The Finish brings Toni Collette full circle

WORDS HUGH BALDWIN

Photo: Tony Mott

Actors-turned-singers seem to be a favourite prey of the music press, so when Toni Collette added “singer-songwriter” to her CV late last year, we held our breath. But with their debut album Beautiful Awkward Pictures, Toni Collette and The Finish have earned a string of thumbs-up reviews, and have just finished a national tour playing 11 dates in five states.

It’s a little-known fact that Sydney-born Collette’s roots lie in music, singing and musical theatre, making the venture with The Finish more of a return than a beginning. For the actor, who has been working consistently in Hollywood, Australia and around the world for “more than half her life”, it also represents a freedom she’s been yearning for.

A scene from the music
video Look Up “Because performing with this group of people is relatively new, it’s very exciting for me,” says Collette. “I don’t feel much pressure. When you sign on to do a movie, your life is not your own… it can be overwhelming, in a good way – and sometimes not in a good way. But with music, from the beginning I didn’t want it to get out of control or be overwhelming.”

Collette acknowledges the important role her husband has played in the band’s genesis and development: Dave Galafassi’s pedigree in the Australian music industry was established as a drummer with his previous band, Gelbison. “My husband is the first person I offer my songs to, so his is the first reaction that I get. I feel very safe in that,” she says.

“Dave and I started a company called Hoola Hoop Records, financed The Finish recording ourselves and released it ourselves through our label,” she reveals. “I think just by not answering to anyone else and calling all the creative shots – and uncreative shots – I’ve learnt a lot. There are some areas where you wish you had some force behind you, some big company, helping to push it along but I really would forego that for the freedom we have.”

At Sydney’s Gaelic Club for
the start of their March
2007 tour
Photo: Nick BrownThey put together an impressive creative team for the album that includes the likes of Glenn Richards, from Australian indie band Augie March, and producer and engineer Paul McKercher (You Am I/The Cruel Sea/Eskimo Joe) to arrive at the unique sound apparent on the album. The result is an atmospheric collection of Collette’s self-penned songs, with undeniable depth yet still achieving Collette’s goal of creating an understated, “cruisey” record.

“Obviously Glenn [Richards] is incredibly talented – I’m a huge fan of Augie March, which is why I asked him to be involved in the first place. I still pinch myself; I can’t believe he’s part of my band. He’s a musical genius basically.

“All of the guys in the band are so incredibly talented. It gets to the point, when you’re collaborating, that you can’t really identify what people are bringing and it feels like a very shared experience. I’d be an idiot not to listen to them.”

According to Collette, another integral part of the creative process for the album was recording at The Shed, a purpose-built studio on Collette and Galafassi’s property on the New South Wales south coast.

“There’s a very good vibe down there and it’s literally at the end of a dirt road, at the top of a small mountain,” she says. “You’re surrounded by nothing. It’s just gum trees and nature. And we converted this concrete room into something quite beautiful.

“We consulted a lot of people and the sound in [The Shed] is pretty incredible. It was nice to be in that room and have a window out to gum trees and Farley the bass player jumping on the trampoline. We felt very removed and focussed, in a relaxed way. There was no pressure.”

At the Sydney Opera
House
Photo: Tony Mott So far Collette has resisted the temptation to direct the band’s film clips – something she had previously done for Gelbison.

“I had initial ideas, especially with the latest single, Look Up,” Collette says. “The genesis of that song was actually a flight from Adelaide to Sydney. I was sitting next to a priest and looking down at the world from 9,000m.

Then this interview came on between Andrew Denton and Matt Damon, and Matt Damon was talking about being in New York during 9/11 and how people were actually laughing because they didn’t know what to do with this excess shock of energy. The video was taken from that… I wanted to portray … getting on with your life…

“Directors Alice Bell and Paul Goldman (of Australian Film Industry-award-winning feature Suburban Mayhem) had this really great idea of starting with close-ups – it looks like I’m either in the city or out in the country somewhere but once you pull back you realise it’s only a screen or a picture. Just messing with those ideas of thinking we’re someplace but then showing we’re actually elsewhere.”

Collette’s movie fans don’t need to worry that she is turning her back on them, however. She can currently be seen on Australian screens with Robin Williams in the thriller The Night Listener, based on a novel by Armistead Maupin, who also wrote the screenplay. Collette describes the experience of working with Williams as everything you would expect it to be.

In her new incarnation as
rock singer: at the Sydney
Opera House
Photo: Tony Mott

“He really is hysterical but he can just be so focussed, so gentle and so clear about what he’s doing on set,” says Collette.

“I wore contact lenses because my character is blind, so I couldn’t see a lot of the time. He would personally walk me around, holding on to my arm, to make sure I was okay and knew where I was.”

Collette’s early career gained its first foothold in the 1992 Australian film Spotswood, which starred Sir Anthony Hopkins, Russell Crowe and Ben Mendelsohn. But it was her performance as the title character in 1994’s Muriel’s Wedding that catapulted her into the international film industry. Ever since, she has regularly transformed into a fascinating cross-section of characters. Among a string of films in 2006, was the Golden Globe- and Oscar-winning film Little Miss Sunshine, which received rave reviews for its screenplay and the cast of Steve Carrell, Alan Arkin and Greg Kinnear.

At the 2006
Homebake festival
Photo: Tony Mott

“That was an incredible cast. Really, really nice people,” Collette says. “That really was a great experience. I think that story’s got such a good heart.” She adds that she’s careful to be true to what’s written on the page.

“I think it has to come from the script,” she says. “One thing I have learnt is that if I read a script and start to imbue things in it that aren’t there then that’s a mistake. I think if it’s not initially there on the page then it’s never going to be.”

Despite an admirable body of work that includes a Best Supporting Actress Oscar-nomination for The Sixth Sense in 2000, Collette has a straightforward attitude towards her career.

“I can’t comment on other people’s idea of it, but from the inside, there are no points of arrival,” she says. “I don’t think of myself as a movie star. I don’t think of myself as even particularly successful. I just take each day as it comes.”

At Sydney’s Gaelic Club
for the start of their March
2007 tour
Photo: Nick Brown

“I like to challenge myself. I’m just living my life and it just feels really normal. I don’t sit around congratulating myself. Once something’s done I kind of move on and look for the next challenge or the next opportunity and go for it. I rarely even look at it [my career] on the whole. I look forward rather than back.”

It’s an approach that allows Collette to pursue goals that are creatively satisfying, rather than being tied to a role as just an actor or a singer.

“Acting and singing certainly spring from the same well… they’re just different forms of self-expression,” she says.

A radiant Toni Collette on
location during the shoot of
the band’s music video

As such, she can just as easily walk the red carpet for a film premiere in Hollywood one day and turn around and play a gig with The Finish at the Revesby Workers’ Club in New South Wales the next. “Just being on the road is bloody brilliant,” she says, of her love of the rock and roll life.

As she moves between creative spheres you get the feeing that Collette enjoys a team creative effort as much as individual expression. It’s evident in the way she describes the “root-to-fruit” creative cooperation in Toni Collette and The Finish and how the band gives life to the music.

Photo: Nick Brown

“I write the lyrics and vocal melody at the same time. And then I just record them and give a shitty copy to each member of the band and they kind of live with it for a while,” she shrugs. “Then we get together and jam and I try, in a director-like fashion, to explain what I can hear in my head.

INSIGHTS

My favourite Jetstar destinations are Phuket, Hong Kong, Western Australia’s Ningaloo Reef, and I’d like to go to the Kimberleys and the Great Barrier Reef.

I’m definitely a last-minute packer. I also overpack – although I’m learning not to.

I’m a huge fan of South-East Asia. I spent a couple of months in Thailand working last year and I’ve been back a couple of times since. I do a lot of travelling with work so when I’m not working I like to go to places I haven’t been and indulge in other cultures. I like to step into the East rather than the West.