Gnome Master Trevor in Gnomebrook.
The ultimate multi-tasker, Murray Fahey is getting ready to produce romantic comedy Alex & Eve and to release his feature documentary and an improvised comedy via his own distribution company.
Peter Andrikidis will direct Alex & Eve, with a screenplay by Alex Lykos based on his stage play Alex and Eve which played in Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne, selling 20,000 tickets.
Casting is underway for the leads. Alex is a handsome Greek Orthodox man aged 35, a school teacher still living with his parents, who expect him to marry a good Greek girl. Alex falls in love with Eve, a Lebanese Muslim corporate lawyer. Her parents have arranged for her to marry a Lebanese Muslim man.
Shooting is due to start in Sydney next month, financed by private investors and the producer offset. Screen Australia supported the development of the project. It’s Andrikidis’ second feature; his first was Kings of Mykonos: Wog Boys 2. His numerous TV credits include Fat Tony & Co., Janet King, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries and HBO Asia’s Serangoon Road.
Alex & Eve will be released by Fahey’s distribution company Magic Box Entertainment, which he formed in 2013, aiming to release 3-5 films per year. Its first titles were Indian comedies Jatts in Golmaal, Oye Hoye Pyar Ho Gaya and Naughty Jatts.
Later this year Magic Box will launch Gnomebrook and Love Stuck. Fahey produced and directed Gnomebrook, a comedic docu which looks at the colourful array of characters who compete at the Australian Garden Gnome Convention held each Australia Day in the Blue Mountains hamlet Glenbrook. The event attracts 2,000 garden gnomes and 10,000 gnome carers. The gnome masters speak gnomish and wear red pointy hats.
Fahey tells IF the plan is to release the film on 30 screens across the country including screenings in regional town halls, schools and community centres as a fund-raiser for Rotary.
Love Stuck is an improvised film shot in Canberra last year during Improvention, the international improvisers’ conference, produced by Fahey’s Conventry Films and Sanguineti Media.
Fahey produced and directed with Daniel Sanguineti as co-producer and director of photography. The cast includes some of Australia’s leading improv performers including Rik Brown, Rama Nicholas, Patti Styles, Lyn Pierse, Gabby Millgate, Ewan Campbell, Nigel Sutton and Glenn Hall.
“We had to work around the performers' availability so scenes that I thought would happen sometimes didn’t or when they did happen, they were completely different to what I had envisaged,” Fahey says.
“I wanted to tell a twist on the girl meets boy story so I thought how about we start with boy meets old girlfriend and see what happens. By the end of the first day I realised we had a romantic comedy in the making.”
Love Stuck will premiere in the ACT in July at Improvention and headline the world’s only Improvised Film Festival.
Fahey has produced more than 60 hours of television programming, six feature films, numerous shorts, documentaries and music clips. His feature credits include A Change Of Heart, Encounters, Sex Is A Four Letter Word, Dags and Cubbyhouse and the documentary We Are London.