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Michael Brindley Michael Brindley i(A72468 works by)
Gender: Male
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BiographyHistory

A screenwriter since 1978, when he graduated from the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS), Michael Brindley's credits include Prisoner, Punishment, Taurus Rising, Bellamy, Blue Heelers and Police Rescue. He was a staff script editor on the top-rating A Country Practice and went on to become the series' Story Producer (qq.v.). Brindley wrote the ABC mini-series Half A World Away, collaborated with Karin Altmann on the top-rating telemovie One Way Ticket., and was a writer/script and story editor for series one and two of the wrote the AFI award-winning drama Grass Roots. He was also later an ABC network executive supervising the MDA-Medical Defence Australia series (which won three AFI awards, including Best Television Drama). Brindley's feature film credits include also co-writing the award winning feature film, Shame, which was invited to many festivals, beginning with the New York Museum of Modern Art 'New Directors, New Films'. It went on to worldwide theatrical distribution and was remade as a telemovie for US Lifetime cable.

Michael Brindley's career has seen him work extensively as a script consultant and reader for all the Australian government film funding bodies as well as the New Zealand Film Commission. He was Head of the Australian Film Commission (q.v.) Script Office between 1987-8, and in 1993 was a consultant for the West Australia Film Council (now ScreenWest) on script assessment and script editing. In addition he has lectured at RMIT University (where he was a founding teacher in the Advanced Diploma In Professional Screenwriting), La Trobe University, VCA Film School and AFTRS. He devised and taught courses in Adaptation, Script Analysis and Feature Film Writing and has lectured in New Zealand for the NZ Film Commission New Writers Scheme. He was also a script advisor to the Australian Film Commission's (q.v., AFC) SP*RK program in 2004 and 05 (and a participant in 2008).

Brindley's insight into the craft of scriptwriting have seen him author a number of papers and guides, including 'What Is A One-page Synopsis?' (for Screen Australia) and 'The Screen Hub Guide to Script Format.' In 1996 he received the Hector Crawford Award for Script Editing from the Australian Writers' Guild (q.v., AWG).

Most Referenced Works

Notes

Awards for Works

form y separately published work icon Blue Heelers ( dir. Mark Callan et. al. )agent 1994 Sydney Australia : Hal McElroy Southern Star Seven Network , 1994-2006 Z1367353 1994 series - publisher film/TV crime

A character-based television drama series about the lives of police officers in the fictitious Australian country town of Mt Thomas, this series began with the arrival of Constable Maggie Doyle (Lisa McCune) to the Mt Thomas station in the episode 'A Woman's Place'. Doyle and avuncular station boss Senior Sergeant Tom Croydon (John Wood) were the core characters of the series until the departure of Lisa McCune.

Immensely popular for a decade, Blue Heelers was cancelled in 2006 after thirteen seasons. The announcement was front-page news in Australia's major newspapers including The Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney's Daily Telegraph, The Herald Sun and The Age in Melbourne, and Brisbane's Courier Mail.

On June 8, 2006 Ross Warneke wrote in The Age:

'It's over and, to be perfectly blunt, there's no use lamenting the demise of Blue Heelers any more. When the final movie-length episode aired on Channel Seven on Sunday night, 1.5 million Australians tuned in, a figure that was big enough to give the show a win in its timeslot but nowhere near big enough to pay the sort of tribute that this writer believes Heelers deserved after more than 500 episodes.It is unlikely there will be anything like it again. At almost $500,000 an hour, shows such as Blue Heelers are quickly becoming the dinosaurs of Australian TV.'

1998 winner Logie Awards Most Popular Series
1997 winner Logie Awards Most Popular Series
form y separately published work icon Police Rescue ( dir. Michael Carson et. al. )agent 1989 Sydney Australia : Southern Star Xanadu ABC Television , 1989-1996 Z1703864 1989 series - publisher film/TV

An Australian television series which deals with the New South Wales Police Rescue Squad and its work attending to various incidents from road accidents to train crashes.

1996 winner Logie Awards Most Popular Drama Series
1994 winner Logie Awards Most Popular Drama Series
form y separately published work icon Shame ( dir. Steve Jodrell ) Perth : Barron Entertainment , 1988 Z1813041 1988 single work film/TV (taught in 2 units)

In the vein of stranger-comes-to-town westerns, lawyer Asta Cadell (Deborah Lee Furness) is forced to stop in the small country town of Ginaborak to await parts for her motorcycle. The men of the town act very aggressively. The women cower. Asta is offered a place to stay by Tim Curtis (Tony Barry) a local mechanic and learns of the rape of his daughter Lizze (Simone Buchanan) the previous evening. As Asta befriends Lizze, she is horrified to discover that the men repeatedly gang rape the women of Ginborak.

Source: Reading Room, 'Shame', http://wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/ReadingRoom/film/dbase/2003/shame.htm (Sighted 7/10/11)

1988 winner Film Critics Circle of Australia Best Original Screenplay
Last amended 12 Jan 2015 16:37:48
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