I had the opportunity
to interview film writer, producer and director Peter Clifton (see next post
below titled “Missing Easybeats film is ready to roll
after 40 years”) several years ago about his involvement in the making of The Night
We Called It a Day, the 2003 Aussie movie starring Dennis Hopper, Melanie Griffith,
Portia de Rossi, Joel Edgerton and Rose Byrne.
Here is
the report of our encounter…
Picture:
imdb.com
All
the Way with The Night We Called It a Day
Report by Luke Brighty
Peter
Clifton, writer and producer
of The Night We Called It a Day, started his project
with three words scribbled on a piece of paper ‘Never Say Sorry!’ Everybody at
the time was talking about the apology issue, i.e. whether Americans should
apologize to the Japanese or whether Australians should apologize to the
Aboriginals. That idea fascinated Peter
who remembered the story of Frank Sinatra’s tour down under and
his refusal to say sorry following a faux pas.
Taking
his own experiences as a rock ‘n roll filmmaker in the seventies, Peter
developed the character of a rock ‘n roll promoter – a “risky business”
kind-of-guy for whom the public would be rooting as he goes out on a limb to
land the job as Frank’s promoter after hearing about Sinatra’s plans to tour
Australia. “I thought that would create an Australian-American metaphor which
always works extremely well in films,” says Clifton. “It’s also got a happy ending as Frank brought
his girlfriend Barbara Marx along and proposed to her on the trip.”
On
being asked how much of the promoter character is based on personal experience,
Peter’s eyes light up. “All of it is. I superimposed myself onto the Sinatra
thing and recaptured much of the stuff that was going on at the time. I was
actually in London in 1974 so I did a lot of research to get all the facts. I
went to the main libraries, interviewed all the original protagonists and spoke
to all the original participants. Being a journalist and documentary maker I
was naturally drawn to the story and true events.”
Michael
Thomas, the scriptwriter
who co-wrote the film, is a dramatist, a humorist and a dialogue expert so he’d
keep reminding Peter that the story they were writing wasn’t true. “I’d answer
that the story was based upon the truth. So I’d always try to stick with the
facts while he’d take us into different dramatic areas. Most of the time he was
right, a few times I was. I had the characters and situations by then. It was
up to him to make them play.”
Peter
also created a female character called Audrey, a girl who has been in love with
the hero all her life and suddenly ends up working with him. He based her on
Audrey Hepburn and got Rose Byrne, an Audrey
look-alike, to play her. Joel Edgerton, the promoter,
eventually falls in love with her and they pull off the tour together.
Peter
Clifton not only co-wrote The Night We Called It a Day, he also
produced it. He had already made big movies in the pop music world but knew he
had to tread carefully with this one. “I knew the most dangerous moment in
filmmaking is just before the shoot starts,” he says. “That’s when the money
can fall over. So I had to be extremely careful in that area. Dennis Hopper and Melanie Griffith wouldn’t get on an airplane until their fee
was paid. They were at the airport with their agents on one line and we were on
the phone with the bank on the other. You start with the thought “I’ve got to
be mad to do this!” Then you come up with bullet-proof ideas. After that it’s a
question of holding onto them by their tails.”
A
number of scenes didn’t make it into the movie. “You always have fights with
the director and financial people about making cuts in a movie,” says Clifton.
“They always want a running time of 100 minutes whereas I like to make longer
movies. One dropped scene was based on a real happening in a London nightclub.
Someone accidentally spilled a flaming Sambucca on a girl’s dress. The flames
were leaping up so I leaned across, grabbed her dress and tore it off. She was
left standing there in her panties!”
“I
used that scene to enable Joel Edgerton to meet the character played by Portia de
Rossi but it was taken out to save on time and
budget which is a shame as it captured the essence of Joel’s character. In the
beginning of the movie, as he is driving across the Harbour Bridge, Joel is supposed to
stop at the toll and flip the collector double or nothing. I wanted the zing of
the coin going up and to see him wink at the toll collector. It was to be a
magical moment where he is gambling and you explore his character. I had quite
a few of those moments lined up but they convinced me it was holding up the
telling of the main story.”
“Although
I’d learned a long time ago not to screen a movie that hadn’t been completed,
we took an unfinished cut to the Cannes film festival. In that version Frank
Sinatra didn’t appear for the first twenty minutes and
because Joel Edgerton’s character wasn’t
lovable enough, you didn’t care about the opening sequences. I remember it
being a really hot day. There was a buzz about the movie. We had the best
billboard on the whole strip. The screening was packed out with more people
than there were seats and then, of course, the air-conditioning had to break
down. By the end of the movie there were only thirty or forty people left. It
was hopeless. I went back to the chateau where I was staying and rewrote the
film. Then I gathered all the financiers and said ‘Look guys. You’ve got to
decide whether you’re making a film about a mountain climber or about a
mountain. If you’re making a film about the mountain then you’ve got to open
the movie with Sinatra.’ Eventually we began with Dennis Hopper doing Sinatra and flashed back to the promoter
trying to get him. The audience was captivated from the start.”
Luckily,
Michael Thomas had flown to Cannes as well so Peter wasn’t alone in his campaign for rewrites.
To
begin with Peter had called the script Never
Say Sorry, a title he now admits didn’t reflect the story well enough. In
the meantime, Michael came up with The
Night We Called It a Day which everybody thought was a great name. It’s
a 1946 Frank Sinatra song that Michael found while going through a
Sinatra selection. Peter thinks the American title All the Way more appropriate as the movie is after all about a love
story.
The
movie didn’t do well in Australia. It was not only screened shortly after being
completed which didn’t allow much time for promotion, it also missed the
gradual build-up that quality movies usually enjoy. When the film hit 142
Australian cinemas simultaneously in a mass release it was up against The Italian Job, American Pie 2 and other movies with big advertising budgets. The
same commercials were airing on Australian television and there was no plan B
if the movie happened to hit a brick wall.
Peter
remembers voicing his concern when things were taking a turn for the worse. “I
said the box office is terrible. What’s plan B?” The reply was, “There isn’t
one!” I answered, “But we’ve just spent $11 million and a part of our lives
making a movie. We’ve got to have a second plan. They admitted they didn’t have
one.” Peter suggested covering the city in posters to build up momentum, but
the idea was nixed.
Unhappily,
the poster promoting The Night We Called
It a Day made no mention of Frank Sinatra. If you weren’t
familiar with the movie or the story then the picture of Joel Edgerton holding a cardboard cut-out of Dennis Hopper didn’t mean a thing. To make matters worse,
designers had slapped a cancelled sign across the cut-out which confused
moviegoers. A lot of people queuing at cinemas would look at the poster, see
the cancelled sign and opt for another movie instead.
When
talking about Dennis Hopper it is obvious that Peter has great admiration for the iconic star. “He
is the coolest bloke I’ve ever met,” he says. “We got on so well. We had mutual
friends, mutual experiences and just seemed to bond from the moment we met. He
did such a good job playing the difficult part of Sinatra.
Melanie
Griffith is also an extremely talented woman. She’d
want her directions to be made very clearly and also required some changes in
the dialogue as there were lines she wasn’t comfortable with. Because Michael
wasn’t there for the shoot the director would turn to me for the line changes.
Melanie would come up with a quote like “I’ve got a mind for business and a
body for sin.” I’d say, “But Melanie, that’s a quote from Working Girl!” She’d reply, “Oh
well, nobody will ever remember that.” I’d laugh and say, “’It’s the most
memorable line in the movie. You were nominated for an Academy Award. We can’t
steal that line!’ So I’d have to go off and think up a new line for her to
say.”
Asked
about the feedback from the Sinatra side, Peter says that it has been quite
positive.
“Nancy
Sinatra thought it was sweet and I knew Tina Sinatra from playing tennis with her when I lived in
Los Angeles. I told her about it and she thought it was a great idea. Being
from the music side of the movie business I knew that we’d have to clear the
songs and I realized we’d never get permission from the Sinatra Estate. That’s
when I heard about Tom Burlinson and his ability to sing like a young Frank
Sinatra. I was relieved to
be able to bypass the problem. But because everyone was in such a rush to get
the movie out, the album came out two to three weeks after the movie’s release
which again didn’t allow for any build-up. The songs were expensive: 10, 15, 20
thousand dollars for some of the big ones. Had Sinatra been singing himself, it
could have cost us up to 100 thousand a song. Because we used Elvis Presley’s ‘Tutti Frutti’ in
the background as a song played on the radio rather than in the foreground we
were allowed to include it and saved a lot of money in the process. I think the
soundtrack turned out great. Every song on the album tells a story and was
chosen for a reason. Had I the time I would have created a sequence where Rose
Byrne cries because she is missing Joel Edgerton. She looks out the
window from the apartment in Blues Point Tower and just watches the boats go
by. I would have used this wonderful theme on the album called ‘Rod and Audrey’
to complement the scene.”
Peter doesn’t have to say more. Imagination takes
flight and we’re suddenly on Sydney’s romantic waterfront, back in 1974.
