Way back then, before they made The Castle, the Working Dog team sat huddled in a think
tank. The tank had in it four film ideas, as Rob Sitch recalls. "The first one was
about a really bad tour bus through Central Australia – which has since been
done." (With some of the same cast; Roy Billing, who stars as the Mayor of Parkes in
The Dish, stars as the dodgy bus tour operator in John Polson’s debut feature, Siam
Sunset.)
"we went off and made The Castle then we came back to
it"
"Then there was one about a dog show. In fact, when we were in Toronto, there was
Christopher Guest's latest film, Best in Show [on that subject]…then we had an idea
about a kid that inherits a bad circus. And then Tom [Gleisner] said, did you know that
Australia was involved in the Apollo 11 mission. Australia doesn't have a space programme
so that made us very interested. And we researched it for a while and then we went off and
made The Castle then we came back to it and buried ourselves in it."
The team – Sitch, Cilauro, Gleisner, Jane Kennedy and executive producer Michael
Hirsch – made a decision early on not to name actual characters, a decision that even
extended to the Prime Minister of the day, John Gorton. In The Dish, the PM is played by
Bille Brown but is portrayed as an amalgam of Australian Prime Ministers from the 40s to
the 70s.
The actual Moon landing, in July 1969, is part of the film’s attraction. NASA,
says Sitch, was incredibly helpful. "NASA was very forthcoming. We got the complete
set of tapes of Armstrong, Aldrin, Collins and Huston command centre talking to each other
over the seven days – on the way to the Moon and on the way back. This was at the
extremes of human endeavour, people stretched beyond their capabilities. Yet they did not
have one angry word to each other in the entire seven days - at the peak of their tension.
It was really interesting how they spoke to each other."
"so bizarre they didn’t make it into the
script"
Other research took them to the various archives, from text to screen; some of the
elements they discovered were so bizarre they didn’t make it into the script. For
instance, under the circumstances, it would be viewed as over the top writing to have the
Mayor of Parkes called Cec Moon. But that was his real name.
Another was a small but interesting discovery, made during research: Armstrong and
Aldrin had written a thank you letter to the Parkes telescope operators in appreciation of
their efforts in the global televising of the Moon mission. Again, this was omitted from
the film; it could have been seen as gilding the lily by the filmmakers.
Shot on the actual location, The Dish looks remarkably authentic: strangely enough,
says Sitch, nothing much has changed since then, as far as outside appearances are
concerned. Even the old wooden telegraph poles are still carrying the electricity wires
across the paddocks around the telescope.
When it came to casting the film, the team had already targeted most of the actors they
wanted. "We'd done a lot of tv production," says Sitch, "and cast a lot of
people, so we had a fair idea. But Jane cast it from top to bottom and I think she does
that really well. We had said early on that we wanted to cast Sam Neill, but we always
assumed thought it would be in the too hard basket. When we finally got a script to him,
he responded really quickly, so that was a bit of a nice surprise. Then there was Kevin
Harrington, Tom Long – most people know them from Sea Change… When people are
interested in actors as Jane is, you have them on the radar for a long time."
There were a few exceptions: when Sitch was in New York on a private visit with Pat
McEnroe, he was shown some wedding photos. In one shot, there was a tall, white haired,
distinguished looking guest, and Sitch pointed him out. "That’s the sort of guy
we need to play the American Ambassador." The man turned out to be US stage actor
John McMartin.
"there’s a sensibility that comedy brings"
Cilauro says there was a desire to use certain comedic actors. "In The Castle
there were a lot of people who had comedy experience. We actually like putting comedy
people into dramatic roles. As Eric Bana proved in Chopper, I think there’s a
sensibility that comedy brings. . .that fear of dying in front of an audience that
encourages a meticulousness in everyone's performance, trying to stay true to the story,
and just to be totally focussed, to get everything right."
Publication date: October 14, 2000
