Interview: Evicted! A Modern Romance

Sharing in the struggles of being a Sydney-based millennial battling the increasing cost of living, Addy Fong sat down with Director Rowan Devereux and cast member William Suen to talk about their film Evicted! A Modern Romance, a comedy about four housemates searching for a place to live after being evicted. The film draws from hilarious personal experience containing anecdotes that seem as absurd as Rowan’s statement, ‘it’s cheaper to make a feature film in Sydney than it is to buy a house.’ 

Thanks for meeting with me. I heard your production company Story Mill is based in Sydney. I understand that production in Sydney can be a challenge and linked to networking. I’m generalising here, you both look young, what has been the challenges you’ve faced as creatives? I’m also in Sydney, in Parramatta, so just wondering about your experiences. 

ROWAN: I started The Story Mill in 2018 with my creative partner, Sophie Saville. We were both freelancers in videography and we started to get jobs together and we just kind of built from there. It started with a TV commercial we did for the Law society which Will was in and that was the start of Story Mill. I was a sole trader, Soph was a sole trader and we just kept getting jobs and once we got that one, we’re like nah we can do something together and that’s how The Story Mill started. Story Mill’s been around since 2018, so that’s like 4 years but really, I’ve been working, trying to get into the film industry in Sydney since I came here nine years ago to study film at AFTRS, so it’s just time and effort. It is a lot of networking. Will and I met – Will where did we meet? I have conflicting answers of where we met, we both went to AFTRS… 

WILL: We met through Rowan’s housemate who is a cinematographer. Ben and I met at AFTRS, we both studied together. Then Ben and Rowan obviously hit it off and then I hit it off with Ben as well, and so Ben is the connecting glue that put us all together. I mean, I suppose it was AFTRS that really put us all together. 

Classic. Ben, is he the guy who did the cinematography for the film? 

WILL: Yes, Ben Powell. Shoutout to Ben Powell who was our connecting glue [laughs] but really it was AFTRS. For me, it was AFTRS that pushed me towards filmmaking, specifically drama, because when you start off you can go into all kinds of directions. I went to COFA (now UNSW Art and Design) for example which is an arts school, but I did that as an arts degree and that put me in all kinds of different weird directions. I was working in virtual reality and augmented reality at one point, I was a digital compositor, I did all kinds of random odd jobs. When I decided to go to AFTRS that was what set me towards the path to ultimately where we are now and ultimately where I met Rowan and Ben and a whole bunch of crew, where we all came together and decided to make films together. 

Will, your degree at COFA led to you developing this hodgepodge of skills and experiences. Similarly, your character in the film, also called Will, does odd jobs, like an airtasker type occupation. Rowan, I’m wondering if Will’s personal experience inspired the script?

ROWAN: Will is definitely a Renaissance man, he’s a man of many skills. In fact, I have his original audition tape, which was just him dancing, it’s why he dances so much in the film. [laughs] I think the airtasker stuff kind of came from the film’s overarching ideas about them being evicted, but the premise or theme of the film is about technology and how it changes millennials’ lives. For Maggie it’s around house hunting and those websites, for Isabelle’s character with May it’s about how we meet people in apps now, where it’s not clear what our relationships are, and the third storyline was around Will, employment and the growing gig-economy that’s kind of seeping into everything. As a combination of things, I thought I came up with this character and I had Will the actor and I put them together cause I knew Will would give it such energy and charm. It wasn’t based on him other then I think Will will be really funny if he does this. 

WILL: When Rowan first pitched the idea, this is early days when he was thinking about writing the film, he was like Will, I think I want to make you into a bitcoin billionaire and I was like YES! YES! HELLS YEAH! I will do that no problem! Six months later, he comes back and he’s like, you’re a gig economy worker and I’m like uggh! 

ROWAN: No, they were always together but you were going to end up being a bitcoin billionaire at the end but it wasn’t a fun ending. [Will laughs] Sorry Will. There’s a pro tip, don’t tell your actors until you lock off the script. Don’t tell them anything. 

You gave him dreams and then you crushed them 

WILL: Yep, that’s it. That’s it. 

[Everyone laughs]

ROWAN: He kept going on so where’s the bitcoin scene? Where’s my badge? Just going back to the other point, talking about how we all met, talking about networking and being in Parramatta, I’m a big believer in it’s a generational thing. We all met, we’re roughly the same age and Will and I have now crossed the threshold of 30. We’ve kind of moved up as a group, as a generation, I think that’s what it is. It’s about the people you meet in your own schools, your own work environments, your own age group and you’ll move up as a team and as a generation. One day the next generation will overthrow us and we’ll just be those old geezers. [Everyone laughs] We’re effectively an old man’s film!

As Sydneysiders we can all hit the town in our 30s. Will’s character, any reason why Rowan, you used his actual name in his character’s name?

ROWAN: I think it was a technique, it was like what else could you call Will? It was kind of like the idea because he’s a different character. Will is not naturally an actor, he’s more of a director, screenwriter, but he had such a presence and I wanted to just import this Will and put in that one. So I’m like if the name’s the same, how would you take it? It was an attempt to try and make it more naturalistic. I knew if we got Will the director or my friend Will dancing in these scenes it would work

WILL:  I remember the meeting. He was always talking about this feature and he sat me down to confirm it for real. It was like, ‘Will you’re gonna be in my movie’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah Rowan, yeah let’s do this. So who am I? Who is Will?’ I remember he was saying, ‘Look, I don’t like telling characters who they are. Instead why don’t you give me situations and I’ll tell you what your character would do.’ So I just threw up a whole bunch of scenarios like I walk into a club who’s the first person I talk to? I walk across the street and someone asks me for a dollar. What do I do? And all these different scenarios came across and then from that I built a character from that which is, obviously based on me, but also super imposing it into what I believe was this romanticised, caricatured version of me inside Rowan’s head and that was really fun. Ultimately, I think there were a lot of things about my character that was Rowan as well. A lot of stuff that I was reading in the script that I was like I would never say that. That’s a Rowan thing. Rowan is also a very quirky man. He’s got his quirks, he’s got his weird things that he does, you know. Me and my friends who know Rowan, we laugh at Rowan for his weird stuff that he does, and so it’s great reading it through me as well. It’s like he was superimposing his quirks onto me and I was like, OK, cool I dig this, I’ll play that and that was fun, just super fun.

ROWAN: Alright Will, we love that. We’ll go with that.

Will, you’re not really an actor and I guess you’re both of you are more comfortable behind the camera. How was it like getting into the mindset of being in front of the camera? This is silly but sometimes if I have to be in front of camera I kind of hype myself up like start yelling, I don’t know if that’s a thing, like ‘I’m gonna do this!’ I’m not an actor so I always need to mentally hype myself up. So was there anything that you guys needed to do to prepare?

ROWAN: I’m a bit like you I don’t like being in front of the camera but I think it’s a bit of Will loves being in front the camera that’s the truth. He always wanted to be in front of the camera so it was actually quite easy for him. I remember I was talking to his partner Margaret, ‘Oh I’ve gotta show him the first cut. Wonder what he’s gonna think?’ and she was like ‘he’ll love it because he’s in it.’ No questions asked. I think Will feels comfortable in front of the camera to an extent. Even falling for it. 

WILL: I loved it. I thought was fantastic. I loved every second of it. I was talking about this yesterday to somebody and I was saying in terms of being in front of the camera I was never nervous, not even once. I was like put a camera in front of me, yeah, I’ll do my thing. No issues. Rowan had put so much into this, I remember in the early days when he was approaching me and he was like, ‘Hey man, I’m gonna make an indie feature’ and I’m like ‘Yeah whatever bro. Cool story.’ And then he gave this impassioned spiel like, ‘Will, this attitude sucks! We should all be making indie films. I’m gonna do everything, I’m gonna win all the awards and make lots of money and be famous, successful…’

After this impassioned spiel I was like, damn he’s right. Indie films is awesome, we should be supporting Rowan 100% to make this film and to actually get it off the ground. After that conversation I really took it seriously, but from that point on the pressure was not for me to be in front the camera, the pressure was more for me to be like OK great, how do I help Rowan make a successful feature film that’s going to put the film on the map, our friends, our family and Sydney, Australia on the map and be this thing. 

Talking about indie films, I understand this film was crowd funded and its part of Sydney Film Festival’s Independent in Spirit strand. It’s always a challenge to crowdfund and to produce something. Amazingly, it’s gotten into Sydney Film Festival and I’m assuming now you’re pitching it to be picked up by other festivals.

ROWAN: Yeah, absolutely. I think it was really liberating during crowdfunding cause it kinda just allowed us to make the film. There’s all this talk about everyone’s got a script that’s a decade in the making in their drawer. We got to a point where we were like we’re happy with the scripts and no one’s gonna give us money, we’ve got to find the money. It was really good experience cause well we made the money, it wasn’t one of those crowdfunds that went nowhere. It gave us a real groundswell I remember that. It was kind of like, oh, we’re not sure how we’re going to go but we went out of the gate really well. We hit our target and so it really gave us a lot of energy to go in and make the film and also helped us raise things other than money as well. We could always point this out to say look we’ve got 3-4 hundred people who gave us 30 grand or whatever the exact number was, there’s demand out there and I think that is a big issue. It’s really hard when you make independent films, they don’t have any stars attached to them or franchise, how do you convince people with money or government bodies or any funding bodies that this film has any value? It’s all just kind of hypothetical but I think crowdfunding allowed us to jump over that step. It just like no, no, we’ve got people who’ve signed up. One of them was my Mum and Will’s mum but like why not? 

Love that mother support!

ROWAN: So much mother support. It gave us such momentum and going to the Sydney Film Festival this is the first time most of those people who funded the film will get to see it, so it’s really helped us sell tickets as well. We already have an audience, we’re not coming out fresh, this isn’t the first time they’ve heard about Evicted. Will and I and Sophie and the rest of the cast and crew have been talking about this for like two or three years now which was really cool because from day dot we were talking about this film. We weren’t like in a cave, working away at it. From the conception phase we’ve been talking about it and been pretty open about the film. 

WILL: From what I’ve seen that has been so successful with raising the money, and the biggest thing, we didn’t have anything going into this, we didn’t have names, we didn’t have any kind of clout behind us at that point, but what sold me ultimately, on backing this film 1000% with Rowan’s impassioned speech to me. He said, you know, with ultimate conviction and passion that this is going to be a thing. And then from that passion that rubbed off onto me and I was like you know what, Shit yeah! And then from then on I would talk to my mum and be like Mum, we’re making an indie film and she’s like ‘Ok son, I’ve put money in!’

I believe in you!

WILL: Yeah, I believe in you! And then I think it got to the point where my sister’s high school friends who knew me from when I was a kid backed the crowdfunding campaign and that all came ultimately from Rowan’s passion rubbing onto me, onto my mum, onto my sister, onto her high school friends, which ultimately they probably put I don’t know 50 bucks or whatever into it. So really felt like this film was fuelled by passion from the ground up and that’s the spirit of indie films baby. 

Oh wow. I do love a passionate man. I don’t know why I just a vibe of like Braveheart, I don’t know if that’s the same thing. Like we can believe together!

WILL: Freeedom!!

ROWAN: Free Filmmaking!!!

WILL: That’s it, that’s it. Indie films!!!

Well, I did not expect that answer to go that way. [Laughs] 

So the film’s about young Australians trying to get a house that’s pretty relevant to us, there’s the kind of idea of like, oh, get a mortgage but now it’s hard to pay off the mortgage you might as well rent but now rent is also expensive. Was that one of the factors of why you decided to write about this particular topic?

ROWAN: Yeah, absolutely. I think it was kind of like it’s cheaper to make a feature film in Sydney than it is to buy a house. One thing that stuck out in my head was I’m a big fan of Australian filmmaking over the years, I think one of the key Australian films is The Castle and we kind of call our film a cross between The Castle and Pulp Fiction. 

I think what is so interesting about The Castle and it’s kind of built into us, the American Dream, but the Australian dream is to own your own house, that’s what we’ve been taught. You get a backyard, that’s the dream. The Castle’s about how their home is a castle to them, it’s their identity. I wanted to do a film about the fact that, as time has gone by, that’s becoming harder and harder and it’s something we keep talking about. It’s something that isn’t really a solution for all and so I wanted to tap into that cause I’m in my 30s and I’m still in a share house, Will is also in a share house. There’s always been that issue, buying house has always been expensive but I think it’s got harder and harder and it’s about kind of trying to communicate that idea and having some fun with it. What really struck me was how the longer you spend in these houses you kind of create a found family cause you end up being in these rentals 4-6 years and it ends up being like a family unit cause you spend so much time together. Your entire life, family unit is around the fact you live together and so I wanted to explore that as the updated version of that, that the more time we spend together, the more we become families. 

It’s kind of an interesting one. We’ve talked to people and you get two groups – people who own a house who don’t understand what we’re talking about and then everyone else who straightaway is like I’ve seen that. I think that was one of my key inspirations for the film, I kept going to parties and housewarming parties and talking to people and everyone had the same experience. It wasn’t just me, it was a generational experience, that everyone was going through the same thing and they’re just getting older and older and working more and more and still just living in share houses. 

Personally, there were parts of the film I related to, but some of it felt very Inner West.The characters, the housemates, they are this typical Artsy crew, a mismatch of different people. I feel like I know people like that or I’ve met people like that so that added a depth of realism to the film

WILL: I think that’s very interesting what you’re saying here. You obviously come from Western Sydney and I come from Northwest Sydney, Eastwood is kind of like my hub and my home kind of thing. For you I assume it’s Parramatta, for example, but Rowan’s from Perth, he’s from out of town, not anymore obviously. You know, like Ben the cinematographer is from Adelaide, Susie’s from Sydney but Susie’s from South Sydney, like Shire-ish and Shanks who was the editor, also Romans housemate, is from Adelaide as well, so like none of us are from ‘the inner west’ 

 We’re not ‘authentic’. 

 WILL: No, we’re not authentic Inner Westers

ROWAN: No, no imported

WILL: But there is something about the Inner West. There’s a mystique around it and I can’t quite put my finger on what exactly is the Inner West and why the film is, I guess it’s because we do all end up now living Inner West. I’m based in Waterloo Redfern now, I’m 5 minutes drive away from Rowan’s place, and Rowan’s housemates are South Sydney, very inner Westie kind of area but I’ve seen them go to all kinds of different houses in Erskineville, Newtown and stuff like that. It is a hub that people in our generation who move out of home, they want to move to Sydney, they move to the big smoke. Where do they go? It’s always the Inner West and I think that’s what it is. It’s the share house lifestyle that is endemic to the Inner West that we’re trying to depict here. Rowan, am I right in saying that? 

ROWAN: Yeah, totally. I think that’s interesting cause a lot of it is that I’ve come from Perth. I was not inner city Perth, I was up in the north which is the poor side. So it’s interesting it’s the opposite of Sydney, the west is super rich in WA cause that’s where the water is and the east is super poor. I grew up in northeast, and yeah, it’s definitely focused on that, but I think it’s a bigger question about cost of living. It’s also where your work is and stuff around that and so it definitely connects more with like inner city life but it’s definitely is like a weird ecosystem. What I find very interesting being from outside Sydney in New South Wales and coming in is Sydney’s very locked into its regions, which Perth isn’t. Perth you can move around more. I had a car I kind of traveled a lot more than I do in Sydney. Sydney really locks people into like Inner West, Parramatta, Northern beaches, they kind of lock everyone away and that is interesting that it’s very gridlocked because it’s so hard to move in Sydney that people just stay in their spots and so these characters are definitely like they’re stuck in their corner as well. There is no argument could they move out further but also I don’t think that’s a solution cause you’ll hit some cost of living issues although the rent is cheaper. In Sydney as opposed to Perth there are tolls and there’s all these other costs that are imposed on people who live in the western suburbs. If you come into work into Sydney, if your job is there, you are charged a toll to come in, which then like you can essentially just add that to your rent, really. 

I find it interesting how we’re all from not from the Inner West, yet there is an attraction towards the place. I just kind of assumed it was because that’s the trendy suburb to have your character in and also production wise it’s closer to get to which could be a factor, but yeah, there are quite interesting points you both raised about it. 

ROWAN: I think also young people like to move into inner city areas and then they get priced out and they get pushed out as a function of it. I feel like Newtown is a really trendy area but I would say probably not for young people anymore. Yuppies are buying up all those townhouses, like all the terrible houses we were in five years ago. They’ve all been sold to developers. People in their 40s, they’ve got a bit of money, they want to be in the cooler area, students made it cool, so we’re gonna push them out. Now it becomes Marrickville, Dulwich Hill, and you kind of go further and further out.

WILL: Ashfield is a trendy subject suburb now. 

Oh, I won’t live my life experiencing the Newtown Share house lifestyle.  

ROWAN: It’s over. I think it’s Ashfield, it will be Marrickville, Ashfield, will be where all the cool stuff happens like it moves. 

WILL: I’ll tell you a funny anecdote that my mum told me. She came to Australia in Sydney in like the late 70s, early 80s. At the time, a lot of Chinese migrants would go to Surry Hills, and she was saying to me, man that was the loser side of town. Surry Hills is the loser side of town because it’s so far away from everything, it’s like a 15 minute walk to Chinatown, it’s ridiculous, you know. Surry Hills is of course a very bougie swanky area today and you know, Surry Hills was known as Western Sydney back in the day. Then of course it go further out and further out. Newtown was10 years ago was, you know, the west of Sydney and then now that’s no longer the case either. Ashfield is now where a lot of my cool, trendy friends are moving down towards so yeah, I guess Sydney just keeps expanding, places keep changing and yeah, Surry Hills to my mum will always be the loser side of town.

Actually, something else about the inner west as well, in my years of meeting different people I have met people who are actually from the inner west who were born there, generationally have had their their parents and sometimes their grandparents be from the same area and they have a totally different perspective of that area as well. I remember I went to this cool hipster kind of market in the Inner West and there was this guy there and I interviewed him and he was like ‘I am sick of people saying the Inner West is uncool. I will always consider inner west to be cool. Inner west is my home. Inner West best!’ I was like, oh damn like what the hell? Since when was Inner West considered uncool? I think there’s like an Eastern Sydney thing and there’s like an Inner West kind of thing that kind of became this like great Eastern Sydney is this dominant, cool place to be, Inner West is where the rejects go. Now of course Newtown was the cool part of town and the people that felt like they were the rejects, outsiders from 10 years ago still feel the same way. So I find that really interesting, it’s like what Rowan was saying the gridlocked parts of town and all the different places that people come from and the interactions they have with each other is all super interesting. It’s all a nuance about being part of Sydney and understanding these things and going forward from there I suppose. 

ROWAN: Yeah, I think Inner West is a really interesting area. I think it’s going to be less cool over time. I think it’s gonna be more yuppie-ish as the years go by. 

WILL: That’s definitely the case from what I’ve seen as well.

ROWAN: Let’s all move to Ashfield. 

I know Ashfield has some cool dumpling places but I haven’t been for a while

WILL:  Yeah, definitely. I remember when the first people told me that they were moving to Ashfield. I was like what?! But who knows? Who knows where Rowan might move next. Who knows where I might move next.

Final question, what’s with the film being divided into different parts? It was really cool to have the artworks with their distinct look or style. Why was the film divided into chapters? 

ROWAN: I guess because we switch point of view quite a bit. When a chapter switches it becomes Will’s story or Maggie’s story or Isabelle and May’s story. So it’s a film that’s not from one person perspective it actually switches and see different versions of people from their perspective so that’s kind of why. Oh, I just love chapters to be honest. When you get down to it, I just like doing chapters but I thought it would be a good way of breaking breaking it up and I thought the artwork was a sort of distinct way of doing it. The artwork kind of has some relevance, each one kind of has relevance to what’s happening in the scene you’re about to see or the chapter you’re about to see. The artwork was a sort of a late addition to it, they sort of give a good contrast and compliment the film because they’re quite dramatic images about different stuff like the opening one is called The Decadence of the Roman Empire, and I thought that was kind of nice. Will was the one who came up with the idea of adding Sydney in the background but the idea of contrasting this sort of old decadent photo with like housing. It just felt like a fun idea. 

…

Evicted! A Modern Romance plays at Sydney Film Festival 2022. For tickets and information, go here.

Interview by Addy Fong.