The Journalist

The Journalist (1979)

Comedy about a womanizing journalist on a Sydney newspaper who confronts job problems and impotence in the context of Australian media and politics of the 1970's. A somewhat lesser Australian film comparable to the American film Shampoo.

Date of release
1979-11-15
TMDB
4.8 / 10 (4)
Runtime
1h 23m
Genres
Comedy
Director
Michael Thornhill

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Box office: A$52K

The Journalist is a 1979 Australian sex comedy about the romantic adventures of a journalist. It has the reputation as one of the worst Australian films of all time.

Production

Michael Thornhill wrote the outline for the film with Edna Wilson, a journalist, in August 1978. Roadshow agreed to distribute and agreed to invest money in the film. In October the New South Wales Film Corporation agreed to invest on the basis of a second draft script. Thornhill had been on the board of the corporation so this was controversial at the time due to a perceived conflict of interest.

By December, the movie was cast. Thornhill later reflected the film "wasn’t supposed to be realistic, and it bears no resemblance to Australian journalism whatsoever. In the film we have newspapers and television stations unconnected, which is the norm overseas but, as you know, is not the case here.” He saw The Journalist as "a modest little thing I thought I could get going fast”.

Roadshow wanted Jack Thompson to play the lead and a second draft was written with him in mind. The shoot started in Sydney on 22 January 1979 and went for five weeks with several days of filming in Hong Kong. The budget was estimated as being between $380,000 and $500,000.

Thompson said prior to filming "We hope this film will be a lightweight domestic comedy - something like an Australian answer to the American film Fun with Dick and Jane. This is a genre which has not been undertaken in Australia before." Thornhill said the film was as representative of journalism as The Goodbye Girl had been of amateur theatre in New York.

It was Thompson's return to leading roles after having played support characters for a number of years. "Two years ago eight out of the ten films presented to the film corporations seem to have been written for me in the lead role," he said. "And those films were all the same - there was an obligatory fight and the lead character was tough.

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