Not Quite Hollywood (2008)

directed by Mark Hartley

Chris Luciantonio

I have always had a somewhat strained relationship with cinephilia, film fandom, whatever you would like to call it, in that I always struggled to express it authentically. When I first decided, consciously or not, to make movies an integral part of my personal identity and become the “film buff” in my friend group in my naive early teenage years, I obviously had not developed an individual taste yet and had no idea what films I even liked or what differentiated the good from the bad in my perspective. To hopefully broaden my taste, I utilized what I believed to be “the canon” established by decades of film criticism and scholarship and the likes of the IMDb top 250 and Roger Ebert’s Great Movies series to guide my viewing habits and help me pick out titles at my local used DVD store (shout out to The Beat Goes On!). While this was certainly effective and I saw plenty of wonderful cinema that would begin to fill out my developing personal canon, I felt a persistent tinge of insecurity over whether or not I truly considered these films to be great, or if I was just echoing the sentiments of those who established the canon. One of the first titles I ever purchased for my ever-growing DVD collection was a used copy of Apocalypse Now because I read Roger Ebert extolling it as possibly the best film about the Vietnam War ever made, and my fourteen year old self had no reason to question it.

My using this metric to explore cinema was definitely not a hindrance in many ways and I inevitably fortified a personal canon I feel is authentic to me (and Apocalypse Now is possibly the best film about the Vietnam War ever made), only years later would I realize there were some inherent flaws in my method. For starters, after pursuing film studies in college I realized that most of what has been established as the accepted canon over decades of Sight & Sound polls and the like overlooks, erases, and outright dismisses popular genre and exploitation cinema despite the incalculable abundance of titles released that could be categorized as such. While I lined my personal DVD collection with battered used copies of Citizen Kane and The Producers because I was told they were necessary for my personal film education, there was an entire side to the cinematic spectrum I was left completely ignorant of or subconsciously dismissive towards. I only wish back in 2008 when I was fourteen and blindly chasing the “Greatest Movies of All Time” that I had known about a documentary made by a self-described film junkie with a penchant for trashy Australian genre pictures that could have irreparably changed the way I watch movies for the better.

Writer-director Mark Hartley may not be the most recognized or respected name in the history of the  documentary genre, but through his trilogy of films beginning with the irreverent Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (2008) he has carved out a distinctive style based on rowdy deep dives into hyper-specific cycles of film history which make zeal and ardor for their subject matters their primary aesthetic. Captivated by his film when I finally saw it years later (picked up at another Beat Goes On location), I desperately wanted to know how its director could cast such a spell for what are, in all due respect, trashy, cheap, exploitation films that were never expected to make it across the Pacific Ocean. By his admission, Hartley came into the production of Not Quite Hollywood somewhat incidentally and “never thought of [him]self as a documentary filmmaker” when he first embarked on the project.¹ Having harbored an admiration for the less-than-respectable titles of his nation’s cinematic catalog since childhood and finding nothing more than a footnote written on them in the established histories of Australian film, he took it upon himself to correct the record.² Guided by this unfiltered enthusiasm, Hartley’s method of historiography consists of an overwhelming plethora of film clip montages and talking head interviews from those who were “in the trenches” during this unprecedented period in Australia’s film history.³ Ceding all narrative control of “the wild story of Ozploitation” to the filmmakers and movies of the era to relay the history, Hartley’s presence is only felt through the film's formalist excesses.

Like his film, Hartley carries no pretensions to what he highlights; he’s showing you delightfully trashy movies from a long lost era of cinematic rebellion that he loves dearly for what they are. Not Quite Hollywood stands as his way to share that love with the world, and while I was expecting the addition of a couple of obscure titles to my watchlist as the most I got out of it, I wound up getting so much more. Bearing witness to Hartley’s fanatical yet sincere appreciation for Australia’s lowly genre cinema genuinely inspired me, as ridiculous as that sounds given the subject matter. In letting Ozploitation speak for itself and taking the likes of forgotten populist entertainment like Turkey Shoot (1982) and Centrespread (1981) at their unpleasant face value, Not Quite Hollywood promotes the idea that, like it or not, the story of film will always be incomplete without delving into the seedy underbelly of genre cinema. And through his unabashed fandom seeping through every film clip montage he displays, Hartley is able to make this salient point without pretension, avoiding the risk of condescending to the creative works he highlights and the audience he's speaking to.

Where before I never outright dismissed exploitation cinema despite the form my cinephilia first took, I certainly never could imagine myself carrying the same enthusiasm for it that Hartley showcases in his film. Not Quite Hollywood got me considering the image of my own country’s cinema, and how Canada’s own brand of cheaply produced genre fare dubbed “Canuxploitation” is a similar treasure trove waiting to be explored. I embarked on a deep dive earlier this year (almost as if to correct the stuffiness in my earlier years) and encountered numerous outrageous gems like Richard Ciupka’s Curtains (1983) and Michael Anderson’s Murder by Phone (1982) which I have come to cherish as favorites in my personal canon. Hartley’s infectious ardor for the movies that populated the drive-ins of his childhood opened my eyes to the possibility of countering the canon I had been following hastily with B-movies leading the charge as a positive representative for a nation’s cinematic identity. He may not have revolutionized the genre of documentary (and may not even consider himself a documentarian) but he fundamentally altered the  way I approached the idea of a canon and boasted an undeniably authentic cinephilia, and for that I’m forever grateful to the Ozploitation advocate.

¹ https://bristolbadfilmclub.co.uk/exclusive-interview-director-mark-hartley-discusses-the-rise-and-fall-of-cannon-films/
² https://umbrellaent.com.au/five-questions-with-mark-hartley/
³ https://whatculture.com/film/mike-talks-ozploitation-and-genre-movies-with-mark-hartley

Chris Luciantonio is a Toronto-based film critic, academic, culture writer, and podcast host. He is a staff writer for Film Pulse and Film Cred. He watches Riverdale religiously for reasons unknown.