Suburban man Rowan Woods (whose first film The Boys screened in competition yesterday) may be a newcomer, but you've probably seen him before. "I was the psycho who shot Judy Davis," he boasts of his role in Peter Duncan's Children of the Revolution (1996).
The burly, soft-spoken Australian director used to earn a living as a character actor. But that was always a sideline. Although The Boys is his debut feature, he has been making short films for nigh on 15 years. At art school in the 1980s, he shot dozens of low budget, experimental films on Super-8.
Woods grew up in inner-city Sydney. All his work, he claims, reflects his fascination with his own backyard. "I tend to be obsessive about the cultural detail and the cultural context of my stories. Since I was a teenager, I've been making films about people around me."
He believes that what distinguishes The Boys from other recent Australian films is the fact that it is "so specific, so researched in terms of its detail." The film is adapted from an award-winning play by Gordon Graham. Woods and his producer Robert Connolly (with whom he was at film school) went to enormous lengths to capture the reality of life in suburban Sydney. They worked extensively with the actors before shooting began. "It's not really the norm in Australian film to have that level of rehearsal time," Woods observes. He and Connolly (who is an established short filmmaker in his own right) plan to make more movies together. "The interesting thing about the way Robert and I work together is that we have both produced and directed. Some way down the track, we may swap roles." Geoffrey Macnab
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