The first day of a new job can be hard for anyone. Employee ID photo, stationery orders, and finding just the right parking space. Now imagine being hired as a hit man and you’re about to carry out your first job. Two men sitting in a car late at night; the one in the driver’s seat fidgets nervously as the other sips from an oversized takeaway cup. Sensing the gravitas of what’s about to happen and the driver’s mounting dread, the man in the passenger seat throws the cup into the back seat and says to his pal, “Do you want a cuddle?” As the driver breaks down in his friend’s arms, he lets it all out. “I’ve never even held a gun before. I use to be a vegetarian”. The other reassuringly nods, “I know, I know – you still can be”.
Adz Hunter wrote the new short film 2 Birds and a Wrench, and co-stars with his friend and frequent collaborator, Roger Woods. Adz (I’m glad he goes by “Adz” now – Adam & Adam just wouldn’t work well in an interview scenario) is perhaps best known in Australia for playing twins Cameron (the good one) and Robert (the not so good one) Robinson on TV series Neighbours from 2006-07. He then headed over to the UK where projects included the offbeat stage play The Pork Crunch, which he wrote, as well at A Wedding Most Strange where one man faces the prospect of having too many potential suitors. While based in L.A., he developed a web series, Fresh Off the Plane about expats sharing an apartment. His character Caleb, a novelist, can’t read you anything he’s written, though; he hasn’t “got that far yet”.
Adz also travels a lot and writes about it. Recent adventures he’s put to paper (or Internet – what’s that, the Cloud?) included a night in Koh Kong on the Thailand/Cambodia border. It rained for most of the time he was there, but it doesn’t bother the locals, “If this was London there would be fights at the bus stop, babies would be crying and you would probably get a walking stick in the ribs at some point”. I remember the feeling when I was in Singapore and they’d be the afternoon downpour. Okay, I wasn’t roughing it around Asia like Adz, but I did have to get to Uniqlo before it closed. He’s equally at home taking a weekend away in the West Midlands of England, trying the brews at the All Nations Inn, “The Dabley Ale made me weak. At the knees. Then in the head after I had two”. Listening to Adz gives me wanderlust. I think it’ll do the same for you.
Adam: How did you get into acting?
Adz: I wanted to perform quite early from probably 10 or 11 years old when I was attending primary school and was interested as to why movie actors were so convincing when they didn’t even have qualifications in real life to be a doctor or a lawyer etc. It stemmed from a love of storytelling that I got from reading comic books as a kid (I’m still a big Batman fan), and wanting to truly be someone else.
Adam: I really liked one of your early short films that was made in Queensland; the sweet-natured Brace Yourself. It makes you realise that anyone can get past having to get braces as a young adult so long as they have an accordion, a fedora (or similar) and some choice dance moves.
Adz: Brace Yourself was my first paid gig out of acting school. The braces were made from a mould exactly as if I was fitted to have them. I was lucky enough to never have braces growing up but now know what a mouth full of metal is like. I remember in the kissing scene they became a little problematic; which to the credit of the writer it was what they were looking for. We shot half of it at an apartment block on the Gold Coast and the rest in a Salsa club on Caxton St in Brisbane. Our accommodation was an expensive hotel so I was under the impression that this was the high life of an actor, and much more of it was to come! If only I knew…
Adam: I had a lot of friends who moved to Melbourne or Sydney after high school or (as you did to Melbourne at 21) university. Friends of mine found those cities to be a bit more welcoming than others since so many people who settle there are from somewhere else. Did you find that?
Adz: I think if you spend 21 years in the same city or state, then a move somewhere new is a normal progression. Brisbane was a cool place to grow up, but I grew out of it quite quickly. You want to find your feet as an adult. I did most of my ‘growing up’ in Melbourne and I’ll always look back fondly on those years. Besides, Melbourne’s cooler climate and thriving arts scene at the time was really inviting for me.
Adam: Twins or similar-looking relatives have a long history on television, particularly where one of them has more nefarious motives than the other! How did you approach playing Rob and Cam Robinson in Neighbours, and avoid making them caricatured dichotomies of each other?
Adz: On a soap it’s quite difficult to create two different personas when you have limited time and fairly simple storylines. The Neighbours guys are the pros at fast turnaround TV, because it takes some skill to produce television that quick! Despite creating two invariably different characters, at the end of the day they are still twins. Cameron was killed off fairly quickly, so I didn’t get a lot of time for any proper in-depth character motivations. Most of the screen time went to Robert who I played as sinister and as unsavoury as possible. Like a really bad wine you expected to be fantastic, Robert leaves a bad taste in most people’s mouths.
Adam: Did having a role in one of their most popular imported series help you get other work when you moved to the UK in 2009?
Adz: In a way it did, but by the time I had made the move to the UK it was over-ripe. I had been off air for three years and although I still got recognised, work didn’t come knocking. I had to go to it.
Adam: Tell me about writing The Pork Crunch. When did you start doing this? Was writing something that you always thought you would do?
Adz: I had been writing in my own time years before The Pork Crunch was finished. I started it as a scene for a showcase night for agents with an actor I’d barely met named Roger Woods. He kindly accepted to perform a script that involved a drugs heist and clubbing a toddler to death on stage. Most found it disturbing, but we thought it was hilarious. Dark, un-pc jokes an old flatmate and I used to ping around the living room and a passion for drum and bass music filled in the rest. Like most writers I was too scared to show anyone my work for fear of being critiqued. Thankfully The Pork Crunch was a project that came quite naturally as I couldn’t write it quick enough and it had a rehearsed reading in 2010 before being staged at the Pleasance Theatre in 2011.
Adam: When I wrote my first journal articles, I was terrified of putting them out into the world for scrutiny. Did you feel this with The Pork Crunch as the production started to take shape?
Adz: Of course. It made no difference how it was received; it was the fact that every word on that page is yours. I even had trouble learning my own lines because it was a very new way of working. Once the show was up, I was ready for anything and I knew any scrutiny was a blessing. Luckily for us, we were well received thanks to Simon Greiff’s ship steering and Roger Woods’ balls. If it wasn’t for those two (or three) we wouldn’t have had a show.
Adam: While in the UK you appeared in a wonderfully-inventive advertisement for Ford Fiesta. Where did you travel to film this?
Adz: That advertisement was a global campaign for Ford, and more of a luxurious couple of months shooting on location in Iceland, Spain, South Africa and Italy than anything. It was weird. Lots of fast-paced montages, like a video clip, and no talking required. It’s the penultimate commercial actors dream. You are paid very handsomely to turn up to set every day, get dressed and drive a car through mountains and rainforests. Then you get to go out to dinner every night. Unfortunately those gigs only come along once in a lifetime. So I’ve done mine. Tick!
Adam: One of the projects I wanted you to tell me a little about was the very unusual (in the good sense of that word) film, A Wedding Most Strange.
Adz: AWMS came from a meeting set up by my British agent with director Trevor Garlick while I was having meetings with agents in Los Angeles. Trevor said he had a script he wanted me to look at, the role of a gay guy who’d been in love with his best friend for many years who returns as a guest at his wedding. At first I declined to do it. I didn’t really get into the script, and there was a chance I’d be parodying any lead character’s gay best friend in every movie ever made. What changed my mind was that if I did something like this now, enjoy it, and continue to diversify the roles I play, I’d be happy. AWMS ended up being a hell load of fun to shoot (despite the freezing Devon weather) and I still have good friends from that shoot today.
Adam: Some of what you write could be described as awkward-based humour, like Fresh Off the Plane, a web series inspired by your experiences of moving to Los Angeles. You also co-starred as Caleb, an aspiring novelist who describes his genre as “technically romance”. What was shooting this like?
Adz: Shooting Fresh was interesting, though I wrote a screenplay that was used as a content base for actors to play with, a majority of what you see as an end product was improvised. A web series is a medium for the YouTube generation to get instant feedback and views in a short period of time. I mixed my observations of cultural differences I would see daily, and the hugely popular genre of awkward humour and decided I could write a series of short episodes that audiences could tune into every week.
Adam: You got some small parts on some big projects while living in L.A.: a Shakespearean actor in Liz & Dick, the dark comedy Wolfpack of Reseda, and a role in ABC- TV’s Mistresses. What was it like living and working in L.A.?
Adz: I get this question a lot, and my answer never changes. L.A. is a tough, tough city to live in. Even for those actors doing well, it’s taken them all many years to get anywhere. I could count on one hand how many actors I know personally who have landed in L.A., walked off the tarmac and straight onto a set. The rest you’ll find in a cue at Sunset Gower Studios at 5pm on a Thursday taking a cheque for $50 for being a part of the audience for The Price Is Right. I was fortunate to get those roles and others out of sheer luck and personal belief – not talent. If you are talented it helps. If you know A LOT of people and have relentless energy/determination 7 days a week for 52 weeks a year, the gods may be good to you.
Adam: Ultimately, you decided to “take a momentary step back from the tinsel and the lights because after a while I was beginning to think I had bi-polar”. You now split your time between the UK and L.A. When I was visiting L.A., I got the impression that living and working there could also breed a bit of paranoia.
Adz: Paranoia is a light term. It was like everything and everyone was on show. Constantly. It’s exhausting. I got back to England and all I did was dig up the garden for two weeks. I found the underbelly of America quite quickly. I like to see genuine and honest people. Los Angeles hit its peak in the 1960s due to a plethora of studios and movies making a lot of money and has been the world’s English movie making capital ever since. But every dog has its day, and I think Los Angeles is going through a huge period of change now. There is a lot less being made there than what there used to be as it’s too expensive. Some would say it’s an overhyped and sensationalised atmosphere that has a reputation for ruining careers. Not making them. So I plan to go back some day. Ha!
Adam: You also write articles and a blog. In one of your blog posts you discussed three things that you think a young actor (18-30) must do: travel, fall in love, and break up with a person you fall deeply in love with. I’ll ask you about the travel. Besides living in several places, when did you start to travel?
Adz: I guess acting and the biz is always where the heart is for me, so I’ll tie anything into that that is of equal passion – which is travel. Travel teaches you a lot about yourself. What you are like in a high pressured situation out of your comfort zone for example. I’m a sucker for punishment and I’ll always have to be taught something three times before I’ll learn. But I have a thirst for what is new and different, so my curiosity is fed by travelling to incredible and untouched places. I never get enough of what the world has to offer. I didn’t even leave Australia for the first until I was 25. I was a late bloomer compared to my friends but once it started, the bug got a hold of me.
Adam: Travel writer (and actor) Andrew McCarthy said travel for him was not vacation or for work, but to “go off into the world and you make yourself vulnerable into the world”. Andrew found that when he did this “the world meets you”. What does travel mean to you?
Adz: Andrew’s right. Travel is true freedom. Travel should be exciting, dangerous and euphoric at the same time. We are lucky we live in a world where most people can’t get to every corner of it before they die. There is always something new to explore and someone new to meet. I just got back from my first time in the Pacific, to the island nation of Samoa, and I’m constantly reminded of how vast this earth really is. Samoa was my 36th international stop. Then I met someone who had more uppity than me to go places, and any future planning now ceases to involve painting the house but more like an hour on Skyscanner and a credit card.
Adam: In another blog post you wrote about how an actor should go with (at least initially) the particular type that they might be given, such as playing repeated “baddies”. You wrote, “Actors struggle being told exactly what they look like at times because they have an idea in their head of the types of roles that they want to play” I wonder if ironically, given how a career in front of the camera makes it all about ‘you’, that some performers also lack self-awareness. That is, self-focus or even rumination doesn’t mean insight?
Adz: Actors need to have an acute sense of themselves and the way they are perceived. We study ourselves in order to become other people. No point in trying to figure out somebody else if you don’t understand yourself first. Actors also do a lot of hiding. They’re masters at it. A lack of self-awareness can only come about if a person believes in their own hype. Play the game. Not the hype. The entertainment industry is a narcissistic business and a way of dealing with it is to continue telling the stories that compelled an audience to listen to you in the first place.
Adam: You must have the face of a “baddie”, because you’re starring in two short-films where you play someone on the wrong side of the law, The Olive Branch Job and your own 2 Birds and a Wrench.
Adz: I get typecast in a way, which isn’t so bad. The darker roles are more interesting and when you have eyebrows like Jack Nicholson and cheekbones that would kick most meth addicts off the street you tend to run with it. Hence the blog I wrote that outlines rolling with what god gave you – it could make you a lot of money. Plus I like playing a bastard. Bastards are complex, they’re troubled, flawed. Iago was a bastard. So was Richard III.
Adam: Tell me about your latest writing effort, the short-film 2 Birds and a Wrench, which you co-produced and co-star with Roger Woods.
Adz: 2 Birds and a Wrench is the second creative venture with Roger Woods. I wrote something that we both wanted to make that fulfilled a desire we both love – dark comedy. I wasn’t interested in writing a film with a message, but something that appealed to us and our audience. I have a wicked, at times sadistic sense of humour that Roger feeds off. We thought about making a movie where two first time hit men signed up for the wrong job and bludgeon their way through the ordeal and come out unlikely winners. We threw many different ideas around but still kept coming back to this one. We fundraised, held auditions, got an incredible director and a stellar cast, and shot a movie we are very proud of. When we were accepted in Portsmouth International Film Festival with three nominations, at least we didn’t feel like a bunch of losers throwing our money down the toilet. Film-making is an ultra-sensitive beast and red flags two very important things that we are constantly reminded of – money and patience. It was no doubt going to be difficult and shooting the entire movie at night proved a challenge but upon completion there was a wonderful sense of achievement.
2 Birds and a Wrench is currently doing the festival circuit, so visit its Twitter page to see where you can catch it. And do keep up with Mr. Hunter (that’s a term of endearment, he didn’t make me call him that), himself, on his Twitter page. Stop on by Adz’ blog. Fresh Off the Plane is available on YouTube.
Top photo: Andy McColl.