3 Acts of Murder

Rowan Woods was hot off the plane from Hollywood - a town where they catch, kill and devour their own - when the script for 3 Acts of Murder grabbed him by surprise and bundled him off to the dead heart of Australia to reimagine one of the weirdest crimes in our history.

The Sydney-born director of AFI winners The Boys and Little Fish only had to learn that 3 Acts' script was by the revered Ian David, scribe behind the legendary Blue Murder, to sign on. But on closer inspection Woods realised he was entering dark, bizarre territory.

"Given the nature of the crime, Ian's script is highly experimental - it's three-scripts-in-one really," says Woods. "It begins as murder-mystery, transforms into historical drama then culminates as tortured domesticity - yet all the while, there's this salacious real-life tabloid story fuelling it!"

3 Acts of Murder follows the true story of crime writer Arthur Upfield, who in 1929 plotted the perfect murder for a novel... only to have his drifter mate Snowy Rowles steal the idea and use it to kill three men.

That novel, The Sands of Windee - featuring Aboriginal detective Inspector Napolean "Bony" Bonaparte - became an international bestseller and made Upfield our most venerated (and tortured) crime writer.

"Both Upfield and Rowles had contributed to the deaths of three men and they both paid in different ways," Woods says. "Rowles was hanged in 1932. Upfield lived until 1964 but his success was tainted by the murders."

Woods is no stranger to dabbling in dark arts. In The Boys it was pack rape, in Little Fish, heroin addiction and in Woods' US debut Winged Creatures (due for release on 7 July), it's a random shooting. "These aren't violent films," he contests. "Violence is used to raise the dramatic stakes and to help the audience explore dangerous cerebral terrain."

Yet even Woods was unnerved when, 80 years later, he revisited the site where Rowles fed his victims strychnine, burned their bodies, then crushed their bones by hand.

"It's just left of Uluru and spooky as hell. Even creepier is the scaffold at Fremantle Gaol, which is almost untouched since Rowles was hanged there. Put an actor up there with a noose and, man, it's bloody real."

Woods corralled a stellar cast - Robert Menzies as Upfield ("Rushy sans Oscar!"), Nicholas Hope and Bille Brown - "old-school heads yet with a sophisticated, lived-in look". The result is a telemovie triumph.

Now back in Sydney after two years in LA with Winged Creatures - "a double-D dark drama" starring Forest Whitaker, Kate Beckinsale and Guy Pearce - Woods is busy with three new acts, all homegrown.

The first is about a classic Sydney mystery, The Shark Arm Murders. "It could be our Chinatown!" enthuses Woods. The second is Flying Man, a self-penned kids' film "in the vein of Harry Potter and Spy Kids"; the third is It Just Stopped, by Stephen Sewell, with whom Woods conjured The Boys. "All risky, all eccentric... all with dark corners." Angus Fontaine

3 Acts of Murder screens on ABC1 at 8.30pm on 14 Jun.

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