STACK New Zealand December Issue 69

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Michael Caton, best known for his roles in
films likeThe Castle, leapt at the chance to
take on a darker role in Last CabTo Darwin.
But he tells John Ferguson there were some
drawbacks as well.
I n person, Michael Caton is as laid back
and likable as many of the characters
he has portrayed on screen. And that’s
perhaps why more darker roles, like his latest in
the drama Last Cab to Darwin, don’t come his
way as regularly as he would like them to.
“I love roles like this but they don’t get
offered to me a lot,” he agrees. “I seem to have
created some sort of archetype and that’s what
I get cast as. So to do something like this, to
me was a treat. I really love characters that
play both sides of the line – they’re the best
characters to play. I have met a lot of actors
who play a lead and they want to have the
white hat on all the time. I’ve never been
like that.”
In Last Cab to Darwin, as he acknowledges,
his character Rex, a cabbie from Broken Hill, is
a bit dour and something of a loner. So when
he discovers that he has terminal cancer, he
keeps the news to himself and sets off to
the Northern Territory, hoping to make use of
controversial new euthanasia legislation that
has just been introduced. However, while
driving across the outback, he reluctantly
acquires some travelling companions in the
shape of a carefree Aboriginal young man
named Tilly (Mark Cole Smith) and Julie, a
former English nurse (Emma Hamilton) who has
been working in a pub.
Caton was aware of Reg Cribbs’s play, on
which the film is based, but admits he hadn’t
seen it on stage. However, Cribbs and director
Jeremy Sims’s script made an immediate
impression on him, particularly when he
participated in a live read-through in front of an
audience at the Dungog Film Festival.
“I think it was Jeremy sussing me out,”
Caton jokes. “We reduced the audience to tears
but unfortunately I also reduced myself to tears!
It was probably not the thing to do, but it did go
down well.”
Although he was the only actor from that
read-through who actually ended up in the
film, Caton is full of praise for his supporting
players, who include both familiar faces like
Jacki Weaver (“we probably wouldn’t have got
the film up without her”), David Field and John
Howard, and some talented younger co-stars.
“The casting was really special I thought,”
Caton enthuses. “Young Mark Coles Smith…
what a great talent. Tilly is nothing like Mark,
he’s a very sophisticated young actor. But
Mark arrived at Oodnadatta 10 days before
and picked up the local lingo and patois and as
far as the kids were concerned, he was Tilly.
And then you had Emma Hamilton, who was
actually Australian but who has never worked
in Australia before. She couldn’t get into any of
the acting schools here so she went to
RADA. We fell madly in love during
the shoot – we had a wonderful
affair without the sex! She’s
become a really great friend.”
According to Caton, the other key character
in Last Cab is the Australian landscape itself,
in particular the sleepy outback communities
rarely depicted in local movies. He says
they had to fight hard to shoot on location in
places such as Oodnadatta and Daly Waters,
which meant they had to work to quite a tight
budget. But the welcome they received in
these isolated townships, not to mention the
locals’ involvement in the film itself, made it
worthwhile. “The population of Oodnadatta is
140 and I think 120 of them are in the movie,”
he notes drily.
But while he enjoyed filming in Australia’s
smaller communities, he says life on the road
wasn’t always easy during the shoot. “I had the
marvelous idea that I would have a little motor
home, so I would have a bit of continuity,” he
recalls ruefully. “It was full of lots of sharp
angles – you had to go outside to change your
mind. The only good thing about it was that the
motor home couldn’t really be where everybody
else was, which meant I was a bit isolated,
which was good; it sort of reinforced that
loneliness.”
Of course, as well as being a road movie,
Last Cab to Darwin also addresses the serious
issue of euthanasia. Caton believes that one of
the reasons that the film has resonated so well
with audiences is that it looks at both sides of
the debate – and he is unsure what he would
do if he found himself in the same position
as Rex.
“I’m all for really having the conversation
nd I think people should be allowed to use
euthanasia if that’s what they so desire,”
he says. “But at the same time, don’t
underestimate the human spirit.”
I really love characters
that play both sides of
the line – they're the best
characters to play
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SERENITY?
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18 DECEMBER 2015