Paul Kelly applauds film ‘mutation’ of his song How to Make Gravy
On Sunday, Paul Kelly’s 1996 Christmas song — now a treasured Australian classic — will cross creative disciplines when a film adaptation begins streaming on Binge.
When Paul Kelly wrote How to Make Gravy in 1996, his only goal was to pen a song that would fit on a charity album titled Spirit of Christmas, which raised funds for the Salvation Army.
But Kelly’s decision to set the song’s narrative inside a letter from one brother to another – written with remorse and a little paranoia from inside prison, and addressed to the family members waiting for him outside – made it a most unusual Christmas hit and one of his most popular compositions.
On Sunday, the song, now a treasured Australian classic, will cross creative disciplines when a film inspired by its lyrics begins streaming on Binge.
Written by husband-and-wife duo Nick Waterman and Meg Washington, and directed by Waterman, there’s no-one more surprised by this turn of events than the songwriter himself.
“The more you think about it, the weirder it gets,” Kelly told The Weekend Australian.
“But I came up in folk music, and that is really how folk music works, too: you write something, and it gets picked up by someone else, and it changes, mutates along the way. It can lead to completely new songs, or quite wild variants of the original song. I’m really comfortable with that; I like the way that works.”
Such is the unpredictable and transcendent nature of music, wherein songs can sprout from one man’s mind and eventually become a feature film starring the likes of Hugo Weaving, Kate Mulvany and Daniel Henshall.
It’s natural to view such a proposition – a film adaptation of an iconic Australian song – with suspicion, and perhaps a little fear: are they about to explode one of your favourite tunes and ruin it forevermore?
Happily, The Weekend Australian can report that Waterman’s film sings with great heart, and honours its source material with uniformly strong performances and a stirring script that takes viewers inside the fraught world of a clan on the brink, with a key family member in the clink.
“I think it’s turned out really well,” Kelly said. “I’ve been aware of it for a while, of course; they approached me a few years back and asked if they could start writing a script. I said, ‘Yeah, go for it.’ They sort of kept me in the loop – but my feeling, right from the start, was: it’s their film, it’s their piece of art, not mine, but it jumps off from the song. It’s a different piece of work.”
The film even filled in a few gaps for the singer-songwriter.
“When I wrote the song, I thought, ‘Well, obviously Joe and Dan are brothers; Rita’s Joe’s wife’, and I imagined Stella was a sister. That’s all I imagined. I didn’t know who the hell Angus, Frank, Dolly, Roger and Mary were; they were names that sang well into the song.”
“So the great pleasure for me was when I first saw the synopsis and they said, ‘Oh yeah, Frank and Dolly are twin daughters; Roger and Stella are married …’ I didn’t know that!” Kelly said with a laugh.
“I hope I’m not giving the film away; I don’t think so,” said Kelly, who indeed is only giving a sketch of some of the inter-family relationships.
“But on the other hand, they also honour the song a lot, with a lot of the details,” he said. “They’re all there. The gravy recipe’s in there; I guess that’s the most important thing. They kept that. It’s a really great ensemble performance. I think they’ve done a really good job, and I hope the film goes well.”
How to Make Gravy will stream exclusively on Binge from Sunday, December 1.
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