Emotion is Dead is undeniably South Australian. Filmed in Adelaide and Elizabeth, it features iconic locations like the former Holden factory, the Gawler line, Hindley Street and the Adelaide Botanic Garden, but its themes of grief, class, friendship and disenfranchisement make the story universal.
The film follows Brock (played by first-timer Jude Turner), a teenage skater with dreams of escaping his northern suburbs home, and the memories of a family tragedy that define it. He has an imaginative and industrious plan that ultimately lands him on the wrong side of a bad crowd – dragging his Holden-obsessed mother and emo ex into the fray.
It’s the first narrative feature film by South Australian writer-director Pete Williams, who says he was influenced by American indie films like 20th Century Women by Mike Mills, Donnie Darko and Juno. Emotion is Dead’s gritty-with-a-grin style is a nod to other Aussie crime flicks like Chopper and Two Hands.
Broadsheet sat down with the filmmaker to hear about his unconventional approach to making the film, the hard-hitting emo soundtrack and his tips for new filmmakers.
Hey Pete, I’ve lived in South Australia my whole life. It’s always peculiar to see my home town on the big screen. How did you approach presenting Adelaide and Elizabeth to the world?
I was away from South Australia for 15 years, making films in London and Los Angeles, so when I came back I wanted to celebrate the places I loved most, and pay homage to the magical places of my childhood. I set scenes at the Adelaide Botanic Garden, the Big Rocking Horse and inside the old Holden Factory [in Elizabeth]. The film’s cinematographer Johanis Lyons-Reid did an amazing job of making each location look beautiful, while also maintaining a gritty and naturalistic consistency. I also tried to include as many South Aussie icons in the film as possible. If you look hard enough you’ll see Popeye, Farmers Union iced coffees, West End red tins and even a frog cake.
It uses the death of Australian car manufacturing as the set-up for what is essentially a coming-of-age story. Why was this an important story to tell?
I grew up in Elizabeth and the closure of the Holden factory struck me as a really significant moment in Australian culture. It was emblematic of what was happening across the developed world. Shutting the factory down had a devastating impact on the local community, and I wanted to explore that. It wasn’t just the loss of jobs, it was a loss of pride. We made the cars that were driven by [racing driver] Peter Brock and won Bathurst. When that was taken away, there was a real sense of emptiness, like a death in the family.
You’ve called the film a “no budget” feature. How much did it really cost?
I have buddies in the industry who’ve been trying to make a feature for years but have been stifled because of budget. So I was determined to make my debut feature for as little money as possible, to totally remove that economic roadblock. Turns out it’s impossible to make a quality film on no budget – some costs are unavoidable, like hard drives, music licensing, crew catering and a lot of the post-production process. The film ended up costing around $300,000, but most of that was my own cash, [which I made] from making TV shows and commercials. If I never see that money again I still feel like it was a sound investment.
Speaking of music licensing, how did you pick the tunes?
Punk rock and emo were the soundtrack to my youth growing up in Elizabeth. As I was writing the screenplay, these songs kept coming back to me and slowly started to embed themselves into the script. It wasn’t until after I’d shot the film and reached out to the bands and labels that I realised how difficult and expensive it is to license songs. I had to work a few more TV-show gigs to pay for the final soundtrack, but I think it’s worth it.
I heard everyone who worked on the film will get one per cent of the profits.
That’s right. Everyone who participated in the film will all share in the success of the film equally. This film wouldn’t be possible without the generous donation of time, energy and passion from the amazing cast, crew, casting agents, location providers, prop donors and cinemas. I don’t know how I can ever repay the generosity shown to me from literally hundreds of people. I hope they can share in the pride I feel when I see our little film projected onto some of the biggest cinema screens in the country.
This is a first film for some of the actors, including Jude Turner (who was in Talk to Me, which was filmed after Emotion is Dead).
Jude’s been studying for years, so his acting chops are on point, he just hasn’t had the opportunity. I set him an almost impossible task (for any actor) by saying he wasn’t allowed to show emotion for 95 per cent of the film. No frowning or smiling. But he really pulled it off. There are also some more experienced actors in the film, like Adam Tuominen, who was a Power Ranger on TV, and Tatiana Goode, who starred in A Sunburnt Christmas, and our producer Brian Hayes, who worked on Hotel Mumbai. But pretty much everyone else was new to the game, or came from theatre backgrounds.
Do you have tips for young filmmakers?
Don’t wait for permission. Don’t waste your life writing grant applications or looking for investors, just take what you have, get your mates together and start making stuff. It will most likely be rubbish for a decade or so, but every failure is one step closer to success – and even the failures are creatively fulfilling if you learn to laugh along with them. No one in the film industry really knows what they’re doing anyway.
Emotion is Dead is showing in select cinemas nationwide.
