Don’t Say No Before You’ve Seen the Bloke: FFC Interviews Bruce Beresford
June 15, 2003|A large man in a rumpled suit with a large clutch of papers and a VHS screener tucked underneath one arm, Bruce Beresford, the Australian director of some of the best films of the past thirty years (and some of the worst films of the last ten), is the model of expansive, self-deprecating charm. An experienced opera director and a member of the Aussie New Wave, which began filling the void in the late-’70s and into the ’80s left by the American cinema succumbing to the call of corporate-fuelled decision-making, Mr. Beresford–whose made-for-cable epic And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself is set to debut in the near future–sat down with me at the 12th Aspen Shortsfest to talk about everything from the topicality of his Breaker Morant to the inexplicability of his Double Jeopardy. I started with the underseen Beresford gem The Fringe Dwellers.