In the Crease SELF-REFERENTIAL STORYTELLING IN TED WILSON’S UNDER THE COVER OF CLOUD

Under the Cover of Cloud (2018) begins with its protagonist returning home on the trusty Spirit of Tasmania ferry. Having lost his job, he is on his way to visit his family in Tasmania, in the hope that he might start writing a new book, ‘something bigger’. His mellow voiceover notes: ‘I want to write something beautiful about cricket – a piece of literary nonfiction. It will, in some sense, be about Tasmanian batsmen, and it will be from the heart.’

Starring writer/director Ted Wilson as himself, and his family as themselves, and Tasmania’s cricket legend David Boon as himself, Under the Cover of Cloud is a film about itself but also not about itself; it is a film about cricket but not about cricket. It is a fiction that feels almost real, while also functioning as a documentary so neatly sliced up that reality seems just outside the screen. So when an audience member asked, during the post-screening Q&A at the 2018 Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF), where they could find the book that Ted-the-protagonist was ostensibly writing in the film, Wilson-the director – who is also Wilson-the-writer and, of course, Wilson-the-actor we’d just spent an hour-and-a-half watching both act and not-act as Ted-the-protagonist – broke into a grin.

Though there