Death of a Gentleman: a film about cricket

by Jarrod Kimber

[This article was published before the Melbourne screening of Death of a Gentleman. The film is now being shown in Adelaide next Tuesday (Jan 19). More info here.]

 

 

The reason you are on this website, the reason it exists, the reason you are reading my words, and the reason my career exists, is that we love sport.  We probably don’t love business. We probably hate politics.  But we love sport.

We probably long too much for a golden age that when you think back with detached emotion wasn’t as golden as we think.  We probably think it is, was, more pure than other forms of entertainment.  We probably can’t remember the last time it didn’t define our lives, or minds, or our waking hours. We think sport is better than all things.

It is our escape from our everyday existence and the swimming pool of excrement that is poured over us from the front part of the newspaper every day.

I know what sport has given me. It kept me close to my father when we didn’t agree on anything else.  It allowed me to play tennis with my mother, when most teen boys don’t talk to their mums. It encouraged me to sit at the feet of elderly story tellers who let me into another world.  It kept me fit despite all the Greenbrook dial a pizza I ate. It kept me, for the most part, out of trouble. It faced up to the demons in my head when they tried to bounce me out of this world. It gave me a career. It allowed me to meet my wife, and grow the family that followed.  And I know that, whether it be cricket, or sport in general, I have at the age of 35 already gotten far more from it than I could ever give back.

But I still feel like I should give back.  One of those ways is to make a film about what is happening with cricket.  You either know about the many problems facing cricket, or you don’t either way. I am not going to spell them out. They are different from the problems of footy, of soccer and of hockey. But all sports are facing challenges that they have never had to face before.

So I could have sat back, with the other chosen few, and written quotes pieces and churned out seemingly unending DRS drivel as cricket continued its confused run into an uncertain future, or I could stand up and do something. I chose to make a film about the sport, because I thought it needed it   I poked the hornets nest of international cricket politics, I made what should have been a cushy job very uncomfortable and certainly put my career in jeopardy. I have made what is an in all but certainty a not for profit film. But I did it because I am a cricket fan.  Who became a writer.  That loved his sport.

You may not be a cricket fan. You’re probably a footy fan.

My film is not ‘Year of the Dogs’, it is a film about what happens when a billion dollars comes into your sport.  We still have a Libba story (remember when Libba’s magnet moved into the other column, heartbreaking), our Libba is Eddie Cowan.  But his story is the story within the machine, the enterprise.  The business of sport.  What we consume, what consumes us.

I can’t guarantee you will love our film, but most sports documentaries these days are made my global companies with rights’ deals or stars in editorial positions giving you a heavily scripted behind the scene access in a well marketed plastic package.  It is the sports they want you to believe exists, with the genital warts removed.

Our film is two cricket fans, with a bit of media access, travelling around the world to see what is happening to our sport, while our other mate plays for Australia.  It’s not always pretty.  It might make you angry. It might make you love cricket. It might make you hate cricket.  But it is sport as it is today.

If that sounds like something you can get behind, the film is showing in Sydney and Melbourne. Other dates will surely follow. As will I am sure, DVDs, online streaming, and all that sort of stuff.

This is a low budget, made by love, thing about sport.  It’s basically the footy almanac, except about cricket, without John Harms, and with a soundtrack.  So watch it, you’ll love it, probably.

cheers

Jarrod Kimber

@ajarrodkimber

Film showings:

https://www.eventbrite.com.au/d/australia/death-of-a-gentleman/?mode=search

Website

http://deathofagentlemanfilm.com/

If you would like to review this film, we can arrange for you to see it.

Comments

  1. I am really looking forward to seeing this film.

    Also, I must add that Jarrod Kimber’s tribute to the retiring Mitch Johnson was excellent.

  2. Stuart Hunter says

    Jarrod

    Can’t make the screening tomorrow but wish you all the very best with the film and will look forward to seeing it another time

  3. Luke Reynolds says

    Also really looking forward to this, though will probably have to wait for the DVD release.
    All the best with it Jarrod.

  4. Sounds like a film that needed to be made. Looking forward to watching it at some point. Good luck with it.

  5. Am hoping to see this film sometime, somewhere, somehow. (Sold out in Melbourne!) Am sure it will be telling/revealing more than a few home truths.

  6. presumably others have seen Malcolm Knox’s article on this doco in Fairfax over the weekend?…very much looking forward to a viewing.

  7. Pardon, what might seem like a silly question, where when in melbourne can i see it. i’m an older person who’s used to going to the cinema.

    Glen!

  8. citrus bob utber says

    Like Glen I am of the ancient mariner vintage (still have my 8 ball clicker!)
    Any chance of the movie coming to the country?
    What about showing it at the final of the T20 so that people can see what cricket really means to many?
    Either of the 2 options would suit me
    Well done Jarrod and Sam- perhaps the Knackers could take it around Australia starting at the offices of CA.
    I am willing to travel
    Citrus Bob

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