How to Make Gravy is already a movie that plays in our heads. That’s its brilliance | Paul Daley

Submitted by Paul Daley on Sun, 08/05/2022 - 6:00am

Like all great writing, the song ceased to be Paul Kelly’s once he launched it into the world. We claimed his characters

It makes perfect sense that Paul Kelly’s quintessentially Australian song How to Make Gravy is going to be adapted into a film.

Kelly’s ballad about a prisoner, Joe, writing home to his brother, Dan, on 21 December lamenting his emotional angst about missing “all the treasure and the trash” of family Christmas, is beautifully sparse. Its brilliance, like so many of Kelly’s lyrics, lies in its fusion of the present with an evocative untold back story that provokes imaginative possibilities.