Making Hula

GirlsA cocktail for

international co-

production

Written by

Trevor Graham

Doctorate of Creative Arts UTS 2009

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Not in Utopia, — subterranean fields, —

Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where!

But in the very world, which is the world

Of all of us, — the place where in the end

We find our happiness, or not at all!

William Wordsworth 1770 - 1850

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ContentsAbstract

Acknowledgements

Preface

1 In the Wake of Wallis, Bougainville, Cook, King Vidor, Elvis,

Gidget & others 14

2 A Buyer’s Market 20

3 I Want to See These Sexy Ladies 36

4 D’ou` venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Ou` allons-nous?

50

5 Co-production Blues 62

6 Researching the Nubile Savage 73

7 Hollywood’s South Seas Princess 101

8 Writing Sharpens the Mind 126

9 We Got 2 or 3 Shots Done Today 147

10 Keep Your Eyes on the Hands

157

11 A History Mash Up 178

12 Conclusions 196

Bibliography 217

Filmography 220

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AbstractThis ‘doctoral package’ comprises two parts produced as

practice-based research within the DCA program at UTS: (1)

the documentary film Hula Girls — Imagining Paradise, a fifty-two

minute documentary that I researched, wrote and directed in

2004 & 2005 for broadcasters in Europe and Australia

(included in the back of this document); and (2) this

document, Making Hula Girls, which is a reflection on the making

of the documentary Hula Girls. The latter should be viewed

before reading this document, as it is the major creative

component of my DCA submission. This document accompanies the

film, enhancing and making explicit the research and

resultant knowledge that are implicit in the creative work.  

The aim of this document is to explore the processes I

employed in making the documentary and to account for some of

the financing and editorial considerations at work in

producing an Australian documentary for the international

television market. The international market for pre-selling

Australian programs is extremely tough and competitive. It’s

a buyer’s market. Making Hula Girls demonstrates how and why the

program attracted buyers (Commissioning Editors) and reveals

the creative processes employed to ensure it had a smooth

path through production and engaged audiences particularly

locally for SBS-TV.

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Concurrent with these marketplace considerations this text,

like the film, investigates the origins and continuing legacy

of the hula girl image, an icon that has captured the

imagination of Westerners since Louis Antoine de

Bougainville’s voyage to Tahiti in 1768. For over two centuries ‘she’ has been immortalized and exploited by

artists, travellers, tourists and film makers. Millions of

people across the world identify the image of the beautiful

Polynesian woman as an invitation to paradise. But, just how

real is she?

In completing this ‘doctoral package’, I argue that

Australian documentaries can succeed in the international

market if producers are mindful of the need to appeal to

international audiences, have a coherent knowledge of

broadcaster slots and a familiarity with the tastes of

Commissioning Editors they are pitching to. I conclude that

there are creative restraints required by these markets and I

elaborate on their impact for filmmakers. Additionally, the

film and text argue that the enduring hula girl

representation is half real, half myth — a product of male

fantasies, a by-word for paradise and a creation of the

Hollywood Dream Factory.

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Context and Acknowledgements

Once I had completed the creative component of my doctorate —

the documentary Hula Girls — Imagining Paradise — and I was

preparing to write the explicatory text, the hand of fate

played its part. In the final stages of the filmmaking

process I was invited by Commissioning Editor, Ned Lander,

and General Manager, Glenys Rowe, to join the commissioning

team at SBS Independent as a documentary Commissioning

Editor. Whilst this would prove to have a huge effect on the

time-line for completing my doctoral submission, the

experience would provide an enormous opportunity and insight

into the documentary commissioning process for television and

also allow me first hand experience of the international

broadcast arena. I cannot thank Ned and Glenys enough for

providing me with this break. I enjoyed my time at SBS. We

commissioned some outstanding work in the three years that I

was employed there. Most importantly we underpinned the

documentary sector of the industry at a time when the

national broadcaster, the ABC, has not.

Then fate dealt a completely opposite hand. Six months after

starting at SBS I was diagnosed with cancer. Not only was

this personally devastating, but the prospects for long-term

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recovery were presented as being grim. I largely managed to

continue my commissioning work at SBS through the months of

treatment, but work on my thesis came to a grinding halt. It

has taken a full two years to get over this experience and to

feel like I wanted to commence writing again. My wife, Rose

Hesp, and daughter, Angelita, provided enormous support

throughout this tough period of my life. I have their love

and encouragement to thank for the fact that I eventually had

the enthusiasm to complete the writing. They have been

patient with me as I spent my weekends on the household’s

computer.

I must thank UTS for also giving me the time and mental space

to recover and come back to the thesis writing when I was

ready. My supervisor, Ross Gibson, was a great support

throughout this time. “Get better and come back to it when

you’re ready,” were his words of encouragement for both my

healing and writing. When I did eventually have some chapters

under my belt Ross provided clear guidance and insight into

the shaping of the thesis and my writing style. He encouraged

me to ‘find my own voice’ at moments when I was riddled with

self doubt about whether I was fulfilling ‘the academic

brief’ required to complete my doctorate. With Ross’s support

I managed to unshackle myself from that expectation ‘to be

academic’, and put words to paper and eventually enjoy

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myself. Writing is a process, and once the fear of writing is

overcome the words can flow and become a steady stream.

In 2007 UTS also kindly offered a scholarship as an

encouragement to complete my thesis. There is nothing like

financial reward to spur one on. My thanks are due to UTS for

this generous, unexpected incentive.

The person to whom I am most grateful is producer Andrew

Ogilvie for asking me to write and direct Hula Girls. Andrew

first approached me towards the end of 2002, when I was very

reluctant to get involved, and to his credit he continued to

pursue me. At the time I was living in Arnhem Land in the

Northern Territory. I was directing a long term observational

film set in Yirrkala, Lonely Boy Richard, about a Yolgnu man who

was on his way to gaol for sexual assault. Despite being the

hardest film I’d ever made it was ultimately fulfilling

because of the powerful nature of the story and the open

access we’d negotiated with Richard, his community and the NT

legal system. The production took over my life in more ways

than one. Observational filmmaking was ‘the force’ at the

time and when Andrew Ogilvie rang inviting me to direct an

historical story about hula girls I could only laugh.

Approximately one year later I was visiting Tahiti, LA,

London, Chicago, Hawaii and Paris, researching Hula Girls and

having a ball. So Andrew deserves my thanks for his 9

persistence and his faith in my ability to deliver a

compelling historical tale. Greg Colgan from Electric

Pictures did much of the initial research of tracking down

South Seas genre pictures, features and archival footage and

undertook the onerous task of copyright clearances for

hundreds, if not thousands of images. Without Greg’s never

take no for an answer attitude, Hula Girls could not have been

made with the richness of imagery that is at the heart of the

documentary.

Directing Hula Girls put me in touch with a vast array of

people: film critics and journalists, Pacific historians, art

curators, art historians, academics and Polynesian dancers

all of whom I am indebted to for sharing their knowledge of

Polynesia and Pacific history. In particular special thanks

are due to: Anne Salmond, Professor and Pro-Vice-Chancellor

at the University of Auckland; Katerina Teaiwa, Assistant

Professor of Pacific Studies at the University of Hawaii;

Margaret Jolly, Professor and Head of the Gender Relations

Centre in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at

the Australian National University; Claude-Louis Stefani, art

historian and curator at Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rochefort in

France; Neil Rennie, Reader in English at University College

London; Stephen Eisenman, Professor of 19th Century Art

History at Northwestern University, Illinois; Ed Rampell,

raconteur, journalist, film reviewer and South Seas

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adventurer; Luis Reyes, Hollywood-based film researcher,

writer and critic; DeSoto Brown, Manager of Moving Images at

the Bishop Museum, Honolulu; Joe O’Neil, an obsessive

collector of all things Hawaiian, shirts, hula dolls,

calendars, souvenirs, all manner of naked Polynesian kitsch;

and Marguerite Lai a professional dancer and director of the

Papeete based dance group O Tahite E. All of these people were

generous with their time and knowledge and were fabulous

participants in the program.

I was also assisted in writing this thesis by Verity

Leatherdale, Dr. Jane Roscoe, Dr. Michelle Arrow, Denise

Haslem, Augustus Dalgaro, Lucy Milne and Carolyn Johnston.

Their interviews shed light on the production, marketing and

programming of documentary, Hula Girls in particular.

Finally I must thank my good friend Margot Nash who said to

me one day, when I was in a fit of despair about my prospects

of making a living from filmmaking, “why don’t you do a DCA

at UTS?” Thanks Margot!

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Preface

This text is a reflection on the making of Hula Girls — Imagining

Paradise, a fifty-two minute documentary that I researched,

wrote and directed in 2004 & 2005. The film is the major

creative component of my DCA submission; this document

accompanies the film and completes the ‘doctoral package’,

making explicit some of the knowledge and research that are

implicit to the creative work.

In order to elucidate the market place and creative issues

behind the making of Hula Girls, I occasionally present

biographical and anecdotal information, but I do this to

provide context and rationale for decision making and the

development of understanding both in myself and the reader. I

also present opinions in the form of research interviews from

a range of experts who participated in Hula Girls, and also film

industry professionals, which offer further illumination.

Having spent 18 months creating the program, Making Hula Girls

now provides me with an opportunity to explore the processes

I employed in making the documentary and some of the

financing and editorial considerations at work in producing

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an Australian documentary for the international television

market.

Hula Girls was produced by Andrew Ogilvie, from Electric

Pictures in Perth, and commissioned as an international co-

production by three broadcasters: SBS-TV (Australia), AVRO

(The Netherlands) and ZDF-ARTE (Germany-France). It was

financed with investment from the Film Finance Corporation

Australia and the Western Australian state funding agency,

Screenwest. It commenced its relatively smooth pathway

through financing, production and broadcast as a 12 page

concept outline with the somewhat kitsch title, Island Aphrodite.

The documentary’s narrative explores the representations of

Polynesian women in Western art, literature and cinema, from

the time of ‘first contact’ in the late 18th century, through

to Hollywood’s visions of the South Pacific, films like Mutiny

on the Bounty (Dir. Lewis Milestone,1962), Bird of Paradise (Dir.

King Vidor, 1932) and Gidget Goes Hawaiian (Dir. Paul Wendkos,

1961). The closure of the program also briefly alludes to the

legacy for contemporary Polynesian woman of this persistently

idealised sexual imagery.

The concept for Hula Girls originated from a book by Michael

Sturma, an academic from Murdoch University in Western

Australia entitled, South Sea Maidens, Western Fantasy and Sexual Politics

in the South Pacific (Greenwood Press, 2002). I was brought onto the

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production as a ‘hired gun’ to research, write and direct the

documentary. With a 20 year track record as a writer/director

in the history genre, films about the Pacific, and indigenous

culture and politics, I was considered by Andrew Ogilvie and

the commissioning broadcasters to be a suitable director. It

was also well known that I had a passion for remote island

life and the tropics, a perfect fit for a film called Hula

Girls. I therefore made sure, as part of this production, that I

was going to shoot in various international tropical

locations and include interviews from Australia, Tahiti,

Hawaii, France, the US, and the UK. The completed program is

an eclectic mix of history, art criticism, anthropology and

film history — challenging to make, and one hopes it is

informative and entertaining for audiences to watch.

14

Michael Sturma’s book was useful as a research tool and as an

originating concept for the television program. But authoring

an academic book is one thing, writing a television proposal

and directing it, for an international market place another.

They are two vastly different beasts. The original Hula Girls

pitch outline (attached as an appendix to my thesis), which

successfully led to commissioning in 2003, bears the stamp of

several authors, Michael Sturma, Andrew Ogilvie and myself.

We all helped shape the writing to produce a document which

pitched the program to the international film and television

market in 2002 & 2003. It’s slick and sexy and deliberately so.

Pitch documents often include a one sentence and one

paragraph description to facilitate easy and quick discussion

at market-based producer meetings. Our document describes

Hula Girls as,

A lush, visual exploration of the origins and evolution of the

sexual mythology surrounding the Pacific island woman. 1.

And the one paragraph description follows,

From the first dramatic contacts in the 18th century, arose a

powerful and seductive image of Pacific island women that continues

to both captivate and provoke us. Drawing on spectacular locations

and a rich heritage of art, literature and film, Island Aphrodite is a lush, visual exploration of the origins and evolution of the

sexual mythology surrounding the Islander woman. 2.

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The pitch document employed words like captivate, seductive, sexual

mythology and lush, to entice buyers. On the one hand the

outline is offering an historical critique of Western art and

cinema by dissecting the fantasy paradise that has been

constructed around Polynesian women. But at the same time it

uses the comparable language that has helped shape the

Pacific in the Western mind as a place of available, exotic,

dark-skinned women and easy sex.

The pitch strategy was successful in the short and long term.

Hula Girls has been broadcast in each of the commissioning

territories where it rated well. It was also well received by

television reviewers in Australia and went on to win the

prestigious NSW History Award – Audio Visual Prize for 2005.

As is revealed in the research and writing of this text,

Commissioning Editors, interview participants, programmers,

reviewers and audiences have all been captivated by Hula Girls

the historical-tale-cum-analysis and entertainment that the

program delivers.

I have been writing, producing and directing documentaries,

largely for television, for more than 20 years. In that time

I have directed more than 20 hours of programs for our

national broadcasters, SBS and ABC-TV. Before Hula Girls, only 2

have been produced as co-productions with financial backing

from international broadcasters, Channel 4 in Britain (Land

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Bilong Islanders, 1990) and WGBH Boston (Mystique of the Pearl, 1996).

This is the blunt reality of the Australian film and

television industry, and in particular its documentary

sector. The international market for pre-selling programs is

extremely tough and competitive. It’s a buyer’s market. On the

whole, international commissioning editors care first and

foremost about audience share and ratings. Because of its

subject matter, Hula Girls clearly had the potential to draw big

European audiences to ZDF-ARTE and AVRO. One of the questions

I intend asking and testing in this thesis is ‘why?’ Is there

anything significant about the production of Hula Girls in the

international documentary market that allows us to understand

and reflect upon ‘the market’ and ‘market forces’

particularly for Australian documentary? Are there lessons to

be learned from this experience for Australian producers

seeking to sell their programs in the international arena?

Throughout the making of Hula Girls there were two questions

that niggled me continuously about its story and content.

These questions gave structure to my creative practice and my

research. Firstly, how could I tease apart the historical

images of Polynesian women, explore these representations,

from the time of Cook to the present, without myself cashing

in on the tits and bums that have been the focus of so much art

and cinema over the past two hundred and thirty years? Films

like F.W. Murnau’s and Robert Flaherty’s Tabu (1931) and Bird of

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Paradise (1932) starring Dolores De Rio freely pushed

Hollywood’s strict censorship codes with their depictions of

scantily clad island women. For their time they exposed a lot

of flesh. But producers were allowed to do so under the guise

of ethnographic realism. Pacific Island women were known to be

bare breasted, so on-screen allusions to that were

permissible, although decorum still prevailed. Breasts were

mostly only partially exposed; floral leis around Dolores Del

Rio always provided a modicum of decency so as not to reveal

all. The second question of concern was the expectations of

the broadcasters I was working for. Would Hula Girls by force of

circumstance be another adventure in exoticism?

I also wanted to include something of the story of

colonisation and militarisation of French Polynesia and

Hawaii in this program. How could I include the saga of

French nuclear testing in the South Pacific? Wasn’t this

nightmare the flip side of European visions of a Polynesian

paradise?

My task of structuring a compelling story from my research

was, as always, complicated. My investigations showed that I

simply couldn’t create a black and white picture of Polynesia

and its exploitation by the West. This story is full of

nuances and complexity, as Margaret Jolly revealed in a

research interview I conducted with her,

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These European visions weren’t just fantasies; they weren’t just

figments of imagination. They were in many ways responding to

cultural forms that were there. There was in a sense a religion of

Eros in Tahiti and Hawaii. It’s then a matter of what the Europeans

did with that in terms of their own imagining. The indigenous

eroticism then got transformed as a spectacle and something that

Europeans could use for their own revitalisation. 3.

Clearly I was facing some big challenges in telling this

story spanning 250 years of European and Pacific history, in

just fifty-two minutes.

Now that the program is finished and broadcast I am in

position to re-evaluate and test what I set out to do in

making the program. Was I right in assuming that broadcasters

wanted titillation for their audiences? Did it succeed in

bringing the past to the small screen? Was it successful in

terms of audience, market place response and with the

critics? And above all, how do I evaluate the program in my

own terms? I don’t wish to explore these questions as a

purely academic exercise, but to try and understand the

thinking behind the international commissioning process. My

most important task however is to probe the creative forces

at work when crafting a 52-minute television documentary and

the compromises that are part of that storytelling process.

Footnotes:

19

1. Sturma M. & Colgan G. (2002), Island Aphrodite, pitch document, Electric

Pictures, Perth, p.1

2. Ibid., p.1

3. Professor Margaret Jolly, Head of the Gender Relations Centre in the

Research School of Pacific and

Asian Studies, Australian National University, research interview by

Trevor Graham (2003).

1.

In the Wake of Wallis,

Bougainville, Cook,

King Vidor, Elvis, Gidget

and others.

This island is inhabited by over 200,000 savages. In the event that

we find ourselves welcome

you’ll discover that these savages have absolutely no conception

of ordinary morality. And

you will no doubt take full advantage of their ignorance.1

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The Captain Bligh Restaurant and Bar in Papeete encapsulates

so many things about Tahiti, its colourful and dramatic

history, its contemporary life as a South Pacific tourist

Mecca and its reputation for young, beautiful and ‘exotic’

women. The restaurant is decked out as a tropical bungalow,

complete with thatched palm leaf ceiling, party lights,

cocktails and the obligatory sounds of French/Polynesian love

songs, courtesy of the house band. Here you can order a

‘Papeete Orgasm’, a mixture of gin, vodka, coconut milk and

pineapple juice. You can make yourself legless with a ‘Bligh

Slammer’, a ‘Fletcher Christian Kiss’ or a ‘Drunken Sailor’.

The bar is a must see and do event for the 21st century South

Seas traveller,

A 19th-century European merchant wrote of the Tahitians, "Their

existence was in never-ending merrymaking. In many respects this is

still true, for after the sun goes down, Tahitians like to make

merry as much today as they did in the 1820s, and Papeete has lots

of good choices for visitors who want to join in the fun. 2

Drawing heavily on the tale of the Bounty mutiny and its

infamous Captain, portraits of Bligh and the romantic hero of

the tale, Fletcher Christian, adorn the walls. And of course

there’s the erotic dancing that — legend has it, so beguiled

the Bounty’s crew — Polynesian beauties with long flowing

hair, ornamented with free flowing pareus (sarongs) and the

21

coconut shell bras made famous by ‘island princess’, Delores

Del Rio, in King Vidor’s Bird of Paradise 1932.

And that’s why I am here tonight — the women, the gyrating

waists, the legends, artists and the movies.

I’ve come to film the O Tahiti E dance group and it’s an

important sequence in the

documentary program I am directing, Hula Girls — Imagining Paradise.

This isn’t my

first exposure to the charms of Polynesian dancing; I’ve been

steeped in Pacific culture

and history since I made a television documentary, Dancing in

the Moonlight, about the

Pacific Arts Festival in Townsville, Australia, in 1988.

Since then, like many Western

men, I’ve had an eye for Polynesian women, particularly, ‘the

demi’, Tahitian women of

mixed French-Polynesian descent. They are the particularly

attractive consequence of

inter racial romance that dates back to first contact, the

exploratory voyages of

European mariners, Bougainville, Wallis, Cook and so many

more, to these tiny Pacific

islands. Since then the allure of Polynesian women and their

legendary ‘free sexuality’,

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has long been a draw card for whalers, traders, colonists,

artists, militarists, writers,

movie stars and filmmakers like me.

And here I am now, filming back stage in the dressing room of

O Tahiti E. A dozen, young, twenty-something Tahitian women are

undressing and donning their costumes for the evening’s

performance. Dance troupe director Marguerite Lei announces

in French why we are here, “They are Australian. They are

making a film about Tahitian dance and culture and the views

of Europeans about our culture in the past and present.” Make

up is applied, grass skirts fastened. And I’m gob smacked.

The women are so casual and matter of fact about our presence

as they strip down and change from their everyday street

civvies to grass hula skirts. I’m a 50 year old filmmaker

with an all male (50+) film crew. There are furtive glances

from us and them as we film our sequence. I can’t help

feeling there’s a provocative aspect to this. Or so it seems.

Is the legend perhaps true after all? To my mind it does seem

like paradise. And I can’t help but recall Louis Antoine de

Bougainville’s much used 1771 quote from his Un Account du

voyage, autour le monde, a report of his visit to Tahiti in 1768,

which helped contrive the legend of Tahiti as an earthly

paradise and a place of easy sex,

I ask you, how was one to keep four hundred young French sailors,

who hadn’t seen a woman in six months, at their work in the midst

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of such a spectacle? Despite all the precautions we took, a young

girl got on board and stood by one of the hatchways. The girl

negligently let fall her robe and stood for all to see, as Venus

stood forth before the Phrygian shepherd; and she had the celestial

shape of Venus. We managed to restrain these bedevilled men,

however, but it was no less difficult to control one self. 3

Standing in the dressing room I also imagine myself as Matahi

the young Polynesian lover and hero from the waterfall

sequence in F.W. Murnau’s 1931 silent Polynesian love

classic, Tabu — A Story of the South Seas,

Matahi peers through large taro leaves and spies on a group of

young and beautiful Polynesian women swimming in a waterfall

flowing into a deep water pool. The women pose seductively in the

pool decorated with floral leis in their hair. Matahi’s other mates

eagerly join him to ‘spy’ on the women. Matahi grabs a ‘young

nymph’ in his arms and together they tumble down the waterfall –

it’s a lover’s paradise - perfect bodies in the sparkling tropical

sunlight. 4

I introduce myself to several of the dancers, stumbling

through my inadequate French, “Je m’appelle Trevor Graham. Je

suis un realisateur de Australie. Nous tournons un

documentaire sur Tahiti et sa culture and dansant

traditionelle”. But again I am possessed by images of

Hollywood. I had after all spent the last 6 months

researching South Seas cinema in preparation for making this

program. And I had so many movies rattling around my brain,

24

Pagan Love Song (Dir. Robert Alton, 1950), South of Pago Pago (Dir.

Alfred E. Green, 1940), White Shadows of the South Seas (Dir. W.S.

Van Dyke, 1928), South Pacific (Dir. Joshua Logan, 1958) and Bird of

Paradise. Tahiti it seemed to me, is a place where art, love,

legend, movies and life have often been confused and rolled

into one. I couldn’t help but recall the 1962 version of

Mutiny on the Bounty, the scene where Fletcher Christian, played

by Marlon Brando, introduces himself for the first time to

his island love interest, Maimiti, played by the female lead

Tarita Terepaia. The Brando movie exploits the male fantasy

of the beautiful island girl who is unworldly, pliant and

infantile,

Fletcher and Tarita caress and kiss each other, they are covered in

an abundance of tropical flowers. He teaches Tarita how to

pronounce his name pointing to himself.

Christian: Fletcher Christian is my name.

Tarita innocently points to Fletcher.

Tarita: Is my name…

Christian: No, no! Fletcher!

Tarita: No, no! Fletcher. 5

Brando did more than star in the remake of Mutiny on the Bounty

when he went to Tahiti in 1962. Brando lived out the legend

of Fletcher Christian, the character he played, when he fell

in love with the beautiful 19-year old Tahitian costar, 25

Tarita Terepaia, who became his wife and the mother of two of

his children. Brando’s fascination with the South Pacific

apparently began when he was a boy looking at National

Geographic photographs of Tahiti. When interviewed on his

arrival in Tahiti, Brando said he had illusions of becoming

Polynesian and wanted to fuse himself into the culture.

Marlon Brando’s story is not uncommon. The South Pacific is

littered with tales of love affairs with seductive brown-

skinned maidens. Before the invention of the motion picture,

captain’s logs, novels, and paintings portrayed the Pacific

Islands as a heaven on earth. This ready-made archetypal

image was inherited by Hollywood. As one of my interviewees,

LA film critic Ed Rampell, explained in his book, Made In

Paradise,

More than any other Hollywood genre, South Seas movies deal with

the theme of paradise — a romantic native paradise to serve as a

setting for adventures enjoyed by white Americans or Europeans,

usually males. 6

My job in directing Hula Girls was to untangle and explore that

250-year-old story by investigating the images and words that

have graced our screens, books and art galleries; to explore

the half real, half myth image of Polynesian women. The obvious

questions I wanted to explore in the documentary and this

companion text are: what is the Western representation of the

26

hula girl, why is it still so strong and fixed? How did it

come about and what are the repercussions both in Polynesia

and the West? But a deeper question also plagued me, which I

will address in this document: how could I avoid creating yet

another western clichéd view of Polynesian women, yet another

image? I wanted to engage an audience, essentially entertain

them, but also challenge their preconceptions and

understandings of the popular images of Polynesians.

My intention was to make a really lively film and when I

started my research I fell in love with Hollywood footage

from Dorothy Lamour films such as Aloma of the South Seas (Dir.

Alfred Santell) made in 1941. There are approximately 600

films, documentaries and TV advertisements made about the

Pacific or set in the Pacific, and many that I have viewed

cash in on the image of the sexy Polynesian woman. Even today

‘she’ features heavily in tourist advertisements for the

South Pacific.

Although Hollywood has used the image of the hula girl

endlessly, I knew the starting point had to be the first

Western encounters with Polynesian women. So I began by

researching sailors’ journals and reports from explorers

about the islands and the women. These stories were

reinforced over time by illustrations and paintings, such as

Cook’s artists, John Webber and William Hodges, whose 18th

27

century works alluded to a tropical Garden of Eden and

sensuality.

Hula Girls not only analyses the use of hula images but

celebrates them as well. My inclination was also to look to

Hollywood to provide humour because many of the films are

very corny and clichéd in the way that they portray their

island paradises and they provide a host of stereotypical

‘typecast’ images. And humour in a documentary is always a

good hook for an audience; it helps disarm them, relaxes them

into the subject or character and therefore can provide an

entry point into difficult social, historical and political

content. As Leslie Nielson the comic star of the Naked Gun

series of films testifies,

I think anytime you make anybody feel good there is a social

function in what you are doing. When people are feeling good they

don't bite each other and hate each other. And usually they are

nice to their kids, and they have the groundwork laid for being

affectionate and gentle. And that's social. 7

I also found via my research, which I will elucidate in

Chapter 7, Hollywood’s South Seas Princess, that films and

literature set in the South Pacific could also offer more

than escapism and bare bodies. They were also capable of

exploring issues of racial and sexual relations — from a

discreet distance. Films like Rodgers’ and Hammerstein’s South

Pacific suggested to audiences the possibilities of interracial 28

and cross-cultural romance. As I delved into researching Hula

Girls I discovered deeper themes which sustained my interest

and provided a balance to the comic scenes I was imagining as

I wrote the screenplay. My challenge in researching and

writing the screenplay was to explore the images that we

westerners had created and Oscar Wilde’s notion that,

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. 8

The Captain Bligh restaurant and bar, cocktail in hand, and

filming the gyrating dancers of the O Tahiti E dance group, was

a good starting point for this story to unfold. Curiously,

even though the dancing was tantalisingly sexy, precious

little of it made it into the completed program.

Footnotes:

1. Mutiny on the Bounty 1977, feature film, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Captain

William Bligh (Trevor Howard) addressing his crew on their arrival in

Tahiti.

2. Goodwin, B. Frommer’s Tahiti and French Polynesia Guide, 1st Edition, accessed

9/9/2006, www.frommers.com/destinations/frenchpolynesia.

3. Bougainville, L.A. 1771, Un Account du voyage autour le monde, Saillant &

Nyon, Paris.

4. Scene description from Tabu, directors F.W Murnau & Robert J.

Flaherty, 1931, transcribed & interpreted for Hula Girls script 2004,

by Trevor Graham.

5. Scene description from Mutiny on the Bounty, screen writer Charles

Lederer, director Lewis Milestone, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1962,

29

transcribed & interpreted for Hula Girls script, 2004, by Trevor

Graham.

6. Rampell, E. & Reyes, L. 1995, Made In Paradise, Hollywood’s Films of Hawaii and

the South Sea, Mutual Publishing, Honolulu, p. 33.

7. Totaro, D. Talking Comedy with Leslie Nielsen, Off Screen, Nov 19 1999,

accessed 14/8/2008, www.horschamp.qc.ca/new_offscreen/leslie.html.

8. Wilde,O. The Picture of Dorian Gray 1890, Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, Philadelphia.

2.

A Buyers Market

Toronto, April 2007. 500 people are crammed into the Senate

rooms of Victoria College at the University of Toronto for

the annual Toronto Documentary Forum (TDF). There’s a quiet

air of expectation. The focus of attention is a panel of 50

Commissioning Editors (CEs) from around the globe sitting at

a long central table. These Commissioning Editors are akin to

royalty in the broadcast documentary business. The BBC is

here, Channel 4, PBS, The Documentary Channel, The History

Channel, Discovery Channel, National Geographic, Arte

(France) and then there are the smaller players YLE

(Finland), Avro (Holland) and SBS (Australia). Every year up

30

to 30 projects are chosen to pitch at the Forum and hopeful

producers make the annual pilgrimage seeking the all

important presales from broadcasters to green light their

documentaries. Pitching at the TDF can be gladiatorial at the

best of times. Thumbs up, or thumbs down from the

Commissioning Editors, instant death for some projects, or a

triumphal march for a lucky few.

Sitting at the head of the pitching table is Australian

producer-director Simon Nasht. With him is his co-director

and editor from France, Ragnar Van Leyden. They are a

formidable filmmaking team. Simon has pitched successfully on

three previous occasions and funded his projects from the

Toronto Forum. Ragnar Van Leyden edited the Academy Award

winning feature documentary, Murder on a Sunday Morning. Their

pitch today is Rebel With A Cause a two part series and a feature

length film version about renegade Australian journalist,

Wilfred Burchett, who dared to report the Cold War, including

the Korean and Vietnam wars from the ‘other side’.

I am sitting at the table too, in support of the Burchett

team as their local Commissioning Editor. In 2007 I

commissioned Rebel With A Cause for SBS Independent, where I have

been working as a CE since I completed Hula Girls in 2005. Simon

and Ragnar have cut a trailer and have been allocated seven

minutes to convince my colleagues about the merit of their

31

project. In my experience at the TDF, I have made six trips

here over the years, there can be a lot of interest on the

day from CEs, but there often isn’t much follow up that leads

to the all important presale that brings a project to life.

But the true value of pitching, is the ‘psyching up’ required

to perform it. Pitching is the refinement of a documentary

idea into a 7 minute spiel. It’s is a short story unto

itself, with themes, characters and narrative distilled into

a trailer and a few spoken paragraphs. Pitching is a valuable

skill and by necessity helps focus the mind of the

storyteller, the writer-director.

Simon’s pitch is confident and comes in on time. It’s well

written and rehearsed and brings to life the character and

significance of Wilfred Burchett’s journalism. The historical

images in the trailer are compelling and it’s a thumbs up

from the crowd of CEs. Nick Fraser, who commissions for a

feature length strand at BBC 4, Storyville, announces the offer

of a presale. This creates murmurings amongst the observing

delegates. Nick is a tough nut. He’s been known to ruthlessly

assassinate pitches at the TDF and other forums including in

Australia. It depends on his mood. But in this instance we

had a heads up from Nick. He decided at a private meeting the

day before the Forum that he wanted Rebel for Storyville. The

project will be the centre piece of a themed season he is

planning called Commies, which will commemorate the 20th

32

anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall (2009) and the

collapse of communism in Central Europe. But his public

announcement at TDF creates a roll. Arte France indicate they

too are interested in Rebel, there is after all significant

French content in this project and there’s also a Parisian

co-director. The History Channel in Canada gives the project

a nod of interest, “Let’s talk afterwards, the archive you’ve

shown is new and fantastic”. YLE (Finland) is in straight

away, they like the opening up of the Cold War for historical

re-examination. But they offer small money. Thankfully there

is enough on offer for the project to attract matching

investment from the Film Finance Corporation of Australia.

TDF is part of Hot Docs, the Canadian International

Documentary Festival one of several major international

documentary festivals and markets that are held each year. It

is the largest in North America. In 2007, the festival

presented a selection of more than 100 cutting-edge

documentaries from Canada and around the globe. Through its

industry programs, Hot Docs also provides a full range of

professional development, market and networking opportunities

for documentary professionals. This year, the festival

attracted over 1800 delegates, including documentary

filmmakers, buyers, programmers, distributors and

commissioning editors from around the world. Other major

festivals and market events on the documentary calendar

33

include: the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam

(IDFA), Leipzig Documentary Film Festival, Sheffield

International Documentary Festival, Sunnyside of the Doc in

France, and the Australian Documentary Conference (AIDC)

which until recently conducted a pitching forum similar to

the TDF. Canadian filmmaker Peter Wintonick (Manufacturing

Consent, Cinema Verite – Defining the Moment) described IDFA 2005 in

Amsterdam as, ‘the mother of all docfests’,

IDFA was born out of the same sense of social and political

commitment, which goes to the very definition of documentary

itself. IDFA has grown to be the largest festival of its kind and

the most influential. Across IDFA’s history 3,400 films have

screened in its various sections….the current edition features 250

documentaries in over 800 screenings. There are about 2,500

professional guests, 150 commissioning editors, and a public

attendance which will top 130,000. A third of a million people are

visiting the IDFA website. 1

Australian producers in increasing numbers are now attending

these all important international documentary markets and

festivals. Commissioning Editors from the ABC and SBS,

together with project officers from Federal and State film

funding agencies also regularly attend. Australian producers

use the opportunity of so many gathered international CEs to

hold private meetings and pitch (some would say harass) their

projects. In 2004 Susan MacKinnon, the Documentary Investment

34

Manager from the Australian Film Finance Corporation,

attended the 12th IDFA Forum,

Being present at four days of pitching at IDFA was like being in a

giant think tank. One is able to observe what ideas and issues are

preoccupying people. The ideas were more international, about

global issues — censorship, racism, religious intolerance, the

subjugation of women, the responsibility of the press and free

trade. Budgets were much higher this year, bringing into question

if the market could support them. Many films were feature length. 2

Producer Andrew Ogilvie from Electric Pictures in Perth is a

dedicated ‘junkie’ of these market events and as a result has

well developed relationships with international broadcasters,

distributors and production companies,

Electric Pictures is very market orientated in that I travel a

great deal to international market places. I make at least three

international trips every year sometimes 4 or 5, international film

and televisions markets or conferences, like IDFA or Sunnyside of

the Doc in France. In a week’s time I’m going to Cannes to what is

called MIP TV, which is one of the world’s biggest and best

recognised television markets. There’s anywhere between 10,000 and

14,000 people who are either buying or selling television product.

And I’ll go again to the same market, same location but different

name, called MIP COM in October. Sometimes I’ll go to Hot Docs,

depending on what I’ve got on offer, but this year (2005) I am

going to Sunnyside of the Doc which is again in France. France

seems to be, it’s partly geographic and partly cultural, a centre

in the world for these sorts of things particularly in Europe. 3

35

Ogilivie’s producing expertise was fundamental to the

financing of Hula Girls. I wish to illuminate his expertise in

this narrative and foreground his successful strategy for

engaging with the international markets and financing Hula

Girls.

Electric Pictures was founded in 1992 and specialises in

factual programming for the international television market.

Since then Andrew has gained a worldwide reputation as a

producer of award-winning programs in a range of genres:

history, arts, adventure and science. Electric Pictures is

always on the lookout for the new idea. Their website

(www.electricpictures.com.au) even features a call for the

submission of ideas from the general public, ‘strong

documentary concepts, with international market potential’.

It was via this process that the idea for Hula Girls was first

generated,

We have two people who are dedicated to being out there looking for

ideas in the community, in the world. There principal task is to

generate ideas, ideas that come to them because of something they

have read, conversations they’ve had, their own personal life

experience. So we decided that at one stage that we’d look to

Murdoch University, our local university, and we advertised through

the staff press that we were a local production company looking for

concepts that might make good international television. And several

academics approached us and Hula Girls is one of the ideas that came

to us in the form of a person, Michael Sturma, who had written a

36

book about the image of Pacific Island women called, ‘South Sea

Maidens’. And there was obviously the germ of an idea. It had

history, it had colour, sex, which is always of interest to the

human condition and to viewers and it had elements that obviously

could appeal to European buyers. It had elements that could work

for Australian buyers. I immediately thought of SBS.

One of our first steps is to always check what’s been made out

there and of course the internet is the most powerful tool for

checking that. So we’ll do title searches etc. And you do find

often there are films made in a similar area, so we’ll look at how

long ago. The very good idea that hasn’t been done before or the

very good idea that hasn’t been done for a while, or maybe you can

do it in a different way, that also does fit into the needs of

broadcasters who have slots or notional genres if you like — if it

fits into those strands for them, then we will spend more money and

develop it a bit further. 4

When attending a documentary market, either as a producer

pitching, or a Commissioning Editor, the first golden rule

is, IT’S A BUYERS MARKET. The competition is stiff and the

buying power limited. At SBS over the three years that I was

commissioning there, I assessed in excess of 500 submissions

for presales. We received on average 600 to 700 proposals

every year and commissioned barely 5% of these. Most of my

job entailed saying ‘No!’ Ideas that I rejected were either

not well thought out, poorly conceived, had no sense of story

and characters, or were simply irrelevant to SBS and its

charter,

37

The principal function of SBS is to provide multilingual and

multicultural radio and television services that inform, educate

and entertain all Australians and, in doing so, reflect Australia's

multicultural society. 5

Programs about blonde, blue-eyed surfies were not going to

get a gong with me. And you’d be surprised, maybe not, how

many of these proposals I received each year and how many

producers had no idea of the Special Broadcasting Service’s

social and cultural remit. Every year at conferences I had to

spell this out to wannabe producers. Apart from lack of

charter content, proposals often don’t fit into any of our

published program strands. There are other reasons projects

were rejected too. We constantly needed to promote a

diversity of themes, stories and ideas. Good ideas seemed to

come in batches and we often received similar proposals from

different producers and of course, only one is selected.

Whilst SBS had a strong commitment to indigenous programming

we received many more indigenous stories than we are able to

commission.

The other important reason for rejection is funds. There is a

limited pot of SBS gold each year. In any one financial year

we time and again were forward committing to the next

financial year to get programs made, such was our thirst for

local programs and Australian stories. All public

38

broadcasters around the world operate with similar issues and

criteria. And when you attend documentary markets like the

TDF, AIDC or IDFA you quickly become aware of the pent up

expectations and frustrations that producers have in getting

their projects financed. Commissioning Editors are set upon,

it’s a feeding frenzy. On my last trip to Hot Docs in 2007, I

came away with dozens of proposals and business cards from

international producers. Before I even left Sydney, my SBS

email inbox was swamped with approaches from producers

wanting to meet in Toronto.

Through his attendance at these international television

markets Andrew Ogilvie has become familiar with a range of

CEs and the strands they commission for,

Commissioning Editors you can divide into two camps. The career

bureaucrats who have never made any television, or it was some

years ago, or they’ve come from radio. They are bureaucrats who

have worked their way through the public institutions where they

are now making decisions about what people want to watch. And then

there are those other CE’s, thankfully there are quite a few left,

who have actually come from a position of making films. They have

made many films and they have got to a point where they have a

mortgage, they have a family and it’s all getting a bit hard. They

really just feel like a stable job and the jobs are often well

paid. And these types understand the processes of storytelling

using film as the medium. And appreciate that medium. 6

39

At these global markets Australian producers have what must

be described as a modest presence. There are usually only a

handful of companies, Electric Pictures amongst them, who

have a constant presence and as a result have strong

relationships with broadcasters and distributors.

The ability of Australians to effectively make documentary

for the global market is best revealed via the number of co-

production projects which receive investment from the Film

Finance Corporation Australia Limited (FFC) in any one year.

The FFC stated in its 2005-2006 Annual Report,

The FFC invested in 34 documentaries during the financial year. Of

these, 11 were non-accords (international co-productions with

international and national broadcasters attached) and 13 were

accords (productions with a national broadcaster attached). The

demand for Australian documentaries remains strong and producers

continue to be able to secure international finance sufficient to

trigger FFC participation. Of the 11 non-accords (totalling 22

hours) four were with the ABC, six with SBS and one feature-length

production, was with the Ten network. This year was marked by an

increasing interest in documentary from the international market

place. 7

The FFC documentary investment in international co-

productions for 2005-2006 increased, from 9.45 million the

previous year, to 12.77 million. But the number of projects

fell from 14 to 11. However an analysis of the number of FFC

40

funded projects and their budgets since financial year 1999-

2000 reveals a consistency in the number of projects

receiving investment from the FFC, and as you would expect

over that period, a rise in budgets.

Year Projects Total Budgets

2005-2006 11 12.77 million.

2004-2005 14 9.45 million

2003-2004 13 10.90 million

2002-2003 11 10.20 million

2001- 2002 13 6.60 million

2001-2000 13 8.20 million

1999-2000 17 10.00 million *

* These figures are not entirely accurate for Australian co-production output. There are a

handful of producers who never deal with the FFC and produce entirely from the international

presales they gather. These tend to be either bigger commercial entities like Southern Star

and Beyond producing large volumes of documentary product, or small producers, working

exclusively in wildlife programming.

Whilst it is reassuring that there has been, more or less, a

consistent ability to produce internationally over the past

seven years, the overall output is modest indeed. The main

reasons for this low Australian co-production output are

financial, and also cultural-geographic, as Geoffrey Blainey

phrased it, ‘the tyranny of distance’. The figures are

testament of a local industry that is perhaps still inward

looking, naïve and

41

inexperienced in dealing with, the large and highly

competitive business of international broadcast. They show

that more often than not, our home grown stories and concepts

don’t travel.

As to the finance, the FFC, SBS and ABC have a limited pot of

money each year to spend on documentary. If the volume of co-

production increased substantially, due to better access to,

and experience in dealing with the international market, it

is doubtful whether the FFC, SBS and ABC would have the

matching funds to invest and commission. This has already

been experienced at the FFC in 2005 and 2006. The

organization ran out of money to invest in documentary in

several rounds even though producers had the necessary

international market place deals, local presales and

distribution attachments.

Another huge contributing factor is the willingness of

Australian broadcasters to back international co-productions.

By and large national broadcasters everywhere favour local

stories for their audiences because they rate well.

Australian audiences are no different. That’s why the SBS

strand ‘Storyline Australia’ was created in 2004 and achieved

a consistent audience following, sometimes rating better than

the network average, sometimes less. The ‘local stories’

argument is also often quoted as an important raison d’etre

42

to justify continued government subsidy for our national film

and television industries.

In the co-production business SBS, on the whole, does better

than the ABC. This is evident in the FFC’s 2005-2006 Annual

Report, ‘four were with the ABC, six with SBS’.

Most of the dozen or so Australian international co-

productions that I commissioned at SBS were Australian

stories, with sufficient global content, like the Wilfred

Burchett series that allow them to generate worldwide

presales. I have also commissioned several large, big budget,

international co-productions that have universal themes such

as Attack of the Baby Boomers, about the ever increasing phenomenon

of global aging. This was a co-production between SBS and

WNET 13 (New York) with FFC investment. But our deal with the

Australian producer required a minimum 25% Australian content

across the two episodes, Australian stories with Australian

characters. Of my dozen commissioned programs only two were

what you would call purely international stories, (1) The Choir

set in a prison in South Africa and (2) The End of the Rainbow,

about a gold mine in Guinea, West Africa. In both cases SBS

Independent backed the projects largely because of the

substantial deals the producers had from the international

market, but our presale offers were half the normal dollar

figure SBS usually offers for an international co-production.

43

Perhaps there is also a problem with the program ideas that

Australian producers take to the international markets? Is

‘the tyranny of distance’ a factor? Anecdotal evidence and my

observations at TDF, reveals that only a few Australian

producers manage to get their projects accepted into any of

the international pitching Forums in any one year. Quite

often there are no OZ pitches at all. At our own AIDC the

opposite occurs, there’s usually a bias towards Australian

programs selected for pitching. But sadly over the years

precious few of these have attracted presales from the

numerous international commissioners who regularly attend

AIDC.

The problem of selling Australian documentary, both at the

presale stage and on completion, is well known to local

marketing agents and distributors. The expertise on which I

will now rely, elucidates the complex issues facing

Australian documentaries in the global market. Lucy Milne was

the Director of Marketing & Distribution at Film Australia

along with her colleague, Carolyn Johnston, the International

Sales Co-ordinator. Lucy and Carolyn were responsible for

selling the Film Australia catalogue locally and

internationally. Augustus Dulgaro was the former Manager of

ABC Product & Content Sales at the ABC, the former Director

of Marketing at Film Australia and is now VP of Sales, for

the Australia and New Zealand region, for Granada

44

International. Lucy, Carolyn and Augustus are all committed

advocates of Australian documentary. In their various

marketing and distribution capacities they have attended many

of the major markets, forums and festivals where documentary

ideas and completed programs are pitched and sold. They

collectively provide some good tips on the dos and don’ts of

pitching and selling Australian programs and ideas. They

speak of a market reality that Australian producers must know

about and engage with if they are to successfully sell their

ideas.

Lucy Milne: Australian documentary is very hard to sell. They are

a niche product in a niche market, so many are completely narrow

and devoid of worldliness. But even if you have a universal theme

that is applied in an Australian context, it’s still reasonably

difficult to sell. For instance we’ve got a film about adoption,

you’ll go to America and they’ll say great topic but we’ve got our

own film about adoption in our country.

Carolyn Johnston: About five years ago over in the UK we were

having a meeting with Channel 4 and Channel 5 and basically every

program we pitched they said great idea, but if we are going to do

that, then we’ll do it ourselves. It was very much that whole

feeling of being, looking within their community and their whole

country rather than looking outwards. But then you still have

countries like France, Scandinavia and the Netherlands who are

still very interested in looking all around the world and who seem

to have this incredible thirst for knowledge in every country.

45

Augustus Dulgaro: The number of times I’ve been told, when I was at

Film Australia that a story is ‘too Australian’ I can’t tell you

how often I’ve heard that. These programs would still sell in a

number of territories, but they are minor sales. The major sales

that Film Australia achieved were minimal. The reality is that

getting a presale or any kind of sale in the UK is near impossible.

Getting any kind of presale in the States is nearly impossible.

They are producing their own stories. Britain has their own

Cunnamullas and the US too. ITV has a huge production output, they

produce a hell of a lot of docs. BBC and Channel 5 produce a huge

amount of documentaries. They are British stories that can be

produced locally and relatively inexpensively and they appeal to a

domestic market. It’s same with the ABC here. It is hard to sell

them international documentaries produced from the rest of the

world. SBS on the other hand takes stories from around the world,

especially non English speaking stories, so there is more of a home

there.

Lucy Milne: By and large, in terms of production values in

Australia, we make very good documentaries. And we have very good

crews. But the stories, the actual content of what it’s about is

often too parochial. The other thing we struggle with enormously is

our accents. Particularly somewhere like Canada they find our

accent difficult. If you’ve got a lot of characters with strong

Australian accents it’s difficult.

While the ‘tyranny of distance’ is an important factor

(stories being ‘too Australian’ or lacking ‘universal themes’

in their content) so too is the challenge of where an idea

might fit on the broadcast schedule, the need for Australian

46

producers to tailor their ideas to particular broadcaster

slots,

Augustus Dulgaro: Trotting out a one hour documentary is difficult.

Can it be placed in a strand or a series if they have a got a

strand to place it into. Do they have an arts strand, a history

strand, an investigative documentary slot. They won’t be interested

in an arts idea if they don’t have the slot. But on the other hand

if you’ve got an 8 part half hour series, or an 8 part one hour

series, that is going to be more attractive, say to cable

broadcasters and terrestrials too, because they get more bang for

their advertising buck. Once they have that audience hopefully that

audience will stay from week to week. So on the whole series ideas

are usually more attractive.

Australian documentaries often also rely on talking heads,

directors shying away from strongly authored narration, as a

story telling device. This was often an issue for me as a

Commissioning Editor looking at rough cuts in the cutting

room. But it’s even more of an issue for international

broadcasters when considering Australia programs,

particularly in Europe, where talking heads will need to be

revoiced. Unlike SBS in Australia, most broadcasters dislike

subtitling their programs. Arte in France is an exception. As

a rule of thumb many European broadcasters prefer a minimum

of 50% narration in their foreign program acquisitions.

Augustus Dulgaro: Narration is always good. Because narration can

provide a separate M&E track and it can be revoiced. Too many

47

talking heads are difficult. If you are going to have experts, get

international experts. International experts can give your program

a sense of universality and international appeal. It doesn’t pigeon

hole it as Australian. Is there a UK angle in the story? You would

always highlight a particular national angle if it worked for your

story, when pitching to a commissioning editor and a distributor.

Lucy Milne: I think it’s more than the issue of revoicing.

Stylistically it’s an issue. Twenty years ago we were making

documentaries that are not dissimilar from the sort of

documentaries that are still being made. It requires a different

headspace that says we can make documentaries that are a bit more

cutting edge in terms of the style and format that are delivered

and not just the content. You talk about talking heads, but look at

‘Touching the Void’, which is nearly all talking heads apart from

the re-enactments. But the way the talking heads were shot for

example, were different. That added more value to the actual

talking heads.

However even when a program is beautifully realised and is

stylistically unusual, as in Touching the Void (Dir. Kevin Mc

Donald 2003) Australian talking heads can still burden

program sales,

Carolyn Johnston: I find that a lot of buyers will turn away from

programs, even beautifully made programs. We have ‘Wildness’ that

was set down in Tasmania with fantastic imagery, but there were a

lot of talking heads that really detracted from it, particularly

for buyers in Asia. It just makes something that they might

consider buying into something that they won’t even touch.

48

Most broadcasters when considering international program

ideas look for stories with universal themes that resonate

beyond national frontiers. Stories that their local audiences

can engage with or characters they can relate to.

Augustus Dulgaro: For the international market it’s important to

not have content that will quickly date it. Avoid the kind of

colloquialisms that are going to move over from charm and

idiosyncratic to alienating. You have got to have something there

that people will hold onto. It has to have issues and themes that

are universal. Anything that will really marginalize your product

from the outset, you need to really think about that. But a local

story will work internationally if it’s unique. Like a ‘Cane

Toads’. Or if it’s exploitable like a ‘Cunnamulla’. Even “Facing

the Music” which is an Australian story with strong universal

appeal is going to have trouble selling because it’s a 90 minute

documentary and there are so few slots that can run it. When you

are talking about personal stories and social justice

documentaries, whether it’s going to work internationally is going

to depend on whether the themes or the story is going to have any

relevance to an international audience.

Lucy Milne: I guess if I we are looking at the documentary

industry, I’d say that there are only a few documentary filmmakers

here that have a concept in their heads of an international market

and that filmmaking is not just something they feel really strongly

about, it’s really a story that they have to get out there because

‘everyone in Australia must know about it’. Or even not knowing

that if they shoot it in this particular way or they use this

particular format or they keep it this parochial or they use too

many talking heads that it will have no appeal in the broader

49

market. They don’t even know that necessarily. There’s only a few

key documentary filmmakers who know the market place and they are

people who have travelled. Therein lies the rub, it’s a catch 22,

documentary filmmakers are starving to death and can hardly get the

bus into town let alone get the plane to see whoever.

Commissioning editors see themselves as the first audience

for a program they buy. Because they see hundreds of

proposals every year, if the first page, the synopsis,

doesn’t appeal you are usually dead in the water. It’s same

with distributors and program buyers considering finished

films.

Lucy Milne: One of the ways I measure a documentary that I am

viewing in terms of acquisition, is if I can watch the whole

documentary without fast forwarding then that’s a good documentary

and one that I will take on. And that’s the principal, if I am not

hooked in the first 5 minutes. If it doesn’t engage with you on the

way through and doesn’t keep your interest, and 55 minutes is a

long time to keep your interest, we are a very ‘satisfy now’ kind

of society, and an hour is a long time to sacrifice to anything

that doesn’t engage you and doesn’t keep you going.

Augustus Dulgaro: A commissioning editor when they are considering

something will put themselves in their audience’s shoes. They may

personally like an idea, but if it’s not going to work for their

audience for the demographic that watches at 8.30pm on a Tuesday

night, Wednesday night, Thursday night, they are not going to buy

it. You are not going to get through the door if you are an unknown

and if you don’t have runs on the board. So if you have a program

50

that has been successfully broadcast on that channel before then of

course they are going to want to see you.

Then, just to add a note of contradiction, there are

Australian programs, which by sheer force of character and

story break all the golden rules,

Carolyn Johnston: One program that we still get interest in that

we have just licensed to Channel 4 in the UK, is ‘Rats In The

Ranks’. That’s just a classic Australian documentary. It couldn’t

be more Australian in terms of its sense of humour, the portrayal

of the main characters involved and it still keeps selling itself.

Lucy Milne: And it’s so localised, a very specific part of

Australian, Sydney life and unlike anywhere else. So it’s a good

case in point. It’s done generally well across the board, not in

Asia of course, but in Europe definitely, it’s done quite well.

Rats In the Ranks (Dirs. Bob Connolly & Robin Anderson 1996) was

a Film Australia and Arundel Films co-production in

association with broadcaster partners the ABC Channel Four

and La Sept ARTE,

Politics is a bruising business. The best policies in the world

mean nothing unless you've got the numbers. This film takes a

behind-locked-doors look at how politicians get the numbers. Every

September Sydney's Leichhardt Council elects its mayor. Incumbent

Larry Hand is popular with the citizenry but they don't vote for

51

mayor, the 12 councilors do and after three years of Larry some of

them are after his job. 8

Rats In The Ranks, from a sales perspective, proves that strong

character-driven Australian stories, with universal themes,

can be attractive to international audiences.

Carolyn Johnston: It’s the main character Larry Hand. He’s such a

character. No matter what country you come from you would still be

enthralled by everything that goes on around him and what all the

other councillors are doing.

Lucy Milne: High drama, huge drama, it’s a thriller, what the hell

is going to happen next? It’s that kind of incredulity. So it’s an

engaging piece.

Carolyn Johnston: And that makes it timeless in its own way.

What’s not timeless is the international television market

place. It’s a constantly changing and complex beast, subject

to changes in fashion, taste and personnel. Regional TV

cultural interests and tastes also come into play,

Lucy Milne: It’s very hard to talk in terms of an ‘international

market’. What is an international market? You can either talk of an

American market, an English market, an Asian market, a European

market. But there is no such thing as a general international

market. And you have to know them all to work them. There are

sectors more than an international market. No two of them will take

the same program on the same basis or pitched in the same way. So I

52

think that’s an important distinction to make. Even though England

and America are English-speaking, they might not take the same

program for slightly different reasons or they may take the same

program for slightly different reasons. There are a whole lot of

cultural reasons behind that, not just language.

Carolyn Johnston: If you wanted to make something that would sell

in Asia, you’d be looking at wildlife, the environment, science,

but you wouldn’t be looking at anything that is social issues. But

European buyers love social issues. They will take other types of

programming, but a lot of the time they are seeking social issues

documentaries too. So you really have to work out which markets

that your program will appeal to.

Augustus Dulgaro: The market is too dynamic and cyclical to have

any lasting impact. We face this all the time in marketing. “How is

this going to sell?” The tastes of the market place are changing

every six months. What you pitch at MIPTV is not going to have the

same currency later in the year at MIPCOM. And it also depends on

what is happening in the world. You have to go back to why you want

to make the documentary. Fashion changes every 6 months but you

can’t produce to second guess the market. If you go to broadcasters

with an idea then you have to turn it around quickly because they

may not be interested in 6 months time. And you can be stuck in a

rut. For instance three years ago every one wanted ‘Surfing the

Menu’, cooking shows. That worked for a while and then it petered

out. People wanted different things.

And Augustus Dulgaro has one important golden rule about

pitching to international Commissioning Editors,

53

Augustus Dulgaro: Don’t try and second guess the buyer, because

once you start doing that you lose sight of the story you set out

to tell. You have to have a really definite idea of the story you

want to tell. And if the market place is telling you they don’t

want it, then do something else basically. You have to go out there

with ten or twelve or fifteen ideas and that way something will get

some traction. So you need to be true to the idea you want to make

and work out the appropriate way to fund it. It may not be in the

international market place.

It was in these specific and competitive market contexts that

Andrew Ogilvie planned to pitch Hula Girls to European

broadcasters in 2002. His pitching skills, together with his

knowledge of markets and broadcasters, had been honed from

his attendance at forums and festivals. He knew the

Commissioning Editors and the program strands he wished to

target. He knew the sort of money they would pay. But what

were the elements of his pitch that attracted buyers? And why

did it transcend the usual marketplace difficulties for

Australian product outlined by Augustus Dulgaro, Lucy Milne

and Carolyn Johnson? Was it the international historical

content? The promise of scantily clad hula girls?

Entertainment? Hula dancing? The Elvis movies it would

feature? What we do know is that Andrew Ogilvie wrote a

clever and sexy synopsis targeting Hula Girls to male, European,

Commissioning Editors. He boarded a plane to France and the

rest of the story is largely his to tell.

54

The interviews with Augustus Dalgaro, Lucy Milne and Carolyn Johnston were conducted by

Trevor Graham in 2006 and 2007.

Footnotes:

1. Wintonick, P. 2005, Welcome to IDFA Land, POV The Art and Business of Indie Docs

and Culture, Issue 60, Winter, p.22.

2. MacKinnon, S. 2004, Report on the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam

2004. Film Finance Corporation Limited, accessed 12/12/07,

www.ffc.gov.au.

3. Andrew Ogilvie, producer Hula Girls, interviewed by Trevor Graham

March, 2004.

4. Ibid.

5. Principal 1. SBS Charter, contained in Section 6 of the Special

Broadcasting Services Act 1991, accessed 12/12/07, www.sbs.com.au.

6. Andrew Ogilvie, producer Hula Girls, interviewed by Trevor Graham,

2005.

7. An Exceptional Year in Pictures, Annual Report, Film Finance Corporation

Australia Limited (2005-2006), accessed 12/12/07, www.ffc.gov.au.

8. Rats In the Ranks program synopsis, Film Australia website, accessed

8/1/2008, www.filmaust.com.au

55

3.

I Want To See These Sexy

Ladies.

Pagan Love Song. Mimi (Esther Williams) and Andy (Howard Keel) stand

arm in arm in Tahiti’s bright ‘romantic’ moonlight. Andy wears a

lolly pink floral lei around his neck.

Mimi: Who is to say where truth ends and fantasy begins,

we take our legends very seriously. As a matter of

fact we have even put them to music.

Mimi sings, The Sea of the Moon, while Andy holds her in his arms.

Lyrics: Come with me to the sea of the moon,

To the sea that was made for the moon, Over the

waves of morning bloom,

Into the evening let me stay with you.

When islands are happy and gay,

In a world that’s forgotten its laughter,

Come and day dream with me

Close your eyes and you’ll be

By the beautiful sea of the moon.

Andy kisses Mimi in the glow of Tahitian moonlight. 1

56

The concrete bunker which is the Palais des Festivals et des

Congres, on the Boulevard de la Croisette Cannes, is a far

cry from the romanticised 1950s Polynesian dream world of

MGM’s, Pagan Love Song, starring Esther Williams and Howard

Keel. But it was here at MIPCOM, amidst the hustle and fast

talk of the world’s largest television market that Andrew

Ogilvie commenced the process of financing Hula Girls in 2002.

That year Andrew was one of 10,000 international delegates

attending MIPCOM, an event where television product is bought

and sold en masse. MIPCOM’s 2007 website aptly promotes the

significance of the annual TV event,

MIPCOM is the global content event for co-producing, buying,

selling, financing and distributing entertainment content across

all platforms. It provides the key decision-makers in the TV, film,

digital and audiovisual content, production and distribution

industry with the only market conference and networking forum to

discover future trends and trade content rights on a global level. 2

And the 2007 website states the following reasons why MIPCOM

is a must do event for international TV producers of all

formats and genres,

Think global — Reach over 12,500 TV, mobile and internet

professionals, 4,216 companies from 98 countries.

57

Meet more sectors — Access the broadest range of broadcasters,

producers and distributors, discuss the latest trends with exciting

new advertisers, advertising agencies and character licensers.

Plan ahead — Use the conferences and networking opportunities to

think about your content in a whole new way.

Enjoy extra value — A concentrated and productive 5 days. 3

Ogilvie arrived, as he usually does, with a briefcase full of

documentary proposals, 30 to 40 one-pagers; concepts that he

and his team had worked up. He’d arranged appointments with

CEs in advance and written the Hula Girls pitch to specifically

catch the eye of the Europeans. It was the right time of the

year, with the European winter approaching, to be selling a

television program set in the South Pacific. The charm and

allure of the tropics was an immense part of his sell in the

pitch document titled, Island Aphrodite,

She has lustrous, flowing hair decorated with a fragrant garland of

flowers, or perhaps a bright hibiscus behind her ear. She wears a

grass skirt or a brightly coloured pareu tightly wrapped around her

hips. In male fantasies, she is bare-breasted, her voluptuous

figure partly concealed by a floral lei. Welcome to the myth of the

Pacific Island woman………

……. Drawing on spectacular locations and a rich heritage of art,

literature and moving pictures, Island Aphrodite is a lush, visual

exploration of the origins and evolution of the sexual mythology

that surrounds the Pacific Island woman. 4

58

With pitch in hand the money chase began and Ogilvie well

remembers the first responses from broadcasters he received

and ‘the flavour’ of the dialogue that ensued,

One of the nice things about Hula Girls, when I did take it to a

market, it immediately appealed, people could immediately see it.

Very easy to pitch it in one line and they immediately get it,

which is so important because so often people can’t summarise their

ideas so succinctly or it’s a complex issue which is hard to

summarise so simply. Commissioners are people who have very short

attention spans, who get 100s of submissions a week, if not

sometimes a day. They are incredibly stressed out and over worked.

And they learn to deal with this by making very, very quick

decisions about whether they may be interested on the basis of

their very first impression. So if you can convey it in a very

simple way that they immediately get, then you are on the way. And

it was easy with Hula Girls, very easy. 5.

My initial assumptions about broadcasters wanting ‘Polynesian

titillation and or exotica for their audiences’, seemed to

hit the mark gauging by the tenor of the responses Ogilvie

received at MIPCOM. The early rejoinders were reminiscent of

Mimi’s song for Andy in Pagan Love Song, ‘Come and day dream with

me, Close your eyes and you’ll be, By the beautiful sea of

the moon’,

The first impressions from broadcasters were, “Oh exotic! Great

winter viewing, on a cold snowy winter’s night”. You know in

59

Germany or France when there’s four feet of snow on the ground and

your days are six hours long and it’s all miserable and grey, you

can sit back and watch something that comes from an exotic part of

the world, for them. The whole area of French Polynesia, being

associated with the exotic, the film’s about that, and it’s true.

It’s a holiday destination for many, a place that they romanticise,

the blue skies and so on. 6

And sex was an important part of Ogilvie’s discussions with

broadcaster’s right from the start,

It’s also sexy. That’s always good viewing. So Hula Girls had history,

it had colour, and obviously it could be very colourful in that

way, sex, which is always of interest to the human condition and to

viewers and it had elements that obviously could appeal to European

buyers. The first interest was a small Dutch broadcaster

specialising in arts programming called AVRO, who look quite

aggressively for ideas that they can help finance and therefore be

the first to show in Holland and have an editorial input, and

therefore help craft ideas to fit their audience’s needs. 7

AVRO (Algemene Vereniging Radio Omroep) is the oldest of 23 public broadcaster organisations in The Netherlands, a niche broadcaster specialising in arts documentary, information, culture, along with soaps and light entertainment. AVRO commissions programs across a wide spectrum of arts activity with the exception of music. Some of their programming highlights since 2000 include the documentary titles: Robert Capa: The Man Who Believes His Own Legend (Dir. Patrick Jeudy, 2004), David Hockney: The Colors of Music (Dirs. Maryte Kavaliauskas & Seth Schneidman 2004), L’ Héroïque cinématographe (Dirs. Véray Laurent, Agnès de

60

Sacy, 2003), Mamadrama: The Jewish Mother in Cinema (Monique Schwarz,

2001) and Great Performances - Making 'The Misfits (Dir. Gail Levin, 2002). One of the main goals of this Dutch broadcaster, according toWillemijn Meuse, Head of AVRO TV, is,

making popular culture accessible to the public. 8

Ogilvie met with Wolter Braamhorst, Head of Art and Culture

at AVRO. Braamhorst was the commissioning editor for Close Up,

a visual arts strand, broadcasting one off arts documentaries

52 weeks of the year. In 2006 Braamhorst described AVRO’s

visual arts strand for the Sheffield International Festival

website,

We have been broadcasting since 1994 and it is the most successful

arts program on Dutch television. We interpret visual arts to

include photography, architecture, painters, sculptors, movies,

design, fashion, popular icons and ancient archaeology. 9

61

Ogilvie had met Braamhorst at previous markets, knew the

criteria of his Close Up strand and also that Wolter had a

professional background as a cultural historian. Importantly

the pitch for Island Aphrodite encompassed the breadth of art

forms that Braamhorst’s strand focussed on, painting,

photography and cinema history. And just to confound my

thesis about the sexual appeal of Hula Girls to broadcasters,

Braamhorst’s interest according to Ogilvie, wasn’t focused on

the sexuality. He had other more rigorous demands to make of

the program,

Well it’s interesting because it wasn’t the sex, because he is gay,

openly gay. He won’t mind me saying that. It wasn’t the women. It’s

the art, it’s the image, it’s the representation. And his only

caveat was, “I don’t want an ethnography! Because we don’t do

ethnography. We do arts programming”. Defined very broadly,

anything defined as an arts program he will have a look at. But he

didn’t want us to go and tell a story about, the way the

Polynesian’s really live, and spend all the time in the village

watching them cooking yams or whatever. He wanted something full of

images that are luxurious, that are going to entertain through the

image, an audience that is interested in painting and in art, and

films. He would be also aware that being sexy it would appeal to

his male audience. But it wasn’t the primary motivation. And never

has been. 10

Braamhorst also stressed what he didn’t want a contemporary

‘feminist political’ analysis of the hula girl image. It

wouldn’t fit the ethos of Close Up,

62

Wolter also said he didn’t want a raving feminist critique! He

didn’t have a problem that there may be some, at times, a feminist

perspective that comes through. But he didn’t want it to become a

feminist essay. And neither did the Germans. Not that they were

denying it. They wanted it to be balanced rather than be very

gender specific. And me being a male I don’t think that they were

too worried that would seriously be the case. That may have been

more of a concern if a female producer had brought it along

ironically. 11

Braamhorst made a commitment to the project straight away,

but he first needed to discuss it with his colleagues in

Amsterdam and seek their views.

It was easy for AVRO because they don’t offer that much money. It’s

still better than selling it when the program is finished, but it’s

not 8 times better or 10 times better as it sometimes can be with a

presale. 12

Next to take an interest in Island Aphrodite at MIPCOM was Olaf

Grunert a Senior Commissioning Editor for documentaries and

Thema ‘theme nights’ at ARTE, a network that sells itself as

Europe’s ‘Cultural Channel’. ARTE is a bi-national French-

German network that broadcasts into France, Germany and other

European nations 24 hours a day, seven days a week,

Europe is at the heart of ARTE’s vision. Look to the future with

ARTE for a more exciting, entertaining and, above all, brighter

outlook on life. 13

63

ARTE’s social and cultural objectives are not dissimilar to

those of SBS in Australia. There is in fact an informal

‘sister network’ relationship and in the past few years ARTE

and SBS have co-commissioned numerous documentary projects.

Like SBS, ARTE broadcasts in up to 200 different languages

and dialects across the thousands of programs broadcast in

any one year. The similarities with SBS are also evident in

the low rating, but niche audiences, attracted to the network

in both France and Germany,

In 2006, 4.2 million viewers in Germany watched ARTE at least once

a week for 15 minutes continuously, thus clearly outperforming

record year 2005. In France, weekly audience figures reached 9.4

million. ARTE is ‘the’ cultural channel and enjoys special status

within the German and French media industries. In both countries,

ARTE has become a synonym for high quality and creative television.

French and German audiences hold the channel in high esteem due to

its credibility and the special attention which ARTE gives to

different issues, as difficult as they may be. Foreign films are

usually broadcast in the original version with French subtitles.

Around twenty-five percent of the films broadcast are co-

productions. Since its inception, ARTE has been financially

committed to supporting talented filmmakers. 14

One of the hallmarks of ARTE’s programming strategy is Thema

or theme evenings every Monday, Thursday and Sunday nights.

They aim to enrich the audience viewing experience by

combining different genres, feature film, documentary,

current affairs and TV drama around a particular topic or

64

theme on any one night and have proven to be very popular

with audiences. Ogilvie knew about theme evenings, he’d

viewed them on various trips to France, and he also knew that

Grunert’s commissioning included, Discovering the Great Legends of

Our Time, Thema on Sunday 8:45 pm,

Usually built around a major feature film screened early evening,

Thema on Sunday is aimed at a family audience, preferring

entertaining subjects that combine dreams and excitement. 15

Grunert was also familiar with the Australian documentary

scene, having attended the Australian International

Documentary conference in Perth,

I decided to take it to one person on the German side and one

person on the French side. So I targeted them both. Anyway I met

Olaf Grunert from ARTE, on the German side. He’s well known, he

gets around a lot, he likes to travel. He’s been to Australia, came

to the local Documentary Conference we had in Perth. He loves the

sun. He loves the beaches. But he’s not young. He would be one of

the older Commissioning Editors, he would be in his late 50s. He’s

an interesting character because I find him, as indeed many

Commissioning Editors are, it goes with the territory, they’ve got

to be pretty well educated and usually pretty smart. But he is I

think particularly well educated and he knows his film history very

well. One of the things ARTE does which defines the kind of

Commissioning Editors they choose, is that they do themed evenings

where on two or three nights of the week they’ll have two or three

hours of television programming around a loose theme. And they

will commission, put major money into one documentary and then they

will acquire the rights to screen a feature film or maybe another

65

documentary to make up the two or three hours of themed

programming. 16

If Hula Girls was to be successfully financed, Olaf Grunert’s

interest was essential. ARTE offer larger presales than AVRO,

and Ogilvie knew the topic would appeal to Grunert’s combined

commissioning and personal cinema history tastes.

Olaf’s also known as ‘the King’ of sexy programs. Not sex as in

porn, but sexy programs, the exotic, things to do with male and

female and gender. He doesn’t have a huge slice of the ARTE pie. He

only has a small percentage of the money to spend and those are the

type of programs he tends to go for. But he’s a lovely bloke,

because he’ll, he’s also very….. “I want to see these sexy ladies”

as he calls them. Because he’s of that generation, he’s an older

generation, very respectful, very hetro, but respectful of the

opposite gender in the way that that particular generation would

express themselves. He basically got the idea right away. He liked

it. He read the ten or fifteen pages that we originally submitted.

And he liked it and was immediately saying “Oh I think I can get

this up!” 17

I pursued this pitch conversation with Andrew Ogilvie further

when I interviewed him towards the end of the Hula Girls post-

production in January 2005. To my great satisfaction it

seemed that my thesis paradigm, commissioners wanting a sexy

program with “sexy ladies”, was bearing fruit. Andrew and I

had many discussions throughout the entire writing,

production and post-production phases of the program, about

what the three broadcasters wanted, as you do. But here was the

66

opportunity to drill down further and test my assumptions. At

this late stage in the production cycle the interview also

revealed something of my producer’s attitude to the content

of the program.

Q. So how much do you think the scantily clad, titillating image of

the hula girl had to do with generating presale interest from Olaf

at ARTE?

For Olaf personally it probably was. He had the image of the

swaying hips and the scantily clad body, which we all have. They

are sex, they are beautiful. Yes they are a turn on to guys. So

I’m sure that’s part of it. But at the same time if we were to make

a film which was totally sensationalised and exploitative of those

images and for no other reason than to show lots of tits and bums,

then they wouldn’t like that at all. No, the sex has to be

packaged within something that is more considered and which is

stimulating intellectually, which is telling something about

themselves as Europeans and about their history, which is

educational. 18

So they wanted a program that was intellectually stimulating

and sexy! As I was to discover throughout the making of Hula

Girls and the writing of this thesis, my bald assumptions about

broadcasters wanting ‘high class smut’ had a ring of truth

about it. But as I was to find time and again, broadcaster

expectations were far more subtle than my blunt fears. My

producer Andrew Ogilvie fulfilled an important role in this

respect and constantly reassured me throughout all phases of

the production that the ‘sexy’ content had to be seriously

67

massaged and packaged within a documentary tradition and

provide ‘quality television’. These were also akin to my own

interests in making the program, to explore the sexualised

representations of Polynesian women that had endured since

the time of first contact in the late 18th century.

With confirmed interest from AVRO and ARTE Ogilvie’s trip to

MIPCOM was clearly already successful. They weren’t however

at this stage firm offers, nor were sale prices discussed.

But at least Ogilvie could confidently start talking to

Australian broadcasters with the knowledge that the Europeans

were interested in commissioning Island Aphrodite. Local

broadcaster support was crucial, without them the documentary

would not be eligible for production investment from the

Australian Film Finance Corporation. So the next step was to

get SBS over the line. Ogilvie considered the program content

more appropriate for the local ‘multi-cultural broadcaster’

than the ABC.

One month after MIPCOM Ogilvie attended the International

Documentary Forum Amsterdam (IDFA), with a modified two page

pitch document,

I went to IDFA in Amsterdam. I hadn’t been to that market before

and that’s where Ned Lander, Commissioning Editor from SBS got

interested. I think it was only a couple of pages at that stage

that I showed him and he thought it was immediately of interest,

not a high priority for SBS, because perhaps the priority at SBS

would be a little bit more political. And their arts strand is not

68

the highest rating area of their programs. But he was interested in

Polynesia. I put it to him that Polynesia which is part of our

region had been seriously underplayed on SBS, which he agreed

about. And one thing I enjoyed about that relationship and it’s

what you would expect from your domestic broadcaster, is that they

think, “if this works for us and Andrew can get together the funds

to make a film out of it then we would probably want to screen

it” . 19

At this point in time (2002) part of SBS Independent’s

mandate was to provide industry support for Australian

producers. General Manager, Glenys Rowe and Ned Lander came

from producing backgrounds, in both drama and documentary.

They were active deal brokers when it came to commissioning,

Hula Girls was definitely more deal led than other commissions I have

made. I am clear about that. It was a strong budget $800,000 or

thereabouts, we were supporting an Australian production. At that

point in time I was two years into my time at SBS as a CE, and I

still had a lot of independent filmmaker characteristics coming

out, and that was one of the things about SBSi, it lent towards the

independent filmmaker as well as to the broadcaster and there was

seen to be a value in terms of supporting the industry and

strengthening the industry. Andrew felt he could bring Walter

(Braamhorst) and Olaf (Grunert) on board. The difference between

someone like Andrew and a lot of other producers is, most producers

feel they can’t go out to the rest of the world’s market until they

know if they have a local broadcaster on board, whereas Andrew will

seek the deals from any broadcasters and then build on that. I

think it’s a very good strategy. When someone is coming to you with

69

an idea and potentially two foreign broadcasters on board, and you

coming on board can complete it with the FFC, you get focused and

really look at it when it’s being presented to you. I spoke with

Walter and he confirmed that he was interested. I then started to

think well what would this film be? 20

When I interviewed Lander for this thesis in 2007, I was

surprised to hear that he had his own concerns about the

expectations of the two European Commissioning Editors.

Whilst mine were focused on sexuality and exoticism, his

apprehensions were about the European fixation on the ‘noble

savage’, a theme that I also dealt with in the content of the

program,

To be totally honest, I tend to feel that often the Europeans still

have a residual ‘noble savage’ streak in their thinking that they

haven’t fully dealt with, even though they intellectually might

question it. For instance my experience of trying to sell programs

about indigenous Australians was that people (Europeans) tended to

have problems with a ceremony if the women had bras on, even though

intellectually they had processed a whole lot of post modern

thought about this stuff, on another level they wanted it to look

nice and ‘natural’. So there was this little part of me that had

the warning bells out about how Hula Girls would go and whether or not

it could really both draw an audience because of the subject matter

and bring a greater understanding of that mythology. 21

Like Grunert and Braamhorst, Lander too could see the

potential audience appeal of Hula Girls. He saw the program as an

70

essay documentary exploring the historical images and the

sexual mythology based in the images.

And also most importantly I wanted a director who could find the

humour, the pleasure and the fun in it whilst still exploring the

subject in a thoughtful way. The notion of something that was

fundamentally going to be an essay film, but also to enjoy, of

looking at ourselves and looking at the history of the images and

the myths we’ve created and why we created them, sustained them. I

was interested in the myth and the way that reflected Western

consciousness as much as it reflected anything about the Pacific,

that reflexivity was something important to the program. 22

I further explored with Lander his notions of audience appeal

when he commissioned Hula Girls in 2003. I asked him why he

thought Hula Girls was a good idea for SBS?

There are so many different elements to that. One is the pleasure

factor, the notion of the joyful, beautiful, sexual subject matter

that would attract people. Then there is the role of popular

culture in that and the way in which the image of Polynesian women

has been represented in popular culture, archival footage. Not only

is it fun to look at and reflect on, but it also opens up those

questions straight away, who is the viewer? Who has created these

images and for what market and what relationship does it have to

actual life experience in this region? So you are getting this

enjoyable journey through popular culture and then also through the

higher end of the art spectrum. And you’re being led through

periods of history that we know our audience is interested in, the

period around the 2nd World War, it absolutely wins every time with

71

our older audience, we know that statistically, and we know it

anecdotally. And I assume that interest would be true in Europe as

well. There were big things about Hula Girls that were going to

succeed with the audience and there were these pleasurable elements

too. 23

Lander also had the SBS charter in mind: increasing the

awareness of diversity of cultures. He offered a

sophisticated view of his commissioning role and SBS’s

broadcaster to broadcaster relationship in choosing to work

with AVRO and ARTE on this project,

It is interesting the notion of Australians mediating a position

between Europe and the Pacific. We are not Europeans and we are not

really of the Pacific. Here was a program that could broker that

history, made by Australians but essentially about Europeans, of

our region but analysing a European mindset. There was also quite a

clear intention in my mind to try and commission more work about

Australia’s relationship to the Pacific and this reflected what

came up in the Keating era, about where we are situated and who we

really are, Europeans in the outpost — thanks to the White

Australia Policy, a European nation in the middle of Asia and also

next to the Pacific. So that interested me a lot and in my view was

completely on charter. 24

Lander’s commissioning raison d’etre wasn’t in the end just

deal-based. He had a well conceived set of commissioning

priorities that he was acting on. He saw a bigger picture of

an Australian program ‘mediating’ and critiquing a European

vision of the South Pacific. Like the European commissioners 72

he too wanted an intelligent program that would rate well

with audiences. The sexy image of Polynesian women was the

potential source of that audience appeal and engagement. But

scantily clad Polynesian women were not sufficient reasons to

commission the program for any of the CEs. The images

required history and analysis to underpin them – a

deconstruction with humour, pleasure and rigour which would

in the end speak about Europeans and their historical

relationship with the South Pacific.

Ten months after Ogilvie first started pitching it, Lander

recommended Hula Girls to the SBSi Board of Management on the

20th of August 2003. His board paper further elaborated his

reasons for commissioning,

Hula Girls is a lush, visual exploration of the origins and evolution

of the sexual mythology that surrounds the Pacific Island woman.

From Gauguin to Once Were Warriors, Hula Girls explores how

representation says as much about the author as it does about the

subject. While the documentary will be playful the subject is

serious — the inter-relationship of art and utopianism, sexuality,

colonialism and the post-colonial landscape. This is a high budget

one-off hour with international partners ZDF/ARTE, AVRO, FFC and

Screenwest. 25

It took many more months of emails and phone calls for the

European broadcasters to finally confirm their presales. By

the time I commenced research and writing in August 2003 the

73

deal with Arte was still being negotiated and Grunert had yet

to decide what feature film they would program with Hula Girls

for their Thema Sunday night schedule. He made preliminary

inquiries about the European broadcast rights for all three

Bounty films, versions made in 1935, 1962 and 1984. Grunert

eventually settled on the 1935 MGM adaptation Mutiny on the

Bounty (Dir. Frank Lloyd) starring Clarke Gable and Charles

Laughton, based on the novel by Charles Nordhoff and James

Norman, which according to Ogilvie was Olaf’s favourite

version. Once the Bounty film was decided upon, Hula Girls was

finally commissioned by Arte. Presale prices were then agreed

with all three broadcasters and deal memos offered. Electric

Pictures (Ogilvie’s company) then made investment funding

submissions to the Australian Film Finance Corporation and

Screenwest (the West Australian state funding agency) for a

budget of $767,968 comprised of the following breakdown:

ScreenWest Amount $110,976

SBSi Amount $110,000

AVRO Amount $ 23,729

ARTE Amount $106,780

Beyond Distribution Amount $ 25,000

FFC Amount $391,483

When I launched into researching and writing Hula Girls I was

doggedly suspicious and concerned about the deal I was

entering into. My thesis research and the exposition of

broadcaster requirements still lay months, and as it turned

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out, years ahead of me. With the benefit of hindsight I could

have been more trusting of what Andrew Ogilvie relayed to me

of his conversations with the three broadcasters. But at that

stage I barely knew him. My director’s brief was entirely

based on the program pitch used to sell the program. And

beyond that I was to find my own way with the story, the

themes and the subject matter. This for me was the exciting

part of this project which enticed me into directing it. I

was virtually given an open research book. I had to find the

characters, locations, archive materials, Hollywood footage,

paintings, prints and drawings that would comprise the

program. At that point I decided to discard the Hula Girls

concept document and start from scratch. It would take many

months of viewing B Grade Hollywood movies, visiting art

galleries, libraries and traveling the world to find people,

places and images. I was on my own grand historical tour. The

challenge was to explore the history and make from it an

engaging piece of television.

Footnotes

1. Scene description from Pagan Love Son, director Robert Alton, Metro-

Goldwyn-Mayer, 1950, transcribed & interpreted for Hula Girls script,

by Trevor Graham, 2004.

2. MIPCOM The World’s Audiovisual Content Market 8-12 October 2007, accessed

6/6/07, www.mipcom.com

3. Ibid.

4. Sturma, M. & Colgan, G. 2002, Island Aphrodite, pitch document,

Electric Pictures, Perth.

75

5. Andrew Ogilvie, producer Hula Girls, interviewed by Trevor Graham

2005.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. Holland first to buy Maria format from BBC Worldwide, BBC Worldwide Press

Releases, 04.12.06. accessed 7/6/07,

www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/bbcworldwide/worldwidestories/pressreleas

es.

9. Wolter Braamhorst, Head of Art and Culture at AVRO, Close Up profile,

Sheffield Documentary Film Festival website, 2006, accessed /6/07/07, www.sheffdocfest.com.

10.Andrew Ogilvie, producer Hula Girls, interviewed by Trevor Graham,

2005.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid.

13.Dr. Christophe Hauser Programme Director , 2006, ARTE Annual Report

2006, Paris, p. 10.

14.Image and Audience Ratings, 2006 ARTE Annual Report 2006, p. 24.

15.Thema – Discovering and Understanding the World, ARTE Annual Report 2006, p 9.

16.Andrew Ogilvie, producer Hula Girls, interviewed by Trevor Graham,

2005)

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid.

20.Ned Lander, Commissioning Editor SBS TV, interviewed by Trevor

Graham, 2007.

21. Ibid.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid.

25.Ned Lander, 2003, SBSI Board paper, 20th August 2003.

76

4.

D’ou venons-nous? Que sommes-nous?

Ou allons-nous?

…. images make history as much as they are made by it…. 1

From the caves of Lascaux to the next Harry Potter, man has

been a storytelling animal. Narrative is part of our DNA. 2

In early December 1897, the French Painter Paul Gauguin had

his second heart attack and thought his death was imminent.

His heart condition was brought on by advanced syphilis which

he’d contracted some years earlier. Despite his poor

condition, Gauguin desired to paint one last great Tahitian

canvas. As on previous occasions, his health crisis soon

passed and he began to paint. But this was to be no ordinary

canvas. He imagined a painting epic in scale and theme,

reflecting his state of mind and his belief that he would

soon die. The intention was to depict his version of a

Polynesian ‘Genesis’, a manifesto embracing many philosophies

and world religions, a landscape filled with things that, in

his own words, “grow nowhere on earth and are only to be

found in paradise”. D’ou venons-nous? Que sommes-nous Ou allons-nous?

77

(Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?) would be more

than 4 metres long, and decidedly rooted (Gauguin believed)

in Tahitian life, customs and culture.

His title was nothing less than the ultimate, impossible riddle all

sentient beings at some point ask themselves, but from which most

recoil in confused despair: D’ou venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Ou

allons-nous? (Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We

Going?) 3

On completion, Gauguin was well aware of the significance of

the work and its place within his Polynesian oeuvre. It drew

together and visualised on rough hewn canvas many of the

philosophical threads, images, ideas and texts he’d been

contemplating since his early days as a painter at Pont Aven

in Brittany. Writing from Tahiti, Gauguin described the

painting and hinted at its meaning in a letter to his friend,

Daniel de Monfried, in Paris.

The two upper corners are chrome yellow, with an inscription on the

left and my name on the right, like a fresco whose corners are

spoiled with age, and which is appliquéd on a golden wall. To the

right at the lower end, a sleeping child and three crouching women.

Two figures dressed in purple confide their thoughts to one

another. An enormous crouching figure, out of all proportion, and

intentionally so, raises its arms and stares in astonishment upon

these two, who dare to think of their destiny. A figure in the

centre is picking fruit. Two cats near a child. A white goat. An

idol, its arms mysteriously raised in a sort of rhythm, seems to

78

indicate the beyond. Then lastly, an old woman nearing death seems

to accept everything, to resign herself to her thoughts. She

completes the story! At her feet a strange white bird, on the bank

of a river in the woods. In the background the ocean, then the

mountains of a neighbouring island. Despite changes of tone , the

colouring of the landscape is constant, either blue or Veronese

green. The naked figures stand out on it in bold orange. If anyone

should tell Beaux-Arts pupils for the Rome competitions: “The

picture you must paint is to represent, Where Do We Come From? What

Are We? Where Are We Going? what would they do? So I have finished

a philosophical work on a theme comparable to that of the gospel” 4

I first became aware of this momentous image when I was

studying HSC art in 1972. I was 17 years old and found the

canvas immensely moving. I have gone back to the image time

and again since then, and it continues to fascinate. I have

had the good fortune to see the work in the flesh on two

occasions, once in Paris at the huge Gauguin Retrospective at

the Grand Palais in 2003, when I was researching Hula Girls. I

subsequently filmed the painting when the same exhibition was

mounted at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 2004. Why does

it have such a hold on me? And why am I citing the canvas

here when I am writing about history, hula girls and

television? Well … it’s a beautiful canvas and beauty is

captivating unto itself. But the work resonates more deeply

than that. Gauguin’s painting unfolds a grand historical

narrative. His ‘Polynesian’ figures are timeless. They occupy

a space simultaneously that is the past, present and future.

79

We spectators are asked to contemplate and enter that space

where we too are timeless, akin to his figures. Like the best

television history, the canvas implores us to enter its space

to identify and empathise with the people depicted, times

gone by, their story. Whilst Tahiti, its people, culture and

landscape resonate in the imagery, the figures are also

universal. It’s a Polynesian ‘Garden of Eden’. But unlike

Adam and Eve, Gauguin’s figures are neither man nor woman; he

paints for the most part androgynous figures, gender is

irrelevant. We are simply human.

If … you want to be someone, to find happiness solely in your

independence and your conscience … you must regard yourself as

Androyne, without sex. By that I mean that heart and soul, in short

all that is divine, must not be the slave of matter, that is, of

the body. 5

The spectator of D’ou venons-nous? is asked ‘to be’ and ‘to

search’ for the answers to the painting’s title, and in that

sense it can be considered an ‘interactive’ viewing

experience. The painting provides a narrative link, engaging

us simultaneously with ancestors, the living, and with future

generations. I cite this here because contemporary television

history programs can and should provide a similar moment of

narrative engagement for their audience if they are to make

their mark on the nightly TV schedule,

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….. it must be about good narrative. Many historians might part

company here, saying that history is not about narrative, it is

about evaluation, it is about evidence, it is about interpretation.

But from Herodotus onwards history has always been about

storytelling and that the best historians have always been those

who can communicate well, not just with other historians but with

the broader community around them. 6

Many years after first studying D’ou venons-nous? I still find

Gauguin’s approach to historical painting and narrative

compelling. The canvas informed the making of Hula Girls and also the

motivation I have in making history programs for a television

audience. It’s an often quoted cliché, but to understand the

present, we need to understand our past. Gauguin stated the

position more gracefully, D’ou venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Ou allons-

nous? As a filmmaker I believe that stories, historical or

contemporary, are important in our lives. They are a way that we

communicate our experience as human beings. They help us

appreciate and understand the world we live in, and what happens

to us, as we journey through our lives. We can even think of our

own life as a story. From the beginning, to the middle, to the

end, it’s the journey that you go on and the most important

(hi)story you will ever know.

In Australia, as in the rest of the world, it seems we can’t

get enough history programming on television, or even within

the broader electronic and print media. Just this year (2007)

the Film Australia 3 part series Constructing Australia attracted

81

million plus viewers to the ABC per episode. SBS has screened

Who Do You think You Are, The Glamour Game and numerous one-off

Australian historical documentaries. The annual Anzac Day dawn

service at Gallipoli attracts a greater following every year

as young Australians seek to identify with that Australian

tragedy. The so called ‘History and Culture Wars’ have put

historical debates on the front pages of our national

newspapers as left and right in Australia battle for ‘truth’

and historical supremacy over our past. This reflects a

world wide trend, a growing interest in knowing about the

past, wanting to discern, ‘Where do we come from?’

In Britain, the late 1990s and early 2000s witnessed what was

widely regarded as an unprecedented interest in history: among

publishers, in the newspapers, on radio and on film, and especially

on television: and from the general public who, it seemed, could

not get enough of it. 7

SBS TV has a popular documentary history strand (for which I

commissioned) As It Happened, which runs 52 weeks of the year.

War stories, particularly from the 2nd World War, rate

consistently well and SBS commissioners jokingly call the

strand ‘the Hitler slot’. A program with ‘Hitler’ in the title

always rated far higher than average with our audiences and

SBS programmers can’t get enough of them.

82

I too am a Hitler aficionado. Like many people of my

generation, my first real taste of television history came

with the British 26 part series, The World at War, produced by

Jeremy Issacs for Thames Television between 1969 and 1973.

The series took four years to research and produce and was

largely composed of recently released archives, interviews

with wartime participants, and compelling narration delivered

by Lawrence Olivier. It premiered on ITV in the UK in 1973,

at a cost of £4 million, a record at the time for a British

television program,

The World at War is the definitive television work on the Second

World War. It set out to tell the story of the war through the

testimony of key participants — from civilians to ordinary

soldiers, from statesmen to generals. First broadcast in 1973, the

result was a unique and irreplaceable record since many of the

eyewitnesses captured on film did not have long to live. 8

I remember watching much of this weighty series with my aging

father who was a WW2 veteran from the Middle East campaign.

Viewing it with him gave me insights into his wartime

experience and created empathy between us. I began to

understand the momentous events he lived through, his search

for solace in alcohol, the arguments and emotional tension

that were a constant in our family life. And so this mutual

viewing experience provided me with both a taste for TV

history and the opportunity to explore the psychology of my

family history, or, where I had come from. It helped me

83

appreciate and understand my father enormously. Given that

the average SBS audience is of my age, 50 plus, it’s perhaps

easy to understand why ‘Hitler’ programs rate well with baby

boomers.

Later on in the 1980s when I began making documentaries this

interest in history, story telling and psychology gelled with

documentaries that I produced and directed, films like; Red

Matildas (1985) about the experiences of communist women in

Australia in the 1930s, or Painting The Town (1987) which

focused on Yosl Bergner, the social realists and Angry

Penguins in wartime Melbourne, or even a later film, Mabo —

Life of an Island Man (1997) which told the biographical (hi)story

of native title campaigner, Eddie ‘Koiki’ Mabo. In my

programs I can trace a line back to that seminal TV viewing

experience of watching World War 2 come to life with my

father.

Kenneth Clarke’s, Civilisation: A Personal View (1969) and Jacob

Bronowski’s, The Ascent of Man (1973) were similarly

groundbreaking documentary series that attracted wide

audiences for television history. I found them gripping to

watch, not to be missed on a Sunday night.

Television history has become very fashionable in recent years. It

has been called the ‘new rock and roll’, the ‘new gardening’, and

even, by Dawn Airely the departing Chief Executive of Channel 5,

84

‘the new sex’. Last week I counted 18 history programs in prime

time on the five UK terrestrial channels. 9

In Australia in the last few years ‘living history’ programs

such as The Colony (SBS 2005) and Outback House (ABC 2005) have

created a local thirst for history programs, creating large

new audiences. ‘Living history’ shuns the archival/interview

approach to story telling and instead throws contemporary

characters into the living circumstances of our ancestors to

see how they cope. And unlike the past, cameras are there

every step of the way to record their character’s journey

through time, the displacement and difficulties encountered.

This approach to history television sometimes borders on the

worst intentions of reality TV, to create drama by immersing

people in extreme circumstances and removing them from their

daily comfort zone. The Colony was successful for SBS greatly

increasing the network’s Sunday night ratings. The ‘Living

history’ style works particularly well for stories that are

located beyond the era of documentation provided by the

moving picture. Similarly, the use of historical re-enactment

in Film Australia’s docu-drama series Constructing Australia

(2007) or the BBC’s Seven Wonders of the Industrial World (2003) has

increased here and internationally, as a way of circumventing

the absence of cinematographic records.

85

For me, the use of reconstructions has freed up history on

television from the tyranny of the archive image. Television can

now evoke periods of history outside the 20th century, and we can

explore topics that no one bothered to film or was able to film at

the time. And we can convey historical detail in an immediate and

relevant way. 10

But making compelling and high rating TV history is not

always dependent on dramatic recreation or ‘Living History’.

The British biopic and social history format, Who Do You Think

You Are? has reinvented ‘traditional archive’ methods of

program making and proven to be popular with BBC and SBS

audiences. Each episode is a personal detective story format

that follows a celebrity as they trace their family origins

back three or four generation, or as far as genealogical

records can go,

Who Do You Think You Are? is a BBC television documentary series,

made by Wall to Wall that started in 2004. In each episode, a

celebrity goes on a journey, in order to try and trace their family

tree. Four series have currently aired and a fifth series will air

in 2008. A sixth series has also been commissioned for broadcast in

2009. The first two series were broadcast on BBC2, and the first

series was the highest-rating program of 2004 on BBC2. Due to the

show's popularity, from the third series onwards episodes were

aired on BBC1. The first series was nominated for ‘Best Factual

Series or Strand’ in the 2005 BAFTAs. 11

86

Local screenings of the UK Who have doubled SBS’s usual

ratings for the Sunday night 7.30pm slot attracting over

600,000 viewers and an audience ratings share of 15%. The SBS

ratings Daily Overview for Sunday 2/12/07 clearly shows the

audience potential for clever historical formats such as Who.

The figures include the 5 City Metro and Aggregate Regional,

- Evening metro share of people 16+ was 8.8%, the second highest

Sun night share result for the year, well above last week (5.1%)

and the YTD average (5.7%).

- Top programs were Who Do You Think You Are? and Dr Tatiana's Sex

Advice for All Creation Rpt.

- Who Do You Think You Are? had an incredible debut with 601,000

viewers (15.8% Metro) (13.8%) Reg) — the highest rating program on

a Sunday night in 5 years. It is also the best-rating SBS program

across all nights of the week in the past 2 months. Who Do You

Think You Are? appealed to a broad audience of People 40+. Viewing

was evenly split between men and women. 12

The Who format shrewdly merges celebrity biography, genealogy

and social history. The series shuns re-enactment relying

entirely on archival records, birth certificates, family

photographs, engravings and moving picture records as it

travels back in time to discover the family origins of their

celebrity characters, such as sporting hero Cathy Freeman, or

actor Jack Thompson, in the Australian series. The popularity

of Who Do You think You Are? in the UK has also sparked an interest

87

in genealogy amongst the general public. The format’s success

testifies to a hunger for history programs that have an

entertainment edge, strong narrative arcs, elements of

discovery for an audience and emotion. It makes for

accessible TV and engagement with social history,

I believe passionately that part of what television history should

be doing is providing a bridge between the academy and the mass

television audience. We should be helping to bring some of the new

understandings, the new insights, the new interpretations, the new

narratives, that professional historians are working on, into the

public domain, where they can be taken in and debated by millions

of people. 13

However history television can and does come with issues and

limitations. David Cannadines’s book of essays History and the

Media (Palgrave MacMillan, 2004) with contributions from

television historians such as Simon Schama, amply elaborates

the fact that sections of academia frown upon populist TV

history. At the centre of the criticism is television’s need

for historical certainty, particularly its need to tell a

story that is linear in nature, with all historical threads

neatly packaged into a neat 52 minute television hour.

History programs don’t easily provide a forum for debate or

expose historical ambiguity or doubt or contradiction. Moving

the story along, ‘next story point’ ‘next turning point’ is

more important in the 52 minute format than counterpoint or

contradiction. The need for narrative, emotion and drama is

88

both the strength and weakness of history program making.

Story, emotion and empathy draw the audiences but they can

also be too simplistic when the history requires depth and

complexity. Can history in fact be packaged as a story? Or is

this yet another construction by a class of producers and

commissioning editors? This debate has also been articulated

in Australia by historian Michelle Arrow from Monash

University. Michelle also has television experience as a

presenter on the ABC’s ‘history detective’ series Rewind

(2004),

History is often about debate and ambiguity. A lot of the time

historical issues can not be answered, it cannot be resolved. But

what happens in television is that it tends to, producers want to

tie it up in a bow, and ‘This is what we think. This is the

answer!’ ‘This skull is really Ned Kelly’s skull’. But the way I as

an historian would approach it would be to ask, ‘Well here is one

interpretation, and here is another. What do you think?’ But that

doesn’t tend to happen in television, because there is a need for a

definitive story. And that’s why historians sometimes get a bit

antsy about television, because the approach is, ‘Can you just give

it to us in three sentences’ and they are usually not very good at

doing things in three sentences and that is sometimes a problem. I

don’t think all historical documentaries should be full of

ambiguity. But I do think that in some programs there should be

more gaps for the audience to fill in things or make up there own

mind. 14

89

Occasionally in the Australian TV landscape documentary

programs that explore historical ambiguity, that allow for

more open ended interpretation, pop up in the nightly TV

schedule. They however tend to be more personal or

biographical in focus, allowing for psychological exploration

of the characters and their historical positioning within

their given epoch and society. In 1999, Tony Ayes Sadness

(Film Australia), won numerous national and international

festival awards. Ayres’s film explores issues of grief,

family and identity through an adaptation of a stage play (of

the same name) by acclaimed Sydney photographer William Yang.

The narrative of Yang’s Chinese Australian family unfolds

through a mesmerizing and poetic use of ‘Hollywood style’

rear projection. Parallel with this family narrative is the

time frame of a later epoch, and Yang’s sense of personal

loss, during the AIDS epidemic of the 80s and 90s. The two

narratives counterpoint each other creating an interior view

of Yang’s family, friends and the evolution of Australian

society over the span of the photographer’s life. The

imaginative style of the film also eschews the historical

certainty of more traditional history programs. The playful

use of rear projection to depict ‘the past’, combined with

Yang’s Sydney ‘gay society’ photographs creates a space for

an audience to ponder and search through the narrative layers

to find meaning. This style strongly encourages emotional

90

identification with Yang, his non Anglo background and the

high emotion of the AIDS epidemic.

The issues of narrative, empathy and the ‘novelisation’ of

history are also hotly debated topics amongst academic

historians in Australia. In 2006, author Kate Grenville and

her novel The Secret River became the focus of scrutiny and attack

by academic historians particularly Melbourne-based Inga

Clendinnen. Grenville’s novel depicts early 19th century

frontier life and conflict on the Hawkesbury River which was

then a frontier land in the newly established colony of New

South Wales. The central character, William Thornhill, is a

freed convict who ‘settles’ on prime river front acreage, the

home of the Darug clan who have occupied their land for

thousands of years and the Darug refuse to give up their land

without a fight. The novel, the ensuing conflict and its

characters are a fusion of researched historical accounts by

Grenville with her own narrative ‘imagined’ writings about

frontier life. Clendinnen in her 2006 Quarterly Essay The

History Question: Who Owns The Past? took Grenville to task

particularly the novelist’s claim that she could create

empathy in her writing to enter the ‘mindset’ of historical

figures and inhabit their experience,

So here we have it: Grenville’s secret method of penetrating

British minds — although not aboriginal ones, which must remain

forever closed to us — is Applied Empathy: the peculiar talent of

91

the novelist to penetrate other minds through exercising her

imagination upon fragmentary, ambiguous, sometimes contradictory

evidence …….. We cannot post ourselves back in time. People really

did think differently then — or at least we must proceed on that

assumption. 15

Grenville defended her approach to writing The Secret River by

arguing for a space in which novelists can employ their

narrative skills and imagination to create empathy with

historical incidents, characters and thereby draw readers in,

or engage them with the past,

It was important to me that the incidents and characters were

solidly based on history, but as a novelist I drew on these

historical sources loosely, as a starting-point for the work of the

imagination. The final events and characters meld many historical

references together - they're fiction, but they're based on fact

…….. The historians are doing their thing, but let me as a novelist

come to it in a different way, which is the way of empathising and

imaginative understanding of those difficult events. 16

Similar claims and arguments can be made about television’s

use of documentary history programs, particularly the recent

fashion for dramatized history employing dialogue. Unless it

is based on documented records how can we know what Prime

Minister Harold Holt said to his house keeper moments before

he took his fateful swim at Cheviot Beach in 1967. Where did

this dialogue come from in the ABC’s The Prime Minister is Missing?

We will never know for sure, but one assumes these words are

92

what the filmmaker imagined was spoken. Artistic license is

employed to create a ‘real’ sense of the sequence of events.

But how ‘real’ is it? Audiences are left to deal with these

issues on their own. There are no footnotes on television.

But a different type of ‘historical space’ can be argued for

television documentary that employs archival materials, film

photographs, documents and eyewitness participants. In these

programs there is ‘documentary evidence’ to build the

narrative and the claim to represent the ‘real’. What

television history in these instances does best is to create

drama, emotion and empathy — engagement that is grounded in

‘reality’ via the ‘archive’ and the ‘witness’. For instance a

bond was created with my father when we watched the World at

War together. The archival/interview series appealed across

the age gap creating compassion for the World War 2

generation on both sides of the conflict. When I was

directing Mabo — Life of an Island Man in 1996, my main task was to

create audience empathy with Eddie Mabo his family and the

people of Murray Island, by personalising Mabo’s story and

his historic land rights struggle. I wanted an audience to

identify with Mabo’s notion of owning a pocket of land which

had been handed down to him since time immemorial. The film’s

success in Australia and abroad indicates that there is a

need and willingness amongst all people to embrace

93

reconciliation and social justice, if stories touch them

personally.

Dr. Michelle Arrow as both historian and TV presenter puts

forward a view that empathy and identification are not only

important for television audiences, but also fundamental for

history students and the search for historical meaning and

complexity,

There has to be a place for emotion in history story telling

television, because otherwise how are you developing empathy for

history if you have no emotion. Empathy is that thing. The syllabus

emphasises it now, and students must develop the skill of empathy

to think about how it must have been in the past. Identification is

important for historical film and television and are also important

for written history too. The whole debate about the ‘History Wars’,

about Keith Windschuttle was, the thing that most people were

surprised or disapproving about his work was its lack of empathy.

It doesn’t have to be full of compassion, you don’t have to write

sympathy letters to the past, but his lack of sense of you know,

‘Only 112 people were killed in this period so that’s OK’. Oh my

God. He used the word ‘only’. This sense that it doesn’t matter and

so that lack of compassion. Empathy is part of being ethical it’s

reading the sources sensitively and presenting them in a way that

doesn’t distort their meaning and allows you to read the emotion

and the complexity in that. The past is different to the present

it’s not something you can recapture. But empathy is one way of

making people feel they have some understanding of what happened in

the past and why it matters now. 17

94

The desire to create empathy also lay at the heart of

Gauguin’s D’ou venons-nous? Gauguin was asking Europeans of the

day to accommodate Tahitian customs, culture, history and

beliefs within the heritage of European art traditions and

values. He was stating to Parisian and European art worlds

that Polynesian culture is of equal value, worthy of

consideration and to be admired. Equating D’ou venons-nous? with

the Gospel, as Gauguin did in his 1898 letter to Daniel de

Monfried, was radical if not heretical for the time,

Gauguin’s partial success in prising open the closed gate of race

was to be one of his major achievements during his years in

Polynesia. On the one hand Gauguin is bringing Tahiti and Tahitian

women into the fold of Europe and the French empire. But on the

other he is saying to the French and to Europe, these people and

their cultural traditions and beliefs have power and value in their

own right. 18

D’ou venons-nous? also neatly fits Simon Schama’s view that,

images make history as much as they are made by it. 19

Hula Girls too is about that historical paradigm. My brief was

to explore the images of Polynesian women created by

Europeans, how and why she has been depicted since the first

contact by navigators Bougainville and Cook in the late 18th

century. The program was based in drawing together the

historical images, creating a narrative about images and how

95

they have perpetuated themselves and made history in their

own right. Unlike much recent television history biased

towards historical re-enactment, this was a program firmly

rooted in archival imagery, prints, paintings, cinema records

and Hollywood’s representations. The images themselves are

the story — an account of the past and present of

colonialism, sex, fantasy and myth making — a fable of the

European mind.

However before I plunged too deeply into researching and

writing Hula Girls there were two major hurdles to overcome, one

was my own fear of making the program. Linked to that was my

director’s contract and signing up to work for three

international broadcasters. Prior experience was saying

‘beware!’

Footnotes:

1. Schama, S. 2004, Television and the Trouble with History, History and the Media,

edited by Cannadine, D. Palgrave MacMillan, Hampshire, Chpt 2, p.

25.

2. Robert McCrum The Observer, quoted in Bringing the Past to the Small Screen,

Taylor Downing 2004, History and the Media, edited by Cannadine, D.

Palgrave MacMillan, Hampshire, Chpt 1, p. 19.

3. Sweetman D. 1995, Paul Gauguin – A Complete Life, Hodder & Stoughton,

London, p. 454.

4. Letter to Daniel de Monfried, from Paul Gauguin, February 1898,

quoted in Gauguin’s Skirt, Eisenman S. 1997, Thames & Hudson, New

York, p. 137.

96

5. Paul Gauguin: Letters to his Wife and Friends, Malingue, M. ed., Steening, H.

tr., 1946 Saturn Press, London, p.103.

6. Downing T. 2004, Bringing the Past to the Small Screen, History and the Media,

edited by Cannadine, D. Palgrave MacMillan, Hampshire, Chpt 1, p.

19.

7. Cannadine, D. ed. 2004, History and the Media, Introduction, Palgrave

MacMillan, Hampshire, p. 1.

8. The World At War, accessed 10/12/2007,

www.randomhouse.co.uk/worldatwar

9. Downing, T.2004, Bringing the Past to the Small Screen, History and the Media,

edited by Cannadine, D. Palgrave MacMillan, Hampshire, Chpt 1, p.

7.

10.Ibid P. 7.

11.Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopaedia, accessed 12/12/07,

www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Do_You_Think_You_Are.

12.Daily Overview (SBS ratings) Sunday 2/12/07.

13.Downing, T. 2004, Bringing the Past to the Small Screen, History and the Media,

edited by Cannadine, D. Palgrave MacMillan, Hampshire, Chpt 1, P.

16.

14.Dr. Michelle Arrow, Associate Lecturer, Department of Modern

History, Macquarie University, interviewed by Trevor Graham , 2006.

15. Clendinnen, I. 2006, The History Question – Who Owns the Past? ,

Quarterly Essay, Issue 23, p.7.

16.Grenville, K. The Secret River, accessed 25/10/08,

http://www.users.bigpond.com/kgrenville/TSR/TSR.html.

17.Dr. Michelle Arrow, Associate Lecturer, Department of Modern

History, Macquarie University, interviewed by Trevor Graham 2006.

18.Stephen Eisenman, Professor of Art History, Northwestern University

Illinois, interviewed by Trevor Graham, Hula Girls transcripts 2004.

19.Schama, S. 2004, Television and the Trouble with History, History and the Media,

edited by Cannadine, D. Palgrave MacMillan, Hampshire, Chpt 2, p.

25.

97

98

5.

Co-production BluesTo elucidate the difficulties of Australian producers working

on co-productions in the international arena and to contrast

the relatively smooth path of Hula Girls, it’s necessary to look

back to some of the recent developments of co-production in

this country. I also wish to examine a prior co-production

experience that provides a personal framework for my initial

concerns and reticence about writing and directing Hula Girls.

When the Australian Documentary Conference (as it was then

known) was launched in 1987, one of its principal aims was to

promote Australian Documentary and documentary filmmakers in

the international arena. The founding board of directors, I

was one of them, decided to invite a range of international

guests, filmmakers, commissioning editors and distributors.

The ADC board felt that Australian documentary makers were

not sufficiently engaged with the growing international

market for documentary. There was an increasing range of

broadcasters, such as Channel 4 in the UK (founded in 1982)

hiring Commissioning Editors and opening their doors to

independent producers to make quality programs for them. The

BBC was also starting to commission independent work. In

Australia too the ABC had commissioned a tiny number of

independent documentaries in the mid 80s and at the time of

99

the first conference they were in the throes of establishing

a documentary commissioning unit headed by Jonathon Holmes

and Harry Bardwell. SBS Independent was yet to be

established, but the multi-cultural broadcaster was

occasionally working with a number of outside producers.

Since the inaugural conference in 1987 much has changed, the

independent documentary community has grown immeasurably. SBS

has abolished all internal production, with the exception of

sport and news, and now commissions all its local documentary

production from the independent sector. The ABC likewise has

moved towards what they call ‘outsourcing’ and gradually

dismantled its internal documentary producing units, with the

exception of their religion and ethics strand, Compass and

their flagship Indigenous strand Message Stick. Throughout this

same period AIDC has become grander and more ‘international’,

having changed its name to the Australian International

Documentary Conference. Each conference since the first has

pursued the cause of fostering Australian producer

participation in worldwide co-production by inviting overseas

commissioning editors and delegations of filmmakers. Each

year a forum along the lines IDFA and Hot Docs provides an

opportunity for local producers to pitch their ideas to

invited Commissioning Editor guests. This ‘international

push’ also extends to the Conference promoting schemes for

national broadcasters to work with their foreign counter

parts. At the 2005 Conference TV 2 (Denmark) and SBSi held a

100

pitching competition, ‘Pitch and Punt’ calling for

documentary proposals with relevance to ‘Danish and

Australian audiences which focused on hard hitting

controversial and compelling international stories dealing

with topical social, political and ethical issues’. This

followed on from a similar pitching format presented by AIDC

in 2004, where the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and

Arte France agreed to jointly finance the development of a

documentary project, to the value of AUD $10,000.

As well as these pitching competitions AIDC has held numerous

panel discussions aimed at developing co-production, Common

Ground — New Horizons (2005), French kiss (2007), International Co-

productions (2007) and United Nations (2008) ‘a strand for those

who are active in the international market and keen to

discuss issues and problems that arise in the world of co-

productions’. Whilst this push to expand co-production

possibilities for Australian producers is to be lauded, AIDC

has also acknowledged through its panels that it’s a business

fraught with pitfalls as was evident at a session in 2006

titled, Versioning for the International Market,

More facts! No, more emotion! More pace! No, more local insight! Oh

and more Americans! In TV, can one size fit all? Not if you intend

to produce for the international market it can't. So come and hear

how to squeeze the budget, tighten the schedule, re-cut the rushes

and generally negotiate your way through several versions of your

own beloved film. The nitty-gritty will be revealed by a team who

101

together recently turned-out four versions of the ambitious feature

doc Bom Bali to satisfy the demands of Network Ten, Sky (UK),

Discovery USA and Discovery Asia. 1

It’s generally acknowledged that co-productions bring bigger

budgets, provide an opportunity to tell international

stories, reach large global audiences and are a necessary

means by which Australian producers can grow and sustain

their businesses. Co-pros also provide documentary producers,

directors and writers the opportunity to expand their skill

set as they must think about an ‘international audience’ and

how they can engage them in the narrative, to be

‘international’ in their story telling. Success on the global

stage with broadcasters can also lead to greater receptivity

by Commissioning Editors to a producer’s ideas as

relationships build. There is also the possibility of

developing co-production business partnerships with

international producers who have close contact with their own

local broadcasters. Treaty arrangements have been established

between the Australian Film Commission and France, Germany,

Canada and the UK to facilitate these international co-

productions. There is a lot to be gained by an Australian

producer who can successfully operate worldwide.

But there is also a down side to this market place. Bigger

budgets can be eaten up by the need to produce different

versions, there can be lengthy delays in getting approvals

102

for rough and fine cuts and most importantly there are often

different editorial considerations, regarding both content

and style. International broadcasters on the whole prefer

programs to be narrated and for narration to comprise at

least 50% of the completed program. This is particularly

important in Europe and other non-English speaking markets

where a narration track can be revoiced into a local language

and also where dubbing talking heads is preferred to

subtitling. Some broadcasters particularly, cable networks,

ask that expert interviewees are not supered with graphics,

to tell audiences who they are, and prefer instead the

information to be relayed via narration. This requires a

substantially different approach to writing narration and

also has a flow on affect for program length. Broadcasters

have different ‘TV Hour’ standards too, varying from anything

between 45 and 52 minutes. Then there are cultural

differences. ‘Parochialism’, as Lucy Milne pointed out in

Chapter 2, can be an issue. Information or ‘exposition’ in a

story about Australia may work for an Australian audience but

not internationally for an audience that knows little, or

nothing about Australia or for that matter South East Asia

and the Pacific. Geography needs to be spelt out very clearly

for US audiences. American broadcasters also tend to want a

narration style that tells an audience everything, ‘tell the

audience you are going to tell them, tell them, and then tell

103

them what you’ve told them’ is the oft quoted cliché about

writing factual programs for US and cable television.

As a Commissioning Editor at SBS I was involved in

commissioning several large international co-productions. One

of them, a three part science series, Cracking the Colour Code

(Dir. Hugh Piper, 2008) brought together 11 international

broadcast partners to finance the series, potentially an

editorial nightmare. Fortunately most of these broadcasters

had a minor financial input and therefore no editorial rights

which would otherwise prove too impractical. Co-productions

can come unstuck if there isn’t sufficient dialogue between

the broadcaster, the producer and the director to ensure that

the production team are aware of the broadcaster’s needs and

expectations. I put this down to a failure by the producer

‘to lead’ the production team and ensure that the

commissioned program is delivered to the required editorial

standards.

Co-productions have also proven difficult because the

broadcasters can’t agree about the totality of the editorial

content in a program therefore requiring radically different

versions to be produced, at a cost often not budgeted for. I

have also witnessed a high degree of intervention by a US

Commissioning Editor over story issues in a rough cut,

including the writing skills of the director, the focus of

104

the story and the amount of talking heads employed. After a

failure of the director to meet the US broadcaster’s

requirements the director was sacked from the production and

the program was completed by the producer. I have seen

potential directors knocked back because they are considered

too risky and or lacking the necessary experience OR, their

prior work was viewed as ‘boring’.

Clearly co-production work is a tricky business for

producers. But it is equally fraught for writer/directors

such as I was on Hula Girls. I was terribly apprehensive about

directing the program because of a prior co-production

experience. In 1996 I wrote and directed a program for Film

Australia, Mystique of the Pearl. The documentary was commissioned

locally by the ABC and also by the prestigious PBS (USA)

science strand Nova based in Boston, the local network known

as WGBH,

Here at NOVA, we believe that science is neither sacred lore nor

secret ritual, but rather curious people exploring interesting

questions. NOVA's approach, developed over more than a quarter

century, is to select a topic of great interest to viewers and then

produce a film that is as entertaining as it is informative, using

the tools of good pacing, clear writing, and crisp editing. Equally

important, NOVA shows the human story behind the science story.

Whether exploring a galaxy or an atom, the series delves into the

personalities responsible for the discoveries, and the social

consequences of events in the lab. Our success is also a tribute to

our viewers (more than six million per week, on average, in the

105

U.S. alone), who have always shown themselves hungry for

uninterrupted, hour-long programs on a single topic, presented

without the sensationalism of commercial TV. 2

Nova commissioned ‘Mystique’ for $US150,000 which in 1996, with

a low Australian dollar, was a serious amount of money. It

was difficult and rare in those days to get a commitment from

a US broadcaster at all. Still is. The program was pitched

to Nova and the ABC by a Film Australia executive producer,

as a ‘hybrid science program’ incorporating, technology,

history and fashion,

Few fashion tends have endured like pearls. For centuries, humans

puzzled over the mystery of how one of nature’s most lowly

creatures — the oyster — could produce the most beautiful and

perfect on nature’s creations. Mystique of the Pearl tells the

intriguing story of how the oyster’s scret was discovered — from

the early success of the Chinese who learnt how to grow pearly

Bhuddas within a mussel shell, to the breakthrough pearl-culturing

experiments of Kokichi Mikimoto at the turn of the century, and the

sophisticated aquaculture techniques of today’s pearl producers.

Today’s cultured pearls are bigger, better and just as elegant as

their natural forebears. The world’s largest and finest cultured

pearls are produced in the warm waters stretching from north west

Australia to Tahiti. A necklace of large, perfect South Sea pearls

recently sold for more than two million dollars. 3

The original idea was mine. I’d first pitched it to Film

Australia as a fusion of science, science history, high

fashion, art, social history and technology. The fashion

106

angle which was to be shot along New York’s Fifth Avenue, in

fine jewelers such as Tiffany and Harry Winston, was of equal

interest to me as the science of Australian pearl culturing.

Australian pearl producers like Paspaley, operating in the

Kimberly in West Australia, manufacture the best, most

perfect and expensive pearls in the world. I wanted to know

why, and then how these gems were transformed in New York

into million dollar plus necklaces, to adorn Hollywood stars

and the likes of Ivana Trump.

A script was produced for the two broadcasters and together

with the Film Australia EP, I travelled to New York to meet

with the Nova Commissioning Editors at the Plaza Hotel in New

York. After more than 10 years in the industry I was working

internationally at last, on a big budget, blue chip

documentary. The discussions went well, though the Nova CEs

soon began to pull apart my script. ‘How and why’ was the

basis of most of their criticism. There wasn’t enough science

or information about the process of natural pearl formation

within an oyster. They wanted ‘hard science’, less history

and definitely less fashion. They made it very clear that

Nova was ‘a prestigious and serious science strand.’

After a rewrite taking several weeks to complete the new

draft was approved by the ABC and Nova. Months later I was in

production shooting at Tiffany, along 5th Avenue, in Toba,

107

Japan and the Kimberley. I was experiencing the highs, I

thought, of international co-production.

Then my joy came seriously unstuck. On the completion of the

rough cut Nova were sent a time-coded VHS tape. So too were

the ABC, who were quick to respond. Overall the ABC was

happy. The program needed greater focus on the story and

themes (a common critique of most rough cuts) extra

information here and there. But overall the ABC felt the

story had too much science. They wanted a ‘sexier’ program;

fashion, jewellery and history were the CE’s main interests.

Finally just over two weeks later, Nova responded and my

nightmare began. A fourteen page fax arrived from Boston with

time codes listed and a scene by scene, blow by blow critique

of the program. For Nova there was way too much fashion, an

over emphasis on pearling history and too little science, ‘real’

science explaining ‘How and Why’. Talking heads were also an

issue, there were too many of them in the program. According

to Nova the story displayed a commercial bias towards

Australian pearl producers. We were accused of denigrating

the Japanese because we had shown how their industry and the

quality of their product were in decline, due to over farming

and poor environmental management. And to boot Nova were

concerned that some of the fashion scenes were ‘sexist’. In

one scene we had beautiful 1920s archive footage of Josephine

Baker, a well known pearl wearer, sporting a string of pearls

108

and nothing else. In another scene, via narration, we had

equated a woman wearing pearls with ‘sex appeal’. This theme

in our edit was backed up in interviews with the Fashion

Editor of Harpers Bazaar and a fashion historian. Our

equation of sex appeal and pearls was way too much for these

politically correct Bostonians. Twin set and pearls were the

order of the day! My producer, Megan Mc Murchy, a well known

‘feminist’ filmmaker, who produced the ground breaking 1980s

documentary, For Love or Money (Dirs. Megan Mc Murchy, Jenni

Thornley, Margot Nash & Margot Oliver, 1983) a history of

women and work in Australia, took this criticism with

clenched teeth and gnarled her way back to the cutting room

to discuss the fax with myself and editor Denise Haslem. Our

bottom lips trembled as we waded through Nova’s rough cut

comments. Whilst we were devastated, we eventually took it in

our stride, as one must, and produced rough cut number two

with Nova’s needs in mind.

At that stage Film Australia should have decided to produce

two versions of the program as the broadcasters’ needs were

so divergent. ‘It wasn’t budgeted for. Do another cut for

Nova and we will convince the ABC to cop it’, was Film

Australia’s response. So we set about making further changes,

including CGI scenes (unbudgeted for) that showed the

formation and growth of a natural peal within an oyster’s

body. We thought this would surely appease and enhance the

109

American’s need for science. After three more weeks of

editing, we were now seriously over schedule, we delivered

rough cut number two with more science, more information,

fewer talking heads and the ‘sexy scenes’ altered and in some

instances deleted. We even brought in a writer to compose a

Nova style narration, ‘tell the audience you are going to

tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you’ve told

them’.

The ABC however was aghast at rough cut number two! ‘This was

not the program we commissioned’. Nova remained unhappy too,

there was still insufficient science for them and they were

not prepared to accommodate the ABC’s different expectations.

This further devastating news was again delivered several

weeks after the tape was sent to Boston, thus causing further

blowouts in our schedule and budget. We were now six weeks

over schedule. I was on a fixed contract, a finite amount of

money and contracted to produce one version only for both

broadcasters.

With the ABC unwilling to approve this rough cut Film

Australia were now forced to face the reality of producing

two versions and paying fully for them. This provided some

relief and was an acknowledgement of what I had been

canvassing since Nova’s rejection of our first rough cut.

Denise Haslem and I now went back to rough cut number one and

110

produced a fine cut of that for the ABC. I then pulled out of

the project with Film Australia’s agreement. I had commenced

making another Film Australia project, Mabo —Life of an Island

Man, to which the ABC had also committed a presale. My

producer Megan McMurchy undertook to complete the Nova

version of Mystique of the Pearl in consultation with myself.

Several more weeks went by with more faxes arriving over

night from Boston. The impasse continued. Eventually, Nova

decided to accept a cut and also asked for a complete copy of

the rushes. They then completed their own edit, wrote their

own narration, changed the program to suit their

requirements, editorially and stylistically.

The ABC were in the end happy with the version that we

completed for them and so too were Nova with their program,

which they called, The Perfect Pearl. The show rated well in the

US and was last screened by Nova in March 2007. It has had a

broadcast life on PBS of more than ten years. I was still

credited as the director, even though I can barely recognise

the Nova version of my own program. I have a huge publicity

booklet from the program’s screenings on PBS across all 52

American states.

Nova today has fortunately changed their commissioning modus

operandi. They now prefer to take a rough cut and delivery of

copies of the camera tape originals, and from these two

111

elements edit their own completed program. Given their strict

and perhaps unique ‘science’ requirements, it is a much

simpler mode of commissioning, ensuring the end product is

what they want and how they want it.

This first experience of international co-production was a

baptism by fire, as it can be for many Australian producers.

So when Andrew Ogilvie rang me to check my interest and

availability for directing Hula Girls my alarm bells rang

loudly. He pitched to me, a history essay piece, for three

broadcasters, only one version planned and budgeted for. As

outlined in earlier chapters I had huge reservations about

the intentions of the commissioning broadcasters, believing

they wanted a program focused on ‘sex and exoticism’. And

those fears were matched equally with concerns about the

number of versions that I could be required to direct to

complete my contract. Ogilvie however was emphatic. Based on

his conversations with the broadcasters one version would fit

all requirements. ‘At least, I thought after speaking with

him, ‘they want the same program length, 52 minutes’.

Whilst I was reluctant to take on the project I was very much

at a loose end at the time. I hadn’t worked for 5 months, I’d

applied for several high profile industry jobs and not been

successful. Money and self-esteem were becoming an issue. So

after several more weeks of phone conversations with Ogilvie,

112

I finally agreed to accept the project. At least I now had a

potential income to accompany my co-production blues.

The next crucial stage involved negotiating a contract that

would give me adequate protection if the versioning nightmare

erupted again. However in good faith, perhaps I was fool

hardy, I had already commenced researching the project before

my contract was finally negotiated. My bargaining position

was therefore not strong and it took several more weeks to

work through my contractual concerns. I sent Ogilive an email

in response to the writer/director’s contract he’d sent me:

Andrew, I would like an additional two clauses stated in my contract,

something like the following. Please let’s discuss:

a. The Director is engaged by the production company to produce one

version of the film only, based on the treatment, consultations

with the Producer and co-production broadcasters at rough cut and

fine cut stages of editing. In the event of more than one broadcast

version of the film being required and major changes to the edit,

storyline and narration, the Producer agrees to pay an additional

weekly fee of $AUS 1,500 for extra work and time required to

produce other broadcast versions. Minor changes to the narration

script are excluded.

b. If international broadcaster approval delays occur at rough cut and

fine cut stages, and the delays amount to more than two consecutive

weeks, the Producer agrees to pay a ‘holding fee’ to the director

of $AUS 750 per week. 4

113

I was trying to protect myself and ensure that I wouldn’t be

working extra weeks without some form of compensation. I also

wanted all the potential versioning elements spelt out in the

contract in detail. Ogilvie’s come back to me was centered on

trust regarding his management style, judgment, broadcaster

relationship and his view that one version of the picture cut

would be satisfactory, given his discussions with

broadcasters about the program’s content. He acknowledged

there may need to be amendments, not substantial, to the

narration track, but this would not affect us too greatly as

the program would be revoiced in France and the Netherlands

anyway and the broadcasters could look after any changes.

Ogilvie would also ensure that there weren’t significant

approval delays at rough cut and fine cut, he would keep in

constant contact with the three Commissioning Editors as to

our progress and post-production schedule. He seemed and

proved to be genuine about this aspect of the schedule.

My position was also somewhat untenable. I had to be honest

with myself, I was taking up this negative position purely

because of my bad Nova experience. Eight years had passed

since then, it was time to move on and get over it. And then

Ogilvie, to his credit, cut me some slack and a financial

inducement to sign. He offered a higher fee if I would let go

of the clauses that I’d asked for in the contract. He also

agreed to hire a writer to co-write the narration track if at

114

rough and fine cut I thought this was needed. To my mind if

three different narration versions were required by the

broadcasters, this would take the pressure off, at a time in

the production cycle where you can start to feel exhausted.

We also then settled on the following contractual clauses

that further helped to massage my fears,

5. c. Prior to commencement of production of the Film, the

production company will inform the Company (my company) and the

Director as to the following in relation to the Film:

(i) any rights of approval contractually reserved to any person

other than the Production Company;

(ii) the proposed below-the-line budget of the Film and any

limitations thereof; and

(iii) program duration and versions that are required, together

with versioning requirements of any broadcaster, distributor

and/or investors involved in the Film, to the extent that any

of the above are within the reasonable knowledge of the

Production Company at that particular stage of production. 5

Trying to spell out the elements of versioning in advance was

important, rather than having it all come up at the backend

of post production. I also agreed in the contract to allow

for versioning as a result of: censorship requirements,

credit duration, use of graphics to explain locations and

‘introductory narration in lieu of superimposition of

interviewee names and titles’. With the exception of the last

point, which could cause quite large writing and duration 115

complications, I considered these to be minor and also a

necessary part of dealing with all broadcasters.

We finally arrived at a point in our negotiations where I

felt comfortable with the way in which Ogilvie had set up the

production and I could sign the contract. It had taken many

months of discussion to achieve this. Whilst I was now

emotionally and contractually committed to the project, demon

doubts still lingered about the project, the broadcasters,

and working with a new producer. Was I embarking again on a

Nova style nightmare? The first test would come after I

delivered a script to Ogilvie, fulfilling my first

contractual obligation. But just how would it be received?

Footnotes:

1. AIDC Program, 2006, Australian International Documentary

Conference.

2. Nova's Approach, accessed 12/1/08, www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova.

3. Mystique of the Pearl, 1996, synopsis VHS cover, Film Australia.

4. Email Trevor Graham to Andrew Ogilvie, 29/9/2003.

5. Hula Girls Directors Contract, Electric Pictures, October 2003.

116

6.

Searching for the Nubile

Savage

She was to all intent my little wife; I loved her truly. And yet

there was a great gulf between us – a gate forever shut. She was a

little savage; between us two who were one flesh there was a

radical difference of race and utter divergence of views on the

first elements of things. If my ideas and conceptions were often

impenetrably dark to her, so were hers to me …. 1

Hula Girls was not an idea that sprang from my imagination, or

my desire to explore this particular aspect of South Pacific

and Polynesian history. It was an idea brought to me by a

producer who had picked up the idea from an academic book by

Michael Sturma, South Sea Maidens, Western Fantasy and Sexual Politics in

the South Pacific. I was a ‘hired gun’, a writer-director coming to

a film that was essentially a producer-broadcaster and deal

lead project. However, once I accepted the gig I launched

myself into it and I was speedily hooked on the topic of hula

and Polynesian women.

The image of the hula girl has evolved through time to be

centre stage in contemporary tourism. It’s an image that

117

resonates broadly in our consciousness, whether by way of the

many Elvis and other movies that has exploited her image, or

her presence in popular music, post cards, tourist kitsch and

advertising. The image of the scantily clad, beautiful, lei-

wearing Polynesian women is intensely associated with the

South Pacific as an ‘invitation to paradise’. The quest of my

research for the program, was to find the origins of this

sexualised representation of the Polynesian woman; to ask

was, ‘she’ ‘real’ or ‘myth’ and to explore ‘her’ enduring

allure, throughout two hundred and fifty years of history,

Inga Clendinnen’s notion that,

A successful myth only grows more potent with exploitation. 2

The companion challenge for researching this document was to

make clear the allure of the hula girl representation as a

motivation for commissioning and attract audience ratings for

co-production broadcaster partners.

I commenced working on this project in my usual fashion, by

asking myself these questions, ‘What’s the story?’ and

‘What’s the style?’ But I could only meaningfully begin to

find the answers to these fundamental questions in my

research. To make the Hula Girls story, to hopefully thrill an

audience, to present them with new ideas about the Pacific,

to draw the threads of history together, to create empathy -

this is what documentary filmmaking is all about.

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Andrew Ogilvie and I decided at this stage to change the name

of the project to Hula Girls. It was more catchy, had the

prerequisite sexiness which the broadcasters wanted and most

importantly in my mind it relied on a ‘popular culture’ icon

as a draw card for the program. I was initially concerned

about the new title being used to cover story content in

Tahiti and French Polynesia where the hula has never been

part of traditional culture. However I let go of this concern

as my thoughts about the program evolved in the research and

I increasingly focused on the representation of Hawaiian

women in Hollywood and popular culture.

I often say that researching a film is the best part of

filmmaking, because at this moment I meet new people, I visit

places and find fresh ideas about the film I want to make.

It’s a process of discovery that is invigorating. Via the

research I begin to test my ideas, gain insights and begin to

see a story and scenes emerging from an idea. The research

stage is also the least costly component of film production

so I take my time and cast the net widely. I won’t rush it! I

keep exploring and asking myself, ‘What’s the story I want to

tell and how can I make it? What will I need? Who will I need

and where must I go to make my film?’ I know when I’ve

completed my research because I am confident about answering

these questions for myself. At that point I can confidently

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and enthusiastically discuss the story, why I am making it,

what the underlying themes are, the subtext, where it will be

filmed and most importantly who the characters are. Only when

I feel I have arrived at this point can I say, ‘I’ve done

enough research!’

I also have what I call my ‘Documentary Idea Check List’

which I test myself with. They are the most frequently asked

questions by Commissioning Editors and Executive Producers

from television networks, when they evaluate story ideas

presented to them.

1. Is the idea strangely compelling? Beyond mere entertainment and

diversion?

2. Is there something important at stake? Hopes and dreams to be

fulfilled or lost? Danger to be confronted or averted? A wrong

to be righted?

3. Will we meet interesting characters, truly memorable people who

stand for something, who are doing something?

4. Is there a strong story line? Is it a witnessed story? A told

story? Does it have a beginning, middle and closure, an end?

5. Do we care about the people in the story? Do we feel happiness,

sadness, anger, empathy, and solidarity? Do we share in the

humour and pathos?

6. Is it agenda setting? Will people talk about it and the issues

that it raises after it has been broadcast?

7. Does the program have a sense of authorship? Do we hear/see the

voice of the filmmaker coming through?

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8. Who is the target audience? Will it rate well with them? Will it

be accessible? Will it avoid elitism? Will it speak to those who

don’t agree, or merely annoy them?

9. Is it an easy idea which anyone could make (and probably has

made)? Is it something special, which needs dedication,

intelligence, integrity, effort, sympathy and special access to

make?

10. Is the idea imaginative, novel, a new look? Does it work against

expectations? Or is it safe? 3

Researching Hula Girls was a mammoth undertaking that took six

months. The program I was planning to make would be an

eclectic mix of Pacific and European history, travel and art

history, cinema and photographic history, anthropology and

popular culture. So I had to develop a degree of expertise

across a broad field of disciplines to navigate my way

through and chart a map for the script.

Finding the story for the film and the interview talent who

would appear was uppermost in my mind. So I started with the

first European records of Polynesian women to be found in the

dairies and journals of navigators, and historical texts

written about Captains Wallis, Bougainville and Cook. This

led me to many potential ‘expert’ interviewees: academics,

historians, journalists and writers who had studied and

written extensively on Pacific history, popular culture,

South Seas cinema and tourism. Among them was Neil Rennie,

Reader in English at University College London, who answered

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my question about the historical origins of the hula girl

image at the heart of my story,

The fundamental beginning of the idea of the South Sea maiden, I

call her the nubile savage, is Bougainville, the boarding of his

ship, La Boudeuse, by a young beautiful Tahitian girl whom he

described as being like a nouvelle Venus, a new Venus. And as the

sailors are letting down their anchor, she lets fall her pareu in

front of them. And Bougainville in his journal uses imagery of a

classical kind about Venus and the Phrygian Shepard. He’s imposing

his knowledge of the classics and philosophy upon what he’s

encountering. And so this was the discovery for the French of the

idea of the nubile young woman unveiling herself to the sailors on

board the ship. It seems to be a combination of 18th century

sensibilities and the islands that produced the fundamental idea of

an island that was really a female and was welcoming — the

necessity of basing your relationship to a place around a woman is

part of the mythology and the vast collection of stories centred

around the South Seas. And Tahiti is the symbolic centre of that. 4

Ever since Bougainville’s account of Venus boarding his ship

in his, Un Account du voyage autour le monde (1771) the mythology of

the Tahitian maiden has depended not only on publicizing her

physical attributes, but the mystique of the South Sea

welcome — canoes full of nubile and bare-breasted women

eagerly greeting European ships. These romanticised accounts,

which neglect the violence of early European contact, are

formulaic scenes for South Seas literature and later flaunted

by Hollywood.

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Film critic Ed Rampell continued Rennie’s line of thinking

about the ‘nubile savage’, and her place in Hollywood, when I

met and interviewed him for my research in Los Angeles,

No South Seas movie would be worth its salt without a flotilla of

native outrigger canoes rushing off to meet and greet the arrival

of the white man’s ship. Often the sails of the tall ships are

glanced from on high – perhaps by a lookout in a palm tree, a cry

of a conch shell and or shark skin drum are heard; Islanders drop

what they are doing dash to their canoes and paddle or swim out to

the Western vessel, laughing along the way. And often there’s

topless girls coming to delight the sailors who have been out at

sea with just male companions for months at a time. This scenario

is repeated in many South Seas pictures. More than any other

Hollywood genre, South Seas movies deal with the theme of paradise

- a romantic native paradise to serve as a setting for adventures

enjoyed by white Americans or Europeans, usually males. 5

Between Rennie’s account of ‘Venus’ boarding Bougainville’s

ship, La Boudeuse in 1768, and Rampell’s account of the South

Seas welcome in latter day 20th century Hollywood, I found

time and again in my research a clear line of images of the

‘nubile savage’ manifesting herself in different art forms

and guises, painting, literature, photography, sculpture,

tourist kitsch and filmmaking. Whilst I was looking for

participants who understood and could expand on the history

of these images, I was also seeking participants who could

either provide a counterpoint and/or bring alternative layers

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of meaning and interpretation, Michelle Arrow’s ‘ambiguity’

to that paradigm. I wanted greater layers of complexity in

the story than was suggested in the pitch document which had

sold the program. I was also determined to look beyond

Australia for my cast of players and avoid parochialism in my

selection of interviewees. This was an international co-

production, so why not look to the world’s leading experts

and those with talent in front of the camera to tell this

story. Fortunately I had the budget and the support of my

producer to achieve this.

I expanded my initial research list of authors and historians

to include actors, directors, Polynesian dancers, a former

government minister in Papeete, artists, French archivists

and art curators and set off on a voyage that took me to New

Zealand, Tahiti, Hawaii, Los Angeles, Chicago, Paris, London,

Rochefort on the Atlantic coast in France, and Canberra. I

travelled for 23 days and met with 26 people whom I

identified from my reading as possible interview candidates.

I was looking for ‘good talent’, interviewees: who have

instant recall of the knowledge they need to impart in

response to an interview question, who are concise and able

to summarise information, who can relate anecdotes of stories

and incidents that create mental pictures for an audience,

and finally I was looking for the all important ingredient,

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humour that would engage an audience in the story I was

telling, believing that,

Humour is, by its nature, more truthful than factual. 6

My DAT recorder is an important accomplice when I am

researching a film. I rely on my research interviews for my

writing. The interviews also help me judge how I think a

candidate will perform in front of camera. If they’re not

great talent at this stage, move on, find someone else. Ideas

also come out of the interviews, images, historical anecdotes

that I haven’t considered. I recorded most people I met on

the ‘grand research tour’. Some of them however I met with

just to ‘meet and greet’ such as, Professors Anne Salmond in

Auckland and Stephen F. Eisenman in Chicago, whose books I’d

read. I met with them, to chat and assess their ‘talent’. I

would paraphrase extracts from their books for inclusion in

my shooting script if I thought they were suitable.

When Andrew Ogilvie presented me with the Hula Girls concept

document it came with an attached suggested list of expert

interviewees. To my dismay it included only one female

historian, there were no Polynesian women, and the suggested

men (respected historians & academics) were in their mid to

late 60s and beyond. It was inconceivable to me that I could

write and direct a program called Hula Girls, about the

representation of Polynesian women, and not have either

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women, and/or preferably Pacific Island women to inform that

story. Finding Polynesians was of utmost importance. So in

Papeete I arranged to meet and interview two members of the

Territorial Assembly. Louise Peltzer a former Minister of

Culture in the conservative, Rassemblement pour la Republique

(RPR — Rally for the Republic) party and government studied

anthropology in metropolitan France. She is an expert on the

history of the Tahitian language and also one of Tahiti’s

most published poets. Tea Hirshon is an outspoken

representative for Oscar Temaru's pro-independence

progressive coalition Tavini Huiraatira (Polynesian

Liberation Front) and was intimately involved as an activist

in the local anti-nuclear struggle. I had high expectations

of including both women in the program. I also arranged to

meet Marguerite Lai, a professional dancer and director of

the Papeete based dance group, O Tahite E.

Marguerite proved to be terrific talent. A large, loud,

energetic woman, with a wonderful sense of ‘Polynesian

humour’, of mixed Polynesian and Chinese descent, she defied

the Polynesian ‘petite’ female stereotype. Marguerite allowed

me to accompany her to dance rehearsals where I met with her

young dancers and she also promised I could film a

performance of the heiva when I returned for the shoot.

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Tea Hirshon too was great talent, passionate and articulate

about politics, particularly the independence and anti

nuclear issues and the militarisation of her country by

France,

The image of this passive, sensuous, quiet woman, submissive

Polynesian woman is kept up because it fulfils a need. We have

tourists come here, that’s what they want. Tahiti has also been a

military base for 30 years, so it influences the economy. Near

naked women dancing sells, so people provide the image that

tourists and the French military want to have. So we give you what

you want but it is not necessarily what we are. 7

And I loved the following quote from my interview with Tea at

the Territorial Assembly. It was a story essentially about

Tea’s father and mother. Her Jewish father came from Vienna.

On a trip around the world had a stop over in Tahiti where he

met Tea’s Polynesian mother. They became lovers and he

ventured no further. Their ‘classic’ story had to be part of

my script,

There are many many love stories, European men come here fall

totally in love with a beautiful Polynesian woman. But then end up

being completely dominated by their wife and the wife gets fat. The

image of this passive, sensuous, quite submissive woman is not

really the case. I have seen women here fight, fight their men too.

Polynesian women are strong willed. You often find European men let

their wives rule the roost, to avoid confrontation at home. 8

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Sadly though, and to my great disappointment, these three

prominent and educated Papeete women were largely unaware of

the rich European visual history of the Pacific and the

depictions of Polynesian women which was the basis of my

brief. With the benefit of hindsight however, it’s not that

surprising. As I was to uncover time and again the history

largely belongs to the colonisers. This ‘European vision’ of

the compliant and sexually available Polynesian woman is of

our making. We painted the pictures, we wrote the novels, we

perpetrated the sailor’s yarns, we wrote and directed the

movies depicting ‘her’ as the ever willing play girl for

white adventurers.

Whilst Peltzer, Lai and Hirshon knew little of that history,

they believed that this sexualised image has had a profound

impact on their present-day society. Each of them expressed

concerns about the influence of tourism on Tahitian life and

culture, in which the figure of the beautiful ‘vahine’ has a

central place. But also, as if to disagree with these

concerns, they were equally worried about the recent decline

in tourism to Tahiti and the economic consequence that was

bringing on the local economy and jobs. ‘Such are the

ambiguities of life, I thought to myself. ‘Could I deal with

this too in the context of the history and the documentary’s

story?’ The artist amongst the three, Marguerite Lai, had a

strong opinion about the influence of the Tahitian ‘beauty

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myth’ on her dancers, which I thought would be invaluable for

my story,

The young people are terribly influenced by the exterior, the body.

They consider themselves to be Polynesian, they are proud of that.

But it is very superficial, it’s about how beautiful you are, the

way your skin is, how you look, it’s not inside. You can’t say I’m

Polynesian because your parents were born here. You have to live

it. The young people here say that we are Tahitian we have the

blood of Tahiti, then we are Tahitian. But it’s not true. If you

don’t put water on it every day, it dies. The influence of the west

is so big. When you say I have everything in my blood you will lose

it. It’s like a tree you have to put water on it. 9

Later in my research trip I met Katerina Teaiwa, Assistant

Professor of Pacific Studies at the University of Hawaii in

Honolulu. Meeting Katerina did solve my desire to include at

least one young Pacific Island woman in the program who had a

solid grasp of the ‘coloniser’s history’. Katerina is often

mistaken for being Polynesian, but is in fact of Micronesian

and African American descent. ‘Bingo’, I thought when I

walked into her office. ‘Great to have a character with her

long black hair, dark skin and gorgeous Pacific Islander

features, who can provide a critique of the history and at

the same time look the part’. She was ‘the mythical image

critiquing herself’ and her ‘hula girl looks’ would help

audiences hook into the story. My secret thoughts were also

influenced by what I imagined were broadcaster expectations,

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‘One or two of the commissioning editors will like her!’ I

thought to myself.

Katerina is also a talented dancer and, up until I met her in

2003, performed the hula in tourist hotels in Honolulu. Of

course my first question to her was, “Can we film you dancing

the hula?” Sadly she declined as she had now moved on and was

performing jazz ballet. “Okay, lets’ film that instead!” I

requested. Katerina proved to be invaluable to my research.

At our first meeting she spoke of the central religious

functions of the hula in traditional Hawaiian culture,

Dance is always a reflection of the environment, the landscape that

you live on, the types of animals, birds, creatures that inhabit

where you live. And then dancing will also be a reflection of

spirituality, appealing to whatever gods exist whether they be

oceanic, or in the forests or in the sky. And sexuality was deeply

interwoven into those realms. Dancing in Pacific communities is not

erotic, not in the sense that you are trying to titillate or entice

somebody to bed with you. 10

Did it matter that Katerina was not Polynesian? No. To my

mind her potential presence on camera, her knowledge of

Polynesian and Pacific history were far more important. The

fact that she’s a young and beautiful Pacific Island woman

was simply a bonus.

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Being a fan of the Hawaiian steel guitar I was also very keen

to explore the rich history of the hula girl in popular

music. Hula dancing became so fashionable in the US in the

1920s that handfuls of entrepreneurs began touring the

American mainland with troupes of dancers. At the same time

there was the development in America of Hapa haole music,

which is played with Hawaiian instruments but the melodic

structure of the music is western in style. Popular songs

were written like, Hawaiian Paradise, Hawaiian Dreamboat, Lovely Hula

Hands, My Little Grass Shack, and A Song of Old Hawaii. A craze for

Hawaiian music also swept Europe in the 1930s, further

popularizing the image of beautiful island women. There was

also a huge cross over between popular music and Hollywood

films, with writers and directors featuring Hawaiian music

and love songs as a fundamental part of their stories set in

the South Pacific. In Hawaii I found Desoto Brown, from the

Bishop Museum in Honolulu, who had a vast knowledge and

collection of Hapa haole music,

This music becomes very popular, it’s composed by Hawaiians and

Caucasians and then modern Hula dancing was adapted to fit the

words and the music. That kicked off a huge fad for songs about

Hawaii and you had song writers in New York, who had never been to

Hawaii, churning out these songs, in the Hapa haole style about

Hawaii. So you get people in London or Germany singing these songs,

have never been to Hawaii, know nothing about the real thing but

are hooked on the mystique through the music and want to imitate it

as best they can. At the very heart of the music is the concept of

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the willing, compliant Polynesian woman who is welcoming and you

can have sex with her. Many, many song lyrics imply that. In other

words, ‘I went to Hawaii, I met her, we fell in love and I had to

go home and now we are separated’. 11

Music was not part of the original broadcaster pitch, nor

were: hula girls kitsch, hula shirts, hula dolls, post cards,

ash trays, lampshades, wall calendars and posters, sexy

trinkets and comic books. I found that the image of the hula

girl was, and still is, all pervasive. ‘She’ has been the

centre of the sales pitch for Hawaiian tourism for more that

a century. ‘She’ is also one of the main lures for American

armed forces’ personnel based on Oahu since the islands were

annexed by the US in 1896. I wanted to cover in my research

this aspect of hula and Hawaiian history.

In downtown Honolulu I found Joe O’Neil’s Hawaiian Antiquity

Centre. Joe sells flash trash and expensive objets d’art of

semi naked Polynesian women: souvenirs, memorabilia and

wiggling hula dolls. He took me on a tour of his store to

show me the hula girl phone, hula girl sheet music, the giant

hula girl, the surfboard hula girl, hula girl naked

calendars, and in the process picked up a porcelain ash tray

of a naked hula girl,

See what it says, ‘The Best Lei in Hawaii’. It’s one of my

favourite pieces. This was the 20 year old sailor’s dream. It’s

1954, there would have been 1000s of these made and sold, they’d

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take them back home to Philadelphia as their memory of Hawaii.

Mostly made in Japan. None of this stuff was made in Hawaii. Look

at this photograph of a topless Tahitian woman. This one here,

beautiful photograph, perfect symbol of the Polynesian girl …. no

silicone implants here … it’s a good example of give ‘em what they

expect. The image of the Hula girl, the tropics, simple life,

sitting on a porch playing a ukulele … everyone wants to relax in

their heart and that’s what Hawaii represents. 12

Joe was perfect talent, loud and talkative. He and his shop

played out numerous scenes in my thinking. I wanted to

include the militarisation of the South Pacific in the 20th

century and the hula girl’s part in that. I was heading

towards a story about the image of the hula girl and her

implicit involvement in the colonisation of the South

Pacific.

France too was a necessary part of my research agenda.

Bougainville, the French voyages of discovery in the western

Pacific, the artist Paul Gauguin, French colonialism and Club

Med style promotion of Tahiti as a tourist Mecca, are all

fundamental to the sexualised images of Pacific Island women.

Bougainville stayed in Tahiti for only nine days after his

arrival in 1768, but his tales of an island Eden and free

love in the South Pacific created a sensation upon his return

to Europe. The French philosopher and chemist, Denis Diderot,

was so impressed by Bougainville’s discovery of ‘Arcadia’

that in 1772 he wrote a pamphlet celebrating the voyage,

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Supplement au voyage de Bougainville. In this widely read work

Diderot praised the nobility of Tahiti’s savages, their

sexual pleasures and freedoms. He argued that ‘savages’ are

freer than ‘civilised’ men, who suffer from an unjust social

order and brutalising forms of work. For Diderot, Tahiti and

her people were proof that European civilisation was

excessive and corrupt and they soon became a ‘cause celebre’

in pre-revolutionary France. By 1804 the idyllic images of

Bougainville were so much a part of French popular thinking

that a Parisian wallpaper manufacturer, des freres Dufour,

produced a brand of wall paper for their wealthy clients,

called Les Savages de la Mer Pacifique .

To explain the French connection to the hula girl image, I

met in Rochefort on the French Atlantic coast, a curator and

archivist from the Musee de l’homme, Claude-Louis Stefani,

who continued Neil Rennie’s line of thinking about the

influence of Bougainville,

The publication of the travels of Bougainville happened very

shortly after the voyage was completed. And very quickly it was

being read by the intellectuals in the high society salons of

Paris, it was very fashionable. In fact it was more than fashion.

It became an intellectual problem. The myth of the women of the

Pacific spread in Europe very quickly from the time of

Bougainville. The French Revolution was fermenting. France was one

of the best examples of an absolutist monarchy in Europe. So Tahiti

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could be used as an argument against the regime as it was in

France, to say elsewhere there is an egalitarian society. 13

Claude-Louis was fabulous talent, a larger than life

‘Monsieur Hulot’ character straight out of Jacques Tati

central casting. He was eloquent, spoke excellent English

(although I would later interview him in French) humorous,

bumptious and very happy to be interviewed for the program as

he had recently been ‘banished’ from Paris to the provinces

(as he himself described it) in order to classify and re-

catalogue the Musee de l’homme Rochefort collection. This

‘trial’ for Claude Louis was a bonus for me, as he was in the

throes of working on the manuscripts and journals of the

French voyages of Pacific discovery, led by the navigators,

La Perouse, d’Entrecasteaux, Baudin and Durmot d’ Urville.

These French navigators like the British before them, wished

to discover new lands, establish commercial trade and claim

future colonies. Like Cook, the French took with them

professionally trained scientists and artists to record and

analyse all that they ventured upon. Claude-Louis stopped

here and there as he made his way through the Rochefort

archive, grabbing large old volumes from the shelves and

eventually sat at a large desk carefully opening the delicate

and fragile pages of Louis-Henri de Freycinet’s voyage en Les Corvettes

L’Oceanie et La Physicenne 1817-20,

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And here we have a young woman from the Sandwich Islands dancing,

an early depiction of the Hula girl and she strikes an extremely

languid, extremely charming pose. The Pacific woman is a siren, she

is a Circe, a kind of enchantress, she is a real jezebel. It is

everything life can produce as a picture of the dangerous woman.

The perverted women. She depraves men because she represents

precisely physical love. Turpitude! The South Seas woman is a

symbol of the noble savage that the 18th century liked to imagine. 14

Claude-Louis then showed me a key image from the Freycinet

voyage Iles Sandwich: Femme de l’ Isle Mowi Dansant, showing a naked

tattooed Maui woman dancing from a sitting position on the

ground,

We are in Hawaii now. This is one of the oldest images of the hula

girl, she is dancing, she is naked. She is not specifically pretty,

but she is not too bad! The breasts are very strange, so far apart.

She is fully tattooed. But they wanted to depict a nice women from

the islands and this is an old prototype of the hula girl. The

physical aspects of the figures are often very European and what is

culturally different is any clothing, the skin colour and the

tattoo. Otherwise it could be a European woman dancing. She belongsalso to the islands of paradise. And that’s what the people now are

going to Tahiti and expecting it’s the island of Bora Bora. If you

say this name in France people say, “Oh it would be wonderful to

live there, for once in my life to see paradise”. So you can say

that people in the 18th century and 21st century have the same

thoughts about images like these of the Pacific islands. 15

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I loved the experience of meeting and dining with Claude-

Louis and his colleague Roger Boulay from the Musee des Arts

d'Afrique et d'Oceanie. In 2000 Boulay curated, Kannibals and

Vahinés : images from the South Seas, an exhibition shown at the

Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Centre in Nouméa. The aim of the

exhibition was to explore through literature and popular

pictures the stereotypical (and often racist) representations

of,the fantastical couple of our South Seas dreams, the vahine and the

cannibal. 16

Via Boulay and Stefani, I could explore another aspect of

Pacific imagery that I wished to include in Hula Girls, the

conflicting versions of Pacific heaven or hell, paradise or

purgatory, as depicted in the contrasting late 18th and early

19th century European images of the peoples of Polynesia and

Melanesia. In 1776 William Hodges, on Cook’s second tour of

the Pacific, painted, The Landing at Erramanga, one the of the New

Hebrides (National Maritime Museum London). The canvas depicts

Cook’s landing party under attack by islanders. The Europeans

in the row boat are shown heroically attempting to escape

from the mysterious mass of dark skinned, islanders wielding

spears. Unlike Bougainville’s ‘welcoming natives’, these dark

skinned peoples of Melanesia are represented as war like and

threatening. When Melanesians boarded the ‘tall ships’ and

climbed the rigging, chattering to each other, the British

likened them to monkeys. French navigators offered similar

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opinions of the Melanesians they encountered as Claude Louis

explained when he showed me, Naturels de la Nouvelle Guinee, Voyage

autour du monds sur la Corvette de sa Majeste la Coquille (1826) a coloured

engraving illustrating three Papua New Guinean men with ‘wild

hair styles’ and Sauvage de la Nouvelle Caledonie, Atlas pour server a la

relation du voyage a la recherché de la Perouse (1799) a depiction of a

Melanesian man wearing a penis wrapper with spear in hand and

a club in the other,

The French sailors were quite disappointed. They were waiting to

find ‘paradise islands’ and welcoming women in the Pacific and what

they discovered was the black side, the dark side of the Pacific.

In Melanesia the people are depicted as nasty, they are cannibals,

also they are diseased, for example the leper here. So they say in

the texts that this paradise is not a paradise. In paradise there

is something rotten. 17

What emerged from these early European voyages of discovery

was a hierarchy of aesthetics in the Pacific, where the

Polynesian women were at the top of the chain and Melanesian

woman at the bottom. The Polynesians were more beautiful,

more desirable and noble, closer to the Europeans. Femmes

Mafors, Voyage en Nouvell-Guinee, by M. Achille Raffray (1879) an

engraving depicting two women with ‘fat’ noses, ‘frizzy’ hair

and long sagging ‘pendulous’ breasts is a pertinent example

of what Katerina Teaiwa describes as the ‘Melanesian other’,

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The Melanesian woman is the most ‘other’ to the European. It’s a

racist typifying of Pacific peoples centred around, skin colour,

height, facial characteristics, bigger noses not being seen as

attractive and totally imagining that all Melanesian people look

the same, they are short and black with fuzzy hair. And similarly

imagining that all Polynesians as being either statuesque or fine

featured and beautiful. 18

I returned to Australia after three whirlwind weeks with a

wealth of research materials and transcribed my interviews. I

had greatly expanded the basic research to include topics

such as Katerina Teaiwa’s ‘Melanesian other’ and the French

19th century voyages of discovery as a way of adding greater

purpose, meaning and depth to the program I wished to make.

After listening to the research tapes I chose who I thought

were the best candidates and set about editing their

interviews and book extracts for my shooting script. The

profiles of the final selected interviewees were included as

character notes in the script,

Margaret Jolly is Professor and Head of the Gender Relations Centre in

the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian

National University. She has written extensively on gender and

sexuality in the Pacific, on indigenous and foreign representations

in the contexts of exploratory voyages, travel writing, cinema and

the visual arts.

139

Neil Rennie is the author of Far Fetched Facts: The Literature of Travel and the Idea

of the South Seas and also editor of Robert Louis Stevenson's In the South Seas.

He is a Reader in English at University College London.

Anne Salmond is Professor and Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University

of Auckland. She is one of New Zealand’s most prominent

anthropologists and historians and recently published the

acclaimed, The Trial of the Cannibal Dog — Captain Cook in the South Seas.

Katerina Teaiwa is an Assistant Professor of Pacific Studies at the

University of Hawaii. She is a contemporary dancer, who practices

an eclectic mix of modern jazz and Polynesian hip-hop. She brings a

social anthropologist’s eye to dance and many other elements of

contemporary Pacific culture.

Claude-Louis Stefani is an art historian and curator at Musée des Beaux-

Arts de Rochefort in France. He organised the recent exhibition,

Kannibals et Vahines Les sources de l’imaginaire. He brings humour and insight

to French perceptions of the South Seas.

Stephen Eisenman is Professor of 19th Century Art History at

Northwestern University, Illinois. He is a specialist in the work

of Paul Gauguin and is the author of Gauguin’s Skirt.

Luis Reyes is a Hollywood based film researcher, writer and critic. He

authored Made in Paradise: Hollywood’s Films of Hawaii and the South Seas.

Ed Rampell is a raconteur, journalist, film reviewer and South Seas

adventurer. He lived and worked in the Pacific for more than 20

years and is a founding member of the South Seas Cinema Society in

Hawaii. Rampell was a major contributor to Made in Paradise: Hollywood’s

140

Films of Hawaii and the South Seas. He writes extensively about the South

Pacific from his base in Los Angeles.

DeSoto Brown is the Manager of Moving Images at the Bishop Museum,

Honolulu. He was born in Hawaii and has written four books on the

20th-century history of the islands. He is a collector of ephemera

relating to this field including Hollywood posters and stills.

Joe O’Neil is a loud and obsessive collector of all things Hawaiian;

shirts, Hula dolls, calendars, souvenirs, all manner of naked

Polynesian kitsch. He runs a shop in downtown Honolulu, the Hawaii

Antique Center.

Marguerite Lai is a professional dancer and director of the Papeete

based dance group O Tahite E. She is an international performer, a

humorous and passionate dancer and a social critic of contemporary

life in Tahiti. 19

The original Hula Girls pitch to broadcasters also included a

suggested self reflexive moment at the end of the program, an

epilogue that explored contemporary Polynesian artists,

writers and filmmakers and their take on the ‘nubile savage’

image,

Increasingly though, islander writers, artists and film makers are

turning ‘the gaze’ and taking on the world. And they’re making use

of the tools that spread the mythology in the first place. Many

indigenous-produced films directly challenge the clichéd romantic

images that have dominated Hollywood cinema, and offer alternative

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images of Polynesian women to those formed ever since the first

Western contact. In Velvet Dreams (1998), Samoan director Sima

Urale, satirised the once thriving enterprise of painting the

Pacific Islands woman on black velvet. Once Were Warriors (1994),

adapted from Maori writer Alan Duff’s novel, became the most

successful film in New Zealand’s history. The film’s stark realism

and complex characterisation proved controversial both within and

outside the Maori community. 20

I was initially unsure about how this epilogue would work

story-wise. I was concerned that it would appear tokenistic

to include no more than five minutes of this content at the

end of the program. I was concerned about ‘story point of

view’. The bulk of the narrative would explore the populist

image of the hula girl as a European creation from the time

of Bougainville. To turn this viewpoint around, at the 47-

minute mark of the story, and introduce new characters and

narrative elements to my mind would lead to confusion and be

unsatisfying for an audience. At this point in a documentary,

all the story threads should be drawn together, the

‘narrative arc’ should be reaching closure and the program

wrapped and into the final credits. I put my case to Ogilvie,

who agreed it may be difficult. However I also decided to

include this content in my research and writing — I could be

wrong and why not give it a go! I was after all a huge fan of

the Polynesian/Maori produced film, Once Were Warriors (Dir. Lee

Tamahori, 1994), and this would provide the opportunity to

meet one of its stars Rena Owen. Subsequent interviews with

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Rena along with the Samoan director of Velvet Dreams (1997)

Sima Urale and Auckland based artist Shigeyuki Kihara were

transcribed and edited for inclusion in the shooting script,

Rena Owen based in Hollywood, is one of New Zealand’s most

successful actors after her performance as Beth Heke in Once Were

Warriors. Rena has extensively toured the International Film Festival

circuit to promote various films, and also to serve on the Jury of

the Montreal, Manila, Hawaii, Santa Barbara, and the USA Film

Festivals. She has also served as a consultant for the Sundance

Screenwriters Lab, and the Sundance Selection Panel.

Shigeyuki Kihara is an Auckland based contemporary performance and

photographic artist. She is of Samoan and Japanese descent and is a

fa'a fafine, a man who lives as a woman. Her artworks parody and

mimic the Hula dancer and South Seas maiden stereotype.

Sima Urale is Samoa's first female film director and lives and works

in Wellington. In 1997 she directed the acclaimed documentary Velvet

Dreams, about the history of black velvet painting. 21

With this selection of interviewees, I thought I had all my

required story content covered. In my judgment, they were all

knowledgeable about their area of expertise, talented, and

could relay information with ease. Raconteur and journalist,

Ed Rampell, was particularly good talent, humorous in the way

he could spin a yarn about Hollywood and the South Seas.

‘South Sea cinema, without sex is like Aunt Jemima’s pancakes

without the syrup’ was one memorable Rampell line of 143

dialogue. His depth of knowledge about Pacific history and

cinema was formidable. Professor Anne Salmond was remarkable

in the way she could visualise events on board the Dolphin in

1768, as Wallis cruised into Matavia Bay, or later Cook on

the Resolution entering into Kealakekua Bay in 1778, where he

and his crew were greeted like gods,

As the Resolution sailed into Kealakekua Bay they swam out, they

came out on

canoes. They came on surfboards parents bringing their children.

And they just swarmed

on board the ships. Just swarmed all over them. In fact, at one

point there were so many

people hanging on to the side of the Discovery that it was sort of

keeling over. And there they

were making love with the sailors. Just all over, below decks, on

decks, presumably not in the

water but who knows. There was joy, people were calling out.

There was just this huge sense of

celebration and excitement. 22

I had also found characters who could provide the counter

point and layering to the story

that I was seeking. Margaret Jolly and Katerina Teaiwa could

flesh out the meaning and

importance of sexuality in customary Polynesian culture

providing some logic for

why Polynesian women were ‘welcoming’ and thereby contrasting

the views

144

of Neil Rennie and Claude-Louis Stefani. Jolly provided some

clues to the research

question at the heart of the story, was ‘she’ ‘real’ or

‘myth’,

Polynesian eroticism was not a figment of the European imagination.

In the ancestral cultures of the islands of Hawaii and Tahiti,

sexuality was not so much ‘free’ as celebrated and sacred. Sexual

intercourse was a desirable and crucial sign of adulthood for both

males and females. It was a great insult to impute that a Tahitian

was immature and or a virgin. Vigorous sexual expression was

expected of women of all classes, high ranking as well as a

commoner. Islander myths, poetry, chants and dances are all,

blatant celebrations of the act of sex and the fertility of the

world.” The Europeans were surprised and entranced by the

islander’s sexuality, infuriated by their attitudes to property,

and shocked by human sacrifice and cannibalism. The drama of these

first contacts was huge on both sides. 23

Katerina Teaiwa elaborated further on the meaning of

Polynesian sexuality when I interviewed her in Honolulu,

For the women there would have been an association between the

Europeans, I am not going to say they were gods, but they had

status, particularly the officers on board. For a woman of lower

status having relations with someone of higher status, that was a

way for her to secure some sort of moving up through the system.

If she has a child from that union that also was a way of

increasing one’s own sacred power in terms of the cosmological

systems that Polynesians were operating with. And there would have

145

been a lot of children coming out of those unions from the ships.

If say somebody else had set up the union, say a father or a

brother, then it would have been as a service to your family. 24

Meeting author and Professor of Art History, Stephen

Eisenman, in Chicago provided a further opportunity for

counterpoint in the program through the story and paintings

of the Frenchman Paul Gauguin in Polynesia. I had read his

book, Gauguin’s Skirt (1997), and was impressed by his writings

on the post-impressionist painter. By 1891, Gauguin was

already a well established artist in Paris, but he was

possessed with the idea of seeking out primitive and exotic

cultures and left for Tahiti that year. Gauguin imagined

establishing a studio of the tropics where he could take

advantage of bright light, brilliant colours and maintain a

cheap lifestyle with unlimited access to beautiful exotic

women, as both models and lovers. Instead of paradise and

noble savages Gauguin found on his arrival in Papeete, a

colony of missionaries, demoralised natives, prostitution,

beach bums and Western riff raff. The paradise Gauguin longed

to paint had all but disappeared.

Undoubtedly women and sex were part of French Polynesia’s

appeal for Gauguin. He had read the immensely popular novel,

Le Marriage de Loti, by Julien Viaud (published in 1880) which

tells the tale of a torrid love affair between a French naval

officer, Loti, and a 14 year old Tahitian ‘vahine’ Rarahu. In

146

the story, Loti wants to make a life with Rarahu, but he

believes that because he’s a Frenchman, a man of the city and

metropolitan France, that this relationship can never really

be made complete and permanent. Loti deems the racial gap

between he and Rarahu too great and that their love is

ultimately doomed. In the narrative Loti lives out an

exoticist paradigm, a desire to go somewhere, to experience

difference, but to never make that difference complete, to

always have the need and the understanding that he will have

to return to the metropolis in order to resume his regular

life. Eisenman spoke extensively about the influence of Le

Marriage de Loti, on both Gauguin and the 19th century French

perception of indigenous peoples when I interviewed him,

Viaud’s characterization of Rarahu displays widely held beliefs of

the era that Pacific peoples will never excel to the level of

Europeans. They are attractive, affectionate, people, with whom

Europeans can mate with, but they will never rise above a simple

level of understanding. As the story of the Marriage of Loti ends,

Loti must return home and Raharu must die in Tahiti. 25

As if wanting ‘life to imitate art’ in Tahiti, Gauguin

mirrored the Loti story and married a young 14 year old girl,

Teha’amana, at a time when he was suffering from acute

syphilis.

It’s very easy to only characterise Gauguin in the mould of

Loti and so many other European sailors, writers, adventurers

or ‘riff-raff’ who ventured to the South Seas in search of 147

young beautiful natives and torrid love affairs. The original

pitch to ARTE, AVRO and SBS did exactly that, portraying the

artist as an exploitative, sex crazed morphine addict, a line

of thinking designed to reinforce the ‘one dimensional’

hypothesis of the pitch. The writers cared not to find any

merit or praise for Gauguin or his work,

More than any other single individual, Paul Gauguin is responsible

for the enduring association between the Pacific Islands and bare

breasts. At times, almost comically, Gauguin juxtaposed bare-

breasted islanders with flowers and ripe fruit. His images alluded

to an idyllic, imagined past.

In contrast to these pictures of paradise, Gauguin’s own life was a

wreck. Finding Tahiti insufficiently ‘savage’, he moved to the more

remote Marquesas Islands. There he tried to seduce young women with

his collection of pornographic photos and strolled around with a

walking stick, the handle carved into an erect penis. He sometimes

signed his paintings Pego, sailor’s slang for penis. When he died

in 1903, aged 54, he was suffering from advanced syphilis and

morphine addiction. 26

There is ample evidence in Gauguin’s own writings, his

letters to friends or his wife Mette, and also the text of

his Tahitian journal, Noa Noa, to confirm and caricature his

amorous misadventures in French Polynesia. Paradoxically

however, Gauguin’s close involvement and relationships with

Tahitian men and women and their culture, had a profound

impact on his work and his beliefs. Towards the end of his

148

life he began to promote and defend indigenous rights against

violations by French colonial officials and the Catholic

Church. He took Polynesian people seriously, found merit and

beauty in their history, cosmology and material culture at a

time when Europeans considered them to be a dying race.

Stephen Eisenman provided the depth and complexity on Gauguin

that I was looking for when I interviewed him for Hula Girls in

Boston,

There are paintings by Gauguin that conform to stereotypes, the

exoticist stereotypes that he confronted in The Marriage of Loti.

There is a picture in the Metropolitan Museum of two Tahitian women

in which the woman is seen half length holding fruit in a bowl in

front of them, that equation between breasts and fruit is a

longstanding one in European art and I think those pictures

probably do not go very far in moving from the exoticist myth. But

there are other works where the bodies are often broad and thick

and somewhat coarse limbed, heavy thighs and wide calves. In Te

Nave Nave Fenua or Delicious Land you have a figure who is standing

and when we look down at her feet we see that she has 7 toes,

polydactylism, a kind of birth defect. To include something like

that in a painting is bizarre. It’s strange. She also has pubic

hair very rare for European painters, for French painters to

include public hair because to do so is to acknowledge that women

have their own independent sexuality. They have actually an organ

there that is an organ of pleasure and not merely something to

please the man. To include that is to violate the depiction of

female sexuality in the salons and the exhibitions of painting in

France. So in that picture and in a number of others Gauguin really

represents a different kind of Tahitian woman, a different kind of

149

Tahitian sexuality than would be expected according to the

exoticist myth. 27

It’s no co-incidence that the protagonist of Le Marriage de Loti

is a French naval officer, as the author, Julien Viaud, was

also a naval officer. When Tahiti was annexed by France in

1842 the islands provided a strategic port for its naval

fleet and ever since then the military has played a vital

role in sustaining the local economy of what is now French

Polynesia. Margaret Jolly connected the militarisation of the

South Pacific, particularly Tahiti and Hawaii with the

sexualisation of Polynesian women and tourism. Joe O’Neill

had playfully alluded to this with his ‘Best Lei in Hawaii’

ashtray for sailors, but Jolly’s correlation was more

sinister,

You can ask the question, ‘Is there a connection between the hyper

sexualisation, the eroticisation of the Pacific, through the

historical depictions of women’s bodies and the facts of power; in

the expansionary colonial period and up to the military, imperial

power of the US across the Pacific?’ The American link to Hawaii is

a complicity between the US military and tourism, but the idyllic

fantasy of Hawaii masks that. If you spend any time in Hawaii you

look at the map of Oahu and two thirds of the island is American

military bases. And there is this very important connection between

this military occupation and we all know that GIs generate a sex

industry in its wake. So that’s linked with mass tourism and

vacationing and Hawaii as the big place that Americans go for a

holiday. 28

150

Ed Rampell, a former Honolulu based editor of the Pacific Islands

Monthly, broadened the impact of popular culture, tourism and

Hollywood to include the decline of indigenous land rights,

The popular image of Hawaii has been a form of entertainment, to

peddle tickets, to make money by selling this phoney image. And at

the same time that this is happening the indigenous people were

becoming more and more disenfranchised in their own homeland. The

drawcard of the happy go lucky ‘native’ in the movies was in ‘real

life’ rapidly disappearing. 29

I thought my research for the program by this stage was well

rounded. I could now begin to speak confidently about the

history of the hula girl. I’d fleshed out the original

concept, added potential new characters and dimensions to the

story. At the same time as seeking and finalising my

international cast, I commenced the other all-consuming

strand of my research, the seemingly endless task of finding

the appropriate archival images: the thousands of art works,

photographs, historical films and Hollywood features that

portrayed Neil Rennie’s ‘nubile savage’. This involved

exhaustive research much of it on-line at: the Margaret

Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and

Sciences, Los Angeles, the National Library of Australia,

international footage libraries, art galleries, museums,

publishers, movie distributors and production companies.

With the assistance of a highly experienced researcher

151

provided by Electric Pictures, thousands of images and

hundreds of films were trawled through. I will deal more

extensively with Hollywood’s depiction of the ‘South Seas

Princess’ in the next chapter. There are so many films,

themes and issues arising out of what Ed Rampell calls South

Seas cinema, that this history demands a chapter unto itself.

My early viewing of Hollywood silent films like Willard Van

Dykes romance, White Shadows in the South Seas (1928) and Bird of

Paradise (1932) starring Delores Del Rio, were to have a great

influence on the way I would write the Hula Girls script.

The first visual depictions of Polynesian women I found were

18th century copperplate engravings in An account of the Voyages

Undertaken by the Order of His Present Majesty for Making Discoveries in the

Southern Hemisphere by Dr. John Hawkesworth, published in London

in 1773. When Cook returned from his first Pacific voyage in

1771, the British Admiralty were so anxious to establish

their supremacy in the South Seas they commissioned

Hawkesworth, a London literary figure, to re-write and

publish the travel journals of both Cook and Wallis. The

book, with illustrations to accompany the text, included a

vivid description by Cook of a public sexual act he and his

crew witnessed in Tahiti, where a 12 year old girl copulated

with an adult man in front of a gathering of spectators.

Hawkesworth’s detailed account of the incident caused great

controversy when it was published in London. However,

152

according to Neil Rennie, Hawkesworth rewrote Cook’s factual

day to day journal written in his Yorkshire layman’s style,

into the style of a literary bot boiler,

Hawkesworth used the Cook and Wallis journals to cook up his own

version of events in Tahiti. His account of the voyages is where

Homer’s Odyssey meets the boys own adventure, Captain Hornblower.

He treats the work as though it’s a novel, characterising and

providing comedy. There were people who wrote to the newspapers

saying that Hawkesworth’s Account was worse than Fanny Hill,

because there were all these indecent scenes of copulation. There

was a constant tirade saying Hawkesworth’s voyages were more

titillating than the most awful French novel. 30

Hawkesworth’s embellishments paid a dividend for the British

Admiralty, matching their imperial ambitions. His book was a

runaway success in London, later published in America and

then translated into French, German and Italian.

Cook, as I was to discover, was crucial in many other ways to

the early image of the Polynesian ‘nubile savage’. His three

voyages of discovery to the Pacific are the source of all the

early recorded images of Polynesia, its landscape, its

customs and its people. His missions were to explore and

chart the Pacific and to document the people he encountered,

describing and illustrating their nature, their physical

features, customary life and government. To accomplish this

he took with him artists who produced 3,000 original

153

depictions of plants, animals, landscapes and Pacific

peoples, never before seen by Europeans. Everything was new

for Cook’s artists: the light, the profusion of fruit, the

rich perfumes of the flowers, the sea, the beautiful

Polynesian faces and bodies. The most romantic Pacific image

of the three Cook voyages was Poedua, Daughter of Oree, Chief of

Ra’iatea on of the Society Islands, a portrait of a young beautiful

Polynesian woman painted from memory by John Webber after he

returned to London in 1780. Margaret Jolly described the

alluring appeal of Poedua for the painting’s spectator,

Her hair is dark and flowing, she has flowers behind her ears, her

features are delicate, her breasts firm. She stands exposed to the

artist and viewer, suggesting that this is the Pacific itself, as

young feminine, desirable and vulnerable, an ocean of desire. 31

For the next two hundred years Webber’s painting was a

template for Western images of Polynesian women, reproduced

in paintings, engravings and eventually mass produced via

photographic and printing technologies. I amassed an enormous

collection of these images, post cards, paintings,

engravings, studio portraits, photographs, Hollywood

production publicity stills and posters. Their origins needed

to be sourced, dated and copyright cleared.

My other main task on my research trip to Tahiti and Hawaii

was connected to the paintings of British artist William

154

Hodges, who accompanied Cook on his second tour of the

Pacific in the Resolution 1772-5. Hodges was the first artist

to capture on canvas the full effect of South Seas tropical

atmosphere and light. I wanted to locate what I eventually

described in my shooting script as, ‘Picture post card scenes

of the islands of Moorea, Tahiti and Oahu; palm trees, sandy

beaches, blue lagoons — clichéd but real images of the

‘idyllic’ south Pacific’. I was looking for ‘virgin’

pictorial views, tropical landscapes that would replicate the

scenes viewed by Wallis, Bougainville and Cook and painted by

artists such as Hodges in his 1776 canvas Tahiti Revisited

(National Maritime Museum London). The first Europeans in

Polynesia were over whelmed by the beauty of the foliage, the

atmospheric light, the warmth and sensuality of the night

air, the large open sky, the fruit on the trees. They saw

Tahiti as an ‘Arcadia’, a land of abundance where work and

toil were not the essence of survival. Margaret Jolly

connected the significance of the Tahitian landscape to the

representation of Polynesian women in Hodges work when I

interviewed her, and it was this connection that I wished to

visually explore and evoke by filming these landscapes,

The visual representations of women’s beautiful classically

proportioned bodies as much as the rapturous rendering of landscape

evoke an image of Tahiti as Arcadia with an abundance of sexual

pleasure. William Hodges’ Tahiti Revisited is drenched in rosy

luminosity, where women’s naked-nymph like bodies merge with the

155

water, and bare buttocks are displayed, exposed to the viewer.

These are bodies that created rhapsody on the part of sailors and

officers. But the allure is also dangerous, the woman’s buttocks are tattooed, a sacred statue stands over her and in the distance

there is a funeral bier. The sexuality here is potentially

threatening. 32

The other point about finding these locations was largely

market driven on my part rather than creative. The European

broadcasters were keen on ‘exotic…. winter viewing, on a cold

snowy winter’s night’ for their audiences. So I would find

these locations, film them and give it to them in spades.

They were after all places I wanted to visit too! I also

needed to find suitable locations in Paris and London, as a

huge part of this history is centred there. There was an all

important budgetary reason for this too. If the archive

royalty budget for the enormous amount of paintings, stills

and Hollywood feature footage required for the story blew

out, then we would have this location footage to fall back on

as a substitute, albeit a poor one. So a small amount of

research travel was allocated to finding locations in London

and Paris, touring the large island of Tahiti, its outlying

companion island Moorea, which is much less developed, and a

trip around Oahu, the main Hawaiian island.

Andrew Ogilvie’s pitch to broadcasters also covered 19th and

early 20th century Pacific literature and the way this too had

156

simultaneously reflected and promoted the European view of

Polynesian women as ‘sex queens’. Herman Melville, the one

time sailor best known for Moby Dick, is often considered the

first writer of substance to popularize the South Pacific

with his 1846 autobiographical novel, Typee — A Peep at Polynesian

Life. Melville went to sea at the age of 16 and later jumped

ship in the Marquesas Islands, where his story is set. It was

Melville’s first and most popular novel until the 1930s, the

book’s success was attributed to the author’s creation of the

island dream girl, Fayaway. I chose to focus on Melville’s

first novel because in 1958 it was versioned and produced by

Warner Bros. as the feature film, Enchanted Island (Dir. Allan

Dwan 1958) starring Jane Powell, as Fayaway, and Dana

Andrews, as Tom, the Melville character. Luckily, amongst the

numerous Hollywood cinema trailers I was researching, I found

a stunning promotion for this South Seas cinema classic which

I transcribed for my script.

Authors Luis Reyes and Ed Rampell revealed the influence of

19th century novelists on Hollywood in their encyclopaedic

book on South Seas cinema, Made in Paradise, Hollywood's Films of Hawaii

and the South Seas,

These seductive islands have been a potent font of literary

inspiration for countless authors for more than 200 years. During

the late Victorian era, Robert Louis Stevenson fashioned novellas

and short stories for a British public smitten with the romance of

157

the South Seas. Mark Twain presented his Pacific based works to

American audiences in the mid 1800s, followed by Jack London in

1893. These and other writers produced a charming though sometimes

confusing portrait of seduction using images steeped in stereotype.

Hollywood movies and later television perpetuated this mythology

that combined fact with fiction to form a conflation of Pacific

cultures. 33.

Researching a film like this, based almost entirely on

archival images, is a complicated business determined

entirely by the archive royalty line in one’s budget. The

selection of the final images and footage for inclusion in

the program would depend first on gaining copyright

clearances and then negotiating the price demanded by the

rights holders. Tracking down the copyright owner could take

weeks if not months and only then could the financial

negotiations start once the owner agreed to the granting of a

license. So it was impossible to completely nail down what

images I could use until this process had occurred. On

numerous occasions I selected a key image that I desperately

wanted to use, only to then find that the copyright fee for

that one painting could buy five others of lesser historical

weight to the story. In some instances the owners refused to

grant licenses at all.

By the final stages of research I was watching on average 20

feature films a week and furiously transcribing selected

scenes that illustrated key moments or themes. I was

158

completely hooked on Hollywood’s B Grade vision of the South

Seas and began to adore Dolores Del Rio in The Bird of Paradise

(1932) and the numerous island themed films of Dorothy

Lamour, John Ford’s Hurricane (1937) and The Jungle Princess (Dir.

Wilhelm Thiele1936) where Lamour plays the role of Ulah, the

female ‘Tarzan’ character that made her a star. I was hooked

because I was being entertained. I was laughing and engaged

with the characters and storylines that shamelessly exploited

the celluloid version of Neil Rennie’s ‘nubile savage’ or

Claude-Louis Stefani’s ‘jezebel’. Meeting Ed Rampell in Los

Angeles, with his extraordinary knowledge of Pacific island

movie history, combined with my growing appetite for 1930s

and 40s South Seas cinema began to greatly influence how I

would direct the Hula Girls story.

The big question for myself, and my producer , was about

copyright fees and whether we could afford vast amounts of

Hollywood footage. And would companies like Paramount, MGM

and Fox release this footage?

Footnotes:

1. Pierre Loti, P. (Julien Viaud), 1880, Le Marriage de Loti, originally published as, Rarahu: idylle polynesienne, 1879, trs Clara Bell, T. Werner

Laurie Ltd, London 1925 p.126.

2. Clendinnen, I. 2006, The History Question – Who Owns the Past, , Quarterly

Essay, Issue 23 p.7.

3. Graham, T. 2001, AFTRS Documentary Course Notes.

159

4. Neil Rennie, author & Reader in English at University College

London, research interview by Trevor Graham, 2003.

5. Ed Rampell, journalist & film critic interview by Trevor Graham

(2003).

6. Parliament of Whores, 1991, by P.J.O’Rourke, quoted in The Oxford

Dictionary of Humorous Quotations, Sherrin N. 2005, 3rd Edition, Oxford

University Press, New York, p.166.

7. Tea Hirshon, member Asemblee de la Polynesie Francaise, research

interview by Trevor Graham Papeete , 2003.

8. Ibid.

9. Marguerite Lai, Directrice O Tahiti E dance troupe, research

interview by Trevor Graham, 2003.

10. Katerina Teaiwa, Assistant Professor of Pacific Studies at the University of Hawaii, research interview by Trevor Graham, 2003.

11. Desoto Brown, Manager of Moving Images at the Bishop Museum,

Honolulu, research interview by Trevor Graham, 2003.

12. Joe O’Neil, owner Hawaii Antique Center, research interview by

Trevor Graham November 2003.

13. Claude-Louis Stefani, curator Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rochefort research interview by Trevor Graham , 2003.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid.

16. Boulay, R. 2002, Kannibals & Vahines Imagerie des mers du Sud, catalogue, Musee

National des Arts d’Afrique et d’Oceanie, Paris, p.24.

17. Claude-Louis Stefani, curator Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rochefort research interview by Trevor Graham, 2003.

18. Katerina Teaiwa, Assistant Professor of Pacific Studies at the University of Hawaii, research interview by Trevor Graham, 2003.

19. Graham, T. 2004, Hula Girls – Imagining Paradise, Character Notes, Electric

Pictures, Perth, p.4.

20. Sturma, M. & Colgan, G. 2002, Island Aphrodite, pitch document, Electric

Pictures, Perth p.5.

160

21. Graham, T. Hula Girls – Imagining Paradise, Character Notes, Electric

Pictures, Perth, p.4.

22. Anne Salmond, Professor and Pro-Vice-Chancellor University of

Auckland interviewed by Trevor Graham for Hula Girls, 2004.

23. Margaret Jolly, Professor & Head of the Gender Relations Centre in

the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian

National University research interview by Trevor Graham, 2003.

24. Katerina Teaiwa, Assistant Professor of Pacific Studies at the University of Hawaii, research interview by Trevor Graham, 2003.

25. Stephen Eisenman, Professor Art History Northwestern University

Illinois, interviewed by Trevor Graham for Hula Girls April 2004.

26. Sturma, M. & Colgan, G. Island Aphrodite, pitch document, Electric

Pictures, Perth p.5.p.4.

27. Stephen Eisenman, Professor Art History Northwestern University

Illinois, interviewed by Trevor Graham for Hula Girls April, 2004.

28. Margaret Jolly, Professor & Head of the Gender Relations Centre in

the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian

National University research interview by Trevor Graham, 2003.

29. Ed Rampell, journalist & film critic, research interview by Trevor

Graham, November 2003.

30. Neil Rennie, author & Reader in English at University College

London, research interview by Trevor Graham, 2003.

31. Margaret Jolly, Professor & Head of the Gender Relations Centre in

the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian

National University interviewed by Trevor Graham for Hula Girls, May

2004.

32. Margaret Jolly, Professor & Head of the Gender Relations Centre in

the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian

National University, research interview by Trevor Graham September

2003.

33. Rampell E. & Reyes, L. 1995, Made in Paradise, Hollywood's Films of Hawai'i and

the South Seas, Mutual Publishing, Honolulu, p. 34.

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162

7.

Hollywood’s South Seas

PrincessDo you remember the first movie you ever saw? The first movie I

ever saw was South Pacific. And I said to myself when I was 4 or 5

years old, I said, ‘self, when you grow up, you’re going to go to

the South Pacific and you’re going to get an island girl like

Liat’. 1

When I was a small boy I too was greatly influenced by the

movies and what I saw on the small screen in the corner of

our family’s living room. I consumed a lot of television when

I was young, particularly on school holidays in the middle of

a cold Melbourne winter. Holiday TV at that time regurgitated

a lot of Hollywood black and white B-grade, as well as the

works of funny men, the Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy, Bud

Abbot and Lou Costello. I would enthusiastically watch these

films with my father day in day out. He loved Abbott and

Costello and I remember one school holiday watching with him

their screwball comedy set in the South Pacific, Pardon My

Sarong (Dir. Erle C. Kenton, 1942). In the story Bud and Lou

play a couple of bus drivers who join the crew of a yacht

bound for Hawaii. On the voyage they are blown off course by

a hurricane and land on a mysterious tropical island.

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Costello is mistaken for a legendary god by the island

‘natives’ and is ‘forced’ to marry their beautiful princess,

Luana. The ‘natives’ then enlist Costello to fight and defeat

the evil spirit of the island’s volcano which has cruelly

ruled their lives.

Pardon My Sarong commenced production not long after the

Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the start of America’s

involvement in World War II. The Pacific War severely

impacted on Hollywood’s ability to continue producing South

Sea ‘island’ stories,

In pre-war days, Hollywood producers would have thought nothing of

sending a camera crew to Honolulu, Bali, Java or to the ends of the

world to get proper background for a film. With World War II,

studio technicians were put to the test to devise authentic

backgrounds within the confines of the back lot. In creating a

tropical background for Pardon My Sarong Universal technicians

created a set that at first glance resembled a Garden of Eden. More

than 20,000 individual plants, many of them rare species, were

arranged and placed to form a jungle. 2

Pardon My Sarong was an early taste in my life of what Ed

Rampell and Luis Reyes have defined as an under recognised

Hollywood movie genre, ‘South Seas cinema’. Even though South

Seas stories hark back to the birth of filmmaking and have

often involved major Hollywood stars, production companies

and directors, the authors claim in their encyclopedic book,

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Made in Paradise, Hollywood’s Films of Hawaii and the South Seas, that the

film worlds’ critics, film historians and academics have

failed to recognise, ‘the island movie as a motion picture

genre with its own distinguishing attributes’. They go on to

define those attributes by writing about the complete range

of feature films, documentaries, television series and early

actuality films, more than 600 in total, that have been shot

and or have story lines set in the South Pacific,

Loosely defining South Seas cinemas as films made in and/or about

Hawaii and other islands of Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia

(three geographical areas sometimes referred to as Oceania), its

most distinguishing feature is that, more than any other Hollywood

genre, it deals with the theme of PARADISE. This utopian quality,

often portraying the isles as earthly Edens, sets South Seas cinema

apart from other film genres. Hawaii is no longer categorised as

being in the South Seas, but more films have been shot in Hawaii

than on any other Pacific island and with the possible exception of

Tahiti, no other place has been so projected onto the popular

imagination as an earthly paradise. 3

In his introduction Rampell goes on to further explore the

defining attributes of South Seas cinema and also the genre’s

relevance to this document, Making Hula Girls,

The happy-go-lucky settings-and sets-for these equatorial raptures

are often languid lagoons where beautiful brown-skinned girls

inhabit a natural native nirvana. Underwater shots, as well as

scantily clad vahine (women) and tane (men) in sarongs, loin

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cloths, and grass skirts are a staple of these scenes, which often

include partial nudity, in and out of the water. 4

Meeting Ed Rampell and his co-author Luis Reyes in Los

Angeles, combined with reading their book, greatly influenced

the way I began to conceive telling the story of Hula Girls in

the latter stages of my research, and Hawaii became central

to the story as ‘more films have been shot in Hawaii than on

any other Pacific island’. There were so many films to

potentially draw on (but only if we could afford the

copyright) that encompassed the notions of free love and

unashamed sexuality which had evolved in the Western mind

since Bougainville’s visit to Tahiti in 1768.

My movie history research began to both challenge and broaden

my thinking about sexuality and the historical representation

of Polynesian women. I realised that I too had a one-

dimensional, politically correct view of the role of

sexuality in South Seas cinema, seeing it solely as a means

of peddling cinema tickets and exploitative of Pacific island

life, custom and history and particularly island women.

Rampell and Reyes opened up new ways of seeing and

experiencing the South Seas genre and provided my story with

the potential twists and turns in the narrative that I was

seeking. Whilst still maintaining a critical eye for the

‘south seas stereotype’, I came to appreciate sex in

Hollywood as a universal language of filmmaking, one that

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most of us have an interest in and therefore engaging to

watch. Moreover, South Seas stories and characters, even

though they maybe stereotypes, were employed by Hollywood

writers and directors as a means of resisting the strict

censorship codes of the 1930s and 40s. Films like Bird of

Paradise, South of Pago Pago and South Pacific also confronted the

taboo subject of interracial relationships and sex in a time

when race lines were strictly drawn in the USA.

So I delved deeper into this cinematic vision of the South

Seas, which commenced in Hawaii at the end of the 19th

century. Just as Paul Gauguin was putting the finishing

touches to his grand canvas D’ou Sommes Nous? and shipping it

to Paris, a new picture making technology, the motion picture

camera, was about to drastically transform and ‘colonise’ the

image of Hawaii and her people forever.

In 1898, after winning the Spanish American war in the

Philippines, the Hawaiian Islands took on a new strategic

importance for the United States, being midway between

mainland America and its newly acquired Pacific territory.

After two attempted coup d’etats to overthrow the Hawaiian

Monarchy and government and years of political turmoil in

Honolulu, the US Congress succumbed to US sugar and business

interests in Honolulu and decided to annex Hawaii in July

1898. A large military garrison was soon established on the

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main island Oahu and the US armed forces quickly became the

leading sector of Hawaii’s economy.

The Hawaiian language was soon banned in all public schools

and children who spoke ‘olelo’, the language of their

parents, were punished. Indigenous Hawaiians slowly but

progressively became a minority in their own land as

immigrant labour from Asia and Europe were brought in to

harvest sugar cane on Hawaiian plantations. Unlike their men

folk, Hawaii’s indigenous women were viewed as exotic

beauties and encouraged to marry freely with other races. In

this rapidly changing social and political environment the

first moving picture images of Hawaii were shot by a Thomas

Edison camera crew in Honolulu just weeks before the American

takeover. Kanakas Diving For Money (Thomas A. Edison No. 2. June

22nd 1898) shows a group of young indigenous Hawaiians diving

for coins in the Honolulu harbour. Behind them is a newly

arrived tourist ship from a trans-Pacific voyage. These

scenes shot by Edison’s crew were to become a recurring motif

in later day Hollywood features such as MGM’s Pagan Love Song

(1950) where Howard Keel, playing a newly arrived tourist (in

this film arriving in Tahiti) throws coins to the ‘happy go-

lucky natives’ from the ship’s deck for entertainment.

Another Edison Company film archived in the Bishop Museum in

Honolulu, Hawaii Footage 1906, documents aspects of Hawaii’s new

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life after the US annexation: soldiers on parade in Honolulu,

marching, marking time and performing bayonet and rifle

drills. The 20 minute film also depicts the first moving

picture footage of Neil Rennie’s ‘South Seas welcome’ where

Hawaiian canoes, race towards a camera stationed on the

harbour shore, a scene replicated time again by Hollywood,

most famously in the three Hollywood ‘Bounty’ films, Mutiny on

the Bounty starring Clark Gable (1935), Marlon Brando’s Mutiny

on the Bounty (1962), and The Bounty with Mel Gibson (Dir. Roger

Donaldson, 1984).

Despite hula dancing having been banned by missionaries in

Hawaii since the 1820s, it underwent a rapid cultural revival

in the 1890s along with a general resurgence in interest in

indigenous culture and traditions, including the Hawaiian

sport of surfing. By happenstance this cultural renaissance

coincided in Hawaii with the arrival of studio photography,

the movie camera and tourism. Hula, along with surfing

quickly became a source of inspiration for post card and

souvenir manufacturers, travelogue and adventure filmmakers

alike. Hula Dancing 1920s is one of the earliest depictions of

hula dancing in the Bishop Museum. The silent footage shows a

hula dancer at Waikiki beach (which due to tourist promotions

was about to become an international icon of Hawaii)

accompanied by a woman chanting and playing a drum. These

early Pacific actuality films, travelogues and adventure

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films, mirrored the travel literature of the 18th and 19th

century, further romanticising the South Pacific – recreating

an old image of the ‘Polynesian maiden’ in the new medium of

the motion picture.

Ed Rampell was well versed in this early motion picture

history when I interviewed him in LA,

Moving pictures and anthropology as a serious social science

emerged during the same historical era. So you find both early

ethnologists and movie makers using the new medium of film as a

means for recording what they saw as the vanishing cultures of

Oceania. Part of the appeal of these early films is that they

permit some sexual license in depicting toplessness on the grounds

of ethnographic authenticity. And the image of the hula girl is

also quickly picked up by both amateurs and by travelogue

companies, further popularising the image of the South Sea maiden. 5

It wasn’t long before Hollywood realised that Polynesian

women and the legends of their sexuality could provide

titillating subject matter for audiences. In 1920, Tinsel

Town’s most famous silent era director, D.W. Griffith,

directed the Idol Dancer, a feature length drama with musical

accompaniment set in the South Pacific. The film opens with

the title Idol Dancer, followed by a subtitle, A Story of the Southern

Seas, in an attempt to furnish the film with authenticity.

Griffith’s feature tells the story of a rebellious native

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girl, White Almond Flower, played by Clarine Seymour, a dusky

South Seas maiden who is desired by both a derelict white

adventurer and a local missionary's invalid son. The South

Seas genre theme of beauty and ‘near-nakedness’ plays itself

out here too. As with most silent era films the narrative is

aided and abetted by title cards to explain the story. In one

scene White Almond Flower sits in a hut wearing only a grass

skirt and floral lei. Sitting next to White Almond Flower is

her adopted father who implores her, via a title card, ‘Say,

why don’t you get some clothes on?’ Dad grabs a blanket and

encourages her to wear it. A recurring South Seas genre moral

is played out in the scene: the feral and exotic island girl,

the temptress or ‘jezebel’, is tamed by a white man and

‘civilised’. In a latter scene White Almond Flower, wearing

her grass skirt, dances a strident and crazy hula dance (more

in keeping with modern jazz ballet) in her father’s shack,

while she is watched by the missionary’s doting son. The

dance is erotic and the son is spellbound.

Griffith had a strong eye for the power of documentary or

actuality footage in drama and used it to with great effect

as a back drop in Idol Dancer. He shot beautiful village scenes

of large traditional canoes paddled across a tropical lagoon

by islander men. He also included footage of ‘South Sea

maidens’ standing at the fringe of the lagoon bathing. This

photographic realism confirmed for audiences that the

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legendary island girl existed and was as exotic and beautiful

as they were led to believe. It reinforced the truth of the

fictional character, White Almond Flower, by placing her

within an ethnographically ‘real’ milieu. The fusion of

documentary and drama in Idol Dancer is something we now take

for granted as a device in the vocabulary of filmmaking. But

in Hollywood’s early silent era it was still a novel and

inventive technique for filmmakers like Griffith to employ as

part of their story telling arsenal. According to Ed Rampell

this technique is one of South Seas cinema’s defining

attributes,

Hollywood’s early incantations are a curious mixture of actuality

or documentary footage, filmed in the islands, which provide a

backdrop for fictionalised stories, usually about a dancer, or a

love story involving a young island woman and a beachcomber or

sailor, like Griffith’s The Idol Dancer. So the border between

anthropological ‘authenticity’ and Hollywood fancy became blurred.

Culture and geography in Hollywood is always goofy, there’s head

hunters, missionaries and sexy maidens all thrown in together.

Hollywood didn’t think up these things it all came out of the

literature and chronicles of the sailors. Movies just put a face

and an image and a picture to what was already there. 6

Hollywood’s most noteworthy South Seas genre picture of the

silent era is also a concoction of fact and fiction and the

product of a turbulent collaboration between two legendary

film directors, the German expressionist master of fantasy

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and poetry, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (better known as F.W.

Murnau), and the American documentary maker, Robert Flaherty.

Released in 1931, Paramount Pictures Tabu — A Story of the South

Seas, is unusual in that the young lovers are not a western

man and a native girl. Instead, it tells a story of forbidden love between Matahi and Reri, on an island whose

inhabitants still live according to ancient Polynesian

customs. When a ship comes to their island bearing the high

priest Hitu, he decrees that Reri is ‘tabu’ to all men — her

virginity must be consecrated to the island gods.

As if mimicking the painting Tahiti Revisited (1776) by William

Hodges, women’s bodies, waterfalls, dappled sunlight and

tropical foliage are empathically intertwined in Tabu (shot

on Bora Bora and Tahiti, and winning for cameraman Floyd

Crosby an Academy Award for Best Cinematography) producing a

bounty of near-naked sensuality for its audience. I

transcribed the following beautifully shot waterfall scene

from Tabu for inclusion in the Hula Girls shooting script,

00:35:58 Waterfall sequence: Matahi peers through large taro leaves

and spies on a group pf young and beautiful Polynesian women

swimming in a waterfall flowing into a deep water pool. The women

pose seductively in the pool wearing floral leis on their hair.

Matahi’s other mates eagerly join him to ‘spy’ on the women. They

topple down the waterfall their bodies firm and muscular. Matahi

grabs a ‘young nymph’ in his arms and together they tumble down the

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waterfall — it’s a lover’s paradise — perfect bodies in the

sparkling tropical sunlight. 7

When I interviewed Margaret Jolly for my research, she elaborated

on the connection between landscape and ‘the figure of women’ in

Tabu,

Tabu is all open air and sunlight — the brilliant tropical light

sparkles on the ocean and glistens on the beautiful young bodies of

the native men and women. It’s a romance not a documentary, but it

gains ethnographic authority from being shot on location in Tahiti

and from its representation of the Polynesian practise of Tabu,

chiefly power. The border between anthropological ‘authenticity’

and Hollywood fancy became blurred around the ‘figure of women’. 8

As with the earlier Idol Dancer, Tabu relies on its documentary

footage to enhance the sense of authenticity. But Murnau and

Flaherty take authenticity one important step further, by

employing Polynesians to play most roles, many of whom were

non actors,

First of all, Tabu is almost completely made on location on Bora

Bora. Secondly it has a feeling of authenticity because most of

the actors are Polynesians who actually weren’t actors. The neo-

realists would do this about 17 years later or so. But Flaherty

and Murnau were using to a large extent non-actors, not completely

but a number of them were non-actors in the lead roles. And there

are these great topless scenes and you really feel that you’re

seeing something authentic. You can see bronzed breasts and

nipples and that was somehow acceptable because it had sort of an

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anthropological or sociological spin to it. And it was a nod

towards authenticity. 9

As Tabu, a story about ancient Polynesian rites and customs

was being made in French Polynesia, sweeping changes were

underway in Hawaii at the apex of the Polynesian triangle.

Often referred to in the press as ‘a passing race’,

indigenous Hawaiians found their dance and music transformed

into entertainment, and nostalgia for ‘the old pre-colonised

Hawaii’. This eclectic mixture of nostalgia and entertainment

is best exemplified by the South Seas movie sub-genre of the

Hawaiian musical, which in the 1930s cashed in on the

sweeping international craze for hapa haole music featuring

ukuleles and steel guitars. Song of the Islands, a 1934 colour

tourist film promoting Hawaii, featured an early hapa haole

song classic, I Found a Little Grass Skirt, for a Little Grass Shack in Hawaii.

The film depicts ‘romantic’ 1930s couples in romantic

locations, doing romantic things: dancing, strolling, surfing

tandem style at Waikiki, taking in the unspoilt beauty (or

what was left of it) of Hawaii.

In one scene in a famous Honolulu hotel, the Royal Hawaiian,

a band master proclaims: ‘Ladies and gentleman we want to

offer my new composition entitled, “I Found a Little Grass

Skirt, for a Little Grass Shack in Hawaii”’. The band plays

the melody as dancers take to the dance floor, then cuts to

scenes of Honolulu Harbour, downtown palm-lined streets,

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Hawaiian lei sellers with their fresh flowers, a panoramic

view of the lush mountains surrounding Honolulu and European

surf board riders at Waikiki. The storylines in these films

are no longer centered on European male meets ‘native female’

and falls in love. The narratives have evolved to include

tourists from mainland America travelling to Hawaii seeking

romance and or meeting a European resident of Hawaii. Hawaii

has become a location and a draw card for generic Western

romance.

In Hawaii in the 1930s tourism and Hollywood danced the same

tune to promote Hawaii as a destination for love. But unless

you were a blue blood, a celebrity, or a seaman, visiting the

South Seas was just a dream. Only the rich and famous could

afford the five day steam ship passage from the West coast of

America to Hawaii. And hence there is a plethora of 1930s

newsreels featuring Waikiki beach and celebrities, movie

stars like Mickey Rooney and Shirley Temple with Hawaiian

surfers such Duke Kahanamoka the ‘ambassador of Aloha’. Every

Hollywood starlet and pin up girl who visited Waikiki,

including such beauties as Rita Hayworth, Eleanour Powell,

Movita Castaneda and Esther Williams were regularly

photographed in grass skirts. Ed Rampell, who had lived in

Honolulu, knew well the impact of this tourist legacy,

Hawaii became a playground and what was left of Hawaiian culture

became glamorised. Never mind that the people of Hawaii have been

176

almost been wiped out by contact with the West or that the hula had

been banned. Hollywood royalty had now arrived big time in the

South Seas. 10

Movie-going became ingrained in America. During the 1930s, 85

million people from all walks of life attended packed movie

houses each week. The audiences were largely middle class

adult women, who set the tone for the majority of American

films. 

According to Ed Rampell the golden age of South Seas cinema

was during this era and the reason he attributes to the

genre’s popularity are the desperate nature of the times and

the Great Depression,

This was the hey day of Pacific pics. Why is that? Capitalism

failed, the system failed. And white man was trapped in

civilisation and its discontents. And there was this yearning to

escape from the dust bowl, from the unemployment, from the class

struggle, from the social upheavals of the depression, from the

creeping fascism overseas. In the US people wanted to run away and

get away from it all. And one cinematic solution to this was to

return to nature, to return to the golden age. To return to Eden

before the Fall. 11

The personification of this great escape in the 1930s and 40s

came in the ‘fine’ figure of Dorothy Lamour, a former Miss

New Orleans beauty queen, who became a sensation in a series

of frothy South Seas romances in which she played a

bewitching Polynesian maiden wearing only a skimpy sarong,

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and the obligatory garland of flowers. She was nicknamed

‘sarong girl’. Young girls the world over would swathe

themselves in table cloths and say, “I’m Dorothy Lamour”.

In the Lamour pictures Her Jungle Love or The Jungle Princess you

could get away from the industrial nightmare, 9 to 5 slavery, from

the drudgery of the depression. You could run away to a place

where food just grew on trees and you could just pluck it from the

trees and nature was balmy, there were no winters. So there was

this back to nature movement and, well if we’re going to go back to

nature, why not go some place warm. And there’s something about

islands, there’s something about the fact that they’re surrounded

by water, they’re harder to get to, they’re not part of a continent

and a bigger society. And they were scenically spectacular, they

weren’t environmentally devastated by modern times, and the South

Seas epitomised all of these fantasies. 12

The ‘South Seas Princess’ also became a stock Hollywood

character in the 1930s. When Dolores Del Rio played Princess

Luana in the RKO film Bird of Paradise (1932) she pushed the

risqué image of the hula girl as far as Hollywood would

allow. Her breasts were covered only by floral leis held in

place by adhesive tape. Del Rio was one of numerous Hispanic

actresses whose dusky looks could double for the generic

Pacific Island ‘maiden’. Viewing production stills in Los

Angeles at the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of

Motion Picture Art and Sciences, of Maria Montez in South of

Tahiti (Dir. George Waggner, 1941) or of Movita Castaneda in

Mutiny on the Bounty (Dir. Frank Lloyd, 1935) one could be 178

forgiven for thinking that the painter of Poedua, Daughter of

Oree, Chief of Ra’iatea on of the Society Islands (1780) John Webber, was

the hairdresser, costume designer and make up artist employed

by Universal and MGM. Their hair is dark and flowing, they

have flowers behind their ears, their breasts are firm,

‘suggesting that this is the Pacific itself, as young

feminine, desirable and vulnerable, an ocean of desire’ as

Margaret Jolly described the Webber portrait.

Whilst I was searching for the most emblematic Hollywood

productions for inclusion in Hula Girls I had at the same time

to be mindful of potential royalty fees payable to the

studios for the clips I wanted. Researcher Greg Colgan, from

Electric Pictures, worked in tandem with me, making inquiries

with the studios about the films. It was looking tough. On

average studios were quoting a price of $US 10,000 per

minute. At this rate we could only afford 3 or 4 clips as our

total archive budget was $AUS 120,000 and this budget line

also had to accommodate the many other copyright payment and

clearances we required for paintings, stills, photographs and

prints. Clearly this budget impost would be disastrous for

the film and my strategy of employing as much Hollywood as

possible to tell the story. However, just as we were facing

up to this debacle, Colgan had a break through. He was

advised by several American distributors, who specialised in

Hollywood trailers, that cinema trailers for productions

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produced prior to 1964 were copyright-free. Colgan also

sought advice from the US Copyright Office confirming the

view from distributors that all trailers produced prior to

1964 are in the public domain unless they were registered,

then renewed after 28 years which in most cases was highly

unlikely. US distributors, Footage Hollywood and Subucat had

many trailer titles on their books from the South Seas genre.

For instance we could purchase an entire trailer for MGM’s

1935 Mutiny on the Bounty for just $US750. On average trailers

were one-and-half-minutes long, and in the case of the Marlon

Brandon 1962 version of Mutiny there were several different

trailer versions featuring dissimilar scenes from the movie,

each more than 3 minutes in length. Not only was this a

budget windfall but trailers had other significant benefits

for Hula Girls which would considerably assist the story-

telling. Trailers are a short-hand version of the narrative

of the film they are promoting. They utilise the key moments

and scenes from the film, highlight the stars and quickly

tell the film’s story via voice-over and titles. I could

employ these trailers without huge budget implications and

quickly summarise storylines by selecting key segments.

At this stage in my film research I also came across King

Vidor’s Bird of Paradise, staring Delores Del Rio and her on

screen love interest, 1930s heart throb, Joel McCrea. A

romantic comedy, it tells the story of a boat load of fun-

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loving US travellers who drop in on a ‘generic’ South Seas

island. Johnny Baker (McCrea) meets the native princes Luana

and makes love to her. Their relationship breaks a local

taboo and upsets the island’s chief. The young lovers flee to

a deserted island paradise where they build a hut, food

simply falls from the trees giving them time to woo each

other and make love. When a volcano erupts on her home island

Luana decides to return, against Johnny’s will, and sacrifice

herself to appease the fury of the island gods. The film

features an extraordinary dance sequence (now viewable on

Youtube) in which Luana bewitches Johnny and the rest of the

boat crew. Frenetic ‘orgiastic’ dancing is another attribute

of Hollywood’s South Seas genre.

Bird of Paradise also featured fabulous dialogue which I thought

well summarized Hollywood’s image of the South Seas and

Pacific Island women. I transcribed the following scene for

the Hula Girls script. It’s a latter day example of

Bougainville’s famous South Seas welcome from 1768,

00:03:30 A boat load of fun loving sailors in a yacht drop in on an

‘island’. Canoes full of islanders come out to the boat to

greet the sailors. As they come closer the sailors yell out

to the women in exaggerated pidgin-english.

Sailor 1: Hellooo. Hellooo. Hellooo.

Sailor 2: What’s that supposed to mean?

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Sailor 1: It’s the call of the wild. Hellooo. Hellooo.

The canoes begin to surround the boat.

Sailor to Johnny: Johnny you’re out of luck. There’s no blondes.

Passenger: You don’t suppose they’re cannibals do you?

More and more canoes arrive, circling the yacht. Johnny and

other crew members stand on deck admiring the women.

Passenger: What do you call this place?

Johnny: It’s probably one of the virgin islands.

Passenger: Heaven forbid. Girls!

Johnny sits down and talks with the yacht’s skipper.

Skipper: Johnny here’s the charm of the South Seas. You cruise about and

out of nowhere you tumble onto one of these little islands. You

nearly always find the natives are happy, carefree people.

Johnny: Yeah I know. Fond of life, wine and dancing.

A young island woman, Luana, dives off a canoe in front of

Johnny and the

skipper and swims around nymph like in the water.

Johnny: Hello baby. Got anything on for tonight?

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The crew and passengers throw objects into the water,

encouraging the

natives to dive for them. 13

Bird of Paradise features other common elements of the South Seas

genre including

a nude underwater swimming scene where Luana swims out to the

newly arrived yacht to

greet Johnny. Its night time and Johnny stands on the deck

listening to the sound of her

splashing as she approaches the boat. Luana swims up to the

yacht and playfully squirts

water at him and dives back enticingly under water, imploring

him to follow. Johnny

obliges, strips down to his shorts and plunges in. The under

water chase sequence,

accompanied by Hawaiian steel guitar is long and sensuous.

Launa swims to shore where

Johnny eventually catches her. Half naked, Luana struggles to

free herself from his grasp.

But the much stronger sailor pins her down, kisses her, and

Luana’s resistance

melts to romance. As if experiencing kissing for the first

time she implores Johnny to kiss

her again, but she doesn’t know the word for kiss, so Luana

points to her lips.

183

In terms of themes, characters, dialogue, ideas and

representation of both women and island life, Bird of Paradise is

a classic example of the South Seas genre and was a must for

inclusion in Hula Girls. So I was astounded when Greg Colgan

informed me that the film was in the public domain. RKO was a

long defunct studio and the copyright in the film had passed.

Turner Entertainment had picked up the entire RKO library and

was selling the film for $US 5,000. And for this amount I

could use unlimited footage and any scene I liked.

Interracial love is one of the most common themes running

through Bird of Paradise and the South Seas genre, with the basic

plot centering on a Western man, fleeing from civilization,

who takes up with a Polynesian beauty. They have a brief and

intense love affair that ends when he returns to civilization

or she is sacrificed to the island gods. This common plot

structure harks back to the doomed relationship of Rarahu and

Loti in Julien Viaud’s 19th century pot boiler Le Marriage de

Loti. But according to Ed Rampell this doomed love scenario,

involving a western male and a Polynesian women has a much

earlier and symbolic genesis,

It goes back to the biblical myth of Adam and Eve in Eden. And the

Bible story does not end with Adam and Eve continuing to live

within the womb of Mother Nature and happily making love for ever

and ever. It ends with their expulsion from paradise. So white

civilisation is perpetuating this outlook, in the collective

184

unconscious, it’s perpetuating the fall from paradise. Another

reason why is because the white man who likes in his arrogance to

think that he’s superior to others and has the best civilisation

and the best God and so on, he can’t allow another society to be

depicted as being superior to his. So he has to undermine the

utopia. He has to subvert the utopia because we can’t be seen as

having our civilization bettered by another. 14

Bird of Paradise has another of the fundamental tenets of the

South Seas genre: displays of open and frank sexuality. Del

Rio is bare breasted throughout the entire picture, with her

bosoms discreetly covered by floral leis. There are numerous

scenes of passionate kissing on the beach with suggestions of

interracial love-making between a white Caucasian male and an

island woman. Discovering this theme in the South Seas genre,

Hollywood’s representation of interracial love and sex,

became one of the major turning points in my research. Its

easy to look back and snitch at Delores Del Rio the Latina

playing the Polynesian beauty, with the benefit of hindsight

and 1980s orthodoxies of ‘political correctness’. But Rampell

and his co-writer Luis Reyes presented me with alternative

view points that were more in keeping with the era in which

Leonard Praskins, and Wells Root were writing, and King Vidor

directing. In their judgment, characters like Luana and

Johnny were examples of Hollywood’s early attempts to

challenge mainstream America’s attitude to race and

segregation, as Ed Rampell put it,

185

You can’t have South Seas cinema without interracial love. It’s

like Aunt Jemima’s pancakes without the syrup. It’s a main

ingredient. It’s usually the white male and brown female, but not

always, but that’s what it usually is. One can look at that in a

number of ways. It’s an extension of colonialism, the white man is

conquering territory, and he is also conquering, the foreign woman

becomes a sex object to him. But maybe we could look at it in a

more kindly way, and maybe its love conquers all and love conquers

racism. That’s another way to look at it, the idea that in a

paradise the different ethnic groups will get along. 15

Films like Bird of Paradise not only challenged racially divided

America they also tested main stream moral values. In the

1930s, Hollywood’s portrayal of romance, sex and violence

came under fire from America's moral guardians. The Legion of

Decency, a powerful off shoot organization of the Catholic

Church of America, was formed in 1934 to combat what they

branded ‘immoral movies’. Members took a pledge in church to

boycott ‘corrupt’ Hollywood films and also embargo movie

theatres that screened them. This ‘fight against filth’ was

aimed at discouraging the major studios from producing movies

that would earn the displeasure of the Legion. In response

studios adopted a voluntary code of strict moral censorship

implemented by the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors

Association of America (MPPDAA). The Hollywood Production

Code (also known as the Hays Code 1930) spelt out

restrictions on language and behaviour, particularly sex and

crime. It prohibited nudity, suggestive dances and explicitly

186

forbade miscegenation, sex relations between the white and

black races. Adultery, illicit or pre-marital sex, could not

be overt or presented as attractive options. In a love scene,

the lovers couldn’t go near the bed and even married

characters had to have separate beds. If there was a kissing

scene actors had to have one foot on the floor and the kiss

couldn’t have a screen time of more than a few seconds

duration. By 1934 any theatres that ran a film without the

Code’s seal of approval were fined $25,000.

According to Rampell one the of the virtues of the popular

South Seas genre films of the 1930s was that they directly

challenged the strictures of the Production Code, and got

away with it, partially on the grounds of ‘ethnographic

realism’,

One of the really curious things about South Seas cinema was that

it was a way of getting around the Production Code. In some of the

South Seas movies you could have nudity. You could have bare

breasts or leis or sarongs or you could see the woman from behind

and see her back and know that she has no bra on or no sarong

covering her breasts. And there was an acceptability to this

because it was far away, it wasn’t in America and because, well,

this was a nod toward anthropological authenticity. Because

audiences were already conditioned to accept these notions of

Polynesian beauty, it was a way to skirt, or sarong around, the

Production Code. And to get away with stuff that you could never do

with black and white actors. The epitome of this is South of Pago

187

Pago where John Hall woos Francis Farmer. Hall plays a Polynesian

chief. In real life he was part Tahitian. Francis Farmer, a blonde

haired, all American girl. And he woos her away from Victor

McLaughlin. And they go away to their own little love island. And

this could never, never have happened in Hollywood with a black man

and a white actress. Can you imagine a scene like this with Bette

Davis and Paul Robeson? 16

Rampell’s take on Hollywood history was new to me. These

revelations provided nuance and complexity to my research and

the Hula Girls story unimagined in the original pitch. Rampell

urged me to watch South of Pago Pago (1941) when I met with him

in Los Angeles and to include scenes from it. He considered

the United Artists picture to be a seminal work in the South

Seas genre because it reverses the usual love interest in the

story line. This time a blonde beauty ventures to paradise

and falls in love with a native chief,

South of Pago Pago. 00:53:52: Kehani (Jon Hall) and Ruby Taylor

(Frances Farmer) lie in each other’s arms on a beach, on an island

somewhere. Behind them (rear projection) waves swell and crash on

the shore.

Chief Kehani: What are you thinking?

Ruby: I’m thinking that sky up there is like a lot

of things I’ve always dreamed of having.

High and far away. And I know if I reached

out my hand, I could touch it.

188

Chief Kehani: There is a saying on Manoa. Love is always

the beginning, never the end. Always the

new, never the old.

Ruby: I know what you mean. I feel clean and

new, like I’d had a bath in them clouds. I

only wish I could believe it will be like this

for always.

Chief Kehani: It will be like this always.

Kehani leans forward and kisses Miss Taylor. 17

Including South of Pago Pago opened a new thematic door for Hula

Girls, women too were vulnerable to the charms of the South

Seas, even all American gals like Francis Farmer. So

historically consistent is the European male meets native

women story that it was in danger of becoming its own boring

stereotype within the Hula Girls story. This film broke the

mould.

Perhaps the greatest Hollywood take on inter racial romance

and the South Seas is to be found in the film whose title

squarely locates its story in the ‘islands of love’, South

Pacific. The end of World War 2 generated a spate of popular

G.I. genre romances including the 1958 movie version of the

Rodgers and Hammerstein Broadway musical hit of the same

name. The movie trailer promoting South Pacific quickly

proclaims the attractions of the musical drama and storyline,189

South Pacific Trailer: World War 2 comes to a tiny island in the

South Pacific. Japanese planes dramatically strafe the ground with

machine gun fire.

Trailer Vivid drama as the tide of battle turns in

the Narration: South Pacific.

Joe Cable and Liat, his Tonkinese lover, swim and kiss under water.

Trailer Romance to make one truly Younger Than

Narration: Springtime. Matchless music by Richard

Rogers. Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein the second.

Rogers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific a thing of

beauty, a joy forever.

Title: SOUTH PACIFIC 18

Beneath South Pacific's sugar coating of musical melodrama is a

modern look at the reality of interracial love. Both the

musical and the 1958 movie production, starring Mitzi Gaynor

and Rossano Brazzi, directed by Joshua Logan, contain story

elements unusual for their time, a love affair between a

middle aged French planter, Emile de Becque and a young navy

nurse from Little Rock Arkansas, Nellie Forbush, set on an

island during World War 2. Paralleling their love, is the

story of Lieutenant Joe Cable and Liat, the beautiful island

daughter of Bloody Mary. Nellie loves Emile, but she is

troubled by their different racial backgrounds and what

190

disturbs the American the most is that Emile has two children

to a Polynesian woman. Although the children’s mother has

since died, she can’t accept De Becque’s past liaison with a

woman of colour and Nellie breaks off their romance. Race is

also an issue for the lovers Joe Cable and island girl Liat.

Although Cable loves Liat, the Pennsylvanian cannot bring

himself to marry her because she is not white.

The musical features high drama and romance particularly

through the Rogers and Hammerstein lyrics and score, songs

such as; Younger than Springtime, Some Enchanted Evening, There ain’t

Nothing Like a Dame, I’m in Love with a Wonderful Guy. Two of the Rogers

and Hammerstein songs had particular relevance to Hula Girls:

Bali Hai, sung by the island matriarch Bloody Mary, and You've

got to be Carefully Taught sung by Joe Cable. Bali Hai is the epitome

of the fantasy love island, an accumulated expression of two

centuries of travel literature about the South Pacific

equating warm tropical islands with dreams of paradise,

romance and the promise of sex. Bali Hai echoes the meaning of

Neil Rennie’s paradigm about the 18th century sensibility

which produced ‘the fundamental idea of an island that was really a female and

was welcoming - the necessity of basing your relationship to a place around a woman’,

Bali Hai Lyrics:

Bali Ha'i will whisper

In the wind of the sea:

191

’Here am I, your special island!

Come to me, come to me!’

Your own special hopes,

Your own special dreams,

Bloom on the hillside

And shine in the streams.

If you try, you'll find me

Where the sky meets the sea.

’Here am I your special island

Come to me, Come to me.’ 19

When I interviewed Margaret Jolly about South Pacific, she had a

similar take to Rennie’s on the historical and thematic

connection between islands and the bodies of women, which

echoed her thoughts on the 18th century Hodges landscape, Tahiti

Revisted. But this time the ‘female bodies’ are an island girl

of Tonkinese descent, Liat, played by France Nuyen and Mitzi

Gaynor as nurse Nellie,

It’s not the old story of white man desires and wins Polynesian

woman. Rather Joe Cable desires the beautiful young daughter of a

Tonkinese migrant woman, Bloody Mary, who entices him in the song

Bali Hai whose plaintiff tones merge the body of a singing woman

with the mystique of the vaporous island. The presence of beautiful

Americans in the Pacific has eclipsed the beautiful indigenes of

previous Hollywood films. It’s a Pacific space that Europeans can

draw on and are revitalised in terms of eros and freedom. 20

192

The alignment of expert opinion provided by Jolly, Rennie and

Rampell was taking on a life force of its own. It was

becoming abundantly clear that one could look at depictions

of Polynesian women made by Europeans, in different art forms

and media, across centuries and come to the same critical

point of analysis. It was also possible to see how the images

and the literature over time had cannibalised one another.

This after all was the intention of the program — the thesis

if you like. My research across continents and epochs, from

18th century paintings and prints, to 19th century post cards &

souvenirs through to Hollywood was clearly paying off.

I was equally excited by the view that reached beyond this

critique of the historical stereotypes via the opinions and

work of film journalist Ed Rampell. When we discussed Joshua

Logan’s direction of South Pacific Rampell took his historical

analysis even one stage further. Progressive Hollywood

according to Ed, was using the musical form and the romantic

location of South Pacific to directly challenge segregation and

home spun American racism,

Joshua Logan, the Broadway musical and the film’s director, wanted

to create a special song to confront racism, so he has Joe Cable

sing the lyrics, ’you have to be taught to hate and to fear’. The

song directly challenges the idea that racism is innate, arguing

that it is learned at an early age. The film’s themes of racial and

cultural tolerance were presented at a crucial juncture in American

race relations. The movie was released during the hey day of the

193

civil rights movement and was an important part of Hollywood taking

on the issue of race.” 21

Joe Cable sings You've got to be Carefully Taught at a point in the

South Pacific story where he faces a moment of personal crisis. He

loves Liat but can he go one step further and marry her? What

will the folks back home in Philadelphia think of Liat, an

island girl? Can he overcome his own doubts about her racial

background? Through the lyrics Cable questions the values he

grew up with and the attitudes of mainstream America,

You've got to be Carefully Taught Lyrics:

You've got to be taught

To hate and fear,

You've got to be taught

From year to year,

It's got to be drummed

In your dear little ear

You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid

Of people whose eyes are oddly made,

And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,

You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,

Before you are six or seven or eight,

To hate all the people your relatives hate,

You've got to be carefully taught! 22

194

Ed Rampell’s claims for South Pacific as a progressive beacon

are borne out by an incident involving the stage production

when it toured the southern states of the US in the early

1950s. Anticipating the arrival of the musical in Atlanta

Georgia in 1953, the local legislature introduced a bill

outlawing all forms of entertainment that promoted,

an underlying philosophy inspired by Moscow. 23

Advocating support for the bill one lawmaker spoke about the

song, You’ve got to be Taught, arguing that,

a song justifying interracial marriage was implicitly a threat to

the American way of life. 24

Rodgers and Hammerstein publicly defended the integrity of

their work and the inclusion of Joe Cables’ moment of

questioning,

The authors replied stubbornly that this number represented why

they had wanted to do this play, and that even if it meant the

failure of the production, it was going to stay in. 25

The Pacific Islands continued to be a site for exploring

romance, interracial love and sex into the 1960s with the

advent of a series of musicals featuring two popular-culture

heart throbs, Elvis Presley and the teenage story book

195

character of the late 1950s Gidget. Paradise Hawaiian Style (Dir.

Michael D. Moore, 1966), Blue Hawaii (Dir. Norman Taurog, 1961),

Girls, Girls Girls (Dir. Norman Taurog, 1962) and Gidget Goes Hawaiian

(1961) draw heavily on the image of the hula girl. However as

in the earlier musical South Pacific the storylines replace

indigenous islanders with ‘haole’ or Caucasian characters,

European and American women dressing up as hula girls. This,

in part, was a reflection of the craze for ‘tiki’ bars which

swept New York and California in the late 1950s where women

dressed up as Hawaiians and also the burgeoning wave of

interest in surfing on the West Coast. American teenagers

were now adopting the erotic persona inspired by the romantic

feminine and pop culture image of the hula girl.

The Hawaiian Visitors Bureau did an effective job of

marketing an accessible image of the islands to middle class

Americans. With the increasing affluence of the 1960s, more

than a million American tourists flew into Hawaii every year.

The Aloha shirt and the muumuu skirt became popular tourist

fashions, while the ukulele became synonymous with fun at

Waikiki. Hawaii would become Elvis Presley’s favorite

vacation destination and he would enjoy many well publicised

vacations there. This further colonisation of the Hawaiian

Islands by the motion picture business (echoing the arrival

of the Edison crew at the time of annexation in 1898)

coincided with Hawaii’s full integration into the United

196

States, when it was made the fiftieth state in the Union in

March 1959.

One of the really great things about the Gidget Goes Hawaiian and

the Elvis films is that you get to see Waikiki Beach before it was

overbuilt and ruined by the tourism industry. The tourism industry

curries favour with the film industry in order to make these films,

a lot of deals are made because it’s considered to be free

advertising for the islands and helping to draw a crowd. Hawaii

Five O it’s said, which also came out in the 60s, 1968, H5O is

believed to have been the biggest tourism poster and lure to the

allure of the islands than anything else in Hawaiian history. So

there’s a direct relationship between the pop culture of the period

and the tourism industry. 26

The confluence of pop, tourism and the movies was a boon for

Presley too. His management team determined that movies and

movie soundtracks should be the future focus of his career.

Blue Hawaii was Presley’s highest-grossing box office film and

became the model for musical comedy associated with him

during the 1960s. The soundtrack gave Elvis the song with

which he would close most of his 1970s concerts: Can't Help

Falling in Love. Blue Hawaii continued another recurring South Seas

genre cliché, the white person who goes to the island, hits

the bush and goes native. Paul Gauguin was accused by the

French ‘colons’ in Tahiti of being ‘encanaque’ or

‘kanakised’. Joel McCrea goes native in Bird of Paradise. It’s a

familiar storyline that stretches back to the legend of the

Bounty mutiny where Europeans, beachcombers, deserters, are 197

entranced by the beauty of the South Pacific and ‘jump

ship’, as Tom does in Enchanted Island, and adopt the

characteristics and attributes of the indigenous people.

Racism also plays a part in the Blue Hawaii story when Elvis

chooses a part-Hawaiian lover and his Hawaiian male friends

over and against his mother’s wishes.

My motion picture research also included looking at a wider

range of hula produced images: television commercials,

cartoons, documentaries about the South Pacific, soft core

1950s pornography, 1960s tourist promotions for Hawaii and

Tahiti and more recent television footage of South Pacific

beauty pageants. The beauty pageants were intriguing as the

contestants were clearly drawing on the popularised

historical image of the South Sea maiden and hula girls.

Katerina Teaiwa was greatly concerned about the influence of

this sexualised hula image on Polynesian and Melanesian women

across the South Pacific,

The South Sea maiden image is an imagining of what Europeans want

when they come to these islands. So when the Ministry of Tourism is

trying to find a face for their campaign they will try to find the

one that is the most Polynesian looking. Which has become the face

and the body of the Pacific. These images are consumed and

exchanged and re-imagined by Pacific peoples themselves. It’s not

just the result of history. It’s a function of globalisation as

well the fact that they sell glamour in Fiji and the Pacific, that

there are these magazines out there that sell images of women that

198

are the most ideal. It’s the ideal vahine converging with idealised

glamour. 27

After almost six months my research was slowly winding up.

I’d chosen my characters and I’d selected a huge number of

prints, paintings, photographs and movies that could

potentially be used in Hula Girls. I knew I’d reached a point

of closure to the research as I could now discuss confidently

what the story was, and according to my own guidelines, ‘why

I am making it, what the underlying themes are, the subtext,

where it will be filmed and most importantly who the

characters are’.

Greg Colgan continued to pursue copyright clearances and

estimates of royalty fees from copyright owners. What images

and Hollywood clips would make it into the film was dependent

on the next stage of this journey, writing the script,

organising the themes, characters, key historical moments and

pictures into a coherent narrative. The great challenge was

how to shape this 250 years of history of images into a

compelling film that audiences would engage with and enjoy, a

film that would, ‘inform, educate and entertain’ and fulfil

the brief for the three broadcasters. Putting pen to paper

was the next important next step as writing helps focus the

mind.

199

Footnotes:

1. Ed Rampell, journalist & film critic interviewed for Hula Girls by

Trevor Graham, 2003.

2. Rampell, E. & Luis Reyes, L. 1995. Made In Paradise, Hollywood’s Films of

Hawaii and the South Sea, Mutual Publishing. Honolulu, p.274.

3. Rampell, E. & Reyes, L. 1995, Introduction, South Seas Cinema — Is it a Film

Genre, Made In Paradise, Hollywood’s Films of Hawaii and the South Sea, p. XXIII.

4. Ibid. P. XXIV.

5. Ed Rampell, journalist & film critic interviewed for Hula Girls by

Trevor Graham (2004).

6. Ibid.

7. Scene description from Tabu. directors F.W. Murnau & Robert J.

Flaherty, Murnau-Flaherty Productions, 1931, transcribed &

interpreted for Hula Girls script, by Trevor Graham, 2004.

8. Margaret Jolly, Professor and Head of the Gender Relations Centre

in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the

Australian National University research interview by Trevor Graham,

2003.

9. Ed Rampell, journalist & film critic, interviewed for Hula Girls by

Trevor Graham, 2004).

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid.

13. Scene description from Bird of Paradise, written by Leonard Praskins and

Wells Root, RKO, 1932, transcribed & interpreted for Hula Girls

script, by Trevor Graham, 2004.

14. Ed Rampell, journalist & film critic, interviewed for Hula Girls by

Trevor Graham, April, 2004.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid.

200

17. Scene description from South of Pago Pago, written by George Bruce &

Kenneth Gamet, Edward Small Productions, 1940, transcribed &

interpreted for Hula Girls script, by Trevor Graham, 2004.

18. Scene description from movie trailer, South Pacific, 1958, Magna/TCF,

transcribed & interpreted for Hula Girls script, by Trevor Graham,

2004.

19. Bali Ha’i lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein 2nd, South Pacific, 1949.

20. Margaret Jolly, Professor and Head of the Gender Relations Centre

in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the

Australian National University, research interview by Trevor

Graham, September, 2003.

21. Ed Rampell journalist & film critic, interviewed for Hula Girls by

Trevor Graham April, 2004.

22. You’ve Got to be Taught lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein 2nd, South Pacific, 1949.

23. Most, A. 2000, ‘You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught’: The Politics of Race in Rodgers

and Hammerstein’s South Pacific” , Theater Journal 52, no. 3, p.306

24. Ibid.

25. Ibid.

26. Ed Rampell, journalist & film critic, interviewed for Hula Girls by

Trevor Graham, 2004.

27. Katerina Teaiwa, Assistant Professor of Pacific Studies at the University of Hawaii, research interview by Trevor Graham, 2003.

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8.

Writing Sharpens the MindWhen I was the Head of Documentary at the Australian Film

Television and Radio School in Sydney (1997-2002), some of

the most frequently asked questions by my students were, ‘How

do you write a script for a documentary? How can you

anticipate what will happen in front of camera? How do you

know what people will say or do? Doesn’t it become staged if

you have a script?’ They are legitimate and debatable

questions that continue to resonate amongst documentary

practitioners.

The well-known American documentary writer and teacher

Michael Rabiger, often refers to two types of documentary,

there are,

films about closed truth, whose content and form can be decided in

advance of shooting. The other kind is called open truth. Here the

documentary must accommodate situations that are in change and

development. 1

Hula Girls falls into Rabiger’s first ‘closed truth’ category,

as does most history programming. My intention was to engage

audiences with fresh insights into the ‘closed truth’ of the

202

hula girl image and the history of colonisation in the South

Pacific.

Whether we like it or not, writing a script has become an

important part of the business of documentary even for highly

experienced documentary producers and directors. Scripting is

necessary because broadcasters, both national and

international, together with film funding bodies, want

certainty about the projects they are investing in.

Broadcasters want a sense of what the picture will look and

sound like and most importantly how it will engage an

audience. That’s the question they always ask.

That’s one aspect of why writing a script is important — the

documentary market place routinely expects it. However my

belief is that’s not the best reason for writing! For me, the

real reason to write is for the pleasure it brings.

Structuring a documentary story on paper, as much as that is

possible, helps me clarify my ideas about what it is I want

to say, and how I should say it. Writing sharpens the mind!

The words on paper are a dialogue I have with myself about

the scenes I want to shoot, how I will present and use my

characters, what I expect may happen to them, locations, the

archive I might use and potential interview questions and

answers.

203

The scripts I write also provide me with an opportunity for

discussion with my producer, crew and editor, and through the

script they can engage with my vision for the program. My

challenge in writing Hula Girls was to find the structure of the

story with a beginning, middle and an end, or in dramatic

story telling terms, a set up, conflict and resolution.

A story is a process of transformation and ‘story structure’

reveals that process to a reader, a listener or an audience.

Structure loosely defined, is the architecture of a film,

novel or a play, it’s the movement from scene to scene

through which characters, subtext, information and themes

manifest themselves. Stories need drama too. The dramatic 3-

act story structure or story arc is well ingrained in feature

film writing and applies to documentaries too. You may not

see it in a finished program, and shouldn’t, but structure

helps to hold and focus an audience’s attention. With bad

structure, you lose your audience. The familiar cry ‘I didn’t

understand what happened’ can be the result of an incoherent

storyline. But there is no magic fix or formula to story

telling, each story needs to find its own logic and rhythm to

engage an audience. As veteran screenwriter William Goldman

said about writing the screenplay for his feature screenplay,

Maverick (1994),

There is no mathematical logic to any of this, it’s just how I

decided what the narrative might be against what you decide. No

204

right or wrong storytelling answer exists. Ever. I went with my

answer for many reasons, but chiefly this: it gave me my spine for

the movie. And until I have that, I am essentially helpless. Once I

have it, I have the confidence to start to write. 2

The documentary scripts I write include dialogue taken from

my research interviews, or extracts for an author’s book. I

chose the following quote from Anne Salmond’s, The Trial of the

Cannibal Dog — Captain Cook in the South Seas because it vividly evokes

the arrival of James Cook on board the HMS Resolution in Hawaii

in 1779. It describes the first contact of indigenous

Hawaiian’s with Europeans and the awestruck nature of the

encounter on both sides,

People paddled out on surf boards and canoes, swarming on board, up

the rigging and under the decks, where the women made love to the

sailors. The decks both above and below were entirely covered with

Hawaiians, men, women and children. The mood was one of unbounded

joy and when one young woman, the most beautiful girl that they had

hitherto seen at these islands was given a mirror she gazed at

herself and cried out in delight, ‘Wahine maika’I au!’ How beautiful

I am. 3

Quotes like this would provide my Hula Girls script with flavour

and authenticity. Having met Anne in Auckland I had a fair

idea that in interview she could create the same vivid ‘word

pictures’ with her descriptions. A quote like Anne’s

judiciously placed, makes a script engaging to read, and if

205

it’s engaging to read the chances are the finished film will

be engaging to watch.

I also decided to include historical ‘eye-witness’ accounts

from the period (to be delivered by actors in post-

production) to further enhance the veracity of the story, and

I chose this diary extract from Captain Samuel Wallis of HMS

Dolphin, the first English navigator to set foot in Tahiti in

1767,

We were much surprised to find ourselves surrounded by some

hundreds of canoes, there could not be less than some eight hundred

people, who looked up at our ship with great astonishment. When

they came within pistol shot of the ship, they lay by us, gazing at

us with great astonishment. They all paddled around the ship,

making signs of friendship. In the meantime we showed them trinkets

of various kinds and invited them on board. 4

It was also important to write the script for Hula Girls to

quantify for producer Andrew Ogilvie the enormous number of

archival images that were required to tell the story, so he

could cost the royalty fees. I wrote clear descriptions of

the archival film, paintings and photographs and

contextualized them within the historical narrative of the

image of the hula girl.

By writing the script I was also thinking ahead to post-

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production where it would serve as a helpful guide for my

editor, Denise Haslem. Writing the story’s possible

structure, suggesting archival images and how the sequences

could be put together would be an invaluable start for an

assembly edit. We met several times before the shoot to

discuss the script, the story and the story structure.

In this dialogue about scripts we must also be mindful that

the scripting process does have its limitations. At best

documentary films should be full of surprises. The twists and

turns of real life stories are particularly engaging and the

unpredictable must be allowed for, it’s what makes

documentary exciting to make and watch. So I am always open

in the shoot to letting go of the script and seeking the

unexpected as it arises either on location or in interviews

with my key talent. My antenna is always tuned and on the

look out for something new, even within a ‘closed truth’

story.

I find it difficult writing to a preconceived plan. I have

learned over the years that I have to commence by putting

words on screen and then I muddle along for a while testing

my ideas, feeling my way through, waiting for patterns of

ideas, argument, moods and emotions to take shape. This

involves a lot of writing, rewriting, deleting, cutting and

pasting. It’s a collage approach, one that aligns more with

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film editing and the visual arts than with writing: I put

this piece of interview against this image, that piece of

narration against that painting, quote, or Hollywood clip. An

embryonic story and style eventually emerges. When I arrive

at that point I can begin to plan ahead and think about where

I want the story to go and chart the spine of the narrative.

The quest and challenge in writing this shooting script was

to crystalise my research into a coherent 52-minute

historical narrative that would engage an audience and reveal

the origins and continuing allure and legacy of the hula girl

representation, in its many media guises, that has so

occupied the Western view of the South Pacific. How could I

squeeze 250 years of Pacific and European history and its

grand historical trajectory into an hour of television? It

was also important not to create my own fantasy version, yet

another Western vision or image of ‘exotic’ Polynesian women.

In the latter stages of my Hula Girls research I started

thinking about approaches to the story telling and tried to

imagine novel ways of writing it. I wanted to get away from a

strictly chronological story, beginning with Bougainville in

the 18th century and ending in Hollywood in the 20th. This

linear style of story would mean only using Hollywood in the

latter stages of the program and Hollywood clips I thought,

were my best asset. Healthy doses of South Seas cinema

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accompanied by interviews with Ed Rampell would enliven the

story with humour.

I considered creating a first-person narration, telling the

story from my point of view as a 50-something Western male,

along the lines of how I commenced this thesis, (Chapter 1)

in the Captain Bligh Restaurant and Bar in Papeete. I could

delve into my fantasies about brown skinned maidens with a

frangipani behind one ear and the origins of this deeply

ingrained desire within Western male culture. The problem

with this however was two fold. Could I pull it off

performance wise? It could be tragic! But more importantly,

would this style fit the brief I’d been given by my producer

and the three broadcasters?

I also considered telling the story from the point of view of

Paul Gauguin. After all, he was greatly influenced by Viaud’s

novel, Le Marriage de Loti, ‘exotic’ studio based photographs of

naked vahines circulating in Paris in the 1880s, and the

European mystique of the ‘noble savage’. I could explore

these historical influences on Gauguin, where they had

originated and the ways they had influenced his paintings and

desires to live amongst ‘savages’ in Tahiti. This story

approach also had its problems. How would Hollywood fit in to

this scenario? I quickly dismissed these two early script

ideas.

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However much I wanted to escape it, linear chronology seemed

fundamental to the brief. Hollywood writers and directors had

followed on from, and capitalized on existing images, created

by 19th century novelists and artists. These writers and

artists in turn were inspired by the early representations,

conjured by Bougainville, Wallis and Cook a century earlier.

I needed to connect the dots in this unfolding narrative.

But still the question of avoiding a linear historical story

was niggling. Potentially this would be deadly boring to

watch. I couldn’t work this problem out in advance and

decided to plunge in and write.

An adjunct of my interest in screen writing is reading the

reflections of other writers on their creative processes. I

am always hopeful of gleaning useful tips about story and

structure. William Goldman’s, Which Lie Did I Tell, More Adventures in

the Screen Trade, is full of insights about stories and writing

screenplays,

We get fed them in the cradle and forever on. Want to read a good

story? Pick up, The Little Engine That Could. Soppy and primitive, sure, but

today just by chance I read it again and let me tell you, you are

rooting with all your heart for that crummy two-bit nothing of a

train to get those toys over the mountain. That’s all it is this

business of writing. Just get the fucking toys over the mountain. 5

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With Goldman’s advice in mind, ‘Just get the fucking toys

over the mountain’, I decided my story equivalent was to get

the hula girls dancing or ‘wriggling’ as quickly as possible.

I also sought advice from another writer’s ‘agony aunt’,

crime novelist Stephen King, who says in his book, On Writing,

Plot is, I think, the good writer’s last resort and the dullard’s

first choice. A writer should start with the situation and the

character and let the story grow from there. 6

With King’s advice in mind I decided to write the image of

the hula girl, Neil Rennie’s ‘nubile savage’, as the lead

character in the film and to quickly bed down the situation, how

she was first conjured by Bougainville, and to let this lead

the unfolding historical plot. After much trial and error

(cutting, pasting, deleting) I eventually wrote the following

scene as a prologue or pre-title tease employing, Hollywood

clips, archive, narration and contemporary dance images. The

prologue establishes the hula girl as a character and she then

becomes the recurring motif throughout the script. The

narration and the choice of images would sit alongside some

of my favourite Hollywood clips from my research, Tyrone

Power’s Son of Fury (Dir. John Cromwell, 1942) and Marlon

Brando’s Mutiny on the Bounty (1962),

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SCENE 1: “LOVE” &

LEGENDS_________________________________________________

Contemporary Polynesia: Picture post card scenes of the islands of

Moorea, Tahiti and Oahu: palm trees, sandy beaches, blue lagoons —

clichéd but real images of the ‘idyllic’ south Pacific.

Narrator: The thousands of atolls, isles and islands that dot the South

Pacific provide the setting for many of history’s most dramatic events, as

well as for some of its most romantic legends.

Movie Clip: Son of Fury. 1942. Benjamin Blake (Tyrone Power) and an

‘exotic Polynesian’ island girl ‘Eve’ (Gene Tierney) sit on a palm

fringed beach. Blake spells out the word “love” letter by letter in

the sand. Eve watches him curiously.

Blake: L,O,V,E. Love!

Eve: Love.

Blake: Yes!

Movie Trailer: Mutiny on the Bounty, 1962. Captain William Bligh

(Trevor Howard) stands on the deck of the Bounty addressing his

ship’s crew.

Bligh: This island is inhabited by over 200,000 savages.

In the event that we find ourselves welcome you’ll discover

that these savages have absolutely no conception of

ordinary morality. And you will no doubt take full

advantage of their ignorance.

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Contemporary Papeete: Tourists at the Captain Bligh restaurant

watch a heiva, a Tahitian dance performed by the dance group O tahite

E. The dancers wear elaborate costumes and perform to a furious

drum beat. The women wear grass skirts and coco-nut shell bras.

Thighs, hips and hands move fast and rhythmically to the beat of

the drums.

Narrator: From the time of the first European contacts in the Pacific, the

South Sea maiden has conjured a spell in the Western imagination.

Poedua, Daughter of Oree, Chief of Ra’iatea on of the Society Islands, 1780, oil on

canvas by John Webber.

Mahana No Atua (Day of the Gods), 1894, oil on canvas by Paul Gauguin.

Filles des Mers du Sud, a contemporary tourist post card shows a

collection of bare breasts and bums as women pose provocatively to

the camera.

Narrator: The young and hyper-feminine Polynesian maiden, is most

frequently evoked by writers, artists, photographers and film directors.

The ‘island girl’ is an integral part of the adventure and romance

associated with travel to the South Pacific.

Movie Trailer: Pagan Love Song, 1950. Mimi (Esther Williams) in Andy’s

(Howard Keel) arms sings, By the Sea of the Moon. Mimi swims in an

underwater fantasy scene surrounded by other ‘maidens’.

Narrator: Polynesian women have been typecast in this role - it’s a

seductive formula — refined over the centuries.

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Archive: Hawaiian Musical Performances 1941-48. A beautiful young

Hawaiian hula dancer, performs to the tune of, Everybody Loves a Hauki

Lau, a ‘Hapa Hoale’ song, with steel guitars and ukuleles. The song

is fun, sensual and beautifully sung:

The lyrics: What a beautiful day for kissing, the old Hawaiian way.

It’s a Hauki Lau day for kissing, the old Hawaiian way.

Oh we’re going to a hauki lau, hauki, hauki, hauki, hauki lau,

everybody loves a hauki lau, hauki, hauki, hauki, hauki lau.

TITLE – supered over dancer & music:

Hula Girls

- Imagining Paradise - 7

With this opening sequence I wanted to flag to an audience

that Hula Girls would be an entertaining program that would tell

an historical tale and challenge some of our preconceptions

about Polynesian women, tourism and the South Pacific. It set

up the style of the program, entertaining Hollywood clips,

evocative paintings, images and music from popular culture,

of the hula girl.

Having written the opening I proceeded to write a sequence

about Bougainville’s arrival in Tahiti in 1768, using his

famous quote from Un Account du voyage autour le monde, historical

images, narration and also a quote from Anne Salmond. After

putting these elements together, I had my first big break-

through as to how I could write the script and avoid a purely214

linear structure. I decided, by chance, to try cutting and

pasting into it a section from W. S. Van Dyke’s silent era

film, White Shadows of the South Seas (1928) about an alcoholic doctor, Monte Blue, who is disgusted by the negative effects of

European colonisation and sails away to an untouched Pacific

island where he falls in love with a native girl played by Raquel

Torres. The White Shadows scene I chose to cut into the

Bougainville historical sequence is when the doctor first

arrives exhausted on the island and is welcomed with a

traditional coconut oil massage by a bevy of island women,

Pan across the French text of Bougainville’s Un Account du voyage autour

le monde.

Bougainville (in French): I ask you, how was one to keep four hundred

young French sailors, who hadn’t seen a woman in six months, at their

work in the midst of such a spectacle? Despite all the precautions we took,

a young girl got on board and stood by one of the hatchways.

Portrait of Tynai-Mai, a young woman with large eyes and classical face,

by William Hodges, Atlas to Cook’s Voyages.

Bougainville: The girl negligently let fall her robe and stood for all to see,

as Venus stood forth before the Phrygian shepherd; and she had the

celestial shape of Venus. We managed to restrain these bedevilled men,

however, but it was no less difficult to control oneself. Louis Antoine de

Bougainville 1768.

Interview Anne Salmond.

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Anne: Once the French sailors were on shore it was impossible to control

them. When they made love to the women they were eagerly watched by

fascinated spectators.

Movie Clip. White Shadows in the South Seas. 1928.

Inter-title:

Lomi-lomi — coconut oil

pressed by the fingers and

drawn out by the sun —

the secret and sacred

massage of Polynesia.

A European sailor is massaged sensuously by six Polynesian

‘maidens’. They rub oil into his chest, stroke his arms and run

their hands along his legs. The sailor is blissed out. One of the

‘maidens’ smiles as the other women stroke his forehead. 8

I was unsure at first how this collage would sit on the page.

It seemed highly unusual and out of context, perhaps even

cheeky, it also made me laugh and still does. The White

Shadows scene disrupted and intervened in the historical

narrative. It connected Bougainville’s journal to a film made

150 years after the French navigator arrived in Tahiti. And

significantly it solved the puzzle of how to tell the story.

I decided to employ two story strands from the very first

frame. Strand ‘A’ would be historical and linear, connecting

the dots, the images that had successively created and

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reinforced the image of the hula girl in the popular Western

imagination for two centuries. Strand ‘B’ told the story of

South Seas cinema, Hollywood’s vision of paradise. With these

dueling narrative strands I could jump straight into the 20th

century and utilize the popular images of the South Seas and

Polynesian women conjured by moviemakers. Using this

‘intervention’ technique I could introduce South Seas cinema

into any place throughout the story where there was a point

of thematic reference or historical connection.

I eventually wrote the following scene to tell the story of

the arrival of Wallis in Tahiti in 1767, using original

footage to be shot in London, historical engravings,

interviews and two key scenes from the 1935 version of Mutiny

on the Bounty,

SCENE 6: WALLIS ARRIVES IN TAHITI_______________________________

Contemporary London: Nelson’s column in Trafalgar Square, the Tower of

London on the Thames. A statue of a mermaid holding Triton’s fork

outside St Paul’s Cathedral.

Narrator: In the mid 18th century European geographers believe there is a

great land mass in the Southern Hemisphere to balance the weight of the

northern continents. The Lords of the British Admiralty are determined that

Great Britain, not France, should claim what they call Terra Australis and a

race begins to get there first.

Engravings of Captain Samuel Wallis and his ship HMS Dolphin.

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Narrator: In August 1766 they despatch Captain Samuel Wallis in a small

frigate, HMS Dolphin, with secret instructions to discover the Unknown

Southern land.

Movie Clip: Mutiny on the Bounty 1935. A woman hawker tries to sell a

sailor a string of beads on the docks at Plymouth.

Woman: So you’re going to the South Seas Jack? Here take this (a

string of beads) you can buy your own island. Ten

shillings!

A ship in full sail at sea, the Bounty sailors climb rigging. The

boson pipes a watch.

Contemporary Pacific: Tahiti’s verdant, craggy peaks rise from the

reefs and lagoons surrounding the island. Mist shrouds parts of the

island — travelling shots across the sparkling surface of the reef

water.

Narrator: After ten months at sea on the evening of June 18, 1767 the

Dolphin’s crew sight a great mountain covered with clouds to the south of their

ship, and rejoice thinking they are the first European’s to discover the fabled

Terra Australis. But Wallis has arrived in Tahiti — the heart of Polynesia.

Scenics of Tahiti and Moorea, their remaining untouched beauty — fruit

trees, waterfalls, ocean views, idyllic white and volcanic black sandy

beaches. The lagoons of Moorea are a deep blue and turquoise.

Anne: Tahiti is a jewel of a tropical island — a world away from Yorkshire and

London. You can imagine the response of the Dolphin’s crew after 6 months at

sea. And you can equally imagine the response of the Tahitians when the

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Dolphin appeared over the horizon and sailed into Matavai Bay. Thousands of

men, women and children lined the beaches staring at the Dolphin in

amazement. It was a moment of pure bewilderment.

Review of the war galleys of Tahiti, 1776, oil on canvas by William Hodges.

Narrator: Just days later the Dolphin is surrounded by a fleet of 500 canoes full

of Tahitian warriors, commanded by a sacred high Chief. Thousands of men

line the shore opposite.

Amusements des Otahitiens at des Anglais, sailors on deck ogle naked young

Tahitian women on a canoe who dive into the water, engraving, 1788.

Narrator: More canoes paddle out to the Dolphin carrying women lined up on

platforms posturing provocatively to the sailors and exposing their genitals.

The Fleet of Otaheite assembled at Oparee, 1777, engraving by William Woollett

after William Hodges.

Representations of the Attack of Captain Wallis in the Dolphin by the Natives of Otaheite,

engraving 1773.

Narrator: The warriors attack from all sides with a barrage of rocks, hurled

with slingshots. The Dolphin responds with a flurry of canon fire, and muskets

firing into the canoes, hurling shattered bodies into the water. But the

Tahitians are quickly subdued by superior firepower and the next day Wallis

takes possession of the island and renames Tahiti, ‘King George the Third’s

Island’.

Captain Wallis, on his arrival at O’Taheite in conversation with Oberea the Queen, engraving

by John Hall, 1773.

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Insulaires et Monuments de l’Isle de Paques, a group of European sailors sitting

with islander men and women, 1797, engraving after Duche de Vancy,

Anne: As soon as the British and the Tahitians stopped fighting they started

having sex, and some of these relationships became commercial. The crew of

the Dolphin were off having a glorious time, concealing each others absences

ashore from the officers and stealing iron from the ship to pay for sexual

favours.

Movie Clip: Mutiny on the Bounty 1935. Sitting on the beach Maimiti and

Tehani brush their long black Polynesian hair and coyly look to

Fletcher Christian and Roger Byram who in turn are watching the two

young Tahitian women looking at them. They look backwards and forwards

at each other. Fletcher is besotted.

Byram: Aren’t they amazing Fletcher? I never knew there were

such people in the world. They’re simple and kind and yet

somehow they are royal.

Fletcher stares at the two beautiful Tahitians. He hasn’t heard a word

that Byram has spoken.

Christian: What did you say?

Narrator: Over the following weeks a frenzy of lovemaking takes place on

shore. Fearing that discipline on his ships is at risk, on 22nd July 1767, after a

stay of one month, Wallis decides to leave Tahiti.

Contemporary Tahiti: Travelling shots across the surface of the waters

off Tahiti — the water ripples and sparkles in the hot tropical light.

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Narrator: As the Dolphin departs a flotilla of canoes escorts them away from

Matavai Bay. 9

This disruptive or intervening technique was liberating. It

mixed up images and text from the distant past, with the

recent past and present, as though they are having a dialogue

with each other. They were all one and the same after all,

images residing in the popular imagination, but from

different eras and employing different media. It allowed me

to run clips of scenes with actors like Clarke Gable, Marlon

Brando and Dorothy Lamour throughout the length of the

program. This for me was a way of drawing an audience into

the unfolding historical drama and the consequences of

colonisation in the South Pacific.

Introducing South Seas cinema at the head of the film also

allowed me to set up the humorous Ed Rampell as a key

interviewee who would be woven throughout the story. Using my

Rampell research interviews together with blocks of Hollywood

clips and scenes from trailers, the script became a joy to

write.

In my writing I was trying to find a way of interweaving

history and historical analysis with the humour provided by

South Seas cinema stereotypes. The Hollywood story strand, I

thought, would provide entertainment value for my Australian

and European audiences alike. Introducing popular culture,

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music and tourist images, would also provide audience

connectivity with the program as familiar icons.

The South Seas cinema ‘B’ story strand I was scripting would

also provide the story twists I alluded to in Chapter 7, through

the themes of interracial love, frank sexuality and the

reaction to this by America's moral guardians, via the Hayes

Code. I wrote South of Pago Pago into the script, with comments

by Luis Reyes and Ed Rampell, as the beginning point to the

end of Act 2,

SCENE 29: INTERRACIAL

ROMANCE_______________________________________

Film Archive: Newsreel. Hollywood scenes 1930s. At a Los Angeles

picture theatre, patrons que to see a new 1930s Hollywood romance.

Narrator: Movie going becomes ingrained in America during the thirties —

85 million people attend packed movie houses each week. But Hollywood’s

mass appeal and its portrayal of romance, sex and violence draws fire

from America's moral guardians. Under pressure from the Catholic Church,

producers in the 30s are forced to adopt a code of strict moral censorship.

Film Archive: Newsreel, on set for a 1930s Hollywood film shoot.

Narrator: The Production Code prohibits nudity, suggestive dances and

explicitly forbids ‘sexual relations between the white and black races’.

Film Archive: Newsreel. Lights and camera are placed in position

for a 1930s romance.

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Reyes: If you had a love scene, the lovers couldn’t go near the bed, married

people had to have separate beds, if there was a kissing scene you had to

have one foot on the floor. You couldn’t show interracial romance or

marriage between blacks and whites. But South Seas cinema got away with

violating the Production Code.

Ed: Unlike dealing with the American Indians in the Western or blacks, the

South Seas movies are where white and non-white mingled the most freely.

One of the best examples is South of Pago Pago, starring Jon Hall.

Movie Clip: South of Pago Pago. Kehani (Jon Hall) meets Ruby Taylor

(Frances Farmer) for the first time. He stares at her intently.

Kehani speaks a broken ‘islander English’.

Kehani: Your skin is white. And your hair is golden

like the sky at dawn.

Ruby: Well it’s been described before, but not like

that.

Ed: Hall was Tahitian, he had a Tahitian mother. So in 1940 you had a guy

playing a Polynesian who was in fact a Polynesian. He steals Frances

Farmer, a blonde American beauty, and interestingly this time it’s a blonde

woman who goes native and has a romantic interlude on an island. 10

From this point in the story I worked towards a climax for

Act 2, culminating in the story of South Pacific (the movie) as

a challenge to racial segregation in America. The musical’s

love stories, set against the backdrop of the Pacific War and

the ‘allure’ of the South Seas, were being utilised here as a

progressive beacon. 223

Apart from finding a structure for the story to fulfil the

brief, there were several other big creative and content

issues to solve at the scripting stage. How could I deal with

the literary history of the Pacific, in particular the South

Seas writers of the 19th and 20th centuries, Herman Melville,

Robert Louis Stevenson, and Frederick O’Brien amongst others?

There was no easy solution to this aspect of Hula Girls.

Literary works on screen are anathema in documentary as they

are inherently non-visual. One is usually reduced to the

talking head to describe the novel. Or re-enacting key

scenes, and I had no desire to go down that path nor the

budget to do it. I decided brevity was the way forward and to

suggest the expansive literary history via several camera

moves and narration. I wrote descriptions of camera pans and

tilts across the covers of major literary works, tableaux of

popular novels, Treasure Island, Moby Dick, Coral Island, Le Marriage de Loti

and other works by Jack London, Somerset Maugham, Louis

Becke, Barbara Grimshaw, Charles Nordhoff and James Norman

Hall. I also decided to focus on one literary story as an

example, and chose Melville’s 1846 autobiographical novel,

Typee — A Peep at Polynesian Life. Melville, as I outlined in

Chapter 8, is often considered the first writer to popularise

the South Seas, and Typee, his first novel was a best seller

in the 1930s. The real reason though for choosing Melville

and his story about Marquesan dream girl Fayaway is that

Warner Bros produced and released a feature film based on the224

novel in 1958, with the new title Enchanted Island. And further

more there was a cinema trailer of the film that I could use

without great copyright expense. I wrote a scene into the

script employing 40 seconds from the trailer. This approach

gave Pacific literature a toe-hold on the script. It was

tokenistic at best. But it was a sacrifice I was prepared to

make in favour of a visually entertaining story.

The other creative dilemma I struggled with in scripting was

the requirement of the original outline that the Hula Girls

story should conclude with an epilogue that explored

contemporary Polynesian artists, writers and filmmakers and

their take on the image of the ‘nubile savage’. As I

described in Chapter 6, I was concerned that these scenes

would appear tokenistic at the end of the program and would

be seen as a divergence from the main thrust of the story. I

had researched this part of the brief when I traveled to the

centers of contemporary Polynesian artistic endeavor, New

Zealand, Tahiti, Los Angeles and Hawaii. In fact across the

Pacific islands a renaissance in Polynesian culture had, and

is occurring — a proliferation of artists, writers and

filmmakers seeking to portray their distinct lives and

questioning the image of Polynesian women.

In Auckland I came across Yuki Kihara a Japanese/Samoan

photographic artist and her House of Spirits series of

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photographic portraits of herself as a ‘dusky South Seas

maiden’. Mimicking 19th century studio portraits of near naked

vahines, Yuki had photographed herself with a twist. She is a

fa'a fafine, a phenomena within Polynesia culture of men who

live as women, constituting a third, traditionally accepted

and acknowledged gender. Yuki’s playful and hyper-sexual

caricatures often focus on the promotional images of

Polynesian women created by tourism. I wrote Scene 33: Cultural

Renaissance and Self-representation into my script and planned to

shoot Kihara getting ready for a new studio photo session and

posing naked to camera as a stereotypical ‘South Seas

maiden’. She would wear a barbed wire ‘floral lei’ around her

head and neck. I also planned to use performance footage by

the Pacifika Divas, a musical group of fa'a fafine who Yuki

regularly performs with, who parody and mimic the hula maiden

stereotype. Kihara had a lot to say about the influence of

contemporary tourism and Hollywood on Polynesian women, and

not only via her photographic work,

In my series Faleafatu, which means House of Spirits I have seven

portraits. I dressed myself in seven different personas. I

consciously made myself look like a dusky maiden as Christ. But I

want to do a flip on that image, of the dusky maiden with the

tiara, naked with a floral lei around, her, being happy happy

happy, like they are in tourist promotions. The image of the Hula

girl is totally about fucking and sex. That’s why I want to add

soft porn under currents to my work, because sex is behind these

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images. Tourism and Hollywood are the things that influence me

most. 11

Polynesian Hip Hop has a very strong presence in New

Zealand, Los Angeles and Hawaii. Katerina Teaiwa agreed to

let me film her Hip Hop group in Honolulu and I would rely

on her to help tie these scenes together in the script via

commentary about Polynesian contemporary arts,

Many Pacific female artists, writers and filmmakers are reworking

the image of the Polynesian maiden — they are making a parody out

of her and they are saying this is a fantasy image, a construction,

and then using the hula girl as a basis for their own images that

reflect their own lives. 12

As a vivid contrast to the bulk of the Hula Girls story I wrote

into the final pages of the shooting script several scenes

from the 1994 smash hit New Zealand film, Once Were Warriors. With

its gritty realism, Warriors directly challenges the romantic

Hollywood idyll of indigenous Pacific life and women.

Directed by Lee Tamahori it was the first and most successful

feature film, produced, directed, written by, and starring

Polynesians. The film tells the story of Beth Heke a

descendant of a proud Maori tribe, and her husband, Jake, who

live in squalor in an Auckland ghetto. I transcribed the

following scene from the feature into my script,

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Beth, Jake and Uncle Bully are in the kitchen, there’s a party

happening. Beth is throwing eggs on the floor smashing them at

Jake’s feet.

Beth: You want eggs, well have the bloody lot of

them.

She gets angrier whilst Jake momentarily adopts an air of control.

Jake: Cook the man some fucking eggs!

Beth: Do it yourself Jake!

Jake violently punches Beth in the jaw, knocking her to the floor.

Beth: I’m not the fucking slave around here

Jake.

Jake picks her up off the floor by her hair and ears. She spits in

his face. He brutally bashes her head against the wall and smashes

her with his fist. He throws Beth against a far side wall. She

struggles to stand up.

Beth: You fucking coward! 13

The female lead in Warriors, Rena Owen agreed to be

interviewed for Hula Girls. I thought this a coup to have a

Polynesian actor of her stature in the program. I interviewed

Rena by phone from Los Angeles for my research and wrote some

excerpts into the script,

228

Warriors dared to have the courage to explore things we've all

known about, things that most societies keep in the closet. It was

time to look at domestic abuse, sexual abuse, alcohol abuse and

cultural alienation, the things that are going on in our society

and not do it in a Hollywood way, but do it with honesty. An

underlying theme of the film is that this is what happens to

warriors when they are colonised. The theme of losing your land,

losing your identity and your mana along with that, that’s the

theme of cultural alienation. 14

Rena provided an opportunity to further politicise the Hula

Girls story. She wanted to speak out about the colonisation of

land, her people and the cinematic images of Polynesians,

What’s happened for Polynesian people, for all indigenous people

around the world, we’ve been colonized and we’ve all had to fight

to have a place in the contemporary Western world, to have some

equality and being reflected honestly in films. It’s about us

saying well this is who we really are, this is us and this is where

we are at. It told our young brown kids from New Zealand or Hawaii,

or in Samoa, that they too could be filmmakers, they could be

actors, writers and directors. 15

I was very happy to write these scenes into the script and

the gritty perspective they provided. Kihara, Owen and their

respective works offered further twists in the narrative of

the screenplay. But no matter how strong or engaging these

scenes were, they still felt like they were occurring too

229

late in the story, and were superfluous. Despite these

misgivings I planned to shoot them, use the potent scenes

from Once Were Warriors and see how they worked in the edit.

And so I kept on writing. In retrospect I was having too much

fun! The first draft was 90 pages long, mammoth, rambling and

unwieldy. There was too much exposition, too many ideas and

interviews and way too many Hollywood clips for our budget. I

was over writing the story, wanting to show and tell too much

history. The first draft also had several ‘ethnographic

tangents’ which AVRO specifically didn’t want. I’d written

some scenes about Polynesian settlement of the Pacific and

the Polynesians as master navigators and sailors. I’d also

written in several scenes that predated Wallis and

Bougainville’s arrival in Tahiti, including early European

imaginings and writings about the Southern Hemisphere,

describing mermaids and monsters and fantastic ideas about

peoples from remote regions.

I subscribe to the feature film script notion that a page is

worth a minute of screen time. The 1st draft badly needed

slashing, burning and simplifying to about 50 pages. I had to

kill my babies and lose 40 pages. I returned to the original Hula

Girls brief and my writing mantra, ‘What’s the story I want to

tell?’ To slash the script I revisited the original program

230

brief that had sold idea to the three broadcasters, I let

‘the market’ be my guide,

A lush, visual exploration of the origins and evolution of the

sexual mythology surrounding the Pacific island woman. 16

Anything superfluous to that ‘chant’, including ethnographic

and political history that I’d written would either be

trimmed back or deleted. Editing interviews and rewriting

reduced and simplified narration brought the script down to

68 pages including synopsis and character notes. I decided to

settle on that as a final draft even though it was still way

too long for an hour long program.

In hindsight the shooting script is more like a rough cut of

the edited program, but it was more than adequate as a piece

of scriptwriting. I’d solved the puzzle of how to tell the

story. It had the requisite characters, locations, themes,

sub-text and archival elements in place from which a royalty

budget estimate could be drawn. Perhaps more importantly the

script gave me confidence that I knew what I was doing and

how I would do it. I could answer my own mantra questions:

‘What’s the story I want to tell and how can I make it? What

will I need? Who will I need and where must I go to make my

film?’

231

My producer Andrew Ogilvie liked what I’d done. It gave us a

point of focus and discussion for the production. Andrew was

confident from his reading that the program would deliver to

the broadcasters the program they had commissioned, thus

reassuring me that we would deliver the one version to all

three broadcasters. It fulfilled the original premise, told a

story, had a beginning, middle and end.

With the script completed we could now move into pre-

production planning for the shoot and make the program. This

would be the real test of the locations and characters I’d

chosen. How would they perform in front of camera? Would they

deliver to my expectations? And crucially would the locations

we were filming in Tahiti and Hawaii deliver the weather to

shoot the opening scenes of the script, ‘Contemporary

Polynesia: Picture post card scenes of the islands of Moorea,

Tahiti and Oahu; palm trees, sandy beaches, blue lagoons —

clichéd but real images of the “idyllic” south Pacific’?

Footnotes:

1. Rabiger, M. 1994, Scripting the Documentary, a lecture at Nordisk Panorama

Film Festival.

2. Goldman, W. 2000, More Adventures, Which Lie Did I Tell, More Adventures in the

Screen Trade, Bloomsbury, London, Chpt 1, p.61.

3. Salmond, A. 2003, The Trial of the Cannibal Dog — Captain Cook in the South Seas,

Penguin, London, Chapter 17, Killing Kuki, p. 394.

232

4. Hawkesworth, J. 1773, An account of the Voyages of Cook and Wallis, Volume 1,

based on diary entry of Captain Samuel Wallis of HMS Dolphin Thursday

18th June 1767, printed for W. Strahan and T. Cadell, p. 213,

5. Goldman, W. 2000, Which Lie Did I Tell, More Adventures in the Screen Trade,

Bloomsbury, London, p.462.

6. King, S. 2000, On Writing — A Memoir of the Craft, Scribner, Riverside NJ,

p.32

7. Graham, T. 2004, Hula Girls — Imagining Paradise, Electric Pictures,

Perth, p. 6.

8. Ibid, p.12.

9. Ibid, p. 23.

10.Ibid, p. 54.

11.Yuki Kihara, contemporary performance and photographic artist

research interview by Trevor Graham, 2003.

12.Katerina Teaiwa, Assistant Professor of Pacific Studies at the

University of Hawaii, research interview by Trevor Graham, 2003.

13.Scene description from Once Were Warriors, 1994, written by Riwia

Brown, based on the novel by Alan Duff, 1994, transcribed &

interpreted for Hula Girls script, by Trevor Graham, 2003.

14.Rena Owen, actress & consultant Sundance Screenwriters Lab,

research interview by Trevor Graham, 2003.

15.Ibid.

16.Sturma, M. & Colgan, G. 2002, Island Aphrodite, Electric Pictures

Perth, p. 1.

233

9.

We Got 2 or 3 Shots Done

Today

Woodbridge Strong Van Dyke the 2nd was nicknamed ‘One Take

Woody’ by his Hollywood colleagues. Throughout late 1927 and

early ’28 Van Dyke spent four-and-a-half months in Tahiti

filming his famed White Shadows in the South Seas, which he co-

directed with documentary auteur Robert Flaherty. Flaherty

was renowned for Nanook of the North (1922) and his documentary

Moana (1926) which was set in American Samoa. Flaherty’s film

shoots were usually long and drawn out affairs and in the

case of Moana took two years to complete. Van Dyke on the

other hand, as his nickname suggests, would require only

weeks to shoot his dramatic features mostly, Westerns and

melodramas. Woody was a Hollywood ‘factory’ director

accustomed to scripts, budgets, schedules and quickly getting

the picture in the can.

White Shadows was based on the 1919 travel book by journalist

Frederick O’Brien and had sparked a wave of interest in the

South Sea Islands as a travel destination and a place to 234

escape the ‘civilized’ world. It was MGM’s first sound movie

(without synch dialogue) employing synchronized music and

sound effects only. There is one spoken word in the entire

film ‘Hello’ along with water splashes, wind, crowd voices,

laughter and whistling. The production was a major

undertaking for MGM. Cast and crew had to be relocated from

Los Angeles to Tahiti and everything was built from scratch:

a small studio, village sets, accommodation, a screening room

for viewing rushes along with a film processing laboratory.

Van Dyke’s ‘one take’ reputation would be sorely tested on

this picture as he was directing experienced Hollywood

professionals like Raquel Torres and Monty Blue, alongside a

large cast of Tahitian non actors.

The White Shadows narrative about colonial exploitation of

Polynesians, and its beautiful cinematography by Clyde De

Vinna was a perfect fit I thought, for inclusion in Hula Girls

and so I wrote several scenes from the feature into my

script.

Van Dyke wrote a diary of his experiences on location in

Tahiti. It’s a day by day, blow by blow account of the film

shoot, the weather they encountered, the problems with cast,

the tension between himself and Flaherty and Van Dyke’s

longing for his lover, his script clerk, Josephine Chippo.

The diary would make poignant reading and I hoped an evening

respite from the rigors of shooting Hula Girls.

235

In pre-production, and together with my director of

photography John Whitteron, I planned a style of filming the

Hula Girls interviews that employed an old Hollywood technique

that W. S. Van Dyke was well acquainted with: rear

projection. This technique relies on location footage

projected onto a screen in a studio, in front of which the

scene is performed by the actors. Car chase sequences and

early westerns, like those directed by Van Dyke, relied

heavily on this technique. However we didn’t have the large

studio spaces that are required for this technique, nor did

we have the crew, so we adapted the technique by using a data

projector to throw images from the front onto an improvised

screen (a large double bed sheet) placed behind our

interviewees. We planned to project historic hula girl images

into the frame which were relevant to the interview subjects,

in the case of Anne Salmond, engravings from the Cook voyages

to Tahiti and Hawaii. For Ed Rampell we chose movie

production stills from 1930s South Seas pictures and for Rena

Owen stills from, Once Were Warriors. I carefully planned each

interview, including the questions, with the background

images in mind. My research interviews had given me a very

good idea of how my shoot questions could be answered, which

allowed me to choose the relevant backgrounds. This technique

required a lot of planning, including screen tests. We

thought about using ‘blue screen’ as an alternative, which

236

would have been easier to manage on location. However John

and I decided the adapted rear projection technique would

provide a more ‘cinematic’ look to the frame. Blue screen we

concluded can look very electronic with its hard edge

division between foreground and background. Rear projection

on the other hand creates a surreal space between the

interviewees and their backgrounds. We created, however, a

rod for our backs as each interview set up would take several

hours to prepare. The latest data projectors, no matter how

expensive, tend to whir as they operate and required sound

baffles to muffle the sound. So much padding was required

that the projector would often over heat and shut down,

sometimes half way through an interview. Patiently we would

wait for the projector to cool before firing it up. We were

also mostly shooting in hotel conference rooms, not the most

efficient form of makeshift studio. Consequently the rear

projection technique whilst effective also provided

challenges.

We arrived in Papeete, after shooting in New Zealand, at the

end of April. Seasonally this is the beginning of the dry

season, the torrential down pours so characteristic of the

South Seas tropics around Christmas, January and February

tail off in April. It’s also meant to be the best time with

calmer seas as the wet season monsoonal winds die down.

Tranquil seas were important as John Whitteron and I were

237

planning to shoot scenes of the Tahitian landscape from a

boat in the water, POVs of a ship approaching the island. I

would use these shots with historical quotes from

Bougainville and Cook.

After a day of filming around the streets of Papeete we

headed off to the island of Moorea which is an 18 kilometer

journey by ferry. Several large French warships were moored

in the Papeete harbour which we filmed as we sped past. On

Moorea, which means yellow lizard, the weather was close to

perfect for filming. Looking out to sea and back to the

distant rugged outline of Tahiti, we filmed white crested

waves breaking gently on the reef line. The water was many

shades of blue and turquoise. We were filming classic South

Seas tourist ‘postcards’ as I had written into the beginning

of my script. Along shaded pathways we found lush tropical

gardens with beautiful hibiscus and other fragrant flowers.

Here we found fertile abundance, banana groves and other

fruits that I wasn’t familiar with. We filmed this fecund

world in close up as though they were the POVS of the ‘first

contact’ navigators encountering the lush tropical landscape

and vegetation for the first time.

Then we drove into the southern mountainous interior of the

island. It’s here that you can get away from the visual

trappings of modern tourism and contemporary life. Signage

238

disappears along with power lines. We ascended winding roads

to Moorea’s peaks. Here we could film views of Mount Rotui

with clouds and sea beyond. These scenes were akin to the 18th

century paintings of Englishman William Hodges. The sunlight,

the humid atmosphere, the play of light on foliage, mountains

and clouds all conspired in Hodges’ pictures to create an

image of a paradisiacal world inhabited by sensuous liberated

women. His landscapes were a precursor for a new era in

British art — the Romantic Movement. Here we were filming a

cinematic equivalent to fulfill my intention of inter cutting

our pictorial scenes with his.

That night the weather suddenly closed in on Moorea and

Tahiti. The next day the sky was a deep sullen grey. The

ferry crossing back to Papeete was rough, the wind whipped up

big surf as the ferry maneuvered its way through the reefs

circling both islands. The heavens soon unleashed a wild

storm. Fortunately the next two days were taken up with an

interview with dancer Marguerite Lei and filming her O

Tahiete E troupe at the Captain Blight restaurant, followed

by a precious day off.

When Woody Van Dyke ventured to Tahiti in 1927 he was

expecting his usual quick turn around to complete White

Shadows. What he hadn’t factored was the reputation of his

co-director, for painstakingly slow work, his largely

239

unprofessional cast and the unpredictable Tahitian weather.

His journal reveals him often venting his frustrations with

Flaherty,

Flaherty has been on location now for a week that should have been

finished in three hours. 1.

Van Dyke and MGM were clearly smitten by the myth of the

South Seas as a tropical wonder land of eternal sunshine. To

schedule the shooting of a picture in the middle of the wet

season (December 1927) can only be described as extremely

naïve at best. White Shadows needed continuous sunlight as most

of the shooting was in outdoor locations and several scenes

were to be shot at sea and required calm waters. Van Dyke,

like I was 80 years or so later, was hoping to shoot picture

‘post card’ scenes of Tahiti. He optimistically started work

when he arrived in Papeete, he loved the warmth and the

atmospheric light. But as the weather turned, so did his

mood. Compounding his woes were the film stocks of the era

which were notoriously slow (low in light sensitivity

compared to modern film stock) and requiring an abundance of

studio or natural light. Weeks later, Woody sank into deep

depression. In a cable to his lover in Los Angeles, Josephine

Chippo, dated January 1928, he wrote about his depressed

mental state which was increasing day by day, along with the

torrential rain,

240

Didn’t think I would write any more today but have got to do

something or go mad. I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me. I

never so thoroughly detested a place or a job in my life. I have

been in the most squalid and miserable places under the worst

possible conditions but never have I felt toward them as I feel to

this job and place. If hell were any worse than this I will cease

from sinning from now on. Could honestly get some relief by putting

my fist through a wall. There isn’t enough money in the world to

have made me take this job had I known what it was going to be

like. I miss you worse than ever thought possible to miss anyone.

And a damn sight more than I ever missed anyone in my life. MGM has

taken a few months of my life and put them on a hot griddle and

watched them fry. 2.

The heavens continued to open on our Tahiti shoot too. Like

Van Dyke, I was laid up in my hotel room, reading his diary

which wasn’t reassuring at all. I wasn’t depressed like

Woody, but I was becoming increasingly nervous about our

schedule and whether we could achieve our shoot in Tahiti.

Fortunately there was further undercover shooting to conclude

at the busy Marche` de Papeete. Here Tahitian women sell

beautiful displays of tropical flowers, fruit and arrays of

souvenirs all with a tropical hula girl theme. Many of the men

and women look like they have stepped out of Gauguin’s epic

canvas, Where Do We come From? Who are we? Where are We Going? I

planned inter cutting these contemporary ‘marche`’ scenes

with quotes from Gauguin about Tahiti and her people.

241

On the Sunday morning we were in Papeete, we had permission

to film at the Evangelical Church of French Polynesia. The

large pink 19th century Protestant Church was bursting at the

seams with a large congregation of men and women belting out

hymns sung in Tahitian — a style of Christian singing unique

to Polynesia. The women wore their white ‘Mother Hubbards’ —

a cover all dress introduced by the London Missionary

Society. The men wore formal suits. It was hard not to over-

shoot here. The singing was so dynamic and the scene spoke

strongly of the evangelical legacy of the London Missionary

Society.

We had planned to travel around the rim road of Tahiti to

shoot both sea and landscapes where we could find them. I

wanted many views that would replicate the type of habitat

that William Hodges encountered or the natural beauty

witnessed by Bougainville or Wallis. But the weather remained

gloomy for the rest of our stay. We had four days of filming

next to nothing. Eventually we toured the island, but more

for pleasure. Every time the camera was pulled from our

vehicle the rain began to tumble. “Let’s shoot anyway!” I

insisted. “It’ll look like shit!” was the response from DOP

John Whitteron. “You’ll never use it.”

It was as though Tahiti was proving a point about its mythic

‘good looks’ to both myself and Woody. On the 27th and 28th of

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January 1928 work had still not progressed far enough for Van

Dyke, he was sinking further into a depressed state,

I think maybe there is a possibility of their sending down some

lights, and if they do that will help us out a lot. We certainly

need them bad enough. The rain is not so usual down here but the

clouds are and we can’t shoot a thing when it is cloudy ….

We got two or three shots done today. It has rained with that

terrible insistency that you felt all the way through the play of

Rain (1922). It comes down steadily and hard until you think it is

raining as hard as it can and as hard as you ever hope to see it

rain, and then the roar on the tin roof will mount until you can’t

here yourself talk above a shout. Every moment this country grows

harder for me to bear …. 3.

I knew in the intellectual sense that the legendary Tahitian

climate, white sands, crystal clear waters and deep blue

skies, were just that, legends. For starters Tahiti has black

volcanic sand on all but two of its beaches. In fact for the

Mutiny on the Bounty shoot, starring Marlon Brando and Trevor

Howard, director Lewis Milestone had tons of white sand

imported to Tahiti and raked over the volcanic beaches. Black

volcanic sand does have a beauty to my mind, but it doesn’t

uphold to the image of ‘paradise’. I knew all of this and intended

filming Tahiti’s black beaches. But without sun and against

grey skies they were extremely unimpressive.

243

I was still looking for these perfect postcard views. I

realized I too was trapped in a mindset when writing the

script and now on location. Andrew Ogilvie had pitched the

program to Commissioning Editors as ‘winter viewing’ for

their European audiences. He saw it as a bright tropical

interlude for viewers in the depths of a grey snow bound

winter. I was overlooking my own knowledge and experience of

the tropics in favour of Ogilvie’s pitch. Was I perhaps too

willing to please? Was I now enhancing the legend rather than

critiquing it? But still I hoped the weather would clear so I

could get the shots. It was hard to let go.

There is one other important factor in this equation (which

may in the end just be a rationale) the dynamic range of film

stock and in our case video tape. Light is what both respond

to, and brilliantly. Grey, sullen skies do nothing for the

ability of film and video to record life because light is a

sculptural tool. Consider the way light falls on and is

reflected by the white marble of Michelangelo’s beautiful

Pieta. The sculptor well knew that light defines space and

the human body skillfully. Landscapes, faces, a nude or a

vase of flowers all need light to be photographed well. The

cinematographer’s art is in part about creating meaning

through light and using the ability of film, and more

recently digital video tape, to record it. This is why movie

making in the US was originally established in Los Angeles,

244

because of the daily abundance on sun light to be had there.

In Tahiti, on our shooting tour around the island, the grey

light created flat, dull images. It was a major intellectual

conundrum for the program. I began to think that the tropical

sunlit images of Tahitian paradise are intimately connected

to the technical recording abilities of black and white and

colour film and video stocks. The proof was in our rushes

from that day of touring the rim of Tahiti. Back in our hotel

rooms we could see that Whitteron was right, our rushes were

‘shite’.

The work of William Hodges, the first artist to paint the

atmospherics of the tropics, holds a key to this argument

too. Hodges uses his deft techniques to infuse the scene with

mood. For example the heavily shaded clouds that he includes

on the horizon establish a counterpoint with Cook’s ships and

the Islander canoes and the woman bathers, which are all

awash in ‘Arcadian’ golden light that defines the space of

Matavai Bay. Just as it was for Van Dyke and for me, tropical

sunlight was important to ‘sculpting’ a more dramatic scene

in Hodges’ pictures too.

Van Dyke eventually got his film in the can with sumptuous

views of Tahiti. But he had to wait nearly five months to

complete the picture. When released the White Shadow reviews

were largely positive with most of them commenting on the

245

breathtaking black and white cinematography which gave DOP

Clyde De Vinna an Academy Award,

Even today the film holds up as an extremely well made,

imaginatively executed fusion of drama, travelogue, and romantic

picturization of South Seas manners and customs. 4.

Unlike Van Dyke we didn’t have 5 months and we left Tahiti

with much of our mission ‘unaccomplished’. On arrival in

Hawaii where I’d planned to shoot along the beach at Waikiki,

the weather wasn’t any better. This skinny stretch of sand,

with its flat waves is testimony to the power of advertising,

the myth making of Hollywood and popular culture. And to boot

the shore line has been savaged by over-development from

tourism. I wanted to film row after row of ugly modern

hotels, it is a big part of the legacy of tourism’s

colonisation of Hawaii and her people.

The weather continued to dog us in Hawaii, dull grey light

and occasional rain. Our tour of Oahu like our tour of Tahiti

resulted in very little shooting. We had also arranged with

the Sheraton Princess Kaiulani Hotel to film an outdoor

sunset dinner show, featuring hula performances, with Waikiki

as a back drop. The show is called ‘Creation — A Polynesian Journey’

and comes with a Mai Tai cocktail and an all you can eat

buffet featuring prime carved rib. Just as the performance

246

started so did the rain. The cheery extravaganza was

abandoned. We packed up, ate the ribs and enjoyed a Mai Tai.

More scenics were shot in Los Angeles, London and Paris: the

Hollywood sign looming large over Beverley hills, Grauman’s

Chinese Theatre, Nelson’s column in Trafalgar Square, the

Tower of London on the Thames, Place de la Concorde, statues

of classical figures in Les Jardins des Tuilleries. With

these scenes I intended to contextualise 18th century European

responses to the ‘discovery’ of Tahiti and Polynesia,

particularly the writings of Dr. John Hawkesworth and Denis

Diderot, the publication of Bouganville’s travel dairy and

the exhibition of Hodges’ Tahitian landscapes at the Royal

Academy in London 1776.

In Boston I had one of my greatest pleasures of any film

shoot I have ever been on, filming the 2004 Paul Gauguin

Retrospective, Gauguin in the South Seas, staged at the Boston

Museum of Fine Arts. It was difficult filming here as the

exhibition was crowded with patrons lining up to scrutinise

the artist’s work. But the crowds had their advantages too

as they afforded the opportunity to provide a sense of scale

to Gauguin’s colossal canvas Where Do We Come From? What Are We?

Where Are We Going? Stephen Eisenman, our Gauguin, ‘expert’

attended the exhibition with us, which enabled me to film him

247

in a museum context and shoot him viewing Gauguin’s work

first hand.

In contrast to our weather woes my interviewees on the whole

performed well, as expected. I was extremely pleased with

myself for casting widely and internationally. This felt like

an ‘international’ picture, a co-production with stature.

Anne Salmond I thought was brilliant. She gave an energetic

and engaging performance in front of camera and was gracious

when asked to do a second or even a third take on a question.

Ed Rampell made the entire crew laugh as we filmed him in our

make shift ‘Hollywood studio’ a backroom of the famous

Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles, home of the first Academy

Awards ceremony in 1929. Ed can talk for hours and not tire,

but we did. At one stage I had to ask him to play down his

humour, he wanted to be the funny man all too often. Katerina

Teaiwa provided a younger, Pacific perspective on the history

of the hula image. Her interview was insightful and fresh and

she provided a ‘face’ of the Pacific for the program.

At the Musee de l’homme in Rochefort, curator Claude-Louis

Stefani wheeled a large trolley through the nooks and

crannies of the museum. He stopped here and there grabbing

large books from the shelves as we filmed him. Claude then

sat at a large desk carefully opening delicate and fragile

pages of Louis-Henri de Freycinet’s voyage in Les Corvettes

248

L’Oceanie et La Physicenne 1817-20 as he discussed the French voyages

of discovery to the Pacific. The interview in French went

extremely well. Even though Claude-Louis spoke very good

English I wanted to conduct the interview in French as to my

mind it would seem more authentic for an audience and in

keeping with the subject under discussion and would further

enhance my desire for internationalism.

When I was writing the script I grappled with the French part

of the Hula Girls story, particularly the many voyages of

exploration to the Pacific in the first quarter of the 19th

century. I was concerned that these later voyages though

important within Pacific history, would be repetitive within

my story in that they would not greatly advance it beyond the

initial Cook, Wallis, Bougainville ‘first contact’

narratives. Within one 52-minute program, how many 1st

encounters could I have? During Claude-Louis’ interview, as I

sat there engaged in interview with him, a beautiful French

image, Iles Sandwich: Femme de l’ Isle Mowi Dansant ( a naked and

tattooed Maui woman dancing from a sitting position on the

ground from Les Corvettes L’Oceanie et La Physicenne 1817-20) projected

behind him, I could already see him hitting the cutting room

floor. First contact narratives of Wallis, Bougainville and

Cook had already been covered eloquently in interview with

Anne Salmond. Losing good material is always painful. A story

249

is a journey and once you over stay somewhere too long it’s

boring, ‘keep the story moving’ is a cutting room refrain.

I arrived back in Sydney with 49 shot camera tapes or 32

hours of rushes. Twenty-six of these tapes (approx 17 hours)

were interviews and the remainder comprised location shots,

the filming of artworks, books and a sequence of Yuki

Kihara’s photo shoot in Auckland. This isn’t a huge amount of

footage for a six week international shoot. But considering

that much of the program was archival footage, artworks,

photographs and graphics it’s fair enough to say that we had

more than ample material to cut Hula Girls with.

Footnotes:

1. Behlmer, R. (ed) 1996, W.S Van Dyke’s Journal, White Shadows in the South Seas,

Scarecrow Press, Lanham, p.41.

2. Ibid, p.38.

3. Ibid, p.39

4. Ibid, p.72

10.

Keep Your Eyes on the HandsCross-cutting – interweaving two threads of the storyline, from different

250

locations and often different time periods. 1.

I chose to edit Hula Girls with an old friend and colleague

Denise Haslem. We’d worked closely together on 6 previous

films and our creative collaboration is one based on teamwork

and trust. We enjoy each other’s edit room aesthetic, style

and taste. But there are also points of difference and both

of us allow the other space to work creatively and with

independence. Even with our well founded working relationship

I was still feeling nervous about showing Denise the rushes.

An editor is the ‘first audience’ for a film and so Denise’s

response to viewing the material was critical. Like most

directors I was needy and looking for affirmation about my

rushes.

Despite the enormous time and effort in writing the script,

documentaries and non-fiction films mostly find their true

form in the edit. The cutting room is like a lab, it’s where

all the ideas in the script, all the planning and the style

of shooting are finally put to the test. I wondered whether

my Hula Girls script would hold up? Would the 10 interviews we

shot, look and sound as good in our Sydney cutting room, a

place of introspection and analysis where you tend to notice

flaws, as they did when I was shooting them? What content

would stay in the rough and fine cuts and what would go?

Would the broadcasters want tits and bums as I predicted at the

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outset of this journey? And would they like and approve my

story approach and style or could this be another agonizing

edit, a woeful case of co-production blues? Only the next 12

weeks of editing could answer these niggling questions and

doubts.

On viewing the rushes with Denise the first casualties became

apparent. My interview with the co-author of Made In Paradise,

Hollywood’s Films of Hawaii and the South Seas, Luis Reyes, became

redundant instantly, largely because the interview with his

co-writer, Ed Rampell, was so hilarious and compelling. Ed

had us in stitches and simply stole the show. He in fact

presented us with other problems further down the track, at

assembly stage, where there was way too much Ed. He was funny

but created an imbalance – too much like the ‘Ed Rampell

show’. Reyes on the other hand stumbled too many times to be

inspiring and there was also doubling up in the movie history

content covered between the two.

The second major casualty was the London academic who created

the phrase ‘the nubile savage’ which I relied on so heavily

in the script, and indeed in this document. Neil Rennie’s

interview proved to be too ‘studious’ in tone. As with many

expert or academic interviews on film it was full of

qualifications, he was speaking with ‘historical footnotes’

and it was very difficult to find concise interview grabs, or

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an alluring anecdote, that could quickly hook an audience. If

we had to, we could’ve worked his interview hard and

supported selected grabs with a link of narration. But I made

a deliberate and creative choice at this very early point. I

wanted this film to entertain and draw an audience into the

subject matter. Interviews that didn’t cut the mustard were

sacrificed. The story and flow of a program, the energy of a

character and their ability to engage viewers must dictate

whether they stay in the cut, or go.

Having viewed the rushes and the mass of archival materials I

left Denise alone for several weeks to put together an

assembly edit based on my script. This is where the hard

yards of script writing pay off, we had a starting point, a

plan of how to put the story together. A subsequent interview

I concluded with Haslem sheds light on the benefits and the

deficiencies of the Hula Girls script for her edit process,

The first thing I did was read the script. It told me the story you

were telling and it told me the style that you wanted to tell it

in. And it told me that the construction of the film would be from

archival and interviews and the international approach you wanted.

It also told me that there would be quite a lot of humour in the

program. Although I didn’t realise to what degree until I saw the

footage that you had chosen. I think when I saw the archival

footage that you chose, and the B grade quality of it, which you

are fond of, that’s when I really knew where you were going. The

script didn’t show me the degree of humour, but the footage you

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chose certainly did. When I saw the footage the humour potential

was realised. 2

We decided to lay down some grounds rules for the edit. We

would have a minimum of 50% narration. We were working to a

European model in deciding this, as the program would be

translated into French, German and Dutch and from my

conversations with producer Andrew Ogilvie, I knew that the

broadcasters wanted a balance of chat and narration, too many

‘talking heads’ was anathema to them. We also decided to keep

the interview grabs to a minimum. If an interview grab or

anecdote was too long, then we would edit it back and support

it with narration and only use the superlative moment. We

decided to let the narration carry the burden of exposition,

conveying information, and so free up the ‘characters’ to

relay historical anecdotes, insights and analysis. We would

look for humour. Always! In both the archival materials,

particularly the South Seas Hollywood films and the

interviews, humour would be king. We decided Hula Girls should

be an enjoyable viewing experience for an audience and should

be both celebratory and critical in tone with a contemporary

political ‘post-colonial’ edge.

Haslem, 2 years later in interview, revealed her nervousness

about our editing approach particularly our combined senses

of humour,

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My main concern was whether the humour we were injecting into the

program was parochial, whether it was too much an Australian sense

of humour, laughing at, rather than with. So I wasn’t certain about

the balance of the humour and how it would work for an

international audience. What we thought was funny, was it really

funny and would it work for an international audience. I don’t

think I ever really resolved that. We just kept going. 3

My answer to her uncertainty was, ‘we had to suck it and

see!’ We could only rely on our own humour buttons and

comedic instinct. If the humour made us laugh then let’s use

it and test these scenes later on others with screenings.

Five weeks later we had an assembly based on my script. It

was 94 minutes and way too long. I knew when I’d completed

writing it that the script was enormous and too laiden with

information and historical detail. Now was the time to

finally confront that I was trying to say and tell too much

in this story. Now was the time to let go, to ‘kill the

babies’ so to speak. But which babies and how?

We showed the cut to producer Andrew Ogilvie. His first

response, thank God, was to drop the end section of the

program dealing with contemporary Polynesian arts that ‘self-

reflect’ on the hula girl image. I sighed with relief. It was

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clear, as I had thought all along, that this epilogue opened

up a whole new story line just as the program was coming to

closure. Deleting this alone would take out 8 minutes from

the rough cut.

Other crucial story telling elements became clear from the

assembly too. Firstly the narration! The draft narration was

OK for the purpose of the script but not for our final screen

version. My writing style is often too wooden with

exposition. Screen writing needs few words, elegance and

grace. Good narration writing bounces off the pictures.

Skilful writing brings the spoken words and pictures into a

combination that unlocks a third layer of meaning in the mind

of the viewer. Narration should also create subtext for the

unfolding story and draw the thematic and dramatic threads

together. Not only would the narration script need

rewriting, but I asked for the assistance of an additional

writer to make the narration sparkle and shine. Fortunately I

was supported by Ogilvie. We approached and eventually worked

with the highly experienced playwright and screen writer

Louis Nowra (Map of the Human Heart, Cosi, The Matchmaker, Radiance,

Black and White, The Widowmaker, First Australians) to co-write the final

drafts.

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On a story telling level and stylistically it became apparent

in the assembly that there was an inherent conflict between

our contemporary location footage from Tahiti, Paris,

Hollywood, Los Angeles, London, and the historic archival

imagery that comprised 75% of the cut. On our first assembly

viewing we found the archival images and the stories about

them from our interviews so compelling, that to move away

from them, to break the spell so to speak, by inserting

contemporary footage, was creating confusion. Why break out

from these beautiful and sometimes funny archival images when

the story is about them? This left us with a creative and

budgetary conundrum. The more archive we used the greater the

cost to our budget and secondly there was an expectation by

the two European broadcasters that the program would have a

dazzling array of tropical scenes to provide comfort for

their mid-winter viewing audiences. I however, decided to

chance my arm on this issue of broadcaster expectations. The

contemporary footage was jarring and if it came to the

crunch, and the CEs wanted more ‘exotic’ scenes I would try

to persuade Andrew Ogilvie and the commissioning editors to

my viewpoint, a legitimate course of action on a picture of

this magnitude. So with the support of Andrew and Denise I

decided to drop all but a handful of shots from Tahiti, and a

couple of scenes from contemporary Paris, which were used in

support of the Gauguin episode in the program.

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At assembly stage we also decided to drop the interview with

Claude-Louis Stefani. The Francophone in me objected

strongly. But as I predicted when interviewing Claude-Louis

in Rochefort, his interviews about the artistic legacy of the

early 19th century French voyages of discovery, didn’t

sufficiently advance the storyline quickly enough. Similarly

the Claude-Louis interview about French philosopher, Denis

Diderot’s, musings on the voyage of Bougainville in my

script, were also dropped in favour of brief and succinct

narration. Even though Diderot’s reflections on Tahiti in,

Supplement au voyage de Bougainville, are considered to be part of

the intellectual ferment that lead to the French Revolution,

I wanted to avoid a situation where an interviewee, no matter

how good, was only used once.

Documentary editing involves selecting interviewees who can

inform the story themes on a number of levels. In this way

the audience can build a rapport with the selected ‘cast’ —

get to know them on screen and come to appreciate their

position as their appearances evolve through the story.

Having a never-ending cast of interviewees popping up

throughout, with one anecdote or point of analysis, cannot

achieve this same level of audience engagement, and the

editorial authority is diluted. So because of this I also

dropped the interview appearance with Marguerite Lei the

dance director of ‘O Tahiti E’ and the associated dressing

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room scenes I shot with her dancers. Much of Marguerite’s

interview doubled up with the content of Katerina Teaiwa, to

the point where Marguerite had only one appearance in the

assembly. The ‘O Tahiti E’ dancers would eventually evolve to

just a few scenes that supported the historic images of

Polynesian dancing in the opening and closing scenes of the

program to connect the hula girl image to the contemporary

tourism industry. The decision to drop the young ‘sexy’

Polynesian dancers was supported by Ogilvie. I was reassured

by this, because it became clear from our assembly viewing

that Andrew wanted to deliver to the broadcasters an

entertaining program with analysis and integrity. He did not

have ‘a tits and bums’ agenda to push as I thought might be

the case at the outset. However removing Marguerite Lei from

the program, the only female Polynesian dancer I interviewed,

greatly impacted on the way one critic, as we will see in the

next chapter, viewed the final program.

As with all assembly cuts there were potentially many

creative paths that Denise and I could follow to deliver the

final program even whilst working to the definitions of the

brief. There were two key connected questions in my mind. How

could we make this program engaging and entertaining for

audiences to watch and draw them into the story? And how

could we quickly and methodically jump forward through 200

years of history, ‘connect the dots’ and provide the audience

259

with intelligent insights to the image of the hula girl that

pervades our collective Western imaginings about her? The

answer to the first question was inherent to my script. The

multiple story line approach that I’d written simply needed

finessing and further development in our edit.

In his book Everything Bad Is Good For You, author and critic Steven

Johnson claims that the first television serial drama to

introduce multiple threaded story lines was Hill Street Blues,

According to television lore, the age of multiple threads began

with the arrival of Hill Street Blues in 1981 the Steven Bocho-

created police drama invariably praised for its gritty realism.

Watch an episode of Hill Street Blues side by side with any major

drama from the preceding decades —Starsky and Hutch, for instance,

or Dragnet — and the structural transformation will jump out at

you. 4

Johnson goes on to analyse the story complexity of Hill Street

Blues which often wove together within an individual episode

as many as 10 story threads. For Johnson this new dramatic TV

writing technique was at first hard work for audiences but

offered viewers greater engagement,

Some narratives force you to do work to make sense of them, while

others just let you settle into the couch and zone out. Part of

that cognitive work comes from following multiple threads, keeping

often densely interwoven plot lines distinct in your head as you

260

watch. But another part involves the viewer’s ‘filling in’: making

sense of information that has been either deliberately withheld or

deliberately left obscure. Narratives that require their viewers

fill in crucial elements take that complexity to a more demanding

level. To follow the narrative, you aren’t just asked to remember.

You’re asked to analyse. This is the difference between intelligent

shows and shows that force you to be intelligent. 5

I didn’t approach the writing and editing of Hula Girls

employing the multiple story line narrative with any

screenwriting history or theory in mind. Rather, I came

across this device intuitively, in keeping with visual arts

practises, watching the structure emerge by trial and error.

However, multiple story threads as Johnson calls them, were a

feature of other documentary programs that Denise Haslem and

I had edited together and they are particularly prominent in

our first documentary collaboration in 1994, Aeroplane Dance.

That film employed 3 story strands woven together, an

‘ethnographic’ indigenous dance, dramatic re-enactments using

a missing (lost after an air crash in northern Australia)

airman’s diary as the source, and an Indigenous oral history

Yanuywa account of the same World War 2 aviation tragedy.

How did we finesse the multiple narrative threads suggested

in the Hula Girls script in the edit? Denise and I decided to

use as much Hollywood as we could possibly afford. This would

require us to supply Ogilvie and our researcher Greg Colgan

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with constantly updated footage counts as our edit

progressed. We would use clips from South Seas cinema to

suggest actual historical moments and first contact

encounters in the Pacific. We would also use Hollywood to

bounce off and reflect ethnographic themes in the story,

leaving the audience to fill in crucial elements and make the

connections. This style had to be established at the start of

the picture. For instance, our post opening head title scene

was from King Vidor’s 1932 picture, Bird of Paradise, where Johnny

and his gang of sailors come across their first South Pacific

island and encounter Neil Rennie’s ‘nubile savage’,

A boat load of fun loving sailors drop in on Tahiti. Canoes full of

islanders come out to the boat to greet the sailors.

Skipper: Johnny here’s the charm of the South Seas. You

cruise about and out of nowhere you tumble onto

one of these little islands. You nearly always

find the natives are happy, carefree people.

Johnny: Yeah I know, fond of life, wine and dancing.

A young island woman, Princes Luana, dives off a canoe in front of

Johnny and the skipper and swims around nymph like in the water.

They are both astonished by her.

Johnny: Hello baby. Got anything on for tonight? 6

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In the context of our story this Hollywood scene, which is

one of hundreds of cinematic and literary versions of a South

Seas greeting, was in fact being used by us to set up the

very first South Seas welcome and the arrival of Captain

Wallis in Tahiti in 1767. Louis Nowra and I decided to write

our way out of this Bird of Paradise clip with the following

narration over an historical engraving of Samuel Wallis,

The beginning of this infatuation with the South Seas girl starts

in the late 18th century when Englishman, Captain Samuel Wallis, is

sent to confirm or deny the existence of the Great Southern

Continent — instead he finds himself among the islands of

Polynesia and accidentally discovers Tahiti. Wallis and his crew

can scarcely believe what they have stumbled upon. 7

The final line of narration ‘Wallis and his crew can scarcely

believe what they have stumbled upon’ is a clever piece of

writing by Nowra that unfolds subtext in the story and helps

bind the vastly different pictorial sources together

thematically. It picks up on Johnny’s ‘astonishment’ in Bird of

Paradise, when Princess Luana (Dolores Del Rio) swims up to

and greets the yacht. Historically it pre-empts the response

of Wallis’ men to their first encounter with Tahiti and

Tahitian women. It also sets up the well documented first

contact of Bougainville when he arrives in Matavai Bay and

Venus, as Bougainville describes her, boards his ship and

unveils herself in front of his astonished crew. In these

scenes layers of historical images and popular culture from 263

across two centuries permeate and play (have fun) with each

other.

The structure of this post title scene set the pattern for

the film. We deliberately intended to ‘scramble’ historical

incidents and images. The linear historical narrative from

the 18th century onwards would be interrupted by 20th century

images thematically connected to the historical narrative. We

used this technique many times throughout the structure of

the story. Introducing Bird of Paradise early in the narrative

also sets up Princess Luana as a ‘stock’ Hollywood character

that we come back to time and again as an exemplar of

Hollywood’s ‘South Seas princess’. Given that the picture was

out of copyright, King Vidor’s picture graciously helped

stretch our archival budget.

There was another pragmatic decision driving my introduction

of Hollywood early into the story. Most of the early pre-

cinema story of Hula Girls, in fact much of the story, was

relying on graphics, paintings and engravings. The use of

Hollywood allowed us to liven the early history in the

program with moving pictures, light dramatic comedy like Bird

of Paradise, and make it more engaging to watch.

Another strong example of moving picture footage disrupting

the linear narrative occurs later in the story when Katerina

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Teaiwa, in interview, reveals the spiritual meaning of the

ancient hula dance to Hawaiians and then contrasts that with

the attitudes that Europeans have historically projected onto

hula, from the time of Cook’s first visit to Hawaii,

You’re actually acting out this very deep and close connection

between the supernatural realm, the physical realm and the realm of

human society. So you will see it in the actions for example, the

mountain, or the moon. People who understand Hula choreography can

see the story that is being told in the hand movements. And it’s

funny that Europeans focused just on the lower regions, and saw

hula as just the hips moving. 8

From this interview we cut to a 1956 musical film clip of

Tony Todaro singing Keep Your Eyes on the Hands. The clip

features 3 hula dancers in bright pink cellophane skirts

while Todaro serenades them. The lyrics were the focus of our

interest and their placement following on from Teaiwa was

critical in sustaining our Hula Girls editorial style,

Whenever you're watching a hula girl dance

You gotta be careful, you're tempting romance

Don't keep your eyes on her hips

Her naughty hula hips

Keep your eyes on the hands

Remember she's telling a story to you

Her opu is swaying, but don't watch the view

Don't concentrate on the swing

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It doesn't mean a thing

Keep your eyes on the hands 9

Haslem wanted to push this ‘scrambled’ editing style to the

limit as she was very keen on parallel story threads, or

cross cutting, as an editing device,

I guess what I really like about that is the interweaving of the

past and present, running parallel. What that does is it creates

timelessness for the hula girl image. You look at where it has come

from simultaneously with how it has impacted on the 20th century

through Hollywood. For me as an editor I love the interplay of

those concepts the two timelines. The final product is a really

complex interweaving. I think it’s entertaining. I think it tells a

pretty good story. 10

Denise and I then decided to put together a scene about

Cook’s arrival in Hawaii in 1788 to push the parallel story

style to an extreme. The Hawaiians were awestruck by the

white-skinned visitors and their extraordinary vessel, and

greeted the navigator and his crew like gods. To create the

scene we would rely on a vivid description by Anne Salmond

about the welcome of the Resolution and Discovery by Hawaiians

and the subsequent love making that occurred on board the

ships,

They swam out, they came out on canoes. They came on surfboards and

they just swarmed on board the ships. Just swarmed all over them.

In fact, at one point there were so many people hanging on to the

266

side of the Discovery that it was sort of keeling over. And there

they were making love with the sailors. Just all over, below decks,

on decks, presumably not in the water but who knows. There was joy,

people were calling out. There was just this huge sense of

celebration and excitement. 11

To build the sense of excitement we used the ‘welcoming’

scene from F.W. Murnau’s silent 1931 classic, Tabu and

intercut it with close up details from an engraving by John

Webber (1779) A View of Karakakooa, in Owyhee, in which the Resolution

and Discovery are surrounded by scores of canoes. The rhythm

of the cutting was determined by the music track from Tabu.

It eventually became a frenetic scene that typified the

editing style we were developing and became a high point of

it — historical juxtapositions between past and distant past,

or as Haslem puts it, ‘You look at where it (the image) has

come from simultaneously with how it has impacted on the 20th

century through Hollywood’.

The cross cutting of history through the use of images

quickly lead to a broader application of the technique with

music and other forms of popular culture. In a scene dealing

with the arrival of Bougainville in Tahiti in 1768, we used

an engraving from a latter French voyage, the Atlas du Voyage de

La Perouse (1797) Insulaires et Monuments de l’Isle de Paques, showing a

group of sailors sitting with topless islander women. Over

the image we ran an early 20th century recording of a song by

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the Hawaiian master of the steel guitar, Sol Hoopii, I Like You

Cos You Have Such Lovin’ Ways. Denise and I knew the 20th century

popular music recording by Hoopi was way out of context with

the 18th century engraving, and we still debate its use years

later. But in my mind it worked. And it worked by leaving the

audience to connect the dots, to hopefully come to their own

conclusion that Hula Girls was looking at the origins of the

popularised female Polynesian image and how ‘she’ has played

herself out through the ages across art forms. We were also I

believe, inferring that the original first contact historical

texts, and their latter day manifestations, were one and the

same thing — popularised images for audiences to read, view

and enjoy. I hoped audiences would also conclude by watching

Hula Girls that history can be fun.

By having Hollywood intervene in the linear historical

narrative we were freed to jump forward in time to the next

major historical development in the hula girl story. This

‘jumping forward’ and ‘connecting the dots’ approach to the

story structure, centered on the creation of mini episodes of

historical incidents, and or characters, important to the

development of the hula girl image. Within our edit the

Bounty incident in 1787 was the first of these mini eps. The

famous maritime incident created countless popular works of

fiction over the years, but in 1933, Charles Nordhoff and

James Norman Hall, American writers who settled in Tahiti

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after the 1st World War, created a publishing gold mine with

their book, Mutiny on the Bounty. The novel was read by an

estimated 25 million people. Its rebellious characters,

romance and high drama made their account irresistible to

filmmakers and in 1933 one of the first talking pictures

produced in Australia was In the Wake of the Bounty directed by

Charles Chauvel. This picture was the debut of heart throb

and swashbuckler Errol Flynn. All following Hollywood

versions of the Bounty story ensured that the leading male

sex symbol of the time played the role of handsome Fletcher

Christian, whether it be Clark Gable, Marlon Brando or Mel

Gibson.

When we were cutting the Bounty episode for Hula Girls we had to

face our first prohibitive hurdle with archive royalty fees.

I had written into my script several scenes from both the

1935 and ‘62 adaptations of the Norman and Hall novel. But

when it came to calculating these scenes against our budget

and considering the hundreds of other archival images we had

to pay for, we clearly could not afford to deliver the

script. Fortunately we were saved by the Bounty movie

trailers which we purchased at minimal cost. There were three

cinematic trailers available for the Brando picture, one of

which was more than 4 minutes long. Each of these trailers

was slightly different in the scenes they featured from the

film, so we had a reasonable range of scenes featuring Brando

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to pick and choose from. On the other hand for the 1935 Clark

Gable and Charles Laughton Mutiny version, there was one

trailer available with limited only scenes from the movie. We

had to evaluate the royalty cost against the intent and the

drama of our Bounty sequence we wanted to cut and find a

creative solution for both our story and budget. So we

decided to rely on the 3 trailers to build the story about

the 1962 Brando version. We would then also use one dramatic

scene from the 1935 trailer and purchase one 30 second clip

from the feature Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) at a cost of

$US10,000.

These constant calculations of our story needs against our

archival budget became a drama in their own right which

dogged us to the end. They were a large part of the creative

challenge we faced in editing to deliver an engaging and

entertaining program to the broadcasters. It was also

complex. We were working with trailers and clips that were

free of royalties as they were in the public domain, trailers

and clips that weren’t free and trying to marry them

together. We were never really on solid ground until we had

final quotes from the copyright holders.

Other episodic story elements that we constructed in the edit

were on the subject of: Paul Gauguin in Tahiti, Murnau and

Flaherty’s 1931 picture Tabu, Hape haole music which became a

270

mini-history of Hawaiian music, the themes and storyline of

the 1941 film, South of Pago Pago, and the story of the Rodgers

and Hammerstein hit musical South Pacific within the context of

World War 2. With our multiple story lines and episodic

structure our story was taking shape. We had a story arc, a

beginning, middle and an end. Within our eventual 55-minute

rough cut we encapsulated more than two centuries of Pacific

and European history.

In our initial story discussions I elaborated to Denise the

conundrum of how we explore the representation and sexual

imagery surrounding Polynesian women without ourselves

exploiting these images. This was one of my suspicions

concerning the commissioning of the project. Did the

broadcasters want this program because of a desire to explore

the history and origins of these images? Or were the

Commissioning Editors seeing Hula Girls as a potentially

voyeuristic viewing experience for their audiences? Our rough

cut was treading a fine line with respect to this question.

In order to explore the images we had to show them. But in

showing them we were also exploiting them with the knowledge

that a certain part of our audience demographic would nakedly

enjoy them for what they were, in many cases, a Polynesian

peep show or tame erotica.

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The manner in which we negotiated this fine editorial line

was to present context, to build a scaffold around the

pictures which provided history and analysis. When Louis

Nowra joined us in the edit room he wanted to tread a more

cautious line and insert what he called a ‘contemporary

feminist perspective’ via the narration writing. In his

judgement our story, in its present written form and

structure, could be misjudged as glorifying the hula girl

image and ultimately be seen as sexist. He acknowledged that

our cut needed to celebrate the iconic image of the hula girl

throughout history and he wasn’t suggesting the program

become a ‘feminist mouthpiece’. But Nowra argued for a more

contemporary ‘post colonial’ critique of the image via the

language of the narration script we employed. At this stage

of our editing I felt it was important to have someone of

Louis’ standing, as a screen writer, to view the film and

critically assess it. He provided a new pair of eyes to a

program that I’d been laboring over for almost a year.

Nowra not only polished my existing narration draft, but

suggested ways of tightening the story lines, by deleting

pieces of interview in favour of a line or two of narration.

Big and little changes evolved over several narration drafts.

Sometimes Nowra added just a word or two in a paragraph,

sharpening the intention of the writing, providing a sense of

critique and, or analysis. We eventually evolved opening the

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program with the following evocative narration penned

substantially by Nowra,

She's beautiful and exotic. She's half real, half myth. A product

of male fantasies, a by-word for paradise and a creation of the

Hollywood Dream Factory.

For over two centuries she's been immortalized and exploited by

artists, travellers, tourists and film makers. For millions of

people across the world the image of the beautiful Polynesian woman

is an invitation to paradise. But just how real is she? 12

‘She's half real, half myth’. ‘A product of male fantasies’,

‘exploited by artists’ clarified at the start of the picture

our intention to explore the icon. The words together with

the images maintained a balance between critique and

celebration. The pictures came to life by questioning the

familiar. My niggling issue, “how not to make yet another

voyeuristic image” was finally only answered and dealt with

in the final weeks of our edit. A few subtle words throughout

the story were all that was needed.

Ten weeks after we commenced editing we sent our rough cut to

the 2 European broadcasters, Walter Braamhorst from AVRO in

Holland and Olaf Grunert from the French/German network ARTE.

It’s was an anxious moment for all concerned as we waited for

feedback from Europe.

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Ned Lander, the Commissioning Editor from SBS, came to the

cutting room to view the rough cut. I wasn’t particularly

worried about this screening. I had known Ned for many years.

He is a close personal friend and we have worked together on

numerous film projects. Lander had also worked with Nowra on

the feature film Radiance. So I fully anticipated that he would

be accustomed to Louis Nowra’s writing style and aesthetic.

Commissioning a program is always a gamble. You can’t back

winners, just projects and teams. There is however immense

satisfaction in seeing a project successfully realized and

engaging to watch, which you have commissioned. On the whole

CEs don’t have much to say at rough cut screenings unless

there are problems in the story and structure to negotiate.

The dialogue tends to focus on what is not working, what is

unclear and how the drama of a story can be enhanced, or how

a character’s presence in a story can be strengthened. A

rough cut screening should present a clear sense of story,

structure and character, with themes, subtext and drama

arising from the narrative.

Fortunately in our screening with Lander we ticked mainly

positives. There were however two minor requests. He wanted

(1) more interview with Katerina Teaiwa, and (2) less

contemporary footage from Tahiti and Paris. He put the case

that Katerina was a young, attractive and intelligent Pacific

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Island woman. An extra piece from her, close to the head of

the program, would help the credibility of the story as it is

an unfolding narrative about the images of Pacific women. He

argued that audiences would readily identify with her and her

thoughts. This request was easy to achieve, although adding

another interview grab from Katerina would mean losing

something else from somewhere else. Lander also found some of

the contemporary footage jarring, taking attention away from

the examination of the historical images. We had already cut

these back substantially and he was suggesting cutting them

further. This was a potential point of difference between

Lander and the other CEs who wanted tropical scenes for their

mid-winter viewing audiences. There was not much more

discussion about the rough cut than this, apart from deciding

on a delivery date. The story was telling itself and he was

engaged.

In retrospect, three years later, I quizzed Lander for his

views, not on the rough cut, but the completed program.

Significantly he tended to pin his critique on the fact of

Hula Girls being the product of a co-production which served

several broadcast masters,

I probably have an ongoing feeling that the essay form is a tricky

form. It’s a form that works best where there is a compelling

social issue to be examined. Hula Girls was much lighter in touch. And

that made it enjoyable but it also ultimately means there is a lack

275

of narrative structure or journey story arc in it as a work. It’s

kind of got a chronological spine but it kind of breaks out of that

and goes to Hollywood early on, but you need to do that to bring

your audience in. And I think it’s often true of the higher end

budget co-production work that you are serving several masters and

it is serving several sensibilities and that can flatten out the

shape of it a little. I suppose a strong character driven story

can’t be realized editorially in this co-production context. It’s

more the essay form that will work for the market. 13

He elaborated further by critiquing the content of the

story as a history of colonial encounter in the South

Pacific, albeit though images,

You also have that problem with any kind of story that involves

colonial interaction with Indigenous peoples in that one side keeps

records that are written down and turned into images, and the other

side has an oral tradition. It’s an oral history not a written

history. So it becomes very difficult to build a consciousness from

both sides of the colonial encounter. So there is supposition or

contemporary people making assumptions about their forebears. It’s

a difficult form which we encountered with First Australians (a TV

history series released on SBS in 2008). At the same time Hula Girls

doesn’t have much of that diarised thought, personal reactions that

bring to life the European or Indigenous point of view. 14

With the benefit of hindsight these are not the type of

comments that could have been made at the rough cut

screening. They are more about structural issues to do with

the financing of co-productions and the story demands of

276

international broadcasters on local producers. Lander raises

compelling concerns which are not easily reconciled given the

need of producers to finance programs like Hula Girls

internationally. I will expand further on this theme and

expand on Lander’s view in my final chapter of conclusions.

His second point is an astute observation about the limits of

historical storytelling for television, particularly when

dealing with Indigenous history and first contact encounters.

They are sentiments with which I whole heartedly agree.

However Hula Girls was never envisaged, or indeed commissioned,

as representing ‘both sides of the colonial encounter’. Its

foot is firmly planted in the European experience,

imagination and images.

With rough cut approval from Ned Lander we waited for news

from Europe. I’d arranged to have a two week break from the

edit whilst waiting for approvals and feedback. There was no

point ploughing on if there were major problems with ARTE and

AVRO. I immersed myself in cook books and feeding my family

to distract myself and hide my anxiety. It was like waiting

to have a tooth pulled or, even worse, major surgery.

Then on the 24th of September late in the afternoon I received

a phone call from Andrew Ogilvie with the good news that

Wolter Braamhorst had approved the rough cut, with some minor

277

recommendations. Andrew forwarded the following email from

Braamhorst,

----- Original Message -----

From: "Andrew Ogilvie"

To: "Trevor Graham"

Sent: Friday, September 24, 2004 3:43 PM

Subject: FW: hula girls rough cut

Trevor

The following are Wolter’s comments on the rough cut.

Olaf has been away but we have a message saying that he will

view it

today. A

------ Forwarded Message

From: "Braamhorst, Wolter"

Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 13:52:54 +0200

To: " Andrew Ogilvie"

Cc: "Huijbregts, Marijke"

Subject: hula girls rough cut

Dear Andrew,

Thank you for the rough cut of Hula Girls. I liked it a lot

and I think

it's going to be a very wonderful film. I don't have many

things to suggest.

There is in my opinion a little mix up around 40 minutes with

the Dorothy

Lamour segment and after that with the latina girls playing

278

polynesian

beauties. Dorothy, I think, should be chronologically after

that and not

before?

Things to cut? You can lose a little on the Bounty story and

maybe on the

music segment. Twice the point is being made about the US

military having a big presence in the Pacific. Maybe the US

colonisation of the Pacific should be more

together, making the point only during the WW 2 story and

looking back a

little a that point in the story. The 'South of Pago Pago'

segment can lose a clip or two.

The interracial story could be a little better cut, more

closely knit, than

it is now. As it is now, it goes back and forth too much.

Also, a couple more new shot images of the beautiful islands

would be

welcome. Sometimes the documentary is too much a compilation

of archive

material.

These are only small points, nothing major. I like the movie

a lot and it

is mostly like I hoped it would be. Lots of fun with the

editing.

Best wishes,

279

Wolter

Wolter Braamhorst

Commissioning Editor AVRO Close UP

AVRO Public Television 15

Grunert’s rough cut response didn’t come that day as

promised. It took another week. In typical Grunert style, he

doesn’t respond to emails, he rang from Strasbourg and left a

message on the Electric Pictures’ answering machine which

simply said in his thick German accent, ‘Andrew, I love it.

Please deliver as soon as possible’. End of message. No

hello’s. No, ‘hi this is Olaf’. The approval from ARTE came

in the most unceremonial fashion. In the age of the email

communications I took this as an extreme positive. He wanted

to personally give his blessing to the program but had

forgotten the time difference between Europe and Australia.

We had rough cut approval!

Ogilivie sent Braamhorts’ email to Ned Lander. Braamhorst

wanted more, ‘new shot images of the beautiful islands’,

Lander at our screening asked for less. Lander rolled over on

this, it was a small point after all, so we put in a couple

of extra shots so we could tell Braamhorst we had done it. We

also began addressing Wolter’s other points. We had to lose

three minutes, so we employed many of his suggested cuts. We

280

left the structure of the Dorothy Lamour scenes as they were.

Ogilvie agreed with this.

Two weeks later we had a fine cut and all of my anxiety

dissipated as we moved towards completing and delivering the

program to the three broadcasters. Given the good responses

to the rough cut we then sent fine cuts for approval. There

were no further responses or comments from ARTE, AVRO or SBS.

On the surface my suspicions about what the three

commissioning editors originally wanted when they

commissioned the program were in the end substantially

negated. In retrospect however, this could be interpreted in

different ways. Either my fears about them wanting an exotic

sexy program, ‘I want to see these sexy ladies’ as Grunert

reportedly said when he was introduced to the program at

MIPCOM, were completely wrong. Or, we had in fact delivered

exactly what they wanted, with enough sexiness’ and ‘sexy

ladies’ to satisfy the masters.

I was happy with the piece. I had written and directed a

program that explored, with integrity I believe, the origins

of the hula girl image and how she had been mythologised by

Western artists and filmmakers throughout the centuries. We

had also deliberately produced an entertaining picture, a

history that was fun to watch. Perhaps embedded within this

281

approach was the ‘sex appeal’ that attracted the broadcasters

in the first place? Perhaps we had achieved in the story

telling a balance of analytical context, history, but also

conveyed it with charm and a tone of celebration.

We delivered the program to all three broadcasters in mid

December 2004. It was now up to audiences, critics,

programmers, distributors, awards judges and festival

directors to have their say on the program. Perhaps the true

answer to these questions of sexiness, entertainment and

intellectual rigour, or integrity, lays with their responses

and views on Hula Girls. It was now time for the audience to

have their say.

Footnotes:

1. Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film, accessed 20/7/08,

www.routledge-ny.com/ref/documentary/editing.

2. Denise Haslem, editor Hula Girls, interviewed by Trevor Graham,

2006.

3. Ibid.

4. Johnston, S. 2005, Everything Bad Is Good For You, Riverhead Books, New

York, p. 67.

5. Ibid, p. 63.

6. Scene description from Bird of Paradise, writers Wells Root & Leonard

Praskins, directed by King Vidor, production company, 1932,

RKO, transcribed & interpreted for Hula Girls script, by Trevor

Graham, 2003.

7. Nowra, L. & Graham , T. 2004, Hula Girls narration script.

282

8. Katerina Teaiwa, Assistant Professor of Pacific Studies at the

University of Hawaii, research interview by Trevor Graham, 2003.

9. Todaro, T & Johnston, L. 1956, Keep Your Eyes on the Hands, Lyrics &

Music,

interpolated into the film The Revolt of Mamie Stover 20th Century-Fox.

10. Denise Haslem, editor Hula Girls, interviewed by Trevor Graham,

2006.

11. Anne Salmond, Professor and Pro-Vice-Chancellor University of

Auckland interviewed by Trevor Graham for Hula Girls, 2004.

12. Nowra & Graham (2004).Hula Girls narration script.

13. Ned Lander, Commissioning Editor SBS TV, interviewed by Trevor

Graham, 2007.

14. Ibid.

15. Andrew Ogilvie email to Trevor Graham, re: Hula Girls rough cut,

September 24, 2004 3:43 PM.

283

11.

An Historical Mash upThe story of the hula girl is the story of the colonisation of the

Pacific and the myriad fantasies and myths that these colonial encounters

inspired. 1

Hula Girls — Where can I buy it? I need it for an assignment. 2

After the intensity of making a program like Hula Girls it was a

relief to have it finally delivered into the hands of the

broadcasters and have it passed by their tech check

departments. I’d been working on the project now for almost a

year, more or less full time and its final delivery and

acceptance to the broadcasters was an anti-climax. Beyond the

responses of our commissioning editors to Hula Girls, I was

wondering how the network’s programming and publicizing

departments felt about my program? There were lots of

questions running through my mind about the Hula Girls TV

premier and when it would hit the TV schedule. Will people

watch and will it be favorably reviewed by critics? Then

there is the international festival scene to think about and

whether the project would be selected by festivals?

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The wheel of fortune then suddenly brought an unexpected and

welcome career change. About 4 weeks after delivering Hula Girls

to SBS I received a phone call from Glenys Rowe, the General

Manager of SBS Independent, asking if I’d like to entertain

the idea of joining them as a Commissioning Editor for

Documentary. It didn’t require much thinking, I jumped at the

opportunity and launched into the job starting in early

February 2005. The CE job proved to be a fabulous opportunity

to learn more about filmmaking from a broadcasting

perspective. It came with the prospect of learning about TV

audiences, what people watch, why they watch and what

projects attract SBS and international broadcasters to

documentary projects and presales — issues central to the

lines of inquiry in this document.

Over the ensuing three years I also learnt much about the

craft of filmmaking as I worked with producers and directors

on the 100 plus hours of programs I commissioned. From films

like Gillian Armstrong’s Unfolding Florence, to a major

international ‘blue chip’ science documentary series, Cracking

the Colour Code, or a host of small 5-minute interstitials, each

program that I commissioned taught and challenged me to think

about the dynamics of story and storytelling and anticipate

what might work for the SBS TV and increasingly online

audiences. I then also had the opportunity of seeing how

285

audiences responded to these commissioned programs via

ratings provided by SBS TV’s Audience Affairs.

The Commissioning Editor job gave me extraordinary access and

insights into the methodologies of broadcasting in Australia

and abroad. It was a fast-tracked learning curve in a very

supportive and collaborative environment. SBS Independent was

highly regarded at the time amongst Australia’s independent

filmmaking fraternity, and also by film State and Federal

funding agencies. We were out stripping by far the

documentary commissioned work by the national broadcaster,

the ABC, and investing in award winning low budget feature

films like 10 Canoes and Home Song Stories. It was an honour to be

part of the SBSi team.

AVRO and ARTE were very quick to schedule and broadcast Hula

Girls and it was transmitted only a matter of weeks after

delivery. In Holland the program was broadcast in the Close Up

arts strand it was commissioned for, with the title, De Hoela-

Hoela Meisjes, on Monday 16th January 2005 at the beginning of

‘prime time’ 18.30 - 19.20. It was repeated four days later

on Friday the 20th by Nederland 1, at 2pm in the afternoon.

Unfortunately the ratings figures for the AVRO and Nederland

1 broadcasts have proved impossible to determine. It’s also

proved impossible to garner information about publicity

and/or reviews.

286

The ARTE transmission was as planned, part of their slot,

Thema — Discovering the Great Legends of Our Time, on Sunday 30th January

at 8:45 pm. Hula Girls was programmed as the second ‘themed’

program that evening and screened at 10.30pm after Kevin

Costner’s 1994 drama Rapa Nui, which was the feature film

component for the themed evening. Hula Girls broadcast in France

with the title, Les Filles des Mers du Sud, (The Girls of the South

Sea) as our original title does not have an equivalent French

translation. The ‘hula girl’ is also more of an American term

that has come into broad use as a result of the history which

the documentary explores. This may also have influenced

ARTE’s decision to re-title the program with a French

cultural and historical reference to their South Pacific

territories. According to the ratings figures supplied by

ARTE’s, Unité Thema department, Hula Girls attracted an audience

share of 1.8% for its transmission or approximately 850,000

viewers. As with AVRO it has proved impossible to gain a

sense of ARTE’s publicity for the program and how it was

received critically.

Australia’s SBS TV, on the other hand, did not commission

Hula Girls with a specific slot in mind and it took some time

for the programming department to place it in their broadcast

schedule. It is the local transmission and promotion of Hula

Girls which I now wish to elaborate on, as I believe my

287

research illuminates perceptions about the completed program

which also explicate the inquiry I’ve undertaken in writing

this thesis: why was Hula Girls successful in the market place

for documentary?

When I started working at SBS the then Programmer, Jane

Roscoe, was experimenting with slots for Friday night,

particularly outside of the ‘prime time’ 6.30pm – 10.00pm

zone. Jane started running an array of international

documentaries exploring sexuality from 10 to 11pm. Internally

at SBSi, we jokingly called the slot ‘Sexy Docs’ and it is

now (2008) publicly promoted as ‘XY Docs’. Working at SBS

gave me access to Jane Roscoe and it was a privileged

position to be in given that I was also a filmmaker with a

program yet to be scheduled by her. The interview I conducted

with her about the ‘Sexy Docs’ Friday night slot and her

subsequent programming of Hula Girls corresponds to the weekly

discussions Commissioning Editors had with Jane about SBS

slots, ratings figures and the programs we’d commissioned

from the independent sector,

Friday is a difficult night and its difficult for networks to get

it right across the board. People at home want something

entertaining, something a little engaging. It’s not the night to

put on your hard hitting political documentaries. You don’t want

any of that but you still want something that engages your brain a

little bit. What we tried to do is get documentaries that push the

288

boundaries around sex and sexuality but do so in smart and

intelligent ways. So we want programs that have some analysis,

some context to the images that might be quite sexy, quite out

there. And that’s the constant challenge because there is an awful

lot of programs out there that are made, they are really quite

fascinating, they’re outrageous, but without that context, you

don’t want to be showing just smut basically. I am sure there’s an

audience for that but I don’t think that is what SBS should be

doing. 3

I have to admit to being horrified when Jane told me that

Hula Girls was probably destined for 10pm on a Friday night.

“Nobody will watch it at 10pm”. “It’s not a sexy doc and it’s

not sexy enough”, I protested. Never in twenty years of

filmmaking had I had this type of access to a programmer and

been able to discuss slots for a program I’d made. It had

always previously been a fait accompli. I also didn’t want

Hula Girls tagged a ‘Sexy Doc’, to me this seemed cheap and

smutty. “I haven’t made a sex program”, I shrieked. To my way

of thinking this choice of slots was SBS proving my thesis

tag line and cashing in on what I have called ‘tits and bums’.

Here was living proof!

I set about arguing for a more ‘serious’ slot for Hula Girls, an

8.30pm time zone for instance, where more people would tune

in. “Surely 8.30pm would pull in a bigger crowd” I argued.

But to no avail, my pleading fell on deaf ears.

289

The reality was that there wasn’t another suitable slot for

the nature of the Hula Girls content on the weekly SBS

transmission schedule and this was my first big lesson after

joining the broadcaster. Of course I already knew from 20

years in the industry that documentaries need to have a home

on a broadcaster’s transmission schedule. A regular slot,

that appears in the TV guide week by week, helps audiences

know where to find a program of a certain genre. But I had

never fully appreciated just how set in stone transmission

schedules and slots can be.

A television network is like a large Bruce Petty cartoon of

contraptions and levers that chew up ‘product’ and spit the

fodder out to national audiences at an extraordinary rate.

Hula Girls was just one hour, 52 minutes to be exact. One of

thousands of hours of programs that need to be commissioned,

brought, delivered from Australia and around the world, then

scheduled, publicised and broadcast on SBS throughout the

year. Hula Girls had taken me a year to write and direct, but it

was now just a tiny cog within the SBS broadcast machine.

In 2005 the defined SBS slots for independent Australian and

international documentary, according to genres were: 8.30pm

Tuesday night, Cutting Edge for investigative-political

documentary (often Iraq stories), Wednesday night 10pm Hot

Docs, for feature length programs with a high festival

290

profile, and 8.30pm Thursday night, Storyline Australia for

showcasing the works of independent Australian filmmakers

(Storyline programs were exclusively Australian based stories,

not a slot for a program about the history of the hula girl)

and 8.30pm Friday night, As It Happened, a history slot, often

running war stories (dubbed the Hitler slot). And then there

was 10pm Friday, ‘Sexy Docs’. SBS can and does create

documentary slots for a series any time they wish to, but not

for a ‘one off’. There was no other place to program Hula Girls

apart from ‘Sexy Docs’ and I ruefully had to accept it.

There was an inherent contradiction in my protestation about

the ‘Sexy Docs’ slot too. When making the program I wanted it

to challenge and entertain and attract an audience and a

large part of the entertainment value Denise Haslem and I

offered to audiences was the historical image of the semi

naked hula girl. You couldn’t make the program without her.

But I wanted audiences, and indeed programmers, to embrace

the more serious historical side to my film. This in

retrospect (3 years later) was perhaps moi, the writer-

director, acting as ‘control freak’ wanting to direct the way

networks and audiences see the finished program. And in

retrospect one has to laugh at the preciousness of it all.

However at the time I was extremely nervous about how the

program would be received in Jane Roscoe’s chosen ‘sexy docs’

291

slot and whether it would draw an audience. Was it ‘sexy’

enough?

When the dust had settled from my tilting at windmills, I

spoke with Jane Roscoe again about her programming decision,

Given the hula girls cultural baggage as an object of sexual desire

it seemed to me to be perfect for the ‘sexy docs slot’. We call it

the ‘sexy docs slot’ but it is supposed to be for documentaries

about sexuality and the body, sexual issues. But for me I’m not

keen to load it up just with lots of naked bodies. So Hula Girls to me

seemed perfect because there was analysis there, cultural

understanding of the importance of the hula girl, plus there was

all that amazing archival footage. It’s a really interesting

balance between analysis and the straight talk, plus the sensuality

of the hula girl and the historical journey as well. And what I got

from the documentary was that notion of the lasting importance of

that image. It is still such a strong image, an icon. What the

documentary did in a very entertaining way, was give us a history

lesson but also give us something that was quite sexy. 4

One couldn’t ask for ask for a better response to the

intention of the program. Jane clearly had tuned in and her

comeback was hugely reassuring. Jane helped me come to grips

with the reality of the program I’d made and to see and value

that the entertainment in the show was intrinsically linked

to the sexuality. Her scheduling decision was further

challenging my thinking about the sexuality and the

historical representation of Polynesian women which I

292

referred to in Chapter 7 Hollywood’s South Seas Princess ‘a one

dimensional, politically correct view of sexuality in South

Seas cinema, seeing it solely as a means of peddling cinema

tickets’. It was time to start exfoliating, let go of this

defensive idea and embrace more the celebratory tone of the

program and the exploration of sexuality embedded within it.

But this internal debate I’d been having with myself from day

one was set to continue and to plague me.

Not much later I was sent the DVD cover and flyer which

Beyond Distribution had created to sell the program

internationally in broadcast and non-theatrical (educational)

markets. The front cover featured a crisply focused mid shot

of a ‘gorgeous’ French Polynesian woman dancing against a

blurred background. The blur and lighting served to highlight

the features of her face and gentle smile. She has a dancing,

‘welcoming’ beauty to accompany the program title in large

bold letters Hula Girls — Imagining Paradise. This was

Bougainville’s Venus, and it brought to mind Katerina

Teawia’s remark from her interview that, ‘Paradise is not

inhabited by ugly people. It is populated by beautiful

people’. Beyond Distribution’s graphic designers had decided

to cash in on the exotic ‘nubile savage’ and make her look

sexy and contemporary. Tahiti Tourism could not have done

better. And the accompanying text was selling an out of the

ordinary documentary voyage as well,

293

Take a journey to the South Pacific: a land of exotic and seductive

women — a paradise on earth. The subject of countless Hollywood

films, the bronzed beauties of Polynesia have hula-danced their way

into history books and become the stuff of romantic legend.

But is this image of the erotic Pacific woman fact or mere sailors’

fantasy?

Hula Girls reveals the many faces of the Pacific Island woman as

portrayed through Hollywood films, art and literature and explores

an indigenous culture which has connected nature, people and love

for centuries. Drawing on spectacular images from Tahiti and

Hawaii, this special will open your eyes to the South Pacific

woman.

Archival footage includes film excerpts from Clark Gable, Elvis

Presley, Marlon Brando and Shirley Temple. 5.

There was no escaping the cliché. Sex sells. It was a further

example of the creative conundrum I’d been dealing with, the

balance between the appeal of the images and the weight of

the story. Selling the completed program, as it was in the

original pitch to broadcasters, was a matter of planting

first and foremost seductive imagery in the buyer’s mind.

Hula Girls was at last scheduled for broadcast by SBS on Friday

27th of May 2005 at 10pm, 6 months after we delivered it. SBS

Publicist Verity Leatherdale put out a press release, with

294

the following introductory paragraph, some of which had

originated from the program’s narration,

Hula Girls - Friday, May 27 at 10.00pm

Beautiful and exotic. Half real, half myth. A product of male

fantasies, a byword for sexuality and a creation of the Hollywood

dream factory. The image of the beautiful Polynesian woman

underwrites the Tahitian and Hawaiin tourism industries and for

millions of people across the world continues to be an invitation

to paradise. HULA GIRLS, screening on SBS Television on Friday, May

27 at 10.00pm, draws on spectacular island locations and a rich

heritage of art, literature and moving pictures to explore the

sexual mythology of the Pacific Island woman and its grip on the

Western imagination. 6

I was getting used to the sell by now. At least there was

sexy angle to pitch, I thought to myself, unlike many

documentaries. However SBS Publicist Verity Leatherdale

revealed she had a sophisticated approach to selling the

program to local TV journalists,

I did the obvious things. I produced a press kit with pics on it

because it had fantastic pics. On the front of the kit I used a

painting, I used a couple of movie stills. Why did I use these,

well to get a flavour of the program, they are all colourful, but

I’ve got to admit in all three of them, appropriate to the program

they are showing lovely looking hula girls in a slight state of

undress. But the press release talks about the program as a

serious, well not serious, but a considered, comprehensive,

295

intelligent, cultural studies program and I took my lead from the

program and the press materials. It talked about Bougainville’s

fantastic description of the woman coming out to the boat. It

talked about Cook’s horror at the permissiveness the first time he

saw the hula dance. And I hope I remained true to the program but I

took my queue from that knowing that you have all of thirty seconds

to grab someone’s attention in the highly competitive world of TV

programs and I had a finite amount of time to do it. 7

There-in lies the rub. In the machine of TV publicity

Leatherdale had all of 30 seconds to grab the attention of

reviewers who are being pulled in all directions by scheduled

TV programs across the networks. At least there was a 30s

seconds pitch to draw a reviewers attention,

It wasn’t difficult at all. I didn’t get on the phone and say,

“Heh. Woooo, tits and bums hula girls”, I said, “It’s a really

enjoyable program, it’s a serious subject in some ways, but it’s

about the whole concept”. So you can have it both ways, it’s

enjoyable subject matter, you are drawn to it for the very reasons

the filmmaker is talking about it, because everyone has this image

in their minds, so you can play off that but at the same time you

can enjoy it. As a publicist it’s a gift because it’s got elements

that you can work with. You know you don’t have to lie about. I

could quite honestly say it’s got a celebratory side, that’s the

leaping off point I guess, but at the same time it’s got a

critical, analytical side and I could play that up or down

according to who I was speaking to. And of course it’s visually

fantastic. 8

296

I liked Verity’s, ‘you can have it both ways’ sell. It was

the publicist’s version of my own ‘entertainment and history’

that I have written about extensively, which was utmost in my

mind when writing and editing Hula Girls.

Verity Leatherdale’s leg work paid off. The week proceeding

the 27th May 2005, reviews big and small in column

centimeters, began appearing in newspapers around the country

and online. They were generally positive critiques of the

program, but some particularly from the main TV guides in

Sydney and Melbourne expressed reservations. The reviewer for

the Melbourne Age Green Guide, Kathy Kazilos, wondered why there

were no voices of contemporary Polynesian women in the

program,

Even in this documentary, which is sympathetic to her plight,

understanding it as a metaphor for the process of colonisation, the

Polynesian woman’s voice is not heard. Instead we hear from

sympathetic academics, some of whom are Polynesian, who attempt to

explain why, say, Tahitian women were so willing to have sex with

the French and English sailors who first visited their island (and

could hardly believe their luck). 9

Another feature article by a colleague of Kazilos, Paul

Kalina appeared in the same edition of the Green Guide.

Kalina had more column space and his article titled, Hubba

hubba hula history strongly endorsed Hula Girls,

297

While the film gives a light treatment to how history and Hollywood

has depicted the hula girl, the subject is for Graham a prism

through which colonialism, sexuality and artistic representation

can be examined. Perhaps the ultimate irony, he notes, is that the

notion of paradise has been turned on its head by the presence of

Westerners. Much of Hawaii today is a military zone.

In the typical movie and pulp-fiction melodrama, a white male comes

to paradise and falls in love with a beautiful native girl. But

among the hundreds of black-and-white B-films Graham looked at in

the research, one of the most interesting is the Frances Farmer-

Victor McLaglen starring South of Pago Pago of 1940. There, a

blonde beauty falls in love with a native chief. Graham argues that

the film tacitly acknowledges that women entertain similar

fantasies about escape.10

On the other hand Scott Coomber writing for The Australian’s

Saturday Review in his critique, Shaking all over reinforced the

Kazilos view about the absence of Polynesian women,

Surely there were some local people who could explain the

intricacies of the dance and its choreography, 11

Coomber also thought there was too much Hollywood in the

program, it was too ‘Bill Collins’ for his liking and taste,

This is where Hula Girls strays off course, steering a little too

sharply towards Hollywood, probably helped along by ready access to

film archives. Vintage film buffs will enjoy the footage of Clark

Gable and Marlon Brando as Fletcher Christian, plus songs from

Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific. Not to mention a little

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ditty the producers dug up called Keep Your Eyes on Her Hands with

its amusing double meaning. 12

But the Coomber review concluded, I thought, on a positive

note,

That said the director has made a piece of entertainment and should

have the final say, ‘Hula Girls not only analyses the use of the image

but celebrates it as well’.13

One always hopes for glowing reviews after the intense effort

of making film and television programs, but 25 years of doing

the business has lead me up a different path. I could quote

from Doug Anderson in the Sydney Morning Herald and downplay the

Scott Coomber review altogether. But this would be a

pointless exercise. When you make a program to put forward to

the general public on a national broadcaster you need to be

able to encompass the views of the people who review it. It

is after all only their opinion. At the time I believed the

major dailies through their reviewers had embraced the

program and helped promote it to their readers. All publicity is

good publicity is the cliché about promotion and television.

That the major TV guides had reviewed Hula Girls at all, when it

was destined for a Friday 10pm slot, was an achievement in

itself and I believe a broad endorsement.

However Kazilos and Coomber had picked on a weakness in the

program with which I agreed and grappled with in the making —

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the absence of the voice of a contemporary Polynesian hula

dancer. Perhaps the inclusion of dance director Marguerite

Lei in the program would have provided this additional

indigenous voice. But I dropped her from the edit as I

thought her interview wasn’t strong enough and she would have

appeared once only. The lack of this Polynesian female voice

was part of a bigger issue that became evident in my research

and which I wrote about in Chapter 10 — the problem with

first contact histories with Indigenous peoples is that there

is no written record, let alone visual representations, of

the colonial encounter from the Indigenous side. Instead the

words, the images and largely the on going study of these

histories, are the preoccupations of the colonisers.

Indigenous Hawaiians and/or Tahitians don’t on the whole

study the work of John Webber, Paul Gauguin or the writings

of French explorer Bougainville. And even if I did find in my

research a Polynesian woman conversant with these European

images, would she be compelling talent? That was my number

one criteria.

I was pleased with the TV guides response to Hula Girls. In

addition to the reviews, Ed Rampell did an extensive live

interview with ABC’s Radio National from Los Angeles to

further promote the program. The SBS publicity team had done

everything possible over a 3 to 4 week span to promote the

show in its 10pm slot. It was now simply a matter of sitting

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tight and waiting for the program rating figures which

determine not only the numbers but also the demographics of

who was watching.

Every Monday morning at SBS, the Friday night and weekend

ratings figures are emailed to all the network executives and

the commissioning team. The SBS ‘Daily Overview’ gives the

overall evening audience share for SBS, the ratings figures

and audience share for every program from 6pm onwards and

also contains an evening narrative summary. The Daily

Overview for Friday 27th May 2005 stated,

- Evening share of people 16+ was 5.4%, down on last week.

- Top programs were Hula Girls with 250k & World News with 241k. - A Fork in the Mediterranean began its new series well, attracting

an audience of 212k, which was an increase on the program

previously in the 20:00 slot, She'll be Right, Boss, whose highest

audience number for the series was 174k. The 250k achieved at 22:00

by Hula Girls was driven mainly by older men. 14

These were extremely good figures. Hula Girls was the top rating

program SBS achieved across the entire Friday evening, and it

did so from the 10pm slot. It even outstripped A Fork in the Road

which was a highly promoted new SBS series. Jane Roscoe was

vindicated and I was forced to rethink my earlier opposition

and disappointment about her programming decision. The

documentary also achieved an audience share of 13%, more than

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double the SBS average for 2005 (5.5%) and as the Daily

Overview showed the increased audience share was driven by

the SBS traditional audience, older men. The OZtam TV ratings

for Sydney and Melbourne also revealed that the audience

share in these capitals grew as the program progressed and

viewers switched off from other networks. This was a

considerable achievement given the stiff opposition

programmed from the other networks, which included: the

ABC’s, The Memphis Trousers Half Hour with Roy & HG; 7 Network’s,

Edinburgh Military Tattoo; 9 Network’s, AFL Football; and Ten

Network’s American Idol Finale.

On the surface the older male demographic supported my

supposition (perhaps cynicism) that Hula Girls was commissioned

to potentially provide an increase in ratings via naked

Polynesian women. But according to Jane Roscoe older men are

already the core audience of SBS, with or without either Hula

Girls or the ‘sexy docs’ slot. Hula Girls simply managed to pull

more of them in that evening, along with some younger

viewers,

That is the problem of SBS generally. They are the core audience of

SBS, they are the over 65 males who will generally watch anything

on SBS. Whatever program we show there is a core of men over 65

watching and Friday night we are really trying to bring in some

different audiences and the sexy docs slot does bring in a portion

of younger viewers and a portion of female viewers. And the females

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are very hard to get at SBS. We only see them in certain numbers

across the schedule at certain points. 15

It is worth making a comparison at this point between Hula Girls

and other ‘Sexy Docs’ programmed by Jane Roscoe for the 10pm

Friday night slot as they provide a ratings context for the

program. The week after Hula Girls (3/6/05) Roscoe programmed

Obscene Machines in the ‘sexy docs’ slot. 370,000 people tuned

in, and like Hula Girls, it was the top rating show that

evening. The next best rating that evening was World News

Australia with 210,000 viewers. Overall the night was down

ratings wise, but the ‘Sexy Docs’ slot boosted the average

audience share to 5.6%. Almost a month later SBS screened

Diary of a Teenage Nudist and 364,000 people viewed it. As the

Daily Overview for that day (24/6/05) noted about the 5.9%

evening audience share,

Increase in share was due to the return of Sexy Docs in the 22:00

timeslot. 16

The week before SBS had screened the FIFA Confederations Cup

Highlights which scored a dismal 87,000 viewers nation wide and

an audience share of 5.5%. A week later (1/7/05) in ‘Sexy

Docs’, In Search of the Perfect Penis screened, drawing a large

audience of 367,000 viewers, most of them predictably older

men. Once again ‘Sexy Docs’ was the best rating program of

the night, but overall ratings that night were lower, so the

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evening audience share remained on average for the year at

5.5%.

I cite the example of the ratings figures for these three

documentaries as they are evidence of the audience pulling

power of a late Friday night slot devoted to programs that

deal with sex and sexuality. They witness that SBS in this

period (and since) was successfully boosting audience numbers

and average yearly audience share through the ‘Sexy Docs’

slot. The slot on many occasions was the slot ratings wise for

Friday evenings. But I cite the figures also because each of

these sex content programs, particularly with their strong

and provocative titles, sheds light on the more modest

ratings achievements and also the intentions of Hula Girls in

exploring sexuality and history. There is nothing like a sex

selling title, Obscene Machines, or Diary of a Teenage Nudist, for

instance to guarantee an audience. Like Hula Girls, each of

these 3 programs were reviewed by the major daily papers and

in my opinion they were credible well made explorations of

sex and sexuality. But the ratings difference is stark,

100,000 more people watched them than Hula Girls. They put my

fears about SBS commissioning Hula Girls to ‘exploit’ tits and

bums back in the box they came from. It was ultimately a

question of degree and intention.

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At SBSi throughout this period the commissioning team would

often debate how we could evaluate whether programs we had

commissioned were successful or not. What were the standards

we could apply to measure our own success in commissioning?

These are not easy criteria to establish because there are so

many variables. As a broadcaster one obvious measure is the

ratings and the ability of a program to pull in and sustain

an audience. Time and again however many excellent local and

international documentaries did poorly on SBS, simply because

of the competition that night from other networks. Another

measure of success is the ability of a program to draw press

reviews or create a public profile though festival screenings

or a cinema launch. The final criteria we employed, was

recognition via national and international film and or

television nominations and awards.

On the first two criteria alone Hula Girls had already kicked

some goals, but it was the third category that I felt the

most personal satisfaction was achieved for my year long

effort in writing and directing the program. In mid July 2005

I received a phone call from the NSW Ministry of the Arts to

say that Hula Girls had been nominated for The Audio/Visual History

Prize ($15,000) of the 2005 NSW History Awards and was one of 3

short listed nominees amongst locally made documentaries made

by my peers. I had won the prize on a previous occasion in

1998 with Mabo Life of an Island Man. I had a high regard for this

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particular award with it its cash prize of $15,000 and to be

nominated a second time I believed was quite special. The

prize emanates from the NSW Ministry of the Arts and is

judged by a panel of academicians. The Ministry website

stated the judging panel’s reasons for the Hula Girls

nomination,

Short-listed

Trevor Graham

Hula Girls

Electric Pictures Pty Ltd, 2005

A witty, intelligent cultural history of the hula girl — a western

fantasy whose origins lie in European colonisation and imperialism

in the Pacific — this cleverly structured film moves between a

chronological account of the development of the image of the

Polynesian Hula girl in western culture, and a deconstruction of

more recent manifestations of the Hula girl in popular culture. The

story of the Hula girl is the story of the colonisation of the

Pacific and the myriad fantasies and myths that these colonial

encounters inspired.

Trevor Graham makes rich use of a diverse archive of visual

representations of Pacific women to develop his arguments. From the

very earliest accounts of the beautiful women of Polynesia by Louis

Antoine de Bougainville, to paintings, photography, and Elvis

Presley films: all evoke the same fantasy of the beautiful,

innocent, and sexually available Polynesian woman. Historians and

commentators are used judiciously to further these claims. A lively

contribution to the history of colonialism in the Pacific, Hula Girls

is also a highly original documentary film. 17

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Four months later I was dining at Government House in Sydney

for the awards presentation with the former Premier of NSW

Bob Carr and the then Minister for the Arts Bob Debus. Hula

Girls had in fact won the The Audio/Visual History Prize, they had

informed me in advance, and I was there to raise the roof,

speak, and take hold of the all important cheque from the

Minister for the Arts. It was a high honor and moment of

personal achievement particularly as the other two nominated

programs Political Football (Dir. James Middleton, 2005) and Frank

Hurley: The Man Who Made History (Dir. Simon Nasht 2004), were both

excellent documentaries by filmmakers whose work I enjoy and

respect. It was a strong field of nominations to win from.

I cite the example of the award not to blow my own trumpet,

but to give context to the significance I place in my work as

a film practitioner receiving recognition from an award like

the NSW History Awards, and in particular the history

discipline. The judges’ reasoning for the award was

reassuring after the creative tussle of making the program

and trying to find the balance, as I have said all along,

between entertainment, celebration and historical analysis.

The award, along side of the reviews, and the SBS ratings was

recognition that we had achieved that balance.

The Awards ceremony also provided another unexpected opening

when I met historian Michelle Arrow, one of the Audio — Visual

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Prize judges. I later arranged to interview her about Hula Girls,

to probe her thoughts beyond her judge’s comments and it

provided an opportunity to dig deeper into a young female

historian’s view of the program,

With something like Hula Girls, what I liked about it was that it

didn’t tell a particular story about a person, most of the other

films (in that History Award category) were biographical. But Hula

Girls was like an essay, a filmed essay. It was the exploration of an

idea, rather than an exploration of a story. Therefore you have

more freedom in the structure, it places more demands on you in the

way you tell that story, because the narrative is not immediately

obvious. The way that film started and the way it cut in with 1930s

cinema and then went back to the very early colonial encounters, I

liked that sense of different layers of the past are all mashed up

together. It wasn’t just, ‘Here’s the beginning, someone is born,

and that’s when they die’. And the other thing I liked was using

the Hollywood film to illustrate the older historical points and

the way that Hollywood kept reinserting itself and the twisted

narrative. It was emphasising the mixed up nature of the past and

the present, the distant past and the more recent past. I liked

that. The past was commenting on the more distant past. They were

having a conversation with each other which I kind of liked.

I liked its slightly playful presentation of history. That it

wasn’t dead serious. I think Ed Rampell was great because his

interview introduced a tone of lightness to it, in his Hawaiian

shirt and he’s brash and he’s loud and he’s out there. The young

woman, Katerina Teaiwa, from the University of Hawaii she was great

too because, she was really important, because it was like the Hula

Girl is speaking. She looks fantastic she is gorgeous, but she is

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also like, ‘Well get stuffed this is actually the way it was’ and

she is actually explaining the cultural specificity of it. She was

great because she was feisty and important to have that voice in

that film for that reason. It would have been very easy for Hula Girls

to simply perpetuate all the things it was critiquing, or

explaining.

And the other thing I liked about Hula Girls is that it digs below

that image, the hula girl or the Elvis image or whatever, it digs

below what we think is very surface or kitschy and says this has a

really deep history. It starts out with something that is quite

innocuous and reveals something that is quite fundamental about

colonisation. So I liked that sense of digging down below the

surface and revealing something much more disturbing, the sense of

representation and that this is a kind of western fantasy or a male

white fantasy. I learnt something from it and that question of

what you want an audience to get from it is interesting. Do you

want your audience to learn from it do you want them to be

entertained by it? 18

Michelle opened up some new important ideas on the program

that I hadn’t really thought through myself all that clearly.

She referred to the program as a ‘mash up’ and ‘a filmed

essay’, but I have never actually ever described it that way

either throughout making it or indeed in writing this thesis.

And that’s because in the business of television ‘essay

films’ are ‘on the nose’ and have been for some time. Try

pitching one to a Commissioning Editor or a TV publicist or a

programmer and see how far you get! So I deliberately avoided

that unpopular documentary genre label. I always prefer to

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use the word ‘story’ when describing a program and with Hula

Girls in particular I’ve preferred to always push the

entertainment button. But Michelle’s thoughts were refreshing

and accurate as a descriptor of the form, ‘Hula Girls was like

an essay, a filmed essay. It was the exploration of an idea,

rather than an exploration of a story’, and ‘therefore you

have more freedom in the structure, it places more demands on

you in the way you tell that story, because the narrative is

not immediately obvious’. I had grappled for that ‘freedom in

the structure’ so as not to tell a purely chronological tale

or as she puts it, ‘Here’s the beginning, someone is born,

and that’s when they die’ and her words resonated like bells

in my head when I interviewed her. She was ‘reading’ the

structure of the film as it was intended and could appreciate

the balance we had struggled to achieve between historical

analysis and popular entertainment.

Post Script: 18 months later on 26/01/07 Hula Girls was back in

the SBS XY Docs Friday night 10pm slot as a repeat program in

the “Summer Schedule”. As the Daily Overview from SBS’

Audience Affairs department stated, “Top programs were The SS

and Hula Girls Rpt”. The program repeat actually pulled in more

viewers (255,000) than its first successful outing in 2005

(250,000) and an audience share of 12.2% almost double the

SBS summer average for 2006/2007.

Footnotes:

310

1. Arrow, M. 2005, Nomination Shortlist & Judge’s comments NSW History Awards, NSW

Ministry of the Arts.

2. Overnight Audience Response — SBS TV Audience Research Tuesday,

13th of February, 2007.

3. Dr. Jane Roscoe, Programmer SBS TV interview by Trevor Graham,

2005.

4. Ibid

5. Hula Girls, DVD cover, Beyond International (2005)

6. Hula Girls, SBS TV Press Release, Verity Leatherdale, 2005).

7. Verity Leatherdale, Publicist SBS TV, interview by Trevor Graham,

2005.

8. Ibid.

9. Kathy Kazilos, K. 2005, Critics View, The Melbourne Age Green Guide, p. 18.

10. Paul Kalina, P. 2005, Hubba hubba hula history, The Melbourne Age Green

Guide, p. 16.

11. Comber, S. 2005, Shaking All Over, Weekend Australian Review, p. 38.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

14. SBS ‘Daily Overview’, Audience Research Department SBS TV,

25/5/05.

15. Dr. Jane Roscoe, Programmer SBS TV interview by Trevor

Graham, 2005.

16. SBS ‘Daily Overview’, Audience Research Department SBS TV,

24/6/05.

17. Michelle Arrow, M. 2005,

Awards, NSW Ministry of the Arts.

18. Dr. Michelle Arrow, Lecturer Dept of Modern History Macquarie

University & Judge NSW History Awards 2005, interview by Trevor

Graham, 2006.

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12.

ConclusionsThe research and writing of Hula Girls and this accompanying

document have been a lengthy and significant personal journey

in which I have had to test and challenge many of the bald

assumptions and ideas I had when I commenced making the

documentary in November 2003. It has proved to be a rewarding

and revealing experience as I examined and re-examined the

history of the hula girl.

Over these past five years, as part of my doctoral project, I

have researched the documentary, written the script, directed

the shoot and edit, delivered Hula Girls to the three

commissioning broadcasters and was actively involved in

promoting and publicizing the program in Australia and

abroad. In completing the doctoral ‘package’, this companion

text has subsequently accounted for the creative processes I

employed to make the film. The written component of the

doctorate has also provided an opportunity to research the

international market place in which Hula Girls was initially

pitched and successfully funded. Thus the combination of

research, analysis and the creative thinking I employed to

write and direct Hula Girls, and to write the subsequent

companion text have altogether generated knowledge about

cultural history, about creative processes within documentary312

practice and about strategic issues of international media

production and consumption.

The two major questions I set out to explore in this document

were: (1) Is there anything significant about the production

of Hula Girls in the international documentary market that

allows us to understand and reflect upon ‘the market’ and

‘market forces’ particularly for Australian documentary?

and,

(2) are there lessons to be learned from this experience for

Australian producers seeking to sell their programs in the

international arena?

Since opening these inquiries into the financing of Hula Girls I

have come to the conclusion that in some respects these two

questions cannot be answered definitively, mostly because of

the continually evolving broadcast landscape. Since 2003 when

Hula Girls was financed, much has changed in the national and

international documentary scene. In Australia in 2008 there

has been a huge shake up and amalgamation of Federal film

funding agencies involving the Film Finance Corporation, the

Australian Film Commission and Film Australia. Whilst the

newly amalgamated ‘uber’ agency, Screen Australia, proclaims

its continued commitment to the funding of documentary with

similar guidelines and levels of support to the Federal

agencies it replaced, the exact level of that support (at the

313

time of writing) and the nature of the new organization

funding guidelines are yet to be determined. One can only

hope that the promised streamlining of the three former

agencies will result in increased levels of production

funding support for the overall film and television

industries.

314

At SBS TV there have also been profound organizational

changes with deep implications for ‘one-off’ documentaries

like Hula Girls. The commissioning arm SBS Independent, (which

granted Hula Girls its required Australian presale) has been

dismantled and replaced by a Content Division with a new

Manager of Commissioned Content, and newly appointed

Executive Producers replacing Commissioning Editors. With

these new staff have come new commissioning priorities and a

greater emphasis on ratings at the public broadcaster, and

many argue this is heavily linked to the networks commercial

advertising agenda. 2007 and 2008 saw a shift at SBS away

from broad support for producers making ‘one-off’

documentaries, towards the commissioning of factual

entertainment, series like Nerds FC, the reversioning of

international formats such as Who Do You Think You Are? and Top Gear

Australia and documentary series production. Acquiring factual

entertainment programs like the BBC’s Top Gear and

reversioning the format into Top Gear Australia is SBS’s attempt

to bring new and younger audiences to the network and boost

ratings and commercial advertising revenue. These twin

imperatives are joined at the hip by the current SBS board

and management. This trend towards commercialization of the

public broadcaster has had many outspoken critics. But one

critic stands out amongst them all for his consistent

trenchant censure of ‘in program advertising’ and the

processes of commercialisation at Australia’s multi-cultural

315

public broadcaster. On the 21st of August 2008, Errol Simper,

continued his frontal attack in his column for The Australian,

with an article titled, Bogus public broadcaster with the hide of a

pachyderm,

When SBS's television service made the most crucial decision in its

existence, when it announced in June 2006 it was to begin

interrupting its programs with advertisements, it consulted

absolutely no one. Viewers and its traditional, ethnically diverse political support bases were totally ignored. They were treated

with utter contumely. Indeed, one senior SBS person is said to have

informed a group of concerned staff that what viewers thought about

commercial interruptions was pretty close to irrelevant. The

station was targeting a different, younger, more lucrative bunch of

viewers and existing audiences could like it or lump it. 1.

SBS TV continues to commission programs from independent

companies, but they are increasingly the ‘big’ companies, not

the kitchen table variety, capable of producing longer series

and format television.

These comments are not meant to deny the quality of a series

format like the Australian version of Who Do You Think You Are?

and its ability to pull an audience to history programming

for SBS. The first episode with Jack Thompson in 2008 broke

the record for the highest rating SBS local production with

857,000 viewers. This was also the biggest ever SBS audience

in the Sunday 19:30 timeslot,

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In total, approximately 2.4 million people tuned into the series in

the 5 capital cities and 1.1 million in regional areas (audience

reach 5 minute consecutive viewing). Viewing was strongest in

Sydney and Melbourne. 2

Each of the six Who programs were well crafted, made by

Australian producers and directors, and their work and the

series as a whole was worthy of support by SBS. It is

informative however, to examine the Who and Top Gear Australia

examples in contrast with the axing of Storyline Australia in 2007.

Storyline Australia was a strand which fostered a vast range of

Australian talent. Over the three years of its existence

(2004-2006) Storyline consisted of 23 to 26 one off

documentaries broadcast every year, made by as many

producer/director teams. By abandoning the Storyline series, SBS

was clearly moving away from its prior support for a

plurality of ideas by small companies, often passionate

‘kitchen table’ producers, towards format and series

television (encompassing factual entertainment) produced by

bigger and fewer companies. The strength of Storyline Australia

and other one-off documentaries, like Hula Girls, is the

plurality of independent program ideas and the plurality of

‘voices’ making them. A series like Storyline with its many

voices and many styles democratises factual television

programming. By promoting program diversity over its three

317

years, the strand provided a core documentary value for

Australian audiences which Peter Wintonick describes as,

social and political commitment, which goes to the very definition

of documentary itself . 3

Ideas came from all corners of the country. Commissioners

were dependent on a random collection of ideas presented to

them, you would never know what would come through the door,

and we would select the best 5%, more or less, from the

hundreds of proposals we received each year. This random

process could produce some gems and some disasters, but it at

least fostered unknown and unpredictable story ideas and

often new and different styles of documentary production. The

ratings for Storyline varied from week to week anywhere between

a low 60,000 or a high 470,000 viewers. Most weeks audiences

hovered around 200,000. And this is why the series was

discontinued, program quality and ratings were too

inconsistent from week to week.

On the other hand a formatted series like Who Do You Think You

Are? provides consistency in terms of quality and audience

expectations. Viewers know what they are up for week after

week. A ‘promise to the audience’ is made by the quality of

the productions and the stories that unravel for viewers. The

Australian series of Who Do You Think You Are? attracted an

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average audience of 602,000 viewers, more than double the

2007 average for the Sunday 19:30 timeslot and three times

the average audience for Storyline Australia. The format therefore

has great potential to generate audiences ratings and in the

case of SBS advertising revenue. The danger is however that

the bigger production companies with their larger overheads

need to play it safe with their relationship to SBS. They

will only present ideas they know the broadcasters will like

and see as relevant to their ratings and commercial

advertising agenda. This not only undermines the democratic

nature, of many voices, many styles, but also leaves one

questioning the value of SBS as a public broadcaster. Is SBS

a ‘Bogus public broadcaster with the hide of a pachyderm’ as Errol Simper

asserts?

To internationalise and contextualise this conclusion about

the altering broadcast landscape, at the BBC in 2007 there

was a massive restructure of staff due to budget cuts.

Programs and commissioning weren’t immune either to the

budget razor and this eventually impacted on several

Australian producers working on British-Australian co-

productions. In Chapter 2, I cited the positive experience of

filmmaker Simon Nasht and the enthusiastic response of BBC4

Commissioning Editor, Nick Fraser, to his project Rebel with a

Cause, about renegade Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett.

After Hot Docs in April 2007 Nasht was offered a substantial

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presale in English pounds. The project was well on its way to

being financed (it had also been commissioned by me at SBS)

or so we thought at the time. Five months later the project

was in tatters. As a result of the changes at the BBC,

Fraser’s budget was slashed and for a moment it seemed that

one of the most significant feature length documentary slots

in the international arena, Storyville, was doomed for the

guillotine. The potential closure of Storyville caused a minor

furore amongst filmmakers both in Britain, Australia and

elsewhere. Fraser eventually successfully lobbied BBC

management to keep the series, but he would cut back on the

overall number of his commissioned projects and reduce his

budget. Sadly Rebel with a Cause was one of Fraser’s sacrifices

and his initial offer, which had already been passed to the

BBC’s Business Affairs Department, was withdrawn. To state

the obvious, independent filmmaking is a fickle business, and

the old cliché, ‘I won’t believe it till the money’s in the

bank’ is a well worn truism for good reason.

With a more commercially oriented imperative currently at

play at SBS it is highly unlikely, even with its potential

for ratings success, that a program like Hula Girls would now be

commissioned by the network. The point of these insights into

SBS, apart from expressing my regret about the changes, is to

reinforce what Augustus Dalgaro said in Chapter 2. A Buyers

Market, that, ‘The tastes of the market place are changing

320

every six months’. The commissioning staff are also changing.

The point needs to be reinforced that what is commissioned at

SBS, or any other broadcaster, depends on the needs of that

broadcaster at any given moment and most importantly on who

is driving the commissioning and their programming taste. It

also depends enormously on broadcaster budgets and where they

are in their budget cycles at any given moment. Hula Girls was

commissioned at a time when SBSi, under the regime of Rowe

and Commissioning Editor Lander, was actively commissioning

‘one off’ documentaries and vigorously supporting local

producers engaged in financing and co-producing programs for

the international market. At the time Hula Girls was

commissioned by Lander even without a regular SBS slot in

mind. This couldn’t happen post 2007. As Lander stated in

Chapter 3, A Buyer’s Market,

At that point in time I was two years into my time at SBS as a CE,

and I still had a lot of independent filmmaker characteristics

coming out, and that was one of the things about SBSi, it lent

towards the independent filmmaker as well as to the broadcaster and

there was seen to be a value in terms of supporting the industry

and strengthening the industry. 4

Ogilvie had approached Lander for a presale at an opportune

time. Lander had been in the job two years, he was venturing

overseas to the international markets and keen to support

Australian producers in this context. When I interviewed

Lander for this document four years later, I asked him how 321

much he thought ‘commissioning of project ideas was

personality based?’,

Personality is inevitably a part of it, a significant part of it,

but not in a very obvious way. I did a little bit of testing of

that early on in my period as a commissioner at SBS. And I found

that who ever you chose whether it was a representative of a

funding agency or a broadcaster, or for that matter a filmmaker,

and if you were looking at 100 submissions, you would all reject

the same 80. Of the next 20 there may be small disagreements

getting rid of the next 10. And of the last 10 you would start to

have significant differences about whether you chose this one or

that one and this is where personality comes in to play. But

actually those final 10 would be all viable productions and would

have things going for them as ideas and there wasn’t a right answer

or a wrong answer. There is a kind of a myth out there that there

is a vast quantity of really top work that isn’t getting funded.

And that’s simply not true. There are five of the 10 on a regular

basis that are not getting funded, that could’ve been funded. And

you could say that part of the selection process is based on

personality. 5

From my own experience as a Commissioning Editor at SBSi I

can vouch for and endorse Lander’s views that the best

projects stand out and that roughly only 10% of submissions

are worthy of consideration. And further that personal taste

can be brought to bear on the final 5% of successful

projects.

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Hula Girls was commissioned for SBSi not so much on Lander’s

personal taste, but because the involvement of a local

broadcaster would clinch the deal and make it eligible for

FFC investment. It was therefore essentially a deal led

project, one in which Lander was supporting an independent

producer like Ogilvie and ‘strengthening’ his company

Electric Pictures. It also happened to be a good idea for

SBSi, at the time, in terms of the broadcaster’s charter

obligations.

Despite the changing broadcast landscape, here and abroad, I

can make some firmer conclusions about the process of

successfully financing and producing a program like Hula Girls

in the international market. These conclusions centre on

producing skills. Andrew Ogilvie’s investment in time and

travel to international markets over a period of time paid

off. It allowed him to get to know CEs Grunert and

Braamhorst, what they were looking for and also their

personal taste. Grunert was known as ‘the king of sexy

programs’ and Braamhorst was previously a cultural historian.

Importantly the pitch for Island Aphrodite (as the project was

originally called) encompassed the breadth of art forms that

Braamhorst’s strand, Close Up focused on, painting,

photography and cinema history. This knowledge influenced

Ogilvie’s eventual successful pitch to both of them.

Similarly, Ogilvie knew Lander was committed to delivering

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entertaining programs that fulfilled the SBS charter, so he

could pitch the program as being important to SBS, not just

because of the deal.

If there is an obvious golden rule to glean from Ogivie’s

successful experience pitching Hula Girls and ‘the market’ and

‘market forces’ for Australian documentary, it is get know the

broadcasters and the Commissioning Editors, what strands or

slots they commission for and their program tastes and

preferences. When Commissioning Editors consider buying a

project as a presale they put themselves in their audience’s

shoes. An idea may appeal to their personal taste. But will

it appeal to their audience and the demographic that watches

at 8.30pm on a Thursday night, which is the slot they

commission for? Producers should only present them with ideas

that clearly work for their slots, otherwise they are wasting

their time and the broadcasters. In relationship to Hula Girls,

Ogilvie already had these questions answered when he pitched

the program. They were a well-oiled part of his pitch.

Ogilvie’s track record since Hula Girls is impressive and worth

noting as a case in point. He has pre-sold numerous new

projects to ARTE and SBS including a ‘blue chip’ high budget

science series, Cracking the Colour Code, and many other co-

production broadcast partners. Clearly these broadcasters

think he and his company are reliable co-production partners,

producing quality programs. But these presales have been 324

generated because Ogilvie spent time acquainting himself with

the international markets.

As I discussed in Chapter 2 A Buyer’s Market Australian

documentary in the international market is often

disadvantaged. Augustus Dulgaro said of his experience

selling Australian documentaries for Film Australia, the

product was often seen as ‘too Australian’ or ‘too

parochial’. Hula Girls clearly could not be ‘pigeon-holed in

this manner. It was pitched as an international idea from the

outset, for an international market. The hula girl icon was

relevant to international audiences: ‘she’ was a readily

identifiable ‘brand’. But what wasn’t known was the history

and genesis of ‘her’ origins and the documentary could

deliver on this.

In terms of style, Hula Girls was also pitched with the needs of

the European market in mind and would encompass an array of

international experts and employ 50% narration. It would not

be a program comprising Australian only experts or consist of

wall to wall ‘talking heads’. In this respect too it could

not be tagged as ‘parochial’ in style.

In relationship to the successful completion and approval of

Hula Girls from the three broadcasters, there are numerous firm

conclusions to be made about story, style and content for the

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international market. Perhaps the most important of these was

my decision to find a balance in the content and the story

between entertainment, or viewing pleasure, and history. As

Verity Lambert from SBS Publicity described Hula Girls, it’s a

program where ‘you can have it both ways’. This involved, as

I have written about extensively, the use of as many

Hollywood scenes for inclusion in Hula Girls as we could

possibly afford. But the Hollywood clips were supported by a

strong historical story which provides context. These ‘A’ and

‘B’ storylines , ‘Hollywood’ and ‘history’ danced with each

other, one dependent on the other to create the full meaning

and complexity of the Hula Girls story. Fortunately my producer

Andrew Ogilvie supported this approach and re-jigged his

budget to accommodate as many Hollywood clips as possible.

The other factor regarding entertainment was the choice of

interview talent. Not only was choosing an international cast

for interview important, but selecting the best available

talent and also looking for humour in the talent, by

featuring someone like Los Angeles-based journalist and film

critic Ed Rampell.

The other important conclusion about interview talent was

selecting characters that could provide the counter point and

layering to the story that I was seeking. Margaret Jolly and

Katerina Teaiwa were able to flesh out the meaning and

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importance of sexuality in customary Polynesian culture and

provide some logic for Polynesian women’s ‘welcoming’

attitudes to Europeans. As Margaret Jolly says,

Polynesian eroticism was not a figment of the European imagination. 6

There is nothing obviously Australian about Hula Girls, it is an

international idea, in its look, its story, its interviewees

and the choice of archival footage. It had one foot in Europe

in its historical story, another in the USA and yet the story

is centered mostly in Polynesia. It is therefore a story with

global resonance. The program pitched the hula girl image as

an international icon, still relevant today, as an emblem of

tourism.

Working to the European model in relationship to employing

narration was another important factor in the success of the

program with AVRO and ARTE. It seems incredible to me that I

still hear filmmakers say they don’t like using narration in

their programs. It was something I encountered a lot in the

cutting room as a Commissioning Editor at SBS, and still do

in my current work as a Series Producer at the ABC. Narration

is first and foremost another filmmaking tool to be used

creatively as a device for storytelling. Deciding to embrace

the notion of 50% narration in Hula Girls, from the very start,

at scripting, was important. Also bringing in script

consultant and co-writer Louis Nowra in the last stages of

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post-production gave our final narration script finesse and

polish.

The other question that hung over the production, and is

central to this thesis, concerned the expectations of the

broadcasters I was working for. Would Hula Girls by force of

circumstance be another adventure in exoticism? “Oh exotic!

Great winter viewing, on a cold snowy winter’s night” and “I

want to see these sexy ladies” was apparently Olaf Grunert’s

response when the project was pitched to him by Ogilvie at

MIPCOM in 2002. On the surface one could easily conclude that

the promise of ‘exoticism’ and ‘sexy ladies’ were part of the

appeal for the broadcasters and their audiences. However my

research revealed a far more complicated picture and set of

expectations than my initial fears relied upon. And further,

I found in the making of the program that sexuality and the

history of the hula girl as an icon are not only intertwined

but they have profound historical moments where they are

beacons for social change.

Essentially Hula Girls was commissioned because of a combination

of factors, its ability to entertain and appeal to European

and Australian audiences and for its historical analysis

which involved unraveling a great deal of European thought

and history. The sexy image of Polynesian women was the

source of that audience appeal and engagement. But scantily

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clad Polynesian women were not sufficient reasons to

commission the program by any of the Commissioning Editors.

The images required history and analysis to underpin them — a

deconstruction with humor, pleasure and rigour which would in

the end speak about Europeans and their historical

relationship with the South Pacific. As Andrew Ogilvie

outlined to me when I interviewed him about AVRO’s and Wolter

Braamhorst’s interests in the program,

He wanted something full of images that are luxurious, that are

going to entertain through the image, an audience that is

interested in painting and in art, and films. He would be also

aware that being sexy it would appeal to his male audience. But it

wasn’t the primary motivation. And never has been. If we were to

make a film which was totally sensationalised and exploitative of

those images and for no other reason than to show lots of tits and

bums, then they wouldn’t like that at all. No, the sex has to be

packaged within something that is more considered and which is

stimulating intellectually, which is telling something about

themselves as Europeans and about their history, which is

educational. 7

I also found via my research for the program that films and

literature set in the South Pacific could also offer more

than mere escapism and bare bodies. They were capable of

exploring issues of race and sexual relations. Films like

South Pacific, Bird of Paradise and South of Pago Pago suggest to

audiences the possibilities of interracial and cross-cultural

romance, as Rampell explains,329

love conquers all and love conquers racism. 8

These Hollywood films confront the taboo subject of inter

racial sex in a time when race lines were strictly drawn in

the USA.

My movie history research challenged and broadened my

thinking about sexuality and the historical representation of

Polynesian women. I realised via the making of Hula Girls that I

too had a preset and one dimensional view of the role of

sexuality in South Seas cinema, seeing it solely as a means

of peddling cinema tickets and exploitative of Polynesian

women. As Rampell proclaimed,

It’s an extension of colonialism, the white man is conquering

territory, and the foreign woman becomes a sex object to him. 9

The conclusion I have come to is that both themes expounded

by Rampell ‘love conquers all’ and ‘the white man is

conquering territory’, although contradictory are to be found

in the Western image and history of the hula girl and

Polynesian women. These dual ideas are embedded and are

fundamental to her representation. South Seas stories and

characters, even though they may employ stereotypes, were in

productions like Bird of Paradise a ruse for Hollywood writers and

directors to resist the strict censorship codes of the 1930s

and 40s. Including South of Pago Pago opened a new thematic door330

for Hula Girls, women too were vulnerable to the charms of the

South Seas, even blonde ‘all- American gals’ like Francis

Farmer. So historically consistent was the ‘European male

meets native women’ story that it was in danger of becoming

its own boring stereotype within the Hula Girls story. South of

Pago Pago broke this mould.

Jane Roscoe’s response to Hula Girls,

What the documentary did in a very entertaining way, was give us a

history lesson but also give us something that was quite sexy. 10

helped me come to grips with the reality of the program I’d

made and to see and value that the entertainment in the show

was intrinsically linked to the sexuality. The nakedness and

sexuality were aiding and abetting an exposition of the

colonial encounter.

My initial apprehensions about working on an international

co-production with Ogilvie were also proved to be ill

founded. Andrew wanted to deliver to the broadcasters an

entertaining program with analysis and integrity. He did not

have ‘a tits and bums’ agenda to push as I thought might be the

case at the outset.

My concerns about co-production and versioning also proved to

be ill founded. As I concluded in Chapter 5, Co-production Blues,

331

‘I had to be honest with myself, I was taking up this

negative position purely because of my bad Nova experience.’

Ogilvie proved to be an extremely reliable and thoughtful

producer, his prediction that we would only produce one

version, proved to be true. It worked because he knew the

broadcasters and their requirements and he put the time and

effort into relaying those thoughts to me. We developed a

constructive, and this is the key, a trusting working

relationship, an essential for any producer-director team.

Our combined experience delivered the program to the

broadcasters without major rewrites or even minor hiccups.

It’s clear from my doctoral research that broadcasters were

hoping for Hula Girls to generate audiences and ratings. The two

SBS broadcasts to date (there will be a third at some stage

in the future) were successful in achieving the highest

ratings for the night and on both occasions doubled the

average yearly SBS audience share. SBS Audience Research

revealed that the older male viewers drove the increase in

ratings. Ned Lander had this audience in mind when he

commissioned the project. On the surface the older male

demographic supports my initial cynicism that Hula Girls was

commissioned to potentially provide an increase in ratings

via naked Polynesian women. But as Jane Roscoe says,

They are the core audience of SBS, they are the over 65 males who

will generally watch anything on SBS. 11

332

The professional lesson for me to learn about my preliminary

fears about broadcaster expectations is to not store up the

resentment of prior negative experiences. Based on my

experiences with NOVA in 1996, I was seeing the negatives,

rather than embracing the opportunities Hula Girls could

provide. Fortunately once I jumped into the production these

tendencies dissipated as I started to enjoy the work in

making the program and working with the team. With a clear

set of commissioning objectives and expectations spelt out by

Andrew Ogilvie at the outset, this proved to be an enjoyable

and rewarding co-production experience.

My personal niggling issue that plagued me throughout Hula

Girls, how not to make ‘yet another voyeuristic image’ was

finally only answered and dealt with in the final weeks of

our edit. An assembly of the pictures alone could be

voyeuristic. But we built, through narration and interviews a

scaffold around the pictures which provided history and

analysis. When Louis Nowra joined us in the edit room he

inserted what he called a ‘contemporary feminist perspective’

via the narration writing. A few subtle words throughout the

story were all that was needed to clarify the intentions of

the program to explore the hula girl as an icon. The words

together with the images maintained a balance between

critique and celebration.

333

Did I succeed in bringing the past to the small screen? And

how do I evaluate the program in my own terms? I have written

and directed a program that explored the origins of the hula

girl image and how she has been mythologised by Western

artists and filmmakers throughout the centuries. We have also

deliberately produced an entertaining picture, a history that

is accessible and fun to watch. The opening lines of

narration,

She's beautiful and exotic. She’s half real, half myth. A product

of male fantasies, a by-word for paradise and a creation of the

Hollywood Dream Factory. 12

neatly sums up the conclusion I came to about the history and

origins of the hula girl image. And the closing narration

left the audience with a more contemporary thought relevant

to their desire for travel and tourism,

The hula girl has become an icon of romance and travel. Even today,

after two centuries of idealisation and myth-making, she keeps on

seducing us with the marvellous dream of escape to an exotic

paradise, far removed from the drab realities of our ordinary

lives. 13

I am also well aware of the historic content I ditched from

Hula Girls and the limitations of what is achievable in a 52-

minute program. The need to tell a neatly crafted story into

a ‘program package’ requires some constraint and it’s easy to

334

understand why sections of academia frown upon populist TV

history. There were many sacrifices, including characters

like Claude-Louis Stefani and a more expansive French history

of early 19th century voyages to the South Pacific. These

voyages produced some beautiful images such as, Iles Sandwich:

Femme de l’ Isle Mowi Dansant, which further enhanced the

‘enchantress’ reputation of Polynesian women. This French

content encompassed what Katerina Teaiwa referred to as the

‘Melanesian Other’, the conflicting versions of Pacific

heaven or hell, paradise or purgatory, as depicted in the

contrasting late 18th and early 19th century European images of

the peoples of Polynesia and Melanesia. What emerged from

these French voyages was a hierarchy of aesthetics in the

Pacific, where the lighter skinned Polynesian women were at

the top of the chain and the darker skinned Melanesian women

at the bottom. This content would have further enriched the

program and added greater meaning and depth. But there simply

wasn’t the space for it. And I deliberately sacrificed this

type of content in favour of the more populist Hollywood

history of South Seas films. Entertainment won the day as an

appeal to audiences and ratings.

We faced an enormous challenge in the Hula Girls story which

spanned 250 years of complicated colonial history in the

South Pacific. Our task was not only to ‘keep the story

moving’ but to ‘connect the dots’. Too much information and

335

too many historical anecdotes would have confused the

narrative. We had to find a balance in the story telling, a

narrative symmetry with the interviews, narration and

archive.

Not finding suitable Polynesian female talent in my research

was another major disappointment. Whilst Louis Peltzer,

Marguerite Lai and Tea Hirshon knew something of the history

of images I was dealing with, it wasn’t sufficient to include

them in the program. Peltzer, Lai and Hirshon expressed

concerns about the influence of tourism on Tahitian life and

culture, in which the figure of the beautiful ‘vahine’ has a

central place. But I decided to have Katerina Teaiwa speak to

this subject, thereby diminishing the need for the other

women. Teaiwa added a welcome counterpoint with her presence

on camera as Michelle Arrow noted,

she was really important, because it was like the hula girl is

speaking. She looks fantastic she is gorgeous, but she is also

like, ‘Well get stuffed this is actually the way it was’. 14

Finally I would like to assess the career value Hula Girls

provided as an international co-production and why I believe

co-production work is a valuable professional enhancement.

This premise of career enhancement though is based on a need

to accept the restraints and limitations that come with the

336

ride when working for international broadcasters. I will

discuss these ‘creative restraints’ too.

Hula Girls is not what I call an ‘auteur director’s’ work. It

was essentially a deal and producer led project for the

international market and it bears some limitations due to its

origins. As Lander stated in Chapter 11,

I think it’s often true of the higher end budget co-production work

that you are serving several masters and it is serving several

sensibilities and that can flatten out the shape of it a little. I

suppose a strong character driven story can’t be realized

editorially in this co-production context. It’s more the essay form

that will work for the market. 15

I wish to expand on Lander’s comment ‘I suppose a strong

character driven story can’t be realized editorially in this

co-production context’ by comparing a previous documentary

which I wrote and directed, Mabo — Life of an Island Man with Hula

Girls. It is a bit like comparing apples and oranges, but the

exercise will shed light on the value, differences and the

restraints of directing for domestic and international

broadcasters. Mabo which I directed in 1996 and ’97 was a

strong character driven story about Eddie Mabo and his

struggle for land rights in the High Court of Australia,

which became known as the Mabo Case. It tells the private and

public stories of a man so passionate about family and home

that he fought an entire nation and its legal system. The 337

feature length documentary was made essentially for the

Australian domestic market with a presale to the ABC. On

completion it had a theatrical release in cinemas around

Australia. As a story it was highly relevant to Australian

audiences, and engaging them in this important story, was my

primary interest in making the film.

Hula Girls from the start was a project conceived by Andrew

Ogilvie for the international market and audiences. Ogilivie

is a highly market focused producer and his company Electric

Pictures was developing an international reputation. It was

financed on the strength of its international presales

through what was known as the ‘International Door’ at the

Film Finance Corporation. As Ned Lander conceded, SBS largely

backed the picture because of the interest from the European

broadcasters AVRO and ARTE.

In terms of its content, Mabo was a film I was driven to make.

I was the writer, director, narrator and co-producer. Because

of the personal nature of the film and my commitment to it I

regard it is an auteur film. It is a film where the voice of

the filmmaker is intimately connected to the story and

characters. The feature length documentary is driven by a

significant Australian human rights issue, with a strong

historical political resonance in Australia, due to the 200

year lack of recognition for Indigenous land rights expressed

338

through the doctrine of Terra Nullius. It was a program

financed for its ‘national interest’ significance and because

of this I was given the freedom by Film Australia, the

production company, to make a feature length film, 87 minutes

long. Although the ABC was initially unhappy about the

length, the broadcaster eventually compromised and embraced

the feature length because the film had been so well received

at Australian film festivals and at the box office.

On the other hand I was a ‘hired gun’ to write and direct

Hula Girls for Electric Pictures. I developed a passion for the

subject, which I hope is self evident from the completed

production and this document. But the story idea wasn’t mine,

it wasn’t an idea that I obsessively had to make and I played

hard ball when I was first approached by Ogilvie to direct

it. In contrast to Mabo’s personal story, Hula Girls was

conceived as an historical essay film, not I thought at the

time, my natural forte. Given the original pitch to the three

broadcasters and their interest in the history of the images

of Polynesian women, there is no way it could be personalised

or made into a Mabo style character driven story. An

explicitly political story also wasn’t what AVRO and ARTE

purchased and so Hula Girls is more a cultural history. It was a

constraint I had to accept as a director, I would have liked

to have tried a more directly political approach to the

story. But within the context of the co-production framework,

339

I couldn’t. So I had to find subtle ways of embedding the

political themes I was interested in within the story of the

hula girl, and the myths ‘she’ inspired as the Pacific was

colonized, first by European powers, then by the USA and

Hollywood. The growing impact of colonialism on the

Indigenous populations of Hawaii and Tahiti became a sub

theme of the program. Introducing the theme of inter racial

love in Hollywood films such as Bird of Paradise and South Pacific

and the challenges these films posed for censorship codes at

the time and a racially segregated America, further enhanced

the political themes.

There was no possible option, as there was with Mabo, to make

more than a TV hour or 52 minutes with Hula Girls. This is one of

the major limitations I had to accept. I was contracted to

deliver a TV hour. It comes with the territory of working

with three broadcasters, particularly with AVRO and ARTE who

had defined hour-long slots that the program would screen in.

It’s one of the major constraints of making documentary for

television and the cause of many complaints by filmmakers who

decry the unwillingness of broadcasters to support feature

length documentary programs. At one stage I put the

proposition to Andrew Ogilivie that perhaps we should ask for

flexibility with the broadcasters to make a longer version so

that we could incorporate the scenes with Rena Owen and Once

Were Warriors and other contemporary Polynesian arts that

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‘self-reflect’ on the hula girl image. I had after all

written these elements into the script and shot them. And the

material was strong. However all three broadcasters would

have needed to agree to an increase in length to avoid a

nightmare scenario of delivering different versions. I knew

this was impossible and I accepted the 52-minute format. This

wasn’t a disappointment in the end because I wasn’t at the

time convinced that the story would hold over a longer

duration.

Significantly, I believe Mabo was not an idea that could have

garnered international co-production interest. It would have

been very difficult if not impossible to sell it as a presale

because it was, as Augustus Dulgaro, the former Director of

Marketing at Film Australia, said ‘too Australian’ perhaps

even ‘too parochial’. Stylistically it could not have been

made with ‘an international cast’ or a third person narrator

with 50% narration as was the case with Hula Girls. This would

have undermined the personal story it told. It was a story

that had to be financed locally for local audiences.

My point in making these comparisons is to back up what

Augustus Dalgaro and Lucy Milne said in Chapter 2 about the

difficulties of selling Australian product in the

international arena. Personal stories, no matter how strong,

that have a particular focus on and relevance to Australian

341

audiences, like Mabo, are a hard sell in the international

arena. However Hula Girls could generate European presales

because it’s a story that encompasses the history of Europe,

the USA and the South Pacific. The focus of the pitch was an

appeal to history, entertainment and an international

audience. Not human rights. Not a personal character-driven

story.

Co-productions bring bigger budgets, provide an opportunity

to tell international stories and reach larger global

audiences. Co-pros also provide documentary producers,

directors and writers the opportunity to expand their skill

sets as they think about how to engage an ‘international

audience’. Success on the global stage can also lead to

greater receptivity by Commissioning Editors for new ideas.

There is also the possibility of developing co-production

business partnerships with international producers who have

close contact with their local broadcasters. But then there is

the downside. The creative restraints imposed by the

international market that was the focus of a well attended

session on co-production at AIDC in 2007,

More facts! No, more emotion! More pace! No, more local insight! Oh

and more Americans! In TV, can one size fit all? Not if you intend

to produce for the international market it can't. 16

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Programs like Mabo and Hula Girls and their methods of funding

domestically and internationally are necessary for both

filmmakers and their audiences. The world of documentary

funding isn’t getting any bigger and as budgets increase so

does the need for international funding and co-production.

Both markets are vital to the livelihoods of documentary

practitioners and the industry we work in. Both approaches

need the continued support of local public broadcasters and

funding bodies for a healthy documentary sector to be

maintained. I argue also that documentary makers need to be

able to work confidently in both arenas. We are not able to

survive and develop our professional and craft skills as

producers and writer-directors on the relatively small number

of domestic market programs commissioned by our local public

broadcasters each year.

I took up the challenge of writing and directing Hula Girls for

a number of reasons. I was not working at the time. I’d just

finished a very demanding film which took almost a year to

shoot in Arnhem Land. I needed to earn an income. That was

the base pragmatic reason. But more importantly I wanted to

research, write and direct in the international co-production

arena once again and move beyond my prior difficult

experience of working with NOVA. This also established the

context for making Hula Girls within the rigors of a doctoral

program. Moreover, I wanted to work on a larger budget

343

project once more, a budget that can only be raised via

international presales. This presented another field of

investigation for my doctoral work. I knew from my prior 20

years in the industry that I could make successful films that

engage Australian audiences and I now wanted to gain

practical and communicable knowledge about how Australian-

based directors can work successfully in the international

arena.

I also wanted to understand more about the craft of writing

and directing for the screen. I started with the premise that

a director should be able to direct a compelling program, no

matter what the subject. As writer-directors we should be

able to direct, not just our own ‘auteur’ ideas, but those

generated by producers as was the case with Hula Girls. We can’t

afford to not embrace the ethos and aesthetic demands of

television and the requirements of the international market.

What extra knowledge did I need to generate so that I and

other members of the creative, filmmaking and scholarly

community in Australia might understand better how to engage

with the international co-production system? When I was a

Commissioning Editor at SBS I often felt that directors were

more concerned about getting their programs into national and

international film festivals, where perhaps a couple of

hundred people will see it in any one screening, rather than

344

trying to attract larger television audiences on national

and or international broadcasters. The reality is though,

that even a poor rating Storyline Australia program on SBS would

attract an audience of 100,000 viewers. Hula Girls, on the

figures available, has been viewed by almost 1.4 million in

Australia and Europe. It has also screened at a handful of

film festivals for small audiences.

Directing Hula Girls revitalized my faith in story telling for

the screen. Writing this document confirmed that my creative

processes are worthy of reflection and I hope sharing with

colleagues in my profession. I also trust these behind the

scenes disclosures about the funding and production of Hula

Girls can provide insights into the anxiety and methodologies

of funding and directing an Australian documentary for the

international broadcast market. For those crazy enough to

embark on a career in documentary and co-production ventures

I hope this ‘cocktail for international co-production’ will

be fortifying, tasty and refreshing.

Footnotes:

1. Simper, E. 2008, Bogus public broadcaster with the hide of a pachyderm, Media,

The Australian, 21st of August 2008, accessed October 1st 2008,

www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24214454-14622,00.html

.

2. Who Do You Think You Are? Sunday 19:30, 13/01 – 17/02/08 Ratings

Overview SBSTV.

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3. Wintonick, P. 2005, Welcome to IDFA Land, POV The Art and Business of Indie

Docs and Culture, Issue 60, Winter, p.22 .

4. Ned Lander, Commissioning Editor SBS TV, interviewed by Trevor

Graham, 2007.

5. Ibid.

6. Margaret Jolly, Professor & Head of the Gender Relations Centre in

the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian

National University research interview by Trevor Graham, 2003.

7. Andrew Ogilvie, producer Hula Girls, interviewed by Trevor Graham,

2005.

8. Ed Rampell, journalist & film critic, interviewed for Hula Girls by

Trevor Graham, 2004.

9. Ibid.

10.Dr. Jane Roscoe, Programmer SBS TV interview by Trevor Graham,

2005.

11.Ibid

12. Nowra, L. & Graham, T. 2004, Hula Girls narration script.

13.Ibid.

14.Dr. Michelle Arrow, Lecturer Dept of Modern History Macquarie

University & Judge NSW History Awards 2005, interview by Trevor

Graham, 2006.

15.Ned Lander, Commissioning Editor SBS TV, interviewed by Trevor

Graham, 2007.

16.AIDC Program 2006, Australian International Documentary

Conference.

346

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350

FilmographyAeroplane Dance, Dir. Trevor Graham, Prod. Trevor Graham &

Cristina Pozzan, Scr. Jan Wositzky, Film Australia 1994.

Aloma of the South Seas, Dir. Alfred Santell, Prod. B.G. De Sylva,

Scr. Frank Butler, Seona Owen & Lillian Hayward.

Bird of Paradise, Dir. King Vidor, Prod. David o. Selznick,

Scr.Wells Root, RKO 1932.

Blue Hawaii, Dir. Norman Taurog, Prod. Hal Wallis, Scr. Hal

Kanter, Paramount 1961.

Blue Lagoon, Dir. Frank Launder, Prod. Sydney Gilliat & Frank

Launder, Scr. Frank Launder, John Baines & Michael Hogan,

United 1949.

Cracking the Colour Code, Dir. Hugh, Prod. Andrew Ogilvie, Scr.

Hugh Piper, Electric Pictures 2008.

Drums of Tahiti, Dir. William Castle, Prod. Sam Katzman, Scr.

Douglas Heyes & Robert E. Kent, Columbia 1953.

Enchanted Island, Dir. Allan Dwan, Pro. Benedict Bogeaus, Scr.

James Leicester & Harold Jocob Smith, Warner Bros 1958.

Forbidden Island, Dir. Charles B. Griffith, Prod. Charles B.

Griffith, Scr. Charles B. Griffith.

For Love or Money, A film by: Margot Nash, Megan Mc Murchy,

Margot Oliver, Jenni Thornley, Flashback Films 1983.

351

Gidget Goes Hawaiian, Dir. Paul Wendkos, Prod. Jerry Bressler,

Scr. Ruth Brooks Flippen, Columbia 1961.

Girls, Girls, Girls, Dir. Norman Taurog, Prod. Hal B. Wallis, Scr.

Allan Weiss & Edward Anhalt, Paramount 1962.

Hawaii, Dir, George Roy Hill, Prod. Walter Mirisch, Scr,

Dalton Trumbo & Daniel Taradash, UA 1966.

Hawaii Calls, Dir. Edward Cline, prod. Sol Lesser. Scr. Don

Blanding, RKO 1938.

Honolulu, Dir. Edward Buzzell, Prod. Jack Cummings, Scr.

Herbert Fields & VFrank Pastor, MGM 1939.

Hula, Dir. Victor Fleming, Prod. Adolf Zukor & Jess L.

Lasky, Scr. Doris Anderson, Paramount 1923.

The Hurricane, Dir. John Ford, Prod. Samuel Goldwyn, Scr. Dudley

Nichols & Oliver H. P. Garrett, Goldwyn 1937.

Lonely Boy Richard, Dir. Trevor Graham, Prod, Denise Haslem &

Rose Hesp, Scr. Trevor Graham & Rose Hesp, Film Australia

2003.

Mabo – Life of an Island Man, Dir. Trevor Graham, Prod. Denise

Haslem & Trevor Graham, Scr. Trevor Graham, Film Australia

1997.

Moana of the South Seas, Dir. Robert J. Flaherty, Prod. Robert J.

Flaherty, Scr. Robert J. Flaherty, Paramount 1926.

Mutiny on the Bounty, Dir. Frank Lloyd, Prod. Irving Thalberg &

Albert Lewin, Scr. Talbot Jennings, Jules Furthman & Carey

Wilson, MGM 1935.

352

Mutiny on the Bounty, Dir. Carol Reed & Lewsis Milestone, Prod.

Aaron Rosenberg, Scr. Charles Lederer, MGM 1962.

Mystique of the Pearl, Dir. Trevor Graham, Prod. Megan Mc Murchy,

Scr. Trevor Graham, Film Australia 1996.

Once Were Warriors, Dir. Lee Tamahori, Prod. Robin Scholes, Scr.

Riwia Brown, Communicado Productions1994.

Pagan Love Song, Dir. Robert Alton, Prod. Arthur Freed, Scr.

Robert Nathan & Jerry Davis, MGM 1950.

Painting the Town, Dir. Trevor Graham, Prod. Ned Lander & Trevor

Graham, Scr. Trevor Graham, Yarra Bank Films 1987.

Paradise Hawaiian Style, Dir. Michael Moore, Prod. Hal B. Wallis,

Scr. Alana Weiss & Anthony Lawrence, Paramount 1966.

Pardon My Sarong, Dir. Erle C. Kenton, Prod. Alex Gottlieb, Scr.

True Boardman, Nat Perrin & John Grant, United 1942.

Rapa Nui, Dir. Kevin Reynolds, Prod. Kevin Costner & Jim

Wilson, Scr. Kevin Retnolds & Tim Rose Price, Warner Bros

1994.

Rat in the Ranks, Dir. Bob Connolly & Robin Anderson, Prod. Bob

Connolly and Robin Anderson, Film Australian & Arundel

Productions 1996.

Red Matildas, Dir. Trevor Graham & Sharon Connolly, Prod.

Trevor Graham & Sharon Connolly, Scr. Trevor Graham & Sharon

Connolly, Yarra Bank Films 1985.

Sadness, Dir. Tony Ayres, Prod. Megan Mc Murchy & Michael

McMahon, Scr. Tony Ayres, Film Australia 1999.

353

Song of the Islands, Dir. Walter Lang, Prod. William LeBarron,

Scr. Joseph Schrank,

Son of Fury, Dir. John Cromwell, Prod. Daryl F. Zanuck, Scr.

Philipe Dunne, TCF 1942.

Robert Pirosh, Robert Ellis & Helen Logan TCF 1942.

South Pacific, Dir. Joshua Logan, Prod. Buddy Adler, Scr. Paul

Osborn, Magna /TCF 1958.

South of Pago Pago, Dir. Albert E. Green, Prod. Edward Small,

George Bruce, UA 1940.

South of Tahiti, Dir. George Wagner, Prod. George Wagner, Scr.

Gerald Geraghty, United 1941.

Tabu, Dir. F.W. Murnau & Robert J. Flaherty, Prod. F.W. Murnau

& Robert J. Flaherty, Scr. F. W. Murnau & Robert J. Flaherty,

Paramount 1931.

The Bounty, Dir. Roger Donaldson, Prod. Bernard Williams, Scr.

Robert Bolt, OR 1984.

The Moon and Sixpence, Dir. Albert Lewin, Prod. David L. Loew,

Scr. Albert Lewin, United Artists 1941.

The Jungle Princess, Dir Wilhelm Thiele, Prod. Scr. Cyril Hume &

Gerald Geraghty, 1936.

The Idol Dancer, Dir. D.W. Griffith, Scr. Stanner E. V. Taylor,

D.W. Griffith Productions 1920.

Touching the Void, Dir. Kevin Mc Donald, Prod. John Smithson,

Darlow Smithson Production 2004.

Velvet Dreams, Dir. Sima Urale, Prod. Vincent Burke & Clifton

May, Scr. Sima Urale, Top Shelf Productions 1997.

354

Waikiki Wedding, Dir. Frank Tuttle, Prod. Athur Hornblow Jnr,

Scr. Frank Butler, Walter De Leon & Francis Martin, Paramount

1937.

White Shadows of the South Seas, Dir. W.S. Van Dyke, Prod. Irving

Thalberg, Scr. Jack Cunningham & Roy Doyle, MGM 1928.

355