Song Composer Alex Proyas Singer Kath Westlake Words Jane Campion Sound Engineer Noel Cunnington Music Performed by Alex Proyas Piano Noel Cunnington

Jane Campion thanks all those who contributed their time and effort so generously, for no, or little financial reward. This film is dedicated to you. (then, inter alia) to the Beatles

The film also features a number of photos of the Beatles and a few lines are sung by three girls from the 1964 Beatles’ song I should have known better (accompanied by strumming tennis racquets).

Lyrics for the song near the end of the film:

At the end of the film, there is a song about feeling the cold and wanting to melt away which is credited to later director Alex Proyas, with words by Jane Campion, and performed by Kath Westlake.

Pam begins singing the song, as images of ice skating are superimposed over her:

Feel the cold Feel the cold Feel the cold Feel it’s here to stay Feel the cold Feel the cold Feel the cold I want to melt away Sheets of iiiicee... I’ll leave this all behind There is no end To this lake of ice I feel the cold Feel the cold is here to stay Feel the cold I want to melt away (Pam’s voice begins talking over the piano, as a man’s hand fondles a woman’s leg and her stockings): What is this sense you offer me Was I not aware? Feels cold, It feels colder still It feels very cold, this world. (Then three girls, including Pam and Gloria, sing, side on to camera): Feel the cold, I feel the cold is here to stay (then over posed shots of the girls, surrounded by radiators on what looks like a studio floor) Feel the cold I want to melt away I want to melt away I want to melt away Feel the cold Feel it’s here to stay Feel the cold Feel that’s all that’s here to stay I feel the cold I want to melt away I want to melt away I want to melt away (then fading, very distant, under music, something like ‘oooh, it’s here to stay’) (fade to black, then end titles roll as the music continues in instrumental form to end of credits)

Composer Alex Proyas:

Alex Proyas, who went on to become a director who worked in both Australia and LA, on his Facebook page described his education at the then AFTS as “frontal lobotomy.” Proyas formed part of a dissenting group described by Jane Campion as a Midnight Club, which also included Laurie McInnes and Sally Bongers.

As well as this song, Proyas worked as “guest cinematographer” on Campion’s Passionless Moments.

Proyas was born in Egypt, and came to Australia when he was three, and at the age of seventeen was accepted into the AFTS. His first short film Groping (1980) was a hit on the international film circuit, and then in 1988, he made the low budget, government body Australian Film Commission funded cult film Spirits of the Air • Gremlins of the Clouds.

When the film didn’t take, Proyas turned to TV advertising and many music videos, and then broke wide when he was allowed to direct the screen adaptation of James O’Barr’s comic strip The Crow (1994). Brandon Lee died as a result of an accidental gunshot wound during the filming, but even so the low budget film ($14 million) did respectable business in the US ($50 million) and elsewhere in the world. It also received favourable reviews.

Proyas later made the sci fi thriller Dark City, and then in 2002 directed the joint venture between Twentieth Century Fox and the FFC, a homage to Proyas’s early “Garage Days” in Sydney’s trendy suburb of Newtown, reflecting his early interest in music.

Proyas received mixed reviews, but met with box office success with I, Robot (2004), starring Will Smith, while the retro speculative science fantasy Gods of Egypt in 2016 received mainly negative reviews and did poor business up against the budget ($140 million budget against a gross of $145 million). The film was controversial for what was perceived as its “whitewashing” of ancient Egypt.

Proyas wrote a rant for his Facebook page about the critical response and bemoaning the way his films rarely received good reviews on the opening of his films.

It began “nothing confirms rampant stupidity faster … than reading reviews of my own movies”, noted “good reviews come many years after the film has opened. I guess I have the knack of rubbing reviewers the wrong way - always have”, and called the mainly pale asses looking politically correct by screaming “white-wash” “deranged idiots.” (It was available in full at time of writing here).

At time of writing, Proyas had only one other credit for music, and that was on another Jane Campion short, the 1984 After Hours.

(Below: Alex Proyas, and below that Proyas with Brandon Lee)