The Way of the Warrior Realising the Mythic Warrior-hero in the Action genre and in Australian Cinema

By Craig Proudley

(Bachelor of Screen Production, Griffith University)

A feature film screenplay and exegesis submitted for the requirements for the award, Master of Fine Arts (Research)

Principal Supervisor: Dr Sean Maher

Faculty of Creative Industries

Queensland University of Technology

2018

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Keywords

Screenwriting theory, feature film, character, warrior, genre, archetype, myth, structure, plot

2 Abstract

This project utilises Creative Practice as research. It explores warrior-hero archetypes in the Action genre; creates and includes these archetypes in the original Australian screenplay Behold a Pale Horse; and discusses their influence on the screenplay’s development.

Together, this creative project and accompanying exegesis seek to interrogate some of the inherent codes, tropes, and conventions associated with the Action genre. Moreover, the exegesis seeks to develop and deliberate on character archetypes derived from myth. It also explores their deep association with concepts and archetypical features within the Western genre—the origin of the Action genre.

By using Creative Practice as research, the work consists of a detailed analysis of successful Australian films that have featured attributes of the warrior-hero. This practice-led examination is conceptually critiqued against the work of story theorists such as mythologist Joseph Campbell and screenwriting analyst John Truby. These critiques are used to highlight the nuances of the warrior-hero, their relationship to Campbell’s Hero’s Journey model, and the necessary components of this archetype’s deployment in a screenplay within the Action genre. Tested against the generic origins of the Western genre, and using the Australian Bush Myth as a cultural fabric, this analysis and critique is then deployed in the development of the Creative Practice.

Through the paradigm of Australian national cinema, the exegesis examines the Action genre in Australia, alongside previous representations of the warrior-hero in key Hollywood examples. Warrior-hero archetypes explored include the Traveling Angel-hero, the Rogue-hero and the Doomed Warrior-hero, alongside a discussion on their cultural relevance to Australian genre cinema. Therefore, the exegesis also seeks to question the dominant national cinema paradigms through which genre are predominantly judged. These investigations are particularly relevant, since Behold a Pale Horse and its warrior-hero protagonist (simply known as Rider) draw upon a suite of codes, tropes, and conventions that are commonly used in a form of film often considered absent of cultural relevance.

Finally, this project illuminates how choices are made in the process of writing the screenplay, and where theoretical discussion can drive the development of Creative Practice.

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Summary of exegesis

This exegesis reviews and critiques Warrior-hero archetypes and proposes a screenplay model that synthesises the Warrior-hero archetype within the tropes, codes, and conventions of the Action genre. The conceptual model that results is then applied in the context of Australian feature film screenwriting.

Screenplay synopsis

Behold a Pale Horse is a post-apocalyptic action movie about Rider, a “seed carrier” who saves a mother, baby, and its dying father from the toxic atomic winds. He does this by taking them to one of the only surviving outposts, a saloon filled with the scum and villainy of the few survivors left in Australia.

When Rider finds his fellow missing seed carriers imprisoned or dead in the vast cave system underneath the saloon, he decides to take back the seeds. However, when he discovers that the bar itself is the seed vault he has spent years looking for, and that the baby (the first child born in over 20 years) will be used as ritual sacrifice by the evil matriarch, The Husband, Rider now must defeat her, the Warrior Women, and an array of transient mercenaries by saving the seeds and the child before an even greater evil arrives.

4 Table of Contents

Keywords ...... 2

Abstract ...... 3

Summary of Exegesis/Screenplay Synopsis ...... 4

Table of Contents ...... 5

Statement of Original Authorship ...... 8

Acknowledgements ...... 9

Glossary of Terms ...... 10

Exegesis ...... 12

INTRODUCTION ...... 12

1. LITERATURE REVIEW ...... 20

1.1 Australian national cinema ...... 20

1.2 Narrative representations of masculine heroes ...... 22

1.3 Inward-facing sensitbilities ...... 27

1.4 The monomyth as a path to outward-facing sensibilities ...... 30

1.5 Discovery of the Warrior-hero archetype ...... 32

1.6 Cinema rentals for warrior-heroes ...... 34

2. METHODOLOGY ...... 36

2.1 Defining 'genre' ...... 36

2.2 Action genre ...... 37

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2.3 Generic transformation of the Western genre ...... 42

2.4 Warrior-heroes in the Action genre ...... 44

3. WARRIOR-HERO CRITIQUE ...... 48

3.1 Warrior-hero archetypes ...... 49

3.1.1 The Travelling Angel-hero ...... 50

3.1.2 The Rogue-hero ...... 51

3.1.3 The Doomed warrior-hero ...... 53

3.1.4 The Holy Fool-hero ...... 54

3.1.5 The Female Action-hero ...... 56

3.2 Overview of Australian mythic exemplars ...... 57

3.2.1 Mad Max Franchise ...... 58

3.2.2 Crocodile Dundee ...... 61

3.2.3 The Man from Snow River ...... 63

4. CRITIQUE OF ARCHETYPES ...... 66

4.1 Critque of Warrior-hero archetype: The Travelling Angel-hero ...... 66

4.2 The mythic dimension via theme ...... 75

4.3 Critque of Travelling Angel-hero exemplar: Die Hard ...... 77

5. CREATIVE PRACTICE ...... 80

5.1 Central dramatic question ...... 80

5.2 The logline ...... 81

5.3 Warrior-hero archetypes applied ...... 81

5.4 Plot - Outline ...... 84

6. REFLECTIVE PRACTICE ...... 87

6 6.1 Process ...... 87

6.2 Steps to development ...... 88

6.2.1 Outward-facing considerations ...... 88

6.2.2 Genre considerations ...... 88

6.2.3 Applying archetypes within genre ...... 89

6.2.4. Australian myth ...... 90

6.3 Feedback applied ...... 91

6.4 New areas of study ...... 93

CONCLUSION ...... 98

Screenplay: Behold a Pale Horse ...... 102

APPENDICES ...... 198

Appendix 1...... 198

Appendix 2...... 199

Appendix 3...... 200

Appendix 4...... 201

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 205

A. References ...... 205

B. Feature Film References ...... 222

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Statement of Original Authorship

The written work contained in this thesis (creative work and exegesis) has not been previously submitted for a degree or diploma at this or any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made.

Signed: QUT Verified Signature

Date: February 2018

8 Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to the academic and general staff of the Creative Industries faculty at the Queensland University of Technology. Special Thanks are due to Dr Sean Maher, Geoffrey Portmann, Sebastian Angborn, Bill Bennett, Ben Cook, Scott Hamilton, Shawn Kasinger, Dr Lilith LeVay Kjeldahl, Amanda Nelligan, Kiah Roche-Turner, Denise Scott and Dr Jodie Taylor.

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GLOSSARY OF TERMS

CINEMA The art or technique of making motion pictures (films); the production of films as an art form or an industry

BOX OFFICE (or CINEMA RENTALS) The measure of the total amount of money or box-office receipts paid by movie-goers to view a movie; usually divided into domestic grosses and international grosses

SCREENPLAY/SCRIPT DEVELOPMENT The process by which the idea (or premise) of a film is developed into a first draft screenplay, or by which the draft screenplay is developed into the shooting screenplay (ready for production); can continue during the production process

DRAFTS A version of a piece of screenplay writing; the preliminary version will most likely be the first draft; the final draft will most likely be the shooting script/screenplay (ready for production)

FEATURE FILM A full-length motion picture, greater than 60 minutes in length (usually about 90–120 minutes)

FEATURE-LENGTH SCREENPLAY

Usually 90–120 pages in length; averages one page per minute of performance

GENRE Refers to a class or type of film (e.g. Westerns, Action) sharing common, predictable, or distinctive artistic and thematic elements or iconography (e.g. villains in Westerns wear black hats), narrative content, plot, subject matter, mood, setting or characters; distinct from film styles (recognizable groups of conventions used to add visual appeal, meaning, or depth)

HERO The major male and female protagonist in a film (or screenplay) with whom the audience identifies and empathises

HERO’S JOURNEY (or MONOMYTH) Joseph Campbell’s theory of an all-embracing metaphor for the deep inner journey of transformation that heroes in every time and place seem to share (i.e. in myth, literature, and film); a path that leads through great movements of separation, descent, ordeal, and return

10 MYTH A traditional, inherited story, especially one concerning the early history of a people, or explaining some natural or social phenomenon; explains a society, its concerns and values, and provides models of behaviour

PROTAGONIST The lead or main character in a film (or screenplay); also known as hero/heroine; in contrast and opposition to the antagonist

SCREENPLAY A blueprint text for a film production written by a screenwriter(s) in a prescribed form as a series of scenes; all dialogue provided, and essential actions and character movements described

WARRIOR A courageous or experienced fighter as protagonist; protector of a community in jeopardy; a lead character who takes action to solve conflict through some form of physical action or violence; most often in defence of the innocent

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INTRODUCTION

Project Description

This practice-led research project is designed to analyse the mythic character archetype of the Warrior-hero within the context of an Australian genre screenplay. The research includes a Creative Practice artefact in the form of an Action genre feature screenplay. As practice-led research, this inquiry identifies how traditional Australian masculinity can connect to, and realise in film narrative form, Joseph Campbell’s archetype of the warrior-hero. It explores the reasons why the attributes of the Warrior-hero archetype are relatively uncommon on Australian cinema screens. It also explores what the potential the warrior archetype holds for the development of screenplays in genre projects.

Behold a Pale Horse is the feature-length screenplay developed for this project. It is in the Action genre, and follows the experiences of its protagonist, a lone rider in a post-apocalyptic Australia. The screenplay adopts the classic three-act Hollywood style screenwriting structure, and strictly adheres to the tropes, codes, and conventions of the contemporary action genre. The protagonist of the screenplay, Rider, is a Warrior-hero character who must fight for the innocent when no one else will. The objective of the Creative Practice was to develop a strong and active ‘man with no name’ character, while at the same time, creating the necessary action sequences required of the genre.

This exegesis seeks to reinforce structuralist thinking in regards to genre, not as a formula, but as a series of creative opportunities. The view and practice presented here is that genre is not so much a prescription but a tool for putting forward a personal vision. What it requires of the creative writer is to use it in a fresh, culturally relevant and dynamic way. The Warrior-hero archetype in distinct genre-orientated cinema has previously been implemented with great audience appeal in Australian feature films, and lead to national and international box office success for the Mad Max, Crocodile Dundee and The Man from Snowy River franchises.

Research that supports the project

The role of this exegesis is to explore the techniques and structures that might be useful in the writing of the screenplay, Behold a Pale Horse in the classic three-act structure, commonly used in Hollywood. The exegesis also explores the importance of writing a screenplay with a Warrior-hero archetype as protagonist. It focuses on the

12 protagonist Rider, and demonstrates the design of warrior as protagonist hero—a tradition that originated in the Western genre and is now firmly established within the contemporary Action genre.

Screenwriting theory informs how warrior attributes are understood and defined, particularly by John Truby, and how this understanding has been applied both in Hollywood and in Australian national cinema. Australian national cinema is discussed in the context of an inward-facing design of story (overtly nationalistic, not considering audiences outside of Australia) and outward-facing design of story (commercial appeal for a world-wide audience), and how this design relates to mythic storytelling. The Bush Myth (Molloy, 1982) and Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, is used as the basis for analysing the mythic framework and attributes of Australia’s national identity. These ideas are discussed through the on-screen film and television portrayal of the warrior-hero, in contrast to an Australian ‘victim-hero’.

Truby’s paradigm of genre screenwriting and the Warrior-hero archetype is critiqued and applied to the Creative Practice to explore where this archetype has been deployed in the Action genre. A selection of Australian films that have demonstrated significant success at the domestic and world-wide box office are used to parallel representations of Australian masculinity on film and television screens. This exploration includes an understanding of character design within the screenwriting theory associated with myth and Jungian psychology. The work of Campbell, Terry Hayes, George Miller and Christopher Vogler inform the study that has been supported through primary data collection through author interviews with Bill Bennett and Kiah Roache-Turner. As an additional source of primary data collection, the author was in attendance for the Mad Max event: George Miller in conversation at GRAPHIC Festival, Sydney Opera House (10/10/2015). Along with co-screenwriters Nico Lathouris and Brendan McCarthy, George Miller, the creator of the Mad Max universe, discussed the process of developing Mad Max: Fury Road (Miller, 2015) over a 12-year journey from concept to the final film.

The approach of the Warrior-hero relates to the Action genre, and to that genre’s origins in the Western genre. Genre analysis charts the generic transformation of the Western into the Action genre. This focus includes an understanding of the screenwriting theory associated with the archetypical design and formation of the hegemonic male protagonist. The Hollywood action film Die Hard is used in the genre analysis to explore the development of theme alongside the deployment of the Warrior-hero.

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A final research strand explores how the study of character design, using John Truby’s model, is applied within the design of the screenplay Behold a Pale Horse, with a Warrior-hero protagonist. Here, the critique of Truby’s technique is applied to the development of the character of Rider. The Creative Practice draws design elements of the archetype of the Travelling Angel-hero from the Western and Action genres to the design of the protagonist Rider.

Research question

Is it possible to synthesize the Warrior-hero archetype within the tropes, codes and conventions of the Action genre in an Australian context and create an original screenplay with the potential for both critical and commercial success?

Proposed methodology

The present thesis is grounded in the insights gained through traditional research methods and the Creative Practice of screenwriting. The combined practical artefact and theoretical output speak to the kind of complexity that is characteristic of developing a creative work within academic practice. Through this complex process, various points of convergence emerge, and the theory and practice are mutually beneficial to the final output (Haseman & Mafe, 2009; Batty, 2015, p113).

The present research into specific narratological storytelling concepts, mythic structures, and screenwriting devices utilises genre theory as a roadmap for navigating both critical and Creative Practice components. Moreover, a creative praxis methodology organizes a systematic guide of storytelling principles for contemporary Australian screenwriters. Genre conventions have also determined the narrative of the screenplay, informing its character design and underlying plot structures.

The critical and creative model utilized in the present research forms a praxis approach that sees elements of film studies, mythic storytelling tools, and screenwriting devices combine in a critically aware professional practice. The investigation contributes to the development of a theoretical framework for creating a screenplay that charts the boundaries, potentialities, and capabilities of genre within screenplay development. The result is Behold a Pale Horse, a narrative artefact in the form of an original feature screenplay, framed within the Action genre.

Both the exegesis and Creative Practice draw upon the work of screenwriting theorists that advocate the use of mythic archetypes in story and screenplay design. These include Campbell, Truby and Christopher Vogler, among others. I specifically study the Warrior-hero archetype in the classic three-act structure, in order to understand if

14 it can be used in the design of an Australian genre screenplay. Lisa Dethridge (2009) explains how the “researchers in screenwriting organise their work into two components”. The screenplay represents ‘creative imagination’, while the exegesis describes “the conceptual framework and the methodology through which the creative work is undertaken” (Dethridge, 2009, p. 97).

The present research is concerned with six interrelated areas of study to “reveal the process of screenwriting as a creative practice” (Batty & Kerrigan, 2016, p139):

1. Australian national cinema

2. Demonstrations of the Hero’s Journey at work

3. Genre

4. Warrior-heroes

5. Development and writing of the Creative Practice

6. Reflective practice

Australian national cinema

The present research focuses on the well-established victim-hero in Australian literature and film. The bush myth is referenced as an Australian narratological device, used to analyse and discuss Australian cinema in the context of the Western genre, and the development of the Action genre. Genre and myth are explored by focusing on topics relevant to creative work within the context of Australian cinema studies. The successful deployment of the Warrior-hero archetype, for example, has resulted in box office success for the following characters:

o ‘Mad’ Max Rockatansky (Mad Max films)

o Jim Craig (The Man from Snowy River films)

o ‘Crocodile’ Mick Dundee (Crocodile Dundee films)

These films, which feature an outward-facing construct and a Hero’s Journey, have achieved not only box office success, but also critical acclaim; particularly the Mad Max franchise.

The study is informed by interviews with industry practitioners, including filmmakers

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with experience as screenwriters and directors of prominent Australian films such as Bill Bennett and Kiah Roache-Turner. Bill Bennett is known for the Australian films Spider and Rose (1994), Kiss or Kill (1997), In a Savage Land (1999) and The Nugget (2002), among many others. When asked if he considers himself a genre filmmaker, Bennett responded: “I hope not. I mean the filmmakers that I really admire transcend genre. But I love genre” (Bennett, in interview with Author 21/12/2016).

Kiah Roache-Turner is known for his debut Action Horror film Wyrmwood: The Road of the Dead (2014). Roache-Turner embraces the idea of being a genre filmmaker, and is particularly enthused by the current state of genre filmmaking in Australian cinema: “…there’s so much going on at the moment. So I think genre’s going really well in Australia. We’ve always been good at genre films though. So I think that’s part of what makes Australian cinema good is our ability to really nail genre” (Roach- Turner, in interview with Author 17/10/2016).

The Hero’s Journey at work

Additionally, in the present research, the Hero’s Journey framework, or monomyth, is used as the architectural basis for the story world design, and in the approaches to development and writing employed in the Creative Practice. Additionally, the Hero’s Journey is used as the basis for examining select films in the Mad Max, Crocodile Dundee, and Man from Snowy River franchises.

In this research, the Action genre is explored through the character of ‘Mad’ Max Rockatansky, and is confined to his appearances in Mad Max and Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. The monomythic framework is further explored through a detailed exploration of the tropes, codes, and conventions of the Western genre, and the related archetypes in the Mad Max universe. Associated world-building characteristics are explored in the context of a post-apocalypse as the equivalent of a frontier in the Western genre, and the basic origins of the apocalyptic visions in the ‘Old West’.

Genre

Genre analysis is approached through generic transformation and its impact on the Western genre, informing and/or transforming into the contemporary Action genre. It includes tracing the development of, and then exploring existing frameworks to examine the origins of the Action genre and its tropes, and the ongoing use of the cowboy and outlaw archetypes as both hero and anti-hero. The results of this exploration are applied to the Creative Practice, particularly to the design of the

16 protagonist and the story world of the screenplay.

Warrior-heroes

In this research, the Warrior-hero archetype is explored though a detailed analysis of a series of films to identify the codes and conventions within the Action genre. By framing character design in the context of genre construction and the associated genre-specific archetypes, a direct, applicable framework is presented. This framework is then used in the design of the characterisation within the Creative Practice, and marries tropes in comparison to iconic films from the Action genre. Using creative praxis as methodology, this approach constitutes committed action informed by critical reflection, and positions practice and theory as mutually constitutive (Carr & Kemmis, 1986).

To illustrate this archetypical design, the films included for critique are:

1. Iconic examples in the Western genre 2. Popular and iconic mainstream examples in the Action genre 3. Contemporary examples in the Action genre 4. Australian feature film examples

Great films have subtext; therefore, great screenplays also need to be constructed in sub-textual layers. Framing a piece of genre work within a mythic context brings layers of structured meaning to a screenplay, regardless of genre. However, a thorough knowledge of genre aids the development of a contemporary social, political, or ideological commentary within characterisation and plot, and the thematic possibilities within myth. Employing semiotics in the textual analysis, key films used to illustrate theme, feature the Travelling Angel-Hero archetype and the chosen archetype within the Action genre for deployment into the Creative Practice.

Development and writing of the Creative Practice

To gain an in-depth understanding of character design, I explore in detail each of the five Warrior-hero archetypes, as espoused by Truby in his analysis of the Action genre. These five inter-related types are:

- The Travelling Angel-Hero

- The Rogue Hero

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- The Doomed Warrior-hero

- The Holy Fool-hero and

- The Female Action Hero

The critique focuses on the The Travelling Angel-hero archetype that directly relates to the design of the protagonist in Behold a Pale Horse. This characterisation is measured against a detailed critique of specific and iconic action films from Hollywood and Australian national cinema. Character design is the pathway used to develop plot.

Reflective practice

The combination of exegetical and Creative Practice based research has resulted in the design and screenplay of, Behold a Pale Horse. The screenplay’s story world resonates with conventions drawn from apocalyptic visions in the Action genre. Attributes of the Action genre are applied through the use of the Travelling Angel Warrior-hero archetype. Research findings related to generic transformation inform the creative approach to the Action genre using elements of the Western genre. Screenwriting adaptations of the Hero’s Journey framework, and the structural model templates pioneered by Hauge, Truby and Vogler, have underpinned the development of the screenplay that drives the Creative Practice.

Creative Practice

The central aim of writing the screenplay Behold a Pale Horse was to analyse and implement the Warrior-hero archetype that is commonly deployed in Hollywood films in an Australian context. An aim of this study is to provide practical and analytic tools that model writing techniques for screenwriters. Specifically, the development of a personal creative process for writing screenplays capable of depicting strong, yet contemporary and complex, masculine warrior characters. To this end, I explore the origins of this archetype within genre, which lead to a detailed study back to the source of cinematic masculinities and action heroes as evidenced in the Western. While Hollywood has continued to develop the Western’s action warrior hero into contemporary archetype, such as Die Hard’s John McClane, my research has resulted in the creation of an Australian Warrior-hero character who, through application of the principles of generic transformation, has transcended many of the limits that were imposed on traditional male action characters and now works for the improvement of his society.

The exegesis is not a screen-studies style critique of ideological or gender-specific

18 discussions on the representation of masculinity or femininity in the Action genre, which would be beyond the scope of this Creative Practice based inquiry. Rather, the gender analysis functions primarily in terms of a technical discussion that supports the screenplay project and assists with the deployment of protagonist characteristics that, are historically and traditionally, masculine. Onscreen gender analysis documents my study of character archetypes, and the process of writing the screenplay.

Equally, discussion of mythology in the Australian context does not refer to the vastly different and highly specific, Indigenous mythology that is the preserve of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. It is with respect to these deeply layered and differentiated cultural mythologies, that lay beyond the scope of this Masters level research, that I have focused all discussion on myth in relation to the bush myth.

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1 – LITERATURE REVIEW

1.1 AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL CINEMA

Australian filmmakers, like most national cinema filmmakers outside of Hollywood, are often torn by divergent cultural and financial imperatives. In the 1970s, Australian cinema was involved in a cultural project of national identity-making, and a process of historical recovery and revision. Dermody and Jacka, in The Screening of Australia, Parts 1 & 2, summarised the context in which Australia’s national cinema was reborn:

The ‘second world’ we inhabit is bound to reproduce the first world (UK and the USA), but needs to assert a measure of independence, of product differentiation, to market or circulate our reproductions ... Second world countries like Canada and Australia are riddled with post-colonial ambiguity and anxieties ... For where do we end and ‘the other’ begin? Who is the other by which we define our difference, ensuring ‘us’? Britain? America? ... Our film industry proclaims its central role in revealing an identity we don’t know we have until we recognise it. (Dermody & Jacka, 1988, p20)

Australia’s national cinema has been defined in different ways, each shedding some light on an unstable and dynamic field. However, all definitions share the same concern: Where does our national cinema fit into the international scene? Tom O’Regan in, Australian National Cinema, suggests:

National cinemas are simultaneously an aesthetic and production movement, a critical technology, a civic project of state, an industrial strategy and as international project formed in response to the dominant international cinemas (particularly but not exclusively Hollywood cinema). (O’Regan, 1996, p45)

O’Regan cites the need for Australian cinema to both “imitate and oppose” Hollywood and Phillip Adams is quoted as describing a cinema based on an exclusive national identity (inward-facing story design) as a ‘doomed’ cinema (O’Regan, 1996, p132). Dermody and Jacka outlined the ‘drastically unequal’ nature of our relationship to the other English-speaking cinemas and they describe the ways in which various film-makers have tried to deal with our difference: Without these attempts at embracing stories that appear to a world-wide audience, they believe, we “shrivel in self-esteem” and “inhabit a place-less, story-less limbo” (Dermody & Jacka, 1987, p11).

Despite the orientation of the national cinema to the international market, only a proportion of Australian-produced films achieve an international release. O’Regan cites Mad Max and Crocodile Dundee as films that imitate American form, but have Australian content (O’Regan, 1996, p49). In this context, O’Regan does not define what he means by ‘American’; nor does he relate any of the attributes of these films

20 to mythic qualities in story, to characterisation, or to the attributes of a commercial, universal appeal.

The 1970s brought a string of films that explore national identity in the terms of recent historical events and irretrievable past; Gallipoli (Weir, 1981), Breaker Morant (Beresford, 1980), The Getting of Wisdom (Beresford, 1977) and Picnic at Hanging Rock (Weir, 1975). These films, however, were also predicated on notions of high art alongside the intrinsic cultural value of their topics. Gallipoli was an original screenplay based on a historical event, while the other examples were based on known literary works. In what is referred to as the ‘renaissance’ of Australian cinema, between 1970 – 1985, the sensibilities of the filmmakers and the nascent industry as a whole was focused on the values emanating from European art cinema. Industry assistance was premised on ‘cultural values’ and providing a national cinema that was intoned with an Australian “voice” resulting in a reaction against a dominant “American ownership of our imagination.” (Adams, 1995, pix; Hodsdon, 2001, p43) Phillip Adams and Barry Jones were tasked with preparing an industry report to then Liberal Prime Minister John Gorton. Adams’ proclamation became legend: “We hold these truths to be self-evident. It is time to see our own landscapes, hear our own voices and dream our own dreams.” (Adams, 1995, p.ix)

As the industry grew in scope and size, more commercially minded genre filmmakers produced blatantly commercial films by design and some found significant international success. The Man from Snowy River (Miller, 1982) was Australia’s first international box office sensation (Cook, 1996, p596; Stratton quoted in Aitkin, 2017); its “box office results were little short of astonishing” (Stratton, 1990, p66). This success highlighted an intractable problem: How do we make Australian cultural property attractive to an international cinema marketplace without surrendering ideals of cultural integrity?

Partly, the answer lay in raising international audience awareness of the potential of Australian films. Meanwhile, filmmakers interested in genre were attempting to make entertainment out of our contemporary Australian reality. Australian protagonists, for example, were commonly given the attributes of ‘battler victimhood’, and did not display many of the heroic qualities of ‘initiators and perpetrators of action’ that were featured in successful Hollywood cinema (O’Regan, 1996, p196).

Independent filmmakers who did not rely on traditional government funding support for filmmaking emerged from this same era; for example, George Miller and his co-

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screenwriter on Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, Terry Hayes. Translating the success of Miller’s first film of the Mad Max series, Mad Max (Miller 1979) into an American Studio-financed sequel, Miller and Hayes (with Brian Hannant) created an outward- focused mythic design of characterisation and plot. This was based on the work of Campbell in the design of the sequel. These screenwriters sought to tap into the mythic qualities of the collective unconscious that they had touched on with the first film; from this point forward, however, they wanted to do it by design and in a more deliberate manner.

1.2 NARRATIVE REPRESENTATIONS OF MASCULINE HEROES

Christopher Vogler, in his introduction to the popular Campbell-infused screenwriting text, The Writer’s Journey, singles out Australia and Germany as two countries that are distinctly ‘herophobic’. Germany’s herophobia is described in relation to its past regimented obsession with, and ‘worship’ of the Aryan race. These confusing notions of heroes and hero worship mean that heroic action is often closely associated with a fascist nationalist sentiment.

The Battler

In describing Australia’s herophobia, Vogler speaks to the unassuming and self- effacing character who remains reluctant “for much longer than heroes in other cultures”, and who “may never be comfortable with the hero mantle”. Speaking to what is commonly known as the ‘tall poppy syndrome’, Vogler identifies the Australian hero as one “who denies his heroic role as long as possible” (Vogler, 1998, p.xvii). Our early failed explorers and convict heritage somehow shaped a cultural identity that remains in the majority of our films, fused somewhere between death and defeat. Our on-screen characters appear to be justified as battler victims of circumstance. Much of our cinema identity seems to confirm this, and was forged at the very origins of cinema history.

The Larrikin

As literary characters began to emerge, our national identity emerged from the printed page, where the bush became a place of fear and oppression (Gelder & Weaver, 2007, pp2–4). Stories set in this harsh landscape often featured Australia’s boisterous and recalcitrant male characters, with their abject disregard for convention and authority (Ward, 1958, pp1–2). These features of Australian masculinity later appeared on screen with the advent of cinema featuring a distinctly Australian choice of hero.

22 These male archetypes were often portrayed as simplistic and naïve versions, or more cunning and criminal versions, of a larrikin (Raynor, 2000, pp8–10).

The Ned Kelly iconography

Characters who are described in literature and film in mythic terms commonly emerge from this criminal element in fact and fiction (Byrne, 2016, pp36–40). The iconography of bushranger Ned Kelly, propagated by its cinematic representations (1906, 1970, 2003) has remained that of a cultural hero symbol, manufactured by the convict system and an ongoing resistance to constituted authority (Ward, 1958, p147). A real life criminal, a character in literature and film, Kelly still appears on t-shirts, bar mats, and as a symbol during protest marches. The ongoing use of the iconic figure in his distinctive tin helmet shows that Kelly’s legacy is alive and well (McHugh, 2011, p316). In reality, the bushrangers who committed crimes between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century were often larrikin characters, but rarely Robin Hood-like heroes. Rather, most were murderers, with many of their victims commonly women and children (White, 1970, pp1–27).

The Gallipoli iconography

Alongside a national obsession with bushrangers, a similar iconography is associated with the victims of Gallipoli. Gallipoli was a singular campaign from one theatre of war, where the idea of Australian soldiers being used as pawns by imperialist forces was established (Crawley, 2010, pp50–51). This image of the solider became part of a ‘Gallipoli industry’ (Robertson, 1990, p258), and features prominently and frequently in print, and in various televisions and cinematic portrayals. During the 100th Anniversary of the Gallipoli Campaign in 2015, the majority of major Australian television networks made Gallipoli-inspired television mini-series such as The ANZAC Girls (Cameron & Watson, 2014), Gallipoli (Ivin, 2015), and Deadline Gallipoli (Rymer, 2015).

This ongoing public discourse relating to our armed forces forms a major part of our national discussion (Stockings, 2010, p234; 2012, pp287–292). At Gallipoli, the ANZAC legend was born: The civilian in uniform “able to bring bush-bred qualities of the natural solider or the cheeky iconoclasm of the urban larrikin to the business of soldiering” (Grey, 1990, p3). The focus of this image is squarely on the infantry solider following other nations into a battle that will most likely result in immediate death. This focus eternally wraps the idea of loss and defeat into the ANZAC iconography and its associated myths. Byrne suggests that the celebration of a

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military defeat is Australia’s de facto foundation myth (Byrne, 2016, p19).

The ‘victim-hero’

As illustrated above, death and defeat remain the driving force of the protagonist characters in our national cinema. Supporting O’Regan’s notion of the ‘battler victimhood’ that frames the protagonist character (O’Regan, 1996, p196), Bennett calls this form of hero in Australian Cinema, the ‘victim-hero’:

I think we mainly make victim films and we mainly make anti-hero films. We come from a culture of anti-heroes. We celebrate Gallipoli, which is – they’re victims. Ned Kelly is a victim and an anti-hero. Burke and Wills are victims of this country. I firmly believe that films fall into two categories; they fall into what I call commercial films and victim films. Victim films are art films. You look at any great art film, it’s a victim film. I cannot think of an art film that is a hero film. Similarly it’s very difficult for a victim film to be a commercial film. (Bennett, in interview with Author 21/12/2016)

The uniquely Australian hero: The influence of contextual and cultural phenomena

The influence of contextual and cultural phenomena on the Australian narrative began for white settlers when the nineteenth century explorers planned to conquer the inland. However, the inland was dubbed ‘The Never Never’. Australia was seen by settlers as a vast land that was unable to produce crops, and where pastures could not be sown (Blainey, 1982, pp171–179; Cathcart, 2009, p199). After setting out as potential warriors wanting to tame the land, stoical Australian survivors returned, not as conquering heroes, but as victims of a land that offered intolerable hardships (such as floods, drought, and deadly animals) and, usually, of their own general ill- preparedness.

Unlike the stories of American settlers claiming and building new lives on the frontier in spite of hardships and toil, the majority of Australia’s inland explorers returned home before reaching their goals (Byrne 1993, pp18–19; Cathcart, 2009, p187). Note the contrast between the national myths emanating from Burke and Wills in Australia and those surrounding Lewis and Clark in the United States. In Australia, pioneering explorers were more often than not defeated. Those who did not return died terrible deaths, consumed by the land, never to be seen or heard of again. Again, by contrast, the Americans told stories about their frontier conquerors, often framing them as ‘warriors’.

Although these Australian characters, many of whom have appeared on our cinema screens, have often become the ‘stuff of legend’, rarely do they enter the symbolic

24 domain of myth. In most cases, the stories of their survival rarely featured the attributes of the mythic hero, and the archetypical characteristics that Campbell later called ‘hero’. The quest was never completed; the land never tamed. There was no chance of a ‘return’ with the elixir to complete the cycle (Campbell, 1968, 186; Vogler, 1998, pp227–233). “In Australia the would-be hero’s trials are the undoing of him or her …” Byrne suggests in his exploration of Australia and its relationship to myth. However, the journey for the young nation does result in “…the creation of a more humble and earthy figure” (Byrne, p162). Blainey concludes his historical account of Australian settlement with the statement: “Most Australians were still strangers in a new land. The land was only half won” (Blainey, 1982, p361).

Glen Lewis in Australian Movies and the American Dream argues that the concept of ‘heroism’ has been influenced by the traditional British preference for understatement. This is also evident through that “extra sense of Australian irony and lack of humour derived from the convict and pioneering years” (Lewis, 1987, p15). Lewis supports this view by citing the influence of national failures such as Gallipoli, the Eureka Stockade, and the various failed workers’ strikes in “shaping the negative image of heroism …” (Barbour, 1999, p34).

Ned Kelly and Gallipoli soldiers: Victim heroes in life and film

The earliest iteration of an Australian cinematic hero begins with a mythology of failure featuring real-life anti-hero Ned Kelly. The character is immortalized on screen in the world’s first feature length film (running over one hour in length) in The Story of the Kelly Gang (Tait, 1906) (Bertrand & Routt, 2007, pp3–15). The characterisation of an outlaw on screen as the protagonist-hero in this film was relatively unique in the emerging narrative Cinema forms. During the development of the early feature-length films, the conventions of melodrama— featuring a morally upright hero protagonist—were used as the basis for most early stories on cinema screens. This was especially the case in Hollywood, where mainstream cinematic storytelling conventions were largely established (Norman, 2008, pp63–65). The Story of the Kelly Gang and later, competing bushranger films, used their outlaw character as the protagonist, later referred to as the ‘anti-hero’.

This emergent Australian bushranger genre came to an abrupt end in 1912. The governing censorship authority at the time banned these ‘outlaw’ themes. Bushrangers had been popular heroes of the larrikin class in the cities in the late 19th Century, and the New South Wales police (who were responsible for film censorship) thought fit to

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ban bushranging adventures from the screen for “fear of a resurgence of larrikinism...” (Pike 1980, p20). Nevertheless, encompassing both a defeatist sentiment and a celebration of criminal behaviour as heroic, characters such as Ned Kelly still dominate our film and television screen stories. The trend continues via other real-life, criminal-as-hero stories being adapted to the Australian screen in contemporary films such as Chopper (Dominik, 2000), Wolf Creek (McCLean, 2005), and Animal Kingdom (Michod, 2010). Fictional creations often share the same fate as their non-fiction on screen counter-parts: “We keep inventing fictional characters who either die, kill or disappear in the outback”, says Byrne (2016, p19).

The screen hero as victim/failure: The influence of Australia’s heritage

So-called ‘heroic failures’ became a much greater part of the emerging Australian narrative rather than victorious heroes (Byrne, 2016, p93). While Australian soldiers have won many decisive victories in numerous wars (Grey, 1990), audiences simply do not hear about them in the stories told on Australian cinema screens. In broad terms, Australians are constantly reminded about loss and victimization through the Gallipoli industry. The honour of our nation seems to be tied to defeat or death through a notion of only taking decisive action when truly victimised (Stanley, 2012, p273). This has led to the emergence of an ethos that historian Cathcart calls ‘necro- nationalism’—the idea that there is a nationalism based on death (Cathcart, 2009, pp157–161). While Cathcart believes that the nation has moved on from this, Australian cinema largely remains entrenched in a place of herophobic storytelling. Terry Hayes (writer of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (Miller, 1980), expounds his views on mythology in Australian cinema, and how the idea of failure relates to national identity:

… I find Australia fascinating; every country has a mythology about itself and in America it’s a mythology of the acquisition of great personal wealth, and that’s sort of fine, it drives people on, enough is never enough. In Britain, of course it’s a mythology of heroism against all the odds, charge of the light brigade, Passchendaele and all that, the officer says go to the top of the hill and get mowed down but nobody runs. Well, Australia is unique because it has a total mythology of failure that is the only thing that we really believe in, including: Phar lap, Les Darcy, The Dismissal, Bodyline, and of course, the biggest one of all, Gallipoli. So these are all failures. (Hayes, in Australian Gothic Cinema, Melbourne Writers’ Festival, 2014)

Investing a redemption element into the failed hero narrative is a direct feature of the monomythic model, which Hayes and Miller developed successfully into the screenplay for Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (Miller, 1980). The writing of this film was directly influenced by Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces (Martin, 2003, p39). This redemptive quality is not common to Australian story telling. There is

26 opportunity for the potential application of the monomythic ethos to the Australian experience depicted in screenplays. Later discussion centres on the character of ‘Mad’ Max Rockatansky—the rare strategic deployment of the Warrior-hero archetype in contemporary Australian cinema in 3.2.1.

1.3 INWARD-FACING SENSIBILITIES

In the The Screening of Australia: Volume 1 (1987), Australian film scholars Dermody and Jacka described a duality in the Australian film industry that saw it separated into two streams of film production: ‘Industry 1’ and ‘Industry 2’. Industry 1 categorized the business end of the film industry, taking into account commercial considerations (such as box office receipts), audience response, and video sales. Meanwhile, Industry 2 encompassed the production of films that fulfilled a cultural mandate. This mandate covered the choice of film stories, characters, and themes that maintained a perceived cultural relevance. Films with this perceived cultural relevance were considered eligible for private access to government funding (Dermody & Jacka, 1987, pp15–47).

Dermody and Jacka’s analysis of Australian films produced between 1970 and 1986 signal a long series of contradictions in the demand for commercial success in light of the ‘need’ for cultural relevance. These contradictions have limited the types of films that can be made in Australia (O’Donnell, 2012). The separation of films into these two categories of (that is, of ‘commercial success’ and ‘cultural relevance’) deflects attention away from the thematic and mythic characteristics of genre films. In discussing the ‘aesthetic of commercialism’, Dermody and Jacka (1988, pp43–49) introduce an unnecessary contrast: One that assumes that culturally relevant films are more ‘Australian’ in their approach. Australian films, whether in the Industry 1 or Industry 2 category, can feature cohesive mythic qualities. This ability renders Dermody and Jacka’s aging argument redundant in a constantly changing global marketplace.

The industry reclaims the use of the term ‘genre’

A positive use of the term genre is becoming more apparent in context of Australian cinema, government-funding agencies and within film schools. It is a term no longer exclusively separated from discussions on cultural relevance. The Australian Film, Television and Radio School’s publication Lumina entitled the fourth issue of its screen industry Journal: Genre is not a Dirty Word. The CEO of the AFTRS at the

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time, Dr Sandra Levy, is quoted in Karen Pearlman’s introduction suggesting to ‘steal the word genre back from its abandoned, pejorative state’ (Pearlman, 2010, p6). Pearlman explains the purpose of an outward-facing cinema while also setting-up genre’s relationship to myth in her introduction to the journal:

So, when we say ‘genre’ is not a dirty word we are not saying ‘sell out’, we are saying pay attention to audience expectations, create them and fulfil them. We are saying pay attention to the history and techniques of cinema. We are saying make stories that are bigger than yourself. And finally, we are saying: consider the role of myth in storytelling and what stories are for. (Pearlman, 2010, p11)

The limited use of the Action genre in Australian cinema

While the contemporary Action genre dwells in the urban environments where detectives battle drug dealers, various conspiracies and (now) terrorists, Australian cinema does not have a particularly long history of detective-driven action stories, let alone action movies.

A one-off Hong Kong/Australian co-production The Man from Hong Kong (Trenchard-Smith, 1975) features large action set pieces and the expected tropes of its chosen genre, and employs the populist model of martial arts over guns. Smaller, atmospheric Detective Thrillers such as The Custodian (Dingwall, 1993) and The Interview (Monahan, 1998) have found niche audiences, and are little known beyond Australian shores. Action Thrillers in remote settings away from the noir-ish trappings of the urban city environments have often been described as contemporary Australian Westerns. Films such as Red Hill (Hughes, 2010), Mystery Road (Sen, 2013), and its sequel Goldstone (Sen, 2016) have transferred the genre tropes of police, corruption, and conspiracy to distant parts of the Australian bush. Mystery Road and Goldstone have sent their bush detective hero to the city, only to return in these narratives to a familiar environment, the remote parts of Queensland where he grew up. There, he finds that crime dominates the sparse towns, and motivates many of their inhabitants. Red Hill, being set in the NSW high country, is reminiscent of the Man from Snowy River, albeit in a civilised, isolated setting.

In contrast to the victim hero, the Australian tradition has its own form of the ‘comic book hero’. Creating parallels with the contemporary American film tradition, Bennett describes characters such as Crocodile Dundee and Max Max as the Australian comic book hero. Describing this type of film, Bennett suggests:

A comic-book film is something that is hyper-real, that steps outside of reality. Baz Luhrmann did that beautifully in Strictly Ballroom; he took that into a comic-book realm. Babe is very much – you know, you can imagine Babe as a graphic novel, and Happy Feet is a comic-book story. You know, it’s easier obviously for these

28 animation films to go that way. But we’re okay with that, you know we’re okay with our hero films being comic-books, being hyper-real. I think, as a culture, as a people, as we as Australians, you know we talk about the tall poppy syndrome; we have a problem with heroes. We only allow our heroes to be sportsmen. You know, every other hero we pull down. Sportsmen are okay, but you know there are very, very few successful Australian films that have been made on sportsmen. (Bennett, in interview with Author 21/12/2016)

Australian cinema in the victim-hero tradition is about outcasts, criminals, murderers, and psychotics. Ironically, these characters try to elicit the same emotions of pity and fear that Aristotle suggests are the roots of tragedy (Aristotle 1996, pp. xviii–xxii). The protagonist’s passive search for a goal in serious and culturally relevant Australian films is the mawkish sort. Unlike Aristotle’s framing of tradgedy, the intended audience will potentially feel sorry for these characters. Therefore not experiencing the empathy suggested in the design of characters by screenwriting theorists such as Hauge, Truby and Vogler. The fear the audiences are subjected to is not religious awe, but hypochondriacal anxiety; in the case of psychotic protagonists, such as Chopper Reed in Chopper (Dominik, 2000), it is pure urban paranoia.

The Australian liberal tradition of the ‘culturally relevant film’ seems to be defined in subject matter that is intentionally maudlin, and with a victim as narrative protagonist (Byrne, 2016). While fulfilling many of the codes, tropes, and conventions of the Action genre, Tomorrow Where the War Began (Beattie, 2010), Mystery Road (Sen, 2013), and Goldstone (Sen, 2016) feature these characteristic victim-heroes. Furthermore, as Vogler suggests, they are denied their heroic role for as long as possible (Vogler, p. xvii). However, Red Hill (Hughes, 2010) and Wyrmwood: The Road of the Dead (Roache-Turner, 2015) are the contemporary exceptions to this rule. These particular action films feature a mythic hero where the protagonists are the active and ultimately redemptive heroes, thus following a clear monomythic path. Roache-Turner credits Campbell’s Hero’s Journey as the key influence that helps him to write screenplays “always consistently every time” (Roache-Turner, in interview with Author 17/10/2016).

While screenwriter and director Patrick Hughes’ debut feature film Red Hill had a limited theatrical release in Australia and the US, this film launched Hughes’ action film directing career in Hollywood (Quinn, 2014). In a 2017 report commissioned by Screen Australia, Hughes’ action film appeared, as of 14 March 2017, as the Australian film closest to going into profit (George & Rheinberger, 2017, p22). The aim of Screen Australia’s analysis was to measure the overall financial success of recent independent Australian films; in so doing, it revealed that a film in the Action

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genre was in first place (Maddox, 2017).

1.4 THE MONOMYTH: A PATH TO OUTWARD-FACING SENSISIBILITIES

To give them the greatest possible chance of financial returns in a fast-changing digital age, films need the largest possible audiences. Suggestions that cultural relevance needs can be packaged into a discussion of global relevance and the role of genre, are at play in this context (Waddell, 2011, p292-4). Goldsmith recommends that the local industry think in terms of ‘Australian-international production’, rather than viewing the market as individual territories for release. The older model of films being released in individual territories has been the norm for many decades. However, this model preceded the advent of various digital delivery platforms that changed the domestic and international distribution landscape considerably (Goldsmith, 2010, p212).

Wardell suggests moving away from an introverted approach to national cinema, to “surviving in the global community”. By framing culturally relevant issues as ‘global issues’, Wardell suggests breaking down the barriers of introverted cinema by embracing common themes, ideologies, oppressions, and archetypal energies (Waddell, 2011, p299). This is because the idea of cultural relevancy has a broader meaning in a globalised industry with ever changing platforms for delivery. Mythological ideas could be the key to unlocking this approach.

Western cinema’s characterisation of mythology and the Hero’s Journey

From Achilles and Odysseus to Luke Skywalker and Mad Max, the west has long deified fictional characters that embody heroic impulses. These characters are usually male, have some form of specific skill set, and are on an adventure or quest. Often, this skill set involves superhuman qualities. Along with the signifying goal of attaining a singular, desired and (eventually possessed) object, there is the need for an antagonistic force that is worth destroying in order to achieve this goal. At the centre of this journey is a weakened community. When the goal is achieved after all the hero’s confrontations, there is the reward of quasi-immortality through hero recognition and status. In the Action genre, this is possibly achieved through the title of a movie that becomes an ongoing franchise. In simple terms, a hero’s quest involves a journey and a reward.

Campbell’s summary of the journey appeared in his popular interview with American Broadcaster Bill Moyers, and the accompanying book, The Power of Myth:

30 The usual hero adventure begins with someone from whom something has been taken, or who feels there is something lacking in the normal experience available or permitted to the members of society. The person then takes off on a series of adventures beyond the ordinary, either to recover what has been lost or to discover some life-giving elixir. It’s usually a cycle, a coming and a returning. (Campbell & Moyers, 1991, p152)

Anchoring tools: The importance of mythology and story-telling

Mythology represents a system of beliefs that are often unconsciously, and widely (if not critically) held (Molloy, 1982). Ideas of the hero in culture and story form within this collective belief system, referred to as ‘the collective unconscious’ (Hill, 1992, p7-8). The relationship between Campbell and the origin of thought relating to the work of Carl Jung is summarised by Mad Max creator George Miller when interviewed by his former script editor, Daphne Paris:

Here was an Australian genre picture that seems to have resonance all over the world. Like in Japan, for instance. I’d never seen a Kurosawa movie, yet the Japanese said Mad Max is a samurai and that’s why he’s successful in Japan. Someone from Iceland told me it’s exactly like the wandering loner Viking folklore. I began, for the first time, to question this process we call ‘storytelling’. Previously, and with my basically scientific background, I took a phenomenological view of the world, where everything was cause and effect. Now I had concrete experience of what Jung called the ‘collective unconscious’. That really was one of the big shocks of my life and I came to it through the practice of filmmaking. Here was something a lot bigger than any individual – forces deep and mysterious that drive this need we have to tell each other stories. The person who shone a great floodlight on this was Joseph Campbell through his discourses on mythology. He went well beyond Jung or anyone else. According to Miller, in all time and space there is this compulsion to put ourselves into the broadest context, to connect ourselves to what came before and what will come after. And the means by which we do this most effectively is ‘storytelling. (Paris, 1993, p11)

Many Western cultures also feature aspects of the hero in their foundation stories, exploration journeys and, therefore, early myths. In the history books, literature, and film, the US celebrates Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett and the fighters of the Alamo as examples. In Australia, however, there are fewer cinematic or (even) historic stories that adhere to this universal mythic framework and heroic structure known as the ‘monomyth’, a reference to the cycle of the hero within the Hero’s Journey paradigm (See Appendix 1.2).

Successful Australian films using the familiar mythic hero

Australia’s most commercially successful films at the domestic and international box office feature familiar mythic hero archetypes of the monomyth. These films also specifically feature the mythic character design of the warrior-hero, genre conventions 31

of the Action genre, and associated plotting, to satisfy traditional audience expectations. These ideas are strongly represented in the work of cultural anthropologist and mythologist Campbell, and other contemporary writers on myth and storytelling. Adaptations of these ideas are also applied to screenwriting practice by story analysts such as Hauge (Writing Screenplays that Sell,1989), Truby (The Anatomy of Story, 2007), and Vogler (The Writer’s Journey, 1998).

George Lucas helped popularise the seminal work on mythic heroes in story when he spoke frequently about the influence of Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), and its influence on the creation of the Star Wars (Lucas, 1977) universe. Upon discovering Lucas’ references to Campbell’s work, screenwriter Terry Hayes studied the text as a basis for the writing of Mad Max 2 (transcript of Australian Gothic Cinema, Melbourne Writers’ Festival, 2014). Later, Hayes introduced the Campbell text to Miller while they were developing ideas for the sequel to the hit 1979 original Mad Max (Martin, 2003, p5). Hayes attributes Miller’s success with this original film to points where Miller had ‘accidentally’ fulfilled various stages of the Hero’s Journey (Hayes, in Australian Gothic Cinema, Melbourne Writers’ Festival, 2014). Miller has spoken many times about Campbell’s influence on his work, and how the collective unconscious relates to the Mad Max films:

As the Mad Max films made their way around the planet, they seemed to resonate somehow, culture to culture. To the French, these were post-modern, post-apocalyptic Westerns and Max was a gun-slinger. In Japan, he was an outlaw Samurai. In Scandinavia, a lone Viking warrior. The movies had tapped into the universal hero myth and I was given a taste of what early Jung was on about when he described the collective unconscious. (Miller, 1996, p39)

On Australian screens, commercially successful films that adhere to the Campbell monomyth, have either been made by design (Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior), or simply through a desire to produce more commercially viable products (Mad Max, The Man from Snowy River, The Man from Snowy River II, Crocodile Dundee, and Crocodile Dundee II). By adhering to classic genre construction and by featuring outward facing sensibilities in their design, these films have, by default, utilised the Campbell-infused structure of the Warrior-hero archetype. In all instances, by tapping into these mythic qualities of a quest, these films have significantly impacted an ongoing cultural discourse, and their own iconography through myth.

1.5 DISCOVERY OF THE WARRIOR-HERO ARCHETYPE

The most iconic of the screenplay analysts who went on to write populist screenwriting ‘how to’ books is Syd Field, first publishing Screenplay: The

32 Foundations of Screenwriting in 1979. Many updated editions followed, as did many other screenwriting analysts and teachers of the craft, such as Hauge, McKee, Truby, and Vogler. In most cases, these analysts are unconcerned with either national identity or history; rather, they focus on structure. Hauge, like his contemporaries, is a structuralist who promotes the three-act system, or something very similar in form:

Structure consists of the specific events in a movie and their position relative to one another. Proper structure occurs when the right events occur in the right sequence to elicit maximum emotional involvement in the reader and the audience. (Hauge, 1988, p82)

Hauge and others are not there to tell you ‘what’ to write, they leave that to your own political, social, and emotional choices. However, their books and seminars can tell you ‘how to write it’. Hauge sees structural analysis as a tool of the screenwriter, not as a tool of anthropology or cultural studies. His goal is to describe the structure of a successful film, as confirmed by its box-office takings. Under this premise, he often side-steps the issues surrounding art and commerce.

Since Field and Hauge emerged in prominence in the 80s, there are volumes of ‘how- to’ books on the craft of screenwriting, some better than others. Aside from Field’s early and iconic work, this study focuses on the texts the author has previously used as part of his own creative screenwriting practice. These are: Writing Screenplays that Sell (Hauge, 1988); Story (McKee, 1997); The Anatomy of Story (Truby, 2007); and The Writer’s Journey (Vogler, 1998).

These texts make strong arguments for their structural analysis, backing it up with many examples. They are frequently updated with contemporary examples from populist cinema to further inform their discussions on the classics. They all reflect a version of the three-act structure as the predominant story form for the classical design of story in cinema. McKee calls it a ‘5 Act Structure’; however, this is simply a similar framing with different naming conventions. Its simple presentation of an argument—thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis—make it an integral part of almost every sophisticated story form: Act 1, Act II, Act III and Resolution (Hauge, 2007, p83; McKee, 1997, pp31–58).

It is important to realise that the three-act structure is not Hollywood’s invention. Stories with beginnings, middles, and ends are ancient forms. While Aristotle’s Poetics outlines this structure, as Hollywood commercialised storytelling, ‘beginning, middle, and end’ has become synonymous with genre films and prescriptive storytelling. While stage dramas have been built around structural assumptions and

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conventions for millennia, the screen industry places story structure at the centre of the writing process and constructs ‘story’, not as personal or national expression, but as product. This is also where the notion of genre can be used for analysis, story design, or as a selling tool (or all three). This notion is discussed in more detail in later chapters.

Critics of Hollywood, however, have a point. If the ‘three-act structure’ or ‘classic narrative’ is interpreted as a Hero’s Journey, it can easily be freighted with many of the shunned values of Hollywood cinema. Critics question the value of the Hero’s Journey, and place representations of complexity and subtext as prescribed, ‘paint-by- numbers’ filmmaking. However, the Mad Max franchise, for example, shows that by using a Hero’s Journey model as part of the strategic design, it is possible to dramatize a morally complex world peopled with anti-heroes within the three-act structure (Batty, 2010, pp125-6).

The significant story engine to drive this exegesis and Creative Practice came in the form of a Truby lecture series focusing on screenwriting structure within the specific context of individual genres. This series—Truby’s Genre: The Action genre (2002) — revealed a complex analysis of the Action genre, and suggested that a nuanced array of archetypes within the genre can be deployed to create worlds of moral complexity in a populist and hugely successful genre.

While every major screenwriting text deals with genre as a foundational principle of its structuralist approach, only Truby analyses the structural framework of individual genres in any depth. Stephen V. Duncan (2008) and Julie Selbo (2015) cover all of the major genres in their screenwriting texts on genre for the screenwriter; however, none are treated as thoroughly as Truby’s treatment of them in his 1985-2002 audio lecture series on individual genres. Many books also focus on examples to illustrate their claims; however, an abundance of these analytics outweighs the attention given to the underlying archetypes and their mythic relationship to the genre. Truby holds that plot evolves from character (Truby, 2007, p15); influenced by this Truby tenet, the author’s Creative Practice began.

1.6 CINEMA RENTALS FOR AUSTRALIAN WARRIOR-HEROES

Commercially successful Australian films of the 1980s, such as Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, Crocodile Dundee, and The Man from Snowy River, began with a strong combination of consciousness of both their mythic possibilities and the kinds of audience expectations that accompany commercial, genre-based cinema. Each of

34 these films appeals to global, as much as to local audiences. Audiences flocked to them in droves, eager to experience their mythic dimensions and their unique Australian quality, where thematic ideas such as the bush myth were folded successfully into the populist Action genre.

Popular movies are cultural standard-bearers; they carry with them the values, beliefs, dreams, longings, and needs of a society and, thus, can function mythologically. (Martin & Oswalt, 1995, p66)

While ‘popular’ in this statement is reflected as domestic and international box office success, it is also measured in outward-facing design. While an analysis of box office success is not part of the creative process, such success did influence the choice of exemplars for critique. This is because theatrical release rentals form an industry benchmark that has historically been, and remains, a key pre-requisite for attributing the success and popular appeal of an individual film. Films have been primarily selected to reflect the application of warrior-hero archetypes in the context of Australian national cinema (The box office results of these films appears in Appendices 2 & 3).

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2. METHODOLOGY

2.1 DEFINING GENRE

The rules and conventions of genre constitute a type of language upon which films are constructed. At the same time, genre operates as a code by which audiences make decisions about what film to watch (White, 2011, pp4–5) and, ultimately, whether they will pay for a ticket, purchase a DVD, or view the film on a VOD (Video-On- Demand) or streaming platform. The term ‘film genre’ refers to the type of story told, whether it be Action, Western, Romance or Comedy, among others. The alternative use of the term is ‘genre film’, often referring to a film considered to be of lower artistic value, due to its lack of originality or close emulation of similar works (Altman, 1999, pp20–24). Films in the populist genres such as Action or Horror are often pejoratively dubbed ‘genre films’ due to the abundance of lower quality films released in these genres each year.

In the Australian film industry, a recently developed term ‘ozploitation’ is a play on the term ‘exploitation films’, a sub-genre that was popular at drive-ins in the 1970s. The term ‘ozploitation’ was coined via the release of the nostalgic documentary Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (Hartley, 2008). Sympathetic to all Australian genre films of that era, the documentary loosely bound together any film from the 1970s to early 1980s that did not fall into the Drama or Art Cinema categories. For example, the first (and independently produced) Mad Max film was considered an exploitation film at the time and, later, once the term was coined, an ‘ozploitation’ film (Stratton quoted in Aitkin, 2017). However, its sequels Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (Miller, 1981) and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (Miller & Oglive, 1985), which were financed by Hollywood Studios (Warner Brothers Pictures), are not considered to be examples of ozploitation or feature the independent processes that spawned this movement within Australian cinema.

Emerging areas of academic discourse and film criticism relating to ‘pop-culture’ (popular culture) studies, however, have been kinder, allowing this kind of cinema a more central place within artistic domains and modernist forms. The idea that modernism is no longer exclusionary to elements of pop-culture is presented by Andreas Huyssen:

There are many successful attempts by artists to incorporate mass cultural forms into their work, and certain segments of mass culture have increasingly adopted strategies from on high. (Huyseen, 1986, p.ix)

Critical acclaim and mainstream box office success greeted the latest edition of the

36 Mad Max franchise, Mad Max: Fury Road (Miller, 2015). While not ozploitation, this genre film signalled a return to the mythic post-apocalyptic universe. Supplementary success followed when Mad Max: Fury Road won the prestigious 2015 International Federation of Film Critics – FIPRESI Grand Prix Award.1 The critical acclaim and accompanying global box office performance (US$375 Million) of Mad Max: Fury Road (See: Appendix 2) underscores that the Mad Max franchise has managed to satisfy the demands of both popular culture and high art (Barbour, 1999, p34).

Among Australian film industry practitioners, there appears to be little evidence of any serious discussion of the deep intertwining of mythic archetypes, genre studies, and screen characterisation. The identity of Australian genre cinema should be part of a sustainable tradition, and of an ongoing discussion about the distinct role that genre plays in developing outward-facing sensibilities (Ryan, 2014, p153). The Mad Max films have proven to be the exception to the marginalization of genre. This is because they fuel discourse within the pop culture realm, while also receiving broad acclaim from critics and gaining the attention of film theorists. All four films in the Mad Max franchise have frequently been the focus of mythic and archetypal critical analysis. Thereby, the franchise appears to be immune to the various stigmas that relate to genre films, consistently appearing in numerous texts on genre, and also featuring at the centre of discussion where Australian national cinema is the focus. A genre film can either be of high (high art) or low quality; therefore, the term ‘genre film’ will be treated in this study as neutral.

2.2 ACTION GENRE

Using elements of other genres such as the Western, Film Noir, Detective, and Gangster, and being heavily influenced by Akira Kurosawa’s much-celebrated Japanese Samurai movies, the Action movies developed during the late 1960s and early 1970s were to become one of the most iconic of contemporary genres (Duncan, 2008; Truby, 2002). This was a trend not unique to Hollywood: It was represented in other cinema cultures around the globe as audience interest in the Western genre waned:

1 At the 2015 San Sebastián Film Festival, the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) Grand Prix 2015, determined by film critics from all over the world, was awarded to Mad Max: Fury Road. In an open poll, 493 members of FIPRESCI participated in the vote. (http://www.fipresci.org/awards/2015)

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The most obvious marker of the action film’s modernity would be the big-city backdrops that had long served noir, detective, and gangster pictures, and against which more classically Western conflicts would now be staged. Urban warfare was about to receive the Western gunfighter, who, to bring law to the lawless, would appropriate some of the dark terrain traditionally associated with other genres. (Lichtenfeld, 2004, p19)

To understand the Action genre, is to understand the most dominant genre at its core, the Western. An analysis of the Western and associated archetypes, later adapted and further developed into the Action genre, provides a starting point for theoretical consideration of, and a basis for the design of the Creative Practice.

Underpinned by classic mythical storytelling conventions and the structures that have risen from its study, this genre analysis explores Action genre codes, tropes, and conventions: the cowboy archetype; the frontier setting; and the codes that transcend superficial cinematic trends (technical, social, or market based). Genre theory informs the critical approach to Action films and the characters that inhabit their stories. The Action genre is positioned as an anomalous hybrid of the Western, Noir, Detective and Gangster genres (Monticone, 2014). By utilizing the concept of generic transformation, the Western genre is charted and assessed in terms of its impact on the development of the contemporary Action genre, particularly in regards to character archetypes (Cawelti, 2012).

When Western star Clint Eastwood transferred his gun-fighting bravado from the Wild West to the middle of a busy contemporary San Francisco street in Dirty Harry (Siegel, 1971), a paradigm shift occurred. The star of Coogan’s Bluff (Siegel, 1968) even seemed to foreshadow this transition when he played Deputy Sheriff Coogan. Coogan had to transfer his small town sensibilities from his rural town in Arizona (the West) to the big city. As cinema audiences watched Coogan adapt, they were watching two worlds collide, as the Western becomes something new, offering a complex reconfiguration of an embattled masculinity into vigilante hero (O’Brien, 2012, pp20–1). Dirty Harry spawned a successful franchise, as did the iconic vigilante series of films from the same era: Death Wish (Winner, 1971) that extended to Death Wish 5: The Face of Death (Goldstein, 1994), and a remake starring Bruce Willis (Roth, 2018).

Coinciding with the release of Siegel’s revisionist Westerns and entry into the Action genre, directors such as Sam Peckinpah were setting their Western narratives at the end of the West itself, the 1890s. Like the aging cowboy character played by John Wayne in The Shootist (Siegel, 1976), Peckinpah’s cowboy outlaws are coming to terms with the later years of their lives, and the inability to be outlaws in the ever-

38 growing cities that accompanied the westward expansion of the United States (McGhee, 1988). The hard and bloodied cowboys of The Wild Bunch were transformed into anti-heroic criminals and, when they died, the West died with them (Cawelti, 2012, p295). Consequently, John Wayne followed in Clint Eastwood’s footsteps and made two urban Action movies, playing an inner city detective in McQ (Sturges, 1974). Sturges was the director responsible for the iconic Western The Magnificent Seven (Sturges, 1960). However, many of the writers of early Action films had no such pedigree. Rather, they received their training by writing serialised Westerns produced for US Television (Lawrence & Jewitt, 2002, pp89–99).

George Miller articulated this transformative development of genre in a 1982 interview in Film Comment:

People are saying that the traditional Western is dead, but I said no, it wasn’t, it was really being retold as the cop picture, and the car chase had replaced the gunfight. I grew up on comic books, serials and B-grade Westerns. Out of all those things came Mad Max. (Miller, quoted in Chute 1982, pp28–9)

Harking back to the Western, the modern Action genre form of warrior is very much the cowboy or outlaw from the American West—albeit wearing a suit, and sans cowboy hat.

Over time, the Action genre has been closely associated with the Adventure genre. Adventure has its roots in early cinema and swashbuckling heroes battling pirates, or treasure hunters traversing foreign lands (Duncan, 2008; Voytilla, 1999). Often film theory texts relate them so closely that it is known as the Action/Adventure genre (Neale, 2000, pp52–60). A long study could be written to separate both. ‘Action’ in this research is related to a contemporary form of the Action genre that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s, where the transformation of Western-style conflicts burst onto city streets. These Action films can be identified by the following tropes, particularly relating to the characterization of the hero:

- The hero protagonist is a warrior, the practical enforcer of what is right

- The hero has a specific skill, using his or her body as a weapon, sometimes augmented by an external weapon of choice

- The hero is aware of the risk, however dangerous the journey ahead

- The hero is an ordinary person in extraordinary circumstances

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- The hero is placed in a situation where he or she must escape

- The story world unfolds in a contemporary setting or in the ‘not-too-distant’ future

- The hero has an inner journey that involves personal awareness and possible healing, related directly to their goal

- A key antagonist is a reflection of the hero, or has a direct relationship to their wound

(Duncan, 2008; Selbo, 2014; Truby, 2007; Voytilla, 1999)

The Action genre and its heroes can provide a model of not only how to act, but of how to act successfully in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds; for example, it illustrates:

- How to stand up to evil

- How to find justice when the social systems let a community down

- How a person can lead a society when it lacks decisive male leadership

(Gallahger, 2006, p4; Truby, 2002)

The hero is a warrior and the ‘way of the warrior’ is a ‘higher cause’ grounded in redemptive storytelling and a monomythic structure (Voytilla, 1999, p20). A hero is ‘called’ to sacrifice himself, not simply to create and maintain a war. Therefore, films within the Action genre that follow the genre tropes, codes, and conventions superficially, without any accompanying mythic depth, lead to destructive storytelling, and lack the redemptive qualities of the monomythic hero. All stories are the result of interactions among ideas, land, and the particular social organisation (Truby, 2002). Thus, there is a fundamental problem with the Action genre when its action heroes solve problems through destructive and negative means, such as violence that lacks moral justification (like self-defence), that does not serve the greater society by liberating a community (Lawrence & Jewett, 2202, pp47–8).

Popular films shape and reflect the preoccupations of the popular imagination. Mainstream cinema propagates dominant features of contemporary socio-cultural ideologies (Molloy, 1982). The Action genre, like the Hero’s Journey itself, has often been criticised as an embedding of a patriarchal or male-dominated warrior culture (Gallahger, 2006, p5). In terms of Campbell’s modelling of the hero, the warrior in

40 the Western and the Action story is only a singular face of the hero and traditionally characterised through strong masculine identities (Vogler, 1998, p.xviii).

Along with its strongly masculinist and patriarchal narrative construction, the Action film has evolved from a vision of taming the West, building a country, and settling the land, into something much more reactionary. As such, it has the potential to portray a lot of negative results when not constructed with a strong thematic basis. Action movies that do not have a mythic or thematic foundation attack the symptoms of the community’s problems, not the cause (Truby, 2002). This is, therefore, symptom- orientated storytelling. This crime Action story is a different story form, where mythic ideas do not form a solid thematic footing. It is also partly a reason for the pejorative use of the term ‘genre film’ with reference to the Action genre. Consequently, audiences themselves become victims. They are convinced that it is the way life really is: that we need these big action heroes to deal with the ‘nasties that are out there’ (Gallahger, 2006).

The Action form can portray very negative views of manhood and womanhood. The image of man or males it projects is one of violence and conquering. The image it projects of women is one of fearing and submitting to men. This is not simply the case with regard to the evil opponent, but to the hero also. It creates a very negative cycle where one has to constantly increase the spectacle of violence and, thereby, the thrill. The main technique that contemporary screenwriters and directors have been using in the Action genre is to tell the story more quickly. In doing so, the action has a more immediate but superficial impact. The filmmakers destroy more people, destroy bigger buildings, and blow away more body parts. When audiences are exclusively concerned about fast action, they have the potential to no longer be concerned about right versus wrong action. In this story form, there is little time for concern about the personal or moral growth of the hero (Truby, 2002). Consequently, there is little time for concern about the personal or moral growth of the family and community. What audiences are left with is a sensual emotive ‘kick’, derived directly from destroying at speed (O’Brien, 2012, pp32–3).

To write a very powerful action story that is positive and not destructive, requires basing the story on a strong social or political theme that is redemptive, or basing the character on a series of underlying myths featuring self-sacrificial qualities that build characterisation (Lawrence & Jewett, p47). The basic Action story is structured within genre, but the complex action story is laced with strong thematic ideas and a mythic basis. The building blocks that are found in any mythic story are also there for

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emotional impact. In a more nuanced version of the Action genre, we are weaving together a number of story types; for example, action + strong Western archetypes + romance + interesting setting + strong plotting, and characterisation that is based on myth.

The contest between the hero and the antagonist reinforces the thematic oppositions, as well as the mythic construction (Hirschberg, 2009). A well-designed Action screenplay looks like one plot line; in fact, however, there are three or more lines woven together into a seamless whole, offering nuance of character, plot, and story world (Truby, 2002). In fact, a well-designed Action story is a nuanced story, full of depth and substance built into the rich characterisation of the protagonist, antagonist, and supporting characters. The archetypes in these Action stories hark back directly to those found within the Western genre, as later illustrated by films such as: Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (Miller, 1981) and Die Hard (McTiernan, 1988).

2.3 GENERIC TRANSFORMATION OF THE WESTERN GENRE

That world of the ‘Wild West’ has not been a phenomenon for over 100 years. Thus, if the Action genre’s roots in the Western genre are studied closely, one can see that the concepts coming out of the Action story are, in most cases, obsolete. New narratives keep playing out these Western-like narratives in contemporary settings, and there have been trends to justify this in violent urban vigilantism such as:

- Crime-ridden New York City in the 1970s, in Death Wish (Winner, 1974)

- A high-rise office building in downtown 1980s Los Angeles, in Die Hard (McTiernan, 1988)

- The neo-noir setting of downtown Los Angeles where hold-ups and small time hoods are commonplace, in Drive (Refn, 2010)

Many Action stories emphasise the destructiveness of the Wild West; however, they do so without signalling the path towards some sort of greater society or a vision for one, such as the new frontier (Wright, 2003). Nevertheless, great social and cultural value can be obtained from the Action genre if it is underpinned by a mythic dimension. Indeed, the screenwriter of the Action screenplay can source much of this mythic dimension from the Western itself.

The first representation of the now familiar ‘Western hero’ or ‘cowboy’ is considered to be the character of The Virginian in The Virginian, later adapted for cinema screens

42 (1914, 1929, 1946) and various television adaptations (Bandy & Stoehr, p4). The Western is an American creation myth (Truby, 2002). In fact, it is the last creation myth that we have had because the US West was the last frontier in the world (Turner, 2015, pp9–10). The Western provided a very strong vision for the American people and their settlement of this part of the North American continent. However, when it evolved into the Action story, there was a very big difference. The Western story presented violence as necessary to handle a unique physical environment—a dangerous physical environment (Truby, 2002). Guns and violence were necessary to deal with that environment on a day-to-day basis. In this context, the Action genre no longer has an environmental reason for its existence (Wright, 1977).

One of the most studied of all film genres, the Western, features a series of common codes, tropes, and conventions, existing as both genre and myth. The genre-as-myth approach relates to the symbology and coding of the Western genre’s origins in the images, iconography, and mythology of the American West itself (Collins, 2002, pp243–4; Pye, 2012, pp240–2). These symbols have emerged from historical accounts and (later) literature, to become one of the earliest and most iconic of all generic Hollywood conventions (Langford, 2005). These conventions date back to the very origins of cinema, and continue through to the Western genre’s demise in the early 1970s. This demise has been referred to as the ‘generic exhaustion’ of the genre as its ‘life-cycle’ in the mainstream ended (McClain, 2010, p60-61; Cawelti, 2012, pp296– 7).

Recurring themes in the Western film genre have strong connections to early Australian literature, including the poetry of Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson (Scott 1978, p275). Further to this, tropes such as the outlaw, the pioneering spirit, the taming of the land, and families living in the bush also began to emerge in Australian cinema with the world’s very first feature film, The Story of the Kelly Gang (Tait, 1906). These trends continued through to the decline of Australian cinema in the late 1940s/early 1950s. During this time, the few films produced domestically primarily explored themes emanating from the bush myth, such as The Overlanders (Watt, 1946) and Sons of Mathew (Chauvel, 1950) (Routt 1995, pp53–56). Plot, setting, and forms of characterization were similar to those of the American West, but were hybridized with Australian sensibilities. These early Australian films reflected the desire of settlers to develop Australia as a newfound frontier, and exemplified how the bush myth could bind people and place (Molloy, 1982).

The American Western featured visions of landscape and settled place, relationship

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with the land, and types of character confrontation (good versus evil), and constantly re-examined thematic oppositions (Voytilla, 1999, pp48–52). Specific recurring themes included:

- man’s relationship to the land

- the roles within an isolated family

- failure in the face of adversity

- overcoming odds unique to a particular location

- man’s ability to be brutal when pushed to the limit

- connecting to the accumulation of great personal wealth, greed, manifest destiny and, often, revenge

(White, 2011, pp2–3)

The development of other genres and their influence on the Western relate directly to the origins of the Action genre. The ‘classic Westerns’ and, later, the ‘spaghetti Western’ collectively waned in popularity from the early 1970s and, over time, failed to capture the attention of the movie-going public as they had for previous generations (Gregory, 2005). The decline of the Western genre at this time allowed for new genres to emerge. While the old genre did not completely die, it did, however, lose its place in the mainstream cannon of populist genres, and transformed the warrior- heroes into something new, while remaining very familiar at the same time.

2.4 WARRIOR-HEROES IN THE ACTION GENRE

The Action-hero begins with a deep love/hate relationship with himself. The ghost of this hero is the motivating factor for the characters existence in the ordinary world, whether a detective working day-to-day for justice or a roving character moving from place-to-place. The Action-hero glories in his own power, with a specific skill set usually relating to the use of weapons or the use of his own body as a weapon (Lichtenfeld pp97–126; Holmlund 1993, p225). At the same time, the hero is driven to excellence and has had to sacrifice elements of a personal life (love and family) to do this. Self-sufficiency is, therefore, key to his ongoing existence. The shape of the hero in the Action paradigm includes disguised origins, pure motivations, a redemptive task and extraordinary, sometimes super-heroic, powers. Ultimately, performance, with a focus on winning, is the path to both survival and to achieving

44 the goal at the outcome of the chosen quest (Lawrence & Jewitt, 2002, p47). The Action movie has taken the mantle from the Western as a model or symbol of physical action (Wright, 1975, p185; O’Brien, 2012, pp19–20).

A Warrior Action-hero must have a warrior mentality (Truby, 2002). He never deviates from the way of the warrior: He lives it every day; there are no ‘days off’ or holidays for the Action-hero. Through his job as a cop, sheriff, detective (or other form of government agent), or as a lone Warrior-hero outside of the trappings of government, he practices his lifestyle choice every day. However, he is acting in a personal and unofficial capacity. Authority figures are both bureaucratic and duplicitous; he is in opposition to the hierarchy, while at the same time defending its ideals (Tasker, 1993, p241). Like the detective heroes featuring in the hard-boiled stories of Film Noir, the Action-hero personally triumphs against, yet also ‘reinforces institutionalised patriarchal authority’ (Krutnik, 1991, p89). This is a masculine union of mind, heart, and body; and the external weapon is, therefore, an extension of the body. From the origins of the genre in Dirty Harry (Siegel, 1971), the .44 magnum— “the most powerful handgun in the world and would blow your head clean off”—is the hero’s de facto penis (Lehman, 2001, pp26–27; Tasker, 1993, p212).

The Action-hero holds to, and practises, the sharp male gaze (Truby, 2002). However, unlike the thuggish men around him who lack personal insight into themselves or others, he sees ‘inside’ people. While seeing inside himself by wrestling with a ghost or a ‘sin’ of the past, he cannot change himself; he can, however, help to change others. He is at his best when dealing with their problems and thereby suppressing his own (Truby, 2007, p127). This forms part of his emotional armour where there is physical danger that requires force and combat (Hirschberg, 2009, pp7–10).

The question for the Action-hero is always: To fight or not to fight. The answer is always: Fight. In spite of the needs of a community, however, the Action-hero fights best when he fights alone. If this character were to rely on anyone else, he would become weaker. The result is that he rarely marries. If he does, divorce is already a likely part of his life, and possibly related directly to his ghost—the scars, flaws, or secrets within his backstory (Truby, 2002; 2007). He cannot join the community; he is a fish out of water, whether at home or in a new location. The family is avoided on screen and in the development of the protagonist’s backstory. (Krutnik 1991, p89; Tasker 1993, p212). In this context, another question relates to the need of the character: To be alone or to be part of the community? The answer is always: To be alone.

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The wrestle with being alone defines the role of the female as potential love interest (Gabbard, 2001, p10). While this adheres to Campbell’s theory, in this genre, the woman is usually kept out of reach of the Action-hero. This is usually by the hero’s own choosing, as Campbell reinforces:

Woman, in the picture language of mythology, represents the totality of what can be known. The hero is the one who comes to know … And if he can match her import, the two, the knower and the known, will be released from every limitation ... The hero who can take her as she is, without undue commotion but with the kindness and assurance she requires, is potentially the king, the incarnate god, of her created world. (Campbell, 1968, p97)

The hard-bodied Action-hero cannot overcome his extreme masculinity (Donaldson, 1993). The genre tropes reinforce Freud’s ‘mastery plan’ of patriarchal culture and its associated gender-specific identities’ (Lichtenfeld, 2004). The action story represents the patriarchal cultural order, spawned from a tradition in the Detective genre (Krutnik, 1991, pp76–91). Therefore, the Action-hero (often a Detective) cannot blend with the feminine in any direct way (Cawelti, 1976, p41; Gabbard, 2001, p9). This character has a key need for something that others can give him—something that will allow him to possibly heal his emotional wounds (Truby, 2007, p126). However, the most nuanced of Action-heroes have a subtle addition of femininity into their design. Bennett describes this need for masculine and feminine duality:

… the successful films that work are the ones where the masculinity is tempered by a vulnerability, a very feminine vulnerability. I have studied the poster of Mad Max 2 where you’ve got Mel Gibson on that road with the burning wreck behind him, with a shotgun, with the leathers. I’ve looked at that poster and I’ve looked at other posters that have tried to do the similar thing. The one thing that defines that poster is the look of terror in Mel Gibson’s eyes, the incredible look of vulnerability and fear. That is what makes that poster work. So, you’ve got the juxtaposition of the masculine and the feminine working, that duality between the masculine energy and the feminine energy, and that’s what makes that character work, it’s what made that poster work, it’s what made that film work. (Bennett, in interview with Author 21/12/2016)

The need to portray this duality in the form of vulnerability allows the audience to see the male hero’s humanity beneath his outward emotional armour. This basic weakness is something that action (use of his skill set) will not solve. The masculine approach is directly associated with freedom and morality and, ultimately, being in control (Seidler, 1989, pp143–149). Meanwhile, the feminine approach in the Action genre is related to life and the ability to connect with the community at a deep and on-going level. Inheriting these tropes from Westerns such as Shane (Stevens, 1953), “the combination of masculine aggression and feminine passivity leads to consummation, which produces life” (Hill, 1992, p136).

The consistency of ongoing deployment of this genre’s masculine foundation is also

46 related to the Action-hero’s basic weakness. This is the weakness that his action will eventually help him to overcome. His internal goal is his ‘need’ versus his basic external goal, which is his ‘want’. Weaknesses usually include: selfishness; unreliability in endeavours outside of the task (external goal) at hand; intense masculinity; inability to deal with women as people (especially as co-workers or as professionals); and a lack of internal honesty. As a result, he is distinctly and unusually cold. A deeper use of characterisations within the quest narrative reveals the protagonist’s ethical dilemmas, emotional traumas, and psychological goals (Jeffords 1993, p245). Therefore, if and when the Action-hero is to transcend his weakness, he has to do something he does not normally do. After the climax, the resolution of the character arc represents the regeneration stage of the hegemonic action hero. The active choices made in the third act result in the exposure and healing of wounds (the ghost) from the past (Vogler, 1998).

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3. WARRIOR-HERO CRITIQUE

The Action-hero can take various forms in the design of an archetype. These initial archetypes relate to behaviour and motivation within character development. The Warrior-hero appears as one, or a combination of, the following warrior forms suggested by Truby in Truby’s Genre: Action genre (2002). While Truby does not articulate the specifics of the archetypal characteristics, his five forms are defined below as ‘Behavioural Archetypes’. Within the Action genre these are deployed to critique the formation of the character arc. These forms are: The Fighter, The Enforcer, The Bringer of Justice, The Destroyer, and The Creator.

Behavioural archetypes (action genre):

The Fighter

The Fighter moves towards the fight. He is a professional who struggles and resists—a fighter of evil with the will, courage, ability, and determination to fight. He is not a victim, and does not want to ever be seen as such.

The Enforcer

The Enforcer is charged with keeping order or enforcing the obedience of dissenting members. Often a public official (such as a police officer) who enforces laws, regulations and rules, this is someone who is physically intimidating (or has a physically intimidating skill set) and can force belligerent members of the community to stop causing suffering.

The Bringer of Justice

The Bringer of Justice is on a mission to uphold the justice of a cause or community. There is righteous action to assist those seeking justice, or to intervene when the justice system is failing in its duty. There is a moral principal or code determining the hero’s conduct and treatment of the community, including its criminals. This can require the administering of justice—either deserved punishment or reward.

The Destroyer

The Destroyer sets out to destroy, and is methodical and calculated in their approach. The destruction of something evil is a particular focus.

48 The Creator

The Creator creates something new for the community, or forms a new community.

In his seminars focusing on specific genre tropes, codes, and conventions, Truby’s mode of character development for the screenwriter has been adapted to the various modalities of genres. His focus on the Action genre uses five archetypes that describe for screenwriters the archetypical design and construction of the Action-hero (Truby, 2002). This paradigm is used here for analysis. The specific archetypal characteristics for each of these warrior-heroes are outlined in great detail by Truby.

Warrior-hero archetypes (action genre):

- The Travelling Angel-hero

- The Rogue-hero

- The Doomed Warrior-hero

- The Holy Fool-hero

- The Female Action-hero

3.1 WARRIOR-HERO ARCHETYPES

Contemporary films in the Action genre are critiqued below:

• Iconic examples of the Western genre: Shane (Stevens, 1953), High Noon (Zinnemann, 1952), Hang ‘Em High (Post, 1968), Destry Rides Again (Marshall, 1939) and Johnny Guitar (Ray, 1954)

• Popular and iconic mainstream examples in the Action genre: Die Hard (McTiernan, 1988), Raiders of the Lost Ark (Spielberg, 1981), Death Wish (Winner, 1974), Dances with Wolves (Costner, 1990), and La Femme Nikita (Besson, 1990)

• Contemporary examples in the Action genre: Drive (Refn, 2011), Guardians of the Galaxy (Gunn, 2014), Gran Torino (Eastwood, 2008), Ant-Man (Reed, 2015), and Lucy (Besson, 2014)

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• Australian examples: Mad Max (Miller, 1979), Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (Miller, 1981), Crocodile Dundee (Faiman, 1984), The Man from Snowy River (Miller, 1984) and Shame (Jodrell, 1988)

3.1.1 The Travelling Angel-hero

The setting of the story and the portrayal of the landscape is key to the deployment of the Travelling Angel-hero. The protagonist is a fish out of water when entering a community. The word ‘angel’ implies the religiosity of underlying myths, such as the Judeo Christ-figure that features commonly in the discussions of Campbell’s monomyth applied to the West. Miller famously dubbed the design of Max for the third film Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (Miller & Oglivey 1986) as ‘Jesus in leather’ (Buckmaster, 2017, p148). Accordingly, this archetype instantly invokes the need for redemption and the offering of self-sacrifice on the part of the hero.

With its origins in the American West, the Action genre also shares a direct connection to the Christ myth and the frontier’s role in the growth of Christianity, ‘America’s messianic role’ in the world, and its various denominational brands across the North American continent at the time of settlement (Glanz, 1982, p141). With or without reference to any specific religious ideology, the Travelling Angel is the travelling saviour. His time to enter the community is now. Adding to a possible spiritual or esoteric dimension, the timing of the hero’s arrival is potentially influenced by the ‘higher cause’ (Voytilla, 1999, pp20–1). The setting is a metaphor for the entire world (that is, all of society). Hayes confirms this character design in a discussion about Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior:

Because you take an ordinary man – Jesus was a carpenter in Galilee, you know? The best hero story ever written whether you believe the religious side or not; he’s an ordinary man who goes on an extraordinary journey, sacrifices himself for some great benefit to his community. That’s Mad Max, it’s Luke Skywalker, it’s Scott Murdoch in I Am Pilgrim. It’s the same story over and over again. And so that was what we did, we then had the landscape, we had the cars, we had the road, and it was successful. (Hayes, Australian Gothic Cinema, Melbourne Writers’ Festival, 2014)

Truby’s attributes of The Travelling Angel Warrior-hero archetype are as follows:

- The hero is perfect in some way

- The hero enters the community

- The hero helps the community set the problem right

- The vision of manhood is one of quiet confidence

50 - The hero never draws first

- The hero has a sense of fair play

- The hero is deadpan, quiet, and understated when he speaks

- The hero is altruistic; a helper of society

Meanwhile, examples of this archetype are:

1. Iconic example in the Western genre: Shane – Shane

Behavioural character arc: Destroyer to Fighter to Creator

2. Popular and iconic mainstream example in the Action genre: Die Hard – John McClaine

Behavioural character arc: Enforcer to Fighter to Bringer of Justice

3. Contemporary example in the Action genre: Drive – Driver

Behavioural character arc: Creator to Fighter to Destroyer

4. Australian example: Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior – Max Rockatansky

Behavioural character arc: Fighter to Creator to Fighter

A detailed critique of The Travelling Angel Warrior-hero archetype appears in Section 4.1.

3.1.2 The Rogue-Hero

The Rogue-hero is the most common Warrior-hero in contemporary action cinema. The rogue is ultimately a sacrificial hero; however, his attitude, motivations, and moral qualities often sit closer to the anti-hero than the sacrificial hero, at least at first. There is a clear-cut motivation that is selfish at the start. Often the lone gunman, the Rogue-hero has to do a little bit of ‘bad’ to do a whole lot of good. Morally speaking, he is free to choose where his conscience dictates in the moment, for better or for worse (Singh, 2011, p173). At times, he is willing to turn on those to whom he is loyal. He is charismatic in a way that those around him are not. He dresses well, and traditionally chooses black over white; eg. Han Solo (solo by name) in contrast to Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars (Lucas, 1977). At first glance, this hero

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looks more like an outlaw than a sheriff; however, this helps in sticky situations or when up against genuine criminals. He is most likely a womaniser, or at least needs a woman—or many women—at the centre of his existence in a way the Travelling Angel does not.

The attributes of a Rogue-hero in 1952 (High Noon) are in contrast to the attributes of the Rogue-hero of the post-1970s. This contrast is clearly defined by a shift in moral character choices that represent an overall shift in society’s values. The contemporary action Rogue-hero has a firm foundation in the hard-boiled detective cycle of the late 1940s and early 1950s, where the hero has set himself above the law (Krutnik, 1991, p193). The attributes of the Rogue-hero are particularly represented through the casting of key actors in these roles, for example:

- Harrison Ford as Han Solo and Indiana Jones.

- Chris Pratt as Owen in Jurassic World (Trevorrow, 2015); Josh Faraday in The Magnificent Seven (Fuqua, 2016); Jim Preston in Passengers (Tyldum, 2016)

Essentially, Truby’s Rogue-hero Archetype is:

- A character who charms and scams his way into success

- A good bad guy, or a bad good guy

- He is usually out for himself (at least at the beginning)

- A street-smart womaniser with tremendous confidence; a good talker and (usually) a liar

Examples of Truby’s Rogue-hero are as follows:

1. Iconic example in the Western : High Noon (Zinnemann, 1952) – Will Kane

Behavioural character arc: Creator to Enforcer to Bringer of Justice

2. Popular and iconic mainstream example in the Action genre: Raiders of the Lost Ark (Spielberg, 1981) – Indiana Jones

Behavioural character arc: Fighter to Enforcer to Creator

3. Contemporary example in the Action genre: Guardians of the Galaxy

52 (Gunn, 2014) – Peter Quill

Behavioural character arc: Destroyer to Fighter to Creator

4. Australian example: Crocodile Dundee (Faiman, 1985) – Mick ‘Crocodile’ Dundee

Behavioural character arc: Fighter to Enforcer (briefly: “That’s not a knife, this is a knife) to Creator

(A detailed critique of The Rogue-hero Warrior-hero archetype appears in Appendix 4.)

3.1.3 The Doomed Warrior-Hero

The Doomed Warrior-hero finds his regeneration through violence. This is a form particularly associated with the concept of vigilante justice. However, there is an unusual depth tied to the ghost of the protagonist. By directly tying the motivations to injustice, the plot is evidentially tied to a revenge story form as the clear justification for vigilantism. The justification for violence is personalised for the Doomed Warrior- hero that it is to be uncritically understood as a type of revelation (Lawrence & Jewett, 2002, p111)

This is a rare Action-hero in contemporary Hollywood cinema. The nature of the doom becomes an action form that ultimately leads to a dead end: death of the hero or a tragic hopelessness tied to the outcome. Justice will not prevail, or the system will always let the Doomed Warrior-hero down: a logical extreme of the ‘doomed’ choices. This emotionally insular character usually goes into exile, or even dies, at the end of the narrative when he helps destroy the world that he has come from. Therefore, this is a character that sets his own demise with “a sense of undue finality” (O’Brien, 2012, p109).

Specifically, Truby’s Doomed Warrior-hero archetype is:

- a character with tremendous integrity in a dishonest world (particularly at the beginning)

- a loner in a changing and corrupt society

- a character who insists on maintaining his true self, even if it means his own

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death

- a man of strength, will, courage, and passion

- a character who is closed off (emotionally); an angry character who cannot be part of the community

- a destroyer of the world in which action is necessary

Examples of this Doomed Warrior-hero archetype are as follows:

1. Iconic example in the Western: Hang Em High (Post, 1968) – Jed Cooper

Behavioural character arc: Creator to Enforcer to Fighter

2. Popular and iconic mainstream example in the Action genre: Death Wish (Winner, 1974) – Paul Kersey

Behavioural character arc: Creator to Bringer of Justice to Destroyer

3. Contemporary example in the Action genre: Gran Torino (Eastwood, 2008) – Walt Kowalski

Behavioural character arc: Fighter to Enforcer to Bringer of Justice

4. Australian example: Mad Max (Miller, 1979) – Max Rockatansky

Behavioural character arc: Bringer of Justice to Enforcer to Destroyer

Mad Max as the Doomed Warrior-hero is discussed in the context of the Mad Max franchise in 3.2.1.

3.1.4 The Holy Fool-Hero

The naivety, goof ball or childish nature of the Holy Fool-hero is a result of the fact that he has such a good heart. This is attributed to a moral strength, and is the least used of the masculinist forms, as it fully embeds the character in the feminine over the masculine. This is the only character, while within the Action genre, that could be classed as the Anti-action hero. The ‘gods’ help him succeed even though, as a supporting character, he brushes up against the hero in one of the four other forms.

This archetype does not relate particularly to this Creative Practice, and so is not analysed in detail. Most Action films relegate the Holy Fool to the supporting role, for example, in the buddy story or within the Action/Comedy hybrid genre. As

54 protagonist, Jim Craig in The Man from Snowy River fits into this form due to his age and lack of experience in ‘life’. While Craig is no fool, he is a naïve and stubborn young man whose innocence and child-like trust in people is what makes him a ‘Holy Fool’.

In summary, Truby’s Holy Fool-hero archetype:

- Has heroic intentions, but is naïve and goofy, or naïve and clumsy

- Is someone whose good heart is the cause of his goofball nature

- Is attributed with a moral strength (the least used of the masculinist forms as it fully embeds the character in the feminine over the masculine)

- Is the one character who, while within the genre, could be classed as the Anti- action hero

- Is helped by the ‘gods’

- Is someone with a good heart (the vision for manhood)

- Is someone who tries hard, and cares about other people

- Is someone who tries to avoid force when solving problems

Examples of Truby’s Holy Fool-hero archetype are as follows:

1. Iconic example in the Western: Destry Rides Again (Marshall, 1939) – Tom Destry Jr.

Behavioural character arc: Creator to Fighter to Creator

2. Popular and iconic mainstream example in the Action genre: Dances with Wolves (Costner, 1990) – John Dunbar (difficult to find an exemplar in the Action genre, so a Western was chosen)

Behavioural character arc: Destroyer to Fighter to Creator

3. Contemporary example in the Action genre: Ant-man (Reed, 2015) – Scott Lang

Behavioural character arc: Creator to Fighter to Creator

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4. Australian example: Man from Snowy (Miller, 1982) – Jim Craig

Behavioural character arc: Creator to Fighter to Creator

The Holy Fool-hero is discussed again in the context of the archetype’s relationship to The Travelling Angel-hero, in the detailed critique of The Travelling Angel Warrior- hero archetype in Section 4.1.

3.1.5 The Female Action-hero

The Female Action-hero takes the form of one of the first three archetypes: the Travelling Angel-hero, the Rogue-hero, or the Doomed Warrior-hero (noted alongside the examples below). In addition to an adapted feminine approach to the application of these attributes, this character is a balance of femininity and traditionally masculine skills within the Action genre. There are very limited applications of this archetype in Australian national cinema.

Truby’s Female Action-hero archetype is:

- A strong woman who has the guts and ability to defeat men

- Determined to get the job done, and can be relied upon to do so

- Physically strong, and talented

- Is both sexy and flirtatious, and strong and tough

Examples of this archetype are as follows:

1. Iconic example in the Western : Johnny Guitar (Ray, 1954) – Vienna (Rogue-hero)

Behavioural character arc: Creator to Fighter to Enforcer

2. Popular and iconic mainstream example in the Action genre: La Femme Nikita (Besson, 1990) – Nikita (Marie Clément) (Doomed Warrior-hero)

Behavioural character arc: Fighter to Destroyer to Bringer of Justice

3. Contemporary example in the Action genre: Lucy (Besson, 2014) – Lucy (Doomed Warrior-hero)

Behavioural character arc: Creator to Destroyer to Bringer of Justice

56 4. Australian example: Shame (Jodrell, 1988) – Asta Cadell (Travelling Angel-hero)

Behavioural character arc: Creator to Enforcer to Bringer of Justice

There is a brief discussion of the Female Action-hero in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior in the context of the Mad Max franchise in Section 4.1.

3.2 OVERVIEW OF AUSTRALIAN MYTHIC EXEMPLARS

Mythic exemplars:

- Max Rockatansky in: Mad Max (Miller, 1979), Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (Miller, 1981), Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (Miller & Oglivey 1986) and Mad Max Fury Road (Miller, 2015)

- Mick Dundee in Crocodile Dundee (Faiman, 1985)

- Jim Craig in The Man from Snowy River (Miller, 1982)

Comparing the characterisations of Max Rockatansky, Jim Craig and Mick Dundee is the basis for a comparative framework to explore the mythic archetypal characteristics of the Warrior-hero archetype:

The popularity and functional utility of the physical model of Australian manhood is not hard to understand. The certainties and predictabilities of strong, tough, invincible masculine bodies have durability and hegemonic appeal. The elements are consistent and congruent, facilitating the promotion of a clear, well-bounded image of national identity. (Seymour, 2001, p70)

The mythic characterisations of Max Rockatansky, Jim Craig, and Mick Dundee directly reflect the Campbell-influenced Warrior-hero archetype, by incorporating tropes specific to the Action genre, alongside direct influences of the bush myth. The Western motifs that code the cowboy as mythic Warrior-hero within an Australian setting, help create an analytical basis for a development of Australian genre screenplays. Australian Action, Adventure, and Comedy genres could benefit from such a tool, given its demonstrated audience appeal based on box office performance.

Meanwhile, arguments could be made for placing any one of the above films in either or both of Dermody and Jacka’s Industry 1 or Industry 2 categories. In an age of globalization and digital delivery platforms, Dermody and Jacka’s discussion should be removed from any future debate. The Dermody and Jacka paradigm has been consistently assessed and re-assessed by filmmakers and academics wrestling with 57

various issues surrounding Australian cinema and box-office rentals for many decades. A discussion about outward-facing cinema and the content required for the global market place is much more productive. By focusing on developing product for both the domestic and international audiences, there is a chance to remove any baggage of cultural relevance for genre projects. Filmmakers working in all genres are learning how to navigate an ever-changing digital landscape and its accompanying finance-raising challenges (Goldsmith, 2014).

3.2.1 THE MAD MAX FRANCHSIE

When George Miller’s film Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) took the prestigious Firesci prize, despite its status as a genre film, it also took up an interesting critical place. Typically, Dramas sweep the major awards such as the Oscars, while the Action genre, alongside the extremities of cinematic fear (Horror) and the apex of joy (Comedy), are often considered the lower forms of cinematic art. In this context, these genre films are often judged on the basis of taste. However, Wolf Creek 2’s (McLean, 2013) screenwriter Aaron Sterns believes that ‘taste’ should not enter the conversation as a gauge of culturally worthy films. Sterns also suggests a lack of understanding of the role and place of genres such as Horror (Australian Gothic Cinema, Melbourne Writers’ Festival, 2014).

Mad Max: Fury Road has reminded us that it is possible to think of genre films as high art. Mad Max: Fury Road reinforced Miller’s own views that action cinema, particularly the chase as a narrative story form, is a staple ingredient of the Action genre but also, in essence, the pure syntax of cinema. From a directorial perspective, Miller explains:

I’m naturally a montage filmmaker, in the sense of the cumulative syntax of the individual shots with the composition of lenses. It’s why I love action movies. I see them as pure cinema, they cannot be experienced in any other way ... I like shooting things that move fast through a landscape (Miller quoted in Mathews, 1984, pp236– 7).

“Inspired by an intertextual mix of idiosyncratic Australian characters, behaviours and stories”, George Miller’s creation of the lone Warrior-hero Mad Max was developed through an introverted approach to filmmaking but has proven over time to be “powerfully resonant for global audiences” through various iterations (Waddell, 2011, p292). The original Mad Max (Miller, 1979) introduces the protagonist Max as a cop – the dedicated police officer in the apocalyptic ‘wild west’ where the roads are

58 the Great Plains. Instead of a horse, he ‘rides’ a high-powered car. As the narrative develops, the cowboy Warrior-hero Max transforms into the outlaw-Warrior-hero Max. The revenge narrative emerges in Act III after the brutal murder of the hero’s wife and child. Max begins as the cop (or ‘sheriff’) and ends as the avenger (Doomed Warrior-hero). The revenge narrative was a popular genre trope in the 1970s (Martin, 2003, p20).

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior introduces us to the outlaw warrior-hero. This Max walks the cursed earth in a realm more closely identified with that of legend and fable – a universal Western inspired hero, the warrior of myth and legend (Martin, 2003, p39; Raynor, 2003, p53; Hayes, quoted in Australian Gothic Cinema). The narrative is a reversal of the original film’s plot and structure. Instead, Mad Max 2 uses the redemption narrative as its plot where Max transitions from outlaw-Warrior-hero to cowboy-warrior-hero. He becomes the Christ-figure, including a (near) death and resurrection (Dundes 1990, pp188–189; Hayes, quoted in Australian Gothic Cinema). The considerable commercial success of Mad Max (1979) and Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981) both at home and abroad is attributable to the generic basis of their narratives, characterisation and iconography. Elements of the Western (the lone avenging hero, the beleaguered community, the desert landscape with its outlaws), Science Fiction (the collapse of civilisation in the first film, the vestiges of post- apocalyptic society in the second and third), the ‘Biker Movie’ and the ‘Police Thriller’ are incorporated with a dynamic combination of self-consciousness and self- parody (Rayner, 2000, pp37–38).

‘Mad’ Max Rockatansky’s reluctant heroism in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, is shaped by an exclusively Australian definition of heroism as we meet him in a post- apocalyptic landscape as outlaw loner. He is a broken anti-hero not looking to help anyone, building towards a more traditionally designed idealistic American definition of cowboy loner: a reluctant hero becoming the hero to a community. The setting is the Australian outback in place of the American frontier shaping the mythology of the story world (Byrne, 2016, p93). The ‘anti-heroic’ Australian tradition is enforced but ultimately redeemed in a classic Hero’s Journey structure at the supreme ordeal structural turning point (Vogler, pp166–167).

Miller is not a filmmaker simply interested in capturing reality, albeit in a fictional post-apocalyptic world. As screenwriters, Terry Hayes and George Miller want to make myths. They want stories with depth that are ‘consciously mythical’ in their construction (Mathews 1984, p34). Constructing the apocalypse was therefore a

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natural subject for Miller, designing a series of frontier landscapes for each entry into the franchise. The original trilogy became the anthem of a generation brought up during the cold war, peak oil crisis and the apocalyptic Reagan era talk of weaponising space via the aptly named ‘Star Wars’ program. It was strategically designed in the form of a screenplay fusing ideas loosely developed in the first film, and the specific discoveries of mythic structure outlined by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces and in other works expanding the ideas surrounding the monomyth (Buckmaster, 2017, p104; Martin, 2003, p5).

The third Max Max film, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (Miller & Oglivey 1986) is the least popular with critics. Considered a much gentler film in tone, use of violence and the focus on Max’s mentor role to a group of children, the film seems confused in its identify. Certain aspects of the monomyth are strongly developed and implemented such as Max’s development of mentor into the elixir of responsibility, passing on his skills as father figure. (Vogler, 1998, p229; Gibson 1992, p174–5). This film seems acutely aware of the Hero’s Journey tropes and is the one film in the series that is didactic in its use of the monomyth:

A community in a harmonious paradise is threatened by evil; normal institutions fail to content with this threat; a selfless superhero emerges to renounce temptations and carry out the redemptive task; aided by fate, his decisive victory restores the community to its paradisiacal condition; the superhero then receded into obscurity. (Lawrence & Jewett, 2002, p6)

This assertion is clearly connecting tropes of the Western genre and reversing them via the post-apocalyptic setting. In the Western genre, the more civilised a society became in the old west, the more corrupt that society became (Alpert, 1994; Wright, 2003). The apocalyptic vision of Mad Max evokes the earlier phases of the Western frontier where boundaries of city and country no longer exist. It is therefore an origin story for Max (in each individual film within the series) and as a new frontier, the narrative arc of each film resolves with the potential that lies within a seemingly hopeless world. In a fictional universe, wanting to create a post-apocalyptic landscape, in each film in the series the screenwriters have forged a union of two fundamental aspects, ‘the realistic and the mythic’ (Byrne, 2016, pp92–103).

The commercial box office success of the Mad Max films, in particular Mad Max (Miller, 1979), Mad Max 2:The Road Warrior (Miller, 1981) and Mad Max: Fury Road (Miller, 2015), appears to transcend any negative genre trappings. Mad Max is considered to be a worthy topic for study by film theorists, academics and industry practitioners alike and Mad Max: Fury Road is the ”most successful Australian film of all time at the global box office” (Stratton quoted in Aitkin, 2017). The genre of

60 each of these films is firmly planted within the Action genre, while elements of other genres feature strongly such as science fiction (apocalyptic ideas), Western (use of landscape and iconography), Australian Gothic (relationship of man to the unique Australian landscape) and crime/gangster/detective (origins as a police officer, criminal behaviors of the antagonistic forces, and chase sequences) in the ‘new west’ (O’Brien, 2012, p38).

Warrior-hero Archetypes:

Mad Max – The Doomed Warrior-hero

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior – Travelling Angel-hero

Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome – Travelling Angel-hero

Mad Max: Fury Road – Rogue-hero

3.2.2 OUTWARD- FACING DESIGN – CROCODILE DUNDEE

Commercially successful Australian films such as Crocodile Dundee (Faiman, 1985) and The Man from Snowy River (Miller, 1982) are often dismissed in critical discourse, denounced as simply commercial vehicles (Moran and Veith, 2005, p104; Raynor, 2000, p9; Stratton, 1990, p645). The local industry, however, while still concerned with culturally relevant considerations, is happy to claim box office grosses for these films (See Appendix 2) as a worthy outcome to be celebrated (Hodsdon 1995, p164).

Unlike Crocodile Dundee and The Man from Snowy River, the Mad Max film series is considered to make a ‘culturally relevant’ contribution, while also being considered pop culture. This is thanks, in part, to the critical acclaim associated with the series. Calwelti describes this type of characterisation in terms of Burlesque “when the inverted presentation actually seems to bring out some latent meanings that were lurking all the time in the original convention”. Combining elements of the Western with exaggerated elements of Comedy, then underscoring these incongruous conventions with the tropes of Australian bush myth characteristics, the screenwriters appear very self-aware via the transformational genre of Burlesque proper (Calwelti, 2012, p288).

Finance for Crocodile Dundee—for the film that became, and still is, the highest grossing Australian film of all time at the Australian domestic box office—was raised

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independently (See Appendix 2). Crocodile Dundee surpassed The Man from Snowy River, the previous film that held this position, and that was also financed independently, using an outward-facing perspective on genre and audience expectations. Before Crocodile Dundee, The Man from Snowy River was considered “Australia’s first international blockbuster” (Cook, 1996, p596).

Leading up to the release of Crocodile Dundee, star and co-screenwriter Paul Hogan made numerous disparaging public statements about the Australian film industry, and referred to those in charge at the time as ‘wankers’ (Stratton 1990, p335). This criticism echoed the sentiments of The Man from Snowy River producer Geoff Burrowes who, a few years earlier, had called the Australian film establishment ‘intellectual wankers’ (Stratton 1990, p64). Hogan wanted Crocodile Dundee to appeal to the needs of an outward- facing industry. This outward focus was key to the development of the character and accompanying screenplay (with co-writer Ken Shadie), particularly for ‘the North American market’ (Nowri, quoted in Aitkin, 2017). When describing the character design in particular, Hogan tapped into the archetypal ideas to be explored in the creation of Mick Dundee. In John Baxter’s 1986 ABC television series Filmstruck, Australia at the Movie, he explained his character:

He’s a mythical outback Australian who does exist in part – the frontiersman who walks through the bush, picking up snakes and throwing them aside, living off the land; who can ride horses and chop down trees and has that simple, friendly, laid- back philosophy. It’s like the image the Americans have of us, so why not give them one? ... We’ve always been desperately short of folk heroes in this country. Ned Kelly is pathetic. So are the bushrangers. (Hogan quoted in Baxter 1986, p164)

Thus, representing another departure from notions of failed Australian heroes is Mick Dundee. Although the narrative primarily takes place in New York City, the locale for Acts II and III, the narrative grounds the character within the Australian bush throughout the establishing scenes in Act I. In forming the Mick Dundee character, the screenwriters combined elements of the bushman as archetype from ideas within the bush myth, with characteristics of the culturally maligned ‘ocker’ archetype. At the same time, the Action genre’s rogue Warrior-hero archetype is used as the basis for its mythic character design (Rattigan 1988, pp150–151).

Dundee is a larrikin with hints of possible criminal behaviour. Like Max Rockintansky and Jim Craig, he is not fighting against the bush; rather, he has become one with the land and its creatures. Like the ‘Road Warrior’ Max in Mad Max 2, he has tamed the landscape and will continue to do so with his special set of heroic skills. A key element of the character’s mythic design is his ability to tame animals (Byrne, 2016, pp77–78). Although Mick Dundee has this special skill that he

62 flippantly suggests is mind over matter, he shares this attribute with Jim Craig and Max Rockatansky (in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior). Jim Craig can tame the wild brumbies, a special skill that, once mastered, belongs to him, and Max can defeat the snake; no other man can. Indeed, “no single creation of a myth-hero can be totally removed from the time, the place and the culture of his creation” (Rattigan 1991, p211).

While Crocodile Dundee is based on a universal concept, it squarely targeted a North American audience (Stratton 1990, p337; Nowra quoted in Aitkin, 2017). The film sits within the Action/Comedy genre; however, it is analysed here in terms of the Action genre. An escapist Action/Comedy such as Crocodile Dundee separates us from reality by using distinct elements of other genres such as Romance (plot), Western, and Adventure. However, these features are subsumed by the dominant functions of the Action genre via a characterisation of the Rogue-hero archetype.

Traditionally, comedy is intelligent and myth is emotional. Both give us an intellectual distance from subject matter and theme, and both help us to comprehend reality; however, comedy separates us from reality, while “myth brings us into communion with it” (Monaco, 1979, pp251–3). The great power of designing the character of Mick Dundee resulted in the rare combination of these two elements working in perfect unison. In addition, elements of the bush myth and effectively- timed comedy, peppered with a laconic Australian flavour, offer psychological catharsis by bringing us together in the celebration of reality, and its lineaments, in heightened form (Duncan, 2008, pp148–9; Neale, 2000, p66).

Crocodile Dundee Warrior-hero Archetype: Rogue-hero

3.2.3 AUSTRALIAN MYTHIC FRAMEWORK – THE MAN FROM SNOWY RIVER

The assimilation of Australian bush myths into the national identity is illuminated through selected Australian films. Many of these mythic ideas are evidenced by films produced in Australia prior to WWII (Molloy, 1982). Using the Adventure genre as a framing device, many of these films share genre conventions with the Hollywood Westerns. However, Australian Action films should deploy a supporting Australian cultural framework in their design such as the bush myth. The bush myth is the framework used to discuss the underlying themes of The Man from Snowy River, as described by Dr Bruce Molloy:

… some of the many feature films made in Australia take the bush as setting or deal with aspects of rural life. For the bush was the location of myth in the anthropological sense of

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something stemming from a social contradiction. The contradiction arose from a discrepancy between the dissemination of bush attitudes and values and the facts of population distribution. Most Australians were not bush dwellers even in the eighteen nineties. But the demographic facts became irrelevant. It gave people the influence, which the bush exerted on the popular imagination through oral tradition, popular literature and journalism. (Molloy, 1982)

The Man from Snowy River takes its subject from one firmly entrenched in Australian legend. Like Max, the protagonist Jim Craig follows a monomythic journey (Vogler, 1998, p14). Accompanying the use of this framework is the use of character, plot, and setting to effectively present the Australian bush as a ‘Wild West-like’ setting. Where the Mad Max series creates a new frontier after an apocalypse, the high country in the Man from Snowy River is essentially a return to the simplicity of the old west and its associated archetypes, including the inherent corruption within a system of civilisation. Molloy suggests this also plays directly into the characteristics of the bush myth:

The city is a place of licentiousness, drinking and gambling. The country is the site of productive fertility, both animal and vegetable, and contentment. The opposition is not simply between the nature of the bush and the culture of the city. It acquired a moral charge with the bush connoting a moral superiority. (Molloy, 1982)

Set within the Australian high country, The Man from Snowy River looks very much like a classic Hollywood Western; however, it is one where Australian accents naturally reside within the unique natural environment (flora, fauna, and climate). The narrative design incorporates many of the rules, conventions, and codes of the Western genre, grounded even more so by the importation of Hollywood actor Kirk Douglas in dual roles. In The Man from Snowy River, the taming of the frontier, which is so familiar in classical Westerns, becomes the taming of the unexplored high country. Craig is depicted as a special breed of hero, transitioning from boy to man (Rattigan, 1991, pp199–200). While constructing a commercially-minded rite of passage narrative, mythic elements emerged and effectively told—by filmmaking design—a very familiar Action story within a unique Australian setting (Stratton, 1990, pp64–68).

While The Man from Snowy River is within the Action/Adventure genre, elements of other genres—such as Romance, Western, and Adventure—feature strongly. Screenwriters John Dixon and Fred Cullen combine action closely with a series of Romantic plot devices, resulting in a hybrid genre film looking very much like a Western. Framing the young white Australian bushman as the teenage orphan on the verge of manhood, our hero Craig is the frontiersman in training. On the frontier, to become urban is to break the spirit of man. For Americans, freedom is out on the distant plains; here in the Australian high country, however, freedom is to own your

64 own land up in the mountains, under the endless sky. The local variations on manhood, freedom, and the frontier adapted from the American Western, weave subtle ‘binary oppositions’, while using similar iconography in this Australian iteration of classic Western motifs (Collins, 1993, p244).

Under the chapter heading: ‘American Adam', American cultural critic Garry Wills describes the cultural view of the American cowboy as:

The archetypical American is a displaced person – arrived from a rejected past, breaking into a glorious future, on the move, fearless himself, feared by others, a killer but cleansing the world of things that ‘need killing’, loving but not bound by love, rootless but carrying the Centre in himself, a gyroscopic direction-settler, a travelling norm. (Wills, 1997, p302)

While maintaining the visual iconography of the Western, The Man from Snowy River cleverly reverses all of these characteristics, and grounds the hero in the first act as the humble naive young man. This youthful innocence frames Craig as the Holy Fool- hero, and thereby creates a template for the young Australian cowboy in a rite-of- passage narrative arc. Craig is the embodiment of one who must embrace his past, and own the future he has found; who questions his own value; who is too young to be feared; who avoids violence and is bound by love; who finds roots in the high country; who ultimately enters into rites of passage, and achieves manhood in the third act. This manhood is exemplified via horse riding in the spectacular action sequences in the film.

The Man from Snowy River Warrior-hero Archetype: The Holy Fool-hero

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4. CRITIQUE OF ARCHTEYPES

Comparative films that illustrate the tropes, codes, and conventions of the Action genre are now also discussed and analysed in detail. The codes, tropes, and conventions can be directly related back to the Western. Criteria for these films are not only box office success, but also critical acclaim. Each chosen film features reliable genre attributes within the Action genre.

The films are discussed in context of the generic transformation of genre, alongside a focus on construction of the character based on archetype. These films were also chosen as they feature the step-by-step attributes of the monomyth encompassed in one of the most oft-quoted descriptions of a hero from Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces:

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: The hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man. (Campbell, 2008, p23)

Using these mythic qualities is not just an arbitrary character device that can be ‘plugged in’ to any genre. As a structural model, the Mythic Warrior-hero needs to sit firmly within an appropriate genre. The accompanying developmental framework for the construction of a Warrior-hero archetype can underpin the codes, tropes, and conventions of a particular genre without reducing Campbell’s model to a ‘paint-by- numbers’ exercise.

4.1 THE TRAVELING ANGEL-HERO

A detailed critique and exploration of the chosen Warrior-hero archetype for deployment in the Creative Practice.

Examples of The Traveling Angel-hero

1. Iconic example in the Western: Shane – Shane

Behavioural character arc: Destroyer to Fighter to Creator

2. Popular and iconic mainstream example in the Action genre: Die Hard – John McClaine

Behavioural character arc: Enforcer to Fighter to Bringer of Justice

66 3. Contemporary example in the Action genre: Drive – Driver

Behavioural character arc: Creator to Fighter to Destroyer

4. Australian example: Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior – Max Rockatansky

Behavioural character arc: Fighter to Creator to Fighter

Exemplified attributes of The Travelling Angel Warrior-hero archetype (from 3.1.1)

Truby’s attributes of The Travelling Angel Warrior-hero archetype are as follows:

- The hero is perfect in some way

- The hero enters the community

- The hero helps the community set the problem right

- The vision of manhood is one of quiet confidence

- The hero never draws first

- The hero has a sense of fair play

- The hero is deadpan, quiet, and understates when he speaks

- The hero is altruistic; a helper of society

In Shane, the casting of the blonde and handsome Alan Ladd in the title role is considered a way of helping to give the hero a quality of vulnerability (Alpert, 1994). Drive is particularly reminiscent of Shane in plot, characterisation, and structure. As for the casting of Alan Ladd, the casting of Ryan Gosling as (what becomes) a brutally violent character and a skilled professional killer, represents a similar vulnerability. Hayes references Shane as a direct influence on the writing of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior: “We knocked it off from Shane… And Shane took it from Yojimbo the Japanese movie. So, you know, it’s nice to think you’re part of a long continuum” (Australian Gothic Cinema Melbourne Writer’s Festival, 2014).

Each character in each film is portrayed as some form of the ‘Man with No Name’:

- Shane is a singular forename in the modern era, just as the singular surname

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was associated with identity in the West.

- John McClaine is known to the audience by name, but not to his enemies or to his single distant ally, Sergeant Al Powell. The discovery of his name and identity is a major plot point that transitions the film from Act II to Act III.

- Driver is known only as ‘Driver’ in the film, the screenplay, and in the text on which the film is based (the literary sequel is called Driver). The writer Hossein Amini framed his screen adaptation of the hero character as the ‘Man with No Name’ (BAFTA and BFI Screenwriter Lecture: Hossein Amini, 2013).

- As an extension of his anonymity and his lack of emotional connection, Max Rockatansky does not identify himself by name, and even calls his dog ‘Dog’. Once he experiences his (near) death and resurrection, the character Pappa Gallo calls him ‘Max’, thus implying the discovery of his name at the point of his supreme ordeal.

Exemplified attributes of The Travelling Angel-hero critique

The hero is perfect in some way

- Shane Shane, a gunfighter, is riding through. He is not just any gunfighter, but possibly the best. He is fast and has moral fortitude. There is the sense he has a dark past, perhaps he is running from something. He is a good man who cannot stand to see the innocent suffering injustice.

- Die Hard McClaine is a detective in New York at a time when the city has a notoriously high crime rate. He is dedicated, and there are indications throughout that he is very good at his job. As well as being a detective (a position which requires several promotions), he is a crack shot who rarely misses his target.

- Drive ‘Driver’ is quiet, handsome, and unassuming. Women are attracted to him; however, his tremendous self-confidence means that he can visibly ignore this. His driving skill is demonstrated through the difficult task of evading police during a heist, and further augmented through his skills as a professional stunt driver for Hollywood movies. It is later confirmed in triplicate by the additional skill of racecar driving.

68 - Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior Max can drive and outsmart his opponents in the high-octane road war that is evidenced in the opening frames of the narrative. He is faster than a snake: “No one has ever beaten the snake before,” says the Gyro Captain character when Max captures the deadly creature that was set as a trap. He always has a backup plan and is prepared at every turn: spare weapons, and booby traps by design. He is also resilient—a survivor. Part of his emotional design is indicated by his ownership of a dog.

The hero enters the community

- Shane Shane arrives on the outskirts of town where the community is represented by a family: a wife with a well-meaning but delusional husband, and their young son. There is instant sexual tension between Shane and the loyal wife. There is also tension arising from the fact that the son clearly idolises the handsome gunslinger. The family and the broader community—determined but weak— are being pushed off the land by a rich landholder and his thugs. While Shane is a fish out of water, his unknown value gives him additional strength, stealth, and the element of surprise.

- Die Hard John McClaine arrives unexpectedly in an unfamiliar environment. Not clearly communicating his intentions, he is welcomed to a community in which he does not belong. He is a cop with ‘a backlog of New York City scumbags’, now trapped in an unfamiliar corporate environment above the streets of Los Angeles. Furthermore, it is a Japanese firm with an emphasis on displays of Japanese culture, and unusually one where women are allowed a high level of influence.

- Drive Driver is already embedded in Los Angeles, but is an outsider because he remains a loner. He doesn’t associate with his neighbours, the film community with which he works, or the criminals for whom he drives. When recognised by a former criminal employer, we first see his true capacity for violence in his verbal response. It is clear that this capacity was always present but hidden until this moment.

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- Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior Max is a loner looking for fuel. He does not play well with others, as evidenced in his opportunistic relationship with the selfish but ultimately well- meaning Gyro Captain. Max reconnoitres the community before entering it, discovering they share his selfish antagonism. He literally enters their community, a gated and secure compound for selfish reasons.

The hero helps the community set the problem right

• Shane Shane reluctantly resumes his gunslinging to take the place of the cowardly father, and to, therefore, fight the battle on his and the community’s behalf. Shane sees an evil greater than either himself or the one he is fleeing, and helps the innocents stand up to the violent and unjust thuggery of Rufus Ryker (the boss), and his brutal head thug Jack Wilson (and his men).

• Die Hard John McClaine fights for the sake of the hostages held by ostensible terrorists. He also begins to fight for the bumbling and incompetent Los Angeles police and FBI who do not have the skills or courage to defeat the enemy. He eventually reveals the real plan to be a simple robbery, thus exposing the terrorist plot to be a ruse.

• Drive The community, as in Shane, is represented by the family unit: a wife and son, and (later) her husband (the boy’s father). Recently released from prison, the desperate father, again following the pattern of Shane, is weak and cowardly; he consistently makes bad choices that will ultimately put the family unit in mortal danger. Driver is a criminal too, and can quickly adapt to the world of the father to outsmart the hierarchy of criminal elements threatening this community (family).

• Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior Max can not only drive, he can also find a truck to haul the community’s fuel to the promised land, Queensland’s Sunshine Coast: Only he can get the truck to them and only he can drive it. However, only after the selfish Max experiences a (near) death and resurrection is he humbled enough to offer his help.

70 The vision of manhood is one of quiet confidence

• Shane Shane is aware of his skills, and comfortable in any social setting. He is aware of himself, his surroundings, and the hierarchy of the people in the community. He appears to make moral choices, and does not make advances to the wife, who is clearly attracted to his extreme masculinity.

• Die Hard McClaine discreetly enters the new community, always surveying his surroundings. He is aware of his environment and aptly judges the hierarchy of the communities he enters: both the corporate community and the criminal element.

• Drive Driver embraces the task at hand, in spite of any odds or change to the plan. He will not even shake the hand of a gangster when it could mean good money and the stakes are high. While appearing passive, we know he is always actively in control because he could snap at any time; and is the master of his own destiny.

• Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior While Max does not speak unless absolutely necessary, he can get himself out of any bind. He is skilled, and very well prepared for any contingency. He watches and listens before acting. His words have meaning, and their timing is always key.

The hero never draws first

• Shane While Shane only draws when drawn upon, he ultimately puts himself in situations where there will be a gunfight. He knows going in that he will win, despite his opponent’s skill as a gunman.

• Drive Driver restrains himself during Act I, and for the majority of Act II. He is in control, and does not carry a weapon. When he first strikes out in violence, it is in self-defence. Throughout Act II, as the mother and child are in rising danger, his restraint is progressively lowered. There is a monster inside him

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and, when it is unleashed, he will draw first by striking first, with his body as a weapon.

• Die Hard John McClaine never draws first, even though he is constantly confronted by men with much more powerful weapons. He never breaks the code he has sworn to as a serving detective. At the climax, with one remaining bullet, he does draw first, knowing he will hit his target, even under duress.

• Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior Max consistently draws his weapon in self-defence. Always outnumbered, his weapon is primarily for show of force. His other skills outweigh the need for a weapon.

The hero has a sense of fair play

• Shane Shane gives the villains multiple chances to back down, regardless of their brutality in the community. His skills are clear to the villains and to the audience. While he consistently tries to put the guns away, he is forced to rely on his gunfighting skills to defend the community.

• Die Hard John McClaine captures a supposed hostage. It is actually the antagonist, Hans Gruber, pretending to be an innocent hostage. McClaine allows Gruber to remain alive until he can categorically prove his identity. McClaine must be able to prove something without the shadow of a doubt before acting with violence. He is an officer of the law after all. He also appreciates the ‘dance’ between himself and Gruber, giving him clues, and engaging in a warrior’s exchange of words.

• Drive Driver allows his boss, Shannon, to take a generous cut of the spoils from his own legitimate (stunt driving) and illegitimate (getaway driving) earnings. He is loyal to the people who are loyal to him.

• Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior Max gives a gift to the Feral Kid. He is honest and will follow through with his promises: A deal is a deal.

72 The hero is deadpan, quiet, and understates when he speaks

• Shane Shane says very little; however, what he does say is measured, wise, and subtly witty.

• Die Hard McClaine uses humour to diffuse any situation—either when alone or when conversing with allies and enemies. His deadpan humour specifically understates the situation, and his references to Westerns contextualise this in the dialogue.

• Drive Driver says very little. He only speaks when necessary, either to the task at hand, or when the weakest of characters has been betrayed and he is playing emotional detective.

• Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior Max is a man of few words; however, he has developed an unspoken exchange with his dog. He only speaks when it is absolutely necessary; for example, in taking advantage of opportunities, or during times of conflict within the community.

The hero is altruistic; a helper of society

• Shane Shane could leave at any time, but does not. He is an agent of good and, therefore, wants to help. He recognises that the community needs his professional skills as a gunfighter and killer.

• Die Hard McClaine’s estranged wife is in jeopardy (a hostage of Hans Gruber); however, there is no question that he will help the community in any heightened situation. He is always on the lookout, therefore; always on call. He saves a group of hostages from the roof in spite of being fired upon by the FBI, knowing that the roof is wired to explode.

• Drive Driver is a proverbial ghost. He could leave town and not get involved. By

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helping the mother and child, he is helping the ‘good’ people in the community. Family means community.

• Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior Max is selfish and is completely reluctant to help at first. He faces death, and returns as the self-sacrificial hero. As a sequel, we know he has helped before; however, he needs to be reminded of his own capacity for sacrifice.

Supporting characters

The Holy Fool as supporting character to The Travelling Angel-hero (from 3.1.4)

Supporting characters in Travelling Angel Warrior-hero films are particularly useful characters. They primarily function as expositional characters, delivering large amounts of plot and back story information to augment the silent nature of the Man with No Name. The archetype features in the Travelling Angel-hero character in the following forms:

• Shane Shane is the well-meaning, endearing-but-weak father, Joe Starrett. He makes bad decisions and talks too much; however, he is a survivor with integrity whom we always expect will succeed once the Travelling Angel arrives.

• Die Hard Sergeant Al Powell is the cop who becomes McClaine’s buddy and trusted companion on the ground (although they do not meet face-to-face until the film's resolution). Reflecting McClaine’s honesty, Powell represents the feminine retreat from violence: He is no longer able to shoot his gun in active service. Now the overweight cop with a desk job, Powell becomes the loyal companion (via walkie-talkie) to McClaine when the hero faces death. McClaine also confesses his failure as a husband, specifically to Powell. This personal encounter reveals McClaine’s moment of being in touch with the feminine before returning to hegemonic action. There is a secondary Holy Fool in the limo driver of Argyle, who augments Powell’s deployment as Holy Fool’s supporting character. Argyle only appears in Act I and the resolution of the film. Like Powell, Argyle acts as a key expositional device for the screenwriter.

• Drive Shannon is the criminal fixer of jobs for Driver, both in the film business (co- ordinating his stunt driving sequences) and setting up the heist opportunities

74 via getaway driving scenarios. Shannon is cunning and well-meaning to a degree, but also doomed to his own downfall. He has an injury (limp) from previous encounters where his ‘deals’ failed.

• Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior In Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, the endearing Gyro Captain character is the affable Holy Fool. The comical fast talker, his dialogue fills in every aspect of the story world for the silent Max (and for the audience). He also acts as a moral compass for the audience, showing emotion where Max appears outwardly indifferent.

The female Action-hero as supporting character to the Travelling Angel-hero (from 3.1.5)

There is also a female Action-hero worthy of mention in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. Known simply as Warrior Woman, she is distrustful of Max; nevertheless, she changes (her character arc), and ultimately gives her life to be part of the final convoy to save the fuel. Miller suggests that his interest in this minor character was part of his inspiration for developing the female Action-hero Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller in conversation at GRAPHIC, Sydney Opera House 10/10/2015).

4.2 THE MYTHIC DIMENSION VIA THEME

Colloquially, we tend to oppose myth and reality. The phrase ‘That’s a myth’ suggests a statement is untrue or unreal. More properly defined, however, myth and reality are closely interconnected. Real myths—those artistic evidences of our collective consciousness—spring directly from roots grounded in reality; they heighten reality and condense it. Myths carry meaning, and ideas borrowed from myth analysis can be applied to the analysis of a feature film and to screenplay construction. Both myth and film are narrative in form, and both have the potential to impact audiences through recognition of a symbolic dimension. This dimension is one in which characters and objects often have a metaphorical significance. There is potential, therefore, for the mythic and thematic layers to make social and political statements and, in turn, influence social action (Molloy, 1982).

Screenwriters start out with the idea of creating or transmitting myth; they work inductively to impose it on the content of the screenplay (Miller, interviewed by Paris,

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1993, p11) The mythic element is supposed to be strong enough to carry the other elements of the film, character and plot. The danger is that the screenplay will turn out to be pretentious, specious, pompous, or simply ‘on the nose'. Myth, however, grows naturally out of close observation: If you have an interesting story to tell, with interesting characters and absorbing thematic material, myth will take care of itself. The risk is obvious: There is no way the filmmaker can plan such myths; they develop themselves. This is where a thorough knowledge of genre, setting, and cinematic history can help define myth, and inform the telling of old myths through a fresh lens (Monaco, 1979, p263).

During the last few decades, an overlay of ostensibly mythic significance has become a valuable selling tool. The result is a number of Action films relying on a combination of spectacle and the superficial use of myth. This spectacle-driven fare is invested with a grandiose sense of importance. At the centre of the film’s screenplay is a rather silly plot poised with smatterings of would-be significance. Such films in the Action genre are exemplified here through B-movie versions of two films discussed here:

- Derivative High Concept ‘Die Hard’ films: Passenger 57 (Hooks, 1992) (or, Die Hard in a plane), Olympus Has Fallen (Fuqua, 2013) (or, Die Hard in the White House)

- Highly derivative post apocalyptic Action movies known for significant similarities to Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior: Steel Dawn (Hool, 1987) and The Salute of the Jugger (Peoples, 1989)

Semioticians speak of a ‘sign’ of communication composed of two equal halves: The ‘signifier’ and the ‘signified’ (Monaco, pp274–275). Films like Passenger 57, Olympus Has Fallen, alongside Steel Dawn and The Salute of the Jugger, are composed only of signifiers, and these never connect with the signified. It is full of sound and fury, very literally signifying nothing. The strongest attributes are often lifted scene-by-scene from their commercially and critically successful predecessors.

Like Die Hard and Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, Drive (Refn, 2014) is very conscious that its signifiers exist in, and of themselves. As a film with European sensibilities (a US film with an English writer and a Danish director), Drive appears to be somewhat of an experiment in this way. Drive adheres to the Action genre codes, tropes and conventions; however, it has a more interesting thematic reasons for doing so.

76 Mainstream box office failures such as King Arthur (Ritchie, 2017) appear to be intentionally all myth but no meaning. There is no longer theme or sub-text in a film that is all superficial action, delivered in the form of unrelenting spectacle. The mythic dimension is now missing. However, the on-going discourse surrounding acclaimed Action films such as Die Hard, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior and Drive reminds Action screenwriters that the signifier can still connect to the signified within a genre such as Action. This is still evident within a series of ongoing films often dubbed ‘spectacle’ in an age of ‘effects driven’ Hollywood Action films (Lichenfeld, 2004, p274).

The imposition of a mythic structure on the events and people of a film is not always specious. Die Hard could be viewed as superficially pretentious to general audiences by consistently displaying the tropes, codes, and conventions of the Action genre. By designing an Action screenplay, the screenwriter is dealing with a continuum. When the material itself is strongly mythic (usually in the historical context), the self- consciousness of the film often works in its favour. As the old Hollywood saying goes: “If you want to send a message, call Western Union” (Monaco, 1976, p280).

The discussion of meaning in film has traditionally been left to observers in a film or cultural studies context. However, much of what working screenwriters learn about the collective contemporary consciousness comes from an analysis of groups of films within a genre, rather than individual masterworks. This is the ‘coral theory of mythopoeia’. The mythic reef, if you will, “builds up slowly but inexorably through the accretion of thousands of mythogenic bits and minimythic pieces” (Wright, 1975, pp162-8). Genres, then, are extremely important, both as components of the study of film and other pop culture forms, and as frameworks for the design and development of the contemporary Action screenplay (Truby, 2002). Meanwhile, genre films such as Die Hard and Drive, alongside other masterworks of the genre such as Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, firmly deliver on the promises of myth. While their mythogenic qualities are delivered through the old themes of the Western, they are done so in a fresh and socially contemporary way through the Western-inspired Travelling Angel- hero.

4.3 CRITIQUE OF TRAVELLING ANGEL-HERO EXEMPLAR: DIE HARD

A screenwriter with a taste for myth tries to root it in reality. However, very few of the mythmongers among contemporary screenwriters actually succeed in capturing

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myths of lasting value. Using existing frameworks and recontextualising them to a genre, is the key to presenting old myths and repackaging them within a reconstructed genre form such as Action. Take an iconic film such as Die Hard, a film discussed in almost every book that deals with the Action genre. Die Hard is a defining piece within the Action genre. The plot features a central crime as the spine of the plot, specifically, a heist. Die Hard uses violence and the super human quality of the protagonist. Based on the genre framework outlined above, Die Hard features the Travelling Angel Warrior-hero character archetype within the Action genre and has been deeply inspired by the Western form, which creates the basis of this analysis. Die Hard features these elements of the Western both at a superficial plot level (in dialogue and character naming conventions) and at a mythic level.

In place of a textual discussion on the social and political ideology of the 1980s Action movies, Die Hard can be read in simple terms based on the superficial text (dialogue, plot devices, and costumes) that has been deployed to build thematic and mythic qualities throughout. “Theme pervades everything in a screenplay” and therefore strongly influences later choices during production (Batty, 2015, p118). In the character design, the ‘attitude and beliefs of the character’ evidence his internal motivations, through external action (Calwelti, 1976, p81). Stuart and deSouza’s screenplay for Die Hard traded nostalgia for a complex age. Set in the 80s, this is ingratiating, not only because of the good humour of the protagonist, but also because of the film’s thematic elements. The construction of the antagonist and the force of antagonism is so very simple: a German ‘terrorist’ in a Japanese building. Considering that the US and its allies fought both the Germans and Japanese in World War II, this construct adds a strong mythic dimension from the film’s very outset.

The pronunciation of the protagonist’s name John McClaine sounds very much like ‘John Wayne’. The fish-out-of-water plot places a New York Detective in the foreign landscape of Los Angeles, where he is the Man with No Name due to his anonymity. These are the various “nods to its Western heritage” (Lichtenfeld, 2004, p168). Therefore, the villain, Hans Gruber, coins many nicknames such as ‘Mr Cowboy’. Gruber questions McClaine’s motivations in this context: “You know my name but who are you? Just another American who saw too many movies as a child? Another orphan of a bankrupt culture who thinks he’s John Wayne? Rambo? Marshal Dillion?” (Tasker 1993, p240).

Thanks to these seemingly character exchanges in dialogue and naming conventions, the Western genre is transformed, and is fully grounded in the contemporary Action film. The cowboy boot-wearing German villain reveals a profound awareness of his

78 own rhetoric, using contextual genre references such as: “This time John Wayne does not walk off into the sunset with Grace Kelly.” John McClaine quips in response: “That was Gary Cooper, asshole!” The famous John McClaine catch phrase “Yippie- ki-yay, mother-fucker” is very much an updating of Western dialogue trope modernised by the contemporary use of foul language.

Die Hard raises a thematic question that it answers via plot and characterisation: When the old enemies returned – what did America need? The answer: the Travelling Angel-hero. More specifically, America in the 1980s needed the traditional cowboy to arrive and save the day. While Die Hard is an Action movie, it is still very much a Western, using ‘old fashioned ideals’ in an updated place and time (O’Brien, 2012, p102).

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5 – CREATIVE PRACTICE

5.1 CENTRAL DRAMATIC QUESTION

As a myth, the Western consists of paradigmatic and syntagmatic structures made up of conceptual oppositions and narrative functions. The oppositions create images of social types, and the narrative functions describe the interaction between the characters. Myth, therefore, provides a conceptual model by making characters significant. To facilitate this, the created world in Behold a Pale Horse is small and confined to a limited set of locations. The social dynamic is that of good versus evil. The plot is based on a classical Western model, and the Warrior-hero archetype is that of the Travelling Angel-hero in the Action genre.

In his seminal work on actor John Wayne as an archetype of American masculinity, author Garry Wills ends this anthropological study of America, celebrity, and the ongoing fascination with the Old West with the answer to a question in the vernacular of John Wayne himself:

Do we really believe that we have escaped the frontier, the mystique of the gun, the resistance to institutions?

That’ll be the day. (Wills, p314)

To attempt to answer this form of question in an Australian context is to begin by asking another question: How do we create a new frontier? The answer: Create an apocalypse. In the design and development of Behold a Pale Horse, setting the story world within an apocalyptic landscape is key to development as a Western as it frames a futuristic but dilapidated frontier setting. The Travelling Angel-hero was chosen as the Warrior-hero archetype to best create a mythic framework using the classic Western form as a foundation for theme.

The central dramatic question at the heart of this futuristic story is: When the so- called end of the world has passed, life must go on – but who will lead us?

This new frontier is created to introduce a new cowboy. Enter the apocalypse: Australia after a nuclear war; the end of the world. Life must exist in ceaseless fallout winds. There is little difference between day and night, just wind carrying toxic dust. The only surviving animals are camels with burned out eyes, and the few remaining humans have to wear protective clothing to survive. This protective clothing also becomes a ‘mask’ for each character. Only adults can live, no child has been born for over twenty years … Until now.

80 The choice of the setting contains the narrative action within the construct of a single location as a man-made and multi-faceted labyrinth. With a narrowly drawn location, the design of the labyrinth is an old Australian pub reframed as an American saloon in the new ‘West’. Only a very small portion of the story is set outside in the deadly winds. The choice of a narrow range of locations is a strategic response to a commercial movie market in which speculative screenplays are written with budget in mind, and thus limiting the locations and compressing a ‘larger’ post-apocalyptic setting. The story world also has to feature enough distinct features of a ‘fresh’ and unusual apocalyptic framework to avoid immediate parallels with the Mad Max universe and its weaker imitators: Dead End Drive In (Trenchard-Smith, 1986); Steel Dawn (Hool, 1987); Waterworld (Reynolds, 1995); The Postman (Costner, 1997); and Salute of the Jugger (Peoples, 1990).2

5.2 THE LOGLINE

In post nuclear Armageddon Australia, disparate groups battle over control of water and seeds—the currency and lifeblood of the new world.

5.3 WARRIOR-HERO ARCHETYPES APPLIED

In Behold a Pale Horse, the protagonist is introduced on the back of a camel, and he is simply named ‘Rider’. He is: The Man with No Name. Later, the arrival of four villainous characters on horseback, when horses have not been seen alive for many years, is representative of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. The film ends with Rider leaving on the ‘Pale Horse’ from the title, strengthening the Western iconography.

Character Development

Rider’s behavioural character arc comprises: Enforcer to Fighter to Bringer of Justice

Deployment of the Travelling Angel-hero in Behold a Pale Horse

The hero perfect in some way

Rider is following the railway tracks to the ‘end of the line’. He is a former solider in the Special Air Services Regiment (SAS) and, therefore, adept as a

2 Shot on location in Australia.

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gunfighter. He is fast – faster than anyone else. When he shoots, he hits his target. He has moral fortitude, and is quiet, handsome, and unassuming. While women are attracted to him, his tremendous self-confidence means that he can visibly ignore this. He can fight. He always has a backup plan, and is prepared at every turn—with spare weapons, and booby traps by design. He is also resilient and a survivor. In this instance one of his primary goals is to save the innocent wife and baby. There is the sense that he has a dark past, running from something known as ‘The Massacre’, for which people think he is responsible.

The hero enters the community

Rider arrives at the Airlock, shielding the bar (outpost/saloon) from the toxic winds. He arrives unexpectedly in the unfamiliar environment. He is a loner protecting the family (father, mother and baby). He is looking for his former soldiers and the seed they carried. He enters the community by force because it is resistant to men who are warriors with an agenda other than trade, booze, or prostitutes. It is a gated and secure compound enfored by a small army of Warrior Women. The compound is further populated by weak and victimised men.

The community is represented by a family: wife, baby, and well-meaning but dying husband. The broader community are the barflies used for their traded goods until they run out. At this point, the men become prisoners and the women become either warriors or prostitutes. Rider is a fish out of water; however, his unknown value gives him additional strength, stealth, and the element of surprise.

The hero helps the community set the problem right

The family unit represents the true community, while everything else is a false community based on commerce and exploitation. The family—wife and baby, when The Husband—has been put in mortal danger. Rider is a survivor so can quickly adapt into the world of the false community to outsmart the hierarchy of the villain. However, he is selfish, and can only do this after he experiences death and resurrection (for this purpose, he is sent into the hellish winds without protection), and is thus humbled enough to choose to help. Rider also begins to fight for the incompetent men who do not have the skills, know-how, or courage to defeat the enemy.

82 The vision of manhood is one of quiet confidence

Rider is aware of his skills and prepared for any scenario. He is aware of his surroundings, and the hierarchy of the people in the community. He appears to make moral choices (to a point) and to live by a soldier’s code. Rider discreetly enters the new community, always surveying his surroundings, and always aware of his environment—both the corporate community and the criminal element. He embraces the task at hand in spite of any odds. He does not speak unless it is absolutely necessary, but can get himself out of any bind with the help of words if needed.

The hero never draws first

Rider consistently draws his weapon as a form of self-defence. He draws when drawn upon, but will ultimately put himself in situations where he knows there will be a requirement to do so. He knows going in that he will win, in spite of the opponent’s skills as a warrior. He never breaks the code that he has sworn to as a serving SAS solider (the rules of engagement). He knows he will hit his target, even under duress. Always outnumbered, his weapon is primarily for a show of force as other skills outweigh the need for a weapon: His body is the ultimate weapon.

The hero has a sense of fair play

The villains, however brutal to the community, are given multiple chances by Rider to back down when they know his skill. Meanwhile, Rider is trying to avoid gun play, but frequently has to fight to protect people because they cannot protect themselves. Rider allows Anat (the lead female warrior) to remain alive, and gains her loyalty as a result. He is honest, and will follow through with his promises: A deal is a deal. He will save the baby, even if it kills him.

The hero is deadpan, quiet and understates when he speaks

Rider says very little. What he does say is measured, wise, and subtly witty. He only speaks when absolutely necessary to the task at hand, or when the weakest of characters has been betrayed, and he is playing emotional detective. Rider only speaks when necessary to take advantage of opportunities within the community.

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The hero is altruistic; a helper of society

As a solider, Rider is a gunfighter and a killer, and the community does not have his professional skills. The wife and child are in jeopardy, and there is no question that he will help them. Rider is a proverbial ghost: he could leave town and not get involved. By helping the mother and child, he is helping the ‘good’ people in the community; that is, the family. He is selfish and reluctant at first. He faces death, but then returns as the self-sacrificial hero after a near death experience. He needs to be reminded of sacrifice.

5.4 PLOT - Outline

ACT I

The story begins with Rider arriving at the end of the line. He has been following the railway to its end. He finds a family under attack. The husband, Dryburgh, is almost dead. Eva, the wife, survives but the baby has been kidnapped. An item, a box, has been stolen.

Rider follows the trail and fights his way into the bar known as Baralku. There are warrior women protecting the bar; they are led by Anat, who takes the baby. Rider overpowers the warrior women to get Dryburgh medical attention, and find out what is inside. He enters the bar to find helpless men and a powerful force of warrior women, led by the female overlord: The Husband. This grossly overweight woman has hierarchical control over everyone and everything in this domain. Rider fights, but is defeated.

Rider is not who he appears to be, a loner/warrior with skills. He is, in fact, a seed carrier—a former solider with a secret. He is charged with carrying one of the last supplies of the most valuable commodity on earth (seeds). It is also revealed that he was involved in an event called ‘The Massacre’. Like previous seed carriers, his back is tattooed with a map. The Husband knows the map is made up of three parts that reveal the location of underground water, and she wants it. Rider is overpowered and knocked out. One of the three maps is tattooed on his back.

ACT II

The next day Rider awakes among the men to discover that The Husband has the baby, and that Eva is being groomed as a prostitute. The men are weak and castrated (literally). Rider fights his way in; however, The Husband has a creature for protection: a toxic fallout mutant warrior, Gudit. Although Rider defeats Gudit, the

84 battle rages into the lower levels with the lead warrior woman, Anat. Rider finds his fellow solider, another seed carrier and bearer of the map. The Husband now has all elements of the map and she will not kill Rider until it is removed.

New villains arrive, male outlaws led by another former solider, Haas. The trio are looking for Rider, but the weakened men suddenly attack. The warrior women and their prostitute warrior companions defeat the men in battle, and The Husband is victor. Dryburgh dies, and the contents of the box are revealed. It contains a formula to allow women to reproduce once again. This is how the baby was born in a world of infertility.

Below, Rider and Anat fight through the prison level into the dungeon level. They are trapped; it is a prison full of mutants. They must fight together to get out, and Rider saves Anat’s life. Her loyalty shifts from The Husband to Rider. They find their way back to the bar, and Rider fights his way out. Anat will assume her old role and help him. Rider reveals to Anat that four evil horsemen are coming to destroy the seed supply, and he must stop them. He is not simply there to save the seeds; he is there to stop the horsemen.

Rider fights through the remains of the lost battle, when the broken men rise up against The Husband and her warriors. Weaker with every battle, Rider is defeated. Rider and Haas are paired off by The Husband. She spares both men, but they are banished to the toxic winds of the wasteland. The pair fights. Haas dies. Rider survives, only just. This is hell.

The Husband prepares a ritual to cook and eat the baby; however, more villainy arrives. Four horsemen enter the broken premises. There is a greater evil they serve, and The Husband works for this evil. They are here to shut down operations, and begin to fight their way through. Rider knew they were coming.

Rider discovers a series of white domes outside in the Wastelands. The Husband has been growing crops, using her army of gimp-like workers to keep operations going. She can produce food, and is using the seed that Rider, and men like him, have carried. Rider defeats Haas in the dome and, through the system of caves, finds his way underground to the water.

ACT III

Rider re-surfaces from the lakes below the ground. This is where The Husband has

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water and stores her seed. However, the water is running out. Rider fights his way back, not through warriors or mutants, but through the four horsemen. They are there to unleash their special weapons and destroy The Husband’s supplies and operation. Rider defeats the four horsemen one-by-one. He also overpowers The Husband, who kills Eva. He lets the people (her captives) finish her off.

As Rider is close to death, three more men arrive. They are from one of the underground cities, and have come to rebuild the railroad. It is revealed that Rider was not guilty of The Massacre. In fact, he tried to prevent it, and the railway needs a man like that to be the new sheriff of the wastelands.

RESOLUTION

Rider can stay with Anat and the baby. He can have a family, or he can take the law out into the wastelands and help the railroad reconnect the city to the bush. Our hero is asked to become sheriff. He declines, and leaves behind Anat and the baby, now in her care. This world needs the law. He takes the Pale Horse from the dark rider. It is mechanical, some form of new technology. He rides the pale horse into the toxic winds, and life after the apocalypse continues.

86 6 – REFLECTIVE PRACTICE

6.1 PROCESS

The original iteration of the developed Creative Practice was a contemporary premise entitled The Drover. A key motivation for changing the ideas emerged in the accompanying research of Warrior-hero archetypes. This research resulted in a choice of switching the archetype from the Doomed Warrior-hero (in The Drover) in a contemporary setting, to the Travelling Angel-hero (in Behold a Pale Horse) in a Western-like setting. The solution to creating a frontier was to set the screenplay within a post-apocalyptic world. While both ideas were developed as an update of the Western within the Action genre, the Travelling Angel-hero is the strongest foundation for the construction of myth within an Australian frontier setting, and particularly lends itself to the iconography associated with the character know as ‘The Man with No Name’.

A good screenplay is one that gives birth to a good film; once the film exists, the screenplay is no more. It is possibly the least visible component of the finished work. It is the first incarnation of the film, and appears upon reading to be a self-contained whole. However, it is fated to go through a metamorphosis, to disappear, to melt into the final form. The process to finding a path to this ‘final form’ is, within this Creative Practice, a path to achieving a ‘first draft screenplay’. The steps to development (outlined below in Section 6.2) reveal the initial processes and considerations applied to the Creative Practice.

The combination of exegetical and Creative Practice-based research resulted in the design of the accompanying screenplay. The central aim of writing the screenplay for Behold a Pale Horse was to analyse and implement the Warrior-hero archetype that is commonly deployed in Hollywood films in an Australian context. The screenplay’s story world has been constructed with conventions drawn from apocalyptic visions applied to the Action genre. Research findings related to generic transformation have informed the creative approach to the Action genre using elements of the Western genre. Screenwriting adaptations of the Hero’s Journey framework, and the structural model templates pioneered by Hauge, Truby, and Vogler, have underpinned the development of the screenplay that drives the Creative Practice. Specifically, the archetypal templates of Truby have assisted in the development of character and, therefore, have been at the centre of this approach.

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6.2 STEPS TO DEVELOPMENT

The early approach to writing the screenplay was to begin by creating a strong, yet contemporary and complex, masculine Warrior-hero character. To this end, the origins of this archetype within genre, lead to a detailed study that revealed the source of cinematic masculinities and Action heroes, as evidenced in the Western. While Hollywood has continued to develop the Western’s Action Warrior-hero into the contemporary hero form (the current Hollywood trend is the Super-hero form), this Creative Practice has resulted in the creation of an Australian Warrior-hero character. Through the application of the principles of generic transformation, this hero has transcended many of the limits that were imposed on traditional male action characters in Australian national cinema, by considering outward-facing sensibilities in the approach to genre.

6.2.1 OUTWARD-FACING CONSIDERATIONS

The following questions were considered while developing the premise of the Creative Practice, and were frequently revisited during the development of Behold the Pale Horse:

- What films are currently successful? (Consider recent box-office trends)

- What genres are currently successful? (That is, what is the currency of specific genres in terms of recent box office performance?)

6.2.2 GENRE CONSIDERATIONS

A solid academic study of genre in the context of national cinema, film studies, and textual analysis provided a depth of knowledge on the Action genre for its use and deployment in the Creative Practice. A series of tests and questions used by the author when developing Behold the Pale Horse, led to the information outlined in previous chapters of this research:

- Depth of genre knowledge:

o What is the genre? What are the tropes, codes, and conventions of that genre?

o What is the story-world? How are the identified genre attributes related, and applied to setting and the story world?

o What are the origins of the particular genre? Is it a hybrid genre or a generic transformation of something else?

88 o If a hybrid genre, what is the dominant genre?

o Can the genre be reinvented through subversion, updating, or reverting to older forms?

- Further outward- facing considerations:

o Is the current market (audience) responding to this identified genre at the domestic or international box office?

o While still adhering to the tropes, codes, and conventions of the chosen genre - what is the distinct approach (setting, tone, mood, style)?

- What character archetypes are within the chosen genre?

o Is there an existing framework (such as Truby’s genre series) that can be applied to the development of plot and character?

o Are there screenwriting texts that reveal a detailed approach to archetypes within this genre?

o Has the approach to genre been tested against other films and their characters?

o What mythic frameworks are traditionally associated with the chosen genre?

Alongside the very pragmatic approach to genre deployment outlined above, a solid academic study of genre has directly influenced the Creative Practice at every step of the development and writing of the first draft screenplay.

6.2.3 APPLYING ARCHETYPES WITHIN GENRE

”In a screenplay, as elsewhere, you must be wary of technique, which can so quickly turn into mere fluency” (Carriére, 1994, p158). This is especially the case within genre: While the screenwriter has to push forward toward genuine emotion, their imagination is the real muscle to be exercised. Like memory, the imagination is strengthened with that exercise. Even in the Action genre, the invention of the imagination must be rooted in real life. To develop myth and theme, the ideas embedded in the screenplay could never have existed without the exceptional fusion of heart and mind that marked that period of creation, and without a persistent and

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anthropological approach to genre.

Discovering a pattern of archetypes such as those articulated by Truby is one thing; intimately knowing the films within the genre is another. Cementing both together is critical. Critiquing key films that deploy chosen archetypes is something that takes deep and ongoing analysis of the genre’s codes, tropes, and conventions, as well as a thorough knowledge of the origins of the genre itself. A film is complete when the screenplay has vanished. Consequently, the film’s structure—that is, its underlying archetypes and (even) its myth—has faded from view. When complete and on the screen, the audience’s mind should be focused on the film itself, not on the techniques behind its construction. If there is depth and meaning built into the film at a mythic and thematic level, the job of the screenwriter is to create a foundation for a film that, when viewed, will allow for the audience’s ‘heart’ to transcend the mind.

6.2.4 AUSTRALIAN MYTH

The bush myth is a strong companion to the Action genre, especially when it is deployed within the context of the Western. Ideas from the American frontier, married firmly with elements of the Bush Myth in early Australian cinema, portray themes of taming the land. These ideas are also highly relevant to a post-apocalyptic setting, and grounded the frontier into a futuristic post-apocalyptic framework for Behold a Pale Horse. The mythic exemplar of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior confirmed this framework. While Australia is still considered a ‘young nation’, there are mythic possibilities than can be applied and adapted from the collective unconscious. Molloy’s seminal work on the bush myth was a very useful tool in grounding a genre film in Australia, and provided a path by which to avoid later comparisons to (what some exclusively call) ‘The American monomyth’.

90 6.3 FEEDBACK APPLIED

The most difficult hurdle in the writing of Behold a Pale Horse was to find a way ‘to make the protagonist active’ in a very reactive environment; that is, when the decisions of the antagonist are driving the story forward. de Zouza, who wrote the final draft of Die Hard (McTiernan, 1988), discusses the difficulties of this process: “The hero cannot do anything until something else happens …” (Interviewed in Reflections of the Shadow, 2009). de Souza continues: “To be clear, nine times out of ten, the protagonist is the villain in genre movies” (Hirschberg, 2009, p158).

Feedback on working drafts was sought from industry colleagues and an LA-based Screenplay analyst, Script Gal (Amanda Nelligan). Nelligan performed script coverage and development notes on a draft of Behold a Pale Horse.3 Rider needed a stronger central goal in addition to the small goals prompted by the villain. Comparisons were drawn to The Hateful Eight (Tarantino, 2015), where the motivations are unclear throughout, and not revealed until the end; therefore, clarity in Act III is needed.

Nelligan pointed out these difficulties as the central problem in the earlier draft of the Creative Practice (screenplay) that she assessed. These issues have been addressed with the contained draft of Behold a Pale Horse. Nelligan also outlined the need for the protagonist Rider to have a clear mission (goal) or anti-mission (personal goal). She compared the draft screenplay with Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, and the anti- mission of Max wanting to remain alone. Based on this feedback, the goal was reconfigured to tie together plot elements; that is: carrying seed, running out of water, searching for the artesian basin, and saving the wife and child. This reconfiguration is also reflected in the accompanying draft.

These issues were consistently flagged by industry colleagues as well, in comments such as: Great action but a lack of characterisation. Rider needs a clear super goal. He has lots of mini-goals but they are reactionary to the villain (Author’s notes); The seed thing, map and water are all fascinating but they need to be cleared. Tie it to Rider’s goal directly and simply (Author’s notes). While a number of other issues

3 ‘Script coverage’ is a filmmaking term (primarily used in Hollywood) for the analysis and grading of spec (speculative) screenplays, often within the ‘script development’ department of a production company or Hollywood studio. Coverage usually takes the form of a written report, guided by a rubric that varies from analysts or companies performing the coverage based on their own criteria.

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were flagged in detail, all were essentially an outworking of this central problem with the protagonist and his over-riding goal.

A particular effort was made to feature a female Action-hero (in Anat, the supporting character) as part of the plot to redeem the villainous females, and to offer an additional emotional arc beyond the protagonist and antagonist. Using an underlying hint of romance between Rider and the widow Eva, Anat becomes part of a subtle love triangle. Whichever female survives would be the perfect match for the hero; however, the hero is a Travelling Angel, and he will leave her at the end.

Upon further reflection, the screenplay is also lacking a Holy Fool-hero supporting character, such as the one that worked to the great advance of plot and characterisation in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (via the Gyro Captain) and Die Hard (via Sergeant Al Powell).

Positive outcomes of the coverage performed on the screenplay included: The action is gripping and well-executed…I like the action and I think this is the kind of movie that audiences would enjoy… I love that Anat and Rider become a team and then, presumably, a thing in the future. That was a nice choice…(Author’s notes) Nelligan concluded her coverage by stating: “This is a highly visual, potentially very commercial action film, but the writer needs to clarify the description and give the characters defined goals and motivations.”

As an interesting comparison, a superficial reading of Crocodile Dundee would suggest that Mick Dundee is a passive protagonist. He does not have an over-riding super goal (Truby, 2007, pp64–5). The plotting of that film is via the romance plot where the Rogue-hero drives every individual scene he is in, but does not have a ‘super goal’ motivating him beyond an attraction to Sue Charlton the female action hero (whose skill is her journalism, and whose weapon is her camera). The film follows the ‘buddy story’ form where the role of protagonist is shared with Charleton as female action hero, who drives the overarching goal and chases Dundee at the end of Act III.

Mad Max: Fury Road also shares this buddy structure. Rogue-hero Max wants to escape. However, his active choices are reactionary and, while he drives the action of every individual scene (with his active choices), he does not drive the plot until Act III. Furiosa makes those choices. Behold a Pale Horse is not a buddy story, although elements of that structure do exist. Early drafts did stray into this territory too far, however, and attempts have been made to correct this course.

92 6.4 NEW AREAS OF STUDY

The praxis approach revealed a strong series of quality tools and resources within the realms of film studies and mythic storytelling that both contributed to the development of a theoretical framework, and influenced the Creative Practice. Nevertheless, there is a dearth of tools for creating a screenplay that charts the boundaries, potentialities, and capabilities of genre within the development of an Action film screenplay.

Australian national cinema

Studies in individual genres are purposeful, and greatly assist the screenwriting process. Hartley’s energetic and nostalgic framing of genre films under the ozploitation banner—Not Quite Hollywood (Hartley, 2008), and Ryan’s doctoral thesis on Australian horror A Dark New World (2008)—confirm that our national cinema’s rich history of culturally relevant genre films deserves further study. Using the Hero’s Journey as a screenwriting tool, more films need to be made in the genre space (Kiah Roach-Turner, interview with Author 17/10/2016).

Genre

Film theorists have explored the territory of the Action genre well, and the Western appears to be one of the most studied of all genres. Thus, there are ample references and resource materials available in this space. However, considering the plethora of screenwriting texts available, there are few that deal with genre as it applies to screenwriting; and even fewer that are dedicated to the depth of specific genres. Truby’s work on the Action genre remains the strongest in this field.

Mythic Application to Screenwriting

Overall, mythic frameworks are also well served. Apart from the immediately applicable texts by authors such as Joseph Campbell and other anthropologists dealing with myth, Vogler’s screenwriting adaptations are directly influential as both practical devices and analytical tools. Myth and the Movies (Voytilla, 1999) is a published form of analysis based on Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey. Campbell’s influence also extends to screenwriting analysis, and to Truby’s theoretical work on the Action genre. Hauge and Vogler’s joint DVD presentation The Hero’s Two Journeys is an immensely practical conflation of their two individual methodologies. This is a well- travelled space that will continually expand; again, however, a focused application to

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specific genres will be beneficial to emerging screenwriters.

Applying the critique of archetypes to Creative Practice

Truby’s out-of-circulation screenwriting audio series Truby’s Genre is one of the only tools relating to specific genres (such as Action) that offers a clear and practical screenwriting framework. Truby’s work also confuses the definition of Action at times, by listing certain films as ‘Action’ when they are more commonly referred to as Adventure or (even) Contemporary Westerns, such as Dances with Wolves (Costner, 1990). His accompanying series on ‘Myth’ as a genre seems confusing to the practitioner. In this series, ‘myth’ seems to mean the genre often referred to as the Fantasy genre. This conflation of terminology is confusing where either an academic approach is required to define genre characteristics or where applicable tools are being sought for Creative Practice.

Many of the classic screenwriting texts of the aforementioned authors, along with the works of Syd Field and Robert McKee, treat genre with respect and importance; however, they do not explore it in any great detail: They do not have the scope, as there are simply too many individual genres. The 2016 publication, Film Genre for the Screenwriter (Selbo, 2016), attempts to deal with individual genres. However, in this instance, the author conflates the genres of Action and Adventure, thereby not treating either genre as a whole.

Theme and its Application to Screenwriting

There is little work on the construction of theme within genre or any deep or powerful analysis of thematic qualities in genre films, particularly as they relate to screenwriting. For example, almost every book dealing with the Action genre examines the film Die Hard in some detail. However, the thematic issues are rarely discussed in the design of the film or its screenplay. Not one mention was found of the WWII connotations of German terrorists in a Japanese building, for example.

In the design of the apocalyptic world and the hero archetype for Behold a Pale Horse, significant inspiration came from this revised study of the Western and its generic transformation to the Action genre. This study revealed that numerous American apocalyptic movements began during the time of the old West. Religious fervour surrounding end-of-the-world notions in the US at this time spawned many religious movements and doomsday cults (Lippy, 1982, pp37–39). The foundational ideas of these religious movements work hand in hand with literary and cinematic apocalyptic visions. The most influential book on the framing of the apocalypse was

94 The Apocalyptic Vision in America (Zamora, 1982), a collection of essays outlining the origins of apocalyptic thinking in the formation of the US. The essays particularly detailed the expansion of apocalyptic thought during the expansion of the American West, and its relationship to many of the themes explored in the classic Western story.

Zamora’s own essay, The Myth of Apocalypse and The American Literary Imagination (1982), related the Western genre (via a literary framework) to the origins of apocalyptic belief systems as the time of the Wild West. This social and contextual information influenced the choice of title, and the definitive ideological framing for biblical myth. Therefore, the biblical Book of Revelation also plays a major part in the ongoing apocalyptic thought in the design of many Hollywood films dealing with end-of-the-world scenarios (Newman, 1998, p18). Apocalyptic visions from Jedeo-Christian theology still form the basis for many Hollywood narratives in the Action genre such as The Book of Eli (Hughes Brothers, 2010), where the Bible itself is built into the film’s title and premise. The title of Behold a Pale Horse is derived from the Book of Revelation (King James Version):

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth. (Revelation 6:8)

A close study of the Mad Max series required inquiry into the story world beyond a superficial reading of the films. Further detail about the story world is revealed in the novelisation of the series including:

• The novelization of Mad Max written by Terry Hayes (under the pseudonym Terry Kaye in 1979)

• The novelization of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (Vince, 1985), based on the screenplay by Terry Hayes and George Miller

• The graphic novel prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road entitled Mad Max: Fury Road (story by George Miller, script by Nico Lathouris & Mark Sexton) Complimentary information to Graphic Festival Festival’s Mad Max: Fury Road symposium featuring the film’s three screenwriters: Nico Lathouris, George Miller & Mark Sexton – entitled online: George Miller in conversation at GRAPHIC, Sydney Opera House (author in attendance 10/10/2015)

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• The screenplays for Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, were also points of reference, particularly to discover minor differences in the finished films.

Complementing the use of descriptive text and finer detail not featured in the films about the Australian apocalypse, other novels were sourced to find the descriptive origins of the cowboy. These included The Virginian (Wister, 1979 edition) and The Searchers (Le May, 1963 edition). Western screenplays also helped in the use of descriptions, and confirmed ideas of archetypes, including: Dodge City (Curtiz, 1939); screenplay by Robert Buckner, Pale Rider (Eastwood, 1985); screenplay by Michael Butler and Dennis Shryack and The Hateful Eight (Tarantino, 2015) screenplay by Quentin Tarantino. Pale Rider featured strong Biblical themes and was written under the original title of Gabriel. Contemporary novels with cowboy-infused film adaptations included the source material for Drive, James Sallis’ novel of the same name (2006), and its sequel Driven (Sallis, 2012). Action screenplays accessed included: Bullitt (Yates, 1968); screenplay by Harry Kleiner and Alan Trustman, Escape from New York (Carpenter, 1981); screenplay by John Carpenter and Nick Castle, and Die Hard (McTiernan, 1988); screenplay by Steven E. de Souza and Jeb Stuart.

Pop culture books on the apocalyptic and its place as a sub-genre also influenced this thinking by conflating key tropes, codes, and conventions that originated in literary form but have been largely popularised by cinematic representations, particularly the Mad Max Trilogy (Stahlberg, 2010; Newman, 2000; Horne, 2009; Jeffords, 1993, pp255–258). A significant discovery in Newman’s book on apocalypse movies was a reference to various national identities relating to early apocalyptic literature, and revealed an early Australian novella entitled: Oliver Spence, the Australian Caesar, or The Coming Terror by S.A. Rosa (1895).

Recent Australian films dealing with apocalyptic ideas were viewed: Final Hours (Hilditch, 2013); The Rover (Michod, 2014); and Wyrmwood: The Road of the Dead (Roache-Turner, 2014) and its accompanying screenplay (supplied to the author by Kiah Roache-Turner); screenplay by Kiah Roache-Turner and Tristan Roache-Turner.

Apocalyptic thinking was approached from a social political point of view by focusing on a contemporary book dealing with current apocalyptic visions. Satire was a primary point of reference, via a collection from World War 3 Illustrated (1979), an American comic anthology with a left wing focus. While there was no direct inspiration, the iconography of a series of comics was an evocative way to visualise the tropes associated with apocalyptic ideas in cinema, comics, and literature.

96 The result of these inquiries was primarily to keep the apocalyptic framework simple. The worst has already happened; to the characters, therefore, it does not matter anymore. They have survived, and now need to continue to survive. Some will have hope for the future, some will not. The hero will be a man who has lost hope, but will regain hope as he confronts evil.

Australian Action films framed as contemporary Westerns were also viewed. These included: Red Hill (Hughes, 2010); Mystery Road (Sen, 2013); Goldstone (Sen, 2016); and the female-led Action revenge movie, Shame (Jodrell, 1988). The topic of Australian Gothic was loosely revisited via films including: Wake in Fright (Kotchef, 1971); The Cars that Ate Paris (Weir, 1974); Picnic at Hanging Rock (Weir, 1975); Wolf Creek (McLean, 2005); and Wolf Creek 2 (McLean, 2013).

Independently produced genre films were also accessed in order to understand the contemporary genre landscape within Australian national cinema. These included: Undead (Spierig Brothers, 2003); Gabriel (Abbess, 2007); Crawl (China, 2011); The Tunnel (2011, Ledesma); Terminus (2015, Furmie); and Arrowhead (2016, O’Brien).

In practical screenwriting terms:

• Hauge’s story concept template was used to develop the original premise of the film. (See Appendix 1 [1.1])

• Hauge’s and Vogler’s theoretical models provided structural frameworks. The joint series by both authors, The Hero’s Two Journeys (2003), was particularly influential. (See: Appendix 1 [1.2])

• Truby’s audio workshop Truby’s Genre – Action genre informed both the critique and the Creative Practice.

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CONCLUSION

A myth is a communication from a society to its members. The history and institutions of a society determine concepts that reflect social trends and attitudes. These determinations are communicated to its members through its stories. This process begins for the Australian film industry with the screenplay—the blueprint of the film. One of the tasks of this exploration of genre was to examine this assertion as it relates to the design and development of the Action genre.

Using the discoveries from a detailed critique of existing films using archetypal analysis, and applying these discoveries to key films in the Action and Western genres, a screenwriting process developed to complete this Creative Practice. This process outlines the incorporation of the Warrior-hero as a protagonist in Australian screenwriting. Combining structural ideas with the development of archetypical characters from genre, and drawing upon ideas derived directly from myth, lie at the heart of the process. By identifying how traditional Australian masculinity can connect to the hero archetypes of the warrior, this research poses the development of a theoretical framework that can inform the principles behind the creation of contemporary Australian screenplays.

This practice-led research explores the mythic character archetype behind Warrior- hero characters which, despite being firmly entrenched in successful Australian and Hollywood film, have inexplicably faded from recent Australian cinema. Aside from the maverick, independently minded filmmakers who brought characters such as Max Rockatansky, Jim Craig, and Mick Dundee to our cinema screens, the deployment of the Warrior-hero archetype remains the exception rather than the rule in Australian cinema. However, a clear interest in developing genre projects within Australian screen agencies, alongside the significant rise in independent genre production by filmmakers like Kiah Roache-Turner, are strengthening the future outlook for outward-facing genre projects with Warrior-hero protagonists.

The argument about cultural relevance needs to be packaged into a further discussion of global relevance. Films need the widest possible audience and, therefore, the highest possible chances of financial returns in a fast-changing digital age. Wardell suggests that to “insist on cultural relevance and survive in the global community is a tough balance act”. He concludes that “culturally relevant issues are also global issues driven by common themes, ideologies, oppressions and archetypal energies” (Waddell, 2011, p299). This connects what Jung, Campbell, Miller, and many others contend when applying storytelling principals to the collective unconscious.

98 Genre is the connective tissue of all forms of filmmaking, whether Art House or Action. All Australian films have cultural relevance in spite of their genre, even if that is a populist genre form. A new generation of Australian filmmakers are embracing the possibilities offered by genre films and genre screenwriting, in conjunction with the growing need to produce films with increased commercial appeal. The desire for an outward-facing perspective has driven this new breed of filmmakers who want their debut feature films to find a global audience. These filmmakers have attempted to find the widest audience possible through a crop of genre films such as: Undead (Spierig Brothers, 2003); Gabriel (Abbess, 2007); Crawl (China, 2011); The Tunnel (Ledesma, 2011); Terminus (Furmie, 2015); and Arrowhead (O’Brien, 2016). Genre helps frame a form of introversion (that is, the featuring of distinctly Australian ideas) that should be facilitated by extroversion (that is, by genre and market trends), where culturally specific ideas can be applied with a global resonance.

The deployment of the Warrior-hero protagonist, alongside a desire to contribute to national myth, brings an extroverted focus to the design and deployment of the protagonist, without the fear of prejudice for its not fulfilling a culturally relevant mandate. Sydney brothers, Kiah Roache-Turner (writer/director) and Tristan Roache- Turner (writer/producer) penned the screenplay for their Action Horror Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead using the Hero’s Journey framework for the construction of the story. Fueled by the renewed interest in Australian genre product on the back of the enthusiasm generated by the documentary Not Quite Hollywood, this new generation of Australian filmmakers continues to find their voice through genre. The filmmakers, primarily writer/directors, are focusing on genre as a vehicle to fulfilling their independent filmmaking ambitions through a first feature film that will tap into the collective unconscious as a path to global audiences. According to Roache-Turner, genre is seen as the tool that brings a distinct outward focus to the design of the screenplays:

I love genre. You sort of can’t go wrong with genre. You take any great story and you put it in a vampire context and it becomes more fun. You could re-tell Romeo and Juliet in space and it’s kind of got a zing to it. I’ve just … I’ve always liked science fiction, Westerns, Gangster films, Post-Apocalyptic films. I just really … I love films that take you on a journey into a world. (Roache-Turner, in interview with Author 17/10/2016)

Wolf Creek 2 screenwriter and Australian Gothic lecturer Aaron Sterns suggests a renewed focus on genre films, old and new:

… there are some of these genre films coming out this year that, and in recent years, I think they’re not just Hollywood sort of slasher type films but they’re very deep and

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thoughtful movies that can speak to the Australian experience. (Melbourne Writers’ Festival, Australian Gothic Cinema 2014)

Exploring the boundaries and capabilities of genre within scriptwriting development is a common practice in response to Hollywood films, and this can be deployed more regularly to guide the development of genre screenplays in Australia. The use of existing models to explore character can only create something of substance (mythic) if there is also a thorough study and discovery of character within myth to underpin genre conventions and develop theme. This methodology—the Warrior-hero archetype, and his associated representations of masculinity—can be adapted to other mainstream genres such as Comedy, Thriller, Romance, and select sub-genres of Horror, where the Warrior-hero as protagonist fits within the parameters of their specific generic conventions.

A thorough analysis within the Action genre revealed that the accompanying developmental tools, pioneered by Hauge, Truby and Vogler, are exceptional resources for this adaptation. They can be used for analysis of genre, as well as for mapping construction. This joint deployment of these theoretical models is especially useful when applied in context alongside a thorough understanding of the Campbell model and the parochial themes of the bush myth.

By previously featuring attributes of this archetype into the Mad Max, Crocodile Dundee and The Man from Snowy River franchises, great box office success has been achieved. These films and their Warrior-hero characters have also found a place in Australian cultural iconography and are recognised the world over as part of Australian myth. This is the moment when fictional heroes are treated as authentic and substantive heroes in the collective unconscious. If used within a distinct genre framework, unique elements of the bush myth also strengthen the work’s Australian identity. Subverting a genre to the extreme, or taking an overly hybrid approach where no one genre is clearly adhered to, weakens the mythic possibilities.

Films that last have mythic dimensions. The most commercially successful films in Australian Cinema, the Mad Max franchise, Crocodile Dundee and The Man from Snowy River are certainly mythogenic. Consequently, they are each culturally relevant in their use of the bush myth, cultural iconography, and genre tropes; and each film feautres Warrior-hero archetypes. Australian myths represent a vast untapped cinematic and cultural well that is worthy of exploring and re-exploring.

Occasionally, the screenwriter becomes the source of mythic power, but only when

100 talking for an entire society. The more direct path to myth is through the collective unconsciousness, and the more a film is likely to travel this path is when the attention is focused sharply on the protagonist at the center of the narrative. When the protagonist has a clearly defined goal, grounded in a familiar but clever use of genre tropes, codes, and conventions, the focus on the notion of an auteur behind the work is removed. This is where genre grounds the screenwriter, and creates a process of ‘boxing in’ the practitioner by allowing them to work within genre while still looking for fresh approaches. Using structural frameworks derived from myth, underpins the opportunity to update thematic ideas based on social and political zeitgeist. Therefore, to reinvent theme is to return to myth, particularly to those that have not been explored on screen for some time.

By acknowledging myth, theme is enabled to be invested at a sub-textual level to deepen narrative meaning. As cinema moved out of the realm of populist entertainment to firmly take its place beside theatre and the novel as a major art form, so too must genre film be acknowledged as and art form to express mythogenic ideas. Developing a screenplay within genre allows the screenwriter to also find the appropriate vehicle for thematic construction based on the related archetypes of that particular genre and, therefore, the associated mythic possibilities. Understanding the origins of a genre through generic transformation is a pathway to truly find myth within genre to develop Creative Practice. To use ‘Genre film’ as a pejorative term represents outdated and misplaced judgment. Underestimating genre comes from a lack of understanding of the nuance and subtlety operating within the great works of any given genre, such as those films analyzed in this study. Genre boundaries might appear safely defined and contained; ultimately, however, a thorough study and application of genre is the key to ongoing genre reinvention.

The fact that genre might appear formulaic, does not mean that it is prescriptive or limited in its application. Consequently, screenwriting methodologies are to be used to inspire and guide, rather than as a cheap trick to formulate a screenplay. If this were the case, recipes would negate the value of the great chefs of the world. For the Creative Practice, the use of genre, its associated archetypes, and the monomythic frameworks, have been key to the design, development, and writing of the Creative Practice. The screenplay Behold a Pale Horse is a return to a frontier setting and, in a way, a return to a re-imagined Wild West. So, it is not actually the Old West at all, but the future. In this post-apocalyptic world, framed as a Western yet embedded in the updated Action genre, the work deploys culturally relevant elements of the bush myth. The Western is back in Behold a Pale Horse. Again. Indeed, it has never gone

101

away, and it will continue to be transformed... Or, as David Stratton once stated, “The cinema began with the western (Stratton, 2010).

102 APPENDIX 1 – SCREENWRITING TOOLS

Appendix 1.1

Michael Hauge’s Story Concept Template

Title is a genre about hero, a role who empathy/setup. When hero is opportunity, hero decides to new situation / preliminary goal. But when change of plans , hero now must outer motivation/primary goal by hero’s plan, in spite of the fact that outer conflict.

(Hauge, 1988, pp36-7)

Appendix 1.2

A comparison of the Michael Hauge and Chriopher Vogler screenwriting models used for structural design of the Creative Practice.

This simple adaptation of their respective models shows both systems working in unison from The Hero’s Two Journeys with Michael Hauge & Christopher Vogler (Hauge & Vogler, 2009):

Hague-Vogler Story Models SEQUENCE TIMELINE

Turning Turning Point #3 Point #4 Turning Turning Point #5 Turning (Point of No Complications and (Major Point #2 Return) Setback) 90-99% HAGUE Point #1 25% Higher Stakes 10% Progress 50% 75%

Refusal of the Call Supreme Ordeal Reward: Return w/ Ordinary Meeting Tests, Approach to (Mid Act Climax) Seizing the Elixir World the Mentor Allies, Innermost Sword Call To Enemies Cave The Road Adventure Back Resurrection

Crossing the VOGLER Threshold

Act 3 Act 1 Act 2

199 APPENDIX 2: TOP 100 AUSTRALIAN FEATURE FILMS OF ALL TIME

DOMESTIC AUSTRALIAN BOX OFFICE

Source: https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/fact-finders/cinema/australian-films/top-films-at- the-box-office [Accessed: 13/08/2017]

200 APPENDIX 3: TOP AUSTRALIAN FILMS IN THE US & WORLDWIDE

International Box Office earnings (worldwide including Australian domestic):

Mad Max: Fury Road (Miller, 2015) US$378,858,340.00

Crocodile Dundee (Faiman, 1985) US$328,203,506.00

Crocodile Dundee II (Cornell, 1988) US$238,606,210.00

FILMS EARNING MORE THAN US$100,000 GROSS AT THE US BOX OFFICE, 1981–MAY 2017

US Domestic Box Office earnings (where worldwide figures are not available):

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (Miller, 1985) US$36,230,219.00

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (Miller, 1985) US$23,667,907.00

The Man from Snowy River (Miller, 1982) US$20,659,423.00

Mad Max (Miller, 1979) US$8,750,000.00

Sources: https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/fact-finders/cinema/australian-films/top-films-at- the-box-office/top-films-in-the-us [Accessed: 13/08/2017] http://www.boxofficemojo.com/ [Accessed: 13/08/2017]

Pre-2002 figures checked against: (Grey & Curtis, Ed. 2002)

Note: Recent Box Office lists are constantly changing for recently released films. This data was accessed and updated before submission. For updated results, box office figures can be found at:

Screen Australia – Australian Films in Cinema https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/fact-finders/cinema/australian-films Box Office Mojo http://www.boxofficemojo.com/

APPENDIX 4: THE ROGUE HERO – CRITIQUE OF ARCHETYPE

201 As part of testing the archetypes for the deployment for the Warrior-hero in the Creative Practice, the Rogue-hero was critiqued in detail to ensure the choice of the Travelling Angel-hero was appropriate for Behold a Pale Horse.

Examples for analysis:

Iconic example in the Western : High Noon (Zinnemann, 1952) – Will Kane

Warrior character arc: Creator to Enforcer to Bringer of Justice.

Popular and iconic mainstream example in the Action genre: Raiders of the Lost Ark (Spielberg, 1981) – Indiana Jones (adventure genre used here).

Warrior character arc: Fighter to Enforcer to Creator.

Contemporary example in the Action genre: Guardians of the Galaxy (Gunn, 2014) – Peter Quill

Warrior character arc: Destroyer to Fighter to Creator.

Australian example: Crocodile Dundee (Faiman, 1985) – Mick ‘Crocodile’ Dundee

Warrior character arc: Fighter to Enforcer (briefly) to Creator.

The Rogue Hero

Iconic examples in the Western : High Noon (Zinnemann, 1952) – Will Kane

Popular and iconic mainstream example in the Action genre: Raiders of the Lost Ark (Spielberg, 1981) – Indiana Jones

Contemporary example in the Action genre: Guardians of the Galaxy (Gunn, 2014) – Peter Quill

Australian example: Crocodile Dundee (Faiman, 1985) – Mick ‘Crocodile” Dundee

A character who charms and scams his way into success

• High Noon Kane is no scammer but he is charming. He has the prettiest girl, the best fashion sense and he is taller than anyone else in town. At any point he could use his qualities for evil but he does not. He is also a moral reflection of the

202 era (1950s) in which the film was made, where even the Rogue-hero archetype is intensely moral.

• Raiders of the Lost Ark Jones has to charm his way through any culture in the world to achieve his ends, particularly with woman. He has a penchant for underage girls, evidenced by the character Marion’s line “I was so young” (Raiders of the Lost Ark, 1981). This is coupled with the obsession of his female university students and the bizarre contribution by George Lucas in the story notes available on the design of the screenplay, revealing that Jones had sex with underage women.

• Guardians of the Galaxy Quill has to charm his way through any culture in the universe to achieve his treasure hunting goals. This also has to work with women from any race in the universe who can procreate with a human male.

• Crocodile Dundee Dundee’s charisma and charm allow him to talk his way into or out of any situation, even when confronted with completely new environments. The Australian cliché ‘the gift of the gab’ is at play when he is in his ordinary world, or when he is on the other side of the world in a completely unfamiliar environment. He can also make friends when people from any race, culture or creed.

A good bad guy, or a bad good guy:

• High Noon Kane is a moral figure but positions himself as the rebel by choosing ‘against the grain’ of the community in which he and his new wife live. He is not bad but is viewed as having made an inappropriate choice by those around him.

• Raiders of the Lost Ark Jones will break the laws of local cultures to ‘save’ artefacts for future generations. “This should be in a museum” trumps any local laws or rituals. Regardless, it is hard to see a character that fights Nazis so vigorously as anything but the hero.

• Guardians of the Galaxy Quill is a low-level criminal with selfish motivations, but also fights the worst

203 bad guys (criminals, terrorists, warlords). He was brought up by a group of smugglers and has inherited their skills, connections and is competing with them on some level. While a small time criminal himself, he is particularly sly in outwitting and fighting genuinely evil criminals.

• Crocodile Dundee Dundee could be a poacher or an environmentalist. The dichotomy of the character and his relationship with the land creates a tension that is never fully resolved. He charm and scamming for a greater good conquers all.

He is usually out for himself, at least at the beginning

• High Noon Kane’s moral uprightness is selfish in comparison to the needs of the community or his wife. In this case, being out for himself is also taking the moral high ground.

• Raiders of the Lost Ark Jones has an agenda that is personal and based on individual artefacts but the arrival of the Nazis and the need to stop a supernatural force (in which he does not initially believe) makes the artefact saving for the greater good.

• Guardians of the Galaxy Quill is selfish and works alone. He is an opportunist who only wants money but allows himself to be drawn in to a conflict that will ultimately save the galaxy.

• Crocodile Dundee Dundee likes the idea of a reporter coming into his life, bringing fame, notoriety and ultimately legend. He insults outsiders and lies to advantage himself. He works to his own agenda – doing what he wants, when he wants it, the way he wants it... But love changes that.

Street smart, womaniser, tremendous confidence, a good talker and usually a liar

• High Noon Kane is street smart: he knows criminal behaviour and its motivations. He is also the 1950s equivalent of a ladies man, having married the prettiest girl in town. He is confident to make the moral choice when it carries the greatest risk, and is also a good talker when needed. While he is not a liar, the Rogue-

204 hero model of the 1950s did not admit this as a valuable quality.

• Raiders of the Lost Ark Indiana is street smart in any country and culture, and furthermore is able to be a good talker in a variety of languages and in contexts ranging from the street to the realms of academia. He is a womaniser (the younger the better) and displays tremendous confidence, allowing to take big risks. He lies for the greater good (or to get the girl), often by omission rather than outright falsehood.

• Guardians of the Galaxy Quill is street smart, understanding criminal behaviour and its motivations regardless of alien race and setting. He also knows (in both senses) women of any race or culture. He shows great confidence, taking big risks, confident in the results. His dancing, music and charm make him a good talker, and part of his charm is in the way he lies and exaggerates to his own benefit at every opportunity.

Crocodile Dundee Dundee has bush smarts, but this translates well into street smarts when he is transposed to the urban environment of New York. This also shows his confidence: if he knows how to survive in the bush and wrestle crocodile and survive, he can survive anywhere. He is clearly a womaniser. He is charming and is even stalking the character Sue Charlton at one point, both to protect her and to enjoy her beauty. Like Peter Quill, his charm lies in his ability to talk to – and win over – anyone, and his willingness to lie and exaggerate (in the most endearing way possible) for his own benefit. He does this particularly consistently to perpetuate his own status as a legend and myth within the story world.

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