Monkey Grip

RESEARCH BACKGROUND The 1982 film Monkey Grip, written by Ken Cameron and Helen Garner, directed by Ken Cameron and based on the novel by Helen Garner is widely considered an Australian classic with a complex legacy. Since publication, the novel has remained an object of diverse scholarship from local authors such as Brophy and international authors such as Wood. The film is a less studied document, with many notable exceptions (Stratton’s The Avocado Plantation). For Melbourne International Film Festival’s 70th anniversary, Black Inc commissioned essays aimed at revisiting the often overlooked history of Melbourne on film. RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION As creative nonfiction, this essay takes a playful approach to (a) the plot of the film, (b) the experience of the film, and (c) the longform critical review, mixing and re-apportioning (and -proportioning) conventions and expectations from story, film and review to create novel effects. Primarily, in undertaking an extended linear reading of the plot with critical background strung through the reading and account, the essay claims to foreground ‘the thing itself’ (the film) while in fact mirroring the viewing experience, taking advantage of the word count to mimic a ‘live’, extended viewing time. Secondarily, it employs a relaxed, insider voice mixed with historical and scholarly knowledges to meet the film on its own terms – a critical posture towards a casual life. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE After writing this invited essay, publication was accompanied by events and a stream of the 2022 MIFF program (also called Melbourne on Film), including a screening and cast Q&A that I was invited to host and introduce at ACMI. My article was selected for syndication at The Conversation in their Friday Essay column where it has attracted 36,146 reads between August and October 2022 In The Age, critic Owen Richardson singled out the essay for its ‘writerly, imaginative evocation of the experience of the [film]’.