;)
The story so far ...
A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, but somehow strangely in the future (thank you Family Guy for pointing that out) a reasonably promising young actor made a lot of people laugh at the Western Academy of Performing Arts. Whether they were laughing at him or with him is another matter. His name was Dave Bishop; and still is other than for a brief period wherein he went mainly by the alias "Big Red".
Three years later he graduated and realised what just about every other Australian acting school graduate realises when they graduate - that when WAAPA, NIDA, Nepean and all the other acting schools are turning out a dozen good actors each year and there is no work (Australia has like a half dozen TV shows and about a dozen feature films a year) - for most Aussie Actors the present is bleak.
The irony is, Australia could and should be producing some of the best feature films in the world and heaps more of them than we currently are. We have the best crews in the world, the best actors in the world and some of the best writers in the world. What's more, most people in the world love Australians. If you did a worldwide survey there is little doubt Australia and Aussies would be in the Top 5 countries and peoples in the world. We'd be right up there with like Hawaii, Canada and that island with all the hot Amazon women who are like really smart and funny and love sports and ... wait no, that was a dream ... dammit!
But we don't make films that Aussies (or anyone else) wants to see very often. In 2008 (according to Screen Australia) only 3.8% or less than 1/25th of the money Australians spent at the cinema box office was spent on Australian films. That figure went down in 2009.
Bish decided there was only one way to fix that. Aussie film lovers had to start making better films more cheaply. So he set about writing a low budget feature called Case. The script received rave reviews and came 2nd in Project Greenlight Australia (A TV series for film-makers created by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck). The Judges included Pia Miranda and Sam Worthington. Pia later joined the Cast from Heaven - some of the best actors in Australia love the script and have signed letters of attachment which basically means they want to be in the film.
Sadly, the funding bodies didn't come to the party and the word on the street was that they thought making one or two huge and massively expensive films like Australia was preferable to making a bunch of cheaper films. So Dave wrote a bigger film;
Vampires from Wagga is the story of two Vampire brothers who were left behind when the European Vampire nation decided to lay low in Australia in the seventeenth century to avoid the Vatican-trained vampire slayers. Barry and Wazza made friends with the local indigenous population and became quite popular. They made a deal to feed on cattle rather than human beings, bought a kingswood ute and fitted right in with everyday life in Wagga Wagga. Now they are being pursued by an ancient evil so foul it wouldst even drink warm VB.
Vampires from Wagga was nominated for the Monte Miller Award for Best Un-produced Screenplay by the Australian Writer's Guild in 2006 and has attracted similar talent to Case in the form of Jason Gann who is not only now doing well in TV and Hollywood but is a legend in Australian Indie film.
Dave kept churning out scripts and getting turned down for funding for half a decade before deciding "screw the funding bodies I'm going to make a movie ... with zombies ... and also I'm going to write some awesome U.S. scripts and try and sell them to get money to make more Aussie films. And I'm going to buy a ute ... and hopefully that will make me more attractive to women."
Dave's first U.S. screenplay, Jesus is Back is about a guy who just happens to be the 2nd coming of Jesus Christ. However he didn't want to destroy the world and so has been hanging out with a bunch of ageing College Students in New York City.
After a drunken night in which he walks across the Hudson, his friends begin to suspect something. When their suspicions are confirmed, hilarity ensues.
Please note the film is a spoof but doesn't poke fun at religious people ... except Mormons but they have 8 wives so they probably don't care. To date, the script has been shortlisted for the screenplay awards of seven international film festivals and won multiple awards;
- The Queens International Film Festival
- The Cinema City International Film Festival
- Skyfest
- AOFFest
- The Mexico International Film Festival
- The Nevada Film Festival - Platinum Reel Award
- The Las Vegas Film Festival - Silver Ace Award
Jesus is Back was written for the sole purpose of selling it to finance Aussie films.
