A lot of people watching out there will say, I've seen that face before, but who is he?
Now, you've been in the business, well, I think we're about the same in terms of years,
but a lot of people wouldn't know.
They say, yes, Barry, he did Barry Mackenzie and so forth.
But what did David Hanader?
Now, just mention some of the films that you've been involved with.
Right, well, Stone, The Man from Hong Kong, Early Frost, quite good as to be.
There's so many.
Muffin's Sola, Grossman's Conduct, which is Naomi Watts' first film in the lead role,
Shotgun Wedding with Aiden Young, Zoe Carridis, Bill Hunter, John Clayton, Max Cullen.
And on On It Goes.
On It Goes.
So, you really only work with the best, haven't you, really, in Australian theatre and film?
Well, I mean, given that my background in the first place was coming from with my father
in theatre and radio, I came at a time that was, I mean, a great period in Australian
drama, which was radio.
And then, of course, television came and killed it.
But the people who inspired me and who mentored me were people like Guy Doleman, Kevin Brennan,
Grant Taylor.
I'd made a film.
In fact, Early Frost I made with Guy Doleman and Kit Taylor, of course, who was Grant's
son in it.
So I'm, Derek Barnes, Derek Barnes played Bluie in the film version of Summer of the
Seventeenth Doll, which was the first film I ever did.
We did.
That's a goodie for a son, isn't it?
Yeah, it was.
I mean, I was in, my job in that was as Extras Casting Assistant, and I got that job because
of the support of Quinne Ashton and her husband, John Cover, who was my agent at Central
Cassie, I mean, Extras Casting Assistant on that picture was a very good job for an out-of-work
actor.
Well, of course.
So that was my first job, actually, in a film at our Transapark Studios.
So virtually you're starting on the floor, you're meeting all the people, the right people?
Yeah, absolutely.
You're watching how actors work and you're watching directors work.
And with this particular product, the argues, you came to it quite late.
I came in post-production.
I mean, Mark and I had done this picture out of the body 23 years ago.
Mark Ambrose, our director, in 1987.
And I was at the movie convention, and we saw each other, and he said he was working
on this picture.
I went up to his house the night after the movie convention finished, and we sat there
looking at the picture, and I could just see that what he got there wasn't there, but
I felt that it could be there, and it was just a question of kind of supporting him
to go the extra mile.
I mean, so I kept on saying, well, do you have any more of this, and do you have any
more of the duck, or any more of virus?
And of course, there was stuff that he hadn't put in the picture, and he kept on saying,
well, I don't have enough.
But the point is that what he has achieved in the 15 months of my involvement, well, nearly
18 months of my involvement, is he's actually gone back into it.
And this required, I mean, a commitment and a tenacity, lesser people would have said,
but I've done it.
I'm exhausted.
I can't do anymore.
I've got everything I can get, but he went back in and found more, and that's the whole
point.
It was your help.
The important thing that he did during the period of looking at what he had was to sit
down with Stephen Tandy, and he and Stephen together wrote the character of Ed Tomato,
which gives it a linear thread through the entire film that actually gives a great quality
to it, actually makes sense.
I mean, the fact that David doesn't make sense, which is absolutely appropriate, is
fine.
I mean, because he does bring things that are absolutely sensational.
For my mind, there's nothing more beautiful in the film than him and Patricia together
skating the way she did with his father.
David is a lovely scene at Rockefeller Center, this famous ice.
And him just in the piazza, just by himself, skating, beautiful.
But I think my favorite character is Iris, which, of course, was one of the things when
I first looked at the film, I said, we've got to have more of Iris.
And given that there was Venice Beach at the beginning of the film in the first cut that
I saw, I said, well, we go from Venice Beach to Venice.
And we have that as a line all the way through the picture.
But another thing that I particularly love that David did, and again, it's a great shame
there's not more of it, the scene in the Italian bar between him and Leon is just absolutely
brilliant, where Leon actually takes over.
And I just wish that David had done more with the duck.
But I think like a lot of people who have dolls, he gets jealous of the doll because
the doll isn't him, but the doll is him, of course.
So you get this kind of bizarre thing where he gets jealous of his own alter ego, which
is coming through the duck.
And that's a shame because if we'd had more of that particular, those kinds of moments,
it would have been built even better than it has.
I think it's the film is an extraordinary achievement.
And I think it's absolutely an extraordinary achievement because of Mark's tenacity and
the fact that he was never going to give up.
