Talking Pictures: The Proposition?s Nick Cave
with Brad Balfour
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- Photo Trevor O?Shana
Although Nick Cave didn’t direct the Australian period drama The Proposition he did write and help shape it. Set in the Australian Outback of the 1880s, the brothers Burns are highly sought-after criminals who have their way around the territory. This is perfect material for Cave who started his career as frontman of the Birthday Party, then formed the legendary Bad Seeds.
The L Magazine: How did you come to write the script for John Hillcoat?
Nick Cave: I’ve known him for about 20 years, and for about 18 of them he’s been talking about the Australian western he’s going to make and that I would do the music. He commissioned a script, that got written, which was basically an American western kind of dumped in Australia and we both thought that that was not the sort of thing he wanted to do. And then he went, “Well fuck it, you write it then.” So, I did. I wrote it very quickly; it took three weeks to write because I refused to invest any more time in something that I basically knew would never ever get made. After a couple of difficult years he actually got it made.
The L: How did the conventions of American westerns influence you in writing the script?
NC: I think John’s heavily influenced by the anti-westerns and revisionist westerns of the 70s — McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Peckinpah’s stuff. But I think we felt that the average Australian had a different view of their history than the average American. I don’t think we see things so much in black and white, or good guys and bad guys, or villains and heroes. We have a much more conflicting, ambiguous shame-faced view of our history. I think we basically see it as a history of failure and incompetence.
The L: What’s the source of that shame?
NC: If you look at a lot of stories like Ned Kelly and stuff like that; the antics they got up to are hilarious and foolish, and you see how kind of doomed they are. And so, our heroes are murky characters. So, we wanted to write a story where you go to a film and expect your radar to focus on who’s the one to sympathize with and who’s the one you want to see get their comeuppance at the end. This radar is confused throughout and sometimes you feel aligned to one character and then you shift your allegiance to somebody else, and that in the end they are a group of people in a place that they should never be and they’re being slowly dismantled by their own folly.
The L: There is a lot of violent imagery in the movie, and anyone who knows your music would probably be familiar with it, so it wouldn’t be that shocking. How did John influence the violent tone of the movie?
NC: John is very interested in violence. If you see his first and second films, he is certainly interested in the aftermath of violence and where violence takes you. I guess when John does violence he does it fast and brutal and it’s ugly and out of the way. Then he deals with the ramifications of that. That’s what he’s primarily interested in. People talk about this film being a violent film, which I find slightly irritating because the stuff that comes out of Hollywood are great ballets of violence. [Hollywood] scripts are being written for the express purpose of just having a whole lot of violence like Tarantino films which I find pretty unwatchable most of the time. So when John deals with violence, I think he deals with it in a realistic way and that it’s a fundamental part of the story. It was a violent time and a violent so-called ‘civilizing’ of the country.
The L: You have a double DVD that’s coming out — Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds — Road To God Knows Where /Live At The Paradiso. Have you looked at them?
NC: No, I never look over my stuff. It just puts me off my game. I’d rather live in a kind of fantasy world that what I do is brilliant, and I don’t really ever want to kind of actually see it for what maybe it really is.
The L Magazine: How did you come to write the script for John Hillcoat?
Nick Cave: I’ve known him for about 20 years, and for about 18 of them he’s been talking about the Australian western he’s going to make and that I would do the music. He commissioned a script, that got written, which was basically an American western kind of dumped in Australia and we both thought that that was not the sort of thing he wanted to do. And then he went, “Well fuck it, you write it then.” So, I did. I wrote it very quickly; it took three weeks to write because I refused to invest any more time in something that I basically knew would never ever get made. After a couple of difficult years he actually got it made.
The L: How did the conventions of American westerns influence you in writing the script?
NC: I think John’s heavily influenced by the anti-westerns and revisionist westerns of the 70s — McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Peckinpah’s stuff. But I think we felt that the average Australian had a different view of their history than the average American. I don’t think we see things so much in black and white, or good guys and bad guys, or villains and heroes. We have a much more conflicting, ambiguous shame-faced view of our history. I think we basically see it as a history of failure and incompetence.
The L: What’s the source of that shame?
NC: If you look at a lot of stories like Ned Kelly and stuff like that; the antics they got up to are hilarious and foolish, and you see how kind of doomed they are. And so, our heroes are murky characters. So, we wanted to write a story where you go to a film and expect your radar to focus on who’s the one to sympathize with and who’s the one you want to see get their comeuppance at the end. This radar is confused throughout and sometimes you feel aligned to one character and then you shift your allegiance to somebody else, and that in the end they are a group of people in a place that they should never be and they’re being slowly dismantled by their own folly.
The L: There is a lot of violent imagery in the movie, and anyone who knows your music would probably be familiar with it, so it wouldn’t be that shocking. How did John influence the violent tone of the movie?
NC: John is very interested in violence. If you see his first and second films, he is certainly interested in the aftermath of violence and where violence takes you. I guess when John does violence he does it fast and brutal and it’s ugly and out of the way. Then he deals with the ramifications of that. That’s what he’s primarily interested in. People talk about this film being a violent film, which I find slightly irritating because the stuff that comes out of Hollywood are great ballets of violence. [Hollywood] scripts are being written for the express purpose of just having a whole lot of violence like Tarantino films which I find pretty unwatchable most of the time. So when John deals with violence, I think he deals with it in a realistic way and that it’s a fundamental part of the story. It was a violent time and a violent so-called ‘civilizing’ of the country.
The L: You have a double DVD that’s coming out — Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds — Road To God Knows Where /Live At The Paradiso. Have you looked at them?
NC: No, I never look over my stuff. It just puts me off my game. I’d rather live in a kind of fantasy world that what I do is brilliant, and I don’t really ever want to kind of actually see it for what maybe it really is.
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