(Written by Roy Maloy)
This has been a long journey. So long, in fact, that it feels like a lifetime ago since I began. I began this project as a reaction to a conversation I had. One of my closest friends is a fierce protector of women’s spaces in all areas of life, and she told me something that actually shocked me. I was discussing my work with her, and that I am proud that I have been able to re-include a number of women into the collective memory of Australian crime history and emphasise the power they possessed at that time. And then my friend asked if I had come across The Bechdel Test.
If you are unfamiliar with it, the Bechdel Test is a measure for gauging the representation of women and their roles in cinema. A number of very impressive female movie makers and actors had pushed for some time to be able to fill roles or at least see roles developed in film and television that didn’t simply require the woman to stand by and be saved by a man. I had never come across this before, and it had never occurred to me.
As I googled different aspects of this, I came across the work that Geena Davis (of Thelma & Louise fame) was doing. Geena has set up a foundation to support movies and writers who create pieces that position women in screenplays to have main roles, equal dialogue and not be represented as flimsy, desperate and pathetic humans, as Hollywood has a habit of portraying them as.
On somewhat of a whim, I reached out to the foundation, not even expecting a response, but I sent them an email telling them about a few people that they may like to look into as options for creating film content. These included the people I had researched such as the Madam of Melbourne, Dolly Gray, the sly grog baroness Bridget Mahoney and the most prolific bordello madam in Australian history Minnie Clark. I don’t think I actually even expected a response. But when I did receive a response, it was not only a massive surprise, but it also challenged me in a way I had never been challenged before. The response was not only personable and supportive, but it put to me the question I should’ve been able to ask myself. The person who wrote to me asked why I hadn’t already written a piece like the one I was telling them to write. If I had all the information, what was stopping me from writing a screenplay myself, with these kinds of characters represented the way they should be?
Their response begins a chain of events that invest me completely in the goal of writing this piece. For those of you who are new to my work, I have a very prolific output. I try to write between 2000 to 3000 words every day, which has resulted in me publishing between three and four books every year for many years now. Being able to move from research, non-fiction, and fiction was also an incredibly rewarding challenge that I thoroughly enjoyed.
Skip forward three years, and the screenplay had been sitting in my Google Docs for a long time. It was something I thoroughly enjoyed writing, as nine full seasons, but it remained something I didn’t have any idea what to do with next. It turned out that it was one thing to write the piece, but entirely another to understand how it goes from being written into an actual screenplay production. I’ve begun the process of applying for grants over a two-year period, but again and again was rejected by 17 of them. All of them told me that I didn’t have the ability to produce a screenplay. It was only when I met producer Gracie Kay and cinematographer Stuart Jaymes that this project fully fell into place.
This Saturday we will go into filming for the third time, and we will try and capture more of the scenes that I have written as a part of this screenplay. This Saturday we will be filming scenes that depict the power of one of the key players from Vendetta 19, and showing a very authentic style of underworld activity run by Dolly Gray. The scenes show her in a position of power over men, seeking retribution and making a particular man pay for his wrongs. This scene is also extremely likely to be on point for its authenticity, historically and socially.
I want to finish this piece by again, thanking everybody who has contributed to the crowdfunding side of this project. The costs from project has been funded by myself out of my own pocket from the money I make in my day job. I have included below a link for the GoFundMe that was set up sometime ago in the hopes that some of you might have the ability to contribute towards the costs of this incredible project. I’m committed to seeing this across the line at my pocket, but anything you can also contribute to will help enormously at this time.
Donate to Vendetta 19 – The Screenplay Pilot (gofundme.com)
