FILMOGRAPHY

2006]Fever
2006] I Kill
2006] The Contract
2003] And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself (TV)
2002] Evelyn
2001] Bride of the Wind
1999] Double Jeopardy
1999] Sydney: Story of a City
1997] Paradise Road
1996] Last Dance
1994] Silent Fall
1994] A Good Man in Africa
1993] Rich in Love
1991] Black Robe
1990] Mister Johnson
1989] Driving Miss Daisy
1989] Her Alibi
1987] Aria (segment "Die tote Stadt")
1986] Crimes of the Heart
1986] The Fringe Dwellers
1985] King David
1983] Tender Mercies
1981] Puberty Blues
1980] The Club
1980] 'Breaker' Morant
1979] Money Movers
1977] The Getting of Wisdom
1976] Don's Party
1975] Side by Side
1974] Barry McKenzie Holds His Own
1972] The Adventures of Barry McKenzie

LINKS

IMDB

Bruce Beresford

Born 16 August 1940 Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

Widely regarded as one of Australia's best directors.

Married to screen writer/novelist Virginia Duigan since 1985. They have a daughter Trilby Beresford who was born in North Carolina on 09/06/86 and has acted in a few films.

Brother-in-law of Australian director John Duigan (The Year My Voice Broke).

Bruce graduated from Sydney University in 1962.

Early in his career Bruce moved to Nigeria to work as a film editor, then to England before returning to Sydney when the Australian Film Commission was formed.

Part of the New Wave period that came about with the initiation of a number of arts funding schemes under Gorton and Whitlam during the 1970s that established an environment in which Australia's artists could experiment with cinema. Other aussie talent to emerge during this period include Peter Weir, Fred Schepsi and Gillian Armstrong.

Beresford's 1980 anti-war courtroom drama Breaker Morant got the director international acclaim launching his career overseas & at the time was Australia's greatest box office success.

Bruce directed the best picture oscar winning film Driving Miss Daisy but missed out on an oscar nomination for best director.

Bruce has been twice nominated for an oscar: in 1981 for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium for: 'Breaker' Morant & then again in 1984 for Best Director for: Tender Mercies (for this he also received a golden globe nomination). He has 4 AFI (Australian Film Institute) awards: 1997 Best Director for: Don's Party - 1980 best director & Best Screenplay, Original or Adapted for: 'Breaker' Morant - 1986 Best Adapted Screenplay for: The Fringe Dwellers.

Bruce together with cinematographer Geoff Burton (Dead Calm) took on the challenge of an IMAX film with Sydney—Story of a City.

Bruce has directed a number of operas including: Girl Of The Golden West (Puccini), Sweeney Todd (Sondheim) & Carlisle Floyd's Cold Sassy Tree.

Bruce on his films:
"Once the films are finished, I never see any of them ever again. All I can see is mistakes. I can't bear to look at them."

Bruce on working with Australian crews on Paradise Road after 10 years working overseas:
"The Australian crews were still down to earth. They don’t get carried away with any phony glamour, and they’re not afraid to give you their opinions. They’re also very good with the actors. They don’t kiss their bums, but they’re perfectly polite and straightforward and I think the actors appreciate that. On Paradise Road one of the crew called out to Glenn Close and said, “Hey Glenn, mate! Just move a bit to the left so that light hits you there. O.K., mate?” And she looked up and said, “Oh, yes. Certainly.” I thought nowhere else on earth would someone call out to her like that, but it was good. He wasn’t rude, he wasn’t offensive, he just had a nice Australian frankness about him, and it makes it easy to deal with."

Bruce on directing actors:
“I have some director friends who have said that they don’t really like working with actors - directors who have said ‘I wish they would just get on with it. I don’t want to talk to them,’ which always struck me as strange because I certainly like talking to actors and I have spent a long time casting them. I think casting is important because if you get the right actors cast then you appear to be a much better director than you are because then it goes very smoothly. But if you make a mistake in the casting and you want a performance that is somewhat different to what they want to do, it’s going to be very difficult. I am always very specific about what I want actors to do and what can be gotten from a scene but I think a lot of it is instinct. Quite often I will watch something and then I will say to the actor ‘it appears to me that if you did such and such, this might work.’ It can be an off-the-cuff thing, but I’ve often found when I have looked back at scenes I have found that I am right, or at least I think that I was right."

Bruce talking about the Australian movie culture in the late-'70s:
"Basically the government made money available through the arts council so instead of people applying for arts council money to be painters, or for the literary grant and stuff like that, they set up a special fund to kick films off. It was quite an enlightened sort of move and the thing was that you could go along to this sort of government bureau with scripts and stuff and get finance, or part finance for films. It kicked off the whole industry, kick-started it, because now they do it less but of course now it's established and needs it less."

Bruce on 'conflict of culture' as a common theme within his films:
"Perhaps it’s unconscious that I have made films along those lines. I think it’s because when I was young, about 23, I went to Nigeria, and I lived there for a couple of years working as a film editor for the Nigerian government. I was the only white man in an all black film unit, and it was an eye-opener for me. Suddenly I saw everything from somebody else’s point of view, from the African’s point of view. Inevitably, I learned to think like them and to have an approach to things like them. So when I came across scripts later on which dealt with major clashes, I think I had an intrinsic understanding of them."

Bruce on how he tackles a movie:
"Well, I storyboard the films from every shot and from every angle. I specify to the cameraman where the camera should be and what lens he should use and then I work out all the moves for the actors. Of course this can change, but I would have to say that 95% of the time the film is done exactly the way I have storyboarded it. That was true with Black Robe even though I was out in the wilderness, because I did all the location work. I just can’t turn up on the set. I have to check everything out beforehand and then think about it.”

Bruce on doing less writing for film:
"I have written a lot of films that didn’t get made for one reason or another and I have one called The Women in Black that I hope will get made next year. And there were others that got made that I wrote under different names, I always think that better directors write the scripts because if you can’t write, and you don’t have anything to say, then what’s the point of making films? If you have something to say then you can say it on film.”

Bruce on filming plays (such as Breaker Morant, Crimes of the Heart & Driving Miss Daisy):
"I quite like filming plays because the characterizations are so solid, and I like to be able to deal with those very well-developed characters on screen. I mean, just because it’s a play doesn’t mean it can’t be filmic. It depends on how you break the shots up and the way you look at what’s going to be filmed. I always try and make the audience forget that it was a stage play."

Bruce on his love of Opera music:
"I never heard a note of classical music until I was around sixteen. I grew up in the country outside Sydney (Australia) and my parents knew nothing of classical music. I doubt if they'd even heard of it, let alone listened to any. One day, a high school friend played me a recording of Bartok's Second Piano Concerto and from that moment on I was hooked. I saw my first opera at about seventeen (Rigoletto) and became a great opera fan, too."

ruce on directing the production of the world premiere of Carlisle Floyd's Cold Sassy Tree:
"I certainly had a first-rate cast. It was a pleasure rehearsing day after day and hearing the glorious voices of Pat Racette, John McVeigh and Dean Peterson bringing the characters to life. Every single member of the cast made my job easier, too, by being aware of the necessity of acting the roles as well as singing them. For me, directing an opera is similar to directing a play. It may sound odd, but the singing must not get in the way of the drama. It's not enough to hit the notes. There is no point in the singers just standing there and sounding wonderful if they're not connecting with the characters they are portraying and if they are failing to bring sense to the words. When the music and the characters are flawlessly synchronized, the opera develops an emotional force that movies and plays cannot match."

Bruce on rehersing:
"I don't rehearse films anywhere near as much as opera or theatre. When I began directing films I thought a long rehearsal period was a good idea, but experience showed me that the best performance was often left in a rehearsal room. Film is shot in fragments and the same moments can be shot again and again until the director is satisfied. It is not just the performance that counts but the way it is interpreted through lighting, camera angle and editing. On stage, the audience watches from a fixed viewpoint and the director cannot retake something he doesn't like. It has to work straight through, without changes of angle, so has to be conceived in quite a different way."

Bruce on the New Wave of filmmakers from Australia, which also included Peter Weir, Fred Schepsi and Gillian Armstrong:
"There really hadn't been a movie industry in Australia before our early films started attracting all this attention, so I suppose there were some feelings of hostility or betrayal when we all left to work abroad. Peter continues to work there quite a bit, and I've gone back to do a couple of pictures over the years, but then some others never go back. You know, it's a big reach in a way, coming over here to make Hollywood films with these huge studio budgets and these marvelous marketing and distribution departments. Imagine going back to Australia, trying to make your film for next to nothing, and then when it's finished, having a hell of a time getting it released. It's hard, knowing you'll have to face all that again."

Bruce on Double Jeopardy:
"Most of the films I've done have been very character-driven pieces about ordinary, everyday people, when by its definition what makes a thriller is something that's out of the ordinary and the everyday. I'd always wanted to do one, and I thought this script was tense and unusual, with some very exciting sequences in it."

Bruce on shooting the underwater scene in Double Jeopardy with Judd trying to elude Jones while handcuffed to a car that plunges off a ferry:
"That was extraordinarily difficult, because we did it all over the place. We shot some of it in the Vancouver harbor, some in a swimming pool in New Orleans, some here in L.A. in this huge 30-foot tank, and still a couple of shots had to be computer generated."

Bruce on filming the scene where Judd's trapped inside a coffin:
"That was hard to do, from a lot of points of view. Filming in an anamorphic format inside a coffin is pretty difficult. So I did a number of camera checks in the weeks preceding the shooting of the scene, storyboarded little sequences, then got them to shoot those. Afterward we’d have a look at the test sequences and work out the best way of doing it. It had to look claustrophobic, otherwise you’re lost, it wouldn’t have worked."

Bruce on Breaker Morant's limited budget:
"In Breaker Morant, we had so little money we used the same soldiers attacking the fort as defending it. We’d put them on the horses, and then when we were finished with that shot, we’d dress them in British uniforms and put them behind the guns. It was the same group of men."

Bruce on his films:
"I like to keep working. I like to keep busy, but I have made a lot of very low-budget films. Driving Miss Daisy I actually directed for nothing. Nobody wanted to finance it. Finally they said, “We’ll give you the money provided you take no director’s fee.” I agreed because I had such faith in the product. I knew it was going to be a wonderful film."

Bruce on Driving Miss Daising winning the Best Picture Oscar but missing out on a directing nomination:
"That was a tremendous deal at the time, but I never really dwelled on it or lost any sleep over it. It was a bit odd, though, because our biggest challenge from the outset was how to take a play about three people, basically just sitting around a kitchen and talking, and directing it in a way that was entertaining enough to hold an audience's attention for 90 minutes, you know? So, the movie's a huge success and then it was like, well, it's such a simple little story, it probably just directed itself."

Bruce on The Barry Mackenzie films:
"It was fun making those films, but for me the Barry Mackenzie films were a big mistake. They were so badly received critically that they effectively put me out of work for three years."

Bruce on his first American film Tender Mercies:
"Tender Mercies is actually a very low budget film, but it was a huge budget compared to anything I had done in Australia. My fee for Tender Mercies was something like 5 times all of my Australian films combined. Also, I was surprised as to how big the crew was, and I remember being amazed that all the actors had caravans, because I was used to actors just sitting around the set."

Bruce on Duvall's oscar winning performance in Tender Mercies:
"Well, it was a great performance. Fabulous. I knew he was going to win. Even the first day of filming he was so fantastic. He's a brilliant actor."

Bruce on choosing his projects:
"People often ask me what connects my films, and there's nothing I've ever been aware of. I usually find that when I finish one, I try to do something completely different the next time, because I find it sort of refreshes me."

Bruce on the the difficulties associated with making an IMAX film:
"One is that you can’t cut very fast because you’d lose the audience. The screen is so massive, with so many things to look at and capture the attention of your senses, that the shots have to be on screen longer to be absorbed. If IMAX scenes ran the same length of time that they do in an ordinary 35mm film, they would appear to be too quick, because your brain can’t process them fast enough. So you’ve got to be careful of that. Also, when you’re shooting the film you can only do about four to five set-ups a day, because the camera is so cumbersome. There’s only a tiny amount of IMAX cameras in the world and they’re all rented out of the IMAX Corporation. So you have to fly them in from Toronto, which is a big deal, along with some IMAX guy who’s standing there all the time to fix the bloody thing when it breaks."

Bruce on Double Jeopardy:
"I don't know if it's that much different to anything else really. Perhaps the main thing was that it was essential to keep the film moving pretty briskly. Also, I was careful during the making of the film to try to keep the audience in suspense, and have them not know certain things. As it turned out, everything I was concerned that they didn't know was given away in the trailer. When I complained, someone at the studio said to me "Audiences don't like going to films unless they know what's happened". So I thought bugger it, what does it matter."

Bruce on Double Jeopardy's popularity:
"It didn't surprise the studio. They told me early on that it was going to be very popular. Certainly the most gratifying part is if you watch it with an audience, they love it, which is nice for a filmmaker. To see the audience absolutely enjoying something, you think "Oh well! I might have done something right."