Celluloid Heroes (play)

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Celluloid Heroes
Written by David Williamson
Date premiered1980
Original languageEnglish
Genrecomedy

Celluloid Heroes is a play by David Williamson about the Australian film industry. It was written to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Nimrod Theatre and is not one of his highly regarded plays. [1] [2]

David Keith Williamson, AO is an Australian dramatist and playwright. He has also written screenplays and teleplays.

Williamson later called it:

A bad play which didn't create characters that were complex enough to last the distance after interval. Part of the problem was that I felt I was writing to order... and I was supposed to be writing something light and bright and happy, but my feelings about the film industry were anything but light and bright. I think I let my personal bile about the indignities writers suffer in the film industry, and how basically shoddy it all is, spill over into the play. I wasn't sufficiently objective and I made the characters overly evil or two-dimensional... [it] was simply social satire dipped into crude farce. Not one of my best efforts... It's the only time I've worked to a commission and it's the only time I've been ashamed of the final product. [3]

He later wrote about the Australian film industry far more successfully in Emerald City .

<i>Emerald City</i> (play) 1987 play by Australian playwright David Williamson

Emerald City is a 1987 play by Australian playwright David Williamson, a satire about two entertainment industries: film and publishing.

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References

  1. ↑ Donald Pulford, "Defining moments: the Nimrod story" Real Time Arts accessed 24 October 2012
  2. ↑ "An ephemeral but cutting Williamson satire". The Canberra Times . 55, (16, 516). Australian Capital Territory, Australia. 14 December 1980. p. 8. Retrieved 4 October 2018– via National Library of Australia.
  3. ↑ Candida Baker, "David Williamson", Yacker: Australian Writers Talk about Their Work, Picador 1986 p 290-315 accessed 24 October 2012


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