Who’s in the movie The Way My Way, and why did I make the casting choices that I did?

To understand the casting, you have to know how this film came about.

This film, like most films that I do, has had a very long gestation period. Like about six or seven years. And let me say here that I never set out to make a movie about myself. That was the last thing I ever wanted to do.

After walking the Camino, I sat down and wrote my memoir for the sole purpose of trying to make sense of why I’d done the walk. I’d arrived in Santiago de Compostela after 30 days of walking in a huge amount of pain, confused as to why I’d put myself through it all.

I’d hoped that in writing the book, the reason would reveal itself.

It didn’t.

The transformative power of the Camino is such that it wasn’t until many years later that I was able to look back with a much deeper realisation of why I’d been so compelled to do that pilgrimage.

Anyway, I self-published the book and had no expectations for it. Ten years later it’s still selling strongly and it now has more than a thousand five star reviews on Amazon. Many say in their reviews that it’s the best Camino book they’ve read.

One of the people who read the book was veteran Australian distributor Richard Becker. The book had a profound impact on him and he urged me to make a film on it.

I said no, emphatically.

I didn’t think there was a film in it, and I certainly didn’t want to make a film about myself. Not for any reasons of vanity or to protect myself from public ridicule – it was more that technically, I couldn’t see a way of writing a film about myself.

And also I wasn’t interested.

I know me, now.

I didn’t then, but now I do.

I’d done the walk, I’d written the book. The Camino, for me, had fulfilled its purpose. There were other films I wished to make, such as my PGS series. But Richard was insistent, and so eventually I told him I’d take a swing at it.

As soon as I disengaged myself from the central character, being me, and began to see myself in the third person as a deeply flawed and humorously self-absorbed control freak who simply didn’t have a clue as to the carnage he left in his wake as he journeyed through life, then the character started to interest me and the screenplay began to take shape.

But the writing took literally dozens of drafts and many years.

At first it was going to be a big budget movie with star casting. Richard brought on a major Hollywood sales agent, and that sales agent required a “name” to play me in order for the film to be financed.

We went out to Mel Gibson, Pierce Brosnan, Ricky Gervais, Ewan McGregor, Rufus Sewell, Eric Bana, amongst many others – they all politely said no.

We didn’t go out to Hugh Jackman because we figured he’d be otherwise occupied – and I didn’t want him anyway because he wasn’t good looking enough.

The only actor, in my mind, who was perfect for the role of playing me was… wait for it…

George Clooney,

of course,

but I believe he was busy doing Nespresso commercials on Lake Como.

This process of going out to big name cast took years. You have to go out with an offer one at a time – at this level you have to make a personal approach, with a money offer, and you have to wait.

Usually that takes several months.

You have to wait for it to get “coverage” through the actor’s agency. Coverage is a process of assessment, usually carried out by low level agency development staffers, who critically evaluate the screenplay and make certain recommendations.

If it gets good coverage it then goes to the next level of assessment, which is the Outer Circle of the actor’s “people.” If it’s passes their more highly skilled and critical eyes, then it goes to the actor’s “responsible” agent who, if you’re very lucky, will read the screenplay him/herself.

Then the Responsible Agent will look over the offer, he/she will do a thorough review of the director, past work etc, review the producers and any distributor or sales agent already attached ( if you haven’t got good distribution or a solid reputable sales agent in place you’re dead in the water) – only if all this checks out will the agent even discuss it with the actor, much less recommend that the actor reads it.

Like I say, this takes months, and you have to go out one at a time.

After several years of going through this frustrating and mind-numbing process, without any name actor saying yes, an actor “meaningful” enough to trigger the financing of a $10m movie, I finally got jack of it. I could see this film never getting made.

Not only that, I couldn’t see how you could possibly mount a big budget movie on the Camino, merely from a production perspective. Dozens of huge trucks, big disruptive lighting set-ups, the massive infrastructure of a major movie in remote and wild locations on the Camino – I just couldn’t see how it could work.

It’s not as if my partner Jennifer and I haven’t done that sort of thing before- we produced In a Savage Land on the Trobriand Islands in Papua New Guinea – an $8m period film in one of the most difficult and inaccessible places on the planet-

But the Camino is different.

Even if I were to snag a “meaningful” actor and secure finance, to do the film as a big budget production on the Camino would require me to fake a whole lot of things – and I didn’t want to do that. Plus there’s no way a big budget movie could ever cover the whole 800kms of the walk. It would be a massive compromise all the way through.

I wanted to make a film that showed the Camino with total authenticity – that traversed the entirety of the Camino, and got to the essence of the transformative power of this unique experience.

I also wanted to film with the real pilgrims I met on my walk. This to me would bring an undeniable truth to the film. I’d remained friends with them over the years and they were prepared to come join me on this crazy adventure.

So that meant rethinking everything – going super low budget, having a very small crew, working “within” the Camino rather than outside it – but what big name actor would be prepared to work this way? And work with the actual pilgrims who’d been so instrumental in making my Camino something so very special ~

There was only one actor I could think of who could play me with total verisimilitude, and be prepared to work within a super small production environment, and who was skilled and proficient in working with “real” people, and that actor was Chris Haywood.

Part 2 next…