The Delinquents

Although the film had an American lead actor, Charlie Schlatter, it was never released in cinemas in the United States.

CHARACTERS & CAST · SOURCED

Producer Joseph Janni and director John Schlesinger had already tried to make a film adaptation of the source novel 'The Delinquents' (1962) in 1963, the year after the book was first published.

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Kylie Minogue's later music video 'Tears on My Pillow' (1990) was cut together with clips from this film.

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It was Kylie Minogue's first cinema film.

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The opening title card of this cinema film reads: ''Bundaberg, Australia 1957''.

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The film's source novel 'The Delinquents' (1962) was the only work published during the lifetime of its author, Criena Rohan (Deirdre Cash), who died in 1963.

DEEPER MEANING · SOURCED

Australian Actors Equity fought the selection and importation of the American actor Charlie Schlatter to share the lead in this film, and lost the arbitration case brought against the film's producers.

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The original screenwriters, Lex Marinos and Dorothy Hewett, do not appear in the credits of the finished film. In his book 'The Avocado Plantation: Boom and Bust in the Australian Film Industry' (1990), David Stratton writes: ''Lex Marinos wrote the first draft and was joined on later drafts by the playwright Dorothy Hewett… the screenplay is by Mac Gudgeon and the American writer Clayton Frohman; during pre-production Dorothy Hewett and Lex Marinos were still listed as co-writers with Gudgeon.''.

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It was the most successful Australian feature film at the 1990 Australian box office. Its total Australian gross between 1989 and 1990 was 3,370,650 Australian dollars (the film was released in late December 1989).

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Criena Rohan's (Deirdre Cash) novel 'The Delinquents' (1962), the source novel for this film, was written in a tuberculosis (TB) hospital.

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Criena Rohan's (Deirdre Cash) novel 'The Delinquents' (1962), the source for the film, was republished in 1986, about three years before the film's release in late 1989.

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It was the last feature film directed by the Australian television director Chris Thomson, who continued to work on the small screen after this film was completed.

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According to David Stratton's book 'The Avocado Plantation: Boom and Bust in the Australian Film Industry' (1990), ''first-time producers Alex Cutler and Michael Wilcox acquired the rights to Criena Rohan's 1962 book.'' With initial support from both the NSWFC [New South Wales Film Corporation] and the AFC [Australian Film Commission]… Cutler and Wilcox managed to interest Greg Coote and John Tarnoff of Village-Roadshow Pictures in the project. Tarnoff, another American… explained how he wanted to make not a small Australian film but an international film.

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This film production was a joint venture between the American Hollywood studio Warner Bros. and the Australian film company Village Roadshow.

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It was the first time the Australian company Village Roadshow produced a feature film to be shot at the Gold Coast studios, which it had just acquired and taken over from the Dino De Laurentiis company.

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Most of the locations shown in Bundaberg were still there in 2022.

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Although the story revolves around two teenagers considered 'underage' for such an emotional relationship, Kylie Minogue was 20 and Charlie Schlatter was 22 during filming.

BEHIND THE SCENES · SOURCED

This 1989 Australian film was not nominated for a single AFI (Australian Film Institute) award in 1990, not even in the Costume Design, Production Design or Cinematography categories (its D. O. P. Andrew Lesnie went on to win an Oscar).

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The film's end title sequence states that it was "filmed at Warner Roadshow Studio, Oxenford, Queensland, Australia and in Queensland, Australia."

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According to Helen Barlow's August 1991 article 'The Australian Film Finance Corporation' published in the Australian film industry magazine 'Cinema Papers' (p. 36), as quoted on the website 'Wikipedia', although an American lead actor [Charlie Schlatter] and an American composer [Miles Goodman] were chosen with the American market in mind, the film was never released [theatrically] in the United States, partly because of a distribution problem. This led the production company to sue Village Roadshow Pictures and the FFC [Film Finance Corporation].

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The source novel for this film, Criena Rohan's (Deirdre Cash) 'The Delinquents' (1962), was submitted for the Miles Franklin Award, a prestigious Australian literary prize.

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The film was made and first released about thirty-two years after the first release in 1957 of the unrelated but identically titled and similarly themed Robert Altman film 'The Delinquents'.

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The classic rebel film 'The Wild One' (1953) had some kind of influence/inspiration on both 'The Delinquents' (1957) and 'The Delinquents' (1989) — two unrelated, identically titled and similarly themed pictures made about thirty years apart.

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Both lead actors were born after 1962, the year the film's identically titled source novel was first published. Charlie Schlatter and Kylie Minogue were born in 1966 and 1968 respectively.

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Targeting a similar market to 'Grease' (1978), this film earned a poor reputation at the box office and went straight to video in some countries.

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Director Robert Altman's earlier unrelated but identically titled and similarly themed film 'The Delinquents' (1957) was made and first released about five years before the first publication in 1962 of the identically titled source novel 'The Delinquents' written by Criena Rohan (Deirdre Cash) for this 1989 film.

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According to the website 'Oz Movies', "pre-production was initially planned to begin in early January 1989, but the FFC was slow to finalise documents and Roadshow had to provide cash flow at the start of the film."

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The film was made and first released about twenty-seven years after the first publication in 1962 of author Criena Rohan's (Deirdre Cash) identically titled source novel.

DEEPER MEANING · SOURCED

It was the first feature film produced by Australian producer Mike Wilcox, also known as Michael Wilcox.

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Producers Alex Cutler and Michael Wilcox purchased the literary rights to the film's source novel 'The Delinquents' (1962) in 1985.

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The real cargo ship featured in the film was the 'Capitaine Wallis', known as 'Cypria' until 1977. The ship was actually built in 1964, about two years after the first publication in 1962 of the film's source novel. Moreover, both the film's story and the source novel's story are set in the 1950s.

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The film was a Village Roadshow Pictures presentation of a Cutler-Wilcox production in association with Silver Lining Entertainment, developed with the assistance of the Australian Film Commission (AFC) and the New South Wales Film and Television Office (NSWFTO) and made with the participation of Australian Film Finance Corporation Pty Limited (AFFC).

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