My Brilliant Career

I'm not a big fan of musicals of all types, but with Milos Forman directing, I think I got to check this one out.

Gillian Armstrong's My Brilliant Career was an Oscar nominee for Best Costume Design.

At that point, she wasn't making Hollywood pictures, I don't believe.

She was just making... films from Australia, but it does get a pretty high critical appreciation at 2,225 and a 7.1 on IMDb.

Bursting with big dreams and plans, an Italian teen goes to Milan to work in a big, impersonal corporate office, where he becomes disillusioned and drained of all his individualism.

And for our second movie, we have My Brilliant Career from 1979.

It stars Judy Davis, Sam Neill, and Wendy Hughes.

A proud young woman in early 20th century Australia must choose between marriage and independence.

But Criterion, I think, is one of the most famous.

So I said to dad, you can pick any two movies.

And dad opened up the Criterion cupboard with a twinkle in his eye and then just sort of disappeared for a while and came back with Il Posto and My Brilliant Career.

Okay, so that's how we got the movies this week.

And we know that Sam Neill spoke to James Mason in 1979.

That was after he made My Brilliant Career.

And Mason told him, I like what you do, and invited him to spend time with him in England.

And he said, and learn the trade.

james mason

what

a nice story took an interest in you saw you in my brilliant career until you get to london and he would provide he says he um he called me in the middle of work i was working on stage and um little television thing in Melbourne.

And the phone went and this voice said, I'm James Mason.

is.

You know, I think about My Brilliant Career and how, like, roles like those, like, where he just, like, plays off, like, somebody as a romantic lead feels true.

He's also great and

he does a great job.

And that led to the lead role in the 1977 thriller Sleeping Dogs, which would become, to my surprise, New Zealand's highest grossing film of the time.

Then they put me on a ship and sent me to Australia to promote the film, and I guess they liked the look of me, and I met Gillian Armstrong, who cast me in the 1979 period drama, which, of course, was my brilliant career.

As a goodness me, I was paid roughly three times my National Film Unit salary to appear as the gallant love interest of Judy Davis.

And as it turned out, James Mason, the English star of stage and screen, he saw my brilliant career and he admired my performance.

He said, I like what you do.

And Neil later recalled Mason telling him, I'm sending you a plane ticket.