Bill Bennett.

Welcome to the Cinema Australia Podcast.

It’s been a while between episodes. I’ve been kept very busy lately with the recent celebration of my 40th birthday, as well as my film festival, the WA Made Film Festival.

I’m back on board now, as I’ve got some great episodes coming up, including one with actor Travis Jeffery, as well as a few episodes focusing on Revelation Film Festival and Sydney Film Festival films.

My guest on this episode is Bill Bennett, the writer, director, and co-producer of The Way, My Way – a charming true story of Bill himself, and one of his many walks on the 800-kilometer-long Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route through Spain. The film is based on Bill’s best-selling memoir of the same name.

Bill is one of Australia’s most experienced and respected filmmakers, having made a ton of feature films and numerous documentaries over a forty-year period.

Chris Haywood and Bill Bennett while filming The Way, My Way.

Bill has received Australian Film Institute Awards for Best Film and Best Director; he’s had two films in the Official Selection at the Cannes Film Festival, four films in Toronto, and had three major international retrospectives.

As usual with this podcast, we go much deeper than just a filmmaker’s most recent film.

Here, Bill takes us all the way back to the beginning of his career and his almost-immediate success with early films like A Street to Die and Backlash.

Bill also shares some incredible stories about making films like Spider & Rose, Kiss or Kill, Two if by Sea with Sandra Bullock, and The Nugget, which he filmed with a very ill Belinda Emmett while 9/11 was happening at the same time.

Regular listeners will know how much I love doing these retrospective-style interviews, so this one was a real treat.

The Way, My Way is in select cinemas from May 16. You can find out more about the film here.

Anyway… enjoy.

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