Aussie Rules: Ted Kotcheff reflects on his 1971 classic Wake in Fright

“If you’re a good bloke, you’re alright.”

An inherently banal statement enlivened by the plain-speaking confidence of the Australian accent that announces it. But in Wake In Fright, everything hangs on the notion of ‘bloke’: not just a ‘guy’ but one compromised by red-blooded machismo, swaggering with primal urges and caveman pragmatism. It would not be the first time director Ted Kotcheff explored such male temperament: the resurgence of John Rambo’s violent instincts in 1982’s First Blood; Gene Hackman’s retired Marine pooling together a group of veterans to rescue his prisoner-of-war son in Uncommon Valor (1983); the dubious rise to get-rich-quick power of the title character in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974).

Wake in Fright’s inexorable 1971 study of psychic disintegration revolves around John Grant (Gary Bond), a disgruntled Englishman forced to sit out a teaching job in a one-horse outpost in the middle of an endless, uncompromising desert. When the six-week Christmas vacation arrives, he heads to meet his girlfriend in the oasis of Sydney, but first must make an overnight stop in the Outback town of ‘The Yabba,’ a sweltering gridiron of insistent masculinity, where steaks are gnawed, beer mainlined and money gambled feverishly. When Grant stakes all on an opportunity to escape his dead-end contract and loses, the stopover becomes one booze-sodden descent into the recesses of his dormant animalism, goaded by the Mephistophelean Doc Tydon (a delirious Donald Pleasance).

Shot in Broken Hill, New South Wales, Kotcheff’s film is a blearily subjective nightmare: expressionistic flourishes of febrile grotesquerie are countered by eerily static scenes, forlorn in their ambiguity. Ignored upon its release, Wake in Fright was pulled out of circulation before vanishing into obscurity. Believed lost for over three decades, materials were found and restored, retrospectively placing Grant’s grim pilgrimage as a cornerstone of the Australian New Wave. When The Skinny called Kotcheff at his home in Mexico, the director came across as one who is, in keeping with his cinema, most definitely ‘alright’.

The Skinny: Retrospectively, Nick Cave has declared Wake in Fright the “most terrifying film about Australia in existence.” How was such an unflattering portrayal of Outback mentality initially received?

Ted Kotcheff: When the locals found out I was there to make the film, they said, “You’re going to rubbish us, aren’t you?” I said, “Look. I’m a director. I don’t criticise. I observe and empathise. I’m not the judge of my characters, I’m their best witness.” When it was released in Australia in 1971, the popular reaction was lukewarm. People were affronted by the depiction of the Aussie male. Jack Thompson, one of the actors in the film, remembered that in the theatre where he saw it, a man jumped out of his seat and shouted, “This is not us!” And another voice cried out, “Sit down you fool. It is us.”

But were you concerned that this depiction might be perceived as parodic or exploitative, what with you being a Canadian-born filmmaker?

When I arrived in Australia, I discovered that the Outback was not that dissimilar to Northern Canada. The same vast, empty spaces that, paradoxically, are not liberating but claustrophobic and imprisoning. And both countries have hyper-masculine societies. John Grant is a sensitive, literate man who succumbs to the shadow side of his own nature. The whole picture is an odyssey of self-discovery: a guy who finds that his essential superiority is unwarranted and does things he never dreamed of to prove his virility. Education and civilisation are thin defence against the ‘yahoo’ in each one of us. It ain’t just Australians! It’s all men. It’s me, OK?

As Donald Pleasance’s character remarks, “Affectability? Progress? A vanity spawned by fear.” This line particularly resonates through your career.

My films seem to be haunted by characters who don’t know what’s driving them on. Take Duddy Kravitz: what’s essential in that picture is the guy who goes up to him and says, “Kravitz! Why do you always run around like you got a red-hot poker up your ass?” He doesn’t know why. And John Grant knows sweet Fanny-Ann about himself. I’m attracted to putting these characters into situations where they can discover things about themselves, however unsavoury.

Many of your films deal with levels of machismo and masculine assertion. What is it specifically about the male psyche that interests you so much?

Well, the one thing you need to know about Broken Hill is that the men outnumber the women three to one. I said to the editor of the local newspaper, “Where are the brothels?” “There are no brothels.” “What about homosexuality?” And he said, “Whut?!? Are you crazy? No way.” “What do they do for human contact?” “They fight.”

And that was the case. I’d go out to a pub and this guy would come and square right up to me. I grew up in the streets and know how to win a fight. You start it. Someone sticking his jaw in my face meant that I could break it. But the fighting was not belligerence, just desperation for human contact. And that provocation was the easiest way of getting touched by somebody.

The prolonged sequence of night-time kangaroo slaughter caused its fair amount of consternation. How difficult was it to bear witness to?

The whole thing flummoxed me because the last thing in my mind was to kill an animal for a film. One of the crew told me that hunters killed hundreds of kangaroos every night in the Outback, going out with refrigerated trucks to sell them to America for the pet food industry: think about that the next time you feed your dog. All I can say is never look in the eyes of a kangaroo as you’ll never kill one again. They are the most anthropomorphic creatures. Whenever I was shooting them outside of the actual slaughter scene, I’d see one and he’d stop and look at the camera. I’d say, “OK, now jump to the left.” And he would. “Stop now.” He’d stop. It was like A Midsummer Night’s Dream: he was Bottom with a kangaroo head on.

Where did you find Nelson, the boxing kangaroo, who violently spars with one of the drunken locals in the midst of this nocturnal nightmare?

Kangaroos are pacific creatures so I had no idea how I was going to do that scene. But I lucked out with Lord Nelson, so called because somebody had shot out his right eye and, as a result, he wanted to rip apart every human being he ever met. He was the Moby Dick of kangaroos. When I shouted “Action!”, Lord Nelson just charged right at the actor who was his adversary. I don’t know how Peter Whittle faced him. What they do is embrace you with their upper arms, go back on their prehensile tail, then raise their legs inside the embrace and disembowel you. Only if they’re angry, and, boy, he was ready to kill Peter.

Anyway, we shot it all, and instead of finishing in three days, we did it in three hours. I opened the gates of the enclosure we were in and said, “Okay, Lord Nelson, you did a great job. You can go.” He wasn’t sure that I meant it and took five exploratory hops, before looking back at me. “Go back to your family and friends Lord Nelson. And I’m sorry somebody shot you in the eye and no one can ever make it up to you, but whoever that bastard was…” And he understood.

Wake In Fright sinisterly details the effects of submission to an aggressive hospitality. If John Grant had been just a bit more assertive in declining the offer of a drink, he might have avoided existential breakdown…

You know Chips Rafferty, the guy who plays the Outback sheriff? The first shot I did with him was where he pours a pint down his throat. I said, “Action!” and he spat it out. “What is that, Ted?” he said. “It’s non-alcoholic beer.” “WHAT?!? I can’t act with that.” “For Chrissakes, Chips, I may do six takes of this. What, you gonna down six pints of real beer?” He said, “Ted, don’t worry about it. You provide me with beer and I will do the acting.” And he did – knocked countless back and never missed a mark.

How do you think the film stands up now, since its rediscovery?

When I screened Wake in Fright after it had disappeared for 25 years, I was deeply intrigued by the despair in it. Despair over humanity. Ironically, Australian audiences have come to appreciate that darkness now, and are always thrilled to discuss it afterwards.

Over a beer or two?

[Laughs.] You can’t understand that film without drinking beer…