AYRES, TONY – THE HOME SONG STORIES
DISOBEYING CONVENTIONS
Ghosts from the past turn up as real people when filmmaker Tony Ayres reveals
his troubled childhood years and his mother’s complicated life in The Home Song
Stories, which often disobeys cinematic conventions, he tells Andrew L. Urban.
When Tony Ayres sat down to write a screenplay based on his colourful childhood
memories centred on his mother, he didn’t try to keep a distance from the events
“because I wanted the emotions to communicate through the screenplay to the
audience. So the film had to be personal but not private,” he explains, as we
talk about what might well have been a painful, perhaps cathartic experience.
His mother had not led her children on a totally blissful journey, as the film
shows.
"a cathartic effect"
“It was when I was directing that I had to put on a new hat … the director
has to be the first audience for the actors, so I can’t be making a personal
psychodrama. That’s one reason I changed the names of the characters – I didn’t
want there to be confusion when people spoke to me; I never thought of the
characters as me, my sister or my mother. The writing did have a cathartic
effect, not so much the directing.
But ever since he began promoting the film, people from his past have popped up:
in Perth during a promotional stop he received a letter from George Ayres, his
stepfather’s brother, “who I haven’t seen for 32 years … he wrote this letter
criticising all of my factual mistakes, and ending the letter saying he held
nothing but contempt for me.”
Ayres doesn’t seem upset now about it, but he admits it hurt. We’re at a café on
Sydney’s busy Circular Quay with the winter sun warming our backs. Ayres recalls
another incident: “Last night at the Q&A for the film, the son of my mother’s
best friend turned up.” Even before the film was made, ghosts of the past came
forth: “The day after I told my sister that I was writing the screenplay about
our childhood, she bumped into Uncle Jo after all these years. I took that as a
sign that my mother was blessing this project…” He says Uncle Jo’s full story is
fascinating but there wasn’t room in the film to tell it. “It’ll be on the DVD
…”
Of course, The Home Song Stories is not meant to be taken as a perfect
re-enactment of Tony Ayres’ childhood days. He’s tried to capture the essence of
his memories, and turned the episodic nature of such memories into a more or
less seamless narrative. “But with biographical material you always have to
disobey filmmaking conventions and that is exciting. And when it goes right, it
goes right in a profound way.”
Ayres learnt a great deal while making the film. “For one thing I saw the
importance of creating a functional family of filmmakers … the more functional
we were as a unit, the more coherent the film…”
"a stupendous, award winning performance"
He also became more confident about controlling the visual elements, and
confirmed his strengths in directing performance and is still in awe of his
leading aldy, Joan Chen. “I knew, of course, she was a good actress, but I
didn’t realise just how good. She gives a stupendous, award winning performance
here. It’s hard enough to get an actress to reveal her age, but she was also
prepared to show her deterioration …”
Published August 23, 2007
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 Tony Ayres
THE HOME SONG STORIES
Written & directed by Tony Ayres
Australian release: August 23, 2007
Tom (Darren Yap), now in his 40s, begins to write the memoirs of his 60s
childhood, as the little boy (Joel Lok) whose mother Rose (Joan Chen), was a
glamorous Shanghai nightclub singer. When Rose meets Aussie sailor Bill (Steve
Vidler), they are quickly married, and she packs up Tom and his older sister May
(Irene Chen) to head for Melbourne. The marriage just as quickly breaks up and
Rose moves with the kids to Sydney. After a succession of male friends and
little success, in 1971 Rose moves back to Melbourne, in an uncomfortable
arrangement living again with Bill – and his mother. With Bill called away to
sea, Rose takes up with young Chinese cook, Joe (Qi Yuwu) but despair, and
conflicts over May’s relationship with Joe, tear the family further apart.
Little Tom is deeply hurt, but May’s ongoing conflict with her mother takes a
respite when Rose tells her daughter about her traumatic teenage years.
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