As many of the obituaries written about him have observed, Bob Ellis, who died on Sunday at the age of 73, wore many hats and dabbled in many trades. His campaign against Bronwyn Bishop is legendary, launched well before denouncing the helicopter-chartering politician’s behaviour went viral. People have spoken about a lacerating wit and an indisputably brilliant ability to produce snap-crackle snark.
Everybody loves a great curmudgeon, at least from afar, and Ellis delivered in spades. But a little less known is his affection for the arts – coupled with an apparent belief he could do anything as well as anybody else – and the enormous impact the veteran hyphenate made on Australian film and theatre.
Ellis was not the sort of person who, when it came to anything culture-related, said “this is a job best left to the experts”. He was the expert, bouldering into projects with a magnetic sense of self-confidence. Ellis had no issues praising his own work, just as he had no qualms naming names and pointing the finger when things didn’t go his way.
Having written or co-written 11 plays, Ellis said his 1970 musical satire The Legend of King O’Malley (his first stage production, which he wrote with Michael Boddy) marked nothing shy of “the birth of an Australian style of theatre”. It was a huge success throughout the 70s and was revived in 2014.
Ellis’s impact on the Australian film industry is not to be understated. As a screenwriter, director and even critic, Ellis contributed to many significant productions throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s – sometimes in characteristically bridge-burning ways.
He was a screenwriter of one of the most influential and highest-regarded Australian films of the 1970s: director Phillip Noyce’s classic Newsfront. After Noyce and producer David Elfick made significant cuts to the film, Ellis demanded his name be taken off the credits. With time he backflipped, eventually coming to view the film as some of his best work.
Ellis worked with the director Paul Cox (billed “the father of independent cinema in Australia”) in the 1980s, co-writing fine films such as Man of Flowers (1983) and My First Wife (1984). The latter features one of the best performances from the great Australian actor John Hargreaves, as a man staring down the barrel of a broken marriage, too angry and self-absorbed to rescue it. During that period Ellis co-wrote the German director Werner Herzog’s first English-language film, Where the Green Ants Dream.
Ellis also jumped into the director’s chair – but only on films he wrote. The best of them, however imperfect, was 1988’s Warm Nights on a Slow Moving Train, which in a sense is a near-miss masterpiece. The film features a terrific lead performance from Wendy Hughes (as a carriage-surfing sex worker who dresses in different clothes to seduce different potential clients) and a cracker screenplay, which at its best is reminiscent of Basic Instinct crossed with Strangers on a Train.
But the naturalistic cinematography from Yuri Sokol (a long-time collaborator with Cox) was ill-fitted with the noirish plot, Colin Friels’ dubious Irish accent was a bridge too far and Warm Night on a Slow Moving Train’s last act – which suddenly lurches into political conspiracy – feels hurried and impatient.
Ellis fell out with the executive producer, calling their collaboration “a grave mistake” and claiming the film was set up by “shifty lawyers”. And of Sokol he said: “He’s a wonderful cameraman but he’s an awful bastard and he would sometimes light with candles.” It was as if Ellis had completely expunged himself of any responsibility, including of things he had influence, if not control, over.
His next film as director, 1993’s semi-autobiographical coming-of-age drama The Nostradamus Kid (starring Noah Taylor as a younger version of himself and largely set at a Seventh Day Adventist-run summer camp) plays like a gloomy alternate version of The Wonder Years, complete with Ellis’s reflecting-on-the-past voiceover narration.
By the time of the 2008 documentary Not Quite Hollywood, which explores Australia’s “Ozploitation” movement of the 70s and 80s, Ellis had well and truly mastered his most memorable role: the professional sourpuss. In the film he cuts an irresistibly acidic presence, a sort of Warhead sour candy the audience are forced to swallow every time the bellyacher speaks his mind.
Of the legendary producer Antony I. Ginnane, whose CV includes Patrick, Turkey Shoot and Dark Age, Ellis said: “His work should be burned to the ground and the ashes sewn with salt.”
And of hiring American actors to play roles in Australian films in the 1980s: “I felt then, as now, that Americans are scum and should not be let anywhere near our money.”
Ellis also, occasionally, spoke positively of others. Bert Deling, who wrote and directed the underground classic Pure Shit, described him as “a champion of the film from the start”.
But every decent curmudgeon is stingy with their plaudits, so when Ellis praised somebody you knew that he meant it. Talking about influential Australian film-maker Tim Burstall, again in Not Quite Hollywood, Ellis said: “He was scum, really. He was the crab louse on the Australian film industry.”
Then he quickly added, in a note of praise any person would cherish – especially from somebody as particular as he – “On the other hand, all of us will always owe him everything.”
