As he prepares to work with Film Finance Corporation backing again, he has lost none of his anger about the federal agency's involvement in Shine. Before it approved funding, the corporation involved an extra partner in the project, reducing the revenue that was paid to the filmmakers after the film became an international success.

"They robbed us of the profits," he says. "It was a tragic mistake, I think. Had they taken the long view, we had the potential to be another Kennedy Miller, which of course was founded on the profits of Mad Max. But in this case, they gave the lion's share of the profits to a foreign sales company to sort of punish us for a tiny extra amount that we needed to make the film. It was very short-sighted and they know that."

Comingsoon.net

This movie has a lot of musical elements in it, opera especially.

SH: Well I guess it is my fault about the opera. When I thought about the character that Aaron was going to play and what he would bring that was interesting or unusual, I thought that opera was a good choice. Partly I was guided by that, because four of the top ten albums were “pop”-eratic works. The point is that the great arias from the great operas are enormously popular and have become so over the past 18 years or so. So it seemed the perfectly natural choice and something that fit so well with the idea of a character that aspired to all things Italian, the food, the music and the wine. For my own part I rarely go to opera, I go occasionally. The most stunning thing about seeing an opera live is knowing that is a human voice you are hearing, that is the staggering thing. You see in a concert hall that “something” coming out of someone's throat and chest; that is extraordinary. I wanted the music to have a very eclectic feel ranging from pop to opera to [Kurt's] work on the score.

Is it true while you were filming in New York people thought it was a real restaurant?

“We had walk-ins! ‘We want a table for four.’ ‘We’re shooting a movie in here!’ They’d take one look and see Catherine and realize this was a really wacky restaurant that they were getting a table in. But no, it looked very inviting. We took over a real restaurant on the corner of Bleecker and Charles and the production designer and the art department just did a fabulous sort of makeover. From the outside it looked like a wonderful new restaurant had opened in the district called 22 Bleecker. It was quite a mark of acknowledgement to that design team that it looked so authentic.”

And is it also true that your wine is actually featured in the movie?
“It is, twice! There’s a lovely scene when Patricia Clarkson, who’s a terrific character, she plays Paula the restaurant owner…she’s always wonderful.So she’s doing a little wine tasting with her staff and talking about this nice little Dolcetto from the Adelaide Hills in South Australia, and guess what? It was my wine!”

So during the tasting no one had anything negative to say about the wine, right?
“No, they didn’t dare! My wife, Kerry [Heysen] is a producer on the film and she said just before we were doing that scene, she said, ‘Why is this scene talking about wines from the Piedmont region of Italy? Why don’t you make it about Australian wines?’ I said that’s a good idea and she said, ‘In fact, you can do it about ours.’ There’s that scene and then there’s another scene when Kate and Nick are having a glass of wine after work in the darkened kitchen, and that’s over a bottle of our Shiraz.”