23 November 2002

On a hot November day in the late '80s, high school student David Critchley got home in time to switch on the Channel Seven midday movie, Picnic at Hanging Rock. It was already half over, but Critchley watched it anyway, enthralled. It was the beginning of an obsession.

Critchley, now a 28-year-old production assistant, has spent the past six years researching the production of Peter Weir's film and the stories behind Joan Lindsay's novel. First he wanted to make a documentary about the book, but when that didn't eventuate, he decided to make a book about the film. Not an essay about the making of the film. With the considerable financial support of the Hanging Rock Advisory Committee, Critchley produced a gorgeous coffee-table book of the original Picnic at Hanging Rock novel, interlaced with excerpts from Cliff Green's screenplay and illustrated with hundreds of never-published images from the film.

Next week, the book will be launched at Hanging Rock in what will also be a tribute to the film.

Miranda, in the form of actor Anne-Louise Lambert (ABC's Changi), will finally return.

Screenwriter Green, now writing for Channel Seven's Marshall Law, will come, as will producer Jim McElroy. Jenny Lovell, the Melbourne actor, director and drama teacher who got her first break in Picnic playing schoolgirl Blanche, will bring a photograph of her friend Jane Vallis, the actor who played Marion, the other girl who disappeared forever. Vallis died of cancer 10 years ago.

Lovell, daughter of one of the film's producers, Patricia Lovell, was cast despite her mother's objections. "She didn't want it to look like I'd got the part because of her." Now Patricia runs Impro Melbourne, which stages local theatre sports. She also works across theatre, film and television, and teaches drama at the Victorian College of the Arts and St Martin's Youth Theatre. "I'm going to the launch for a catch-up and a gossip," she says.

In his search for a missing scene of headmistress Mrs Appleyard committing suicide on the rock, Critchley discovered the mother lode: the original rushes from the film production, full of unseen footage, kept in three sea chests under a stairwell in a Sydney house.

Normally, a film's rushes are destroyed, but in this case they'd been saved by a crew member.

Some publishers knocked back Critchley's proposal for a coffee-table book that celebrated both the sun-soaked imagery of the film and the dark undercurrents of the novel. Finally, the Macedon Ranges Shire Council agreed to fund a limited edition of the book as a way of promoting Hanging Rock. At first, says Critchley, he consulted Peter Weir closely on his proposals for the book's look and feel. But then Weir became too busy. "He told me I had to keep everything to the standard of the original proposals I'd sent him," says Critchley. "So that was my guide - would Peter like this?"

Fifteen hundred softcover versions have been printed, while 200 individually numbered hardcover books are also available, complete with a strip of the original film. The very first hardcover printed has been on a voyage around the world to collect the signatures of as many of the film's cast and crew as Critchley could find.

"There's a line of Lindsay's where she says, 'the pattern of the picnic continues to spread'," says Critchley. "And it really does. When you go looking for people involved in the film, they've all got their own stories, some a bit dark, some have been really successful. Apparently when Lindsay visited the set, she said that this film would change people's lives, and it did."

The darkest parallel was between the character of headmistress Mrs Appleyard, whose suicide scene was cut from the film, and the English actor Rachel Roberts, who portrayed her. She committed suicide by poisoning in 1980.

In some ways, Picnic at Hanging Rock was a kind of Petri dish for the Australian film industry. There were other films, good films, at the same time, but what other film of 1975 grew so many careers in the industry?

Picnic's director, Weir, and cinematographer, Russell Boyd, have both gone on to international acclaim, and they've just finished production of the Russell Crowe film Master and Commander in Mexico. Camera operator John Seale went on to become the Oscar-winning cinematographer of The English Patient. He's just finished shooting Cold Mountain with Nicole Kidman. Picnic at Hanging Rock gave early exposure to actors such as Jacki Weaver, Helen Morse, Garry McDonald, John Jarratt (McLeod's Daughters and Better Homes and Gardens) and Vivean Gray (Mrs Mangel from Neighbours).

You can find Picnic alumni in make-up departments, production design, special effects, sound design, and other film specialties in Australia and around the world. Screenwriter Green was one of the writers on the ABC's Janus and Phoenix, and the creator of the newspaper drama Mercury. The Australian Film Commission's chief executive, Kim Dalton, started out as the film's second assistant director.

"I always keep an eye on the credits when I'm watching films, looking for all those people associated with it," says theology student Christine Lawrance, who played Edith, the girl who comes screaming down the mountain when the others disappear. Lawrance was only 13 when she was cast in the film, the youngest on set, plucked for the role from an open audition in Adelaide where Weir and producer Patricia Lovell were looking for old-fashioned faces. "Weir didn't want modern-looking girls," says Lovell, who still produces and teaches at the Australian Film Television and Radio School in Sydney. "He had a great eye for the right face."

Lawrance, then Christine Schuler, did not pursue an acting career when she went home. "Oh, school, university, dropped out, life got in the way," she laughs. She lives in Adelaide with her husband and her eight-year-old son, who is also a fan of the film. "It keeps coming up, all the time, and people suddenly make the connection," says Lawrance. Now she wants to be an Anglican priest. "If that doesn't happen, I'll be a theologian and write terrible erudite books that get up bishops' noses."

Karen Robson, the Sydney girl who played the mysterious brunette Irma, wanted to pursue acting after her experience on that film, her first acting role. "I went up for the role Judy Davis got in My Brilliant Career, and when I didn't get that I thought I didn't really want to [act] after all," says Robson. But she hasn't left the world of film behind. She's a partner in the Los Angeles entertainment law firm Pryor Cashman, specialising in film finance, for productions as varied as Sylvester Stallone's Cliffhanger and Nick Nolte's Affliction. With her husband, Iranian-born film director Ramin Niami, she's just produced an independent film, Paris. (They also have two children, an eight-year-old girl and a baby boy.)

While she hasn't worked on any of Weir's American films, she has met him once or twice since Picnic, and she's still in touch with Patricia Lovell. "I literally swam into Russell Boyd eight years ago when I was staying at the Chateau Marmont," says Robson. "I bumped him in the water, and he looked up and said, 'Karen?"'

Picnic comes up all the time, says Robson. "It follows my life. I was working on a film in Germany, and when they found out [she was in Picnic] they were sending me photos to autograph."

There's one person nobody has been able to track down - Margaret Nelson, the girl who played the role of defiant orphan Sara. David Critchley has asked everywhere. Patricia Lovell doesn't know where she is. None of the cast or crew knows. Critchley tracked down a Margaret Nelson working in film production in LA - but it was the wrong Margaret Nelson. Obviously a powerful young actor even then, Nelson dropped out of the industry long ago. She may well be living happily somewhere in Sydney, but she has disappeared from view. "Margaret is the enigma," says Critchley. "I'd love to trace her. She did a fantastic performance in that role."