Brendan Cowell & Patrick Brammall (Ruben Guthrie)

RUBEN GUTHRIE

An interview with Brendan Cowell & Patrick Brammall

Making a film about high society disasters looks like a hell of a lot of fun – glitz, glamour, red carpets, pressed suits and endless champagne. But for a first-time film director and an actor who’s never led a feature, the task can be intimidating.

This is particularly true when a story requires the kind of moneyed look that a tale like Ruben Guthrie demands, and which an independent film can only hope to emulate. However, it’s a deeply personal story for writer/director Brendan Cowell – which is perhaps why we’re able to see it complete.

“It was a daunting task but it was one I really had my sights set on,” says Cowell. “I didn’t want to give up. Now we’re in such a great position with the opening night of Sydney Film Festival, I’m glad we fought that hard to make the damn thing.”

Ruben Guthrie started life seven years ago as a play, loosely based on Cowell’s own experiences and anecdotes with a hefty dose of creative licence. Now on the verge of the film’s release, Cowell shrugs off his personal association to the story.

“Little by little as you go into making a film, it becomes less about me and more about the actors and the characters we create,” he says. “In no way did I make it like it was even slightly biographical, you know? It was [the cast’s] story to tell. We told it together. I’m a collaborator, I want everyone to do their job and I want everyone to bring me freaky shit and I’ll decide whether it works or not.”

And boy, do they bring the freaky. The alcoholic advertising man Ruben bursts onto the screen in the form of Aussie TV darling Patrick Brammall.

“Patrick’s a revelation,” says Cowell. “He was [producer] Kath Shelper’s idea. He’d been onscreen so much in the two years leading up to Ruben that it was almost like he had his hand up saying, ‘Someone give me a big movie role, I could do a really good job!’ … My editor and I will attest to the fact that there’s not really one take in the entire film where he wasn’t giving me everything he had.”

On the topic of working with Cowell, Brammall is similarly gushing. “It was a beautiful working relationship,” the actor says. “I sort of gave him my soul for the duration of filming and he gave me his heart as some sort of safekeeping.”

Brammall, best known for his roles in TV’s Offspring and Upper Middle Bogan, says the weight of carrying the film didn’t often factor into his day-to-day work on the set.

“It’s just like any other job, really,” he says. “Except I was in every single scene. It took everything out of me.”

Not surprising, as not only is Ruben a very different beast to the affable Brammall, but one at both the peak of his career and on the knife-edge of addiction.

“It’s a funny film but it’s an inky black comedy,” he says. “That’s why we call it a black label comedy. So even though there’s laughs in it, to me the reality of it was finding essentially an alcoholic – so it was a very, very dramatic role to play, knowing that it was real. That was the joy of it, actually.”

Cowell is quick to assert that Ruben’s addiction could be to “anything” and that the film is not an anti-alcohol piece. “What I’m saying is a polemic – I use alcohol as a way of talking about human beings,” he says. “At the same time, alcohol’s a pretty serious issue in Australian culture.

“We’ve got to look at our relationship with it, and I think it’s the best thing in the world to punctuate incredible experiences, but if it starts owning you, that’s a problem. And I think there’s a lot of pretty serious binge drinking going on in our culture that’s not only accepted but in a way kind of [considered] heroic, you know? It’s almost like you’re a legend for behaving disgracefully. And that’s a real worry.”

The director’s statements mirror those of his lead, whose research took him into AA meetings and the lives of addicts.

“[It] was uplifting, strangely,” Brammall says. “These people have come of their own volition because they’re wrestling with something. They get up and share their stories and they listen to each other’s stories, and I thought, ‘If these are the broken people, we’re OK.’ It was a real kind of shot in the arm for me, that humanity.”

Brammall, too, avoids proselytising. “As an actor, I can’t afford to be thinking big-picture about what sort of comment we’re making here,” he says. “It’s just moment to moment.”

Darkness aside, the cast and crew found plenty of joy on set, from stunt shots that sunk Ruben to the bottom of a pool to improvisations with hidden cameras at the Randwick races.

No rest for the wicked, though – Cowell and Brammall are both intent on producing new, original Australian content. “I always think the more we can create, the better off we are,” says Brammall. “Whether we have money to market them or not, we should hear our stories. Local content’s the go.”

As for the name Ruben Guthrie, just where did it come from?

“You can look deep into it to find out what the writer is hiding in the name,” says Cowell. “But you won’t find anything. It just sounded good.”

Ruben Guthrie is the opening night film at Sydney Film Festival 2015 and shows at the State Theatre Wednesday June 3.

Post originally printed in The Brag, available at http://www.thebrag.com/arts/ruben-guthrie