I’m getting up scarily early tomorrow to catch a plane, but I couldn’t go to bed without a quick note about this evening. Penny and I and quite a few other people were extras in the film Alex is making as part of his year-long director’s course at AFTRS. That’s the Australian Film Television and Radio School. We spent hours standing around being bored, and minutes sitting in front of the camera – at least I was sitting, pretending to eat disgusting noodles, while Penny had a more upright role, wearing an anti-infection mask. I loved seeing – and being a small part of – the well-oiled machinery of a film shoot in action, and I especially loved seeing the way the two actors, in the midst of so much noise and busyness, managed to make something happen between them. All this happened beneath the roar of the Expressway in Pyrmont, close to the city. I took a number of blurry photos with my phone camera. No time for more – here is Alex with actor Richard Green (of Boxing Day fame), a masked Penny, Alex in a variety of directorial moments (including one with Anna Lise Phillips with an umbrella – did I mention it rained a fair bit? Anna Lise lent me her hoodie), and the disgusting noodles.
-
Join 734 other subscribers
Recent Comments
Top Posts
- About
- Ian McEwan's What We Can Know at the Book Club
- November verse 14: On waking from a dream of a friend
- November verse 4: A turning point?
- Hearts in London, 1
- Niall Williams's Time of the Child and the book group
- The Granddaughter by Bernhard Schlink
- Ann Patchett's Truth and Beauty
- SWF 2019 Sunday Part Two
- The Book Group on David Mitchell's Utopia Avenue
Currently reading & watching- Askew (Andy Jackson 2026)
- Naza (Yuval Abraham & Rachel Szor 2026)
- Carriageworks: David Hockney Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away) (Studio 59, 2023)
- Switzy (Emma Cline 2026)
- Full Circle (Chris Hammer 2026)
- Camelot Lounge: Gershwin & More (Simon Tedeschi & George Washingmachine)
- Nobody Wants This, season 3 (Erin Foster 2026)
- Blue Lights, season 4 (Declan Lawn & Adam Patterson 2026)
- Belvoir: A Room with a View (Grace Chapple 2026)
- In Praise of Shadows (Junichirō Tanizaki 1933, translated by Thomas J. Harper & Edward G. Seidensticker 1976)
Tags
ABC Alison Croggon art Australian Women Writers Challenge children's literature comics David Brooks David Malouf doggerel Eileen Chong Evelyn Araluen First Nations history Jeff Sparrow Jennifer Maiden journals Marcel Proust memoir non-fiction Novel NSWPLA Overland Pam Brown phone photo poetry Quarterly Essay science fiction/fantasy Sydney Writers' Festival Toby Fitch translation-
Recent Posts
- November verse 4: A turning point?
- November verse 3: To a nephew
- November verse 2: Looking
- November verse 1, 2026
- Clive James’s Fire of Joy
- How to End a Story, final report
- Junichirō Tanizaki In Praise of Shadows
- Jo Langdon’s Delivery
- Alison Bechdel, Are You My Mother? at the book group
- Ender Başkan’s Two Hundred Million Musketeers
- Omar Musa’s Fierceland and the Book Club
- Douglas Stuart’s John of John and the Book Club
- How to End a Story, report 5
- Pam Brown’s Guess the Experience
- How to End a Story, report 4
Archives






