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Behind-the-scenes vision from the Australian film Candy, featuring actors Heath Ledger, Abbie Cornish and Geoffrey Rush, has emerged for the first time.
Key points
- Vision was turned into a documentary called Diary of a Milkman
- It has only been seen by about 20 people in past 10 years
- Luke Davies' rising success in Hollywood means it is unclear if documentary will ever be released
The years that writer Luke Davies spent addicted to heroin and living with artist Megan Bannister were a rich source of material once he got clean at the start of the 1990s.
In the years that followed he wrote Candy — more memoir than novel — then co-wrote a film version with director Neil Armfield.
Released in 2006, the movie starred Ledger and Cornish and became a minor Australian classic. It was the last movie Ledger ever made in Australia
What few people realise, however, is that Davies shot a behind-the-scenes documentary, which remains unreleased to this day.
"Once the film was going to get made, it became clear to the producers that it was my story, I was going to be hanging around and I would probably be annoying," Davies told Australian Story.
"So let's give Luke something to do. Let's give him a camera and he can shoot the behind-the-scenes stuff."
Davies' 'obsession' with cameo captured on film
Davies had written into the script the part of a milkman, which he intended to play.
That simple cameo, not filmed until the second last day of the shoot, became something of an obsession for Davies and formed the spine of the documentary, which he called Diary of a Milkman.
"I had this three-month period where I could create this documentary all about my anxiety, effectively pushing Abbie Cornish and Heath Ledger to the sides," Davies joked.
"Diary of a Milkman is a classic example of Luke's guileless enthusiasm," said director David Michod, who shares a house with Davies in Los Angeles.
"He'd never shot anything before in his life. I don't think he'd ever actually worked a video camera before."
Much of the footage in the documentary is light-hearted and self-deprecating, with Davies making fun of his self-absorption and highlighting his sweetly combative, "odd-couple" relationship with Armfield.
Darkest life moments resurface
As filming progressed, however, the documentary took a darker turn.
Davies became a vital source of information on the mechanics of drug taking, which was invaluable to Armfield and the actors but unnerving for Davies himself.
At one point in the documentary he reflects: "It's been 15 years since I did anything like tie a tourniquet or fiddle with a syringe and it's a bit more disconcerting that I imagined it would be."
More disturbing still was watching the miscarriage scene being filmed.
Speaking to the camera, Davies says: "Watching the miscarriage stuff was really, really unexpectedly difficult and traumatic, like it was trigger into some grief stuff that was unresolved."
As shooting went on, Davies decided to add a further layer to the documentary.
He contacted Bannister, who was living in Melbourne, suggesting they turn the camera on themselves and talk about their past.
"We talked about all this really difficult stuff — it was really uncomfortable," Davies said.
"And we intercut real photos of our lives as junkies with stuff from the movie that Heath and Abbie are portraying."
Ledger's death would 'change' documentary
This footage is extremely powerful but also sounded the death knell for the documentary.
What Davies did not realise was that the movie's insurance policy was based on it being a work of fiction, and those scenes with Bannister were a stark demonstration that it was anything but.
"The producer saw it and he talked to the lawyers and came to us the next day and said, 'Your movie is shut down'," Davies said.
Davies was gutted. By this time the Sydney Film Festival had arranged to screen it, a small arthouse run was being planned for Sydney and Melbourne and the ABC had expressed interest in buying it
He was told that Candy's insurance policy ran out in 2008 and he was free to resume work on Diary of a Milkman then. But at the beginning of that year Ledger tragically died
"That would have totally changed the nature of what had to be included in the documentary anyway," Davies said.
After that the years just got away. Davies had relocated to Los Angeles and the documentary, still only in rough-cut form, remained untouched.
"About 20 or 30 people have seen this movie in the last 10 years," he said.
Davies' recent Oscar nomination for the Lion screenplay means he is less likely than ever to return to the documentary.
"I don't want to be the director of it any more, I've got other things happening, but there's something there — it's kind of fascinating," he said.
"Maybe it will be revived one day or maybe it will just remain an obscure cult mystery. Private screenings only!"
Footage from Diary of a Milkman appears in part two of Australian Story's Candy Man, ABC TV 8:00pm.
Topics: documentary, film-movies, human-interest, actor, sydney-2000, australia
First posted