Australia / 2015 / 95 min / BR / Colour / Comedy
Director : Brendan Cowell
Script : Brendan Cowell
Cinematography : Simon Harding
Editing : Peter Crombie
Music : Sarah Blasko
Production : Kath Shelper
Cast : Patrick Brammall, Alex Dimitriades, Abbey Lee, Jack Thompson, Jeremy Sims
Sydney Festival 2015
‘Let’s get smashed!’ The battle cry of our eponymous, party animal ad-man proves inadvertently prophetic after a drunken rooftop dive from his swanky Sydney pad. Adding insult to near-fatal injury, Ruben’s long-suffering Czech model fiancée Zoya walks out, issuing an ultimatum: quit alcohol for a whole year and she’ll return. Maybe. Sceptical at first, it’s only when Ruben genuinely attempts to sober up that he realizes just how much his job, his lifestyle and an entire society isn’t just underpinned by boozy excess, but actively enables it.
Brendan Cowell
He is a successful playwright and actor in the Sydney theatre scene. His play ‘Rabbit’ was the recipient of the 2003 Griffin Playwriting award for most outstanding new work, and his play 'Bed' earned him a share of the 2001 Patrick White Playwrights award. As and actor he played in Kick (1999), "The Monkey's Mask" (2000), Suburban Mayhem" (2006), "Noise" (2007), "Three Blind Mice" (2008), "Beneath Hill 60" (2010), "Last Cab To Darwin" (2015), all screened at the Saint-Tropez Antipodes Film Festival. He is a co-founder of Roguestar Productions with fellow actors 'Anthony Hayes' and Leland Kean.