Robbie Williams film and Boy Swallows Universe dominate AACTA Awards
By Garry Maddox
It was the year of the monkey at the country’s main film and television awards. And the year “invisible” actors, who were not on screen in their films, made history.
Director Michael Gracey’s inventive Robbie Williams biopic Better Man, which has the British pop star played by a digitally created chimpanzee, dominated the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards on the Gold Coast on Friday night.
Winners at the AACTA Awards: Robbie Williams (right), with Jonno Davies, who won best actor for playing him in Better Man.Credit: Getty Images for AFI
It won best film, director and - in a first - best actor for Brit Jonno Davies who wore a motion capture suit throughout the shoot so he could be turned into the performing monkey that Williams thought he had often been during his turbulent career.
Better Man won nine awards, including five it had collected for craft at the Industry Gala on Wednesday.
While voice acting has been historically overlooked for mainstream awards, Sarah Snook and Jacki Weaver, who brought the characters Grace and Pinky to life in Adam Elliot’s Oscar-nominated animation Memoir of a Snail, surprisingly won best actress and supporting actress respectively.
The awards, hosted by Russell Crowe, were also a triumph for Boy Swallows Universe, the Netflix drama adapted from Trent Dalton’s bestselling novel about a boy coming of age in 1980s Brisbane.
It added six awards to the six it won earlier: best mini-series, TV screenplay for John Collee and all four TV drama acting prizes for Felix Cameron, Phoebe Tonkin, Lee Tiger Halley and Deborah Mailman.
A worldwide hit on Netflix, Boy Swallows Universe unearthed rising talent in Cameron and Halley, who played the teenage Bell brothers, and gave Tonkin an emotional role as their struggling mother.
“I spent 18 years as a journalist coming home every night, waiting to find the courage to write Boy Swallows Universe,” Dalton said after the win for best miniseries.
“Please do the thing that scares you. You never know when you might find 200 beautiful friends to take your thing around the world.”
Winners: Felix Cameron and Lee Tiger Halley who played teenage brothers in Boy Swallows Universe.Credit: Getty Images for AFI
There was more success for the streaming service with Heartbreak High winning best drama and soundtrack.
The ABC cleaned up with Fisk winning best narrative comedy series, Kitty Flanagan for comedy acting for playing lawyer Helen Tudor-Fisk, Bluey for children’s series and Muster Dogs for factual entertainment program.
Hard Quiz was named best comedy entertainment program, host Tom Gleeson best comedy performer and Grand Designs Australia best lifestyle program.
Kitty Flanagan poses with the AACTA Award for best acting in a comedy for Fisk.Credit: Getty Images for AFI
They added to the national broadcaster’s success at the Industry Gala, where Miriam Margolyes: Impossibly Australian won best documentary or factual program, Spicks and Specks entertainment program, Ladies in Black costume design in television, Muster Dogs direction in non-fiction television and Bluey for original score in television.
The awards were a lively celebration of the Australian screen industry, with Robbie Williams performing Angels, Paul Kelly singing How To Make Gravy and the star power including Henry Cavill, who is shooting Voltron in Queensland, Guy Pearce, George Miller, Catherine Martin, David Wenham, Asher Keddie, Sam Neill, Bryan Brown and Teresa Palmer.
The only political moment was Pearce wearing a Free Palestine badge on the red carpet.
The day before the ceremony, Gracey told an AACTA Festival session that awards were not important - “what lives on is the film itself” - and acknowledged that Better Man did not connect with audiences as well as hoped, partly because of confusion over the chimpanzee.
But he was delighted when his follow-up to the surprise hit The Greatest Showman took the top film award in a field that included action sequel Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, song adaptation How To Make Gravy and Memoir of a Snail.
“I’m very grateful for the awards but it’s not why you do it,” Gracey said. “The beautiful thing is that events like this bring all of this talent together that you don’t necessarily get to see - or you don’t see that regularly. It’s just beautiful to be in the room with so much Australian talent.”
In the evening’s most entertaining speech, Williams thanked “drugs, ADHD, depression, anxiety, dyslexia, dyscalculia, insomnia, dyspraxia, a lack of self-awareness, a lack of self-worth, a fear of social interaction, body dysmorphia, addiction, alcoholism and a lower than average-sized penis, without which none of this film could be possible”.
Other than a momentary glimpse of Davies’ face at the end of Better Man, Damon Herriman, who won best supporting actor for playing Take That’s manager in the biopic, is the only one of the four film acting winners to appear onscreen.
Furiosa, which had 15 nominations, had earlier won best cinematography, costume design, hair and makeup, production design and sound in film.
Russell Crowe hosted the awards.Credit: Getty Images for AFI
Binge’s How To Make Gravy won best original song for Meg Washington, Brendan Maclean and The Prison Choir’s Fine.
Best documentary went to Otto by Otto (Stan), Gracie Otto’s moving look at her actor father Barry’s life after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
The lifetime achievement Longford Lyell Award went to the Working Dog team, with Oscar-winning cinematographer Greig Fraser (Dune: Part One and Part Two) collecting the Byron Kennedy Award for outstanding creativity.
Kartanya Maynard, best known for acting in Gold Diggers, Heartbreak High and Deadloch, won the Brian Walsh award for emerging talent.
Guy Pearce, who was nominated for best actor in a film for The Convert, on the AACTA Awards red carpet.Credit: Getty Images for AFI
In the only wins for commercial free-to-air broadcasters, Anne Edmonds: Why Is My Bag All Wet? (Ten) won best stand-up special and MasterChef Australia (Ten) was named best reality program.
In the audience choice awards, Margot Robbie and Chris Hemsworth were voted the country’s favourite actress and actor. Wicked was named favourite film and Netflix teen drama Outer Banks favourite TV show.
The writer travelled to the Gold Coast as a guest of AACTA.
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