Interview

interview: Michael Ouzas

Hunters Hill lawyer-turnedwriter Michael Ouzas is hitting the big time in LA. He still misses home though….

 You grew up in Hunters Hill and went to school there. What are your memories like from that time? The friends I made at Hunters Hill Public School over 20 years ago are still some of my best friends today. Growing up with them in Hunters Hill was a dream. I remember endless summers of tennis down by the Lane Cove river, and playing football for the All Saints. We lost almost every game and had to rotate the goalie every week because they were inevitably reduced to tears, but we all loved it. I’ve lived with those same friends and travelled the world with them. I feel very lucky to have met them.

 You’ve lived overseas for the past two and a half years. What do you miss most about home? The people. My friends and family, especially my mum. Sorry to my sister if she’s reading this. I keep in contact with everyone, but two Zoom Christmases is more than enough. I also miss the greenery. After living on the edge of a desert for two and a half years, you really start to appreciate a good tree. The food, too. I miss that a lot. Can you tell I’m homesick?  You’ve worked as a waiter, a tipstaff to a Supreme Court judge, a lawyer, and a screenwriter in Hollywood. Are there any jobs I’m missing? I was a pizza delivery boy for Chelso’s (now Lipari Pizza Bar) in Hunters Hill for years. I was paid to drive around while listening to the rugby on the radio. Not the worst job in the world.  Why did you decide to leave the law and pursue a career in Hollywood? The law felt like more of a chore than a challenge. I wasn’t satisfied making rich companies richer. On the other hand, creating things has always given me energy. As a kid, I was always drawing or painting or writing mediocre songs and singing them even more mediocrely - I’m sure my parents regretted buying me that guitar. So, when the opportunity came along to follow my dream in the US, I knew I’d regret it if I didn’t take the plunge.

 What drew you to writing for TV and film in particular? I get bored easily. The moment I know I can do something for sure, it’s no longer interesting to me. It’s probably a symptom of a deeper disorder which will come out in my writing at some point. Writing is like a puzzle that rearranges itself with every new story. Something that works in one story won’t necessarily work in the next one, so you have to constantly adapt to what each story requires. The possibilities are endless.

 When did you know you wanted to be a writer? On my eighth birthday, my aunt gave me a copy of The Hobbit. For years, I wrote poor imitations of it. Adventure stories which were epic to me at the time but were really only about eight pages long. I had a poetry phase as a moody teenager, too, before moving onto writing films at uni. So I guess I’ve always been writing, it just wasn’t until later that I realised writing was something you could do for a living. It still feels like a dream that someone’s paying me to make up stories all day.

 Your screenplay Third Man won the Screencraft Drama Competition and was a finalist in the prestigious Nicholl Fellowship. Tell us about the story. Third Man is about a young soldier in World War I who has to choose between loyalty to his country and the person he loves. It’s an unsanitised portrayal of war, but I hope that readers also take from it a sense of hope that love can blossom in even the direst situation.  You’re writing on the upcoming TV series Beacon 23. What can you tell us about it? I feel so lucky to be a part of this incredible show. It’s a sci-fi thriller set on a beacon, which is basically a galactic lighthouse, hundreds of years in the future. It’s based on the book by Hugh Howey and we have an all-star cast led by Lena Headey (who played Cersei in Game of Thrones). The writing team is truly legendary as well. I can’t wait for people to see it!

 Do you have any plans to return to Australia in the near future? I’m actually coming back this month for the first time in over two years. I can already tell it’s going to be very emotional being back home. The fear is that everything has changed without me, but I find the important things tend to stay the same.

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