‘I’m catching up to Tarantino’: Kriv Stenders on his biggest film to date

A film set would be the natural location for lunch with Kriv Stenders. Fold-up chairs under a tarp somewhere in the middle of nowhere, queuing up with the cast and crew to load up a plate from a buffet on a trestle table.

But the country's busiest mainstream filmmaker – with nine films in 17 years – is back home preparing for the release of the Vietnam War drama Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan, directing a secret documentary on an Australian musical icon, about to shoot two episodes of Doctor Doctor and planning a new film on Olympic gold medallist Steven Bradbury.

‘You’ve got to adapt’: Lunch with busy filmmaker Kriv Stenders at Bartolo. Credit:Peter Rae

"My dad always said 'find a job you love doing and get paid for it'," Stenders says cheerfully. "And I just love the work. I love making films. I love the process. I love everything about it.

"And you learn. Bergman made 20 films before he started great films."

Instead of a windswept buffet, Stenders has chosen somewhere indoors for lunch. With proper chairs. And a menu. Newish Italian restaurant Bartolo is just near where he lives in Surry Hills. "I moved here in '86," he says, pointing across the road. "Literally that block there. Then I moved to Bourke Street so this is my universe."

After studying cinematography at film school – a concession to his parents' preference for a craft skill that would make him employable rather than just focus on directing – Stenders started out making commercials and music videos for "your Barnsys, your Farnsys, your Diesels". Desperate to get into feature films – his word – he put up his own money to shoot Blacktown (2005), a low-key charmer about an Aboriginal bus driver who falls for an office worker.

Three months after Stenders' first conventionally funded film, the black comedy The Illustrated Family Doctor (2005), bombed at the box office, Blacktown won an audience award at the Sydney Film Festival. The lesson was that not everything works so you have to keep moving.

"To have success, you've got to have failure," he says. "And success and failure are relative anyway. Something can be a failure at the box office but, for you personally, it can be creatively successful."

There was another, more Yoda-like lesson too. It's not always the opportunity that's the opportunity; it's the opportunity that comes out of the opportunity.

Producer Nelson Woss saw Blacktown and asked Stenders to direct Red Dog (2011), a warm-hearted drama about a kelpie who unites a mining town. When it became a hit, it made Stenders' name.

Director Kriv Stenders, left, and producer Nelson Woss on the set of Blue Dog in Karratha.Credit:David Darcy

The son of Latvian immigrants living in Brisbane – an architect father and physiotherapist mother – he has directed a diverse bunch of films that includes the experimental Boxing Day (2017), western Lucky Country (2009), comic thriller Kill Me Three Times (2014), sequel Red Dog: True Blue (2016) and contemporary drama Australia Day (2017).

"I'm catching up to Quentin Tarantino," he says.

Outside film, Stenders has directed the music documentary The Go-Betweens: Right Here (2017), TV reboot Wake In Fright (2017), documentary series The Pacific: In The Wake Of Captain Cook With Sam Neill (2018) and a batch of television series.

Grilled lamb rump skewers at Bartolo. Credit:Peter Rae

That's a lot of time on set and, as he studies the menu, Stenders admits it has had consequences. He is on a protein diet to lose a few kilograms. "There's always catered food and you just always over-eat because it's there," he says. He settles on grilled lamb rump skewers with a mixed leaf green salad, while I go for tagliolini alla sorrentina and we share a bottle of mineral water.

There is a generation of filmmakers inspired by seeing Star Wars in cinemas as a child but Stenders' inspiration was an earlier Hollywood blockbuster.

"I fell in love with movies when my dad took me to see Jaws," he says. "I think I was 11. And that experience just blew me away. It was like 'what is this? This is incredible I have to find out how this was made, who made it'."

With a Super 8 camera bought by his father, he started making films at 12. "I saw a beautiful film called Day For Night, a Francois Truffaut film about a director," he says. "I went 'that's the job I want, that's what I want to do with my life'."

I'm catching up to Quentin Tarantino.

As all that suggests, Stenders is an enthusiast, never happier than when talking about films and film-making. Actors seem to love his cheerful, almost boyish enthusiasm. Instead of chewing out cast and crew members out of anxiety on set, he constantly chews through pens.

"It's a terrible habit," he says. "Every script supervisor when they work with me knows they've got to add a box of pens to their budget. Virtually one a day gets ruined."

That lesson about the opportunity being the opportunity that comes out of the opportunity was confirmed when producer Martin Walsh saw Red Dog, loved it and asked Stenders to direct Danger Close, easily his biggest budget film to date.

Walsh, who made a widely watched documentary about the battle, calls it a coming-of-age for the Australian military in the Vietnam War. Just over 100 Australian and New Zealand soldiers held off more than 2000 enemy troops during a short, ferocious battle in a rubber plantation near Nui Dat in August 1966.

Little Pattie (Emma Dougall) and Col Joye (Geoffrey Winter) perform for the troops at Nui Dat Base in Danger Close: The Battle Of Long Tan.Credit:Jasin Boland

When Stenders read Stuart Beattie's script, he was so surprised by the details – how the pinned-down Delta Company troops fought courageously while their comrades repeatedly disobeyed orders to support them with artillery, helicopters and armoured personnel carriers – that he had to check it had really happened. "The actual story was incredible," he says. "I was amazed that all of this happened in the space of four hours."

The $24 million film centres on Major Harry Smith, played by Travis Fimmel from the TV series Vikings, the real life, hard-driving commander who holds his troops together under fire. Other key roles are played by Richard Roxburgh, Anthony Hayes, Luke Bracey, Daniel Webber and Alexander England.

As the food arrives – the friendly staff have added a complimentary plate of grilled octopus – Stenders admits to seriously doubting they could actually make the film. When they started pre-production in Queensland – shooting at paulownia plantations at Nerang and Kingaroy – they had none of the military hardware that was essential for the story.

Grilled octopus at Bartolo.Credit:Peter Rae

"As with every film, it was chaos and disaster right up until the death knock," Stenders says. Gradually they sourced Howitzers from private collectors and the Army, rescue helicopters that had to be repainted every time they were used because they were still on firefighting duty, a third chopper for interior scenes from on top of a pole at the Caloundra RSL and armoured personnel carriers from the Army.

Stenders sees Danger Close as being about one intense battle rather than the Vietnam War.

"It's a survival story as opposed to a war story," he says. "And it's an Australian story on [a war] that hadn't been shown apart from The Odd Angry Shot and the Kennedy Miller series [Vietnam]."

Stenders also felt a responsibility to veterans of the battle, including Harry Smith, who had been living with memories of the traumatic events for more than 50 years. Almost half of them had been conscripts aged around 20.

"We made the very deliberate, creative decision to not make a political film about the Vietnam War, which was undoubtedly an obscene, unjust and immoral war," he says. "Our film is purposely told through the perspective of the Australian and New Zealand men who were thrust unwillingly and unknowingly into a brutal battle and who were severely compromised by an ineffective chain of higher command."

While so many war movies focus on victories – Hollywood even turned Pearl Harbour into an American triumph – Danger Close is not one. The surroundings at the restaurant – lunch, other diners, staff – recede as Stenders goes into a reverie about the significance of the battle.

"I don't think they won the battle," he says grimly. "I think they survived it. The statistics are incredible but Australians died, New Zealanders died and a lot of Vietnamese died.

"I was talking to one of the veterans who said the battle was intense, really fully on, and traumatic. He would look over and see men literally digging their faces into the ground. The bullets were flying that low that they were literally using their noses as shovels to get their faces into the dirt.

"But the worst part was two days afterwards when they had to go back in and do the body counts of the enemy. He still has nightmares of those two days. That was more traumatic than the battle, looking at the carnage of what the artillery did to the enemy."

Our film is purposely told through the perspective of the Australian and New Zealand men who were thrust unwillingly and unknowingly into a brutal battle and who were severely compromised by an ineffective chain of higher command.

To break the ice, when he introduced a preview screening for veterans Stenders told a joke: "How many Vietnam veterans does it take to change a lightbulb? How would you know? You weren't f—ing there!"

The joke went down well; two hours later, the film had been warmly received too.

"Harry Smith, who has never smiled, was the last one to come out after the credits," Stenders says. "He came over steely-faced, locked eyes with me, shook my hand, smiled and said 'good job'."

The son of another Australian commander came up later with tears in his eyes, Stenders says: "He said 'thank you for making this film because I finally understand who my father is'."

For a moment, you get a sense that he is OK with whatever happens next for Danger Close. Worst case, it might be another Illustrated Family Doctor. Or it could create a new myth about Australia at war like Peter Weir's Gallipoli. Or it may just be an opportunity that leads to another opportunity. But already the film has touched lives.

Travis Fimmel as Major Harry Smith on the set of Danger Close.Credit:Jasin Boland

Coffee arrives. Drawn back from that reverie, Stenders says he wants to keep jumping into different types of projects given how crazily fast the entertainment landscape has been changing.

"It's exciting and terrifying and confusing and confronting," he says. "When I was younger, it was much more linear. You made films, you did this, you did that. Now it's totally up for grabs. You've got to adapt."

But he is looking forward to directing the Steven Bradbury film, which he describes as the inspiring story about what it took for the speed skater to get to the 2002 Winter Olympics before he became the last man standing in the 1000 metre final.

"Making documentaries, making TV, making films, I feel like I'm keeping myself cross fit," Stenders says. "It's like an athlete. You've got to train all these muscles."

Danger Close: The Battle Of Long Tan opens on August 8.

Bill for lunch. Credit:Bartolo

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