Writer of Bryant film: 'Evil repeats itself if we don’t shine a light on it'

The writer of a movie about Martin Bryant said he knew it would be controversial but his motivation was to consider why mass shootings happen and how gun control can prevent them.

"I'm a big believer in the idea that evil repeats itself if we don't shine a light on it and examine it," said Shaun Grant of the film, working title Nitram (Martin spelt backwards), which has drawn criticism since its production in Victoria's Geelong was revealed on Monday.

Grant said he had never forgotten when he first heard 35 people had been killed and another 23 injured in a mass shooting at the Port Arthur historic site in Tasmania in 1996. But what came next resonated just as much.

Shaun Grant, who wrote the film, at the Toronto Film Festival premiere of True History of the Kelly Gang, another of his collaborations with director Justin Kurzel.Credit: Brian de Rivera Simon

"I've never been prouder to be an Australian than following that event," he said. "It showed the world that you could regulate guns. I wish more countries had followed our lead on that and not waited for tragedies of their own."

Grant, who grew up in rural Victoria, had considered writing about Port Arthur for a decade before a spate of mass killings while he was living in Los Angeles finally convinced him to try. "Within a period of about 10 days there was a shooting in Thousand Oaks and there was a shooting in [a synagogue] in Pittsburgh, and every time I hear of these things my mind goes back to that day in 1996. I was going, 'What's going on with the world', and particularly that nation [the US]. I couldn't tell the Thousand Oaks story, so I went back to this story."

The film is being directed by Justin Kurzel, whose acclaimed debut feature Snowtown was based on the true story of South Australian serial killer John Bunting, and whose most recent film was True History of the Kelly Gang. It has a cast that includes Essie Davis, Judy Davis (no relation), Anthony LaPaglia and American actor Caleb Landry Jones in the lead. The movie is being made for Stan (which is owned by Nine, publisher of this masthead), but will debut at the Melbourne International Film Festival next year ahead of a brief theatrical season before releasing on the streamer.

American actor Caleb Landry Jones, seen here in Antiviral (2012), has been cast as the lead character in Nitram.

Producer Nick Batzias said the filmmakers were "acutely aware of the sensitivities around the material", especially in Tasmania, but believed it would resonate "in terms of the message it can spread".

"Any time there's a mass shooting in America, someone mentions Port Arthur because what happened after is an exemplar of gun policy," he said. "To be clear, there is not one murder shown on screen in our film. We don't need to show the victims or the murders to remind people of the need for sound gun control."

Tasmanian Liberal senator Eric Abetz, who lost a friend in the shooting and abides by the widely accepted Tasmanian custom of refusing to use the shooter's name, said he suspected that "any publicity or extra notoriety it might provide to the murderer would be welcomed by him."

"It might not only pull the scabs off, but tear at scars that are there within the community."

Labor MP Brian Mitchell, whose electorate of Lyons includes Port Arthur, said he was "totally against" the idea of the film, adding "it's going to reopen wounds that are still healing".

"No matter how well intentioned, well produced or well directed the project," he said, "we know all we need to know" about the gunman and anything else would be "salacious".

"Nobody benefits from having a story about the gunman's background. It's a dramatisation anyway, it's not like it's historical truth-telling."

However, Lesley Podesta, chief executive officer of the Alannah and Madeline Foundation, the charity established by Walter Mikac in honour of the daughters he lost, along with their mother, in the shooting, said it was important that society reflected on what caused the massacre. Ms Podesta said the value of the film would depend on the treatment of the subject.

"We don't believe in censorship of ideas, we don't want artists to stop being able to explore what happens, that's a really important part of our society, of a free and open community where people can express ideas and dissent," Ms Podesta said.

Justin Kurzel in 2012, when he won best director for Snowtown. Credit: Ben Rushton

"What we don't want to do, though, is give notoriety and celebrity to people who have done the wrong thing."

The impact on survivors and first responders would likely be traumatic, Ms Podesta said, but she appreciated "that we need to be able to explore our history and the events to be able to make sure that it doesn't happen again".

Geoffrey Wright, writer-director of Romper Stomper and himself no stranger to controversy about violence on film, said "any worthwhile look at the shooter must also look at his victims, who were real people, not just a list of names. You cannot understand this kind of criminal without understanding the loss he caused.

"That is why refraining from the actual shootings is not as worthy a notion as it may appear," he added. "Some sort of depiction may have been useful. If you want to analyse the nature of horror or 'evil' or psychopathy, show the awful things it wreaks."

The film is being made in Victoria in part, Batzias said, because "this is really sensitive material in Tasmania, and we didn't want to rub anyone's noses in it by being down there making it".

It has an American lead, says Grant, not because no local would do it, as some have claimed – "let me assure you, we saw plenty of Australians" – but because they believed he was the best actor for the part.

The film has received no direct government funding, with state and federal agencies understood to have assessed the project as artistically strong and well intentioned but far too problematic to back. It will, however, have access to the tax offset available to all qualifying Australian film productions, roughly equivalent to 30 per cent of its production budget.

Writing in this masthead on Tuesday, producer Richard Keddie – whose film and TV work includes biopics of Bob Hawke, John Curtin and Michelle Payne – argued that was unacceptable.

"I believe a movie about Martin Bryant is entirely irresponsible and should be stopped in its tracks," Keddie wrote. "The damage this story will do to the people it means the most to is incalculable. To tell Bryant's story could be seen as a form of an assault, a harassment of the real people involved."

However, former Fairfax journalists Paola Totaro and Robert Wainwright, authors of the 2009 book Born or Bred: The Making of a Mass Murderer, said there was value in trying to understand what leads to someone becoming a mass killer.

"If the film manages to widen understanding of the kind of brain development and psychiatric issues that can lead to such catastrophic disasters – and bring them to new audiences – then we wish the filmmakers all the very best," they wrote on Tuesday.

At least one other filmmaker has been trying to get a Port Arthur-themed feature made for several years. Paul Moder has been shopping his project WASP since at least 2016, promising a tale that goes "beyond the mainstream story" to an event "full of ambiguity" that suggests "there was more to Port Arthur than the lone nut scenario".

To a degree, this is the prospect some in Tasmania fear most – a picking over of old terrain, an unsettling of the accepted, if painful, facts, in pursuit of deep conspiracies that pit vested interests against each other.

Grant said that was not what Nitram is about. "I take great offence at the conspiracy theory stuff," he said. "Our film has no links to any of that. It absolutely is aiming to look at [the factors that shaped his psychology] and to shine a light on these people in the fringes, and how accessible it was for a person with that psychology to piece together an arsenal and do what he did.

"We can't assume these people don't exist, that this is a one-off, because it's not," he said. "I was curious: who are these boys, and what can we learn to ensure this is a thing of the past?"

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