Jonathan Sequeira director of the hilarious rock band documentary THE MOST AUSTRALIAN BAND EVER! And Movies That Changed Your Life: Robocop, Crocodile Dundee, Purab Aur Pachhim
Join screenwriter Stuart Wright as he dives into movies that changed your life with filmmaker Jonathan Sequeira, in this engaging episode of 3 Films That Have Impacted Everything In Your Adult Life
Welcome to my ongoing series of interviews I am calling “3 FILMS THAT HAVE IMPACTED EVERYTHING IN YOUR ADULT LIFE". Every week I get together with filmmakers and film lovers to explore cinema's transformative power on your personal growth.
From emotional masterpieces to thought-provoking classics, each interview delves into the films that have had a profound impact on the subject.
Through personal biography, Stuart uncovers the impact and lasting influence that movies have had on our lives.
This week I speak to the award winning, Australian documentary producer and director Jonathan Sequeira.
Best known for Descent Into the Maelstrom (2017), Waiting - The Van Duren Story (2018) and more recently, the hilarious Hard-Ons rockumentary: The Most Australian Band Ever! (2024).
ROBOCOP (1987)
I remember seeing the newspaper ad [for Robocop] and thinking what? This is terrible. It sounds like a dumb B-grade film.
I had a part-time job and on Thursday nights, I used to go see a movie after that finished - across the road to the cinema.
I saw Robocop [there] and loved it. I thought this is one of the smartest films I've ever seen. I was a big comic book fan and I really like Judge Dredd and Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns. And this film is obviously [influenced by] those two. In fact, there’s: “Your Move Creep”, which [feels like] a line straight out of a Judge Dredd comic.
It's a B-grade action film at its absolute best in that it's a B-grade budget, but it’s [still] a smart, intelligent film. The storytelling and the the world building is brilliant. Everything in this futuristic world is set it up so well. The way they use that television device, which, again, is out of Dark Knight Returns.
I could have picked any any of those mid-80s, sci-fi action films, like Terminator, Terminator 2 or the original Predator. But I I think Robocop is easily the smartest of the lot.
It's very cynical, but at the same time, in the lead character, there's still quite a positive character there, coming to grips with his life. This is a dark and gritty [film], but there's still this, sort of, not optimism, that is not quite the right word, but there's Alex Murphy [play by Peter Weller] and he accepts his fate and comes out of it a hero at the end. He's not going to get his life back, but he's embraced his new life. That's really interesting and that wouldn't necessarily happen in a lot of other films.
The Robocop design looks fantastic. The acting's amazing too. Kurtwood Smith as the villain, Clarence Bodica, is one of the best onscreen villains ever. He’s just so horrible.
And it doesn't get saddled with a love story [sub-plot], but there is a female lead [Lewis played by Nancy Allen] and that works to create a little bit of romantic tension.
[Robocop is] a really different film and a really smart film and something that I just didn't expect at the time. I think John Carpenter’s The Thing maybe gets a bit more love, but Robocop's on that level to me. It's just an all-time classic.
CROCODILE DUNDEE [1986]
I picked this because it is an independent success story. And what most people outside Australia don't realise is that this film was made without any support from any of the screen funding bodies or the arts community. [The filmmakers] backed themselves and said, "Let's raise the money ourselves. Let's do this." [Crocodile Dundee] is an absolute classic. It is so the everyday ordinary Australian. It doesn't fit that middle class arts funding world that unfortunately bogs Australia down.
[Crocodile Dundee] was really about bringing the ordinary Australian, Paul Hogan, who'd been a rigger on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and his whole thing of: ‘Hey, I'm just an everyday guy. I'm a tradesman.’
He was bringing that into Australian lounge rooms [during the 1980s].
It's hilarious… It's still hilarious [today]. It genuinely does capture a side of Australia that you used to see on the screen in the 50s and 60s. For example the Dad and Dave [comedy] films. But it had died out a little bit by the late 70s and early 80s where the sort of arts cognoscenti had taken over - and there's some great films - but you weren't getting the everyday working class people in these films.
[Crocodile Dundee] filmmakers decided this doesn't have to be dreary; it doesn't have to be sad or depressing. Let's just make a good fun film that everybody can relate to.
I’m not surprised it was a huge success because it's funny, honest and original. It's a great fish out of water story. Really simple, but there's no pretence about it. What you see, is what you get and people got it.
[Paul Hogan] was a little bit known in America because he was the face of the Australian tourism commercials. So, he had a little bit of a profile.
Everybody in Australia saw it when it came out. It was huge. It was a phenomenon. It was as big as Star Wars would have been when that came out. It ran for a year.
From the get-go it was [a cultural and commercial success] because the story was, hey, we did this ourselves. And because Hogan was a star, one of our own - homegrown. It was a big deal.
It's a little bit forgotten [now]. I think it's probably damaged by some of Hogan’s later films, but the story of [Crocodile Dundee] probably still resonates.
When you look back, it's a cultural phenomenon and should probably be held up as an absolute Australian classic because at the end of the day, it's a brilliant film, with beautiful cinematography, great acting, great performances and an amazing script.
PURAB AUR PACHHIM [1971]
I'll go back a little bit about me getting into Bollywood films. I saw Ghost World by Terry Zwigoff [starring Thora Birch and Scarlett Johannson] and there's a scene in it where they're watching a VHS of a Bollywood film. It’s the dance scene from Gumnaan (1965). I really liked the music and I started looking into it and got into Indian films [that way]. My dad's Indian but he didn't watch Bollywood stuff. I used to go down to a little Indian DVD store in one of the suburbs, and it's $4 for two movies on the DVD. Subtitles would go out of sync and second film would be terrible. But the first would be great. All these amazing Indian films from the 60s and 70s. It really was a golden age. People might know films like Mother India (1957) or Sholay (1975).
Purab Aur Pachhim means east and west.
It starts off with black and white footage of pre- Indian independence and there's some English/Indian conspirators, they betray some people and they go over to the UK. Years later, the good Indian boy Bharat [played by Manoj Kumar, who's also the director], goes over to England and he meets up with the family [who fled] and stays with them.
It’s this really interesting culture clash of east and west. Bharat’s like: ‘oh can we go and see Shakespeare's house, can we go and do this etc’. All the Indians, who've been living in England for a generation or are born there, they've all become victims of the decadent west and have lost sight of their motherland. It’s a bit of a propaganda film, in a way.
It is a really amazing film because the direction is incredible. What happened in that era, I think, is a lot of these Indian directors they didn't feel bound by [any movie] conventions and they just tried all these different ideas. What you get out of Bollywood films, at that time, is you can do anything, but you have to stay true to the character. And I find this is true for all films. Stay true to the character. Don't make them do anything out of character, and you can get away with the craziest, most fantastical things.
Go and see any of the late 60s, early 70s Bollywood films. You’ll feel like you're watching something that's really different. They might be a bit random and they're three hours [long]. So it's good to take an intermission break, even if you're watching on DVD. That always makes it more enjoyable. There's heaps of movies about doubles, brothers and sisters separated at birth. A lot of them are like Elvis movies but with a little bit more depth. The bad guys are always “smugglers" and the bad girls are always “dancers”.
Bollywood takes the best of Western cinema and they do their own thing with it. Amazing.
THE MOST AUSTRALIAN BAND EVER! international release is scheduled for early 2026.
A blu-ray and box set is planned for Australia late 2025. HARDER AND HARDER (the sequel to THE MOST AUSTRALIAN BAND EVER!) is in Australian cinemas from November 2025.
This article is an edited version of a Britflicks Podcast interview. For the whole conversation between Stuart and Jonathan see
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3 FILMS THAT HAVE IMPACTED EVERYTHING IN YOUR ADULT:
Impact
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