Post by wheelspinner on May 21, 2011 18:25:12 GMT -5
This is a very sad loss. If you've even seen an Australian film any time in the past 40 years, chances are you've seen Bill Hunter in it.
Icon of Australian film leaves behind an enduring legacy
Jim Schembri and Karl Quinn
May 22, 2011
Bill Hunter: "Much loved. A gentleman, an inspiration to fellow actors, a journeyman and a rogue."
Bill Hunter's passion for his craft leaves an indelible mark on the local film industry.
TODAY there is a great big curmudgeon-shaped hole in the Australian film industry where Bill Hunter used to be. The veteran of almost 60 films and dozens of TV movies, series and mini-series died in a hospice in Kew yesterday, aged 71.
The actor had been admitted earlier this week, after a battle with cancer. He died just after 8pm last night, surrounded by friends and family.
Mark Morrissey, Hunter's manager for 17 years, said he was ''much loved. A gentleman, an inspiration to fellow actors, a journeyman and a rogue. He was a fine actor, a true storyteller and a great friend''.
Hunter was renowned for playing gruff, no-nonsense types, and it was a role he relished both on-screen and off, as many of those who worked with him testified.
One of the last filmmakers to work with him was director Kriv Stenders, on his forthcoming feature Red Dog.
''He came in for a day's work to do a cameo and I couldn't really direct him,'' said Stenders. ''Every time I came up to him to say something, offer some encouragement, or even just to say 'great', he told me to 'f--- off', but in the best, most straightforward, down-to-earth way, just 'Ah, f--- off, I know I what I'm doing'.
''It's a thrill to have been able to 'work' with him, even if it was for just one short, surreal day.''
Alkinos Tsilimidos, who directed Hunter in his 1995 drama Everynight, Everynight - a film Hunter often cited as his favourite - and in his 2004 homelessness tale Tom White had a similar tale.
''I remember keeping him up very, very, very late for one particular shot in Tom White - it was about 4.30 in the morning - and Bill had had enough waiting around. I finally got him out of his van and he said to me, 'Mate, you only get one [shot], and I'm walking now'. And I had to roll, because by the time he got to the other end of the laneway he was going home.''
So how did he do? ''He nailed it.''
Tsilimidos said playing the curmudgeon was something Hunter could turn off as well as on. ''He had a persona out in the world, and he fulfilled that for people and enjoyed it, but there was another side of him, an inner turmoil that he could reach to get to places as an actor,'' he said.
''Billy could walk into a room and he'd fill it up,'' said close friend David Field, who co-starred with Hunter in Everynight and Tom White. ''But he never filled it up with a sense of himself being above anybody else. If he saw an actor having difficulty he'd hold their hand and help them through and make them feel strong. He was never a selfish actor. He passed on knowledge that I could never have gained from anyone else about acting - and not just about the actual craft but about how you approach it as a man and as a human being.''
Of all his work, Hunter's portrayal of Major Barton in Peter Weir's classic 1981 war epic Gallipoli is widely regarded as his finest. Charged with playing a man who must send young Australian troops over the top to certain doom, Hunter brought such power to the character it emotionally sideswiped David Williamson, the film's screenwriter.
''Bill was the perfect actor in the world for that performance,'' Williamson said. ''No one could have done it like Bill. You could believe him listening to the opera the night before the slaughter. When he put the whistle to his lips, it's probably the most powerful moment in the film.''
Steve Bastoni worked with Hunter on the 1995 miniseries Blue Murder and considered the older actor a mentor. His biggest lesson? ''The power of stillness, how you can convey more with a look than you can with words. Bill had the unique ability to give you a look and the world just stops.''
For many, though, Hunter will be best remembered for his comic work, particularly a string of films in the early to mid-1990s - Strictly Ballroom, Muriel's Wedding, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert - that helped define a certain picture of Australian oddness for the world.
He had a natural gift for comedy, said Tony Martin, who directed him in the 2003 cop movie Bad Eggs, that came from the less-is-more school. ''You know that Leslie Nielsen thing where it's funnier when you don't try to ham it up too much? He seemed to know that instinctively. There was no need to explain comedy to Bill Hunter.''
''He just liked honesty in comedy,'' said Paul Moloney, director of the 2002 hit Crackerjack. ''We tried to play it in the form of the old English Ealing comedies where you don't hammer the gags. He was quite happy with that approach and it was a wonderful experience.''
Hunter was born in rural Victoria and raised in a Ballarat pub run by his father. ''I used to run home at lunchtime when I was about six and have a shandy,'' he told Good Weekend in 1998. ''My mother used to be appalled but Dad would say, 'Let him have it now and he won't want it later on'.''
It didn't quite work out that way.
Hunter, who suffered from depression throughout his life, remained fond of a drink and a smoke to the very end, and it took him to the brink of ruin when he was declared bankrupt in 1996.
In the words of Simon Wincer, who first directed him in an episode of Matlock Police in 1972 and most recently in his Melbourne Cup film The Cup: ''Bill was the great Aussie bloke, living life to the full. He almost took over where Chips Rafferty left off.''
If Rafferty was the greatest star of Australian cinema's first brief flowering, Hunter was inextricably linked with its renaissance. He was an extra on the Shiralee in 1957 and a stunt double in On The Beach in 1959, but it was from the late 1960s that he really began to assert himself, just as the Gorton plan was kickstarting the dormant local industry into life. He was in Skippy, Homicide, Division 4 on the small screen, and in the cinema he appeared in a series of earthy films that dared tell uniquely Australian stories for the first time: 27A, set in a mental hospital; Backroads, set among the outback Aboriginal communities most white Australians knew nothing about; Newsfront. By the mid-1990s, he was everywhere - so much so that Steve Vizard joked at the 1994 AFI Awards that it was now compulsory for every Australian film to have Bill Hunter in it.
But now there will be no more Australian films with Bill Hunter in them - at least not after Red Dog, which is out in August, and The Cup, in which he plays Bart Cummings, in October - and Australian cinema will be so much the poorer for it.
''He was passionate about the Australian industry but very modest about his craft,'' said Simon Wincer of the man he considered a dear friend.
''He once said: 'There's no great art to this craft. You've just got to stand there, hit your mark, say your lines, walk away and take the money.' That's how pragmatic he was, and yet he was an extraordinary talent and a wonderful human being.''
His memorial service will be held on Thursday at The Princess Theatre from 2pm.
Read more: www.theage.com.au/entertainment/movies/icon-of-australian-film-leaves-behind-an-enduring-legacy-20110522-1eyd5.html#ixzz1N230GO7u
Icon of Australian film leaves behind an enduring legacy
Jim Schembri and Karl Quinn
May 22, 2011
Bill Hunter: "Much loved. A gentleman, an inspiration to fellow actors, a journeyman and a rogue."
Bill Hunter's passion for his craft leaves an indelible mark on the local film industry.
TODAY there is a great big curmudgeon-shaped hole in the Australian film industry where Bill Hunter used to be. The veteran of almost 60 films and dozens of TV movies, series and mini-series died in a hospice in Kew yesterday, aged 71.
The actor had been admitted earlier this week, after a battle with cancer. He died just after 8pm last night, surrounded by friends and family.
Mark Morrissey, Hunter's manager for 17 years, said he was ''much loved. A gentleman, an inspiration to fellow actors, a journeyman and a rogue. He was a fine actor, a true storyteller and a great friend''.
Hunter was renowned for playing gruff, no-nonsense types, and it was a role he relished both on-screen and off, as many of those who worked with him testified.
One of the last filmmakers to work with him was director Kriv Stenders, on his forthcoming feature Red Dog.
''He came in for a day's work to do a cameo and I couldn't really direct him,'' said Stenders. ''Every time I came up to him to say something, offer some encouragement, or even just to say 'great', he told me to 'f--- off', but in the best, most straightforward, down-to-earth way, just 'Ah, f--- off, I know I what I'm doing'.
''It's a thrill to have been able to 'work' with him, even if it was for just one short, surreal day.''
Alkinos Tsilimidos, who directed Hunter in his 1995 drama Everynight, Everynight - a film Hunter often cited as his favourite - and in his 2004 homelessness tale Tom White had a similar tale.
''I remember keeping him up very, very, very late for one particular shot in Tom White - it was about 4.30 in the morning - and Bill had had enough waiting around. I finally got him out of his van and he said to me, 'Mate, you only get one [shot], and I'm walking now'. And I had to roll, because by the time he got to the other end of the laneway he was going home.''
So how did he do? ''He nailed it.''
Tsilimidos said playing the curmudgeon was something Hunter could turn off as well as on. ''He had a persona out in the world, and he fulfilled that for people and enjoyed it, but there was another side of him, an inner turmoil that he could reach to get to places as an actor,'' he said.
''Billy could walk into a room and he'd fill it up,'' said close friend David Field, who co-starred with Hunter in Everynight and Tom White. ''But he never filled it up with a sense of himself being above anybody else. If he saw an actor having difficulty he'd hold their hand and help them through and make them feel strong. He was never a selfish actor. He passed on knowledge that I could never have gained from anyone else about acting - and not just about the actual craft but about how you approach it as a man and as a human being.''
Of all his work, Hunter's portrayal of Major Barton in Peter Weir's classic 1981 war epic Gallipoli is widely regarded as his finest. Charged with playing a man who must send young Australian troops over the top to certain doom, Hunter brought such power to the character it emotionally sideswiped David Williamson, the film's screenwriter.
''Bill was the perfect actor in the world for that performance,'' Williamson said. ''No one could have done it like Bill. You could believe him listening to the opera the night before the slaughter. When he put the whistle to his lips, it's probably the most powerful moment in the film.''
Steve Bastoni worked with Hunter on the 1995 miniseries Blue Murder and considered the older actor a mentor. His biggest lesson? ''The power of stillness, how you can convey more with a look than you can with words. Bill had the unique ability to give you a look and the world just stops.''
For many, though, Hunter will be best remembered for his comic work, particularly a string of films in the early to mid-1990s - Strictly Ballroom, Muriel's Wedding, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert - that helped define a certain picture of Australian oddness for the world.
He had a natural gift for comedy, said Tony Martin, who directed him in the 2003 cop movie Bad Eggs, that came from the less-is-more school. ''You know that Leslie Nielsen thing where it's funnier when you don't try to ham it up too much? He seemed to know that instinctively. There was no need to explain comedy to Bill Hunter.''
''He just liked honesty in comedy,'' said Paul Moloney, director of the 2002 hit Crackerjack. ''We tried to play it in the form of the old English Ealing comedies where you don't hammer the gags. He was quite happy with that approach and it was a wonderful experience.''
Hunter was born in rural Victoria and raised in a Ballarat pub run by his father. ''I used to run home at lunchtime when I was about six and have a shandy,'' he told Good Weekend in 1998. ''My mother used to be appalled but Dad would say, 'Let him have it now and he won't want it later on'.''
It didn't quite work out that way.
Hunter, who suffered from depression throughout his life, remained fond of a drink and a smoke to the very end, and it took him to the brink of ruin when he was declared bankrupt in 1996.
In the words of Simon Wincer, who first directed him in an episode of Matlock Police in 1972 and most recently in his Melbourne Cup film The Cup: ''Bill was the great Aussie bloke, living life to the full. He almost took over where Chips Rafferty left off.''
If Rafferty was the greatest star of Australian cinema's first brief flowering, Hunter was inextricably linked with its renaissance. He was an extra on the Shiralee in 1957 and a stunt double in On The Beach in 1959, but it was from the late 1960s that he really began to assert himself, just as the Gorton plan was kickstarting the dormant local industry into life. He was in Skippy, Homicide, Division 4 on the small screen, and in the cinema he appeared in a series of earthy films that dared tell uniquely Australian stories for the first time: 27A, set in a mental hospital; Backroads, set among the outback Aboriginal communities most white Australians knew nothing about; Newsfront. By the mid-1990s, he was everywhere - so much so that Steve Vizard joked at the 1994 AFI Awards that it was now compulsory for every Australian film to have Bill Hunter in it.
But now there will be no more Australian films with Bill Hunter in them - at least not after Red Dog, which is out in August, and The Cup, in which he plays Bart Cummings, in October - and Australian cinema will be so much the poorer for it.
''He was passionate about the Australian industry but very modest about his craft,'' said Simon Wincer of the man he considered a dear friend.
''He once said: 'There's no great art to this craft. You've just got to stand there, hit your mark, say your lines, walk away and take the money.' That's how pragmatic he was, and yet he was an extraordinary talent and a wonderful human being.''
His memorial service will be held on Thursday at The Princess Theatre from 2pm.
Read more: www.theage.com.au/entertainment/movies/icon-of-australian-film-leaves-behind-an-enduring-legacy-20110522-1eyd5.html#ixzz1N230GO7u
