THE FILM THAT NEVER HAPPENED.
Paul Feldman - Class of 1968
In those days, anything seemed possible. For one thing, Reg Byrne was the coach of our debating team. On the Away days, all four of us clambered into his gunmetal grey VW (‘the people’s car’) and farted our way far and wide. We did compulsory examinations at Kogarah, the failure of our media at Sir Joseph Banks and capital punishment at Kingsgrove North.
About half the time the adjudicator was one Father Matthews, a priest in a black cassock. I thought he was quite fair in his adjudications, but I noticed that Reg would sit up at the back and fix him with a cynical stare. When Matthews awarded our final debate to Birrong High, Reg walked off without shaking hands. I can remember him drawling ‘I’m sorry to be rude, but that man brings out all my anticlericalism’.
Part of the reason we weren’t very successful was our distinctive and somewhat unharmonious speaking styles. On paper it would have been hard to fault our first speaker. Gary Simes went on to write a dictionary, but in those days he affected a County Cutie accent of the ‘mater has a grahnd piahno’ variety. As second speaker, I could never think on my feet, and used to fill in the gaps by insulting the other team and sometimes the audience. Imants Tillers was there to help us with ideas. In the middle of a debate on Australian secondary industry he would hand you a note that said ‘the Soul is indivisible, and cannot be defined in emptiness’ Geoff Fleming was all right as whip, but by that time the damage had often been done.
Anyway, late one day in 1967 Reg drew half a dozen of us into a room and said he knew a film director who wanted to make an experimental movie at the school. It was going to be a fictional fantasy about a sex-appeal drug, and did we want to be in it? He needed some boys from Tech, and about the same number of girls from St George Girls High.
The next week we got a copy of the plotline. It looked like we were going to have a lot of fun making it. Geoff Sykes from sixth form said it was clichéd and silly and then started going on about the film he wanted to make, about a Sixth former’s reminiscences of his days at the school. But he was Vice Captain and always had this patronising take on things, so what did he know.
The plotline featured a character completely lacking in sex appeal. There was an ill-favoured, unkempt kid in our year called Alan (‘Gabby’) Williams who was quite willing to lay his ugliness on the line. He assured us that he had been all the way with several girls and was in no way sensitive about his appearance. At the other end of the spectrum, someone good looking was needed, and so the expert drinker Peter Rose was enlisted.
The next weekend about five of us went over to meet Reg Byrne in Balmain. Chris Ellis drove us there in his green two-tone Hillman Minx, with classical music playing loudly on the radio. He was off to play tennis with some of Reg’s friends. He let us out on Darling Road where we saw Reg coming out of the pub with Bruce Searle and Jim Rannard.. Searle was the Jean Cocteau of Sixth form and Rannard was a chuckling Communist. They had been playing pool.
Reg took us down to Louisa Road in Birchgrove and we met the director, whose name was John Abbott. I remember feeling uneasy about Abbott. He was about 35. Despite his cord coat, he was too old to be cool and I think he knew it. He was friendly in a stagey sort of way but kept making these knowing asides to anyone adult. Still, he lived in a ramshackle two storey house with at least one woman, and his film gear on the top floor. And he took us round to an anarchist house, to eat lunch with people in long hair and caftans who sat on the floor and ate with their fingers from a big spread of Asian food. He introduced us loudly and theatrically, along the lines of: ’I have with me five young men who have survived the ravages of the education system. They are eager to see what life has to offer them. They are our future as well as their own, and if they look like the Beatles, then that’s not their fault’. That last bit is word for word.
After lunch we went back to his place again, and were joined by a small apelike man, wearing a flat cap and carrying sound recording equipment. He kept snapping his fingers as though he was on something. John Abbott passed around a page or two, and we all assumed character roles and read a line of script each.
It turned out that Abbott and this man had made a documentary about the army in Vietnam. They had been over there making it, and Abbott flourished some footage of dead bodies. ‘See’, he said, ‘this is the sort of thing our boys get up to’. But when we lurched across the room to look, he said ‘Oh look, they all want to see the dead bodies. Don’t worry, you’ll get your turn when your number gets pulled out.’
What else happened? Abbott annoyed Tillers by saying something to him in Latvian, and then asserted that he hadn’t said anything offensive and that Tillers really had to learn to cope with that sort of thing. My notes say we had to go away and come up with a list of questions that the sexual attraction researchers would ask students, to analyse sexual attraction. We all went home by public transport.
A week later and nothing had happened. Then Reg gave us the bad news. The Education Department had stopped the project because they didn’t like the theme. Reg showed us a letter John Abbott had written to the Minister of Education protesting about the decision.
Within a day or two, the official version emerged. Mr Haddrill, the silken-voiced conservative who ran the English Department, summoned us for a meeting with the Headmaster.. Bong affected disappointment, but proceeded to rationalise the Department’s rejection of the project. “Boys, I think you have to bear in mind that the Department has to take into particular account the community’s view of this use of school property. I’ve read this [plot outline] and I think it all sounds like good fun, but I think you need to put yourself in their shoes. There are members of the community, I think it’s fair to say, who would not be happy to have this film made on school property. I think in particular the word ‘Pill’ conjures up a lot of things in the present day context. I think the Department were worried that the public view of the school would suffer if this film were to be made on our property. I’m not saying I agree with the Department, but I think you need to know why they reached that decision. So I’m sorry about this, boys.”
Later Haddrill assured us that the Headmaster had done his very best to change the Department’s view. “I think those people were leading you up the garden path” he said.. “I think they knew that this would never be allowed to go ahead”. But it was also Haddrill who once said “I always find that those who have no respect for authority have no respect for themselves”.
I never heard anything about John Abbott ever again. It bothers me that I can’t find any references to his later work. He gave us this gesture of rebellion, then left us to fight for ourselves with the ogres of compliance.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Plot Outline
THE “IT” PILL PROJECT: from John Abbott, 77 Louisa Road, Balmain
Nature: A half hour B&W full sound film, shot as an experiment at Sydney Technical Boys High School, Bexley
Plotline: The failure of an unattractive, skinny boy to get any girl to go with him to a forthcoming dance excites the interest of a group of boys. What, they wonder, is it that attracts one sex to another. They enquire, and quickly learn that neither brains, beauty nor any other single factor seems to be the sole cause. The enquiry, in the form of a market study, is carried out at both the boys’ school and the associated girls’ school. The information in, the team analyses all factors and comes up with a mysterious “It factor’, which they believe they can synthesise.
The team goes to work; in the lab, various experiments are tried. Necessary equipment is manufactured in the machine shop – and at last, a magnificent machine is assembled. It clicks, grunts, gurgles, grinds, coughs and clatters – and at last, produces a large, round pill. What next? Who will try it? None of the team are willing, so the skinny boy who started the whole idea is brought in. Would he like to be irresistible to girls? He is soon convinced, takes the pill and sets off to test its effects. He is followed by the team, eager to see the result.
Near the girls’ school, the skinny boy discovers the startling power of the pill. A beautiful girl starts to walk past him – then snaps about, purrs and approaches affectionately. And another. And another. Until the poor lad discovers the price of total attraction and is submerged in a mound of howling girls, all after him. He crawls off, finds his feet and flees. The girls pursue, howling and jumping, on roller skates, skate boards and bicycles. The It Pill research team, observing, is horrified – they must not let this happen again and hurry off to set guard on their machine. Eventually, after a long chase, the skinny boy finds refuge.
The girls, thwarted, come to their senses and discuss the strange thing that’s happened to them. They return to the school, still wondering – and there, a girl who had not been in the chase tells the others of an experiment her brother was involved in – to make a pill that renders its taker irresistible to the other sex. Aha. A short, fat girl hears this – and determines, once in her life to know what having all the boys after her feels like. She sets out to win herself a pill.
The fat girl infiltrates the boys’ school. She avoids sentries posted around the lab area, enters the building, tippy toe. Inside, by superb rugger tactics, she avoids the last ditch guard, makes it to the machine, seizes the pill from the production chute, and swallows it. She spins around, faces her audience with a happy smile. Her smile fades as the boys’ expressions switch from anxiety to slavering greed. Her rugger is enough to get her out and, collecting an ever growing crowd of pursuers, she flees. The boys mount their motor bikes, bikes and whatever to continue the hunt.
The chase continues until at length the girl finds refuge too – and she and the skinny boy scare the tripe out of each other in the hiding place, until each realises neither is attracted to the other. The “it” effect has worn off. They relax. Shyly, the boy asks if the girl has a partner for the dance yet, and, as shyly, she admits not.
At the dance, a number begins. The skinny boy walks along the line of chairs towards the fat girl, who sits demurely. He passes a very attractive girl, who says hello to him, smiles encouragingly. He is about to ask her to dance, when he sees her again as she was during the pursuit - arms flapping, jumping up and down, face a mask. He jumps and moves on. As he approaches the fat girl, a good looking boy comes up and asks her to dance. She is about to accept – when she too recalls how he had looked during the chase – face a devil’s leer, crooked fingers clawing after her. “ I’m sorry, I have this one”. The skinny boy and the fat girl move out onto the floor and dance, as…..
….end titles super over.
_____________________
The Australian. October 1967
STUDENTS’ FILM ON SEX APPEAL BANNED
The New South Wales Education Department has stopped senior pupils at a Sydney high school producing their own 30 minute film for speech day.
Mr J. Abbott, a TV producer, wrote the script for the film – called The It Pill Factor – which tells the story of schoolboys who produce a pill which makes them irresistible to the opposite sex.
Mr Abbott wrote the script and offered the use of his production unit, technicians, and film at no cost to the school.
But the film’s theme was ruled unsuitable by Mr J. Buggy, assistant to the State Director-General of Education.
Mr Abbott protested to Mr Buggy, who allegedly replied: “I don’t have to give you a reason.”
Now, Mr Abbott, who produces documentaries for the Commonwealth Film Unit, has appealed to the State Minister for Education, Mr Cutler.
NO KISSES
Mr Abbott claimed that the film was virtually a contemporary Midsummer Night’s Dream and added: “ There’s not even a kiss in it.”
Neither Mr Buggy nor Mr Cutler was in Sydney yesterday, and they could not be reached for comment.
The central character of the film is a boy named Bones, an adolescent greatly lacking in sex appeal.
His female counterpart is a short, fat girl, Tessie.
The story shows what happens when Bones takes the It Pill and is pursued by dozens of schoolgirls who cannot understand why he is so appealing to them.
After a chase, Tessie takes an It Pill, and she in turn is chased by boys.
___________________________
The Australian April 24, 1969.
ANOTHER FILM MAN JOINS THE BRAIN DRAIN
John Abbott, one of Australia’s best-known documentary film makers, became part of the brain drain yesterday.
Before he left Sydney with a British work permit in his briefcase he told me: “I don’t want to leave but I have been forced to join a long line of others in voluntary exile.
“I can make a very good living making commercials but just one more commercial and I would have gone around the bend. You just can’t make a living out of documentaries in Australia.
“Where are Stefan Sargent, Sue Baker and Richard Croll? They are all making films in England.
“The funny thing about it all is that there is every chance that NBC, in America, or the BBC will send me back here to make sort of documentaries I wanted to turn out anyhow”
John is 37, a cousin of Australia’s Minister of the Interior Peter Nixon, and the man who made Action in Vietnam, a wide-screen colour film, in South Vietnam for the Australian army.
He also has a world scoop to his credit with The Other Germany. His camera crew was the first to film in East Germany without the restrictions of censorship.
“It was astounding but true” John said. “I doubt very much if it could be done today.
“The trouble about making documentaries in Australia is that the budget is nearly always too small to make anything out of them, while the budgets for commercials are enough to stack money away in the bank.
“Another strange thing is that you get treated with greater respect when you are making commercials than when you make documentaries.
“Nor do you get any marks for new ideas. About 18 months ago I was approached by a teacher to make a film with his class to replace the hoary annual concert.
“We began work on a film which all the kids loved. It was called the It Pill Project. A boy taking one of the pills became irresistible to all the girls, and if a girl took one she was popular with boys.
“Of course, in the end it all cancelled out, but this was too much for the NSW Education Department which cancelled the project in the middle of rehearsals.
“Originality does not count for very much in Australia. For an idea to go you need to show that it has already been a success in some other country. Second-hand ideas such as Man Alive, in England, turn up in Australia as the new TV programme Checkerboard.
‘It is not only the brain drain that Australia has to worry about. Even more important is the imagination drain.
“The sort of films I would like to see made here are self participating films. I want to make a prison film inside a prison with the script written and acted by the prisoners themselves, with some of them also working with the film crew.
“The film I intend to make one day in Australia, no matter what happens, is about the No 1 question for every Australian – How we have for years occupied the Aboriginals’ lands.”
29/8/2007 - John Abbott |
