Life of crime
SON OF A GUN Writer/director Julius Avery harked back to his troubled youth for his searing feature debut.
Julius Avery is, you might say, one lucky son of a gun. A teenage tearaway, turned writer-director, his early years saw frequent brushes with the law growing up in Western Australia. “I came very close to going to jail,” he nods, “but some of my other friends, they did end up in jail and a lot of them are dead.” Thankfully, his mother pulled him away from this life of crime – encouraging him towards film by giving him a stills camera.
After his Cannes Jury Prize winning 2009 short Jerrycan, he now makes his full feature debut with Son Of A Gun, a pulsating crime thriller that draws, in part, from his own experiences. Like a cross between prison drama Starred Up and Heat, it’s the story of JR (Brenton Thwaites), a young offender taken under the wing of veteran inmate Brendan (Ewan McGregor), a relationship inspired by one Avery himself had during his misspent youth.
“An older guy came into my life who was a very Machiavellian Fagin-like character. He has a bunch of us kids working for him doing these small petty crime jobs. I got sucked into that world. I lost my father when I was very young – at six – and I was always looking for father figures. He taught me how to steal and do things like that, but he also taught me taught me stuff a father would teach you.”
Much of Avery’s youthful trouble revolved around stealing cars. “I thought we were doing things that weren’t hurting citizens,” he says. “But looking back on it, it’s just scumbag activity.” Yet when he was making Son Of A Gun, it hit home just what petty theft can lead to.
One ex-offender brought in to talk to the actors initially went to prison for six months – and then spent the next decade in and out of jail, including a seven-year stint for armed robbery. McGregor also got to walk on the wild side. “I introduced him to a couple of pretty full-on crims,” says Avery, a meet that proved useful when it came to rehearsing a scene where Brendan leaves his mark on a fellow inmate. “We talked about this scene, and the guy was like ‘You break their eardrums, you break their nose, you break the jaw. So whenever they look in the mirror, they will be reminded of you.’”
Already Son Of A Gun has got Hollywood drooling. “The studios went crazy for it,” says Avery, who is toying with doing a Stand By Me- like coming-of-age drama as his first American film. “I want to make films that your regular folk are into. Like a Ridley Scott or a Christopher Nolan. They tend to take risks, and still do really great commercial films.” Maybe crime does pay after all. JM