Hey Guys. The other day I was lucky enough to speak to all the cast and the director of the new Australian War film Beneath Hill 60. This was top film and the Review is here. I was lucky to speak with actor Gyton Grantley, the beautiful Bella Heathcote, Historian Will Davies. Then I will finish it off with the talented Brendan Cowell and the high quality director Jeremy Sims. I also spoke to the funny and talented Anthony Hayes but we went over time and the interview topped out at 54 minutes so I am going to add this one under my rising stars interviews and most likely over four parts. So I hope you enjoy the interviews as well as they were all very chatty and just good people.
My first interview is with actor Gyton Grantley. Gyton is best known in Australia for his role as convicted mob boss Carl Williams for the TV series Underbelly to which he won acclaim.Gyton had to shed 8 kilos for his role in Beneath Hill 60 as the miner William “Pull Through” Morris. Here is what he had to say:
PJ-So how did you become involved with the film?
GG- Bill Leimbach contacted my agent and he and David Roach who wrote it thought I’d be a good addition to it and I thought that was great idea too.
PJ-Did you have to do a screentest?
GG- I didn’t, no this was one of the first job I have been offered. I was given the screenplay to read and asked if I liked it and what characters I thought I would like to play except for Capt Woodward because Brendan [Cowell] was already playing him.
I just loved Morris , he jumped out at me and I thought it would be a really great experience to portray him.
PJ-So what attracted you specifically about the character?
GG- To be honest Jeremy [Sims-Director] will tell you that there is a scene where we call the Redhouse scene where Woodward,Morris and Fraser crawl across no man’s land and blow up this farmhouse that is housing a big German machine gun and I just wanted to do that. I really want to have that experience. Crawling across craters and being shot , flares going up and falling into slimy muddy holes with corpses next to me, ducking as machines guns shoot bullets across my face and just really go through that experience. It was really exciting and I like Morris’ complexities.He has a dark sense of humor but he does keep the morale high by cracking jokes here and there but he is not afraid to call it as it is and bring light to the horrors and realities they are facing. The horror of it all.
PJ-Why do they call you "Pull Through"?
GG- Well a "pull through" is an instrument used to clean the barrel of a rifle. It’s a long skinny cylindrical piece of metal with a string on the end. The soldier would cover it with a clean piece of gauze and then with string pull it through to clean the barrel out. He is also referred to as “his lankiness”. I am reasonably well known for putting on weight to play Carl Williams so for this one I had to lose a few kilos to get as close to his lankiness as I could.
PJ-Is that hard to lose that amount of weight?
GG- It’s a lot harder to lose than gain but you just have to eat well and exercise and not eat too much.
PJ-Apart from losing that much weight , did you have to do a lot of preparation to play the role? Training etc.
GG- Yeah, I had to get a sense of what they did with the mood and feelings they had. I read the book Somme mud which was edited by Will Davies who also wrote the accompanying book Beneath Hill 60. Another one I read was "birdsong" by Stephen Faulks and there is another called "Beneath Flanders fields" which is a history book of what the miners did. They were quite good for the technical aspect of it.
PJ-Did you have a bootcamp?
GG- Yeah we had a bootcamp, Warwick who is one of the actors is also our military advisor and he took us on a boot camp and he taught us how to use our rifles and our bayonets. We had a night in our trenches where they shot the film, so we slept in the dirt and ate our bulli beef and drank the tea.
We got shot at by the Germans and they had mortars set up to blow mud on us. There was a gas attack and we had to take shifts during the night keeping watch and keeping our heads down. So we did get the tiniest little inkling of a sense of what it was like. Also people might not realise that these people were not trained soldiers, they were just miners recruited and sent over straight away. The soldier aspect of it wasn’t too important.
PJ-Did you feel a sense of responsibility doing this?
GG- You always have that sense of responsibility when you’re telling a true story; you want to honour and respect it as much as possible. Especially when your telling a story of these men who gave their lives to secure the freedom we enjoy so much.
PJ-What’s your favourite memory from filming ? I am trying to get some dirt on you all.
GG- We did a six day shoot so Sunday was out day off and true to the camaraderie of our characters the actors and the crew there was a great friendship formed. There was a cricket match one weekend of cast vs crew and the cast kicked their asses. That was fun as well. I did enjoy being in Townsville as I am a keen fisherman and I did enjoy the estuaries as I tried to grab a mangrove jack and barramundi. Magnetic Island was just across the way so we all took a trip there. There was a weekend where we visited the rodeo just put of town. Offset there was a lot of great things like that to do.
PJ-So do they deliberately set these up to build the camaraderie of the actors?
GG- No, I don’t think it’s set up on purpose but by all means being in the beautiful city of Townsville away from all our friend and family you are forced together and you get to know each other and there you have your friendships.
PJ-Just off subject, why Acting? What draws you to it?
GG- Wow well, I love it and I guess I get the opportunity to experience different facets of human emotion and characteristics and human lives. The are so many different people out there that are experiencing things that while I will never do that in it’s purest form it is exciting discovering all the different forms of nature
PJ-What do you think of the current state of the Australian film industry? And where would you like to see it?
GG- Well it’s no secret that Australian films struggle and theirs many theories . The best one is that we don’t market them as well and I understand why. You get only so much money and we want to spend all that money to make the best film we have and then you don’t have any left to promote it.
I think we make great incredible pieces of art and our films are funny and dramnatic but the future of Australian film is….oh I can’t say. I really can’t say. I like that Screen Australia is finally starting to invest in genre based films that seem to secure a bigger and larger audience so that’s good. As long as we keep telling great Australian stories than I will be happy.
PJ-One more sneaky question, If you could ask Pull Through Morris one question what would it be?
GG- Um….oh dear,, If I were to ask him one question what would it be?? Why… why did you…that’s a really good question . What would I ask him? Ummm are you long sited or short sited? [Laughter]
PJ-That’s perfect thanks for your time.
NEXT INTERVIEW WILL BE WITH BENEATH HILL 60' S BEAUTIFUL STAR BELLA HEATHCOTE, SO STAY TUNED!!