Is either a lack of top rate actors, or a reluctance to find other top rate actors. Regardless of which one it is, the fact that the same actors seem to crop up over and over and over in leading roles, with a very small amount of variability, makes a large number of otherwise good or great films feel like they’re the same film you watched last week, just with everyone in a different costume.
Case in point, I caught the last half hour of Lantana on Movie Extra last night and felt like I was watching an amalgamation of about three or four Australian television shows and movies, all of which have had a few of the actors from Lantana in them.
This isn’t to say that actors should be excluded from working on more than one production…far from it. I just think that if the Australian film industry wants to be taken more seriously by the international film industry and wants to make films which have more international appeal, then they need to nurture a wider base of talent. The writing is good, but you can’t have an almost identical set of leading actors in every production without them all feeling the same, and people losing interest.
Samuel
Comments Disabled To "The issue which plagues the Australian film industry"
#1 Comment By randombrainwave On March 9, 2009 @ 11:17 pm
Agreed, Samuel. Screen Australia will happily fund a crappy film if a name actor is involved, but won’t fund a great script if it’s full of unkowns. It’s bizarre when you consider that a name actor actually has no effect on the box office. Consider Candy – it featured Heath Ledger and failed miserably, as did Swinning Upstream which starred Geoffrey Rush. Kenny was a big hit and had no name actors. Figure that one out.