ALONG FOR THE RIDE

GRIFFITHS TRANSLATES PAYNE’S MELBOURNE CUP TRIUMPH WITH HEART

Within minutes of watching Michelle Payne’s history-making triumph at the Melbourne Cup, Rachel Griffiths knew she wanted to make a film about the barrier-breaking jockey.

But the Oscar-nominee admits it’s taken her more than two decades in the industry to feel confident pitching herself as a director.

“It’s taken me until I’m 50 to direct my first film, but it took me until I was 50 to be able to sit in front of people and say ‘I can do this. Take a chance on me’. I don’t think I could have done it 10 years ago. I don’t think I believed in myself enough to get anybody else to back that,” she says.

“The difficult thing about biopics is choosing what to leave out.

“We come into our own in our own time, and Michelle came into hers early but she still had a long road to get there. You have people telling you you can’t, but you’ve got to be resilient.”

Griffiths faced her fair share of hurdles while making the film, from earning the trust of Michelle and her team – beating interested parties from America – to Jacki Weaver dropping out of the project just a month before filming due to illness.

“Those were the hardest days – when you get the call ‘Oh by the way we don’t have Jacki Weaver any more,” she says. “On the budget you have you never go home happy feeling like you got all the shots you want. Calling the shots means making those decisions about what you think you can live without, and sometimes you’re wrong and you’re in the edit going ‘Oh why did I do that?’.

“Then there was the added layer of responsibility for people and horses ... Every time the racing was running, I had a pit in my stomach. If anything happened to a horse or a rider I felt it would kill the beaut spirit of this film.”

Telling the story of the first female jockey to win the Melbourne Cup in the prestigious horse race’s 155-year history sounds like it should sit nicely within the Me Too movement. But Griffiths says she wanted to make a family film about not only Michelle’s achievements, but those of her family and, in particular, her older brother Stevie, who plays himself.

The first-time actor, who was Michelle’s strapper on the day of her Melbourne Cup win, delivers a stand-out performance.

“The thing about Stevie is you don’t see disability. You see his abilities as a performer. He’s matching Magda (Szubanski) moment to moment for the laughs,” Griffiths says. “You also see his equine ability. Here’s someone who’s traditionally not seen for their ability showcasing two incredible abilities. This film is not a Me Too film; it’s a you can’t be what you can’t see film. That’s true for Stevie and Michelle, and we’ve already had so many emails just saying how that part of the film is so special.”

For Michelle, who famously told the world to “get stuffed” after her Melbourne Cup victory, the satisfaction of seeing her story on the big screen comes from the potential to inspire the next generation of young women.

“For me the best thing after the Melbourne Cup wasn’t just realising my dream I’d had since I was five years old, but also I was now a role model for younger women with dreams,” she says. “I had my older sisters and I looked up to them. If I can be that person now and carry that on that’s really special to show that it’s not always going to be easy. There will be a lot of tough times and it might seem impossible but that’s life, and you’re never going to achieve anything if you give up.”