Gay Australian classic finally published

Gay Australian classic finally published

Released in 1970, Australian film The Set was part of the golden age of ‘Ozploitation’ films – home grown cinema that revelled in graphic depictions of sex, nudity and violence.

Predating the brazen tits-n-bums soap Number 96 by two years, the film was a front-page scandal before it was even released thanks to its homosexual content and went on to become the highest-grossing Australian film of the decade.

Yet the novel that it was based on, author and actor Roger Ward’s groundbreaking tome of the same title, remained unpublished – until now.

“At last the public have a chance to see what all the fuss was about. To finally have it out there is a great feeling and even though I was apprehensive at the reception the book would receive, I’m damn pleased that it’s finally out there,” Ward told the Star Observer.

The story centres around a group of five Australian teenagers struggling to find themselves and their place in society. Handsome rich kid Tony is the only member of the group who seems to have the means to make something of himself, but it is his friends – including sometime lover Paul – who forge careers while Tony finds himself drifting through life.

Ward, an accomplished film and television actor who’s appeared in iconic Australian programs like A Country Practice and Homicide as well as Mad Max, garnered initial inspiration for the book while working in the late ‘60s South Australian theatre scene.

“I was intrigued by the gay guys and gals that frequented the theatre, both as performers and in the background.

“I liked their attitude and felt empathy for their plight – and it was a plight at that time. There was no public recognition, they were ostracised and had to live together inconspicuously. I decided to thread their unique lifestyle throughout the novel.”

He decamped to Tahiti to write much of the book, and was further inspired to explore homosexuality in the novel by the fact that it wasn’t just heterosexual love he witnessed on the so-called ‘Island of Love’.

“There was any kind of love one could want up there. Here I was in a supposed heterosexual male paradise, and the main street was rife with outlandish queens, all fluttering their eyelids, their faces made up and all of them having such a happy and refreshing attitude to everything, especially sex.”

Back in Australia, Ward “jumped the gun” and sold the film rights to The Set before finding a publisher for the novel. The buyer, American film producer Frank Brittain, then asked him to start work on adapting The Set into a suitably salacious screenplay.

“That’s an art within itself, and I was soon floundering because I refused to cut any of my scenarios from the 735 page novel. It was a dissection I just could not do.”

As Ward puts it, “Frank solved that problem by penciling every depiction of homosexuality within the manuscript and saying, ‘Write a 130-page screen play about that’. Now that was art!”

The resulting film was a massive success, helped in no small part by a plethora of pre-release publicity from an Australian media predictably outraged at the depictions of homosexuality on screen.

“A Sydney paper saw fit to run a full-page feature with depictions of the script pages and their own ‘disgusted’ narration. This of course caused a furore and a further avalanche of publicity when the film actually began shooting,” Ward recalled.

“I think the outrage was just not caused by [the sex and nudity], but because we had the audacity to portray homosexual men in an everyday situation with normal thoughts and occupations and without the usually depicted sashaying, and mincing. The public were not ready to accept them in a ‘normal’ guise. Of course, since then homosexuality has continued to be accepted and I think films and books like The Set have helped that cause.”

Despite this, Ward admitted he wasn’t particularly happy with how the film turned out, regarding the novel as the definitive version.

“I don’t think any author is happy with the movie depiction of his work. I’m keen to have the book remade, but not necessarily into film – perhaps as a miniseries with a decent budget that will allow us to cover all aspects of the book?”

Until that happens, The Set fans have the opportunity to pore over the original text in all its glory. Written more than 40 years ago, the book acts as a time capsule looking back at an Australia on the cusp of the sexual revolution.

“The book is a true diary of the fifties and sixties, and that’s why I wanted it out there: to let the kids of today know the anguish that was felt by a homosexual man back then, why they were confined to private parties and clandestine meetings,” he said.

info: The Set is available from The Bookshop Darlinghurst (Sydney) and Hares and Hyenas (Melbourne).

You May Also Like

Comments are closed.