RED DOG: True Blue

RED DOG: True Blue For publicity enquiries, please contact: Emma Micklewright, Publicist Aus/NZ Roadshow Films E: [email protected] T: +61 2 9552 8603 Australian Release Date: December 26, 2016 New Zealand Release Date: January 1, 2017 1 One line synopsis An iconic Australian story of family, friendship and adventure, between a young boy and a scrappy one-of-a-kind dog that would grow up to become an Australian legend. One paragraph When eleven year old Mick (LEVI MILLER) is shipped off to his grandfather's (BRYAN BROWN) cattle station in the remote Pilbara region of Western Australia, he prepares himself for a life of dull hardship, but instead finds myth, adventure and a friendship with a scrappy, one-of-a-kind dog that will change his life forever. 2 One Page The year is 1968. After the tragic loss of his father, eleven year old Mick Carter (LEVI MILLER) is shipped off by his grieving mother to a vast cattle station owned by his Grandpa (BRYAN BROWN). The station is in the Pilbara - a grand, ancient Australian landscape, remote and cut off from city life. At the station, Mick is the only child. The Outback attracts strong men that know the value of silence - but that’s not Mick. He’s a talker - a talker without anyone to talk to. He’s lost and lonely. The station is filled with a cast of charming misfits – Bill Stemple (THOMAS COCQUEREL), a bravado-fuelled helicopter pilot returned from Vietnam; Little and Big John (SYD BRISBANE and STEVE LE MARQUAND), stockmen with a secret; Jimmy Umbrella (KEE CHAN), an eccentric, slightly unhinged cook; and Taylor Pete (CALEN TASSONE), an Aboriginal jackaroo and budding activist. When a cyclone hits, water rises and floods the dry land. In the middle of a flooded plane, Mick finds a dog covered with blue mud. Mick rescues him and calls him ‘Blue’. Mick and Blue become inseparable. Mick treats Blue as an equal, a companion, but as an Aboriginal elder tells him, Blue is more than a dog; he’s a Marlunghu- a trickster spirit. Mick and Blue get into their share of trouble and the boy and his dog become inseparable. Grandpa is determined that Mick’s life is more than just play and is concerned Mick requires a formal education. The subsequent arrival of a beautiful tutor, Betty Marble (HANNA MANGAN LAWRENCE) complicates relationships - not just between Mick and Blue, but between Mick and Bill Stemple. Betty starts to stir competitive rivalries in Stemple and Mick but, with the world in the throes of change that reach into even this remote landscape, Betty wants more than either of them can offer. Relationships between the Aboriginal community and white folk strain – this is a time of conflict and change not just for Mick, but for an entire country. When he finds out he has to leave his beloved dog for boarding school in the big smoke, Mick runs away with Blue. Only a few kilometers away, Mick and Blue see a fire coming towards the station and must make a decision – to turn back and face responsibility and the pain of growing up, or escape from the forces pulling them apart. 3 THE BIRTH OF AN ORIGIN STORY In 2011, the production team at Woss Group Film Productions introduced RED DOG to audiences. The company had a history with great, iconic Australian stories as it had produced NED KELLY for Universal Pictures in 2001. RED DOG was another outback tale, focused on a local legend that brought communities together. RED DOG went on to become one of the great successes of modern Australian cinema, striking a chord with audiences right across the country, and giving life to a legend. On the heels of such success, the creative team behind RED DOG naturally discussed a follow-up film and what form it could take, but director KRIV STENDERS, producer NELSON WOSS and writer DANIEL TAPLITZ felt that above all, the new film must be a story worth telling in its own right. In late 2013, Taplitz called Stenders and Woss and pitched an idea. Stenders recalls: “We liked the concept that Daniel Taplitz pitched to us. It was such a lovely, beautiful idea and a very clever one. I knew immediately that it would make a great movie.” The journey of RED DOG: True Blue had begun. The new film would be a prequel rather than a sequel - an origin story. In RED DOG: True Blue the filmmakers have fictionalised the early origins of the Red Dog story. No one actually knows where the real Red Dog came from and the many stories about him have become both Pilbara myth and Australian legend. The film would be about a young boy called Mick and his rambunctious yet tender relationship with the dog that would grow up to become this legendary canine, but the period would be key to the backbone of the story. It would be set in 1968, a pivotal year globally – political and social ruptures in Europe, the civil rights movement in the USA, the Apollo space program, women’s rights, the sexual revolution - but the film would find particular inspiration in the transformative shifts occurring in Australia. Kriv Stenders elaborates: “It was a critical time in Australia. It was the beginning of equal pay; it was the end of the way in which farms operated using Indigenous labour. It’s set at a time when mining had just started in the Pilbara– the death of one kind of industry and the birth of another. The film is very much about change; adapting to change and learning from it.” By setting the new film in the past, the filmmakers could look at the present day more objectively. Stenders explains: “It’s that removal that allows you to still look at today, but through a very different prism. It’s not on the nose, things are more in relief. Aboriginal Australians getting the vote, the death of rural industry, the beginning of equal pay – 4 those things had a huge effect on local communities. It’s an intense period that would be a great stage to set our story in.” From the time of cracking the concept, the journey to filming would take just over three years. Woss, Taplitz and Stenders had learnt a great deal on RED DOG, and had developed a language to be able to shape the world of RED DOG: True Blue from – a world with its own laws, logic and parameters. Stenders explains: “It was fun to be able to come back into that world and really build on a lot of the templates that we’d built with the first film.” For producer Nelson Woss, it would mean working again with RED DOG investors and corporate partners. “Screen Australia was involved, as well as ScreenWest, Royalties for Regions, the Pilbara Development Council, and our amazing distributor Roadshow Films. We had a number of corporate sponsors and relationships - Woodside Petroleum, Pedigree and the Mars Group, and most importantly Rio Tinto who supported the first RED DOG and RED DOG: True Blue, these relationships were the key to allowing the films to be made in the Pilbara. Vital would be RED DOG: True Blue’s locations, which the team sought out early in the process - they would help shape Daniel Taplitz’s script, the landscape being an important character in almost every scene. CHRIS VEERHUIS, who had been location manager on RED DOG, remembers “I’d just gotten a dog and was sitting on the couch with the him when Nelson Woss rang and said, ‘So what are you up to?’ I looked down at the dog and said, ‘Oh, nothing.’ Nelson said, ‘Good. I’m putting you on a conference call. We are doing a prequel to RED DOG.” The next morning, Woss and Veerhuis called Jason Brennan from Rio Tinto, and the following Monday, Veerhuis was in the Pilbara scouting locations for the new film. Karratha Station, about 30 minutes out of the city of Karratha, was chosen as the principal site for RED DOG: True Blue’s action. The station reaches east to Karratha, and west all the way to the West Australian coast. Veerhuis, who was engaged as co-producer on RED DOG: True Blue, says: “Choosing Karratha Station would mean we’d be able to stay put at the one location for 24 of 26 shoot days in the Pilbara, which would make everybody happy.” The relationships with Aboriginal communities and the traditional landowners of the region would be crucial and necessary for the film on many levels. On the first location scout, Veerhuis met with the Ngarluma Aboriginal Corporation, and later with the Ngarluma Yindjibarndi Foundation. 5 Veerhuis says: “These two groups connected us with the traditional owners and elders. We did a couple of location surveys but conversations were mainly about the script, which had a really strong cultural sense to it. They read the script and made notes about things that were culturally significant, mostly language and texture.” Writer Daniel Taplitz would be sent these notes and would incorporate them into new drafts of the script. CASTING Finding Mick, Blue and the third key role of Mick’s Grandpa would be crucial. The dog came first, with casting beginning in early 2014. Director Kriv Stenders explains: “We had to start with the dog because it takes a long time to train them up. It was a long process of trial and error trying to find a dog that had the right sensibility – it had to be not only an animal that looked good and had charisma and that ‘X’ factor, but that could also technically do what we needed it to do.” It was difficult to find a replacement for Koko and the production company spent two years scouting for dogs.

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