The True Story of Eskimo Nell
| The True Story of Eskimo Nell | |
|---|---|
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| Directed by | Richard Franklin |
| Produced by | Richard Franklin Ron Baneth |
| Written by | Richard Franklin Alan Hopgood |
| Based on | ballad Ballad of Eskimo Nell by Robert Service |
| Starring |
Max Gillies Serge Lazareff Butcher Vachon |
| Music by | Brian May |
| Cinematography | Vince Monton |
| Edited by | Andrew London |
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Production
company |
Quest Films
Filmways Australasian Distributors |
| Distributed by | Filmways |
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Release date
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Running time
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103 minutes (original cut) 94 mins (Sydney) |
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Budget | A$200,000 |
The True Story of Eskimo Nell (retitled Dick Down Under in the United Kingdom) is a 1975 Australian western comedy film produced, directed, and written by Richard Franklin, and starring Max Gillies as Deadeye Dick and Serge Lazareff as Mexico Pete. The film was the first film produced by Richard Franklin.
Based on and inspired by the bawdy Ballad of Eskimo Nell, which had actually been banned in Australia, with Deadeye Dick and Mexico Pete setting forth through the Australian Outback in search of the infamous prostitute, Eskimo Nell.
The film features large amounts of full frontal nudity which was one of the main attractions of the film at the time.
The film was part of the Australian New Wave, with most of the film being shot in Ballarat and some in Canada.
The film's unlikely protagonist is a mild-mannered window peeper named Dead-Eye Dick (Max Gillies). Dick spies on a Mexican couple. The husband is very jealous and is about to discover that his wife has a lover when Dick rescues the lover, whose moniker is Mexico Pete (Serge Lazareff). The worldly Pete counsels the shy Dick on his problems approaching women. Dick claims that he is waiting for an Alaskan Eskimo named Nell. Pete and Dick decide to travel to Alaska to find this fantasy woman, and they have several wacky misadventures along the way.
Franklin says he got the idea to make the film when he was in Sydney producing The Jumping Jeweller of Lavender Bay and heard a tape recorded version of the poem Eskimo Nell. He thought it would make a great movie and several months later wrote a treatment.
The movie became known as a sex comedy but Franklin says it was never his intention to make that sort of movie. He was more interested in exploring a male friendship along the lines of Midnight Cowboy (1969) with elements of comic Westerns like Cat Ballou (1965). He wrote a draft of the script which was set in the same locations as the poem, the Rio Grande and Alaska, and took it to Hollywood in 1972. However he encountered resistance from Hollywood agents, who believed "no one wants cold scripts", referring to the box office disappointment of movies like Ice Palace (1960) and Ice Station Zebra (1968). He also discovered that the poem was not well known in the US. "It's known only in the 'English World', meaning Canada, Australia and England," said the director.
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