‘A nasty, horrible human being': Wolf Creek's John Jarratt on Bradley John Murdoch
'It could be his last little 'up yours' to cash out without telling anyone where the body is,' says Jarratt, 73, of the convicted murder who has died in custody, aged 67. 'He was a really nasty, horrible human being from all accounts.'
But the actor, who portrayed Taylor in two Wolf Creek movies in 2005 and 2013, and in two seasons of a spin-off TV series in 2016-17 for streaming platform Stan*, also conceded it was possible that Murdoch simply didn't know the exact location of Falconio's remains.
'Maybe he just went off track somewhere and dug a bit of a hole and threw him in and he didn't know where the hell it was,' Jarratt speculated. 'I mean, it would have all been a bit frantic.'
What Jarratt does know for a fact is that, contrary to popular belief, the character of Mick Taylor – whom he will again portray in Wolf Creek 3, due to start shooting early next year – was not based on Murdoch.
Nor was he based on Ivan Milat, though the actor did read a biography of the so-called backpacker murderer in an attempt to understand something of the mindset of a psychopath – 'how they operate because they've got no empathy and all that sort of stuff'.
Jarratt was first given a screenplay by the film's writer and director Greg McLean sometime in 2003, the same year Murdoch was arrested (in November) and charged with the 2001 murder of British backpacker Falconio and the assault and attempted kidnapping of his girlfriend Joanne Lees in the Northern Territory. But the idea had been kicking around long before that.
'Greg had this in mind about 1998 or '99,' says Jarratt, whose latest film as writer-director, What About Sal – about a young man with Down syndrome who tries to track down his birth father – currently sits at number 6 in Netflix's top 10 movies in Australia.
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