The Bastard from the Bush: An Australian Life

by Jarratt, John

  We did one show in Tasmania. It was great to catch up with Will and Sharon. I told them I was courting Rosa but she was being very cautious. Will remarked, ‘How sensible of Rosa, she knows a dickhead when she sees one.’ It’s okay, it’s how Will and I relate, I can take that crap from the hairy-nosed little hobbit, he’s all scrotum and no balls.

  The last show was in Warrnambool, a country town two hours west of Melbourne. Charlie and Will turned up and stayed with me, happy Dad. I also caught up with Jeff Jenkins; his wife and good friend of mine, Michele Fawdon, died from cancer in early 2011, leaving behind Jeff and their teenage daughter, Lulu. Michele was a great actress and singer. She was the original Mary Magdalene in Jesus Christ Superstar. Jeff is a great singer, muso and dancer. He’s a professional cook. Why? He needs to make a quid. The show went out with a bang: I made the boys kiss each other for five minutes before I came on to break it up. They knew it was coming. Max would have loved it. We said our au revoirs and headed back into our lives.

  I headed back to Doonan to finish the house. There was a strong chance it would be sold and the kids would move to the Blue Mountains. I stopped off at Rosa’s on the way. She was recovering nicely. I took her for a drive to the northern beaches. We stopped at the Bahai Temple at Terrey Hills and sat in there for about half an hour of meditation. I like meditating; it’s very calming and good for your soul. I didn’t meditate much, I kept opening an eye to look at the beauty of Rosa.

  For twenty-seven years I dreamt constantly about Rosa. If ever I had a dream fantasy, it was about Rosa. If I have a dream fantasy now, it’s about Rosa. She is the love of my life, my one and only. I thought I’d lost her forever.

  We drove back and Rosa said stuff I didn’t want to hear: ‘Look, this is just too much. It took a long time to get over you, I was crushed for years, but I got over you and now you want to try again? Do I set myself up for that pain again? I don’t think so. Your whole life you’ve run from one relationship to another, you’re doing it again, but with me, of all people. Don’t you ever learn? Go away, take your time, smell the roses, make a wise decision for yourself for a change.’

  She made a lot of sense, but I didn’t see it that way. I saw it as, I’ve been in the wilderness for twenty-seven years, I’ve figured out where I should be. I’ve been a fool, I know where I should be, I’m knocking on the door, I’m going home. This was my mantra: that somehow the universe had sent me back to where I should be. This wasn’t a rash decision, this was something I’d spent twenty-seven years trying to unravel. Maybe I was wrong but I didn’t want to take time out, I needed to pursue this. If she knocked me back, I’d spend the rest of my life single because now I knew. I’m not meant to be with anyone else.

  In November 2011 I went to Doonan to finish the house in order to sell it. The GFC hit lifestyle-choice locations like Noosa very hard. The sale price on the Doonan house dropped approximately $200,000. My house was worth about the same as when I’d bought it, at only half the size it was now.

  I had to bite the bullet and spend a few grand on it to get it up to scratch. I spent the next seven weeks putting in arches and windows, completing rooms, restoring the exterior, putting in pathways and landscaping. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without the help of my Townsville mate Billy Gregson. I just couldn’t have got through it without throwing a shitload of sarcasm his way for seven weeks.

  During that time I continued to woo Rosa via texts and phone calls. I slowly began to make headway but she took a lot of persuading. I texted a little poem, she texted one back. That progressed to more thoughtful, lyrical, romantic poems via email. Eventually she texted me, ‘I’ve got to say, you’re very persuasive, your poems are so heartfelt, I can’t help but feel a little bit of love for you.’

  I had my caravan at Noosa North Shore during this period. After building all day, I’d retire to this good old-fashioned caravan park. It was cheaper than renting a flat and a hell of a lot more congenial. There was surf, paperbark forest, parkland, little bush tracks to bike or walk along. I’d sit in my annexe drinking coffee, watching grey kangaroos graze on the forest edge; it doesn’t get better than that. My boys loved it. Long walks on the beach talking to Rosa. More coffee under the stars, writing love poems. The only thing missing was the recipient of my poems.

  Ebony came to Rosa’s from Alice Springs with her husband-to-be, Daniel, and of course Jasmine. Daniel’s a great bloke, a good old-fashioned family man who more than looks after Ebony and Jazzy. He was raised in Alice Springs and he’d just taken over from his dad to run their computer business. He’s a very bright young man, and what he doesn’t know about computers is not worth knowing. He is that rare person who is both technical and creative: he’s a brilliant classically trained pianist. His family means everything to him. As I said recently at their wedding, ‘Daniel’s problem is that he loves Ebony and Jazzy too much.’ Not a bad problem, huh? So I had to spend Christmas at Rosa’s, didn’t I? I had to see my Ebony and Jazzy. I slept on the couch in the lounge room. Jazzy was five and she sang made-up songs, danced, performed scenes from Dora. This kid can perform – if she doesn’t get into the biz I’ll be very surprised.

  I turned up in Epping for Christmas with my first family. I didn’t have much money but I wasn’t worried because Wolf Creek 2 was about to happen; Matt Hearn had set himself up in Adelaide and they were about to go into pre-production. Straight after that I was off to the States to do Django Unchained with Tarantino: 2012 was looking good.

  The transition

  Knock, knock. ‘Hi, Rosa, I’m home. I’ve been in the wilderness for twenty-seven years. I’ve done my penance, can I come in?’

  I was so happy to be in Epping. It was a full house. Ebony and Daniel were sleeping on Nonna’s side, Zadia and Cobi on Rosa’s side, Jazzy in Rosa’s bedroom, me on the lounge. Nothing was really said between Rosa and me at first, but we were doing everything together. Shopping, coffee, drives to the northern beaches. A lot of that included the rest of the family. It was strange and wonderful. We went to the movies with Ebs, Dan and Jazzy. I sat next to Rosa, and we got about halfway through it when Rosa put her head on my shoulder. I was glowing like a teenager on his first date. The next a-ha moment came when we were walking along and Rosa took my hand. We’ve been holding hands ever since. We started talking about the prospect of being together. Rosa wanted little steps, careful consideration, holding back until we were absolutely sure of our decision. After all, she had been terribly hurt and went through ten years of hurt and heartache getting over me the first time. She was still shaking her head in disbelief that this was even happening! This suited me too. I’d been through twenty-seven years of unhealthy decisions myself. As much as I loved Rosa, I had to be sure for her sake and mine that this was going to work.

  Zadia and Cobi flew to Queensland on Boxing Day to be with Cobi’s mother and grandma for Christmas. On 27 December Ebony and co flew home to Alice Springs. I was to drive to Queensland on the 29th. So on the 28th it was just Rosa and me. My relationship with Rosa reignited on 28 December 2012.

  I was supposed to go to Adelaide to do Wolf Creek 2, but at the last moment the major investor pulled his $5 million out. I was now unemployed and I’d spent my savings renovating the house. I didn’t have anything to fall back on as I hadn’t been available for four months. My agent was trying to find work to fill the gap until I started Django Unchained in late March. I was limited, because I couldn’t accept anything that would go over into the Django commitment. Then my Django gig was delayed half a dozen times until finally I shot it in late July.

  The major stars of Django had taken millions out of the cast budget. The rest of us with small parts got scraps. I got very little out of it but I had to do it. I couldn’t knock back a credit in a Tarantino film, but I went broke achieving it. It did prove one thing: Rosa didn’t take me back for the money.

  I did manage to get three days in February on a fabulous horror–comedy called One Hundred Bloody Acres. The film go
t downloaded out of existence. Please don’t download illegally, especially independent films and up-and-coming music. If a film gets downloaded one million times, the filmmaker loses $20,000,000. We cannot sustain that, we will not survive! Our little country loses a billion dollars a year, that’s a billion stolen from us. We are the only industry in the world you can steal billions from and it’s supposed to be cool to illegally download? It’s the same as you going to pick up your pay packet and every week, it’s illegally downloaded and you’re expected to keep working for nothing for years. Would you be angry? Would you try to make it stop? When I was a kid, smoking was a cool habit, every movie star and every rock star did it. Then we were educated that it’s a filthy habit that could eventually kill you if you didn’t stop. Illegal downloading is a filthy habit that could eventually kill the Australian film industry if it doesn’t stop.

  Jackson and Riley didn’t end up moving to the Blue Mountains. The decision was to stay at Doonan, and the house was taken off the market. On average, I drove from Sydney to the Sunshine Coast every second weekend for a year; it nearly killed me. I kept the caravan at Noosa North Shore, which was much cheaper than renting a flat, and the kids had a ball. I found a great mate in John who runs the joint. He’s been very supportive of me, for which I will be forever grateful. He’s a very giving soul, he lives for his children and his mates, playing poker and golf, and watching golf and his DVD collection and his Holden Caprice and his customers; lots of ands …and he lives.

  Rosa and I were getting reacquainted. We’d had contact over the years, of course, but not a lot of deep and meaningful discourse. We were both on the path of finding the physical, mental and spiritual growth necessary to give life its best shot. Rosa had already been on that path when we were married. My awakening had begun with the teachings of my Aboriginal mates Donald Blitner, Tommy Lewis and David Gulpilil. I’d witnessed stuff with them that made me think there’s more to it than this physical experience on earth.

  One of two things will happen when you die, nothing or something. Nothing is nothing but something? What a blast. So Rosa and I are going with the something, a much more positive option. If nothing else, pursuing that option inevitably leads to a better way of life. AA catapulted me forward. As Ernie would say, ‘You can imagine being eaten by worms and rats when you die or you can imagine your soul going to a beautiful place. I’ll take the second option, thanks.’

  Rosa and I have a lot in common now. We’re not alcoholics, drug addicts, smokers or obese. We eat well, we’re healthy and we’re fit. We discuss our problems, we don’t yell. We try to be positive at all times, we face our problems, we find our way forward, we try to live in the now, not the past or the future. She is and always will be the only woman in the world for me, and me the only one for her. We have our differences, we fail, we’re not perfect, but overall it’s been four years now and it’s bloody marvellous. I’ve had a miracle in my lifetime. I’ve come home to Rosa, my angel. I look at her every day and pinch myself that I’m here.

  The man is beautifully mad

  In July 2012, Rosa and I were in LA to shoot my bit on Django Unchained. I arrived on set and was shown to the horse and cart I was to drive. I heard this voice behind me: ‘G’daaay, maaate.’

  I looked behind me and it was Quentin on horseback getting into his part. I was in John Wayne country, the wild hills above LA where Hollywood had played for decades.

  I worked with Jamie Foxx and Michael Parks mainly. Michael, one of Quentin’s faves, was an old-school actor who’d worked with everybody, and he told me a lot of wonderful tales. One of his best mates was Robert Mitchum: what a wonderful rogue he was, also one of my favourite actors. Michael was a pleasure to work with.

  Jamie’s intensity burns straight through you, and he’s dedicated to getting it right. I had one scene in which I had to cut a rope. The props team had a rope held together with magnets, but when we tried the prop it looked false.

  Quentin said, ‘Fuck that, just cut the rope.’

  Jamie looked concerned.

  I said to him, ‘I’m good with knives. If I cut you, you can punch me in the head.’

  He looked me in the eye and said, ‘Okay…I will.’

  I didn’t cut him, thank Christ – he’s a solid bastard. Between takes he was an easy guy to chat with. He had a teenage daughter and he was going through the shit that all dads go through, no matter how rich and famous they are. He just wanted to know how I handled that shit with my daughters.

  The three things said to me most are, ‘Do the laugh’, ‘I loved you on Playschool’ and ‘What’s it like to work with Tarantino?’

  Quentin Tarantino is an amazing man. He has a photographic memory, and he is a walking encyclopaedia when it comes to film. I asked him if he’d seen Wake in Fright. Not only had he seen it, but he knew all about it in detail: who the director was, when it was released and re-released, and so on.

  He is a consummate filmmaker. He writes the film, develops it, directs it, edits it and markets it. He delivers it around the world like some kind of Hollywood Santa Claus, doing the song and dance at every port of call.

  On set he knows exactly what he’s doing at all times, from the smallest detail to the big picture. Then he’ll have a blinding flash and take the scene off the horses and shoot it under a tree, refocus and be all over it. He respects his actors and allows them to do their thing, like all good directors do. He has the talent of adding nuance to what you’re doing without taking it away from you. Bad directors try to force their own perception, which usually ends in an argument. (I’ve found a peaceful way around that predicament, but it’s my secret, of course.)

  I helped Quentin with the Aussie accent. I sat by him and he worked hard on getting it right, which he did for the most part. At one point he even gave me a compliment: ‘Nice directing, Jarratt.’ He got it wrong once and it was three lousy words. It was the only thing he said without me being there. The line was, ‘Shut up, Black’: he pronounced ‘black’ more like a South African, ‘bleck’. Ironically, Americans say black exactly the same way Aussies do. From that alone, critics described his accent as South African.

  Quentin’s character in Django is blown up with dynamite, and he wanted to do the stunt himself. The blast was going to blow him off his feet. There was a soft bed of bark for him to land on. (Not so when I was shot: ‘We’ll cut on the gun shot, unless you got enough man in you to take the dive?’ Yeah, of course I did.) There were three or four cameras on it. The shot was stacked up so that all the action on camera looked like it was on the same line; Quentin was actually about 20 feet behind the blast. ‘OK, keep yer goddamn mouths shut until ya hear cut, don’t come runnin’ in all concerned if you’re not on the stunt team. Okay, let’s shoot it.’ The blast went off, Quentin went down like a bag of potatoes, the stunties raced in and stood him back up, he was fine.

  ‘OK, did you get the blast?…Good…What about the flame coming outta my saddlebag? That was good…Anyone have any problems at all…No?…All good…Great! Let’s do it again. Why?’

  The entire crew yelled back: ‘Because we love makin’ movies.’

  ‘Fuck yeah!’

  He did it seven more times, the crazy bastard.

  He’s also a bit off the wall. Rosa and I were sitting under the shade of trees with a bunch of people between takes. He came up to us and said, ‘John, do you know the ballad of John O’Casey?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Come on, it’s a famous Aussie ballad.’

  ‘Nah, don’t know it.’

  So Quentin decides to sing it to me, verse and chorus. ‘There wa-as Ol’ Jo-ohn O’Ca-a-sey.’ He sang it with gusto, conducting himself with a clenched fist swinging his right arm across his body. ‘And that’s the ballad of John O’Casey.’ As he was walking away Rosa commented, ‘That man is beautifully mad.’

  Django producers were obligated to fly me first class, which is about six times the price of economy. Instead Rosa and I flew to LA th
en to New York, San Francisco and then home and it was still cheaper! This was Rosa’s first trip to the US. We played tourists in LA, going to Malibu, Santa Monica, Venice Beach, Rodeo Drive, West Hollywood, Sunset, the usual. Then we flew to New York.

  This was our first time visiting New York. We loved it. Linley and James came up from Philadelphia and stayed overnight. They knew their way around New York and they showed us around. Linley and Rosa loved all the classy shops; James and I tagged along, and I used the time to get into Jimmy’s ear. The only thing that shuts Linley up is shopping. The only sentence she used while shopping was, ‘Oh look at this, Rosa, it’s gooorgeous.’ Linley invented a saying about women shopping: ‘Had to get it, fifty per cent off, pure silk.’ Rosa and I didn’t have a lot of money. All we bought me was a hat and a jacket: ‘Had to get it, fifty per cent off, pure lamb’s leather.’ True story. Rosa bought a small Native American rug and that was it.

  Rosa’s niece Lidia, her son Eliot and her husband Hal lived in Brooklyn. They took us everywhere: uptown, downtown, across town, Central Park, Empire State, across the Brooklyn Bridge. We had a lot of laughs and ate a lot of good food. What a gas. New York, New York!

  Next we went to San Francisco to see Brian. It’s always wonderful to see my brother. He’s everything Dad was, without the bad temper. Funny, larger than life, big solid guy, still fit as a mallee bull and he looks ten years younger than me, bastard. We took a long walk down to the fish markets, introduced Rosa to seafood chowder and went to visit the fur seals lounging around on the wharves. We took a trip across the Golden Gate and visited a colourful, quirky neighbourhood of houseboats that were like works of art.