Kylie Minogue was one of the biggest TV stars in the country in the late-1980s. But it took the support of the government’s newly-formed screen agency, the Film Finance Corporation (FFC), to provide millions of dollars in funding for her big screen debut.
The Delinquents, like many Australian films, bombed. The FFC’s near $4 million investment – almost half the $8 million budget – returned just $524,000 to the agency in just over 12 months, according to a confidential analysis.
It was a disaster that spurred the executives and board at the FFC – which later merged into Screen Australia – to believe they knew better than the private sector after a four-and-a-half hour meeting on May 4, 1991.
“The meeting noted that marketplace judgement of quality had not proved sufficient e.g. The Delinquents,” the FFC’s board notes recorded. “A possible way to address this problem is to pay more attention to a negative script assessment.”
It was the beginning of the end of the nation’s most audacious experiment in direct arts funding: letting the free market decide.
