Epic voyage in search of truth

January 24 2013 - 3:00am
A still from Jeremy Thomas' film <i>Kon-Tiki</i>.
A still from Jeremy Thomas' film <i>Kon-Tiki</i>.

BRITISH film producer Jeremy Thomas was last in Melbourne in 1975 producing his first film. It was Mad Dog Morgan, directed by Philippe Mora and starring Dennis Hopper - one of the resurgent Australian film industry's more peculiar bits of casting - as the bushranger. It was a wild time, with stuntmen setting themselves on fire for real and every day's shoot ending in a tide of amber nectar. ''I came here from a country where apprenticeship was everything and you couldn't really get your break if you were over 20. Here, everything was up for grabs,'' he says. ''And it was exciting being parachuted into this culture of Melbourne, which was a very, very interesting place. It was good to be here at that beginning moment.''

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