difficulty in eclipsing it.
The extremes of weather are affecting not only people’s nerves but the practical aspects of filming. A sudden ferocious wind tears the ‘blacks’ which block out the light into the bar, and it takes half an hour to secure them again. Later, there is a generator breakdown, which forces a hundred already uncomfortable extras to be disagreeably confined with nothing to do except get drunk. More uncomfortable than any of them is Terence. This is the day on which a fundamentally serious movie actor has been obliged to come to terms with the fact that he is standing on the counter of an Australian bar, dressed in one of Lizzy’s and Tim’s most absurd creations, being leered at by miners as he tries — repeatedly, and for much of the day — to lip-synch, dance in heels and tear off his pigtails to a forgotten disco song. (Terence will later identify this as the moment when he went through the fear barrier and capitulated to the absurdity of the film. It was certainly a long way from William Wyler and The Collector. )
We finish late, to a fanfare of torrential rain. When I fly out of Broken Hill the following afternoon, floods have closed many roads, confining us to interiors, and the plane goes through an electrical storm of an intensity which prompts me to wonder if I will survive to witness the birth of my child.
The baby, unconcerned with Priscilla ’s schedule, is not quite ready to emerge. Andrena goes for a swim, hopeful that exercise may help to engender some movement, perhaps even symbolically break the waters, but nothing happens. Somebody tells me that vodka martinis are a little known but highly effective labour inducer, so I call a bar renowned for the potency of its cocktails and ask if they would be prepared to make four ‘to go’ and pour them into an empty vodka bottle. I collect them in the rain which has followed the flight all the way from Broken Hill and take them home. Laughter might also help, and as I am running a little short of it, we watch Stanley Kubrick’s distressingly hilarious Dr Strangelove, whose concluding explosion might set off a few internal associations. So, the checklist is complete: exercise, vodka martinis, film comedy. And an audio tape from Stephan, as he likes the idea of his future godchild being born to a succession of cheesy pop songs and nauseating show tunes.
It works. Thirty-two hours later, Rachel Maria Priscilla Clark makes her first appearance about thirty minutes after the mother and midwife have duetted to Helen Reddy’s uniquely awful ‘I Am Woman’.
*
The infatuation with my baby daughter is such that I do not call Broken Hill until the following day, just before everybody drives to Coober Pedy. The sun has come out; Bingo the homicidal dog of Stephens Creek has gone over the edge (there is a picture of him pressed up against a car window, straining to kill someone, the flash revealing a canine Hannibal Lecter); a service station in which we were going to film has been replaced because the Christian fundamentalist owners of the land did not want a bus with the graffiti ‘AIDS FUCKERS GO HOME’ in its courtyard; and a unit assistant has had a shattering experience with a glass partition. A convivial group of crew members with acoustic guitars were relaxing over an after-work sing-along of ‘Here Comes The Sun’ when he suddenly came crashing through from next door, shards of glass hanging from every part of him. In an appearance fraught with the danger ofsevered arteries, he has escaped with a few cuts. Stryker, whom we have taken on full-time in the make-up department, was particularly impressed. ‘Now that’s a drag queen entrance,’ he exclaimed approvingly, as people cleared the room.
In Coober Pedy they will be joined by the original second assistant director, who has finally recovered in time for the twentieth day of the shoot. By not arriving until the twenty-first day — in a tiny plane from Adelaide blown around
The extremes of weather are affecting not only people’s nerves but the practical aspects of filming. A sudden ferocious wind tears the ‘blacks’ which block out the light into the bar, and it takes half an hour to secure them again. Later, there is a generator breakdown, which forces a hundred already uncomfortable extras to be disagreeably confined with nothing to do except get drunk. More uncomfortable than any of them is Terence. This is the day on which a fundamentally serious movie actor has been obliged to come to terms with the fact that he is standing on the counter of an Australian bar, dressed in one of Lizzy’s and Tim’s most absurd creations, being leered at by miners as he tries — repeatedly, and for much of the day — to lip-synch, dance in heels and tear off his pigtails to a forgotten disco song. (Terence will later identify this as the moment when he went through the fear barrier and capitulated to the absurdity of the film. It was certainly a long way from William Wyler and The Collector. )
We finish late, to a fanfare of torrential rain. When I fly out of Broken Hill the following afternoon, floods have closed many roads, confining us to interiors, and the plane goes through an electrical storm of an intensity which prompts me to wonder if I will survive to witness the birth of my child.
The baby, unconcerned with Priscilla ’s schedule, is not quite ready to emerge. Andrena goes for a swim, hopeful that exercise may help to engender some movement, perhaps even symbolically break the waters, but nothing happens. Somebody tells me that vodka martinis are a little known but highly effective labour inducer, so I call a bar renowned for the potency of its cocktails and ask if they would be prepared to make four ‘to go’ and pour them into an empty vodka bottle. I collect them in the rain which has followed the flight all the way from Broken Hill and take them home. Laughter might also help, and as I am running a little short of it, we watch Stanley Kubrick’s distressingly hilarious Dr Strangelove, whose concluding explosion might set off a few internal associations. So, the checklist is complete: exercise, vodka martinis, film comedy. And an audio tape from Stephan, as he likes the idea of his future godchild being born to a succession of cheesy pop songs and nauseating show tunes.
It works. Thirty-two hours later, Rachel Maria Priscilla Clark makes her first appearance about thirty minutes after the mother and midwife have duetted to Helen Reddy’s uniquely awful ‘I Am Woman’.
*
The infatuation with my baby daughter is such that I do not call Broken Hill until the following day, just before everybody drives to Coober Pedy. The sun has come out; Bingo the homicidal dog of Stephens Creek has gone over the edge (there is a picture of him pressed up against a car window, straining to kill someone, the flash revealing a canine Hannibal Lecter); a service station in which we were going to film has been replaced because the Christian fundamentalist owners of the land did not want a bus with the graffiti ‘AIDS FUCKERS GO HOME’ in its courtyard; and a unit assistant has had a shattering experience with a glass partition. A convivial group of crew members with acoustic guitars were relaxing over an after-work sing-along of ‘Here Comes The Sun’ when he suddenly came crashing through from next door, shards of glass hanging from every part of him. In an appearance fraught with the danger ofsevered arteries, he has escaped with a few cuts. Stryker, whom we have taken on full-time in the make-up department, was particularly impressed. ‘Now that’s a drag queen entrance,’ he exclaimed approvingly, as people cleared the room.
In Coober Pedy they will be joined by the original second assistant director, who has finally recovered in time for the twentieth day of the shoot. By not arriving until the twenty-first day — in a tiny plane from Adelaide blown around
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