Celluloid Heroes (play)

Celluloid Heroes
Written byDavid Williamson
Date premiered1980
Original languageEnglish
Genrecomedy

Celluloid Heroes is a play by David Williamson about the Australian film industry. It was written to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Nimrod Theatre and is not one of his highly regarded plays.[1][2]

Williamson later called it:

A bad play which didn't create characters that were complex enough to last the distance after interval. Part of the problem was that I felt I was writing to order... and I was supposed to be writing something light and bright and happy, but my feelings about the film industry were anything but light and bright. I think I let my personal bile about the indignities writers suffer in the film industry, and how basically shoddy it all is, spill over into the play. I wasn't sufficiently objective and I made the characters overly evil or two-dimensional... [it] was simply social satire dipped into crude farce. Not one of my best efforts... It's the only time I've worked to a commission and it's the only time I've been ashamed of the final product.[3]

He later wrote about the Australian film industry far more successfully in Emerald City.[4]

References

  1. ^ Donald Pulford, "Defining moments: the Nimrod story" Real Time Arts accessed 24 October 2012
  2. ^ "An ephemeral but cutting Williamson satire". The Canberra Times. Vol. 55, no. 16, 516. Australian Capital Territory, Australia. 14 December 1980. p. 8. Retrieved 4 October 2018 – via National Library of Australia.
  3. ^ Candida Baker, "David Williamson", Yacker: Australian Writers Talk about Their Work, Picador 1986 p 290-315 accessed 24 October 2012
  4. ^ Cochrane, Peter (14 March 1997). "Williamson's World". The Sydney Morning Herald. p. 15.


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