In 1976, a youthful chief set off on a mission to make an exciting music assume the Wizard of Oz. John Safran addresses those behind Oz: A Rock'n'Roll Road Movie about all that turned out badly
Get our end of the week culture and way of life emailefore the ABC ran plugs for Q&A and Bananas in Pajamas between shows, they ran reflective breaks - waves running into rocks, tourist balloons floating through the mists, something like that. This is the way the overseer of Oz: A Rock'n'Roll Road Movie, Chris Löfvén, started out. At 14 years of age, he shot around Melbourne with his 16mm camera, licked a stamp and presented the recording on the TV slot. They preferred it and ran it.
Chris' most memorable work out of secondary school was working for chief Fred Schepisi (who'd proceed to make The Devil's Playground and The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith). "I prepared as an associate cameraman," he reviews. "Fred, he was excellent about loaning out gear on the ends of the week."
One such end of the week, in 1971, he bounced on a transport with Melbourne band Daddy Cool, going to Myponga, South Australia for a stone celebration. "In this way, I was shooting small amounts and bits of that excursion. Furthermore, we wound up involving it for Daddy Cool's Eagle Rock film cut."
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Chris helped pioneer an entire classification. "Furthermore, what is a film cut? There was no such thing as them in those days," he says. There were not many network shows that played exciting music and those that did needed the groups acting in the studio. With no place to play video cuts, nobody pondered recording them. "I didn't shoot especially in light of the fact that I was on a truly strict financial plan. I would've just shot around a 100 feet all in all outing." A 100 feet is more than two minutes. So scant, so valuable. How circumstances are different. You couldn't actually get killed these days without it being gotten on 17 iPhones.
Bird Rock turned into the top rated single in Australia that year, the film cut a significant part in its prosperity. So 23-year-old Chris and his co-maker Lyne Helms made a beeline for London (they were likewise sweetheart and sweetheart). Close to this time, he got the US movie Easy Rider, coordinated by and featuring Dennis Hopper. "That was a truly free street film with heaps of incredible music. What's more, the plot came into it around 3/4 of the way through. I thought, goodness, what did they need to do that for? It was simply so decent cruising along the roadway and nothing happened."Chris initially imagined Oz to resemble Easy Rider before the annoying plot jumped in. "Being a story feature was rarely implied. It was initially going to develop around the possibility of a free doco-style film, covering everything that I believed were oz youth, similar to board vans and Holden vehicles and cruisers and music." Chris concluded that even a free film required something to maintain a level of control. "Thus, I thought perhaps you could have a wizard character and one thing prompted another. For what reason don't we make it a figurative story, of The Wizard of Oz, which I'd seen when I was a youngster."
Dorothy is a 16-year-old groupie riding with a musical crew in country Victoria (Kansas) when their shaggin' cart crashes, taking her out. She awakens in a dreamland and learns they ran over a neighborhood hooligan (The Wicked Witch of the East). As a prize for killing the disagreeable hooligan, a gay shop specialist (The Good Fairy) at a close by store gives her a couple of red shoes, to assist her see the last show of The Wizard, a male/female rock vocalist, who with willing be raising a ruckus around town in the Emerald City (Melbourne). She is sought after by the hooligan's sibling (The Wicked Witch of the West) who endeavors to assault her on a few events. En route she meets a moronic surfer (The Scarecrow), a coldhearted repairman (The Tinman), and a fearful biker (The Lion).
The Australian Film Commission (AFC) kicked in $90,000 of the $150,000 financial plan. They expected to find a merchant who might hack up the rest. "There were around three dissemination organizations in the entire country. Town Roadshow thumped it on the head. They said, 'Goodness, it's really quite gay and we would rather not have some familiarity with it.'"
We lost the sound. Quickly the crowd realized this wasn't genuine, this was horse crap, and they got considerably more forceful
Bruce Spence
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The Good Fairy was played by Robin Ramsay, mincing about country Victoria like Mr Humphries in Are You Being Served? The Wizard depends on David Bowie. Graham Matters, who tragically passed on in 2021, was prepared for this job, having showed up in neighborhood creations of The Rocky Horror Show and Hair. Satisfaction Dunstan played Dorothy, and Bruce Spence, Michael Carman and Gary Waddell balanced the cast as The Scarecrow, The Tinman and The Lion.
Chris and Lyne traveled to Sydney to pitch to Greater Union's governing body. "We needed to go through an activity of expressing out loud whatever something inventive this was, the way things were managing the young market, which they had never addressed. We had no clue about regardless of whether we were talking bologna."
The film variant of The Who's rock show Tommy was a tremendous hit at that point, so bologna or not, it sounded genuine that the stone fuelled Oz could work. More noteworthy Union focused on the film, however wouldn't toss in all the cash required. "The main cash we could place into it was our conceded compensation, which implied we were truly battling with the posteriors out of our jeans to get the thing made."
The AFC in the end consented to give the last $25,000 required however this was as an individual credit. "It's focusing on me simply recollecting," Chris says.
The shoot required five weeks, over January and February 1976. They couldn't manage the cost of lodging convenience for the cast and team. "We needed to keep areas near Melbourne yet make them appear as though they were out in the center of no place." Little River in Greater Geelong was picked. A couple of years after the fact Mad Max recorded there.
"We shot around mid-to get every one of the outsides truly hot and hot." Chris was too fruitful in such manner, hit with sunstroke on the very beginning, so he was unable to come to the primary day of surges. (Chris didn't become familiar with his example. He presently wears a privateer's bandanna, having lost an ear to skin disease.) But, Chris says, it wasn't the climate that burdened him most. He ended up in conflict with the most achieved entertainer on set, Bruce Spence. He had won best entertainer in the Australian Film Institute Awards 1972, for Stork. He was currently playing the surfie, a substitute for The Scarecrow.
Chris became stressed Bruce was campaigning different entertainers to betray him: 'They used to have this large number of little meetings in the troop'
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"I don't think he partook in the involvement with all," Chris says. "He needed significantly more information. What's more, he could have done without the relaxed way I was coordinating. He continued to need inspiration for things that were simply not needing it." The until recently easygoing Chris becomes energized relating this. "I continued to share with him, look, this character's put together basically with respect to me. So watch me and the manner in which I act. It's actual basic. Try not to attempt to add an excessive amount to it." Chris gasps. "It ultimately depends on you whether you contact Bruce, however he won't utter a word pleasant about it."
I contact Bruce.
"It was an odd, odd film to shoot," Bruce says. He doesn't think Chris coordinated in a relaxed manner, fairly the inverse. Bruce makes sense of Easy Rider, Chris' impact, was essential for the New Hollywood development, which itself was propelled by French New Wave film. "What they were attempting to do was allude to the world in a more contemporary light," Bruce expresses, contrasted with the movies emerging from US studios. They were dismissing the film-production shows around pacing, altering and plot, and didn't consider themselves to be a gear-tooth in the innovative flow, as in customary Hollywood. They were auteurs, holding control (or attempting to) over all that from writing to shooting to altering. "We began to see a ton of auteurs in Australia. Furthermore, that is the manner in which Chris saw himself," Bruce says. "Chris was extremely defensive of what he was doing, and fanatically."
They practiced Oz in Chris' back yard. "He and I had a distinction of assessment since he didn't need a syllable changed in his content." Bruce feels Chris was too auteur-y in any event, for an auteur. Bruce worked with German chief Werner Herzog on Where the Green Ants Dream in 1984. "Herzog could get moderately over the top with his content however would recognize that a scene could require some
Michael Carman, Gary Waddell and Bruce Spence (right) in Oz: A Rock'n'Roll Road Movie. Photo: Melbourne International Film Festival
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Things didn't back off, moving from practices in Chris' back yard to the shoot. Chris became stressed Bruce was campaigning different entertainers to betray him. "They used to have this multitude of little meetings in the band," Chris says. "Where I thought they were happening about various things." Now, Bruce contemplates whether Chris was so controlling of the syllables since it was difficult to control much else while shooting a film like Oz. Chris couldn't yell at the sun to emerge from behind the mists in Little River and he didn't have the spending plan to lounge around and stand by.
Bruce recollects that one rushed evening of recording. The content required The Wizard to perform with his band in the Emerald City with Dorothy watching on in stunningness. Chris had persuaded music head honcho Michael Gudinski to give the made up band embed themselves access to the setup at a co
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