‘Looking For Alibrandi’ Nearly Ended Differently For John Barton

Spoilers for Looking for Alibrandi (obviously, you drongo).

This post discusses suicide.

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This year marks the 25th anniversary of Melina Marchetta’s groundbreaking novel Looking for Alibrandi, and one plot point is still just as devastating as it was the first time you read it in Year 7 English.

The death of privileged golden boy John Barton (played in the film by Matthew Newton), who Josie put up on a pedestal as everything she wished she was, is still a frank and moving depiction of teenage suicide; one that doesn’t promise any dramatic resolution but is the catalyst for Josie reckoning with her own family history.

Did it help that in the film, John Barton’s funeral scene was paired with a very upsetting version of ‘With or Without You’ by Hamish Cowan as the camera zoomed in on Josie’s (played by Pia Miranda) face, too shocked with grief to even cry? No, it did not help.

While talking to Junkee as an ambassador for the Emerging Writers’ Festival, Melina Marchetta said she didn’t know that John Barton was going to take his own life until “a couple of chapters before” Josie finds out. “I never imagined that’s where that story was going to go,” she says.

“I sometimes wonder if I wrote that book today I actually don’t think I would have written about suicide because it has affected my life too much. It’s something I would have kept away from. I think after years and years I have come to terms with his death — which is weird for the writer to say that.”

When writing the film adaptation, Marchetta says that she realised how “important he was as a character” when it was suggested that the story would be smoother if they took John Barton out all together.

“I was told to take the character out, because it’s closer to the end of the novel and they didn’t want people coming out of the movie theatre bawling their eyes out,” she says. “I had to find a way of keeping him in the film, because I didn’t want to pretend that stuff like that didn’t happen.”

And for the record? Marchetta “does not take pleasure” in making multiple generations of Australians cry. You can find the full interview here.