''Bootleg'' is a 1985 Australian film directed by John Prescott and starring

John Flaus John Flaus is an Australian actor. Career Flaus began acting in 1969 when he was on the set of the short film ''The American Poet's Visit'', directed by Michael Thornhill. Flaus was there to observe the set, but Thornhill had told him to be ...

as a detective in

Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...

.David Stratton, ''The Avocado Plantation: Boom and Bust in the Australian Film Industry'', Pan MacMillan, 1990 p. 236Ed. Scott Murray, ''Australia on the Small Screen 1970-1995'', Oxford Uni Press, 1996 p. 18

Premise

Joe Hart, a private investigator, is sent to Queensland on assignment following a bomb explosion. He becomes involved with a bootleg music racket, a prostitute, the anti-nuclear movement and various other criminals. Some confuse him for Gromonski, a jazz saxophonist.

Cast

Ray Meagher Raymond Francis Meagher (born 4 July 1944) is an Australian actor, who has appeared in Australian film and television since the mid-1970s. He is notable as the longest continuing performer in an Australian television role, portraying Alf Ste ...

as Lawker, a conservative policeman *

Carmen Duncan Carmen Joan Duncan (7 July 1942 – 3 February 2019) was an Australian-born stage and screen actress and activist, with a career locally and internationally in the United States that spanned over 50 years. She was nominated for the AFI Award ...

as Rita, a prostitute *John Gregg as T. C. Brown, an anti-nuclear campaigner *

Max Meldrum Duncan Max Meldrum (3 December 1875 – 6 June 1955) was a Scottish-born Australian artist and art teacher, best known as the founder of Australian tonalism, a representational painting style that became popular in Melbourne during the interwa ...

as Walter Stone *lan Nimmo as Lucan *Shelly Friend as Netha *

as Joe Hart *Trevor Hawkins as Mechanic *Aaron Lovelock as Paperboy *Gay Catterall as Annabelle Hart *Jenny Fern as Receptionist

Production

The film was partly financed by the

Queensland Film Corporation The Queensland Film Corporation (QFC) was a government-funded film production company that existed in the state of Queensland, Australia, in the 1980s. History The Queensland Film Corporation was established by the ''Queensland Film Industry Deve ...

who also invested in Prescott's short film ''A Town Like This'' which had won an AFI Award for Best Short Film. The movie was also financed by the Australian Film Commission.

Reception

Academic and writer Susan Dermody said she regarded the film as "a loving but usually floundering essay of the detective film noir, with strange elements in it that seem to have seeped over from early Eisenstcin... The most interesting moments arc those that seem about to make use of the undersides of Brisbane in all its seedy, subtropical splendour as a special new landscape of the noir detective story, but the knots of story keep pulling away from this possibility before it really happens. The Queensland politics seem (even for Queensland) overblown, as though the actors escaped the uncertain clutches of the director, John Prescott. Still, with John Flaus in it, its eccentric credentials arc unmisiakeable." According to academic Susan Ward, "While the film has been lauded for its cinematic flair, the film has a convoluted plot line with many subplots ending up on the cutting room floor, but like ''Australian Dream'', it is a testimony to the level of cooperation and commitment by local crews, to work on features that gave them the opportunity to showcase their creative skills."

References

External links

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Bootleg
at Screen Australia
Bootleg
at Letterbox DVD
Bootleg
at AustLit Australian crime drama films 1985 films 1980s English-language films 1980s Australian films Films shot in Queensland Films financed by the Queensland Film Corporation {{1980s-Australia-film-stub