Conversations

00:00 At a rural picnic spot in the dark, a young man suddenly disappears. 00:04 You could nearly say an alien took him away because he's just vanished. 00:08 When more clues from that night surface, something doesn't sit right. It's nonsensical where the stuff is. It's been scattered. I'm Rob Bergen. Join me as I investigate what became of Jack in the new season of Unravel. Is it a murder? Is it someone just gone missing? You know where my son is. Search for the Unravel podcast on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. 00:32 This is an ABC podcast. 00:34 Life's turning points can arrive in many different ways. For Tim Chappell, it was finding a copy of French Vogue on a bench at Flinders Street Station in Melbourne when he was 14 years old. 00:48 Immediately, Tim knew that he belonged to this world of glamorous, extravagant fashion, and he sensed that he could create those kinds of show-stopping outfits himself. 01:01 Ten years later, at just 24, Tim was standing on stage with Lizzie Gardner, accepting the Oscar for Best Costume Design for Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. 01:13 Tim's illustrious career in costume design began with making shorts for bartenders and went on to include creating outfits for Cher and for the TV shows The Masked Singer and Dancing with the Stars. So I think it's safe to say minimalism is not Tim's thing. 01:32 This fabulous life is all a long way from growing up in Broadmeadows as the son of an army officer. Hi, Tim. Hey. Before we get on to the creations that you make for others, how do you describe your own style? Are you someone who pays a lot of attention to what they wear? 01:50 I look like I've been dressed by an angry toddler. Yeah. 01:57 So colour is a big part of your own wardrobe? 02:00 Yeah, yeah. I like things that clash. If everything clashes, then everything matches. 02:07 As I mentioned, your dad was in the army. So did that mean that your family moved around a lot? 02:12 Yeah, we're on the road regularly. I mean, I went to six different schools. We often moved back to places. I remember when I was about four, we lived on North Head in Sydney, which was really remarkable. There's an army base up there. 02:29 And then we swung back around, you know, 10 years later. 02:32 And what other places did you... Penang. 02:34 There's an army base called Butterworth just outside of Penang. I lived there. I remember the monkeys mostly. They were terrifying. There were so many monkeys. And I remember everything being very lush. And I had an armour, which is a Chinese nanny, And she had been with an English family before me and she spent a lot of time with me and kind of taught me to speak. And I ended up with a slightly different accent to the rest of my family because of my Chinese armour. 03:06 What did your dad actually do in the army? 03:09 He was a warrant officer. 03:11 What does that mean in practice? 03:13 He, I think, looked after the sergeant's mess. 03:16 What were things like at home with your dad? What sort of relationship did you have as a kid with him? 03:23 Well, my mother puts it like this, you can't have two balls in one pen. 03:28 And I think that's a really nice way to put it. We were very, very strong personalities and I wasn't even trying to be different. I was punished for so much of my childhood. 03:39 And my father really resented my freedom and the fact that I could go out into the bush for hours and hours. In fact, that's all I wanted to do was escape and go out into the bush. 03:52 I think that he saw me as this uncontrollably free spirit and found that kind of hard to deal with because his life was the exact opposite. 04:04 What about things with your brother and sister? What kind of relationship did you have with them as a kid? 04:09 My brother and sister are both amazing people and we have a magic that happens. I think it's when kids grow up and they travel and it's just them, you have a special bond that is unlike other siblings because it's not interfered with by other kids. 04:28 And whenever to this day, whenever it's just the three of us together, it's the same magic is there. 04:34 You're the oldest, so were you a bit of a ringleader when you were growing up? 04:39 Well, you could say I was the ringleader, but my mother never thought so. I always give the impression that I'm the good kid. But no, yes, I'm the ringleader. 04:48 Well, what kind of adventures did you when your siblings get up to you? 04:51 Oh, my God, so many adventures. I remember in Melbourne, we always had a thing for finding tiger snakes. I mean, it's Melbourne. There's lots of tiger snakes out west. 05:01 And some of them were massive. And my brother used to love getting them riled up and... 05:08 Sometimes they charge, tiger snakes charge, playing on the railway tracks, as you do. 05:14 Tell me more about playing on the railway tracks, which I don't think is usually recommended. No. 05:19 It was a combination of the massiveness of the machinery and we loved doing this thing with 20 cent pieces and you'd put them on the railway track and see how flat you could get them. They'd end up being quite lozenge shaped. 05:34 Did you have to get close? I mean, were you close when the trains went by doing that? 05:39 Well, sometimes we set my sister to... There was a little railway bridge. It was a cute little railway bridge and there was this little seat where your head was quite close to the railway tracks and we'd make her watch to make sure the money didn't fall off. She's still alive though. 05:55 Your poor mother is what I think too. 05:57 She's still alive too, barely. 06:00 Tell me more about her. Tell me about Diane. 06:03 My mother's amazing. She's such a beautiful woman. She's one of those people that you know would do anything for you, that she would die for me and for all of us, absolutely selfless and caring and full of love and made up for anything else that was ever missing in my life. 06:22 What do you remember her encouraging in you as a child? 06:25 Oh, well, the best thing I think she ever did for me... She doesn't remember doing this, by the way. 06:31 She used to read, I think it's Dr Seuss from the 70s, and she wouldn't let me have colouring in books. She insisted that I just had plain paper and learnt to draw my own drawings and colour them in. 06:47 And ta-da! 06:49 Thanks, Mum. 06:51 There must have been those moves, all those moves to different places must have, of course, had a big impact on her life. How do you think she felt about going from, say, Penang with the nanny to Broadmeadows out of Melbourne? 07:05 Well, I knew she loved being in Penang, going from Penang where you've got a gardener, a nanny, a cook, to Broadmeadows where you've got a hot water system that you have to light and try not to burn your hair off. 07:21 That would have been tough for her. But the funny thing is when you travel a lot growing up, You learn to be really present as an adult. As a finished product, you are less shy because you never know when you're going to meet this person again. 07:41 So you have a hunger for getting to know people. There could be something really fascinating here and I would want to know. 07:50 You were fascinated not just by people but by plants and animals as a little kid. Tell me about that. 07:58 Well, my grandfather was a science teacher. In fact, he was the head of science at North Sydney Boys. 08:05 And so my family were very science and medicine oriented. 08:11 And my grandfather had all these amazing textbooks and Scientific American and I would go out into nature and I would see things like how the Fibonacci sequence actually works, basically proportions that exist in nature in many, many different forms, like shells, flowers, daisies have it. And it's just one of those incredible things that repeats all through nature. 08:40 Well, it's pattern when you describe it, then it's design, I guess. 08:43 Yeah, it is exactly that. 08:45 And what about orchids, which were something you loved too? 08:48 I still to this day am obsessed with orchids, especially Australian terrestrial orchids. They're really magical. 08:55 And people think of the Australian bush as being really sort of rough and banksias and rough bark, but terrestrial orchids are these... 09:05 delicate, beautiful blooms. And when you find one, they're like little fairies out in the bush. 09:12 What colours are they? 09:14 Well, they come in all colours. Like, there are Thelometras, which are sun orchids, which are really beautiful. But the one I really want to see is the Sunshine Duras. The Sunshine Duras was once all across Melbourne, and people used to pick them as posies because they're also known as the Fragrant Duras. The biggest of the terrestrial orchids were this beautiful fragrance, and they were made extinct. 09:39 Until like 1979 when a tiny patch of them were found by the railway tracks in Sunshine. 09:48 And that's why it's called the Sunshine Juris. 09:50 Oh, wow. I could go on the Sunshine Juris. It could take this whole hour. There's so many amazing things about this orchid. It's on my bucket list. I just want to smell it and see it before I die. 10:04 So as a kid, Tim, were you off looking specifically for orchids in the bush? 10:09 Yeah. 10:10 By yourself or what? 10:11 Yeah. Well, I spent most of my childhood by myself. And it's funny because I was never really alone because I'm looking and seeing all the amazing things out there and it's so busy. Like when you're like looking at all the different trees and Because orchids grow in very specific environments and generally with very specific other species. And it's wonderful. You see all the patterns, how things associate with each other. And it's really informed who I am as an adult. 10:45 What about insects as a kid? 10:49 Yeah, insects. That was a funny arc, that one. Always loved insects. And when I was quite young, I used to collect them. And I had my insect collection, shirt boxes that I would keep. I had like six or seven of them. 11:03 And then one day I caught a baby stick insect. And I was so excited because I'd never seen one before. And I put it in the jar and anesthetised it and then put it in the box. 11:17 And then... 11:18 was absolutely horrifying when I realised that that may have been the last one and I killed it and I never did it again. 11:28 So this image that you're creating of this little boy who's loving the natural world and knowledgeable and passionate about insects and orchids, how does fashion first enter the scene for you? Tell me about this momentous day at Flinders Street Station. 11:45 Well, I've actually been giving it a lot of thought lately. I was very big on making things. 11:51 My uncle gave me a book when I was 10 called Things to Make and Do and I loved it. I did everything in that book. There was things like growing a zucchini in a bottle and just all these crazy things. But my mum was really into craft. She used to make paper flowers and she sewed. 12:11 And so I used to make things, making candles, making coconut ice and macaroons, all of the different ways you make things. And the other kooky thing, in summertime, I would lay on my front lawn because we lived near Tull Marine Airport and watch the planes go over and I'd go, oh, God, I wonder who's on those planes. God, I'd love to meet those people one day. Anyway, now I'm one of them. 12:41 frequent flyers, I think they're called. 12:43 So you've got this visual imagination or sensitivity and creativity and then you're at the station and you pick up this magazine. Tell me about it. 12:53 Tell me about that moment. 12:55 It never had occurred to me that the craft side of me... 13:00 could turn into this very sophisticated thing and i found this magazine and i had never seen anything like it and i opened it up and i was like okay i totally understand how this works i i remember shoulders collars and sleeves and going oh they've got they've achieved this shape by gathering that in there and i compressing here and going, oh, that's beautiful. I could see it as a flat pattern. 13:31 Had you done any sewing by that point? 13:35 No, I hadn't constructed anything at that point. I'd made cushions, I think, and I made those coat hanger covers that you used to make on the little loom with the nylon and dry nylon in great colours. 13:52 But you had enough sense that when you were looking at those images, you thought this is... You were interested in the creation of them, not just the look of them, but how they happened. 14:02 It's almost like synesthesia. I can see how this works. I can see how that's built and I can see how I can do this well. And I just went, that's what I'm going to do. 14:11 The discovery of this French vogue came at a moment when your family was getting ready to move again. Where were you off to next? 14:18 To glamorous Sydney. 14:21 Far from Broadmeadows. 14:23 Far from Broadmeadows. 14:25 So Sydney was offering a beacon of a different kind of life, you thought back then as a teenager. 14:32 Well, Sydney was very glamorous and it just was beautiful and I always wanted to be here in Sydney and my mother's family were predominantly in Sydney. We'd come up on holidays and occasionally I'd get taken to like St Mary's Cathedral or through Hyde Park and I was just like... God, this city is so beautiful. 14:54 So how quickly did you act on this newfound interest in clothing and fashion once you moved to Sydney? 15:01 Well, it all just, everything made sense for me to pursue this angle. I'm moving to Sydney. I know I can do it. And within like six months of moving to Sydney, I was doing it. I had to stall. In Year 10, I started to stall at Painter Markets. 15:18 What were you selling? 15:19 Well, it was during sort of the Buffalo Girls kind of period, you know, Malcolm McLaren. And if your hem was a bit rashy, you just would tear it and tie it into knots. 15:32 And I would hand paint the fabrics and people just thought they were really great. I remember there was this one moment... 15:39 My mother had given me this pleater, a pleating foot for the machine. And I was like, oh, my God. And I went pleating, man. I pleated everything together. And it was great. It made these tiny, tiny little pleats. But I wasn't really a very good sewer. 15:54 And so I pleaded all these things together and they're on hangers. And this lady came over and she was like, oh, how much for that skirt? And as she picked the hanger up, the skirt went and came out of the waistband. I was like, oh, you can have a discount. She's like, no, I don't need a discount. I fixed it at home and gave me the full price. 16:11 Did you go on and get any formal training then in sewing? 16:14 Yes, yes. Well, not while I was in high school, but I did go on to Sydney College of the Arts and do fashion and textile design. 16:22 You found out that there had been sewers in your family, tailors in your family. Oh, that's right, yes. What's that? What did you discover? 16:31 Well, it turns out that my grandmother's father was a tailor and his father before him was a tailor too. 16:43 And you didn't know that growing up? 16:45 No. And nobody ever sort of got out the sewing book. He had a lot of tailoring books, which I've still got two. 16:55 One from 1890s, which is livery. 16:59 And another one from the 1920s, which is ladies' gowns, which apparently he wasn't very good at. 17:08 The pleats fell off. The skirts fell off. But after you finished school, you did start formal training in... I did, yeah. ..in costume. I mean, did you know at that point whether you wanted to make fashion or were you already kind of drawn to film, theatre, TV and costumery? 17:24 No, I always thought I would be doing fashion. Yeah. 17:28 But one summer while I was at college, I met a producer who said, why don't you come and work on our show over summer? 17:37 And that was the ABC. And what was that show? It was called GP. 17:42 Now, my memory of GP is that it was sort of current day set in a Sydney GP's office. What do costumes involve for something like that? Isn't it just getting clothes off the rack? 17:52 I was 18 years old. I wasn't designing anything. I was just the assistant of the assistant. I washed boots. 18:00 What was your official title? 18:02 Oh, Shroudmaker. 18:04 Why on earth were you called a shroud maker? 18:06 Well, back then, auntie didn't have a job description for people who made costumes. They only had shroud. So we were paid on our paychecks. It said shroud maker. 18:17 This was a way to pay you at a lower rate than a costume designer? 18:21 Yeah, I expect so. Or as a seamstress or as a cutter. People who make costumes are generally called cutters. 18:30 But, yeah, so Aunty had us as shroudmakers and we took Aunty to arbitration with an Elizabeth I costume and a shroud and showed the judge what shrouds look like and what we make and we got paid rights. 18:47 Was that entry into TV and costume departments, did that change your focus then? Did you feel like this was a world you wanted to be in? It was a natural fit. 18:59 It was a natural fit for me. Um... 19:02 Making characters is really interesting and watching, working with designers, because at that point I wasn't really, I would help out a bit, but watching them read, reading the script and then seeing the words become these people and watching how they work with the actors was really fascinating. 19:22 You then went after the ABC to E Street. And who was your boss at E Street? 19:29 Lizzie Gardner. That's where Lizzie Gardner and I met. 19:32 And did you have an immediate affinity over clothes, over costumes? 19:36 No. 19:37 Well, interestingly enough, our very first interaction was when I turned up for the job interview and this beautiful, young, fresh-faced girl met me at the gate and all I'd spoken to was this really gruff woman on the phone. She sounded like she'd had too many siggies and she was very cranky. And this pretty girl turned up and I was like, oh, so what's Lizzie like? She sounds really gruff. 20:05 Anyway, that was the start of a long, long family relation. 20:11 Great way to impress your boss on the first day, Tim. 20:14 She got me back. 20:17 One of your first tasks on East Street was to make a wedding dress. Had you made many wedding dresses before that? 20:23 No, this was my very first wedding dress for a male or a female or a drag queen or real or TV. 20:31 So how did you go about doing it? 20:34 With Chelsea Brown. It was Chelsea Brown's coffee-coloured wedding dress. And I still didn't really know it. I call myself self-taught when it comes to sewing. 20:48 I wanted it to look luxurious and I made it out of lining. 20:53 Out of lining. 20:54 Out of lining because I didn't know that satin was a thing. 20:57 So I made it out of lining and to get the weight, I backed it with calico and it worked. Everyone thought it looked great and it was just lining. 21:11 But on the day of the shoot... 21:14 which was outside broadcast off Wakehurst Parkway in the middle of nowhere. It was like six o'clock in the morning and the sun had just come up and went over to Chelsea's trailer with her and we could see all this smoke billowing out of the door and we threw the door open and it was on fire. Their wedding dress was on fire. What? Yeah. Why? Well, somebody had hung it over the make-up mirrors and back in the day when light bulbs were hot, it had been sitting over a make-up mirror for like an hour and And it was smouldering. 21:56 But fortunately, because I didn't know what I was doing and I lined it with calico, it didn't burn all the way through and was salvageable. 22:04 There you go. It was a win, even if it was an unintended win. 22:08 As a young man in Sydney, you were also working as a bartender. What sewing did you first do at the bar? 22:16 That was at the Aubrey Hotel, which was the mecca of gay Sydney. 22:23 I used to make the bartenders shorts and... How short were the bartenders shorts? 22:28 Well, they weren't necessarily... 22:30 It's not about the shortness of the leg but the arrangement of the goods. LAUGHTER 22:38 So can you reveal your secrets? What did you do? 22:41 Yeah, well, the trick is to have a short quotch depth and you want a long rise on the back and really low on the front. So everything gets lifted and I would make the centre front seam, I would back it so that it would lift and present. 23:00 It was like a push-up bra, but for fellas. 23:03 Exactly, exactly. 23:04 The drag queens, who were one of the really noted things about that hotel, noticed your sewing and you started working with them. What was the look for drag queens in Sydney or at that hotel? 23:15 It was a magical time. Sydney was... far enough away and still focused on the outside world, but we were far enough away that we had our own unique look, fashion, music, everything. And the drag scene was just the same, so... 23:36 You know, it's like when species evolve on islands and if they're separated for long enough, they develop all their own characteristics. And our drag scene did the same thing. So, you know, I used to make outfits for the show bags for, like, Miss 3D and Benina and Cindy Pastel and... 23:59 It was just so much fun. I was able to express myself and no one had any money. I mean, the way I learned to make things fabulous for no money was all things I learned back then. The phrase is called mochtocroc. It's Polari. So Polari is the drag queen language and mochtocroc means to make something amazing from nothing. 24:21 So it's like the opposite of you can't make, what is it, a silk purse out of a sales ear. This is like you can. 24:26 You can. You give me any sales ear. 24:30 I'll give you a silk frock. 24:32 So like this is such a different drag than that uber femme look that might be on RuPaul or whatever now. What was the look? 24:40 So the fascinating thing is RuPaul's show now is favouring character and people who look interesting. 24:51 They're getting much more attention than the pageant queens because anyone can look pretty but it takes guts to look interesting. 25:00 Tim, what conversation did you have at the hotel one night with a man you knew called Stephen Elliott? 25:06 Stephen Elliott, the beautiful Stephen Elliott, the talented auteur. He came to see me one night after a shift and said, oh, I'm doing this film about drag queens. Do you want to do the costumes? And I was like, that sounds fun. I'm happy to do it. They didn't have a lot of money. I thought, so there was this curse that followed me around. 25:30 People would hire me as assistant designer. That's what happened on E Street, assistant designer. 25:35 But they just wanted me to do the alterations. And he hired me because he knew I could design it and then make everything as well. So I'd be cheap. 25:44 Cheap and cheerful. 25:46 What vision did he have at that point for how he wanted the costumes to look? 25:51 Yeah, well, that's the interesting thing. And that was the battle that we had all the way through Priscilla was he wanted them to look like lay girls, to look like beautiful women. And that's not... what I had any intention of doing besides the fact that our cast, I mean, Guy probably would have made a beautiful woman, but the other two just really lend themselves to being characters, not a pretty lady prancing around, trying to fool the boys, you know. 26:25 He wanted traditional drag and I gave him non-traditional drag. 26:31 What of the images that you created for Priscilla, and so many of them have become so iconic, really, which are you proudest of? Which jump up in your mind when you think about that film? 26:43 Well, those are the costumes. I call them the Gumby costumes from I Will Survive. Yeah. 26:48 These were the amazing kind of floral rubber headdresses, these huge headdresses and the bell bottoms. Yeah. 26:54 The jumpsuits. 26:56 So when Stefan and I, one of the songs that Stefan and I decided to use was I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor. 27:03 And originally my vision was, you know, this diva with a big afro. That's the look I wanted. And I wanted the pantsuit. 27:13 So I put it together and I'm like, I really want the pantsuit to sit stiff like an Avon bubble bath bottle. You remember those? What a great reference. Yeah, but that's what I wanted it to be as stiff as that Avon bubble bath bottle, but like cut in half. And I was like, how am I going to make it do that? And I tried putting... 27:34 boning in the hem, but it kept moving. So I encased the whole shoe and put foam on the bottom and then just duct taped the stretchy fabric over the top. And ta-da, we had that amazing shape. 27:51 And the headdress was originally a big afro with flowers in it and I just had plenty of time and I just kept redoing it, adding more flowers and I was like, you know what, let's dispense with the afro and just do it in flowers. We created something unique out of visual material that everybody recognises so it's both fresh and familiar. 28:18 What about that incredible dress made out of thongs? 28:21 Yes, the old thong dress. Well, thongs are Australia's national shoe. Well, they were back then. And my mum worked at Target at the time and they had thongs on sale. And ta-da, thong dress, which literally was made out of duct tape and cable ties. Yeah. 28:42 Is this part of the magic of costume as opposed to, you know, crudier fashion? It doesn't need to last. It just needs to get through the scene. 28:50 Well, not in theatre. 28:53 In theatre, it's got to last. It's a totally different animal. But in film, yeah, it's just got to make it through the shot. In some of those shots in Priscilla, I'm literally behind the actor holding their costume on their body and out of frame. 29:08 One of those extraordinary shots from that film is Guy Pearce on top of the bus with the silver fabric billowing out over the desert landscape. 29:16 Mostly Guy Pearce. 29:17 Mostly Guy Pearce. Tell me about that scene. 29:20 The silver wings, which I'm so absolutely proud of. I can't believe that I was part of the creation of this moment in Australian cinema, which is so beautiful and speaks of freedom so clearly and everybody can see it. 29:41 Everybody feels that freedom that scene expresses. But it nearly didn't happen. The long story is I'd made a much smaller version and we camera tested it and it was really disappointing and the producers came to me and said... What do you need? And I said, I need all the silver lame in Australia sent here in the next day and I need to remake it. And they did. I got like 150 metres, like 20 rolls of silver lame and I cut it all on the bias and... 30:18 So the bias over the fabric is not the warp or the weft, which is the threads that go up and down. If you cut diagonally through those, that is cutting something on the bias. And what that does is it gives all fabric a certain amount of elasticity. 30:33 And softness, which is, I've realised working with lame, tissue lame is very delicate. It tears very easily. And the only way I was going to be able to get this huge amount of fabric to fly is by cutting it on the bias. So I cut all these hundreds of metres. 30:53 I didn't sleep for like two days. 30:56 Sewed it all together. And we... 31:00 Went out at dawn to do the shot and we had Guy up on the bus and the sun was just coming up, but it was absolutely still, so still, nothing was moving. And I didn't think it'd be a problem. I thought, well, it's a cut on the bias. And it had these fishing blanks holding it out. I was like, maybe, you know, the moving of the bus will make it work. So they started rolling camera, which was using film, and the bus took off and everything just went dragged along the ground. 31:34 It was really depressing. 31:36 Stefan was like, cut, cut, back to one. And I bundled it all up and the bus reversed, beep, beep, beep, back to the beginning spot. And we're like, okay. And I was like standing out of shot again. And the bus took off and I threw it all in the air and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 31:54 just dragging. And the safety officer came over to me and he said, I'm sorry, Tim, we're going to have to cut it off because it's dangerous. It could get caught in the back axle and you're just going to cut it off. So Stefan's like, oh, one more, one more, back to one. So bus reverses. I bundled all the stuff up and I lay it, stretch it out along the road. 32:18 And the bus takes off and it's just... And then I walk over with a pair of scissors to go and cut it off and this huge gust of wind lifts it out of my arms and it takes off and Stefan's like, get the shot, get the shot, get the shot. And literally it flies and makes that incredible moment and it nearly didn't happen. 32:39 That's one of the amazing things about the film visually was how it reclaims this iconic, very macho landscape and makes it queer or makes it, you know, completely transforms the way we thought about it or looked at it. I think about those quintessential Australian desert outback landscapes where you're used to seeing, you know, film of settlers or cowboys. Suddenly to have this enormous silver lame flying across it, what a different claiming of a landscape. 33:14 It's interesting because when I go out there, I just see the incredible flowers and... oh, look how these plants are growing together and the beauty of the rocks and it's full, this full landscape for me. But that's the thing that's beautiful about Australia. It's all of ours and we can make it what we want it to be. 33:36 And then the funny thing was when we were shooting that film, none of us thought, oh, how crazy that we're contrasting drag queens in the desert. For me, why would you not? 33:46 It's so, it makes such a perfect contrast. 33:49 You and Lizzie must have been working crazy hours to construct these costumes and make everything happen. 33:57 There was a lot of hot glue. In fact, you know what? My fingers were so burnt from the hot glue gun and so infected that I couldn't even touch anything by the end of that film. 34:06 You did get some help, though, in terms of construction. Who made the pom-poms for Priscilla, Queen of the Desert? 34:13 The sweetest guys that you'll ever get robbed by. 34:18 No, I don't know if they were robbers. Yes, we had met a lady who was teaching craft at Long Bay Jail and I was whinging one day at dinner going, oh, we've got to make all these pom-poms. We've got to make like 300 of these pom-poms and each one takes about five hours. There's no way I can do it. And she's like, I'll have my guys do it. So, you know, we got the process going, I got all the different colours, organzas that we needed and I gave her the rolls of fabric and the scissors and she said, I'm sorry, Tim, they're not allowed to have scissors? 34:57 And I was like, of course. So I cut the fabric into strips and they made the pom-poms. 35:04 That's such a beautiful detail. I wonder how they felt about the film. 35:07 And that was the thing. It's like when I picked them up, they were like, oh, what are we making next? I'm like, I'm sorry, that's it. That was so upset. Yeah. 35:15 What do you remember about seeing the finished film for the first time? 35:19 I remember not thinking that it was a homemade movie because that's what I thought we were making. Everybody was putting in great effort but we were also having a crazy amount of fun and there was a lot of joy and life being lived. 35:35 I hadn't actually thought that far ahead of what it was that we were making and our first cast and crew screening... which was at the Greater Union Cinema on George Street. I remember after the first five minutes going, oh, this is really good. 35:52 This is a really good film. And I could step back and appreciate it from just a normal person's perspective. 36:00 I thought this was really funny and interesting and different and has heart and has music. I was like, we've got something really special. Yeah. 36:12 And audiences felt that. It was such a huge hit. 36:15 Oh, my God, Cannes Film Festival. We were in the midnight screening, which is apparently a... Big deal. Big deal. I'm sitting there with my date, Rupert Everett. Big deal. Big deal. And we got a 14-minute standing ovation from... So the French PR guy was going, sis, set. And we got up to 14 minutes. And for 14 minutes is such a long time. 36:47 They loved it so much. 36:50 And, you know, when you think about it, the fact, Tim, that it came out in 1994 and was this huge mainstream hit in the same year that homosexuality was finally decriminalised nationally in Australia. I mean, what was the meaning of that for you as a gay man, to be part of that huge success, popular success of joy and heart, as you say, at that point? 37:12 Also, at the same time, the first anti-retrovirals arrived. 37:19 And... 37:21 The world had gone from people having joy because who knows when life is going to end to there being hope. 37:31 And I think Priscilla happened to capture that hope and joy 37:37 You and Lizzie Gardner were nominated for Oscars for your work on Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Tell me about that night. Did you think that you were in with a chance? 37:47 Oh, my God, it was such a funny night. It was like Benny Hill at the Oscars, Lizzie and I. So we get in our limo... 37:55 And we drive to the Oscars. So when you get in your limo at your hotel, which is about five kilometres from the Oscars, you get in the limo, drive out the driveway, and then get in the limo line. And you're travelling at the speed of which people get out of their limos for, like, five kilometres. So we spent hours in this limo. Then when we could hear the crowds in the distance, we're like, oh, my God, oh, my God. They're getting louder and louder. And we're like, now, like, driver's like, we're here. 38:25 The door opens and there's red carpet and there's thousands of faces all looking at you and then looking really disappointed because you're nobody. A thousand faces going, oh. 38:39 Where's Tom Cruise? Yeah. Who are these guys? But Lizzie did look amazing in that credit card dress. 38:44 Yeah. We were also very lucky that it was a very sort of dull Oscars. So she really shone. 38:50 What did you think your chances were? Do you get any hints beforehand? Like are there any secret nods or winks from staff? 38:57 A most reliable way of working out what your chances are is betting. So the bookies take odds, and we were the odds-on least favourite to win. And so we were like, oh, but, you know, it's the Oscars. It's going to be so much fun. It's going to be so crazy, and we'll just rock on up. And that was one of the reasons why Lizzie wanted to wear the dress. It's like, you know, we're not going to win, so we may as well get some press out of it. But then we get to our seats. Yeah. And the guy sitting is down going, right, you're Lizzie, you're Tim Chappell, right, do not move. 39:28 You're in these seats, do not move. 39:31 And then we look and the room behind us has all the other Oscar nominees for best costume and that chick up there in the, you know, Marie Antoinette dress that's 12 people in, she ain't winning. There is no chance she's getting to that stage in under 12 minutes, you know. And then I turned to Lizzie and I said, oh, my God. 39:51 She said, shut up. You're going to jinx it. I was like, but we haven't even prepared a speech. She's like, it doesn't matter. You go first. 39:59 And then Sharon Stone called out your names. What was going on in your head? Do you remember it? 40:05 It was such a physical and emotional moment. It burnt into my brain. I'll never forget it. Everything kind of went white. 40:14 Because it all happened very fast. We're the second one. So the first category is best supporting actress and the second one is costume. So we sat down, started, bang, and then us. And then when they called out our names, everything kind of went white. I was like, Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I'm so excited and both terrified. And you can see my face in the videos. I'm both exhilarated and terrified until Lizzie talks. 40:42 And the great thing was when Lizzie's talking, I get a moment of beingness. I get a moment of... going, oh, my God, I just won an Oscar and I'm looking out at the crowd and I was looking in everybody's face. I did see Oprah was like, yay, and Tom Cruise was like, yay. It was just all these celebrities and they were so happy for us and they were all clapping and it was like this feedback loop of joy and I was just getting so excited. 41:14 I was just going to explode into, like, a big cloud of glitter. 41:18 I had a look at that clip again, Tim, and you're so young. You're so beautifully young. I mean, winning an Oscar at any age is obviously a huge deal, but at 24, what a baby. Yeah. 41:32 Best and worst thing that ever happened to me. 41:34 What do you mean? 41:36 I think awards are more appreciated if it's what you've been wanting and working towards and striving for. 41:45 I'm not a very ambitious person. I... 41:48 I just do what I do. It just comes out and it's of value to some people and I didn't do that film to get an Oscar and all the accolades and they're wonderful but at 24 I didn't know what to do with it. It took until my 40s to really... 42:07 value and go, you know what, I actually did do something really cool and did deserve that award. 42:15 You've designed the costumes for Dancing with the Stars for around a decade now. What guides the look of those outfits? Like how is it different designing for dancers and for people who might be dancing or are often dancing for the first time in public? 42:29 I have two beautiful evening gowns. 42:33 that work like a Russian gymnast uniform. Like, they have to be able to bend and flex and it needs to look like an evening gown. And that's really quite a complicated process. We also do... The gowns are different for each dance. Like, if you're doing a Viennese, you want a slow gown. You want a slow gown that's wafty and swings around and catches lots of air. If you're doing a foxtrot, you want a fast gown. It's a shorter one, but it's bouncy. 43:05 And then if you've got a cha-cha or a samba, you want something that's short and fringy that adds to the movements that you're giving it. And one of the important parts is with the celebrities, I have to turn that up a lot. 43:19 How important are the costumes for the confidence of these celebrities going to dance, show themselves publicly in a way they're not used to? What role does the costume have in their confidence? 43:32 The role of a costume in anything is to transform somebody. My job is to give them the tools to become these other characters. And what's wonderful, especially when you're working with athletes or people who aren't performers for a living, is when you put them in something glamorous and beautiful and they just look at themselves in the mirror and their posture shifts. 43:58 I'm reminded by what you said right at the beginning about, or right when you started making costumes with the ABC, that you saw what costumes could do for character and the creation of storyline. How do you think about that now, at this point after all your years of experience, about the impact that clothing more generally has in creating drama and story without words? 44:20 I think as I'm getting older, I see myself as somebody who provides a lot of support. I'm a much better listener and I don't force my ideas on people anymore. 44:35 I help them bring their vision to life. But costumes have this ability. We all wear clothes, right? We've all been wearing clothes for how many thousands of years? 44:47 The part of our brain that reads people, reads it all unconsciously, but when you take those elements of, like, how people wear their clothes, the fits, when you apply design theory to it, like using colour and texture and contrast especially, you can tell people about the inner life of these characters and at the same time make something that's visually beautiful. It's like choreography but for the eye. Yeah. 45:16 In most costumes, the audience isn't seeing the underwear that's underneath them. But why does underwear matter so much, do you think? 45:24 Underwear and shoes. Your shoes are where you touch the earth. They're really important. How you sit in your shoes, how you stand, whether you've got a heel, whether you're wearing scuffs, whether you're wearing thongs, whether you've got bondage shoes on, that changes the way you walk. And Underwear, underpinnings are so important. You can totally change someone's posture with their underwear. If you're doing a period film, like think about Mad Men. They use period accurate underwear. 45:55 And one of the things they wore were mercerized girdles. Girdles? Yeah. Sounds painful. I thought a girdle was like wrapped around like this, but they were like bike shorts made from hot water bottles. Oh. 46:07 Like proto-spanx. 46:09 Yeah, they were. And friends of mine who were old flight attendants said that the women would have to line up and the chief stewardess would come and flick each of their butts to make sure they had their girdle on because, of course, you become this solid mass. 46:28 You are the girdle shape. 46:30 So it can change posture, underwear, but it can also change your sense of yourself, your inner attitude. How have you used that with different costumes, that fact? 46:40 A couple of times I've had people who are lacking in their own sense of self and what I'll do is I'll go and buy them really expensive, gorgeous, sexy underwear and... And you're never going to see it. But they know it's there. 46:57 And you can see them really enjoying it. 47:03 There's a sequel of Priscilla in the works. Is that something you're involved in, Tim? 47:10 Maybe. 47:11 Can you say anything about it? 47:13 Even old showgirls deserve a happy ending. 47:17 That sounds like it's another shot of joy then. Is it going to be? 47:22 I think it's, yes, it's joy and a bit punk as well because you don't see old transsexuals on the screen. You don't see older gays anymore. We're kind of invisible. In the way that the original Priscilla was going to new territories, the new Priscilla is the same. The storyline is Bernadette is suffering from dementia because she's kind of trapped in a facility that... 47:58 and is not using her mind, her brain. And if you don't use it, you lose it. We all know that. 48:03 This is the Terence Stamp character. Yeah, the Terence Stamp character. 48:06 She's got some money and the facility, once she reaches a certain, once she's certified as reaching a certain point, they just basically take over her finances. 48:17 So they have to spring her. And there is another Priscilla, but it's not a bus. That's exciting. 48:24 Have you still got any of the original costumes? Yeah. 48:28 A couple of that, there's a few at the National Sound and Film Archives in Canberra. 48:37 And oddly enough, a couple turned up in private collections with huge dollar figures on them. 48:44 And recently, some drawings. Okay, so I was broke for a minute in LA. And to pay the rent, I would draw Priscilla drawings. And some of them have turned up in the Oscar Museum on Wilkeshire, the brand new Oscar Museum, and one of the costumes. Where do you keep your Oscar? On the bridge with the BAFTA and the Tony. 49:10 What do you think that little Tim searching for orchids and making mud bricks would have thought about the life that you've ended up making for yourself? 49:20 He... 49:22 Couldn't have ever dreamed that his life would be as fabulous as it is. 49:28 But it's the same as well. Like, I would have been happy had I just stayed with orchids and nature. I love getting out of nature and it's really satisfying. 49:38 I really hope that you find your sunshine orchid before it's too late. 49:41 Well, I don't want to... They grow them. I just want to smell one. Please, if you have a sunshine duras, can you invite me next time at Flowers? 49:51 Tim, it was delightful to speak with you. Thank you so much for being my guest on Conversations. 49:56 It's been my pleasure, Sarah. 49:58 Tim Chappell was my guest on Conversations today. This story was produced by Alice Moldovan and recorded on the lands of the Turrbal and Yagora people. 50:08 I'm Sarah Konosky. Thanks for listening. 50:11 Discover more great ABC podcasts, live radio and exclusives on the ABC Listen app.