Adelaide Advertiser - November 19, 2005
MEET THE AUTHOR: WILLIAM McINNES
A bloke and his shed
BYLINE: SAMELA HARRISE
DITION: 1
SECTION: Magazine
Much to his surprise, actor William McInnes is well into writing his second book. SAMELA HARRIS talks to him about cricket and other hobbies, while he reveals the influence of his father.
MOST men do handy, blokey things in their sheds. Not William McInnes. He goes into his shed to write. "Aren't sheds there to produce things?'' he laughs. "Some men produce useful bits of household furniture and man-type things. I produce rambling books.
''To general acclaim, as it turns out. Suddenly, and to his mild surprise, the actor is being feted at writers' festivals. McInnes does not yet recognise himself in the skin of a writer, but he is busy on his second book, nonetheless. Writing, he says, is a form of release, a diversion after a day on the movie set.
McInnes's first book, A Man's Got to Have a Hobby - Long Summers with My Dad, The Advertiser Big Book Club's November selection, has been reaping good reviews and selling like hot cakes. He accepts its acclaim with modest amusement. He's that sort of a man - the kind of true-blue Aussie people like to describe as having "no tickets on himself''.
"I was never a great lover of scholarly work,'' he says. "I always quite liked writing. I like telling stories. But, did you know what hard work writing is? "It's hard. So hard."
'The star of TV series Blue Heelers, Sea Change, Shark Net and My Brother Jack found himself committed to the lonely art of writing after a guest feature article attracted the attention of publisher Hachette Livre. "We sat down and had a chat and decided to do this book,'' he says. "Now I'm writing another one, about cricket, an erotic thriller set against international cricket.''
He waits for a shock response - and gets one. "It's really about park cricket and the people who play it, drawn on my experiences a lot and some of it made up,'' he amends. "It's not really about erotic cricket - but that does sound exciting. It's only that when I tell people I'm writing a book about cricket, they just stare at me. It's a shame. The Americans have that great tradition of writing about sport, baseball especially. But when we write about cricket with any seriousness, it always seems to end up seeming rather affected.
''A Man's Got to Have a Hobby, a well-written account of the bliss and blundering of boyhood in suburban Queensland in the 1950s and '60s, is peppered with tales in which he is the brunt of his own jokes. After all, he was the boy who published his own death notice in the local paper as a prank. Pity his poor parents. But the book principally is a humorous paeon in praise of his extraordinary father, a man McInnes says was always larger than life, a man who had been through war and seen things a man never should see, but who emerged with a powerfully optimistic spirit. It was he who would reply to most every query on his lifestyle, especially his regularly doomed challenges as a Labor candidate in a safe conservative seat: "Well, a man's got to have a hobby.''
"I think people like the book because I don't take the micky out of anyone,'' McInnes says. "It's a book written by a bloke who likes laughing. It's not nasty. I'm the biggest twerp in there.''
McInnes was the youngest of five children and the last thing his father wanted for him was a career in acting. Hence, when McInnes enrolled at acting school, he told his father he was studying law. "I think Dad was worried that acting was not much of a career for making a living,'' he says. McInnes sympathises with his father's reservations. "I was fortunate to get a good run,'' he says.
A very good run, as it happens. McInnes has been in high demand both on stage and screen. He has just been working in the title role of an ABC telemovie called Stepfather of the Bride, and the film Looking Both Ways, made with his director wife Sarah Watt, has been swamped with AFI award nominations, including one for McInnes as best actor. But an actor's life also contains "resting'' time.
For McInnes, it has become writing time and, when at home in Melbourne with Sarah and his children, Clement, 12, and Stella, 7, fathering time. He does not see in himself much paternal resemblance to his father. "He was a man of his time and I am a man of mine,'' he says. "His time was very violent. Mine hasn't been. He saw some terrible things and he lived in a time which was more bound by ideas of race prejudice, religion and place. Today, it is a lot more amorphous and less ruled by obvious patterns, of service, family first and loyalty to country.
Things have changed a lot. McInnes says he is not much of a reader. "I like skimming, dipping into books, but I take a while to read a book,'' he says. That said, he starts mentioning recent reads - "Bryce Courtenay's book about his mum and his dad. I like Philosophy Made Simple. I like poetry actually. Tom Hughes poems and David Porter. So, well, no, I guess I don't mind reading.
He warms to the subject. "And I love cricket biographies. I love Robert Louis Stevenson, Joseph Conrad, American realists like John Steinbeck, Faulkner, not that he was a realist really. I like Hemingway. And I tell you what, I read Ian Townsend's book. Now that was fantastic. I really liked that book. Really graceful writing. Really interesting, too. A cracker.
And thus does one find a man with not one but several hobbies - perhaps more like his father than he thinks.
William McInnes will be in Adelaide and regional centres from Wednesday, November 23, to Monday, November 28.He will make appearances at Tanunda (phone 8562 1107), Port Lincoln (8688 3622), Cummins (8676 2476), Victor Harbor (8551 0730), The Grainger Studio, Adelaide (8348 2311), Sussex Hotel, Walkerville (8344 7714), Port Noarlunga Arts Centre (8384 0036 or 8384 0655), and Marion Cultural Centre (8375 6855).
A bloke and his shed
BYLINE: SAMELA HARRISE
DITION: 1
SECTION: Magazine
Much to his surprise, actor William McInnes is well into writing his second book. SAMELA HARRIS talks to him about cricket and other hobbies, while he reveals the influence of his father.
MOST men do handy, blokey things in their sheds. Not William McInnes. He goes into his shed to write. "Aren't sheds there to produce things?'' he laughs. "Some men produce useful bits of household furniture and man-type things. I produce rambling books.
''To general acclaim, as it turns out. Suddenly, and to his mild surprise, the actor is being feted at writers' festivals. McInnes does not yet recognise himself in the skin of a writer, but he is busy on his second book, nonetheless. Writing, he says, is a form of release, a diversion after a day on the movie set.
McInnes's first book, A Man's Got to Have a Hobby - Long Summers with My Dad, The Advertiser Big Book Club's November selection, has been reaping good reviews and selling like hot cakes. He accepts its acclaim with modest amusement. He's that sort of a man - the kind of true-blue Aussie people like to describe as having "no tickets on himself''.
"I was never a great lover of scholarly work,'' he says. "I always quite liked writing. I like telling stories. But, did you know what hard work writing is? "It's hard. So hard."
'The star of TV series Blue Heelers, Sea Change, Shark Net and My Brother Jack found himself committed to the lonely art of writing after a guest feature article attracted the attention of publisher Hachette Livre. "We sat down and had a chat and decided to do this book,'' he says. "Now I'm writing another one, about cricket, an erotic thriller set against international cricket.''
He waits for a shock response - and gets one. "It's really about park cricket and the people who play it, drawn on my experiences a lot and some of it made up,'' he amends. "It's not really about erotic cricket - but that does sound exciting. It's only that when I tell people I'm writing a book about cricket, they just stare at me. It's a shame. The Americans have that great tradition of writing about sport, baseball especially. But when we write about cricket with any seriousness, it always seems to end up seeming rather affected.
''A Man's Got to Have a Hobby, a well-written account of the bliss and blundering of boyhood in suburban Queensland in the 1950s and '60s, is peppered with tales in which he is the brunt of his own jokes. After all, he was the boy who published his own death notice in the local paper as a prank. Pity his poor parents. But the book principally is a humorous paeon in praise of his extraordinary father, a man McInnes says was always larger than life, a man who had been through war and seen things a man never should see, but who emerged with a powerfully optimistic spirit. It was he who would reply to most every query on his lifestyle, especially his regularly doomed challenges as a Labor candidate in a safe conservative seat: "Well, a man's got to have a hobby.''
"I think people like the book because I don't take the micky out of anyone,'' McInnes says. "It's a book written by a bloke who likes laughing. It's not nasty. I'm the biggest twerp in there.''
McInnes was the youngest of five children and the last thing his father wanted for him was a career in acting. Hence, when McInnes enrolled at acting school, he told his father he was studying law. "I think Dad was worried that acting was not much of a career for making a living,'' he says. McInnes sympathises with his father's reservations. "I was fortunate to get a good run,'' he says.
A very good run, as it happens. McInnes has been in high demand both on stage and screen. He has just been working in the title role of an ABC telemovie called Stepfather of the Bride, and the film Looking Both Ways, made with his director wife Sarah Watt, has been swamped with AFI award nominations, including one for McInnes as best actor. But an actor's life also contains "resting'' time.
For McInnes, it has become writing time and, when at home in Melbourne with Sarah and his children, Clement, 12, and Stella, 7, fathering time. He does not see in himself much paternal resemblance to his father. "He was a man of his time and I am a man of mine,'' he says. "His time was very violent. Mine hasn't been. He saw some terrible things and he lived in a time which was more bound by ideas of race prejudice, religion and place. Today, it is a lot more amorphous and less ruled by obvious patterns, of service, family first and loyalty to country.
Things have changed a lot. McInnes says he is not much of a reader. "I like skimming, dipping into books, but I take a while to read a book,'' he says. That said, he starts mentioning recent reads - "Bryce Courtenay's book about his mum and his dad. I like Philosophy Made Simple. I like poetry actually. Tom Hughes poems and David Porter. So, well, no, I guess I don't mind reading.
He warms to the subject. "And I love cricket biographies. I love Robert Louis Stevenson, Joseph Conrad, American realists like John Steinbeck, Faulkner, not that he was a realist really. I like Hemingway. And I tell you what, I read Ian Townsend's book. Now that was fantastic. I really liked that book. Really graceful writing. Really interesting, too. A cracker.
And thus does one find a man with not one but several hobbies - perhaps more like his father than he thinks.
William McInnes will be in Adelaide and regional centres from Wednesday, November 23, to Monday, November 28.He will make appearances at Tanunda (phone 8562 1107), Port Lincoln (8688 3622), Cummins (8676 2476), Victor Harbor (8551 0730), The Grainger Studio, Adelaide (8348 2311), Sussex Hotel, Walkerville (8344 7714), Port Noarlunga Arts Centre (8384 0036 or 8384 0655), and Marion Cultural Centre (8375 6855).
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