Image supplied. Reg Cribb and Jeremy Sims.
Last Cab to Darwin starts shooting today. It’s the second feature venture for Jeremy Sims, Reg Cribb, Greg Duffy and Lisa Duff as a team, following Last Train to Freo in 2006. Despite the similar titles however, there is little similarity between the films.
The production team has been in Broken Hill for the last four weeks for pre-production, where the locals have been welcoming, and many are being used as extras. Strangerland, starring Nicole Kidman, is also filming in the area. Producer Greg Duffy is delighted with the way all of the pieces of the pre-production puzzle have been coming together.
This is the first film which Greg has produced since Last Train to Freo, and he’s been working on it with writer/director/producer Jeremy and writer Reg Cribb throughout the intervening years. The development period took around seven years in total, although there have been other projects in between of course – Jeremy made Beneath Hill 60, writer Reg Cribb co-wrote Bran Nue Dae, and Greg has been busy with his work as a lawyer.
Greg stressed that whilst Last Cab to Darwin was initially inspired by some elements of a true story, the film’s storyline and its lead character, Rex (played by Michael Caton) are an original creation. Greg says Rex has spent his very ordered life in Broken Hill. He drives a cab and goes drinking with his mates every night at the pub. He has an under the radar relationship with his next door neighbour, Polly (Ningali Lawford-Wolf). It’s all very comfortable. That’s his life and it has been for almost 70 years. When he is told that he doesn’t have long to live, Rex decides to do something he’s never done before, which is to leave Broken Hill. He decides to drive his cab to Darwin to take advantage of the Northern Territory right to die laws, in an attempt to die on his own terms.
“Along the way, he has an adventure and meets lots of people. There’s a young Aboriginal guy out of Oodnadatta called Tilly, who’s looking to restart his Aussie Rules football career, and a young English backpacker in Daly Waters, called Julie, who’s a nurse, who is escaping her life in England for a bit of an adventure. Along the way, he realises before you can end your life you’ve got to live it, and to live it you’ve really got to share it.
