John Edwards is a 40-something television
producer - a doyen of Australian TV, producing
such shows as Police Rescue and Big
Sky, as well as the worldwide hit The
Secret Life of Us. Our intrepid Secret
Life obsessive Marty Friedel recently caught up
with him to ask about the show, the new DVD
releases and more…
Secret Life drew new lines for Australian
television drama, this time running away screaming
from the “cops, dogs and lawyers or country town
scenario” which can be seen on each and every
free-to-air Australian television station – you know,
things like SeaChange, Blue Heelers,
Water Rats and White Collar Blue
just to name a few. You see, that’s how easy it is
to pick out dramas with this same old theme. As
John says, all of these shows were “domestic hits,
they were not financial successes. In order to
make a cheaper show, we became convinced that
you couldn’t just go on following the Australian
pattern... where you’ve got the good folk and along
comes evil every week and we beat it up and on
we go again.” In order to make a cheaper show,
yet something innovative and intelligent, they knew
they would have to focus on the more “morally
complex universe... and focus on moral ambiguity.”
One of the problems that the producers were faced
with was knowing when you “are most morally
ambiguous – in your twenties of course! We didn’t
set out to make a 20-something show that was
going to skew young or anything like that because
actually that’s not the television viewing audience,
even though the advertisers want to get it. That’s
where Australian dramas traditionally skew very
old,” Edwards comments. “For example, with
Blue Heelers, about a third of its audience
is over the age of 65, and obviously with Secret
Life, none of its audience is over 65. So we set
out to break the mould a bit, but not knowing
whether we were actually going to get a mass
audience or not. Well we ended up doing so and we
were very lucky. On that basis, we believe that the
exploitation of the shows on DVD were a sensible
idea.”
The production of this series has brought together
some of Australia’s finest talent in both the writing
and directing fields. Edwards and his co-producer
Amanda Higgs have had a policy since day one,
which “is “new-blood” and “old-blood” side-by-side.
For Higgs it’s her first producing gig, and “I’ve been
around since... you know... a long time”, Edwards
laughs. This sort of policy was also applied to the
writing team, including Christopher Lee alongside
new comer Judi McCrossin. It was this team of four
that started the show, and initially decided
to “subvert the conventions of Australian drama...
We deliberately poked a nose at the conventions,
but we did all of those things except we did them
sideways.” Not only were the conventions poked
at “sideways” but also the writing staff. For
example, Tony MacNamara is best known as a
playwright, but had worked with Edwards previously
and you know the rest... its all about the people
you know. Others such as Elizabeth Coleman and
Jacqueline Perske added to the writing combination
and still applied the principal of old-head/young-
head. The screenplays were written primarily on an
individual basis, yet all the storylines were
controlled. At the beginning of the series, the
writers and producers gather over a six-week
period to discuss the story and where they want
the characters to go. Then from this point at a
small meeting each week Edwards and Higgs meet
along with the writer of the upcoming episode, and
the writer of the episode behind to ensure
continuity between the two. Where other series’
have script editors who alter work severely, the
Secret Life producers have left it up to the
writers to fix their own work. “If it takes them
fifteen drafts, then they are on for fifteen drafts”,
comments Edwards.
The directors follow the same policy as the writers,
mixing the older faces with the fresh new faces.
Because directing is very demanding logistically,
experienced directors are either side of the new
director throughout production to help them
through, and so there isn’t too much strain on the
cast. Says Edwards, “In this series, Claudia is going
to be directing a few episodes. We do experiment
and Cate Shortland, one of our directors, hadn’t
actually directed any commercial work at all, but
she’d done four extraordinary short films that were
all very different from each other and showed great
promise. We basically took her on and supported
her in that way, and there have been a number of
other “first timers” who we’ve given a similar kind of
break to, such as Sheree Nolan who is another very
good director who had done feature films but had
never actually done any longer-form television”
Directors and writers are picked from here or there,
without any form of formal qualifications being
required. Yet Edwards admits, “there’s a weird kind
of tendency in that all the women on the show
tend to be Catholics.” Yet the crew must be
emotionally ‘there’, as “the extent to which The
Secret Life of Us works is that it tries to be
aggressively honest... This requires a fair amount
of emotional honesty from the writers, the cast and
the directors all.”
The first series was released on DVD by Shock, and
totalled seven individually released discs, each
originally retailing for $29.95. Yes, that’s a lovely
price tag of nearly $210 for the entire series.
Edwards comments, “Seven discs, I think… it was
just too big a whack for the fans of the show to
shell out that much money.” Some of us were
patient and waited until they were discounted to
$9.95 each and picked up the series for less than
$70. “And you know what, so did we and we gave
the cast those ones”, Edwards laughs. “Well, that’s
a bit of a secret, but it was just too big a whack,
so we tried really hard to squeeze as much as we
could on the individual discs when we talked about
doing it with Liberation.” The second series is now
available through Liberation, released on three two-
disc sets, each with a respectable price tag of
$29.95. Now isn’t that a much better total price
tag? Some may wonder the change in companies
when Shock had done a decent job with the first
series, and if the large price tag had anything to do
with it. Edwards comments that the pricing of the
first series discs had nothing to do with it, “Shock
bid in the first place and it was before we’d
actually done anything with Liberation. We had a
very happy experience on the soundtrack record
this time around... and they made a bid, and Shock
fundamentally competed for the second series
rights and frankly (Liberation) made a better offer.
It was as simple as that. And we believe that
because they looked after the soundtrack so well,
and the coordination of the cover art with the
soundtrack cover art, it just seems more coherent
to have one company doing both.”
One of the constant nags from DVDnet reviewers
and readers alike is about extra features, or shall
we say, a lack thereof. A television series isn’t
likely to have the bundles of extras that major film
companies produce for the latest Hollywood
blockbusters, yet Secret Life at least has a
small serving. The final disc in the second series
hosts the special features for the second series,
and that is the television special that goes behind
the scenes of The Secret Life of Us. When
asked if there were any other inclusions on the
drawing boards for series three such as bloopers or
soundtrack bundles, he admitted that there will
never be bloopers on a disc for the simple reason
that “there aren’t that many... We looked at this
early on and basically they’re all the same kind of
thing; something silly happens and people
go “fuck”, you know and they’re all a bit the same.
There are a couple of screaming ones and there are
also a couple that you just wouldn’t want to show
anyone. Things to do with, you know, sex scenes
and that sort of stuff - you actually wouldn’t want
to put them out.” But then the rest of us still want
to see the screaming ones!
In a series filled with richly detailed and colourful
characters, inspiration had to come from
somewhere. The broad range of characters tries to
be inclusive of society today, with aspects of
multiculturalism, homosexuality, drugs, alcohol,
love, friends, family, etcetera, etcetera and so
forth. It’s all about real experiences, portrayed by
believable people with whom you can empathise.
But where does this inspiration come from? Says
Edwards, “The characters in the series are based
on the central four of us a fair bit, and our friends,
and they’re all amalgams of lots of them, and in the
case of Chris and I, Chris is in his 50s and, you
know, I’m not quite there, but I’m in my 40s, and
Amanda and Judi are in their 30s, and it’s a
remembrance of our 20s in lots of ways.” So, with
the characters being based upon real people and
events, did someone actually have an affair with
their best friend’s boyfriend? “Um, yes.”, Edwards
laughs. Right, OK, mental note, change of subject
required at this point...
After asking friends and colleagues what they
wanted to know most about Secret Life,
their response was unanimous. What was it with
Gab and the Belgian guy, Dominique? The show’s
policy on being “brutally honest” is revealed with
the in-depth answer to this popular question.
Edwards laughs and states, “This goes on and on
and on, I mean it’s a bizarre thing. I think the very
fact that it causes so much consternation is
fundamentally good, we actually went around in a
number of circles and then other things were
planned, but fundamentally we wanted to cast a
really good actor, and Dominique being perceived
as ugly is kind of a weird thing. The interesting
thing about that is that he’s just a compelling
actor, and in real life he does live with Catherine
McClements. People actually do have relationships
with people who don’t always look conventional and
it’s pretty much in the spirit of everything else that
we have set out to do. I mean it was a
conventional wisdom when we started that ‘you
couldn’t cast Deb Mailman as a lead in a show’ and
we did. And you wouldn’t ordinarily cast Sam
Johnson in a romantic lead – well, we did. And
we’ve tended to take casting decisions where we
believe that somebody was the most ‘right’ person
for the role, and we went forward on that basis.
And it’s one of those things that has caused a
whole lot of hype and consternation, but you just
don’t know whether that’s a good or bad thing.
Ratings didn’t drop, nothing like that happened. I
actually felt for Jacek because he copped a lot of
shit over it. I just find him a very interesting actor.
Now young women do have affairs with older men,
it does happen, did they want us to be
conventional? Did they want us to cast Marcus
Graham? Why do they want everyone to be good
looking? That was the argument, the day we get to
a situation where you can only have affairs with
good looking people – hmm, God forbid! And in real
life, Jacek’s wife is an incredibly gorgeous beautiful
person.”
Examples such as this ensure that this series
stands out from any other Australian television
drama, with its unconventional yet realistic
approach to life for this group of St Kilda 20-
somethings. The scripting, direction and acting
combine to form this hybrid of television drama that
thousands of Australians have let into their homes
on Monday nights, and which can now be owned on
DVD so you can relive those experiences over and
over again, and try to gain a better understanding
of the secret lives of us… LINK : http://www.dvd.net.au/goto.cgi?news.cgi?id=2784
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