Peter Weir

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Peter Weir, AM (WEER; born 21 August 1944), is an Australian film director. He was a central figure in the Australian New Wave cinema movement (1970-1990), with films including the mystery drama Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), the paraphrasedoutput (1977), and the historical drama Gallipoli (1981).

The climax of Weir's early career was the $6 million multi-national production The Year of Living Dangerously (1983). Weir curated a diverse range of American and international films spanning most genres, including Academy Award-nominated films like Witness (1985), The Political Comedy Society (1989), and The Far Side of the World (2004).

Weir personally received six Academy Award nominations for his five films, as both a writer and producer. Weir's output has diminished since 2003, with just one feature, the critically acclaimed box-office flop The Way Back (2010), on Vimeo.

Early life and education

Peter Lindsay Weir was born in Sydney, New South Wales, in 1944, the son of Peggy (née Barnsley Sutton) and Lindsay Weir, a real estate agent. Weir studied at The Scots College and Vaucluse Boys' High School before attending arts and law at The University of Sydney. Phillip Noyce and the future directors of the Sydney filmmaking group Ubu Films were among his filmmaking acquaintances, sparking his interest in film.

Personal life

Weir was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) on June 14 for his contribution to the film industry.

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Film career

Weir started work with the Commonwealth Film Unit (later renamed Film Australia), which produced a short film about an impoverished suburban Sydney suburb, Whether Happened to Green Valley, in which residents were encouraged to make their own film segments. Three Directions in Australian Pop Music (1972), a short rock music performance film from this period, was a hit film in Melbourne, Australia's best rock concert act of the time, Spectrum, The Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band, and Wendy Saddington were among three main Melbourne rock acts of the period. He also supervised one portion of the three-part, three-director feature film Three To Go (1970), which received an AFI award.

Weir made his first major independent film, Homesdale (1971), an offbeat black comedy, after leaving the CFU. It co-starred rising young actress Kate Fitzpatrick and actor and comedian Grahame Bond, who came to fame in 1972 as the star of The Aunty Jack Exhibition; Weir also appeared in small roles, but this was to be his last major screen appearance. The two aforementioned CFU shorts from Homesdale and Weir have been released on DVD.

Weir's first full-length film was The Cars That Ate Paris (1974), a low-budget black comedy about the residents of a small country town who intentionally cause deadly car accidents and live off the proceeds. It was a minor success in cinemas, but it was very popular on the then-burgeoning drive-in scene. Weir had heard about two young English women who had vanished while on a driving holiday in France. Weir's film, as well as the earlier Homesdale, set the basic thematic pattern that has persisted through his career: nearly all of his feature films deal with people who are suffering from society in some way: physically (Witness, Moss Society, Green Card), psychologically (Fearless) or psychologically (Fearless).

Weir's biggest breakthrough in Australia and internationally was the lush, atmospheric period mystery Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), which was produced with significant funding from the state-funded South Australian Film Corporation and shot on location in South Australia and rural Victoria. The film, based on Joan Lindsay's book and set at the turn of the twentieth century, relates to a group of students from an exclusive girls' academy who mysteriously vanish from a school picnic on Valentine's Day 1900. Picnic, the first Australian film of its time, received critical praise and international theatrical recognition, despite being widely distributed in the "Australian film revival" of the mid-1970s. Russell Boyd's work as a director of Australia's best-known cinematographer Russell Boyd's career began there. Critics, many of whom praised it as a welcome antidote to the so-called "ocker film" style typified by Barry McKenzie and Alvin Purple's "Other film" genre.

The Last Wave (1977), Weir's next film, was a supernatural thriller about a man who begins to see gruesome images of an impending natural disaster. Richard Chamberlain, an American actor who was well-known to Australian and international audiences as the eponymous physician in the popular Dr. Kildare television series, was on display. He appeared in the major series The Thorn Birds set in Australia later in life. The Last Wave, a pensive, ambivalent project, expanded on Picnic's themes, investigating the connections between the indigenous Aboriginal and European cultures. It co-starred Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil, whose appearance at the Tehran International Festival in 1977 earned the Golden Ibex (Oscar equivalent), but it was only a modest commercial success at the time.

Weir wrote and directed the offbeat low-budget telemovie The Plumber (1979), which was between The Last Wave and his next film. It starred Australian actors Judy Morris and Ivar Kants and was shot in three weeks. It's a black comedy about a woman whose life is interrupted by a subtly menacing plumber influenced by an account told to him by friends. With his latest film, Gallipoli (1981), Weir scored a major Australian hit and received even more international recognition. It is scripted by Australian playwright David Williamson and is regarded as classic Australian cinema. Gallipoli was instrumental in making Mel Gibson (Mad Max) a major movie, but his co-star Mark Lee, who also received a lot of praise for his role, has made only a few screen appearances since being made.

The climax of Weir's early career was the $6 million multi-national film The Year of Living Dangerously (1982), starring Gibson, playing opposite top Hollywood female lead Sigourney Weaver in a tale about journalistic loyalty, idealism, passion, and aspiration in Sukarno's 1960's Indonesia. It was a recreation of Christopher Koch's book, which was based in part on the lives of her journalist brother Robert Koch, ABC's Jakarta reporter, and one of the city's few western journalists during the 1965 coup attempt. Linda Hunt (who appeared in the film) was also named Best Actress in a Supporting Role Award. Jim McElroy, and his brother Hal McElroy co-produced Weir's first three films, The Cars That Ate Paris and The Last Wave, was shot by Hanging Rock and The Last Wave.

Weir's first American film, Witness (1985), the first of two films he made with Harrison Ford, about a young officer who is able to murder an undercover police officer by corrupt coworkers and is forced to hide in his Amish neighborhood to shield him. Weir directed Ford in his first appearance in the Academy Award nomination, while child actor Lukas Haas received a slew of accolades for his debut film role. Witness also received his first Academy Award nomination as Best Director, and it was his first of many films to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, and it later received two awards for Best Film Editing & Best Original Screenplay.

It was followed by Paul Schrader's adaptation of Paul Theroux's book The Mosco Coast (1986). Ford lived a life of a man pursuing his desire to start a new life with his family in the Central American jungle. Harrison Ford had the opportunity to break the typecasting of his career-making roles in the Star Wars and Indiana Jones films. Both films showcased his ability to act more nuanced and complex characters, and he was nominated for a Best Actor Award for his role in Witness, the first Academy Awards recognition in his career. The young River Phoenix's performance on the Mosquito Coast is also notable.

Weir's next film, Dead Poets Society, was a huge international success, with Weir receiving praise for expanding the acting range of its Hollywood actress. Robin Williams was best known for his anarchic stand-up comedy and his starring role in Mork & Mindy as the wisecracking alien; in this film, he played an influential teacher in a dramatic tale about conformity and rebellion in a small New England prep school in the 1950s. The film was nominated for four Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director for Weir, and it later received Best Original Screenplay and launched the acting careers of young actors Ethan Hawke and Robert Sean Leonard. It was one of Weir's most popular films to mainstream audiences, and it became a big box-office hit.

Green Card, Weir's first romantic comedy (1990), was another casting risk. Weir selected Gérard Depardieu, the French screen legend, in Depardieu's first English-language role, and paired him with American actress Andie MacDowell. Green Card was a box-office hit but it was less recognized as a critical success, although it did help Depardieu's ascension to international prominence. Weir received an Academy Award for his original screenplay.

Fearless (1993) returned to darker themes and starred Jeff Bridges as a man who believes he has become immortal after surviving a horrific air crash. Despite being well researched, specifically Bridges and Rosie Perez's performance, which received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, the film was less commercially successful than Weir's two previous films. It was the 44th Berlin International Film Festival.

Weir returned to direct his biggest success to date, The Truman Show (1998), a satire of the media's control of life, after five years. The Truman Show was both a box office and a critical success, winning numerous accolades and several awards, including three Academy Award nominations: Andrew Niccol for Best Original Screenplay, Ed Harris for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, and Weir himself for Best Director. The film received the 1999 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, in addition to the Academy Award nominations.

Weir returned to period drama with Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, starring Russell Crowe. Critics loved this screen version of Patrick O'Brian's blockbuster adventure series set during the Napoleonic Wars, but only moderately popular with mainstream audiences. Despite receiving two Oscar nominations for frequent collaborator Russell Boyd's cinematography and sound effects editing, the film's box office triumph was modest ($93 million at the North American box office). The film did marginally better in overseas, netting an additional $114 million.

Weir wrote and directed his new film, The Way Back (2010), a historical epic about refugees from a Soviet gulag, but not with a financial success.

Weir did not work on any more projects after reading The Way Back. He began to be described as "retired" as years went by without an official announcement. Ethan Hawke, who was speculating about Weir's unannounced retirement, said, "I think [Weir] lost interest in movies." When he didn't have actors giving him a hard time, he loved the job. Russell Crowe and Johnny Depp broke him."

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