P.J. Hogan Video Interview On Directing ‘Mental,’ Toni Collette

Well, 'Mental' is based on a true story, it is based on events that occurred when I was 12 years old. My mother had a complete nervous breakdown and was institutionalized, and my dad was running for reelection at that time, for mayor for our small town. He said to us all that, ‘No one votes for a guy whose wife is crazy, so you’ve gotta keep this quiet. The official story is your mom is 'on holidays.’' So that was the lie we all told. The moment my mom was gone, we didn’t sit around crying, we just took immediate advantage of her absence and ordered and ate pizzas, we didn’t wash our clothes. We had clothes everywhere, and so we sent our dad a little bit crazy. So crazy that when he was on his way to counsel he stopped for a hitchhiker who he trusted because she had a dog. He picked her up, offered her a job, which was looking after us so he wouldn’t have to. We got home from school and there was this strange woman sitting in our living room, a hunting knife sticking out of her leather boot, her insane dog growling at us and she set the dog onto us and made us clean, and gradually she changed our lives. In the movie I call her Shaz.

Well Toni Collette was in 'Muriel’s Wedding,' which was both of our first movies and that turned out very well for both of us. We’ve always wanted to work together again and I actually, on the set of 'Muriel’s Wedding,' I would say to her, ‘If you think the story of Muriel, which is based on my sister, if you think that’s a mad story, wait till you hear about Shaz.' Anyway, Toni kept at me. She’d send me emails, ‘Give me a call, how’s the Shaz script going?’ Finally, the time was right. I think I was waiting for Toni to get old enough to play the character. So it wasn’t like we hadn’t seen each other for 20 years. We hadn’t worked together in 20 years, but really we just picked up where we left off. Thankfully she said yes because I can’t imagine anyone else playing the part.

Well, 'Mental' really couldn’t have been made anywhere else but Australia. Like 'Muriel’s Wedding,' the original story occurred in Australia and all the characters are based on people I grew up with or people I know, Australians. So for me it just had to be made [in Australia]. I actually shot it in the town I grew up in. But you know, 'Muriel’s Wedding,' turned out to be, even though it was an Australian film, it turned out to be a universal story and the same is proving true of 'Mental.' I think that as long as it’s funny and honest and is a ripping good yarn, you can get it no matter where you live, no matter what language you speak.

If you’re going to call a film 'Mental,' one it has to be mental. Look, I am in the trenches with mental illness; my sister is schizophrenic, my brother is bipolar, and I’m the father of two autistic children, so I live with it everyday. That’s why the film had to be a comedy, because I think anybody who is the primary caregiver for somebody who suffers a mental illness will tell you that if you don’t find a laugh, you yourself will go mad. I wanted the film to be politically incorrect and outrageous, because when it comes to mental illness, everyone’s immediate reaction is. 'How tragic! It must be a very serious serious issue.' Well you know what? It is and it isn’t. I wanted it to be politically incorrect because political correctness when it comes to mental illness is often used as people's way to not talk about it unless you use the right words. If you don’t have the right respect or vocabulary, we'd rather not talk about mental illness, and that’s the problem. So, I wanted it to be outrageous because I think also laughter inspires compassion. I really believe that about laughter. You know, not laughing at the character, but laughing with them. You know, laughter can invite you in and that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to invite the audience in to a world that they might otherwise resist.

I never really know why I am attracted to one project and not another, but when I look back I realize that all my films have something in common; they are about the outsiders and they do focus on the underdogs. You know, I wasn’t an athletic kid and my dad was, in addition to being a mayor, a sports writer for a local newspaper and he would write up the football matches. His dreams for his sons, and I was the oldest, was that I would be a star football player and I think I humiliated him once by catching a football between my knees and I broke my nose too on a goal post. That was the end of my football career. So you know, I am really drawn to the disenfranchised. To me, that’s just the story of the outside and in a lot of ways, that’s everybody's story. I think we’ve all felt like outsiders at at least one point in our lives.

I never really know why I am attracted to one project and not another, but when I look back I realize that all my films have something in common, they are about the outsiders and they do focus on the underdogs. You know, I wasn’t an athletic kid and my dad was, in addition to being a mayor, a sports writer for a local newspaper and he would write up the football matches. His dreams for his sons, and I was the oldest, was that I would be a star football player and I think I humiliated him once by catching a football between my knees and I broke my nose too on a goal post. That was the end of my football career. So you know, I am really drawn to the disenfranchised. To me, that’s just the story of the outside and in a lot of ways, that’s everybody's story. I think we’ve all felt like outsiders at atleast one point in our lives.