A podcast with Rolf De Heer, director of Bad Boy Bubby, The Tracker, and The Quiet Room

By Adam Lippe

Here’s a podcast with Australian director Rolf De Heer. It was originally recorded in August of 2008 and there was even an unedited and intro-free version on the site before. I’ve cleaned it up significantly, trimming 20 minutes and tightening it up to the point where it flows considerably better than it did before. Now since it was one of my very first podcasts, the sound quality is not terrific, as it was recorded using an analog recorder on an incoming overseas call from Australia. However, it’s entirely listenable, if anything, the fact that it is analog makes Rolf sound less robotic and tinny than if I were using a digital recorder on a cell phone.

Those unfamiliar with Rolf’s work would benefit from seeing his films, but will not be utterly in the dark, and will be amused by hearing about how Rolf’s directing career started by accident, having to deal with Miramax and Harvey Weinstein during its film butchering heyday, and how your movie can become anachronistic while you’re making it.

Speaking of anachronistic, some of my comments about the availability of two of Rolf’s films, Incident at Raven’s Gate and his director’s version of Epsilon, have happily become dated, as there were two 6 disc Australian box sets of Rolf’s films released in 2009. Those sets were also the first time that Tale of a Tiger and Dance Me to My Song were ever released on DVD.

The podcast is below:

Download the full interview.
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Roadracers

By Adam Lippe

Whenever there’s a genre parody or ode to a specific era of films, such as Black Dynamite’s mocking of Blaxploitation films or Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, the second half of Grindhouse, the danger is that the film might fall into the trap of either being condescending without any particular insight, or so faithful that it becomes the very flawed thing it is emulating.

Black Dynamite has nothing new to say about Blaxploitation films, it just does a decent job of copying what an inept [...]


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On Cold Fish:

Though the 16 year old me described the 1994 weepie Angie, starring Geena Davis as a Brooklyn mother raising her new baby alone, as “maudlin and melodramatic,” Roger Ebert, during his TV review, referring to the multitude of soap-operaish problems piling up on the titular character, suggested that it was only in Hollywood where Angie would get a happy ending. “If they made this movie in France, Angie would have shot herself.”

Well Cold Fish was made in Japan, where Angie would have shot herself and that would have been the happy ending.