After a staggered start to the day (“Nothing has quite gone as planned this morning,” Damian Hill wryly admits following communication gremlins and overlapping schedules), our conversation about new Australian featurePawnoseems to have been weirdly presaged.
An ensemble drama centred around a pawn shop in the Melbourne suburb of Footscray, the film sees an assortment of lives intersecting and complicating each other; fitting, then, that our interview begins in convoluted fashion. Yet the film itself is far from haphazard – it is a stunning debut from director Paul Ireland and showcases actor/writer Hill in exceptional form.
“There’s probably something in that naïvety when it’s married with enthusiasm,” Hill muses on the pair’s relative inexperience behind the camera. “There’s a real learning curve. We definitely became producers by proxy – it’s not what I set out to do. That said, the next thing I do I’d probably produce to some degree. But our thing was to surround ourselves with people who were better than us. We got an amazing first AD [Karen Mahood], which is really what producers do, I think. Get people who know what they’re doing.
“As we built the pawn shop, I remember driving out to hard rubbishers, ordering plastic jewellery from China, all sorts of ridiculous things. Trying to price make-up, endless emails to try and get the money, to get it in shape. We had a lot of assistance from the right people. But creatively, we were really left alone. What you see is really our film.”
While a film’s budget is no real yardstick of the quality, the struggles in getting any feature off the ground are significant. Between Ireland, Hill and a large cast and crew, the spirit to realise this gritty tale of a single day in Melbourne was strong, but the numerous hurdles that stand between the page and premiere are many.
“Man, it’s hard!” Hill says. “Every rejection from a distributor or film festival or actor, losing any potential money, you all share that feeling. You might find yourself working two or three other jobs in between, finding a part in some other film that means, ‘Thank fuck, I can pay rent for the next six months.’ That’s the hardest part. I think a lot of the best actors will just drop off from the pressure, and I totally get that. If you don’t absolutely love doing it, there’s no easy way. But the pay-off is, last year Paul and I went to Estonia for the most beautiful film festival in a building that used to be occupied by the Soviets that’s been converted into a cinema, where people thought the film was so exotic and amazing. Those experiences, you can’t buy that.
“There are certain scenes I still look at and think, ‘Wow, that was amazing.’ Plus my partner and oldest daughter is in it; Paul’s wife and daughter is in it. It was an absolute joy to have your family and friends there. And that’s not all that normal. A lot of times you’ll show up, say hi to the costumer, the director, and that’s it. It’s work. This was different.”
The proof is entirely in the product. The centrepiece of Pawno is a shop operated by the hard-edged Les Underwood, played with subtle menace by John Brumpton. Though the film is ostensibly seen through the eyes of Hill’s own character, Danny, it is Underwood who captures our fascination – a mix of charm and aggression in the vein of Ian McShane’s character Al Swearengen from Deadwood.
“I’ve worked with John on a play where I also met Paul the director, and Tony Rickards who plays Harry,” says Hill. “John had played the role I was playing 20 years earlier. I’d always wanted to work with him. He came to my high school when I was 15 to do a one-man play, and I was blown away. That’s where I found out I wanted to be an actor. By the time of writing [Pawno], though, I’d done that play, a few short films, then another play with him. Then we ended up on a film called Fell, and, well… Men at times probably aren’t the best at saying what they think, but you can do it through actions. There’s something to that with John and I, and I knew we’d work well together. We’d even played brothers together, and another with a kind of father-son element. So there’s a lot there in how we work together.”
Though Pawno certainly boats an impressive cast – including Maeve Dermody, Malcolm Kennard, Kerry Armstrong, Mark Coles Smith and many more – what becomes quickly apparent is the role of Footscray itself. Brimming with despair, colour, violence and love, it is very nearly a character of its own.
“It’s a character within the piece, definitely,” Hill agrees. “I don’t know Sydney that well, but I guess it’s comparable to what Redfern was, or the Cabramatta I remember from when I was younger. I’m sure there are pockets of London, of New York, every country – even Estonia, as I saw over there – everywhere you find pawnbrokers. People need loans everywhere. I think most of these characters could live everywhere, and at first I thought, ‘Yeah, it could be a Melbourne story,’ but I don’t think that’s it. It’s a huge part of it, but that’s not the focus. Really, it’s just people being people. It’s the Australia I know. There are no kangaroos or koalas in this one.”
Pawno(dir. Paul Ireland) is in cinemas Thursday April 21.
