Australian Good Taste Article

Look Both Ways Wins Discovery Award

Look Both Ways has won the "Discovery Award" at the Toronto Film Festival. For more information there is an article in the Melbourne Age online. Go to:

Melbourne Age Article

Geelong Advertiser - August 27, 2005

Leading man close at hand
Section: Big Weekend, pg. 044

AWARD-WINNING animator Sarah Watt didn't have to look too far when it came to locating a leading man for her first feature film, Look Both Ways, given that she's married to Blue Heelers and SeaChange star William McInnes.

The way McInnes tells it, though, "she basically wanted me out of the shed, so she wrote me a part I couldn't say no to''.

The role he's talking about is Nick, a newspaper photographer whose life is thrown into chaos when he learns that cancer is spreading through his body. At the same time he receives this unfortunate news, he meets Meryl (Justine Clarke), a young artist unwillingly fixated on the dangerous possibilities surrounding us all -- she can barely walk down the street without imagining a variety of horrible accidents befalling her.

The events that link these two characters make up just one strand of Look Both Ways's multi-faceted storyline, with a wide array of different people finding themselves connected by coincidence and circumstance.

According to McInnes, it all results in "a story about how people let themselves be managed by fear and why they shouldn't be''. And for the rangy, good-humoured actor, who travelled to Geelong earlier this week to promote the film, it's actually a very inspiring
and life-affirming piece of work.

"It's a story about being governed by fear, being inhibited by it, and how easy it is to be disconnected from life,'' he said. "I think Sarah's noticed that a lot in Australian society.

"To be completely honest, the best way to sell something these days is to use fear, as opposed to inspiration. No one tries to inspire any more -- there's the feeling that if you do try to inspire
people, you're either a demagogue or a madman.''

While Look Both Ways may seem a little fearful itself to begin with, McInnes believes that makes the film's pay-off all the greater in the end.

"Nick's just sort of mooching through life, he's quite content in a disconnected way,'' McInnes said. "When he gets the news about this medical situation, his world is turned upside-down. When something like that happens, the cobwebs get blown away and you start to straighten things out.

"In Nick's case -- and in the case of everyone in the film -- that's what happens. In that way, it's actually a very sweet film, life-affirming and all those good things.

"I think it's also an open and accessible film. But I think the reason people have liked it so much is that it's complex as well.

"From the beginning, you've got to accept the fact that we're all going to die. That's happy! But it also says you've got to throw your lot in with life. Otherwise you're just waiting to die."

Being married to the filmmaker offered McInnes the opportunity to be close to Look Both Ways during its development, and he admits "there were times when I read drafts and made a few suggestions, very minor suggestions. During the rehearsal process, everyone was really encouraged to come up with ideas but once that period was over that was it -- you knew what you were supposed to do and you did it. And everyone hooked into that because they liked the
script and they wanted to be part of it.''

Given the subject matter of Look Both Ways, it was a sadly ironic twist that Watt was diagnosed with breast cancer while editing the film.

"You just sort of roll your eyes and say 'I can't believe this!' It was like a really bad joke,'' McInnes said. "She went through chemotherapy while she was doing the final mix of the film.

"She's on another course of treatment now, but she's doing well, as well as can be expected.

"You just don't know with a disease like that, that's the awful thing. But she's living her life, and that's fantastic."

Look Both Ways is in cinemas now.
Copyright 2005 / Geelong Advertiser (Regional Daily)
Source: Geelong Advertiser, AUG 27, 2005Item: 200508271044212647

Adelaide Advertiser August 27, 2005

A sentimental bloke

Edition: 1 - State
Section: Magazine, pg. W20

He watches cricket with his mates and does a good line in self-deprecating humour, but actor William McInnes isn't afraid to show his sensitive side, writes BEN McEACHEN.

THE quintessential Aussie male is not what he once was. Judging by some of the men in our more recent films (Lantana to Three Dollars), the dominance of insensitive louts, distant fathers and stern beer drinkers is diminishing.

Take Look Both Ways, which was shot around Port Adelaide last year and largely financed by the SA Film Corporation and the Adelaide Film Festival's Investment Fund. Not only is it Australia's best adult drama since Lantana - not that the competition has been difficult - but the imaginative "romantic comedy'' about love and death also includes a grown man noticeably panicked by a possible fatal illness.

William McInnes plays a newspaper photographer, Nick, who meets a death-obsessed woman (Justine Clarke) while he has a weekend wait for cancer test results.

As the troubled man who journeys from hidden pain to open angst, McInnes is great. But you would know that if you checked out his best known work, on television series Blue Heelers and SeaChange.

Thing is, you've probably looked past handsome McInnes's sizeable TV and film record. While he's blessed with leading-man looks and charm, McInnes is not as blustery as Russell Crowe, or indie cool as Guy Pearce. He's more chiselled than David Wenham, less theatrical than Geoffrey Rush.

Somewhere between Hugh Jackman and Nathan Phillips (Takeaway, Wolf Creek ) is McInnes, and a more humble, matey Aussie bloke would be hard to find. He would give Jack Thompson a run in the personable stakes.

But McInnes is no superstar and he admits he has struggled to get film work after TV success.

But that should change with the release of Look Both Ways, which has arrived with much hype about it leading the Australian film industry out of the doldrums. On the other hand, McInnes was also in one of those recent "doldrum'' movies, the lame-brained You and Your Stupid Mate.

"I didn't have that much invested in it,'' McInnes kindly admits.

"Oh, you know, it was a particular type of film which was supposed to appeal to a particular audience and people hopped into it a bit. Someone told me David Stratton refused to review it on The Movie Show, so there's a bit of notoriety. You know, it just happens that it didn't work. Some people liked it. . .''

What did he make of it?

"Oh, you know, I enjoyed. . er, it was all right. I'm not going to bag it. Lots of nice people worked on it.''

And as McInnes espouses the talents of his co-stars, Angus Sampson and the aforementioned Phillips, you start to get the idea. McInnes isn't a grandstander or an acting machine calculating every move towards international fame. Even when he mentions that he has tried to get work overseas, his steady self-deprecating humour isn't too far away.

"To be completely honest'' - as if he hadn't been all along - "one thing that irritates me is that I have been offered jobs overseas but other actors get them,'' he says. "Nicole Kidman gets all
my roles. She won an Oscar with a big nose. I've got a big nose - I could have done the role.''

Talking to McInnes about McInnes is to hear a man praise others, easily assess his job, and happily talk about his family and sport. Giving his driver directions to a store so he can pick up a new cricket bat on the way home, McInnes is fired up about the first Ashes test.

I was a bit worried, to tell you the truth,'' he says. ``They put up a fair show, the Poms. But I was so happy with it. "I was sitting with a mate watching it, and they were carrying on
in the first innings, pointing the batsman off to the change rooms and doing windmills.

"I was getting really irritated. I said 'These guys are jokes'. And this mate of mine, he's a Kiwi and a sports photographer, he said 'That's what the Australians have been doing to everyone for
the past 10 years'.''

McInnes is happy to admit that while Look Both Ways - which had its world premiere at the Adelaide Film Festival - has had an overwhelming critical response, there was a dud review somewhere. "Which is good,'' he notes.

"But that night at Adelaide Film Festival, the people really got into it. It's a film that an audience taps in to. It's great to sit in an audience and watch it.''

Look Both Ways is very close to McInnes. His wife, Sarah Watt, wrote and directed it. Which is a big reason why he got the job. But the low-budget corker goes deeper. Watt was diagnosed with breast cancer during the editing of Look Both Ways in early 2004.

"It's sort of an irony, one of those nasty little twists that life chucks up,'' McInnes says, without being dismissive. "But, you know, it's all right. . . It's something that lots of women go through. Worse things happen to people.''

Perhaps, but not many have made a lauded movie which has remarkable echoes of their real life.

In Look Both Ways, Nick struggles to tell anybody about his situation. Watt did a similar thing when she was first told of her condition. "I'd taken the kids up the coast, to have a holiday with them,'' the doting dad says about son Clem, 11, and daughter Stella, 7.

"And she gets diagnosed, which is a really dreadful thing.'' It took Watt several days to tell him, for fear of ruining a perfectly good vacation.

"How long before she told us? A week. I could have killed her,'' says McInnes, loving sadness tinging his humour.

"She didn't want to ruin our holiday. She's got a wide streak of steel to her character. I mean, she comes from pioneer stock. She's ace, I really. . .''

How is she now?

"Yeah, she's OK. Yeah, she's pretty good as far as we know. The doctors are all pretty happy. So touch wood and we'll see how we go. "But just getting on with life, that's the trick. Not being held hostage by it. Which is easy for me to say, but she's really a terrific person to be with.''

McInnes and Watt have experienced a "roller-coaster ride'' in the past 12 months. The sorts of highs and lows which make for, well, a movie.

Or perhaps a book. Which could happen, considering McInnes is now a published author. As fate would have it, the understated and open bloke has a new movie and book launched in the same month. A Man's Got to Have a Hobby is an entertaining memoir about his Queensland childhood in Redcliffe, 40km south of Brisbane.

Well, sort of.

"It's more about what happens when you go back to where you grew up, and some of the stuff you realise that what you thought was pretty stupid, in life it turns out to be the most important stuff.''

With everything on the up and up, McInnes the actor should get another boost when we get to see him alongside Susan Sarandon and Sam Neill in Irresistible, which was recently filmed in Melbourne.

"Basically, I'm just telling Sam Neill where the toilet is in the film,'' McInnes quips.

Describing everybody involved with the project as "nice'', McInnes easily sums up his laid-back approach to acting. "Any job you can walk away from with a nice couple of friends and a funny story is all right, I reckon.''

So that's McInnes's plan? It's that simple?

"I don't have a grand plan,'' he happily admits. "My main ambition now is to get my hands on this cricket bat.''

Cairns Post - Sept 1 2005

See this film, says popular Aussie TV star

Edition: 1
Section: News, pg. 007

EVEN for an actor who shuns the celebrity lifestyle, there comes a time when he must hit the promotional hustings.

And so it was for William McInnes yesterday, visiting Cairns to talk about his latest celluloid vehicle, the much acclaimed Australian movie Look Both Ways.

"You've got to go out and flog it," says the towering Melbourne actor.

"If you don't, people won't go and see it. It's a good film and I want people to see it."

McInnes should have no problems there.

With critics raving, film festivals clamouring and box office tills ringing, the future is looking bright for McInnes, already a household name after roles in Blue Heelers and SeaChange.

Not to mention his wife, award-winning animator and director Sarah Watt, who wrote the role especially for her husband.

"It won't be everyone's cup of tea," says McInnes of the film, which deals with a number of damaged characters whose paths cross during a weekend.

"It's not a smash, bang, shoot 'em up Matthew McConaughy adventure.

"It's a film that asks people to bring a bit of their brain to it and if you do - and open yourself up to it - you get really genuinely moved and affected by it. It's been a while since that's happened
in an Australian film. That's why it's kicking a few goals, I suppose." McInnes has had a crazy few weeks, releasing his debut book - A Man's Got to have a Hobby - shortly before the film.

"It's going well," he said.

"It's about where I grew up, my family, father, mum, neighbourhood and what happens when you go back to where you've grown up."

Look Both Ways is showing at Cairns City Cinemas.
Copyright 2005 / The Cairns Post
Source: Cairns Post, The, SEP 01, 2005Item: 200509011007159683

Northern Territory News - 2-9-05

Deathly role temporarily tames lively larrikin

Section: News, pg. 005

If the new Australian film Look Both Ways is as funny as the actor who stars in it, than everyone will be lining up to watch it.

Aussie actor William McInnes, known for his leading roles in drama series Blue Heelers and Sea Change, arrived in Darwin yesterday to promote the new film, which was released in cinemas last week.

In an interview with the Northern Territory News he was jumping off
the walls and proved to be a real larrikin.

"I've always been the class clown,'' McInnes said.

But he put all the comedy stunts in the closet in his latest acting role, playing a man who is far from being a comedian.

In Look Both Ways, McInnes, 41, plays a photographer who has just recieved devastating news -- he has cancer.

"It's a great movie and I really enjoyed acting in it,'' he said. "It's not your usual storyline -- the whole thing is about not being ruled by fear and death.''

He said there had been lots of positive feedback about the film.

"It's been in the top 10 since it was released last week, which is fantastic.''

Look Both Ways was written and directed by McInnes's wife, Sarah Watt. "It was a bit intense working with her but she was very fair to everyone and only sent me to the naughty corner a few times,'' he joked.

McInnes said he had no plans of chasing a role in the next Hollywood blockbuster but said he was deciding on whether to do some telemovies.

When not being under the spotlight, McInnes loves to just be a father. He has a son Clement, 12, and daughter Stella, who is seven.

He flies out of Darwin today.

Copyright 2005 / Northern Territory News
Source: Northern Territory News (includes Sunday Territorian), SEP 02, 2005Item: 200509021005154713

Book Review - The Mercury (Tasmania) 3-9-05

FUN, TEARS IN ACTOR'S MEMOIRS; WARREN BREWER

The Mercury (Tasmania, Australia) 09-03-2005

FUN, TEARS IN ACTOR'S MEMOIRS
BYLINE: WARREN BREWER
EDITION: 1
SECTION: Weekend

A Man's Got to Have a HobbyBy William McInnesHodder, $32.95

THE phone rang. I managed a gurgling "Hullo''. "What's happening? Are you all right?'' was the concerned reply.

I tried, between gasps and attempts to brush aside my tears of laughter, to explain that I was immersed in yet another hilarious episode in William McInnes's memoirs A Man's Got To Have a Hobby. "Read it to me . . . read it to me'' was the response. The subsequent telephone reading now was more difficult as the visual images of McInnes's decision to replace Boso the fire-eating clown at his son's birthday party were firmly embedded in my imagination. I tried to set the scene. "You see, he didn't want to pay for the clown and thought he could do it himself and do it better.''

I read his account of his comedy of "out of control'' errors culminating in setting his hair on fire and screaming "magic words'' in his wild endeavours to put himself out . . . all to the hysterical delight of the audience. It was a joy to share such hilarity.

Most readers will have enjoyed William McInnes's many television, film and stage performances. They have earned him widespread acclaim. His memorable roles in Sea Change and My Brother Jack won him outstanding actor awards in 2000 and 2004. His gift for comedy, pathos and laconic stoicism also pervades this very special book. Typically he breaks the rules that normally apply to an autobiographical work. Yet his writing has a refreshing spontaneity and liveliness about it. The language is authentically simple and the detail provided creates vivid images. The result is an emotional and entertaining book that he dedicates to his parents, siblings, and the community of Redcliffe, Queensland where he grew up. It was a warm place in both meanings of that term and he mourns the loss for current generations of the security, fun and innocence that he had enjoyed.

His mum and dad were obviously real "characters'' in the colloquial sense, not eccentrics but close. His dad, an overzealous handyman, operated a somewhat disorganised and worn-out tool hire business from home. "Resplendent in singlet, stubbies, long white socks and joggers he bought from Woolies'' he blundered through the heavy maintenance tasks on his equipment with variable success. "Ernie, a fireman who lived up on the corner, said he used to set the clock by my father's screams.''

McInnes's mum stabilised and nurtured the lively and unpredictable household. What obviously held them all together was their deep love for each other and their good humour. Rollicking fun and joy of life pervades this entire narrative. Yet there are moments where he identifies the emergent economic and environmental impacts and voracious business practices that were changing his idyllic community.

Then there are the personal frustrations and deep sorrow he feels when his father suffers and succumbs to Alzheimer's disease and old age takes its toll of his family and friends. It's a passionate, nostalgic, yet uplifting story that will resonate with all Australian families, especially the baby boomer generation of the 1950s and '60s.

Copyright 2005 News Limited. All rights reserved.

Cairns Post - 5th September 2005

Edition: 1
Section: The Word, pg. 023

Is William McInnes the next Rossell Crowe? Just joking!

Man of the moment, actor and author William McInnes tookthe mickey out of The Cairns Post reporter Roz Pulley at his interview last week. The chat was part of McInnes's whirlwind tour of the country in supportof his new film Look Both Ways. When Roz suggested he was about to become the "next Russell Crowe", McInnes threw on his "acting" persona and mimed throwing his phone and throttling Roz.

He then laughingly told the story about when he was at a recent booksigning, and he had to prove he really was an author. Offering to show off his drivers licence, McInnes realised that his friend had written "deluded" across the licence, leaving him ina pickle of explanations.

Look Both Ways was written and directed by McInnes' wife Sarah Watt and is now showing in Cairns cinemas.

Hilarious Radio Interview - Nova 93.7

Have been sent this very funny radio interview with William on Nova 93.7

Not much actually gets discussed, they're too busy being silly, but I got a great laugh out of it. It's under the "August" section. Go to:

Nova 93.7 Interview

Article: The Australian

The Australian
September 14, 2005

Brisbane Writers Festival

William will be involved in the Brisbane Writer's Festival again this year, which runs from 29th September to 2nd of October.

For more information go to:

www.brisbanewritersfestival.com.au

Info Page - Look Both Ways

A detailed information page about "Look Both Ways" with some stills from the movie:

Click Here

At Beaumaris Books

Photos and info about William's recent appearance at Beaumaris Books.

Click Here

Snippet - Australian Newspaper

August 31, 2005

Errors in the dark

BAD lighting can play havoc with an arts minister's performance. Just ask Victoria's Mary Delahunty, who threw away her notes when poor lighting made it hard to read at the launch of a new arts website this week. Alas, the noteless Delahunty then introduced actor William McInnes as William Innes, referred to arts company Urban Dream Capsule as Urban Dream and Time Capsule, and called the Red Stitch Actors' Theatre, Red Sitch. McInnes says it was not his first identity crisis. Some Brisbanites had been convinced he was fellow actor David Wenham, Sydneysiders had believed he had once played football for Australia, and South Africans had also decided he was a footballer: former Wallaby rugby union player Troy Coker. Delahunty bowed out apologetically.

Source

Book Review - A Man's Got to Have a Hobby

Star News Group

This made me laugh as his character Max Connors from SeaChange is mentioned as being a "guinea pig farmer"... methinks William has been pulling someone's leg!

More Reviews - Look Both Ways

Weekend Australian 18th August 2005

The Mercury 18th August 2005 (Tasmania)

Who Weekly 17th August 2005

Cinephilia