From Australia to Hollywood, Tom Goodall is no stranger to making award-winning movies. The Aussie filmmaker has gone from page to screen with film industry royalty. Aside from bringing to life Disney’s “Lady and the Tramp” and “Christopher Robin”, Tom has worked on independent movies that have gone on to win major awards. He is known for being a detail orientated filmmaker with the ability to push boundaries. His reputation for his relentless ambition and work ethic are exactly why Tinsel Town keeps him close.
His latest project, “Tokyo Cowboy” is headed to movie theatres later this month. In an exclusive interview, we sat down with Tom Goodall to talk “Tokyo Cowboy”.
HELLO TOM, WELCOME TO ABOUT INSIDER! YOU HAVE QUITE THE RESUME OF MOVIES. WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR EARLY ON SET EXPERIENCES?
It’s always a case of pushing the envelope with me. I was directing one of my earliest films years ago, and we were doing a shot where a huge semi-trailer truck was hurtling right towards the camera. My father was visiting set that night, and decided that he didn’t want to risk standing behind the camera with me and the crew in case the truck barreled right through us, so he snuck off to the side of the road, having no interest in dying for his son’s art. Little did he know that everyone was standing behind the camera because the truck was cued to swerve off the road at the last moment before hitting the camera, so he had unwittingly positioned himself right in the path of the speeding semi. The funeral was rich with irony, but I sometimes regret showing the fatal footage during the eulogy. Just kidding, he dodged the truck at the last second, but now on every set of mine that he has visited since, he always stands where he’s told.
Then there was the time I accidentally made national news with movie magic. I was filming in the beautiful forests of the Adelaide Hills in Australia, and the film’s story took place over the course of a year, so we used various tricks to make the forest look like it was in different seasons. The Adelaide Hills never get snow so, to create a convincing winter scene, we had to make fake snow. Wowed by how real it looked, a crew member took a photo and posted it to their socials but didn’t mention anything about our film shoot. By the time the evening news went out that night, there was rampant speculation and excitement about the fact that there was snow in the Adelaide Hills, an unprecedented weather event. I had to contact these news outlets and tell them the bad news – they’d fallen for our incredible movie trickery. It was a testament to our team for creating such a convincing winter landscape, and I wasn’t upset about the free publicity either.
WHAT MAKES YOU UNIQUE IN THE FILM WORLD?
There are three qualities that define me as a filmmaker.
Number 1: I put the audience first. The entire reason I got into entertainment was to bring happiness to as wide an audience as possible. People get into filmmaking and entertainment for a lot of different reasons, but my north star is the audience’s experience. You’ll see some people in this business wanting to have fame, to look talented, to seem accomplished, to flex their power, to appear to have the best ideas, and to do whatever makes them feel good. This is totally backwards – you are putting yourself ahead of the audience. One person, ahead of millions. We should be solely focused on making the best possible movie we can, to give the audience the best possible experience. If some entry-level assistant comes to me on a set I’m running with a great idea on how to improve a scene, I’m not going to dismiss them because of their rank or reject them because it’s my job to be the creative leader and not theirs – that’s just hurting the movie, and so hurting the audience. The audience isn’t going to know where a good idea came from, they’re only going to know how good the result was. That is what this work is all about, and we’d make a lot better movies, and have a lot more fun doing it, if everyone embraced that.
Number 2: I use magical realism as an analogy for the theme that the movie’s built around. I personally love a supernatural element in a story, and if that story’s well designed, then the magical ingredient will dovetail perfectly with the story’s meaning. A great example of this is Groundhog Day, where Bill Murray’s character Phil wants nothing more than to escape this dreary day in this dreary town, but he needs to realize how much beauty he’s missing in this place – so he’s magically trapped there, until he learns this lesson. Movies that use magical realism in this way are sadly few and far between, but they are the heart of what I want to make.
Number 3: I am an unapologetic optimist. While there certainly are bad things going on in our world and plenty of suffering, there is also so much wonder and positivity, and things are generally getting better. You need only look back in time, a few decades, a few centuries, set any number you want, you’d rather live now than then. You could say I’m very “glass half full”, and you wouldn’t be wrong, but even if the glass were a quarter full I’d still say it’s amazing to have any water in the glass at all. This positive outlook appears to be rare in the world, and I hope to use my filmmaking to help spread it.
TELL US ABOUT “TOKYO COWBOY”
It’s a heartwarming cross-cultural story about a Japanese businessman that goes on an unwitting journey of self-discovery when he takes a company trip from Tokyo to a Montana cattle ranch.
The movies follows Hideki Sakai, a Japanese salaryman, a no-nonsense suit-and-tie business executive who lives in the hustle and bustle of central Tokyo. In an effort to impress his superiors at the food multinational he works for, Hideki boldly volunteers to visit one of the company’s troubled cattle ranches in the US to turn it around and show off his capabilities. From the moment he steps off the plane, the adjustment from the hectic world of Tokyo to the wide expanse of Montana’s big sky country is more shocking than he expected. Hideki doesn’t speak the language, understand the culture, command any authority, and the solutions he dreamed up in the Tokyo skyscraper boardroom don’t work quite as well on the ground. But as he gets to know the ranchers and the Montana way of life, Hideki starts searching for a new way forward for the troubled ranch, and for himself.
WHAT WAS YOUR PRINCIPAL ROLE IN THE MAKING OF THE MOVIE?
On a small indie film like this, everyone wears multiple hats. The lead producer asked me to come aboard the project as part of his team, way back when the project was just an idea in the director’s mind. I’d worked with this producer on several big budget studio movies by this point, so this low-budget feature was a new experience for all of us and it was all hands on deck from the start.
When a specialized issue comes up, there’s no relevant department to send it to – it just falls to you as part of the filmmaking team to find a solution. Among all the expected duties of developing the script with the writers or liaising with investors about the project, I also found myself in very unique situations. We have this one tiny gag in the movie where a Japanese character desperately wants a particular brand of fast food from America, and so I end up connecting with this company and going higher and higher up the corporate ladder to get their permission for this one silly gag. They were skeptical at first, obviously unsure how we were going to portray their product, and so I spent a surprising amount of energy working with this corporate headquarters to convince them giving us permission was a safe idea. When you think of movie making, yes, a lot of it is lights and cameras and actors, but filmmaking is also about every single detail around those obvious elements.
You don’t get into this business necessarily to be on the phone to a burger chain negotiating how many individual fries can be shown on screen but, you know what, that is filmmaking. Deciding an effect that you want the audience to feel, planning how to achieve it, and having the know-how to pull those factors together. The more seamless a movie plays on screen, the harder the filmmakers worked to make their effort invisible and let little moments that build the larger story flow by effortlessly.
One part of the role I loved was working with our Japanese counterparts, who helped us arrange the Tokyo section of our shoot. Taking a small indie movie shoot to a foreign country where you don’t speak the language can be very daunting. Anyone will tell you making movies is hard enough when everyone speaks the same language. In this case though, I was constantly liaising with our Japanese team to make sure they had everything they needed and were heading in the right direction, and they made everything run flawlessly. My sister lives in Japan and speaks fluent Japanese, so I was able to lean on her for some additional translation help from time to time. I’ve been brushing up on Japanese, but I’m not nearly at the level I need to be in order to communicate crucial logistic details and important creative nuance. I’m more at the “Hello what time is it” level.
Now, as we approach the US theatrical release of the movie on August 30th, I’m in frequent communication with our distributors at Purdie Distribution. From deciding what cinemas to put the film in, to how to market the movie, they’ve been great partners and amazing advisors on how to give the film the best release possible.
Those of us in the core filmmaking team, who’ve been shepherding this project from inception to completion, are still wearing multiple hats. One minute you can be deciding whether to take the movie to a particular city, the next you’re quickly whipping up marketing graphics because you have no marketing team to do it for you.
This project started as a cross-cultural labor of love by all involved, and we’ve all been happy to roll up our sleeves and do whatever grand or grinding job needs doing. Years later, it’s finally ready to hit the screen, and we couldn’t be happier with how it turned out.
WHEN IS “TOKYO COWBOY” RELEASING?
The movie heads to cinemas across North America on August 30th. You can see the full list of our theatres at tokyocowboyfilm.com to find the cinema in your area.
WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO STAY IN TOUCH WITH YOUR WORK?
People can follow me on Instagram @thegoodalllife, or find my work at IMDb @Tom Goodall or website tomgoodall.com
Watch The “Tokyo Cowboy” Trailer Here
