John Marsden – Happy with the film
Looks like John is happy with how the film turned out! An excellent sign. Some of his concerns match those of which many people here had, who commented on the various updates since the movie’s announcement.
Have a read…:
John Marsden isn’t much of a moviegoer and when he penned the first book in his hit teen series, Tomorrow When the War Began, he didn’t picture it ending up on the big screen.
But the $20-million Aussie film, directed by Stuart Beattie and starring Caitlin Stasey, will premier in cinemas on August 8. And Marsden loves it.
“I am totally non-movie orientated. I don’t see films, I am not visually literate,” he says.
“(But) I saw the film two weeks ago and was stoked and thought it was extraordinarily good.”
Based on the first novel in the seven-book series, the movie follows eight teenagers who are on a camping trip when foreign invaders take over Australia.
The group, including friends Ellie, Fi, Robyn, Homer, Chris, Lee, Kevin and Corrie band together and become guerilla fighters hiding out in the bush and carrying out attacks and raids on the invading forces who occupy their town.
Marsden had no involvement in the making of the movie but after watching a day of filming he had “high hopes” for the project.
“(I) was quite enchanted by the whole atmosphere which was so positive,” he says.
While some of the characters have been changed significantly, the film is quite faithful to the books.
“As a movie I think it works, as a fair reflection of the book I think it works,” Marsden says.
“I would have like Fi to have been a little more sophisticated and Robyn to be a little less preachy and nerdy and Chris to be a little more morose, because that is the way I wrote them. But if they choose to play them differently so they work better on film then I can’t criticise their decisions.”
But Marsden admits he did have a few concerns.
The main one was that the film gave the invaders in his book a racial identity, something Marsden had carefully avoided.
“I suppose on balance I would have preferred them not to (have made the invaders Asian) but I am not overly stressed about it because it’s not a race type I suppose,” he says.
While Marsden suggests using Eurasian faces could have been an option he admits that there are a couple of hints in the books that the invaders are Asian.
“Realistically, if we are looking at potential invaders of Australia we would be silly to kind of look at Europe or North America,” he says.
Another concern was the casting of Caitlin Stasey – known for her role as Rachel Kinski in the soap Neighbours – as the lead character of farm girl called Ellie Linton.
Stasey was too good looking, he says.
“She is really quite amazing, she doesn’t look like the way I had imagined Ellie much at all, I thought she would be a bit broader and thick set and fairly plain,” he says.
“But Caitlin, when I watched her acting … I thought ‘Christ, she has become Ellie’ she has an amazing presence and power.”
While Marsden doesn’t make time to watch movies, joking that he only recently learned who Robert De Niro is, he is always busy.
His old love, writing, has been cast aside for several new loves which include his partner of several years, her six sons and the school he founded.
In an unexpected plot twist, Candlebark, the alternative school Marsden set up started in 2006, led him to the woman that has changed his life.
“She was actually a single mother of some kids at the school… we had had a few terse interviews about her older son’s poor behaviour, what could possibly go wrong after that?” he jokes.
The pair now live in a nunnery not far from Marsden’s bushland estate in regional Victoria.
“I knew my life had changed when after a few months I was shaving in the bathroom one morning and one of the kids was standing on my left foot cleaning his teeth with my toothbrush and another one was standing on my right foot trying to spit into the sink. I thought, ‘geez, things sure are different’.”
And he is far too happy to be writing.
“I think my need to write has always been an emotional thing and I think emotionally now I am very happy in other ways.
“I even wrote comedy when I was feeling depressed.”
While Marsden can think of plenty of things he would rather do than watch a film he is hoping plenty of other people will be happy to spend a few hours in the dark and watch the war begin again.
From The Courier Mail
