Why interview this guy at all. He hates everything. One of those critics who wants films to remain like they did in the Golden Age of Hollywood or something? He contributed nothing to this film. And he apparently doesn't like Americans (maybe just the actors or all of us, not sure). Well back at you lard a$$, waste of space loser.
Expansion to your ego.
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Bob Ellis was a brilliant writer, film maker, critic and political speechwriter with a biting wit and a wonderful turn of phrase, but was also a well known curmudgeon who was no doubt quite mercurial and difficult to get along with. I recently re-watched the early Phillip Noyce film "Newsfront" on DVD co-written by Bob Ellis and the DVD commentary track makes plain how difficult Ellis was during the whole process often throwing up his hands and declaring he was disowning the picture. "Newsfront" is one of Noyce's finest films (he may be well known to Americans for "Patriot Games", "Clear and Present Danger" and "Salt"). Ellis was also responsible for some wonderful Australian films, now not widely shown, such as Paul Cox's "Man of Flowers" and "My First Wife".
I often saw the typically dishevelled Ellis in his later years (he died in April 2016) stumbling around the gardens where the Adelaide Festival's Writers Week was held, clutching a well used, ordinary bedroom pillow; his generous frame would often collapse in an ungainly manner under the shade of a tree and he would appear half asleep, prone on the grass, listening to the discussions conducted with visiting writers. Often he was in the company of former South Australian Premier Mike Rann, Ellis being a strong supporter of the Australian Labor Party and one time speech writer for ALP leaders. As one who wished to see Australia stand on its own two feet and not be too much under the thrall of our more powerful allies such as the UK and then the USA, I am not surprised Ellis appears highly critical of the US, but I would see it more as someone critical of American political, economic and cultural mores rather than one against the American people themselves. Many described Ellis as a curmudgeon and difficult to get along with, but praised him as an Australian Hunter S Thompson, Tom Wolfe or Norman Mailer. Noyce said of Ellis, in a report for the Australian Financial Review, "He writes from the heart and speaks from the heart and thinks from his heart, not anyone else's heart. You could say he's jaundiced but it's always illuminating. That's a very rare quality. He's Australia's Hunter S. Thompson. So much journalism and writing is safe. Bob was never safe and he has often paid for that." The same 2015 article in the AFR, commenting on "Newsfront", succinctly states how that film crystallised Ellis' views on Australia and its love/hate relationship with the US, which emerged from the 1940s onwards, "The script was very much Ellis, with its original account of the struggles for a national identity, expressed through the popular media and the prism of an Australia consumed with the Cold War and growing American influence."