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One of the emerging trends in movie theatres seems to be the professional production of recordings of theatrical Productions. One of the latest productions to be filmed for cinematic release is the Australian musical biopic of Johnny O’Keefe, ‘SHOUT! The Legend of the Wild One’. Starring as Johnny O’Keefe is Tim Campbell – the long time star of stage and screen otherwise known as Mr Anthony Callea. Zoe Carter caught up with Tim to find out more about his brush with the Wild One …
[Johnny O’Keefe] was a pretty amazing role. I kinda felt a little ashamed that I didn’t know more about his life and his story before I did it because he was such a pioneer in rock’n’roll in Australia. Back in the late 1950’s when he kind of branched out it was a bit taboo for an Aussie artist to be considered a star and to be considered good at music. We take the piss out of ourselves, but he kind of broke through that and eventually people loved seeing him alongside of the Buddy Hollies and all the big overseas acts. And then he kind of took his music overseas as well so he broke down a few walls as far as being big Aussie acts in Australia and then Aussie acts taking their music world wide.
Between that it was a bit of an amazing story he had anyhow. Talking to people who had worked with or experienced Johnny O’keefe at the time was the best research I could do. They all had great stories about what he was like on and off stage and just the kind of heart that he had, and sometimes the bastard that he was and everything else. Even just as an actor it was a great role to research and play because it wasn’t a black and white story that’s for sure.
I knew some of his songs, but I didn’t grow up idolizing him and so I didn’t want to imitate him and mimic him and try and be him…first of all the height was an issue because I’m six foot two and he was probably three foot nothing so I thought, ‘we’re buggered in trying to look like him’. But I just wanted to get the flavour and the essence of him into the role
Nothing beats going to the theatre obviously, but it’s kind of a really good second way of seeing a show… It’s a good way of seeing a really good taped show with great audio. They recorded it in 5.1 and they spent a bit of time because audio’s really important in this…
Theatre prices are going up a bit, I guess like everything else is, but it’s a good chance if you like theatre, or a better chance if you like of rock n roll, J.O.K music and all that kind of thing. Even if you’re scared of going to musicals – because some people when you say musical think ‘Weird arty farty stuff I won’t be doing that!’ – maybe this is a nice introduction to what musicals are like…
Hopefully it will open up for people who don’t see musicals or poor Perth people who have to spend thousands of dollars flying to the east coast to see a show!
SHOUT! The legend of the Wild One is screening at Ace Cinemas Subiaco and Midland from the 6-12 of November.
Zoe Carter
