Monkey Grip BRIAN MCFARLANE
Few Australian films are as evocative of the time and place of their production – or of the period in which they are set – as Ken Cameron’s adaptation of Helen Garner’s award-winning novel Monkey Grip. Upon its release in the early 1980s, the film had a mixed critical reception, both here and abroad, and indeed had difficulty in securing even local distribution. However, the distributors found they had underestimated its potential, and today the film occupies an assured place in the history of the Australian film revival. Its atmospheric re-creation of a bohemian phase in Melbourne suburban life, among artists and addicts of various kinds, has not been superseded.
Brian McFarlane, Series Editor
Getting it made – and shown
For a while, it looked as if the film might not get made – and, when it was finally made, there was no guarantee that it would attract exhibitors from the main cinema chains. Of the production, David Stratton has written, ‘Raising money was painfully difficult. At the beginning, in early 1979, the budget was [A]$553,000 but no distributor was interested in the project’; according to Lovell, however, this was not the actual beginning. For her, a key industry figure whose production background included such landmarks of the New Australian Cinema as Picnic at Hanging Rock (Peter Weir, 1975) and Gallipoli (Weir, 1981), Monkey Grip represented a serious break from the kinds of popular and prestige jobs she was associated with. She initially experienced a deficit of A$130,000 when she tried to get the project started in early 1980. Then the government announced the 10BA tax deductions, on the understanding that ‘money was to be made from Australian movies’, and ‘the floodgates opened’, leading to a huge rush of projects clamouring for financial backing.
During the early negotiations, the film’s budget had risen to the figure quoted by Stratton above; according to Lovell, she and first-time director Ken Cameron ‘decided not to put up [their] fees in an attempt to keep the budget in check’, and she had a messy time with an assistant who proved unreliable. In her autobiography, she recounts: ‘I feel remorse each time I remember that Ken was only paid [A]$45,000 to both write and direct’. Cameron himself was interviewed about the film in Cinema Papers before the film got off the ground: ‘It is going to be an inexpensive film – [A]$200,000 or so. It will be made in the way John Duigan has been making films: very low budget, small crew, no big stars.’ Budget was obviously a key issue in getting started; probably, it always is.
Eventually the budget escalated to just over A$1 million. What emerges from her own and other writings is that Lovell was a cautious and responsible producer, who knew that she was engaged in promoting what was seen as a risky project and was sensitive to the need to pay off crew members if the film had to be abandoned. Monkey Grip was destined to be at a remove from those films that had made Australian cinema a product to contend with, and the key names associated with the production – such as writer/director Cameron and stars Noni Hazlehurst and Colin Friels – carried no commercial or critical clout at this stage of their careers. As well, Lovell had health problems that involved a spell in hospital; as Stratton recalls: ‘Suffering from nervous exhaustion, Lovell was hospitalised and sedated for forty-eight hours.’
Lovell gives a full account of the fraught proceedings leading up to the time when production finally got underway, with the help of a personal loan of A$50,000, Stratton’s moral support and the just barely achieved agreement of the Australian Film Commission (AFC), which disliked the idea behind the film. Lovell was a part-time commissioner and, to avoid conflict of interest, had to absent herself from the AFC boardroom discussion: ‘I sat outside twiddling my thumbs for at least half an hour, so realised that it was a near-run thing.’
To jump ahead, while still considering ‘industrial’ matters, she ran into further obstacles when it came to securing distribution for the film. None of the three main distributors – Hoyts, Greater Union and Village Roadshow – were interested, believing the film had no commercial future. Lovell then had to take matters into her own hands, and fortunately won the support of Alan Finney, employed in Roadshow’s marketing department. Finney offered to distribute it through Village, and this was followed by the preparation of posters and a trailer; the film was invited to a place in the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard section, where it played to full and appreciative houses. When it finally opened in Melbourne, Lovell recalls, the film did ‘excellent business in its first weekend [… and her]
