STACK #122 Dec 2015

DVD&BD

FEATURE

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Angus Sampson and co-director Riley Stearns

they would often say, ‘OK, look. I know you’re telling me you want this to be achieved from this scene, but it’s not currently there.’ Noni [Hazlehurst, who plays Ray’s mother] would do that,” he says warmly. “Hugo said, ‘How are they passing the time out there?’”, referring to the two detectives who are simply sitting and waiting with Ray in the hotel. “I thought, good question. Hugo said, ‘Maybe they’re playing chess,’ and I went ‘What about Jenga! Jenga! It could be like a house, you know, and one false move and it all goes wrong,’” Sampson yammers like an eager puppy, laughing at himself. “And Hugo’s like, ‘Yeah, maybe chess.’” The reason Sampson was so charged about the symbolism of Jenga (and chess) is that there are numerous little keys dropped throughout the film as to where the narrative might be turning, and Sampson questions me on which ones I picked up. “It might only be someone that watches the film 20 times, that they might pick up that connection,” he says of one of the cues. (Keep your eyes peeled.) It’s difficult not to imagine anyone involved in this film becoming hyper aware of their body – Ray’s physique is analysed by the camera, he’s often in pain, and there are several shots of the inside of his body as his heroin-filled gut tries to disgorge itself. Sampson has some fascinating remarks about how he thought of these physicalities, as well as what a mule (the animal) is really like. “Egotistically, I might normally go, ‘I’m doing four months of training and I’m getting my chest waxed and I only want to film from the left side with lighting no higher than 2K’,” he rattles off. “But Ray needs to have thick skin; [a mule is] a bit wonky, wobbly, they have a tough hide. [Ray is] a bit of a pack horse. So if you look closely, I tried to play him with rounded shoulders, like he’s got stuff on his back.” One thing the actor was not interested in during filming, however, was getting too much detail from the prop guys. Needless to say, there is some faecal matter in the movie – but Sampson has no idea what it was made of. “I didn’t want to know,” he says, “because if they said to me, ‘It’s just a bit of peanut butter,’ then that’s all you’re thinking.” An extremely commendable proximity to method acting, in this instance.

Aussie director/actor/writer/menschAngus Sampson has released his engrossing and smart new comedy THE MULE , and spoke about it to an enraptured Zoë Radas. O n the surface, it’s a simple story: A first time drug mule is captured at the airport coming home to Melbourne from mean, I don’t drink cognac but it’s like rolling a lovely cognac around the palate.”

Sampson and Whannell clearly had a lark of a time penning the script, which is set in the 1980s and really takes advantage of that old school Australian knack for phrasing. “I know this bloke in Victoria who’s a great man, and one time we went to have dinner at an Italian restaurant in [fancy Melbourne suburb] Toorak, when we were 20 or something,” Sampson recalls. “It was a BYO place. We were sitting at a table, and he came in and pulled out this box, and put the box on the table, and pulled out two bottles of Bundaberg rum and a two-litre bottle of Coke. And our faces just dropped,” he sniggers. “And he says, ‘Well, we’re not here to f*ck spiders.’ And I’d never heard anyone say that before.” That line became one of the gems that Sampson included in his last collaborative effort with Whannell, the horror comedy 100 Bloody Acres (2012). It’s clear that Sampson hugely valued the input of his players. “The entire cast is so clever, so clever,” he says, giving several examples of their suggestions. “They’re wonderfully smart humans and they’re wonderfully interested in society – so

Thailand; he’s shut up in a dingy hotel by the police, where they wait for him pass the heroin they’re sure he’s swallowed. They figure the seven days they are legally allowed to detain him will be more than enough time for the mule’s body to do its natural thing. But within the ply of new Australian comedy/drama The Mule , there’s so much more going on. Written by Angus Sampson, Leigh Whannell (the man responsible for the Saw franchise) and Jaime Browne, and with co-direction by Sampson, there was a very collaborative spirit to begin with. Sampson – who plays the hapless mule, Ray Jenkins – took great delight in having the lines he’d written with Whannell delivered by the impressive cast. “I tell you, there’s nothing greater than seeing or hearing an actor and a performer of the calibre of Hugo Weaving reciting these lines: ‘You are this close to getting run over, spoofbag,’” Sampson mimics, perfectly adopting the ragged, slithering tone of Weaving’s cop character, who’s been tasked with guarding the mule while waiting for his body to process the drugs. “I

The entire cast is so clever

• The Mule is out on DVD and Blu-ray on Dec 3 – only at JB Hi-Fi

Angus Sampson as Ray Jenkins, ‘The Mule’.

DECEMBER 2014 JB Hi-Fi www.jbhifi.com.au

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