Author Archives: Bill Bennett

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About Bill Bennett

I am an Australian based producer and director of feature films and documentaries, and author of several novels and non-fiction books.

The Golden Bridge – genesis

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How my latest novel, The Golden Bridge, came into being is very strange – and I still don’t fully understand it.

It was in the middle of COVID, it was the middle of winter, and it was the middle of the night.

I woke up and there it was, right in front of me, fully formed.
I can’t explain it better than that.
The whole story was fully formed.
The character, the journey, the arc.
Everything I needed to start writing.

I hadn’t dreamt it.
This wasn’t the stuff of dreams.
But it woke me up.

I said no.

I didn’t want to write the story. I didn’t think there was a market for it. I didn’t want to spend 12 months of my life writing something that no one would ever get to read. It wasn’t the kind of story that I would normally write anyway. The whole thing just made no sense to me.

And so I said no.
I’m not going to write this.

They came back immediately and they said: Yes, you are going to write this!

Who were “they?”
I don’t know.
They were those that had delivered me the story, and they were insistent that I write this.

Again I said no.

I knew that to do the story justice, it would require a level of writing expertise that I didn’t think I possessed. I knew intuitively that it would be the hardest thing I would ever write.

I flat out said NO, this is not something I can do.
This is not something I want to do.
It will be a total waste of time.

(Here I am, in my bed in the middle of night, in the middle of winter, during the middle of the pandemic having this weird conversation in my mind with God knows what, or who. The whole thing was completely bizarre.)

They held firm.
They were not going to budge.
They told me I had to write it, and that was that.
No arguments.

So, a few days later I started.

I would get up at 4am or thereabouts, go downstairs and have a double espresso, and then in a half somnolent state I would begin to write. My job was to keep my mind clear so that I could allow an unfettered passage to whatever wished to come in.

I didn’t want to impose, I didn’t want to interfere.
I wrote with craft, of course, and with style.
To deny ego in a creative process is to deny your own unique voice.

I didn’t meditate.
I just tried to keep my mind clear.

I started out thinking it would be the hardest thing I would ever write.
It turned out to be the easiest.
And in fact now I look back at the manuscript and wonder how on earth did that happen?

I would write from about 4am-4:30am till about 9:30am. By that stage I would have written about 1,000 words, sometimes a little more. I didn’t take a day off until I’d finished. The book is approximately 75,000 words.

At times I would need to do research. The chapter The Dowser required research. I found myself reading a lot of Alice Bailey’s work, in particular The Soul and its Mechanism, and The Consciousness of the Atom. Also Saint Germain on Alchemy.

But most of the book just came to me.

When I finished the manuscript I did some revisions, and then I sought publication. I got an offer from a major New York publishing house and suddenly found myself with a publisher that had published the works of some incredibly famous people. Like, seriously famous authors.

But the fit wasn’t right.

I wasn’t happy with the commercial deal terms, and I wasn’t convinced that the publisher would really work my book. I worried that it could just get lost in amongst everything else he was doing. So I pulled away.

The book is now set up with a smaller imprint based in Melbourne. I know this publisher, James Terry at Arcadia Press, and I know James will work the book hard to get it into the best bookstores and outlets. The book will be formally launched by Arcadia early next year.

In the interim I have put the book out on Amazon –

The Golden Bridge on Amazon.com
The Golden Bridge on Amazon.com.au

Some people who’ve read it describe it as “the new The Alchemist.”
Someone else described it as “a quiet little masterpiece.”

All I know is that this book came to me in a seriously weird way. Was it channelled? All creative endeavours are channelled. That’s how creativity works. Having a work channelled doesn’t make it special. That’s the norm.

But if I leave this plane having written The Golden Bridge and made the film The Way, My Way, then I’ll be happy that my work here is done. Anything else is a bonus.

Why elephants? Why India?

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We’ve shifted into sound post production with The Way, My Way – and there’s not much for us to do at this stage of things, so I decided that Jennifer and I could productively use our time to do research and location surveys on a story that’s intrigued me for some time.

And by some time, I mean for about twelve years or so.
That’s often how long I need to sit with a story to allow it to marinate before I feel sufficiently comfortable to move ahead on it – or not.

Kiss or Kill took ten years, In a Savage Land took eight, The Nugget had a long gestation period of over a decade, and this current film The Way, My Way, was percolating away for seven years before we upped tools and began production.

I can’t really remember when I first read Tarquin Hall’s To an Elephant Graveyard, but it would have been a good twelve years ago, maybe longer.

It was an obscure book, set in Assam in the north east of India, and it detailed how a council of villagers hired a hunter to track down and kill a “rogue” elephant. The story was told through the eyes of a journalist sympathetic to the elephant.

I found it a fascinating story, and one that would allow me to explore the destruction of natural habitats, and the dysfunction and disconnect between man and nature.

Assam though is fraught with political difficulties, not a very safe place to visit I was told, but then in research I discovered that there was a place called the Elephant Mountains in a remote region of Tamil Nadu in southern India that had one of the largest concentration of elephants in the world.

I also discovered that a scientist by the name of Dr Anand Kumar, Chief Scientist at the Nature Conservation Foundation, was a world expert in what’s called elephant / human conflict. In other words, deaths resulting from human / elephant interactions. The place where he’d done most of his research was in the Elephant Mountains.

So I contacted Dr Kumar from Australia and arranged for Jennifer and me to spend a few days with him and his associate in the NCF, Ganesh Raghunathan. (Ganesha by the way is one of the most prominent of Hindi gods – an elephant god believed to be a clearer of obstacles.)

They were very generous with their time with us. And they immediately informed me that the story in To an Elephant Graveyard simply wouldn’t fly.

For starters they railed against the notion of a rogue or killer elephant. In scientific terms they didn’t see elephants in that way at all. Elephant behaviour was far more complex and sophisticated – and to be branded rogue or killer was simply sensationalism – and they wished to have no part in any production that sought to go down that path.

Equally, they said that a village group hiring a hunter to kill an elephant just wouldn’t happen, even fifteen or twenty years ago. Apart from the fact that it was then and still is illegal, they pointed out that elephants in India are deities — they worship Ganesha, the elephant god.

So that killed stone dead my thoughts of making a film around that book.
That’s okay.
Maybe there was a better story to be told within this arena.

And there is!
A way better story.

During the time spent with Anand and Ganesh, they gave us information and told us true stories which you simply couldn’t make up.

Put into a dramatic narrative form, they will make for a film that will have way more impact than the story I started out with. It will be far more intriguing, and it will say things about the co-existance of man and the natural world in ways that will be fresh, original, and will be a full-blast emotional rollercoaster.

Jennifer and I had to come to the Elephant Mountains and spend time with these very special people and get out and see locations for ourselves – be on the ground talking not only to scientists but villagers and others as well – to feel comfortable that we will be attempting to undertake a film that, like The Way, My Way, can be told with the utmost authenticity.

Now I have a big write ahead of me.

The Way, My Way – Q&As

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You’ll notice a new look to the blog – I’m using the key art from the film – the poster artwork, which is interim artwork until a distributor comes on board – but more on that later… oh and by the way, I notice from the analytics that this blog has been getting a lot of traffic recently, so I’m going to eat my bran and be more regular, I promise!

Firstly, there’s been a lot of interest in the film lately so I thought I would use my blog to update you all on what’s really happening, as against what’s purported to be happening.

QUESTION: What stage is the film at right now?

The film is now at fine cut stage. What that means is that after nearly six months of editing, we have locked off the picture cut. It´s running time is 103 mins, without end credits. I’m finally happy with the cut – at least, I’m happy enough – for if truth be told, I could spend another twelve months or more in the editing room fine fine tuning with Rishi Shukla, my trusted editor, but to what end? At some point I have to let go of my baby.

QUESTION: What happens next?

The next stage is sound post-production, which is probably even more complex than picture post production.

Fortunately I have the best sound team in the country, and indeed one of the best in the world in Wayne Pashley and Libby Pashley and their team at Big Bang Sound. They were Oscar nominated last year for their work on Baz Luhrmann´s Elvis. Their previous credits include Mad Max Fury Road, the Babe movies and Happy Feet for George Miller.

Wayne and Lib have done all my movies since Kiss or Kill in 1996, for which they won the AFI Award for Best Sound.

Sound post will take us up to next February, So the film won’t be completed until end of Feb earliest.

QUESTION: What’s happening with distribution?

Now that the film is in sufficient shape to show distributors, we’re beginning to have screenings. We’ve already had interest from one major distributor here in Australia, and we’re hoping that an offer might be forthcoming.

Once we have an Australian distributor locked in we´ll then seek a foreign sales agent. This has to be done linearly, step by step. I’ve been producing movies now for forty years and I know my way around distribution and exhibition enough to know that you can’t rush these things.

I’ve brought on veteran distributor Richard Becker to act as consultant in these matters. Richard is retired now, but he’s been a huge fan of this movie right from the getgo, and he’s providing invaluable advice. Distribution and marketing is a minefield, and even someone with my experience needs someone like Richard to guide the film through this minefield.

QUESTION: When am I going to be able to see it? And where?

That’s the key question, and the answer is I don’t know, and the decision isn’t mine anyway – it will not even be the distributor´s decision most likely – it will be the exhibitors´. They’re the ones that call the shots. If a distributor can’t get the screens, then they can’t release the movie.

If everything falls into place, then I’m hoping – and I emphasise the word hoping – that the film will be in cinemas in Australia in the first half of 2024, and internationally sometime after that.

Streaming then will follow – and as for the timing on that, it will depend on the distributors, because they’ll most probably hold those rights.

But you know, there’s another scenario:

The film gets invited into Official Selection at the Cannes Film Festival, the film gets a ten minute standing ovation in the Palais, after the screening there’s a bidding war between Netflix, Amazon, A24 and a bunch of others, Netflix offers us US$20m and it takes us all of five seconds to accept their offer, they give the film a short theatrical release to qualify for the Oscars, then a quick window to streaming – meanwhile the film goes on to take out Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Screenplay – I accept the three Oscars with practiced humility, the film then gets another run in the cinemas, and I´m then signed by Warner Bros to direct a Marvel spinoff movie for a directing fee of $7.5m with 5% from dollar one.

I like that scenario.

haha

The reality is that first we have to finish the movie then we have to get distribution then we have to market the film very carefully. I’ve seen too many good films fall through the cracks to be complacent about all this stuff. It´s a delicate and complex process making a movie – it´s even more delicate and complex selling it.

If you have anymore questions contact me at: CaminoFilmProds@gmail.com

Oh and by the way, I am going to be blogging more regularly so please follow me here to ensure that you get these incredibly witty and insightful missives.

Now the fun starts…

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After five weeks of filming in Spain then a few days filming in Mudgee, Australia, we’ve now completed Principal Photography for my Camino film, The Way, My Way – based on my memoir of the same title.

Now the fun starts.

Everything comes down to editing. All the decisions you make as a director on location are based on how it´s all going to cut together in the editing room.

Given the way this film was shot, the editing process will be even more crucial than normal.

As per my style in such films as Kiss or Kill, Malpractice, Tempted, or Backlash – this is a film that has a high degree of improvisation. This was necessary for when we came to shoot with the “actuals” – the actual pilgrims that I met and walked with on my original Camino ten years ago.

They’ve come back to play themselves in the movie.

Their involvement dictated a certain style of performance from the actors, but also it influenced the shooting and hence the editing style. The actuals were real, they were authentic, so the surrounding performances had to match their verisimilitude pitch-perfectly. A more formal, “dramatic” visual style would have been totally out of kilter with the authenticity of the actuals´ performances.

To keep the location crew size down to a minimum, I had no continuity person on set, however I had two cameras on just about everything we shot, so I know I’ve got the coverage to get me out of trouble if needs be,

Rishi Shukla is my editor. He cut the two theatrical feature documentaries I’ve done lately: PGS – Intuition is your Personal Guidance System, and Facing Fear. Editing a dramatic feature film is a whole other ballgame though. The rules are totally different, and this will be Rishi´s first movie as a feature editor. But I’ve seen his choices in the assembly so far and I know he’ll do a mighty fine job, like he’s done with everything else we’ve worked on.

I look forward to the next 12-15 weeks or so in the editing room with him.

Going back some fifty years – yes, fifty years – when I first determined that I wanted to make films, the first book I read was Karel Reisz¨s classic, The Technique of Film Editing, written in 1953.

As a young cadet journalist working for the ABC in Brisbane at the time, I would read this book in the back of the camera car as we went out each day to cover news stories. I also read Film Sense, by Sergei Eisenstein.

I read these two books over and over.

Everyone – cameramen, journos, the editors – they all thought I was a wanker. But instinctively I knew that if I wanted to learn how to make films, I had to learn editing, and both those books were the definitive works. They’re still as relevant today as they were fifty years ago.

Later, I would enroll in a three year acting course so that I could understand performance.

Editing is the key to film production.
And I’m jumping out of my skin to start!

To Make a Movie is to Go to War –

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I’ve just been to war.
And it´s not over yet.

For the past five week I’ve been directing a feature film in Spain, along the Camino de Santiago. The film is called The Way, My Way, based on my Camino memoir of the same name.

I’m heading back home for a further period of shooting in Australia next week. Then comes months and months of post production. Then comes months and months of marketing and publicity.

It´s taken me nearly seven years working on this project to get to where I am right now, and probably more than forty different drafts of the script. I’ve lost count.

I’ve had constant rejections – from actors, from distributors, from financiers, from functionaries in government film offices who weren’t even born when I made my first movie.

They all, for their own reasons, said no.
For some, it was too much a risk.
For some, they didn’t believe in me.
For some, they saw me as a filmmaker that once showed talent, but that talent left the building a long time ago. Thank you and goodnight.

If this were a war and each rejection were a bullet, my body would be riddled by now. It would be lying in the mud in the trenches, a bloody mess. It would be so shredded they’d need my dog tags to identify me.

But somehow I’ve managed to pick myself up after each mortal wounding, and I’ve picked up my weapon, put my armour back on, and I’ve gone back to war, to fight yet another battle, to face further bullets, further assaults, further indignities.

What is my weapon?
My weapon is my vision.
I see the film already made.
There can be no more powerful weapon.

What is my armour?
My armour is my implaccable determination.
It´s my shield, it´s my suit of kevlar, it deflects most of the ordinance.

Most, not all.

Some of it somehow manages to get through the layers of protection I’ve built up around me over the years, over the decades of fighting, and it wounds me. It hurts, and it leaves scar tissue.

Each war, each movie, extracts its toll.
But the fight is worth it.

This latest film – my fourteenth feature film as writer/producer/director, my fifteenth as writer/director, my sixteenth as director only – was also a war, and the war will be ongoing until way after its release, sometime next year.

Who am I fighting?
My most powerful and cunning of enemies is myself.

My fears.
My willingness to compromise.
My unwillingness to compromise.
My loss of vision.
My sheer exhaustion.
My creative inadequacies.
My empathy.

To be a good film director you have to be a bastard at times.

But this is war, fuckit.

I have one chance in my life to make this film – a film that will last – and I’m going to do everything I possibly can to make it the best film it possibly can be.

I fight other enemies too.

The budget.
There’s never enough money.
The weather.
There’s never enough days of light. Beautiful light.
There’s never enough days of storm and thunder. There’s always too much ordinariness. That’s one of my biggest enemies – weather and light that’s ordinary.
Time.
There’s simply never enough time to do what I really want to do:
People.
Invariably in a war situation, people show their true colours. Some shine, some disappoint. That’s human nature.

I’m never alone when I go to war.

I’m surrounded by highly talented, highly experienced veterans, and sometimes rookies too, who share the vision and in their own highly specialised way join me in this particular battle.

For me they are a source of joy and wonderment and they save my life every day.
Every day I look around me and I quietly say thank you. Today you saved my life.

By my side is Jennifer.
She believes when I lose faith.
She takes risks when I’m too scared to.
She sees it done when my exhaustion clouds my view.
She cops the flak so that I can keep fighting.

Without her, I wouldn’t have the strength to pull myself up out of the bloodied muddy trenches and get back out there to face another day.

Making a movie is like going to war.
Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

Whatever the outcome, it´s a privilege to have the opportunity to fight for a vision that can hopefully have a positive and uplifting impact around the world.

Casting The Way, My Way – Part 2

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As I said in my previous post, the casting of the film adaptation of my book, The Way, My Way, didn’t happen overnight.

I mean, how do you cast someone to play me?

I rejected Brad Pitt because he wasn’t buffed enough, I rejected George Clooney because he wasn’t suave enough, I rejected Hugh Jackman because I was concerned he couldn’t do a convincing Australian accent…

So I cast Chris Haywood.

Chris is one of Australia’s finest actors. Theatre trained, with more than one hundred Australian films under his belt, Chris was a natural choice for many reasons.

Firstly, Chris and I go back to 1984, when he played the lead, opposite Jennifer Cluff who played female lead, in my Vietnam veterans drama, A Street to Die. Chris won the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Actor for his performance, and later we worked on other films too.

Perhaps the most memorable was in my Outback noir thriller, Kiss or Kill, where he played a detective chasing down a serial killer. The film includes the now famous “bacon scene,” which won Chris another AFI nomination.

Here is that scene:
https://aso.gov.au/titles/features/kiss-or-kill/clip3/

Sometime back I´d made the decision to have the real pilgrims who walked with me play themselves in the movie. I knew that Chris was masterful at working with “actuals,” and he was also unfazed by working on small productions.

I needed this film to be crewed tight and lean because there was no way I could get the real authenticity of the Camino if I had a large crew. I knew that Chris would chip in, become part of the team, part of the family – which he has done with full vigor.

Chris and I have kept in touch over the years and he knows me. That was also an important factor in the casting. If an actor was to play me, then that actor needed to know me. Yes Chris is a few years older, but that didn’t bother me – he has a mischievous and rascally streak in him and a flagrant disregard for rules regulations and authority, which some people claim is what I have.

Personally, I don’t see it, but then how would I know.

There are four other actors in the film, the rest are “actuals,” or non actors.

The first is Jennifer Cluff, who plays my wife in the film. Perhaps I should call her an actual, but she’s one of Australia’s finest actresses with a career that goes back to . She played Chris Haywood´s wife in A Street to Die.

Laura Lakshmi (below) plays the role of Rosa, who was one of the Biarritz Taxi Four, the four of us sharing a taxi from Biarritz airport to St Jean Pied de Port – and forming friendships for life. The real Rosa couldn’t unfortunately join the production because she’s just had a young baby. But Laura has done a stellar job in playing her…

Pia Thunderbolt plays the character of Cristina, who is a mysterious and haunted looking pilgrim who intersects with Bill’s journey to Santiago intermittently. She finally reveals her devastating secret on the mountain top of O Cebriero. Cristina is a composite character of several pilgrims I met on my five Caminos.

Spanish acto Daniel Espuńa plays a pilgrim I met on and off along the way. He told me that when he first met me, I came across as an arrogant wanker (I’m certain he must’ve mistaken me for someone else) but that later on when he met me again, I’d changed.

Then there’s the “actuals,” and the non actors. The actuals include:

Balazs Orban, who was one of the Taxi Four and played a huge role in helping me finish the Camino. He’s Hungarian, and a remarkable man –

Then there’s another Hungarian, Laszlo Vas, who was an inspiration to me during my walk, and to all of us in the crew during filming.

The two pilgrims that make such an impact in my book, and have become dear friends to Jennifer and me, are Ivan the Terrible (Beeel) and His Beautiful Wife Giovanna. (You take taxi, no?) They were on set every day, even when not doing their scenes, and kept me laughing always.

The non actors, those that aren’t professional actors but who have a connection with the Camino and who play roles are:

Kurt Koontz, a dear dear friend from Boise Idaho who plays an American I met who was quite convinced that I made porn. Kurt did a remarkable job playing a skirt-chasing mysoginistic loud-mouth and Kurt told me it was a big stretch for him to play such a role – he had absolutely no idea why I’d cast him – but he’d do his best. His best will be one of the highlights of the film.

Another dear Camino friend is Patty Talbot, who plays a woman whose name I can’t remember. Patty, in her performance, left Kathey Bates in Misery in the shade…

On my Camino, I asked a waiter to take a group photo of myself with my pilgrim friends. The waiter, predictably, took the shot and left in too much headroom. I told him this, gave him the camera back, asked him to do it again. Again there was too much headroom. I pointed this out to him, again asked him to take the shot and this time to get it right – we must have done it five or six times and he nearly knocked my block off.

Marie Dominique Rigaud, another very close Camino friend, played the role with gusto and left us all laughing –

The actuals and non actors have given performances that are real and truthful. And the actors, working with them, have had to fine tune their performances to match their level of authenticity.

It´s going to be a unique film.

Casting The Way, My Way – Part 1

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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…

End of Wk1 of shoot…

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Yesterday we finished the first week of what will be a 5 wk shot on my movie, The Way, My Way – an adaptation of my book of the same title.

I was rusty the first few days. It took me a little while to remember how to direct a feature film, as against the theatrical documentaries I’ve been doing these past several years.

It’s been 23 years since I directed The Nugget, starring Eric Bana, and 15 years since I directed my supernatural thriller, Uninhabited. But with sixteen feature films under my belt I finally found my groove and recalled that at the end of a take, the director is meant to call out “cut!”

I’m fortunate to be working with one of the best crews I’ve ever had on a movie – and believe me, I’ve worked with some of the finest in the world.

DP (Director of Photography) Calum Stewart will, I have no doubt, at some stage join the élite pantheon of Australian DPs who have made their mark on the world stage. And I don’t say that lightly. How circumstances worked to have Calum do this picture is, quite simply, yet another instance of the Universe doing what it does best – bringing the right elements into alignment.

Second Camera and Drone Operator Scott Last, who’s done the stunning drone work for PGS and Facing Fear, here in Spain on the Camino is like a kid in a lolly shop. The visual opportunities it’s presenting him are spinning him out.

Mind you, Scotty’s usually spun out anyway.

Sound Recordist Nick Emond just completed a $60m movie and decided that he’d “get back to his roots” and do my film.

I saw him the other day carry two tripods up a steep hill in St Jean Pied de Port for the camera department. I was gobsmacked. That simply doesn’t happen on an ordinary movie. The camaraderie on this film humbles me.

Yesterday Nick was joined by one of Australia’s finest boom swingers, Gary Nucifora. We have some tricky dialogue scenes coming up in the next few weeks and I felt the production needed his vast experience.

The camaraderie on set is happening in large part because of “Cowboy” Dave Sutttor, who has stepped away from his role of providing vehicles and doing unit for the mega-budget movies which shoot in Australia to do my small personal film. Dave and I go back a long way, and I’m so fortunate to have him here.

As I am with my First AD, Rachel Artis Evans, whom I wrenched off the golf course and out of fifteen years of comfortable retirement to bring some sanity to this craaaazy production, as Ivan the Terrible would describe it.

(Ivan the Terrible is one of the pilgrims featured in my book. He’s a gorgeous man with a huge heart who made me laugh constantly during my pilgrimage. Beeel, what are you doing here??)

Rachel and I last worked on The Nugget and she is perfect for this movie. Every day I’m in awe of her genius in wrangling the crew, scheduling the day so that Calum and I get the best light, and most importantly, handling me – which as Jennifer will tell you, is no easy task.

Editor Rishi Shukla has joined us this first week to present me with a few cut scenes so that I can determine that the style and look and tone are working as I’d imagined. I am so grateful that he’s come – his presence here has given all of us in the technical areas great comfort.

Backing all this up in the Production Office is Line Producer Annie Kinnane, who is bringing to the production a structure and a fiscal control that’s enabling me to focus on what I need to do, and that is to direct a (hopefully!) great movie.

She’s being aided by Associate Producer Belinda Dean, who has just joined us here in Spain. Belinda has been terrific in organising some sponsorship.

Annie’s lot is not an easy one, because we have such limited resources – but she’s doing a great job in making those resources stretch as far as possible, so we get maximum impact up on the screen.

I can say already after week one, this will be a film that will look many times its budget.

Our daughter Nell is also here assisting us. She speaks both Spanish and Basque fluently, and she’s brought to the aid of the production what we call our “Camino Fixer,” Paco Plaza. He is a high level corporate executive living in Spain. They’re doing big picture stuff, helping organise Spanish Government grants and getting us permission to film in places which are usually inaccessible to film crews.

I can’t mention everyone working on this movie in this post, but a highly experienced Camino guide and author (Finding Love on the Camino), Deb Wilson, has joined the production and has done an amazing job in locking in logistics – accommodation, glorious restaurants etc. She’s English, but speaks Spanish and French fluently, and I’ve snaffled her as my assistant.

Everyday she makes my job easier through her care and exactitude.

I’ll also mention Tiffany Chuck, who’s doing standby props and wardrobe. Her enthusiasm, her energy and her laughter light up the set every day. And Camera Assistant Daniel Acora, who has stepped in at short notice and has become an invaluable part of the team.

And of course there’s Jennifer – who has an overview unmatched by us all, myself included often. Her wisdom and unfailing belief in this project, and me, is what keeps me going.

This film wouldn’t be happening without her.
She’s fearless.

It’s a small crew I’ve got, but every single person working on this show is top of their game, and a joy to work with.

I’ll do a separate post on cast and “actuals,” those pilgrims that I met on my walk 10 years ago who are coming back to play themselves.

But crew-wise, I couldn’t have a better team of people helping me bring this story to life.

Two days out from shoot, another strange occurrence…

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I woke up suddenly last night.

A light woke me up. It was the light from my Fitbit watch, on my wrist. For some strange reason, it was rebooting, and the light had woken me –

In all the years I’ve been wearing a Fitbit, this is the first time that’s ever ever rebooted of its own accord. But last night it did, and it woke me.

I watched it, and once the reboot was finished, up came the time on the watch face – in big numerals:

3:33

That’s what came up on my watch face; 3:33. I did a Google search, to find out what 3:33 meant, and I discovered that I was being guided and protected by “one or more Ascended Spiritual Masters,” and that they had heard my call for help.

I have been calling for help in the past few days. The filming for my movie, The Way, My Way, starts the day after tomorrow and I have been going through periods of self-doubt and panic, and yes – fear – and then last night, this happened.

It was just so weird. Like meeting Dana Gassaway in the O Gato Negro restaurant in Santiago a few days earlier, and him telling me he stood on the star in the chapel at the Burgos Cathedral and he too lost his pain. (see previous blog).

To take my mind off things, and to relax, I’ve been reading The Way Some People Die. This is not a spiritual book, this is hard-boiled crime fiction, written in 1951 by Ross Macdonald, regarded as one of the greatest crime authors of all time – up there with Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.

The New York Times says that he took crime fiction into literature. And I agree. I’m bowled over by his use of prose, and his dissection of the human spirit.

Why aren’t I reading my script? I figure that the more relaxed I am, the better I’m able to tap into my innate storytelling skills – and reading Ross Macdonald reminds me what’s possible.

But getting back to my Fitbit rebooting, and waking me up to tell me it was 3:33. I don’t regard this as coincidence. I do believe now that our spiritual guides connect with us through such occurrences. I never used to believe this stuff, but now I do.

Walking the Camino was the first step in my shift in consciousness.

A chance meeting?

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After completing my first Camino in 2013, and after receiving my Compostela and attending the midday Pilgrim’s Mass in the Santiago Cathedral, I then met up with the pilgrims that I’d walked with on and off during the past thirty days: Balazs, Laszlo, Rosa, and Ivan the Terrible and his Beautiful Wife Giovanna.

We went to Santiago’s classic restaurant, the O Gato Negro – and we had a long lunch, and I remember feeling a happiness I’d not felt since my wedding day (at that stage) some thirty-one years earlier.

As part of the film that’s now underway, a reimagining of my Camino Memoir, The Way My Way, we’ll be recreating that lunch in the same part of that tiny restaurant – and today we surveyed the location in preparation for the shoot.

So there were seven of us in the crew in the O Gato Negro today, combining our location survey with lunch, and we were at the same table in the same backroom where I’d had that lunch ten years earlier. A man sitting at a table across from us stared at me and called out: Are you Bill Bennett?

I said yes, and stood as he came over.

He was a big man, in his 70s, an American – and he said: I knew you were in Spain right now but I never thought I’d meet you.

He then went on to explain that he’d read my blog when I walked that Camino in 2013, then he read my book, then he went and saw my film PGS Intuition is your Personal Guidance System when it screened in San Diego in 2018 during its US cinema run. 

That was extraordinary in itself – that we should meet like that.
But the thing that knocked me out was this:

He told me that he read in my blog, then later in my book, that when I arrived into Burgos in 2013, I went immediately into the Cathedral. I was in a great deal of pain from my knee, and I found myself in one of the Cathedral’s chapels. There was a star on the floor of this chapel, made out of black and white tiles, well worn by the centuries. I stood on this star, then felt compelled to look up – and discovered that high in the vaulted ceiling above me was another star, made from leadlight glass.

Immediately I felt a rush run through my body, from the star above me, through the top of my head down through my body into my feet to the star I was standing on, then back up again. I described it at the time as a rush of divine ecstasy.

I then walked out of that Cathedral with no more pain in my knee. 

Anyway, this gentleman told me that a year later, in 2014, he was walking the Camino and he too was in pain when he got to Burgos. His pain was in his feet. He could barely walk. But he remembered what I’d written and so he made his way into the Cathedral and he found the chapel and he too stood on the star – and he too walked away with his pain gone. 

He told me this today in the little restaurant, and I felt incredibly humbled, I have to say. Humbled that I recognised once again that there are greater forces at work than I often acknowledge, and that these forces are working through me and through many others – as a reminder that “…there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” as Hamlet says to Horatio, and as I quote in PGS. 

I left that restaurant today feeling very strange – this gentleman, Dana Gassaway, said that he’d never been to that restaurant before but a Camino friend, Kelly Lin (a Taiwanese pilgrim and author), had suggested it, and had he not been in the backroom he would not have seen me (and recognised me from my blog.)

Not one hour earlier, I was speaking with one of our crew, Paco Plaza, (our brilliant Spanish locations fixer) about getting permission to film in the Burgos Cathedral, and I’d shown him photos of that star on the floor, and the domed star.

I’d explained to him what had happened. How after standing on that star the pain in my knee disappeared. Less than an hour later I met Dana in the O Gato Negro and he told me his story.

A chance meeting?
I don’t think so.
Coincidence?
I don’t think so.

This film is coming together in ways that sometimes leave me in a state of awe and wonder.