MOVIES

From Background Blurs to Lead Roles

Getting the lead role in a major new Oz movie was like a dream come true to Kerry Mack who plays Christine Maresh in Hostage. But stardom is not all glitter and excitement, it's hard work, as Kerry told BARRY LOWE.

THE Christine Maresch story reads like a

descent through hell. A naive young woman leaving her working class Wollongong background, moves to Germany with her husband and becomes embroiled in neo-nazi intrigue, murder and mayhem in Turkey and becomes the hostage of her sadistic obsessive husband.

It's the stuff of good melodrama, but in this case it's based on the real-life "adventures" of Christine Maresch whose autobiography has been released concurrently with the film. So to play the lead role has been like a dream come true for Melbourne actress, Kerry Mack. Her kookie sense of humor and her straightforwardness must have endeared her to director Frank Shield. And her hair, a sort of grass-mown blond extravaganza that looks as if it's been put through a malfunctioning blender. She has success written all over her. She's critical of her own performance but only because she still seems to be embarrassed by watching herself on the big screen. But she has nothing to worry about and the weeks of rehearsal and her acting background have not let her down.

"I'd always been interested in acting," she says in the office of Roadshow, the movie's distributors. "I did the usual school plays and went to drama school in Melbourne for 18 months before I got myself an agent and did extra work, blurs in the background. I did that for about three months and then I realised extra work was all the agency was about and I didn't want to continue. So I changed agencies and two days later I got Desolation Angels."

Kerry enjoyed the experience of working on her first feature although its future is clouded and currently Desolation Angels, looks as if it will be released in America before it touches down here.

"It's a sort of Puberty Blues meets Mad Max," she laughs. "Although if I hadn't done it I wouldn't have got Hostage, so it was good grounding for

me.

"The plot of Angels is about three girls who sneak away for a weekend to the house of one of the girl's parents. And it's how they get hassled by these guys in two identical black hotted-up panel vans all the trip. It all turns into rapes and murders and they crash into the house in a panel van and all that sort of stuff. It was a small budget movie and was shot over six or seven weeks.

"It was the biggest thing I'd done apart from Holiday Island in which I played a nudist. The show was axed before my episodes got shown, which was a blessing in disguise."

After Angels, Kerry saw the casting consultants for Hostage and she read the script. She became one of 800 women from Australia and New Zealand who auditioned for the lead role. She was subsequently one of the 40 chosen for director Frank Shields to see and then one of the eight actually screen tested. From that she was picked.

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Three weeks of rehearsals were followed by three weeks of filming in Germany and two in Athens. The scenes in Turkey were actually shot in Broken Hill.

"We couldn't get into Turkey because of their adverse reaction to Midnight Express. So they sent the second unit to shoot some footage. The first assistant director wrote this fake jeans commercial and took a couple of guys over. He told the Turkish officials they wanted some nice scenery as background. The cameraman was guarded by these guys with guns but he would just pan away from the models over the countryside and we got the footage that

way.

The Turkish sequence with its attempted rape, abduction and bloodletting, however, is hardly likely to endear Hostage to the Turkish government.

But how does an actress approach a role which is based on a real person?

"I didn't want to meet the real Christine and Frank, the director, didn't want me to either. Not until filming was over. I did meet her on the final day of shoot and I think my characterisation would have been totally confused if I'd met her at the beginning.

"As it was I thought I had my character down after the rehearsal but it's the same old story, you start shooting and everything changes. We shot the

scenes in Germany first and that sequence falls in the middle of the film. The only scene that was done chronologically is the end scene where I look so terrible. And that's no makeup, the film was so tiring that I did look terrible.

"During shooting Frank made the leading man, Ralph Schicha, put on these strange looks which hadn't been there in rehearsal and, of course, I had to change, otherwise I would have looked ridiculous. So the character I had developed during rehearsal had to change.'

But even with the weariness of the shoot and the changing of her character Kerry is optimistic about the future.

"If this film doesn't go places I think I'll still get work. Not because my performance is necessarily so wonderful, but if you have a leading role in a feature film which people are going to make a fuss over, then naturally they're going to pay you more attention.

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LATVIAN THEATRE

32 PARNELL STREET, STRATHFIELD

JUNE 1983 WEDNESDAY 1st THURSDAY 2nd FRIDAY 3rd SATURDAY 4th

at 8.00 p.m. at 8.00 p.m.

at 8.00 p.m. at 2.15 p.m. and 8.00 p.m.

SUNDAY

5th

at 2.00 p.m. and

Kerry Mack and Ralph Schicha

6.30 p.m.

Adults $6.00

School Children $3.00

Students to the age of 20-$4.00

Pensioners:

All performances except

Friday and Saturday Evenings:

$4.00

Forward Your Cheque and Stamped Addressed Envelope to: 62 BETTINGTON ROAD,

DUNDAS, 2117

Telephone: 630 4570

1983 MAY CAMPAIGN 47