Stone Bros.
| Stone Bros. | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Directed by | Richard Frankland |
| Produced by | Ross Hutchens Colin South |
| Written by | Richard Frankland William Bainbridge |
| Starring |
Luke Carroll Leon Burchill Valentino del Toro Peter Phelps |
| Music by | Shane O'Mara |
| Cinematography | Joseph Pickering |
| Edited by | Meredith Watson Jeffery |
|
Release date
|
24 September 2009 |
|
Running time
|
90 min. |
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $3,400,000 |
| Box office | $99,032 |
Stone Bros. is an Aboriginal Australian stoner comedy film. It was theatrically released in Australia on 24 September 2009.
Eddie (Carroll) is working as a cleaner in a museum in Perth, Western Australia, but loses his job because of an accident that sees a series of cardboard cutout images of Australia's Prime Ministers fall down in a domino effect, resulting in an image of John Howard landing on and killing his boss's cat.
When his cousin Charlie (Burchill) trades away Eddie's favourite jacket, he unwittingly loses a sacred stone, entrusted to Eddie by his uncle, which he promised to one day return to its home in Kalgoorlie. This is the final straw, as far as Eddie is concerned, and he sets off to recover the stone and reconnect with his aboriginal roots. Charlie, escaping the wrath of his vengeful girlfriend, forces himself along for the ride, and Eddie's spiritual journey takes a very sharp turn off-track.
Along the way, they pick up what Charlie mistakes for a 'hot chick' only to find they are landed with Vinnie (del Torro), a self-described Italian rock star. Soon after they are joined by Eddie and Charlie's transgender cousin Regina (Page), who dreams of making it big on the Koori edition of 'Australian Idol', and a confused European Australian cop (Phelps) who dreams of going walkabout.
The film is widely regarded as the first feature length Aboriginal Australian comedy film. When asked why there were so few Aboriginal comedies, director Richard Frankland stated that:
Essentially we’ve been in a situation where in the early 1990s there were some 10,000 hours of film footage with Aboriginal content or subject matter, and over 90 per cent of that was written, directed and produced by non-indigenous people. So Wal Saunders began the Australian Film Commission’s Indigenous Branch in 1993, with the support of Cathy Robinson who was the then CEO. And it went through the roof. That was the in my opinion of indigenous filmmaking. There have been individuals before who’ve stepped out, but all of a sudden both Warwick Thornton and I did that first [mentored] program, Sand to Celluloid, and now here we are doing feature films. So I think both Cathy and Wal deserve to be commended for what they did. It was absolutely courageous and so needed. It essentially changed the cultural landscape of Australia.
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