Firth and Kidman in The Railway Man
With a total of $25,000 in travel grants from Screen Australia, director Jonathan Teplitsky, producers Chris Brown and Andy Paterson were able to bring themselves, Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman to Toronto to support The Railway Man.
The cut-through led to positive media coverage and a Weinstein deal for a theatrical release in North America. You would call that a success for Screen Australia.
That grant went up on the Screen Australia website with $10,000 credited directly to Nicole Kidman, though it was applied for by Pictures in Paradise, and given to the company as part of its festival promotions effort.
Mumbrella spotted the glitch and wrote an article. It led with the ‘rich lister’ motif, before allowing Chris Brown to defend the travel grant.
Now, News Ltd has turned on the envy machine for a national audience. The Courier Mail version is all about rich people getting money ‘from the taxpayer’:
Despite being the country’s fourth richest woman – with assets close to a third of a billion dollars – the actor was eligible for the handout as part of the Government-funded Screen Australia`s travel grants scheme.
It goes on to list other grants, emphasises the Screen Australia error, and generally pumps up the outrage. The comments are suitably vindictive about parasites and the chattering classes.
Meanwhile, Garry Maddox in the Fairfax press allows Graeme Mason to tell the Screen Australia story.
Screen Australia has denied claims that Nicole Kidman received $10,000 of taxpayer money to attend the Toronto International Film Festival last year.
Chief executive Graeme Mason said an error on the film agency’s website made it appear that the actress rather than producer Chris Brown had received a travel grant to launch The Railway Man, director Jonathan Teplitzky`s drama about a former soldier tracking down his Japanese torturer decades after World War II.
The industry is very used to the politics of smear and envy as the distant whining of the downmarket journalists is a constant backdrop to screen publicity. But the issue is now more urgent, as the Audit Committee prowls and the Abbott government looks for cuts.
For any Australians working successfully overseas, it is a reminder that working on local projects exposes them to the risk of mean-minded misrepresentation. Not an encouragement to work on modest Australian projects.
