newsthewest.page

news -"green and keen" the west magazine article by angela wellington

      He may be a country boy in Always Greener, but Abe Forsythe has got the bright lights of the big time in his eyes.

     It's turned out to be a rather good year for Abe Forsythe. As an actor, he landed a regular role in Always Greener, a new Channel 7 series which has clicked with viewers and sits comfortably among the nation's top-rating programs.

     As a filmmaker, his script for a movie about Ned Kelly was picked up for production and is expected to be shot early next year. Not bad for someone who's only 20 and, while it would be a bit rich to think of him as a long-struggling artist made good, he has actually been knocking around the entertainment world for quite a while. In fact, he was virtually born into it; his father is actor Drew Forsythe. "I spent literally all my childhood hanging out with him and touring with him on different shows," he says.

     Now it is Abe's turn. He says he's stoked to be doing both projects. His Always Greener character is a really, really good one; it's the best crew he's ever worked with; his Dad is like the nicest man in the world; and he sees great potential for the sort of films he wants to do in Australia. He is excited and having a good time.
     Born in Sydney's Kings Cross, Forsythe lived the first decade of his life in the Blue Mountains before returning to the city. When he was 10 he scored a part in a Sydney Theatre Company production. At 16 he left school to traipse around with his father as Drew toured with stage shows such as The Pirates of Penzance, HMS Pinafore and The Mikado.

     School might not have interested Forsythe much but learning did - in an informal way. He likes to tackle things at his own pace and is wary of being indoctrinated by others. Even important lessons from his father - in creating characters and timing - were learnt through watching rather than being told. "He never sat me down to teach me anything...just by watching him he's taught me so much... He's never been the kind of person who's wanted to tell me what to do or push me in any sort of way. He's always let me just work it out for myself and make my own mistakes."

     Forsythe is an independent sort of fellow. Once he started making short films he was greatly encouraged when he won an award at the Tropfest festival with his first effort, Guided by the Light of the Lord. "I did basically everything on it. And it was made on 70 bucks." He made several more, continuing to educate himself by doing and watching. "If you look at something a year after you've done it, you notice all your flaws and you know not to do that the next time."

     His 50-minute spoof of The Matrix, called Computer Boy and using some of the same locations as the original, gave him another boost. Shot in less than two weeks and on a budget of $2000, it has proven popular on the Internet. It's been downloaded 380,000 times and has just been picked up for a DVD release he says.

     Comedy is a tough but rewarding training ground. If someone doesn't like drama, you can argue with them over meanings, Forsythe notes. "But with comedy, if they don't laugh, then that's it, it doesn't work." NED, a feature length project, is intended to be a "fairly full-on" comedy. He wrote the script in about three weeks earlier this year when he'd been having a bad run with auditions. Missing out on a lead role in one film after getting down to the last two contenders was particularly depressing. "It was looking really, really good and it was cut from a lot of people down to that - and then they ended up picking the other guy." He figured "it's not going to happen unless I can do it myself".

     Forsythe gave the script to a producer he'd worked with at Tropnest, a writer developement program, last year. It the went to Ocean Pictures who put up "quite a lot of money", explains Forsythe, and gave it a distribution guarantee. It is expected to be shot in four weeks around next February. With other Ned Kelly films in development, time is of the essence. But where the others treat the Australian outlaw as a hero, he says, NED tries to paint him as an idiot. Did Forsythe read a lot on Kelly? "No, not at all. I basically had a timeline of his life which was, you know, Ned's born this year, this event happened at Euroa, this even happened at Glenrowan, this is where he was hanged."

     Around the same time that NED was being pitched, Forsythe was making the pilot for Always Greener. And that also took off. The role of Campbell Todd, country boy headed to the city, came after an acting flat patch last year making commercials. "I thought I was going to be ad-boy for the rest of my life." It's a fun character in a show with a cast he enjoys working with and a great crew. To Forsythe it doesn't seem like work. He learns his lines, goes in and has fun.

     Perhaps not surprisingly, Forsythe's chief filmmaking hero is New Zealand's Peter Jackson, director of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. "He was the one that made me want to get into it all." Forsythe started watching Jackson's early films as a child and looked up to him for having started from scratch and done things on his own. Jackson played two roles in his first film because there weren't enough other people to fill them. He was from a country away from the big-budget, glossy face of film. "He had all these offers to go over to Hollywood but he stayed in New Zealand and made these outrageously funny fiims."

     Then there was Jackon's 1994 feature Heavenly Creatures. One of the best films ever made, says Forsythe. In the same way Peter Jackson had, Forysthe avoided the formal study. "I think if you do that you get stuck into a way of thinking by whoever you're taught by, rather than discovering your own style...I think it's better to actually get in there, work out what your own style is and then push it."

Always Greener screens on Seven on Sundays at 7:30pm.