Happy 81st Birthday, Fred Schepisi! Born today in 1939 as Frederic Alan Schepisi, this Australian screenwriter, producer and film director made his mark in the late 1970s and early 1980s with sensitively handled dramas which defied easy categorization and were therefore somewhat underrated.
Born in Richmond, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, Schepisi was the son of Frederic Thomas Schepisi; a fruit dealer and car salesman of Italian descent.
Schepisi began his career in advertising and directed both commercials and documentaries. This was before writing and directing his first feature, being the 1976 Australian independent/drama film 'The Devil's Playground'.
Two years later, Schepisi wrote, produced and directed the film of which he is best known.
This was the 1978 Australian drama film 'The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith'.
It had been adapted from prolific Australian novelist, playwright, and essayist, and actor Thomas Keneally's (Schindler's Ark) 1972 historical fiction novel of the same name.
Shot in fourteen weeks, the film is based on actual events surrounding Indigenous Australian Jimmy Governor.
He was notorious across Australia for the murders in 1900 of four members of the Mawbey family and their woman boarder, which quickly became known as the Breelong Massacre.
The film follows Jimmie Blacksmith (Tommy Lewis), a man of half-Aboriginal ancestry.
He is eventually pushed to the breaking point by the racist oppression perpetrated by the British in their rule of Australia in 1900, and by his inability to acclimate to Western culture.
Raised in a white Christian family but never recognized by white individuals as their equal, Blacksmith undergoes frequent humiliations that provoke a violent response when he brutally murders his employer's family.
For the film's main protagonist, Indigenous Australian actor and musician Tommy Lewis was spotted by Schepisi's then-wife at Melbourne Airport (colloquially known as Tullamarine Airport) just walking past. He was approached and was eventually cast.
Upon release, 'The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith' was critically acclaimed, but lost A$179,000 at the box office.
Because of the promotional costs involved, only $50,000 was returned to the producers. Due to this, Schepisi lost his entire investment.
For him, the reception for 'Jimmie Blacksmith' was a disillusioning experience and Schepsisi left Australia soon after to work in Hollywood.
While not prosecuted for obscenity, the film was seized and confiscated in the United Kingdom under Section 3 of the Obscene Publications Act 1959 during the video nasty panic.
However, Schepisci said that Americans regarded the film as a Western, leading him being offered the chance to direct one.
Nonetheless, 'Jimmie Blacksmith' was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 31st Cannes Film Festival in May. However, it did not win.
Some months later, the film won Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Ray Barrett), Best Actress in a Lead Role (Angela Punch McGregor), and Best Original Music Score at the 20th Australian Film Institute Awards (AFI) in September. It was also nominated for nine more awards, but did not win.
In February 1981, Roger Ebert wrote of 'The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith': "One of the wonders that a good movie can sometimes achieve is to take us entirely outside the framework of the society to which it will eventually be shown.
[...] Its story is told entirely in the moral terms of the raw Australian outback of about 1900, and the racial attitudes in the movie are firmly drawn from that period.
But more than anything else, it is valuable because it deals with its materials in the terms of the period in which it is set.
I found no message in the movie, and no contemporary political attitude reflected in the events of the past.
What I found instead was much more rare, a film concerned with showing us how people felt, acted and lived 80 years ago. To know where we are, we must begin by knowing where we came from."
One decade later, Schepsisi left Australia to make the 1988 Australian drama/docudrama film 'Evil Angels' (released as 'A Cry in the Dark' outside of Australia and New Zealand).
The following year, Schepisi won the Australian Film Institute Award (AACTA) for Best Direction and the 31st Australian Film Institute Award for Best Screenplay in 1989. This was for both 'The Devil's Playground' and 'Evil Angels'.
In the mid-2000s, Schepisi co-produced and directed the two-part 2005 American drama television miniseries Empire Falls for HBO. It featured Paul Newman, Ed Harris, Joanne Woodward, Robin Wright Penn and Helen Hunt.
Schepisi was later nominated for the Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries, Movie or Dramatic Special and the Directors Guild of America Award for Best Director of a TV Film.
In 2007, Schepisi was the Chairman of the Jury at the 29th Moscow International Film Festival in June.
Schepisi has also directed a number of music videos, including the 2008 pop-dance song "Breathe".
This was by Australian singer-songwriter and DJ Kaz James and featured Canadian film, television, and voice-over actor as well as a producer of television, film and music Stu Stone.
Asked about the "gypsy-like existence" of a filmmaker, Schepisi has said: "It's the hardest thing. I think we're today's circus people. It's very hard on your family.
[His wife] Mary travels with me and when everyone was younger and it was possible, I liked them to travel with me and be with me. Fortunately, Mary's an artist; she paints, and often finds inspiration from our locations."
According to Schepisi's personal life, he has been married three times. He has seven adult children and one grandchild.
His third and final wife, Mary, of whom he married in 1984 and with whom he had a seventh child, is an American artist currently working in Melbourne and New York City, New York.
Schepisi currently resides in Melbourne. He and his wife have two children together. These are Australian actress Alexandra Schepisi and Nicolas E. Schepisi.
Schepisi currently supports Australia becoming a republic and is a founding member of the non-partisan member-based organization Australian Republican Movement (ARM).
Among his credits, Schepisi is also known for directing 'Plenty' (1985), 'Roxanne' (1987), 'Mr. Baseball' (1992), 'Six Degrees of Separation' (1993), 'I.Q.' (1994), 'Fierce Creatures' (1997), 'Last Orders' (2001), and 'The Eye of the Storm' (2011).
A former director of television commercials, Schepisi has proved himself a master at translating difficult material (i.e., plays and novels) into entertaining and captivating feature films.
Schepisi is also generally attracted to stories pitting strong outsiders against small-minded establishments which are recounted with a smooth and straightforward filmmaking technique even when shifting back and forth between flashbacks, time zones and diverse locations.
Schepisi has been active from 1973–present.
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