Interview with Imogen McCluskey / Suburban Wildlife

Arran (18) from Film in Revolt spoke with Imogen McCluskey director and co-writer of Suburban Wildlife – a coming-of-age film set in Sydney’s outer suburbs, exploring the struggles of friendships, love, sexuality and independence faced by young adults. Suburban Wildlife is screening at the 2019 Sydney Film Festival. 

I really loved the film and it’s so amazing that you made it within the $5000 budget. I was wondering what advice you would have for young filmmaker’s within that small budget and time restrictions?

It was definitely very challenging but it worked in our favour that we had no idea how hard it was going to be [laughs]. It was a bit of ignorance and cockiness of like “Yeah, we can do this!” And now, on the other side, we’re just like “Wow, that’s a lot of work.”

But I think what is really important is just having an amazing team around you and I was very lucky to be in a year at AFTRS with my cinematographer, producers, production designer; we all were on the same page about what film we wanted to make and how we were going to make it. We didn’t want to wait and go through the process of getting funding. We just wanted to do it ourselves and tell our own story that way. Thank God we live in an age of crowdfunding. That’s how we got the money.

Advice would be to find people who share your vision and want to tell your story with you. And so my advice would really be just to do it [laughs].

You mentioned the team you worked with, including those you met at AFTRS. How important is it for you to build a community of diverse creatives?

It’s really important. I know people who are really precious with their idea and want to keep it to themselves which I totally understand but I think that ideas always grow stronger when they’re shared and there’s love and trust. And then they put their thoughts into the story and it grows through that. So the film belongs to everyone.

I don’t really believe in being this “auteur”. Not that that’s a bad form of directing but I’m inspired by sharing ideas and growing with other people. I also want to say, I don’t think film schools are necessarily for everyone. I’m really supportive of people who don’t go to film school. What AFTRS did give me was this community that was formed while we were there and that intense environment that helped us make the film. But I definitely don’t think that you need to go to [film school] to do what we did. It’s just about being hungry and passionate and having a good story to tell.

I definitely agree. Especially as someone who is considering whether to go to art school it’s good to hear.

Totally. I dropped out of four different degrees before AFTRS. So I’m all for not doing a degree.

Yeah, so it’s more about building that team of people?

Definitely. And just always checking in and making sure you’re telling the same story. I work off giving a lot of tonal references and I took all the cast to see American Honey because it was in cinemas before we started shooting. I wanted to show the tone, the mood and the light and the way [Andrea Arnold] shoots. It was just about making sure we were all making the same film.

About working together to make the same film –  what took inspiration for each character. How did you develop them and did you develop them with the cast and crew?

I think [Béatrice Barbeau-Scurla] and I were bouncing around ideas around developing our shorts and writing together. But the more distance I get from the writing and material, the more I think “Shit! They’re all me!” [laughs]. I think it’s just the different sides of myself and the people I know. Kane is based from my late friend Ravi and a few other things like that where I really drew on real experiences and that feeling when you’re at this point in life where there are roads ahead of you where you know you should go down but you’re not sure what to do or where to go. Also, moving from Brisbane to Sydney was a big inspiration for me. Realising that my school friends, who I love, who I’d still be hanging out with all the time if I was in Brisbane, aren’t my “adult” friends.

I’ve found these really beautiful friends as an adult in Sydney. The film really speaks to evolution in a friendship – you still love these people you’ve known since you were six, but they don’t know you in the same way anymore or they’re not the people that you’ll carry through with you for the rest of your life. But you still love them. I think that this is what the film was really about. I don’t know if [the characters] would stay friends. Some would, some wouldn’t, maybe they’d go their separate ways. I wanted to capture that, which hopefully we did.

Yeah, definitely. It really resonated with me as someone finishing school and being on my gap year. It also makes sense to me about that transition period.

 Definitely. Romantic relationships in film are shown all the time. Friendships aren’t as much. Like they are, definitely but I just find it interesting because there isn’t really a “map” of friendship as much as there is a relationship. You know, there’s “You meet, you fall in love, you have fun, you break up, or you get married or whatever”. But with friendship, it’s so much more complex and long-lasting. I find it so much richer as a basis for storytelling.

Do you think then, that it was more important for you to represent friendship on screen as opposed to something oversaturated like relationships?

Yeah, well we definitely had a bit of relationship stuff in there. Like Nina’s finding her sexuality and [hooking up] with some girls. Alice has Ravi and is sort of feeling her way through that relationship, but the main relationship is between these four friends. Particularly the relationship between Nina and Louise. Because she loves Louise and realises she’s in love with her and that it’s never going to happen. So it’s sort of a melding of the two ideas of platonic love and [romantic] love and it kind of fucks you up a little bit [both laugh].

About the lesbian representation, what lengths did you go to, to represent a multicultural Australia instead of just these straight white characters?

It was really important to Bea and I to not just make another Girls (2012-2017). Girls was great and came at a time where that show really resonated with everyone but I feel like if you’re making stories now, it’s your obligation to represent Australia properly. I hope we did that in our film, across all our characters. I am just really sick of seeing white males, in particular, as we all are. Definitely moving forward as a white person and someone not completely sure of their sexuality, I want to help people tell their stories. I’ve seen enough blonde upper middle-class Australians on screen. Like I don’t want to see other people like me on screen. I want to see other people. I think moving forward from this film, that’s a real focus for me. And trying to collaborate with other storytellers in a really authentic way.

The cast we ended up with was really wonderful. They were really able to bring a lot of life and truth into all their struggles they’re fighting within the film.

With the actors, how did they influence the creation of the characters? How did their input develop them?

I fell in love with them. I’m like their mum and their cheerleader all in one. ‘Cause, I think they’re so incredible. I was thinking about this the other day, the film is very slow and very moody and for that to work, there’s so much internally the actors need to do. A lot of it isn’t in the dialogue but the space between. So, they have to communicate a decision or a change in their point of view or a changing shift in mood and tone through silence and looking. Looking back on it, it’s like “Fuck! That was actually really challenging for them.” They pulled it off beautifully. They didn’t know each other before we started shooting. They met a couple of weeks before in our rehearsals. We had a few rehearsals and I sent them on little friend dates to get to know each other. I think the intensity of the shooting, ‘cause it was like 24 locations over 14 days which is nuts. It really threw us together in a way that helped to speed up that process. We are all such good friends now. Looking back on it, it’s weird to think we didn’t know each other. Yeah, they’re such intuitive, amazing actors. I was just so lucky to have worked with them.

I feel like in a way, Sydney was a character [in the film]. It really felt like a presence in its own right. I was wondering what made you choose Sydney specifically instead of your hometown or more ambiguous.

When I was writing I definitely had Brisbane in mind, where I am from originally. Like, huge suburbia there. But we shot in Sydney as a necessity, as we all live here now. All around Australia I feel like people would relate to this sameness and suburbia. And the sounds of cicadas, lawn mowers and kookaburras and shit. That will resonate with people hopefully.

I think sense of place was really important to me. I think Andrea Arnold’s style really influenced this film because she’s so good at constructing that setting and captruing a feeling. Particularly with American Honey you get this feeling of the mid-west. It’s just country. I don’t want to shade too many Australian cinematographer’s but there’s times when you see Australian suburbia on film it’s grey and a little bit boring looking, which fits the tone of their film. But when I worked with our wonderful cinematographer Lucca, we wanted to bring this sort of dreamy nostalgic quality with the lenses we shot on. Longer lenses and the colours and warm tones. That was really important in terms of making the place a character that informs all their lives. It’s also a place they’ll leave and look back on. Louise is moving to London and that’s not suburbia at all. That’s full on city. I think that the place also represents the time in their lives as well as the setting.

I like how you made it look quite beautiful. Like you were saying, many director’s haven’t necessarily captured the beauty of Australia and its [suburban] landscape and how it does look really amazing. It can be just as aesthetic as New York or London.

Totally. I love it. I think of Ladybird (2017), which came out only recently. That was a big thing where I was like “Shit! I know what you’re talking about!” ‘Cause that love for Sacramento was the same love I felt for Brisbane and Sydney. There’s a real sense of love and even though you hate it when you’re going through it and you’re like “Fuck this place.” [laughs] “This sucks. I really want to get out of here.”  Looking back on it there’s this nostalgia and love. We really wanted to capture that.

What’s a question that you think you wish you were asked about film?

That is a very good question. I think maybe something along the lines of female filmmaker or crew wise. We had majority female crew. Definitely most of our heads of department were female and a lot of us are queer. I think that was really important. I remember just one day looking around set and thinking “Shit! We’re all ladies!” [laughs]. Which like, even though there is a move in the industry towards that, there’s still times where I’ve been in the camera crew on a big set of a film as an attachment or something. There’s like me and one other lady. And then they all call it “the ladies corner” and I’m like “Fuck off. There’s two of us and we’re working just as hard as you are.” You know, it’s just moving towards getting rid of that bias. I think as well, I don’t want to generalise women, even though it’s a positive thing I’m going to say but I think that we are really good at communicating and listening to each other. And helping each other in a way that lends itself really well to filmmaking ‘cause it is just inherently collaborative. So I think when there are more women on set or equal numbers it’s only a good thing. So I think I just want to keep doing that. Even our cinematographer [Lucca Barone-Peters] who is a dude and I love him, he’s really into just having his room and his crew virtually all female. Which is nice, he’s one of the good ones. [both laugh].

Yeah, I did notice in the credits there was mainly women. Which is really rare, ‘cause even in a film with an all female cast it’s rarely diverse behind the scenes.

Yeah, we were really lucky in that regard. It just sort of happened that way though. Definitely if and when I get more money and are able to actually pay people and hire people properly I want to be moving forward with that focus. ‘Cause you can’t, you know, you can’t train up people if they’re not given opportunities. So it’s like, you know, that whole thing of like, “Well, there’d be more cinematographer’s if they worked harder.” But no, you’re not giving them the opportunity ‘cause you have all this unconscious bias that doesn’t let them move up the ranks of the camera department. Oh, dudes. [Both laugh].

I completely agree, there’s just such bias about even giving women opportunities in general.

Completely. And I feel like people don’t even know they’re doing it. Cause you wanna give your jobs and stuff to your friends. And if your friends are mostly male, then that just perpetuates the same thing. But I think it’s a really good important conversation that we’re having right now. I think some people are getting a bit tired of it. But it’s like, this just needs to happen to correct the imbalance. So that’s the big thing for me.

Definitely. Thank you so much for your time and the amazing answers.

Aw, thank you. I hope they’re useful. [Both laugh]

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