Mat de Koning spent 12 years of his life trying to make Meal Tickets, his documentary about a Perth rock band whose ambitions were never realised.
The film, which screens at the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF), encompasses loud gigs, a roadie turned rival, music industry farce and the depths of male friendship. It takes numerous turns, but its creator is clear-cut about what the feature ultimately communicates.
"It's a cautionary tale: for every Tame Impala there are a million bands who don't get near to hitting pay dirt," notes de Koning. "It's the reality of what happens when you invest so much of your life in chasing your dreams. I've lived the same life – I haven't had a full-time job, I've sacrificed financial reward to keep making films."
The 32-year-old filmmaker and public spaces designer, who will be attending MIFF, is speaking from the Canadian city of Vancouver. It's where he went to finish the documentary, a process that took 25 editing drafts. It wasn't just that de Koning had assembled more than 700 hours of footage between 2004 and 2014 that required paring down, it was that he was deeply linked to the film's protagonists.
Near the end of Meal Tickets, flashback footage shows a group of carefree 14-year-olds in the music room of a Perth high school. The young singer is de Koning and, while he aspired to make movies, the other budding musicians seen went on to form the Perth outfit Screwtop Detonators, a quartet whose pummelling Detroit rock sound got them a garrulous manager, a US record deal and an American tour in 2004.
De Koning went with them, capturing on-the-road shenanigans, an anticipated ascent, and a young roadie named Will whose less than serviceable skills gets him kicked off the tour. "I want what you have," admits Will, who ends up moving to Melbourne and launching himself as Will Stoker, a caterwauling frontman whose reputation grows as the Screwtop Detonators suffer testing setbacks.
"Trying to portray everyone in a light that is accurate but to still have friends at the end of this experience was incredibly difficult," says de Koning, who talks about his movie with a tempered enthusiasm. He sounds as wearied as some of his subjects eventually do.
A film that begins with echoes of Spinal Tap steadily deepens with each year, taking in the relationships of the various musicians, internal band struggles and the stress of falling short. On the surface, Meal Tickets is a primer on the music industry's evolution, but beneath the lure of stardom it draws on the struggle young men have to define their place in life and the point where camaraderie becomes something more.
"I didn't set out to make a documentary – my influences are narrative films such as Stand By Me and The Commitments. Whilst it's a documentary, it's a documentary through the necessity that I can't write," de Koning says. "If I could write a film like Kevin Smith, one of my heroes, I would have gone down that path. I wanted to make a film that audiences would respond to in the same way I responded to Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused."
Screwtop Detonators, who also relocated to Melbourne, saw an early version of the film, humorously focused on the initial American tour, in 2012, and the group's then recently departed drummer, Charlie Austen, did not speak to de Koning for six months. Subsequently the musicians' reservations have butted up against their closeness to de Koning and his commitment to making an honest, rounded work.
"They had reservations about various things, such as drug-taking and relationships that are no longer happening. It's hard for the guys to look back and see parts of their lives that would otherwise be left in the past being brought back by the film," concedes de Koning. "It's been a battle to make sure I told an even-handed story."
De Koning, who is now editing a documentary about the late Perth artist Matt Doust – a friend and inspiration to Stoker in Meal Tickets during a debauched Los Angeles sojourn – has set up the members of the now defunct Screwtop Detonators to share in any commercial profits the documentary makes, in exchange for licensing their songs. It may be their best chance of turning a profit from a business they became disillusioned with, but what the director really wants is his friends' acceptance.
"Some of them won't be coming [to MIFF] because they've got hesitations about how they'll be perceived," de Koning says. "I'm just sticking to my guns. I believe that in a few years' time when the madness has passed and it means something to people, the guys will see it's an important film."
Meal Tickets screens at the Melbourne International Film Festival on August 4 and 5. See miff.com.au for details and tickets.