By: debbie lynn elias
Let me tell you a true story about PJ Hogan. A man I have had the privilege and pleasure to know for some years, this story goes back to the 2001-2002 shooting of Peter Pan. With a great amount of aerial work and stunts in the film, Hogan and crew hired one of the industry’s best aerial stuntwomen, Svetla Krasteva, a woman I had known for a number of years thanks to my own second unit work and affiliations. Diagnosed with advancing cancer prior to the shooting of Peter Pan, although never giving up hope, everyone knew that this would be Svetla’s final film. So intent was Hogan on having her be a part of the film, he not only insisted she be allowed to work on the film, but had the production team fly in her husband, actor Tom Sean Foley, to be with her. Although her condition worsened and she was forced to stop work and fly back to the United States before shooting ended, Svetla was given one more moment to soar thanks to PJ Hogan, something for which her husband is still eternally grateful. As Hogan and I again caught up and talked about the past and the present, our thoughts once again turned to Svetla. “She was a beautiful person. I loved her. I thought she was wonderful. She was just great.”
If this doesn’t tell you the type of man PJ Hogan is, nothing will. And it’s this same care, concern and love for people, life and laughter that Hogan infuses into his films – and most recently, MENTAL.
I sat down for another exuberant fun-filled exclusive interview with PJ Hogan where we talked about MENTAL, mental illness, “normality”, “perfection”, dolls and yes, the Family von Trapp.
PJ, I am absolutely in love with MENTAL! Somebody has a family as fucked up as mine!
Oh, thank you so much I’m pretty fond of it myself. We all have fucked up families! We all have screwed up families. I don’t even know what normal is. I grew up, because my dad was a local politician, and he would say, “Would you be normal? Could I have a normal family, please? When we’re out in public could you not act like such mental cases?” And we thought we were being normal. We were really trying so hard. He wanted The Brady Bunch. He wanted ordinary. Well, I don‘t know what “normal” is. I don‘t think it exists. Once I left home and I moved to Sydney and I got out there in life, I realized that there is no such thing as normal. It’s like the word “perfection.” It doesn’t exist. It‘s a pretend word. I tried to do that in the film. I tried to present a couple of people in the film who are paragons of normal, posters for normal and, in fact, other people constantly refer to them as normal, like the character based on my dad. My dad was considered a role model. A man who picks a hitchhiker up off the street to look after his kids who he canft get on with after committing his wife – a role model. People elected him 3 or 4 times back to local government. My next door neighbor who – I look back on it now and go, “Oh my God! She was totally crazy! She was OCD.” A cleanliness nut. For what? That’s pointless. One of my relatives, one of my aunts really made dolls and would take them out when she’d glaze them to help dry them, but basically [it was] to show them off. And they were the freakiest things I’d ever seen. I wanted to smash them and in the film I made my wish come true! Actually, I‘ve been accused of cruelty to dolls.
I don‘t blame you.
Are you a doll fanatic? I find some people are.
I find some people are, too, and I just really want to wring their necks or snap the heads off of their dolls.
You know what it is? It’s all control. I researched every facet of mental illness before I made this film because I didn‘t want to get anything wrong. You have to be a specific personality to make dolls. It‘s all about control. It’s about making life come out perfect. So we’re back to perfect and normal again. If life doesn’t go the way you want it, the doll will be perfect, it will be ideal, an idealized child. Or an idealized life. A lot of people say that‘s what filmmaking is. We can’t make life come out perfect in life – it never does – you never get what you want – life’s always full of surprises – and films are where it all comes together for everybody. You‘re uplifted and you feel good. Not personally something I’m drawn to in films. I‘m drawn to feeling good, but I also like films to feel like life feels, particularly when it’s something like MENTAL which is very much based on personal experience. Completely based on personal experience. I’m not going to kid anybody.
Two things that really struck me. How cathartic was it for you, writing, directing and putting this film together, and also, how challenging was it to cast actors when you have the voices of the people in your head?
Not as difficult as you think because I’ve made an autobiographical film before. My very first film, Muriel‘s Wedding is based on fact. And that was actually a darker film than MENTAL. It’s going back awhile, but it came from a place of great anger whereas MENTAL is a film that is a lot warmer and a lot funnier because I‘m in the trenches with mental illness. My sister is schizophrenic. My brother is bipolar and I’m the father of two autistic children. So this is something that‘s an issue that‘s very important to me. That‘s why I made the film as funny as I could and as politically incorrect as I could because being a caregiver to people with mental challenges, I know that if you don‘t laugh, you go crazy yourself. I wanted to make it as politically incorrect as possible because I don’t like political correctness, especially in terms of discussing mental illness. Political correctness to me is a way of saying, “I’d rather not talk about it. Unless you use the right words, don’t offend me.”How do you talk about mental illness without offending people? How? My sister, Shan, my schizophrenic sister, she’s one of the most funniest people you’ll ever meet – on and off her medication. But when she’s off her medication she thinks she owns Quantas Airlines and she thinks she’s best friends with Beyonce.
Well, she dreams big!
She does dream big! And she’ll say, “I just got off the phone with Nancy Reagan. Paul, all your problems are over. I’m going to sell the jet and invest in your next film. I think I’ll sell the big one.” She’s serious. She really believes it. And then we all know she’s not taking her meds; because she feels really good. That’s the thing. Once something is schizophrenic or bipolar they start to feel really good because of the meds and then they think they’re so good, “Oh, I don’t need those meds anymore.
I went through that for decades with my mother. Years ago. Part of it was chemical, part of it was bipolar, part of it was totally physiological, but she would go off, “I‘m not gonna take these meds. I‘m not gonna take pills anymore.” And then everytime she wouldn’t, she‘d land back in the hospital. Then she’d be out on the roof with knives in the middle of the night.
Oh wow! No kidding? Attacking aircraft or something?
No kidding. She‘s gonna cut through the screens into the different rooms of the house. So you see why I love this film! I still remember when one of the worst episodes happened. Middle of the summer, middle of July. I had just turned 16 and she‘s out there were knives waving them in her pockets in her housecoat. The police had a helicopter out there, and the cop cars. 4 in the morning. You gotta laugh at it and you have to laugh.
Holy cow! That’s great! I mean great in a filmic way. I’m sure living through it wasn’t that great. My mother’s nervous breakdown wasn’t as spectacular as it’s painted in the film, but that nervous breakdown [Shirley Moochmore’s] was based on a mutual friend of ours. Just recently, she had a breakdown and started shopping. Somebody told her “Go shopping. It’ll cheer you up.” And she didn’t stop. She went shopping all day, maxed out six credit cards and then all the trucks started arriving and she couldn’t remember the shopping. The trucks just started coming. White goods kept being unloaded, sofas, tv’s and she went to the hospital. She said, “Clearly, I have cracked up.”
I know it well. Every penny that my mother made working she would go to Nordstrom‘s every week, JC Penney, get her hair done, she‘d buy jewelry. When she passed away 5 years ago, all this stuff, rooms full of stuff, still had tags on it. So for me seeing this movie…..
Holy cow. Wow. Man! You’ve lived it! We should just talk about you and I doing a movie! And it’s different from Shopaholic, isn’t it, because that’s the last time we talked.
That was the last time we talked. You and I had also talked with Shopaholic whether the economy at that point was going to effect the box office.
And it did! Oh man. Talk about bad timing! Strangely enough, it affected the box office here in the USA but it did really well overseas. It went over $100 million there. And itfs found a life on DVD. It’s great. But that’s the luck involved with filmmaking. When we made the film everything was fine, everybody was shopping. All the doors to the great stores were open to us. I think the second Sex in the City movie came out and everybody said, “What a terrible movie!” But everybody went to see it. And it was essentially about spending, shopping, shoes. And then we came out and I think, most of the reviews were based just on the title. So, shopping is bad now!
And see, I raved about Shopaholic. I loved it. Talking about shopping and spending money, a really fascinating thing is the music in MENTAL. All of the tracks from The Sound of Music that you have in the film! How much of the budget did that take up?
They weren’t free. We went into it telling [the Estate of Rodgers & Hammerstein] we don’t have a lot of money and we sent them the script. And luckily, I’ve made two movies that involved music of very established singer-songwriters, ABBA in Muriel‘s Wedding and Burt Bacharach in My Best Friend’s Wedding, and both those artists did very well out of those movies. So, the Estate of Rodgers & Hammerstein went, “Okay. He‘s crazy but he‘s not insulting. He‘s using our music in a respectful way.”
It‘s a very loving way.
And that’s from fact. My mother’s favorite film is The Sound of Music and that‘s why I used clips from The Sound of Music in MENTAL. She dragged us along to see that – in Australia it was a HUGE HUGE movie. It kept being re-released. I never saw it when it came out. I saw it on subsequent re-releases. It would come out every Christmas in Australia. – And my mum would go, “Oh My God! The Sound of Music’s on! We’re all going!” And we’d all go, “Noooo. We can’t! We can’t sit through The Sound of Music again!” And we did. We watched The Sound of Music and my mum, like clockwork, cry in that same scene. I used it in the movie. When Captain von Trapp pulls out the guitar and go, “Edelweiss, Edelweiss” and all the kids would gather around and start singing Edelweiss in their beautiful voices. And my mum would go, “Why can’t you sing like that?” And what she really wondered was, “Why cant Dad canft come home and sing Edelweiss to us all?” He never came home for dinner let alone come home with a guitar and sing. That was why it was important. The Sound of Music is such an idealized family. Once Julie Andrews comes in and rescues them all, they’re just all so happy and they defeat the Nazis. You can’t do better than that!
How can you possibly not love that?
It’s terrific! Who doesn’t want to see the Nazis destroyed by song and straight white teeth?
I have to ask you about Liev Schreiber. Interesting, interesting choice for Trevor, considering the Aussie cast, the accents you have in place, and then you get Liev who is flawless. For him to pull off the performance of Trevor, the accent is such an important part of the demeanor and backstory.
Isn’t his accent incredible? When I was writing Trevor, I really had in mind a couple of people that Ifd met throughout my life. My sister who was the model for Muriel [Muriel‘s Wedding] once worked for a guy who was a shark hunter. One of her many adventures was working for a nutty Australian fisherman whofd caught, and I think he still holds the record, the biggest great white ever, ever caught. Possibly a man-eater. He claimed it ate a former prime minister of Australia named Harold Holt who actually did go missing in the ocean in the late 60’s. He claimed that. I never believed him. My sister did. She worked for him and I was really freaked out by this place. Again, I made a mental note, “This is a character in a movie.” Then I thought Steve Irwin, one of these Aussie types. I had that in mind, that guy Steve Irwin, and I never thought Liev Schreiber. I thought it was going to be an Australian. But Liev got a hold of the script somehow and he loved the part. I thought first it was a hoax that Liev Schreiber wanted to be in this small Aussie movie. [But] I had two problems. One, we didn’t have any money to pay him. And two, he’s American. But, when I met with Liev he said, “Don’t worry about the first one. I’ll do it with whatever you’ve got. And the second one…” As I started talking to Liev, I realized that Liev wouldn‘t even consider the part if he didn’t think he could do the accent. And he‘s brilliant at accents. The Australian accent is extraordinarily difficult so anytime an Australian director casts an American in a quintessential Australian part, it’s a huge roll of the dice. But I rolled the dice because it was Liev and he nailed it. Even on set, what he’d do was – because I’ve lived in America so long he didn’t trust me to pick up any faults in his accent – he’d go to the crew. He’d talk to the grip. He’d go, “Any words? Any words I’m getting wrong?” And they’d go, “Yea, we don’t say ‘bugger off’ like that. We say it like this.” And Liev would go, “Okay. We’ll go again. Say it for me six times in a row.” He was just great. He didn’t stay in a hotel. He stayed in a trailer on the set and just hung out with people in the town where we shot. He was marvelous. He was such a pleasure.
It definitely pays off because he fits so beautifully in the package.
And his big scene with Toni Collette, I had to have someone really great in that part because Toni is used to wiping actors off the screen. She met her equal with Liev.
#
