Screen legend David Gulpilil prepares for his impending death
Screen legend David Gulpilil, who walked the world stage and made dozens of films and TV shows over five decades, is now preparing for his impending death.
Screen legend David Gulpilil, who walked the world stage and made dozens of films and TV shows over five decades, is preparing for his impending death.
Gulpilil, who shot to international fame as a child star with his mesmerising first film Walkabout, has strode the red carpet with the likes of Clint Eastwood, Bruce Lee and Marlon Brando.
He has partied with Dennis Hopper and Muhammad Ali, got high with Bob Marley, and dined with the Queen, for whom he also performed one of the ceremonial dances of his Yolgnu culture that first made him a star.
He has made “a lot of films”, including Storm Boy, Australia, the Crocodile Dundee films, The Last Wave, The Tracker, Rabbit Proof Fence, Charlie’s Country and The Proposition.
Now, as he told the landmark documentary about his life My Name isGulpilil, he has stage four lung cancer and emphysema and “we have to prepare for my funeral”.
“I’ve stopped chemo, not working. I have been smoking all my life … cigarettes, ganja, too much tobacco I’ve been smoking,” he said.
“I’m crying inside for my father, I will return to my country, I will lay down in his soil.
“My spirit will return back to my country.
“I was born a Mandjalpingu man … Gulpilil, my name means kingfisher, that’s my totem.
“My name is in the fish, in the tree, in the sky, in the stars.
“I’m not scared, but I’m sorry there’s nothing I can (do to) make myself stronger.”
Directed by Molly Reynolds, and produced by Gulpilil, Rolf de Heer, Peter Djigirr and Reynolds, #MyNameisGulpilil is a feature #film about the extraordinary life of #Indigenous actor, dancer, artist, and screen legend, David #Gulpilil. In Australian cinemas May 27. pic.twitter.com/POSUdhHo2n
— My Name is Gulpilil (@ABCG_Film) May 1, 2021
He is now aged in his late 60s, though he is not exactly sure that the birth date quoted on his personal papers is the actual day he was born.
The documentary of Gulpilil’s extraordinary life was directed by Molly Reynolds, and produced by Gulpilil himself with his longtime collaborator Rolf de Heer and actor-producer, Peter Djigirr.
It charts the chance discovery of a gifted boy in a remote Aboriginal community, his rise to fame and his fall from grace via alcohol.
It shows how his spine tingling performances brought his culture to world notice, and reveal his grace as he sits in a hospital bed on oxygen coming to terms with his life’s imminent end.
“My father taught me to dance and sing,” Gulpilil says of his tribal childhood in the northeast of the Northern Territory, in the Arafura swamp region in Central Arnhem Land.
Back in 1969, he was living in the Aboriginal welfare settlement of Maningrida, when a British director turned up on a casting mission for an outback horror movie, Walkabout.
Roeg was looking for an Aboriginal youth to star as the boy who teaches a city teenager (Jenny Agutter) and her brother how to survive in the desert.
“When I went to the mission school, Nicholas Roeg, the director from England and London, he came to Arnhem Land to look for an Aboriginal boy who can throw a spear, who can hunt, who can dance.
“And everyone pointed at me and said ‘him, David Gulpilil’, and so they picked me the first time.
“Full blood, me, Aboriginal, I went to work on that film … Walkabout, 1969.
“I can see it now. It was a long time ago. I was fourteen years old. I made that film, yeah.
“I was a solid young boy, growing up, knowing things.
“And I was strong. Non drinker. Non smoker. Not even the sweet. That was me.
“I remember. And then I danced.”
#MyNameisGulpilil Well, that's one way to survive 60,000 years. Something old, something new. Lessons learnt, stories told. Long live Gulpilil.
— Jordan Metlikovec (@jordanstwt) July 11, 2021
Gulpilil says of the film’s plot line that between the two teenage characters played by Jenny Agutter and himself, “it didn’t work, cause she was a white woman, I was a black boy”.
“Then I have to teach and tell her the message through the dance, dancing of the spirit.
“I helped my film come to life … for my culture. I made it true.”
Now regarded as a classic, Walkabout revealed the ancient mystique of the Australian landscape and the contrast between black and white culture for international audiences.
Gulpilil’s haunting performance saw the film nominated as an official Cannes Film Festival entry for Britain.
News footage resurrected for the documentary shows him arriving off a plane in London, aged 17.
He and his friend, didgeridoo payer, Dick Bandilil, travelled to Cannes and then on a world tour to promote the film.
“We were two young good-looking boys,” Gulpilil reflected, “there is no city we came from, just the bush.
“I followed the film Walkabout to London, and my spear went there too. I been walking the red carpet. I walked with the Queen of England.
“The film Walkabout made me the star. It introduced me to the whole world.”
Gulpilil’s naturally gregarious personality led him to carouse with celebrities, and fall into drinking alcohol and smoking cannabis.
Of acting, he said he never had any trouble with performing for a camera.
“I like acting,” he said. “Acting is easy, I just stand there and the camera sees me”.
But as his movie career rocketed, he fell into trouble via his drinking and substance abuse.
He was charged with drink driving and jailed, charged with taking alcohol into a “dry” community, and for assaulting his wife, Miriam Ashley, whose arm he broke when he hit her with a broom.
He spent a year in prison, and endured broken relationships and a career slump which saw him by the late 1990s living “in the long grass”, a fringe dweller who ended up in a humpy back in a remote part of Arnhem Land.
#MyNameisGulpilil Well, that's one way to survive 60,000 years. Something old, something new. Lessons learnt, stories told. Long live Gulpilil.
— Jordan Metlikovec (@jordanstwt) July 11, 2021
I first saw Gulpilil on screen in Walkabout when I was thirteen years old. As a young immigrant from Scotland/Ireland, I have always remembered this film as one of the most important moments in my life on understanding Australia. I feel like I have always known Gulpilil.
— Dr Grace O'Brien (@DrGraceOBrien1) May 7, 2021
“I was drunk. I was a drunken man,” Gulpilil says on the documentary. “I am a drug and alcoholic.”
But in the early 2000s, Gulpilil revived his career with directors who sought out his remarkable talent for their projects.
In 2002, he began his collaboration with Rolf De Heer on The Tracker and made the award-winning Rabbit Proof Fence with director Phillip Noyce.
De Heer’s Ten Canoes and Baz Luhrman’s Australia were followed by another De Heer film, Charlie’s Country which won multiple awards, including Gulpilil’s for Cannes Film Festival Best Actor.
Gulpilil followed up his 1976 Storm Boy performance as Fingerbone Bill, playing the character’s father in a 2018 reprise of the movie.
In 2019, he was diagnosed with lung cancer, and has been living 3000km from his home lands as he receives medical treatment, supervised by his carer, Mary Hood.
He has been unable to travel or collect accolades, such as the 2019 NAIDOC lifetime achievement award.
Of his impending death and burial on his traditional lands, he says his family will come and visit him at his burial place and named each of his seven children.
“I will miss my children and I think of them and I love them,” says Gulpilil.
#MyNameisGulpilil there are no words to describe the beauty of this man. His grace in illness, his humour, the life he's lived, etched in his face. ðŸ™â¤ï¸
— James M. 🀠- Respect: Always was, always will be. (@dotrat) July 11, 2021
I love David, he is the spirit of Australia, his country
— john bell (@daddio60) May 8, 2021
#MyNameIsGulpilil. Watch it for a deep engagement with this remarkable man. Also watch it to understand the experience of cancer for First Nations people & the trauma of being away from country & commumity at the end of life. https://t.co/W8zNC0LWZM@CancerAustralia â¤ï¸ðŸ’›ðŸ–¤ pic.twitter.com/hIqrVpipQL
— Julie McCrossin AM (@JulieMcCrossin) July 11, 2021
After the screening of My Name is Gulpilil on ABC TV on Monday night, Twitter users posted about how his films and the documentary had touched them
“I first saw Gulpilil on screen in Walkabout when I was thirteen years old,” one user posted.
“As a young immigrant from Scotland/Ireland, I have always remembered this film as one of the most important moments in my life on understanding Australia.
“I feel like I have always known Gulpilil.”
Another Twitter user wrote they were “in tears watching My Name is Gulpilil … so sad just how much history and knowledge is lost when our Elders leave this place”.
Another poster recalled first seeing Gulpilil in Storm Boy in 1976, writing: “He’s been a constant in Australian cinema and culture since Walkabout and his contribution is unparalleled. Wishing you good luck David.”
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