Dags (film)

Dags
Directed byMurray Fahey
Written byMurray Fahey
Produced byMurray Fahey
Edited byBrian Kavanagh
Release date
  • 1998 (1998)
CountryAustralia
LanguageEnglish
Budget$26,000[1]
Box officeA$17,171 (Australia)[2]

Dags is a 1998 Australian comedy film centring on the adventures of a group of friends, directed, produced and written by Murray Fahey.

It is not related to the Deb Oswald play Dags.[1]

Plot

A series of incidents involving a group of friends

Cast

Production

Fahey wrote the film in three weeks, inspired by a desire to use talened actors he knew who were out of work:

I used all the places where I live and go shopping every day, and I wrestled with the changes that Australian society is going through. There is the older, traditional Australian dag and the newer, younger generation of dags. Then there are the ethnic dags. . . it’s a nice mixture of Aboriginal and Anglo dags . . .the older ones have stiffer barriers, but I wanted the kids to reveal themselves. They are all uniquely daggy and that’s the common ground. They don’t talk about their different cultures or their different ethnicity – they’re focusing on the footy or the car repairs.[3]

Fahey financed the film on credit cards and mortgaging his mother's house.[4]

It was shot in nine and a half days using a house that acted as four locations in one.[5] It movie was shot between Christmas and New Year. "This was the best time because I could get all the crew I needed and the cast were free," said Fahey.[3]

Reception

Sandra Hall of the Sydney Mornign Herald wrote the cast "generate a lot of unpretentious humour in a manic kind of way."[6]

References

  1. ^ a b "A dag eat dag world". The Sydney Morning Herald. 21 January 1999. p. 12.
  2. ^ "Australian Films at the Australian Box Office", Film Victoria Archived 9 February 2014 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved 12 November 2012
  3. ^ a b Andrew L Urban, "DAGS: WILL THEY INHERIT THE EARTH?" Archived 5 April 2015 at the Wayback Machine, Urban Cinefile. Retrieved 25 November 2012
  4. ^ "Rushes". The Age. 15 February 1998. p. 30.
  5. ^ Anne Marie Lopez, "Everyone Together Now: Low Budget Filmmaking in Australia", Cinema Papers, July 1997, p18-21.
  6. ^ Hall, Sandra (21 January 1999). "Classic dags to witches tale". The Sydney Morning Herald. p. 12.