Video of William Discussing His Book

Click Here to view Video

Australian filmmakers get ready to roar in Rotterdam

The 35th edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam has announced that three Australian films will screen at the prestigious festival that kicks off the European festival calendar.

The award-winning feature films Look Both Ways, written and directed by Sarah Watt will screen in the Sturm und Dang section of the festival.

The International Film Festival Rotterdam runs from January 25th — 5 February 2006.

Article - Melbourne Age - January 17th, 2006

Click here for article. Contains photo of William.

Article - The Australian - January 2nd - 2006

Courting in the cloisters with the aid of Fraser and Border - THE SUMMER I FELL IN LOVE

Edition: 1 - All-round Country

Section: Features, pg. 013

I SAW her by the most expensive perfume counter. We had been shopping for a present for Nanna. That meant I had been chasing my daughter in and around the perfume counters of one of those nice, quiet department stores that drift off every mall in every large city
in Australia. The ones where everybody smiles and everybody wears black and white.

My seven-year-old daughter loved running through the wide spaces of the department store, especially the perfume counters, because, as she loved to sing, "That's where all the funny mirrors are.''

She would run this way and that, poking her tongue out and blowing her cheeks and scrunching her face up when the smiling store staff would proffer a perfume-drenched card or tester spray to her.

"Not here for the smelly stuff, here for the funny mirrors,'' she would say.

I was about to try to shush her for the 10th time when I saw her.

Yes, it was her. She turned her wrist over in a slow, practised way and sprayed some perfume on her hand.

My daughter made a face. She looked at my daughter for a moment and slowly raised her hand to her face. Her eyes never left my daughter.

She tilted her head and ... I stared and I knew somehow what would come next. Those green eyes would narrow.

The first time I saw her was nearly 23 years ago outside a student union office. She stood by a small card table that was covered with ordered lines of pamphlets. I was with a mate on our way to the students' club for a beer. I had often walked this way with various mates with the intention of having a beer. I had often passed the card table covered with multicoloured pamphlets. But usually there was a small, odd-looking man whom I knew slightly from an
elective humanities tutorial. Garth.

I found this slightly amusing because Garth was a name that seemed completely unsuited to him. He spat a bit when he spoke, which was quite often and with great excitement in a high, torn sort of voice. Frankly, he looked emaciated and half mad. Garth.

The table belonged to the International Socialists, and even though I came from a Labor Party family I never could bring myself to flip through the colours on the card table. Garth wouldn't help matters when I tried a blokey nod-of-the-head
greeting. "Not interested in the truth? Not surprising.''

"Wanker,'' my mates would reply.

Today there was no Garth. She stood in the afternoon light which was streaming through the walkway and with a fluorescent light shining above her. She looked like she had stepped from another planet.

I stopped and stared. It was her attitude as much as anything else. She stood to be counted, almost daring people to laugh, to mock. Funnily enough nobody did.

For some reason I thought of the woman on the banks of the river from Heart of Darkness. The way she stood staring after the boat that was carrying Kurtz away. Standing there with her arms outstretched.

F---, I thought, I haven't even had a beer yet and I'm thinking about stuff I've read in a humanities elective. This could be serious.

She was holding out a light blue pamphlet. In that light it matched her green eyes beautifully. I didn't know what to look at, her eyes or the pamphlet. I looked at both.

I stared into those green eyes and then looked at the face of Malcolm Fraser. I wasn't sure if I was in love but I knew that if looked back at the eyes and gave up on Malcolm Fraser, I might find out.

There are moments in your life when attitude and atmosphere and something in the universe all collide, and something in your brain tells you "this is it''; well, you must also remember that your brain can sometimes bullshit you.

I could have said something really witty and clever. Instead I came up with, "Where's Garth?''

She looked at me with her green eyes.

"Garth's running late. I'm filling in.''

"Need a hand?'' I asked.

My mate snorted "Get real'' and walked off to the students' club shaking his head.

"Are you interested?'' she asked.

I had only the pamphlets to go on and I hadn't really read them. I knew Malcolm Fraser was involved somewhere. "I've always had time for Malcolm Fraser.''

"Malcolm Fraser?'' Her green eyes narrowed. "Yes.'' I stared and had no idea what to say. She nodded and we stood together handing bits of paper that lionised senator George Georges and demonised poor old Malcolm and Maggie and Ronnie and just about everyone else. I shuffled through the pieces of paper; a purple pamphlet had a photo of Salvador Allende on it.

"I admire him so much, he was a brave man.''

"Yeah,'' I said. Even I knew who Allende was, and he was a brave man. She looked at me and weighed me up; I looked at her and was completely swallowed.

"Who do you admire?'' she asked.

Sadly I heard a voice and knew it was my own.

"Who do you admire?'' she asked again.

"Allan Border,'' I said, staring into her eyes.

She looked at me and then smiled. But not at me. Garth had turned up. He came over to the card table, bent down and kissed her.

"Come on, Gwen,'' he said.

What was worse was that she kissed him. And her name was Gwen. "Do you mind manning the stall, brother? We're a bit late for a Green meeting. New party,'' Garth rasped.

I didn't do anything much as I watched Garth and Gwen walk away, although I could have sworn that, as I sat there in my brother's rugby jersey at the card table surrounded by political paraphernalia and propaganda, Malcolm Fraser gazed up at me in the half light
with certain understanding.

"You, mate,'' I said as I held him in my hand. "You seem to understand a broken heart.''

I packed up the card table, popped the pamphlets in a bag and left them by the door of the students' club.

I never saw Gwen again until that afternoon in the department store.

Around her neck and wrists, she wore jewellery that would be the sum of mortgages to lots of people. She was dressed in a white suit, her hair lashed back in a bun.

I called to my daughter, who ran over and held my hand. "I don't like the smelly stuff,'' she said.

"I know,'' I said.

Gwen, in white and jewels, wrinkled her nose, shook her head, turned away from the counter and walked out of the store.

I laughed. "Allan Border,'' I said, and laughed even louder.

Article - Sydney Morning Herald - 14 January 2006

A golden moment in a busy checkout lane

By William McInnes January 14, 2006

HE WAS a young man, aged no more than his late teens. He looked a little nervous, his hands running through the pockets of his tracksuit pants and then darting up and scratching his nose, before roaming through his long hair and then back down to fidget in his pockets again. Three sets of eyes, of suspicious eyes, looked at him. He didn't have the money to pay.

We were in the checkout line at the local supermarket and it was late and we'd been standing there for what seemed like an eternity, there in the express lane while an old lady had counted out her money and questioned the total. The young woman at the checkout had chewed a bit on her gum and then gone through the receipt explaining the items to the old lady.

We had all waited. We looked around at the other checkouts but they were all closed. We were stuck here. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting as the young woman at the checkout slowly went through the old lady's list. "You've got your no-name shampoo, you got your no-name bacon, you've got butter," on it went. It sounded like some chant, some incantation, almost hypnotic in its monotony.

I thought of all the times in my life I'd spent waiting in checkout lines. All those hours, standing, shuffling forward, flipping through the junk magazines, wondering whether I should take a punt and change lanes. I've seen men and women jump from one lane to another like deranged drivers in rush hour. I've seen queue rage where somebody has cut off somebody else's trolley just as they career over to that little lane to freedom. The checkout. All those hours of life. I can remember as a little boy sitting in the trolley pushed by my mother and hearing the ringing bells of the old cash register. It was a happy sound. Mum would know the women in the shop and they would pass the time of day. I'd look forward to that sound because I knew the chances of scoring one of those lollipops placed just by the cash register were pretty good if mum felt in the right mood.

These days the checkouts have got more bribes and enticements for children daubed around them than decorations on a Christmas tree. It is an amazingly bald-faced piece of consumer temptation. Have supermarkets no shame?

When my children reach out for some sweet little delight I hear the words my mum would say to me as I reached for one of those lollipops by the cheery cash registers of my youth. They echo to me and I hear myself saying, "Put it back, it's not for you. PutitBack!"

I hear the chant again. "You've got no-name sugar. You've got condensed milk. You've got wine gums."

Wine gums. The old lady looked at the young woman at the register. "They're a treat for my hubby. He likes them of a night." The old lady looked back at the rest of the receipt. The woman at the cash register suggested the old lady might like to take something back. She looked at the receipt for a long time. She picked up the wine gums. "You can keep these, they're just a treat." She gently dropped them on the checkout.

The man in front of me in the checkout line humphed a little bit and said, "At last!" Under his breath. He started piling up his shopping. The young kid with the long greasy hair and tracksuit pants stood in front of him and put his loaf of no-name bread on the checkout. The man in front of me grasped a rectangular piece of metal and banged it on the checkout to separate his shopping from the loaf of white bread. He did it like some border guard banging down a gate on some godforsaken frontier.

The woman behind the checkout welcomed the young man to the front of the queue with that particular tone that people who work long hours at checkouts have. "How are you today?" No reply is expected; it doesn't even sound like a question.

That's when the young man in the tracksuit started looking nervous. That's when me and the border guard and the woman at the checkout all thought: "He doesn't have the money to pay." The young man asked how much the bread cost. The border guard clicked his teeth and looked at me. "Well, reeeeeeeally," he said. Now, in the language of the checkout lane, the words "Well, reeeeeeeally" are pretty strong stuff. The border guard went further."Some people!"

Some people. Yes, some people just don't care how long they hold people up. The woman at the register punched up the price, and told the young man with the greasy hair. He pulled out some small silver coins and counted them. He winced. He looked back at me and the border guard. He laughed and simply said: "Don't have enough, but I do have enough."

He gave the bread back to the checkout woman. Instead he picked up the wine gums the old lady had discarded and counted out the money for them. He didn't wait for the register's receipt. He was in a hurry. He scratched his way quickly through the doors of the supermarket and we could all see him through the big glass windows.

He ran up to the old lady and stopped in front of her; she looked like she got a bit of a fright. The young man put his hand on her arm softly and then with his other hand nervously gave the old lady a small round tin. The wine gums shone in the bright lights outside the supermarket. Shone gold.

The old lady stood still for a moment and then smiled. She went to say something but the young man with the long hair smiled, shook his head and wandered off.

She looked down at the tin of wine gums. Her husband liked them of a night.

The border guard sniffed a little bit and said quietly: "Well, really."

The woman at the cash register welcomed him and smiled. "Yeah, some people. How are you today."

Blue Heelers Axed

Click here for article. William McInnes mentioned.

William McInnes Article - Sydney Morning Herald

Hope springs eternal

By William McInnes
January 7, 2006

WHEN I finished primary school it didn't really mean that much. There was no big finale, no big moment; it was simply the end of little school. I got a well-meant but absent-minded handshake from a teacher I really liked and then I walked out the gates, and that was that.
These days the end of primary school seems to have taken on a sense of occasion that passes me by.

Now, I don't know, but a friend said to me it was because things were getting a little bit too precious. We want to make things matter more than they should, everything has to be marked, everyone has to have an occasion, an event. And he said it was because the parents wanted it more than the children. Perhaps this is a bad thing because kids will think every moment in their life should be a party or, as my friend likes to say, "a Moment". My friend, by the way, is a teacher who has no children.

Well there you are. And maybe he has a point. But I can't help it if I get a bit involved in that well-meaning, distant way that sentimental parents do. Perhaps it's because I don't have enough to do, but my son is finishing primary school and I'm feeling something in the air.
The school he goes to tells us by way of the weekly newsletter that my son and his classmates are graduating. It sounds vaguely American and makes me feel a little odd about the whole thing. But then, as I tell my friend, the childless teacher, something kicks in. My son is growing up, and he is finishing primary school.

He's growing up. I remember the first day he went to this school. He seemed so little. I was away working on a television show. I stood on a beach with my hair dyed and my fake tan on and I spoke to my little boy as he was about to leave home to go to school for the first day.
The wind blows hard on those southern beaches and I couldn't hear him, so I told him to speak up, he had to shout. So I heard my son's little voice shriek from my mobile phone. "Daddy, what if they laugh at me?"

His made-up father told him not to worry, that of course nobody was going to laugh at him. He yelled that he'd find out and that he loved me.

I remember that as if it was yesterday. Maybe my friend is right; maybe we parents want our children's passage through life to matter in a tangible way to make us feel better.
But I think to myself: so what?

I have lived through that school with him. I have walked the route to school with him, past all those landmarks he knows so well: Ivan's discount hairdressing, the upholsterer's that is always devoid of people but chock-full of chairs in various states of undress. The fruit and veg shop where our dog peed on the old onions outside, which has created a deep suspicion of that vegetable in my son's eyes. The various lollipop people who have morphed into different shapes over those seven years: Strange little Spiro who would blow his whistle at anything, and looked and sounded like one of those funny claymation figures that used to come on for five minutes on the ABC on Sunday nights before the news. Big Peter the Greek, with his booming voice and his laugh. Little Julie, who has been there in all sorts of weather and always with a smile.

How big a change is it for my son to walk that route one more time, the last time before he finishes?

I don't know. I ask him and he shrugs his shoulders the way young boys do.

What will he miss about the school, I ask him. He looks at me. He looks away and smiles.
I ask him again.

"The faces of the people and the voices of the school. The way the birds sing in the arvo before the bell goes and the smell of the canteen. And the oval. I'll miss the oval."

He smiles again and goes about his business. And then says: "I'll miss the national anthem on a Monday."

I let that one go, and I remember many things about that school but two things in particular.
On an excursion to an IMAX cinema to see a film about giant kelp, of all things, I was positioned on the end of a row to aid any little ones who had to dart off to the toilet in the dark.

Nobody came. I looked away from the screen and its 3-D seaweed to see the sight of little people with their funny 3-D glasses all sitting in their seats with their little arms outstretched and their little fingers wiggling in the hope of touching the fish that swam around the weed on the big screen. They were open-mouthed and smiling.

It was them trying to touch something they knew wasn't real, wasn't there, but they would still try. It was beautiful to see that endeavour and somehow it said a lot about our hope and optimism through life.

And my boy's words about the national anthem. At this school the national song is played every Monday and I have seen it sung many times. I have seen how those children sing it hand in hand together. White children, black children, yellow children. Some are Anglos, some are Muslim, and some are indigenous, some of Asian heritage. Yet as they sing that song of ours, that song so often tarted up for no good reason at football games and the like, they sing a song that speaks to anyone with eyes to see and heart to be filled. They sing, these children, and they walk together hand in hand, a rainbow of colours really, a little group of Australians.

It sounds beautiful and I rejoice that such a country can create such a marvel.

It may just be that I'm overly sentimental; it may just be that I want it to be something more important than it is. But I think my son and his classmates and their soon-to-be-old school have given something to me and to the other parents and to our country: hope.

New Book to be Released August 2006

Happy New Year!

Just found news of William's new book to be released in August 2006. The following snippets:

Melbourne Age: actor William McInnes, who follows his memoir with a suburban novel, Cricket Kings (Hodder, August).

The Australian: William McInnes's dissection of middle-aged suburban cricketers in Cricket Kings (Hodder, August).

Looks like another good laugh coming up in August! Watch this space for more information.