{"id":72,"date":"2002-05-01T15:33:34","date_gmt":"2002-05-01T22:33:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/?p=72"},"modified":"2002-05-01T15:33:34","modified_gmt":"2002-05-01T22:33:34","slug":"bennett-mad-to-do-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/?p=72","title":{"rendered":"Bennett ‘Mad’ To Do It"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cinefile<\/a>, July 9, 1998
\nBennett ‘Mad’ To Do It<\/strong>
\nA.L.U.<\/p>\n

“In A Savage Land”, a love triangle set against an anthropological background 50 years ago, is set on the Trobriand Islands in New Guinea, where a newly married couple (Stange and Donovan) of anthropolgists crashes into the different culture of the islands, and the young wife falls in love with an American pearl trader, (played by Rufus Sewell, who took out an Australian passport on the strength of his convict ancestors; and his Australian born father).<\/p>\n

The 22 year old Stange is making her feature debut, and her character will age a dozen years in the course of the story.<\/p>\n

Trobriand has no water, no electricity, no accomodation<\/p>\n

The enormity of the task facing Bennett and his co-writer\/wife Jennifer, shared by the cast and crew, was pressed home when Bennett explained the production had to hire a small cruiser and anchor it off the island main beach for accomodation. Trobriand has no water, no electricity, no accomodation……. but it does have rats, pigs and cockroaches, and is strikingly beautiful.<\/p>\n

Asked how they will cope with the isolation and difficult conditions, Donovan quipped that he was doing the movie because he needed some isolated time with a small group of people, and he was “determined not to become an arsehole.”<\/p>\n

“This film has to be done properly, not Hollywoodised.” Bill Bennett<\/p>\n

Bennett said that despite some pressures to shoot the film in a less risky and more accessible location – such as Fiji or Vanuatu – in the end “all the investors understood that this film has to be done properly, not Hollywoodised.”<\/p>\n

The investors include PolyGram Filmed Entertainment for Australian rights, Beyond Films for international sales rights, German film investor, Hollywood Partners, South Australian Film Corporation, and the Australian Film Finance Corporation; who was very supportive from the very first draft, said Bennett.<\/p>\n

“What is primitive and what is civilised.”<\/p>\n

A love story and a cultural adventure, Bennett said the film asks “what happens when a couple in what we now call an old fashioned marriage intersects with a matrifilial society…….the film also questions what is primitive and what is civilised.”<\/p>\n

The six week shoot on the islands will be followed by a two week shoot in Adelaide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cinefile, July 9, 1998 Bennett ‘Mad’ To Do It A.L.U. “In A Savage Land”, a love triangle set against an anthropological background 50 years ago, is set on the Trobriand Islands in New Guinea, where a newly married couple (Stange and Donovan) of anthropolgists crashes into the different culture of the islands, and the young […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[37],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}