Why you don’t have to be ruthless to be successful (2024)

What time do you get up? Do you have a regular routine or are you a more ad hoc person?

Tony Ayres: I wake up about 5.30-6am, but I tend to listen to the radio for half an hour, three-quarters of an hour, and then get out of bed. I try to, on a good day, do Sam Harris’ Waking Up, which is a 10-minute meditation every morning. My partner and I do that together and then we have breakfast. I read various articles, the best of journalism that I can find for half an hour, three quarters of an hour, and then I start my emails.

Is that a particular type of meditation? I don’t know Sam Harris.

Sam Harris is basically trying to get you to reflect upon what the nature of consciousness is, which is a useful thing to remember when you are in highly stressful situations. You can sort of step away from the stress, observe it, and he gives you techniques for doing that.

Oh, so what are the techniques?

The Waking Up podcast gives you certain steps to separate yourself from the gripping feelings of anger, anxiety or fear that you might be experiencing in a particular situation.

It makes you aware that these are just feelings and thoughts and they all belong in this state called consciousness and that they don’t actually need to define who you are. Just being able to see those things as feeling states or thought states, or even bodily states like breathing faster or feeling your heartbeat – being conscious of those things somehow gives you a separation from them. Being able to separate yourself can sever the power of those feelings.

And do you do breakfast, coffee?

Always coffee. Coffee is my productivity hack. There’s a great coffee shop around the corner, which is my de facto office.

Is that where you do your emails?

No, it’s where I do my meetings. That’s kind of my routine except for when I’m in production. And of course, production determines what you do because it’s so resource heavy and so expensive, and you basically have to tailor your day for that. So you have to get up early, you have to be there, or you have to stay up late and be at the beck and call of production.

Tell me about a pivotal moment in your career that shaped you as a leader or somehow changed what you were doing.

In 2006, I made an autobiographical movie called The Home Song Stories about my mother and my sister. I was so proud of that movie. I gave it my all. It did very well in terms of film festivals and awards, but no one saw it. And I sort of realised, well, maybe I need to pivot to television. I made The Slap soon after that for the ABC, and every episode had about a million people watching it. And this was the day before streaming services or iView or catch-up opportunities, so it had a big commercial audience. It won every award under the sun. It got nominated for an Emmy, it got nominated for a BAFTA, and my career took off from there in terms of connecting with audiences. That was the pivotal moment for me.

So you had to make the decision yourself to move into TV?

Yeah, I’d always kind of flirted with TV. Early on in my career, I was a TV writer after film school, but the deliberate decision to really focus our resources on television was really an audience-based decision. I really wanted my work to connect with people. And when I made The Slap, it was one of those “come to Jesus” moments where you can make work that you’re proud of and people can watch it.

What is the best piece of career advice you’ve ever been given?

You don’t have to be an arsehole to be successful. You can be a nice guy. You don’t have to be anything more than who you are to do well. I remember when I was at film school, there was this kind of unspoken idea that to be successful you had to be the auteur director, and you had to be ruthless and a bit narcissistic and selfish.

Thump the table and get your way.

Yeah! Soon after I left film school, I befriended a beautiful playwright, Nick Enright, who sadly died of cancer decades ago now, but he said that you can be the person that you are. You can be a good person and try to cultivate good ethical values and still be successful. And it allowed me to find my own path through this industry, but still maintain a sense of my personal integrity.

So, are there times when people aren’t doing what you want them to do, and you really feel like being an arsehole and thumping your hands on the table where you have to restrain yourself? Or are you actually not inclined that way at all?

I certainly have an emotional temperature. There are a few people I vent to, and I think that’s useful, but I try not to bring it into my work.

And when you say you have an emotional temperature, what does that mean?

Oh, I can get cranky. I get angry.

And do you let people know or do you go home and sort of talk to someone about it afterwards?

I believe in the unsent email.

That’s another very good piece of advice. Don’t send it!

Sometimes you need to vent, sometimes you need to express what you’re feeling, but I think that the consequences of acting in that way are always greater than the pleasure of venting your feelings. I think it’s better to just try to act in a rational dispassionate way and have some other outlet for the feelings that you are going through.

What speed do you listen to podcasts on?

I am such an avid fan of podcasts. I have to hear them at normal speed.

What are you listening to at the moment?

I’m listening to this great thing at the moment called Chameleon. It’s all about scams and frauds, and there’s one about the conspiracy to kidnap a governor and basically, how it was all facilitated by the FBI. It’s fantastic.

So when you are listening to them, are you trying to get ideas for scripts or for stories that you want to tell?

The thing about being a storyteller is that material is all around you all the time. So sometimes it’s for that, and sometimes it’s just fascinating. There’s a podcast called Blocked and Reported, which I really love. It’s all about the crazy things that happen on the internet. It means I don’t have to join Twitter or X or anything like that. I can just listen to that and get the latest scams.

Is there something about fraud and scams and scamsters that really fascinates you?

Well, that’s one thread of interest. Yeah. I mean, we’re all putting on an act all the time and just even in relating to the world, we’re all putting on masks. And sometimes when you exaggerate that, that becomes a story that impacts on the world. For a storyteller, sometimes it’s good to get away from the murder mystery version of the world where the stakes are very high, and sometimes you want to find stories that you want to tell that still have consequences but aren’t necessarily life or death.

Do you like public speaking and have you always liked it?

I don’t mind public speaking, but I can’t say I like it. I’m always filled with dread beforehand. I can be either good at it or terrible at it.

Does that depend on whether you’ve done preparation, or is it just how you wake up in the morning?

Sometimes I can over-prepare and that is worse than under-preparing. I remember once I had to give an introduction for something at the Melbourne Film Festival and I had over-prepared, and I was thanking everyone. And then I realised halfway through it, I’m just banging on and on and on. But I had this kind of paper in front of me, and I was duty-bound to kind of go all the way through. At one stage, someone in the audience said, “Just shut up.” That was probably one of the most humiliating moments of my life.

And you couldn’t be responsive to the audience?

Exactly. I knew I was losing them. I’m always best when I’ve got a few dot points and I have to hit those dot points, and then I’ll just riff.

So with the dot points, there is this theory that you should make three points and if you want to make smaller sub points, then you should have three points underneath each. Apparently, we as an audience like things in multiples of three.

Rule of three, yes. Storytelling also has the rule of three.

I think that we are all templated around a certain idea of what a narrative is – beginning, middle, and end. That’s a narrative. And that’s three things.

So in terms of storytelling, what is the rule of three? Can you explain that?

The rule of three is basically you have to say something three times for it to print to an audience, so people will understand it and take it on board.

This is a particular message, for example, that you’re trying to deliver?

Yes, a key plot point for instance, or a key character point. If you do it three times, it will somehow bore into the audience’s reception. Sometimes if you just do it once, the audience can glance over it.

So, if you want the audience to understand the particular plot, you’ve got to find three different ways of delivering them that information, which will be through different characters or through different methods.

It can manifest in all kinds of different ways, and it is a rule that is designed to be broken as well, because often you don’t need to do that. But it’s surprising how often the rule of three works.

Tell me about a time when you failed at something. How did you recover, and what did you learn?

The last feature film I made, Cut Snake. I was very proud of the movie, it just did not find an audience at all, and that was terribly upsetting. Especially when you’re directing a movie, you feel particularly responsible.

So what did I learn from it? I learnt there are certain things that audiences will respond to, and if you try to do something that’s a little bit too esoteric … I was trying to talk about the crime genre in Australian cinema and the hidden hom*ophobia and hom*oeroticism in that genre. And I think this kind of theme was a little bit too abstract for an audience.

Dealing with a sense of rejection for something that you have put your heart and soul into, that can happen to lots of people on lots of different levels. Is there a secret to dealing with that personal rejection?

I think the key is to remember that who you are is different from your job or the product that you’re making, the story that you’re telling. And I think that will help you move on and do the next thing. I mean, I’m a great believer in jumping back on the pony and some stubborn part of me uses failure as an incentive to then do better the next time.

If you had 12 months off unencumbered, where you could do anything you liked, what would you do?

I’d get really good at table tennis.

Really?

Yes. Just before COVID started, I got a table tennis table, and during COVID, through a bit of a loophole, a friend came over and we played table tennis every second day. And I realised, oh, this is such a great thing, and it stops me thinking about work. It satisfies a certain obsessive compulsive element in my personality. You’re just hitting a tiny little ball over a net.