Image: still from Exile, made in 1994, starring Aden Young, Beth Champion and Claudia Karvan.
Paul Cox had made a total of 27 substantial films since Illuminations in 1976, and between 1988 and 2001 he basically made one picture every year.
He is an indefatigable independent, a position only reinforced by his biggest excursion into directing a picture he didn’t own. He describes Molokai as a disaster, in which his cut was destroyed. ‘Every time I’ve done a film for other people I’ve been in terrible trouble,’ he says. ‘I’ve never had the nature to take all that rubbish, you know.’
While other filmmakers are caught in a complex and expensive industry model, Cox works independently, quickly and cheaply.A unique approach
Not that he sees himself as a low budget filmmaker. ‘I don’t regard them at all as low budget productions. I always call them responsible budget productions because the wastage and the selfishness and the stupidity in the production of the films are horrendous. We live in a world where people consume enormous energy making a film. Its not necessary at all.’
Cox’s methods challenge the received wisdom and the normal production process. He puts his position with some gusto. ‘It upsets a lot of people because it undermines the actual system, the system of greed and ignorance that comes with it’.
However, he works with the same actors and crew repeatedly, and they are happy with the experience. He creates a distinctive atmosphere on set, a bubble of attentive pleasure which turns the production into its own world.
What is more, history is offering a kind of vindication. Key thinkers about Australian production are pushing for budgets to match expected returns, and to find fast, flexible ways of thinking. Paul Cox and Illumination Films have become an example which is worth studying, even though his character driven meditations may seem a world away from commercial genre production.
Building new models​
Mark Patterson, who produced Cox’s latest film Force of Destiny with Maggie Miles, is very willing to adapt his methodology to the circumstances. Does he think the Illumination Films approach is a dead model, or is it driven by the essence of film?
‘That is a very interesting question’, he says. ‘It is certainly true that the way that Paul makes films is becoming a very very rare model, but that has a lot to do with the way Paul conceptualises and then executes his creative vision. Which is in many ways the quickest route between A and B.
‘It is interesting in terms of the model which is relevant now. Either you have to be quite high budget so you can cast up [to get known stars] and get a market or be very low budget and rely more on government finance and less market pressure. In that case it’s very, very relevant.
‘The worst thing you can do is lay the model of forty crew on every production. We have small crews, often without trucks. Everything we can pack in we use, and that is all we need.’
A certain attitude to financing
He argues that the conventional system ensures that a huge proportion of the production budget is used to secure the money. Executive producers claim fees to find the money, the bank charges interest, a long development process must be funded, the lawyers and accountants are paid their professional rate.
To a conventional producer, his approach to cash flow is pretty frightening. Patterson has seen him work on five films. ‘We were usually not cashflowed until a couple of weeks in. In some ways we will look after it and we will let it happen. A second before midnight, just before the tires deflate, you let off the brakes and we are away. ‘
Paul Cox acknowledges this is not a path to prosperity. ‘I hardly got a salary out of it and the system where I got investment from overseas, maybe fifty, sixty thousand was usually enough to trigger something here and we kept going because everybody was almost employed.
‘In a way its a Communist system of course and people hate you for that. I think I might get a little bit more money because I have to pay a lot more bills than most, but for the rest, everybody gets a very fair deal. it is done with absolute transparency.
‘And also the people that we’ve done productions where nobody got paid, on productions where there was enough money gave them double their salary. That creates an atmosphere of trust, transparency and may I use the dirty word, love. So what normally costs five, six, seven to ten million dollars we can do for one or two.’
A matter of simplicity
The crews are as small as possible, and pretty flexible. Patterson described his own role on set as ‘doing everything from making rain to dangling branches and picking up at the end of the day and being an extra boom pole. For the young people on the crew it was a bit of an eye opener. It was a lot more artisanal. It was fun and sad as a reflection of how films are done, so controlled and compartmentalised, without the fluidity we have.’
In this kind of egalitarian system, Cox is able to work with fine actors for wages which do not acknowledge any marquee power, which must make agents grind their teeth. That is a testament to the trust and affection he evokes, and the opportunity to do interesting work in a supportive context. Like Paul Cox’s living room.
Most producers going through a Cox film scene by scene would probably come up with a modest budget as well. But that is because he is able to explore the dramatic essence of his story simply – without reducing it to a pale copy of what it should be.
Says Patterson, ‘The hardest thing on any film is to make it simple. To make it complicated is easy, but to declutter it is where the true art comes in. It requires a huge amount of skill. It is easy to load it with heaps of visuals and effects and sound, but it doesn’t make it a good narrative.
‘What Paul has taught us is we can simplify everything down, both in the making process and also in how you tell the story.’
What can be learned
What is natural to Paul Cox is unnerving to filmmakers who embrace a more industrial model.
‘I don’t understand why more people don’t do it,’ he claims. ‘People don’t even write a script. They come to me and say I can’t get the money to write a script. I would say here is a pencil and here is a bit of paper and off you go. Its as simple as that.’
Patterson can see that the Cox approach is the product of considerable experience, picked up over a lifetime as the technology has improved but the funding opportunities have been squeezed. It is ‘a model borne of many many years. You can’t just splice it up – you have to learn it and have the confidence of your own ability and not over-complicate everything.‘One of the things which probably makes a difference between the generations is that people wait for things to happen. Paul waits for nobody and he always finds a way. He always invests in his own films, and it is all about making it happen really.’
Cox is very aware of his own individuality. ‘I always think the world I live in might think I’m a bit crazy but I’m not the crazy one. I think I’m very, very sane and I think the world that surrounds me is totally insane.
[You will succeed] If you define your goal and always keep going to that goal and don’t have fragmentation all the time, you know. I so easily get ‘oh, he must be very bossy’ and so on. Not at all, I’m just very persistent.’
