ABSTRACT
Beyond Alan Finney, who bought the film for Village-Roadshow, few could have predicted the remarkable success of the low-budget comedy movie, The Castle (1997). Having grossed over $10m before the end of its release-year, the film now ranks amongst the top ten Australian films at the domestic box-office. Low expectations had been set in many quarters with news of a film made by people from television with no prior filmmaking experience, a film written in two weeks, shot in 12 days and completed at the tiny cost of just $700,000 – production circumstances barely known since the French New Wave – and with a publicity budget of only $750,000. The creative team, calling themselves Working Dog, consisting of Robert Sitch (director and co-scriptwriter), Jane Kennedy (co-scriptwriter, casting, sound and music), Tom Gleisner (co-scriptwriter) and Santo Cilauro (cinematographer, co-scriptwriter) certainly seemed to lack a track record in cinema. Having achieved huge success with their small-screen spoof on current affairs television, Frontline, the group did most of the filming using their own money and enjoying total artistic control, before Finney saw a rough cut, funded post-production and signed up Working Dog to a three-picture, first-refusal contract.
