Three-sided stories
At 5 a.m. at Hobart airport I come face to face with a sticker, on the neck of an expensive guitar case, which reads “Reduce Greed”. On the plane, two men sitting beside me are going to the mainland for a butchers’ conference. I’m flying in to see the Melbourne Theatre Company’s production of Moonlight and Magnolias, which sounds interesting, chiefly because it is the first stage play directed by the film-maker Bruce Beresford.
On stage is a traditional three-walled set. This is the plush, golden-wooded office of David O. Selznick (Patrick Brammall). Huge windows take up most of the back wall and through them we see the imposing colonnaded frontage of the Selznick studios. The producer is making Gone with the Wind and has closed down production for desperate want of a good script—which is what Beresford should have done.
Into his office Selznick brings scriptwriter Ben Hecht (Nicholas Hammond) and director Victor Fleming (Stephen Lovatt). For five days the men are locked in…
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
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6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
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23 mins
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2 mins