A top director had signed up and meetings with the super keen Cruise were going wonderfully. A limosuine took Williamson from meeting to meeting and star power was fuelling his rise from Z list to capital A celebrity writer at dizzying speed. That was until he met the studio boss.

“This is set in the Korean War, nobody remembers the Korean War, nobody’s ever heard of it,” the mogul raged. “No, I’m not green lighting this project. But I like the cast. Find another vehicle for Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise.”

Williamson was out on his ear just like that. Ten seconds later the limo was gone, he was finished at the luxury Los Angeles hotel and he had to find his own way to the airport for a long flight home. The studio bigwig’s idea eventually became the Oscar nominated 1992 movie A Few Good Men directed by Rob Reiner and written by Aaron Sorkin. The original script was in shreds on the movie industry’s much referenced cutting room floor.

Nobody does ‘NO’ quite like Hollywood and it was Williamson’s first lesson in the brutality of the big time.

“If you are there everything is laid on for you but the second you are not there, gone,” Williamson said.

“Truly within five minutes my treatment went from royalty to nothing.

“I had five minutes of fame in Hollywood. It couldn’t have been more sudden.”

With a lifetime of experience in show business, luckily not always like this brush with Hollywood, it was inevitable he would get around to writing his new black comedy The Big Time, now showing at the Ensemble Theatre.

The play examines the uphill power struggle faced by talented creatives desperate for their break. They all want to make it to the top but famously very few do.

The central characters Celia and Vicki became friends at drama school and knew from the start it was going to be a deadly competition out in the real world. They are now in two very different places on the career ladder and the old jealousy has never left them. One is a high earning TV soap queen, the other an indie theatre darling.

“It’s all the things I’ve seen in my years in the profession,” Williamson said.

“The business that creates the drama on your screen also has plenty of high level off screen drama and it’s not always pleasant and it’s sometimes blackly funny.

“It’s a fruitful field to be investigating especially when you know it so well like I do.”

Williamson, 76, is now approaching his 50th year in the entertainment business and holds a place as one of Australia’s most loved playwrights. Every single play he created was produced on stage and there’s been so many he’s not sure if The Big Time is 54th or 55th. In his early years The Removalists, Don’s Party and The Club brought him widespread attention and his pen quickly became famous for sharp commentary on urban Australia. Like many artists pushing the boundaries, his breakthrough took time.

In the ‘60s and early ‘70s there was very little representation of Australian stories on screen, stage or television as British drama was the order of the day. When Williamson’s early works landed on desks at major theatres, he recalls responses were both rude and scathing. He was not deterred and thanks to the small alternatives popping up in Sydney and Melbourne, he got his break. The seats started filling up and it didn’t take long for the large companies to backtrack and start showing his work. They finally realised what seems obvious now; that people love watching a reflection of themselves.

“There was a real sense of frustration that the actors never spoke their own accents and the stories never reflected our own lives,” he said. “The small theatres in Carlton and Sydney sprang up as an active rebellion against being locked out of our own stages. Suddenly people flocked to see the Australian work in the small theatres and suddenly the bigger theatres realised ‘Oh well there seems to be an appetite for this’.

“Suddenly I was on the main stages.”

Williamson has stayed there his entire career. He had a 25-year run with the Sydney Theatre Company and made a high profile move to the Ensemble, where he now shows many of his new works. The relationship started in the late ‘90s when former artistic director Sandra Bates approached him wanting to revisit his older plays. He quickly grew to love the harbourside venue, which is known for its welcoming atmosphere from the box office through to the goodbye after the show. The theatre survived for six decades with very little government funding and instead kept the doors open with ticket sales.

“The way it has done that is by programming plays people want to see,” he said.

“Many of our other theatre companies feel that theatre has to be a form of torture for the audience. That they have to expose the audience to how rotten they are, how rotten society is and pathetic their lives are.

“By and large the public don’t like cutting edge theatre that tells them they are leading horrible lives. Understandably they have to get big subsidies to keep them going because not many people want to go.

“But the Ensemble does plays that are not trivial but they are first and foremost entertaining. It has to have something it’s saying underneath that’s worth saying. That’s exactly the theatre that should be done.”

Looking back on his career Williamson knows he’s had a charmed life as a writer. Seasons at the Ensemble usually sell out and his works are still saying something the audiences want to hear. He’s written another play for next year and then he thinks he’s going to give it up. He has announced his retirement previously but this time it’s for real.

“I think I’m ready to lead a less stressful life.”

Williamson has heart rhythm problems and also suffered a stroke. A recent bout of flu turned into pneumonia and he’s at a stage in his life where he could use a strong immune system. Writing a play is hard work with hours in front of a computer and a lot of stress involved, something he could do without. Will he miss writing? His answer is clear.

“No I think I’ve done my job. I think the last couple of plays are good ones. I think people are going to like The Big Time and the one that comes after it. If that’s true I will go out on a high note.”

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