Ryan Griffen: interview, and commentary on a Cleverman episode
Ryan Griffen is the Aboriginal creator of the highly lauded indigenous scifi show Cleverman. I haven't actually watched the show but found what he had to say really interesting anyway.
Ryan Griffen guest of honour interview:
This was great! Cathy did a great job as interviewer.
He started out talking about his first film "You Turn", a tiny low budget movie consisting of two people having a conversation in a car.
How they made it was by driving a car along the route several times to capture all the different angles. They got an old broken Volvo and put it in front of a projector screen, rotating it to match the angles of the camera, with lighting to mimic street lights etc.
Even while working on Cleverman he needed a day job folding clothes in a warehouse.
His aim has been to become a writer/director who understands enough of the practicalities of finance etc to know what's practical to ask for. He comes from a retail background, and that informs his perspective.
He was a paid intern for the company making Sapphires but then got offered a job at ABC. (He talked more about some practicalities of getting into the film industry but since I have no interest in doing that didn't write it down)
It took 5-6 years to get the money for Cleverman. He always wanted to make a show for his son exploring Dreamtime stories. It started out as a show called Dreamtime Detectives, but it didn't click. The traditional stories are told in a sanitised form in schools and kids books but the actual stories are much darker and more adult, and he wanted to be able to tell them honestly. The protagonist has always been called Koen like Ryan's son.
We saw a very short un-narrated documentary of the making of You Turn which Ryan hadn't been aware was being filmed and had never seen before.
When Ryan was at school he didn't like it and only went to see his friends. He didn't like reading either and is amused he's now become a writer. He needed to find things he actually wanted to read/pursue.
Since he's relatively pale, people at school didn't believe he was Aboriginal until they saw his darker father.
Ryan's son is into WWE and wants to be a wrestler called Cleverman who walks out to the Cleverman opening music. His goal worked!
Ryan made the first Message Stick that ever got pirated, about a hip hop artist. I think it was one of Briggs and Trials from A. B Original, I forget which. He has a good relationship with them and got them to do the Cleverman theme song, and one of them played a guest character. They connect about being Aboriginal people coming together to empower young Aboriginal people.
He doesn't want to make "Australian Television".
His dream job would be working on a big budget Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie with a darker tone.
Watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with his son was an inspiration for making Cleverman: he wanted something that could compete culturally.
There was more but I had to leave.
Cleverman commentary, Season 2 episode 4:
I didn't take notes in the dark so this is just from memory. Also I was feeling very out of it, I later realised I'd forgotten my meds, making me woozy and emotionally volatile. I found it very emotionally engaging even though I hadn't watched any Cleverman before. It also made me cry a bunch, and overall supported my decision not to watch the show because while it seems great I am too much of a sook.
So, the premise of Cleverman, as I understand it: the protagonist Koen inherits the role of "Cleverman", gaining superpowers, a connection to the Dreaming, and responsibilities. Around the same time, mainstream Australian society discovers the "Hairy" species of hairy, super strong humanoids. The Hairies are all played by aboriginal actors, and since they lived along side Aboriginal culture for thousands of years there are many similarities in culture and language. Mainstream Australian society FREAKS OUT and oppresses the hairies in ways that parallel the racist treatment of indigenous peoples and immigrants.
The episode has a few subplots:
Koen goes on a quest to learn more about his powers from an older man (I think the previous Cleverman?), which Ryan described as "his Dagobah moment"
A Hairy woman chooses to go through a human-ising treatment to assimilate into human society. Koen's brother, the antagonist Waruu, talks her through it.
The Hairy man Boondee who was forcibly assimilated, including being made permanently bald, reconnects with his Hairy wife Araluen after being stolen away from her.
An aboriginal woman married to a white guard working in the anti-Hairy forces discovers...something?? about her husband. There are some other government...things??
I couldn't always make out the dialogue or visuals clearly and some plot points went over my head. But I followed enough to care about the characters. The two subplots about Hairy characters dealing with assimilation BROKE MY HEART, when Araluen hugs the bald Boondee and tells him he's still handsome I started bawling.
Ryan had a lot of interesting things to add in the commentary. He talked about all the clever things they had to do to find and set up locations, including googling "field wedding photo" to find a location that looked just right.
He also talked about all the historical and mythological parallels, with names and plotlines mirroring events from the colonisation of Australia, or having special significance for other reasons. For example the repeated use of 96/97/98 (or something like that) is an in-joke.
There was other stuff but I can't remember it!
This entry was originally posted at https://alias-sqbr.dreamwidth.org/665940.html. There are
comments.
Ryan Griffen guest of honour interview:
This was great! Cathy did a great job as interviewer.
He started out talking about his first film "You Turn", a tiny low budget movie consisting of two people having a conversation in a car.
How they made it was by driving a car along the route several times to capture all the different angles. They got an old broken Volvo and put it in front of a projector screen, rotating it to match the angles of the camera, with lighting to mimic street lights etc.
Even while working on Cleverman he needed a day job folding clothes in a warehouse.
His aim has been to become a writer/director who understands enough of the practicalities of finance etc to know what's practical to ask for. He comes from a retail background, and that informs his perspective.
He was a paid intern for the company making Sapphires but then got offered a job at ABC. (He talked more about some practicalities of getting into the film industry but since I have no interest in doing that didn't write it down)
It took 5-6 years to get the money for Cleverman. He always wanted to make a show for his son exploring Dreamtime stories. It started out as a show called Dreamtime Detectives, but it didn't click. The traditional stories are told in a sanitised form in schools and kids books but the actual stories are much darker and more adult, and he wanted to be able to tell them honestly. The protagonist has always been called Koen like Ryan's son.
We saw a very short un-narrated documentary of the making of You Turn which Ryan hadn't been aware was being filmed and had never seen before.
When Ryan was at school he didn't like it and only went to see his friends. He didn't like reading either and is amused he's now become a writer. He needed to find things he actually wanted to read/pursue.
Since he's relatively pale, people at school didn't believe he was Aboriginal until they saw his darker father.
Ryan's son is into WWE and wants to be a wrestler called Cleverman who walks out to the Cleverman opening music. His goal worked!
Ryan made the first Message Stick that ever got pirated, about a hip hop artist. I think it was one of Briggs and Trials from A. B Original, I forget which. He has a good relationship with them and got them to do the Cleverman theme song, and one of them played a guest character. They connect about being Aboriginal people coming together to empower young Aboriginal people.
He doesn't want to make "Australian Television".
His dream job would be working on a big budget Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie with a darker tone.
Watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with his son was an inspiration for making Cleverman: he wanted something that could compete culturally.
There was more but I had to leave.
Cleverman commentary, Season 2 episode 4:
I didn't take notes in the dark so this is just from memory. Also I was feeling very out of it, I later realised I'd forgotten my meds, making me woozy and emotionally volatile. I found it very emotionally engaging even though I hadn't watched any Cleverman before. It also made me cry a bunch, and overall supported my decision not to watch the show because while it seems great I am too much of a sook.
So, the premise of Cleverman, as I understand it: the protagonist Koen inherits the role of "Cleverman", gaining superpowers, a connection to the Dreaming, and responsibilities. Around the same time, mainstream Australian society discovers the "Hairy" species of hairy, super strong humanoids. The Hairies are all played by aboriginal actors, and since they lived along side Aboriginal culture for thousands of years there are many similarities in culture and language. Mainstream Australian society FREAKS OUT and oppresses the hairies in ways that parallel the racist treatment of indigenous peoples and immigrants.
The episode has a few subplots:
Koen goes on a quest to learn more about his powers from an older man (I think the previous Cleverman?), which Ryan described as "his Dagobah moment"
A Hairy woman chooses to go through a human-ising treatment to assimilate into human society. Koen's brother, the antagonist Waruu, talks her through it.
The Hairy man Boondee who was forcibly assimilated, including being made permanently bald, reconnects with his Hairy wife Araluen after being stolen away from her.
An aboriginal woman married to a white guard working in the anti-Hairy forces discovers...something?? about her husband. There are some other government...things??
I couldn't always make out the dialogue or visuals clearly and some plot points went over my head. But I followed enough to care about the characters. The two subplots about Hairy characters dealing with assimilation BROKE MY HEART, when Araluen hugs the bald Boondee and tells him he's still handsome I started bawling.
Ryan had a lot of interesting things to add in the commentary. He talked about all the clever things they had to do to find and set up locations, including googling "field wedding photo" to find a location that looked just right.
He also talked about all the historical and mythological parallels, with names and plotlines mirroring events from the colonisation of Australia, or having special significance for other reasons. For example the repeated use of 96/97/98 (or something like that) is an in-joke.
There was other stuff but I can't remember it!
This entry was originally posted at https://alias-sqbr.dreamwidth.org/665940.html. There are
comments.