Bryan Brown

World Screen Weekly, July 6, 2006

Men admired his courage in movies like Breaker Morant and women swooned at his dashing behavior in the mini-series The Thorn Birds. Bryan Brown distinguished himself as an actor early in his career in both movies and television. He went on to star in Cocktail, with Tom Cruise, and in Gorillas in the Mist: The Story of Dian Fossey, but he has always appreciated the power of the television medium.

“The thing that gave me enormous exposure at home and all around the world was a series called A Town Like Alice, which went out on PBS in America,” says Brown. “I got letters galore from that series. It gave me the opportunity to go out into the world and be an actor. And I’ve never forgotten how many people that television show got to.”

Brown admits that movies provide viewers with a unique experience, because of the giant screen. “But, many, many people get that film experience through their television set,” he continues. “It sits in a person’s home 24 hours a day. If you can do something with it, you can get to an enormous number of people.”

In 1996, Brown worked with Nine Network in Australia on a TV series called Twisted Tales. “As an actor I was getting a bit bored. I had done a lot of movies, but I was looking for something fresh,” recalls Brown. “I had decided to do live television, like they did in the old days. Nine Network said to me, ‘Do you really want to do live TV?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I can get the actors, we’ll get new plays written and we’ll do them in half hours. The guy at Nine said, ‘All right, I think you’re mad, but I’ll give you some development money.’ I woke up the next morning thinking, He’s right, I am mad! That’s the stupidest thing I could ever want to do! I rang him up and said, ‘You’re right, live television is crazy, but I’ll still take your development money and we will shoot the episodes on film.’”

That’s how Twisted Tales came about. Brown solicited scripts from the public. He wanted to do something along the lines of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery. Brown got 1,200 scripts and chose 12. The result was a series of 12 half hours, with Brown introducing each one. They dealt with stories of the bizarre and the supernatural and all had a twist at the end of the story. The series was distributed by Southern Star International.

Now Brown is connected to another series produced by Nine Network and distributed by Southern Star. This one is called Two Twisted. Once again he solicited scripts from the public. “These days, everybody wants to be a filmmaker; every kid’s got a video camera and everybody can tell a story,” explains Brown. “They are all film-literate, story-literate people. It doesn’t mean they get it right every time, but they’ve seen every bloody movie ever made, which is quite extraordinary.”

Brown was sent 2,600 scripts and chose 14. “We got the most wonderful range of stories—from the classic I-want-to-kill-my-husband, to stories of cloning and horror stories,” he says. “None of them splatter in your face, they are very character-driven stories, all with wonderful twists.”

Two Twisted’s cast includes Sam Neill (Jurassic Park I, II, III) Melissa George (The Amityville Horror, Alias) and Greta Scacchi (Flightplan, Beyond the Sea).

Brown is well aware of all the emerging platforms that allow consumers to enjoy content on computers and portable devices. Where will this all lead to? “I haven’t got a clue,” he replies. “We live in a world called the capitalist system, with people out there who want to make money,” he says. “So whatever they’re going to do, they are going to make sure [movies and programming] get to a lot of people. I have no control [over] how this is going to happen and I have no intention of banging my head on a brick wall. There is nothing better than sitting in a cinema looking at a huge 40-foot screen. It’s a unique experience. But that is not the be-all and end-all of how you get stories.

“I have no knowledge of how [this technological-driven world] works and I can’t participate in it, but I can attempt to make the product and be in the product, and [consumers will say] what way they want to get it.”