“Inside the Kellyverse”: How Paul Kelly’s “How to Make Gravy” Became a Christmas Movie | Australian film

THere’s an amazing device from How to Make Gravy, as it’s almost impossible to pinpoint the film to a specific era. An earthy 70s style color palette. The fashion and cars are 90s shabby. The backyard table decorated for Christmas dinner and the screen doors slamming ever louder as the red wine flows are omnipresent. Eventually I discover a vape, but the overall effect is that the brain is filled with nostalgia.

Binge commissioned How to Make Gravy as his first original feature film, based on the 1996 Paul Kelly song of the same name. Its creators were loyal to those early fans (like Hugo Weaving, one of the stars) who vividly remember discovering the song on Rage back in the day and still cherish it.

“You’re in the Kellyverse,” says Meg Washington, the singer-songwriter who co-wrote the film, “and for that reason we didn’t want to have a temporal anchor.”

Kelly’s song takes the form of a letter she wrote from prison on December 21, just before lights out. An explosion of violence on Christmas Day set author Joe on a new course and now he is separated from his family. The song conveys a lifetime of pent-up fear in just 357 words.

“It explores the space between what men say and how they actually feel,” says director Nick Waterman. “And that’s why a lot of men connect with it.”

Waterman and Washington, who are married, conceived the film during the pandemic. Her two touchstones were Kelly (sometimes direct, sometimes along the lines of “what would Kelly do”) and Dr. Richard Goldwater, an 83-year-old Boston psychiatrist whom Washington had been seeing for 10 years. Dr. Goldwater became the project’s psychiatrist and helped unpack the characters.

“We talked to him every Friday and talked about what was going on with our scripts, our characters, and in our actual lives,” says Waterman. (Dr. Goldwater is referred to in the film as “Maieutic,” which comes from the Greek word for midwife.)

The toughest nut to crack was Joe, played with nuanced fear by Snowtown actor Daniel Henshall. Joe is full of resentment, prone to self-sabotage, and has poor impulse control. When someone shows him compassion, his response is a curt: “Well. Shit happens.”

Kelly says the film’s Joe was a surprise to him. “A good thing. I like to be surprised. “I couldn’t have imagined the reason he was going to prison,” he tells Guardian Australia. From time to time he has imagined that Joe is the same unfortunate protagonist in his songs “To Her Door” and “Love Never Runs on Time”, but he is not 100% sure.

Salvation for Joe comes in the form of Noel, an old-timer played by Weaving. Noel runs the prison kitchen – a safe haven from “politics,” as he calls threats and violence. The catch is that the entire kitchen staff has to attend his men’s meetings. And let’s just say that if Noel wasn’t in prison he’d probably be running a drum circle in Mullumbimby.

Tortured masculinity has long played a role in Australian film, but Weaving says he got tired of playing “these wounded men” before reading the script.

“It’s about feelings and inner states, and that’s really hard to capture on film,” he says, crediting Waterman’s work on short films, commercials and music videos, which have served him well when it comes to distilling a mood. The film has a warm tone; Even the prison uniforms are gravy brown. It was filmed in Jacobs Well, halfway between Brisbane and the Gold Coast, but as Weaving says: “It’s a timeless Australian suburb that could be here or there.” The idea is that you’ll swear you know .

The names of the ensemble cast are taken from Kelly’s lyrics. There’s Angus (Jonah Wren Phillips), Joe’s young son, who is in danger of following in his father’s footsteps if the cycle isn’t broken. Inside, Joe is stuck agonizing over the fact that his brother Dan (Brendan Thwaite) is “holding down the fort” in his house, entertaining his children and perhaps moving in with his long-suffering wife Rita (Agathe Rousselle). As Kelly’s text says, “She’s the one who saves me,” and Rita has become Joe’s partner, mother, and therapist all in one.

Then there’s Roger, Joe’s smug brother-in-law, married to Stella (Kate Mulvany) and lovingly played by Damon Herriman. Herriman may have portrayed Charles Manson (twice, in Mindhunter and Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), but Roger is a new kind of lowlife: He accidentally and intentionally forgets that Joe just lost his job and annoys Dan about his lack financial security as a semi-successful musician.

“It was important for us to have a character who embodied the choice to live as a musician,” says Washington, herself a three-time Aria winner, “because it can be very difficult to justify a life in search of art. “

The prison cast consists of a generous selection of musicians. Patience Hodgson of the Grates and rapper Briggs take on the role of guards, while solo artist Brendan MacLean, rapper Dallas Woods and Zaachariaha Fielding and Michael Ross of Electric Fields play prisoners.

Having a prison choir sing heartbreaking musical numbers written by Washington brings sentimentality to the film without turning it into a turkey.

“In terms of genre, this film had to be a prison film, but it also had to be a Christmas film,” says Washington, “so there’s a wonderful opportunity for redemption and awakening that seems to be inherent in the Christmas genre.”

Kelly’s song itself joins a limited canon of non-cheesy Christmas classics, including the Pretenders’ “2000 Miles” and the Pogues’ “Fairytale of New York.”

“I love Fairytale and 2000 Miles too,” says Kelly. “Of course there are many other great offers. First of all, “What Would Santa Claus Say” by Louis Prima and “River” by Joni Mitchell.

Back in 1996, he didn’t expect his song to become such a festive hit. “I know the band and I enjoyed playing it from the beginning. The structure has built-in gear changes that send us soaring every time we play it. It’s like a ride. I knew from a very early age that we had a good tool in the toolbox every time we went to work, Christmas or not.”

While How to Make Gravy is available to watch from Sunday, Binge is no doubt hoping that Gravy Day – the Kelly-inspired unofficial Australian holiday on December 21st – will provide another boost. And this may not be the last we hear of the characters either.

“I feel like I’m not done with Joe and Rita yet,” Kelly reveals. “I’ve been playing around with a sequel that has more of Rita’s side of the story. Working title: Rita Wrote a Letter.”