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 Ned Kelly Production NotesWhen the law tried to silence him, a legend was born.
Reteaming for the first time since their breakthrough film Two Hands, director Gregor Jordan and actor Heath Ledger bring moviegoers the true story of their brave and iconoclastic countryman – Irish-Australian legend Edward “Ned” Kelly.
In the latter part of the 19th century, Australia is still largely untamed. The former penal colony’s first-generation Irish immigrant population lives in poverty. Having already experienced police brutality and the death of his father, bushranger Ned (Heath Ledger) is wrongfully imprisoned on the trumped-up charge of stealing a horse.
Emerging a few years later, in 1874, Ned is hardened but vows to stay straight. Rejoining his widowed mother and younger siblings, he makes money for his family as a champion bare-knuckle boxer. He also toils as a farmhand on the estate of an English landowner – with whose beautiful wife Julia (Naomi Watts) Ned shares a mutual attraction.
But the British colonial system and its Victorian English enforcers remain prejudiced against Australia’s working people, and the struggling Kelly family is no exception. When, in 1878, a bullying police officer is rebuffed by Ned’s younger sister Kate and targets the family for harassment, Ned and his mother are unjustly charged with attempted murder.
Ned is determined to avenge his family’s name and strike back against his people’s oppressors. While hiding in the bush, he forms a loyal Gang that includes his best friend and first lieutenant Joe Byrne (Orlando Bloom). A chance encounter with the police culminates in shots ringing out, and three officers are killed. The Kelly Gang is forced to go on the run. They blaze a trail through the Outback, robbing banks to fund themselves as well as to recover immigrants’ land deeds, and giving police the runaround. The Kelly Gang’s reputation as invincible outlaws grows, as does nationwide support from their immigrant countrymen.
To the masses, Ned is a hero. To lawmen and the establishment, he is the most wanted man in Australia. £8,000 is offered for his capture – at the time, the highest reward the world had known. When the authorities bring in the formidable Superintendent Francis Hare (Geoffrey Rush), and an army of police, with carte blanche to capture and/or kill the outlaws, Ned strategizes a risky showdown at the Glenrowan Inn. It is this event which will seal his fate – and his legend.
About the Production
Ned Kelly is based on the true story of Edward “Ned” Kelly, the 19th-century Irish-Australian bushranger whose daring bank robberies from the rich to give back to the poor triggered a massive manhunt and whose confrontations with the police turned him into a folk hero and legend. Ned was born circa late 1854, and was hanged on November 11th, 1880. For over a century, his story has been a recognized and enduring part of Australian heritage and history. An icon of Australian culture, he has been immortalized in books, films, theatre, opera, paintings, reenactments, and even the 2000 Olympics opening ceremony at Sydney.
Ned Kelly producer Nelson Woss, who is an Australian, recalls, “[Ned Kelly screenwriter] John Michael McDonagh sent me a copy of Robert Drewe’s book Our Sunshine back in 1999.
The book is about a man who stands up for what he believes in. I thought it was a fantastic story– one which had the potential to resonate with audiences internationally. John had a clear take on how to adapt the book, and this convinced me to option it.”
“The book tells the story in a dreamlike, poetic manner,” explains McDonagh. “I thought that if the story could be retold in a linear way then a dynamic, startling, lyrical film could be the result.”
Woss and McDonagh sent an early draft to Australian actor Heath Ledger. Woss then approached Working Title in the U.K., following which Tim White joined the project as executive producer. As thoughts turned to finding a director, Gregor Jordan emerged as the logical choice.
White had executive-produced Jordan’s feature directorial debut, the award-winning Two Hands, and therefore “knew that Gregor would bring vigor and a sense of boldness to material that other directors would perhaps have approached in a more traditional way.”
Jordan remembers, “I was excited by what I read. At the core of the story is a person fighting for a cause. He’s part of a persecuted minority, and he stands up and fights back. Ned Kelly was, and is, a national hero.”
Keen on making the project his next film, Jordan was quick to confirm that the ideal actor to portray Ned Kelly was Ledger, his Two Hands discovery. “The only way I was prepared to make the movie was with Heath,” says Jordan. “The casting of Ned, a real person, is essential for this film. You need someone who is the right age, physically tall, strong and charismatic. I also felt he should be Australian. So when you add those qualities together, there is really only one person to play the role.”
Like the director, Ledger immediately responded favorably. He says, “As a kid, I’d read a lot about Ned. I loved how passionate he was, and I was excited at the thought of giving life to the legend. Gregor and I had been looking for another project to do together for a while. I thought, ‘Let’s go for it.’”
With Ledger now committed to star, the project quickly coalesced. With Working Title Australia [WTA] just formed, Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner, co-chairmen of Working Title, would be shepherding the project as executive producers alongside their newly named WTA head, Tim White.
Another creative collaborator with a passionate interest in the subject matter was Australian producer Lynda House, who was already developing a documentary on Ned Kelly. Contacted by White, she came aboard Ned Kelly as producer.
With producers, star, and director all firmly in place, the creative team sought to finalize the screenplay by working with McDonagh to expand it. White explains, “John’s adaptation was exciting, but as with Robert Drewe’s novel it assumed a lot of stored knowledge about Ned Kelly– which we knew would not necessarily be the case with an international audience.”
One of the challenges facing McDonagh in his screenplay adaptation was that Our Sunshine is a fictional novel about actual historical events. Woss and McDonagh had discussed how true the screenplay should be to historical fact. They concluded that there would be aspects about Ned Kelly that would be accurate historically while others that were fictionalized. Woss explains, “We did not set out to make a biopic or a documentary. What we wanted was to reveal the underlying themes of the Ned Kelly story in an entertaining way.”
Yet, Jordan adds, “The book is metaphysical – it’s inside Ned’s head and doesn’t preoccupy itself with the history. So we set about trying to combine some of the surreal elements of the book with factual truths. Much of the time, when we were in doubt, we would just go back to what was true. That nearly always ended up being the most interesting material.”
The film’s opening sequence depicts an incident in Ned Kelly’s childhood, where he saved another boy from drowning in the flooded waters of Hughes Creek. As a reward, he was given a silk sash – which became one of his most cherished possessions, and which he would wear beneath his armour during the Kelly Gang’s famous standoff at the Glenrowan Inn.
Also referenced on-screen is the Jerilderie Letter, perhaps the most important of the Ned Kelly artifacts that have been preserved for decades. (Among the other artifacts are five death masks made a few hours after he was hanged, Ned’s original armour and a Colt Carabine Revolver from the Glenrowan Inn standoff, and the sash from the Hughes Creek rescue.) The Letter was directed to the Premier of Victoria and ran dozens of pages long. It was dictated by Ned Kelly to Joe Byrne in February 1879 – during the last of the Gang’s two bank robberies (in Jerilderie). In it, Ned tells his side of the history of his conflicts with the law, and outlines the persecution that he felt he and his family had suffered at the hands of the establishment.
Writing of past police harassment of his family, Ned states in the Letter that “this sort of cruelty and disgraceful and cowardly conduct to my brothers and sisters who had no protection [,] coupled with the conviction of my mother…certainly made my blood boil as I don’t [sic] think there is a man born [who] could have [had] the patience to suffer it as long as I did or ever allow his blood to get cold while such insults as these were unavenged and yet in every paper I am called the blackest and coldest [-] blooded murderer ever on record…[The shooting of the] three troopers [was done] in self [-] defence…I am a widows [sic] son outlawed and my orders must be obeyed.”
Another storytelling challenge was to condense a true story that spanned several years into under two hours. The solution was to mostly depict the latter part of Ned’s life. Heath Ledger began actively preparing to incarnate Ned Kelly. He was especially struck by a photograph “of Ned two days before he was hanged. I looked into that portrait and it’s all in his eyes; he is very dignified and very proud.”
Meanwhile, the supporting cast was being assembled. Jordan sought age-appropriate actors to play the three other members of the Kelly Gang, “who were all very young – I wanted to cast young lads.” The search began in Ireland because, as White explains, “Ned was as much Irish as he was Australian, so Gregor was keen to go to Dublin to meet with young actors.”
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Laurence Kinlan, Orlando Bloom and Heath Ledger in Ned Kelly.