Jon
Hewitt
(Jon
Desmond Hewitt)
b. April 8, 1959, Wodonga, Victoria, Australia.
BIOGRAPHY:
Jon Hewitt cut his teeth in the Australian
film industry in exhibition and distribution.
From 1983 thru 1997
he worked in programming, acquisitions and marketing for Australia's
largest "quality" film exhibitor and distributor, The Premium
Group.
CRITICAL
OVERVIEW:
I first started to think about making
movies in 1975 when I was fifteen and saw Sandy Harbutt's incredible
bikie classic, Stone (1974). Suddenly here was a film that
told a story about people who seemed real to me - people I knew.
The area I lived in (Albury/ Wodonga) had a big bikie culture
and the people in the film seemed just like the bikies I saw around
me. So, this was really the watershed moment when the heavens
opened and I saw that movies could come from 'real' life - and
exciting, action-packed movies at that .... While Bloodlust
was being written the filmmakers that had the greatest impact
on the process included Russ Meyer (Faster Pussycat, Kill!
Kill!, 1965), Abel Ferrara (King of New York, 1990)
and John Woo (The Killer, 1985). Hong Kong bullet-ballet
cinema also had a huge influence .... Because we [Richard Wolstencroft
and I] were doing it underground with no support from the 'industry'
and film funding bodies, there was no pressure from that quarter
... [in the years that followed] most people involved in the industry
thought we were gross, perverted, appallingly untalented and not
deserving of any support. So nothing happened that had any career
impact. Richard also went on to shoot his second feature in mid-1996
[Pearls Before Swine, 1999] but, basically, we're both
still waiting for something to happen, for someone to give us
a break, but we're not counting on it ... [A production] doesn't
have to be big and probably shouldn't be. A large percentage of
the shoot of my next feature will be just me [camera and sound]
and the actor ... I see myself as a filmmaker defined by the writing,
producing and directing of the project, but editing is a skill
I prefer to put in the hands of an artist ... It's technically
easier to make a feature-length project than ever before. You
can shoot footage on a domestic video camera now that's more than
good enough to cut it in the world marketplace and it's also ridiculously
cost-effective. One of the films in competition in Cannes 2004
was shot on various grunge formats and post-produced on a Mac
ibook on a budget of $400. I've always thought that the hardest
thing of all is getting to the point of turning over on the first
shot. After that, it's all downhill.
Jon Hewitt,
April 2004, excerpted from Metro Magazine (see reference
below).
