Russell Crowe has opened up about the struggles of making “Poker Face”, his second feature film as a director, and why he was compelled to keep going despite the obstacles.
The film premiered in Sydney on Tuesday night and will hit streaming platform Stan on Nov. 22.
Speaking in one of the cinemas on the opening night, Crowe said the production was on the brink of collapse when he came on board.
“They came to me and they said ‘Hey look, here’s the thing, do you want to take over this production? It’s not cast, the sets aren’t fully built yet and you’ve got like five weeks before you start’,” he said.
“Now for those of you that don’t know, you’d normally have the advantage of 12 or 18 months of conversations leading up to a production.
“So like an absolute fucking idiot, I said ‘yes’, and set about probably one of the most torturous 12 months of my life.”
Some other issues plaguing the film, which he described as a “terrible set of circumstances”, included COVID and floods shutting down production.
Despite the obstacles, Crowe said he still “[got] that motherfucker done”, largely because the medium of film is so resilient.
“You can just push at it and push at it and sometimes it gives you an immediate response, and you go ‘Yea, that’s what I’m doing. I’m doing it that way’. You know? So even though I didn’t have that preparation time, I found myself approaching it more and more like I was painting – and you’ll see the relevance of that as the [film’s] story unfolds,” he explained.
He said pushing on with the production of “Poker Face” also enabled him to keep 288 crew members employed, something his father, who died just before he took on the project, would have been proud of.
It also allowed him to flex his directorial muscles for the first time since 2014’s “The Water Diviner”.
“I love the medium of film, love my job and there’s no more spectacular job to have in art than directing a feature film,” he told the cinema crowd.
“It takes into account so many different things – its composition and its colour and its music and its choreography – and it’s all these different things that just make it such a special job… And I just had to put on that hat where you pretend to know what the fuck you’re doing and eventually you can start applying yourself.”
In other press interviews prior to the film’s premiere, Crowe told media outlets the film benefitted from calling in favours from friends and corporations despite its smaller budget.
The luxury cars featured in “Poker Face” were borrowed from Crowe’s neighbour and veteran broadcaster John Laws, while Crown Casino allowed the production to shoot on the 88th floor in Sydney to showcase the wealth of Crowe’s character Jack.