In 2006 film and stage director Neil Armfield brought us to tears with his devastating feature film about drug addiction Candy, and there’s a good chance you’ll shed a tear again watching his latest film, an adaptation of Tim Conigrave’s autobiography, Holding the Man.
Armfield is an award-winning theatre director who started out as the Artistic Co-Director of the Nimrod Theatre in Sydney. He’s also been Associate Director of the Lighthouse Theatre Company, South Australia, and the Artistic Director of Sydney's Company B at Belvoir Street Theatre. Not only is he one of Australia’s greatest theatre directors, he is also an accomplished opera director and has worked with international companies including the English National Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera and Zurich Opera.
As well as co-writing and directing Candy, Armfield has also directed for television, and last year was announced as the co-director of The Adelaide Festival of Arts (2017 – 2019). HOLDING THE MAN is his first film in nine years, and he kindly took time out of his busy schedule to talk to us about it.
Rialto: For New Zealanders who might not be so familiar with Timothy Conigrave, can you tell us a little bit about him?
NA: Tim Conigrave was an actor, a playwright, an AIDS activist, a health worker...and most importantly a diarist who spent the last year of his life, after the death of his lover John Caleo, struggling against his own illness and dementia to write this memoir Holding the Man. All his life he was outspoken. Nick Enright, a friend and playwright who had taught Tim at NIDA and had helped him to edit Holding the Man, began his eulogy at Tim's funeral with the words "Tim Conigrave was a stranger to tact..."
Rialto: Conigrave’s memoir Holding the Man is a cult classic and one of Australia’s favourite books - did that weight on you as you were making the film?
NA: Of course. I had experienced something similar with my previous film Candy, from Luke Davies' cult classic of the same name. Everyone feels invested in it and wants to make sure their favourite bits will be included in the film! But finally you have to find the film that has its own rhythms, logic and truth. It can't be a series of incidents, but must grow organically across its two hour span. You remain true to the spirit of the book, but it's an utterly different form and you must allow its new life to grow.
Rialto: Getting the casting right was vital and Ryan Corr and Craig Stott do an incredible job bringing this love story to life, how easy was it find the right two actors to play Tim and his partner John Caleo?
NA: I knew the film would never work without extraordinary chemistry between the two lead actors. Tommy structured the script around an intended change of actors as they shift from school to uni, made clearer by the 8 year leap forward at the end of part 1. And so we were initially looking for a younger and an older version of the couple. But on the first day of screen testing (and there were many days, and many hundreds of actors tested) Ryan Corr's test shone out. He had the intelligence, the swiftness of wit and a facility for clowning that was absolutely necessary for Tim. Falling in the middle of the two age groups, he was a good reason for abandoning the change of actor plan. Craig took much longer. He'd sent a screen test over from LA early in the process, which I looked at on a crowded day and too swiftly dismissed. Months later I was testing in LA and a friend recommended Craig to me both for his acting and for his eyelashes. I'd forgotten his test and looked at it again. I saw what I had missed. Eventually we put Craig and Ryan together in a room in London some weeks later and they immediately generated the necessary heat. They just locked together. It was thrilling: after all those months to know we finally stood a chance of getting it right!
Rialto: As well as Corr and Stott, you’ve got some big names in smaller, but pivotal, roles. How did you manage to get Anthony LaPaglia, Guy Pearce, our very own fabulous Kerry Fox and Camilla Ah Kin on board?
NA: Not to mention Geoffrey Rush, Kerry Walker, Sarah Snook, Marcus Graham, Julie Forsyth, Kris McQuade...! This is a greatly loved story in Australia, and Tommy Murphy's play from the book has been a national and international success. It is also a story about the Australian theatre, and there are many great colleagues who just wanted to be a part of it. Many of those actors I work with regularly in the theatre, and many knew and loved Tim Conigrave.
Rialto: A lot has changed since Tim passed away in 1994. And yet, this is such a timeless story isn’t it? I can imagine similar conversations still being had within families today.
NA: Yes nuclear families tend still to be bastions of heterosexual 'normality' where the assumption is the kids will be like their parents, unless they stand up and declare their difference. So that act of declaration (and not everyone is gifted with certainty!) still takes enormous courage. Of course values are shifting and maturing in some families, but by no means in all, so the conversations, the self-doubt, the pain, the relief involved remain very much alive today.
Rialto: I think it’s lovely Tim's family were involved in the process of shooting this film - what do you think Tim would have thought of the film?
NA: Tim's mum, Mary-Gert, came along with his brother Nick and sister Anna (and her daughters) to be extras (along with a host of other friends of Tim and John who were characters in the film) at Anna's wedding. It was a very rich blending of realities! Mary-Gert turned up in a fuschia pink dress that almost matches the one that Kerry Fox is wearing in that scene playing Mary-Gert. So there is a cut to (real) Mary-Gert and Anna looking slightly amused and perplexed by the proceedings. It was a long day. Mary-Gert commented at the end of it that it was like "watching paint dry - and not acrylic!". But they have been extremely supportive and are immensely proud of the film and of Tim's legacy. I think Tim would've loved it. At his death bed, his friend Tony Ayres, having just read the proofs, came to him and said "I've read your book, and I think there's a film in it." Tim smiled, opened his eyes and whispered "Fabulous". It was one of the last things he said.
Rialto: You’re a respected theatre, opera and television director as well as film director - what can film bring to a story that these other mediums might not be able to so well?
NA: Film can bring intimacy. In some ways this is a story told through a series of scenes of sexual coupling, culminating in that heartbreaking final fuck when John returns from hospital. It's something that can only happen on film I think. Rufus Wainwright watched that scene and immediately wrote that beautiful song that plays under it. But we also wanted to show how funny sex can be - and Tim's and John's relationship grows across the years with all the time it takes for two bodies really to understand each other.
HOLDING THE MAN premieres on Saturday 6th August at 8.30pm on Rialto Channel