Emerald City is a 1988 Australian
comedy-drama film directed by
Michael Jenkins, based on the 1987
play of the same name by
David Williamson
David Keith Williamson AO (born 24 February 1942) is an Australian dramatist and playwright. He has also written screenplays and teleplays.
Early life
David Williamson was born in Melbourne, Victoria, on 24 February 1942, and was brought ...
. Much of the play's dialogue is retained, though discussion of off-stage characters is usually replaced with their appearance, and a more conventionally cinematic level and speed of dialogue is maintained. Also, the younger daughter Hannah is omitted.
Plot
Colin, a principled screenwriter of some success, and his wife Kate, the editor for a publishing house, relocate from the warmer
Melbourne
Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...
to the more ruthless
Sydney and soon become lured by the bright lights of the big city. Colin meets Mike, a hack but resourceful screenwriter with commercial ambitions, and strikes a partnership with him, while instantly falling for his attractive girlfriend Helen. Meanwhile, Kate starts working on a socially important book but soon begins to lose sight of her ideals in this new world of hustlers and cynics.
Cast
*
John Hargreaves as Colin
*
Robyn Nevin
Robyn Anne Nevin (25 September 1942) is an Australian actress, director, and stage producer, recognised with the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards and the JC Williamson Award at the Helpmann Awards for her outstanding contributions to Austra ...
as Kate
*
Chris Haywood
Chris Haywood (born ) is an English-born Australian actor, writer and producer, with close to 500 screen performances to his name. Haywood has also worked as a casting director, art director, sound recordist, camera operator, gaffer, grip, l ...
as Mike
*
Nicole Kidman
Nicole Mary Kidman (born 20 June 1967) is an American and Australian actress and producer. Known for her work across various film and television productions from several genres, she has consistently ranked among the world's highest-paid act ...
as Helen
*
Ruth Cracknell
Ruth Winifred Cracknell AM (6 July 1925 – 13 May 2002) was an Australian character and comic actress, comedienne and author, her career encompassing all genres including radio, theatre, television and film. She appeared in many dramatic as we ...
as Elaine
*
Dennis Miller
Dennis Michael Miller (born November 3, 1953) is an American talk show host, political commentator, sports commentator, actor, and comedian.
He was a cast member of ''Saturday Night Live'' from 1985 to 1991, and he subsequently hosted a stri ...
as Malcolm
* Ella Scott as Penny
* Haydon Samuels as Sam
*
Nicholas Hammond
Nicholas Hammond (born May 15, 1950) is an American-born Australian actor and writer who is best known for his roles as Friedrich von Trapp in the film ''The Sound of Music'' and as Peter Parker/Spider-Man in the 1970s television series ''The A ...
as Ian
*
Michelle Torres as Kath
Production
The film rights to the play were bought by
Joan Long
Joan Long (born Joan Dorothy Boundy; 20 July 1925 – 2 January 1999) was an Australian producer, writer and director best known for '' Caddie'' (1976). She was awarded as a Member of the Order of Australia in 1980 for her services to the film ...
, whose first choice to direct was
Bruce Beresford
Bruce Beresford (; born 16 August 1940) is an Australian film director who has made more than 30 feature films over a 50-year career, both locally and internationally in the United States.
Beresford's notable films he has directed include '' B ...
. However, he had just filmed
an adaptation of the play ''
Crimes of the Heart
''Crimes of the Heart'' is a play by American playwright Beth Henley. It is set in Hazlehurst, Mississippi in the mid-20th century. The play won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play. In 1986, the p ...
'' and did not want to do another play adaptation, so
Michael Jenkins was hired instead. According to some accounts, the original draft of the script pared down the dialogue but John Hargreaves and Robyn Nevin insisted it be put back during rehearsals. Michael Jenkins decided to go along with the actors but had them speak the dialogue especially fast.
Jenkins:
We sat down with the piece when it was in script form and we thought, 'This is not going to survive if we approach it too politely', so... we decided we would do it as we did – we were a bit inspired by some of the Cary Grant
Cary Grant (born Archibald Alec Leach; January 18, 1904November 29, 1986) was an English-American actor. He was known for his Mid-Atlantic accent, debonair demeanor, light-hearted approach to acting, and sense of comic timing. He was one o ...
movies of the '40s when they talked so quickly. So we thought we would pursue that line and feed the information to an audience at a fairly fast rate so that it keeps happening for them. There were mixed critiques. We had some friends and some foes. Those that loved it loved it - those that hated it were very angry about how fast we spoke.
Possible inspirations
Williamson and
Denis Whitburn worked on a World War II miniseries with
director
Director may refer to:
Literature
* ''Director'' (magazine), a British magazine
* ''The Director'' (novel), a 1971 novel by Henry Denker
* ''The Director'' (play), a 2000 play by Nancy Hasty
Music
* Director (band), an Irish rock band
* ''D ...
Chris Thomson titled ''
The Last Bastion
''The Last Bastion'' is a television mini-series which aired in Australia in November 1984. It is a docudrama telling the story of Australia's involvement in World War II, and its often strained relations with its two main allies, Great Britai ...
'', which ran on
Network Ten. The running time was 360 minutes. (
Academy Home Entertainment released a version that ran only 160 minutes to US home video). The miniseries was much ballyhooed but was not well rated. Also, Williamson assisted his brother-in-law,
Chris Löfvén
Chris Löfvén (born 4 April 1948) is an Australian film maker. He is best known for directing the feature film ''Oz (1976 film), Oz'' (1976) and for directing a number of video clips, including "Eagle Rock (song), Eagle Rock".
He started making ...
, on ''
Oz'', an Australian
rock musical
A rock musical is a musical theatre work with rock music. The genre of rock musical may overlap somewhat with album musicals, concept albums and song cycles, as they sometimes tell a story through the rock music, and some album musicals and conc ...
film that retold ''
The Wizard of Oz'' on the streets of Melbourne. The fictional
Land of Oz
The Land of Oz is a fantasy world, magical country introduced in the 1900 children's novel ''The Wonderful Wizard of Oz'' written by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by William Wallace Denslow, W. W. Denslow.
Oz consists of four vast quadrants, th ...
rarely comes up in Australian conversation; the term is used almost exclusively as the nickname for one's own country.
The title of the play ''Emerald City'' has been used as a frequent moniker and nickname for the city of Sydney ever since the play was first presented. The title has been attributed to
Brett Sheehy who was Sydney Theatre Company's Literary Manager when the play was written and first produced. The play's director
Richard Wherrett
Richard Bruce Wherrett AM (10 December 19407 December 2001) was an Australian stage director, whose career spanned 40 years. he is known for being the founding director of the Sydney Theatre Company in 1979.
Early life, education and family
Ri ...
recalls in his autobiography ''The Floor of Heaven: My Life in Theatre'' that Sheehy suggested ''Emerald City'' as the title, which Williamson accepted, adding the line of dialogue, "The Emerald City of Oz. Everyone comes here along their yellow brick roads looking for the answers to their problems and all they find are the demons within themselves."
Reception
The
Australian Film Institute nominated the film for five awards: Best Actor (John Hargreaves), Best Achievement in Cinematography (
Paul Murphy), Best Adapted Screenplay (David Williamson), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Nicole Kidman), and Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Chris Haywood), for which it won.
Williamson enjoyed the adaptation saying it "had a lot of raw energy".
Home media
The film has never been released on
home video
Home video is prerecorded media sold or rented for home viewing. The term originates from the VHS and Betamax era, when the predominant medium was videotapes, but has carried over to optical disc formats such as DVD, Blu-ray and streaming me ...
in the United States, though it has been shown on the
cable channel Romance Classics
We TV (stylized as WE tv) is an American pay television channel. Owned by AMC Networks since its September 1997 launch, it is oriented mainly towards lifestyle and entertainment programming.
As of February 2015, approximately 85.2 million Ameri ...
. A
region-free
A regional lockout (or region coding) is a class of digital rights management preventing the use of a certain product or service, such as multimedia or a hardware device, outside a certain region or territory. A regional lockout may be enforced ...
PAL
Phase Alternating Line (PAL) is a colour encoding system for analogue television. It was one of three major analogue colour television standards, the others being NTSC and SECAM. In most countries it was broadcast at 625 lines, 50 fields (25 ...
DVD
The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...
was released in the United Kingdom by an anonymous company in
Herts
Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For govern ...
(VFC31962 NL041; UPC: 5 017633 41002 >) sometimes given online as "Hollywood Classics". This edition was pressed with a ten-second jump in the master early in the film. Although this jump is noted in the counter, it happens in exactly the same place on all copies. In Germany, the film was released on DVD on 23 March 2012 under the title ''City of Sex''.
References
External links
*
''Emerald City''at Ozmovies
{{David Williamson
1988 comedy-drama films
1988 films
Australian comedy-drama films
Australian films based on plays
Films about screenwriters
Films based on works by David Williamson
Films scored by Chris Neal (songwriter)
Films set in Sydney
Films shot in Sydney
1980s English-language films
Films directed by Michael Jenkins