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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ten years yesterday, I walked into Santiago de Compostela and I stood in front of the Cathedral, like millions had done before me, and I called myself a pilgrim.
I had walked the Camino Frances, some 800kms from St Jean Pied de Port, but I’d walked most of the way in enormous pain with a knee that I would later discover was devoid of cartilage.
I’d walked bone-on-bone.
As I stood in front of the Cathedral I was expecting an epiphany as to why I’d put myself through what had been, at times, a torturous ordeal.
That epiphany never came.
So when I got back home to Australia I wrote a book, hoping that in the writing I would discover why I’d done the pilgrimage. That discovery never came either.
But I began to realise that walking the Camino had set in motion the impetus for change that would happen gradually over the next several years. The change was subtle, and stuttering, but cumulatively over a period of years the transformation was huge. So huge that I now divide my life into the years before the Camino and the years after the Camino.
And now I’m making a movie of that first Camino.
For the past few weeks I’ve been scouting locations during what we call pre-production of the movie. I’m here in Spain with the first troupe of crew – and I’m revisiting places that featured so prominently in my journey.
Yesterday I went back to the albergue in St Jean where I spent my first night before heading off the next morning. I walked through the ancient stone Porte and stood on the bridge where someone took my photo for me.
I walked into the Burgos Cathedral and stood on the star in one of the chapels of that magnificent structure and I looked up at the star above me, in the high ceilinged dome – and I remembered the flush of divine ecstasy that rushed through my body when I stood there ten years earlier.
One of the crew members asked me later how I felt about revisiting these places, reliving the experiences that would later change my life so fundamentally.
Strangely, I feel nothing. It’s like it all happened to someone else. I don’t feel in any way sentimental or charged with any great emotion. I feel like an observer of someone else’s play, sitting at the back of the theatre, looking at it all through a Proscenium Arch.
Perhaps that’s because I’m about to make a film about me, my life, what happened to me – and I can’t afford to get too close. The only way I can make this film is if I stand outside the events, and the person that happens to be me.
As a director I have to look at this purely technically – I have to focus on the craft, and see this person as a character in a story that fascinates and intrigues me, and not because it’s my story, but because it’s a simply a story that I believe might have resonance to an audience.
As soon as I start to see this as my story, I’m dead in the water. It’s not my story. It’s the story of the millions of pilgrims that have walked the Camino before me, and the millions that will walk after me,
It’s a story of the inexplicable and mysterious capacity for the Camino to trigger personal transformation.
Tomorrow Jennifer and I leave for Europe. We’re going to Spain via Munich for a couple of days to see a dear friend who has swung his support behind the movie. Then on Saturday we fly to Madrid to meet up with Line Producer Annie Kinnane and Transport/Unit Manager Dave Suttor.
We’re spending a few days in Santiago de Compostela – the end point of the Camino – spending some time with Camino legend Johnnie Walker, who has very kindly swung his support behind our endeavour which, as the Mastercards ads say, is priceless.
Then we’re driving back to Burgos to meet the second wave of our team coming in. Then we kick it off seriously.
I’d forgotten how difficult it is to make a feature film.
For the past several years I’ve been working on these theatrical feature documentaries – PGS and Facing Fear. And the next film in the series, on Hope as well. And whilst they’ve required all my skills and experience as a filmmaker, they’re go-karts in comparison to the Formula One of feature films. (If I can use an analogy from my recent newly acquired passion – F1.)
Making a feature film is a privilege.
Films last. Unlike television which comes and goes, films last. I take that seriously. I’ll have my name on this film and I take that very seriously.
Added to that is the complication that this is a film about myself.
I’ll write a separate blog later about how I didn’t want this film to be made, and how it came into being anyway – but for now let me just say that I don’t want to even think about the personal consequences of this film being poorly received.
I’m putting myself out there, big time. I stand to be ridiculed as a filmmaker and as a person. And I’m fine with that. If you don’t step off the edge you can’t ever know what it’s like to fly.
But back to the production.
I now have the most perfect group of people to work with to make this film something very special. Each one has been handpicked not only for their technical expertise, but also for their “energy.” What they bring to the show energetically. And I don’t mean their enthusiasm, or vigor – I mean what they bring as spiritual beings.
And the cast is perfect too.
Like Nomadland, this is going to be a mix of actors and “actuals,” the actual pilgrims that I met along my way, and who have agreed to come back and play themselves in the movie.
Again I’ll talk more about the casting in a later blog, but just to say that the actors that are in this film will have to tailor their performances to the actuals. To the real people, if I can call them that. That’s going to be a huge acting challenge – to hit that level of truth and naturalism. But again, all the actors in this film are up to it.
Frances McDormand did it beautifully in Nomadland, and won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance.
This is the first feature film I’ve made in thirteen years. And it was ten years before that, that I made The Nugget, starring Eric Bana. I don’t make a feature film unless I feel absolutely committed to telling that particular story. I’ve never been a director-for-hire. I’ve always generated my own material.
Actually, no – that’s not true. I was a director-for-hire on the Sandra Bullock movie I did for Warner Bros, but that was only because the producers who hired me originally were Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer. I really wanted to work with those guys. But then the film went into turnaround and they stepped back. Such is the merry-go-round of Hollywood.
Jean Luc Godard famously said: All I need to make a film is a girl and a gun. (In fact that’s the common belief, that he said that – but I’ve done a deep dive and he was actually quoting from the legendary DW Griffith, director of Birth of a Nation.)
But that aside, I have my girl, I have my gun – That’s all I need to make a film.
Most films are orchestral. And by that I mean they are structured, they are ordered. Everyone in the orchestra has their own set and defined roles. They all play music under the direction of the conductor, and according to the score sheets in front of them written by the composer.
The music is formal, at times stiff, and as well, clearly defined. When you go to a concert hall to hear an orchestra play Beethoven’s Fifth, you know what you’re going to hear. Sure, there’ll be some subtle variations according to the interpretation of the conductor, but basically you’re going to hear Beethoven’s Fifth.
The other thing about films being orchestral is that they are large. They are large and they are cumbersome. And because they are large they allow no deviation. A pianist playing Rachmaninov’s 2nd piano concerto isn’t allowed to deviate markedly from Rachmaninov’s original score. And everyone else in that supporting orchestra knows their role and what to do and when to do it.
And when it all clicks it’s magnificent. Orchestras can and do create transcendent music. As do some films. They create transcendent imagery. And they stir emotions and the intellect unlike any other art form.
That’s why I love making films.
I’ve made my fair share of orchestral films in my time. I’ve walked onto sets in the US and the crew has been so large I haven’t know most of their names. I hated that. I’ve worked on films where, if you need to shift the unit to get a shot, it’s taken several hours, there were so many trucks. I’m not joking.
This next film I’m undertaking is not going to be an orchestral film. It’s going be jazz, baby! We’re going to be small and nimble and we’re going to riff. We’re going to play off each other. We’re going to create something fresh and vibrant and surprisingly unexpected.
A few years back I took my wife Jennifer to a restaurant in New York called Eleven Madison Park. It’s one of these fancy places where you have to book and pay six months in advance. But it was a special occasion – her birthday.
A fancy restaurant like that can also be orchestral. Large and formal and stiff. But what made this particular restaurant great, and interesting for me, was that they based their whole philosophy on Miles Davis – the legendary jazz musician.
The restauranteur compiled a list of eleven words that defined the music of Miles Davis, and he printed them up and hung them on the wall of his kitchen to remind himself and his staff that they needed “a little bit of Miles Davis” in their approach. Those words were:
Cool.
Endless Reinvention.
Inspired.
Forward-Moving.
Fresh.
Collaborative.
Spontaneous.
Vibrant.
Adventurous.
Light.
Innovative.
These are the words I’ll be bringing to this next film…
PGS - The Way 
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