Noise Background
What a day to see a movie called Noise. This Australian cop yarn, starring Brendan Cowell as Constable Graham McGahan, is loose-limbed, laconic and legit. An engrossing film. While sirens wail, and a city seethes after an awful crime, C-flat shrills in Graham’s ear, the poor cop a victim of tinnitus – or tinea as his arsehole boss describes it.
Don’t worry. I won’t sell the plot cheap. The meander is worth the fare, with scattergun laughs and a genuine menace built into the story, chiefly because Graham is so self-absorbed he can’t hear the danger signals swelling around him. That, and we meet a real bloke who looks in the mirror to see if a policeman is staring back.
But the coincidence is the day itself – Tuesday, May 22, 2007 – the day my good friend Senior Constable Joe D’Alo is no longer a senior constable. Or a cop for that matter. The navy-blue umbilical has been officially snipped after 20 years of service.
Moving from Preston uniform to surveillance to King Street CIB to the Armed Robbery Squad, Joe has seen the sights. He and I became good mates through co-writing One Down, One Missing – the Hunt for the Killers of Silk and Miller. Like Noise, the book engulfs you in real terror and workaday slog.
Cut loose from all he knows, Joe describes the feeling of mufti life as a weird sort of freedom. He’s earned a builder’s ticket since taking a spell from the job – working pro bono on house projects around Melbourne. And urban design is where he wants to head, just as soon as he realises that the shortwave radio crackles for another ear.
We’ve been through some amazing times, me and Joe. One Down is a giant story, embracing 40 robberies, and two shocking murders. Serving police still talk about the yarn’s impact, while Jack and Jill Citizen can’t believe such shadow-life thrives in their own town. I can write this without arrogance as the power lies in the taskforce’s tenacity, and not my pen. If you want to sample cophood, read the book, or see a film like Noise.
Anyhow, to Joe. Raise a glass when you get the chance. Read the book and think about how all exiles begin their journey as bright-eyed aspirants, just as Graham McGahan must have done, in his backstory.
Or see Noise and revel in the rawness that is police life. The movie is a study of the hapless buggers tasked with keeping the beasts from our bedside. This afternoon, over our hundredth cup of tea, the best I could muster my mate was a Cuban wrapped in cellophane, to smoke when that sense of freedom felt entitled.
Draw it in, paisano.