THE FILMING OF

HAMMERS OVER THE ANVIL*

I called in to see Alan Marshall in the early spring of 1982 to discuss my concept for the screen adaptation of Hammers over the Anvil. Alan finished dictating a letter via his secretary to one of his many admirers (he was always very generous with his support and encouragement), and I wheeled him out onto the lawn of the nursing home.

In our discussion I was aware of treading carefully - just  a little uncertain of how Alan would respond to some of my suggestions. When you are inspired by a writer and looking to transform their work to the screen, you have a strong desire to be absolutely faithful - to both the writer and the work - yet at the same time fulfill your own requirements.

We were discussing Miss McPherson and her bearded face which in the story Alan discovers via his sister Elsie. The screenwriter at that stage wanted many of the incidents from Hammers to happen first-hand, rather than have them talked about in conversation, but that would mean altering the nature of stories like 'Miss McPherson' quite considerably.

As I skirted gingerly around possibilities and related the thought of young Alan catching Miss McPherson with her bandage off, Alan Marshall's face lit up and his gravelly voice responded enthusiastically, 'Oh yes, that would be wonderful. I can see it now ... like that scene from Great Expectations when young Pip is confronted by the escaped convict in the cemetery with that very dramatic close-up of his ugly face. You could do that,' he said. 'You could have Alan catching her unexpectedly maybe asleep or something and she swings around in her chair revealing her bearded face. What a shock for young Alan - and the audience.'

Then he leaned over to me and said most earnestly and with absolute resolution, 'You know, you must remember that you are taking these words and these stories and you are setting them in another medium, another medium altogether. I used the medium and the form that I had at my disposal to gain the fullest effect that I could when I wrote those words, and you must feel free to do the same. That close-up shot of the bearded Miss McPherson would be very dramatic and very good. It's visual, and you have to use that. Don't worry about my words.

With that graciously granted freedom, we proceeded with the adaptation of Hammers of the Anvil.

Adaptation is never easy and it was made that much more difficult with Hammers being short stories. There were at least twenty-one different adult characters who, although part of the same community, were only linked for us by the observations of one young boy who seemed to change in age and maturity with each story.

How then were we going to give the movie a backbone, a strong narrative line that would carry the audience through to what we saw as the climax - the awakening of young Alan?

And there was another dilemma. Young Alan was more than the observer, the voyeur, who would discuss the incidents with his mate Joe, but not be directly involved.

We knew that Hammers was never going to be a dramatic thriller, that it was going to be driven by the interesting characters, with the subtle element being the development of young Alan from relative innocence to greater awareness and understanding. But it still required a dramatic core.

Then the writer, Peter Hepworth, hit on the idea of making the story of East Driscoll one of the main themes. In East we had a hero who was admired by the town but was also a womaniser. He had a good relationship with young Alan, which could be made even stronger if we were to give Alan the dream of wanting to ride like East. If we matched his story with that of Miss McAlister - making East the wool-classer in the 'Miss McAlister' story who puts Grace in the family way - then we had a good basis for dramatic structure. Around this we could incorporate the rest of the town, the development of young Alan, and many of the underlying themes in the stories like sexual relations, adult fallibility and the injustices of the world.

We needed a frame in which we could place this structure. In the early stages it seemed that a good way of telling the story would be to have old Alan reminiscing, looking back and remembering the characters who had undoubtedly had a strong impact on him. The hammers over the anvil were, at least figuratively, the 'blows' of young Alan's contact with the reality of the adult world, the 'blows' like the hammer on the metal, that shape and mould a person. If the film were to open and close with old Alan remembering, we thought it may 'frame' the film nicely. However, this idea did not last because the time taken by this 'top' and 'tail' from the main story was to prove too valuable. There also seemed to have been a number of films with a similar approach and we did not feel its value was sufficient to compensate for the time it took up.

The theme of change for which we were partly using old Alan, (the now/then difference) could also be better reflected in other elements set in the body of the film. For instance, in a good number of drafts for the script we had Pat Corrigan competing, not with Conneady, another farmer, which is what the story of Pat describes, but with Mr. McAlister's man (Burns in the final film) driving a new fangled truck, for which Pat and his horse would eventually be no competition. The impact on Alan of the craziness of Pat (and his empty milk cans), and then Pat being beaten, would reinforce the theme of change and be nice points of emphasis that all add to a good movie.

We also felt that so much of what goes on in the town seems to be determined by the sexual politics of the moment. The stories of Elsie and East, Old Mrs. Bilson, Miss Armitage, Mr. Thomas, Miss Trengrove, Freckles Jack, Judy Fleisher and Miss McAlister are all underpinned by the consequences of, and preoccupation with, sex. The relative growth of Alan and Joe through the movie, therefore, was going to be measured to a considerable degree by their increasing 'knowledge' and experience of sexual matters. The sequence and nature of these sexual revelations were going to have a great bearing on the whole story. And they would determine the ages at which we set Alan and Joe. At first we had them quite young - around 10 or 11 - because many of the statements made by them (like the Jack the Ripper incident from 'Miss Trengrove') seemed typical of that sort of innocence. Others however, were considerably more knowing and it took a number of drafts to settle on 13 years of age, with incidents either included or excluded according to how believable they were for that age.

It was also important to place the story in time. East Driscoll, in may ways, represents the archetypal Australian hero. We felt that if we set the film just at the beginning of the Great War, then symbolically we would be making comment on what was to come for may similar Australian 'heroes'.

At this stage the initial draft of our script in 1986 could be summarised in the following synopsis:

The aging and crippled Alan Marshall returns to Turalla, the country town he grew up in, and the sight of once-familiar rooms and objects bring memories of his boyhood flooding back...

In the years just prior to the outbreak of the Great War, the 11-year-old Alan fights against jibes, physical disability and his own fear, to try to emulate East Driscoll, the local larrikan horsebreaker and the idol of Alan's youth.

More than anything, Alan wants to overcome his setbacks enough to ride Nero, East's huge and powerful  horse.

His main allies are his best friend Joe, a rough diamond from the poor Catholic part of town, and a crazy old eccentric lady, Mrs. Bilson.

Against the background of a small country town life, with its intrigues and secrets, scandalous pregnancies, public fistfights and general frailties of human nature, beneath strict and censorious Victorian morality, the boy struggles both to achieve his dream and to understand the mysterious and confusing world of the adults around him.

As the winds of change and the drums of war build, he becomes enmeshed in the forbidden affair between East and the daughter of the local squatter, a liaison doomed to failure and ending in double tragedy, but one that provides the last spur for him to achieve his dream.

And though innocence is destroyed, the boy takes the first faltering steps alone into manhood.

Most of the characters from the stories were present at this stage of the development, including the major ones like East, Alan, Joe, Dad, Mum, Grace, Elsie, Nellie, Mr. Thomas and Mrs. Bilson, but also many of the minors like Miss Wilson, Duke McLeod and his father Peter, Pat Corrigan, Joe's Mum and Dad, Grace's sister Maggie, Mick Hanrahan, Miss Trengrove, Miss Armitage and Snarley Burns.

But of course this was only the first draft, and a good film script goes through many drafts, a long process of distillation - a process that will hopefully find the essence of what it is we are trying to say.

This may go some way to explain why so many adaptations alter radically from the original source, not only because each person's vision of what is important is different, but the very process of developing the script is a very dynamic one - a creative process in its own right, that will take on its own form and shape.

Once a script is written, the structural requirements of a movie become more obvious. Film, as Alan Marshal had said, is a particular form that has its own patterns, patterns that the audience have come to know and expect, patterns that we have to fulfill to a considerable extent. For instance, in the first twenty minutes or so it is very important to introduce the main characters and set up the major aspects of the premise you are going to develop. And around that twenty-minute point there needs to be something fairly dramatic that turns the whole plot and naturally takes the audience into the body of the film - the 'meat' of the movie. (In Hammers that could be considered the ride with East and Grace chasing the ostrich which is the start of their relationship). Around twenty minutes from the end there needs to be a further incident (the letter writing scene between Alan and East), that leads us into the dramatic final climax which resolves all the elements of the plot, if not absolutely, then certainly enough to satisfy the audience.

In these circumstances 95 minutes goes very quickly, especially with 21 stories and characters from which to choose! So the form placed quite definite boundaries on us, some of which we could move, but only within certain audience-acceptable limits.

Those boundaries were quite difficult to resolve throughout the development of  Hammers. All the characters were strong and very enjoyable but if they did not serve the plot then time restrictions alone would mean they would have to go. It was at this point that we really did have to take Alan Marshall at his word and do what we felt was necessary. Pat Corrigan for instance. Marshall's masterly exposé of the character of Pat, by using the innocent young Alan as a foil, made him a favourite that we all wanted to keep. But there came the point where it had to be grudgingly acknowledged that in fact he was not assisting the story, rather, he was slowing it down. Similarly the story of Freckles Jack, the major thrust of which was maintained in all of the scripts including the final draft. The scenes were actually shot, but they ended up on the cutting-room floor because Freckles wasn't sufficiently assisting the evocation of the main story, and time was limited.

Pregnancy was also a theme that raised it's head rather too regularly. With Nellie, Miss Wilson and Grace all becoming pregnant in their stories and being a part of the early scripts, it became obvious that one or two would be more than sufficient to convey our theme. Miss Wilson, whose liaisons with Tom Dixon provided us with the very humorous incident of the boys thinking Tom was 'Jack the Ripper', and highlighted the snooping small-minded nature of country living, eventually became unnecessary because the essence of her story could be given to other characters more integral to the main story.

About this stage we were looking at draft four with the shape of our story developing well as the synopsis for that draft indicates:

Alan was 13 when he first saw a man and woman making love.

He was so naive that he thought the shrieking girl was being murdered. Alan's best mate Joe reckoned that the Reverend Thomas - for it was he who was hard at work pleasuring Nellie Bolster - must be Jack the Ripper hiding out in Australia and up to his old tricks! Joe was full of those nuggets of wisdom.

This educational event took place at the beginning of the summer of 1910.

Hammers of the Anvil is the story of that summer, it is about how the hammer blows that life deals out, either break us or make us.

It is Alan's story, charting his loss of innocence as he stumbles from childhood toward the alluring, forbidding world of adults. For him the blows are particularly savage, struck down by polio as an infant he is unable to move without crutches. His love affair is of horses and horsemen, yet he will never ride: 'God must be a real bugger,' says Joe ruefully, 'I never knew a bloke who liked horses more'n you, and then He goes and mucks you up so's you can't mount.' But crippled limbs cannot suppress Alan's zest for life. In fact his disability becomes his inspiration as he strives to find his place in the world.

Summer in the sleepy hamlet of Turalla promised the boys all manner of wonderful adventures - raiding orchards, skinny dipping, building hideouts and the like, but by season's end Alan will leave these juvenile pursuits beyond. He will find himself caught up in a maelstrom, faced with the intoxication of sexuality, baffling social taboos, the unjust and apparently random death of a dear friend in Old Mrs. Bilson and the frighteningly dark and capricious side of human nature. And he will face the hard reality of his physical limitations, while at the same time discovering his own unique talents.

Hammers over the Anvil is the funny, moving and inspirational story of a boy taking his first faltering step towards manhood. It is to be enjoyed by everyone who can remember the fun and the pain of adolescence.

The story was beginning to show depth, and a maturity that indicates considerable refining.

But there were still many elements requiring adjustment. The death of young Grace (as in the 'Miss McAlister' story) for instance. In the stories her death is obviously significant for young Alan and it could be quite a dramatic moment in the film. But that was our dilemma. To this point young Alan had either been directly involved in, or observed, everything that had gone on. Yet this was clearly very difficult with Grace's death. Even if we were able to set him there in a manner that was believable (and we tried many links to do so), it left Alan at the end of the film suddenly having to confront the questions of whether he would be able to ride like East, had he lost his friend and hero forever, and why would Grace kill herself?

Was this too much? Could a young man who was as close to these two as Alan had been, survive such strong emotional blows? Could he come up smiling or at least not so battered that the audience could feel a potentially positive future for this character? There was much debate on this issue.

All the way through we had wanted this film, like the original stories and like Alan Marshal himself, to be tough, hard-hitting, but ultimately optimistic. Realism was important, the incidents needed to hit hard, but that hard?

In the book these events are not directly related and the impact is therefore much less traumatic. Not only that, the written word can be escaped. The book can be put down, forgotten for a while an hence the overall impact can be lessened by reading one chapter or story at a time, at different times.

In the cinema very rarely does one walk out - the only real means of escape. The incidents just keep coming as does the emotional impact. It is so much stronger because of the immediacy of that sight and sound, the darkness and the concentration.

For that reason alone, every development of the plot in a film needs to be considered for its impact on both the story and the characters - the balance of the piece overall. That is the 'art' of film making.

The director, Ann Turner, who wrote the last draft of the script, solved the problem of the impact of Grace's pregnancy and dying by making her Mr. McAlister's wife rather than his daughter. Apart from adding other moral dimensions, it meant that Grace was a much stronger character, more in charge of her own destiny and playing an active role in the development of relationships. It then became not so much a question of pregnancy and death, as had been the case with younger Grace, but of other more appropriate consequences, the effects of which were still very powerful, but left more open the possibility of optimism that we were seeking with young Alan.

It was at this point that we felt it appropriate that young Alan comment on some of the incidents as they occurred, not as a means of furthering or explaining the plot, but to expose his thoughts and feelings more to the audience. Often narration like this can work against the flow of the film, but because this story was essentially driven by his character, we felt it would give him greater depth and rapport with the audience.

By now the process of distillation had been considerable. There were many characters who had been eliminated or amalgamated for the reasons mentioned. Alan, for instance, was now without a mother which we felt added poignancy to relationships in the Marshall household and strengthened the relationship between Alan and Dad, Alan and East and Alan and Grace.

The script was close to its final form and the money men were pressing with a timetable, but it was still just words on the page. Those words had to be made into pictures and sound that live and this is where the director takes over.

As a member of the creative team, the director has a very significant impact on the nature of the final product. It is this person who works with the crew every day to achieve the required look; works with the actors to extract, demand, cajole and encourage the best performances possible; with the editor in the cutting room, piecing together all the strands, to come up with a product that will carry an audience from one dramatic moment to another. It is this person who ultimately turns those words into meaningful light.

And when the adaptation process is complete, the film becomes an entity in itself!

We  wish you enjoyable viewing.

Peter Harvey-Wright

Harvest Productions, Co-Producer

with South Australian

Film Corporation

*final chapter of the movie tie-in book

Abridged production notes from the press kit by Beyond Films:

In Hammers Over the Anvil  Russell plays East Driscoll, idol of Alan Marshall, town horse-breaker and occasional heartbreaker. East forms an explosive relationship with Grace McAlister (played by Charlotte Rampling) which results in dramatic changes in both their lives.

Russell enjoys East's wholesomeness and admires the strength he develops through his association with horses. "I see the control East has of the horse as inspiring - it's more a sense of agreement and co-operation than control - kind of like a partnership," says Russell.

Russell learned to ride his character's horse, a 16.2 hand thoroughbred stallion, on his days off from working on the hit film Romper Stomper. He would drive from Melbourne to Mansfield on Sunday to spend time with acclaimed horse wranglers Bill Willoughby and Gerald Egan.

"The first time I cantered the horse up a hill I was addicted - the adrenalin rush was extraordinary as the speed and rhythm of the horse's body took control," said Russell.  "We're talking one big racehorse with his own ideas of what he wanted to do, so it had to become a marriage of wills just to survive."  Other than a couple of bruises, he came through the experience unscathed.

Twenty-seven year old Crowe developed an immediate empathy with his co-star Charlotte Rampling, twenty years his senior.

"She has a virtually perfect technical base, a big heart and a wonderful magic in her eyes," said Crowe. "What you'll see on the screen is as close to falling in love as possible - the trick is getting out of it again."

Russell enjoys taking risks, living on the edge and is passionate about his craft. For The Crossing Russell worked out to add centimetres to his chest and learned the rudiments of sheep shearing. For his role as Andy in Proof he peeled potatoes in Melbourne restaurants. For  Spotswood he powertalked with businessmen, went to Wales to perfect his role in Love in Limbo (note: The Great Pretender in the press kit) and digested Mein Kampf and war histories for the demanding role of Hando in Romper Stomper. And of course, his preparation for Hammers Over the Anvil has developed his skills as a horseman.

Revered as Australia's most promising young male actor, Crowe is pleased to see the current growth in the Australian Film Industry. "Movies should be a combination of art, entertainment and money and for a while money overtook its rightful place - the industry was run by accountants and people who were unfamiliar with film making,"  recalls Crowe. "Now real people are making real movies about something worthwhile - Australia - and it's great to be part of it!"

Ann Turner, Director: "Russell was so right for the role - charismatic, earthy and extremely sensual - he's an amazing horseman and brings a great sense of power to the character."

Ben Gannon, Producer: "Russell is without a doubt the bright new male star on the horizon. He's passionate about his work and handles the complexities of the character's relationships superbly."

Charlotte Rampling, co-star: "Russell has a wild sense of humour."

Excerpt from Australian Film 1978-1994, by Fincina Hopgood:  

Adapted from Alan Marshall’s short story collection of the same title, Hammers Over The Anvil interweaves an adulterous affair with the trials of adolescence, and sets it against the social mores of the 1900s.
 

Alexander Outhred plays 11 year old Alan, who dreams of becoming a great horseman like his idol, East Driscoll (Russell Crowe), despite his crutches and leg brace, the legacy of infantile paralysis. With his best mate, Joe Carmichael (Jake D.Frost), Alan explores the adult world of sexual relations, through innocent pecks exchanged with Joe’s girlfriend to witnessing the seduction of teenager Nellie Bolster (Amanda Douge) by the sly local priest and blacksmith (Frank Gallacher). They also befriend the crazy old Mrs Bilson (Althea McGrath), a hilarious and tragic character. Despite losing his mother as a young child, it is the inevitable death of Mrs Bilson which confronts Alan with his first experience of morality and the loss of a friend.

These events frame the focus of the film's narrative: the immediate attraction between East and the newly arrived wife of a wealthy landowner , Grace McAlister (Charlotte Rampling). Alan himself is strongly attracted to the elegant and yet strong willed Grace. The trio become constant companions —the childless Grace drawn to the motherless Alan- and yet Alan remains the outsider on the fringes of the adult world, most clearly when he walks in on Grace and East in the stables and, concealed by the shadows watches their lovemaking. The affair ends tragically when a fall from a horse leaves East brain damaged.

The film's strength lies in the rapport director Ann Turner encourages between the inexperienced Outhred and the expert ensemble cast, including some heated arguments with Alan’s father (Frankie J.Holden). The photography is both expansive in its presentation of South Australia’s Clare Valley and detailed in its inclusion of minutiae which intensify the narration of significant events in Alan’s life. As with her feature debut Celia (1989), Turner presents us with a child’s view of adult behavior which is historically specific in its detail and yet timeless in its observations of human nature. The film's title, recalling the blacksmith’s craft, represents the blows which mould a person as he or she passes through life, just as the hammer blows give shape to crude metal.

Alan Marshall spent his lifetime watching his fellow Australians and writing about them with rare wit, humour, compassion and deep understanding.

In this collection of stories we watch the young Alan growing up in country Turalla. A victim of infantile paralysis, Alan walks with crutches and knows he will never be able to ride the horses he adores. But his disability does not prevent him from roaming the countryside with his mate Joe and writing in his notebook about the lives and intrigues of the local characters.

Alan Marshal's fascinating notebook of stories has now been brought to life in a film starring Charlotte Rampling, Russell Crowe and Alexander Outhred as young Alan. Included in this edition is the background to the filming of Hammers Over the Anvil written by the co-producer, Peter Harvey-Wright.

Movie tie-in (out-of-print)

Penguin Australia, 1994

WINNER!

BEST ACTOR (RUSSELL CROWE)

SEATTLE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

YOUNG ACTOR'S AWARD (ALEXANDER OUTHRED)

AUSTRALIAN FILM INSTITUTE

Russell Crowe stars as East Driscoll, a bachelor horsebreaker who won't  settle

down. He becomes the idol of Alan, a young boy with polio who dreams of

riding just like his hero. As Alan struggles with the hardships of growing up,

he meets Grace, an older English Aristocrat whom he develops feelings for.

The situation gets further complicated when the married Grace falls for the

much younger East and Alan, unwillingly, is caught in the middle.

A YOUNG BOY'S HERO, A MARRIED WOMAN'S DESIRE