Primal Screens: Mark Savage and Australian Independent Cinema

For decades, Australia had no real cinema of its own. After a turn of the century flirtation with the medium, movies from America and Britain controlled the young country’s cultural landscape. It wasn’t until the ’70s, when filmmakers like Peter Weir and George Miller made their mark, that the domination of other markets was more or less minimized. This allowed the industry to thrive, fostering a new generation of young artists desperate to forge their own sense of self-determination. Yet many Down Under writers and directors faced another, even more bewildering barrier. Getting their films show in their native land was tough: censorship was strict, and certain subjects (horror, sex) were more or less forbidden. Even worse, getting the attention of the rest of the world was almost impossible. Just as they were gaining their own creative footing, the potential audience was growing more and more insular.

Thankfully, VHS (and more importantly, DVD) allowed for many a new celluloid voice to finally be heard. One such Aussie maverick is Mark Savage. From very early on, the movies made a significant impression on this lifelong cinephile. “At the age of four, I was diagnosed with amblyopia”, said the 44-yearold in a recent email interview, “which necessitated my wearing glasses with an eye patch for several years. I looked like and felt like a monster.” Lost in a world of books and film, Savage’s destiny arrived in a slight surreal package. “When I was six, I saw Whale’s Frankenstein on TV,” adds the director, “and I connected with the monster completely and fell in love with horror. It changed my perception of myself; I began to see a ‘monster’ as so much more than a hideous outsider.” This self-described ‘freak’ would later go on to helm several sensational movies, most of which were just released on a magnificent box set from Subversive Cinema.

Growing up in Melbourne, the oldest of four children, Savage found himself drawn to the cinema as much for the stories they told as the inspiration they provided. “American and European cinema moved me enormously,” he confesses. But more importantly were “descriptions of the films I read about in magazines like the early Cinefantastique, House of Hammer, Continental Film, Films and Filming, and Little Shoppe of Horrors.” In many cases, this was the only way Savage could experience his favorite motion picture genre. “In Australia, many horror films were censored, so much of what I read about never made it into the Australian cuts. These magazines were my window to ‘fantastique’ cinema.” His curiosity piqued, Savage would spend his free time ‘visualizing’ his own versions of his horror heroes. “I (would sit) for hours and (write) my own stories. I never wanted to do anything but write and make movies.”

Soon, he was putting his thoughts and plots on film. “When I was 15 I worked part time at McDonald’s, and I saved up enough money to buy a Chinon Super-8 movie camera”, he states, “I felt a burning desire to create some films of my own with my brother, Colin.” Driven by a “desire to tell stories about loners, outsiders, and misunderstood people”, Savage discovered that realizing his ideas visually “was a total joy. I did little else but make films with my brother every weekend for the next four years.” After moving to America, Mark got his first big “professional” break, oddly enough, on the other side of the industry. In 1982, while living in Detroit, Savage was befriended by Bert Livingston. “He was one of the most selfless, kindest people I ever met. He took me under his wing and organized a job for me with Orion Pictures.” Soon, the promising youngster was working behind the scenes in the film biz. “Not only was I committed to making films, I was also committed to learning how they were distributed. I felt that it would help me in the long run.”

This time spent outside the creative end of cinema was crucial. “The Orion ‘break’ represented the first time anybody ever acknowledged my worth and abilities as a professional” he states, “a generous act that instilled more self worth in me than anything I have ever encountered. It has fueled my confidence ever since.” With a wealth of short films under his belt – many of which are included on the Savage Sinema From Down Under set – Savage was ready to take a stab at his first feature. Entitled Marauders, this 1986 homegrown violence fantasy became a significant step in gaining acceptance in his native land. The simple story of teen hoodlums who end up messing with the wrong group of backwater townsfolk was a definite genre throwback: juvenile delinquency meshed with the post-modern horror moves of films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Evil Dead.

From the opening montage where our anarchic anti-heroes kill and curse their way through the beginnings of a major crime spree, Savage announced his inherent abilities as a filmmaker. “Because the film was so low budget, I was determined to keep it visually interesting and kinetic,” he explains, “While the narrative is linear (loosely modeled on the film Death Weekend by Canadian director William Fruet) there are many cuts and a lot of coverage. Over 1,400 hundred edits, actually.” Loaded with gratuitous brutality and an incredibly amoral action adventure stance, Savage still strove to give the exploitation effort a serious philosophical significance. “The message is found in the photographs of the characters as children that appear at the end. It’s a simple message – everything changes. I still believe this and it intrigues me. When I read about a serial killer in the newspaper, I always want to see a picture of him or her as a child. It saddens me what happens between childhood and adulthood.”

While not a major success (“It got me some attention and it sold overseas”, he adds) it did get him recognized. Hoping to parlay this minor moment into something bigger, Savage started planning for his next project. He would face nothing but complications for the next decade. “I spent years raising finance for three separate movies that all fell apart at the last minute for various reasons. It was a dark, disappointing period for me, but I never considered quitting.” To keep his name known, Savage “made many commercials, industrials and some rock videos.” He also wrote more than a dozen screenplays, but found it almost impossible to get them produced. “Although many Australian features are government-financed, I couldn’t turn to government funding,” he explains, “because there was a bias against investment in genre films.”

Yet he persevered. “I did make two movies in that period, however – The Sentimental Assassin and The Masturbating Gunman, a Japanese-financed black comedy.” However, neither film reestablished his cinematic credentials. “The company that funded Assassin went broke before the film was completed and Gunman received limited distribution (Gunman may actually be part of another Subversive Cinema release in 2007).” Yet none of this really undermined Savage’s resolve. “Because I have invested my own money in my own films, I see the process from both sides, ” he suggests. “Remember, I also worked in distribution – for Orion, and later for Village-Roadshow in Australia – so I am cognizant of a distributor’s position in relation to a film’s commercial viability. Filmmaking is creative, but business models drive it. A filmmaker must be an artist and a businessman in order to succeed.”

Realizing that his next project had to be far more commercial, Savage set out to make a slam bang black comedy about a hit man who hungers to be just like his lifelong hero: a suave and sophisticated assassin called SNAK (an anagram for Sensitive New Age Killer). Taking the tag as a title, the filmmaker found the proper balance between the hyper-stylized Hong Kong crime genre (best illustrated by directors Ringo Lam and John Woo) and the more outrageous genre bending satires of filmmakers like Pedro Almodovar. Featuring a quirky, clockwork narrative involving a sexually frustrated police woman, double crossing criminals, eccentric mob bosses and dizzying slow motion fire fights, Savage went out of his way to differentiate this effort from his previous cinematic turns.

“I like to go to new places with each movie,” the filmmaker clarifies. “I want the process to improve my filmmaking skills. For example, by the time of Sensitive New Age Killer, epic shoot-outs were starting to become clichéd in cinema. I decided to parody the form by staging one that was so ridiculous it would become surreal.” Indeed, one of SNAK‘s many masterstrokes is the readily apparent ability of the criminals to constantly shoot at each other without ever having to reload their weapons. Thousands of rounds of ammunition are spent during each over the top exchange, and yet never once do we see a character stop to change their magazine or click off a few empty chambers. “It was entirely deliberate” he adds, confirming that it was all part of an elaborate set-up to keep the audience off guard and “always guessing.”

Sensitive New Age Killer cemented Savage’s growing status as a serious filmmaker, and with good reason. A ridiculous romp loaded with expert acting, inventive camerawork and just the slightest bit of off beat humor to keep everything fresh and frisky, it was the kind of movie that careers were fashioned after. Yet always wanting to change his perspective and push the limits of his talents, Savage decided to approach his next project – the 2004 female empowerment revenge flick Defenceless – from a completely different artistic angle. “There was a desire to return to the purity of my early Super-8 movies, which were shot silent, then embellished with music. I wanted to tell a story without dialog so nothing would be stated in absolute terms.” But there was more to it than that. “I wanted the visuals to be part of the story and occupy a primary position,” he adds, “to discover that in great beauty one can still find enormous ugliness. And violence.”

Like a fairytale befouled by the preening paternalism of a male-dominated society, Defenceless is a vibrant, visionary realization of that infamous Shakespeare quote regarding Hell having no fury like a woman scorned. The expressionistic plot suggests a business deal gone desperate, a group of glad-handing partners capable of anything, and the idealistic ecologist caught in the middle. Naturally, this all turns fatal. But just like a festering fable, karma has something to say about the way things turn out. Through the efforts of an abused child, wrongs are righted in ways both satisfying and sickening. And all the while, Australia’s amazing horizons glow like gemstones in a fancy platinum motion picture setting.

The combination of awe and anger was all part of Savage’s original plan. “I like to go to new places with each movie,” he reiterates, “and with Defenceless, everything would be interpretive. I liked the challenge of telling a story with pure imagery and music. It kept my creativity sharpened and required me to work very closely with the actors to achieve clear, non-verbal performances.” While clearly a serious statement about payback, Savage suggests that there’s more to the movie than simple vigilante justice. “My perception of the complexity of revenge has changed since I made Marauders.” He confesses. “I am interested in depicting the pain that precedes revenge, the darkness you must pass through before you are ready to act. For many people, emerging from the darkness negates the need for revenge. For others, the victims of their revenge suddenly seem pathetic. I understand the importance of dramatic contrast now more than I did 20 years ago.”

Perhaps the most stunning element of the movie is the enigmatic performance of actress Susanne Hausschmid, as the symbolic soul at the center of the story, a persona labeled simply ‘The Woman’. “Susanne and I created the character together,” Savage explains. “She was very excited to be playing a person who never speaks and experiences so much. Ironically, The Woman’s traumatic journey paralleled Susanne’s traumatic personal life at the time. We collaborated on the wardrobe, the make-up, the hair. We had long discussions about The Woman’s ‘walk’ and body language. We shot tests of her walking on the beach six months before the principal filming began.” When combined with the painting-like imagery and stark, disturbing deaths, Defenceless made Savage impossible to ignore.

His follow-up would confirm such a stance. Based on a new report he read about a child pornography ring, Savage scripted a disturbingly direct look at such perversion. Created for Australian cable TV, 2005’s Stained stands as one of the director’s proudest achievements. “When I learned that there is such an organized trade (involving children), I was very angry, so I became determined to expose it. Of course, one filmmaker can do very little, but creating awareness of a problem is a step towards addressing it.” In order to get beneath the surface of the controversial subject matter, Savage envisioned a decidedly different approach to the subject matter. “I asked myself: What kind of person gets involved in such a vile world? The answer was: Your next-door neighbor. What do they lose of themselves in order to profit? Everything, of course. How do their actions impact on others? Totally.”

Realizing that “the precise details of the crimes were not important”, Savage centered instead on presenting a corrupt character piece, looking at pedophilia and its impact from the personal and the individual. The story is all suggestion: a man and his brother who may be trafficers in white slaves, a sinister fathers desperate to locate his daughter, a collection of little girls cowering in the corner of a dirty shed, a final act confrontation that seems both coincidental and non-conclusive. Outrageous depictions of cruelty and sexual contact were instantly negated since, as Savage puts it, “I didn’t need to show the direct abuse. Instead, I chose to focus on the details surrounding it. True to his genre roots, Savage suggests that such “literal representations would unbalance the narrative. I wanted the audience to imagine the rest.”

What’s on the screen, however, is devastating enough. As he proposes, Stained is like lifting the lid off of everyday suburbia and discovering a shit-strewn cesspool thriving underneath. None of the characters here appear archetypal or stereotypical, their motivations being more money than sexually motivated. The individuals responsible for keeping the kidnapped kids aren’t drooling fiends with their pants round their ankles. Instead, they go about their business, emptying piss buckets and providing food like some sort of jaundiced jailers. Because he doesn’t spell everything out in embarrassing black and white terms, Savage is able to situate his sinister circumstances directly under you skin. “People will use their imaginations if you give them strong triggers,” the director argues. “Often it is the best way to go. Every scene requires serious consideration. The point of attack is most important.”

With such a substantial personal resume at his disposal, Savage still found it hard to get noticed outside Australia. A few of his films found their way onto the festival circuit, with a couple – like Marauders – developing a considered cult following on home video. Still, it took a call from Subversive Cinema’s Norm Hill to pave they way for Savage’s international appreciation. “I was contacted by (Subversive) a couple of years ago to produce the supplements for their release of the Australian crime drama, Blue Murder, one of the greatest police dramas ever made.” During his dealings with the company, head hocho Hill asked to see some of Savage’s movies. The rest is recent history. “A couple of months later, he offered to distribute them in the States and proposed a box set based on a theme,” said Savage, “and I am very happy with the work they’ve done.”

Indeed, Savage Sinema from Down Under is one of 2006’s definitive DVD presentations. Using Marauders, Sensitive New Age Killer and Defenceless as the tentpoles (there is a limited edition set as well that includes Stained and a collection of early short films), Subversive provides Savage with a platform to explain his aesthetic designs as well as to discuss the problems and pitfalls of outsider filmmaking. Loaded with commentaries, behind the scenes documentaries, exclusive insider interviews and lots of contextual heft, these discs are practically a primer to getting involved in independent filmmaking. What’s even more remarkable, each film argues for its overall importance in Savage’s creative canon. All three (plus Stained) suggest an artist who is perfectly in tune with his talents, as well as his limitations.

Looking over his oeuvre, Savage is a little more direct. “I’d like to think that my strength is clarifying what a scene is really about, whether that’s while I’m working with an actor to portray a character, or constructing a physically complex sequence,” he confesses. “I love the collaborative process of filmmaking and working hard to present an original perspective for the audience. I do possess an affinity for outsiders and am drawn to stories that carry an element of moral ambiguity. I may not always succeed, but I strive to make every scene intriguing.” With a full fledged big screen version of Stained in the offing (“I can actually make three films out of the material,” Savage states) and a whole new fanbase just discovering his work, this now middle-aged man is just as excited about cinema as when he first saw Frankenstein stumble to life.

“I am as enthusiastic about making movies now as I was when I was 12-years-old,” Savage says. “I have lost none of my passion for moviemaking. It is a privilege to make movies, so I take them very seriously, but I have plenty of fun doing it, too. I don’t want to use my talents to make only one type of film or one type of TV show. A good director should be able to direct anything that fires his passion. If your heart is not in it, of course, the result will be lackluster. Passions are worth fighting for, and they make the best movies, too.” If Savage Sinema from Down Under is any indication, Savage is definitely a man of his word.

Trailers for the Films Mentioned: