That's not a knife. THIS is a knife...

So, it was by a very lucky happenstance that I found myself inert in front of SBS one evening earlier this week. Whilst casually flicking through the channels with more than half an eye on a forkful of super-heated microwave lasagne hovering precariously above my groin on its way to my mouth, someone said the words "film" and "industry", in that order, and my ears pricked.

Insight, the SBS current affairs live (I think) discussion programme, was just the latest media outlet to dive on the old "What's wrong with the Australian film and TV industry?!" chestnut. In attendance were various media types: producers, directors, financiers, film-makers, critics, students, studio representatives (well, Fox at least), the AFC, SBS itself but NOT, notably, anyone from any of the commercial channels here in Australia. Apparently they'd been invited, but had elected not to come. Presumably they had no good answers as to why they keep moving their scheduling around in a seemingly random fashion. I guess "We're following a post-modernist interpretation of the ancient Mayan calendar. Isn't everyone?" just wouldn't cut it.

What was established was this; the Australian film and TV industry ISN'T DOING VERY WELL.

I'll give everyone a moment to come to grips with that shocker.

Now that you're all back in your seats I'll continue. Everyone constantly referred to "great Australian stories" as being the saviour of the industry. I'd agree with that. The trouble is I think they're getting a bit confused between "great Australian stories" and "great Australian stories". My distinction is this: one is chiefly Australian (dealing with issues that only affect Australians) while the other is a universal, archetypal story that is set in Australia and has an Australian flavour. It is these archetypal stories that endure across cultures and across contexts. It is that type of story that should be strived for.

"But what about Crocodile Dundee? It made $48m at the Australian Box Office," someone shouts, "and it did great business in the larger world!"

True enough. Dundee was a great success, and it's Australian... but what isn't chiefly Australian is the fact that it's a fish-out-of-water comedy which is, I think, responsible for some of its success. The appeal of Paul Hogan as a comic (with a very successful TV series to his name) certainly added to that appeal along with the fact that, at the time, Australians (and Australian movies) were viewed as a little bit 'alien' to other cultures, especially to audiences in the US. Since one of the constants in successful screenwriting is to give the audience a unique view of a world that they are unfamiliar with, these three factors combined to make that movie the success it was, and indeed deserved to be.

We cannot make Crocodile Dundee now. Australians are almost as commonplace in Hollywood as Americans so the uniqueness of the culture has been lost. With nothing like that to differentiate ourselves we have to do what everyone else has to do. WRITE GOOD STORIES.

"We should be aiming squarely for the Multiplexes! We need to be making genre movies! Why aren't we making genre movies?" shouts someone else.

I echoed this question. What aren't we? Genre movies are often the ones that may cost more due to their higher production values, but they also have what is closest to a ready-made audience. The most important demographic (as established in this very debate) in box office terms, the 16-24 age group, are exactly the demographic that the genre pictures appeal to. Look at the current Red Eye. A measly (in US terms) production budget of US$26m and it has already grossed US$52m in the first four weeks. And can ANYONE explain why last year's Saw - a genre movie - ended up being financed by the American Lion's Gate company? It cost about US$3m and grossed US$55m. If we have the talent here, and we do, why are we not utilising it?

It seems that the luminaries of the industry over here think that unless we spend all our finance on "serious" films then we'll somehow not be taken seriously. While Somersault and Look Both Ways are important Australian films that definitely should have been made it is short-sighted to think that they are the ones that will keep the industry afloat. It's the - dare I say it - popcorn movies that would pay for them and pay for a lot more besides. The industry needs to have an eye on both the creative and the commercial sides.

I'm keen to see whether this point will be proven with the outcome of the third series of the US Project Greenlight. After two commercial disasters with Stolen Summer (budget US$1.8m, gross US$134,000) and The Battle Of Shaker Heights (budget US$1.8m, gross US$280,000) the Greenlight team made the third series a genre contest and chose the script Feast, a horror about patrons locked in a bar being forced to fight monsters to escape. While it does sound suspiciously like From Dusk 'Til Dawn, I'll put my neck on the line and say that I think it'll be the only Greenlight movie that'll make money.

And if it does, I think there's a lesson to be learned from that.

J.