The Big Picture

The film Hippie Hippie Shake, based on the controversial Oz magazine editor, Richard Neville, has faced numerous delays and setbacks since its inception in the late 1990s. The production was marked by behind-the-scenes chaos and conflict, including disputes with Germaine Greer, one of the film’s subjects, and the departure of director Beeban Kidron. Despite positive reviews from test screenings and support from the cast, the film was ultimately shelved due to financial difficulties and internal issues at the studio. It is unlikely to be released anytime soon.

There are countless reasons why a film may struggle to come out by its intended release date, as the process of putting together an ambitious film production is never predictable. A film like Mad Max: Fury Road took over a decade of restarts, production shutdowns, studio delays, and release date changes before it finally saw its release in 2015 and was immediately hailed as an all-time great masterpiece; Terry Gilliam’s struggles to get his passion project The Man Who Killed Don Quixote completed after years of creative and financial setbacks even inspired the independent documentary The Man of La Macha to chronicle his journey. However, there are some films that went through nearly every pushback and delay possible, and still haven’t been seen by audiences. The Cillian Murphy star vehicle Hippie Hippie Shake began pre-production in the late 1990s, and went through a tumultuous behind-the-scenes process before it even got to start shooting. While the film is now more or less completed, it has yet to be officially distributed in any form, and it’s unlikely that audiences will see it anytime soon. So what made this curious Australian biopic so controversial?

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What is ‘Hippie Hippie Shake’?
Image via Working Title 

Hippie Hippie Shake is loosely based on the autobiography of Richard Neville, the highly influential (yet very controversial) editor of the offbeat Australian satirical magazine Oz. Long before the days of the Harvard Lampoon or the trials of Larry Flynt, Oz became highly controversial within Australia for its biting satire, shred characterization of recent events, and frequent lewd material. Oz started as a grassroots publication under Neville’s direct control in Sydney, Australia during the dawn of the 1960s when the counterculture movement was in full swing; it inspired a parallel London edition that debuted in 1967, and subsequently became a phenomenon. However, Neville’s interest in including taboo subjects like government-sponsored racism, censorship, homosexuality, police brutality, and the Vietnam War resulted in severe public blowback that resulted in two separate court cases in which the publication was put on trial for obscenity.

It’s evidently a great story, and one that certainly would be worthy of a probling historical biopic. The 1990s saw the success of several films about controversial public figures, including The People vs. Larry Flynt and Man on the Moon, so a biopic of Neville seemed all but guaranteed to be a major hit. Working Title Film Productions acquired the rights to Neville’s memoir Hippie Hippie Shake: The Dreams, the Trips, the Trials, the Love-ins, the Screw Ups: The Sixties in 1998 and hired screenwriter Don MacPherson to pen the first draft. The initial delay in production was unclear, but Hippie Hippie Shake was back on track in 2002 with the acclaimed British filmmaker Shekhar Kapur (Elizabeth, The Four Feathers, Elizabeth: The Golden Age) behind it, as well as a new script by Kapur’s preferred screenwriter Tom Butterworth. Unfortunately, this seemingly promising sign of progress only resulted in another delay.

Like Neville himself, Working Title was determined to have their voices heard, and a third and final attempt at adapting Hippie Hippie Shake began moving forward in May of 2007. The production had a talented filmmaker behind it with Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason director Beeban Kidron behind the camera, and a cast began to form to play the various figures within Neville’s life. The stacked ensemble included Cillian Murphy as Neville, Sienna Miller as Neville’s longtime girlfriend Louise Ferrier, Nina Liu as the famous fashion designer Jenny Kee, Emma Booth as Germaine Greer, and Tom Goodman-Hill as David Frost. Other notable British actors set to appear included BAFTA nominee Derek Jacobi, Max Minghella, Chris O’Dowd, Hugh Bonneville, Matthew Beard, and Margo Stilley, among others.

‘Hippie Hippie Shake’ Sees Further Delays
Image via Working Title 

Gladiator screenwriter William Nicholson had helped pen an additional draft of the script that was used when the film actually began shooting in 2007. Little is known about the filming process itself, but apparently the production was so tumultuous that it made the chaos at Lucasfilm with Solo: A Star Wars Story look like smooth sailing. It’s always difficult for biopics to stand on their own when its subjects are still living; while Neville himself supported the film, the real feminist author Germaine Greer wrote a seething piece for The Guardian in which she called out the film and expressed her displeasure about being played by Booth. She stated in her piece that the notion of being portrayed infuriated her, and mused that “you used to have to die before assorted hacks started munching your remains and modeling a new version of you out of their own excreta.” Additionally, Kidron left the film in the middle of post-production, leading her husband (and the film’s co-screenwriter) Lee Hall to complete the project.

This happened to coincide with Working Title’s financial difficulties, and Neville himself stated that “Universal Pictures decided to shelve the film and save themselves a lot of tax payments.” He went on to claim that while the rough cut of the film didn’t live up to their expectations, a second cut had made significant improvement. During a promotional tour several years later for Live by Night, Miller backed up his assertions by agreeing that “I don’t think we’ll see it at this point,” but that “I did see a rough cut of it and it was a pretty beautiful film.” A test screening reaction from Ain’t It Cool News in 2008 reported that a test reviewer said that he “really liked it” despite “some predictable scenes, some hammy acting, some bad jokes.”

It doesn’t look like Hippie Hippie Shake is going to be released anytime soon, and that’s unfortunate. It’s unquestionably been a massive struggle to bring this story to the screen, and a film about the importance of free press and the ability to hear contrasting opinions might be particularly relevant right now. It’s quite unnerving when studios can simply pull the plug on a project’s release, and the cancelation of Batgirl reminded film fans recently that this can happen to any type of project. Hopefully Hippie Hippie Shake will make its way on to a streaming platform at one point, as at the very least it’s sure to give us a great Cillian Murphy performance.