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Or the story of Jack Charles, addicted to heroin, who has swung between life as a criminal and a successful acting career for 40 years, missed the FIFO 2010 jury grand prix by one single vote. It merits a closer look.

Interview with the director Amiel Courtin-Wilson.

How did you meet your key figure, this fabulous and very likeable Jack Charles?

Jack is an old family friend. My mother knew him when she was 15 years old: she used to go to the theatre and see him there. He was a good friend of my uncle who wrote plays. I had never really met him but I had heard about this actor’s mythical and romantic story.

How did you get to meet him?

I had made three documentaries, and I was looking for a new subject for my next film. My uncle told me that Jack had just acted in Sydney and that he was back in Melbourne. The first time that I saw him, I was almost 22, and I knew straight away that I had to make a film about him.

How did your meeting go?

We met in a café. I had my camera in my rucksack – just in case. We began to speak and after two minutes he said, “Why don’t you begin to film me, you should film this conversation.” He made me get out my camera straight away. And from that moment, he really let me enter into his life. Now I am 30. It was a lovely way of spending my twenties.

It took you 7 years to make this film, why did it take so much time?

At the beginning, I thought that it would take me three months like the others. But it was very hard to find the funding because obviously, the life of a homeless, heroin addict, an ‘original junky,’ didn’t really interest the television companies. First of all I filmed for four years before getting something but at the time, the film wasn’t at all what it is today. It was more conventional, with a great deal of Jack in his films and on television, other actors, several one-to-one interviews…

What made you decide to make it less conventional?

The path that his life took. The chosen days in the film became the story’s true subject. The fact that he was chosen to be in a film, that he got his first apartment… These events became more important than his career as an actor. They focussed more on the redemption of a man and the re-birth of a human being.

So after having obtained the first funding, you filmed for three more years… Wasn’t it difficult to film him when he was taking heroin?

It wasn’t easy to find moments of clarity. In fact, we used to film at precise moments in the day, otherwise, he was high. We learnt to work together. I also had to give him money because he would have spent all day trying to find some so we would never have had the time to make the film. So each time we filmed I gave him 50 dollars for the day. With that, he bought heroin. So the following day, we didn’t film, and I tried to find more money again.

It can’t have been easy…

Finally the biggest difficulty was in helping him. For someone who had been through so much in life (uprooted from his family and placed in a home for boys where he was abused…), he is very open, generous and optimistic, like a child in a way. It was difficult seeing him sleep under bridges, in the street. When he went to prison in 2002, obviously I couldn’t film him. We became closer: It was no longer just a relationship between a director and a character. It had become a friendship.

I imagine this friendship was the cornerstone of the story?

The film exists thanks to it. This film is in part a love letter to Jack, a gift for him. The hardest thing was to stop filming as our relationship was fundamentally based on this interview process. So it was very strange to have suddenly finished the film. We used to joke together saying that the only moment that we would stop filming would be when he died. I am pleased that we finished before that.

Has he seen the film?

Yes. He didn’t want to see any of the rushes but just the film as it is now. We sat together and we linked arms, hand in hand. He began to cry, I cried too. He held me very tight and told me, “You have done a great job.” “Thanks Jack, you have done a great job too,” I replied. He was happy. Me too. In fact I was very scared of his reaction, because some of the scenes show him really drugged up. But because he had come off heroin when we finished the film, he was able to start a new chapter in his life.

And this 1st special jury prize?

I feel very privileged, very happy and honoured that the film was shown to an international audience because several times when I tried to get funding I was told that the story was too "local". Receiving this prize finally shows that Jack’s story is universal. In addition, it is my first international prize. I feel ‘over the moon.’

Do you have any projects with Jack?

We are currently writing a book about his life, with some photographs and some passages written by him. We have also recorded some songs. In short, we are not going to stop mid-flow. It keeps going!

Manon Hericher