) break up, and I had my own reasons in my head, but they were all ridiculous, like the way most relationships break up, but this flashback (c. 8'30") hopefully gets some sense that they were once happy, in that Roy wasn't always miserable …and I like to think that the film ends in a way that suggests he won't always be miserable either …having said that, I hate flashbacks ..."

• 8'46", and Saville notices a little reference to SBS, who happened to be the domestic licensee for, and part funder of, the film. Saville thought they might take umbrage at him admitting it on the TV within the film, but they didn't.

• When it comes to the cafe, c. the 9 min mark, Saville says it was really important to get the right location. He confesses to being the son of a real estate agent, and that there are three most important things, both in real estate and a film like this is "location, location, location." With only four locations in the film, it was important to get them right, with the cafe in particular needing to be specific. It needed to be on a corner, it needed to be on a corner with a stop light that Cate would have to stop at, and it needed to be kind of believable that Roy could sit at the window without Cate seeing him - although it later gets revealed that she knows he's there. But they worried a lot about whether they were stretching the friendship by showing that physically the relationship was too close, but he credits the DOP László for lensing it up in a way that got them around that problem.

• 10'09" when Darren Casey just saunters out of the cafe and away, Saville explains he was sauntering because he didn't know what to do. Saville hadn't given him any direction, and he'd meant to cut before the sauntering got going, but didn't.

• c. 10'40", as a stand-up comic performs, Saville notes that the actor, Simon King, was a mate of his. He played the plagiaristic Greg Welles. It was Simon who insisted on the pork pie hat, and he also insisted on white sneakers. "I think he was using Seinfeld as a touch stone… unfortunately we didn't get the sneakers in shot …but I think the sneakers did affect his performance".

• c. 11'15", Saville says the scene is for Melbourne resident trainspotters, who would probably pick that the set was the front room/bar of the Esplanade hotel. Saville says they were really fortunate to get the Espy as a location - suggesting that it's arguable there would be no comedy scene in Melbourne if not for the Esplanade hotel. "It has the stickiest carpet in Melbourne, possibly the southern hemisphere."

• c. the 12 min mark, when Gil calls Simmo a fucking idiot, Saville says the line gets a laugh every time - there's something funny about old men swearing, "don't know why." His attention shifts to Simmo's semi-mullet hairstyle, which Saville likes to call "the helmet".

• Just after the 12'30" mark, with Roy taking snaps of Cate, Saville says the story is now shifting into gear… "where we get carried into the film", noting that Simmo is looking at Cate driving off in her vehicle, and he often feels that the film is told from Simmo's POV, "that he was the character out of all of them, out of the three of them, that we could relate to more, and therefore he would bring us into the story …", noting at this moment that he's discovered what's afoot and that there's some stalking going on.

• Saville adds that Elliot was a big help with all of the performances in the film. It was the first major role that Darren Casey had played, and Saville thinks he does a fantastic job, but at the time Casey wasn't an actor by trade, he was more a stand-up comedian than actor. Even though they'd talked to Casey a lot about the film, it was quite a way in before they made the decision to cast him as Roy. He was very helpful advising them technically on the script, on the life of a Melbourne-based stand-up comedian, but early on they did entertain the idea of casting a "legitimate actor". It was a question, a conundrum, as to whether to cast an actor and teach them how to be a stand-up comedian, or cast a stand-up comedian and teach them to be an actor. 

• In hindsight he can now say that comedians can turn in really good dramatic performances because it's a skill that they do utilise in stand-up comedy … "that they are actually playing characters. That was one of the great myths that was dispelled for me at least researching the film … comedians are actually fairly normal people, they don't tell jokes to each other all the time, they go home and watch DVDs like everyone else …play Playstation, that sort of thing ..."

• On the other hand, Elliot was a very experienced actor on stage and screen and he was terrific in terms of helping Darren, sort of demystify the process of acting. Savillle says he had a very simple, elegant approach, which was basically to go through every scene, and ask himself as a character 'what does the character want, and how does the character think he's going to get it?' "… and once you apply that to every scene, it became very simple for Darren … he sort of thought 'right, I can work with that, it's not this complex Stanislavski method' …"

• Saville says that the other thing Elliot did in the couple of years before they shot the film was ring up and say he'd bought two all day tram tickets, and they'd just hang out with each other. Not in character necessarily, but just as mates, "so by the time that we were at the first day of the shoot, these guys already had a rapport", and that was because of the hard yards and preparation work that they did even before pre-production.

• Around the 18'10" mark, with cars driving past the cafe at night, Saville says that the idea in the sound design was that the cars were beeping and playing Clair de Lune. In hindsight he thinks the effect was a little bit too subtle. He didn't want the effect to be too much of a gag, and he didn't want it to be so clear that they were playing a tune that Simmo would have to realise that they were playing it, "but I think we didn't quite get there." Having said that, Saville says that the sound design for the film is one of the things he most enjoys about it, and he also enjoyed that process (foreshadowing the sound design on Noise).

• When Debussy starts playing in and around the 19'30" mark, Saville notes it was a library version, and also sincerely apologises to Debussy for the oversight of not crediting him in the film for composing the music.

• 19'46" in, and Saville notes that the location was the back 'Gershwin' room of the Espy. "It's the most graffiti-addled, nicotine stained wall I've ever seen in my life."

• After the 20 min mark, when John Clarke turns up, Saville says that Clarke and Casey were both excellent at taking the essence of a scene and then working the dialogue around in their own cadence and vernacular. That wasn't to say that they were disrespectful of the script, "but they were constantly adding little flourishes."

• c. 20'40" and the Batman routine, and Saville confesses to not writing a word of it. It was one of Darren's "old rope" routines. Saville used to go and watch him do his routine and hang out back stage with other comedians so he could get a feel for the world. For years he tried to write a decent stand-up routine for this section of the film, and never could. "…Finally I just said, 'Darren, can I please have the Batman routine' …and he said 'sure' ..."

• Saville says he had another great routine, about how they pixilated the penis in the footage of the Roswell alien autopsy…

• Saville adds that when they shot in the room, they were in Darren's universe. He'd been on that very stage for more than a decade, so in a sense, Saville felt that Casey was guiding him through this world. "… he was so at home and relaxed…"

• In terms of shooting/schedule order, Saville says they began the shoot in Roy's flat, then moved into the Espy and shot all the stand-up routines and all the bar scenes, and then went and shot at the cafe, and finally did the car scenes. Saville noticed a real difference in the way that Darren engaged with them … with the crew, the camera and with him as a director and with the rest of the cast, after he'd had a week in what was basically his second home, in the Espy. It gave him the opportunity to seize authorship of the film "in some way… we were sort of his guests".

• As for John Clarke, Saville says he didn't need much direction. He rang Saville about a week before the shoot and said he could see it go one of two ways … he's either like an ex-rocker in a leather jacket, or he's like a failed entrepreneur and so he'd be in a blazer. Saville went with the blazer: "after that, he knew what the role was."

• Just after the 24 min mark, with Cate joining Simmo at the bar, Saville says things get a bit deeper now, with a second twist of the screw for Simmo. He thinks the scene is when Simmo becomes complicit in something, and we begin to realise that there's a triangle here. Saville says he said the film was about friendship, but also thinks it's a love story, or an inversion of it, "in that the vast majority of love stories that we see told on screen about how people fall in love, and the difficulties of falling in love, and people sort of overcoming differences that they have, in order to reach love, this is sort of the other end of that story …where these people are already in love, and the conflict is that their love's coming to an end …but it's a love triangle …we didn't again want to be particularly obvious about it, but I think you get a sense that these two, that Cate and Simmo, are really fond of one another and that were circumstances a little different, that you know ..."

• When it comes to Cate, Saville confesses that it was a horribly underwritten role. A flip way of putting it is that writers are always told to write what they know, "and what I know is men, I don't really particularly understand women, and that's reflected in my writing… so I'm beholden to Asher for filling in the gaps … of the terrible hole that I left there, where Cate should have been …" 

• Saville says it would have been really easy for her to play the role as a ghost that wasn't there, but she really filled the role out, and put in a lot of information that wasn't in the script. He thinks that strengthens the film as a whole, but also the relationship between Simmo and Roy, "because now we see what the issue is, and the issue is Cate …"

• Around the 27'20" mark, Saville notes that the driving scene was shot on a lowloader. He jokes it's a big circus, basically to get a two shot of two guys sitting in a car talking. He finds such scenes really difficult, because he can't really engage with the actor - they're in the car and he has to communicate via radio because he's out in the truck and it's cold and windy and loud, so the actors have to look after themselves and this is where he's beholden, because he had no idea what they were doing in there.

• At 28'25", Saville shouts 'ducks on the pond' to celebrate the shadowy shape of producer Trevor Blainey briefly appearing, essaying the role of pedestrian #2, caught in the car headlights, joking about the performance being overlooked at the AFIs

• Around the 29'30" mark, Saville notes that there's now a little air in the film, and after the frenetic opening, it now eases up a bit (no doubt helped by Roy watching a Danoz exercise commercial on the telly). Saville says the film's about winding down, and the pace of the film begins to wind down, again an inversion of the norm in terms of story structure, where the usual thing is to speed up towards the climax. "I always felt this film sort of slows to an emotional climax."

• When he sees Roy having a toke around the 30 min mark, Saville assures listeners no drugs were taken during the making of the film. All the beer was Birell and there was tobacco in the bong. The coke that Roy did at the beginning of the film was sugar, which Casey sucked into his mouth (though as an aside, really tobacco is probably the worst drug of all, followed by sugar).

• Heading towards the 31 min mark, Saville notes that Roy is in a rut - hang out at the cafe, do drugs, do the gig, repeat - and now Simmo is getting caught in the same rut.

• At 30'56" over a wide shot of the cafe and the surrounding street, Saville says almost to himself that there's not enough wide shots in the film and he should have asked for more wide shots, though he says that László did a great job and that the film was shot on video, to be precise, Pro50. He says that Channel 7 covered the Olympics, and then after the Olympics had some 200 cameras that no one needed, so there were all these cheap cameras that came down to Melbourne from Homebush. He wonders if the camera was the same as the one that shot Cathy Freeman.

• 31'35" in, Saville notes a really tricky scene for him (Roy doing stand-up). He notes that there was all sorts of politically incorrect stuff, a lot in exchanges with the height-challenged heckler played by Arthur Penn, but Saville says Arthur was cool about it, and understood the context, and that they really weren't "making fun of dwarves… in the context of the film we're seeing the rot's kinda come up on to stage with Roy, and the one thing in his life that still made any sense to him - his profession - is starting to suffer ..."

• When Roy gets desperate near the 33 min mark, and tries it on with a blind woman pushing a pram, Saville says he actually did see a blind woman in the street one day, and the moment did end up in the script. At 33'00", Saville says that's the only moment he's going to admit to being autobiographical, "that and my fascination with clouds."

• A little later, with Roy back on stage, Saville notes another twist of the screw, with the agenda shifting on to Simmo. He's now got two things to worry about - Roy and Cate.

• 33'42", a CU of Maude Davey (later seen in Noise) prompts Saville to discuss her as a terrific actor who should be a movie star, another example of somebody they thought would be perfect in the role, and she agreed to do it, despite it being a small role, handy because according to Saville sometimes the small roles are the tough ones. You don't have as much time as an actor to introduce a characterisation, and she had to do the same thing as Asher Keddie had to do with Cate… create something that feels three dimensional, but with a really small amount of screen time, a great skill for an actor to have. He's still in awe of it, and really likes the idea of two comedians going at it toe to toe with their wit and emotional intelligence, firing shots at one another.

• 35'23" and Saville notes a grave flaw in the plot - Simmo leaves a full beer on the bar. He would never have left it, Saville thinks he would have sculled that…

• 35'33", Roy coming out on to the balcony to take a Polaroid of clouds was, according to Saville, the film's first shot, slate 1. 

• 35'47", with Roy and Simmo in the cafe, Saville says the scene in the script, where the two girls walk into shot, the girls were initially described as deaf mute lesbian #1 and deaf mute lesbian #2, and when they were casting and sending pages to the casting agent, it was suggested they delete the word lesbian, just in case anyone took offence. So they did, but then the two girls who finished up in the film caught on, because they got hold of an old copy of the script that was lying around on set and asked if they were lesbians. Saville had been skirting around that whole thing, but the women said they'd love to be lesbians. He said they could if they liked as a sub-text, with Saville saying that in background they apparently started to talk dirty to each other in Auslan signing. To Saville it just looked like they were deciding what drink they wanted, but "apparently they're swear words."

• 37'05", the interjection of "coupe" as an alternative to "sedan" was an ad lib by Elliot.

• 37'40", with Roy and Simmo back in the cafe after the car gig is said by Saville to be his favourite scene. "Nothing happens, no one says anything, they've run out of things to say, these two boys …" He notes the very nice little music cue by Bryony Marks whom he subsequently married, and who did the score for Noise.

• 38'20" and Saville notes another mate, Steve Adams, a very experienced actor who agreed to come in and do a couple of hours work for them (playing a back stage comedian smoker). He adds that Peter Rowsthorn did the same thing. He waited for four hours just to walk past the camera, 38'43" "there he is … and there he goes." Saville thinks that he was a mate of Darren's and it was Darren who talked him into coming in and doing the walk past … (thereby establishing that there's some credentialed stand-up comics backstage). Saville says that Rowsthorn had a bit more to do but it hit the cutting room floor, and he offers his sincere apologies.

• When Roy goes into his routine about clouds being giant inkblot tests designed by aliens, Saville says it's actually true and there's a lot of research to support it. Meanwhile, he notes John Brumpton in the background as another who came in to help out.

• Saville then turns back to Roy breaking down on stage, saying that legend has it that this has happened, where comedians get absolutely sick of it. He's never personally seen it, he's only seen people die on stage, and then they just generally walked away from the mic. Saville says he's had comedians come up to him and say "'oh so you knew about … dot, dot, dot …'"

• When Darren tells the audience they're fucked, and one member lets out a squawk of laughter, Saville says that this was Darren's idea, because he claimed that there were members of audiences who loved to be told how fucked they are. (Saville points out Simon King as heckled plagiarist Greg soft in the background at 41'06". They got him back in the scene so he could witness Roy's meltdown and heckle Roy and thereby complete the circle).

• When it comes to the fight scene, Saville says he found it hard to watch, with John Brumpton a former boxer (he might have added that the other bouncer Andy McPhee was at one time a professional wrestler).

• With c. 10 mins to go, and John Clarke giving Roy the sack, Saville says that originally he had the scene blocked out in a different way. Originally it was scripted with Clarke sitting down, and Roy meant to be pacing around like an animal. They did a rehearsal and it wasn't working, and it was the DOP's idea to invert the roles and have Darren sit down like a chastised schoolboy. (He adds that he loves the way John Clarke puts away the invisible mirror after holding it up and inviting Roy to have a good hard look at himself).

• At 43'46", with Cate and Simmo at the bar, Saville says that while they nailed it, one of his great regrets was that he didn't film the last rehearsal of the scene. After it, Luke came up to him and told him he should have shot it. But Saville thinks they still nailed it, and only doing three takes to get it. Saville says they'd scheduled to be able to go in to get close-ups, but the two shot just seemed right, so he allowed it to play out more theatrically, in a kind of proscenium arch, where you can watch the two people at the same time and how they're engaged with one another, "when they chose to look at each other, and when they don't". He also thinks it allows the actors to create at their own pace and deliver an uninterrupted performance.

• Saville says that in the script it's mentioned that Cate cries. Luke gave him a bit of advice - whenever he saw in a script that a character was supposed to cry, "he always suspected that the writer's intention wasn't necessarily for the character to cry, but for the audience to cry, and that people actually do in Australia, and especially men, do everything in their power not to cry …"

• This leads to him noting Asher Keddie on the brink of tears and wondering how they do it … do they think of something sad, do they think of sad music?, joking that "in show business they call it acting."

• Saville gets carried away by the scene and the ask he made of the actors, and the same happens in the next scene, in the cafe between Roy and Simmo. He sees them as two halves of the same scene - the first to resolve everything with Cate, and the second one with Roy. He says somebody must have been aware of it, because the scenes feel the same, and done in a two shot. He credits his DOP for offering very simple, beautiful ways to shoot things without offering chicanery or too many tricks. Saville thinks he understood better than Saville did the need to stay out of the way of the performances, not that it's easy, with Saville saying that a five minute take is a lot more difficult than a one or two second shot, because you're allowing the audience the time to examine the shot.

• Saville says that he wasn't aware when he was shooting it that the whole editing rhythm was slowing down, that the film was slowing down.

• He adds that while the Roy/Simmo scene is sad, the characters are also still cracking wise at each other, which he thinks of as a particularly Australian thing, "the way that they approach difficult emotional territory quite often is through cynicism and sarcasm… comedy is actually a defence mechanism ..."

• 49'40", with Luke at the fridge, drink in hand, Saville says they never shot a CU of Luke at that point, and he's so glad they didn't. Saville loves the idea of the monkey on Roy's back, the voice in his ear, "it's almost like he's the conscience … and that these two guys can't be near each other anymore …so to play it all out in this one shot brings a greater tension to the scene, because an edit sometimes let's you off the hook …and lets you sort of escape the scene a little bit …but if you sort of just have to sit there and hold and watch it, in all its excruciating glory …off he goes, that's the last we'll see of him..."

• At this point, Saville suggests rewinding to see the point where Luke left the photograph on the counter. "It is there, and there'll be a prize in the foyer for the first correct answer."

• Never mind, as Roy looks at the photo, of the trio, Saville provides the answer: "That's what he's lost", adding "that was where I wanted to end the film, right there. Or that shot … (51'02", CU of Roy staring out the cafe window) … but I was reliably informed that they'd pelt the screen with fruit and vegetables if I did …" 

• So instead the film continues, with Roy leaving the cafe and crossing the street, and some might wonder if Saville's first instinct wasn't the better one … a long hold on Roy staring bleakly at the camera in the manner of Judy Davis at the end of Winter of Our Dreams. It would have been an even bigger downer, but stylistically cleaner.

• Never mind, Saville consoles himself: "There's nothing wrong with resolving things in a little way", and he turns to sound designer Emma Bortignon and mixer Yoron Kipen (the same team as on Noise) coming up with the idea of having the clicking pedestrian signal at the traffic light. They introduced the sound into every scene at the caf … and then at the end an inscrutable smile from Asher Keddie, a cut to black, and the clicking sound of the walk signal ...

(b) Commentary with the two leads, Darren Casey and Luke Elliot.

• Casey, a genuine stand-up comedian, provides some interesting insights into the art, starting with the genesis of a routine seen at the start of the show, working on the basis that if it amuses him, that's the starting point. (He gets agitated by bad grammar and his double chin). When it comes to the plagiarist routine, Casey says he's never done it in real life, but it's a bit of a fantasy, saying he'd suggested the notion to writer/director Saville (Elliot has his doubts).

• The pair provide a light-hearted commentary, starting with chatter about the smoke machine and saying that on big days there were up to 30 extras, and Casey noting that his name is ahead of Elliot's in the opening credits. We also learn that the extras were in situ for some three days for the nightclub routines and had to change their shirts. 

• Casey said he did a 15 minute spot to get all the extras warmed up, and he especially enjoyed the extras being cued to laugh - a stand up comic's heaven. He also thinks the extras had an authenticity in the way they reacted to his routines. (Casey also likes the netball trophy his character hands over to his former partner).

• When a Jenna Elfman joke comes up, both confess they didn't know who she was.

• There's a Casey joke about pubs having gaffer marks on the carpet so you'll know where to stand to have a beer, while Elliot jokes about the Gaelic thing draped around his neck. (Of course there are jokes about the "Roy" shirt and Roy having to hum Claire de Lune).

• The pair give away the location for them driving in the car just after the 26 minute mark, saying they did eight laps of Brunswick street on the low loader, with people coming out to watch the fun and/or wreck the shoot with some dick head running in front of the car flapping his arms. Casey says he wasn't ready for the response of the public down Johnson street in Fitzroy, saying he had no idea they'd get so excited about a movie being shot (Elliot also mentions the horn tooting as a way of getting into the movie).

• When it comes to the pint-sized heckler just after the 31 min mark, Casey says that in screenings he's been in, most audiences go a bit quiet during the scene, but there was one screening in Melbourne where they laughed all the way through it. He suspects they were the wrong crowd, but he liked it.

• Casey jokes that he looks like he'd just been taught how to sign, not looking that relaxed when doing the signing joke about not ordering the garlic sauce.

• He confesses to having come out and had his opening gag land on silence. "Every comic can have bad gigs or unfunny moments." With more experience, he says comics can recognise whether it's them, slurring or misremembering the routine, or the audience not wanting to go with them or not getting it.

• He also confesses to having had guys like Davin Taylor (Yuppie male) with a smarmy smirk on their face in the front row and wanting to punch them in the head, so he really enjoyed all the punch-up. "Even getting beaten-up was kinda fun." (Cue joke about make-up being on a budget and so beating the crap out of him to get the right look).

• As for Simmo's scenes, Casey jokes the movie should be called "Simmo's had a Gutful" or "Simmo Lets 'Em Have It." He then goes further and reckons he should have got up on stage and sung "What About Me"? (the 1981 song first recorded by Moving Pictures for their debut album). Elliot admits there's bit of tension between his character and Cate, but says they just let it sit there (and she did the real crying because of the way they played the scene).

• At the very end, they mention the way that there were two or three alternative endings for the film discussed, and Elliot admits it could have gone a number of ways. Casey wants to end on an up note, and says that the three weeks of shooting Roy were thrilling, three of the greatest weeks of his life … and they both talk about doing a sequel.

• Along the way, Casey worries about whether he was able to look and play 38 when he was actually 42 (one reviewer at least had mentioned it as an issue), but consoles himself that he gets away with it.

11. Darren Casey:

Here are two profiles of lead Darren Casey.

This one was at the Comedy Store, saved to Trove here:

Darren was shopping at Ikea. He decided to grab a ham sandwich from the kiosk. He was given two slices of bread, a chunk of ham, an allan key and told to construct it himself. It was nice. The key was gritty but went down OK.

Darren Casey is an Australian comedy legend as a headliner, writer and actor. Along with Eddie McGuire, he was on the Triple M Grill Team and he was also lead actor in the award-winning SBS short film Roy Hollsdotter Live. Darren has worked with some of the best including the Working Dog Productions team, Russell Gilbert, Peter Rowsthorn, and as special guest Master of Ceremonies on Tony Martin and Mick Molloy's 1994 Australian tour, at the height of the Martin Molloy phenomenon.

Casey has also been featured on legendary ABC comedy series Frontline, as himself on Rove Live, and has been involved in iconic comedy tonight shows including Russell Gilbert Live and In Melbourne Tonight.

Casey’s recent film works includes underground hit short-feature film Roy Hollsdotter Live [2003], in which Casey takes the titular role as Roy Holsdotter, a 37-year-old stand-up comedian going through tough times, and stalking his ex-girlfriend. On Roy Holdsdotter Live Casey worked with Director Matthew Saville, director of famed productions including Noise, The King, We Can Be Heroes, Hamish and Andy, Big Bite, Skithouse and more.

In 2003 Roy Hollsdotter Live was released and won a Dendy Award for Best Film in it's category at the Sydney Film Festival. It has also won the IF award for best short film, two cinematography awards [State and National] the Writers Guild Award for Best Original Screenplay for television and was short listed for a state literary award [script]. It was also been nominated for two AFI Awards [Best Short Film and Best Editing].

Casey’s theatre ventures have included Two Bums Go Vegas [1995] with Matt King at Budinski's Theatre, Melbourne, and He's a Little Bit Mental  [2001] at the Victoria Hotel, Melbourne. Casey’s eagerly anticipated return to Melbourne International Comedy Festival in 2007 culminated in the solo show Poo Ring Sting.

A-List bio:

This bio at A-List was saved to Trove here:

Darren Casey first performed stand-up comedy in 1991. After slugging it out on Melbourne's pub circuit he turned professional in October 1992, after successfully headlining the Comedy Club's 10 week season of 'What's new in comedy?' 1992 also saw Darren voted the Esplanade Hotel's "Most popular new comic".

In 1993 Darren took his dry style to London. For him the highlights were the encore performances in bars in the West End. Darren could still be in London only he couldn't resist the opportunity to tour nationally with Tony Martin and Mick Molloy of the ABC's Logie winning show "The Late Show" in 1994.

In 1995 Darren moved into radio, joining Eddie McGuire, Trevor Marmalade and Glenn Robbins on Triple M's "The Grill Team", Melbourne's most popular Saturday morning show.

In 1997 an altered "Grill Team" went into the afternoon drive slot. Darren co-hosted along with Dermot Brereton, Bridget Duclos and McGuire. It was during this time that Darren won a national radio award for "Best Newcomer on Air". 1998 included several appearances on the popular chat show "The Panel" on Channel 10.

Regular TV appearances followed in 1999 as Darren had a weekly spot on Channel Seven's sports show "Live and Kicking". With the onset of 2000 Darren appeared on Channel Nine's "Russell Gilbert Live" but spent a lot of the year searching for ......his brother cheese??!!

2001 saw the introduction of a new act. Darren teamed up with talented comic actor and singer Paul McCarthy (star of Channel nine's sketch show "Comedy Inc") to produce "The Cheese Brothers"; a comic-cabaret act with Darren on the piano which had a successful debut season at that year’s Melbourne Comedy Festival. 2001 also saw Darren take on the job as the writer for new reality quiz show, "The Weakest Link" until moving back to radio in 2002.

Back on radio now and 2002 saw (or heard) Darren team up with radio pair Tony Moclair (Guido) and Julian Schiller for the Sunday morning show "The Flying Squad" on Triple M which broadcast to 40 stations nationally. At the same time Darren could be heard on Mondays when he teamed up with Geelong football star and personality Billy Brownless and sports journalist Matt Granland to present "The Hot Tub" for radio station K Rock in the afternoon drive slot.

The highlight of 2002 was shooting the SBS short feature film (50 minutes) "Roy Hollsdotter Live" to be screened in mid 2003. The film is about a stand up comic, Darren has the lead role.

In 2003 "Roy Hollsdotter Live" was released and won a Dendy Award for Best Film in it's category at the Sydney Film Festival. It has also won two cinematography awards (State and National) the Writers Guild Award for Best Original Screenplay for television and was short listed for a state literary award (script). It has also been nominated for two AFI Awards (Best Short Film and Best Editing).

Darren once had an elderly female neighbour who believed he was trying to gas her.

12. Costas Kilias:

Kilia is perhaps best remembered for his role in The Castle, but he was also a lawyer and a speaker, with this bio at Successful Speakers, saved to Trove here:

Having trained and worked as a barrister Costas has a brilliant mind. Combined with his acting skills gained from roles in famous Aussie films has made him the consummate Emcee. He is able to retain amazing amounts of information and mould it into communications with any audience to command their respect, entertain and inform. He also delivers keynote speeches with the degree of research and passion you would expect from a true court room performer.

Born and bred in then working class Port Melbourne, Costas Kilias was educated at Melbourne University and has worked as a barrister since 1989, specializing in crime.


When he is not performing in the court room, Costas has been seen in a number of guises across the entertainment industry.


On film he has built an impressive roster of roles in The Castle, The Wog Boy, Head On, The Wannabes, Two Fists One Heart and most recently Kings Of Mykonos, Wog Boy 2.


Costas has also been prolific on Television with roles in Neighbours, Blue Heelers, The Adventures of Lano and Woodley 11, Sea Change, Pizza, Kick, Race Relations and City Homicide.


No stranger to speaking, Costas has MC’d and been guest speaker at various corporate and sporting functions and was the host for “Onside Soccer” functions at Crown Casino.


On radio Costas was the host of The Big Conspiracy on 3AB, a weekly guest on 3AK and a weekend presenter on 3AK. Currently Costas can be heard on SBS radio on the weekly soccer program The World Game. 
Being a barrister gives Costas a great background for adapting to any brief. 


Costas has the ability to host, facilitate and guest speak at a wide range of functions. 
From sporting events, to awards nights, debates, hypotheticals - he can handle them all.


Film


2011 Great Western, Grogan, Great Western Films


2010 Big Mamma’s Boy, Mr Cotoletta, Bruno/Lotito , director Frank Lotito


2009 Kings Of Mykonos, Tony Ugoslav, KOM Productions, director Peter Andrikidis


2008 Two Fists One Heart – role, Costa Akidis, Palm Beach Pictures, Director Shawn Seet


2005 Wil – role, Colin, Quixotic Films, director Jeremy Weinstein


2002 The Wannabe’s – role, Adrian, director Nick Giannopoulos


2002 Fat Pizza – role, Russian Mob Boss, director Paul Fenech


2002 Roy Holdstotter Live – role, Lionel, director Matthew Saville


1999 The Wog Boy – role, Tony the Ugoslav, director Alexsi Vellis


1997 Head On – role, The Taxi Driver, director Ana Kokinos


1996 The Castle – role, Farouck, director Rob Sitch
Television


2010 City Homicide, Kostas Emmanouel, Network Seven, director


2009 Race Relations, Rabbi for ABC TV


2006 KICK – role of George, Storm Productions for SBS


2004 Regular Melbourne Guest Presenter for the Today Show, Channel 9


2001 Pizza – role Wrestler Husband, director Paul Fenech


1998 The Adventures of Lano & Woodley 11 – role, Postman Rob


1998 Sea Change - role, Dave Jennings


1998 Neighbours - role, Police Sgt. Walker, director Nic Buffalo


1998 Blue Heelers – role, Osman Denir, director Richard Jasek


TVC


2002 Commonwealth Bank “Equity Mate”- TheThreeSixZero Partnership


1997 Red Rooster – Saatchi & Saatchi
Radio


2010 Weekly analyst on The World Game SBS Radio


2002 Weekend Presenter on 3AK, Saturday 12pm-6pm, Sunday 12pm-5pm


2001 Weekly guest on 3AK Drive with Nick Pappas


1998 Host of ‘The Big Conspiracy’ at 3AB
-2000

13. DOP László Baranyai:

Baranyai would go on to do Saville's first feature Noise, a film which shares the same sense of night light and night life as Roy Höllsdotter Live.

Baranyai at one point had his own site, as Laszlo Films, saved to Trove here. It contained this brief bio:

László Baranyai was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1950.

He started work as Camera Assistant for the Hungarian Film Company MAFILM in 1970.

In 1978 he was accepted into the internationally renowned ACADEMY OF DRAMATIC & CINEMATIC ART, FILM & TELEVISION, Budapest.  

After graduation in 1982 he returned to MAFILM where, as Director of Photography,  he shot feature dramas, feature documentaries and many short subject dramas and documentaries.

These projects garnered him numerous awards and established his reputation world-wide for excellence in Cinematography. 

In 1988 he relocated to Australia. 

Now based in Melbourne, László has forged a body of work including TV series, mini-series, documentaries, short dramas and multi-award winning feature films.

In 1996 The Hungarian Government  awarded him the “TRIBUTE TO EXCELLENCE” - a prize especially established for Hungarian filmmakers living abroad and awarded for their outstanding contribution to world cinema.  

László Baranyai is an accredited member of the Australian Cinematographers Society as well as the Hungarian Society of Cinematographers.