Director Mack Lindon put movie on hold for two years while actor John Jarratt fought rape charge
When actor John Jarratt was charged with rape, Gold Coast director Mack Lindon didn’t hesitate to put a multimillion-dollar film on hold, convinced for a very particular reason that the Wolf Creek star was innocent.
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FOR two years Australian producer Mack Lindon put a multimillion-dollar film on hold and did TV ads so he “could put food on the table” for his four young children.
The Gold Coast writer and director had signed famed Australian actor John Jarratt to star in the film Dunamis, but decided to park it when the Wolf Creek star was accused of raping a woman 40 years ago.
Why? Because Lindon faced the same harrowing experience a decade ago.
“I was accused for the same charges he was falsely accused for,” he said. “I understood the plank he was walking. I know that past and I know that walk.
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“I said ‘mate, as soon as you are all clear’, because it was just a timing issue, ‘let’s get you back in the game’.”
In 2008, Lindon was sentenced to six years in jail after a court found him guilty of spiking the drink of a woman he met at a Melbourne bar and later raping her at her unit. He pleaded not guilty.
After he spent 500 days behind bars, a Supreme Court judge overturned his conviction on appeal after throwing out the prosecution’s case after just one week of a retrial.
As filming was to start on Dunamis on the Gold Coast in 2017, Jarratt was charged with raping a woman he lived with in Sydney 40 years ago. For 20 months he proclaimed his innocence.
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Last month a NSW court found him not guilty. Within a week he was the set of Dunamis at Molendinar and Currumbin.
“I was wrongfully accused of rape for crying out loud,” Jarratt told the Bulletin this week.
“In 15 minutes the jury worked out I was innocent. Twenty months of hell was sorted out in 15 minutes.
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“People like my granddaughter had to have the word rape explained to her so (she understood) when they called her grandfather a rapist at school. She was 10 years old.
“I didn’t get the assumption of innocence like she did. And it turned out after 20 months that … I’m the victim. (She) still has the suppression order and I’ll never have a suppression order.
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“She walked out of court and it didn’t cost her a cent. It cost me half a million, loss of my career, mud all over my name. It was horrendous. People were looking at me and calling me a filthy pig in supermarkets.”
Lindon said he had an open heart and accepted anyone – regardless of their past – including another Dunamis cast member, American actor Danny Trejo.
“His acting career started in jail as well,” Lindon said. “He’s done a lot of time in California.
“I think what happens is when prisoners get out of jail, you still have a life. So you just have this underground web of people. You know, they are not doing their time anymore, they are out and just trying to make the world a better place.
“There’s a lot of good people among all that. They are just trying to move on with their lives. We all stuff up, I’ve done silly things.”
Both Jarratt and Lindon have moved on with their lives.
In 2014, Lindon produced his first film Rise, which was about his experience in jail.
While he waited his day in court, Jarratt wrote a book.
“It came together because I couldn’t talk for 20 months,” Jarratt said. “I sat in my house and let everyone else talk about me and I couldn’t talk until I was totally exonerated and proven innocent,” he said.
“Just little things like the woman who called me the accuser, who they called the alleged victim, was given a suppression order from the get-go. And I was the alleged perpetrator and I wasn’t given a suppression order.”
Jarratt said he was getting back into acting and had other roles being offered to him.
“I’m good. I did fine the whole way through because I’m innocent and I had nothing to be ashamed off. I’m Irish-Australian and I stood tall.
“I’m getting back into the Wolf Creek stuff next year.
“Being financially insulated wasn’t fun but the thing that bugged me most was what it did to my wife and my family. (To lose) 20 months of my career, is just part of it but that’s not as important. It’s what they did to my family. That upset me.”
Lindon said he couldn’t give away too much about the film, other than it’s set about year 2050 and is an adventure drama. While filming has already started, he said investors could put $10,000 into the project and would return one per cent of profits made over the next 15 years.
The movie is set to be released in 2020.
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