Spider and Rose is a 1994 Australian film directed by Bill Bennett and starring Ruth Cracknell, Simon Bossell, and Max Cullen. It is about the relationship between an elderly lady and a young ambulance driver.
It won the audience award at the Tromsø International Film Festival in 1995.[3]
Plot
An ambulance driver, Spider, 22, has to take a seventy year old woman, Rose on a six hour trip to her family farm. It's his last day at work and he wants to get back for a party he has organised. Spider and Rose clash but over time they form a bond.
Cast
- Ruth Cracknell as Rose Dougherty
- Simon Bossell as Spider McCall
- Max Cullen as Jack
- Marshall Napier as Henderson
- Bruce Venables as truck driver
- Jennifer Cluff as Helen Dougherty
- Lewis Fitz-Gerald as Robert Dougherty
- Tina Bursill as Sister Abbott
- Beth Champion as Nurse Price
- Bob Baines as Ambo Officer Muggleston
Production
Bennett claimed he wanted to make something "a bit more mainstream" than his earlier films. The story was inspired by his grandmother who lost her partner in a road accident. He was also inspired by having been in a several car crash himself in the 1970s which gave him a great appreciation for ambulance drivers.[4][5]
Bennett later said he did not regard the film as a comedy but "a drama that would have some funny bits in it... Even now I don't see the film as a comedy. I regard it as quite a serious treatise on the way we treat the aged."[6]
Bennett estimated it took four years from writing the first treatment through to the completion of the film.[6]
The movie was entirely funded by the AFFC. However it did not want to cast Ruth Cracknell or Simon Bossell. "Ruth Cracknell has yet to deliver a credible screen performance and Simon Bossell (Joh’s Jury) is highly inexperienced,” wrote FFC executive Catriona Hughes to the FFC board.[1] According to Bennett, FFC head John Morris would only finance the movie if Cracknell was not cast, but Bennett insisted; Morris relented but warned it would be a mistake.[1]
Shooting took place near Mudgee.[5]
Reception
David Stratton of Variety wrote "On paper, the idea of an odd-couple generation-gap road movie hardly seems promising, so it's a minor miracle that writer/director Bill Bennett has managed to inject life into such familiar material."[7]
The film led to Bennett being hired to make Two If by Sea.[1]
References
- ^ a b c d Brendan, Swift· (27 May 2024). "Why the government film agency railed against casting Ruth Cracknell in Bill Bennett's '90s film 'Spider & Rose'". If Magazine.
- ^ "Australian Films at the Australian Box Office", Film Victoria accessed 13 November 2012
- ^ Tromsø International Film Festival
- ^ "Seventy, single and dangerous". The Age. 9 September 1994. p. 17.
- ^ a b Loane, Sally (22 December 1993). "Riding the high road". The Sydney Morning Herald. p. 24.
- ^ a b "Bill Bennett". Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. 11 April 1996.
- ^ Stratton, David (9 May 1994). "Spider and Rose". Variety.
External links
- Spider and Rose at IMDb
- Spider and Rose at Letterbox DVD
- Spider and Rose at Screen Australia
- Spider and Rose at Oz Movies