March 23rd, 2012 by Glendyn

You can’t do Puberty Blues without a trip to the ‘Drive-In’. We needed to find a fully operational drive-in and luckily for us the one in Blacktown (below) is not only one of the original but also one of the last remaining drive-ins in Australia. It’s still pretty much untouched looking and feeling much like it always has.

From our recce the other night it appears to be a popular option for ‘first dates’ and ‘double features’. Tuesday nights, 2 films for 10 bucks! Bargain!

I couldn’t help but think of the transformative power of that giant outdoor screen. I wonder how many people may have been moved or who’s lives have been changed while gazing through their windscreens up towards the flickering image.

Have any of you got a great drive in memory?

March 19th, 2012 by Glendyn

Location hunting in Kurnell (the birthplace of ‘modern’ Australia).

March 14th, 2012 by Glendyn

March 12th, 2012 by Glendyn

Head down in pre-production. Locations, script, camera tests, casting and more.

Location scouting and recce-ing has been the main focus, but all the elements including wardrobe and make-up are coming into play. Because we are recreating 1970′s Australia, everything we see through the lens has to be considered and designed.

We have houses, businesses, streets and a whole high school to lock in. Luckily the ocean and parts of Cronulla beach are the same as they’ve alway been : )

It’s actually quite amazing how many houses are out there essentially ‘untouched’ and still ‘living in the 70′s’. Homes where newly weds built the house, moved in, bought all their stuff and then were just content to keep it that way. Quite nice really. So far removed from the consumerism of today. It says something about the period as well. Things were built to last then and why replace it, if it isn’t broken?

March 2nd, 2012 by Glendyn

Moved to Sydney this week to begin pre-production on Puberty Blues! We are making eight, one hour episodes inspired by the original book. I say ‘the book’ as opposed to ‘the film‘, not that I don’t like the film, I think it’s great! But it’s a different approach to take when going back to the source material, rather than ‘remaking’ a film.

The book doesn’t necessarily tell a great story (although it does), nor is it beautifully written (although it is), I guess to me what is unique and special about the book is that it provides a wonderfully blunt and extremely honest recollection of what it was like to be a teenager, growing up on the beaches south of Sydney in mid 70′s. Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey wrote Puberty Blues when they were only eighteen years old. It’s a detailed autobiographical account of their shared misadventures of when they were just thirteen years old (!!!). It’s the authenticy that leaps off the pages. No-0ne else but those two girls could have written such a vivid account of the highs and lows of the sex and drugs and surfing with such detail, naivety and the unbridled enthusiasm of youth.

Puberty Blues ’the series’ (produced by John Edwards and Imogen Banks and written by Tony McNamara, Fiona Seres and Alice Bell) will still be set in the seventies and although it will feature many of the details, characters and narrative beats of the book, essentially it’s a ‘re-imagining’ of the world documented in the book in all it’s sad, funny and at times brutal truths.