"People Who See This Film Want To Get Smashed Straight After It"

“He just looks at Ruben like he’s a walrus or an alien. ‘If you don’t want a drink, let’s just have a drink and talk about it.’"

The film is an adaption of a hit play Cowell wrote and directed eight years ago capturing the difficulties of going sober when you’re a young, successful advertising executive living large in the Harbour City. “I feel the play was a lot more of a cautionary tale. Plays are so much about ideas and arguments in a room. Whereas a film is very much about what you see and feel. Most people who see this film want to go and get smashed straight after it. But that’s because of all the drink porn. It has an overwhelmingly visceral effect on the film. Maybe that’s the brilliant trick, or maybe that’s the absolute failure of the film.”

An experienced theatre director, stage and screen writer and acclaimed actor himself, Cowell has worked with a lot of Australian acting talent over the years but says when it’s time to walk onto set as a director you have to put aside previously-built relationships. “It’s kind of like running onto a football field. You’ve still got to tackle the bloke into the sideline whether you had dinner with him and his wife last night. It’s nice to have a high five between takes if you nailed it but I’m still going to push a friend as hard as someone I’m not friends with. When you get on set you’ve got an hour to shoot a scene.”

Though Ruben Guthrie is set in the world of advertising largesse, pool parties and Eastern European model girlfriends, Cowell believes it’s a story that a lot of Australians can relate to. “It’s about alcohol but for me it’s about a guy trying to change. I was at Marrickville Council the other day and they watched the trailer and someone said, ‘It looks like Friday night at Marrickville Council,’ and I thought, ‘God, Marrickville Council is getting wild.’ I think everyone is a little prone to excess in Australia. True balance to me is an ever elusive thing.”