When Shirley Barrett’s first feature, Love Serenade, won the Camera d’Or at Cannes in 1996, she briefly found herself flavor of the month in Hollywood. Shirley later presented the visit as a series of amusing embarrassments:
“Just as he was about to get into the car, he suddenly threw his arms out wide in what I giddily interpreted as Warren’s way of saying ‘Let’s hug.’ After all, that’s what Northerners do “Americans, right?” I threw myself headlong into Warren Beatty’s arms. And as I did, a terrible thought suddenly struck me: Warren was just lying down.
Shirley Barrett, respected filmmaker, television director and author, died in Sydney on August 3 after a long illness.
Set in a small northern Victorian town called ‘Sunray’, Love Serenade is about two alien sisters, Dimity (Miranda Otto) and Vicki-Ann (Rebecca Frith), who are baffled by the arrival of the town’s new DJ, Ken Sherry (George). Shevtsov). Sherry is aloof, controlling, and predatory, though by the film’s close we don’t know who is hunting whom. Throw in a throbbing ’70s soundtrack by Barry White and you have an unlikely mix that perfectly captures the auteur’s sensibility.
Initially more appreciated overseas than in Australia, Love Serenade has become canonical. Critic Guy Rundle described it in 2017 as “the best film made in Australia, something demure and perfectly judged”.
Shirley Barrett was born in 1961 and raised in Melbourne. A sickly girl, she was often left home from school. She and her older sister, my wife Karen, created elaborate stories and games. When Karen’s class studied Egypt at school, Shirley looked forward to her coming home each afternoon so they could continue to nurse their dolls through the tribulations of Tutankhamun’s curse. From an early age she kept a journal, specializing in nonsense verse, an interest she maintained into adulthood, often regaling a captive audience at family dinners with the rhyming adventures of household pets.
In 1981, while studying at the University of Melbourne, Shirley went to a party and met an art student, Chris Norris, who became the love of her life. Typically for Shirley, she didn’t just fall for Chris, she fell for everything about Chris; Robinvale, the final location of Love Serenade, was his hometown. The couple moved to Sydney in 1985 when, on her third try, Shirley was accepted into the Australian Film Television and Radio School. She and Chris were married in Las Vegas in 1992 by an Elvis impersonator.
Love Serenade brought Shirley acclaim, but also difficult life choices. Hollywood came courting, and while Shirley was flattered by the attention, she decided to stay in Australia. She and Chris had a baby girl to think about, with a second on the way. Even more importantly, he wanted to write and direct his films and, as his misunderstanding with Beatty humorously illustrated, America was not a culture in which he felt he could write effortlessly. Although Shirley never regretted the decision to stay in Sydney, she understood that it meant she was outshone by some of her contemporaries.
Still, DreamWorks’ David Geffen wrote a big check for his next feature, Walk the Talk, which premiered in 2001. Set in the seedy clubs and bars of the Gold Coast, it’s about dreamers and schemers, two-bit losers and thugs. – for rent. Like Love Serenade, the film is sui generis and attracted many admirers. But DreamWorks lost its investment and did not release Walk the Talk in the US.
Shirley’s third feature, South Solitary (2010), is a change of pace. Set in 1927, it again stars Miranda Otto as Meredith, a lonely young woman with a complicated past who accompanies her Uncle George (Barry Otto) to take over a lighthouse on a remote island, where she is thrown with the lighthouse keeper Jake. Fleet (Marton Csokas), a damaged veteran of the First World War. Again, the film didn’t make money, but it was liked by many critics, and Shirley’s script won several literary awards.
Meanwhile, Shirley had been building another career for herself in television, directing numerous episodes of shows such as Home and Away, Offspring and Love My Way. While these weren’t cultural milestones in the way her films aspired to be, Shirley loved the camaraderie of television and prided herself on getting along with her crew and cast.
But Shirley saved her biggest surprises for last. Researching an idea for a feature film about whaling in Eden, on the NSW south coast, in the first decade of the 20th century, he realized that the challenge of raising investment for this project would be overwhelming. Her mother suggested she do it as fiction, and the result was her first novel, Rush Oh!, in 2015. Narrated primarily by Mary Davidson, spinster-in-waiting and eldest daughter of the heroic whaler d ‘Eden, George Davidson, is Moby-Dick you know. Pride and Prejudice meets my brilliant career.
Shirley’s second novel, The Bus on Thursday, is a flamboyant horror-romance set in Talbingo in the Snowy Mountains (another place with Norris family connections). Her heroine, Eleanor, a breast cancer survivor, goes to Talbingo as a substitute teacher for the saintly Miss Barker, whose disappearance is one of the many mysteries that plunge her deeper into her vortex.
The book was inspired by the experiences of Shirley’s friend Kate, who was operated on for breast cancer as a young woman, recovered, but struggled with the after-effects. In a sad coincidence, Shirley herself was diagnosed with breast cancer while completing the book, in 2017. As she later wrote:
“I would put ‘don’t write a book about cancer’ right up there with other government health guidelines, like how much alcohol you should drink if you don’t want to get cancer (head). Writing a book about cancer can give you cancer ? Apparently! So that’s my first piece of advice: don’t do it.”
Shirley remained a source of fun and support to her family and friends during her illness, even as the disease spread to her bones and brain. Until her final weeks she was the life of the party and was able to celebrate her 60th birthday with extended family in November last year.
I have known Shirley Barrett since she was 15 years old. In discussing this article with her, I asked her if she had any closing words:
“I feel like I’ve had a lucky and privileged life, even though I’m dying a little earlier than I would have liked.
“I’ve had a loving family, a wonderful husband, beautiful children, and a career where I’ve been able to do exactly what I wanted to do. I don’t feel like I’ve missed out on anything.”
Shirley Barrett is survived by her mother, Frances; his sister Karen and brothers Graham and Andrew; and by Chris and their grown daughters, Sabrina and Emmeline.