Ex-Malthouse Theatre Creative Director Michael Kantor premieres his first feature film, Boy Castaways, at the upcoming Melbourne Festival. Shot in three weeks at Her Majesty's Theatre in Adelaide and featuring an all-star cast of actors, musicians and performance artists, the film promises to be a unique and electrifying piece of metaphysical Australian cinema. Accompanying the film's release at the Festival will be the one night only performance at the Forum Theatre, Songs Of Wreck And Ruin, consisting of songs from the movie performed by its leading players, Tim Rogers, Megan Washington and Paul Capsis.
As director and co-writer (with Raimondo Cortese) Kantor explains that Boy Castaways follows the mental journey of four men who play out their deepest fantasies in a theatre under the watchful eye of their leading lady, Sarina (played by Washington). “Quite extreme hidden fears and strong death-wishes are revealed through their desires and dreams. The end of the film kind of realises their ultimate desires. It's quite dark.”
It's essentially an abstract Peter Pan story of recalled and reverberated childhood memories, playing on the characters' efforts to negotiate a perilous adult psychological world. Indeed, the film takes its title from one of JM Barrie's more obscure stories.
Drawing on his vast experience as a live performance maker, Kantor aims to bring corporeal rawness to the film. “I'm intrigued by the kind of hot house that's generated inside a theatre and I wanted to get some of that heat into the film,” he says. “I find film quite a cold medium, and one thing that's great about theatre is that it's about the heat exchanged between the actor onstage under the spotlight and the audience. It's tactile in that way.”
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As with much of Kantor's work, Boy Castaways is driven by music, featuring live performance of songs from Buzzcocks, Fleetwood Mac, The Psychedelic Furs and The Waterboys, all arranged by Peter Farnan. “It's about how songs sort of sit in our collective subconscious. Not everyone knows every song there is, but there are reference points for so many people in any song. They tend to re-trigger their memories. We can use them as a narrative device.”
“I think music is this fantastic field of sex and death. Particularly pop music,” Kantor says. “Those things drive away through most powerful music. It's just haunted by the desire to have sex and the desire to die. I'm also really attracted to the whole pathology and hagiography of the rockstar and the modern day hero and anti-hero. I love watching those people perform.”
This, no doubt, goes some way towards explaining the casting of Rogers, Washington and Capsis. “They're a fantastic collection of diverse musical geniuses,” he says. “Tim's got such a hard music background, Megan's quite melodic, and Paul's got one of the most unique voices in Australia. It's quite a dynamic combination.” Locked away together on one location, Kantor says his cast, which also includes Mark Winter and Marco Chiappi, thrived on the improvisational and constantly evolving nature of the film's development.
It was a remarkable experience for Capsis, who is one of Australia's most revered cabaret artists and made his film debut in 1998's Head On opposite Alex Dimitriades. Playing a chameleon-like, gender-bending performer, the film, for him, involved embodying the spirit of some of his music idols. “That's kind of what I do nowadays, not so much replicating the person as getting into where the song's coming from.”
His character is “not really a drag queen, as such,” Capsis says, “but, rather, a character that explores femininity, not just the surface experience. It's a deeper layered, more ambiguous thing.”
