FROM THE DIRECTOR ROWAN WOODS
"I've been to hell and back. Now show me the dream life."  "I must not be dragged down again." "I hope. I hope."
Like many of the boat people who populate her bustling Asian suburb, Tracy Heart and her single mother Janelle possess an indomitable streak, clawing for the future, running from the spectre of the past.
This is the story of a suburban Australian family who very nearly fall down.
In a way, Tracy Heart's situation is an amped up version of a universally understood gen x dilemma. You hit thirty, imagining a rosy future panning out before you. But the clouds roll in and the pursuit of happiness becomes hexed by who you are and where you came from. 
Tracy plight is heightened by the dangers of criminal association. It is an edge-of-the-seat ride, but Little Fish is not a crime film. The tension of the story comes from the struggles of the heart.
The themes of this unusual love story have shifted the tone of Little Fish away from the dark hues of my debut feature, The Boys.  At times, Little Fish is scarily real, but the outcome of this story is one of hope.
I am inspired by movies with distinctive directorial signatures that boldly underscore the writing. To Kill A Mockingbird, The Graduate, Midnight Cowboy, Family Life, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Breaking the Waves, Together, Morvern Caller, City of God, Donnie Darko and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Movies from screenplays that create a Shakespearian universe with ordinary people thrust into extraordinary circumstances. Where the veracity of the struggle is palpable in the stalls.
Little Fish has added significance for me as it continues my fascination with Sydney stories. It is the logical extension of previous projects (Tran The Man and The Boys), whose characters had been rigorously researched and drawn within a story that reached for a mythic dimension.

TRACY'S WORLD
Jacquelin Perske wrote the screenplay.

Perske: A big inspiration when writing Tracy's world was a desire to see a suburban girl having a life Shakespearian. The idea that a supposed nobody from nowhere, has a life that is full and tragic and glorious. That a suburban girl, Tracy Heart, could have a hero's life.
Woods: During the waves of Asian immigration into Australia before and after the fall of Saigon, my parents were teachers of English as a Second Language (ESL). From an early age we had close family friends in the Vietnamese, Cambodian, Thai and Laotian communities as they settled into their new Australian home in the western suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne. Several of my earlier films have been set in the surrounding Sydney suburbs. In 1994, Tran the Man, my graduating film from Aftrs, starring David Wenham, was set in the heart of Cabramatta. And in 1998 my first feature, The Boys, was set a couple of suburbs down the train line in Auburn.

When Cate Blanchett first read the Little Fish screenplay she was taken by the fact that she hadn't seen these characters onscreen before.
Blanchett: These characters, who've had exciting hopeful dreams in their twenties, have had those dreams dashed on the rocks and they are forced to re-apprentice themselves to their parents. They're desperately trying to work out who they are in their thirties. And that's a whole side of society… deeply uncool, unfashionable people who rarely get represented in cinema… that's what I found fascinating about the world of Little Fish.
Woods: One of the aspects of Tracy's suburban world that hooked me in was the melding of the Australian/European psyche with an Asian psyche. In this part of Sydney, people don't have any paranoias about the multi-cultural mix in their suburban community because that's the way it is. In Cabramatta, it's been like that for half a lifetime. The folks who couldn't hack the racial divide, have left. In Little Fish Tracy and her mother have stayed.  But there are scars from the past that prevent them from getting on with their lives. So for me, the story is about arrested development… not just within our character story, but within the broader Australian community where the acquisition of wealth and real estate as an 'aspirational' goal doesn't necessarily deliver the happy future that it's supposed to.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE SCRIPT
Woods met screenwriter Jacquelin Perske at the Australian Film and Television School (AFTRS) in the early 90s. Perske has since written for several hit TV series and most recently created, wrote and co-produced Love My Way, the acclaimed Foxtel drama series, which is the first non-network drama to win a Logie (Best Drama, 2005).
After graduating from film school in 1994 Rowan Woods wrote a rough outline of a story that continued on with the Cabramatta subject matter of his graduating film.  This outline was picked up by Screenwriter Jacquelin Perske who developed the project with Vincent Sheehan for 4 years with some development funds from the NSW Film and Television Office.

Sheehan: When I first read the screenplay in 1998, I was immediately drawn in by the voice and the spirit of the character Tracy, which was music to Jacquelin's ears.  So from that moment on, Tracy's journey became the core of the story; a woman struggling to find happiness. Someone in her 30s with a difficult past where she almost destroyed herself. She's had to pull herself back from the brink.  That's always been the basis of Tracy's journey.
In 2001 Perske and Sheehan presented the project to Rowan to direct.
Woods: The draft that Vincent and Jacquelin first showed me was totally different to the crappy outline I had written years before. It was a really honest, peculiarly Sydney story with a mythic Shakespearean bent. What shone for me was this original take on a gen x female struggle… a most unusual love story. And it was very confronting to admit that this was the movie I wanted to put ahead of several other projects because the writer was my wife.
Sheehan: And then Rowan came on board and pushed the screenplay into a different genre busting place.
Woods: I do have some serious concerns about the standard of screenplays by writer-directors. It's a bug-bear of mine. I prefer to work with dedicated writers like Jacquelin Perske and Stephen Sewell (THE BOYS), who have properly developed their craft in a way that I haven't. Jacquelin is a very precise writer who has a keen and unusual connection to her culture. She has an excellent ear for dialogue without being a slave to naturalism like many of her TV contemporaries. She's an avid cinephile with an impressive understanding of genre and genre bending forms in contemporary cinema, so we have a shorthand when we work.
Perske: I'm always juggling projects. With Little Fish "I never thought, "give it up", or "that's it, I'm never going to work on it again", but I'd often put it aside. It was always this fantastic puzzle that wouldn't quite fit... I just kept working on the puzzle. It always held great curiosity for me.
Soon after Rowan Woods came aboard as director, Little Fish was selected into the inaugural Aurora script development program, an intensive script workshop funded by the NSW Film and Television Office. The program gave the team access to high calibre international advisors - producer Jan Chapman, Academy Award winning writer Rob Festinger (In The Bedroom) and US producer Geoff Stier. Coming off Aurora, the project entered a final intensive period of writing.
Perske: Everyone Rowan works with is pushed out of their comfort zone.  He does it with his own work.  He's never rude about it, but it can be very confronting if you're not used to such robust analysis, or it can be liberating if you are prepared to be driven to go further, go harder, go higher. 

In early 2003 Little Fish the screenplay was sent to Cate Blanchett for the role of Tracy Heart. 

Sheehan: For several years, Rowan and Cate had been sounding out the possibility of working together. They flirted with several projects on the back of Rowan's feature debut THE BOYS. When Cate Blanchett attached to LITTLE FISH, the project shifted a gear. For creative reasons, Rowan wanted to invite Cate into the filmmaking team. I agreed and was excited by the common desire we all had to keep the project independent, to keep control of a particular vision inherent to Rowan and Cate's needs.

With Cate Blanchett now committed, Little Fish had strong interest from many parties to finance.

Woods: When the pressure of finance comes on, it's the most dangerous time for a script, but I love to get notes from outside of the writer/director/producer circle.  I actively seek them out and in this case we really took advantage of the investors. I pushed them harder than they pushed me and the screenplay got better as a result. The trick is to stay completely in control of the movie you want to make. It was also important to keep Cate in the loop, to pick her brain, and she was across each and every draft Officially, there were 10 drafts of the script, but in reality there were probably closer to 20 drafts over the full 8 years of developing Little Fish.

SCRIPT TO SCREEN
The film was scheduled to shoot in early 2004 and Rowan had commenced his normal approach to research.  However, when Cate Blanchett announced she was pregnant the project was delayed nine months allowing Rowan an even more extensive research period.  Sheehan and Woods decided to take full advantage of the delay with the help of a full-time research coordinator and a camera/sound team.
The research on Little Fish began as a fairly academic exploration of the characters and themes in the script as the team created an extensive library of DVD interviews along with standard written research. It informed the final drafts of the script as well as being a library resource for design and performance. This body of research was available on a strictly confidential basis to relevant cast and crew.

Woods: In a way, my research is like an updated version of traditional dramaturgy in the theatre. We looked into particular aspects of the script as it pertained to Vietnamese refugees, drug rehabilitation and the 'after-life' of famous Australian sporting identities. At some point in the process our focus narrowed and we started to hone in on real folk who bear strong similarities to the characters in the script. In many cases these folk were employed as advisors to the actors and became reference points for accent and mannerism.
Sometimes the research revealed something pivotal that had to be dragged into the script. The most obvious example of this was the school choir that the Tracy character is confronted by in the movie. The idea for the choir came directly from a research trip where Woods and Sheehan ran into an old theatre in Campsie to escape the rain. They came across a local catholic school choir in rehearsal.
Woods: All these little Asian, anglo and middle-eastern kids singing their hearts out. We decided, on the spot, to put Tracy in the same situation at the emotional climax of our movie.

Perske:  I had not worked in this way before. When the research started to form itself, I began to view the DVD interviews some of which I often found irrelevant or misleading. But occasionally there was something quite inspirational. In fine-tuning the script, the imagination would dry up on certain things and the research would fill the gap.

By the commencement of pre-production Woods had gathered hundreds of hours of documentary research and a library of conventional resource material, all indexed and easily accessible to any one in the production that felt the need. 

Woods: Inevitably, at some point, a buzz goes around the crew about say, DVD No 23, containing an amazing blow by blow account of a Vietnamese man's battle with pirates in the South China Sea or DVD No 18 which contains a heart wrenching story of a 13-year suburban girl's battle with addiction.
Liz Watts: The biggest challenge with an internationally known cast is having brilliant and recognised actors who can hit those suburban benchmarks that Rowan expected from the performances. I think Rowan's research process challenged and excited the cast, and created an impetus to knuckle down to the work and not just rely on an existing skills base. The cast embraced that research and the movie has an unmistakable truth to it as a result. 
Woods: Strangely enough, the research ultimately means artistic freedom. You do it so you can throw it all away and speak with confidence on behalf of the character and the story. It's the letting go that I crave. And the time to let go is coming into rehearsals at the end of pre-production.
Sheehan: The other thing that Rowan pushes for on all his projects is a much more extensive rehearsal period than is normally allocated. In this case, it was nearly 4 weeks (unheard of on Australian features).
Woods: In rehearsals, I like to work with an assistant who is taking notes on the details of the block as it emerges and with the writer present to record and suggest changes to dialogue.
Perske: After nearly 8 years of development the final tweaking of the script came through my involvement in the rehearsals. Rowan insisted I be there and I'm now converted to the advantages it can bring… viewing actors saying the lines and blocking moves suddenly revealed worrying inaccuracy or dramatic flaws. It was also a surprise to see how regimented and respectful of dialogue Rowan and the cast were. On most occasions, I was more prepared to ditch lines than anyone in the room. But the real advantage is that the writer can input changes while gauging the impact on the script as a whole.

FINANCE
With Blanchett attached in early 2003, Little Fish had a major international star, a distinctly Australian screenplay and the anticipation of a second feature by Rowan Woods. 
Under Porchlight Films, Vincent Sheehan and producer Liz Watts have been in business together for over eight years. In forming an independent company, Sheehan and Watts share a creative vision and resources enabling both producers flexibility with projects.

Sheehan: When Cate got involved, Little Fish became an altogether bigger proposition and it made complete sense to just walk into the office next door and say "Liz, gimme a hand on this one", because I needed someone I could trust. That's the beauty of the structure of the company we have.

Due to the elements and cast involved Little Fish, the financing quickly became an international venture.

Sheehan: At this stage there was much concern about any artistic compromises that may creep into the equation. We wanted to finance it at a budget where we could maintain control, but not one that would limit us. So we were quite selective in choosing the partners…Icon in Australia, Myriad in the US, were smaller, established and ' independent' distributors and sales agents. We then went through the FFC in Australia.  And perhaps because of our staunch independence, it did have a complex, drawn out period of financing which was endlessly frustrating. However the extra time spent did result in sharpening our focus on the film we wanted to make and why we wanted to make it.
Watts: The financing went through quite a few different models and it was a very tricky process. In the end, the Film Finance Corporation of Australia (FFC) became the majority investor and was tremendously supportive of the project and we also maintained a private investor.  It has really been a testament to Rowan's international reputation from THE BOYS, Jacquelin's script and the huge draw-card of Cate Blanchett that drew the financing into place. But it was a difficult path at times where we relied on some fantastic supporters who were always firm in their backing of the movie and our team.

The NSW Film and Television Office supported the project through 6 years of development funding and also remained as an investor. Also coming on board early was London based Executive Producer Marion Pilowsky, who had championed Rowan's film The Boys and Vincent Sheehan's Mullet as an executive at Showtime Australia.  Marion was then heading the London Office of Myriad Pictures and wasted no time in convincing LA-based president Kirk D'Amico to commit.

Sheehan: Marion immediately understood the potential of a Woods/ Blanchett combination.  She was also an Australian working in international film financing and was therefore a great ally in protecting the authenticity that could easily be threatened when viewing the project from a Hollywood angle. As it turned out, Kirk also became a passionate advocate for Rowan's vision of the movie.
Watts: Richard Keddie came onto the project as a Producer and was part of a film fund that was interested in funding the movie. When that fell over Richard was a very important part of piecing together private money that was the final lynchpin finance that saw us through.
Richard Keddie: I was deeply intrigued by the project, and had a lot of respect for Rowan's work and Jacquelin's beautiful script. This was a difficult film to finance and it was critical that private investment be found. At the eleventh hour I approached an English investment banker, Robert Mullis, who's company Mullis Capital Independent is based in Thailand, and was interested in venturing into film investment.
Robert Mullis: I was aware that Australia has some very talented film-makers and probably no-one more talented than Cate Blanchett. I knew LITTLE FISH was a difficult film to both finance and market, but I had a lot of respect for the team, and the material, and so worked closely with Richard Keddie to structure a deal that could work for investors and the film-makers. The key was to keep private investors at the table, which is the toughest part of this business.
Keddie: It was at this time that Robert and I asked Barrie Osborne (LORD OF THE RINGS) to become involved as Executive Producer.
Barrie M. Osborne: I had first come across Jacquelin Perske's script while lending my hand to help raise a film fund.  I was excited by the script, by Rowan Woods whose prior film THE BOYS I admired, and by the incredibly talented cast including Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving, Martin Henderson and Sam Neill.  It was an honour to join such an extraordinary team of filmmakers.
Keddie: Remarkably Robert Mullis cashflowed the entire pre-production of the film on only a deal memo, so the day we rolled camera I think we were all walking around literally in a daze, astounded that we got there. My lawyer Bryce Menzies, suggested that Robert was 'saintlike' for hanging in the way he did through the most testing finance process we had ever seen.


CASTING & CHARACTERs

SETTING & DESIGN/ COSTUME DESIGN/ DIRECTION  & CINEMATOGRAPHY
MUSIC & SOUND DESIGN/  THE SCREENWRITER, DIRECTOR AND PRODUCERS