Australian
audiences are very familiar with the work of Gregor
Jordan. The director's short film "Swinger" won
the respected Tropicana Short Film Festival in Sydney
before going on to take the Jury Prize at Cannes in
1995. Jordan's first feature "Two Hands",
starring Heath Ledger, debuted at number one at the
Australian box office in 1999 and went on to win
Australian Film Institute awards for Best Film, Best
Director and Best Original Screenplay.
Jordan
reunited with Ledger for "Ned Kelly", and
immediately wanted the young actor for the title role
after reading the script.
"I was given the script
by executive producer Tim White and I was interested in
it as a concept," he says. "But I said to Tim, the only
way to make this movie is with Heath. To me he was the
only person who could play the role. So I rang Heath and
told him about it, he read the script and said 'Okay,
let's do it'. And so it was only really when Heath said
yes that I said yes."
While Ledger and many of
the other actors in the film are Australian, Jordan did
not restrict his talent search to his home country.
Because the Kelly family and many of the other
characters were immigrants or first generation
Australians of Irish decent, most of the accents in the
film would be Irish.
"There really was no such
thing as an Australian accent at that time, or if there
was it was in its infancy," Jordan explains. "And really
the story has a lot to do with Irishness, the story of
the Irish versus the English. I just want actually the
best actors for the roles. Some of them ended up being
Australian and some of them ended up being
Irish."
While "Ned Kelly" is based on
Robert Drewe's fictionalised account of Kelly's life
"Our Sunshine", many of the elements of the story are
factual.
"There are certain elements that we have
taken a bit of artistic license with, but not in an
extravagant way," says Gregor. "When you're trying to
condense a story that lasted for 10 years down into two
hours, you have to take a certain license here and
there. But it was interesting because while developing
the script, we found a lot of the time that, when we
were in doubt, we would just go back to what was true
and a lot of the time that was the most interesting
stuff."
For Jordan, the most memorable moment on
set came while shooting the film's climax - the siege at
Glenrowan. "The moment where they walk out onto the
veranda at the Glenrowan Inn, in their full armour -
these four crazy bastards made themselves suits of
armour and walked out in front of 160 police armed with
rifles. It's so iconic in Australia that you kind of
take it for granted, but when you actually think about
actually standing in a suit of armour in front of 160
policemen with rifles, it's insane. When we shot it, it
turned out great and it looked amazing. But it made you
think, my God, these guys are crazy."
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Heath Ledger brought in Gerry
Grennell, whom he previously worked with, as dialect
coach to help with the Irish, Welsh, Scottish and
English accents |
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Director Gregor Jordan with Ned's guns |
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Heath Ledger on set with director Gregor
Jordan |
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Orlando Bloom on set with director Gregor
Jordan |
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