Stephen Elliott always struck me as a self-promoting pratt.

My memories of the year 1994 are a bit hazy owing, I suspect, to a lifetime of dedicated drinking. However one thing does vaguely stand out; if you wanted a night out watching an Australian film* there seemed to be only two real choices in 1994; The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert or Muriel’s Wedding.

I chose Priscilla and thus spent the evening locked in almost visceral rage** while all about me people were laughing like hyenas on nitrous oxide.

The fact that Priscilla’s director, Stephen Elliott, then made two critical and commercial flops and disappeared into a well deserved obscurity offered me a great degree of satisfaction.

Now, it seems, Mr Elliott is back.

And with a new film, Easy Virtue.

Bugger.

In a series of mostly puff pieces in the local media Mr Elliott claims that his nine year absence from the exciting world of cinema was due to his “self-destructive tendencies” or that he was “traumatised by being in New York during the 9/11 attacks”.

Really?

I think a more likely explanation is that he pissed a lot of other people’s money up against the wall making his two flops and people weren’t keen for that to happen again.

Apart from one or two local outlets, everybody else seems to regard Easy Virtue as possessing all the attractions of a piece of stinking fish so I suspect it may be some time before Mr Elliott pops up again.

*A mistake I won’t make again.

**Owing largely to its racism and misogyny. Oh and the fact that it was shit.