With seven Oscar nominations (and a clutch of other awards already won), Babe is a watermark feature for Australian cinema, marking the beginning of a new era, one which opens up the possibility of big budget, effects-hungry projects to be made Down Under - by Australians, even if financed by Hollywood.
Financed to the tune of US$27 million in a negative pick up deal by Universal - at considerable risk with the studio having to insure itself when no completion underwriter would take it on - it was made in rural New South Wales, using largely Australian elements, plus some Hollywood SFX work in post.
Although it was director Chris Noonan's first feature film (wining the New York Film Critics Best First Feature Award), his work has regularly won awards: in 1989, his hard hitting TV docudrama, Police State, was voted Best Telefeature; in 1988, his telefeature The Riddle of the Stinson, won the Golden Tripod Award for cinematography; his 1987 mini series, Vietnam, was voted Best Drama Series, Mini Series and Television Program of the year, with Noonan voted Best Director. In 1985, the fact-based war time drama, Cowra Breakout, which Noonan also directed, was voted Best TV Screenplay in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards. And Stepping Out, his 1980 documentary about a theatrical group of mentally disabled people, won 14 major awards and was screened all over the world.
Noonan is a mild mannered and intelligent man with the air of a kindly art teacher - something he originally expected to become; until he made a film called Could It Happen Here?, which won third prize at the Sydney Film Festival short film competition.
Noonan was just 16, and he recognised that film making was the career for him.
He was 35 when he and Dr George Miller (Mad Max, Witches of Eastwick, Lorenzo's Oil) of Kennedy Miller began the task of writing the script of Babe, based on Dick King-Smith's novel about a piglet who learns to do the work of a sheep dog. Babe took seven years of his life, the first three in preparation; "That's why I'm not anxious to make Babe II," he jokes. "I was a young man when I started, now I'm middle aged!"
But the process made him a better film maker. "I never before worked in such detail and with such meticulous planning. Until then, I'd loved the spontaneity of film making, believing nothing was fixed until the moment of the camera rolled.
Babe still had some of that, but a lot less. I learnt about myself that I could work with that high degree of planning and not lose that sense of enjoyment - because I didn't know I had it in me. So what it taught me is that I'm driven by faith in a story, I'll do anything to tell that story."
One thing Noonan was determined to do was work with the animals as actors, not merely relying on 'fetch' and 'come' commands. That, and the combination of various technologies were the two most challenging elements of making Babe.
But the result is one of the best things he has done, he believes, "together with Stepping Out, with Vietnam close behind."
It is likely that Babe will take US$200 million world wide (it has taken over US$23 in Australia alone) in theatrical release, which could precede a massive video return, perhaps as much as US$100. Whatever the final figure, Babe has already opened "virtually every door in Hollywood," for Noonan has expanded his options "exponentially".
He believes it has also expanded the range for other Australian film makers: "it's an example of an alternative...it's not like any other successful Australian film. And I love that about the film: it's a different hybrid. But the hardest job now is to choose what to do next."
Noonan's home based office, perched on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean in South East Sydney, is flooded with mail and his IN tray is filled with scripts. He has already turned down several big money offers, "because I'm really project driven, not money driven." ANDREW L. URBAN
