Robert Hughes on "ABBA - The Movie":


Speaking in 1977: "There was one occasion when I had to make a rush for ABBA as they came out of their tour caravan. And, would you believe it, nobody had told the bodyguards! I got clobbered right away and a glorious fight started. Well, we Aussie  may be handy enough in a punch-up, but I was glad when someone eventually convinced those guys I was the actor!"

Robert was interviewed extensively by Australian fan Cotton Ward and featured in the ABBF Magazine across four issues from Issue 36.  He said in that interview: "If Lasse had told everyone I was an actor, the bodyguards would have acted. So all their reactions to me on the Sydney Opera House steps were completely natural."

Although a loose synopsis had been written, Robert Hughes told the ABBF Magazine: "The first concert was in Sydney and that's when we were having talks about the script and we just started shooting. It was crazy - we just sort of went with cameras and did things. Robert Caswell was supposed to write the script and he was really upset because everything was moving too fast and he didn't have time to write anything. Most of the scenes I did were shot on my own and were adlibbed. There was no rehearsal, but it was a wonderful experience."

In particular, his scene at the start of the film with Bruce Barry, the radio station manager, was all ad-libbed. Robert said, " We'd discuss it and say, 'What do you want to talk about'?, come up with a character idea, kick it around and then shoot it."

Robert continued: "There's a lot of sequences where I was interviewing people that became really boring to do because I had to keep asking 'And what do you think of ABBA?'  All that stuff was live and I was operating the tape recorder and doing the sound at the same time. I initiated some of the shots, such as the one in Perth at sunset - we were driving along and I saw a line of seagulls hanging in the breeze so I suggested putting a long lens on the camera and I walked towards it through the seagulls and Lasse used it during "I've Been Waiting For You." Another was a quick shot of the ABBA flag with the full moon behind it. Also the sequence at the end when ABBA are in the studio, Lasse said, "What can we do?  We've shot everything," and I said, "But you haven't actually shot them in the studio."

The film apparently had an unlimited budget. "Some say a million bucks, nobody knows," said Robert. "When they were shooting at the Myer Music Bowl in Melbourne, the crew had every Panavision camera that was available in Australia. They also had isolated camera mounted for static shots. There were many people with buzzers and lights hidden around to help synchronise the sound. There were some complaints about the cameramen getting in the way. I've got a terrific shot of cinematographer Paul Onorato on his knees in front of the girls and he's got a huge Panavision camera doing a close-up on stage and  a lot people complained about that and I can understand why. A lot of the close-ups of stage footage were shot at different concerts. ABBA wore the same outfits and the scenes were inter-cut."

For many years rumours have abound that Robert Hughes had been trying to distance himself from his involvement with the movie, but his willingness to give the ABBF interview (in 1993) as well as an Australian radio interview in the early 1990s, proved he had plenty of positive memories of his time working with Lasse Hallström and ABBA. Indeed his reason for distancing himself may well be embarrassment considering ABBA's huge backlash of popularity in Australia starting in the late 1970s. Another explanation may be the small issue of his payment for appearing in the film. In the ABBF interview he said, "I didn't get paid a lot of money for the film. I haven't had any residuals from overseas sales or anything. I just got a fee for each week of work and that was it. I'm looking into this. There's a bone of contention over the contract, which nobody can seem to find."

On filming the taxi scenes: "Tom Oliver was not sitting high enough so they took the seat out of the taxi. So he was driving a left-hand drive car around the streets of Stockholm sitting on an apple box as he improvised his diaglogue."

On filming in Sydney and then Stockholm, "When I started filming, I had a pair of boots and was doing all this running and because the boots had become part of the film, I had to take them to Sweden and did many running scenes in them. They were extremely uncomfortable. I also had three identical sets of the jeans and the top I wore - that became the uniform for the film so they didn't have to worry about wardrobe changes."

Robert spent four weeks in Sweden including a weekend on ABBA's island: "We'd gone to the island to watch the shooting of a pull-out shot of the island from a helicopter. We were hiding behind the cabin in the shot. There was a normal-sized three-bedroom timber home with a deck where ABBA lived on the lower island. They were having a sewerage problem in the main house when I was there and they were most apologetic about it because didn't smell too good!"