Yester Grange, one of the earliest stately homes built in the Blue Mountains, is now restored and used mainly for weddings – but a lavish 'wedding' filmed there recently is unlikely to be forgotten when it's released on Australia Day.
The 97-minute comedy A Few Best Men is about an English lad David who announces to his mates that he is getting married to an Australian – the daughter of a wealthy politician. The bridegroom's English mates fly out to join him for a chaos-filled wedding day at Yester Grange.
The movie was awarded four stars by both David Stratton and Margaret Pomeranz when they reviewed it for their ABC-TV At the Movies show. "Not many films make me laugh out loud these days," said David, "and this made me laugh out loud quite a few times. I really enjoyed it."
But how did Yester Grange win star billing as the bride's home? The credit has to go to the film's director, Stephan Elliott, who shaped the popular comedies Easy Virtue and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
First, he changed the plot and its location from Wales to Australia. Then, instead of the bride's father being Welsh landed gentry, Elliott convinced the producers to make him an Australian politician played by Jonathan Biggins.
"Let's go for politics," he told his producers. "Let's go for classy, well-mannered, well-spoken people," Elliott revealed to David Stratton in an exclusive interview. "I said, look at Malcolm Turnbull, that's what we're going for. I told Malcolm that the other day and he nearly died."
The producers had planned to shoot the movie in Queensland, but Elliott was determined to make it in New South Wales. To convince his producers, he took them for a helicopter survey of the Blue Mountains: "It was one of those magical afternoons where the Blue Mountains was perfect. We did a couple of laps around the mountains and there was Yester Grange. We found it from the air. And I said: That's it. We've got it."
Some of the cast at Yester Grange
The bride's mother, who lets her upper class hair down with great gusto, is played hilariously by Olivier Newton-John. "Mothers of the bride do have a tendency to cross the line spectacularly," says Elliott. "I started videotaping weddings. That's where my career began. I did thousands of weddings and, trust me, I've seen more bad behaviour from mothers of the bride than anyone else."
Elliott explained more at the recent Rome International Film Festival: "Speilberg started making films with a Super8 camera. Tarantino started making films because he used to work at a video shop. I used to videotape people's weddings.
"I did probably 10,000 weddings from about 14 years old to when I started directing movies. I actually learned how to direct by doing weddings. I mean, they'd walk down the aisle, they were all so excited about getting their weddings taken, photographed for the first time. They'd get down and I'd say to the bride, 'You looked a bit fat. Can you go back and do it again.' And in those early days of video weddings, they'd let you do it.
"And that's where I actually learned to direct films. The film is quite subversive – of 20 years of videotaping weddings, this is my revenge because I suffer from wedding rage."
A Few Best Men, whose ribald humour is not for the faint-hearted, will be released nationally on Australia Day.
Check out the review on At the Movies.
Visit the Yester Grange website.