MELBOURNE, Australia – In the photo posted on Instagram, actors Chris Hemsworth, Idris Elba and Matt Damon, all wearing 1980s style sweats, hug each other. You are maskless. Touch. Happy even. The headline reads: “A little 80s themed party never hurt!”
Your outraged fans peppered the post with comments. What about the pandemic? Social distancing? Masks? We are still suffering from a pandemic that has all but crippled the travel industry and prevented most people from casually flying on vacation to paradise.
However, the Hollywood Brigade was in Australia, a country where coronavirus has been effectively eradicated, allowing officials to relax restrictions on most gatherings, including parties (with dancing and finger food). Due to the near-lack of the virus and generous subsidies from the Australian government, the country’s film industry has been buzzing at an enviable pace for months compared to other regions.
Australia has managed to lure several Hollywood directors and actors into continuing film production. In fact, many celebrities including Natalie Portman, Christian Bale and Melissa McCarthy found freedom from the pandemic there.
One person wrote on Mr. Hemsworth’s Instagram post, “Before you comment, remember that not everyone lives in America.”
Although the accelerated pace of vaccination in the United States has raised hopes of returning to some semblance of normality by summer, the country is still the world leader in the number of coronavirus cases and deaths. The cinemas only reopened in New York City last week. Some fans are cautiously sneaking back while others are still cautious about contracting the virus.
But thousands of kilometers away, many stars who appear on the big screens can frolic or film on location in Australia. (Mr. Hemsworth is a fixture himself – he moved back to Australia in 2017 after several years in Los Angeles.) In the US, where hundreds still die every day, some fans watched jealously.
“These Hollywood stars have been transported to another world where the world’s problems don’t exist,” said Robert Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University in New York. He added that the temporary exodus from the United States revealed another disintegration of the myth that Hollywood was the endgame for celebrities.
Australia has become a “hip place” that “fabulous people want to go,” said Professor Thompson. “If you’re trying to be a star, you have to go to the west coast to make your bones.” When you become “a really big star” you are buying property in an exotic location like Australia, he added.
“It definitely feels like a time machine,” said Ms. Portman, who called from Sydney, late-night host Jimmy Kimmel in December. “It’s so different, all animals are different, all trees are different, I even mean the birds, there are multicolored parrots that fly around like pigeons,” she added. “It’s wild.”
A spokeswoman said the government helped 22 international productions bring hundreds of millions into the local economy. Paul Fletcher, Federal Minister of Communications, said: “There is no doubt that this is a very significant increase over previous activity.”
But even as celebrities dress up and pose on social media, some Australians grumble that the country’s strategy to fight the virus has stranded tens of thousands of citizens overseas. The strict border measures have also contributed to a shortage of agricultural labor.
Exceptions have been made for tennis players who participated in the Australian Open last month, as well as for the staff who run the tournament. The presence of Hollywood’s rich and famous has further angered critics who see a clear bend of the rules for those with money and power.
“Everyone knows that there seem to be separate rules for anyone who is a celebrity or has money,” said Daniel Tusia, an Australian who was stuck overseas with his family for several months last year. “There are still a lot of people who couldn’t get home, who don’t fall into that category and who are still stranded,” he added.
In a statement emailed, the Australian Border Force said travel exemptions for film and television productions have been considered “if there is evidence of the economic benefits the production will bring to Australia and support from the relevant government agency . “
A year ago, Hollywood Everyone’s Tom Hanks made the threat of the pandemic all too real when he and wife Rita Wilson tested positive for the coronavirus in Queensland, Australia while filming an unnamed Elvis biopic. Her illness made a personal threat, the seriousness of which was only just beginning to crystallize at this time.
But in May, Australia appeared to be well on its way to quelling the first wave of the virus, and the soap opera “Neighbors” was one of the first scripted TV series in the world to resume production. The federal government has allocated more than $ 400 million to international productions, which, along with existing subsidies, gives film and television producers a discount of up to 30 percent for filming in the country.
More than 20 international productions including Thor: Love and Thunder, a Marvel film with Hemsworth, Damon, Portman, Taika Waititi, Tessa Thompson and Bale; “Three Thousand Years of Longing,” a fantasy romance with Mr. Elba and Tilda Swinton; and Joe Exotic, a spin-off of the podcast that preceded the popular Netflix series Tiger King, which stars Saturday Night Live actress Kate McKinnon as Big Cat enthusiast Carole Baskin all filmed either in production or in preparation next year.
Ron Howard directs Thirteen Lives, a dramatization of the Thai rescue of a football team from a Queensland cave in 2018 (the Australian coast is a good proxy for the tropics). And later that year, Julia Roberts and George Clooney will arrive in the same state to direct Ticket to Paradise, a romantic comedy.
Although a number of American temporary employment stars have landed in the country, some like Ms. McCarthy, who was originally in Australia to work on “Nine Perfect Strangers,” have decided to shoot more projects, according to industry representatives. “Oh the birds!” she raved in a YouTube video. “I love seeing a spider the size of my head.”
Others, like Zac Efron, appear to have settled here permanently.
His Instagram is flush with Australiana: Here he is in a hammock in the desert of the red earth, seems to be participating in an indigenous ceremony or is wearing the Australian cowboy hat, an Akubra. Last year, Mr. Efron even got what an Adelaide barber called a “mullet,” a vicious hairstyle popular in Australia.
“Home, sweet home,” he captioned a picture of himself in front of a $ 100,000 motor home.
Chances are the stars will keep popping up. They were seen camping under the stars as they went to dinner without a mask and partied (yes, like it was 1989). Mr Damon said in January that Australia was definitely a “happy country”.
But locals in Byron Bay – the seaside town that has gone from hippie to glitter in recent years – have complained that the influx of stars over the past year has changed the city beyond repair.
“The actors and the famous people are the tip of the iceberg,” said James McMillan, a local artist and director of the Byron Bay Surf Festival. He added that the large cohort of production workers from Melbourne and Sydney had priced locals out of real estate.
“It has definitely changed more than it has ever done in the past 12 months,” added McMillan, who has lived in Byron Bay for two decades. “People have stars in their eyes.”
