When John L. Simpson was sourcing the meagre budget on his drama Men's Group, the producer experienced what would prove to be one of his most cherished moments – in his backyard.
When Simpson told his wife he was going to start the production without all finance securely in place, she gave her blessing – on the condition that he continue to put food on the table. So he did. “I needed 60 to 70 hours a week to work on my passion – my film, leaving me four hours on a Saturday to feed my family”, he recalls. “So I went to the local shopping centre and approached the fishmonger and the butcher and said, 'I'm a filmmaker and I'm making a film with no money and I need to put food on my family's table.”
Simpson's booming voice and affable personality won over the merchants, who paid him in produce; their generosity kept both his family and the Men's Group cast and crew well fed. It also allowed the committed family man to witness his profound influence on his young daughter: “At a family barbeque, Lilly held up a lamb chop and announced 'My father spruiked for this'!”
From a background in acting and the arts, John L. Simpson's tenacity and fierce adherence to story, character and social justice in his films is known throughout the Australian film industry. He came to national prominence in 2007, when he picked up the rights to Dee McLachlan's suburban-slavery tale The Jammed and saved her deeply-personal project from straight-to-DVD ignominy. The old-school producer self-distributed the film, hammered out percentages with independent and arthouse cinemas and marketed the film from the ground up (he stood outside Greater Union's Russell Street complex in Melbourne, distributing flyers). Despite his films dealing with such hot-button issues as prostitution, men's mental health and male bonding, Simpson cites the great showmen P.T. Barnum, flamboyant entertainer Reg Livermore and the 'show-must-go-on' attitude of the great Australian pictureshow men as his inspirations.
“Quite a few years ago, at the Byron Bay Film Festival, every speaker got up and spoke about how dark and bleak everything in the industry was, and I was shocked,” he says, recalling a time when he observed a veteran documentary maker take a stand for the passion that Simpson believes should define a nation's film culture. “I don't remember his name, I wish I did, but he stood up and said 'Shut up about money. Steal the stock, steal a camera, borrow someone's computer. If you're not making a film, you're not passionate enough and you shouldn't be making films!'” It was a defining moment for Simpson, then still new to the producing game. “I heard that and I thought 'Yeah, you're right'.”
Though the distribution and exhibition landscape has become an increasingly tough slog for the independent producer, Simpson is supremely confident that quality films that fill a niche and are marketed precisely, will never disappear. “The struggle is very, very hard, but those that have to tell their story, do get to tell their story”, he says. “It is a huge challenge, but maybe an artform as important as filmmaking needs people who are that passionate”.
Simpson refuses to let his films fight their own battles once he has opened them, and it's because of his commitment to linking the films with their audience that arthouse exhibitors still talk to him. “I don't just put our films out there and think 'oh well...'” He laughs when recalling some of the venues in which he's screened The Jammed (United Nations Human Rights Conventions in New York, Vienna and Geneva) and Men's Group (the RAAF Williams Base in country Victoria and a Tasmanian prison). “You have to swim upstream as an independent producer and distributor because you don't have the big distribution deals that the studios have with the Hoyts and Greater Union people. “
His outspokenness used to shock some in the industry, but most now realise he speaks in truths that few are willing to put on record. Recently, views he expressed in Andrew Scarano's documentary Into The Shadows, in which he took the commercial cinema chains to task for their “dodgy distribution deals”, rattled a few cages. “My training as an artist and an actor taught me to express myself, so coming into the film business....ok, sometimes I'm naive and I just open my mouth....but I'm doing what I am trained to do, expressing what I believe in and what I have come to understand many people believe in.”
Given the opportunity, Simpson is quick to reiterate his thoughts on the brutal terms and short-sighted practices which afflict our national cinema. “Keeping shut may be prudent, but I'm also compelled to say that if there are really bad deals out there, especially if it (represents) might crushing the spirit of the filmmakers or prohibiting our stories or making really stupid decisions about great films like The Jammed...” He pauses, though it's hard to judge if it's to bite his lip or reload. “You know, I'm not trying to rub anybody's nose into anything, I'm just saying 'Why isn't anybody talking about how dodgy all this stuff is!'” He laughs wryly, fully aware the accepted practice is not to mouth off. “The unspoken law is 'You better shut up or the bully is going to get you'. I just can't seem to shut-up...”
His penchant for taking on the establishment reaches new heights in his latest film, Mother Fish. Director Khoa Do's mesmerising refugee drama, which screened under the title Missing Water at the 2009 Sydney Film Festival to rapturous acclaim, has undergone some re-editing (“We've sharpened up the front end so that it goes between the two realities more efficiently”) and has had some real-life political soundbites inserted to give the already potent film even greater impact. “The movie was going in a particular way anyway but now it's even more relevant to the asylum seeker issue.”
With two other films set for release in 2010 - Blind Company (“without a doubt, Colin Friels' finest film performance to date”) and Dee McLachlan's follow-up to The Jammed, Eliminated (“a film of big, bold themes and a truly international cast, talking to issues like celebrity and racism – it will be unrecognisable as an Australian film”), John L. Simpson has remained faithful to the ideals upon which he founded Titan View. “I want to see characters inter-relating, experiencing transformation; I want to see films that explore the human condition.” The passion that inspired Lilly to declare the symbolism of her lamb chop continues to fuel Simpson and his team. “I'm not in the business just to be in the business,” he declares. “I'm happy to be poor but I'm not happy to spend my life in slavery and drudgery, just a cog in a wheel facilitating the production of or the distribution of just anything.”
Share
