Summer City

Director Christopher Fraser has said of this film: "It's been 23 years since I have commented on this film. I was the director and it was my first film. As far as I was concerned it was never finished. Despite the ludicrously low budget it could have been so much better than it turned out. All the leading actors fell into a serious argument with the producer and refused to continue working on the project. I never expected to see it on the screen. The producer and editor padded out the film with meaningless bits of irrelevant stock footage to make the required length of 87mins to qualify for a feature film. As you can imagine I was disappointed and embarrassed. Some parts of the movie actually work very well. There was a lot of spontaneous adlib especially between Mel [Gibson] and Steve [Bisley]. The first time we saw Mel [Gibson] in closeup in a viewing theater someone said "He's going to be a star". I thought so too. One day I'll tell the whole story. It's more complex and funny than the film itself."