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Tell
Magazine
(September 1996)
Colin Friels: Seaching for the Aussie
Character
Colin Friels has been in some of
the most memorable Australian movies, and has even starred in a Hollywood
feature film (Darkman), but these days Colin has moved to the smaller screen and
is passionate about his country. Tell talked recently to the star of Water Rats,
the hit TV series based on Sydney Harbour's Water Police.
Tell: How has the change to the small screen been going?
CF: It is very different to a movie, it is much faster moving,
films are like watching grass grow. It doesn't suit my pace very much, films. I
have done some fantastic reading on film sets because you take hours and hours
while they light it, or set it, and everything has got to be perfect because it
is the big screen of course. It can be a very pretentious medium. In fact I
think films have basically become a fashion horse more than anything. The pace
of television is that you have got to grind it out once a week and you have got
to try and keep up a certain standard. It is much more of an actors medium.
Tell: You reckon TV is more suited to actors?
CF: Weekly Drama or Comedy or something like that is much more
suited to actors than cinema which is very much a directors medium and publicity
or fashion medium.
Tell: The Water Rats scripts seem to be pretty well written...
CF: Yes they are.
I think we have got a chance to create some really good indigenous characters,
not in a soap opera way.
Tell: The show is very distinctly Australian..
CF: It has to be. It's crucial. That is my main reason for
wanting to do it. It's crucial that we start to do this now especially with the
Fox studios being built in Sydney. We'll become a lackey for the American studio
system, it's just about to be completely overrun. In fact I think just about
everyone who works here, all they want to do is work for the Yanks.
Tell: We seem to have lots of talent that doesn't get used.
CF: I think we don't like ourselves, I think we don't trust
ourselves. I mean I get it all the time 'Oh you work in Australia, what's it
like to be a loser'. If you are working here you musn't be any good. I sometimes
formulate the theory that we all dislike ourselves ardently because (of the
attitude) if you are here you are no good. And I think it is going to be a long
time getting over that.
When I grew up in the theatre you couldn't get a job unless you had an English
accent and now it is hard to get a job over here unless you have worked in an
American film over there. The directors and the actors have no power in
Australia at all, the power comes from the producers and the larger bodies and I
guess they like these American films.
We had this hideous thing happen here in Sydney
not long ago. They opened a thing called 'Planet Hollywood' and all these
American stars came over and, nothing against them personally, but what appalled
me was that 22 thousand people turned up to see them and the Lord Mayor was so
sycophantic (flattering) you couldn't believe it. I thought - this is a culture
in trouble when you have got twenty two thousand people turning up to see people
who are largely in very violent films.
It is an interesting point you are raising there,
because it is the arts that are really the spotlight for the culture.
There are some deep questions. There is a lack of generosity about ourselves or
a lack of openness. I think we are afraid to be vulnerable and show ourselves
for what we really are. Which is one of the reasons I believe we have seen a
lack of really true Australian characters portrayed on stage and screen. We
quite like it when Russians, Americans or Scandinavians do it but we tend not to
do it ourselves. I think we have inherited a lot of the bad habits from the old
country. We took on some of the bad mannerisms and left out some of the good
ones.
Tell: It sounds as though you are beginning to understand the
Australian Psyche a bit.
CF: That's all I have ever been interested in as an actor,
stories of my own place. That is what I am interested in and I am quite
passionate about getting some stories in there about how people around here
really tick. This is what actually goes on and it is a long way from doing that
yet, but that is what I would hope to achieve.
Tell: Is there anything that defines Australians?
CF: Sydney is different. I don't know if I would give you two
bob for Sydney at the moment but for a lot of Australians there is a sweetness
in the people as a people. What I fear is that is diminishing. There is now a
coldness or a lack of a sense of altruism coming in. There was an ease of nature
in a sense that was approachable and we got by with a bit less.
But when you look at the average mortgage in Sydney is two hundred thousand
dollars you think there is something wrong here. Somebody has a couple of kids,
them and the wife are working 70 hours a week each just to pay the mortgage - it
is off track!! I don't know that we reflect enough on ourselves as a culture. We
are not critical of ourselves enough.
Tell: Paul Keating said that
Australia is a nation searching for identity and in many ways it is probably
true.
CF: Very true, very true. I think if you go back to the 1914
war and you read historical accounts, letters, bulletins or anything, you see a
very different nation and of course that would be so, but it was very much a
nation that had an identity and I do think that Australia has to start coming to
grips with itself as a nation rather than try to impress larger nations.
Tell: The future for you looks like staying with the show?
CF: I'll hang with the show for another year. They will be sick
to death of me by then - I think they are sick to death of me now, I never let
up. I reckon we can get a really top show happening.
You have got to have completely believable people on there that the audience
understand. I ask people about the show and they are not mugs, they know what is
going on. That is crucial, they have got to be real people, first and foremost
and once you have that peg set in at the bottom then you can take it to other
levels.
This interview was recorded live on a radio programme associated with Tell.
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