After representing his film MAD BASTARDS at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, lead actor and co-writer DEAN DALEY-JONES sits down with TIM MILFULL and gives his version of what the title really means.

There’s a quiet, but intensely powerful moment in Brendan Fletcher’s new Australian film, Mad Bastards, where itinerant ex-con, TJ (Dean Daley-Jones) confesses to an Indigenous elder that there’s an angry little man with an axe inside of him screaming to get out; that this little man is the source of all of the problems in TJ’s adult life. When I ask him to explain the title of the film featuring his debut as lead, I expect Dean to reveal that it all has to do with the angry little man.

But his answer is something of a shock, “A mad bastard is a man who’s been doing it tough and hard, an aboriginal man – well, not even an aboriginal man – someone who feels like he’s doing everything right, but he just keeps getting into trouble, and has this anger, this menacing thing inside of him: a man inside of him with a little axe. When he changes, that’s a mad bastard, ‘You’re a mad bastard – you changed!’ That’s a term of endearment – that’s how we look at it.” So a mad bastard is someone who has sorted himself out? “Yeah, I look at it like that: ‘You’re a mad bastard. You used to be a lunatic, but you’ve gone and got counselling for your anger, for your substance abuse, for your alcohol abuse, for violence, to change! You’re a mad bastard! Fucking come here and give us a hug, brother – that’s solid.’ A mate of mine grew up in our suburb, a rough suburb, and now he’s a classical ballet dancer – he’s a mad bastard!”

When Dean was in Broome, his good friend, Ngaire Pigram – who plays TJ’s estranged wife in Mad Bastards – recommended that the carpenter and budding filmmaker see writer-director Fletcher about a film he was making. One moment, Dean was looking at a position as key grip; the next, Fletcher was asking him to read the script, “Brendan said, ‘I want you to do a screen test because you can relate to the lead character from your own personal challenges and your own personal journey. I know you’re not that crazy person anymore, and I know it might be hard for you to conjure up those emotions that you used to have…’ I said, ‘Well, before I do a screen test, I need to read the script properly because there’s a lot of films that have been made about indigenous Australians which have been great and successful, and you could never knock ’em. But me personally, I couldn’t be involved in anything that’s going to portray us as “poor fella me”.’ I’ve had enough of seeing “poor fella me”. You see a bit of TJ as “poor fella me” in the beginning – there’s a kind of up-and-down rollercoaster, and there’s a dark side. But in the end, you can see him actually believe that he wants to change – it’s not throwing the guilt at anyone. He wants to change, and that’s great.”

But Fletcher’s film, and Dean’s performance is not just a blackfella’s story, “It’s a universal story – we’re just interpreting it for a blackfella, for our way. Of course, we’re being role models for our own people, but also for anyone. My father passed away when I was 10 – I was lucky I had his brothers, and they taught me how to change the tyres on a car, how to fish, how to go hunting, how to fight, but they never taught me how to cry – they never taught me how to talk about what was really going on inside of me. So that sort of stuff didn’t come out in me until, well … a bit like what happened with TJ. It was like, ‘Fuck this – I’m working in the building industry; I’m working hard; I’m paying my bills. But when I’m in the pub I’m still hearing people shouting out, “Boong this,” and “Abo that.”’ So I’d guzzle a few, and I’d go up to them and say, ‘Well, I’m a fucking boong – bring it on!’ That’s how I dealt with that. Now, I’d go and sit next to those blokes and say, ‘Mate, can I buy you a beer?’ I don’t do that no more, which is great – I’m happy. It’s good not to be like that. If I hadn’t opened those doors to start my journey of healing, I wouldn’t have been able to make this film. That’s why I was able to do it, because there was a challenge, but what made it easier for me was that I wanted to tell this story so that we could prevent other people from going through this stuff.”

MAD BASTARDS opens in cinemas Thursday May 5, rated [MA15+] www.madbastards.com.au

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