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Director
who knows the drill, by Lauren Martin - 7th August
2004
(Fairfax Digital)
On bad days on set Chris Kennedy is possibly the only
film director who shakes his head and thinks, "Jeez,
I wish I could be back extracting a molar."
The
part-time Five Dock dentist has already packed three
films between fillings - a throat-slasher (Glass),
a dental splasher (This Won't Hurt a Bit, with Greig
Pickhaver/H.G. Nelson), and the award-winning country
and western culture-clasher Doing Time for Patsy Cline.
Now
Kennedy is dashing off to the Montreal Film Festival,
where his next film, a comedy called A Man's Gotta
Do, has been invited to screen in competition. The
festival begins later this month but, with the film
not opening in Australia until November, Kennedy was
back at his practice this week.
"I
do a lot my thinking while I'm drilling," he
said. But since many of his patients are in showbusiness
- "a lot of the big stars," he teases, refusing
to dish the plaque on anybody - it works.
"Britt
Ekland showed me her crown and bridgework once,"
Kennedy laughed dryly. How was it? "Beautifully
done."
Other
producers tell Kennedy to stay tight-lipped about
being a dentist, saying people will not take his films
seriously. But he tells aspiring film-makers they
should have another trade - "plumbing or something"
- to save them living out of the back of a car for
years.
A
few film-makers, according the Screen Producers Association
of Australia, are financed by doctors and dentists
willing to punt on the product and take the tax losses,
but Kennedy says he would be far too shy to ask any
colleagues to be investors.
Still,
his profession has been useful in unexpected ways.
In A Man's Gotta Do the actor John Howard is a fisherman
and sometime standover guy. He has struggling with
his 22-year-old daughter's plan to marry "a sleazebag".
Among the diary-snooping and disappearances that ensue,
somebody ends up with a concrete netball attached
to "their private parts".
The
art crew was coy about this, so Kennedy says he made
the parts out of dental materials. "They looked
great," he laughed.
Better
yet, the actor required for the scene was "very
proud indeed".
And
it did not hurt a bit.
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