Jan Sardi Interview 4/19/04 in Houston, Texas.

Present were Jan (JS), Jill, Elaine, and Susan ($¢)

$¢: Love’s Brother has been years in the making…can you tell us a little bit about how it got

started and the trials and tribulations and why it took years to get it done?

JS: In answer to the second question, any independent film these days is very hard to finance.

And when you’re out there looking for money, what people want is, they want big names

…not just names, they always want BIG names. If you’ve got one big name, it’s always,

they want two big names. But I had a particular film that I wanted to make and I knew the

actors I wanted—certainly Giovanni and Adam—and so we had to fight in many ways to

hold on to the vision of the film and at the same time try to get it financed. We could

have had it financed earlier, but we’d probably have lost control of it. Jane Scott

(producer of Love’s Brother), she’s a brilliant producer—she did it on Shine. She finances

a film so that the filmmakers have control of it and that’s her brilliance. Also, in the way

that she puts crews together she’s worked with first-time directors including Baz

Luhrmann, so she’s very good like that. It took a few years…it took I guess probably two

and a half years to really finance it from the time we went out there, which some people

will say is not a long time, but when you’re working on something full-time and nothing

else, two and a half years it’s every day—there’s no weekends; you just keep at it—it

feels like a lot longer.

$¢: So when did you actually start on ‘Love’s Brother’?

JS: I had the idea back in 1985—I’d heard about the situation because it was a very common

situation back in the 50s in Australia for Italians to send photos—in ’85 or ’86 someone

had just told me about an Italian who had sent his brother’s photo and then I subsequently

found out it wasn’t an uncommon thing to send someone else’s photo or to send a photo

of themselves when they were 20 years younger and then the girl would turn up in

Australia…and that was sort of a peculiar way in which the Italians did things…the bride

actually had to get married in Italy before she left home. Someone would stand in, often it

would be a member of the family, and sometimes the groom’s family—if it was someone

that was unknown to them—it could even be the bride’s own brother or in one situation

the father who took the vows for the groom. It always stuck with me as a great idea for a

film. I walk around with ideas for a long time before I start writing; I also had another

idea to do a story about this espresso culture in Melbourne where it got started in

Australia—I mean, the first espresso machine in Melbourne arrived in Carlton which is

the suburb that I grew up in. It’s where all the Italians lived. The two ideas came together

and I wrote an outline in about ’94, ’95 and then Shine went into production and started

to take my focus for quite a while and then it became a big hit and it took my focus for

even longer. After doing the Hollywood stuff—writing scripts for Hollywood and a

couple of really interesting stories which never got made—one has been made and is

coming out in about a month’s time. It’s called The Notebook—I was one of many writers

on it, the first writer actually.

Jill: We recognize that—Adam was reading it in, what, ‘Seventeen’ magazine? He said he

was reading a pile of scripts and that he was reading ‘The Notebook.’

JS: It was a good script…I don’t think he read my version—he probably read someone

else’s. He also read another one of mine called The Journey Is The Destination. That’s a

great story which hopefully will get made one day which I know Orlando Bloom is

interested in. So where was I? Okay, so Shine sort of took off and by 1999 I was kind of

fed up with Hollywood and I thought I wanted to get back to being my own kind of

storyteller telling my own stories, which is what I’ve always done. I said to Jane, “I’ve

got this story” and I gave her the outline at Sundance—I’d had an outline which is

exactly the synopsis that appears in the publicity kit—I wrote to it try to give the feeling

and the flavor of the sort of thing I wanted to make. And so in 1999 I sat down and

started to write the script and finished it over three or four months. I did another draft in

early 2000 and then, I think in about April 2000, Jane and I went off around the world

trying to see if we could raise some money for it. We then hooked up with Sarah

Radclyffe, who is a wonderful UK producer and she became our co-producing partner,

and we set it up as a UK co-production so that we could get money out of the UK as well.

We had genuine elements there…we were shooting in Italy which qualified us for

UK money and also we did all the sound and the music in London. A big bonus for me

was recording the music at Abbey Road Studios—that was a big thrill, a BIG thrill, and

working with Stephen Warbeck was also a thrill.

Jill: Did you have your picture taken walking across the street?

JS: No, I didn’t do that. I had my photo taken inside the studio…

$¢: Tell us a little bit about casting…since we’re not in the business, we were wondering--

you did allude briefly to the fact that you wanted Giovanni Ribisi and Adam…

JS: I didn’t audition either of them. Jane and I went to London in early 2000 and met with a casting agency there and the casting agent said to me, “So, what is this character ‘Gino’ like? And I said, “Well, he is John Travolta when he’s 25 years old—a young John Travolta.” And she said, “Well, then you must meet Adam Garcia.” And I said, “Who is Adam Garcia?” And she said, “Well, he’s just finished playing the Tony Manero part in Saturday Night Fever here. He was here last week, but he’s gone back to Australia to promote Bootmen.” When she said he’s Australian I said, ‘well, but I’ve never heard of him!’ I’d never followed Tap Dogs and Adam, to his credit, did the very wise thing of going to London rather than going to L.A. to be an actor and did theatre over there, and that impressed me straight away when she said he’d been on the West End, he’d done that for12 months I think in Saturday Night Fever and then he’d also been in Birdy and I was impressed because I knew that he, as an actor, would have more to offer than someone who’d been sitting around a café in L.A. reading scripts or an Australian actor who’d been appearing in soap operas.

$¢: …Although he was in one in Australia…

JS: Was he really? What was he in?

$¢: Yes he was…

Jill: Wasn’t he Yabba Creek Boy…in Far and Away?

JS: Home and Away? Ah, he didn’t tell me that!

$¢: Was that when he did the Spice Girl thing…?

Jill: No, that was…

$¢: That was Dream something…

Jill: That was Dream Team, a football series done in the UK…

JS: So I saw “Bootmen” and I met with Adam and on my way back I’d been to Jerry Bruckheimer’s editing room and saw scenes from Coyote Ugly, I saw Bootmen and I knew that he had the qualities I wanted and also that he was a very good actor because in scenes that I saw him in he was working very much on his own instincts because I know that in Coyote Ugly he had to—I could see the quality there. It comes from having a certain presence and being totally focused which springs from his dancing I think. I thought, okay, I just gotta harness that. So I knew that he had those qualities and that I didn’t have to audition him. I thought he was perfect for the role. And then I met with him in Melbourne when he was promoting Bootmen and I offered him the part.

$¢: What about Amelia Warner?

JS: I did audition her, you know, because she had exactly…when she walked in the room, I thought, this is the person that I see and I tend to cast like that…I tend to have an image of people in my mind and when I write, it’s like the gypsy artist, Reg Mombassa, I saw a photo of him in the paper—I said, that’s exactly the face of the gypsy.

$¢: Last night you told us a little anecdote about Adam in the boat. We know this from his personality that he’s very self-effacing, and kind of a prankster and a jokester and so forth.

JS: Yeah.

$¢: Do you have any other stories that happened on the set that his fans might be interested in knowing?

JS: Hmm…

$¢: We wanted you to relay some that we could put on the Web site and others that you wouldn’t want us to put on the Web site but that we wanna know! [All laugh]

JS: You should ask Amelia Warner, I dunno. Mmm. There’s a wonderful goof of Adam when Gino’s running through the crowd and he stops in the ship scene and looks up at the ship to see if he can see Rosetta. He runs and he stops and a streamer wraps itself around his face…He tries to keep serious for a moment but then of course, totally cracks up—everyone cracked up. The row-boat one was very funny, too. I wanted him to row out to sea. I said to him, “can you row?” and he said, “oh yeah, I’m fine…I’ve done quite a bit of rowing.” So, okay, Adam gets in the boat, and he sits there and I say “Action!” And he pulls on the oars and they came straight out of the water and he’s gone back over the back of the seat [we all laugh] and I say, “Oh, that’s really good, Adam, you’re a real expert! I can see your prowess in rowing!”

There were those scenes in Italy where Adam jokes, as you say, quite self-effacingly, about how hard he had to work. You know, living in a little Italian village, having meals cooked for him, and then I’d say, “Adam, now we’re gonna do a take—we actually need you. Adam had to step out of the church and kiss Amelia Warner—and after I said, “So, Adam, do you need to take a break now? He laughed. He’s very good that, he’s just got the greatest sense of humor. And you can joke with him. He doesn’t take himself too seriously, which is the great thing about Adam. He takes his work seriously, but not himself.

A very special thanks to Jan Sardi for indulging us in Houston, and especially for our interview. (He even was even kind enough to read these notes for accuracy before we submitted them to the Web site.) He’s the best, and in my humble opinion, showcased Adam better than any other film director in Adam’s career. Again, thank you, and bella fortuna with Love’s Brother!

--Respectfully submitted by Susan Moneypenny