Andrew Leavold: Director and Creator of “PUB: The Movie”…
The idea for Pub: The Movie probably hatched a long time before the cameras started rolling. I’d been listening to Fred’s bands for more than thirty years, collecting his strips and flyers, touring him to Brisbane, playing in bands with him, drinking with him, appearing in countless Pub strips, even shooting him for my first feature film LESBO-A-GO-GO back in 2003 (Fred makes an appearance as a grotesque Vision of Hell!). I intimately knew Fred and his world, and both Fred and I figured I could tell his story more effectively than most. After Fred watched my first documentary feature THE SEARCH FOR WENG WENG at the end of 2013, he turned to me and said, “Now you’re done with Weng Weng, how about doing a film on ME?”
After several more years of compiling materials and thinking about its structure, we started proper filming in mid-2016 just as I Spit On Your Gravy reformed for Robbie Rocket’s ten year passing. After that shoot I’d travel to Melbourne once or twice a year and along with my cameramen Jarret Gahan and Matthew Victor Pastor, we’d follow Fred around with a camera, just in case something of interest occurred – which it invariably did. Soon we’d amassed an incredible treasure trove of fly-on-the-wall footage, gigs, Fred “happenings”, old videos, photos, articles, you name it. In November 2019 I was joined by Jonathan Sequeira, my old mate from Sydney – his fantastic documentary on Radio Birdman, Descent Into The Maelstrom, had just done the rounds of film festivals and cinemas – as co-producer and director of photography. Our first batch of interviews included Tim Rogers (Fred’s manager in The Twits), I Spit On Your Gravy’s Mark “General Sausage Fingers” Carson and Sindy Virtue Van Eede, daughter Millie Negro, Elizabeth Reale (The Peptides, Piranhas In Love), Paulie Stewart (Painters And Dockers), Steve Lucas (X) and Joey Bedlam (DollSquad); returning via Sydney we then shot Pub collaborator Paul Fraser, Graham “Hoody” Hood (The Johnnys), and music scribe Clinton Walker (or as he likes to describe himself, “the villain of the piece”).
I then put out the call for Kickstarter contributions to help fund an early 2020 shoot, anticipating a mid-year finish. Late February 2020 I dropped by Melbourne just as the Kickstarter campaign topped the $11K mark. Everything was looking Gravy…
As soon as I returned home from Melbourne, disaster struck. A Global Pandemic! The two years of Co-Vid effectively put the entire project on pause. I don’t need to remind you about the closed borders, workplaces locked down, entire Melbourne suburbs sealed off… Meanwhile in Queensland I was stuck on the Sunshine Coast, effectively grounded for the duration, and it made even working on the Kickstarter merch an impossible task.
Then came the first glimmer of hope: Queensland’s borders finally opened in December, around the time Brett Garten, our new Executive Producer, stepped in and bankrolled the final shoot and post-production. Co-producer/DOP Jonathan Sequeira and I then flew to Melbourne in January to film the final batch of interviews, including Fred’s brothers Dez and Ross Negro, Ross Knight (Cosmic Psychos), Sam Crassweller (I Spit On Your Gravy’s first Spitette), Phil “Grizzly” Miles (Gravies, The Gravybillys, The Band Who Shot Liberty Valance), Luke “Lush” Aston (The Twits), Fiona Leonard and Fiona Lee Maynard (original members of the infamous Thursday Crawl), Munster Times’ Matt Ryan, punk historian Melynda Von Wayward, Bec Anthony (Kooky Karaoke etc), and last but certainly not least, Fred’s partner-in-crime Vivienne Gay.
Once we got back from the shoot, Jonathan appointed his protégé Benji Steane as editor, who began the massive task of compiling the editing from 100-plus hours of footage, literally thousands of photos, flyers and articles, and more than thirty years of Fred’s Pub strips. Another new face joining our little team was Lluis Sanchez aka Lluis Fuzzhound, animator extraordinaire as well as being half of Melbourne garage punk duo Thee Cha Cha Chas. Lluis was happy to fill the shoes of our previous animator Alex Machin who, over the past two years, had become swamped with offers to do music clips. Just wait til you see Fred’s characters from his Pub strips come to life!
Melbourne International Film Festival approved the rough cut and programmed its very first screening for August 12th at the Astor Theatre – not only my favourite cinema in the country, but located IN St Kilda itself, and for Fred it’s just two tram stops away! At the start of July 2022 it was a quick trip to Safety Bay in Western Australia to supervise the fine edit with Benji, and then off to Melbourne for the MIFF program launch.
That first ever screening at the Astor was PANDEMONIUM! There must have been more than 750 people crammed into two floors of the Astor, and the reception was more like a rock concert than a screening. Everyone had a complimentary Mountain Goat beer in their hand, and STILL we broke the Astor bar record. Two more MIFF screenings followed – Kino in the city, then back to the Astor – and the reaction was the same, audiences LOVED the film. Sydney Underground Film Festival hosted a fantastic screening at Event Cinemas on George St on September 10th with myself, Jonathan and Brett Garten present for the Q&A; the Queensland premiere on October 8th was in my home town of Nambour, as part of the Sunshine Coast Film Festival, and was a roaring success.
SO WHAT’S NEXT FOR PUB: THE MOVIE? After our brief Aussie festival run, things have become a lot clearer exactly where the film will take us next. I imagine more festivals here and overseas, a “PUB Crawl” around Australia, a DVD/Blu-Ray release with a ton of tasty extras, a Fred internet archive, a book (it’s already being compiled!), and after that – who knows?
Pub will continue to be an adventure for all of us, and I hope you can stay with us for the wild ride! Meanwhile please sign up to our Pub: The Movie Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100066783002373 for more frequent updates, or Fred’s official page at https://www.facebook.com/frednegrostkilda