Tuesday, April 16, 1996
Jane and Anna Campion are sisters, but their similarities end
there. While Jane prefers pretty period pieces, Anna turns to
modern-day shame, guilt and criminal behavior in her first film,
‘loaded.’ By Lael Loewenstein
Daily Bruin Contributor
Anna Campion isn’t one to mince words.
"Do your friends have guns?" she asks innocently, a question
that seems entirely at odds with both her mild-mannered demeanor
and the pristine surroundings of the Four Seasons Hotel. "Because
from everything we hear and the articles we read in the press, it
seems as if everybody in the U.S. does."
Campion, a New Zealand native now residing in England, came
across one such article several years ago. It eventually became the
inspiration for her just-released debut feature film, "Loaded."
The article traced three well-educated youths from upstate New
York whose bad judgment had snowballed into fatal tragedy. Having
crashed their parents’ car, they decided to borrow a gun and rob a
convenience store to pay for the repairs. Though the robbery was
successful, a policeman later saw them brandishing the gun in a
parking lot and tried to detain them. When they resisted arrest,
the cop fired, killing one. Fleeing the scene, the friends quickly
decided to bury the dead youth and say nothing. Eventually, the
news came out.
"People couldn’t understand why they had not trusted the law or
why the situation had continually escalated so that they never went
to any authority figure," Campion explains. "I thought that was an
interesting situation to work with for a film. We’re drawn to
salacious stories. People either think, ‘My God, I’m still alive
and they’re not,’ or else ‘That person had everything and look how
they’ve destroyed it.’"
For Campion, the juxtaposition of higher culture and tabloid
gossip is intriguing.
"I’ve definitely found that newspapers and journalistic writing
provide some of the most inspirational material at the moment," she
notes.
In her case, it spawned "Loaded." Switching the action to
England, she wrote a story of seven British youths who go away
together to shoot a low-budget horror film. Over the weekend,
various events and conversations bring undercurrents of tension to
the surface. One night, in order to become closer, they all get
loaded, only to see things go violently wrong.
In researching the script, Campion conducted an intensive series
of interviews with young men and women aged 15 to 20. What struck
her most in these sessions was the diverse range of responses. She
found that the subjects ranged from intermittently hysterical to
extraordinarily bright and well adjusted.
"The interviews became the model for how far I could go in the
film. Their intelligence was pretty inspiring; it was so much ahead
of their actual experience. But when experiential things hit them,
even in the realms of love and jealousy, they’re not very good at
dealing with them. They have no textbook example to follow. It’s
the same with the characters in ‘Loaded.’"
Campion, having spent several years working as a therapist, was
particularly adept at persuading the interviewees to open up to
her. As a clinical psychologist, she had learned "how to talk to
people and get around the various manipulations and
deceptions."
The route from therapist to filmmaker would seem circuitous, but
Campion had actually started out as an actress, a craft which was
to provide the seeds for both career trajectories.
Having acted for six years in New Zealand, she had the requisite
confidence to perform before strangers. When she relocated to
England, she decided to get involved with social work. So she
auditioned for the job of interim therapist and found it much like
performing for an audience  albeit an interactive and
psychopathic one.
"Acting was quite a good introduction to the psycho-babble
industry," she notes. "The inmates were allowed to choose which
people they wanted to take on as trainees. And because I’d been
acting, they voted for me because I was actually speaking with them
and showing an interest and not being so seriously minded."
The experience taught her a great deal about the human psyche,
specifically guilt, shame and criminal behavior. These behavioral
tendencies resurfaced in "Loaded," and they continue to inspire her
work. They will no doubt crop up in her second feature screenplay,
which deals with a cult deprogrammer. She co-wrote the script with
her sister, Jane ("The Piano"). The collaboration, their first,
they found quite productive. "Jane is a good shaper, and I’m better
at dialogue," reveals Campion. "Together, we complement each
other."
Still, she admits that having a sister as successful as Jane
Campion can be a double-edged sword.
"The problem is this: She’s done five films and I’ve done one.
People sometimes expect me to be just as good as Jane right now,
which is too much to ask because I’m at a different stage of my
experience."
People also assume that the two sisters have the same taste. But
whereas Jane has cornered the woman’s period film with "The Piano"
and the forthcoming "Portrait of a Lady," Anna has no such
aspirations.
"I don’t particularly like costume dramas," she says. "There are
other things I want to do. I’d like to have a rawer edge in my
work."
One way she plans to accomplish that is through her chosen
genre. Anna Campion has long been inspired by science fiction,
especially the films of Ridley Scott and Stanley Kubrick (she lists
"Alien," "Bladerunner," "2001" and "A Clockwork Orange" as
favorites). She is currently at work on a sci-fi feature.
"I like science fiction because it opens your psyche. It has all
these possibilities of human beings who act less human than an
alien, and it’s full of layers of meaning and various
metaphors."
Campion considers "Loaded" an indirect homage to science
fiction, although her reaction to it now runs the gamut from
frustrated disappointment to professional satisfaction.
"Most of the time I can’t bear to watch it. I’ve seen it so many
times that I’m always aware of the glitches and the mistakes," she
allows. "But you find yourself having so many reactions. There are
times when you watch it and you think it’s bad, you take it lower
than it should be. And then there are moments when you fantasize,
‘It’s got a bit of ‘Alien’ in there, now doesn’t it?’"
Director Anna Campion
Catherine McCormack (left) and Thandie Newton star in Anna
Campion’s newly released "Loaded," a film inspired by an article
about youths and their run-in with the law.
Catherine McCormack (left) and Oliver Milburn star in "Loaded,"
Anna Campion’s "indirect homage to science fiction."