Phil Noyce showed a copy of his short film
Castor and Pollux to David Elfick, a magazine publisher who had made a number of successful
surf movies. Elfick, along with Mike Molloy and
Philippe Mora, had been discussing making a film about newsreel cameramen of the 1940s and 1950s who worked for such companies as Movietone and
Cinesound Productions. Elfick hired
Bob Ellis to write the screenplay because he admired ''
The Legend of King O'Malley'', a play Ellis co-wrote with
Michael Boddy. Ellis says he wrote the first draft with
Howard Rubie, who had been a cameraman for
Cinesound and thought he was going to direct the film. Anne Brooksbank later contributed to the script. Noyce was hired as director and worked with Ellis. Ellis fell out with Noyce and demanded his name be taken off the credits. Ellis: There was some nonsense about how long it was; we'd set it out, one short scene per page and it finally came out about 300 pages or so but, in fact, it was maybe two and a quarter hours long, which wasn't too bad then or now for something that covered 10 years. But a legend started about how huge it was. When I saw it, I was appalled. I could only see what was missing and abruptly took my name off it. Then when it won all the prizes, I sort of shamefacedly put my name back on it. It was a quite painful experience and I think a very good film, but not as good a film as might have been made. One of the models for it was the film,
Yanks, which was a moment in history in particular culture perfectly captured. It had a lot more than the politics in it but, partly because of the budget and partly because of the length, it was pruned back to the politics. Now, the politics was all there in the original but it was surrounding other things, such as the way people spent their Christmases. That was removed. Funding was provided by the
Australian Film Commission and the New South Wales Film Corporation. ==Release==