After enduring a prison sentence and attempting to eke out an existence on the Victorian goldfields, Daniel Morgan teams up with an Indigenous Australian outcast called Billy. Together, they terrorise southern NSW, killing policemen and raiding farms. Eventually, the authorities raise the reward for Morgan's capture to £1000, thus making his attempts to avoid capture even more difficult. He eventually crosses back into Victoria, but his behaviour has become increasingly erratic. Meanwhile, the police, led by Detective Mainwaring, close in.
Mad Dog Morgan
Bob Ellis
,
Anne Brooksbank
,
London
:
Corgi Books
,
1976
Z561320
1976
single work
novel
historical fiction
Mad Dog Morgan : The True Story of Australia's Most Infamous Bushranger
Melbourne
:
Southdown Press
,
1976
Z1692572
1976
single work
biography
Based on original research by Margaret Carnegie into the life and times of Daniel Morgan, the book is includes historic prints and colour scenes from the motion picture Mad Dog Morgan.
'It’s December 2014, and I’m researching a book on the 1976 bushranger film Mad Dog Morgan – one of the best Australian films of the 1970s, a far-out antipodean Western directed by the much underrated pop surrealist Philippe Mora and starring Dennis Hopper in his glory days of alcoholic excess. For a few months, I’ve been trying to track down surviving members of the cast and crew; high on my wish list is David Gulpilil, who played the key role of Billy, Morgan’s young Aboriginal partner in crime. But the hope of reaching him seems a forlorn one: Gulpilil does not give many interviews, and even journalists in the Northern Territory, where he lives most of the time, have had trouble pinning him down.
'At the last moment, I hear that Gulpilil is coming down to Brisbane to attend the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, where he’s been nominated as Best Actor for his role in the acclaimed Charlie’s Country (2014), which he co-wrote with director Rolf de Heer. After some negotiation with his agent, he agrees to share his memories of the Mad Dog shoot. We meet at his hotel in the middle of the city, on a rainy afternoon a few hours before the APSA ceremony; at the suggestion of the astute publicist Cathy Gallagher, I bring along a DVD of Mad Dog for us to watch together.
'Talking to Gulpilil is not the usual kind of interview. His answers are often indirect and fragmentary, sometimes hard to follow. When a question doesn’t interest him, he’ll give a cursory “Yeah, yeah” and move onto a different train of thought. Yet it doesn’t take long to realise that the unfussed manner masks great alertness and intelligence: he’s constantly making surprising connections, and at any moment may say something startlingly lucid. Ironically, this is even the case when he talks about how he’s been affected by substance abuse: beer, he says, is like putting his brain in a freezer, marijuana like an early morning fog.
'In person as on film, Gulpilil communicates as much through intonation and gesture as through language: set down in print, his words inevitably lack much of their original meaning. For this reason, this piece combines direct quotes with my own efforts – inadequate as these may be – to sum up other parts of what was said.' (Author's introduction)
Mad Dog Morgan
Sydney
:
Currency Press
,
2015
8759979
2015
single work
criticism
'Mad Dog Morgan was a risky project on every level: artistic, financial, psychological and physical. What made the risks worth taking? What was at stake for the film's makers– and for Australian cinema?
'Released in 1976 at the peak of the Australian film revival, Philippe Mora's dramatisation of the bloody life and death of the nation's most infamous bushranger stands at the crossroads of multiple genres and trends: a violent action movie, an excavation of a traumatic colonial past, an antipodean variant on the 'acid Western', and a radical experiment with echoes of Bertolt Brecht and Jean-Luc Godard. Morgan himself is seen as a ruthless avenger, yet also a helpless victim–a paradox brought to life in the gonzo lead performance by Dennis Hopper, backed by an extraordinary supporting cast including Jack Thompson, David Gulpilil, Bill Hunter, John Hargreaves and Frank Thring.
'Jake Wilson's thoroughly researched book takes a fresh look at the historical Dan Morgan as well as the film's colourful production history and its significance in the wayward career trajectories of its director and star. Above all, it interrogates the creative risk-taking drive that made the film, like the man himself, into the legend that it is. ' (Publication summary)
Mad Dog Morgan
Sydney
:
Currency Press
,
2015
8759979
2015
single work
criticism
'Mad Dog Morgan was a risky project on every level: artistic, financial, psychological and physical. What made the risks worth taking? What was at stake for the film's makers– and for Australian cinema?
'Released in 1976 at the peak of the Australian film revival, Philippe Mora's dramatisation of the bloody life and death of the nation's most infamous bushranger stands at the crossroads of multiple genres and trends: a violent action movie, an excavation of a traumatic colonial past, an antipodean variant on the 'acid Western', and a radical experiment with echoes of Bertolt Brecht and Jean-Luc Godard. Morgan himself is seen as a ruthless avenger, yet also a helpless victim–a paradox brought to life in the gonzo lead performance by Dennis Hopper, backed by an extraordinary supporting cast including Jack Thompson, David Gulpilil, Bill Hunter, John Hargreaves and Frank Thring.
'Jake Wilson's thoroughly researched book takes a fresh look at the historical Dan Morgan as well as the film's colourful production history and its significance in the wayward career trajectories of its director and star. Above all, it interrogates the creative risk-taking drive that made the film, like the man himself, into the legend that it is. ' (Publication summary)
'It’s December 2014, and I’m researching a book on the 1976 bushranger film Mad Dog Morgan – one of the best Australian films of the 1970s, a far-out antipodean Western directed by the much underrated pop surrealist Philippe Mora and starring Dennis Hopper in his glory days of alcoholic excess. For a few months, I’ve been trying to track down surviving members of the cast and crew; high on my wish list is David Gulpilil, who played the key role of Billy, Morgan’s young Aboriginal partner in crime. But the hope of reaching him seems a forlorn one: Gulpilil does not give many interviews, and even journalists in the Northern Territory, where he lives most of the time, have had trouble pinning him down.
'At the last moment, I hear that Gulpilil is coming down to Brisbane to attend the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, where he’s been nominated as Best Actor for his role in the acclaimed Charlie’s Country (2014), which he co-wrote with director Rolf de Heer. After some negotiation with his agent, he agrees to share his memories of the Mad Dog shoot. We meet at his hotel in the middle of the city, on a rainy afternoon a few hours before the APSA ceremony; at the suggestion of the astute publicist Cathy Gallagher, I bring along a DVD of Mad Dog for us to watch together.
'Talking to Gulpilil is not the usual kind of interview. His answers are often indirect and fragmentary, sometimes hard to follow. When a question doesn’t interest him, he’ll give a cursory “Yeah, yeah” and move onto a different train of thought. Yet it doesn’t take long to realise that the unfussed manner masks great alertness and intelligence: he’s constantly making surprising connections, and at any moment may say something startlingly lucid. Ironically, this is even the case when he talks about how he’s been affected by substance abuse: beer, he says, is like putting his brain in a freezer, marijuana like an early morning fog.
'In person as on film, Gulpilil communicates as much through intonation and gesture as through language: set down in print, his words inevitably lack much of their original meaning. For this reason, this piece combines direct quotes with my own efforts – inadequate as these may be – to sum up other parts of what was said.' (Author's introduction)
