by Simon Sellars

Originally published on Sleepy Brain, 1 March 2004.

Over the past year, a sweet little film about a strange little man has been getting a lot of attention. Harvie Krumpet, director Adam Elliot‘s 23-minute claymation, is up for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short. And right beside Elliot on Oscar night will be his producer Melanie Coombs. Elliot speaks highly of Coombs, pointing to her energy, savvy and faith in the director’s work as a driving force behind Harvie’s success.

Melanie Coombs has taken a somewhat meandering route to get to the Oscars. Over the past decade, she’s tried her hand at acting, writing for documentaries, directing short films and working in community radio and television. Although film remained her focus, she realised her true calling was behind the scenes, rather than in front of or behind a camera. She says it’s the nitty gritty of filmmaking that appeals to her, the knitting together of deals and plans and the “ joy of seeing something go from an idea to a fully developed project”.

After graduating from university in 1997, Coombs moved down south from Sydney to launch her producing career because of “the community spirit, a sense in which people are more generous and more experimental. The commercial imperative is stronger in Sydney; it’s a gentler, daggier base in Melbourne.” The move was worth it. The following year she met Elliot when the filmmaker had just had completed his 4-minute short, Cousin. Coombs was blown away. “I said to Adam, ‘When you do something bigger I’d like to be involved.’ All the projects I develop are about outsiders in some form, and Cousin was just this incredibly charming, honest and candid response to disability [cerebral palsy]. Adam brings out the extraordinary in the ordinary. He’s an absolute angel to work with, precociously talented and incredibly generous.”

Coombs is a born producer, a natural member of that mad breed. Producers are, out of necessity, a mass of contradictions: cajoling, tender, tough, sensitive, creative, business-minded. They make and break the deals, while nursing the bruised egos when the going gets hard. And in what’s been an ordinary time for Australian film, with a depressing sameness about recent features and limited funding for filmmakers waiting in the wings, the bruises will show. Coombs has a way of dealing with that. She has what she terms “emotional intelligence”, the producer’s secret weapon. “It’s the capacity to put yourself in other people’s shoes,” she explains. “A lot of people in this industry have fragile egos, including me. Because there’s no money and it’s all about ideas, it’s all high drama and feelings can get terribly hurt.”

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