Stephan Elliott has been directing films for 25 years. From his very first film Frauds, which starred Phil Collins, and his breakout success with The Adventures of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, he is no stranger to success. Over the course of his career he has worked with many big names including Ewan McGregor, Ashley Judd, Jessica Biel, Kristen Scott-Thomas, Colin Firth, Olivia Newton-John and Rebel Wilson.

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Now he presents his new film Swinging Safari, which boasts an ensemble cast that features Kylie Minogue and Guy Pearce in a 1970’s nostalgia fest of sunburn, shag carpeting and swinging in the suburbs.

Given that the main character Jeff Marsh in Swinging Safari is a burgeoning teenage filmmaker who goes on to live a “fabulous life”, how much of it is autobiographical?

I planned on doing it very autobiographically. I had my own world planned out but the adult cast brought their own ideas to the table and I invited them to do so. Eventually I just said come as your parents and everyone became an evolution of their own parents. That was cool to see it take of in its own direction.

What is it about the world today that made you want to tell a story about yesterday?

My long term collaborator Lizzie Gardiner was living on Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles and she said to me you have to see this, it’s called school pick up at Wonderland Avenue, a prestigious school where you have to be very wealthy to go there.

We went up there and there was a fleet of limousines and Hummers with bullet proof glass and their own security guards and it was literally run like a military operation. There was even a sniper on the roof looking for someone who might kidnap and murder all the teenagers. It was the weirdest thing I’d ever seen.

So it was extreme helicopter parenting?

Oh it was way beyond; it was next level. I thought this is just insanity and the question that arose was how did we grow up? The idea came from there and as early as Priscilla I said I was going make this movie and get our childhood down. So that was the catalyst, seeing those kids.

Also I hit 50 and thought what’s next? At 50 I hit a wobble and I thought what do you do when you have a mid-life crisis? And here we are.

Whether it’s Olivia Newton John in A Few Best Men or Kylie Minogue playing an agoraphobic alcoholic housewife in this film you have a knack for attracting big name icons in your films…

Always against type.

Do you approach them or do they come to you?

No I go hunting! I miss it now but one of the greatest casting tools I ever had was walking through the video shop and gazing at the shelves, and it’s gone now. There’s one left in Sydney and a lot of my casting comes from looking at the shelves.

Today you look at the computer screen and see 25000 films and you think where do you go what do you see how do you browse? I always think how should I cast and how shouldn’t I cast and there’s a sense of surprise and fun that comes with it.

When you’re releasing a film do have any criteria as to how you judge each one is going to be received critically and commercially?

That’s the juggle of what we do. On A Few Best Men, I didn’t write that. I didn’t have a passion for it but I could see it was a commercial entity. It was a wedding goes bad movie, it’s a genre. That was first time I was a gun for hire and I thought it would be interesting to make a commercial movie. Of course once we got started I couldn’t help myself and started re-writing on the fly and the producers were furious every time I changed a word but so many of big laughs were absolutely mine and based on decisions we made on the day. The fights were legendary but it was a very successful movie. The global box office was $20 million but it the the market when streaming took off, but that film became monumentally huge globally, because of Olivia & Rebel Wilson. Netflix picked it up and the sequel came about because it was so successful in the new medium and that was a really good lesson for me

With the way the business model of film making and releasing is changing with all the new streaming platforms does that open up more opportunities for you as a filmmaker?

Up until a year and a half ago if your film went straight to Netflix it was considered a dud. Now if you don’t go straight to Netflix you’re considered a dud and its happened in a phenomenally small amount of time. A couple of years ago Netflix and Amazon were searching for content, now they’re turning people away en masse. A lot of people are pleading to get onto these platforms and they’re saying no. What we’re drowning in now is too much content. God bless critics like David Stratton & Margaret Pomeranz because there’s so much content, sometimes people do need to be told where to go and what to watch. I’ll listen to a critic that I like to get a rough idea of where I’m going.

Netflix is great for queer films, I’m seeing gay films that I never would have had the chance to see because they could never go anywhere, the problem now is that even that platform is getting quite busy. So its hit and miss with what you’re going to look at, but you have to take a gamble.

Is this also a good thing for Australian film industry?

I think it’s a good thing for any industry. I think we’re in evolution, it will sort itself out. Nobody knows what’s going on. Do you think the studios in north America know what’s going on? They don’t. All they can do is keep throwing money at comic book superhero movies and keep their fingers crossed.

From the inception of the idea for Swinging Safari to its release what was the time frame?

It took me three weeks to write the script and 30 years to think about it. Noel Coward used to say he could write a play in three days, but he’d talk about it for three years.

You have a talent for creating cinematic “moments” that really sell your films, whether it be Guy Pearce on top of the bus in Priscilla or Jessica Biel squashing a dog in Easy Virtue…

That wasn’t Coward, it may have been a Noel Coward script but Noel Coward never came up with that one.

…or Olivia Newton-John huffing lines of cocaine in A Few Best Men, do these ideas come to you in a lightning bolt moment?

They’re all lightning bolts, Priscilla’s a great one, this is something I’ve never quite talked about. I’d done the script and again it was another very fast write, it was two weeks for that one but after a long time collating ideas my producer Al Clarke said you’ve got the middle act doldrums, which a lot of films get. They get to the middle and everything goes a bit quiet. All films suffer from it.

So you came down with second act syndrome?

Exactly and Al told me the it goes dead in the middle, it’s absolutely treading water, you need a moment. It goes flat in the middle and it’s absolutely treading water, you need a moment. The first idea that came into my head… ping pong balls. That was a lightning bolt moment and it’s the epicenter of the film and it’s a moment that nobody forgets. Unfortunately, its been borrowed and used so many times since, but it was a lightning bolt moment that happened on the spot and it cost me three ping pong balls.

Having created a cult classic that’s as iconic as Priscilla, do you feel the pressure to follow it up with each film you make?

Its beyond cult it’s a global statement now. Anything that happens with gay rights now, in every language it’s the calling card film that they put on. The film makes more money today than it ever did back then. 25 years later it’s the go to celebration film. The stage show is still rolling out around the world, it’s this monolith. I really had that pressure for about a decade, I tried, I really tried, but then… it is what it is, I was sick of feeling the pressure and I said I’m not going to feel it anymore, I’ve just got to go forward. I get that, people say it’s not Priscilla. It’s not Priscilla…

Because it’s Swinging Safari, it’s its own beast?

Exactly, it’s its own beast and I’m not going to remake Priscilla and trust me the money offers have been pretty major just to repeat myself. It was of its time; it was at the end of the AIDS crisis in 1994. it made gay characters, fun, likeable & happy. I dealt with AIDS for a hundredth of a millisecond and then I moved on. I copped so much shit for that because I didn’t deal with the issues, and I said I’m not going to, I’m moving forward and that’s why the film worked.

If I made that film today I don’t think it would get made, we lucked out. Back to Swinging, too much Priscilla!

Do you have any advice for aspiring filmmakers who are trying to break into the industry?

I do actually, you have to get dirty. it’s mean its painful, it vicious. It’s hard, you don’t eat you don’t sleep, and I take on a lot of kids every time, but I look for resilience. It doesn’t get handed to you on a plate, you have to work really hard for it. Every now and then I’ll spot someone who’s got the fire in them. It may mean making tea and coffee, or in my case getting coffee poured on my head by a very famous American actor and getting punched in the head repeatedly, I was 17, but I took it and I just kept going. You have to get a little bit dirty to tell the stories.

When you were casting swinging safari with the characters portrayed by Rhada Mitchell and Kylie Minogue are very much against type. Rhada is completely over the top. She’s a rich narcissist and Kylie’s performance is very subtle and understated was that a deliberate casting choice?

Oh you know the answer to that!

Over the course of your career you’ve made a drag road movie, the period drama Easy Virtue, the psychological thriller Eye of the Beholder and Aussie comedies like Welcome to Woop Woop and Swinging Safari… what’s next?

This has taken me 30 years to get out of the gate. I don’t think people will realize how amazingly cathartic this one’s for me. What I need to do is stop and take stock. It could mean an entirely different career change. If I do something in the industry again it’s going to be interesting. At the same time, I could do something entirely different. I woke up and realized I’m not getting any younger, I’ve been making films since I was fourteen, maybe it’s time to cast myself against type and do something really weird. I’m not frightened anymore, I can do anything I want now, I’m free.

Clinton Little