Call Me Mister Brown: Scott Hicks revisits the true story Qantas tried to kill
It was an SA-made film from an Oscar nominated director that set a furious Qantas on a mission to hide it from Aussie eyes. Now Scott Hicks hopes his lost movie can finally come home.
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This is a true story – nothing has been changed for dramatic purposes.
“Call me Mister Brown,” the man said, as though he was in a conference call, not making a bomb threat. Qantas flight 755 from Sydney to Hong Kong was carrying an explosive, he warned. And it was set to detonate as the plane came in to land.
It’s the larger-than-life tale of Australia’s great plane robbery — one of the nation’s most brazen aviation heists, born out of greed and undone by sheer stupidity.
For a mere $500,000, Peter Macari (aka Mr Brown) would lead authorities to its exact location, sparing the lives of all those on the flight.
He got his money and drove off in the only canary yellow Kombi van in the Southern Hemisphere. Turns out there was no bomb.
Macari was eventually caught after he went on a spending spree, buying prestige cars and a Bondi penthouse with the used $20 bills.
Oscar-nominated director, Adelaide’s own Scott Hicks remembered the 1971 hoax, but it wasn’t until he discovered a book on the affair that he truly realised the cinematic potential. He wrote the script, sourced funding and cast a stellar ensemble including Chris Haywood as Macari himself in Call Me Mister Brown.
“The real story for us began once we started shooting,” Hicks tells the Sunday Mail ahead of the tale airing on Nine’s Australian Crime Stories this week.
“We’d been very diligent in trying to get Qantas to talk to us about any security concerns.
“They would not give us the time of day.”
Hicks pressed on. Qantas sent a delegation to Adelaide to “monster” then Premier John Bannon to stop the film. He refused, saying his government wasn’t in the practice of shutting down films.
The Flying Kangaroo even tried calling Hicks himself to inquire how much it would cost to buy the rights to the film so they could burn it.
“We said ‘well, it cost a bit more than a million dollars, so we’d need that for starters, and then we would need to make some money on top of that’,” Hicks said, adding with a laugh “I suddenly thought ‘Oh my God, we’ve become Mr Brown’.”
Qantas ultimately won, putting the thumbscrews on the network saying they’d pull all of their advertising and travel deals.
The network tried to renege on its contract with Hicks, but ultimately settled on never airing the film.
And wait, there’s still more.
After flying back home to Adelaide (on Qantas of course), Hicks realised he left his shooting script and its intricate storyboard drawings in the seat pocket.
He called Adelaide Airport and was told all the rubbish had been placed in a dumpster. Hicks jumped into that huge skip filled with “hideous garbage” but couldn't locate it.
To this day, he’s not sure if he simply couldn’t find it in the mess or if – befitting the tale’s twists and turns – Qantas perhaps destroyed the valuable document.
Since that day, Hicks puts his scripts in a big huge, book that can’t be lost. .
Call Me Mr Brown has been seen all over the world – even in Israel – but never in Australia.
Ironically, it was nominated for Best Telefeature at the 1982 AFI awards. “It was a real blow to me,” Hicks shares.
“It was years worth of work and it just disappeared.”
He’s hoping one of the networks or streaming platforms might buy it now.
“After all, it’s first-run Australian drama, after all,” Hicks says.
“And it’s quite an interesting document especially considering what happened to my career subsequently.
“It’s really the first film I wrote and directed myself and it was quite a saga.”
AUSTRALIAN CRIME STORIES, “THE MONEY OR THE BOMB”, WEDNESDAY, 8.40PM, NINE.