Sunday Territorian
SUN 29 MAY 2005, Page 050
On a Wing and a Prayer
By STEPHEN JOHNSON

WHEN David Wenham, one of our most recognisable faces, searched a bin for
food on a Melbourne street few people looked twice.

A long-lens camera was hidden from view 35m away as Wenham played the part
of Eddie Harnovey, a family man who had just lost his job.

A boom pole to record sound was absent as the actor -- best known for
playing Diver Dan in the ABC series SeaChange -- wore a radio microphone
under a dirty, oversized duffle coat.

To onlookers, the streetscape looked nothing like a movie set.

Instead Wenham, a thespian from Moulin Rouge and the Lord Of The Rings box
office trilogies, resembled just another homeless man leading a broken
life on the streets.

The director of Three Dollars, Robert Connolly, said the fact that Wenham
went unrecognised showed the public often ignored the faces of the
homeless.

Connolly said the idea of hiding the set was to capture awkward stares.

``What you don't want is for him to be recognised and someone asks for his
autograph,'' he said.  ``People said you couldn't do it.''

During filming, the only person who recognised him was his partner's
friend. Thinking Wenham was going through a crisis, the worried friend
rang the actor's home.

Connolly said Three Dollars explored the heartlessness of economic
rationalism in contemporary Australian society.

``It's about a man forced to face issues of ethical and economic
compromise at a time of rising interest rates and downgrading of hospitals
-- there's a whole range of social and economic issues that come to
bear,'' he said.

``It's a political film, an unashamedly political film.''

Wenham's character, Eddie Harnovey, is a principled man who loses his job
as a Victorian public service chemical engineer when he refuses to approve
a residential development on toxic land. Times get tougher when wife Tanya
(Frances O'Connor who starred alongside Jude Law in Artificial
Intelligence) suffers from depression and daughter Abby, 6, (Joanna
Hunt-Prokhovnik) is diagnosed with epilepsy.

Eddie has just $3 in his bank account and struggles to pay off the
mortgage when he befriends a homeless man called Nick -- who is played by
Robert Menzies, the grandson of Australia's longest serving Prime Minister
Sir Robert Gordon Menzies.

Homeless men at the Sacred Heart refuge centre in Melbourne's St Kilda
were paid to appear in the film.

Connolly said he directed Wenham to play a compassionate man who had minor
failings.

``You watch a good man being tested and you hope he will survive,'' he
said. ``I would like to think the film's complex enough, you're not sure
if he's making the right choices.''

Three Dollars is based on the novel by Elliot Perlman, who worked with
Connolly on the screenplay. The book has chronological storytelling while
the movie uses interwoven flashbacks, which piece together Eddie's
connection with his beautiful and wealthy childhood friend Amanda (Sarah
Wynter from the 24 TV series) -- who appears at key moments in his life
every nine and a half years.

Connolly said Aussie films needed to explore social issues rather than
copy successful ones like The Castle.

Connolly said Australian comedy The Wog Boy worked but the more recent The
Wannabes was an example of films that ``haven't been good enough''. He
hoped audiences would compare Three Dollars to the 2001 success Lantana.

The graduate of the prestigious Australian Film, Television and Radio
School in Sydney, first met Wenham in 1991 when he was directing stage
play The Boys, based on the sadistic murder of Sydney's Anita Cobby.

``He was beginning his career as an actor and I was beginning my career as
a filmmaker,'' he said.