Courier Mail
Edition 1 - First with the newsSAT 23 APR 2005, Page M03 
The right time . . . and path 
By Rod Chester 

Director Robert Connolly looked to Hollywood legends Jimmy Stewart and Frank Capra for inspiration to make
Three Dollars, writes Rod Chester

LIKE Eddie, the character in his new movie Three Dollars, director Robert Connolly understands the difficulty in choosing 
the right path in life.

After the success of his films The Bank, which he directed, and The Boys, which he produced, Connolly pondered whether it 
was time to join his colleagues who have used a success in the Australian film industry as a way to break into Hollywood.

``It's a real challenge working out what to do next,'' the affable Sydney-based filmmaker admits.

``I've a great distrust of the studio system, I feel it's really bereft of any soul,'' he says. ``The films they are making 
are dreadful.

``David Wenham, Richard Roxbury and Hugh Jackman made Van Helsing, they spent a year of their life working on it. The 
film is dreadful, and I like big action films.''

His criticism of Van Helsing isn't personal. He's friends with Wenham, having worked with him on three films, and he's 
currently the producer on Roxbury's debut as a director, which is being filmed in Melbourne starring Susan Sarandon and 
Sam Neill.

Connolly knows that his new film needs to work overseas if it's to be financially successful, but also believes that worrying
about financial pressures can make a filmmaker forget about the basics.

``I think it's dangerous to have an ambition to make an international story, because then you compromise the elements that 
people want to see in an Australian film,'' he says.

``You make this generic thriller, and the Americans are going to say: So? We make generic thrillers too.

``With Three Dollars, I knew people had to recognise themselves.''

Three Dollars, based on the award-winning Australian novel by Elliot Perlman, is about an ethical man who, at a crisis in 
his life, finds he has only $3 to his name.

It's a simple film, yet difficult to pigeonhole.

``The shifting genre in the film was very conscious,'' Connolly says. ``I have a very clear responsibility as a filmmaker 
to engage an audience. I don't want to make broad Hollywood aspirational commercial cinema but nor do I want to make 
something rarefied.

``We describe this as the epic story of an ordinary man.

``Your life is not one particular genre. There are moments in your own life where you go `Shit, I'm in a movie', but then 
there are other moments that are realistic. That was a challenge to pull off.''

FILMMAKERS can discover the story for a movie in many ways. With Three Dollars, the idea came gift-wrapped and with a card.

Daniel Nettheim, a director from the TV series The Secret Life of Us, gave his former film schoolmate the book for his 30th 
birthday.

At the time, Connolly was a single man and was fascinated by the subplot of the beautiful Amanda (played by Sarah Wynter 
in the film) who appears in Eddie's life every 9 1/2 years.

When he returned to the book three years later, he realised the story could be his next film.

``I was married, I had my first baby on the way and a mortgage,'' he says.

``And all of a sudden this whole other dimension lifted out about this man trying to make his way in the world despite all 
the economic pressure of contemporary life and trying to be a good father.

``I thought Eddie was this fantastic character. Part of my love of cinema is finding these screen characters that are new 
and fresh and you haven't seen.

``And I thought there hadn't been a story with a contemporary Australian man, a good man. We've got this obsession with 
criminals and abhorrent characters and here was this good man trying to make his way in the world.''

While Eddie is something of a recent novelty, he is hardly without precedent.

``To tell the story of a good man, I had to look back in cinema history,'' Connolly says.

``And you look at the Gary Cooper roles and you look at Jimmy Stewart in It's A Wonderful Life and all the Frank Capra films,
and you think these were films that took good men and the structure of the film is the world testing that man.

``I think Three Dollars is the story of the world testing that man. He's put in a predicament where the world keeps trying 
to break him, it tests issues of fidelity, it tests issues of him as a provider for his family, it tests him as a good father 
to a sick child, as a husband to his wife, as a moral person at work.

``Every possibility tests him, and every step of the way it says compromise your values and everything will be OK.''

Having decided it had potential as a film, he gave the book to Wenham.

Only after the versatile actor agreed to play Eddie did Connolly go after the rights to the book.

Instead of going through Perlman's literary agent, the filmmaker took a shortcut.

``I Googled him,'' Connolly says.

Perlman agreed and told Connolly that when he wrote the book he pictured Frances O'Connor as Tanya, Eddie's brilliant but 
troubled wife.

Once Connolly had a script ready, he sent it to the London-based Australian actress. O'Connor took the part, convinced by a 
scene in which Eddie and Tanya's marriage nearly collapses in a fight over a block of Edam cheese.

``You have to write great roles to attract people like Fran,'' Connolly says of one of Australia's more successful exports.

``It's not that people hadn't pursued her, it's just she hadn't found a role she wanted to play.''

The work was filmed in Melbourne, with an area near the Grampians west of the city the location Connolly found to recreate 
one of the most famous scenes in cinema.

Connolly is a Hitchcock fan, and made references to him in The Bank. In Three Dollars, the tribute comes though in an 
update of the famous North by Northwest scene in which Cary Grant is chased by a crop duster plane.

When it came to filming Wenham running in front of a helicopter, things nearly went wrong.

``We thought we'd killed him,'' Connolly says.

The stunt pilot was supposed to bank off when he came within 10m of the actor. Instead, he kept going to make the shot 
more realistic.

``David said there was a point where he was running and looking back over his shoulder where he, as David Wenham, not 
just the character, was going, `Oh my God, it's getting really close'. ''

When the shot was over, the helicopter flew off but the actor remained motionless on the ground.

``David just lay there,'' he says. ``There was this silence before everyone started running across the field. He got up 
and came over to me and said, `OK, your turn'. ''