Starstruck
Clip 1: Harbour view and rabbit stew
2 min 43 sec
Taken from the feature Starstruck (1982)
Original title classification MA – this clip chosen to be G
Availability of the complete title
Curator’s clip description
Angus (Ross O’Donovan), 14-year-old wanna be rock star manager with blue hair, tries to enlist interest in his songs from a local band, The Wombats. At home later, his nana (Pat Evison) rinses out the blue dye as boarder Mrs Booth (Melissa Jaffer) wrangles a litter of kittens. In the hotel kitchen, a pot of rabbit stew explodes as aunt Pearl (Margo Lee) tries to find out where her daughter Jackie has spent the night.
Curator’s notes
The clip introduces us to the bizarre world of the Harbour View Hotel, with kittens roaming in the kitchen and rabbit stew on the stove. The stew suggests poverty – or at least that things are not going so well in the pub business (as does the fact that there is only one boarder ‘left standing’, as Angus says). The writer, Stephen MacLean, who died in 2006, grew up in similar circumstances, surrounded by aunts, in a pub. The film was partly his tribute to those women.
Paul Byrnes, curator
