Overview
To view this page in your preferred language, please use the language drop-down in the lower left of the screen. This article features descriptive audio for the movie, along with the movie audio and an audio transcript.
Length: 91 minutes
Released: 17th August 2006
Rating: 6.7 out of 10 from 6214 users
MPAA Rating: R – Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian. Contains some adult material. Parents are urged to learn more about the film before children listen to or read it.
Language: English
Director: Murali K. Thalluri
Creator: Murali K. Thalluri
Actors: Teresa Palmer, Frank Sweet, Sam Harris, Charles Baird, Joel Mackenzie
TagLine: It’s only a matter of time.
2:37 (2006) Trailer
2:37 (2006) -Trailer
Yeah, I've got a good body but it's
not about being vain, you know, it's about
being a top class athlete.
You've pissed yourself man, that's horrible.
I just rang to say that I miss
you.
Is everything alright?
You okay?
People just look at me like I'm this
sick, perverted, twisted little outcast.
Hey, I read your story.
You understand that it's just a story.
I know, I know, I know, but someone
came in here and wrote up a story
about shooting up the whole school.
It'd be my responsibility to check it out.
Yeah, right, I understand that, but this story,
it's a love story.
Oh, they were all so jealous of Luke
and I.
Go Mark, it's one of them.
I've been trusting, you know I have.
Sure, we think we have family and friends,
but when stuff happens, serious stuff happens, it's
just some stuff you can't share.
Open the door!
you
not about being vain, you know, it's about
being a top class athlete.
You've pissed yourself man, that's horrible.
I just rang to say that I miss
you.
Is everything alright?
You okay?
People just look at me like I'm this
sick, perverted, twisted little outcast.
Hey, I read your story.
You understand that it's just a story.
I know, I know, I know, but someone
came in here and wrote up a story
about shooting up the whole school.
It'd be my responsibility to check it out.
Yeah, right, I understand that, but this story,
it's a love story.
Oh, they were all so jealous of Luke
and I.
Go Mark, it's one of them.
I've been trusting, you know I have.
Sure, we think we have family and friends,
but when stuff happens, serious stuff happens, it's
just some stuff you can't share.
Open the door!
you
Review: 2:37 (2006) – A Raw, Unflinching Glimpse into Teenage Anguish
Some movies just entertain, while others make you think and feel uncomfortable. 2:37, the first feature from Australian director Murali K. Thalluri, definitely falls into the latter category. It gives a raw and unsettling look at teen struggles, diving deep into the darker side of suburban life.
The film unfolds during one school day, and it builds up to a tragic moment—a student’s body is found in a bathroom at 2:37 p.m. From there, we hear from six students, each sharing their personal battles with identity, sexuality, disability, self-worth, and loneliness. It’s a tough watch, but that seems to be the point.
Performances That Feel Too Real
The cast, mostly made up of newcomers, gives super realistic performances. Teresa Palmer, in her first role as Melody, shows a mix of charm and vulnerability that she later develops in other films. She really portrays her character’s quiet strength and tragic denial well.
Frank Sweet, Sam Harris, and Charles Baird bring honesty to their roles, but it’s Clementine Mellor as Sarah who stands out. Her take on a young woman with a dark secret is haunting. Joel Mackenzie’s role as Marcus, dealing with disability and being overlooked, adds a touching layer to the film without going overboard.
Direction and Style
Thalluri directs with surprising skill. He was only 22 when he wrote, directed, produced, and edited 2:37, inspired by the suicide of a close friend, which gives the film its emotional weight. While some people compare it to Gus Van Sant’s Elephant, 2:37 finds its own voice with a stronger focus on emotional storytelling.
His use of long takes and direct-to-camera moments adds an almost documentary feel. It can feel a bit off at times, but that seems intentional, reflecting the characters’ inner chaos.
Cinematography and Sound
Louis Irving’s cinematography is both sharp and expressive. The school’s bright white hallways cut into the characters’ lives, and the camera lingers on faces and spaces, creating a tense atmosphere without dramatic flair.
Caine Davidson’s score is simple but effective, often using silence to draw you in. The sound design amplifies feelings of isolation, with everyday school sounds muted to reflect the characters’ emotional states.
The School as a Stage
Filmed in Adelaide, South Australia, the school isn’t just a backdrop; it feels like a character that’s cold and overwhelming. This works well as the day unfolds in almost real-time, trapping us in the same pressure that the students feel.
Final Thoughts
2:37 isn’t easy to recommend. It’s intense, raw, and sometimes upsetting. But it’s a film worth watching, especially for its honest take on youth mental health. It raises important questions about silence, stigma, and how we often miss the struggles of those around us.
If you like emotionally charged movies like Requiem for a Dream or Thirteen, 2:37 will hit home. Despite its darkness, it has a heart—and that makes it unforgettable.
Rating: ★★★★☆
2:37 (2006) Audio Files
Movie Audio and Transcript
Includes English subtitles and an English transcript. To change the subtitle and transcript language, please use the language drop-down menu at the bottom left of the page. You can reposition the transcript box by holding onto the ‘AutoScroll’ section.
2:37 (2006) - Audio
["Fantasy Star Wars Main Theme"] ["Spy's
Theme"] Mr...
Please!
Yes, yes, relax, everyone.
Everyone!
Open the door!
Yes, go away, please!
Find somebody else to ignore.
Mr...
Mr...
What happened?
Hello!
Mr...
Hello!
I said piss off!
Now!
Hello, is there somebody in there?
Open up.
Are you sure there's someone in there?
Yes, I'm sure.
Well, go and get the janitor.
Hello, hello?
Mate, is that you in there?
Open the door!
Is there somebody in there?
Open the door!
Open the door!
Are you sure there's someone in there?
Just open the fucking door!
Yeah, no, it's me.
Yeah, it's me, Blake.
Um, alright, well, yeah, I'll talk to you
about it in the first break, okay?
Alright, yep, cool, see ya.
Mel!
Next year, um, when school's finished.
I'm leaving, Melody!
I'd really like to be like my dad.
You know, he's just...
You've just gotta admire him.
I mean, he works really, really hard.
Um, he's successful.
He's a partner in this major firm.
You know, six-figure salary.
They have these fucking beautiful offices.
Mel!
I'm leaving, Melody!
Remember when I was little?
I was probably about eight or nine.
And I saved up all my money for
those dollar-a-day commercials?
You know, the ones with the kids with
all the flies all over their face?
Anyway, I sponsored this little girl.
Her name was Jemina.
She was so cute.
Anyway, my brother Marcus found out, who then
told my dad.
God, he got so angry.
He said I was wasting money.
You know, she could have died.
I love kids.
I think I could be a primary school
teacher.
It'd be fun.
Oh, and animals too.
They're just so gorgeous.
We weren't allowed pets, though.
Yeah, I've got a good body, but it's
not about being vain, you know?
It's about being a top-class athlete.
Like, I love scoring goals and winning and,
you know, just making good time.
And then I fucking hate school.
I sit there and I listen to shit
that has no relevance to me.
Like, fair enough for someone else who's gonna
go off and be a lawyer or some
shit like that, but for me it's just
fucking useless, you know?
Who actually gives a fuck about some dead
poet from 200 years ago?
Premier League soccer players, we don't need maths
or Shakespeare or Tutankhamun, you know?
Luke!
I love tits.
I love pussy.
I just love women.
Like I say, all that shit makes me
normal, huh?
It's like people can just look at me
and say, oh, he's just this normal, horny
little kid.
You know the truth, though?
I love cock.
I love ass.
And saying that shit, people just look at
me, like, look at me like I'm this
sick, perverted, twisted little fucking outcast.
That's school, though, isn't it?
After next year, all my friends want to
be big, independent women or have some great
career.
Yeah.
I think marriage is a nice thought.
Now, I know there's probably a million feminist
butch chicks out there who'd kill me for
saying that, but I'm not talking about one
of those fat housewives who go shopping in
their trackies.
I just like the idea of being in
love.
I mean, just because you're married doesn't mean
you have to let yourself go.
Back home in England, me and my family,
we always lived in the same street, same
house, and all neighbours and friends, they knew
my medical problems.
I've got one leg longer than the other
one, and that gives me a limp.
I was also born with two urethras.
One of them I can control, and one
of them just does its own thing.
I wet myself, and it's really embarrassing.
I started school here three months ago, and
we moved down here.
I used to have this saying, that the
shit would hit the fan, but it would
never hit me.
Recently, it's really, really started to stink.
Fuck.
Hey!
Mel!
Mel!
Listen, are you going to be okay?
Mel!
Melanie!
Hey.
What's up?
Not much.
Your mum's still away?
Yeah, she is.
I haven't really spoken to her for a
while.
Oh, really?
When's she getting back?
I don't know.
Probably three weeks or so.
So you're home alone?
Yeah, it's just me and Marcus.
How are you?
Not bad.
Hey.
Hey.
I heard your
story in English did really well.
You know, it's been said that exposure to
classical kinds of music as a child triggers
these neural pathways in your brain that create
this...
spatial, temporal reasoning ability.
It increases your intellect.
Your story...
Was it, um...
about somebody in particular?
Was it...
personal?
Of course it was personal.
Oh.
Who was it about?
Look, I gotta go.
Marcus.
Come on, I didn't...
Mourn enough,
don't it?
Oh, I was fucking gone.
You fucked.
I'd gone into the corner to take a
slash ride because I was a fucking parrot.
And this little bastard taps me on the
shoulder.
What, Dino?
No.
Yeah, there.
So I turn around while I'm taking a
piss and just piss all over this guy,
man.
You fucking pissed all over him.
What did Ben do?
What could he do, man?
He was covered in piss.
Hey, Shawny!
Hey, Shawn.
How's it going, buddy?
You get fucking shit on your dick.
Hey, Shawn.
You like taking it or giving it, eh?
I could give it to you, Shawny.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, I'm gonna come.
Yeah, you like that?
There you go.
Come on, give us a kiss.
Get the fuck off of me.
Well, we're not good enough for you, Shawny.
Fuck me.
Fucking cock jockey!
Hey, babe.
Hey, guys.
She's always looking at him.
Whatever.
She is.
What the fuck are you doing?
Get out!
What is wrong with him?
He's probably stoned.
That's disgusting.
Did you hear about Greg's having cancer?
Shit, is it bad?
I don't know.
I think so.
That's sad.
It is.
Alright, how do I look?
You look hot.
Alright, I'll see you later.
Alright, I'll see you later.
Yeah.
Hey, Sarah.
Hey.
Can you wait two minutes?
Yeah, I'll meet you down there.
Alright.
See ya.
See ya.
Give us a kiss.
Enough for you, Shawny.
Fucking profane.
Fucking cock jockey!
Hey, babe.
Hey, guys.
We're gonna cruise, aren't we?
Yeah.
Do you need a jacket or something?
Uh, I gotta go.
I just got here.
Hey, guys.
Hey, where's Luke going?
To class or something.
Where are we in?
Oh, the student video thing.
Oh.
You gonna do it?
No.
So, uh, how are things with Luke?
Yeah, okay.
Yeah, I am at school.
At a payphone.
So, how's your holiday?
Oh, God.
It's so sunny down here.
Wish you were here with me.
Yeah.
How's your father?
He's okay.
I haven't really seen him.
He's interstate at the moment.
What?
He left you guys alone?
No.
Please don't tell him.
I wasn't meant to say anything.
Unbelievable.
How did you get to school?
Marcus drove us.
Typical.
Anyway, I just...
I just rang to say that I miss
you.
Is everything alright?
Are you okay?
Yeah.
Gotta run.
Love you.
Love you too.
You still there?
Yeah.
Take care of your brother, okay?
Okay.
My parents really pushed my brother into things.
Like school, music.
Everything.
It's just so different with me, though.
You know, any time I started getting good
at something, piano or dance or basically anything
arty, Dad would just stop paying lessons.
It's like...
It's like he hated me being good at
things.
Hell, he wouldn't even let me listen to
music.
He's weird.
And I know that sounds stupid, I know
that.
But that's just the way it seems.
That's good, that's good.
You've shown some really perceptive discussion on the
legal side of same-sex marriage and the
legal side of adoption.
But what about the kids in this whole
issue?
How are they going to be affected?
What's going to be their place in this
complicated jigsaw?
Yeah?
Well, I don't really think it matters.
If you have parents that are the same
sex or male and female, they're still going
to get the same amount of love and
the kid's going to be brought up fine.
I can kind of see, though, if other
people, they'll probably look at him differently, I
reckon.
Why would they look at them differently?
Well, I mean, obviously people are going to
find out that his parents are gay.
So, you know, he's going to get harassed
and teased at school.
You know, it's just rude and it's unfair.
Exactly, yeah.
That kid would have to put up with
all of the torment that he'd get because
his parents made the selfish choice to have
that relationship and then bring them into it.
Well, you're saying that it's selfish for two
people to have a child, for two loving
people to bring a kid into a loving
family, is that what you're saying?
No, it's just it's not natural for two
gay men to have a kid.
It's got nothing to do with natural.
If two people love each other, they should
be able to bring and raise a child.
It's not about love.
I mean, they've never been able to adopt
a kid before.
God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and
Steve.
That's fucking bullshit, mate.
You're referring to a Bible reference.
It's a creation story.
It's a myth.
Look, if two dudes are bringing up a
kid, of course the kid's going to be
a fag in the end, aren't they?
You're fucking ignorant, mate.
Sean.
You're ignorant.
Come on.
Straight as an arrow.
Look at you.
You're a fag.
You're trying to flip that on the rest
of us.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
This is not a personal discussion.
It's a discussion about issues, okay?
What's the issue that you are trying to
direct here?
Keep your personal stuff out of it.
G'day, mates.
Bit early today.
Yeah.
Hey, I heard you playing before.
I didn't know you were musical.
Oh, I've been playing since I was a
little kid.
Yeah, well, it shows.
Thanks.
Hey, I read your story.
Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, I, uh, I liked it.
Thanks.
Sounds like you're in love, huh?
Hey, listen, about that, um, your story.
Uh, I mean, this is just a formality,
but, um...
Formality?
Yeah, well...
What do you mean?
It's sort of...
I was thinking about it last night, and,
um...
What?
I mean, I know it's...
You know it's my piece.
Oh, of course, of course.
I haven't copied it.
No, no, it's not that.
It's, uh...
Well, it's...
It's the content.
What are you...
I don't understand.
What are you trying to say?
Well, it's, uh...
I mean, I'm sure you'll agree it's not
a story that every Tom, Dick, and Harry
would write.
Yeah, okay.
And it touched upon some very sensitive and
erotic issues.
Yeah, all right, but you understand that it's
just a story.
I know, I know, I know, but, um...
Well, let me put it to you this
way.
Someone came in here and wrote up a
story about shooting up the whole school.
It'd be my responsibility to check it out.
I understand that, but this story isn't about
shooting up the whole school.
It's a love story, for Christ's sake.
Did you write it about anyone in particular?
No, I didn't, and everybody's been asking me
that, and it wasn't about anyone, and it
wasn't written for anyone.
It's just a story, that's all it is.
And if I showed it to someone, say,
your father?
No, why would you show it to him?
Okay, relax.
No, I can't relax.
It doesn't even have anything to do with
him.
And, look, I just...
I wrote this story because I wanted to
be...
Morning, guys.
I wanted to be controversial, and I wanted
to be different so I could win, and
I did, and that's what it's about.
That's the story.
Forget I said anything, okay?
It's all good.
I just...
Okay.
Okay, guys.
Now, if you can get your books straight
out today and open up to page 24.
We are studying the Scottish play.
Okay, now...
I remember one time, um...
we had this babysitter, and this is when
Mum and Dad were still together, but anyway,
we had this babysitter, and Melody and I
fell...
well, Melody fell asleep.
I was still half awake.
And Mum and Dad got home, and they
paid the babysitter, and Dad...
Dad didn't even wait until they got into
the bedroom.
I don't know, I guess he thought that
we were both...
that we were both asleep.
But, um...
I remember, he just ripped off her clothes
and just started fucking her, like, right then
and there on the couch.
And I know I should be disgusted.
Like, I know that.
I was...
Well, it's not like I was...
I don't know.
I guess I still think about it.
All right,
I'll feed you.
Hey, baby.
Come on, the other way.
There we go, sweetie.
Hello.
You're getting big.
Yeah.
Little cutie.
You remember me.
Don't be scared.
What's going on in there, huh?
Hey, Melody.
You've been really great with the animals this
term.
She's a cute one, isn't she, Daisy?
Hey, you know, someone has to take them
home each week for the weekend.
Maybe you could...
No.
My brother's allergic.
Marcus?
Yeah.
Everything all right?
Yeah, everything's fine.
Oh, boy.
Bloody Ralph.
I can so much as sew his lips
together.
Luke, Tom!
I'm just scared that now that I have
things like Ron out there, now that I...
All right, get out of here now, both
of you.
Okay, thank you.
Now that I know that I will wake
up alive tomorrow, did I forget?
Hey, what do you reckon of that clear
chick in there?
Fat one.
She's not fat.
She's huge, man.
She's got good tits, though, man.
My girl has twice the tits and half
the frame.
Yeah, but that's Sarah, you know what I
mean?
She's like a twig.
You're too hard on Sarah.
Break her.
Got a small cock.
Virgin.
Shut the fuck up, man.
What?
Cheers.
I was thinking, I reckon I'm an ass
fucker.
Sarah?
Yeah.
What's wrong with that, man?
I'm an ass fucker.
Nothing gay, man.
Nothing gay.
Someone put your cock in her.
Fuck you.
Check it out.
What is that smell?
Stephen?
Stephen?
I see you're outside.
What is the matter with you?
Stephen, I'm speaking to you.
Bit old for this sort of thing, aren't
you?
You'd better go and get yourself cleaned up,
then.
You'd better go and see the counsellor.
Mr. Darcy, my bag and books.
Inside.
I'll be lucky it wasn't number twos.
I was thinking, I reckon I'm an ass
fucker.
Sarah?
Yeah.
What's wrong with that, man?
I'm an ass fucker.
Nothing gay, man.
Nothing gay.
Someone put your cock in her.
Fuck you.
Check it out.
Hey, how you going on even, Stephen?
Stevie, all right, bro?
I just had an accident.
You've pissed yourself, man.
That's horrible.
Watch out.
Watch out.
Stairs.
Shit, that sucks.
Wait up, mate.
I didn't mean to do it.
I mean, it's not like...
It's not like I can control it.
Before I knew it, it was...
My trousers were just wet.
It's just like a routine now.
My parents, they used to send me with
these...
Perfume to school and to try and mask
the smell, but that was pretty hopeless, and
then they tried...
Well, we tried these pad thingies, and I
think they were meant to absorb the wee,
but, God, that was a stupid idea.
That didn't work either.
So now the only thing that I can
really do is I'll just pack the same
pair of trousers that I'm wearing that day
and underwear and then take them to school,
and, yeah, I suppose that works, but some
days I go...
I've wet myself more than once, and it's
frustrating.
It's embarrassing.
Sure, we
think we have family and friends, but when
stuff happens, when really serious stuff happens, you
just feel so alone, and you can't tell
people.
I mean, they'll probably listen, but they don't
know everything.
In fact, they don't know anything.
It's just some stuff that you can't share.
So what do you do then?
He's really beautiful.
Which one?
Luke.
Oh.
I don't even think he is.
Yeah, he is.
So, um, would you, uh...
Would you fuck him?
Sorry, I mean, um, would you give him
the opportunity?
So do you hear Michael's back in hospital?
Yeah, I heard.
Slut.
Fucking bitch.
Don't worry about it.
No, who the hell does she think she
is?
Seriously, don't worry about it.
All right, I gotta go.
Yeah, well, I'll see you at four.
Yeah.
She's right there with it.
Well, what was it?
It was positive.
So she's pregnant.
Wait, Sarah, tell me exactly what happened.
She stopped anaesthesia.
What was I supposed to do, huh?
Never thought she'd get a fuck.
Bullshit.
Wait, who does she think it is, then?
Sarah, come on.
Don't do it.
Don't do this to yourself.
You don't understand.
She's with him more than I am.
Look, he loves you.
You know he does.
This is stupid.
You do this every time.
Look, it's his.
I know it.
Slut.
Hey, babe.
That's it, boys.
I gotta go.
Oh, babe, just a minute.
Sorry.
God, they were all so jealous of Luke
and I.
He had his pick of every girl in
the school, and he chose me.
It's not like I tried to trick him
or anything.
I didn't.
I can trust him.
I know I can.
But girls can be so bitchy, and frankly,
they'll do anything to get what they want.
It's not always the guy's fault.
At home, I've got this list of all
the football greats, like Beckham and Ronaldo and
Zidane and all of them.
One day, I'm going to be on that
list.
And this is Steven's comeback game.
He's been out for about a year of
a leg injury now.
One important comeback game this one's set to
be.
He's just gotten his first touch of the
game.
It looks to be a good interception at
the halfway line.
He takes it around one defender.
Oh, skips past another, and he's gone past
Ronaldo.
He's not even there.
He lays it off.
This is brilliant play.
He gets it back at the edge of
the box, and he's shooting it straight into
the top right corner.
Oh, and the crowd go wild.
This is absolutely brilliant play by Steven in
England.
When they haven't seen play like this in
66, the Brazilians are gutted.
I was
watching one of those courtroom dramas, and there's
that moment when the jury come out of
deliberation, and they tell the judge whether or
not this guy's going to be guilty.
The tension is so thick, you actually could
cut it with a knife.
I mean, that's what it was like when
we got a test or an assignment back.
You just avoid all the scribble on all
the pages, and you just head straight to
the verdict.
I mean, I usually do pretty well.
But, you know, those few times I heard
that guilty verdict.
It was my dad.
Yeah, he really tore me up.
Yeah, he's always like, oh, yeah, yeah, it's
good, but is it good enough?
Everything always has to be so fucking perfect
with him.
He's usually right, though.
Marcus.
Yeah, I just saw my mark for the
test.
Yeah, 87, not bad.
Yeah, I know it's pretty good, but I
need three more percent.
Well, there's no negotiating marks.
Look, I understand that in any other circumstance
that I would be fine.
No, in all circumstances, we don't change the
marks.
Look, please, you don't understand.
Look, if you could just check over that
paper once, I'm sure we can find through
it.
No, I'm not checking over anything, no.
I'm sure we can find it.
Look, please, just put my mind at rest.
Look, Marcus, if you want to continue with
this nonsense, we can talk about lowering your
overall mark by five percent.
Mrs. Jacobs, look, you don't understand.
Look, you've just got to check it over
just once for me, please.
Fuck.
I ain't got time to hear
what you're after.
What's up with you?
She wouldn't even fucking listen to me.
Who?
Jacobs.
I need a 90.
What did you get?
87's awesome, what are you talking about?
Marcus.
I think most people probably see me as
a geek or a nerd or whatever.
They never really give me much trouble though,
I don't know.
But the other times that they do give
me a bit of grief, I just look
at them and think to myself, well, in
five years you'll be on fucking welfare and
serving me at McDonald's.
Yeah, well, that's a comforting thought.
Get back to your mum.
Get back to your mum.
Look who's checking you out, man.
Which one?
The fucking blonde one, what's her name?
Mel.
Melody, man.
Melody.
I've known her since I was like six,
man.
Whatever, man.
Look, you've got to tell me that with
a straight face.
Tell me you wouldn't want a piece of
that ass.
Did you see that look?
I saw that look, man.
You've fucking done her already, haven't you?
Did you fuck her in the ass?
Was it tight?
Look, man, you're with your boys, you can
tell us.
No.
You took her home.
You stroked her hair.
And you fucked her up.
Fuck off.
Yeah?
You all right, man?
It's all a fucking game at school, you
know?
I mean, the shit that goes on there,
seriously.
Yeah, I'll give someone shit, I'll pay him
out, but I doubt he's going to go
home and cry himself to sleep over it.
You know, you've got to be tough, otherwise
people will stomp you down to the fucking
ground.
It's a jungle, and if you can't fake
your way through school, how the fuck are
you going to make it in the real
world, huh?
Tell me that.
You want me to call a plumber, Steve?
I love my family, my mum.
My dad, my brother, my sister.
Through all of this, they've been sitting at
my bedside in hospital or waiting in waiting
rooms when I've been in theatre, and it's
been brilliant through all of this, and it's
just been amazing, their support.
And now when I have trouble at school,
I just don't think I can complain to
them.
I don't think I can.
They deserve...
They deserve to have better than that now.
Yes.
Sean.
Matt.
Come on through.
What's that?
It's just my folks.
They, um...
They got me, like, this dog the other
day.
Oh, cool.
Yeah.
What's on?
It's, um...
It's like a husky, I guess.
It looks sort of like a wolf.
How's he settling in?
Well, I cut its fucking throat.
You killed it.
No, I'm just joking.
It's going good, yeah.
I like it.
OK.
And why do you think your, um...
Why do you think your parents bought you
a dog?
I don't know.
It's just...
Lately, I guess since...
It's probably since I came out, you know.
They've been fucking badgering me constantly about why
don't you bring any people home anymore, and...
I guess it's about they want me to
have companionship.
It just fucking shits me off, because my
dad especially, always in my ear constantly.
He thinks this is a phase.
He thinks that I'm just a teenager, that
this whole fucking gay thing is just gonna
disappear.
You know what I mean?
It's just fucking shit.
He knows I'm gay.
He has to fucking deal with it, and
that's it.
It's really hard for fathers to understand.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, I'm his kid.
I'm his son.
How fucking hard is it to accept your
kid?
And parents want their kids to grow up
like they did.
Big deal.
Did your parents like...
Did you grow up how your dad was?
No, I didn't.
No, I didn't, but it's a natural parental
instinct.
I mean, parents want their kids to be
happy.
I've been as subtle as I can with
this whole thing, and it's fucking blown up
in my face.
How are things with your mum?
My mum?
She's a fucking bitch.
I don't even go out with my parents
anymore.
I don't even go to the places that
they go to anymore, because everybody knows I'm
fucking gay.
They don't even ask me to come anymore.
Do you talk to your brother at all?
No, I don't talk to my brother.
He's the complete opposite, you know?
He's got this career, and he's gone to
uni, he's done it all, he's got this
woman, he's probably going to get married in
a couple of years, everything's going really, really
well, and, you know, here's me, fucking...
So he's the golden boy?
Of course he's the fucking golden boy.
I mean, what are they going to get
out of me?
They're going to get grandkids out of him.
I'm just their dirty little fucking secret.
So they're ganging up on you?
They're not ganging up on me.
They're just both against me.
Yeah, um, fine.
Um, thanks.
Hey, um, heard about your sister.
Really?
Yeah.
Oh.
What, what did you hear about her?
What are you talking about?
Yeah, look, it's OK.
I know.
What, what, what are you...
What are you, what are you saying?
What are you talking about?
Marcus, look, you can talk to me about
it, you know, it's all right.
What are you...
What the fuck are you talking about?
You mean you didn't hear?
I didn't fucking hear.
What the hell are you talking about?
Shit.
Look, you know, I probably shouldn't have said
anything.
Just fucking tell me.
Just fucking go, Marcus.
What the fuck is wrong with you?
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Jesus.
Can you please just fucking tell me what
the fuck is going on?
Fine, fine.
I heard she might be pregnant, right?
Jesus.
Who the fuck told you that?
I can't stand the whole attitude at school.
You know, all that politically correct, self-righteous
bullshit.
And calling it my issues, and calling me
homo-fucking-sexual.
I mean, fuck that.
You don't call a pussy a vagina, do
you?
I'm gay.
It's as simple as that.
Fucking get over it.
Fuck.
Back at the
class.
Oh, fucking Jacob's fucking...
Oh, I got physics.
I got physics.
Look at that pink fucking shit.
How the...
No, not good for the animals, actually.
Not good.
I'm blue, fucking...
You're blue?
Is everything okay?
Mm.
Where have you been?
Innocence.
You're fucking kidding me.
No joke.
I'm going to take a piss.
Remember to wipe the shit off your cock.
Yeah, get laid first then come talk to
me.
What's going on?
Dude, just leave.
You can't fucking avoid me forever.
Just fuck off, alright?
Don't fucking touch me!
What the fuck?
You're pretty fucking confident giving me shit in
front of your mates, huh?
You fucking macho man.
Just fuck off!
Everyone knows you're fucking gay, alright?
Fucking get over yourself.
Cut.
Fuck!
Get the
fuck out of my way.
What the fuck?
You know, people reckon I can't fall in
love.
But I have.
Who is it?
That's my business, but it feels fucking great.
And I know one day I'll be able
to bring him down to the house so
he can meet mum and dad.
I'll make sure he sits right next to
my brother at the kitchen table, you fucking
freak.
What's going on?
Dude, just leave.
You can't fucking avoid me forever.
Just fuck off, alright?
Don't fucking touch me!
What the fuck?
You're pretty fucking confident giving me shit in
front of your mates, huh?
You fucking macho man.
Just fuck off!
Everyone knows you're fucking gay, alright?
Fucking get over yourself.
Cut.
Fuck!
Dude, come on.
I'm warning you, fuck!
I don't think that people mean to be
cruel.
Mum says that they're just kids and she
reckons eventually things will get better.
School finishes in three months.
That's 90 days.
90 days can sometimes be a really, really
long time though.
Oi, Stephen, are you okay?
You're bleeding.
I have a tissue if you want.
Hey, are you going to be okay?
Yeah, I'll be okay.
Hey, I've
been looking for you.
Baby, what's wrong?
Fuck off, alright?
Fuck!
There are some things you just don't talk
about, you know?
I won't, alright?
And I'm just just not going to.
I just love him.
I love everything about him.
He knows more about me than my own
parents do.
I mean, how many people can say that
at 17?
They call us the prince and princess but
they don't realise that it's not a joke
to me.
This is serious.
I could really see us getting married.
What else can I say?
I love him.
Shit.
What are you doing next class?
What do you think of that?
Good?
Fuck!
Of course
I know you're good.
Yeah.
Hmm.
You've been touching me since I was 13.
Marcus.
But that...
That was the first time that you actually
fucked me.
What?
How did you know?
My friend saw the tester.
Are you dead fucking sure?
Sure that this isn't...
I know it was sure.
Fuck, I mean, no one knows what to
do.
Sarah's got shit on her.
She thinks she's cheating on her.
Where are you going?
Marcus, look, you didn't hear it from me,
alright?
Marcus.
Where are you going?
Come on, do it.
Marcus.
Leave me alone!
Marcus!
Fuck it all.
What the fuck have you said?
What the fuck did you do?
Is it true?
You fucking...
Mum?
I'm not too sure what I want to
do when I leave here.
I know I should have all that planned
out by now.
Have my goals set.
I know Marcus wants to be some hotshot
lawyer.
Good on him.
But me?
I cannot imagine sitting behind a desk all
day long.
I don't know.
I want to travel.
Get as far away as possible.
Steven, are you okay?
You're bleeding.
I have a tissue if you want.
Hey.
Marcus.
Marcus.
Come on, I know you're...
Marcus.
Hey.
Are you going to be okay?
Marcus.
No.
I
love you.
Marcus.
Sometimes, you know, sometimes you just get so
wrapped up in your own problems that you
just don't notice anybody else.
You know?
You know, people talk about reincarnation and heaven
and what happens when you die and hell
and all that bullshit.
I mean, none of it makes sense.
You know?
It's just people are scared of dying.
Well, I'm not.
Once you're dead, you're dead.
It's as simple as that.
I think the last time I had a
real conversation with her was year two or
something.
That was ten years ago.
Yeah.
Well, she was my friend and I'm going
to miss her.
I don't really have anything more to say
about it than that.
She was in my brother's music class.
I guess all I can really say is
she's lucky.
Really.
I mean, I knew her and she seemed
like a happy enough person.
You know, not once, not fucking once did
she ask for help or indicate in any
way that she was going to top herself.
You know, maybe she did.
That I could have helped.
I don't know.
She just...
My sister has this little boy, a baby
boy, but well, he's not really a baby
anymore, I guess.
But he's just learning to talk and do
animal noises and she sent me a video
that she'd taken on her camera the other
day and she's got him with his face
painted like a little tiger and she's saying
Oscar, do the tiger noise and his little
face goes meow meow and his little lips
and it's so cute and the whole camera's
shaking because she's laughing so much and it's
just so sweet.
on each sofa so high now that all
seems like a dream I will never see
broken wing destiny
seems so hard there's no hard dream forget
me he
sings wish upon
a sea
Theme"] Mr...
Please!
Yes, yes, relax, everyone.
Everyone!
Open the door!
Yes, go away, please!
Find somebody else to ignore.
Mr...
Mr...
What happened?
Hello!
Mr...
Hello!
I said piss off!
Now!
Hello, is there somebody in there?
Open up.
Are you sure there's someone in there?
Yes, I'm sure.
Well, go and get the janitor.
Hello, hello?
Mate, is that you in there?
Open the door!
Is there somebody in there?
Open the door!
Open the door!
Are you sure there's someone in there?
Just open the fucking door!
Yeah, no, it's me.
Yeah, it's me, Blake.
Um, alright, well, yeah, I'll talk to you
about it in the first break, okay?
Alright, yep, cool, see ya.
Mel!
Next year, um, when school's finished.
I'm leaving, Melody!
I'd really like to be like my dad.
You know, he's just...
You've just gotta admire him.
I mean, he works really, really hard.
Um, he's successful.
He's a partner in this major firm.
You know, six-figure salary.
They have these fucking beautiful offices.
Mel!
I'm leaving, Melody!
Remember when I was little?
I was probably about eight or nine.
And I saved up all my money for
those dollar-a-day commercials?
You know, the ones with the kids with
all the flies all over their face?
Anyway, I sponsored this little girl.
Her name was Jemina.
She was so cute.
Anyway, my brother Marcus found out, who then
told my dad.
God, he got so angry.
He said I was wasting money.
You know, she could have died.
I love kids.
I think I could be a primary school
teacher.
It'd be fun.
Oh, and animals too.
They're just so gorgeous.
We weren't allowed pets, though.
Yeah, I've got a good body, but it's
not about being vain, you know?
It's about being a top-class athlete.
Like, I love scoring goals and winning and,
you know, just making good time.
And then I fucking hate school.
I sit there and I listen to shit
that has no relevance to me.
Like, fair enough for someone else who's gonna
go off and be a lawyer or some
shit like that, but for me it's just
fucking useless, you know?
Who actually gives a fuck about some dead
poet from 200 years ago?
Premier League soccer players, we don't need maths
or Shakespeare or Tutankhamun, you know?
Luke!
I love tits.
I love pussy.
I just love women.
Like I say, all that shit makes me
normal, huh?
It's like people can just look at me
and say, oh, he's just this normal, horny
little kid.
You know the truth, though?
I love cock.
I love ass.
And saying that shit, people just look at
me, like, look at me like I'm this
sick, perverted, twisted little fucking outcast.
That's school, though, isn't it?
After next year, all my friends want to
be big, independent women or have some great
career.
Yeah.
I think marriage is a nice thought.
Now, I know there's probably a million feminist
butch chicks out there who'd kill me for
saying that, but I'm not talking about one
of those fat housewives who go shopping in
their trackies.
I just like the idea of being in
love.
I mean, just because you're married doesn't mean
you have to let yourself go.
Back home in England, me and my family,
we always lived in the same street, same
house, and all neighbours and friends, they knew
my medical problems.
I've got one leg longer than the other
one, and that gives me a limp.
I was also born with two urethras.
One of them I can control, and one
of them just does its own thing.
I wet myself, and it's really embarrassing.
I started school here three months ago, and
we moved down here.
I used to have this saying, that the
shit would hit the fan, but it would
never hit me.
Recently, it's really, really started to stink.
Fuck.
Hey!
Mel!
Mel!
Listen, are you going to be okay?
Mel!
Melanie!
Hey.
What's up?
Not much.
Your mum's still away?
Yeah, she is.
I haven't really spoken to her for a
while.
Oh, really?
When's she getting back?
I don't know.
Probably three weeks or so.
So you're home alone?
Yeah, it's just me and Marcus.
How are you?
Not bad.
Hey.
Hey.
I heard your
story in English did really well.
You know, it's been said that exposure to
classical kinds of music as a child triggers
these neural pathways in your brain that create
this...
spatial, temporal reasoning ability.
It increases your intellect.
Your story...
Was it, um...
about somebody in particular?
Was it...
personal?
Of course it was personal.
Oh.
Who was it about?
Look, I gotta go.
Marcus.
Come on, I didn't...
Mourn enough,
don't it?
Oh, I was fucking gone.
You fucked.
I'd gone into the corner to take a
slash ride because I was a fucking parrot.
And this little bastard taps me on the
shoulder.
What, Dino?
No.
Yeah, there.
So I turn around while I'm taking a
piss and just piss all over this guy,
man.
You fucking pissed all over him.
What did Ben do?
What could he do, man?
He was covered in piss.
Hey, Shawny!
Hey, Shawn.
How's it going, buddy?
You get fucking shit on your dick.
Hey, Shawn.
You like taking it or giving it, eh?
I could give it to you, Shawny.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, I'm gonna come.
Yeah, you like that?
There you go.
Come on, give us a kiss.
Get the fuck off of me.
Well, we're not good enough for you, Shawny.
Fuck me.
Fucking cock jockey!
Hey, babe.
Hey, guys.
She's always looking at him.
Whatever.
She is.
What the fuck are you doing?
Get out!
What is wrong with him?
He's probably stoned.
That's disgusting.
Did you hear about Greg's having cancer?
Shit, is it bad?
I don't know.
I think so.
That's sad.
It is.
Alright, how do I look?
You look hot.
Alright, I'll see you later.
Alright, I'll see you later.
Yeah.
Hey, Sarah.
Hey.
Can you wait two minutes?
Yeah, I'll meet you down there.
Alright.
See ya.
See ya.
Give us a kiss.
Enough for you, Shawny.
Fucking profane.
Fucking cock jockey!
Hey, babe.
Hey, guys.
We're gonna cruise, aren't we?
Yeah.
Do you need a jacket or something?
Uh, I gotta go.
I just got here.
Hey, guys.
Hey, where's Luke going?
To class or something.
Where are we in?
Oh, the student video thing.
Oh.
You gonna do it?
No.
So, uh, how are things with Luke?
Yeah, okay.
Yeah, I am at school.
At a payphone.
So, how's your holiday?
Oh, God.
It's so sunny down here.
Wish you were here with me.
Yeah.
How's your father?
He's okay.
I haven't really seen him.
He's interstate at the moment.
What?
He left you guys alone?
No.
Please don't tell him.
I wasn't meant to say anything.
Unbelievable.
How did you get to school?
Marcus drove us.
Typical.
Anyway, I just...
I just rang to say that I miss
you.
Is everything alright?
Are you okay?
Yeah.
Gotta run.
Love you.
Love you too.
You still there?
Yeah.
Take care of your brother, okay?
Okay.
My parents really pushed my brother into things.
Like school, music.
Everything.
It's just so different with me, though.
You know, any time I started getting good
at something, piano or dance or basically anything
arty, Dad would just stop paying lessons.
It's like...
It's like he hated me being good at
things.
Hell, he wouldn't even let me listen to
music.
He's weird.
And I know that sounds stupid, I know
that.
But that's just the way it seems.
That's good, that's good.
You've shown some really perceptive discussion on the
legal side of same-sex marriage and the
legal side of adoption.
But what about the kids in this whole
issue?
How are they going to be affected?
What's going to be their place in this
complicated jigsaw?
Yeah?
Well, I don't really think it matters.
If you have parents that are the same
sex or male and female, they're still going
to get the same amount of love and
the kid's going to be brought up fine.
I can kind of see, though, if other
people, they'll probably look at him differently, I
reckon.
Why would they look at them differently?
Well, I mean, obviously people are going to
find out that his parents are gay.
So, you know, he's going to get harassed
and teased at school.
You know, it's just rude and it's unfair.
Exactly, yeah.
That kid would have to put up with
all of the torment that he'd get because
his parents made the selfish choice to have
that relationship and then bring them into it.
Well, you're saying that it's selfish for two
people to have a child, for two loving
people to bring a kid into a loving
family, is that what you're saying?
No, it's just it's not natural for two
gay men to have a kid.
It's got nothing to do with natural.
If two people love each other, they should
be able to bring and raise a child.
It's not about love.
I mean, they've never been able to adopt
a kid before.
God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and
Steve.
That's fucking bullshit, mate.
You're referring to a Bible reference.
It's a creation story.
It's a myth.
Look, if two dudes are bringing up a
kid, of course the kid's going to be
a fag in the end, aren't they?
You're fucking ignorant, mate.
Sean.
You're ignorant.
Come on.
Straight as an arrow.
Look at you.
You're a fag.
You're trying to flip that on the rest
of us.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
This is not a personal discussion.
It's a discussion about issues, okay?
What's the issue that you are trying to
direct here?
Keep your personal stuff out of it.
G'day, mates.
Bit early today.
Yeah.
Hey, I heard you playing before.
I didn't know you were musical.
Oh, I've been playing since I was a
little kid.
Yeah, well, it shows.
Thanks.
Hey, I read your story.
Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, I, uh, I liked it.
Thanks.
Sounds like you're in love, huh?
Hey, listen, about that, um, your story.
Uh, I mean, this is just a formality,
but, um...
Formality?
Yeah, well...
What do you mean?
It's sort of...
I was thinking about it last night, and,
um...
What?
I mean, I know it's...
You know it's my piece.
Oh, of course, of course.
I haven't copied it.
No, no, it's not that.
It's, uh...
Well, it's...
It's the content.
What are you...
I don't understand.
What are you trying to say?
Well, it's, uh...
I mean, I'm sure you'll agree it's not
a story that every Tom, Dick, and Harry
would write.
Yeah, okay.
And it touched upon some very sensitive and
erotic issues.
Yeah, all right, but you understand that it's
just a story.
I know, I know, I know, but, um...
Well, let me put it to you this
way.
Someone came in here and wrote up a
story about shooting up the whole school.
It'd be my responsibility to check it out.
I understand that, but this story isn't about
shooting up the whole school.
It's a love story, for Christ's sake.
Did you write it about anyone in particular?
No, I didn't, and everybody's been asking me
that, and it wasn't about anyone, and it
wasn't written for anyone.
It's just a story, that's all it is.
And if I showed it to someone, say,
your father?
No, why would you show it to him?
Okay, relax.
No, I can't relax.
It doesn't even have anything to do with
him.
And, look, I just...
I wrote this story because I wanted to
be...
Morning, guys.
I wanted to be controversial, and I wanted
to be different so I could win, and
I did, and that's what it's about.
That's the story.
Forget I said anything, okay?
It's all good.
I just...
Okay.
Okay, guys.
Now, if you can get your books straight
out today and open up to page 24.
We are studying the Scottish play.
Okay, now...
I remember one time, um...
we had this babysitter, and this is when
Mum and Dad were still together, but anyway,
we had this babysitter, and Melody and I
fell...
well, Melody fell asleep.
I was still half awake.
And Mum and Dad got home, and they
paid the babysitter, and Dad...
Dad didn't even wait until they got into
the bedroom.
I don't know, I guess he thought that
we were both...
that we were both asleep.
But, um...
I remember, he just ripped off her clothes
and just started fucking her, like, right then
and there on the couch.
And I know I should be disgusted.
Like, I know that.
I was...
Well, it's not like I was...
I don't know.
I guess I still think about it.
All right,
I'll feed you.
Hey, baby.
Come on, the other way.
There we go, sweetie.
Hello.
You're getting big.
Yeah.
Little cutie.
You remember me.
Don't be scared.
What's going on in there, huh?
Hey, Melody.
You've been really great with the animals this
term.
She's a cute one, isn't she, Daisy?
Hey, you know, someone has to take them
home each week for the weekend.
Maybe you could...
No.
My brother's allergic.
Marcus?
Yeah.
Everything all right?
Yeah, everything's fine.
Oh, boy.
Bloody Ralph.
I can so much as sew his lips
together.
Luke, Tom!
I'm just scared that now that I have
things like Ron out there, now that I...
All right, get out of here now, both
of you.
Okay, thank you.
Now that I know that I will wake
up alive tomorrow, did I forget?
Hey, what do you reckon of that clear
chick in there?
Fat one.
She's not fat.
She's huge, man.
She's got good tits, though, man.
My girl has twice the tits and half
the frame.
Yeah, but that's Sarah, you know what I
mean?
She's like a twig.
You're too hard on Sarah.
Break her.
Got a small cock.
Virgin.
Shut the fuck up, man.
What?
Cheers.
I was thinking, I reckon I'm an ass
fucker.
Sarah?
Yeah.
What's wrong with that, man?
I'm an ass fucker.
Nothing gay, man.
Nothing gay.
Someone put your cock in her.
Fuck you.
Check it out.
What is that smell?
Stephen?
Stephen?
I see you're outside.
What is the matter with you?
Stephen, I'm speaking to you.
Bit old for this sort of thing, aren't
you?
You'd better go and get yourself cleaned up,
then.
You'd better go and see the counsellor.
Mr. Darcy, my bag and books.
Inside.
I'll be lucky it wasn't number twos.
I was thinking, I reckon I'm an ass
fucker.
Sarah?
Yeah.
What's wrong with that, man?
I'm an ass fucker.
Nothing gay, man.
Nothing gay.
Someone put your cock in her.
Fuck you.
Check it out.
Hey, how you going on even, Stephen?
Stevie, all right, bro?
I just had an accident.
You've pissed yourself, man.
That's horrible.
Watch out.
Watch out.
Stairs.
Shit, that sucks.
Wait up, mate.
I didn't mean to do it.
I mean, it's not like...
It's not like I can control it.
Before I knew it, it was...
My trousers were just wet.
It's just like a routine now.
My parents, they used to send me with
these...
Perfume to school and to try and mask
the smell, but that was pretty hopeless, and
then they tried...
Well, we tried these pad thingies, and I
think they were meant to absorb the wee,
but, God, that was a stupid idea.
That didn't work either.
So now the only thing that I can
really do is I'll just pack the same
pair of trousers that I'm wearing that day
and underwear and then take them to school,
and, yeah, I suppose that works, but some
days I go...
I've wet myself more than once, and it's
frustrating.
It's embarrassing.
Sure, we
think we have family and friends, but when
stuff happens, when really serious stuff happens, you
just feel so alone, and you can't tell
people.
I mean, they'll probably listen, but they don't
know everything.
In fact, they don't know anything.
It's just some stuff that you can't share.
So what do you do then?
He's really beautiful.
Which one?
Luke.
Oh.
I don't even think he is.
Yeah, he is.
So, um, would you, uh...
Would you fuck him?
Sorry, I mean, um, would you give him
the opportunity?
So do you hear Michael's back in hospital?
Yeah, I heard.
Slut.
Fucking bitch.
Don't worry about it.
No, who the hell does she think she
is?
Seriously, don't worry about it.
All right, I gotta go.
Yeah, well, I'll see you at four.
Yeah.
She's right there with it.
Well, what was it?
It was positive.
So she's pregnant.
Wait, Sarah, tell me exactly what happened.
She stopped anaesthesia.
What was I supposed to do, huh?
Never thought she'd get a fuck.
Bullshit.
Wait, who does she think it is, then?
Sarah, come on.
Don't do it.
Don't do this to yourself.
You don't understand.
She's with him more than I am.
Look, he loves you.
You know he does.
This is stupid.
You do this every time.
Look, it's his.
I know it.
Slut.
Hey, babe.
That's it, boys.
I gotta go.
Oh, babe, just a minute.
Sorry.
God, they were all so jealous of Luke
and I.
He had his pick of every girl in
the school, and he chose me.
It's not like I tried to trick him
or anything.
I didn't.
I can trust him.
I know I can.
But girls can be so bitchy, and frankly,
they'll do anything to get what they want.
It's not always the guy's fault.
At home, I've got this list of all
the football greats, like Beckham and Ronaldo and
Zidane and all of them.
One day, I'm going to be on that
list.
And this is Steven's comeback game.
He's been out for about a year of
a leg injury now.
One important comeback game this one's set to
be.
He's just gotten his first touch of the
game.
It looks to be a good interception at
the halfway line.
He takes it around one defender.
Oh, skips past another, and he's gone past
Ronaldo.
He's not even there.
He lays it off.
This is brilliant play.
He gets it back at the edge of
the box, and he's shooting it straight into
the top right corner.
Oh, and the crowd go wild.
This is absolutely brilliant play by Steven in
England.
When they haven't seen play like this in
66, the Brazilians are gutted.
I was
watching one of those courtroom dramas, and there's
that moment when the jury come out of
deliberation, and they tell the judge whether or
not this guy's going to be guilty.
The tension is so thick, you actually could
cut it with a knife.
I mean, that's what it was like when
we got a test or an assignment back.
You just avoid all the scribble on all
the pages, and you just head straight to
the verdict.
I mean, I usually do pretty well.
But, you know, those few times I heard
that guilty verdict.
It was my dad.
Yeah, he really tore me up.
Yeah, he's always like, oh, yeah, yeah, it's
good, but is it good enough?
Everything always has to be so fucking perfect
with him.
He's usually right, though.
Marcus.
Yeah, I just saw my mark for the
test.
Yeah, 87, not bad.
Yeah, I know it's pretty good, but I
need three more percent.
Well, there's no negotiating marks.
Look, I understand that in any other circumstance
that I would be fine.
No, in all circumstances, we don't change the
marks.
Look, please, you don't understand.
Look, if you could just check over that
paper once, I'm sure we can find through
it.
No, I'm not checking over anything, no.
I'm sure we can find it.
Look, please, just put my mind at rest.
Look, Marcus, if you want to continue with
this nonsense, we can talk about lowering your
overall mark by five percent.
Mrs. Jacobs, look, you don't understand.
Look, you've just got to check it over
just once for me, please.
Fuck.
I ain't got time to hear
what you're after.
What's up with you?
She wouldn't even fucking listen to me.
Who?
Jacobs.
I need a 90.
What did you get?
87's awesome, what are you talking about?
Marcus.
I think most people probably see me as
a geek or a nerd or whatever.
They never really give me much trouble though,
I don't know.
But the other times that they do give
me a bit of grief, I just look
at them and think to myself, well, in
five years you'll be on fucking welfare and
serving me at McDonald's.
Yeah, well, that's a comforting thought.
Get back to your mum.
Get back to your mum.
Look who's checking you out, man.
Which one?
The fucking blonde one, what's her name?
Mel.
Melody, man.
Melody.
I've known her since I was like six,
man.
Whatever, man.
Look, you've got to tell me that with
a straight face.
Tell me you wouldn't want a piece of
that ass.
Did you see that look?
I saw that look, man.
You've fucking done her already, haven't you?
Did you fuck her in the ass?
Was it tight?
Look, man, you're with your boys, you can
tell us.
No.
You took her home.
You stroked her hair.
And you fucked her up.
Fuck off.
Yeah?
You all right, man?
It's all a fucking game at school, you
know?
I mean, the shit that goes on there,
seriously.
Yeah, I'll give someone shit, I'll pay him
out, but I doubt he's going to go
home and cry himself to sleep over it.
You know, you've got to be tough, otherwise
people will stomp you down to the fucking
ground.
It's a jungle, and if you can't fake
your way through school, how the fuck are
you going to make it in the real
world, huh?
Tell me that.
You want me to call a plumber, Steve?
I love my family, my mum.
My dad, my brother, my sister.
Through all of this, they've been sitting at
my bedside in hospital or waiting in waiting
rooms when I've been in theatre, and it's
been brilliant through all of this, and it's
just been amazing, their support.
And now when I have trouble at school,
I just don't think I can complain to
them.
I don't think I can.
They deserve...
They deserve to have better than that now.
Yes.
Sean.
Matt.
Come on through.
What's that?
It's just my folks.
They, um...
They got me, like, this dog the other
day.
Oh, cool.
Yeah.
What's on?
It's, um...
It's like a husky, I guess.
It looks sort of like a wolf.
How's he settling in?
Well, I cut its fucking throat.
You killed it.
No, I'm just joking.
It's going good, yeah.
I like it.
OK.
And why do you think your, um...
Why do you think your parents bought you
a dog?
I don't know.
It's just...
Lately, I guess since...
It's probably since I came out, you know.
They've been fucking badgering me constantly about why
don't you bring any people home anymore, and...
I guess it's about they want me to
have companionship.
It just fucking shits me off, because my
dad especially, always in my ear constantly.
He thinks this is a phase.
He thinks that I'm just a teenager, that
this whole fucking gay thing is just gonna
disappear.
You know what I mean?
It's just fucking shit.
He knows I'm gay.
He has to fucking deal with it, and
that's it.
It's really hard for fathers to understand.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, I'm his kid.
I'm his son.
How fucking hard is it to accept your
kid?
And parents want their kids to grow up
like they did.
Big deal.
Did your parents like...
Did you grow up how your dad was?
No, I didn't.
No, I didn't, but it's a natural parental
instinct.
I mean, parents want their kids to be
happy.
I've been as subtle as I can with
this whole thing, and it's fucking blown up
in my face.
How are things with your mum?
My mum?
She's a fucking bitch.
I don't even go out with my parents
anymore.
I don't even go to the places that
they go to anymore, because everybody knows I'm
fucking gay.
They don't even ask me to come anymore.
Do you talk to your brother at all?
No, I don't talk to my brother.
He's the complete opposite, you know?
He's got this career, and he's gone to
uni, he's done it all, he's got this
woman, he's probably going to get married in
a couple of years, everything's going really, really
well, and, you know, here's me, fucking...
So he's the golden boy?
Of course he's the fucking golden boy.
I mean, what are they going to get
out of me?
They're going to get grandkids out of him.
I'm just their dirty little fucking secret.
So they're ganging up on you?
They're not ganging up on me.
They're just both against me.
Yeah, um, fine.
Um, thanks.
Hey, um, heard about your sister.
Really?
Yeah.
Oh.
What, what did you hear about her?
What are you talking about?
Yeah, look, it's OK.
I know.
What, what, what are you...
What are you, what are you saying?
What are you talking about?
Marcus, look, you can talk to me about
it, you know, it's all right.
What are you...
What the fuck are you talking about?
You mean you didn't hear?
I didn't fucking hear.
What the hell are you talking about?
Shit.
Look, you know, I probably shouldn't have said
anything.
Just fucking tell me.
Just fucking go, Marcus.
What the fuck is wrong with you?
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Jesus.
Can you please just fucking tell me what
the fuck is going on?
Fine, fine.
I heard she might be pregnant, right?
Jesus.
Who the fuck told you that?
I can't stand the whole attitude at school.
You know, all that politically correct, self-righteous
bullshit.
And calling it my issues, and calling me
homo-fucking-sexual.
I mean, fuck that.
You don't call a pussy a vagina, do
you?
I'm gay.
It's as simple as that.
Fucking get over it.
Fuck.
Back at the
class.
Oh, fucking Jacob's fucking...
Oh, I got physics.
I got physics.
Look at that pink fucking shit.
How the...
No, not good for the animals, actually.
Not good.
I'm blue, fucking...
You're blue?
Is everything okay?
Mm.
Where have you been?
Innocence.
You're fucking kidding me.
No joke.
I'm going to take a piss.
Remember to wipe the shit off your cock.
Yeah, get laid first then come talk to
me.
What's going on?
Dude, just leave.
You can't fucking avoid me forever.
Just fuck off, alright?
Don't fucking touch me!
What the fuck?
You're pretty fucking confident giving me shit in
front of your mates, huh?
You fucking macho man.
Just fuck off!
Everyone knows you're fucking gay, alright?
Fucking get over yourself.
Cut.
Fuck!
Get the
fuck out of my way.
What the fuck?
You know, people reckon I can't fall in
love.
But I have.
Who is it?
That's my business, but it feels fucking great.
And I know one day I'll be able
to bring him down to the house so
he can meet mum and dad.
I'll make sure he sits right next to
my brother at the kitchen table, you fucking
freak.
What's going on?
Dude, just leave.
You can't fucking avoid me forever.
Just fuck off, alright?
Don't fucking touch me!
What the fuck?
You're pretty fucking confident giving me shit in
front of your mates, huh?
You fucking macho man.
Just fuck off!
Everyone knows you're fucking gay, alright?
Fucking get over yourself.
Cut.
Fuck!
Dude, come on.
I'm warning you, fuck!
I don't think that people mean to be
cruel.
Mum says that they're just kids and she
reckons eventually things will get better.
School finishes in three months.
That's 90 days.
90 days can sometimes be a really, really
long time though.
Oi, Stephen, are you okay?
You're bleeding.
I have a tissue if you want.
Hey, are you going to be okay?
Yeah, I'll be okay.
Hey, I've
been looking for you.
Baby, what's wrong?
Fuck off, alright?
Fuck!
There are some things you just don't talk
about, you know?
I won't, alright?
And I'm just just not going to.
I just love him.
I love everything about him.
He knows more about me than my own
parents do.
I mean, how many people can say that
at 17?
They call us the prince and princess but
they don't realise that it's not a joke
to me.
This is serious.
I could really see us getting married.
What else can I say?
I love him.
Shit.
What are you doing next class?
What do you think of that?
Good?
Fuck!
Of course
I know you're good.
Yeah.
Hmm.
You've been touching me since I was 13.
Marcus.
But that...
That was the first time that you actually
fucked me.
What?
How did you know?
My friend saw the tester.
Are you dead fucking sure?
Sure that this isn't...
I know it was sure.
Fuck, I mean, no one knows what to
do.
Sarah's got shit on her.
She thinks she's cheating on her.
Where are you going?
Marcus, look, you didn't hear it from me,
alright?
Marcus.
Where are you going?
Come on, do it.
Marcus.
Leave me alone!
Marcus!
Fuck it all.
What the fuck have you said?
What the fuck did you do?
Is it true?
You fucking...
Mum?
I'm not too sure what I want to
do when I leave here.
I know I should have all that planned
out by now.
Have my goals set.
I know Marcus wants to be some hotshot
lawyer.
Good on him.
But me?
I cannot imagine sitting behind a desk all
day long.
I don't know.
I want to travel.
Get as far away as possible.
Steven, are you okay?
You're bleeding.
I have a tissue if you want.
Hey.
Marcus.
Marcus.
Come on, I know you're...
Marcus.
Hey.
Are you going to be okay?
Marcus.
No.
I
love you.
Marcus.
Sometimes, you know, sometimes you just get so
wrapped up in your own problems that you
just don't notice anybody else.
You know?
You know, people talk about reincarnation and heaven
and what happens when you die and hell
and all that bullshit.
I mean, none of it makes sense.
You know?
It's just people are scared of dying.
Well, I'm not.
Once you're dead, you're dead.
It's as simple as that.
I think the last time I had a
real conversation with her was year two or
something.
That was ten years ago.
Yeah.
Well, she was my friend and I'm going
to miss her.
I don't really have anything more to say
about it than that.
She was in my brother's music class.
I guess all I can really say is
she's lucky.
Really.
I mean, I knew her and she seemed
like a happy enough person.
You know, not once, not fucking once did
she ask for help or indicate in any
way that she was going to top herself.
You know, maybe she did.
That I could have helped.
I don't know.
She just...
My sister has this little boy, a baby
boy, but well, he's not really a baby
anymore, I guess.
But he's just learning to talk and do
animal noises and she sent me a video
that she'd taken on her camera the other
day and she's got him with his face
painted like a little tiger and she's saying
Oscar, do the tiger noise and his little
face goes meow meow and his little lips
and it's so cute and the whole camera's
shaking because she's laughing so much and it's
just so sweet.
on each sofa so high now that all
seems like a dream I will never see
broken wing destiny
seems so hard there's no hard dream forget
me he
sings wish upon
a sea
Movie Director’s Commentary and Transcript
Includes English subtitles and an English transcript.
2:37 (2006) - Director's Commentary
Hi, I'm Morali.
I'm the writer, director and co-producer of
the film 237.
Hi, I'm Nick Matthews.
I'm the director of photography and co-producer
of the film.
And I'm Kent Smith, and I'm the producer
of the film.
I never...
I love all these logos at the beginning
of the film.
It's always so funny to watch, you know,
all these companies that come together to get
the film out there.
Yeah, there's a lot of them, aren't there?
Yeah.
It makes you realise just, you know, how
involved it is trying to get a film
made, you know, how many companies have to
combine forces.
These leaves are just fantastic.
It's such a beautiful way to open the
film, I think.
I remember the way we actually shot it.
It was a happy accident, whereas the Steadicam
operator had, you know, gone for a rest
and he'd slung the Steadicam and the camera
over his shoulder, but we left the camera
running and, you know, we got some leaves
there.
And when we were in post, we were
like, oh, this is fantastic.
So we went back out and we shot
more, and that's how the leaves came about
here.
In plenty of Q&As, people are asking
the significance of it, and we might get
into that later.
Nick, do you want to talk about the
slow motion?
This slow motion material in the film is
actually shot on film.
The majority of the film is actually photographed
on video.
But there's some little bits and pieces of
film here and there, and film's a good
format to facilitate slow motion.
It's all very hypnotic here.
I love it.
It's a nice way to ease into the
film.
And I remember when we were in Cannes,
Kevin Smith, he saw the film, he sent
me an email saying, I love those slow
-mo shots of the kids bombing around the
school.
So hypnotic, man.
That girl that just walked past was artificially
put in in post-production as well, by
the way.
Which is interesting.
This is the entire setup to the film.
So this scene was always going to be
crucial in creating drama.
Remember, this is where the characters of Gary
Sweet's character, Mr. Darcy, Amy Chappell as Lacey,
and the janitor find the dead body.
And we were faced with a couple of
options, whereas we could have shown the arm
or the fact that it was a suicide
when it happened.
But we wanted to build drama suspense where
it could have been a suicide or a
murder or anything like that.
I like their performances.
I think they're wonderful.
I love that transition from the St. Peter's
Boys Choir as we get into the guitar,
played with a bow.
It really builds a lot of tension.
You never see anyone in the cinema moving
at this point.
Mate, is that you in there?
Take note of that section there where he
says, mate, is that you in there?
Because we wanted to throw the suspicion on
one of the other characters, that being uneven
Stephen.
And I'll point out that scene later where
Gary chastises him and it's a sense of
guilt that washes over him.
I've always found it really interesting that quite
a few people have picked that up.
Yeah, I agree.
It's the janitor.
He looks a lot like a janitor.
It's fantastic.
But this scene here is beautiful.
The music as it builds up and, you
know, with the guitar.
Oh, God, it's just so emotional for me.
And that, oh, my God, as we hear
this big rumbling noise building and building and
over the trees, building to a crescendo and
then.
Wow.
I love it.
That's very powerful in the cinema, isn't it?
Oh, my gosh.
I always stay to watch that bit.
I did battle with putting that earlier that
day there, to be honest.
I've never been a fan of, you know,
putting captions like that in, but it did
work.
I felt it worked.
So it ended up in there.
Yeah, it did.
This is Frank Sweet's real life house, too.
Yeah, the actor who plays Marcus here, that's
Frank Sweet.
It's yeah, it's his actual house.
And I think we shot three of the
characters house in there.
It's Gary Sweet's son.
You've just got to admire him.
Nick, this is high definition.
That's right.
Yeah, this is the black and white interviews
in the film are all photographed on high
definition video.
And they have a I think they have
a kind of sharper feel than the rest
of the film.
Well, I guess it was a good idea
to shoot that way there, because these interviews
were our chance to actually get in, get
to know the characters and get right in
their face.
So that detail there, I think, fantastic.
It's kind of contrary to the usual thing
where if you break the drama with interviews
or something, you'd make them more gritty.
And I think it's interesting that they're actually
kind of sharper and clearer than most of
the film.
Yes, it makes them feel very real, doesn't
it?
Yeah, this footage is some of the footage
that I saw.
You know, when we first decided to come
on board and I was so impressed with
Teresa's performance and the cinematography and the direction
was amazing.
You know, the footage you brought back to
me from Cannes.
These guys, all these actors are just they
blow my mind constantly when I watch this,
because none of them had ever acted before.
And, you know, this disturbing nature of Frank
Sweet is gives me the willies to this
day.
Teresa here is, within five seconds of watching
her, I think you feel, you know, the
character of Melody.
The authenticity and just the natural energy that
Teresa exudes is something that is so incredibly
rare.
I love the way in the cinema, you
know, when you're watching this on film, the
way her eyes are kind of five foot
wide, it's so tight.
It's unusual to shoot that way in the
cinema.
All these interviews were heavily scripted.
A lot of the film was improvised, and
I'll go into those moments when they come
up later on, but the interviews were so
crucial in getting to know the characters that
it was the only part of the script
that I demanded the characters, the actors, sorry,
really knew their lines.
And barring one interview, which I will point
again when it comes up, I think they
just delivered some amazing performances there.
This music makes me laugh every time I
hear it.
Our sound designer, Leslie, and I put that
in as a joke to start.
The four seasons, I think it's spring or
winter.
And we put it in as a joke.
And then when we put that sort of
low, sort of humming guitar, played with a
bow sound, it just sounded so incredibly eerie.
And we left it in there until the
last minute, thinking we'd change it.
But by that time, we'd both fallen in
love with it.
And, you know, Kent and Nick loved it
as well.
And it was a good way for when
we repeat the scenes coming up now.
It was a good key identifier for the
idea that we are repeating the scenes orally.
I always say to this actor, how much,
how long did you rehearse that one for?
He did amazing here.
It's a tough scene to pull off something
like this.
No pun intended.
No pun intended.
But it's because it is so, it has
to be so natural.
It can't be a send up.
My favourite part here is where he pushes
the keyboard as if, you know, flicking to
the next picture.
That's hilarious.
This is one of my favourite shots in
the film.
Me too.
So beautifully choreographed.
And it's Luke's running through the house.
It was really, we used the location there,
you know, maximum points to the team for
figuring all this out here.
Once again, we hear that music from a
different perspective.
It really excites me when I hear stuff
like that.
I love the idea of showing things from
different perspectives.
The idea that life and problems are all
about perspective.
And I think that's what this film's really
about.
I fucking hate school.
I sit there and I listen to shit
that has no relevance to me.
Like, fair enough for someone else who's going
to go off and be a lawyer or
some shit like that.
But for me, it's just fucking useless, you
know?
What's interesting about Sam Harris's performance is that
he's, as a person and a human being,
he is so far removed from his character.
You know, he's a very soft, kind-hearted
kind of guy.
And for him to start his opening line,
yeah, I've got a good body.
Joel McKenzie playing Sean.
What a revelation.
The intensity that Joel's, as an actor, has
on screen is amazing.
And he's amazing to photograph as well.
Those blue eyes really come out there.
This is some of my favourite footage.
Yeah, I'd agree with that.
The sequence of this one.
Don't you think, Ken?
It's just beautiful.
It is.
You just wouldn't pick this as tape, standard
definition.
No, it's a wonderful piece of cinematography.
With the nice green in the background there.
I love tits.
I love pussy.
I love tits.
I love pussy.
What a way to introduce a character.
That always gets a few shocked laughs in
the cinema.
Like I say, she makes me normal, huh?
Joel was probably one of the characters Morali
had really, really lived the part for the
entire film.
Absolutely.
You see, Joel was one of the youngest
members of the cast.
He was obviously becoming an adult.
And the process of his mind were changing.
And he used that, just like his character.
He used that attitude, that intensity.
That was all Joel.
And Joel spent countless hours with me, hounding
me for rehearsals outside our normal scheduled ones.
And it was fantastic.
His appetite to learn was amazing.
And he co-wrote elements of the script
with me.
And he's wonderful.
I always have to give 10 points to
Marnie for doing this.
I remember it was something on the day
we thought it shows us that degree of
vulnerability.
And coupled with the sound design in the
background, it gives a lot of insight into
her psyche.
I think marriage is a nice thought.
I like her interviews.
They always came across as very natural for
me.
I love that line, feminist butch chick.
I'm not talking about one of those fat
housewives who go shopping in their trackies.
To me, the character of Sarah is an
amalgamation of probably every ex-girlfriend that every
guy has in high school.
Oh, gosh.
I love this.
Nick, do you want to talk about this?
Nick's a big soccer fan, so Nick, go
on.
This is one of my favourite moments in
football history or soccer history, where Manchester United
scored, Ryan Giggs from Manchester United scored a
fantastic goal in the FA Cup semi-final.
Oh, sorry.
Can I cut in there?
There's the Ninja Turtles there.
I love that, but go on.
So what we did is we transcribed some
real commentary from the BBC and gave it
to a friend of my father's who's an
ABC commentator, and he did a fantastic performance.
I think it sounds very genuine.
Uneven Steven here is one of the most
heartbreaking characters in the film.
He really, really touches my heart.
And after every screening we've had of the
film, people go, and see, the thing about
this guy, his name's Charles Baird.
He'd never acted before.
He had never even contemplated acting before, and
for him to pull off such an incredibly
honest performance was just mind-blowing.
I've got one leg longer than the other
one, and that gives me a limp.
I always feel weird talking over, you know,
such a fine performer.
It's interesting how you originally met Charles.
Yeah, me and Charles met in the street.
I saw him there, and Charles actually does
have a slight limp, and just like the
character of Uneven Steven, and I walked up
to him, and I said, listen, mate, do
you want to be an actor?
And he looked at me like I was
crazy, but eventually he came out to lunch
with me, and he read the script, and,
you know, he loved it.
And he's so proud of him, because over
four months he got such a hold of
his craft that I look forward to see
what he does in the future.
I always think Charles might go on to
get really interested in filmmaking as well.
He's very interesting behind the scenes.
Yeah.
I agree.
He was always helping me carry bits of
gear.
Well, I love this, how the 237 gets
hidden behind the leaves.
But I agree, Charles, he has a sense
of cinema, doesn't he?
Yeah, he does.
I like it, how the Four Seasons music's
coming back in here to connect the car
from where we were before.
This is one of my favourite shots in
the film.
I remember the day we shot it, we
had about a half an hour, 20 minute
to half an hour window.
One side we'd lost electricity, the other side
the sun was coming out, and we couldn't
have it looking too, you know, with hot
spots all over the place.
In two takes we knocked this out, it
was mind-blowing.
So perfectly choreographed.
There were a lot of rehearsals though, weren't
there?
Oh, yes.
Choreographing.
In the rain, I might say, and it
was so freezing.
It was like 10, 12 degrees, and these
guys are all wearing clothes that aren't too
warm.
And I remember in between every take, Teresa
would run and get, would go and get
blankets for all the extras so that, and
it's so indicative of what a kind of
person she is.
You can see on the ground, there's bits
of water around.
It was very, the sky was very grey,
and it actually gives the scene a really
interesting quality.
The funny thing about this, and all our
shots in this film, is none of them
were really storyboarded.
It was a matter of getting there on
the day, and, you know, it was Nick
and I sort of dancing around with our
hands pointing in all these weird different directions
and coming up with this sort of stuff.
It's hard to imagine this is standard definition
video.
Again, absolutely.
I just love the transitions from moving from
character to character, using those extras so we
can move to Sean, and Sean's obviously at
this point just focussing on Luke there.
The other interesting thing, I thought, Morali, is
that on the second shoot, he'd cut his
hair.
Yeah, and all those were hair extensions.
It's scary that, you know, you can't tell.
That transition to uneven Stephen and now to
Sarah is amazing, but we split our shoot
up into two parts, and the character of
Sean, Joel McKenzie, had cut his hair, and
his hair's normally brown, and we didn't know
what to do, so all that was hair
extensions for the second part of the shoot.
The baby helped.
Oh, yes, absolutely, and there's a challenge for
you.
See if you can spot which one was
the first and second shoot.
This is one for the people into symbolism.
I think I've had a few comments about
the red curtains here.
Oh, the red curtains.
People wanting me to go into some kind
of cinematographic coding about if it's about blood
or...
You know, to be brutally honest, we put
red curtains there because it's one of my
favourite colours and it looked pretty.
I love that smile he pulls there and
the performance from these two guys because, see,
to me, a performance doesn't...
Like, the brilliance of an actor doesn't come
in pulling off an intense scene like a
rape scene or a suicide scene, but it's
in making the mundane interesting, and I think
Anthony Hopkins once said, acting is doing nothing
incredibly well, and if you look at these
guys here, they've got very little dialogue to
work with, but it's what's said between the
lines are the expressions on their face.
If you look at Clementine, the character who
plays Kelly, right there, she's like, oh, yeah.
This part here, look at her face.
That's priceless.
That says a million words.
It's brilliant.
And Frank just comes across as...
His character of Marcus is such a socially
awkward person, and Frank just summed that up
beautifully.
This is one of the key scenes, because
obviously it's one of the few scenes with
Kelly in it, and as Kelly's the one
who inevitably, you know, commits suicide, it's a
scene where she does get rejected to a
degree.
She's obviously come up, you know, wanting some
sort of help or, you know, wanting to
talk about something, but Marcus is so wrapped
up in his own problems.
It's never about anybody else but oneself.
Look, I gotta go.
Marcus.
Come on, I didn't...
I love these moments where we go into
Kelly's eyes.
You really can see into her, and that
was one of the main reasons, well, barring
her acting ability, which is fantastic, but just
those eyes, you really feel you know her
just by looking at her.
The sound design here is interesting.
This is what Leslie and I did while
we were in Los Angeles, and what we
wanted to do is we wanted the audience
to feel as though they were listening to
what's going on in Marcus's head without hearing
any words, and all these sounds of trains
running, of doors opening, and just this general
rumbling, I think that really contributes towards a
disturbing sound design and disturbing insight into what's
going on in Marcus's head, and as it
builds here as we move on to transition
onto another character.
But one of my favourite shots again.
What happened at the party last night?
So smooth.
Fuck.
I love the way this is framed with
the three boys.
I love it.
It's great when you hear the sound design.
For me as a cinematographer, you hear the
way in which the transitions, the visual transitions
have been supplemented with fantastic sound design as
well.
A lot of this dialogue here was improvised
once again.
You know, the guys talking about what happened
on the weekend before the scene would sit
down and have a chat, and I guess
that's why it's so natural and fresh.
You like taking it or giving it, huh?
Xavier and Chris are supporting Rolster Luke.
They've got such a great sense of comical
time.
It's fantastic.
Yeah, they're great.
I like this.
Give us a kiss.
Get the fuck off of me.
I love that.
He's got such an attitude.
Those eyes could kill.
Fucking cock jockey!
I'd never even heard that word before they
said that in that take.
Hey guys.
She's always looking at him.
Gosh, this was so funny.
This was a last-minute decision to throw
Sean into this scene.
You know, we just thought, add a sense
of comedy, a bit of light and shade.
It always gets a laugh in the cinema,
doesn't it?
He's just got no clues.
Or maybe he does have a clue, it's
just disregard.
A couple of people have said to me
the fact that he's openly gay.
Does he feel he belong into the girl's
bathroom?
But I can honestly say we never thought
of that.
We just thought it to be funny.
And I love this bit where he bumps
into the girl.
Gosh, he's fantastic.
Did you hear about Griggs having cancer?
Shit, is it bad?
I like that.
Oh no, no, I think so.
That's sad.
Did you hear about Griggs having cancer?
That's sad.
All right, how do I look?
Once again, completely self-obsessed.
The sound design in this section here is
amazing.
Once again, it's got the guitar sort of
piercing sound underneath.
But we also hear a little girl talking.
You know, you're mommy and all that sort
of stuff.
That's actually Leslie's daughter, Charlotte.
She's the cutest kid.
We recorded her talking and it just lent
such an eerie sort of insight into how
Sarah's mind works.
Whether she was pregnant, someone mentioned to me.
I never thought of that.
Or, you know, the innocence that sort of
exists in one's life.
And as you're becoming an adult, you're losing
it.
But it is dying to get out.
And it just means so many things.
Just sound is so critical.
It's amazing how much of a story the
sound can tell.
Once again, these repeating of the scenes.
It says so much to me, the repeating
of the scenes, in that one person could
be going through one problem and we see
it from their point of view and it
consumes their life.
And it's completely dramatic and so on and
so on.
But then you see it from another person
just walking past and it's completely insignificant.
And to me, that's what the film's about.
We should never place one problem over another.
We should try to understand, get to know
people.
If you have to miss a dance class
to talk to someone, that's fine.
So be it.
Sarah Hudson as Julie is wonderful.
She's so funny.
What a crack up that girl is.
She was the best one.
She actually dominates the goof reel.
Oh, absolutely.
She had, we had so much fun with
her on set.
Yeah, I am at school.
This scene here to me is one of
the many scenes in the film where the
kids have the opportunity to talk to the
parents in theory.
But in practise, you can't just make an
offer to talk.
It's something that trust has to be built.
And they feel as though they're so isolated,
even from their own family.
And to me, that's indicative of sort of
this generation we're in now, where instead of
reading your kids a bedtime story or something
like that, you let them play the PlayStation
before they go to bed.
And kids being raised by the internet, their
PlayStations and computers and so on and so
on.
The bond between the older and younger generation
is breaking so quickly to the point where
the older generation can't pass on their wisdom
to the younger generation.
I think that's why they're so directionless.
Once again, Teresa's ability to say something without
saying something.
To say a million words in a pause
or a look.
The hope that she has there.
Look at that quarter of a smile.
Gosh, it's heartbreaking.
Take care of your brother.
Oh, God.
My parents really pushed my brother into things.
Like school, music, everything.
It's just so different with me, though.
You know, any time I started getting good
at something, piano or dance.
So what I find interesting about Melody's interviews
is the contrast, or the difference we see
in her interviews to how she presents herself
in school life.
She's actually got a bit of fire in
her belly and just so much anger and,
you know, she's just, it's almost like there's
another Melody within her trying to break free.
But in the world that she's living in
at the moment, she's just constantly being pushed
down, whether it's by her father, her brother,
her mother, even, and teachers.
And see, this is indicative of what Melody
could be when she's talking about the children,
talking about how much she loves animals.
That's Melody to me.
And she's a beautiful character.
Brenton Treglowan's performance here is so natural.
He really comes across as a caring teacher.
People always say you paint the teachers here
in a negative light, but this is one
scene where we actually do show a teacher,
you know, as someone who cares, someone who's
contributing towards their lives.
That guy there, Crafty, he was the best
boy on the film.
He was great.
He was wonderful.
He became a bit of an iconic figure.
And so we put him in a scene
and full credit to him.
I kind of see, though, the best boy
is somebody who helps with lighting, by the
way.
Other people, they'll probably look at him differently,
I reckon.
Why would they look at them differently?
Well, I mean...
This girl here, Elsie, I taught her acting
class and I think she's wonderful.
So, you know, he's going to get harassed
and teased at school.
You know, it's just...
I remember when we were in L.A.
and Leslie's like, he asked me, what does
you know you mean?
And the accent sort of got lost.
The performance here by Brighton and Covelli, we
were in school together.
He performed Creon in the play Antigone and
I thought he was so fantastic.
And when I ran into him again, I
just, I was like, oh gosh, we have
to put you in this film.
The tension between these two characters here, you
could cut it with a knife.
Look at the attitude from John McKenzie.
I think it's really interesting in the scene
the way we covered it and the way
that we don't keep cutting to all the
various people that are interjecting.
I think it really adds to the tension
and keeps the attention on John.
I agree.
And I also think, I remember everyone on
set, like some of the crew were saying,
how are they going to cut this film?
And we're like, we're not.
That's the beauty of it.
I like this little build up into the
next scene.
There's a little in-joke there, Macbeth.
Daniel White.
He's fantastic.
I wish we could have given him a
bigger role.
He's such a talented guy.
Been playing since I was a little kid.
Yeah, well, it shows.
Marcus's awkwardness as a character is just so
evident here.
He's just so introverted, all into himself.
It's interesting to watch him interacting with other
people.
It's like you're in love, huh?
Hey, listen, about that, your story.
I noticed when you were shooting this scene,
Morelli, you changed a word in the dialogue
because he was struggling just to get around
that word.
I can't remember what the word is.
I remember that.
It was just so open.
From penis to musicals.
Yeah, because it sounded like penis.
I like this bit coming up here.
I want to talk about this in a
second.
It's the content.
What are you trying to say?
Well, I'm sure you'll agree it's not a
story that every Tom, Dick and Harry would
write.
Obviously, he's written a story that alludes to
him sexually abusing someone.
But you understand that it's just a story.
I know, I know, I know.
But I like this here.
Let me put it to you this way.
If someone came in here and wrote up
a story about shooting up the whole school.
That's my little reference to the obvious influence
of Gus Van Sant's Elephant.
It's a love story, for Christ's sake.
Did you write it about anyone in particular?
No, I didn't.
I find it interesting, the comparisons to Elephant.
I think Elephant's a wonderful film and it
inspired us visually.
But to me, comparing 237 and Elephant is
like comparing Brokeback Mountain to a cowboy movie.
Whereas they are similar in style and even
location, etc, etc.
But the stories are so incredibly different.
But I had to throw in that little
reference to Gus's film Elephant.
I think he's a brilliant filmmaker and such
a huge influence.
He has seen the film, doesn't he?
He has seen the film and he really
enjoyed it.
He told me it was very emotional for
him.
Now, if you can get your books straight
out today and open up to page 24.
We are starting the Scottish play.
I remember one time...
This is an interview I wrote on the
day, actually.
I don't know why I wrote it there,
but it gave a little insight into Marcus's
character.
I wanted people to know that he didn't
have it easy as well.
I didn't want them to hate him completely.
I was still half awake.
And mum and dad got home and they
paid the babysitter.
I love the way he struggles to tell
the story here.
It's not something that you can just say,
so dad got home and he fucked my
mum in front of me, you know?
Just the way he's struggling to articulate it.
So he comes across in the way that
he wants to.
A lot of people ask, who was he
fucking?
Who was he fucking?
The babysitter or the mother?
Someone actually asked, or was it Melody?
But I intended it to be the mother.
But either way, it's the fact that his
father was so...
I guess I still think about it.
I guess cruel to do that to him
with your children right there.
That's disgusting.
I like this scene.
This shows a bit of heart with Melody.
We always see her so upset and I
wanted to show her where she was happy.
I wanted to show her where she was
opening up and she loves animals and it
was a beautiful way to do it, I
thought.
And her performance is wonderful.
Look at that smile.
We rarely see Melody smile.
So when she does, she lights up the
screen.
These guinea pigs are actually Nick Matthew's niece's
guinea pig.
I think the name of the guinea pig
is actually rabbit, isn't it?
Oh, ding-dong.
That one there is ding-dong, yeah.
It's gotten big now, hasn't it?
You know that we forgot to put ding
-dong in the credits and I believe ding
-dong is going to sue us for that.
We can't talk much more about it.
Don't be scared.
I love that.
The tenderness.
And the noises the little guinea pigs make
come through as well.
Hey, Melody.
Rena is the actress here.
She comes across as such a high school
teacher.
You've been really great with our morals this
term.
Trying to connect once again with the students,
but Melody not jumping on the opportunity.
It's such a superficial way of trying to
connect.
Someone has to take them home each week
for the weekend.
Maybe you could take...
No, my brother's allergic.
That was a choice Teresa actually made in
terms of the fear when the teacher talked
about taking it home and running away from
an opportunity to tell...
I can understand it.
I can so much as sew his lips
together.
I remember being shocked when I heard this
that day.
That was a bit of improv.
He says, bloody refos wish someone would sew
their lips together.
It was a very schoolboy thing to say.
I always find this funny because that's what
I remember school being like.
Back in the class.
Having a good time.
All right, get out of here now, both
of you.
Okay, thank you.
There's my political statement right there in the
back.
Hey, what do you reckon of that clan
chicken there?
Fat one.
It's not fat, it's huge.
She's got good tits though, man.
I like the way you shot this, Mick,
that we didn't try to make everything lit.
They can go into the darkness, come out
of it.
It all feels very natural.
It's very important.
Do you want to talk about that?
Yeah, I think that there's always a temptation
to over light because you're afraid that you're
going to miss out on things.
But I think it adds to the overall
tone of the film.
The fact that they disappear at times There's
uneven Stephen in the background and we'll see
this scene from his point of view again
soon.
What's wrong with that, man?
I'm not an arse fucker.
I love this.
Nothing gay, man, nothing gay.
It's funny how much of the dialogue revolves
around sex, you know, when we improvised it.
But that's the way it was at school.
I remember that.
This was the first scene we shot.
It is, first day.
I remember that.
That day I had to ask you what
a clapperboard did.
You really feel for poor old uneven Stephen
in this scene, don't you?
He just wants to be by himself.
Such a tragic character.
I see you outside.
And I think it's interesting putting Sean there
in that little smirk.
No one's willing to give their heart out
to anyone at this point in the film
anyway.
This was a moment, I have to say,
it breaks my heart.
My parents, when they saw this, it broke
their heart because I had a bladder problem
when I was a child and they remember
me coming home crying, bawling my eyes out,
telling them how my teacher humiliated me.
This is pretty much word for word.
Bit old for this sort of thing, aren't
you?
I think everyone's got a story where they've
been humiliated at school.
It has a profound effect, doesn't it, as
a young kid?
Oh my gosh, yes.
Look at uneven Stephen, he couldn't even lift
his eye level, you know, above the 180
degree line, you know, and it's...
He played it.
He played it so beautifully.
And then his head goes down, you know,
it's...
Can't look Gary in the eyes.
That was one line that was improvised by
Gary and when he said that I just
burst out laughing that we had to do
a second take and it was very irresponsible
of me as a director, but I just
cracked up laughing.
As cruel as it is.
This music by Mark Chance is so evocative,
it really gets across the idea that there's
just almost, you know, no hope for uneven
Stephen, just going through the motions.
I love these repetitions of scenes.
I'm surprised.
We had a continuity guy for a couple
of weeks, but we couldn't afford it for
much longer and one of our EPs and
the script editor did continuity for a while.
The fact that it's, you know, so strong,
it's lucky.
We're very lucky.
How cruel is this?
Gosh.
Shit, that sucks.
Oh, wait up, man.
The thing about uneven Stephen, he never fights
back, does he?
He just takes it, takes it all.
Absolutely.
Obviously, it has a serious effect on him.
Oh, yes.
This scene here where he goes and changes
his pants is another thing out of my
school.
When I was a child, they had a
special bathroom that I could use and they
always kept a change of clothes for me
in there and I remember going through the
motions and this is how I felt.
He's just, he's literally going through the motions.
He's not even thinking here and I deliberately
kept this scene for so long, watching, showing
the same underpants just so he didn't get
caught the same pants exactly.
And it's very emotional.
All of this is true.
For me.
Kids just want to be the same as
every other kid at school.
They don't want to be different.
Absolutely.
They want to blend in.
It's frustrating.
It's embarrassing.
Well, it's hard because when they're growing up,
you look around you in which to mould
yourself on and the idea that what doesn't
kill you makes you stronger is true but
as a child, as a teenager, it's hard
to understand that.
Comes prepared with the plastic bag and oh
man, how heartbreaking.
It's interesting how he ties his shoelaces.
I've never learned how to do it like
he does.
Yeah.
I like this idea.
Well, it is very apparent to me that
despite the fact that you're always surrounded by
thousands of people while in school, you're always
very lonely.
This shot here was actually part of one
of the most proudest shots I've ever done
and we had to cut it in the
film.
It's in the special features so go and
check it out but it was part of
a four-minute tracking shot through the school
with 200 choreographed extras and it used to
be our opening credit sequence but we couldn't
use it.
It's one for the show room.
Well, it is on the DVD.
Look at him here, just so expressionless.
What did Stephen's parents think when they saw
the film?
Charles's parents?
Sorry, Charles's parents.
They loved it.
It really reached out to them as well
and they just thought it was fantastic but
the character of uneven Stephen's very different from
Charles as a person as well.
He's very open, fun.
He's very funny as well.
Hilarious.
This is another moment of doing very little
extremely well.
If you look at her face here, hearing
someone coming in, the self-consciousness.
I always wonder how a girl would shake
that without piss flying everywhere.
But even the breath out there, you know,
you can almost see the perspiration of anxiety
coming off of her.
We hear another one who you'll see to
be Sarah throwing up in the bathroom.
That was shot on a different day.
The sound design here is incredible.
Really builds up.
It's almost like a pressure cooker building up
and then suddenly releasing the pressure.
I'll stop talking for a second so you
can hear how that builds.
Nice soft light in there too, Nick.
Yeah, and Teresa's just got such a fantastic
face for the camera.
She just can occupy the screen.
I love this.
Sorry, I love this here.
It's building, building, building and then there it
goes.
I love that.
I always found this very emotional, that part
there, and then where her interview cuts in
here.
This tracking shot here, the look on her
face is just sheer agony, isn't it?
It is.
It's such a good performance by Teresa.
I love the way there's trophies in that
cabinet.
I think that was our production designer.
It was her actual trophies.
It was her?
Oh yeah, genuinely.
Serious stuff happens.
This was shot on green screen.
The decision to go black and white with
a black background We wanted this to stand
out in the interviews.
We did, and we were actually talking about
the idea at one point, I remember, of
keeping the colour in the eyes, but we
felt that would be almost gimmicky, and so
we decided to go with the black and
white.
And it's so striking, especially on a 40
-foot cinema screen.
It's just some stuff you can't share.
Oh gosh, it's so true.
So what do you do then?
It's almost accusing the way she delivers that.
I like that.
That's my brother and all his mates there
as well.
They're single, just in case you're wondering.
The idea of this scene here was to
build a suspicion amongst the audience that Luke
was the one that got her pregnant.
See, when Miriam says here, Would you fuck
him?
Would you fuck him?
Would you give him your opportunity?
We know she has lost her virginity because
she's pregnant, and Melody averts, she changes the
subject.
You hear Michael's out of hospital.
Then again, with Sarah coming in with that
line, I really wanted the audience to feel
that Luke and Melody were having an affair.
So when the revelation came as to who
got Melody pregnant, it'd be all the more
shocking.
And even Stephen was just there in the
background, as you'll see.
There he is, right in the background.
Gosh, it's so disgusting hearing someone throwing up.
I know it's not real, but it just
gives me shivers.
I remember doing the temp track for that
when we were editing.
Oh, it was so funny because Nick did
the track for the throwing up, and it
was just Nick going, You know, this grown
man.
I wasn't very good at it.
Not at all.
Once again, the music here.
This is a sound that Martin Zub created.
It really builds tension.
I'm not sure what he used to do
it, but we used it in various points
in the film.
It's wonderful.
It just really slowly builds.
And now we see what happened before Melody
came out of the bathroom.
She got caught by Sarah, giving Sarah a
reason to think that Melody's sleeping with Luke.
I like this shot a lot.
I like peeking into classrooms and moving out.
The location really allowed us to do that.
It's all in one building, and I really
like the idea of an audience member feeling
that if they were thrown into that school,
they'd know their way around, of being able
to identify with the location.
That's what the Steadicam allows us to do.
Luke says it all, doesn't it?
I think the fact that there aren't cuts
and that there aren't Steadicam shots from different
angles gives it more of a real feel.
It feels like it's almost documentary.
Well, it feels as though we're not hiding
anything because we're not cutting anything out.
We're not cutting around things.
We're presenting it as it is.
We're not manipulating.
There's my brilliant cameo there.
Oh, Nick's going to win an Oscar for
that.
He was the soccer coach in the background
in the black shirt.
You'll see him right here.
He says, come on, boy.
There he is.
I think on that note about documentary style,
I think the style that we achieved is
kind of heightened documentary.
It's a heightened sense of realism, isn't it?
Yeah, it's like documentary was really smooth.
You know, camera work.
And I think we're all really proud of
that.
I love this delivery from Marnie.
There again, we see Camille and Teresa in
the background there.
Although a sprinkler's magically appeared.
I just realised that there.
This leads into one of the great pieces
of sound design, I think, in the film.
Absolutely.
And this was actually using this music.
This big, triumphant music was a beautiful idea
by Dale Roberts, our editor.
It's all mundane.
And even Stephen's watching him.
And you get the sense that he kind
of wishes he was out there.
He loves his soccer, as we heard in
the morning and just then.
And then, bam, I love that.
In a cinema, when that just hits you,
it's so loud.
And then we get into his commentary, which
is brilliant.
Brilliant.
It's one of the few times we see
a bit of light in Stephen's eyes.
And I think that's very important.
Look at him.
Brazilians are gutted.
I love that line.
Sorry, that was Charles's own little input there.
It was wonderful.
And then cutting back to reality.
If only, if only.
You're allowed to dream, aren't you?
Oh, absolutely.
No matter how bad the circumstance.
Or how important dreams are, because they carry
you through.
And I love the sounds of these children
in the background.
It's very eerie to me.
Once again, using the leaves as we're going
through.
It's going to be a shift in tone
from here on.
I was watching one of those courtroom dramas.
And there's that moment when the jury...
I like this line.
I love his deliberation.
Every high school student feels like this when
they get their papers back.
The tension is so thick.
You actually could cut it with a knife.
I mean, that's what it was like when
we got a test or an assignment back.
You know, you just avoid all the scribble
on all the pages.
And you just head straight to the verdict.
I mean, I usually do pretty well.
But, you know, those few times I heard
that guilty verdict.
It's my dad.
Yeah, he really tore me up.
Yeah, he's always like, oh, yeah, yeah, it's
good.
But is it good enough?
Everything always just has to be so fucking
perfect with him.
Good pause by Frank there in the delivery.
He's usually right, though.
I always wonder, is it Frank saying that
or is it the father and Frank saying
that?
This day was the funniest day of the
entire shoot.
We were shooting this scene and this was
the final take that we did.
I think it was only take two or
three.
And our gaffer had put a 2000 watt
light under one of those fire sprinklers.
And it heated up.
Essentially, we flooded the entire first floor of
the school.
And it's in the making of some footage
of that.
It was horrible.
And I thought that was it.
This is over.
We've lost the school.
We've lost the film.
But within a couple of hours, everyone cleaned
it up.
And I was so impressed with the teamwork.
Everyone came together and just cleaned it up.
And we were shooting within a few hours.
Marcus.
Yeah, I just saw my mark for the
test.
Yeah, 87.
Not bad.
Yeah, I know it's pretty good, but I
need three more percent.
It's funny how three percent can mean the
world to someone in that position.
I always think how unreasonable is the teacher?
Just looking over it would put someone's mind
to rest and they can move on.
They really control one's life with the red
pen.
I love that little look back there.
It's nicely choreographed.
It's true, isn't it?
So the idea that they hold a student's
life with their red pen, it's scary.
I love that bit of sound design there.
And once again, we see Kelly here and
Marcus isn't exactly accommodating towards her.
What's up with you?
She wouldn't even fucking listen to me.
Notice the bandage on Marcus's hand the entire
time.
That gets explained later on during the rape
scene.
What did you get?
87's awesome.
I love that.
87's awesome.
We kept saying that all the time, didn't
we?
Once again, her eyes here.
Oh, you're really seeing to them.
We did.
We were going to call the film 87's
awesome at one point.
I love this line.
This always gets laughs in cinemas.
I remember thinking this when I was in
school as well.
He's got big lips, Frank.
But the other times that they do give
me a bit of grief, I just look
at them and think to myself, well, in
five years you'll be on fucking welfare and
serving me at McDonald's.
What a line.
And this is it.
This tops it off.
Yeah, well.
That's a comforting thought.
I think that's so funny.
That guy in the red shirt's my brother.
Look who's checking you out, man.
This makes me laugh every time I watch
this scene.
What's her name?
Mel.
Melody, man.
I love the rap they get into here.
All improv.
It was wonderful.
We talked about it and this is what
we came up with.
Such a boy thing to say.
Such a boy school thing to say.
A little reference to the conversation earlier.
I love this.
That's very funny.
That's, once again, my brother there.
I think my mum was absolutely devastated when
she saw that my brother would drop his
pants in a film that would go around
the world.
Nice ass, man.
This scene was a difficult one to shoot
for all of us, I guess, because we're
trying to get so much across with such
a general kind of scene.
And it all came down to Sam Harris's
performance here.
And if you look at the angst on
his face, he just looks so troubled.
It's perfect.
And with the sound design, the sort of
slightly disturbing sounds that come in here.
And he's obviously having a flashback to that
morning.
And at this point in the film, we
don't reveal what he was looking at.
We used to in an earlier cut, but
we thought it was too early to give
that away.
Although I'm sure the audience has their suspicions
by this point.
Look at him.
Look at those eyes.
So troubled.
It's all a fucking game at school, you
know?
I mean, the shit that goes on there,
seriously.
Yeah, I'll give someone shit.
I'll pay him out.
But I doubt- I like how in
his interviews, he never can look straight at
the camera.
He always looks away and then comes back.
It's a strong sign of insecurity.
And that was a choice that he as
an actor made.
It was a conscious choice.
Tell me that.
Oh, gosh.
You just feel so sorry for him.
He's wet his pants again and doesn't have
another change, trying to clean it up.
And I remember I did this during school.
I'd go to the, you know, dryer.
And see, I didn't understand at the time.
I think I was only like 10 or
11.
And, you know, you can dry it, but
that's not going to get rid of the
smell.
And it was the visual sort of thing.
I didn't want people to catch me out
from a distance.
This guy here is Nick Self.
He's one of the executive producers and my
script editor.
We ride a lot together.
That's going to win him an Oscar.
That is such a harsh, cruel line.
I like this shot here.
It's nice, isn't it?
Nice, isn't it?
Uneven Steven.
He's, I just can't even begin to describe
how important his character was to this story.
Because everyone connects with him.
The frustration Charles displays here is, it's incredible.
Oh, what a cut.
I love my family, my mum, my dad,
my brother, my sister.
The sense of guilt here is heartbreaking.
They've been sitting at my bedside in hospital
or waiting in waiting rooms when I've been
in theatre.
This is, again, coming from your life as
a kid in hospital.
I spent a lot of time in hospital
as a child.
And once again, I suppose that's why I
love Uneven Steven as a character the best.
Because it's so deeply personal for me.
You know, like you put, despite the fact
that my medical problems were out of my
control, there's always a sense of guilt that
everyone couldn't go on with their daily life
because they had to visit me in hospital
or do this.
And, you know, as family, you know that
they're doing it out of love, not out
of obligation.
But nonetheless, you know, it's tough to deal
with.
This is another part of the tracking shot.
The big famous four minute one.
We used it in two separate bits.
But I like the choreography here.
How we sort of leave him, slowly move
out, go wider, show the loneliness amongst the
people he's surrounded by.
And then we lose him and we find
the character of Melody.
It's a great little respite from the drama
in the film.
It gives the audience room to breathe.
Sean, is that Matt?
Gosh, this scene's so funny.
This always gets a laugh in the cinema,
his sideburns.
It's the student council.
What I wanted to get across here is,
you know, every time I was talking to
counsellors, I remember they'd be smiling and nodding.
And yes, I understand.
But really not getting it.
And it's so funny when, like, Joel, Sean's
talking here.
Look at that smile.
It's also clinical and trained.
I love this line here.
They got me like this dog the other
day.
There's a little humour in Joel.
Strips away the intensity.
It's like a husky, I guess.
It looks sort of like a wolf.
How's he settling in?
This was a bit of improvisation from Joel,
wasn't it?
This line, he just threw it in.
Absolutely.
These are...
Oh, wait, we'll get to this.
This is...
I love this.
No, I'm just joking.
That's wonderful.
I love that.
But this actual scene was shot on two
separate days, 10 months apart.
Because we never really got much coverage of
the council.
We didn't think we'd use it.
And it was a different person as well.
And it's probably since I came out, you
know, they've been badgering me constantly about why
do you bring any people home anymore?
And I guess it's about they want me
to have companionship.
It just fucking shits me off because my
dad, especially, always in my ear constantly.
Frustration that Sean is, he's venting here.
This whole fucking gay thing is just going
to disappear.
You know what I mean?
It's very natural.
And it's very honest as well.
He has to fucking deal with it.
And that's it.
It's really hard for fathers to understand.
What makes me irritated with the counsellor here
is that as a character, the actor, I
just standard responses.
He's not giving any insight.
He's not helping.
But it's a natural parental instinct.
I mean, parents want their kids to be
happy.
I've been a Dominic Pedler.
I'm so glad we got him in here.
He was just, he's just the like with
the societies and everything going on.
It's just the perfect kind of, you know,
I'm trying to fit in with the kids.
It's really another case, though, of adults not
listening to kids, isn't it?
Absolutely.
It comes across a lot in this film.
You know, he's there specifically to listen to
the kids.
It's a good, it's a good character.
He's the complete opposite.
You know, he's got this career and he's
gone to uni.
He's done it all.
He's got this woman.
He's probably going to get married in a
couple of years.
Everything's going really, really well.
And, you know, here's me fucking.
So he's the golden boy.
Of course he's the fucking golden boy.
I mean, what are they going to get
out of me?
They're going to get grandkids out of him.
I'm just their dirty little fucking secret.
So they're ganging up on you.
I love this one.
They're not ganging up on me.
They're just both against me.
They're not ganging up on me.
They're just both against me.
Classic.
This was actually shot outside of the school.
We went to a local library.
For some reason, the school didn't want us
to film in their library.
It's nicely choreographed through the books and everything.
Marcus and Sarah, Frank and Sarah, the two
actors in this scene, are actually going out.
They've been together for a couple of years
now.
They met on the set of this film
and love blossomed.
This was in the second part of the
shoot, so it was very funny for them
because they're always mucking around, laughing and joking
around.
So for them to do a very serious
scene, it was very funny to watch.
But they did a fantastic job.
I like that before he looks out the
window and you hear the bird.
It's slightly ethereal.
Maybe the school thought, if you set the
sprinklers off in the library, that could be
very expensive.
I'm guessing that's probably right.
This scene's setting up a degree of insecurity
in Marcus's mind that, first of all, Melody's
pregnant, but more so that she's told people
what he's done to her.
That's my little sister who just walked past
in the background.
She was in so many scenes.
She loved coming to set every day.
Yeah, she was a clapper girl.
I like the way you can see the
red marks on Sarah's arm.
Oh, absolutely.
I never noticed that up until recently when
I saw it in a cinema.
This was one of my favourite scenes to
shoot.
It's a scene where the character of Sean,
after that counsellor, he just wants to kick
back, relax, and he goes into the cleaner's
closet to get high.
It seems to be a place that he
goes regularly, and basically what we did is
I was just behind the camera in the
corner, and after he's had his first few
smokes and stuff, I was basically doing something
like shouting, laughing, screaming, or making funny sounds,
and Joel would imitate me, what I was
doing, and it turned out to be very
comical on the day as well.
It was fun, funny to shoot, but the
little things he pulls here are just very
funny.
It's after his interview.
I'll go into them in a second.
See, the good thing is here, all he's
doing is smoking.
He's doing it so well.
He's very interesting to watch.
It's a nice look to this scene, Nick.
Yeah, it's one of the rare opportunities where
you get to really create a strong mood
through lighting, because normally we're kind of in
corridors.
Look at this attitude, I love it.
I love that line, that's so funny.
These are the little things I was just
talking about before, where Joel's getting high, and
he's having a bit of fun on his
own.
I love this bit here.
The lighting level's obviously really low there, Nick,
because the cigarette lighter lights up his face
quite a bit.
Yeah, that's right.
Brightly.
Yeah.
Back at the class.
Fucking Jacob's fucking...
Like a work of physics.
I never really knew how much detail we
were going to get out of this, and
it was fantastic to finally see it printed
up to film, and just see into all
the shadows.
I love that line there, he's like, not
good for the animals, not good.
Doesn't make sense in the slightest, and laughing
at that.
This is, I've tried ever since I saw
him do that to make that sound.
I can't do it.
It's impossible.
I love the way this looks as though
the scene's going into some, in a particular
direction, and then it just never goes there.
To me, here is where the film really,
really kicks off, in terms of, it's the
final act, obviously, and the tension.
Obviously, at this point, we've seen everybody's got
their reasons to do it, whether it's from
the very, very serious to the slightly not
so serious, and here's where it all kicks
off.
They really enjoy kissing, don't they?
I always see this scene as he's just
walking up the stairs at the beginning of
the end, as he's walking into almost the
big turning point in the film.
That guy there that he just says hello
to is one of my closest friends, Theo.
His family actually invested in the film.
Where you been?
In San Siro.
I like that.
You're fucking kidding me.
No joke.
I have heard in the cinema a couple
of people say, what do you say there?
As he rubs his hands and disguises them.
That's one of my favourite transitions.
I do, I like that, how it goes
across the wall and cuts in.
These bathrooms weren't on location either, was that
a university where we shot?
I like just the general feel of the
bathrooms, it just all feels one location, doesn't
it?
Yeah, I think the movement, the flow into
them helps the cutting points.
Absolutely.
Sells it.
And here we go, here's the big turning
point.
This performance was very tough for them to
pull off.
I mean, asking two straight teenage guys to
kiss, and to kiss quite passionately as well,
was a tough ask.
But both of them were so professional about
it, they realised that when they were being
Sean, or when they were being Luke, it
was a different person to them.
And I think they had to do like
15 takes from a lot of different angles
for this.
Because we're going to show this scene from
various different points of view.
Fucking confident giving me shit in front of
your mates, huh?
You fucking macho man.
Just fuck off!
I'm not, everyone knows you're fucking gay, all
right?
Fucking get over yourself.
Cut.
Great performance.
Use the C word there.
Yeah, it was probably easy for them to
push each other away there.
Because they didn't enjoy it as much.
I think there was a lot of mouthwash.
We finally get to see what Luke was
looking at in the morning.
But I'm sure there was a lot of
mouthwash actually.
I like this.
This is, I can probably say, in one
of my top few moments in the film
where he goes into the closet here.
And ironically into the closet.
But oh gosh, look at that.
Look at that anger.
That's all real.
See, when we were doing rehearsals, I got
to know the actors so well that when
it came time to do scenes like this,
it was a matter of pushing their personal
buttons in their life.
And this was all completely real.
You know, we prepared an area for Joel
to smash his head that had styrofoam under
it.
But he completely missed it and he concussed
himself.
You know, he's an amazing guy.
Amazing actor.
Look at this.
And just the juxtaposition of an interview like
this with a scene like that is heartbreaking.
But I have.
Yeah, I think the thing that's really interesting
from an editing point of view about this
is that it puts the timeline of the
interviews into a really uncertain place.
So that you don't know when it is.
That's the way I wanted it.
I didn't want it to be completely, everyone
to know it was shot as a student
interview or in their minds or anything like
that.
I want it to be ambiguous.
Someone once mentioned to me, actually, guys, tell
me what you think of this, that this
was very, had a lot of Jesus Christ
symbolism.
I don't get it.
It's a bit of blood and he's looking
up.
Once again, this is the uneven Steven music.
It just proves though, Merle, it doesn't that
everyone gets something different.
It's wonderful, isn't it?
It's so wonderful to hear everybody taking things
I never even intended.
It's wonderful.
This is great.
Subtle eye movement.
Oh, it is, isn't it?
And actually, we were off camera saying, boys
are kissing.
Boys are now shouting.
Boys are punching, you know, and Charles responded
to it very well, especially as an untrained
actor.
He really used his imagination well.
It's again, testament to the fantastic performances that
we just hold.
We can hold on Charles for this long
and he's still gripping the watch.
There's no cutaways of looking between the gaps
of the door.
I mean, I've had the confidence in the
actors to be able to do that.
This scene breaks my heart.
Oh, gosh.
You know, that actual punch was about 30
centimetres away from his face.
It's amazing what camera angles can do.
And Charles, it was the only take where
Charles actually threw his head back in perfect
time with the actual punch.
It's just so helpless.
That girl there is Guy Sebastian's girlfriend.
At the time of taping.
At the time of taping.
I'm not sure what's happening.
But this interview is just heartbreaking because he's
trying to look for the positives in people,
despite the fact that everyone's only looking at
the negatives in him.
He reckons eventually things will get better.
School finishes in three months.
So he very often holds the gaze of
the audience.
It's, you know, it's really heartbreaking to watch
him.
His eyes just say so much.
He sort of came of age, didn't he,
during this film?
Charles grew in confidence a lot as a
result.
Absolutely.
And like Nick said, I remember actually the
day before we were meant to shoot a
scene, he went mountain biking.
He's like a crazy mountain, like going at
speeds I'd never even go at a car
probably.
And he stacked it and he came on
set the next day with bandages all over
his legs.
He was like, hey guys, how you doing?
He just wasn't phased by it in the
slightest.
He's such a confident guy, though.
You know, in real life, he's so different
to these characters.
Oh, now, especially.
Yeah.
It's a very important moment.
I have a tissue if you want.
As we see at the end of the
film, that's Kelly who asks him that.
And I often wonder, I often wonder if
the character of Stephen here turned around and
said, I'm going to be OK.
Are you going to be OK?
If he said, I'm going to be OK,
what about yourself?
I think the outcome of the film would
be entirely different.
That's me putting all these old friends and
et cetera into the film.
Once again, being able to hold on to
someone.
I love being as a director.
It's amazing to know you have that in
the kitty, basically, to be able to hold
on to someone that long.
I like the cutting here where it swoops
up there.
It's nice.
The subtle sort of rumbling here.
Hey, I've been looking for you.
We had a couple of options there in
terms of how to approach the scene.
And we did shoot another version of it
that wasn't so crash hot, where they could
have had the big drama with talking about
it and shouting.
And you know, that seemed very Dawson's Creek
to me.
So we just thought he's just come out
from something that feels natural to him internally,
but in his heart, but in his mind,
it's disgusting to him.
And so just the fact that he just
threw her aside and just needed to get
out of there, I think that was the
best way for them to break up.
And this is one of Marnie Spillane's finest
performances in the film.
She just looks so incredibly insecure.
Just on a technical note, this one's interesting
that that window in the background has been
put in post-production, because unfortunately that day
we shot that, it was very dark.
Once again, Marnie's performance in the interview was
so positive about her outlook of the future
with Luke and juxtaposing that with the breakup.
Look at her there.
Oh gosh, you really feel for her.
And despite the fact that her problems aren't
as big as everyone else, it's consuming her.
Once again, perspective.
And I remember when Marnie performed this, when
she just started crying.
We were like, oh my gosh.
And she came down the stairs and everyone
just started clapping.
It was wonderful.
The music in this scene, Mark Chance did
an amazing job, especially to sort of transition
into the following scene, this one.
That guy's voice is actually Nick Matthews' voice,
just pitch corrected, because Nick sounds like a
girl.
No, I'm joking.
Yeah, it was just that I think I
did so many little voiceover spots that you
had to try.
Make them sound different.
Make them sound different, yeah.
This is one of my favourite shots.
It's beautiful.
Her performance is fantastic.
This was one of the shots you had
on your initial...
Investor DVD.
Yeah.
This scene here, Teresa had said to me
she couldn't cry.
She'd never been able to cry on cue.
So I sat just off screen, just to
the left, and I was whispering to her.
And slowly the emotion started building and tears
started falling down her face.
It was wonderful.
This is a very disturbing scene, not only
to watch, but to shoot.
Nick, do you remember that night?
We just had the biggest headaches by the
end of it.
It was horrible.
That was a really strange physical reaction.
At the end of this night, my eyeballs
felt like they were just exploding.
My head just felt so full of pain.
It was really strange.
I think it's that instinct of watching someone
suffer like that.
And not being able to jump in and
help.
Absolutely.
It's horrible.
I still can't watch this stuff.
Frankie pulled off an amazing performance here.
God, he looks so creepy.
And just the care in which he starts
off stroking her and getting into the bed.
And then when you look at the rough
way that he treats her once he's in
there.
In every screening, there's always people who, at
least a couple of people, who walk out
during the scene.
I can understand why.
It's very tough.
And often they walk out early in the
scene.
Yeah, because they know what's coming.
They know what's coming.
The woman who owns the house told me
that the door was closed.
You guys were filming in there and she
heard screaming and yelling.
She thought, oh my god, what are they
doing in there?
Look at the tenderness in which he touches
her.
I remember on the day I had to
justify to Frank, the actor, why would someone
feel it's okay to rape his sister?
And we were discussing it.
And we were talking about the idea that
his sister may go out on any Friday
night and sleep with some guy who doesn't
even care about her.
He loves her more than anything in the
world.
Why shouldn't he be able to express his
love to her?
And as disturbing as it was, that was,
you know, what was going through his mind
as he was doing all of this.
And, oh god, that scene there just feels
like a spider crawling over her body.
It scares me.
And as a young girl, it'd be very
tough.
But Teresa and Frank, both of them, were
just so professional about doing this.
When we did our first 35mm test prints,
her face was a bit dark there, Nick,
wasn't it?
It was, yeah.
In the end, this has turned out to
be one of my proudest scenes as a
cinematographer.
Just, I've used magenta.
If I can just cut in there, that's
the tears I was talking about.
I'm just off screen whispering to her.
See, the good thing about this scene is
we don't show too much.
I didn't want to, you know.
I think the worst we show is Marcus's
ass, basically.
It's all about her face.
But what makes it so disturbing is her
screams.
I didn't want to, like, I didn't want
to be exploitive in this.
We didn't need to see more.
And it's obviously one of the reasons the
film got an R rating, I guess.
As much about the incest as it is
about the lyric.
Look at that.
That's heartbreaking.
And whilst Leslie and I were doing sound,
we put the children in here.
And it just made it all the more
eerie.
I remember Francis Ward Lindsay, our effects guy,
all the little effects, the subtle effects that
he put into it.
He was our supervising sound editor and effects
editor.
The subtle effects of, like, the little board
squeaking and, you know, it just made the
entire scene so incredibly eerie.
The sound team really worked together on, you
know, especially in scenes like that where once
again, we're trying to get into their minds
and we just stacked it.
We had so many layers of completely different
sounds.
It was incredible.
I think we realised just how good the
sound was when we watched it in a
cinema where the 5.1 wasn't working.
I remember.
Oh, yes.
Suddenly the experience was removed.
It lost a lot.
See, this to me is almost worse than
the rape scene watching this.
It was a perfect delivery by Teresa, the
actress.
And you've been touching me since I was
13.
So much anger.
She looks like she's about to explode and
regret at the same time, actually.
Do you find that, Nick?
Yeah, this is, you know, when the scenes
book ended with this, they're reflecting on this
part here.
Those eyes.
Oh, my gosh.
I'm glad we can use, we could use
similar pieces of music throughout the whole film
rather than having five different, completely different.
It's got a common thread throughout the entire
film.
And a lot of the actual score, if
I could call it that, in the film
was made up without music.
So the moments where we do use music,
particularly in the last act, are very powerful,
I find.
Love the birds here.
This is the biggest continuity error in the
film.
Her hair is just so incredibly different to
any other scene.
It's just we couldn't match it because it
was 10 months later.
It's real.
Now we know the truth as the audience
as to who got Melody pregnant.
The stakes are higher when we revisit this
scene.
Marcus, look, you didn't hear it from me,
all right?
Marcus, where are you going?
Come on, do it, Marcus.
Leave me alone!
Marcus!
The sound design in this scene is incredible.
We just stack the sound so much.
It's just the screams, the then, you know,
we can hear what's going on in the
outside world as well.
It just really gives us an insight into
Marcus's mind and how fundamentally flawed or disturbed
that he is.
You see a bit of uneven Stephen there.
That was when he had bandages all over
him so we couldn't really include him in
shot.
Those screams really freak me out, especially when
you hear it in a full theatre.
We see Kelly there in the background and
we'll revisit that later.
I love that sound.
I think this is one of my finest
scenes in the film.
I think their performance here is so believable.
Look at the rough way in which she's
holding her head.
It's almost like a doll.
It's just so incredibly abusive and now we
know why he's got the bandage on his
hand because she bit him during the rape
scene as well and he just throws her
back.
I often wonder, does he think what he's
doing is wrong by this point?
There's Kelly again.
The way he treats her, it's almost like
she's the one who's done something wrong.
Exactly.
Once again, we juxtapose a positive interview with
being seen utterly hopeless.
We show a bit of hope in Melody.
People often say to me the film doesn't
show hope and with these kids talking about
their future, their dreams, I don't think you
can get any more hopeful than that.
And the fact that six children survived, it
shows incredible resiliency from all the six characters
and there's hope in that as well.
I'm going to travel, get as far away
as possible.
Once again, a change in the pace here.
This next scene here was conceived about a
week before our second shoot where I wanted
to tie everything together because Kelly, this character
on the screen now, is the one who
commits suicide and I wanted to show that
everything we'd been witnessing from these other characters,
as important as it seemed at the time
when we were seeing it from their point
of view, was just out of focus and
insignificant to Kelly.
We see the breakup there and it just
is almost like nothing.
I call this scene the final walkthrough.
She's obviously walking to the area where she
will inevitably commit suicide but in the process
encountering all the characters that we've spent the
duration of the film getting to know.
And the decision to make it Kelly who
commits suicide, I think, was the only way
where we could go because if I'd made
it uneven Stephen or Melody then it suggests
that their problem is more important than anyone
else and I don't think the film would
have worked.
And we don't really allow insight into Kelly's
life or problems.
There's hints here and there but I think
that was also very important because suicide isn't
something that can be summed up.
I didn't commit suicide because I had a
bad day at school or because my parents
broke up.
It's so many things.
But what this does highlight, this final scene
in particular here actually, is the lack of
communication and the complete and utter disconnect between
children at school.
It's almost like she's, look at her, she's
asking him if she's going to be okay,
if he's going to be okay.
I really, every time I see this I
wish, even though I know I shot this
and I still wish that uneven Stephen will
turn around and ask if she's going to
be okay.
The sound in this film is fantastic.
In this scene, sorry, all in the film
and the scene.
The mix here was just very elaborate.
We spent a long time doing this scene.
The screams.
Once again, Nick, I like how we go
into the shadows there.
Yeah, yeah.
It creates mystery, I think.
I often find when I'm sitting in a
cinema watching this with people, they know what's
coming.
And despite the fact that if this scene
was on its own, it'd be quite a
boring scene because it just goes on and
on.
They know what's coming and they don't want
it to end because of that.
Like I said before, we saw Kelly from
Marcus's point of view when he was walking
down the stairs.
Now we see, and she was just an
insignificant sort of white blob almost, and now
we see them from her point of view
and they're just in the background.
That's actually not Teresa there, just in case
anyone wanted to know.
That's one of the extras.
We didn't have Teresa that day and I
think we held that a little too long.
I love it.
Sorry, I love it here how the Eric
Satie piece comes in.
It's very tender.
Sorry, Kent, you were about to say?
Well, it's at this point that the audience
realises, oh my God, it's her.
So many people have said to me they
think the film ends at this moment right
here.
I love this moment where she walks out
into the...
Once again, we hear the children and that
says so many things and a lot of
people take their own meaning out of it.
O'Reilly wasn't going to let the audience
get away with it that easily by ending
the film there.
I felt I had a responsibility almost when
I was going to show this suicide.
I wanted to show the brutality, the suffering
and the pain.
But more than anything, I really felt I
had to show the regret too.
I wanted to use the scene that's about
to come as a deterrent, almost scare people
away from the idea of suicide, because I
find often in the media and in the
past, it's glorified and in other films and
I didn't want to do it that way.
Now these leaves are finally connected to something
and we see where it's all coming from
and this is one of our favourite shots
here.
It's coming up where...
I'll get to that in a second.
We see all the green sort of beautiful
leaves intercut with Kelly here and then we
go to branches that have no leaves on
it, completely stripped out of focus.
We focus in and that says so much.
It's such a poignant moment.
It's very emotional for me when I watch
that visually.
Yeah.
This performance by Clementine is...
I can't...
I still find it difficult to watch because
it's so real.
We worked...
I remember we worked so hard to get
it here.
We didn't rehearse much for this because we
needed to keep it fresh.
But come the day, Clementine and myself were
in the green room and I remember thinking,
I can't expect her to do this unless
I'm going to do it with her.
So we both worked ourselves up into a
frenzied state and it's...
Oh gosh.
I think the shoot took about...
This suicide shoot, when we actually started shooting,
it was about three or four hours of
shooting.
Would that be about right on?
Yeah.
Clemmie stayed in the distressed character state for
that entire time.
And the tears never really stopped flowing for
her.
They were incredible.
The audience always just...
You can always just see people shifting in
their seats here.
And we keep it going for a while
actually.
You know, the build-up is just so
tense.
Intercutting it with the elements that we've seen
in the film earlier of her being completely
and utterly isolated.
She is alone, isn't she?
Nobody's really interested in her or communicating with
her.
At one point in one of the edits
we did, we actually used to cut to
various outside elements of life just going on.
And it didn't work, but the idea was
so important because there's probably a thousand people
in that school, but no one has any
clue as to what she's about to do.
To take her own life when being surrounded
by so many people is almost criminal.
Oh God, I can barely look at that.
And in fact, we cut away there for
a reason because I wanted to force people
to watch that.
So people close their eyes and they open
it.
And by the time they open it, they
actually see it for what it is.
Oh man, it's so difficult to watch this.
In screenings, I always walk out during the
section because it's so personal for me.
And I just find it so difficult to
watch because it's almost like a recreation of
someone's death.
It's so real.
That blood creeping out there, it's, you know...
I like the transition to this music here.
It's the only piece I felt that could
go along with this music and with this
scene, sorry.
Look at that performance.
We were so pleased when we had permission
to use this music.
It's an Andrew Lloyd Webber piece.
It took us a long time, but we
got it eventually.
See here, I remember watching this that day
and I was like, gosh, this is an
amazing performance.
But when I yelled cut, she kept doing
it.
She was actually dry reaching.
She was that into the role.
This kind of stuff you can't fake.
And if we didn't get the performance that
we did in this scene, the entire film
would have fallen over.
I often wonder why the blood didn't fill
into those little gaps there.
Watching someone die, it's so rare, isn't it?
We never see this amount of detail.
People usually cut away, but I'm so glad
we showed it.
And despite the controversy that surrounds the scene,
I will never, ever regret the way in
which we did it.
This moment here says it all to me
where she's saying, help me.
She's muttering the names of her family members,
the actresses, and she's saying, help me.
And that shows the regret.
It shows that she's starting to realise that
when she wakes up in the morning, well,
she's not going to wake up in the
morning.
She's not going to have those children.
You know, she's not going to graduate from
school.
She's not going to be able to follow
her dream because this is it.
And there's regret there.
That was an amazing technical accident that happened
there.
As I was operating this shot, the camera
started running out of battery.
And so it started shooting in fast motion.
Sometimes, you know, sometimes you just get so
wrapped up in your own problems that you
just don't notice anybody else.
I guess that's the theme of the film.
You know, people talk about reincarnation and heaven
and what happens when you die and hell
and all that bullshit.
I mean, it just none of it makes
sense.
You know, it's just people are scared of
dying.
Well, I'm not.
And once you're dead, you're dead.
It's as simple as that.
I think the last time I had a
real conversation with her was year two or
something.
That was ten years ago.
Fine performance from Marnie there.
This bit's heartbreaking from Charles.
His eyes are so soulful.
I don't really have anything more to say.
But then that.
She was in my brother's music class.
This this line here where Melody says she's
lucky has caused a bit of controversy.
But it's often the case that when one
person in a school does take their life,
it's closely followed by another one.
And I just I just like I said,
I wanted to be so honest in presenting
this.
And what Melody was going through was so
horrific.
It felt like that's the only thing she
could say.
Not one.
God, this scene just makes me want to
punch Marcus in the face.
Fantastic performance.
A brilliant performance.
She was going to top herself.
You know, maybe she could have helped.
But it just makes you want to hate
him so much, because Kelly did reach out
to him on various occasions and he completely
ignored her.
When someone is going through that problem, they
don't have to go running through the hallways
with a big banner saying, I'm going to
commit suicide.
My sister has this little boy.
This interview here was so crucial in the
fact that it was the only time we
get to meet Kelly.
We get to know her as a human
being.
She does have a life outside of school.
She's not just this ghostly character who walks
around the school.
And this is the only interview in the
entire film that wasn't scripted, that we recorded
about an hour or two hours worth of
her just telling stories about her life.
And there was so much hope there.
Oh, I know.
It's heartbreaking.
Oh, gosh, that's so cute.
And cutting to this incredibly endearing moment when
the audience just connect with her and love
and care for her.
Cutting from that to a shot where she's
on the floor of the bathroom, where she's
bled to death with blood dripping off her
fingers.
Oh, it's heartbreaking.
Absolutely heartbreaking.
And this, it's the full circle is now
complete.
We started off with Gary Sweet finding the
body.
And we end with him trying to get
in again.
I've always been very reluctant to go into
the personal details of this film, but I
think this dedication says it all.
And I'm so glad that I put it
there.
It felt completely right.
And this sound design at the end is
the credits with the children talking with the
beautiful soft Eric Satie piece.
It's a perfect end for the film.
And this is a film that I'm incredibly
proud of.
And it came, it was very personal for
me.
So I don't think I could ever make
something like 237 again.
And so I thank you for watching it
and listening to this commentary.
So thank you very much.
Yes, I feel the same, Raleigh.
I mean, we're incredibly proud of it.
And we're so pleased that we had the
opportunity to join you and Nick in the
making of the film and meet all the
great people like Leslie and everybody else that
was associated with helping bring this amazing film
to fruition.
Yeah, it's been an amazing two-year journey
so far.
And we never knew what was going to
become of this little film.
And it keeps exceeding our expectations.
So thank you so much for watching.
And I thank you guys for joining me
on this journey over the last two years.
And we look forward to the next one.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
I'm the writer, director and co-producer of
the film 237.
Hi, I'm Nick Matthews.
I'm the director of photography and co-producer
of the film.
And I'm Kent Smith, and I'm the producer
of the film.
I never...
I love all these logos at the beginning
of the film.
It's always so funny to watch, you know,
all these companies that come together to get
the film out there.
Yeah, there's a lot of them, aren't there?
Yeah.
It makes you realise just, you know, how
involved it is trying to get a film
made, you know, how many companies have to
combine forces.
These leaves are just fantastic.
It's such a beautiful way to open the
film, I think.
I remember the way we actually shot it.
It was a happy accident, whereas the Steadicam
operator had, you know, gone for a rest
and he'd slung the Steadicam and the camera
over his shoulder, but we left the camera
running and, you know, we got some leaves
there.
And when we were in post, we were
like, oh, this is fantastic.
So we went back out and we shot
more, and that's how the leaves came about
here.
In plenty of Q&As, people are asking
the significance of it, and we might get
into that later.
Nick, do you want to talk about the
slow motion?
This slow motion material in the film is
actually shot on film.
The majority of the film is actually photographed
on video.
But there's some little bits and pieces of
film here and there, and film's a good
format to facilitate slow motion.
It's all very hypnotic here.
I love it.
It's a nice way to ease into the
film.
And I remember when we were in Cannes,
Kevin Smith, he saw the film, he sent
me an email saying, I love those slow
-mo shots of the kids bombing around the
school.
So hypnotic, man.
That girl that just walked past was artificially
put in in post-production as well, by
the way.
Which is interesting.
This is the entire setup to the film.
So this scene was always going to be
crucial in creating drama.
Remember, this is where the characters of Gary
Sweet's character, Mr. Darcy, Amy Chappell as Lacey,
and the janitor find the dead body.
And we were faced with a couple of
options, whereas we could have shown the arm
or the fact that it was a suicide
when it happened.
But we wanted to build drama suspense where
it could have been a suicide or a
murder or anything like that.
I like their performances.
I think they're wonderful.
I love that transition from the St. Peter's
Boys Choir as we get into the guitar,
played with a bow.
It really builds a lot of tension.
You never see anyone in the cinema moving
at this point.
Mate, is that you in there?
Take note of that section there where he
says, mate, is that you in there?
Because we wanted to throw the suspicion on
one of the other characters, that being uneven
Stephen.
And I'll point out that scene later where
Gary chastises him and it's a sense of
guilt that washes over him.
I've always found it really interesting that quite
a few people have picked that up.
Yeah, I agree.
It's the janitor.
He looks a lot like a janitor.
It's fantastic.
But this scene here is beautiful.
The music as it builds up and, you
know, with the guitar.
Oh, God, it's just so emotional for me.
And that, oh, my God, as we hear
this big rumbling noise building and building and
over the trees, building to a crescendo and
then.
Wow.
I love it.
That's very powerful in the cinema, isn't it?
Oh, my gosh.
I always stay to watch that bit.
I did battle with putting that earlier that
day there, to be honest.
I've never been a fan of, you know,
putting captions like that in, but it did
work.
I felt it worked.
So it ended up in there.
Yeah, it did.
This is Frank Sweet's real life house, too.
Yeah, the actor who plays Marcus here, that's
Frank Sweet.
It's yeah, it's his actual house.
And I think we shot three of the
characters house in there.
It's Gary Sweet's son.
You've just got to admire him.
Nick, this is high definition.
That's right.
Yeah, this is the black and white interviews
in the film are all photographed on high
definition video.
And they have a I think they have
a kind of sharper feel than the rest
of the film.
Well, I guess it was a good idea
to shoot that way there, because these interviews
were our chance to actually get in, get
to know the characters and get right in
their face.
So that detail there, I think, fantastic.
It's kind of contrary to the usual thing
where if you break the drama with interviews
or something, you'd make them more gritty.
And I think it's interesting that they're actually
kind of sharper and clearer than most of
the film.
Yes, it makes them feel very real, doesn't
it?
Yeah, this footage is some of the footage
that I saw.
You know, when we first decided to come
on board and I was so impressed with
Teresa's performance and the cinematography and the direction
was amazing.
You know, the footage you brought back to
me from Cannes.
These guys, all these actors are just they
blow my mind constantly when I watch this,
because none of them had ever acted before.
And, you know, this disturbing nature of Frank
Sweet is gives me the willies to this
day.
Teresa here is, within five seconds of watching
her, I think you feel, you know, the
character of Melody.
The authenticity and just the natural energy that
Teresa exudes is something that is so incredibly
rare.
I love the way in the cinema, you
know, when you're watching this on film, the
way her eyes are kind of five foot
wide, it's so tight.
It's unusual to shoot that way in the
cinema.
All these interviews were heavily scripted.
A lot of the film was improvised, and
I'll go into those moments when they come
up later on, but the interviews were so
crucial in getting to know the characters that
it was the only part of the script
that I demanded the characters, the actors, sorry,
really knew their lines.
And barring one interview, which I will point
again when it comes up, I think they
just delivered some amazing performances there.
This music makes me laugh every time I
hear it.
Our sound designer, Leslie, and I put that
in as a joke to start.
The four seasons, I think it's spring or
winter.
And we put it in as a joke.
And then when we put that sort of
low, sort of humming guitar, played with a
bow sound, it just sounded so incredibly eerie.
And we left it in there until the
last minute, thinking we'd change it.
But by that time, we'd both fallen in
love with it.
And, you know, Kent and Nick loved it
as well.
And it was a good way for when
we repeat the scenes coming up now.
It was a good key identifier for the
idea that we are repeating the scenes orally.
I always say to this actor, how much,
how long did you rehearse that one for?
He did amazing here.
It's a tough scene to pull off something
like this.
No pun intended.
No pun intended.
But it's because it is so, it has
to be so natural.
It can't be a send up.
My favourite part here is where he pushes
the keyboard as if, you know, flicking to
the next picture.
That's hilarious.
This is one of my favourite shots in
the film.
Me too.
So beautifully choreographed.
And it's Luke's running through the house.
It was really, we used the location there,
you know, maximum points to the team for
figuring all this out here.
Once again, we hear that music from a
different perspective.
It really excites me when I hear stuff
like that.
I love the idea of showing things from
different perspectives.
The idea that life and problems are all
about perspective.
And I think that's what this film's really
about.
I fucking hate school.
I sit there and I listen to shit
that has no relevance to me.
Like, fair enough for someone else who's going
to go off and be a lawyer or
some shit like that.
But for me, it's just fucking useless, you
know?
What's interesting about Sam Harris's performance is that
he's, as a person and a human being,
he is so far removed from his character.
You know, he's a very soft, kind-hearted
kind of guy.
And for him to start his opening line,
yeah, I've got a good body.
Joel McKenzie playing Sean.
What a revelation.
The intensity that Joel's, as an actor, has
on screen is amazing.
And he's amazing to photograph as well.
Those blue eyes really come out there.
This is some of my favourite footage.
Yeah, I'd agree with that.
The sequence of this one.
Don't you think, Ken?
It's just beautiful.
It is.
You just wouldn't pick this as tape, standard
definition.
No, it's a wonderful piece of cinematography.
With the nice green in the background there.
I love tits.
I love pussy.
I love tits.
I love pussy.
What a way to introduce a character.
That always gets a few shocked laughs in
the cinema.
Like I say, she makes me normal, huh?
Joel was probably one of the characters Morali
had really, really lived the part for the
entire film.
Absolutely.
You see, Joel was one of the youngest
members of the cast.
He was obviously becoming an adult.
And the process of his mind were changing.
And he used that, just like his character.
He used that attitude, that intensity.
That was all Joel.
And Joel spent countless hours with me, hounding
me for rehearsals outside our normal scheduled ones.
And it was fantastic.
His appetite to learn was amazing.
And he co-wrote elements of the script
with me.
And he's wonderful.
I always have to give 10 points to
Marnie for doing this.
I remember it was something on the day
we thought it shows us that degree of
vulnerability.
And coupled with the sound design in the
background, it gives a lot of insight into
her psyche.
I think marriage is a nice thought.
I like her interviews.
They always came across as very natural for
me.
I love that line, feminist butch chick.
I'm not talking about one of those fat
housewives who go shopping in their trackies.
To me, the character of Sarah is an
amalgamation of probably every ex-girlfriend that every
guy has in high school.
Oh, gosh.
I love this.
Nick, do you want to talk about this?
Nick's a big soccer fan, so Nick, go
on.
This is one of my favourite moments in
football history or soccer history, where Manchester United
scored, Ryan Giggs from Manchester United scored a
fantastic goal in the FA Cup semi-final.
Oh, sorry.
Can I cut in there?
There's the Ninja Turtles there.
I love that, but go on.
So what we did is we transcribed some
real commentary from the BBC and gave it
to a friend of my father's who's an
ABC commentator, and he did a fantastic performance.
I think it sounds very genuine.
Uneven Steven here is one of the most
heartbreaking characters in the film.
He really, really touches my heart.
And after every screening we've had of the
film, people go, and see, the thing about
this guy, his name's Charles Baird.
He'd never acted before.
He had never even contemplated acting before, and
for him to pull off such an incredibly
honest performance was just mind-blowing.
I've got one leg longer than the other
one, and that gives me a limp.
I always feel weird talking over, you know,
such a fine performer.
It's interesting how you originally met Charles.
Yeah, me and Charles met in the street.
I saw him there, and Charles actually does
have a slight limp, and just like the
character of Uneven Steven, and I walked up
to him, and I said, listen, mate, do
you want to be an actor?
And he looked at me like I was
crazy, but eventually he came out to lunch
with me, and he read the script, and,
you know, he loved it.
And he's so proud of him, because over
four months he got such a hold of
his craft that I look forward to see
what he does in the future.
I always think Charles might go on to
get really interested in filmmaking as well.
He's very interesting behind the scenes.
Yeah.
I agree.
He was always helping me carry bits of
gear.
Well, I love this, how the 237 gets
hidden behind the leaves.
But I agree, Charles, he has a sense
of cinema, doesn't he?
Yeah, he does.
I like it, how the Four Seasons music's
coming back in here to connect the car
from where we were before.
This is one of my favourite shots in
the film.
I remember the day we shot it, we
had about a half an hour, 20 minute
to half an hour window.
One side we'd lost electricity, the other side
the sun was coming out, and we couldn't
have it looking too, you know, with hot
spots all over the place.
In two takes we knocked this out, it
was mind-blowing.
So perfectly choreographed.
There were a lot of rehearsals though, weren't
there?
Oh, yes.
Choreographing.
In the rain, I might say, and it
was so freezing.
It was like 10, 12 degrees, and these
guys are all wearing clothes that aren't too
warm.
And I remember in between every take, Teresa
would run and get, would go and get
blankets for all the extras so that, and
it's so indicative of what a kind of
person she is.
You can see on the ground, there's bits
of water around.
It was very, the sky was very grey,
and it actually gives the scene a really
interesting quality.
The funny thing about this, and all our
shots in this film, is none of them
were really storyboarded.
It was a matter of getting there on
the day, and, you know, it was Nick
and I sort of dancing around with our
hands pointing in all these weird different directions
and coming up with this sort of stuff.
It's hard to imagine this is standard definition
video.
Again, absolutely.
I just love the transitions from moving from
character to character, using those extras so we
can move to Sean, and Sean's obviously at
this point just focussing on Luke there.
The other interesting thing, I thought, Morali, is
that on the second shoot, he'd cut his
hair.
Yeah, and all those were hair extensions.
It's scary that, you know, you can't tell.
That transition to uneven Stephen and now to
Sarah is amazing, but we split our shoot
up into two parts, and the character of
Sean, Joel McKenzie, had cut his hair, and
his hair's normally brown, and we didn't know
what to do, so all that was hair
extensions for the second part of the shoot.
The baby helped.
Oh, yes, absolutely, and there's a challenge for
you.
See if you can spot which one was
the first and second shoot.
This is one for the people into symbolism.
I think I've had a few comments about
the red curtains here.
Oh, the red curtains.
People wanting me to go into some kind
of cinematographic coding about if it's about blood
or...
You know, to be brutally honest, we put
red curtains there because it's one of my
favourite colours and it looked pretty.
I love that smile he pulls there and
the performance from these two guys because, see,
to me, a performance doesn't...
Like, the brilliance of an actor doesn't come
in pulling off an intense scene like a
rape scene or a suicide scene, but it's
in making the mundane interesting, and I think
Anthony Hopkins once said, acting is doing nothing
incredibly well, and if you look at these
guys here, they've got very little dialogue to
work with, but it's what's said between the
lines are the expressions on their face.
If you look at Clementine, the character who
plays Kelly, right there, she's like, oh, yeah.
This part here, look at her face.
That's priceless.
That says a million words.
It's brilliant.
And Frank just comes across as...
His character of Marcus is such a socially
awkward person, and Frank just summed that up
beautifully.
This is one of the key scenes, because
obviously it's one of the few scenes with
Kelly in it, and as Kelly's the one
who inevitably, you know, commits suicide, it's a
scene where she does get rejected to a
degree.
She's obviously come up, you know, wanting some
sort of help or, you know, wanting to
talk about something, but Marcus is so wrapped
up in his own problems.
It's never about anybody else but oneself.
Look, I gotta go.
Marcus.
Come on, I didn't...
I love these moments where we go into
Kelly's eyes.
You really can see into her, and that
was one of the main reasons, well, barring
her acting ability, which is fantastic, but just
those eyes, you really feel you know her
just by looking at her.
The sound design here is interesting.
This is what Leslie and I did while
we were in Los Angeles, and what we
wanted to do is we wanted the audience
to feel as though they were listening to
what's going on in Marcus's head without hearing
any words, and all these sounds of trains
running, of doors opening, and just this general
rumbling, I think that really contributes towards a
disturbing sound design and disturbing insight into what's
going on in Marcus's head, and as it
builds here as we move on to transition
onto another character.
But one of my favourite shots again.
What happened at the party last night?
So smooth.
Fuck.
I love the way this is framed with
the three boys.
I love it.
It's great when you hear the sound design.
For me as a cinematographer, you hear the
way in which the transitions, the visual transitions
have been supplemented with fantastic sound design as
well.
A lot of this dialogue here was improvised
once again.
You know, the guys talking about what happened
on the weekend before the scene would sit
down and have a chat, and I guess
that's why it's so natural and fresh.
You like taking it or giving it, huh?
Xavier and Chris are supporting Rolster Luke.
They've got such a great sense of comical
time.
It's fantastic.
Yeah, they're great.
I like this.
Give us a kiss.
Get the fuck off of me.
I love that.
He's got such an attitude.
Those eyes could kill.
Fucking cock jockey!
I'd never even heard that word before they
said that in that take.
Hey guys.
She's always looking at him.
Gosh, this was so funny.
This was a last-minute decision to throw
Sean into this scene.
You know, we just thought, add a sense
of comedy, a bit of light and shade.
It always gets a laugh in the cinema,
doesn't it?
He's just got no clues.
Or maybe he does have a clue, it's
just disregard.
A couple of people have said to me
the fact that he's openly gay.
Does he feel he belong into the girl's
bathroom?
But I can honestly say we never thought
of that.
We just thought it to be funny.
And I love this bit where he bumps
into the girl.
Gosh, he's fantastic.
Did you hear about Griggs having cancer?
Shit, is it bad?
I like that.
Oh no, no, I think so.
That's sad.
Did you hear about Griggs having cancer?
That's sad.
All right, how do I look?
Once again, completely self-obsessed.
The sound design in this section here is
amazing.
Once again, it's got the guitar sort of
piercing sound underneath.
But we also hear a little girl talking.
You know, you're mommy and all that sort
of stuff.
That's actually Leslie's daughter, Charlotte.
She's the cutest kid.
We recorded her talking and it just lent
such an eerie sort of insight into how
Sarah's mind works.
Whether she was pregnant, someone mentioned to me.
I never thought of that.
Or, you know, the innocence that sort of
exists in one's life.
And as you're becoming an adult, you're losing
it.
But it is dying to get out.
And it just means so many things.
Just sound is so critical.
It's amazing how much of a story the
sound can tell.
Once again, these repeating of the scenes.
It says so much to me, the repeating
of the scenes, in that one person could
be going through one problem and we see
it from their point of view and it
consumes their life.
And it's completely dramatic and so on and
so on.
But then you see it from another person
just walking past and it's completely insignificant.
And to me, that's what the film's about.
We should never place one problem over another.
We should try to understand, get to know
people.
If you have to miss a dance class
to talk to someone, that's fine.
So be it.
Sarah Hudson as Julie is wonderful.
She's so funny.
What a crack up that girl is.
She was the best one.
She actually dominates the goof reel.
Oh, absolutely.
She had, we had so much fun with
her on set.
Yeah, I am at school.
This scene here to me is one of
the many scenes in the film where the
kids have the opportunity to talk to the
parents in theory.
But in practise, you can't just make an
offer to talk.
It's something that trust has to be built.
And they feel as though they're so isolated,
even from their own family.
And to me, that's indicative of sort of
this generation we're in now, where instead of
reading your kids a bedtime story or something
like that, you let them play the PlayStation
before they go to bed.
And kids being raised by the internet, their
PlayStations and computers and so on and so
on.
The bond between the older and younger generation
is breaking so quickly to the point where
the older generation can't pass on their wisdom
to the younger generation.
I think that's why they're so directionless.
Once again, Teresa's ability to say something without
saying something.
To say a million words in a pause
or a look.
The hope that she has there.
Look at that quarter of a smile.
Gosh, it's heartbreaking.
Take care of your brother.
Oh, God.
My parents really pushed my brother into things.
Like school, music, everything.
It's just so different with me, though.
You know, any time I started getting good
at something, piano or dance.
So what I find interesting about Melody's interviews
is the contrast, or the difference we see
in her interviews to how she presents herself
in school life.
She's actually got a bit of fire in
her belly and just so much anger and,
you know, she's just, it's almost like there's
another Melody within her trying to break free.
But in the world that she's living in
at the moment, she's just constantly being pushed
down, whether it's by her father, her brother,
her mother, even, and teachers.
And see, this is indicative of what Melody
could be when she's talking about the children,
talking about how much she loves animals.
That's Melody to me.
And she's a beautiful character.
Brenton Treglowan's performance here is so natural.
He really comes across as a caring teacher.
People always say you paint the teachers here
in a negative light, but this is one
scene where we actually do show a teacher,
you know, as someone who cares, someone who's
contributing towards their lives.
That guy there, Crafty, he was the best
boy on the film.
He was great.
He was wonderful.
He became a bit of an iconic figure.
And so we put him in a scene
and full credit to him.
I kind of see, though, the best boy
is somebody who helps with lighting, by the
way.
Other people, they'll probably look at him differently,
I reckon.
Why would they look at them differently?
Well, I mean...
This girl here, Elsie, I taught her acting
class and I think she's wonderful.
So, you know, he's going to get harassed
and teased at school.
You know, it's just...
I remember when we were in L.A.
and Leslie's like, he asked me, what does
you know you mean?
And the accent sort of got lost.
The performance here by Brighton and Covelli, we
were in school together.
He performed Creon in the play Antigone and
I thought he was so fantastic.
And when I ran into him again, I
just, I was like, oh gosh, we have
to put you in this film.
The tension between these two characters here, you
could cut it with a knife.
Look at the attitude from John McKenzie.
I think it's really interesting in the scene
the way we covered it and the way
that we don't keep cutting to all the
various people that are interjecting.
I think it really adds to the tension
and keeps the attention on John.
I agree.
And I also think, I remember everyone on
set, like some of the crew were saying,
how are they going to cut this film?
And we're like, we're not.
That's the beauty of it.
I like this little build up into the
next scene.
There's a little in-joke there, Macbeth.
Daniel White.
He's fantastic.
I wish we could have given him a
bigger role.
He's such a talented guy.
Been playing since I was a little kid.
Yeah, well, it shows.
Marcus's awkwardness as a character is just so
evident here.
He's just so introverted, all into himself.
It's interesting to watch him interacting with other
people.
It's like you're in love, huh?
Hey, listen, about that, your story.
I noticed when you were shooting this scene,
Morelli, you changed a word in the dialogue
because he was struggling just to get around
that word.
I can't remember what the word is.
I remember that.
It was just so open.
From penis to musicals.
Yeah, because it sounded like penis.
I like this bit coming up here.
I want to talk about this in a
second.
It's the content.
What are you trying to say?
Well, I'm sure you'll agree it's not a
story that every Tom, Dick and Harry would
write.
Obviously, he's written a story that alludes to
him sexually abusing someone.
But you understand that it's just a story.
I know, I know, I know.
But I like this here.
Let me put it to you this way.
If someone came in here and wrote up
a story about shooting up the whole school.
That's my little reference to the obvious influence
of Gus Van Sant's Elephant.
It's a love story, for Christ's sake.
Did you write it about anyone in particular?
No, I didn't.
I find it interesting, the comparisons to Elephant.
I think Elephant's a wonderful film and it
inspired us visually.
But to me, comparing 237 and Elephant is
like comparing Brokeback Mountain to a cowboy movie.
Whereas they are similar in style and even
location, etc, etc.
But the stories are so incredibly different.
But I had to throw in that little
reference to Gus's film Elephant.
I think he's a brilliant filmmaker and such
a huge influence.
He has seen the film, doesn't he?
He has seen the film and he really
enjoyed it.
He told me it was very emotional for
him.
Now, if you can get your books straight
out today and open up to page 24.
We are starting the Scottish play.
I remember one time...
This is an interview I wrote on the
day, actually.
I don't know why I wrote it there,
but it gave a little insight into Marcus's
character.
I wanted people to know that he didn't
have it easy as well.
I didn't want them to hate him completely.
I was still half awake.
And mum and dad got home and they
paid the babysitter.
I love the way he struggles to tell
the story here.
It's not something that you can just say,
so dad got home and he fucked my
mum in front of me, you know?
Just the way he's struggling to articulate it.
So he comes across in the way that
he wants to.
A lot of people ask, who was he
fucking?
Who was he fucking?
The babysitter or the mother?
Someone actually asked, or was it Melody?
But I intended it to be the mother.
But either way, it's the fact that his
father was so...
I guess I still think about it.
I guess cruel to do that to him
with your children right there.
That's disgusting.
I like this scene.
This shows a bit of heart with Melody.
We always see her so upset and I
wanted to show her where she was happy.
I wanted to show her where she was
opening up and she loves animals and it
was a beautiful way to do it, I
thought.
And her performance is wonderful.
Look at that smile.
We rarely see Melody smile.
So when she does, she lights up the
screen.
These guinea pigs are actually Nick Matthew's niece's
guinea pig.
I think the name of the guinea pig
is actually rabbit, isn't it?
Oh, ding-dong.
That one there is ding-dong, yeah.
It's gotten big now, hasn't it?
You know that we forgot to put ding
-dong in the credits and I believe ding
-dong is going to sue us for that.
We can't talk much more about it.
Don't be scared.
I love that.
The tenderness.
And the noises the little guinea pigs make
come through as well.
Hey, Melody.
Rena is the actress here.
She comes across as such a high school
teacher.
You've been really great with our morals this
term.
Trying to connect once again with the students,
but Melody not jumping on the opportunity.
It's such a superficial way of trying to
connect.
Someone has to take them home each week
for the weekend.
Maybe you could take...
No, my brother's allergic.
That was a choice Teresa actually made in
terms of the fear when the teacher talked
about taking it home and running away from
an opportunity to tell...
I can understand it.
I can so much as sew his lips
together.
I remember being shocked when I heard this
that day.
That was a bit of improv.
He says, bloody refos wish someone would sew
their lips together.
It was a very schoolboy thing to say.
I always find this funny because that's what
I remember school being like.
Back in the class.
Having a good time.
All right, get out of here now, both
of you.
Okay, thank you.
There's my political statement right there in the
back.
Hey, what do you reckon of that clan
chicken there?
Fat one.
It's not fat, it's huge.
She's got good tits though, man.
I like the way you shot this, Mick,
that we didn't try to make everything lit.
They can go into the darkness, come out
of it.
It all feels very natural.
It's very important.
Do you want to talk about that?
Yeah, I think that there's always a temptation
to over light because you're afraid that you're
going to miss out on things.
But I think it adds to the overall
tone of the film.
The fact that they disappear at times There's
uneven Stephen in the background and we'll see
this scene from his point of view again
soon.
What's wrong with that, man?
I'm not an arse fucker.
I love this.
Nothing gay, man, nothing gay.
It's funny how much of the dialogue revolves
around sex, you know, when we improvised it.
But that's the way it was at school.
I remember that.
This was the first scene we shot.
It is, first day.
I remember that.
That day I had to ask you what
a clapperboard did.
You really feel for poor old uneven Stephen
in this scene, don't you?
He just wants to be by himself.
Such a tragic character.
I see you outside.
And I think it's interesting putting Sean there
in that little smirk.
No one's willing to give their heart out
to anyone at this point in the film
anyway.
This was a moment, I have to say,
it breaks my heart.
My parents, when they saw this, it broke
their heart because I had a bladder problem
when I was a child and they remember
me coming home crying, bawling my eyes out,
telling them how my teacher humiliated me.
This is pretty much word for word.
Bit old for this sort of thing, aren't
you?
I think everyone's got a story where they've
been humiliated at school.
It has a profound effect, doesn't it, as
a young kid?
Oh my gosh, yes.
Look at uneven Stephen, he couldn't even lift
his eye level, you know, above the 180
degree line, you know, and it's...
He played it.
He played it so beautifully.
And then his head goes down, you know,
it's...
Can't look Gary in the eyes.
That was one line that was improvised by
Gary and when he said that I just
burst out laughing that we had to do
a second take and it was very irresponsible
of me as a director, but I just
cracked up laughing.
As cruel as it is.
This music by Mark Chance is so evocative,
it really gets across the idea that there's
just almost, you know, no hope for uneven
Stephen, just going through the motions.
I love these repetitions of scenes.
I'm surprised.
We had a continuity guy for a couple
of weeks, but we couldn't afford it for
much longer and one of our EPs and
the script editor did continuity for a while.
The fact that it's, you know, so strong,
it's lucky.
We're very lucky.
How cruel is this?
Gosh.
Shit, that sucks.
Oh, wait up, man.
The thing about uneven Stephen, he never fights
back, does he?
He just takes it, takes it all.
Absolutely.
Obviously, it has a serious effect on him.
Oh, yes.
This scene here where he goes and changes
his pants is another thing out of my
school.
When I was a child, they had a
special bathroom that I could use and they
always kept a change of clothes for me
in there and I remember going through the
motions and this is how I felt.
He's just, he's literally going through the motions.
He's not even thinking here and I deliberately
kept this scene for so long, watching, showing
the same underpants just so he didn't get
caught the same pants exactly.
And it's very emotional.
All of this is true.
For me.
Kids just want to be the same as
every other kid at school.
They don't want to be different.
Absolutely.
They want to blend in.
It's frustrating.
It's embarrassing.
Well, it's hard because when they're growing up,
you look around you in which to mould
yourself on and the idea that what doesn't
kill you makes you stronger is true but
as a child, as a teenager, it's hard
to understand that.
Comes prepared with the plastic bag and oh
man, how heartbreaking.
It's interesting how he ties his shoelaces.
I've never learned how to do it like
he does.
Yeah.
I like this idea.
Well, it is very apparent to me that
despite the fact that you're always surrounded by
thousands of people while in school, you're always
very lonely.
This shot here was actually part of one
of the most proudest shots I've ever done
and we had to cut it in the
film.
It's in the special features so go and
check it out but it was part of
a four-minute tracking shot through the school
with 200 choreographed extras and it used to
be our opening credit sequence but we couldn't
use it.
It's one for the show room.
Well, it is on the DVD.
Look at him here, just so expressionless.
What did Stephen's parents think when they saw
the film?
Charles's parents?
Sorry, Charles's parents.
They loved it.
It really reached out to them as well
and they just thought it was fantastic but
the character of uneven Stephen's very different from
Charles as a person as well.
He's very open, fun.
He's very funny as well.
Hilarious.
This is another moment of doing very little
extremely well.
If you look at her face here, hearing
someone coming in, the self-consciousness.
I always wonder how a girl would shake
that without piss flying everywhere.
But even the breath out there, you know,
you can almost see the perspiration of anxiety
coming off of her.
We hear another one who you'll see to
be Sarah throwing up in the bathroom.
That was shot on a different day.
The sound design here is incredible.
Really builds up.
It's almost like a pressure cooker building up
and then suddenly releasing the pressure.
I'll stop talking for a second so you
can hear how that builds.
Nice soft light in there too, Nick.
Yeah, and Teresa's just got such a fantastic
face for the camera.
She just can occupy the screen.
I love this.
Sorry, I love this here.
It's building, building, building and then there it
goes.
I love that.
I always found this very emotional, that part
there, and then where her interview cuts in
here.
This tracking shot here, the look on her
face is just sheer agony, isn't it?
It is.
It's such a good performance by Teresa.
I love the way there's trophies in that
cabinet.
I think that was our production designer.
It was her actual trophies.
It was her?
Oh yeah, genuinely.
Serious stuff happens.
This was shot on green screen.
The decision to go black and white with
a black background We wanted this to stand
out in the interviews.
We did, and we were actually talking about
the idea at one point, I remember, of
keeping the colour in the eyes, but we
felt that would be almost gimmicky, and so
we decided to go with the black and
white.
And it's so striking, especially on a 40
-foot cinema screen.
It's just some stuff you can't share.
Oh gosh, it's so true.
So what do you do then?
It's almost accusing the way she delivers that.
I like that.
That's my brother and all his mates there
as well.
They're single, just in case you're wondering.
The idea of this scene here was to
build a suspicion amongst the audience that Luke
was the one that got her pregnant.
See, when Miriam says here, Would you fuck
him?
Would you fuck him?
Would you give him your opportunity?
We know she has lost her virginity because
she's pregnant, and Melody averts, she changes the
subject.
You hear Michael's out of hospital.
Then again, with Sarah coming in with that
line, I really wanted the audience to feel
that Luke and Melody were having an affair.
So when the revelation came as to who
got Melody pregnant, it'd be all the more
shocking.
And even Stephen was just there in the
background, as you'll see.
There he is, right in the background.
Gosh, it's so disgusting hearing someone throwing up.
I know it's not real, but it just
gives me shivers.
I remember doing the temp track for that
when we were editing.
Oh, it was so funny because Nick did
the track for the throwing up, and it
was just Nick going, You know, this grown
man.
I wasn't very good at it.
Not at all.
Once again, the music here.
This is a sound that Martin Zub created.
It really builds tension.
I'm not sure what he used to do
it, but we used it in various points
in the film.
It's wonderful.
It just really slowly builds.
And now we see what happened before Melody
came out of the bathroom.
She got caught by Sarah, giving Sarah a
reason to think that Melody's sleeping with Luke.
I like this shot a lot.
I like peeking into classrooms and moving out.
The location really allowed us to do that.
It's all in one building, and I really
like the idea of an audience member feeling
that if they were thrown into that school,
they'd know their way around, of being able
to identify with the location.
That's what the Steadicam allows us to do.
Luke says it all, doesn't it?
I think the fact that there aren't cuts
and that there aren't Steadicam shots from different
angles gives it more of a real feel.
It feels like it's almost documentary.
Well, it feels as though we're not hiding
anything because we're not cutting anything out.
We're not cutting around things.
We're presenting it as it is.
We're not manipulating.
There's my brilliant cameo there.
Oh, Nick's going to win an Oscar for
that.
He was the soccer coach in the background
in the black shirt.
You'll see him right here.
He says, come on, boy.
There he is.
I think on that note about documentary style,
I think the style that we achieved is
kind of heightened documentary.
It's a heightened sense of realism, isn't it?
Yeah, it's like documentary was really smooth.
You know, camera work.
And I think we're all really proud of
that.
I love this delivery from Marnie.
There again, we see Camille and Teresa in
the background there.
Although a sprinkler's magically appeared.
I just realised that there.
This leads into one of the great pieces
of sound design, I think, in the film.
Absolutely.
And this was actually using this music.
This big, triumphant music was a beautiful idea
by Dale Roberts, our editor.
It's all mundane.
And even Stephen's watching him.
And you get the sense that he kind
of wishes he was out there.
He loves his soccer, as we heard in
the morning and just then.
And then, bam, I love that.
In a cinema, when that just hits you,
it's so loud.
And then we get into his commentary, which
is brilliant.
Brilliant.
It's one of the few times we see
a bit of light in Stephen's eyes.
And I think that's very important.
Look at him.
Brazilians are gutted.
I love that line.
Sorry, that was Charles's own little input there.
It was wonderful.
And then cutting back to reality.
If only, if only.
You're allowed to dream, aren't you?
Oh, absolutely.
No matter how bad the circumstance.
Or how important dreams are, because they carry
you through.
And I love the sounds of these children
in the background.
It's very eerie to me.
Once again, using the leaves as we're going
through.
It's going to be a shift in tone
from here on.
I was watching one of those courtroom dramas.
And there's that moment when the jury...
I like this line.
I love his deliberation.
Every high school student feels like this when
they get their papers back.
The tension is so thick.
You actually could cut it with a knife.
I mean, that's what it was like when
we got a test or an assignment back.
You know, you just avoid all the scribble
on all the pages.
And you just head straight to the verdict.
I mean, I usually do pretty well.
But, you know, those few times I heard
that guilty verdict.
It's my dad.
Yeah, he really tore me up.
Yeah, he's always like, oh, yeah, yeah, it's
good.
But is it good enough?
Everything always just has to be so fucking
perfect with him.
Good pause by Frank there in the delivery.
He's usually right, though.
I always wonder, is it Frank saying that
or is it the father and Frank saying
that?
This day was the funniest day of the
entire shoot.
We were shooting this scene and this was
the final take that we did.
I think it was only take two or
three.
And our gaffer had put a 2000 watt
light under one of those fire sprinklers.
And it heated up.
Essentially, we flooded the entire first floor of
the school.
And it's in the making of some footage
of that.
It was horrible.
And I thought that was it.
This is over.
We've lost the school.
We've lost the film.
But within a couple of hours, everyone cleaned
it up.
And I was so impressed with the teamwork.
Everyone came together and just cleaned it up.
And we were shooting within a few hours.
Marcus.
Yeah, I just saw my mark for the
test.
Yeah, 87.
Not bad.
Yeah, I know it's pretty good, but I
need three more percent.
It's funny how three percent can mean the
world to someone in that position.
I always think how unreasonable is the teacher?
Just looking over it would put someone's mind
to rest and they can move on.
They really control one's life with the red
pen.
I love that little look back there.
It's nicely choreographed.
It's true, isn't it?
So the idea that they hold a student's
life with their red pen, it's scary.
I love that bit of sound design there.
And once again, we see Kelly here and
Marcus isn't exactly accommodating towards her.
What's up with you?
She wouldn't even fucking listen to me.
Notice the bandage on Marcus's hand the entire
time.
That gets explained later on during the rape
scene.
What did you get?
87's awesome.
I love that.
87's awesome.
We kept saying that all the time, didn't
we?
Once again, her eyes here.
Oh, you're really seeing to them.
We did.
We were going to call the film 87's
awesome at one point.
I love this line.
This always gets laughs in cinemas.
I remember thinking this when I was in
school as well.
He's got big lips, Frank.
But the other times that they do give
me a bit of grief, I just look
at them and think to myself, well, in
five years you'll be on fucking welfare and
serving me at McDonald's.
What a line.
And this is it.
This tops it off.
Yeah, well.
That's a comforting thought.
I think that's so funny.
That guy in the red shirt's my brother.
Look who's checking you out, man.
This makes me laugh every time I watch
this scene.
What's her name?
Mel.
Melody, man.
I love the rap they get into here.
All improv.
It was wonderful.
We talked about it and this is what
we came up with.
Such a boy thing to say.
Such a boy school thing to say.
A little reference to the conversation earlier.
I love this.
That's very funny.
That's, once again, my brother there.
I think my mum was absolutely devastated when
she saw that my brother would drop his
pants in a film that would go around
the world.
Nice ass, man.
This scene was a difficult one to shoot
for all of us, I guess, because we're
trying to get so much across with such
a general kind of scene.
And it all came down to Sam Harris's
performance here.
And if you look at the angst on
his face, he just looks so troubled.
It's perfect.
And with the sound design, the sort of
slightly disturbing sounds that come in here.
And he's obviously having a flashback to that
morning.
And at this point in the film, we
don't reveal what he was looking at.
We used to in an earlier cut, but
we thought it was too early to give
that away.
Although I'm sure the audience has their suspicions
by this point.
Look at him.
Look at those eyes.
So troubled.
It's all a fucking game at school, you
know?
I mean, the shit that goes on there,
seriously.
Yeah, I'll give someone shit.
I'll pay him out.
But I doubt- I like how in
his interviews, he never can look straight at
the camera.
He always looks away and then comes back.
It's a strong sign of insecurity.
And that was a choice that he as
an actor made.
It was a conscious choice.
Tell me that.
Oh, gosh.
You just feel so sorry for him.
He's wet his pants again and doesn't have
another change, trying to clean it up.
And I remember I did this during school.
I'd go to the, you know, dryer.
And see, I didn't understand at the time.
I think I was only like 10 or
11.
And, you know, you can dry it, but
that's not going to get rid of the
smell.
And it was the visual sort of thing.
I didn't want people to catch me out
from a distance.
This guy here is Nick Self.
He's one of the executive producers and my
script editor.
We ride a lot together.
That's going to win him an Oscar.
That is such a harsh, cruel line.
I like this shot here.
It's nice, isn't it?
Nice, isn't it?
Uneven Steven.
He's, I just can't even begin to describe
how important his character was to this story.
Because everyone connects with him.
The frustration Charles displays here is, it's incredible.
Oh, what a cut.
I love my family, my mum, my dad,
my brother, my sister.
The sense of guilt here is heartbreaking.
They've been sitting at my bedside in hospital
or waiting in waiting rooms when I've been
in theatre.
This is, again, coming from your life as
a kid in hospital.
I spent a lot of time in hospital
as a child.
And once again, I suppose that's why I
love Uneven Steven as a character the best.
Because it's so deeply personal for me.
You know, like you put, despite the fact
that my medical problems were out of my
control, there's always a sense of guilt that
everyone couldn't go on with their daily life
because they had to visit me in hospital
or do this.
And, you know, as family, you know that
they're doing it out of love, not out
of obligation.
But nonetheless, you know, it's tough to deal
with.
This is another part of the tracking shot.
The big famous four minute one.
We used it in two separate bits.
But I like the choreography here.
How we sort of leave him, slowly move
out, go wider, show the loneliness amongst the
people he's surrounded by.
And then we lose him and we find
the character of Melody.
It's a great little respite from the drama
in the film.
It gives the audience room to breathe.
Sean, is that Matt?
Gosh, this scene's so funny.
This always gets a laugh in the cinema,
his sideburns.
It's the student council.
What I wanted to get across here is,
you know, every time I was talking to
counsellors, I remember they'd be smiling and nodding.
And yes, I understand.
But really not getting it.
And it's so funny when, like, Joel, Sean's
talking here.
Look at that smile.
It's also clinical and trained.
I love this line here.
They got me like this dog the other
day.
There's a little humour in Joel.
Strips away the intensity.
It's like a husky, I guess.
It looks sort of like a wolf.
How's he settling in?
This was a bit of improvisation from Joel,
wasn't it?
This line, he just threw it in.
Absolutely.
These are...
Oh, wait, we'll get to this.
This is...
I love this.
No, I'm just joking.
That's wonderful.
I love that.
But this actual scene was shot on two
separate days, 10 months apart.
Because we never really got much coverage of
the council.
We didn't think we'd use it.
And it was a different person as well.
And it's probably since I came out, you
know, they've been badgering me constantly about why
do you bring any people home anymore?
And I guess it's about they want me
to have companionship.
It just fucking shits me off because my
dad, especially, always in my ear constantly.
Frustration that Sean is, he's venting here.
This whole fucking gay thing is just going
to disappear.
You know what I mean?
It's very natural.
And it's very honest as well.
He has to fucking deal with it.
And that's it.
It's really hard for fathers to understand.
What makes me irritated with the counsellor here
is that as a character, the actor, I
just standard responses.
He's not giving any insight.
He's not helping.
But it's a natural parental instinct.
I mean, parents want their kids to be
happy.
I've been a Dominic Pedler.
I'm so glad we got him in here.
He was just, he's just the like with
the societies and everything going on.
It's just the perfect kind of, you know,
I'm trying to fit in with the kids.
It's really another case, though, of adults not
listening to kids, isn't it?
Absolutely.
It comes across a lot in this film.
You know, he's there specifically to listen to
the kids.
It's a good, it's a good character.
He's the complete opposite.
You know, he's got this career and he's
gone to uni.
He's done it all.
He's got this woman.
He's probably going to get married in a
couple of years.
Everything's going really, really well.
And, you know, here's me fucking.
So he's the golden boy.
Of course he's the fucking golden boy.
I mean, what are they going to get
out of me?
They're going to get grandkids out of him.
I'm just their dirty little fucking secret.
So they're ganging up on you.
I love this one.
They're not ganging up on me.
They're just both against me.
They're not ganging up on me.
They're just both against me.
Classic.
This was actually shot outside of the school.
We went to a local library.
For some reason, the school didn't want us
to film in their library.
It's nicely choreographed through the books and everything.
Marcus and Sarah, Frank and Sarah, the two
actors in this scene, are actually going out.
They've been together for a couple of years
now.
They met on the set of this film
and love blossomed.
This was in the second part of the
shoot, so it was very funny for them
because they're always mucking around, laughing and joking
around.
So for them to do a very serious
scene, it was very funny to watch.
But they did a fantastic job.
I like that before he looks out the
window and you hear the bird.
It's slightly ethereal.
Maybe the school thought, if you set the
sprinklers off in the library, that could be
very expensive.
I'm guessing that's probably right.
This scene's setting up a degree of insecurity
in Marcus's mind that, first of all, Melody's
pregnant, but more so that she's told people
what he's done to her.
That's my little sister who just walked past
in the background.
She was in so many scenes.
She loved coming to set every day.
Yeah, she was a clapper girl.
I like the way you can see the
red marks on Sarah's arm.
Oh, absolutely.
I never noticed that up until recently when
I saw it in a cinema.
This was one of my favourite scenes to
shoot.
It's a scene where the character of Sean,
after that counsellor, he just wants to kick
back, relax, and he goes into the cleaner's
closet to get high.
It seems to be a place that he
goes regularly, and basically what we did is
I was just behind the camera in the
corner, and after he's had his first few
smokes and stuff, I was basically doing something
like shouting, laughing, screaming, or making funny sounds,
and Joel would imitate me, what I was
doing, and it turned out to be very
comical on the day as well.
It was fun, funny to shoot, but the
little things he pulls here are just very
funny.
It's after his interview.
I'll go into them in a second.
See, the good thing is here, all he's
doing is smoking.
He's doing it so well.
He's very interesting to watch.
It's a nice look to this scene, Nick.
Yeah, it's one of the rare opportunities where
you get to really create a strong mood
through lighting, because normally we're kind of in
corridors.
Look at this attitude, I love it.
I love that line, that's so funny.
These are the little things I was just
talking about before, where Joel's getting high, and
he's having a bit of fun on his
own.
I love this bit here.
The lighting level's obviously really low there, Nick,
because the cigarette lighter lights up his face
quite a bit.
Yeah, that's right.
Brightly.
Yeah.
Back at the class.
Fucking Jacob's fucking...
Like a work of physics.
I never really knew how much detail we
were going to get out of this, and
it was fantastic to finally see it printed
up to film, and just see into all
the shadows.
I love that line there, he's like, not
good for the animals, not good.
Doesn't make sense in the slightest, and laughing
at that.
This is, I've tried ever since I saw
him do that to make that sound.
I can't do it.
It's impossible.
I love the way this looks as though
the scene's going into some, in a particular
direction, and then it just never goes there.
To me, here is where the film really,
really kicks off, in terms of, it's the
final act, obviously, and the tension.
Obviously, at this point, we've seen everybody's got
their reasons to do it, whether it's from
the very, very serious to the slightly not
so serious, and here's where it all kicks
off.
They really enjoy kissing, don't they?
I always see this scene as he's just
walking up the stairs at the beginning of
the end, as he's walking into almost the
big turning point in the film.
That guy there that he just says hello
to is one of my closest friends, Theo.
His family actually invested in the film.
Where you been?
In San Siro.
I like that.
You're fucking kidding me.
No joke.
I have heard in the cinema a couple
of people say, what do you say there?
As he rubs his hands and disguises them.
That's one of my favourite transitions.
I do, I like that, how it goes
across the wall and cuts in.
These bathrooms weren't on location either, was that
a university where we shot?
I like just the general feel of the
bathrooms, it just all feels one location, doesn't
it?
Yeah, I think the movement, the flow into
them helps the cutting points.
Absolutely.
Sells it.
And here we go, here's the big turning
point.
This performance was very tough for them to
pull off.
I mean, asking two straight teenage guys to
kiss, and to kiss quite passionately as well,
was a tough ask.
But both of them were so professional about
it, they realised that when they were being
Sean, or when they were being Luke, it
was a different person to them.
And I think they had to do like
15 takes from a lot of different angles
for this.
Because we're going to show this scene from
various different points of view.
Fucking confident giving me shit in front of
your mates, huh?
You fucking macho man.
Just fuck off!
I'm not, everyone knows you're fucking gay, all
right?
Fucking get over yourself.
Cut.
Great performance.
Use the C word there.
Yeah, it was probably easy for them to
push each other away there.
Because they didn't enjoy it as much.
I think there was a lot of mouthwash.
We finally get to see what Luke was
looking at in the morning.
But I'm sure there was a lot of
mouthwash actually.
I like this.
This is, I can probably say, in one
of my top few moments in the film
where he goes into the closet here.
And ironically into the closet.
But oh gosh, look at that.
Look at that anger.
That's all real.
See, when we were doing rehearsals, I got
to know the actors so well that when
it came time to do scenes like this,
it was a matter of pushing their personal
buttons in their life.
And this was all completely real.
You know, we prepared an area for Joel
to smash his head that had styrofoam under
it.
But he completely missed it and he concussed
himself.
You know, he's an amazing guy.
Amazing actor.
Look at this.
And just the juxtaposition of an interview like
this with a scene like that is heartbreaking.
But I have.
Yeah, I think the thing that's really interesting
from an editing point of view about this
is that it puts the timeline of the
interviews into a really uncertain place.
So that you don't know when it is.
That's the way I wanted it.
I didn't want it to be completely, everyone
to know it was shot as a student
interview or in their minds or anything like
that.
I want it to be ambiguous.
Someone once mentioned to me, actually, guys, tell
me what you think of this, that this
was very, had a lot of Jesus Christ
symbolism.
I don't get it.
It's a bit of blood and he's looking
up.
Once again, this is the uneven Steven music.
It just proves though, Merle, it doesn't that
everyone gets something different.
It's wonderful, isn't it?
It's so wonderful to hear everybody taking things
I never even intended.
It's wonderful.
This is great.
Subtle eye movement.
Oh, it is, isn't it?
And actually, we were off camera saying, boys
are kissing.
Boys are now shouting.
Boys are punching, you know, and Charles responded
to it very well, especially as an untrained
actor.
He really used his imagination well.
It's again, testament to the fantastic performances that
we just hold.
We can hold on Charles for this long
and he's still gripping the watch.
There's no cutaways of looking between the gaps
of the door.
I mean, I've had the confidence in the
actors to be able to do that.
This scene breaks my heart.
Oh, gosh.
You know, that actual punch was about 30
centimetres away from his face.
It's amazing what camera angles can do.
And Charles, it was the only take where
Charles actually threw his head back in perfect
time with the actual punch.
It's just so helpless.
That girl there is Guy Sebastian's girlfriend.
At the time of taping.
At the time of taping.
I'm not sure what's happening.
But this interview is just heartbreaking because he's
trying to look for the positives in people,
despite the fact that everyone's only looking at
the negatives in him.
He reckons eventually things will get better.
School finishes in three months.
So he very often holds the gaze of
the audience.
It's, you know, it's really heartbreaking to watch
him.
His eyes just say so much.
He sort of came of age, didn't he,
during this film?
Charles grew in confidence a lot as a
result.
Absolutely.
And like Nick said, I remember actually the
day before we were meant to shoot a
scene, he went mountain biking.
He's like a crazy mountain, like going at
speeds I'd never even go at a car
probably.
And he stacked it and he came on
set the next day with bandages all over
his legs.
He was like, hey guys, how you doing?
He just wasn't phased by it in the
slightest.
He's such a confident guy, though.
You know, in real life, he's so different
to these characters.
Oh, now, especially.
Yeah.
It's a very important moment.
I have a tissue if you want.
As we see at the end of the
film, that's Kelly who asks him that.
And I often wonder, I often wonder if
the character of Stephen here turned around and
said, I'm going to be OK.
Are you going to be OK?
If he said, I'm going to be OK,
what about yourself?
I think the outcome of the film would
be entirely different.
That's me putting all these old friends and
et cetera into the film.
Once again, being able to hold on to
someone.
I love being as a director.
It's amazing to know you have that in
the kitty, basically, to be able to hold
on to someone that long.
I like the cutting here where it swoops
up there.
It's nice.
The subtle sort of rumbling here.
Hey, I've been looking for you.
We had a couple of options there in
terms of how to approach the scene.
And we did shoot another version of it
that wasn't so crash hot, where they could
have had the big drama with talking about
it and shouting.
And you know, that seemed very Dawson's Creek
to me.
So we just thought he's just come out
from something that feels natural to him internally,
but in his heart, but in his mind,
it's disgusting to him.
And so just the fact that he just
threw her aside and just needed to get
out of there, I think that was the
best way for them to break up.
And this is one of Marnie Spillane's finest
performances in the film.
She just looks so incredibly insecure.
Just on a technical note, this one's interesting
that that window in the background has been
put in post-production, because unfortunately that day
we shot that, it was very dark.
Once again, Marnie's performance in the interview was
so positive about her outlook of the future
with Luke and juxtaposing that with the breakup.
Look at her there.
Oh gosh, you really feel for her.
And despite the fact that her problems aren't
as big as everyone else, it's consuming her.
Once again, perspective.
And I remember when Marnie performed this, when
she just started crying.
We were like, oh my gosh.
And she came down the stairs and everyone
just started clapping.
It was wonderful.
The music in this scene, Mark Chance did
an amazing job, especially to sort of transition
into the following scene, this one.
That guy's voice is actually Nick Matthews' voice,
just pitch corrected, because Nick sounds like a
girl.
No, I'm joking.
Yeah, it was just that I think I
did so many little voiceover spots that you
had to try.
Make them sound different.
Make them sound different, yeah.
This is one of my favourite shots.
It's beautiful.
Her performance is fantastic.
This was one of the shots you had
on your initial...
Investor DVD.
Yeah.
This scene here, Teresa had said to me
she couldn't cry.
She'd never been able to cry on cue.
So I sat just off screen, just to
the left, and I was whispering to her.
And slowly the emotion started building and tears
started falling down her face.
It was wonderful.
This is a very disturbing scene, not only
to watch, but to shoot.
Nick, do you remember that night?
We just had the biggest headaches by the
end of it.
It was horrible.
That was a really strange physical reaction.
At the end of this night, my eyeballs
felt like they were just exploding.
My head just felt so full of pain.
It was really strange.
I think it's that instinct of watching someone
suffer like that.
And not being able to jump in and
help.
Absolutely.
It's horrible.
I still can't watch this stuff.
Frankie pulled off an amazing performance here.
God, he looks so creepy.
And just the care in which he starts
off stroking her and getting into the bed.
And then when you look at the rough
way that he treats her once he's in
there.
In every screening, there's always people who, at
least a couple of people, who walk out
during the scene.
I can understand why.
It's very tough.
And often they walk out early in the
scene.
Yeah, because they know what's coming.
They know what's coming.
The woman who owns the house told me
that the door was closed.
You guys were filming in there and she
heard screaming and yelling.
She thought, oh my god, what are they
doing in there?
Look at the tenderness in which he touches
her.
I remember on the day I had to
justify to Frank, the actor, why would someone
feel it's okay to rape his sister?
And we were discussing it.
And we were talking about the idea that
his sister may go out on any Friday
night and sleep with some guy who doesn't
even care about her.
He loves her more than anything in the
world.
Why shouldn't he be able to express his
love to her?
And as disturbing as it was, that was,
you know, what was going through his mind
as he was doing all of this.
And, oh god, that scene there just feels
like a spider crawling over her body.
It scares me.
And as a young girl, it'd be very
tough.
But Teresa and Frank, both of them, were
just so professional about doing this.
When we did our first 35mm test prints,
her face was a bit dark there, Nick,
wasn't it?
It was, yeah.
In the end, this has turned out to
be one of my proudest scenes as a
cinematographer.
Just, I've used magenta.
If I can just cut in there, that's
the tears I was talking about.
I'm just off screen whispering to her.
See, the good thing about this scene is
we don't show too much.
I didn't want to, you know.
I think the worst we show is Marcus's
ass, basically.
It's all about her face.
But what makes it so disturbing is her
screams.
I didn't want to, like, I didn't want
to be exploitive in this.
We didn't need to see more.
And it's obviously one of the reasons the
film got an R rating, I guess.
As much about the incest as it is
about the lyric.
Look at that.
That's heartbreaking.
And whilst Leslie and I were doing sound,
we put the children in here.
And it just made it all the more
eerie.
I remember Francis Ward Lindsay, our effects guy,
all the little effects, the subtle effects that
he put into it.
He was our supervising sound editor and effects
editor.
The subtle effects of, like, the little board
squeaking and, you know, it just made the
entire scene so incredibly eerie.
The sound team really worked together on, you
know, especially in scenes like that where once
again, we're trying to get into their minds
and we just stacked it.
We had so many layers of completely different
sounds.
It was incredible.
I think we realised just how good the
sound was when we watched it in a
cinema where the 5.1 wasn't working.
I remember.
Oh, yes.
Suddenly the experience was removed.
It lost a lot.
See, this to me is almost worse than
the rape scene watching this.
It was a perfect delivery by Teresa, the
actress.
And you've been touching me since I was
13.
So much anger.
She looks like she's about to explode and
regret at the same time, actually.
Do you find that, Nick?
Yeah, this is, you know, when the scenes
book ended with this, they're reflecting on this
part here.
Those eyes.
Oh, my gosh.
I'm glad we can use, we could use
similar pieces of music throughout the whole film
rather than having five different, completely different.
It's got a common thread throughout the entire
film.
And a lot of the actual score, if
I could call it that, in the film
was made up without music.
So the moments where we do use music,
particularly in the last act, are very powerful,
I find.
Love the birds here.
This is the biggest continuity error in the
film.
Her hair is just so incredibly different to
any other scene.
It's just we couldn't match it because it
was 10 months later.
It's real.
Now we know the truth as the audience
as to who got Melody pregnant.
The stakes are higher when we revisit this
scene.
Marcus, look, you didn't hear it from me,
all right?
Marcus, where are you going?
Come on, do it, Marcus.
Leave me alone!
Marcus!
The sound design in this scene is incredible.
We just stack the sound so much.
It's just the screams, the then, you know,
we can hear what's going on in the
outside world as well.
It just really gives us an insight into
Marcus's mind and how fundamentally flawed or disturbed
that he is.
You see a bit of uneven Stephen there.
That was when he had bandages all over
him so we couldn't really include him in
shot.
Those screams really freak me out, especially when
you hear it in a full theatre.
We see Kelly there in the background and
we'll revisit that later.
I love that sound.
I think this is one of my finest
scenes in the film.
I think their performance here is so believable.
Look at the rough way in which she's
holding her head.
It's almost like a doll.
It's just so incredibly abusive and now we
know why he's got the bandage on his
hand because she bit him during the rape
scene as well and he just throws her
back.
I often wonder, does he think what he's
doing is wrong by this point?
There's Kelly again.
The way he treats her, it's almost like
she's the one who's done something wrong.
Exactly.
Once again, we juxtapose a positive interview with
being seen utterly hopeless.
We show a bit of hope in Melody.
People often say to me the film doesn't
show hope and with these kids talking about
their future, their dreams, I don't think you
can get any more hopeful than that.
And the fact that six children survived, it
shows incredible resiliency from all the six characters
and there's hope in that as well.
I'm going to travel, get as far away
as possible.
Once again, a change in the pace here.
This next scene here was conceived about a
week before our second shoot where I wanted
to tie everything together because Kelly, this character
on the screen now, is the one who
commits suicide and I wanted to show that
everything we'd been witnessing from these other characters,
as important as it seemed at the time
when we were seeing it from their point
of view, was just out of focus and
insignificant to Kelly.
We see the breakup there and it just
is almost like nothing.
I call this scene the final walkthrough.
She's obviously walking to the area where she
will inevitably commit suicide but in the process
encountering all the characters that we've spent the
duration of the film getting to know.
And the decision to make it Kelly who
commits suicide, I think, was the only way
where we could go because if I'd made
it uneven Stephen or Melody then it suggests
that their problem is more important than anyone
else and I don't think the film would
have worked.
And we don't really allow insight into Kelly's
life or problems.
There's hints here and there but I think
that was also very important because suicide isn't
something that can be summed up.
I didn't commit suicide because I had a
bad day at school or because my parents
broke up.
It's so many things.
But what this does highlight, this final scene
in particular here actually, is the lack of
communication and the complete and utter disconnect between
children at school.
It's almost like she's, look at her, she's
asking him if she's going to be okay,
if he's going to be okay.
I really, every time I see this I
wish, even though I know I shot this
and I still wish that uneven Stephen will
turn around and ask if she's going to
be okay.
The sound in this film is fantastic.
In this scene, sorry, all in the film
and the scene.
The mix here was just very elaborate.
We spent a long time doing this scene.
The screams.
Once again, Nick, I like how we go
into the shadows there.
Yeah, yeah.
It creates mystery, I think.
I often find when I'm sitting in a
cinema watching this with people, they know what's
coming.
And despite the fact that if this scene
was on its own, it'd be quite a
boring scene because it just goes on and
on.
They know what's coming and they don't want
it to end because of that.
Like I said before, we saw Kelly from
Marcus's point of view when he was walking
down the stairs.
Now we see, and she was just an
insignificant sort of white blob almost, and now
we see them from her point of view
and they're just in the background.
That's actually not Teresa there, just in case
anyone wanted to know.
That's one of the extras.
We didn't have Teresa that day and I
think we held that a little too long.
I love it.
Sorry, I love it here how the Eric
Satie piece comes in.
It's very tender.
Sorry, Kent, you were about to say?
Well, it's at this point that the audience
realises, oh my God, it's her.
So many people have said to me they
think the film ends at this moment right
here.
I love this moment where she walks out
into the...
Once again, we hear the children and that
says so many things and a lot of
people take their own meaning out of it.
O'Reilly wasn't going to let the audience
get away with it that easily by ending
the film there.
I felt I had a responsibility almost when
I was going to show this suicide.
I wanted to show the brutality, the suffering
and the pain.
But more than anything, I really felt I
had to show the regret too.
I wanted to use the scene that's about
to come as a deterrent, almost scare people
away from the idea of suicide, because I
find often in the media and in the
past, it's glorified and in other films and
I didn't want to do it that way.
Now these leaves are finally connected to something
and we see where it's all coming from
and this is one of our favourite shots
here.
It's coming up where...
I'll get to that in a second.
We see all the green sort of beautiful
leaves intercut with Kelly here and then we
go to branches that have no leaves on
it, completely stripped out of focus.
We focus in and that says so much.
It's such a poignant moment.
It's very emotional for me when I watch
that visually.
Yeah.
This performance by Clementine is...
I can't...
I still find it difficult to watch because
it's so real.
We worked...
I remember we worked so hard to get
it here.
We didn't rehearse much for this because we
needed to keep it fresh.
But come the day, Clementine and myself were
in the green room and I remember thinking,
I can't expect her to do this unless
I'm going to do it with her.
So we both worked ourselves up into a
frenzied state and it's...
Oh gosh.
I think the shoot took about...
This suicide shoot, when we actually started shooting,
it was about three or four hours of
shooting.
Would that be about right on?
Yeah.
Clemmie stayed in the distressed character state for
that entire time.
And the tears never really stopped flowing for
her.
They were incredible.
The audience always just...
You can always just see people shifting in
their seats here.
And we keep it going for a while
actually.
You know, the build-up is just so
tense.
Intercutting it with the elements that we've seen
in the film earlier of her being completely
and utterly isolated.
She is alone, isn't she?
Nobody's really interested in her or communicating with
her.
At one point in one of the edits
we did, we actually used to cut to
various outside elements of life just going on.
And it didn't work, but the idea was
so important because there's probably a thousand people
in that school, but no one has any
clue as to what she's about to do.
To take her own life when being surrounded
by so many people is almost criminal.
Oh God, I can barely look at that.
And in fact, we cut away there for
a reason because I wanted to force people
to watch that.
So people close their eyes and they open
it.
And by the time they open it, they
actually see it for what it is.
Oh man, it's so difficult to watch this.
In screenings, I always walk out during the
section because it's so personal for me.
And I just find it so difficult to
watch because it's almost like a recreation of
someone's death.
It's so real.
That blood creeping out there, it's, you know...
I like the transition to this music here.
It's the only piece I felt that could
go along with this music and with this
scene, sorry.
Look at that performance.
We were so pleased when we had permission
to use this music.
It's an Andrew Lloyd Webber piece.
It took us a long time, but we
got it eventually.
See here, I remember watching this that day
and I was like, gosh, this is an
amazing performance.
But when I yelled cut, she kept doing
it.
She was actually dry reaching.
She was that into the role.
This kind of stuff you can't fake.
And if we didn't get the performance that
we did in this scene, the entire film
would have fallen over.
I often wonder why the blood didn't fill
into those little gaps there.
Watching someone die, it's so rare, isn't it?
We never see this amount of detail.
People usually cut away, but I'm so glad
we showed it.
And despite the controversy that surrounds the scene,
I will never, ever regret the way in
which we did it.
This moment here says it all to me
where she's saying, help me.
She's muttering the names of her family members,
the actresses, and she's saying, help me.
And that shows the regret.
It shows that she's starting to realise that
when she wakes up in the morning, well,
she's not going to wake up in the
morning.
She's not going to have those children.
You know, she's not going to graduate from
school.
She's not going to be able to follow
her dream because this is it.
And there's regret there.
That was an amazing technical accident that happened
there.
As I was operating this shot, the camera
started running out of battery.
And so it started shooting in fast motion.
Sometimes, you know, sometimes you just get so
wrapped up in your own problems that you
just don't notice anybody else.
I guess that's the theme of the film.
You know, people talk about reincarnation and heaven
and what happens when you die and hell
and all that bullshit.
I mean, it just none of it makes
sense.
You know, it's just people are scared of
dying.
Well, I'm not.
And once you're dead, you're dead.
It's as simple as that.
I think the last time I had a
real conversation with her was year two or
something.
That was ten years ago.
Fine performance from Marnie there.
This bit's heartbreaking from Charles.
His eyes are so soulful.
I don't really have anything more to say.
But then that.
She was in my brother's music class.
This this line here where Melody says she's
lucky has caused a bit of controversy.
But it's often the case that when one
person in a school does take their life,
it's closely followed by another one.
And I just I just like I said,
I wanted to be so honest in presenting
this.
And what Melody was going through was so
horrific.
It felt like that's the only thing she
could say.
Not one.
God, this scene just makes me want to
punch Marcus in the face.
Fantastic performance.
A brilliant performance.
She was going to top herself.
You know, maybe she could have helped.
But it just makes you want to hate
him so much, because Kelly did reach out
to him on various occasions and he completely
ignored her.
When someone is going through that problem, they
don't have to go running through the hallways
with a big banner saying, I'm going to
commit suicide.
My sister has this little boy.
This interview here was so crucial in the
fact that it was the only time we
get to meet Kelly.
We get to know her as a human
being.
She does have a life outside of school.
She's not just this ghostly character who walks
around the school.
And this is the only interview in the
entire film that wasn't scripted, that we recorded
about an hour or two hours worth of
her just telling stories about her life.
And there was so much hope there.
Oh, I know.
It's heartbreaking.
Oh, gosh, that's so cute.
And cutting to this incredibly endearing moment when
the audience just connect with her and love
and care for her.
Cutting from that to a shot where she's
on the floor of the bathroom, where she's
bled to death with blood dripping off her
fingers.
Oh, it's heartbreaking.
Absolutely heartbreaking.
And this, it's the full circle is now
complete.
We started off with Gary Sweet finding the
body.
And we end with him trying to get
in again.
I've always been very reluctant to go into
the personal details of this film, but I
think this dedication says it all.
And I'm so glad that I put it
there.
It felt completely right.
And this sound design at the end is
the credits with the children talking with the
beautiful soft Eric Satie piece.
It's a perfect end for the film.
And this is a film that I'm incredibly
proud of.
And it came, it was very personal for
me.
So I don't think I could ever make
something like 237 again.
And so I thank you for watching it
and listening to this commentary.
So thank you very much.
Yes, I feel the same, Raleigh.
I mean, we're incredibly proud of it.
And we're so pleased that we had the
opportunity to join you and Nick in the
making of the film and meet all the
great people like Leslie and everybody else that
was associated with helping bring this amazing film
to fruition.
Yeah, it's been an amazing two-year journey
so far.
And we never knew what was going to
become of this little film.
And it keeps exceeding our expectations.
So thank you so much for watching.
And I thank you guys for joining me
on this journey over the last two years.
And we look forward to the next one.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
2 Fast 2 Furious (2003)