One only need look to Steven Kastrissios to understand the commitment needed to make an independent feature film in Australia. Since 2003, he has done little else but nurture the life cycle of his directing debut, The Horseman.
“When we sold it, I thought 'Okay, it's sold now, I don't have to do anything', but then I had to oversee the technical stuff and then the marketing and then I had to try to book theatres and it just went on and on,” says Kastrissios, who spoke with SBS Film just a short walk from his home in Sydney's inner-west.
In addition to directing the brutal revenge-themed thriller, Kastrissios wrote, produced and edited the film and, on the eve of its long-awaited theatrical debut, has assumed the role of local-area marketeer – he carries with him a large envelope full of the film's poster, destined for telegraph poles around his neighbourhood. “It never fucking ends...it never ends....,” he bemoans, tongue-in-cheek.
Kastrissios is philosophical about his role as a low-budget filmmaker plying his trade. “It's tough to walk away from something once you've got it started, because you're not going to get your next one up if you do.”
From a film school course in his native Brisbane (where he first met The Horseman co-producer, Rebecca Dakin), Kastrissios worked in the post-production sector until the seed of an idea for his first script began to grow. “I spent two years trying to write scripts, and they all had revenge elements in them, that I ultimately abandoned just because they got too big for a micro-budgeted film,” he recalls, of a period early in 2003. “Then, out of frustration, I thought 'Why not just do an all-out revenge movie', which would be easy to do as a no-budget film – just a guy going house-to-house, equally psychological as well as the blood-and-guts and action.”
In hindsight, the writing of his debut feature was perhaps the easiest part of the entire journey. “I spent two weeks writing out the character arcs and then another month writing, just pumping out the final draft, which was pretty close to the final shooting script.” Shot over four 6-day weeks in the outer suburbs of Brisbane in 2005, the film follows a distraught father (stage veteran Peter Marshall) as he seeks out those involved in the making of a pornographic film that features his deceased daughter; a teenage runaway (Caroline Marohasy, in her film debut) befriends the vigilante and becomes in inextricably involved.
Fuelled by his grief, the everyman anti-hero inflicts heinous acts of torture and brutality upon those he tracks down, including graphic moments that involve fishing-hooks, bike pumps and crowbars – intense scenes that Kastrissios promises were anything but that during the shooting of the bloody film. “The tone on the set was the total opposite to the tone of the film,” he says, reassuringly. “We were laughing and joking all the way through. Peter Marshall would come in, scream his guts out, cry, attack people and then, thirty seconds later, he'd be laughing or going for a cigarette.” Kastrissios recalls it was a happy set and the collaboration is one he remembers with fondness. “Marshall is like a big kid; he and I spent most of the shoot laughing our arses off and teasing the art department girls.”
The seven-year journey to the limited cinema release the film will receive in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane this month has hardened the youthful-looking filmmaker. He completely understands that an R-rated genre film steeped in impactful violence is not an easy sell in today's exhibition sector, but admits to being surprised at how difficult it is to get a film like The Horseman seen anywhere. During the course of the interview, he reflects wryly and at length about the dire state of local funding opportunities, the close-mindedness of the international festival circuit (“I'm sure some of the genre festivals we submitted screeners to never even watched the film.”) and the misfortunes that can befall a small movie on the world stage (he shakes his head recalling the festival organisers who programmed the film, then lost the DVD and forgot they had booked it).
But Steven Kastrissios takes enormous pride in the successes his film has enjoyed – the influential founder of the Ain't It Cool website, Harry Knowles, championed the film; screenings at the Melbourne International Film Festival, the South-by-Southwest Film Festival in Texas (“People were yelling at the screen!”) and the leading horror/fantasy film gatherings Sitges, Frightfest and Fantasia secured a round of meetings with LA studio heads and agency representation in Hollywood (under Australian expat Bec Smith).
Most pleasing is the feedback he has received from his contemporaries. “The industry really seems to like the film, the fact that it is extremely independent and low-budget as well as beyond just the background of the production.” Despite horror hits like Greg McLean's Wolf Creek, Kastrissios knows such films are not always viewed as artistically noteworthy, but it is company that he is happy to be amongst. “Most of (Australia's) genre films have been a bit schlocky, which turned the industry off them a bit, but those films are a lot more fun and interesting than some of the other, more important films we've produced.”
